Cinderfella (20 page)

“Church! You didn't go last week, or the week before. People will talk.” Poor Verna, she was so concerned about what people thought.

“I'm not feeling well.”

Verna's sigh was audible through the closed door. “Very well. I'll make your excuses.”

“Thank you,” Charmaine mumbled.

“But we have a standing in this community, and next week I'll expect you to join me.”

If she was still here next week. “Of course.”

 

It was Sunday, and that meant no field work for the day. But the animals still had to be fed, and there was enough work to keep Ash busy in the barn.

Anything to keep his mind off Charmaine.

“The first time's always the hardest.”

Ash nearly dropped the shovel he was cleaning out the stall with, as Nathan's articulate voice interrupted his thoughts.

“What?” It
showed?

“Of course it is,” Nathan said calmly. “You think you're never going to disagree, and then some little thing crops up and there you go — your first fight.”

First
fight.

“You and Charmaine are both so transparent,” Nathan continued. “She's furiously doing laundry and you're attacking these stalls like you're going to find treasure under there somewhere.” He wrinkled his pert nose. “Can I help?”

“No.” Ash returned to his chore. “You've helped quite enough.”

“No need to be impertinent.”

Ash waited for Nathan to leave, but he didn't. He leaned against the doorjamb and seemed to wait himself.

“I don't understand women,” Ash admitted.

“Ah,” Nathan breathed, and it was a wise, knowing
ah.
“This conversation again. To be honest, I don't think any man is expected to understand women. You might just as well accept that you'll never understand Charmaine, and get on with your life.”

Ash propped the shovel against the stall and went to the door for a breath of fresh air. “I don't know what she wants,” he confessed. “One minute I think I know exactly what she wants and the next minute, out of the blue, she changes her mind. I don't know if I can take it.”

“Of course you can take it,” Nathan said, with a hearty slap to Ash's back. “Man has been 'taking it' since time began. I know it seems impossible, but eventually you and Charmaine will come to an understanding.”

If only it were that simple. “She's leaving.”

Finally, Nathan was shocked. “Leaving? Good heavens, what kind of a fight was this?”

Ash stared up and toward the window to his room. “It wasn't a fight, Nathan, it was . . . the truth. This is a forced marriage that started with a lie. Neither of us wanted it, and it's not going to last. It's just as well. She can't cook, she can't sew, she's scared of all the animals but Pumpkin. . . . ”

“Your mother was the same way when she came here. You should have seen her, chasing chickens and milking cows from the wrong side, and ruining half your father's shirts trying to wash and mend them. She learned, just as Charmaine will learn.”

Ash tore his eyes away from the vacant second-floor window. “There was one very big difference, Nathan, and you know damn well what it is. When my mother came here she came of her own free will. She loved her husband, and
this
is where she wanted to be.”

He didn't have to finish, didn't have to say aloud that Charmaine would rather be anywhere than here. And as for love? Never. Even if they were married for a hundred years, Charmaine wouldn't come to love him.

He could love her, though. He could feel it already, growing in his heart even as he tried to quell it. Loving Charmaine would ruin his life, but he wasn't sure he could stop.

“And still . . . ” he said, memories he didn't want coming to the surface, “it was hard on her. As much as she loved my father, as much as she wanted to be here . . . she was never strong enough. I thought maybe Charmaine was, but it was a mistake.”

“Lila was happy here,” Nathan said defensively.

“Most of the time,” Ash agreed. “You weren't here in '74 when the locusts descended on us. You didn't see her stand on the porch and scream. . . . ”

“You were just a baby. . . . ”

“I was four years old,” Ash interrupted. “And I can still close my eyes and see it. The darkness that came so fast, the grasshoppers everywhere. They ate everything green, and then they started on the bridles and saddles and shovel handles. My mother stood on the front porch and screamed until she couldn't make a sound.”

He didn't tell Nathan that he'd had nightmares for years that the grasshoppers hadn't stopped there. In his nighttime terrors the locusts kept going, through the house, through the people in it.

