The Endless Forest (45 page)

Daniel leaned over to scoop up the puppy, who squirmed not to get away, but to get as close as he could. In no time at all he had found a button and was tugging at it with great seriousness.

“Looks like you’ve got your dog,” said Mrs. Allen. “And now I have to get these old bones to bed.”

“We are intruding on your peace,” Daniel said. Martha held her
breath because it was certainly true, but what could be done about it, unless they were to ride away into the night? In which case she would surely collapse of plain exhaustion.

“Not unless you decide to play bowls in the parlor at ten of the evening. Which my grandsons did, not a week ago.”

At the door she paused and turned laboriously. Then she used her cane to point at the ceiling over her head. “Two chambers, fresh made up,” she said. “Take one or both, whatever suits. Extra coverlets in the chest if it should happen you need ’em. We’re in for some more weather.”

When they heard the sound of Mrs. Allen’s chamber door closing, Daniel smiled at her.

“Didn’t expect to be bringing a new dog home from this trip.” He dumped the pup onto Martha’s lap and laughed to see him start from scratch, nosing into Martha’s bodice and under her arms, pulling on buttons and tugging at ties until he reached her throat and began the process of licking her into submission. She laughed, but that only seemed to encourage him.

When she turned to Daniel he was watching her with an expression that she had seen before. Early this morning, sitting on the porch while the sun rose on this very long, most extraordinary day. Without taking his eyes from hers he reclaimed Hopper and put him with the rest of the litter, where he immediately wiggled his way to a free teat.

“So,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

Later, Daniel banked the fire while Martha wiped the bowls and put them away.

“I’ll take our bags upstairs.”

She said, “I’ll come behind with the candle. Unless the stories are true and you can see in the dark.”

He laughed. “Now that’s one I haven’t heard before.”

“I think there must be many stories you haven’t heard about yourself. You have always been a staple of conversation among the schoolchildren.” She said, “I knew you couldn’t make deer and wolves and otters obey you. You couldn’t even make Lily obey you, try though you might.”

“So you saw through me even then.”

She might have said,
I loved you even then
, but her bravado only reached so far.

The two chambers above the kitchen were simply furnished, each with a dresser, a small table under the windows, a few chairs, and a bed. In the second room the bed was very old-fashioned, high enough to require steps, with curtains that could be pulled closed to keep out the sun, and a canopy of faded fabric heavily embroidered. It was a bed for a princess, and the very sight of it made Martha step backward over the door swell.

Daniel seemed less overwhelmed. He went straight to the windows that looked out over pasture and woodland. When he turned around again he seemed to have come to some kind of decision. “You need sleep,” he said. “I’ll take the other room.” Before she could think of how to respond to this surprising declaration, he was most of the way out of the room, turning his body so he could slip past her. Martha caught his hand and he stopped. The two of them stood together in the narrow doorway, his gaze so intent, as if he meant to see into her head and see what she was thinking. She said, “Wait.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’ve got years ahead of us.” She forbade herself to drop her gaze. “I am very tired,” she said. “But can’t we sleep in the same bed? Just sleep?”

Now there was a question.

Daniel doubted that such a thing was possible, but he also was determined to give her what she wanted. It was the least he could do after such an abrupt wedding, without so much as a proper wedding supper. And worse still, without a wedding ring.

In the hurry to get away it was the one thing that hadn’t occurred to him. They were almost to Johnstown when he realized what was missing, and he told her immediately. He was ready to see unhappiness or disappointment on her face, but she only looked puzzled.

“There’s no goldsmith in Johnstown,” Daniel told her, “but there is an Irishman who fixes clocks and he sometimes has things to sell. We could stop there—”

She stopped him with a soft shake of the head.

“Is a marriage legal without a ring?”

It was the first question they asked of the lawyer, who assured them that the law did not insist on a ring. But it still felt wrong, no matter how unconcerned Martha seemed to be. He would have to put it right as soon as possible.

