Chapter Eleven
CAL FOLDED THE LICENSE and put it away. “I had to tell the justice of the peace why we were in such a hurry to marry. He wanted us to wait,” he confessed.
She let out a long breath. “What if he tells someone?”
“I can assure you that he is a decent man,” he replied. “He will not. Nor will his wife.” His voice softened at the vulnerable look in her eyes. “I couldn’t take you back to your uncle’s ranch in disgrace, Nora.”
She lifted her eyes. “You did it to protect me.”
His mouth quirked. “I seem to do little else lately.”
She shifted a little and peered up at him. “When I am completely fit, I could protect you,” she offered.
His eyes twinkled. “An excellent suggestion.” He bent and kissed her forehead gently. “You will see a doctor,” he repeated. “And we will have no more…encounters until you have.”
Her face fell.
“For a straitlaced lady, you have an unusually expressive face.”
“I don’t feel very straitlaced after such a night,” she confessed.
He smiled, taking her hands in his to raise them to his lips. “All the same, you are,” he said.
She smiled. “I am tired,” she said gently. “Perhaps some tea and toast would settle my poor stomach.”
He put a warm arm around her. “Let’s see.”
IT WAS RAINING the day they arrived in Tyler Junction, and a beaming Chester and Helen and Melly were all three there to meet them at the station in the surrey.
“Why, what a welcome!” Nora exclaimed when she’d been hugged and exclaimed over.
“Cal wired us about your secret marriage, and the very happy event to come,” Melly burst out gaily. “Oh, Nora, how lucky you are! A husband and a baby…and you will be close to us, so that we can visit!”
Nora’s gasp was covered by Cal’s arm pulling her close. “I knew they would want to know that we reconciled for our baby’s sake.”
“We want to hear all about it later,” Helen said firmly.
“Yes, we do,” Chester agreed. “But meanwhile, we’ve arranged a little celebration party for tomorrow night. That will give you both a day to settle in at the cabin and rest up, and Cal can help me work out some details on these new purchases. I’ve been waiting for him to get back before I made any decisions.” He grinned at Cal. “He’s very knowledgeable about this sort of mechanical invention.”
“Oh, I’ve worked on places that had combines and tractors,” Cal said, without adding that it was the family ranch enterprise where he learned.
“No talk about work, if you please,” Helen said firmly, linking her arm through Nora’s. “Melly and I made new curtains for the foreman’s cabin and had it thoroughly cleaned. We hope you’ll like what we’ve done.”
“I’m sure I will,” Nora said. She didn’t want to admit how terrified she was of living under such primitive conditions, and being less than a member of the family. But Melly and Helen weren’t treating her like an outsider, or an inferior. And the baby shocked no one, thanks to Cal’s quick thinking.
She wondered at her aunt’s kindness and ready acceptance of her marriage. Aunt Helen had been very vocal about her disapproval before. The question she couldn’t ask was answered for her on the way to the surrey.
“I’m sure that this hasty marriage broke your poor mother’s heart,” Helen said sadly. “She had such great hopes for you, Nora, and so did I. But if you feel so strongly about Mr. Barton, we can only hope that your judgment is not faulty.”
Nora smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Mr. Barton is a kind man,” she said, “and intelligent.”
“Of course he is,” Helen replied, “but he is a working man, Nora. And because of it, you must now learn to do the things that servants have done for you all your life.”
It hadn’t occurred to her before that her aunt knew what she was talking about. She turned to Helen and saw the remembered pain in her eyes.
“Why…you understand,” she faltered.
Helen smiled wistfully. “Yes, my dear, all too well. I married against my family’s will and found myself disinherited and living in a line cabin with Chester twenty-five years ago. In those days, this was wild country indeed, and there were still Comanche raids.”
“This far east?” Nora was aghast.
“Yes, this far east,” came the amused reply. “I myself had to shoot a rifle and protect myself when Chester and his men drove cattle to the railhead in Kansas.” She pushed back her graying hair. “I know what it is to be gentle born and suddenly cast into a life of deprivation. I love Chester. But if I had it all to do over again…I don’t know what choice I would make. It is not an easy life. I thought we were doing well when Chester announced last year that a combine was buying us out because we were on the verge of bankruptcy.” She shook her head. “And here we are, at our ages, at the mercy of people we don’t even know.”
