Daniel's Bride, page 13
Gemma and Hank brought ample wood, as requested, then scampered off to wade barefoot in the spring.
“They act just like they belong here,” Jolie murmured, gazing through the wagon’s one window and smiling as the children played happily near the small, shallow pool. The spring fed a creek, which provided natural irrigation for some of Daniel’s land, no doubt making him one of the most prosperous, and envied, farmers in that part of the territory.
Nan was briskly making up the rumpled cot, a task Jolie hadn’t gotten around to, and memories made her blush. At the head of the bed was a locked cabinet, with metal handles—the same ones Daniel had gripped when he was making love to Jolie, using them to pull himself deeper into her.
For a few torturously sweet moments, she relived the dizzying sensations, and her blood heated even more. She hurried outside the wagon, desperate for a breath of fresh air, and Nan followed.
“Are you all right?” the neighbor woman asked, touching Jolie’s arm.
Since there was no way she could gracefully explain, Jolie worked up a feverish smile and nodded. “It was a little close in there, that’s all.”
Nan sighed ruefully. “Just imagine how it’s going to be in the heat of midday, with the stove fired up like the boiler in a locomotive.”
The prospect made Jolie weary, but she shored herself up. She’d worked hard all her life, under varying circumstances, and she wasn’t one to waste badly needed energy on dread. All the same, she couldn’t help reflecting that, by the time the day was over, a blast from hell’s furnace would feel like a spring breeze.
Resolutely, she fetched a bag of fresh-picked green beans from the wagon and she and Nan sat side by side in the fragrant grass, snapping the curved stalks and tossing them into a big kettle. In the meanwhile, dust roiled everywhere, tumbling toward the sky and filling Jolie’s hair and each pore of her skin with grit. The men yelled and swore and the mules brayed and by some miracle, the confusion coalesced into the beginning of harvest.
Daniel passed Jolie and Nan, driving a water wagon toward the spring, without so much as glancing in their direction, and the slight did Jolie profound injury, though she tried her best to hide it. When she looked at Nan, she realized she’d failed.
Her friend was smiling with a certain spicy sweetness. “It’s like that with Joe and me, too,” she said, her cheeks pinkening slightly beneath their sprinkling of freckles.
A handful of beans thumped against the side of the kettle as Jolie tossed them in. She was mightily embarrassed, but it was nice to know regular people had similar feelings; that made her feel less like a wanton strumpet hot for the touch of a man. She bit her lip and continued snapping beans.
“There’s a story about Daniel,” Nan dared, in a breathless whisper. She went right on working with the vegetables, and she didn’t meet Jolie’s eyes.
“What?” Ordinarily, she didn’t go in for idle talk, but this concerned Daniel and that made it important.
“A certain soiled dove at one of the saloons in town is grieving because he got himself married. It’s said that Daniel knows more about pleasuring a woman than most men do.”
Jolie’s face burned, and she snatched up another handful of beans with more energy than the task called for. “Nan Culley, how on earth would you manage to hear such a thing?”
Nan’s voice was a saucy whisper. “Joe told me. Don’t you believe it when men claim they don’t gossip, because they surely do. Daniel knew a … a foreign woman a long time ago, in San Francisco, and she taught him how to—well, she taught him how.”
It was impossible for Jolie not to turn and crane her neck in Daniel’s direction. The muscles in his arms and shoulders moved gracefully as he handed buckets of springwater up to Deuter, who sat astraddle of the water wagon’s black tank, pouring the precious liquid through an opening.
Jolie’s heart leapfrogged over one beat. It was a frank relief to hear Nan’s words, since Daniel barely had to touch her before she set to carrying on. She’d thought it meant she was a bad person, of lesser morals than other women. “Oh,” she said, and her voice sounded as weak as she felt.
Soon after, Jolie carried the kettle to the spring, along with a ladle, and Nan came too, bringing buckets. Reaching the bank, Jolie knelt and began dipping water to fill the pot, doing her best to pretend she didn’t notice Daniel standing only a stone’s throw away.
