Reaching across the table, ’Ring squeezed his sister’s hand. “I apologize. I think I have my poetry under control now. Tell me about yourself and what you’ve been doing.”
“I was telling you about Josh. About his farm.” For all that she’d said that ’Ring wouldn’t care about Josh’s farm, the truth was she was a bit worried that ’Ring would find the place a little bit ragged. “And about Josh.” Her face lit up. “Josh can read a story aloud as well as Maddie can sing.”
’Ring looked at Josh with new respect. “Can you now? That’s saying a great deal.”
“Who is Maddie?” Josh asked.
“She’s ’Ring’s wife and to the world she’s known as LaReina.”
It was Josh’s turn to look at ’Ring with respect, for LaReina was one of the world’s greatest opera singers. “My congratulations on your choice and on the honor of having such a woman for a wife. I’ve heard her sing many times. In Paris and Vienna and Rome. I’ve gone to hear her whenever possible.”
“I didn’t know you’d been to all of those places,” Carrie said, but Josh ignored her.
“Thank you,” ’Ring said. “She’s a wonderful woman and—” He broke off as his eyes widened. “You can read aloud…You’re—”
With one very swift gesture, Josh flung his arm out and knocked ’Ring’s wine glass over, effectively stopping ’Ring from saying what he’d started to. As Carrie was looking at the mess on the table, she missed seeing the way her husband looked at ’Ring with eyes that begged him to say no more.
After Carrie finished trying to mop up the spilled wine, she didn’t know what had happened, but she knew that something had. It was as though both men had joined some secret club that excluded her. It was as though, in the space of a few seconds, they had become the best of friends. For the rest of the long dinner, they talked to each other, only now and then acknowledging Carrie’s presence. They talked of all the cities they had seen, plays they had attended, and ’Ring’s wife’s singing. They talked of people they both knew, of hotels and food and wine.
Carrie sat silent through the meal, ignored and smoldering at the way they treated her: as though she were much too young and untraveled to be of interest to them.
At long last the two men decided it was time to retire. “I shall see both of you tomorrow,” ’Ring said. “Shall we say at your farm at noon? The wedding is set for five o’clock. That will give me time to meet these children of yours. Tell me,” he said to Josh, “are they anything like you?”
Carrie felt that her brother was asking Josh a question that had a different meaning from what she was hearing.
“They are like me with one exception: They have more talent.”
That seemed to amuse ’Ring a great deal.
By the time she and Josh said goodnight to ’Ring, Carrie wasn’t speaking to either man.
As Josh took her arm, he was musing over something to himself and didn’t seem to realize that Carrie was angry at him. Nor did he seem to notice that she wasn’t speaking to him.
“I brought Hiram’s wagon,” he said. “It’s at the stables. I assume you are going home with me.”
Carrie’s first thought was to tell him that she was staying at her shop in town, but she wanted to see the children again, and she wanted to tell them that she was staying in Eternity after all. She might never speak to their father again, but she was going to marry him tomorrow—if his wife gave him a divorce, that is.
Josh went to the stables, got the wagon, helped her onto the seat, then talked to her all the way home. He told her what a fine fellow her brother was, how educated, how wise, how cultured.
“I guess that’s because he knows all the people you know, has been to all the places you have been. Places that I didn’t even know you’d seen.” Carrie’s voice rang with sarcasm.
Josh didn’t seem to hear her derision, but kept on talking about ’Ring and what a great guy he was. A man’s man. “A man like him can handle a horse, a gun, a line of Shakespeare, and a woman all at once.”
At that particular line, Carrie said she thought she was going to throw up.
“Is it the baby?” Josh asked, concerned, starting to halt the horses.
“No, it’s you.”
Smiling, he flicked the reins of the horses.
Before going to Josh’s house, they stopped at Hiram’s big, sturdy, perfectly clean, perfectly dull farmhouse—not a flower in sight—to pick up the children. Carrie stayed on the wagon while Josh went in to get them, carrying a sleeping Dallas in his arms, a drowsy Tem following. Carrie took Dallas, and Tem climbed onto the seat, snuggling against Carrie.