“But things will go well for you,” Nora assured her. “Uncle Chester is doing a fine job.”
“With your Mr. Barton’s help, yes,” Helen said gently. “Your mother no doubt sees history repeating itself. She tried to talk me out of running away with Chester, but I would not listen. She has always considered that she made a better marriage than I did. Although,” she added with just a touch of hauteur, “frankly, Nora, your father had no money until he married your mother, even if he did have a good family name.”
Nora remembered her father’s cruelty with unpleasantness even now, and her mother’s lack of compassion. “They both despise me for marrying Cal,” she said, her voice strained. “It was not a pleasant moment when they were told, but Edward Summerville was trying to pressure me into marrying him and restoring his family fortunes. I had to ask Cal to come and tell them the truth about our marriage.”
That wasn’t quite the truth at all, because they hadn’t been married then. But the comment was enough to placate Helen. “That man!” she said angrily. “That terrible man, and after being the cause of your infirmity…” She frowned. “Nora, you have told Cal about it?”
Nora grimaced. “No.” She met her aunt’s accusing eyes. “I cannot! It’s enough that he has me and a baby to burden him. How can I tell him, now, that he has another burden as well?”
“Oh, my dear,” Helen said helplessly.
“I’ll be all right,” the younger woman said with more confidence than she felt. “I must be,” she added.
“Besides, you have been in my position and survived it. So shall I.”
Helen forced a smile. “Certainly you will.”
THE RIDE BACK to the ranch was tiring. Cal helped Nora into the small cabin that would be their home, and she forced herself to act happy and bright. But she felt less than confident when she saw the ancient wood stove in the separate kitchen. This was her house and she would have to clean it and cook for Cal, wash and iron his clothes…
She turned, pale. “You were not serious,” she began, “about my having to kill a turkey?”
He laughed gently. “Oh, Nora,” he said, shaking his head. “Of course not!”
He pulled her to him, and in his eyes there was tenderness and something else. “Stop worrying. I know that it’s a big change for you. But you’ll cope.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I will.”
“Tomorrow, though,” he added firmly, “you see a doctor!”
“All right.”
There was little to do the first night, because they were invited up to the main house for the evening meal. Nora was almost tearfully grateful for the small courtesy. She had no idea how to do the simplest things around a house. She would learn, but it wouldn’t happen overnight. And her worst fear was having to produce an edible meal.
“You must loan me a cookbook,” she whispered to Melly after they had eaten, while the others were talking. “And show me how to light a fire.”
“Cal can light the fire,” Melly assured her warmly, “and cooking is not so difficult, truly. It is mostly a matter of practice.”
Nora grimaced. “I shall poison him the first day I cook, I know I shall!”
“No, you won’t,” came the firm reply. She stared at her cousin with amusement and awe. “Imagine, getting married so quickly and secretly before you left to go home. And you didn’t even tell me!”
Nora’s eyes dropped. “Well, we were very aware of Aunt Helen’s disapproval,” she evaded.
“She’ll come around. After all, she did it, too, you know,” she added with a grin.
Nora met her eyes. “And you and the elusive Mr. Langhorn?”
The smile faded. “Mr. Langhorn is still pursuing Mrs. Terrell. I haven’t spoken to him since the night of the Women’s Club affair, and I do not intend to speak to him ever again, after what he said to me. The man is rude and crude and utterly unpleasant!”
And Melly loved him. She didn’t say it. She touched Melly’s shoulder comfortingly. “I am sorry,” she said.
Melly shrugged. “I shall get over him. I am teaching a crafts class for children. His son attends. Bruce and I enjoy each other’s company, but Mrs. Terrell refuses to let her son come to my class. And I think she has said something to Mr. Langhorn, because Bruce mentioned only yesterday that he is uncertain if he will be allowed to attend much longer.”
“That would be petty!”
“Mr. Langhorn is petty,” Melly said with uncharacteristic venom. “He only allowed Bruce to come the first evening because it left him free to escort the widow Terrell to the theater.”
“What sort of class is it, Melly?”
“I teach art—sculpting, mostly. Bruce has wonderful hands,” she added reflectively. “He did a bust of his father that was remarkable. He won’t allow me to show it to the vile man, however, for fear of being ridiculed. You see, Mr. Langhorn thinks sculpture is a good pastime for a boy, but is no fit occupation for a man,” she muttered. “He wants Bruce to be a cattleman. Bruce doesn’t like cattle!”
