The Romancing of Evangeline Ipswich (14 page)

Even for his lingering lethargy, when the realization struck him that Evangeline was already up and making breakfast, Hutch hopped out of bed, pulled on his trousers and boots, and headed out the back door of the house to wash his face before facing his wife after their first night together.

The water in the rain barrel was frozen over. But Hutch punched a fist through the thin layer of ice, splashing a few handfuls of frigid water on his face and taking a few swallows to revive himself. If he hadn’t been wide awake a moment before, he certainly was now!

Having made a quick trip to the outhouse, he paused before the mirror in the mudroom at the back of the house to run his fingers through his hair a few times, snapped his suspenders that were hanging at his waist over his shoulders, and headed into the kitchen.

In being honest with himself, Hutch was a bit nervous about facing Evangeline. She’d been so stunned to find him in bed next to her that he feared she would be angry with him. Still, she had allowed him to keep her warm, and he figured that was a good sign she didn’t hate him or anything.

As he entered the kitchen and saw her standing at the stove turning some sausages in a skillet, Hutch smiled and exhaled a sigh of admiration. For a moment, he was doubtful that he was really seeing what he was seeing—the beautiful Evangeline, standing at
his
stove in
his
house, cooking breakfast for
him
.

But she really was there, and he wondered how long she’d been awake—for she was completely dressed and her hair coifed perfectly. Hutch smiled with amusement and unforeseen pleasure as he noticed she wasn’t wearing any shoes. She wasn’t wearing any stockings for that matter either, and something about the fact caused Hutch’s physical desires for her to escalate a hundredfold. Inhaling a deep breath of self-control, Hutch realized just how difficult it was going to be to be patient enough to win Evangeline’s heart without ravaging her.

“Good morning.”

The sound of Hutch’s voice both startled and thrilled Evangeline. Whirling around, and nearly dropping the fork she’d been using to turn the sausage she was cooking, she gasped when she saw him standing in the kitchen wearing only his trousers and boots.

“G-good morning,” she greeted, forcing a smile and praying she did not look as unsettled as she felt.

Oh my goodness
, Evangeline thought as she studied Hutch quickly for a moment. His superb physique was far more intimidating in the broad light of day than it had been in the dark of midnight.

“I-I hope you don’t mind sausage and biscuits for breakfast,” she stammered. “I was going to make bacon and eggs…but then I wasn’t sure whether you were still tired of—”

A knock on the door interrupted her.

Hutch frowned. “Who on earth can that possibly be?” he grumbled as he carefully peeked through one of the kitchen curtains. “Oh hell,” he growled.

“Who is it?” Evangeline asked. It was obvious Hutch was not pleased with whomever it was.

“Heather Griffiths,” he said in whisper.

“Heather Griffiths?” Evangeline squeaked.

She was at once irritated. What was Heather Griffiths doing knocking on Hutch’s front door? After all, whether it had been his choice or not, he was a married man now. He was
Evangeline’s
man!

Hurrying to where Evangeline stood, Hutch took the fork from her hand and removed the skillet from the fire on the stove, setting them aside.

“Here,” he whispered.

“What?” Evangeline inquired.

Hutch then reached out, quickly pulling a few pins from Evangeline’s hair, causing it to begin cascading down around her shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Evangeline exclaimed in a whisper. Though she did not want Hutch knowing, she had spent quite a lot of time that morning before he’d awakened—quite a lot of time pinning her hair so that she might look her best when he woke.

“Shh!” Hutch shushed. The expression on his glorious countenance was that of pure mischief—though Evangeline couldn’t fathom why.

Next he unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirtwaist collar—and then tugged at her shirtwaist, untucking it from her skirt.

“Hutchner!” Evangeline scolded. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Just go along with me, all right?” he asked. An impish grin spread across his face. “This will be fun. I promise!”

Another knock at the door, and he said, “Hurry! Unbutton a few more buttons of your shirt there.”

“I will not!” Evangeline whispered.