Now Martha was sorting through her bag and making neat piles of things. He saw something edged in lace, a set of hairbrushes, a tin of tooth powder, a pair of rolled stockings.

She said, “I won’t be long,” and without waiting for a response she ducked behind the dressing screen. When she came out she was wearing a night rail that brushed against her bare feet, with their high arches and long toes. She had plaited her hair and it swung as she walked, bumping the base of her spine.

She climbed the three steps to the bed and sat on the edge, her hands folded in her lap.

“I think this will be a very comfortable bed to sleep in. Come, Daniel, I’m not going to bite. Come and sleep.”

Sleep was going to be hard to come by; now he had not only her bare feet to put out of his mind, but curiosity about how exactly she might bite him, should things ever get that far.

The last person Martha had shared a bed with was Callie, when they were girls. After Callie’s father disappeared and Jemima ran off, Curiosity took them both in and gave them a chamber together. It had seemed too large a gift at the time, a quiet, safe place where they could talk without worry that they would be overheard.

What a treat it had been to sleep in a bed made up with cool linen and pillow slips that smelled of lavender. How comforting it was to have Callie sleeping beside her, better than a warming brick on the coldest nights. Every time she went to bed with a full stomach she had wondered how long she could count on what she had.

Now that old feeling of safety and comfort came back to her, and she slipped away, contented, half asleep before Daniel ever came to lay down beside her.

She woke to the sound of rain drumming on the roof and the smell of apple wood on the hearth. Had she ever been so comfortable before in
her life? If so she couldn’t remember. It would have been the most natural thing in the world to slip back into sleep.

If it wasn’t for the fact that there was a man in the bed with her. Daniel Bonner, who was, oddly enough, her husband. Martha turned onto her back slowly so as not to wake him and saw she was too late.

He smiled at her. A sleepy smile that asked nothing of her but acknowledgment. She said, “Good morning. What time is it, do you know?”

“The hall clock struck six not long ago.”

“You’ve been watching me sleep.”

“Do you mind?”

She shook her head. It was interesting to her that he watched her openly and without excuse. For her own part, she found both things very difficult. Daniel had worn his shirt to bed, open at the top so that his throat was plain to see. Why it should move her so strongly she couldn’t say. Looking at classical sculpture she was most often drawn to the strength of leg and arm and back, but now the sight of Daniel’s muscular throat started a warm pulsing that moved up her spine and spread out.

Of course she could do as she liked. She could run her fingers along Daniel’s jaw to feel the bristle of his beard or kiss the hollow at the bottom of his throat and test his pulse with her lips. Any of those things were her right, but for the moment she was content to study him as he studied her.

Martha had heard quite a lot about the etiquette of the wedding night from her friends who had married first, marching into foreign territory armed with the advice of mothers and older sisters and grandmothers. The trouble was, there was no consistency in any of the reports. Some of it was shocking and some of it was frightening, and some of it was even funny, but there was precious little practical in the guidelines handed down to a bride or even in the firsthand accounts.

Her own engagement had ended before Amanda could bring herself to speak of such things. She wondered now what Amanda might have said. It seemed unlikely that sweet, quiet Amanda would give advice as Sylvie Steenburgen’s mother had. Mrs. Steenburgen had told her only daughter not to worry, the business was messy but it didn’t last long; she herself used the time to compose menus.

Margaret Bickman’s mother had told her to submit once a week and
no more, and that complaining would do her no good; in fact, it might only serve to drag it out. And, most important: She was never to lift her night rail higher than her waist.

Dorothea Ennis had heard from her grandmother that it was a great deal of fuss about nothing at all and that once she had three children she should come again and ask how to keep from having more.

And Annie Chamberlain’s mother, Martha’s favorite of all her friends’ mothers, had said that if it turned out Annie didn’t like it, why that meant her husband was as new at the business as she, or if not, he was a selfish bugger who needed an education. If they worked at it, Jane Chamberlain explained, they’d soon find it was a fine way to spend an evening alone, and the best way there was of really getting to know each other.