Nora was dumbfounded. She could see stormy times ahead for the child. She wondered briefly if her own child would have artistic abilities, and if Cal would want to suppress them. Men had odd ideas about the correct occupation for their sons. But agriculture was not the booming business it had once been, and harder times loomed ahead. Nora thought that she might prefer her son to go into business. But the child should be free to decide for himself.
She asked Cal about it later, when they were alone in their cabin. “Would you insist that our child wear your shoes?”
He eyed his dress boots. “Well, if our child is a girl, we might have to shrink them a good bit.”
She laughed. “You know what I mean.”
He grinned. “If we have a son, I would like him to be involved in my business, whatever it might be,” he said simply, without mentioning oil or Latigo. “But a child should not be forced to follow exactly his father’s or even his mother’s footsteps.”
She smiled warmly. “There! You do feel as I do!”
He chuckled. “You are unconventional in a few ways.”
“Only a few, I fear,” she said with a weary smile. “If I were more unconventional, I could have spared you a marriage that you didn’t want.”
He put down the clock he was winding and took her by the shoulders. His silver eyes were serious as they met her wistful blue ones. “I want the child,” he said bluntly. “Marriage is not the ordeal I always thought it. In fact,” he added, running his eyes slowly over her trim figure, “it has definite benefits.”
“Such as?” she teased.
He pulled her close and wrapped her up against him. “Such as getting kisses whenever I want them,” he murmured against her eager mouth.
He kissed her until it became uncomfortable and reluctantly eased her away with a chuckle. “My only complaint at the moment is that I cannot strip you naked and throw you down on the bed and ravish you.”
Her face colored prettily and she sighed. “Oh, I should like that very much!” she said honestly.
He burst out laughing. He lifted her and swung her around before he kissed her tenderly and let her go. “Never lie to me,” he said suddenly, the smile fading. “Your honesty is the one virtue I treasure most.”
She averted her eyes quickly before he could see that she still kept secrets from him. But it was a kind secret, she said to herself, justifying it. It was a secret for his own sake.
“And you will be equally honest with me, will you not?” she asked gently, lifting her eyes.
She surprised something in his face that she couldn’t grasp, and just as quickly it was gone.
“Of course I will,” he affirmed. “I have to check on the stock before I turn in. I won’t be long.”
She looked at the huge iron bedstead, so different from the polished wood four-poster she had occupied at home. She forced a smile. “We will…sleep together?”
“As we have done since we married,” he agreed. He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you object?”
She smiled. “Oh, no. I love sleeping in your arms. But it is difficult for you, isn’t it?”
His broad shoulders rose and fell. “It won’t be forever,” he reminded her. “Only until our small cake is baked and ready for icing,” he added, staring warmly at her belly.
“What a very nice way to put it.”
“Being with child suits you,” he said quietly. “You look fragile and very pretty.”
She curtsied pertly.
He made a face at her and went out the door smiling.
BREAKFAST, TO PUT IT MILDLY, was a complete disaster. Cal did light the stove for her before he went to check on the stock in the barn and corral, something he did at least twice a day because some sick animals were contained there.
While he was gone, Nora whipped out the old cookbook she had been lent and tried desperately to make biscuits. The bacon was not too difficult, except that she burned one side trying to get it cooked enough. She was sweating and her hair was all in her face, which was streaked with flour like the blue-patterned dress she was wearing. It was a dress meant for the front parlor, not the kitchen, and it already showed the strain of the use it was being put to.
She fried the eggs in the bacon grease, but splattered herself with popping grease. While she was concentrating on the painful splotches on her arms, the eggs grew darker and harder. By the time she took them up, they would have bounced if she had dropped them.
It was a meal, of sorts, she consoled herself. Edible. Just. She put it all on the table, with the butter from the small icebox, and the jar of grape jelly that had been a gift from Helen.
Cal’s nose wrinkled involuntarily at the burned smell of the cabin when he joined her in the small kitchen. He said grace and they prepared to eat.
“I have made my first biscuits,” Nora said proudly.
He lifted one without comment.
“Here is the butter and the jelly,” she added, pushing both toward him.
