Chapter Eighteen

 

Her toes were black. Hester could see them peeking out from under her skirts after she'd kicked off her shoes.

She poured the last of the hot water into the tub, set the kettle back on the stove, and tested the temperature with her elbow; her hands couldn't seem to tell blistering hot from warm anymore. She checked to be sure she had soap, a towel and her clean nightrobe. Locks clicked as she secured the three kitchen doors. The rustle of fabric followed the sound as she removed her clothes. She wobbled a little as she stepped out of the undergarments, her strength uncertain, as was common lately.

Only after her clothes had been hung over a chair back and she stood naked as God made her, did she allow herself a good look at her feet. It was as she had feared. Heels, arches, toes— black as midnight. And icy cold. They looked dead. A shiver ghosted over her.

Before Bartholomew’s last trip to Portland, she had blamed the dark color of her feet on the dye from her old black shoes. But he had bought her new shoes in the city; tan, Paris kid, button boots. No matter how she scrubbed her feet, they looked as if she’d rubbed coal on them.

There was no escaping it; God was punishing her. How could He be so unfair? Hadn't she suffered enough for her sin? She had been so young when Lenny Joe took her, had barely known what he was doing to her. Ever since that day, she had devoted her life to keeping her body pure. 'Course, there was the one time when she had gone to Bartholomew's bed, but surely that didn't count; they were married the next day. Only adultery and fornication outside of marriage counted as sins.

Whatever turned her feet black must be what caused the cramps in her legs too, and the constant pain and cold in her feet. Could it explain her unquenchable thirst? The loss of weight, no matter how much she ate? The nausea and diarrhea, the blurred vision, the sores that refused to heal?

Hester propped a foot on her knee so she could see it better. There was a red spot on her heel that was puffy and sore. She bent closer and saw that a blister had burst open. From the new shoes, she supposed. It looked more painful than it felt, but she'd noticed lately that her feet, like her hands, weren't worth a tinker's damn for feeling anything.

She climbed carefully into the tub and sank down into the warm water. Could Bartholomew be right? Was she being punished for denying him her bed? She had promised to love, honor and obey, but why in hell did that have to mean letting him rut in her body whenever he damned well wanted to? But maybe if he had her in his bed, he would stop lusting after Ariah.

He had snuck off to the woods that day and Hester reckoned that was where Ariah was too, 'stead of tending to her cooking as she shoulda been. Wedded one day and already meeting in the woods with the wrong husband. Hester knew better than to count on her dolt of a nephew to put a stop it; he was too gone on his new wife to see her for what she truly was—a sneaky, husband-stealing slut. Hester would have to see to everything, just like she always did.

♥ ♥ ♥

Next door, Pritchard glanced at the mantel clock for the hundredth time since supper. Twenty after nine, finally; surely that was late enough for going to bed. He set aside the stiff new padded baseball mitt he'd been rubbing with mink oil. The new mitts had only been out a year now, and most of the players still used the old unpadded ones, with a raw beefsteak inside to protect their hands. As soon as he had enough money saved, he'd order him a pair of the new shoes they were making with heel-and toe-grips for traction. He rose and made a display out of yawning noisily and stretching as though very tired.

"You ready for bed?" he asked Ariah.

Seated on the living room sofa, Ariah took another stitch in the skirt she had managed to tear somehow on her jaunt into the woods that day. Her husband had been unusually quiet all evening. She had begun to hope he was too exhausted to want to make love. Yet, as she looked up at him now, she noted with a sinking heart the telltale bulge in his trousers. Quickly, she averted her gaze. "You go ahead. I wanted to finish my mending first. I'll be up in a moment."

He pulled a face. "Can't you do it tomorrow? I want you to come up with me now."

Ariah glanced anxiously toward the vestibule and the closed door of the First Assistant Keeper's sitting room. "Shh! Seamus will hear. He's in the next room."

