Thomas sat on the porch steps and watched the twilight thicken over the valley. A chorus of frogs croaked in the muddy pond near his irrigation station. In the creek, a beaver splashed its tail. A hawk soared overhead. The scent of blossoms from the pomegranate orchard by the lake floated on the breeze.
Sundown was his favorite part of the day. The chores were done. Horses were safe in their stalls, the milk cow in its pen and chickens in their coop. It was the time to relax, time to allow his aching muscles a moment of rest. Time to look forward to supper, and then to sitting down by the fire to work on a piece of furniture, or to read a book by lamplight.
Ever since he’d finished building the house in his second year on the farm, Thomas had sat on the porch steps in the evenings. And every night, he’d wondered what it might feel like, to have someone inside waiting for him.
All his life, he’d longed for that.
To enter a room and feel welcome.
Would he achieve it now? Would his wife smile at him, her face bright with pleasure as he stepped across the threshold? Or would it forever be his fate to live with the silent hostility that had ruined his childhood and youth, until he could no longer take it and had chosen to leave his Michigan home.
There was a risk in marrying an unknown woman.
It was a risk he’d felt compelled to take.
For not trying at all would have been cowardice.
Thomas pushed up to his feet, slapped the dust from his knees. He should have changed into work clothes instead of taking care of the animals in his Sunday suit.
One corner of his mouth tugged up in a wry smile. Didn’t matter. He’d not wear the suit again until someone died. His smile deepened. Or perhaps for the christening of his child. Their child. For, according to the law, any child born to his wedded wife would be his, even if another man might have planted the seed.
“Charlotte.” He tasted her name on his tongue.
“My wife,” he whispered into the silence, enjoying the sound of it.
He raked one more satisfied glance over his valley, now shrouded in deep shadows, and then he walked up the porch steps into the house.
The parlor was empty, the lamps unlit. Thomas turned toward the bedroom. The doors were closed. He didn’t know what to make of it. He understood it was common for women to fear their wedding night. It made sense. Most women had little idea what to expect, and it was human nature to fear the unknown, but that should not be the case with Charlotte. The proof of her experience was growing in her belly.
With hesitant steps, Thomas set off across the floor. Before he reached the bedroom door to the left of the fireplace, the door on the right side opened. His wife stood in the opening. The last glimmer of daylight from the window behind her silhouetted her, rendering her thin white nightgown transparent.
Thomas felt his mouth go dry. His heart hammered in the confines of his ribs. He wanted to rush up to her, rake his hands down the dark curls that cascaded past her shoulders. He wanted to frame her face between his palms, tilt it up toward him and kiss her until his body hummed with joy.
She moved.
A step toward him.
Not away from him.
And then she laughed—a tingling, feminine laughter that crawled up his spine and fanned the needs he had just spent an hour trying to bank down.
“Why do you have two doors to the bedroom?” she asked. “I can see us going round and round, looking for each other, one of us going in through one door while the other one is coming out through the other door.”
Thomas had trouble speaking. He had to clear his throat before the words came. “It is so that the bedroom can be divided into two later, creating a separate bedroom for the children. That’s why I put in a window on both sides, rather than one big window at the end.”
She spun around to survey the bedroom. The transparent nightgown gave him a view of her back, different, but just as fascinating.
“I see,” she said. “What a clever idea.”
Thomas smiled. Tomorrow, he would show her his irrigation station, and some other inventions he’d made to ease the burden of farm chores. She might be surprised to discover that despite his lack of formal education he possessed as much knowledge of mechanics as a trained engineer.
“I’m hungry,” he told her. “Will you eat supper with me?”
She whirled back around to face him and edged closer. Either she lacked modesty, or she had no idea how much the flimsy nightgown revealed. Thomas would have bet his life on the latter. When she was only two steps away, she clasped her hands together in front of her in a manner that was becoming familiar to him.
“I haven’t cooked supper for you,” she said, her expression crestfallen.
Another wave of warmth spread in his chest. This was exactly what he had hoped for. A woman to help with the chores. “It’s all right,” he reassured her. “I didn’t expect you to cook anything. Not on your first night. I was just going to have some bread and cheese.”
She pressed the flat of her palm against her belly and held it there. Thomas guessed a pregnant woman might like to do that, to feel the new life growing inside her. His eyes lingered at her waistline. Five months. Shouldn’t she be bigger? Without thinking, he blurted out his thoughts.
“You look too thin. Is there something wrong with the baby?”
“No,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong.”
“Are you sure? Have you seen a doctor?”
She shook her head in silent reply.
“Not at all?” he pressed. “Not even in the beginning?”
“No.” She came closer to him, touched the back of his hand in a gesture of reassurance. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with the baby. Nothing at all. I’m just small, that’s all. Some women don’t show until they go into labor.”
