“And were you also an adoring audience?”
“I loved every one of them. I loved their voices, their tempers, their demands. I loved their big breasts and big hips. I loved the enthusiasm they had for life. They ate, drank, loved, and raged with passion.”
“I’m not sure I am as…as passionate as those women.”
“You love your family so much you were ready to give me up for them.”
She knew he didn’t realize how vain he sounded. “That was no great sacrifice. You were a penniless clerk in my father’s office.”
“I took the job to be near you. I never wanted to imprison myself, but a man in love will do a lot of foolish things.”
She snuggled his arm across her chest. “You came back for me. I did doubt you, and I’m sorry. I won’t doubt again.”
“Now you’ll go with me?”
“I’ll follow you anywhere. I’ll be as faithful as a…as a dog.”
He laughed at that. “What if your little sister tells you I’ve kidnapped the Sunday School class?”
“I might believe the choir, but not the Sunday School.”
He squeezed her tightly. “Nellie, answer me. It’s my whole life you’re playing with.”
Part of Nellie was fearful. Lately there had been something compelling about her family, something so compelling that she felt she couldn’t leave. Not as long as her family needed her.
“Nellie,” Jace said, as though warning her.
“Terel needs me.” She could feel him getting angry. “Maybe we could find her a husband. How many brothers do you have?”
He relaxed at her joke. “Not enough for your little sister. She could—”
Nellie turned in his arms and kissed him. “The fire’s going out, and I’m hungry. Maybe we could eat, and maybe we could do this again. Is that possible?”
He bit her earlobe. “I might be able to manage it.” He rolled away from her, then watched her pull the cloth back over her body. “You really don’t mind having our wedding night early?”
“There will be a wedding?” she asked softly.
“As soon as I can arrange it. That is, if you agree—and, considering the hell you’ve put me through, you damned well ought to agree.”
“Yes,” she said, her heart in her eyes. “Yes, I will marry you and live with you and bear your children and love you forever.”
He kissed her hand. “That’s all I want of you: your body, soul, mind. I want every part of you.”
“What do I get in return?”
“All my love. Contrary to popular opinion in this town, I love only one woman at a time.”
“As faithful as a diamond?” she asked, eyes twinkling.
He smiled, then, stretching, reached for his wet coat. He looked in the inside pocket and withdrew a box. “Speaking of diamonds…” He opened the box to show her the ring with the big yellow diamond. “For you,” he said softly. “If you’ll have me. Me and my temper and my jealousy.”
“I’ll have you with or without the ring, with or without money.” She looked at him, love in her eyes. “I really don’t care about your money. It’s you I love.”
“I know that. Give me your hand.”
He slipped the ring on her finger and kissed her gently. “Now, about that wedding night,” he said, pushing her to the floor.
They made love, then ate hugely, then made love again, then ate again. Toward dawn they slept, wrapped about each other’s bodies, tired but happy.
A strong, bright ray of sunshine came through a broken window and woke Nellie. She sat up with a jolt.
Jace, still half asleep, reached for her to pull her back down to him.
“I have to go,” Nellie said, trying to pull the tablecloth from under Jace so she could cover herself, but he was too big to budge.
“Nellie,” he said, his tone tempting her back into his arms.
She rolled away from him and went to the corner where her clothes were heaped. They were still damp and cold, but she struggled into them as quickly as she could.
Jace rolled onto his stomach and looked up at her. “Honeymoon over?”
She paused a moment as she looked at him, all six feet of him stretched out, bronze skin against white damask, and almost dropped her clothes and ran to him. She caught herself. “I have to get back. My family will be worried about me.”
“Worried about their breakfast, more likely,” Jace muttered, but not so Nellie could hear. Something she’d said last night had made him pause. She’d asked if he wouldn’t have believed a Montgomery over a stranger. Whatever else Nellie’s father and sister were, they were her family, and it was only right that she believe them.