Pritchard listened and caught the low baritone of the old man's voice raised in one of his sea chanteys:

 

“Around Cape Horn we've got to go,

To me way, hay, o-hio!

Around Cape Horn to Call-eao,

A long time ago!”

 

"He's singing. He can't hear us." Pritchard tried to take her hand and pull her up off the sofa. "Besides, what's wrong with wanting my wife to come to bed with me?"

Ariah blushed and jerked her hand away. "There's nothing wrong with it. You simply don't speak of such intimacies loudly enough for others to hear."

"I said, he can’t hear us. Come on."

She had longed to avoid the scene she knew was coming, yet couldn't abide his whining. Why couldn't he have gone up and fallen asleep as she had hoped for? She sighed. What was the use of trying to put off the inevitable? She’d best get it over with.

"Very well." She secured her needle in the fabric and tucked it into her sewing box. "I'll put Seamus's meal out for him and be right up."

Pritchard grinned and hauled her to her feet before she could further object. "Let him get his own meal. Come with me now."

He nearly dragged her up the stairs, but his steps slowed as snatches of his conversation with Bartholomew came back to him. He wanted to bed Ariah so badly, to learn how it felt to actually be inside a woman, but he was terrified he'd go off too soon like he had last night. If he humiliated himself again, would she make fun of him in front of everyone, the way Jimmy Caine's wife did him, until the poor man was so impotent even the fancy whores in Portland couldn't get it up for him? The thought was enough to wilt the stiffness in his trousers.

As they entered the bedroom, he let go of her hand. She shut the door and leaned against it, her gaze on the floor as though she'd grown shy. He took off his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair, lowered his suspenders and took off his shirt. Still she stood there, hugging the door. Thinking she might be worrying about the pain that would come when he entered her, he went to her and took her into his arms. He breathed a sigh of relief when he managed to kiss her mouth without bumping noses. "I'll try to be more patient tonight. You're so small, I don't want to hurt you."

At that she glanced up. "I'm already sore."

"You are?"

"From last night."

"Oh."

"Would you mind very much if we waited?"

Her request brought bitter disappointment, but comfort as well; he couldn't fail at something he didn't try. "For how long?"

"We've known each other such a short time, Pritchard. You still seem like a stranger to me. You must understand how it is for a woman. All our lives we're told over and over to guard our innocence, that letting a man touch us is wrong. Now suddenly I find myself married and expected to eagerly give my body to someone I don't even know. It's not that easy to tell my body it's all right now. In my heart I feel confused, and a little scared. I need time."

He let go of her and stepped back. "But I'm no stranger, I'm your husband."

"I know that, Pritchard." She struggled to remain calm, knowing everything would be lost if she let her temper get the upper hand. "And I want to be a good wife to you. I want to make you happy. But can't we start slowly, the way it would have been if we'd met in town and you'd courted me for a proper length of time?"

"Does that mean I can't even kiss you anymore?" He flung his arms into the air in a gesture of pure male frustration. "Are you going to move back to Aunt Hester's?"

"No." Feeling guilty and thinking to pacify him, she laid a soothing palm on his bare chest. "We're still married, and we'll still live together, though it might be easier on you if I slept in the other room for now."

Pritchard stared at her, trying to think. When she was this close and touching him—God, her hand on his bare chest had nearly caused him to explode—his mind couldn't function properly. He'd never be able to lie beside her without going crazy wanting her.

"It will work out best in the long run, Pritchard, you'll see. And when we are ready to consummate this marriage, I promise you'll find it easier than it was last night."

Was she right? Would it be easier after some time had passed? Once they got to know each other and felt comfortable together? It did make sense. If he got more used to having her around, to being able to kiss her and touch her whenever he wanted, surely he'd be better able to control himself when she was ready to return to his bed.

"All right," he said, slumping down onto the mattress. "But for how long?"

With a natural instinct for bargaining, she pursed her lips and pretended to consider. "How long does a man usually court a woman before they marry?"