He studied her guarded expression for a second, then nodded. He couldn’t help the niggling feeling that something was wrong. Maybe earlier Miss Jackson had tried to get rid of the baby. Maybe she had taken some potion and it had harmed the development of the child, stunting the growth in the womb.
Miss Jackson. Thomas frowned. Strange, how it seemed to him as if that person, the person in the tintype photograph he had filed away, was someone else altogether, and not his wife, the woman who had asked him to call her Charlotte.
Turning to the kitchen cupboard, Thomas took out a loaf of bread from a stone jar and a wedge of cheese from the milk safe. “If you keep the burlap cloth moist at all times, it will keep the milk and cheese fresh an extra day, even in the summer heat,” he told her, looking back over his shoulder.
Charlotte remained on her feet, hugging her arms around her body.
“Why don’t you put your coat on?” he asked.
She rubbed her arms, shivering. “The wool fabric is itchy.”
Thomas paused. He glanced back toward the bedroom. He’d intended to save his bridal gift for when he knew for certain she would stay with him, but it didn’t matter. Today was the proper day for giving marriage gifts.
“Wait here,” he said, and strode off into the bedroom.
He knelt by the linen chest at the foot of the bed, lifted the lid and searched inside. He pulled out the crocheted shawl and paused for a moment, smoothing his fingers over the soft texture of the fine wool. It was the only token of love he’d ever received, not counting the fact that he had been born. On the morning he’d said goodbye and walked out of the house that final time, his mother had hurried after him.
“Take this,” she had whispered. “I made one for you too, like I did for your brothers. For your bride.” She’d cast a fearful glance back at the house, where her husband’s shadow fell across the window.
“He doesn’t know I made it.” She’d drawn a breath, and Thomas had heard a sob in her voice. “I wish I could have been...stronger...that I could have defied him...but I couldn’t...not even for you.” She had looked up with a plea in her eyes. “You understand, don’t you?”
Thomas had taken the shawl, slipped it into his bag. Not a saddlebag, for they wouldn’t even let him have a horse to see him on his way.
His mother had clung to his arm. “Tell me you understand,” she’d begged. “Tell me you forgive me.”
Thomas had looked down at her from his height. Small and dark, like everyone else in the family, she’d stared up at him with tear-bright eyes. He would never understand, and he didn’t have it in his heart to forgive his mother for not loving him. Perhaps the man he’d grown into might possess the strength to forgive, but the child he’d once been and whom he still carried inside him clung to the hurt.
But he’d said it anyway, even though it was not true.
One final act of love for the mother who had never loved him.
“I forgive you,” he said, and asked God to absolve him for the lie.
Kneeling by the linen chest, Thomas lifted the shawl to his face. In the first two years, the scent of the rose water his mother used had clung to the wool. Then he’d made the chest and the spicy scent of cedar wood had replaced the scent of roses.
He pushed up to his feet and went back into the parlor. He shook out the shawl. It was patterned in earthy colors, rust and moss green and the rich red hues of maple leaves in the fall. He moved to stand behind Charlotte and spread the shawl over her shoulders. His arms circled her for a second before he pulled away.
“What is this?” she asked.
“It’s a wedding gift for my bride. My mother made it.” As Thomas spoke the words, a tiny edge of the old pain chipped away. Perhaps one day forgiveness would come.
“The custom is that I should give it to you in the morning after our wedding night, but I can see that you are cold, and our marriage isn’t a traditional one anyway.”
Charlotte fingered the soft wool, not meeting his eyes. “It’s lovely,” she said. “And very warm.” She glanced up at him. “Thank you.”
Thomas nodded. They needed to talk about it. Their wedding night. And all the nights that came after. But such a conversation might be easier for both of them if he waited until the darkness let them hide their thoughts from each other.
* * *
Charlotte clutched the shawl tighter around her. Night was falling, but she didn’t feel ready to meet the challenges the darkness might bring. The longer they remained in the parlor, talking, the longer she could postpone facing those challenges.
“I believe I’m hungry after all,” she said, and recalled the task that had sent her out to the well earlier that evening. “I was going to make coffee.”
She darted over to the kitchen counter, her bare feet soundless on the timber floor. The pail was full of water. An iron pot filled to the brim sat on the stovetop. Thomas came to stand beside her, nodded at the pot. “That’s water for washing. I didn’t light the fire yet. I stopped to sit on the porch steps for a moment.”
“Let me do it.” She nudged him aside with her elbow.
Obediently, he eased back, but instead of sitting down at the table, he settled a hip against the edge of the tabletop and leaned back, arms folded across his chest. Watching her. As if to inspect her household skills and pass judgment on them.
