Montgomery - Eternity Part 3

Carrie smiled at that. "True."

With shaking hands, Josh pulled the letter from inside his coat. "She wrote to me about what she could do. She said that she'd run a farm since she was little more than a child."

"Perhaps I embellished the truth a bit," Carrie answered modestly.

Josh took a step closer to her. "You lied. You b.l.o.o.d.y well lied to me!"

"I think that's a curse word. I'd rather you didn't-"

He took another step toward her, but Carrie was already in that s.p.a.ce so she had to back up. "I wrote that I wanted a woman who knew about farming, not some... some socialite carrying a long-haired rat she calls a dog."

As though he heard himself mentioned, Choo-choo began to bark at Josh. "Now see here," Carrie began.

But Josh didn't allow her to speak. "Was this your idea of a joke?" Putting his hand to his forehead as though he were in great agony, Josh stepped away from her. "What in the world am I going to do now? I was suspicious when I received that proxy marriage paper, but I thought it was because the woman was mud-ugly. I was prepared for that." Turning back to Carrie, he looked her up and down with great contempt. "But you! I wasn't prepared for you."

Shus.h.i.+ng Choo-choo, Carrie looked down at herself, wondering if she'd suddenly turned into a frog, for she'd certainly never before had a complaint about how she looked. "What's wrong with me?"

"What isn't wrong with you?" he said. "Have you ever milked a cow? Do you know how to chop the head off a chicken and pluck it? Can you cook? Who made your dress? A French modiste?"

Carrie's dressmaker at home was French, but that was of no consequence. "I can't see that any of those things matter. If you'd just let me explain, I can clear up everything."

At that Josh went to the tree, leaned back against it, and folded his arms across his chest. "I'm listening."

After taking a deep, calming breath, she told her story. She started by telling him how she and her friends had organized the mail-order bride office, hoping that it would show him that she was good at a great many things. He didn't speak, nor could she read his thoughts, but she continued by telling him how she had seen the photo he'd sent and known from the first moment that she loved him. "I felt that you and your children needed me. I could see it in your eyes."

He didn't so much as move a muscle.

She told him in great detail of her indecision, of how she had given the matter great consideration. (She didn't want him thinking that she was a featherbrain who did things without thinking them through first.) Then she told about all the complicated arrangements she'd made in order to marry him, and when she told of leaving her family and friends and home to come to him, there were tears in her eyes.

"Is that all?" Josh asked, his jaw rigid.

"I guess so," Carrie answered. "You can see that I didn't do this to be mean. I felt that you needed me. I felt that-"

"You felt," he said, moving away from the tree toward her. "You decided. You and you alone decided the fate of everyone around you. You gave no consideration to anyone else. You put your friends and your family through h.e.l.l all because of some romantic notion you had that a man you never met-" He glared at her. "Needed you." He said the word with a great deal of derision.

Stepping toward her, he leaned over her so that she bent backward. "For your information, you spoiled, overindulged, little rich girl, what I need is a wife who can run a farm. If I needed some empty-headed, worthless bit of fluff like you, I could pick her up anywhere in the world. I could have had a half-dozen women like you right here in Eternity. I don't need a feisty bed partner. I need a woman who can work!" With that last declaration, he turned away and angrily started walking back to the stage depot.

Blinking in bewilderment, Carrie stood where she was. No one had ever talked to her as this man had just done-and no one was going to. Pulling her bodice down as though to emphasize her resolve, she went after him. Since he was walking very quickly, he wasn't easy to catch, but she managed. She stepped in front of him.

"I don't know how you decided that you know all about me, but you don't. I-"

"Appearances," he said. "I have judged you on appearances. Isn't that how you judged me? You took one look at my photograph and decided to alter the course of my life. You never so much as considered that I might not want my life altered."

"I didn't decide to alter your life. I decided-"

"Yes?" he asked, his eyes blazing. "What did you decide if not to change my life? And the life of my kids." He gave a snort of laughter. "I told them that I would bring someone home tonight who could cook dinner for them, and I swore that they'd never have to eat my cooking again." Roughly grabbing her hands, Josh looked at them as though her hands were his enemy. Carrie's hands were creamed and soft, the nails trimmed and filed. "I have a feeling that I've cooked more meals than you have." Tossing her hands down in disgust, he started walking again.

Determinedly, Carrie moved in front of him again. "But you liked me. I know that you did. I didn't tell you who I was immediately because I wanted to see if you liked me or not."

