The Marriage Bed (2 page)

Chapter One

Maple Stand, Wisconsin

April 1897

Olivia loitered in the corner of Zephin's Mercantile where the United States Post Office stood, the letter in her hand.

"Mail it," her sister-in-law, Bess Sacotte, urged, nudging her less than gently toward the counter where Emma Zephin waited. "Send it and deal with Spencer later, when there's nothing he can do about it."

"Will you stop it," Olivia whispered, brushing at Bess's hands and then straightening her coat in an effort to restore her dignity. "This is not like sending for a new pair of commonsense boots, you know."

"It's sending for a whole new life, Olivia Williamson, and it's high time you did it. Why, if I could fix all my troubles by sending away for something, don't you think I would?" She rubbed at her ample hip and grimaced. "Bet it'll be quite a storm tonight."

"You're too young to be telling the weather with your bones, Bess," Olivia said. "It isn't fair."

"Married to Spencer Williamson and you talk to me about life being fair? Seems to me the snow is calling the ice cold."

Olivia said nothing. What was there to say? Bess would never understand that Spencer didn't mean to be unkind. He was still just hurting. If Livvy could give him the time he needed to heal, she didn't see why her sister-in-law, and everyone else in Maple Stand, couldn't be more patient.

"Can I help you ladies?" Emma asked, still standing behind the counter, her feather duster poised in midair so that she wouldn't miss a word. Emma was Charlie Zephin's oldest daughter. His other girls had all married and were raising families of their own. But Emma, who was even uglier than Charlie's other daughters, was an old maid.

"Mail that for you?" Emma asked, reaching across the counter for the letter. Olivia couldn't seem to let the envelope go, allowing it only enough leeway to slip inch by precious inch through her fingers. "Mrs. Williamson?"

"Yes," Bess said, pushing Olivia's arm toward the counter like a puppeteer. "She wants it to go out today, if possible."

"That right?" Emma asked Olivia, who nodded, then looked at her sister-in-law, disgusted.

"He isn't going to like this."

"He doesn't like anything," Bess said sharply, and Emma let a snicker escape her lips before quickly covering her mouth with her hand.

"How are you doing anyways, Emma?" Olivia asked, anxious to change the subject. "You over that cold?"

"Finally," Emma said. "I think it was that spring-green soup of yours that did the trick. My papa swears you spent the whole winter curing other people's children since you haven't—" Emma's hand flew again to her mouth as if she wanted to pull the words back in.

"It's all right," Olivia assured her.

"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings or anything. I suppose Papa's right and there's just no hope for me. Often as not, I seem to say the wrong thing."

"Don't worry, Emma," Bess said, patting the woman's hand gently but looking straight at Olivia. "You can't hurt Olivia's feelings. She's plum numb. And it's time she got thawed out and started living.''

No feelings. Is that how she seemed to all of them? just because she refused to break down and cry at every last little thing? Why, she had so much feeling inside sometimes she thought she'd just burst apart from the pain of it all. But there was enough sadness in her house. Spencer had the rights to all the misery there. With what he'd been through, most of her little dissatisfactions seemed petty and unimportant.

All except one.

And that was why she was standing in Zephin's Mercantile when she should have been baking Belgian pies for the church and getting a jump on her spring cleaning. There wasn't much hope that the problem would just take care of itself. After all, they'd been trying for three years and she wasn't getting any younger. She felt that today, especially.

It was hard to swallow around the lump that formed in her throat. No babies. Even if taking a new wife hadn't made Spencer happy, surely a new baby would. A new baby to replace the pain he carried like a newborn against his heart.

And so she was doing the next best thing. If there wasn't any hope for children of her own, Olivia didn't see any reason for denying the pleas of her brother-in-law any longer. With her sister, Marion, dead almost three years, Julian had found it impossible to take care of their children alone. Of course he was right not to try to move across the entire country and get resettled with three little ones in tow to look after. Who better to raise the children than their Aunt Olivia and Uncle Spencer? Her sister's children were bound to need her love almost as much as she needed theirs.