Charlotte glanced down at the pile of firewood and pursed her lips. The front of the stove had three hatches, one big, two small. She bent down, opened the biggest hatch and threw a few bits of firewood inside.
“That’s the oven,” Thomas said. “The wood goes into the smaller compartment on the left.”
Charlotte swallowed hard, nodded, removed the bits of firewood and placed them in the smaller compartment on the left, just as he had told her. She could see a round pit in the metal bottom of the compartment and guessed that the firewood, as it burned, would collapse into the third compartment beneath. That must be where a low fire burned for baking and where the ashes gathered for removal.
“How are you going to get the fire started?” Thomas asked.
She looked at him over her shoulder. He pointed at the small pieces of bark gathered in a metal bucket beside the firewood. “Kindling.”
Charlotte nodded, rebuilt her pile of firewood with kindling at the bottom and glanced once more over her shoulder, her eyebrows arched in question.
“You need to stack the wood loosely, to allow air to circulate in between. Wood stacked in a tight pile won’t catch flame.”
She nodded, did it all over again.
Thomas pointed. “Matches are on the shelf.”
Rising on her toes, Charlotte searched the shelf, found the small metal tin and clipped it open. Her eyes narrowed in victory. Something familiar. Papa had used matches to light his pipe, and she’d used them for candles. She snapped a match free from the row, looked around for a piece of sandpaper to strike it against but saw none.
Any abrasive surface would do. Her eyes darted from object to object, settled on a heavy cast iron frying pan sitting on the counter. Eager to demonstrate her competence, Charlotte shot one arm out and drew the match across the belly of the frying pan.
“No,” Thomas shouted, but it was too late.
The flame sparked, and blew up from the frying pan like a dragon’s breath. Charlotte screamed and jumped back. Strong arms closed around her, lifting her off her feet. Keeping one arm wrapped around her waist, Thomas inspected her hands.
“Did you burn your fingers? Show me! Show me!”
Tears stung at the back of her eyes, but they were tears of misery and frustration and helplessness, not tears of pain. Charlotte clenched her hands into fists to keep away his probing fingers. “I’m fine,” she muttered.
It took a moment before the intimacy of their position registered in her mind. She was dangling in the air, anchored against his chest. A thick forearm cut like a band of steel across her waist. Thomas was looking down over her shoulder, his head bent next to hers. She could feel the rough stubble on his jaw rubbing against her cheek.
And yet, despite the hold that emphasized his superior strength, his touch was gentle. It was clear that he could subdue her without effort, but something in his manner told her he would never hurt a woman. She need not fear that he might take her by force. The realization eased her terror, but a new kind of tension crept in its place.
Slowly, Thomas released her, settling her on her feet.
“I never wash the frying pan,” he explained. “I just wipe it with a cloth, which leaves a layer of grease on the bottom. It keeps food from sticking to the metal.” He took another match from the tin, squatted in front of the stove, rearranged the wood, struck the match against his thumbnail and lit the fire. He spoke with his back to her, his eyes on the catching flames. “The coffee is on the shelf.”
Her nerves jumped and thrummed. Coffee. Coffee. She’d seen it before. She found the round metal tin on the shelf, took it down and struggled with the lid. Her hands were shaking. The tin slipped from her fingers, fell to the floor with a clang, burst open and rolled along. Coffee granules scattered in a spray over the timber planks.
With a squeal of horror, Charlotte rushed toward the counter for a cloth to contain the mess. Her elbow butted against the pail of water, dislodging the dipper hanging by its hooked end inside the pail. The dipper flung up in the air and sent a spray of droplets across the floor, where they landed over the spilled coffee granules.
Aghast, Charlotte stared at the sticky mess by her feet. She froze. Thomas didn’t say anything. Would he be angry at the waste? Coffee was expensive and she understood he had very little money. Would he scold her, maybe even shout and yell at her?
When the silence cut too deep into her frazzled nerves, she slowly turned around to look at him. Thomas had straightened on his feet. He was biting his lip. His whole body was quivering, and his face was red, as if he had been holding his breath.
He was about to explode.
Ready to meet the assault of his rage, Charlotte drew her shoulders into a hunch, like a turtle hiding in its shell. She’d never been hit in her life, had never tasted the sharp edge of violence before Cousin Gareth’s ugly groping.
Startled, she watched, as Thomas bent over, slammed his hands against his knees and dissolved into laughter. Charlotte stared. Her shoulders fell from their protective hunch. Her spine straightened. Humor unfurled in her belly, light at first, like the soft tickle of a cat’s tail. Then it took hold, and she burst into an irrepressible fit of giggles.
