Chapter Eight

Something coarse and fluttery tickled Nan’s nose, and a lovely blend of scents—a faint muskiness, a hint of cologne, and traces of piney bath soap—teased her sleep-numbed senses and beckoned her from the dark dregs of dreamless oblivion. How odd, she thought drowsily. The layered blankets on her bed kept her cozy even on the coldest of winter nights, but as she drifted slowly toward wakefulness, she became aware of radiant heat enveloping her, almost as if she’d curled up against an oversize bed warmer. She struggled to open her eyes, squinted a moment until her pupils adjusted to the morning light, and then stared in bewilderment at a bare male chest only inches from her face. It was sparsely furred with black hair and was the delightful color of café au lait, her favorite kind of coffee.

Nan blinked. Memories came storming back, most of them alarming and the rest unacceptable. This man was her husband. As if dashed in the face with cold water, she came instantly alert and smothered a moan of abject dismay. Her nose was buried in Gabriel Valance’s armpit. It was his hair tickling her nostrils.

Nan stopped breathing, acutely conscious that Gabriel still lay on his back with his folded arms pillowing his head. It was not he who had moved toward her. She had closed the distance between their bodies in her sleep. And, oh, sweet Lord, she’d curled her left arm over his bare waist. Even worse, she’d propped a bent knee on his denim-sheathed thigh. She was snuggled full-length against him with certain very private parts of her body in unnervingly close contact with his.

Fully awake now, Nan tried to think what to do. If she moved quickly away, she’d startle him from slumber, and she absolutely did not want that. He’d kept his promise and not touched her. He would undoubtedly find it highly humorous if he opened his eyes to find her lying nearly on top of him.

Very carefully Nan drew her arm back, then focused intently on ever so slowly moving her knee off his leg. She nearly parted company with the mattress when his voice rumbled near her ear.

“I’m already awake. I was afraid to move for fear of startling you.”

“Consternation!” Nan rolled quickly away from him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how that happened.”

“You were asleep. I reckon you got a little cold and just moved close to get warm.”

Close didn’t say it by half. Now Nan understood why some people claimed they’d nearly died of embarrassment at certain moments of their lives. She wanted to cover her head with her pillow and never have to look him in the eye again. Instead, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. When the bare pads of her feet touched the floor, she felt no chill, but shivered as if she did.

“I didn’t mean to—um—crowd you,” she managed to say. What must he think? Undoubtedly that she was a wanton hiding behind a facade of propriety. “The last I remember, I was on my own side of the bed.”

“You weren’t crowding me. It was nice, actually. You have a very cute little snore.” The smile she heard in his voice made her wince.

“Snore?” Nan cast him an incredulous glance over her shoulder. “Ladies do not snore.”

He chuckled and sat up to rake his fingers through his hair. “It’s a very ladylike snore.” His dark eyes, twinkling with laugher, met hers. “Soft, sort of whispery.” After studying her for a moment, he seemed to sense her dismay. With a shrug, he added, “Maybe you’re right, and I really shouldn’t call it a snore. The sound is definitely nothing like what some men make when they sleep. Over the years, I’ve heard some real wall shakers.”

Nan had moved past the snoring issue to a new concern: How could she get up and move about in front of him without being decently clad? She cast a glance at the armoire, where her wrapper hung inside on a door hook, and wished she’d had the forethought last night to drape it across the foot of the bed. Even though her gown was made of heavy cotton, it would provide her with precious little cover if she got between him and the sunlight that slanted over the half curtains at the window. She couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing her naked, even if only in silhouette.

“Is something wrong?” Gabriel asked. She felt the mattress jiggle as he swung off the bed. “You’re staring at the armoire as if it holds a bucket of gold nuggets.”

Nan turned slightly to look at him. “My wrapper’s in there. I forgot to get it last night.”