He took his knife and tried to open the biscuit. It proved more difficult than he had imagined. Nora stoically put butter on the outside of hers and tried to bite into it. She laid it on her plate without comment and prepared to eat her egg. But this was impossible. The sight of it covered in grease and staring up at her made her queasy. She ran for the back porch and barely made it in time.
“Now, now,” he comforted, handing her his handkerchief, which he had wet from the pitcher on the washstand behind her. “That was my first reaction, too, but the eggs aren’t so bad. The bacon was a little crunchy, but you’ll get the hang of it.”
She pressed the cloth to her mouth and looked up. “You haven’t mentioned the biscuits.”
He grinned sheepishly. “Well, actually, I’m trying to forget about the biscuits.”
She laughed, too, and her fears evaporated when he pulled her close to his side and kissed her unkempt hair.
“You’re game, Nora,” he said proudly. “God, you’re game!”
“I want only to please you.” She laid her head against his shoulder and stood content in the circle of his arm. “I shall try very hard to be a good wife, Cal. You must forgive me if I’m less than efficient, but I have a great deal to learn. This is…new to me.”
He felt a terrible pang of guilt. She was pampered, and pregnant. He shouldn’t subject her to this sort of life. She deserved better.
He wanted to take her to Latigo and introduce her to his family. He wanted to take her out of this cabin and into the sort of house she had a right to expect. But he couldn’t leave Chester in the lurch. And he couldn’t stop prospecting for oil when he’d put almost every cent he had into these last two lots and the rigs to use on them. Too much was riding on it. If he lost his gamble, he’d be living on Latigo charity for the rest of his life, and Nora with him. That would hurt his pride. King would inherit Latigo. Although there would be plenty of money left over to divide when their parents were no longer alive, Cal didn’t want the family fortune. He wanted to make his own.
“You’re very quiet,” she remarked.
He kissed her hair again. “I was thinking about something. I must go away this weekend.”
She frowned as she looked up at him. “Where?”
He smiled. “It’s my secret, for now.” He put his finger over her mouth. “It’s business, I assure you, not another woman.” He pulled her close. “You’re as much woman as I can handle,” he whispered at her ear, “and more.”
She flushed with pleasure and nuzzled her face against his shirt. “I’ll ask Melly to drive me in to the doctor,” she promised.
“Good girl.” He smiled at her wan, pale face. “Take care.”
“I will.”
She watched him go, thankful that he was patient and not demanding and sarcastic like her father. It boded well for their future that he did not expect too much of her.
THE DOCTOR WAS KIND and she liked him at once. She told him about the fever and the slight bleeding—although she blushed profusely at having to admit how it had occurred—and her fears for her health.
After he examined her, they sat in his office and he wore a solemn expression.
“You must not exert yourself,” he said unexpectedly. “There is a weakness which is not uncommon in a woman of your build. It need not cause you any problems if you are careful. As to the fever,” he began, and hesitated. He took off his glasses. “There are many theories about how it is provoked. I favor fatigue as a causative agent. You must eat well, get enough rest and take special care not to become ill from any other cause. Even a simple cold might bring the fever again.”
“Could it harm me? Could it threaten my child, I mean?” she asked uneasily.
“It is possible,” he said. “I would like you to come back in a month to see me.”
“Yes. Yes, I shall.”
“If you have any difficulties, please do not hesitate to send for me.”
She shook hands with him. “You are very kind.”
DON’T EXERT YOURSELF. She heard the words echo in her mind over and over again in the days that followed. But how could she avoid it? There was water to fetch from the well and heavy pans to carry back and forth from the stove. There was bending and stooping as she tried to keep the cabin swept, and even the strain of getting into and out of the buggy. Before the week was over, she was exhausted.
“Nora, can’t you manage to find me at least one clean shirt?” Cal grumbled as he slung dirty ones around the bedroom. “For God’s sake…!”
“Here,” she said stiffly, presenting him with her first effort. She and Helen had washed the day before, and Nora had done her best to use the heated flatirons to produce something wearable. But she knew before he unfolded it that he was going to hit the ceiling. He did.
“What…!” There were scorch marks all down the sleeves and on the back. It was a chambray shirt. She didn’t have the nerve to mention the white one she’d burned a hole through. She winced at his expression.
“I was not employed as a personal maid!” she said with a trembling mouth. “You must make allowances for my background!”
He breathed slowly, trying to hold back his temper. Burned breakfast, burned supper, unswept floors, and now scorched shirts.