“People in New York sure have funny habits,” Thomas managed between bursts of mirth. “Here in the West, we make the coffee in a pot.” He reached to the counter, picked up a rag and handed it to her. “You clean. I make coffee.”
* * *
Thomas sat across the table from his bride. She had finally relaxed, even got some color in her cheeks. If anyone had told him he would find clumsiness and incompetence endearing qualities in a wife, he would have told them they had lost their mind.
She had done her best to follow his instructions. And she possessed the ability to laugh at herself. Good humor and willingness to learn were more important qualities in a wife than expertise, Thomas decided.
He cut another piece of cheese, another slice of bread and passed them onto her plate.
“Eat a bit more,” he urged her. “It’s good for the baby.”
“No.” She slid the plate over to him. “I’ve had enough.”
They had eaten in silence, both discovering they were famished. Now Charlotte patted her belly and sighed with contentment. Thomas transferred the bread and cheese onto his own plate. He’d learned not to waste a morsel of food.
“How did you end up here?” Charlotte asked. “It’s a long way from Michigan.”
“How did you end up here?” he countered. “It’s a long way from New York City.”
Something flickered in her eyes, like a shadow of painful memories. Thomas told himself it might have just been the lamplight. Tonight, he’d lit up two lamps instead of one. An extravagance, for certain, but he wanted to see her clearly.
With his bride in mind, he’d bought lamp oil instead of kerosene—another additional expense, but he didn’t want her to suffer from the sting of smoke in her eyes.
And now those eyes were laughing at him, dark and mischievous. “Are you telling me that you came here because some woman sent for you as a mail-order husband?”
“No.” He took a sip of coffee and swallowed, using the time to select his words. “I wanted to come south, away from the harsh winters. There’s good farming around Phoenix, with irrigation systems. I spent a few months there to see how it’s done. Then gold was found up here. I joined the crowd of prospectors, hoping to strike it rich.”
She frowned at him. “Gold Crossing is a mining town?”
Thomas grinned. “Not much of a town, huh?”
Her lips pursed into a circle of disapproval, perhaps even of disgust. “It’s the scruffiest, most miserable, run-down excuse for a town I’ve ever seen.”
Thomas laughed. “I hope that kind of blunt talking means you’ll always be honest with me.”
Charlotte didn’t reply. Again, he could see that flicker of worry in her eyes.
She had secrets. The knowledge hardened inside Thomas. Of course she has secrets, he told himself. Without the offer of a marriage she would have been an unwed mother, an outcast in polite society, a sinner according to many folks.
He leaned across the table to adjust the flame on the lamp. “People flooded to Gold Crossing after Art Langley found gold and recorded his claim. Eight years ago there were almost a thousand people there, living in a tent town that sprung up virtually overnight.”
“A thousand people!”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” He shifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “The seam of gold petered out quickly, and no one ever found another lode of quartz. By the time they’d finished the railroad spur to take out the ore, the mine had just about played out. People hadn’t even had enough time to build proper houses before they moved on to the next boomtown. Most were still living in tents. That’s why there aren’t streets full of abandoned buildings in Gold Crossing, like there’ll be in Jerome in a few years when the copper mine plays out.”
“But you stayed on in the area?”
Thomas nodded. “The man who owned this sheltered valley had planned to develop an orchard. He’d planted pomegranate trees. But the town died before the trees had matured to bear fruit. I was able to buy the place cheap.” He drank the last of the coffee in his mug. “I have ten cultivated acres. Four each of wheat and corn, and two of vegetables. The valley has about twenty fertile acres in all, but ten is the most I can irrigate in the summer on my own.”
Her brows furrowed. “You irrigate the fields?”
“On hot days, I need to pump water from the lake. I have a hose and a sprinkler. I’ll show you tomorrow how it works.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll learn how it’s done, and I’ll help you.”
Thomas nodded, to confirm that he was indeed counting on her help.
He got to his feet. “Time for bed.”
Charlotte rose. She hovered by the table, her nightgown reflecting the lamplight, her dark curls like a snare designed to trap a man’s heart. Her frightened eyes darted from him to the bedroom door and back again. If Thomas wasn’t mistaken, her long white nightgown was fluttering, not from the draft but from the way her slender body was trembling.
“Go on now, Charlotte,” he said softly. “You have nothing to worry about. Here, take the light.” He slid one of the lamps across the tabletop toward her. When she picked it up, the glass dome rattled, an indication of how hard her hands were shaking.
“You have nothing to worry about,” he reassured her again. “Get into bed. I’ll go and check on the animals, and then I’ll come back inside and join you.”
He watched her spin around and dart into the bedroom, scurrying with hasty footsteps, like some tiny animal seeking a refuge. They’d have to talk about the physical side of their marriage, before she drove herself into a state of agitation.