"Olivia?" Emma said softly, fingering the edge of the envelope that lay on the counter beneath Olivia's sweaty palm. "You want me to Send it?"

"Yes," Bess said with determination, as if she could will Olivia the courage to do it.

"Yes," Olivia said to Emma, and then turned a bright smile to her sister-in-law. "Yes. Send it. Right away. Today. As soon as possible."

"Quick," Bess said. "Before she changes her mind."

The three women laughed and Charlie Zephin looked down at them from the ladder on which he was perched counting cans. "What are you three witches cackling about?" he asked good-naturedly.

"Just cooking up a little magic, Mr. Zephin," Bess said, then rubbed her hands together like an evil witch.

Olivia felt a chill run down her back. This plan could blow up in her face, she knew. Spencer could hate the children. Hate her for bringing them. Lord, he seemed to hate everything else these days.

"Magic," Charlie said. "Well, you be careful there ladies. We sure don't want the devil in Maple Stand, do we? They may not be burnin' witches anymore, but they sure ain't too popular 'ceptin' on Halloween." He laughed at his own joke, nearly lost his balance on the ladder, and then righted himself. "Well! No need to kill me off, ladies. Your secret's safe with me."

"Speaking of secrets," Emma said in a loud whisper, "I hear there's talk about that railroad spur again. Hear they might even be paying money for the land it's gonna run through since they've got to get to Sturgeon Bay. And they're sending an agent.'' This last detail was acompanied by a flush to Emma's cheeks.

"Well," Bess said as she sighed and rubbed again at her aching joints. "Don't suppose that'll matter much to us out on the outskirts. I'd about give my whole cherry orchard for a hundred dollars cash."

Olivia tsked at her and laughed. "That's my family's farm you're giving away, my dear. I'll thank you to take better care of it!"

Bess nodded but the smile was gone from her face. It made Olivia think, only for a moment, that perhaps she really meant it.

"Guess we'd better be getting home," Bess said after they had traded banter a few moments longer. "I got three little boys and one big one that'll be clamoring for supper before I get my own front door full open."

Olivia knew what was waiting for her at home and was in no rush to get there. For a moment she considered taking the letter back from Emma and forgetting the whole idea.

"And they'll all be wanting hugs and kisses as much as bread and butter," Bess added, as if she knew just what Olivia was thinking and could feel that extra encouragement she needed.

Children waiting for her who would want hugs and kisses. She sighed and caught herself, realizing how foolish a woman of her age must look daydreaming in the middle of the mercantile.

"You send that letter," she said to Emma as she tied her hat ribbon beneath her chin.

"Atta girl," Bess said, and looped her chubby arm through Olivia's thin one. With their woolen coats on, it was a tight fit.

"That's easy for you to say," Olivia said as they headed for the door.

"Oh, no, it's not," Bess said more solemnly. "I don't know where I'll put the four of you if comes to that."

Olivia stopped in her tracks and even Bess's bulk wouldn't budge her.

"It won't come to that," Bess reassured her. "Don't worry so. It'll all work out."

Bess had promised her that before. When, after more than a year of marriage, Olivia still hadn't conceived, Bess had assured her that time would take care of everything. But it hadn't. And now Spencer hardly touched her in bed, as if he believed there was little point in it. And in some ways she was glad for his lack of attention. If there wasn't any hope of children, she'd just as soon never be intimate with her husband again. Each union left her strangely bereft, as if her body was as sad as her heart. And except for that moment on their wedding night when she had begun to feel a heat that spread from her most private places, she had never felt even remotely warmed by what they were doing.

In fact, despite the intimacy of the situation, she felt lonelier when they were making love than at any other time in-her life. And lately it had gotten worse. Now Spencer didn't just collapse against her and moan. Now he got up and left the room, claiming a good cigar relaxed him and helped him sleep. As far as she was concerned, all it did was stink up their home.

And so he left her alone in their bed, lying perfectly still in the hopes that his seed would take root within her. Left her to wish on stars in the darkness, with only the moon and her hope to keep her company.