“Wrapper?” he echoed, his tone implying bewilderment. He rubbed one well-muscled shoulder as if to get the cricks out and stifled a yawn. Nan noted how the furring of hair across his chest narrowed into a diminishing dark line that descended to the waistband of his black jeans and then disappeared. A blush seared her cheeks when he caught her looking. He studied her, his brow pleating in a thoughtful scowl. Then, startling her, he snapped his fingers. “Ah, yes, your wrapper. Of course! Every proper lady wears a wrapper.” He drew open the armoire doors and fisted his hand over the deep pink robe. “This it?”

“Yes.” The garment looked effete in his big hand. When he stepped toward her, proffering it, Nan took it and said, “Thank you. It’s—um . . . The air has quite a nip in it this morning.” Curling the fingers of one hand over the cuff of her sleeve to anchor it at her wrist, she thrust her arm into the wrapper. “I’ll be warmer now.”

His firm mouth quirked at one corner. She half expected him to call her on the lie. She wasn’t really cold, after all. Instead, he went to collect his shirt, which he’d tossed over the back of a chair. As he shoved his arms through the sleeves and began fastening the buttons, he said, “I’ll go add wood to the fires. I don’t want you or Laney taking a chill.”

He sat behind her at the opposite side of the bed to pull on his boots. Then, circling around to face her, he tucked in his shirttails, apparently oblivious to the fact that a gentleman would never do such a thing. Nan sighed inwardly. She’d been so focused on all the physical aspects of this union that she hadn’t stopped to think how difficult it might be to teach this man some proper manners.

He started for the door, then stopped dead. “My guns. I can’t believe I almost forgot them.”

He retraced his steps to collect his weapons. Why he felt he needed to wear them this morning, she didn’t know. But she refrained from asking, mostly because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer.

Once armed, with the plain leather holsters anchored snugly to his muscular thighs, he left the room, softly closing the door behind him. The starch drained from Nan’s spine, and her shoulders slumped. Though she knew she’d slept deeply, she didn’t feel rested and dreaded the day ahead.

The door popped back open and Gabriel poked his raven head in through the crack. “Happy Thanksgiving,” he said with a grin that flashed strong, even white teeth.

It was a charming smile, Nan thought. A little too charming for her taste. It hinted of long practice. And she wasn’t about to be fooled by it. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she replied stiffly.

“I’m excited about it,” he told her. “It’ll be my first.”

She didn’t understand. “Your first . . . ? Your first what?”

“My first real Thanksgiving.”

Long after the door closed again, Nan sat on the bed, staring blankly at nothing. My first real Thanksgiving. Surely he’d been joking.

But something told her he hadn’t been.

•   •   •

After performing her morning ablutions behind a locked door in the water closet, Nan emerged into the hallway properly attired for the day. She’d chosen a rust-colored gown trimmed with brown—autumn colors appropriate for the holiday. After checking on Laney, who was still fast asleep, Nan crossed the sitting room and entered the kitchen, expecting to find Gabriel sitting at the table, waiting for her to make coffee and breakfast, expecting, as most men did, to be waited on as if he were a king. Instead the coffeepot was already set to boil atop the woodstove and her new husband was nowhere to be seen. She’d put away her nightclothes, so she knew he wasn’t in the bedroom.

“Mr. Valance?” she called. “Gabriel?”

“Back here!”

Nan followed the deep ring of his voice down the short hallway and stopped in the open doorway of her workroom. On his knees, her husband was scooping up handfuls of beads and returning them to the wooden box on the floor beside him. The sight was so astonishing that for a moment she was speechless.

“That’s my mess to clean up,” she told him when she found her voice. “There’s no need for you to do it. I’ll make fast work of it after breakfast with my broom and dustpan.”

He shook his head. “If you sweep them up, dirt from the floor will get in the box and all over the other beads.”

Nan couldn’t argue the point. She tried to keep a tidy home, but it was impossible to sweep even well-waxed floorboards perfectly clean. She wanted to thank him for being so thoughtful and willing to help, but a lifetime of bitterness toward men held her tongue. She would not be taken in by his pleasant demeanor. Nor would she lower her guard. Sooner or later, he would show his true colors. All of them eventually did.