“I’ll find the horses,” Jace said, and reluctantly he stood and began to dress. “Think there’s any food left in here?” he asked as he opened the basket. There was so much food left it looked as though they’d not touched it. “This thing is bottomless.”
“It seems that way,” Nellie said, looking over his shoulder. He caught her to him. “Maybe it’s just me, but everything seems to be more beautiful than it’s ever been in my life.”
“I agree,” he said, kissing her.
Nellie was the first to push away. “I have to return.”
Jace sighed and released her. “If I can find the horses.”
At that moment an answering nicker came from outside, and he opened the door to see both horses standing in the mud as though they were waiting to return. “My luck has run out,” Jace said heavily, making Nellie giggle.
Within minutes he had her buggy hitched and his horse tied behind. As soon as they stepped into the buggy their euphoric mood left them. They didn’t talk. Both of them were afraid of what awaited them at the Grayson house in Chandler.
Berni greeted them at the door. At first she was concerned about their long faces, afraid they hadn’t made up their differences. (Berni had stopped watching them after they’d entered the cabin and had, instead, used her wand to spy on her former twentieth-century friends.) But then she saw their fingers entwined and realized that their sad faces were from dread of Terel and Charles.
“At last!” Berni said. “Nellie, the most incredible thing has happened!”
“Are Terel and Father all right?” Nellie asked dully, clasping Jace’s fingers.
“More than all right. Look at this telegram from your father.”
Nellie read it twice before she looked up. “Terel has eloped?”
“It seems she fell in love with some farmer and married him the same night. She doesn’t even want to come back for her clothes; she wants them shipped. And your father is marrying someone, too. He wants to stay in Denver until the wedding.”
Nellie just stood there blinking.
“You’re free, Nellie, free,” Berni said.
Jace frowned. “You know, there’s something odd going on here. Yesterday there was that pool of water Nellie fell in, and then this morning it was gone. And the horses ran away even though I’d locked them inside the stables. And there was that bottomless basket of food. And now this. I think—”
Berni narrowed her eyes at him. “Haven’t you ever heard the old saying ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’? Nellie is free of her obligations to her family and free to marry you. Are you questioning that?”
“No, I just…” He stopped and smiled. “You’re right. I’m not questioning anything. Well, Nellie, how about marrying me next week?”
“Yes,” Nellie said softly, just beginning to realize that she was indeed free. “Oh, yes, I’ll marry you.” She turned to Berni. “You’ll stay for my wedding, won’t you?”
“I can’t. My job’s done now, and I have a date.” She smiled. “A date with heaven.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Right away.”
“But you can’t, you—”
“Five minutes after I leave you won’t even remember me. No, no protests. You have each other now. You don’t need a nosy old aunt around.”
Nellie k
issed Berni’s cheek. “I will always need you. You are a very kind person.” She leaned toward Berni’s ear. “I don’t know what you did, but I know that last night was your doing. Thank you. I will thank you all my life for your generous heart.”
Those words meant a lot to Berni. No one had ever called her generous before, but then she’d never deserved the title before. “Thank you,” she whispered, then she straightened. “I must go.” She looked at Nellie. “Any wishes for the future?”
“I have everything I want,” Nellie said, moving to stand close to Jace.
“I have a wish.” Jace looked down at Nellie and remembered his first wife dying in childbirth. “I hope we have a dozen healthy kids and their deliveries are easy on their mother.”
“Done,” Berni said, then she stood on tiptoe and kissed Jace’s cheek. “You’ll have all your children, and the deliveries will be safe and easy.” She turned and went up the stairs. At the top of the stairs she paused and looked down at them, lovers engrossed in each other. Berni had never done anything that made her feel as good as getting these two together had.
She gave a little sniff, wiped a tear from her eye, and said, “Beam me up, Scotty,” and she was gone from the Grayson household and from the Grayson memory.
The Kitchen
Pauline was there to greet Berni, and she was smiling.