“Dad was in town, and by the time he got home she was losing the baby she carried. I didn't know that then, of course, I only knew that she was bleeding and screaming and I knew that somehow those damn insects were responsible.”

After that there had been no more children. Losing that baby had damaged her, physically, mentally.

“She never talked about that time,” Nathan said softly.

Ash shook his head. “No. She tried to ignore it, to pretend that it never happened. But you see, she wasn't strong enough for this life, and it killed her.”

“I can't believe that.”

Of course Nathan couldn't believe it. If he'd thought his precious Lila was in danger he would have done everything in his power to save her. The little man would have done battle with demons, if necessary.

“It would be the same with Charmaine,” Ash said gruffly. “What am I supposed to do, force her to live and die here?”

“You're depressing me,” Nathan said with a sigh. “I think I'll saddle Pumpkin and go for a nice long ride in the countryside.”

“Sure,” Ash mumbled as he returned to his work.

“And I think you should give your wife a little more credit. She's stronger than you know, I imagine. While I'm gone, and you and Charmaine have the place to yourselves, why not try to talk some sense into her?” Nathan suggested in an offhanded way. “Women are volatile creatures, stormy one minute, calm the next. Who knows, maybe Charmaine's winds have changed.”

Ash shook his head and returned to his chore as Nathan took the saddle from the wall.

 

* * *

 

Maureen closed her eyes and reclined on the sofa. Well, she was going to have to relent and go see the doctor, like it or not. Her head was spinning, and her stomach was twirling nauseatingly. Was this normal? What if it was something worse than the change of life? A terrible disease, perhaps. She'd been healthy all her life, and this speculation over her failing health was disturbing, to say the least.

She had tried to convince herself that this illness was a result of her age and the unnatural amount of excitement in the household as of late. Charmaine's return, the ball, the wedding . . . but as time passed and life returned to normal, her health had not improved.

Everyone else was out of the house, Stuart on the range and Jane at her sister's, so when someone knocked loudly on the door she groaned and rose to answer. Perhaps it would be Charmaine, come for another visit. That thought cheered her enough that her headache all but disappeared.

But it was that odd little man, Ash's friend, who stood at the door with his hat in his hand.

“Mrs. Haley,” he said with a bright smile. “Just the woman I wanted to see.”

 

Charmaine made the bed with clean sheets, while those she'd soiled last night hung on the line outside the kitchen door. She thought she'd feel better when the bed was crisply made, but that wasn't the case.

Ash Coleman would make some woman a wonderful husband, one day. When she was gone and the divorce was final and any lingering scandal had died down. He was hardworking and handsome and really very sweet, most of the time. And last night. . . .
 

She tossed a pillow onto the bed. This couldn't be happening to her! She wasn't twelve any more, she was twenty-one, fully grown and mature and very certain about what she wanted from life.

She wanted her life to mean something. She wanted to do something
important.
Falling in love with Ash Coleman and considering, for even a moment, staying here, was out of the question.

But her life of seminars with Howard suddenly seemed lonely. Funny, for they'd always been exciting to her, before. Before she'd made the mistake of coming back to Salley Creek. Before the ball. Before she'd begun to wonder if she would always miss Ash the way she missed him now.

Goodness, he was in the barn! How could you miss a man who was no more than a few hundred feet away?

She should have better control of herself. She wasn't a misinformed child, she was an educated woman who understood very well what had taken place last night. Her physical impulses had overridden her common sense, it was as simple as that.

But it wasn't simple at all. She wasn't emotional like Jeanette and she never had been, yet her emotions were in turmoil. Of course, this wasn't love! Love was harmonious. Neat and tidy and warm, and a comfort to those who found it.
This,
whatever it was, was complicated and dreadful. It was turning her insides around and muddling her normally clear mind. Her heart
hurt,
and for the first time in her life she didn't know what she wanted.