Nan would be ready when that happened. Colorado had been a state now for more than four years, but women still weren’t allowed the right to vote, and Nan had little faith that the male populace was in any hurry to rectify that. Until women here were granted suffrage, they would remain lesser citizens without a voice, and in the interim, the men controlled everything. Nan had seen few overt demonstrations of dominance in Random, but the public demeanor of men in no way reflected what actually occurred in their homes behind closed doors.

She wasn’t sure what Colorado’s laws were in regards to a woman’s financial wealth after she married. In some states, the new husband automatically took possession of all his bride’s assets. In others, a wife could retain possession and control. Nan only knew that she wasn’t going to take any chances. She’d worked too hard and scrimped too long to save what little she had, and there was no way she would allow Gabriel Valance to take a single dime of it.

On Monday morning right after the bank opened, she’d slip across the street and empty her savings account before Gabriel thought to visit the bank himself. A floor plank in her downstairs workroom had started to work loose. With the claws of a hammer, she could easily pry it up, slip her money into the crawl space, and then nail the board back into place. It would be a perfect hiding spot. When Gabriel Valance grew weary of acting nice and started trying to rule her every word and action, she would be ready to act. She was certainly no stranger to packing everything she could carry in pillowcases and vanishing.

At her silence, Gabriel glanced up. “If my doing this upsets you, Nan, I can stop. I only wanted to get it cleaned up before someone else took a tumble.”

“No, no.” Nan forced a smile that stretched her stiff cheek muscles. It wasn’t only men who could hide behind a charming facade. She would pretend to accept this marriage. For the duration of the holiday weekend, she would be sweetness itself. After Monday came and went, and she had her money safely tucked away, she’d figure out an escape plan that she could execute in short order. Then she’d simply bide her time. If all went well, she’d be pleasantly surprised and more than willing to admit, if only to herself, that she’d misjudged this man. If all didn’t go well, she would spirit Laney away from this town and never look back. It would be difficult, and both she and Laney would feel sad, but in the end they would both be better off without a man ruling their lives. “I appreciate the help, actually,” she continued. “After throwing together a quick breakfast, I have to make bread and put it aside to rise while I make pies. It’ll be a very busy morning and early afternoon for me.”

“Pies?” He sat back on a boot heel and grinned from ear to ear. “You’re a pie maker?”

Weren’t all women? He made it sound as if making pies were the equivalent of roping the moon or plucking stars from the sky. Nan could almost see him salivating, and this time her smile wasn’t forced. “Ah, so you like pies, do you?”

“Like ’em? I love ’em. Even the bad ones at restaurants taste good to me.”

Nan folded her arms. “What’s your favorite?”

“No favorite. Apple, peach, rhubarb, any kind of berry.”

“How about pumpkin?”

“You’ve got a pumpkin? Where? I’ll gut it if you’ll make some pies with it.”

Nan grinned. She couldn’t help herself. “It’s a deal. I bought a pumpkin on Tuesday from Burke Redmond at the general store. It’s in the cabinet under the sink. Last Thanksgiving I cut myself trying to stab a knife through a pumpkin shell. I’ve no wish to repeat the experience.”

He tossed some beads into the box. “Not too handy with knives, I take it.”

Nan tapped the toe of her boot, a nervous habit she’d never been able to break. “My talent runs more to knitting needles.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” He chuckled and bent to his task again. “Don’t overdo on breakfast. If pies are on the menu, I don’t want to waste much room on everyday fare.”

“I was thinking of oatmeal porridge and toast. That’ll be quick and filling.”

“Sounds grand to me.”

•   •   •

Twenty minutes later, Nan was about to put breakfast on the table when Laney emerged from her bedroom. Still in her nightgown with her hair loose and astir from her pillow, the girl tottered across the sitting room into the kitchen, stifling a yawn with her hand.