At that Josh's face changed from anger to almost amus.e.m.e.nt. "Is that what you thought, that when you met me I'd be so bowled over with your beauty that I wouldn't notice that your only use is to sit in some rich man's parlor and play minuets on the spinet? Did you think that I would be so blinded by your beauty and my raging desire to get you into bed at night that I'd not be able to hear the hungry cries of my two children?"

"No," Carrie said softly, but he had hit nearer to the truth than she liked to think. "I didn't think that. I thought-"

The rage came back to his face. "You didn't think at all. It never seems to have occurred to you that I could have taken a wife here. Did you think that no woman would want to marry me? Do you think I'm too ugly to attract a woman?"

"Why no, I think you're-"

He didn't allow her to finish her sentence. "Yes, of course you do. A lot of women do. I can get a woman if I want her, but I have neither the time nor the inclination for courting, and all women want courting, no matter how ugly they are. I sent to that lunatic company of yours so I could get a helpmate, not a girl with a head filled with romance, so I could feed my children and myself." With what was close to being a sneer, he gave her one more look up and down. "Now, Miss Montgomery," he said, tugging on the brim of his hat, "I bid you good day, and good-bye. I hope in the future that you think before you act."

He walked away from her, leaving her standing there, her little dog at her feet.

Carrie wasn't sure what she was to do now because what had just happened was not something that she had considered. Trying to give herself time to think, she wondered when the next stage ran. She dreaded going back to Warbrooke, but she guessed she'd have to. Looking up, she glared at the back of Josh as he walked toward the depot.

"Mrs. Greene," she said softly to his back, then called out louder, "My name happens to be Greene. Mrs. Joshua Greene." By the time she said the last, she was fairly shouting.

Stopping where he was, Josh turned and looked at her.

Carrie crossed her arms over her bosom and glared at him defiantly.

With anger in his every step, he started back toward her. There was so much anger on his face and emanating from his body that Carrie stepped away from him.

"If you touch me, I'll-"

"Half an hour ago you were practically begging me to touch you. If I'd started undressing you, you wouldn't have protested."

"That's a lie!" Carrie said, but her face turned red.

"You should know about lying if anyone does." Reaching out, he clamped his hand on her upper arm and began pulling her along behind him as he started toward the stage station.

"Release me this instant. I demand-".

Halting, he put his nose almost to hers. "As you reminded me, you did such a thorough job of hornswoggling me that I find I am now married to you. You are going home with me until next week when the stage runs through here again and I can send you back to your father where you belong."

"You can't-"

"I can and I'm going to," he said, dragging her along behind him as he walked. When he reached the depot, he stopped. "Where are your bags?"

Carrie stopped trying to push his hand off her arm and looked about her. While they had been under the tree, her baggage wagon had arrived, and, when she looked at it, she saw that the driver's seat was empty so the man must be inside the depot. "There," Carrie said, nodding toward the wagon. "I can take care of myself. I can-" She broke off at the look on Josh's face, for he looked as though he had just seen a swamp monster. He was horrified, shocked, immobile with disbelief. Following the direction of his eyes, she saw nothing unusual, only her baggage wagon.

But what Josh saw was a mountain of trunks, all of them tied down with heavy rope onto a big wagon drawn by a four-horse team. He doubted if the sum total of all the belongings of the people of Eternity was enough to fill that many trunks. "Heaven help me," he whispered, then looked back at her. "What in the world have you done to me?"

Chapter Four.

By the time Carrie was seated atop Josh's old buckboard, she was beginning to wish that she had never seen his photograph. He was so angry at her that he wouldn't look at her or speak to her. He yelled at the horses and snapped the reins as though the horses were the cause of his problems, and they rode off into the setting sun, Carrie's baggage wagon following them.

"I really didn't mean-" Carrie began, but Josh cut her off.

"Don't say a word to me. Not one word. I need to think what to do about this."

"You could let me prove myself," she said under her breath.

When Josh heard what she'd said, he gave her a sideways look of such contempt that Carrie tightened her lips, refusing to say another word to him.

After a long ride over a dusty, rutted road, they turned down a weed-infested road that was hardly more than a path and slowly made their way into the tall trees. After some minutes the trees cleared away, and Carrie could see the house.

Never in her life had she seen such a forlorn, unhappy-looking place as that dilapidated little house. She had seen poverty in Warbrooke; some of her Taggert cousins were poor, but their houses didn't have the miserable, sad, forlorn look about them that this place did.