She stopped for just a moment at the edge of Sacotte Farm by the wayside shrine her father had built for her mother after the house and barn had been miraculously spared in the great fire, and promised the Blessed Virgin that she would remember to bring the delphiniums as soon as they bloomed. Just as it had when she was a child and had helped her mother tend the little chapel, so it calmed and comforted her now.

And calm and comfort were surely what she would need, she thought, as she rose from her knees and headed toward her home. That and a healthy dose of strength and courage.

She went over her news one more time in her head as the farm came into view and her husband's form loomed on the horizon.
Heavens. There's going to be the devil to pay.

"You what?" he asked, staring at his wife for any sign that she was bluffing. She sat serenely in the chair across from him, her hands folded in her lap as if sending for three children without even telling her husband was as ordinary and normal as taking a stroll by the lake. But if this was a stroll by the lake, she was in over her head. In her heavy boots. With her hands tied behind her. And it was going to take more than that Houdini magician fellow to get her out of this mess.

"I told Julian to send the children," she repeated, so calmly that he was tempted to reach out and check her forehead for signs of a fever. Spencer knew firsthand the kind of man Julian was, and only for the sake of Olivia's sister, Marion, had he held his tongue for all these years. Now Olivia had invited the man's children into his home.

"Without asking me?"

She shrugged and he saw the edge of her lower lip disappear between her teeth.

"You just got it in your head to go to town and send that brother-in-law of yours a letter telling him to put his three children on a train and send them to my house—"

"
Our
house—"

"
My
house," he repeated, thumping on his chest for emphasis. She hadn't been the one to put up the house, log by log, brick by brick, just the way Kirsten had wanted it. She didn't pay the rnortgage, work the soil, chop the logs. . . .

One of her eyebrows lifted. She sat ramrod straight. Her eyes scanned the room silently, but the only sign of her hurt was the hard swallow he watched in her neck.

New curtains framed the windows in the kitchen. A new cloth covered the table. The cows were milked, the chickens fed, and all of it because of Olivia. He had married her to keep his house, to cook his meals and wash his clothes, to tend his garden and take care of his livestock while he did the work in the fields. He hadn't asked for the hundred other things she did, and all with that damn smile on her face, but he was grateful she did them.

"Our house," he conceded honestly.

She nodded at him as if she had followed his thoughts and appreciated his conclusion.

"I didn't just 'get it in my head,' "she said quietly. "It was time."

"Time?"

She nodded, opened her mouth,' but nothing came out. After all, what was there to say?

"Well," he said, and looked up at the clock on the mantel, squinting despite his glasses. "Too late to do. anything about it today. We'll send a wire tomorrow and tell him they're not to come."

"They're coming."

"They're not!" he shouted, not happy at all with her highhandedness. It wasn't like her to defy him. What had happened to the agreeable girl he had grown up with, the one who had followed him around and hung on his every word? What had happened to the woman he had married who had sworn that all she wanted was to see him happy again?

"What have I asked from you, Spencer? In all this time?" She picked at a thread on her sleeve, then looked at him guilessly. "Nothing. I've asked you for nothing. But now I'm asking."

He studied her. Over the years her face had softened so that there wasn't an angular line to it. Her lips were full, overly so, perhaps. Her cheeks, too, were fleshed out, especially where he thought he ought to see her bones. And her nose lacked any fragility, as well. Not at all like the fineness of Kirsten's tiny face, Olivia's was more like some painting of an exotic woman from far away, her dark eyes watching him from beneath her only fine features, two thin, nearly straight dark brows. While not one to turn a man's head, he supposed plenty of men would find her chestnut hair and olive skin pretty enough.

In all truthfulness, though there was none of Kirsten's frailty about her face, she did have a sweetness that the years hadn't managed to dim. And to her credit, despite a long and severe Wisconsin winter, there was still a warmth in those soft cheeks, and her dark eyes met his with a new determination.

"Isn't there something else you'd like?" he asked. "A new range? A pretty dress?''