Charmaine threw herself, face first, onto the bed. Her life was in shambles.

 

 

 

 

 

Fifteen

 

Damn, it was turning cold fast. Ash hurried from the barn to the house for a quick evening meal, and then it would be back into the cold for him.

He'd been sleeping in the barn for three days, and but for one snide comment from Verna everyone in the house ignored the new sleeping arrangements. He didn't sleep any better in the barn than he did in the house, but at least now he could blame the weather or the hard cot or Charmaine for his sleepless nights.

He heard the shouting before he so much as set foot onto the steps to the porch.

“I will not allow it!” Verna's voice was high-pitched and sharp.

And who was the recipient of that acid tongue tonight? Elmo? Oswald? His smile faded. It had better not be Charmaine.

His question was answered before he opened the door, by Elmo's unusually strong reply. “I'm going, and you can't stop me.”

“But what about the treasure?” Verna hissed as Ash opened the door.

The three of them turned sharply to the door. Verna's face paled, and Elmo had the good manners to look ashamed. Oswald was cool as always.

“What treasure?” Ash asked as he closed the door behind him, shutting out the cold wind.

Verna's eyes narrowed. “You know very well what treasure. The Montgomery treasure your mother brought with her when she came to this house, the treasure your father talked about on his deathbed. ‘Be sure Ash remembers where the treasure is. Lila wanted him to have it.' ”

“Funny, Verna,” Ash said emotionlessly as he stripped off his heavy coat. “You've never asked me about the Montgomery treasure.”

She reached out and slapped Elmo on the arm. “See what you've done? We'll never get it now!”

Charmaine came to the top of the stairs, and she watched the scene with apparent interest. Nathan was not far behind her. He'd been dressing for dinner, as he did every evening — even when the meal was nothing more than tasteless stew or burnt chicken.

“Would everyone like to see the Montgomery treasure?” Ash asked softly. Nathan smiled widely, and Charmaine waited with curious expectation on her face. Verna's eyes became bright, and Oswald grinned wickedly.

Ash moved the rocking chair Verna sat in every night, threw back the tattered rug, and dropped to his haunches. It had been a long time, but he was sure he hadn't forgotten. He pressed against one floorboard, and it held fast. He moved to the next, and this time when he pushed hard the floorboard popped up to reveal Lila Montgomery's secret hiding place.

“You idiot,” Verna hissed. Ash didn't turn to see which son she admonished. “I told you to search this room!”

“I did!” Oswald snapped. “Several times!”

Ash didn't listen to their continuing argument. He lifted another board and then he reached into the space beneath the floorboard and wrapped his fingers around the wooden box that held his mother's treasure.

It had been years since he'd gone through the contents, and he placed the box on the floor and lifted the lid carefully. There was a silent crowd around him, now. Verna and her boys, Nathan and Charmaine, all looking down at the valuables within.

“The Montgomery family Bible,” he said, lifting the largest and heaviest item in the box. He gently turned back the cover to reveal the family history written carefully there. His name was the last entry in this book. “Her favorite book of poems.” He took the slim volume from the box and leafed through the yellowed pages. How many evenings had she read to him from this book? There had always been something of the dreamer in her, something fragile and much too soft for the life she had chosen.

“Is that it?” Verna wailed.

“Oh, no,” Ash said as he delved one more time into the box. “We can't forget the Montgomery family blessing.”

“The
what?
”

Ash smiled grimly at Oswald's outburst. “The Montgomery family blessing has been handed down from generation to generation for more than a hundred years. Now
that's
a treasure.”

Charmaine's curious eyes were fastened on the contents of the box — and then on him. “Lila Montgomery, my mother,” he said, speaking only to Charmaine, “was a young woman when the War Between the States began. Her family was untouched, at first, and then everything went wrong. She saw her father die, and then her brothers, and then her mother.” He never spoke of this, because he felt his mother's agony for these ancestors he had never met. But for his wife — temporary though she may be — he would tell it.