Berni, once again wearing her burial clothes, took a moment to adjust to the foggy Kitchen after leaving Jace and Nellie. “I did well, didn’t I?” she said, pretending she’d never shed a tear at leaving. “You thought I couldn’t do it, but I did.”
“You did very well,” Pauline said, smiling brighter. “You did especially well by not making Nellie hate her family. You could have let her see how selfish they really are.”
Berni was a little embarrassed by the praise, even though it felt very good. “There was enough hate and jealousy. I didn’t need to spread any more,” she mumbled.
“You did very well indeed. Now, shall we go to Level Two?”
Berni’s mind was on Nellie. “I guess so.” She started walking beside Pauline, then stopped. “Could I see what happened to Nellie? I’d like to be sure she did okay.”
Pauline gave a little nod and led the way to the Viewing Room. Once they were seated comfortably the screen before them began to clear.
“It’s now Christmas 1897,” Pauline said, “one year to the day since you left, and Jace and Nellie have been married for a year.”
The fog cleared, and Berni could see the Grayson house, decorated for Christmas, and it was filled with people. “Who are they?”
“Jace’s relatives came all the way from Maine, and Terel came with her husband, and Charles with his new wife, and then there are the Taggerts from Chandler.” Pauline smiled. “Nellie doesn’t know it, but she’s already carrying her second child. She—”
“Sssh,” Berni said, “I want to see for myself.”
Chandler, Colorado
Christmas 1897
“When will the new house be finished?” ’Ring Montgomery, Jace’s father, asked Charles Grayson, who was sitting at the opposite end of the couch. As he spoke he reached out an arm and caught one of the Tyler boys, who was running through the house at full speed, by the shoulder and gave him a look of warning before releasing him.
“Three more months,” Charles shouted above the din. He and his wife were living in Denver until the old Fenton house could be remodeled to his wife’s taste. It was costing him every penny he had, but it was worth it to see her happy. He couldn’t care less how much he had to spend. “You enjoying Chandler?” he shouted back.
“Very much.” ’Ring, unlike Charles, didn’t seem in the least bothered by the noise of eleven children and fourteen adults. In one corner of the room Pamela Taggert was loudly playing the piano while Jace and his mother were practicing a Christmas duet for church that evening. “You’re flat on that note, son,” ’Ring said over the heads of four dirty-faced children.
How in the world he could hear anything Charles didn’t know. An hour ago Charles’s lovely wife had excused herself and gone upstairs to lie down. Charles wished he could join her.
“Should those children be eating that?” Charles asked.
’Ring looked at the three toddlers in the corner, two of them Kane Taggert’s kids, one of them the pig farmer’s. “A little dirt never hurt any kid as far as I can tell, but Hank,” he said to his twelve-year-old nephew, “see what those kids are eating.”
Hank grimaced at having to leave the side of his cousins, eighteen-year-old Zachary and the nearly-adult twenty-one-year-old Ian Taggert. Hank was at the age where he wasn’t quite adult and wasn’t quite a child. Dutifully, Hank took three bugs from the hands of the toddlers, and all three kids started wailing.
“Take them outside,” ’Ring said, making Hank groan.
“What are you two laughin’ at?” Kane said to his son Zachary and his cousin, Ian. “Get outside and take care of them kids.”
The boys stopped laughing at Hank, and each picked up a child and went outside.
“Now what were you saying?” ’Ring asked Charles.
“The house should be ready in a few months, but—” He broke off at a loud guffaw of laughter from Kane and Rafe Taggert and John Tyler, who were standing together by the foot of the stairs.
“Johnny, honey,” Terel said from a corner of the room where she sat lounging on an easy chair, “I believe I’m thirsty. Do fetch me a glass of lemonade.”