Pritchard came to his feet in a rush. "Holly Hector, you want me to wait a whole year? Ariah, I don't—"

She held up her hands. "I was thinking more like two months, Pritchard."

Two months sounded a heck of a lot better than an entire year. He might be able to survive that. And maybe if he was nice to her, later he could convince her later to cut it down to one month. Or even less. "All right, two months."

She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. "I'll move my things into the other room."

"I don't want the others to know," he said as she opened a drawer and snatched out a handful of lacy underwear.

"What we do in the privacy of our own home is no one's business but our own, Pritchard."

"Good."

Feeling more relaxed and more hopeful than he had all day, he watched her take her clothes into the bedroom across the hall. What he had to do was think of this as getting hired onto the Cincinnati Red Stockings. A man always started out on second string until he'd proved himself. But if that dream ever came true, Pritchard intended to make sure he was moved to first string before the season was half over. He would do the same with Ariah. Hell, he was going to be so nice to her, she'd be begging to come back to his bed within a week.

"Hey, Ariah," he called, following her into the other room. "You're from Cincinnati. Ever see a Red Stockings game?"

She paused in the act of hanging her dresses in the wardrobe. "A Red Stockings game?"

"Yeah, the first professional baseball team. They had a one hundred and thirty game winning streak once. I think they're still the best team in the league."

"I'm sorry, I've never been to any baseball games. Do you play them here?"

He moved out of the way so she could pass back through the doorway. The change of subject had helped him lose the aching need in his groin. "Not with only five people to work with; it takes nine men to make up one team. You don't know anything about baseball, do you?"

Untroubled by the disdain in his voice, she moved her mother's hand-crocheted dresser scarf to the other room and spread it lovingly over the dresser. She set out her brush, comb, hand mirror, and the photograph of her parents in its ornate silver frame. "No, I'm afraid I don't."

"Then I'll have to teach you. If we're going to produce our own team, you'll have to understand the game."

Ariah whirled to stare at him. "Produce our own team? Are you saying you want nine children?"

He grinned. "Sure. Don't you?"

"I don't believe I've ever even considered the idea."

"Well, you better start, and soon too. We don't have a lot of time to waste, you know. If you give me a bunch of girls, it'll take that much longer to come up with nine boys."

Her mouth dropped open as she realized what he was saying. She might have to bear more than a dozen children in order to come up with nine boys. When would she have time to read or study ornithology?

Pritchard walked back to his own room feeling a great deal more cheerful than he had when they'd started upstairs. He'd speak to Uncle Bart tomorrow about getting some time off so he could take Ariah to Portland or Astoria for a good baseball game. The team he played with in Tillamook during the summer was too amateurish. He had a feeling his wife would not be impressed with anything but the best, and it was important that she share his fondness for the game. A lot more important than those books she was always reading, or her silly birds.

He might even see if he could wangle a try-out while they were in Portland. He had no intention of remaining a lighthouse keeper all his life. This job was only temporary, until he could get onto a professional team. Baseball was his life, after all, and he was the best hurler and striker the National League would ever see. All he needed was a chance to show them.

In the meantime, it might be a good idea to go into Tillamook and pay a visit to Nettie Tibbs on the far end of Hoquarton Slough. He'd heard that for half a dollar Nettie would teach a man everything he wanted to know about sex. A man didn't have to worry about pleasing that kind of girl. He could let himself go off as fast as he needed to, and he wouldn't have to take a bath first either. Once he'd learned the ropes, he'd feel a whole lot more confident bedding Ariah.

All he needed now was an excuse to go into town—without his new wife.

♥ ♥ ♥

Down at the light, Bartholomew was finding the night far too long. He polished brass fittings until his fingers were raw. He performed one-arm push-ups. When it was still light enough to see without carrying a lantern, he ran up and down the stairs, his hard heels clattering on the metal steps until the tower rang with their echo. After dark he studied Dante's Inferno until the words blurred and his eyes ached. By the time Old Seamus relieved him at midnight, Bartholomew was exhausted enough to sleep, in spite of Ariah Scott Monteer.