“Good morning, dear heart,” Nan said. “I hope you’re hungry. Breakfast is almost ready.”

Laney rubbed her eyes with both fists. “What are we having?”

Nan glanced at the child’s attire. Wearing only a nightgown had been okay before, but now that there was a man in the house, the child needed to change her habits. “Oatmeal porridge and cinnamon toast. While I’m setting the table, run get your wrapper on, sweetie. Now that we have a gentleman in the house, it’s important that we not parade around half-dressed.”

Gabriel appeared behind Laney in the sitting room archway. He’d apparently overheard Nan’s edict, for he swept a measuring look over the girl’s gown, arched a winged brow, and then met Nan’s gaze with a question in his own. Nan knew precisely what he was thinking: namely that the child was already decently covered. To Nan, that was beside the point. It was her job to teach Laney how to comport herself as a lady, and ladies did not keep company with men while en dishabille.

Laney retraced her footsteps to her room to don her robe. Nan set bowls of porridge and plates of toast on the table. Then she went to a drawer for spoons. She deliberately avoided Gabriel’s gaze, because it was not her intent to debate with him her parenting decisions. The man had no idea how to raise a girl to become a proper young woman, so his opinions were not only impertinent but also unwelcome.

To his credit, he voiced no objections, and by the time Nan joined him and Laney at the table to break their fast, some of the tension had eased from her spine. Laney tucked into her meal without speaking. She tended to be less talkative upon waking than she normally was. As a result, Nan often leafed through fashion periodicals during the first meal of the day. Studying fashion plates was something she rarely found time to do, so she jumped at any opportunity. Unfortunately, with Gabriel at the table, she felt obligated to rigidly observe the rules of proper etiquette.

She yearned briefly for one of the fashion issues she kept tucked away in a kitchen cupboard, but Gabriel’s low moan of pleasure when he took a bite of cinnamon toast soon distracted her. He actually closed his eyes to savor the taste. Then, lifting his lashes, he grinned at her and said, “This is delicious. I’ve never tasted the like.”

Nan noted that he at least swallowed his food before speaking. Otherwise, his manners were deplorable. He had one elbow propped by his bowl. He didn’t bother to put down his spoon before taking a sip of coffee, choosing to use both hands, as if dining were a race to the finish line. The linen napkin she’d put at his place remained folded on the tablecloth and, she surmised, would never make it to his lap. She decided to be grateful for small blessings: He had not yet slurped or used his spoon as if it were a shovel, so he wasn’t completely beyond salvation.

“You’ve never had cinnamon toast?”

“No. How the hell do you make it?”

Nan shot him a meaningful look. He appeared to be puzzled for a second, but then he glanced at the quiet Laney and said, “Pardon my language.”

Nan bit back a smile, feeling heartened. Definitely trainable, she decided, but giving the man even a glimmer of polish would take unflagging determination on her part. “Cinnamon toast is easy to make.” She quickly told him how. “It’s difficult for me to imagine never having tasted it. It became a favorite breakfast treat for me when I was a small child.”

He took another bite, once again humming appreciatively at the taste. “I wonder if they serve this in restaurants. I don’t recall ever seeing it on the menu.”

As a young woman, Nan had gone with her father to restaurants for supper, but she’d eaten out in the morning only while traveling out west, and then during a brief layover at the Random Hotel while Laney recovered from pneumonia. Though Laney’s illness had frightened Nan at the time, she now felt it had been fortuitous because she had discovered the hat shop during their stay. “My experience with breakfast menus is limited, I’m afraid. In the future, perhaps you should suggest to a café or restaurant entrepreneur that cinnamon toast be added to the morning selections.”

His ebon brows snapped together. “A restaurant what?”

Laney giggled. Battling a smile herself, Nan sent the girl an admonishing glance. “Entrepreneur is a word of French origin, meaning business owner or proprietor.”