“Are you going to stay or leave?” Tem asked, yawning.
“Stay,” Carrie answered.
Tem nodded as though to acknowledge that this was the latest decision, but that it might change in the next minute.
At home Josh took the children up the ladder to the loft, then came back down to the first floor. Yawning, he walked to the bedroom.
Carrie met him at the door. “What are you doing?”
“Going to bed.”
“Not in this room, you’re not,” she said firmly.
Josh sighed. “Carrie, love, this is ridiculous. I’m tired and I don’t want to have to share that tiny bed with Dallas. Have pity on me.”
“You are not spending the night with me. You and I aren’t married. In fact, legally, you are married to another woman. If you and I slept together, we’d be committing adultery.”
“But I was married to her before when we spent the night together.”
“But then I didn’t know anything.”
Moving closer to her, the sleepy look left his eyes, and his voice lowered to a silky tone of seduction. “Carrie, my love, I just want a place to sleep. You can’t deny a man that, can you?”
“Are you tired from raising worms all day or from talking to my brother and ignoring me all evening?”
“Carrie, honey,” he said, pleading and reaching out to caress her cheek.
“Don’t you touch me!” she said and slammed the bedroom door in his face.
Upstairs, when Josh climbed in the narrow bed with his daughter, Dallas sleepily said, “I told you Carrie wanted the big bed by herself.”
The next morning Carrie was sound asleep when Josh allowed the children in the room to wake her up. But instead of jumping on the bed as they usually did, they climbed in with her and Choo-choo, and soon all of them were sleeping together in a heap.
Josh stood in the doorway drinking a cup of the world’s worst coffee and looked at his family with love—well, maybe he didn’t love the dog, but even that creature was growing on him.
Last night at dinner, contrary to what Carrie thought, he had been very aware of her anger. He probably shouldn’t have indulged himself so, but her jealousy had felt so very good. He’d had women jealous when he’d given his attention to others, but those women had meant nothing to him. Those women had not loved him, not loved the man, but had loved who they thought he was. Several women in his past had tried to get to Josh through his children, but his children were very astute: They had universally hated all the women.
But now, looking at Carrie and the kids, not being able to tell where one person began and the other ended, he knew how very much he loved her. And she was right: He and his children needed her.
He smiled at the lot of them. Everything was going to be all right now. He knew it. All he had to do was deal with Nora, and then he’d be free.
As though thinking of her conjured her, Choo-choo jumped out from under the covers and began to bark frantically. Outside was the sound of an approaching carriage, and as Josh turned toward the front door, he grimaced. It couldn’t be Nora already, could it?
At Choo-choo’s bark, Carrie came awake slowly, and for the first few moments she wasn’t sure where she was.
Tem raised his head. “Who’s that?” They could hear the carriage as it stopped in front of the house; a man was yelling at the horses.
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“I hope it isn’t Uncle Hiram,” Dallas said. “We’ll tell him Carrie is here, and he’ll be afraid and run away.”
Laughing, Carrie began to tickle the child, while Tem went outside, but came back in seconds, his face pale. “It’s Mother,” he whispered.
Carrie sat up straight in bed. She had thought of this woman as Josh’s wife, but not as the children’s mother. Would they be so glad to see her that they’d forget about her, Carrie? Carrie chastised herself for even thinking such a terrible thought. This woman was the children’s mother, and of course they loved her.
“Go on, go see her,” Carrie urged.
But Dallas sat down on Carrie’s lap, while Tem stayed by the door.
At that moment the front door to the house burst open, and even though Carrie couldn’t see the woman, she could feel her presence, for the woman’s spirit seemed to fill the little house.
“Where are they?” she called. “Where are my darling babies?”