When she finally had no choice but to lift her eyes to him, she felt an intangible blow strike her midsection. Although the sensation could not have been described as pain, it quite literally knocked the breath from her lungs.
Daniel was filthy from head to foot, his hair, skin, and clothes coated with dust, and he looked at her with a mixture of fury and blatant desire. Wounded by the former and painfully aroused by the latter, Jolie scrambled awkwardly back to her feet and hurried toward the cook wagon without even waiting for Nan to finish filling the buckets.
As Nan had predicted, the wagon was almost unbearably hot by noon, and she and Jolie were glad to escape it. The workers came in from the fields, black with dirt except for white circles around their eyes, and ate hungrily of the food the women had prepared.
Immediately after the hands had gone back to work, Jolie and Nan began washing dishes. As soon as they’d finished that, it would be time to start getting ready for supper.
Gemma and Hank were curled up in the cool, dandelion-sprinkled grass underneath the wagon, sound asleep and as dirty as any of the field workers. Jolie smiled, feeling a pang of affectionate envy for them, and went on with her work.
At sunset, she and Nan served fried trout, caught downstream by Deuter and a well-rested Hank, along with potatoes and boiled carrots. As soon as the heat subsided a little, the men washed in the creek and sat smoking and talking under a banner of stars. Nan and Joe said their good-byes and went home for the night.
Looking at the narrow cot, Jolie thought with longing of the wide, comfortable bed in Daniel’s room back at the house. Since she’d had enough of the inside of the cook wagon to last her for a while, she tucked Gemma and Hank into either end of the narrow berth and took two blankets and a pillow outside.
She was making a bed under the wagon, in the sweet-smelling, bruised grass, when Daniel suddenly appeared, kneeling beside the rig to scowl at her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
Jolie sighed. She loved this man, and Lord knew, she couldn’t deny wanting him, but he could be downright exasperating at times. “I should think it would be perfectly apparent, even to you, Dan Beckham, that I’m making a place to sleep.”
In a sidelong glance, she saw his Adam’s apple travel the length of his throat and down again, and she held back a smug smile as he swallowed visibly. He leaned toward her, his dirty hands resting on the strained fabric covering his thighs. “I won’t have my wife sleeping out here in plain sight of God and everybody!” he whispered hoarsely.
Jolie went right on spreading and smoothing her blankets. “I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can do,” she said, over the steady thrum of the crickets. “Gemma and Hank are in the cot, and there simply isn’t room for me as well.”
Daniel glanced over one shoulder toward the two dozen or so men he’d hired to help with the harvest. Due to the fact that it was too hot a night for a fire, and the moon was a thin fingernail paring in the black sky, only the vague outlines of their prone forms were visible. “You can go back to the house, then. I’ll take you there myself.”
She yawned, patting her mouth with straight fingers, then sat cross-legged on the makeshift bed to begin unlacing her shoes. “I couldn’t leave the children,” she said distractedly, though in truth she was feeling anything but nonchalance. “Besides, I need to be on hand early to get breakfast started.”
Jolie took off her dress, confident that no one besides Daniel could see her, and crawled between the blankets in her muslin chemise to stretch luxuriously. It felt wonderful to lie down and rest her aching muscles, and the sights, sounds, and smells of the night offered a tender comfort.
With a muttered curse word, Daniel wrenched off his boots, then his shirt, then his trousers. He tossed aside the blanket and lay down close to Jolie.
“You’re filthy, Mr. Beckham,” she said with a sniff, to hide the fact that she’d gone all warm and moist at the feel of his gritty flesh against her. “And you smell. You’d best sleep on the floor of the wagon.”
He moved deftly over her and parted her legs with a motion of one knee, and she felt his manhood resting against the delicate skin of her thighs. “I’ll decide where I sleep, Mrs. Beckham,” he countered, in a low whisper.
Jolie felt herself expanding to accommodate Daniel, and her undeniable need of him was humiliating. “You should have a bath,” she said.
“Here’s what you should have,” Daniel replied brusquely, and then, in simultaneous motions, he covered Jolie’s mouth with his own and glided into her depths.