Or so he had hoped. But when he lay alone at last in his narrow bed, he found his eyes wide open and his entire body tense with frustration. Had Pritchard succeeded tonight in deflowering Ariah? Had she suffered from his efforts? Or, worse, enjoyed them?

The knock on Bartholomew's bedroom door came as a surprise. Only serious problems with the light would bring someone to his door in the middle of the night. Yet there was no storm, and he had doubled-checked everything before he left. The light was in perfect order. Had something happened to Seamus? Or could it be Ariah? Had she fled Pritchard's bed and come to him for protection or solace?

He leaped from the bed and yanked on his trousers. When he opened the door and found Hester on his threshold, dressed only in a nightrobe that looked virginally white in the lantern light, he was too astonished to speak.

"May I come in?" she asked with a smile that might have been seductive, had she been capable of the necessary passion.

Bartholomew eyed her warily. "What's wrong? Are you ill?"

Hester's smile waned and her lips grew thin, a sure sign of annoyance, but her tone remained light. "No, merely . . . lonely."

Another shock. To his knowledge, Hester had never needed any company but her own. His mind was so befuddled with suspicion and puzzlement he didn't think to step aside so she could enter. He simply stood there staring at her.

"Pritchard's wedding started me thinking." Hester squeezed past him into the room she had never before entered, except to clean. The quality of her soft, Southern drawl warned him that her visit was anything but casual. She was up to something.

"I've been a good wife to you, even you can't deny that." She ran a fingertip along the dresser top as though to point out its cleanliness. She picked his shirt up off the foot of the bed and folded it. "I've kept your home clean, served you good hot meals and made myself useful in the barn as well as the garden." She laid the shirt on the dresser and turned to pin him with her gaze. "I'm sure you believe me extravagate with your money, but most wives of our station spend a good deal more than I do on clothing and furniture."

Her emotionless hazel eyes held an accusation she kept from her voice. Bartholomew almost smiled. Whatever she wanted, she was desperate to achieve her goal, desperate enough to sacrifice her prudish pride. Curiosity overcame his distrust of her unorthodox visit, but he refused to aid her by asking leading questions. He remained mute instead.

As though she sensed his amusement, her lips tightened. She switched her gaze to his mussed bed.

"The only place you can say I failed you is here. I—" her voice faltered, but he couldn't tell if it was faked or real "—I've decided to rectify that maleficence. Tonight."

"I think you mean malfeasance, Hester."

"Whatever."

She turned and he saw that she had unbuttoned her gown. With a shrug of her shoulders, it slipped free, slithering down her candlewick thin body as if she were warm paraffin. He averted his gaze from her thin, unappealing form and heard her climb into his bed. Stunned, he stood frozen for several heartbeats, unable to think. Of all the stunts he might have expected from her, this he would never have believed her capable of. Finally the shock wore away and with the resumed functioning of his brain came illumination, and anger.

Whatever was wrong with Hester she was scared enough to want to make sure she wasn't being punished for denying him his marital rights. It appalled him to realize how much pleasure her fear gave him. He was becoming as embittered as she was.

"Get up, Hester. This won't make you well again."

She watched him stare at the floor so he wouldn't have to look at her. Damn him. He'd had his little slut in the woods. Now that the girl was wed to that fool Pritchard, Bartholomew figured he could go off fornicating whenever he wanted. Hester knew he reckoned his wife no better than white trash and old now to boot. What did he care if he condemned her to the Lord's awful retribution? But she'd get even, and she'd find a way to get rid of Ariah Scott Monteer too.

With as much grace as she could manage, Hester left the bed and drew on her nightrobe. She went to stand before the husband to whom she had given seven years of her life.

"You ungrateful bastard. After all the care I gave that foul-mouthed father of yours, and you. All you ever cared about was that lump of flesh 'tween your legs. Only a whore like her would like having it rammed into her. Does she like to put her mouth on it the way I've heard other whores do?"