“Ah. Thank God it’s French. I’ve worked hard to build my vocabulary, but I’ve stuck to only English. For a second there, I thought I’d missed a big word. They’re my main focus—learning how to say them, what they mean, and how to use them. The widow Harper stressed to me during the year I stayed with her that being well-spoken is important.”

Nan felt it unnecessary to say that entrepreneur was commonly used by English-speaking people. Given what little she knew about Gabriel’s appalling childhood and lack of formal education, she found it admirable that he’d studied so hard on his own to learn his letters and build his language skills.

“The next time you make this, will you show me how?” he asked.

Nan quite liked cinnamon toast herself and wouldn’t mind having it two days in a row. “Tomorrow morning then,” she agreed. “It’s truly very simple.”

“It doesn’t taste simple to me,” he said, his voice ringing with sincerity.

Nan refused to believe he would remain so easy to please at mealtimes. She’d once seen her father bludgeon her mother in the face with a full platter of hot meat because it had not been prepared to his taste. Though the fault had lain with the kitchen staff, Helena had still taken the brunt of her husband’s temper.

•   •   •

Unaccustomed to company in the kitchen, Nan was rattled by Gabriel’s intent observation of every move she made as she prepared yeast bread, mixed up a batch of corn bread to go in the stuffing, and then began pie dough. He was full of questions, asking why she did this and why she did that. A careful measurer when she cooked, Nan grew so distracted while adding ingredients to a bowl that she feared she might have put in twice the amount of baking powder.

Hoping for a brief respite, Nan set him to the task of cutting into the pumpkin. Behind her, she heard him ask Laney, “Did you have a jack-o’-lantern for Halloween?”

“We did! Mama helped me carve it. She saves our candle stubs all year long so we can have ours lit in the shop window until right before we go to bed and still have some fat stubs left over for our Christmas tree.” Laney was a great fan of holidays. “Ours was the best jack-o’-lantern in all of Random.”

“Do you often use candles?” he inquired.

“Fairly often. When we’re doing nothing that requires a lot of light, candles are cheaper to burn than kerosene.”

“Less expensive,” Nan corrected over her shoulder. She could almost see Laney rolling her eyes. “You won’t run low on breath using that term, little miss, and it is far more ladylike.”

“Burning candles is less expensive,” Laney complied, her tone implying that the trials she endured under Nan’s tutelage were nearly unbearable.

“I figured Nan for being big on decorations during the holidays,” Gabriel mused. “The Christmas boughs that framed the shop window were beautiful.”

Nan turned to give him a curious study. “When were you here at Christmas?” she asked. “I thought this was your first visit to Random.”

Darting worried looks at their pumpkin carver, Laney avoided Nan’s gaze, which struck Nan as being rather odd. Gabriel, however, didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, I’ve been here before.”

Nan was about to ask when, but he forestalled by saying, “Are we having turkey? I know some folks around here raise domesticated ones. Not that I care. I only ask because you mentioned making stuffing.”

Since coming to Random, Nan had served turkey at Thanksgiving only once. Though it had been a small bird, she and Laney had been unable to consume but a portion of it, and the remainder had gone to waste. “With only the two of us, I serve roasted chicken as a substitute. It’s quite good, the stuffing is just as marvelous, and we aren’t left with meat going bad. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Mind?” His white teeth flashed in a teasing grin. Not for the first time, Nan noticed how the creases in his lean cheeks deepened when his mouth curved. “I’ll bet your roast chicken today puts all the turkeys cooked in Random to shame.”

“If you’re implying that I’m the best cook in town, you’re in for a big disappointment,” she replied. “Luckily, it’s hard to go wrong with one of Ellen Hamm’s hens. I don’t know what she feeds her chickens, but their eggs are superior, and so is their meat.”

Gabriel had scooped out the pumpkin seeds onto an open newspaper, and one bit had fallen to the floor. Nan stooped to pick it up.

“I’m sure it will be delicious,” he assured her. “Hell, I’d be happy if you served shit on a stick. You’re just that good a cook.”