Before Carrie could say anything, before she could tell Tem to close the bedroom door so the woman wouldn’t see her sitting in bed with her hair mussed and wearing only a nightgown, Nora swept into the room.
She was large. She was tall and big boned and had a dramatically colored face: white skin, dark eyes, red lips, black hair. She wore an expensive dress of black and red brocade, her waist corseted down to what Carrie’s practiced eye knew was no more than twenty inches. Above her waist was a bosom that most women would have given a few, or more, years of their lives to possess. Josh had said that his wife wasn’t exactly pretty. No, this woman wasn’t pretty. What she was, was beautiful. Stunning. A woman to make men stop in their tracks. A woman to inspire poems and songs written about her.
As Carrie was staring at this woman in speechless wonder, Tem had moved closer to her, and she put her arm around him as she hugged Dallas on her lap. For once, even Choo-choo was quiet.
“My goodness, what a very…domestic scene. Tell me, Josh, do all your new…ladies sleep with you and our children?”
Carrie wanted to defend herself, but what could she say, that she was this woman’s husband’s wife?
The children just looked at their mother silently.
“Come, darlings, and give your mother a kiss.”
Obediently, silently, the children went to their mother. Bending, Nora allowed each child in turn to kiss her lovely cheek. But she didn’t hug the children or touch them in any other way.
“And who is your little friend?” Nora asked Tem, nodding to Carrie.
“She’s our new…I mean she and Papa are married.”
“Are they? How very interesting.” Turning, she looked at Josh who was standing behind her. “Darling, it looks as though you have two wives. I may not know a great deal about the law, but I don’t think that’s legal.”
“Perhaps we should allow Carrie to get dressed,” Josh said as he led his beautiful, ravishing, divine wife from the room.
Carrie dressed in her riding clothes, and when she was ready, she went into the parlor. Josh and his wife were sitting at the table, heads bent close together.
Pulling away, Nora looked Carrie up and down in appraisal. “Aren’t you the cutest little thing? She’s darling, Josh, wherever did you find her?”
“In the tadpole pond,” Carrie said through her teeth and started toward the front door.
Josh caught her, held her arms to her sides, and led her back to the table. Still holding her, he pushed her onto the chair. “Tem!” he snapped. “Get Carrie some coffee.”
When he’d placed the coffee before Carrie, Josh said, “Carrie, my love, my one and only love, I’d like you to meet Nora.”
“Your wife,” Carrie said flatly and tried to get up, but Josh held her shoulders.
“Why Joshua, darling, I do believe the little thing is angry at you. You did tell her about me, didn’t you?”
“And how could I have accurately described you?” Josh’s voice dripped acid.
Nora seemed to take that as a compliment as she gave a suggestive little laugh. “Of course you couldn’t describe me, darling, but many men have tried.” She turned back to Carrie. “She looks awfully small to be on the stage.”
“She isn’t on the stage,” Josh snapped. “She’s a wife and mother and nothing else.”
“How very…interesting,” Nora said, making no doubt as to what she thought of Carrie’s life’s work.
“I can run a shop,” Carrie snapped, because Josh made her sound as though she stood over a laundry tub all day and hadn’t a thought except how clean her floors were.
“A shop?” Nora said, one eyebrow raised.
“She buys dresses,” Josh supplied, again making Carrie sound insignificant.
Carrie started to get up, but Josh held her down.
“Nora, just give me the paper to sign and get out of here. There’s nothing here for you.”
At that Nora began to cry rather prettily into a lace handkerchief. “Josh, how could you be so unkind to me? I only came as an excuse to see my children once more. I miss them so much. I miss the sound of their footsteps in the night. I even miss the way Dallas used to wake up with bad dreams. I miss their voices. I miss—” She was crying too hard to go on.
In spite of herself, Carrie stretched her hand across the table to take Nora’s. Carrie had known the children only a short time, but she thought she’d die if she had to leave them. What must this woman be feeling to have her children taken from her? And why had Josh done something so cruel to a woman he’d once loved?