His mother was a wonderful cook, their home had always been immaculate, and she did her own washing and ironing as good or better than the Chinese laundry in El Paso. Nora was a complete failure at the simplest chores. She couldn’t even seem to remember to fill the pitcher with water so that he could wash his face and hands before meals. Her only virtue to date had been her delightful presence in his bed, but her pregnancy even denied him that consolation. Sleeping beside her and being unable to touch her made him as edgy as a sunburned snake.
“I need a daily woman,” she said angrily. She pushed back wisps of unkempt hair. She was not at all neat these days, he thought irritably, hardly the picture of a bandbox beauty. Even that would not have rankled so had she been able to cook an edible meal.
“I cannot afford a daily woman on my salary,” he lied. “And you spent your savings, I believe, on a new Paris hat at the milliner’s in town the day you went to see the doctor?”
She colored. It had been an impulse, the new hat, something to cheer her up, but she was willing to admit that she should never have spent so much on something so unnecessary. “I am sorry,” she murmured. “I have always spent what I pleased.”
“That is at an end,” he said curtly. “From now on, before you spend one red cent, you ask me if we can afford it. Is that understood?”
She glared at him. How was it possible to love and hate one man so much? Her teeth closed sharply. “When I was a lady of means, you would not have dared speak to me so!” she burst out.
“Wouldn’t I?” His eyes gave her a pointed appraisal. “Whatever you may have been before we married, you are now the wife of a ranch foreman, and I hold the purse strings.”
She stood breathing heavily, aware of her aching back and sore feet and hands that showed the ravages of unfamiliar labors. She wished she had the strength to lift the iron skillet on the wood stove above her head. She would have laid his skull open with it.
He must have seen the light of battle in her eyes, because he smiled faintly. But a minute later, he shouldered into the burned shirt with visible resignation and reluctance and went to work.
Thanksgiving came and went. Cal gave in when Helen pleaded for them to join the family for the special meal, for which Nora gave thanks. But it was only a one-day respite. The next day she was back to fighting eggs out of shells that came apart in her hands and trying to cut meat with too many bones. She felt terrible and looked it, and her fragile health was beginning to deteriorate under the double strain of her troubled marriage and the physical labor she was not used to performing.
The beginnings of a cold caught her unawares, but she managed to get out of bed and make breakfast for Cal. It was a wasted effort. He gave her latest disaster one cold glare and stormed over to the bunkhouse to eat with his men, muttering all the way out the door about being stupid enough to marry a woman who couldn’t boil water. She cleared the food away without looking at it too closely. Her own appetite had faded to nothing, and she wasn’t eating properly or resting properly or feeling particularly well. She stopped trying to cook at all, settling for bread and vegetables and bits of meat that a sympathetic and worried Melly sneaked into the cabin.
If Cal noticed, he never said a word. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to notice. He had started sleeping at the bunkhouse as well as eating there, because, he told everyone, he disturbed Nora, and she needed her rest.
It was a good enough excuse, but she didn’t believe a word of it. She thought that he was really just avoiding the arguments that seemed to flare up over nothing these days as Nora’s health suffered and her temper reflected her dissatisfaction and discomfort. She hated her mercurial temper, but she couldn’t help it. She had a cold and she was afraid that the fever was going to catch her off balance. What would she do when Cal knew the truth, knew how she’d deceived him? He would see her as even more of a burden than she was. He hardly looked at her these days, as if the sight of her hurt his eyes.
In fact, she did hurt his eyes. She didn’t know how desperately fragile she looked or how badly her new situation reflected on her. Cal felt guilty, more so by the day. He had moved to the bunkhouse to spare her the cooking and chores that she was unable to perform; and the arguments that did her no good at all.
He had to go to Beaumont and check on Pike’s progress this weekend. He thought seriously about taking her on to El Paso afterward. He was ashamed of the way he’d treated her. Every day he blamed himself more for subjecting her to a life for which she was so obviously not suited. He had thought to teach her how to appreciate the person and not the social station, but he no longer had such ambitions. He had been impatient with her lack of skill in the house, unreasonably so. The strain of being near her and unable to touch her had worsened his temper, and her own was none too good lately. When he came back from Beaumont, he would do what he had to, to spare her any further ordeal. He had caused her enough heartache.