Bartholomew pretended not to understand. It was safer that way. Otherwise, he was afraid he'd kill her. "I haven't been to any whores, Hester."

"Your precious Ariah's a whore, if'n you admit it or not."

His hand came off the doorknob and balled at his side. "Shut up, Hester, before you regret your ugly words."

A thrill surged through her at the razor edge hidden in his soft voice. His dark eyes had hardened to flint, the way they had in the Ketcham garden when he’d struck her. She smiled. At least she could still wrest some passion out of him, after all his years of apathy.

"I could never regret anything I said about your beloved trollop." She pressed closer. "No words are ugly enough to describe her kind. Did you take note of the nice odor in the kitchen when you come in tonight? She brung me a bouquet of wildflowers. To thank me, she says, for savin' her roast. Stupid little bitch put a skunk cabbage smack in the center. Thinks she's so smart, bringin' cats in the house, taunting me. Well, we'll see who gets the last laugh."

"Now, Hester—"

"Don't you ‘Now, Hester’ me. Save yer threats for somebody as cares. You say one word 'bout my past in town and I'll tell everyone about the whore you forced your own nephew to take on just so you could keep her around. Does she beg for your filthy touch, Bartholomew? Does she pant for you like a bitch in heat?"

The urge to knock the leer from her face, to thrash the ugliness out of her soul, was so great he could almost feel her flesh give under his hands. But he'd given in to the dark side of his soul once, and found it too bitter to bear. Her eyes blazed with a strange sort of eagerness that reminded him of her passionate response the day he hit her. Swiftly he clamped down on his emotions and smiled.

"You're a sick woman, Hester, in more ways than one, and you know you have more to lose than Ariah if it comes to hanging out dirty laundry. Even Pritchard will refuse to back you on this one. He's quite smitten with his new wife." He leaned back against the door as if bored. "I'll take you to see Dr. Wills tomorrow. I suspect you have a fever. You're sweating, in spite of the chill in tonight's air, and you smell like rotten apples."

Her face blanched then flushed red as a starfish. "If I'm sick, it's because of you . . .you and your filthy need to rut on any female you can find."

"That's not true, Hester. I've no need, or desire, to rut on you." He gripped her arm and guided her out into the hallway. "I'll take you back to your room. High tide will be about dawn tomorrow. Be ready to leave an hour before that."

"I told you, I don't need no doctor for what ails me, Bartholomew Noon, and I won't let that man put his hands on me. He ain't nothing but a lecher like you, using doctoring as an excuse to gawk at a woman's naked body."

"Don't you want to go to church? It is Sunday tomorrow."

She straightened at his mention of church, and fear entered her eyes. "Yes, yes, gotta go to church. Lord's riled enough at me, mustn't make it worse."

Bartholomew pushed open the door to her bedroom and led her inside to her bed.

"Don't turn out the lamp," she said as she crawled under the covers. "Can't stand the dark . . .devil hides there, waiting an' waiting. And make sure there ain't no cats in here. Be just like that slut to put a stinking cat in here, to rile me."

"There aren't any cats, Hester. Go to sleep."

She curled into a fetal position, her back to the wall. Her eyes scoured the shadowed corners of the room. The air stank of urine, with a sweetish scent to it he'd never noticed before. He feared she was more ill than he'd suspected. Her stubbornness about seeking treatment would kill her, unless he did something to prevent it.

Unbidden, the thought came to him that this might be his chance to be free of her. All he had to do was ignore her condition, and wait.

The temptation lasted no longer than one tick of the clock on her bedside table before he thrust it aside.

Feeling wearier than he had at the end of his exhausting watch at the light, he closed Hester's door and returned to his bed. Dawn would come early tomorrow, along with the tide, and the night was already half gone.

Please, God, let me sleep, and in sleep, escape the torture of imagining Ariah in bed with Pritchard.