Josh caught Carrie’s hand before she could touch Nora.
“Your timing is off,” Josh said. “You’re getting lazy.”
To Carrie’s consternation, Nora’s face changed from misery to a smile in an instant. “But, darling, I don’t have you to rehearse with. How can I be good without the Great Templeton beside me?”
Carrie turned to look up at Josh, but he was looking at Nora.
“I want the paper,” Josh said.
Nora leaned forward, her arms propped on the table. Her gown was very low cut, not what any decent woman would wear before sundown, and it was obvious that she had no need to supplement her bosom with cotton. “I lost it, darling,” she purred. “I lost it down the front of my gown.”
Looking up at Josh, Carrie saw that he was looking down the front of his wife’s dress as though he meant to search for the paper. Carrie got up, left the house, and went to the shed that Josh euphemistically called a barn. She was throwing a saddle on Josh’s old workhorse when he entered.
“Carrie,” he began.
“Don’t you say a word to me. Not one single word. There is nothing you can say, darling—” She sneered the last word. “There isn’t anything you can say to me. You have lied to me for the last time.”
“Tem,” he said softly. “Dallas.”
Putting her head against the saddle for a moment, tears came to her eyes. “How dare you use the children to get what you want from me.” She tried to pull the cinch on the horse, but her vision was too blurry to see.
Josh came to stand beside her, brushed her hands away, tightened the cinch, then stood to one side. “You’re free to leave. I won’t try to stop you. If it doesn’t matter to you that I love you and that my children love you and that we’ve already made another child who will grow up without a father, then leave. I will make no effort to stop you.”
Carrie started to mount the horse. She put her foot in the stirrup, but then, turning, she flew at Josh, hitting him on the chest with her fists. “I hate you, hate you, hate you! Do you understand me? I hate you as much as I love you.”
When her first fury was past, Josh pulled her into his arms and held her while she cried.
“She’s so beautiful,” Carrie said. “She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Rather like a coral snake. Beautiful and deadly.”
“You don’t really think that or you wouldn’t have married her.”
“I wa
s nineteen years old when I married her, how was I supposed to have any sense?”
“I’m only twenty,” Carrie sobbed. “Does that make me stupid?”
“Of course not. You have the good sense to be in love with me.”
Carrie hiccuped a laugh between her tears.
“That’s better. Now, I want you to come over here and sit down. I think it’s time we had a talk.”
“Talk? You’re going to talk to me? Talk to the woman you profess to love? You couldn’t be going to tell me what everyone else in the world seems to know about you, could you? Your…wife, your children, your brother, even my own brother—they all know. Don’t look at me like that. For all that you seem to think that I’m stupid, I’m not. ’Ring wouldn’t have taken to you last night as he did if he hadn’t known something about you.”
Josh pulled her to stretch out beside him on a pile of straw, his arm under her shoulders. “Where should I begin?”
“Why ask me? I don’t know enough to tell you where you should begin. Besides, are you sure you have time to talk to me? Won’t your adorable, mysterious, overweight wife want you to go searching for the divorce paper? Not that you’ll need much encouragement. Perhaps we could tie the rope we rescued Tem with around your waist and you can go diving for the papers. All I ask is that I be allowed to tie the knots.”
Josh put his hand over his mouth so she wouldn’t see his smile. “Nora is busy with Eric. You didn’t see him, did you? Six foot. Blond. Adoring. Ten years her junior.”
“She’s older than you, isn’t she?” It was the happiest thought Carrie’d had since Nora had entered the bedroom.
“Much,” Josh said. “Now, do you want me to tell you about myself or do you want to continue being catty about Nora?”
Carrie had to take a moment to decide. “Listen,” she said.
“My parents were two-bit actors, not very good, although I think my father would have been better if he hadn’t drunk half a gallon of anything with alcohol in it every day of his adult life. Anyway, I was raised in dressing rooms and in dingy hotel rooms until I was eight. Then my father died and—”