“Come on, Evie,” he almost begged. “Just give me this one moment of…of…”

“Hutchner?” came Heather Griffiths’s voice from the other side of the door. “Are you home? I’ve just been to Jennie’s and…”

Reaching out with impatience, Hutch tugged at the collar of Evangeline’s shirtwaist, pulling hard enough that several buttons went flying across the room and exposing her neck and throat.

Evangeline gasped as Hutch winked at her and then turned and opened the door. Indeed, Heather Griffiths was standing on the porch.

“H-Hutchner?” Heather stammered. Her eyes fell to his shoulders, his chest, his stomach. After all, he stood before her shamelessly displaying the smooth, muscular curves of his torso.

“Heather?” Hutch said, feigning momentary confusion.

“Hutch…I’ve just been to Jennie’s house to welcome her new baby…and she tells me that you…that you’re married?” the young woman nearly screeched. “How can you be married?”

Hutch raked a hand through his dark hair and chuckled. “The Reverend Lloyd married us…didn’t he, Evie?”

Hutch stepped aside, and as Heather Griffith jealously studied Evangeline from head to toe, Evangeline understood exactly what he intended the young woman to think.

“Why…why yes, he did,” Evangeline said, brushing a long strand of unpinned hair from her face. She nervously began to fiddle with the open collar of her shirtwaist. Stepping forward, she said, “Hutch and I have known each other since we were children, you realize,” she explained, forcing a smile and taking Hutch’s arm. “And when I came out to see Jennie…” She shrugged, feigning naïveté. She looked to Hutch and smiled, “Well, the moment I saw him…it was as if we’d never been apart.”

Hutch released Evangeline’s arm where she’d been holding it and instead placed his hands at her waist, turning her to face him. There was nothing she could do but place her hands on his warm, broad chest and smile at him—for Heather Griffiths’s sake, of course.

“You married this woman?” Heather nearly growled.

“I did,” Hutch said, placing a firm kiss to Evangeline’s cheek. “I couldn’t help myself. She’s so beautiful, and I’ve loved her for so long. And once she stepped off that train and back into my life…”

Evangeline startled when Heather screeched with anger and frustration. “You’ve ruined everything, Hutch!” the girl growled. She looked to Evangeline, hatred fairly spitting from her eyes. “Fine,” she said to Hutch then. “You could’ve had me, Hutch. But you chose her instead. Therefore, all I can tell you is…well, you’ve made your bed, so you’re the one who’ll have to lie in it!”

Hutch smiled, however, saying, “Oh, I have, Heather.” He looked to Evangeline, pressed a long, lingering, warm kiss to her mouth, and then said, “I have,” and closed the door in Heather Griffiths’s face.

Evangeline heard Heather squeal a bit with fury, stomp down the front porch steps—and then she was gone.

“You’re terrible!” Evangeline scolded Hutch, though she couldn’t keep from laughing. The truth was, she’d been somewhat thrilled when she’d realized just what Hutch was trying to make Heather assume. Oh, it was devilish of her to willingly play a part in his deceit, but she was glad she had.

Hutch shrugged, however. “That woman has been driving me near to drink for over a year now,” he explained. His smile broadened. “But…I expect she’s finished with me now. Don’t you?”

“I would hope so,” Evangeline admitted. The truth was, she could hardly think straight! Hutch had kissed her! His warm lips pressed so firmly against hers had turned Evangeline’s innards to spring-day slush. Not to mention the fact that he still held her against him—that her palms were still pressed against the warm, solid contours of his chest.

“Now wasn’t that fun?” he asked her. “A little mischief always puts an extra sparkle in your eye, you know, Evie. It always has.”

“Well, you’re not the one who has to sew three buttons back onto this shirtwaist, now are you?” she teased.

Hutch’s gaze was so mesmerizing! He was staring at her intently, rather as if he didn’t plan on releasing her any time soon. The deep, cool blue of his eyes seemed to boil somehow as he looked at her. His expression thoroughly thrilled her, caused her to quiver with wanting to kiss him—to think of the bed Heather Griffiths had accused him of making—and of lying in it with him.