Just before dawn, shivering with early morning cold, Jolie hastened into her dress and shoes and climbed out from under the wagon. Daniel had not been beside her when she awakened, a fact that nettled a little, even though it didn’t surprise her.
He had built up the fire in the cookstove, however, and he’d left warm, clean water so Jolie could wash. As soon as she performed her ablutions, she hastily brushed her hair and wound it into a loose knot at her nape.
She was returning from the spring, a heavy bucket of water in each hand, when the sun suddenly blazed over the horizon, spilling gold and crimson light onto the wheat. Jolie drew in her breath at the beauty of the sight, then hurried on toward the cook wagon.
After filling a metal basin with eggs from the crock full of water in the corner, Jolie started breakfast cooking. She’d already served the men and was in the process of brewing the third huge pot of coffee when Joe appeared on the milk stool outside the door, hat in hand.
“Mrs. Culley regrets as she won’t be over to help this morning,” he said, in his shy, friendly way. “She’s feeling poorly.”
A pang of anxiety twisted in Jolie’s stomach. “It’s not—”
Joe interrupted with a smile and a shake of his head. “Nothing a person wouldn’t expect,” he said. “She’s fixing to be a mother, you know.”
Jolie nodded, shy of discussing such a topic with a man, and went on about her work. She worried about Nan intermittently throughout that long, busy day, but there really wasn’t much time for reflection. No sooner had she finished cooking one meal when it was time to start another, and what might she had left over she needed to keep Gemma and Hank under some semblance of supervision. The children ran from morning until night, dirty as savages, and they thrived.
Daniel was careful to avoid any personal contact with Jolie, and she knew he regretted lying with her the night before, in the sweet grass. After supper, she closed herself away in the wagon, where she took a warm sponge bath and brushed her hair before changing into a clean calico dress.
The men were sitting in a circle, swapping yarns by the light of a few carefully watched kerosene lanterns. Gemma and Hank sat on either side of Daniel, their heads resting against his sides, and his arms resting lightly around them.
Jolie blinked back tears and bent to lift Gemma, who was sound asleep. “It’s time they were in bed,” she told Daniel, and the storytelling went on as he got to his feet, hoisting Hank up onto one hip. He followed her to the wagon without a word.
Only when the children’s faces and hands had been washed and they had been tucked in at the separate ends of the cot did Daniel speak.
“About last night,” he began, shoving the splayed fingers of one hand through his hair.
They were outside the wagon, facing each other across the step, and Jolie reached up to touch Daniel’s mouth with the fingers of her right hand. To silence him. She couldn’t bear to hear him apologize for what had happened between them.
“Shhh,” she said.
Daniel’s lips moved, soft and pliant, against the pads of her fingers. “But … ”
“I know, Daniel,” Jolie whispered, with miserable practicality. “You’re not in love with me, and you still care for Ilse.”
He didn’t deny her words when she finally lowered her hand to her side. She knew without his telling her that he would gladly have died in Ilse’s place, rather than see his first love perish.
“I’m sorry,” he said, after a long time.
So am I, Jolie thought brokenly, but she didn’t dare speak aloud for fear of betraying her grief.
He bent slightly and kissed Jolie’s forehead.
She slept fitfully that night, alone under the wagon, with Daniel resting a dozen feet away. The next day, she worked even harder than she had before.
That Saturday evening, after dinner, Daniel took his small, improvised family back to the main house. No work would be done in the fields on Sunday, and those men who had not gone to town would be expected to cook for themselves.
Jolie saw that both Gemma and Hank had baths and shampoos before settling them in the spare room to sleep. Once she’d told them a long, involved story, Jolie went downstairs to start heating water for her own tub.
She was pleasantly surprised, and a little moved, to find that Daniel had already done the job for her. She took a thorough bath and put on a nightgown, but she had no real hope of seeing Daniel again before breakfast. He’d probably paid a formal call to the little graveyard yonder, no doubt apologizing to Ilse for his lapses, and then made himself a bed out in the barn.