Charles watched as John Tyler and three of his dirty kids tripped over themselves to go to the kitchen to get Terel whatever she wanted. Terel’s marrying a penniless pig farmer had bewildered Charles until he saw them together. The poor, illiterate Tyler family felt honored and privileged to have Terel in their family and treated her as though she were royalty. She lounged about, eating what they cooked for her, wearing what their work paid for, and now and then bestowing a radiant smile upon one of them. It seemed to be enough to satisfy all of them. John and the kids didn’t seem to mind that they wore torn, worn-out clothing while Terel dressed exclusively in silk. Charles had seen Terel reward a child by letting him touch her skirt. It didn’t make sense to him, but the Tyler family seemed to be quite happy.
Charles gave ’Ring a bit of a smile as if to indicate that further talk was impossible.
“How’s that?” Jace called to his father when he’d finished another song.
“Still a little flat on the fourth bar, but better,” ’Ring said. He looked at his wife, his eyes, as always, full of love. “You, my dear, were perfection.”
Maddie blew him a kiss, then put her music down on the piano. “I believe my grandchild is crying,” she said to her tall, handsome son, nodding to the crib that held two babies, each only a few months old.
“That one’s mine,” Kane said, and he scooped up a baby and expertly nestled it on his shoulder.
“I think the one you took is mine,” Jace said as he picked up the other child, who had also started yelling.
Kane pulled the child from his shoulder and looked down the front of its diaper. His third child was a girl, and this one was a boy. He and Jace exchanged kids.
Maddie laughed, told Pam thanks for playing the piano, and went into the kitchen. Nellie, Houston, and a young girl, Tildy, were up to their elbows in flour and turkey dressing.
“Want to help?” Houston asked, smiling at her husband’s cousin’s wife.
“Absolutely not,” Maddie said, giving a delicate shudder. Maddie had cultivated the image of prima donna for so long that one could almost believe that she’d never seen the inside of a kitchen.
Nellie, looking radiant and as happy as she was, said, “Then you must sing for your supper.”
Maddie laughed. It hadn’t taken her but minutes to fall in love with her daughter-in-law. “All right. What shall it be? ‘Silent Night’? Or something less seasonal?” She took a cookie from a basket and ate it.
Nellie and Houston looked at each other w
ith liquid eyes. A woman with one of the greatest voices of all time was offering to sing just for them, anything they wanted.
Houston took a deep breath. “Lakmé’s Bell Song,’ ” she whispered, knowing that Delibes’s beautiful aria would best show off Maddie’s exquisite voice.
Maddie smiled at Houston, then softly said, “Jocelyn, I need you.”
Jace put his head into the kitchen, his eyebrows lifted in question to his mother.
“Houston and your wife would like to hear the ‘Bell Song.’ ”
Jace smiled. “Good choice.” He looked at his mother. “Where is it?”
“In my bag.”
Jace handed his son to his father and within minutes returned with a flute. Nellie watched in wonder as she saw this new aspect of her husband, saw a man who had been surrounded all his life by music. Jace put the flute to his lips and began to play, just enough to accompany his mother’s voice.
The “Bell Song,” meant to show off the range and variety of a coloratura’s voice, began slowly—no words, just a voice, but a voice of such heavenly sweetness that it made one gape in wonder. Maddie’s voice played with the notes, trilled them, caressed them as she sang the song, imitating the bells, echoing Jace’s high flute notes.
Nellie and Houston stopped working, and the girl Tildy, who had never heard such a voice in her life, stood transfixed.
In the other room everyone grew silent, and even the babies stopped crying as Maddie played with each note, holding it, loving it, until her listeners had tears of joy in their eyes.
When she finished there wasn’t a sound in the house until one of the pig-dirty Tyler kids, gaping at the back door, said, “Damnation, ain’t never heard nothin’ like that afore.”
With that, everyone broke into laughter, and all the adults, kids over shoulders, tucked under arms, held by the hand, crowded into the kitchen.
“Exquisite,” ’Ring said, pulling his wife into his arms. “I’ve never heard you sing better.”
“It’s the influence of the love in this house,” she whispered against his lips.