“Oh! I forgot to tell you,” Evangeline exclaimed, however—too uncomfortable to continue with the train of thought she’d begun. Whether or not Hutch was, by law, her husband—whether or not her feelings were so strong for him that she hated every moment he was away from her, longed to be in his arms with every breath she took—she didn’t quite know how to surrender to his teasing implications. For always in the back of her mind was the question of how sincere his teasing was.

Therefore, she casually stepped out of his grasp and said, “I found a spider this morning—a huge, huge, enormously monstrous wolf spider—and I couldn’t find the courage to step on it. So I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind getting rid of it for me. Otherwise, I’ll never be able to sleep again, you know.”

Hutch shook his head and chuckled, obviously amused. “That’s what you’re thinking about right now, Evangeline?” he asked. “We just sent one of our neighbors off into the world thinking scandalous thoughts of what you and I are up to in here…and you want me to kill a spider for you?”

Evangeline nodded. “If you wouldn’t mind,” she assured him. “I abhor spiders.”

Hutch sighed, chuckled again, and asked, “All right. Where’s this monster spider you need squashed?”

“In the kitchen,” Evangeline told him.

She was a coward! A spineless coward! She knew neither of her sisters would’ve backed away so hastily from the men that they loved, and it made her wonder what was wrong with her. And yet Amoretta’s and Calliope’s circumstances of marriage were vastly different than her own. They’d been proposed to by the men they loved, planned weddings, been married properly with many witnesses, had photographs as proof that their men loved them enough to marry them. It wasn’t the same—wasn’t the same as Hutch actually wanting to marry her of his own free will.

“I did manage to put an empty peach bottle over it,” Evangeline explained as she followed Hutch into the kitchen. “But I swear it’s so big its legs were still sticking out of the bottle rim at first.”

Evangeline shivered with wild discomfort as Hutch approached the large glass jar sitting over the spider on the kitchen floor. She watched as he hunkered down in front of the jar and placed a hand on it.

“Ahhh!” Evangeline screamed, hopping up onto one of the kitchen chairs. “What are you doing? Are you insane?” She wished she’d put on her shoes before she’d dressed, for now her bare feet were at the mercy of being crawled on if the spider escaped its glass prison.

Hutch looked up at her a moment and smiled. “Well, I gotta move the jar if I’m gonna stomp the spider, sugar,” he chuckled.

But as Hutch lifted the jar, the unusually large wolf spider did indeed fulfill Evangeline’s fears by quickly scampering across the floor toward the very chair on which she was standing.

Horror-struck, Evangeline hopped from the chair she’d been standing on onto the kitchen table, squealing and dancing about as if the tabletop were a bed of hot coals instead of just an ordinary (and harmless) piece of furniture.

Even after she heard the hard stomp of Hutch’s boot on the floor—even after he’d assured her the spider was dead and he’d gone to the stove to scrape its remains from his boot on the pile of wood in the wood bucket there—Evangeline’s skin was swarming with the residual goose bumps, goose bumps of terror.

“My skin is crawling!” she said as she remained standing on the table. “I’ll never, ever get to sleep tonight! How many other monsters like that are in here, do you think?”

Evangeline watched as Hutch turned back toward her, bending to one side as he studied something. It took her only an instant to realize he was staring at her legs—her scandalously bare feet and legs! When she’d leapt up to the chair (and then the table), she’d been clutching her skirt and petticoats, keeping the hem lifted to nearly her knees for fear another spider might appear and endeavor to scramble up her legs. Even her pantaloons had somehow managed to bunch up above her knees, so that her knees were visible as well—visible to Hutch!

Evangeline dropped her skirt and petticoats at once, properly covering her calves, ankles, and feet. Her goose bumps of terror were quickly spiraling into goose bumps of embarrassment and a scarlet blush of humiliation.

Hutch straightened to his full height, smiled, and said, “Mercy! I’ve never seen a woman’s bare, naked legs before. It’s a beautiful sight indeed…yes, indeed it is. At least
your
bare, naked legs are a beautiful sight.” His smile broadened as he added, “I’m finding there really are quite a lot of advantages to being married to you, Evangeline.”