Far too exhausted to pursue the matter, Jolie towel-dried and braided her hair, then dragged the bathtub onto the step and emptied it. The thing was too heavy to carry any farther, so Mrs. Beckham had to content herself with flooding the dooryard in soapy water.
She was stretched out in bed, tired enough to weep, when she heard Daniel climb the stairs and pause outside the door. She held her breath, too exhausted to receive him but yearning to lie peacefully in his arms. Moments later, however, his footsteps moved along the hallway again. She heard the door of the bedroom next to hers open and then close.
Jolie reached up and touched the wall with one palm, knowing Daniel was on the other side, keeping himself separate from her. A few moments passed, and she heard the bedsprings creak under his weight.
Even though she was exhausted, Jolie thought surely she’d cry if she lay still, so she got up and went across the hall to check on the children. Hank was sleeping soundly, but Gemma was tossing and turning.
Jolie got the little girl up to use the chamber pot, then put her gently back to bed. When she returned to the hallway, she could hear Daniel snoring in the third bedroom. She smiled sadly and climbed back into her own lonely bed.
In the morning, she made a simple breakfast of toasted, buttered bread, hot oatmeal and milk, and apricots from a jar in the pantry. Then Daniel brought the buckboard around to the front of the house and handed Jolie and Gemma up into the box, both dressed in their Sunday finest.
Hank rode manfully at the back of the wagon, with his feet dangling down over the dusty road. Jolie just hoped his stockings and knickers wouldn’t get too dirty before they reached town.
Every long, hard bench in the little clapboard church was filled that morning by the time the congregation began to sing the first hymn. Jolie privately thought it was a wonder any of them could keep their places in the songbooks, the way they were stealing looks at her and Gemma and Hank.
The Reverend Blackborrow told the story of Adam’s two sons, dwelling dramatically on the part where God heard Abel’s blood calling out from the ground. It was a stirring tale and, even though Jolie had heard it countless times in Aunt Nissa and Uncle Franklin’s church back in Nebraska, her eyes were wide by the time it was over.
The children were plainly relieved when the long service finally ended. Gemma and Hank ran off to play with the others while their elders shook hands with the reverend. Jolie learned that Mrs. Blackborrow suffered from a nervous condition and her husband had insisted she stay home that morning and rest herself.
Verena Dailey made a point of coming up to Jolie and embracing her, though all the other women were keeping noticeable distances. “I do hope you’ll stay for the picnic this afternoon,” she said.
Jolie had noticed the baskets and boxes resting in the backs of various wagons that morning, but she hadn’t thought beyond that. Now, seeing the eyes of her neighbors skitter away without making contact, she knew she would not have been invited if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Dailey.
They were outside in the sunshine now, and Jolie could see the children playing chase between the gravestones in the churchyard. She smiled. “We have dinner waiting at home,” she lied, speaking clearly and brightly in hopes that no one would guess how much she wanted to be accepted.
Verena took Jolie’s arm and, at the same time, winked up at Daniel. “I guess you’ll just have to eat it later,” she said. “I brought plenty of chicken and roast beef sandwiches for all of us.” With that, she pulled Jolie into the circle of tight-lipped women and proceeded to introduce her to each and every one.
The older ladies remained coldly reserved, but, as the afternoon progressed, some of the younger ones began to show signs of friendliness. Of course, Jolie thought philosophically, they were probably just curious about her and the children. After all, the three of them had come into Daniel’s life in rather unconventional ways.
While Jolie sat on the grass under an elm tree, delicately nibbling at a piece of crisp chicken and listening as a young matron went on about how her little Jack kept losing the buttons from his knickers, Daniel joined in a game of horseshoes with the other men.
With un-Sunday-like pride, Jolie thought how he was the finest looking one of them all, towering over all his companions. To her, his back seemed broader, his smile warmer, his eyes friendlier. Her heart ached with the secret longing for his love.
When the picnic was over, Daniel hoisted both the children into the fresh hay in the back of the wagon. By the time he climbed into the box, Jolie had already taken a seat there, without assistance from him. For just this one precious day, she reflected, she and Daniel and Gemma and Hank had been like a real family.