Technically Martha understood what was supposed to happen. Certainly animals had provided a lot of information over the years: dogs in the garden, pigeons on her windowsill, cows at pasture. None of whom kissed, which brought her back to the original problem. If he didn’t kiss her, what then? Was she to wait until he was ready? And did it mean she was not attractive to him?

He said, “You look as though you’re trying to do long division in your head.”

That made her laugh, a little at least.

Then he sat up and, without another word, got out of bed. Martha was so surprised she didn’t know what to say. Maybe he wanted to go right back to Paradise, but it was raining so hard, that seemed unlikely. He disappeared behind the dressing screen and began the noisy business of emptying his bladder into the commode. Martha wondered if all men took such a long time. She knew so little about the way they were put together. There was splashing at the washbasin, and when Daniel appeared again he was damp and half dressed.

He said, “I’ll be right back,” and to her astonishment, he went out and closed the door behind him.

Martha sat up in her surprise and tried to make sense of what had just happened. Apparently there was to be no kissing—he hadn’t even kissed her after the ceremony in the lawyer’s office—and nothing else either. Why this should be the case was unclear. Certainly no explanation was coming her way. She didn’t know if she should be insulted or thankful. Or simply sad.

There was nothing for it, and so she lay down again and watched the rain pearling on the windowpanes.

There was no sign of Mrs. Allen in the kitchen, but she had left a note. It was written in a spidery, uphill hand and announced that her daughter had fetched her to help deliver her eldest granddaughter’s first child, and she would likely be away until tomorrow. If they cared to stay they were welcome. She had made up a breakfast tray, and they were to help themselves to whatever else they found to eat. There was a bath in the workroom and if anybody wanted to bathe she suggested the best place to do that was before the kitchen hearth. In any case she hoped they would stay. Michael would be pleased if they did.

Daniel thought of the horses, and remembered that one of the farmhands was there to see to them.

By blind good luck they had come to a place where they could be alone. They had the house to themselves, and firewood enough, and food. It would be foolish to set out for Paradise in a downpour when there was no pressing need.

Molly’s litter was playing in front of the hearth. He whistled and they all looked his way, but Hopper was the only one who came running in his tumbling puppy way. Daniel took a minute to rub the potbelly and let his fingers be nibbled.

“So,” he said to the pup. “I have to go back upstairs. I’m as nervous as a girl, but that stays between the two of us, if you please.”

The tray was heavy with dishes: warm biscuits under a folded tea cloth, a lump of new butter sweating water, a plate of bacon, a jar of gooseberry preserves, and a jug of water.

He found Martha seated on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. She was watching the storm, and she gave him no more than a glance as he put down the tray.

He had done something wrong, clearly. Rather than ask about it he sat down beside her—he didn’t need the stairs as Martha did—and took her hand and folded his fingers through hers.

Martha shifted a little, as though she might want to get up and walk away.

He said, “The biscuits are still warm. Aren’t you hungry?”

She looked at him then, and he saw that he had insulted her somehow
but that she was trying to control her feelings. They would eat breakfast, her look seemed to say, if that was what he really wanted.

What he really wanted was something very different, but again he reminded himself that she should be the one to set the pace.

The truth was that Martha really was hungry and so they went about filling plates and then they sat there on their perch on the side of the bed and ate. Daniel told her about Mrs. Allen’s note, but his tone didn’t indicate how he felt about any of it. And why, she asked herself, was she so ready to be insulted?

The food helped. The biscuits were tender and the preserves sweet and tart at once. She would have liked tea, but the water was very cold and good. None of that changed the fact that Daniel had run off without even kissing her, but on the other hand it was nice to sit beside him like this in the quiet house with the rain coming down. Outside the world was wrapped in mist, but this chamber over the kitchen was warm. She felt her irritation seeping away, and try as she might to call it back, it was soon gone for good.