All the ground in front of the house and surrounding the little shed behind the house was bare of gra.s.s and plants, and the cheerless house itself had no gla.s.s in the windows, just oiled paper. There was light coming from inside the house, but not much, and there was no smoke coming from the ragged-topped chimney.

The house itself was nothing but a box, with a door and a window on each side. Another perfectly square, perfectly boring box was attached to the back of the house, and she wondered if it was a bedroom.

Turning, she looked at Josh in the moonlight, her face showing her disbelief at what she was seeing. For the life of her she could not picture this man living in a place like this.

With a set-jawed straight-ahead stare, he refused to meet her glance, but she knew he was aware that she was staring at him. "You see now why I wanted someone who knew how to work. Could you, Miss Rich Princess, live in that?"

Carrie thought it was odd that he could see how appalling the place was yet he hadn't done anything about it. Her Taggert cousins lived in semisqualor, but they all seemed to love the mess. When they visited her house, they were uncomfortable and couldn't wait to leave.

Angrily, as though the house and everything about it was somehow her fault, he halted the wagon in front of the house and got down. When she was closer to the place, Carrie could see that the house was even worse than it had looked from a distance. The missing roof s.h.i.+ngles made her wonder if the house leaked. The front door was hanging by one hinge, giving the place a drunken appearance. Since there was no porch on the house, there was what looked to be a permanent mud puddle in front of the door.

With what seemed to be a permanent mood on his part, Josh angrily came to her side of the wagon and lifted her down. But there was no lingering of his hands on her waist this time. In fact, he didn't so much as look at her as he left her standing while he went to the baggage wagon.

After one more look at the house, she turned to the baggage wagon and asked the driver to hand her the two small carpet bags that were loaded on the front of the wagon. One was full of her night things and the other contained her gifts for the children.

"Are the children inside?" she asked Josh.

"Inside waiting in the cold and the dark, and I'm sure they're hungry." The anger and bitterness in his voice made it sound as though the condition of the place was Carrie's fault.

She didn't say any more to him, but turned and went toward the house. It wasn't easy trying to balance the two bags and Choo-choo at the same time, but Josh made no effort to help her. He was giving orders to the baggage wagon driver about where to unload Carrie's trunks, and he let everyone within hearing distance know what he thought of all her baggage. The broken hinge of the front door made it nearly impossible to open, and when she did get the thing open, the frame nearly hit her in the face. It was a struggle, but she managed to get it open enough to go inside the little house.

If she thought the house was bad outside, she wasn't prepared for the inside. Grim, she thought. A bleak, unhappy, colorless place that was guaranteed to make its inhabitants wretched. The walls were of bare planks darkened with soot from many fires. In the middle of the room was a dirty, round table with four mismatched chairs, one of which was leaning to one side from a leg that was too short.

In the corner of the single room was a cabinet that seemed to be the kitchen of the house, for the top of the cabinet was piled high with chipped dishes that hadn't been washed in so long that they were dusty as well as encrusted with dried food.

As Carrie stood with her back to the broken door and looked about the dreadful place, at first she didn't see the children. They were standing in the shadows of the doorway to what Carrie a.s.sumed was the bedroom, standing quietly, watching, waiting to see what was going to happen.

They were beautiful children, even more beautiful than their photograph showed. The boy looked as though he might grow to be more handsome than his father, and it was obvious that the girl would someday blossom into splendor.

In spite of their good looks, the children looked as unhappy as the house did. Neither of them had combed their hair in days, maybe months, and, although they were fairly clean, their clothes were dirty and torn and had that faded look that only hundreds of was.h.i.+ngs could give to cloth.

As Carrie stood looking at them, she knew that she had been right: This family needed her.

"h.e.l.lo," Carrie said as cheerfully as she could manage. "I'm your new mother."

The children looked at each other then back at Carrie, their eyes wide in wonder.

Carrie went to the table and set her bags on it, noting that the table was greasy and needed a good cleaning. Sniffing around her legs, Choo-choo pulled to be free, and when she unsnapped his leash, he went immediately to the children, both of whom looked down at the animal in astonishment. Neither of them made any move to touch the little dog.

Opening the first case, Carrie withdrew a porcelain-headed doll, an exquisite creature, made in France and dressed by hand all in silk. "This is for you," she said to the girl, then waited for a seemingly endless moment until the child came forward to take the gift. She looked as though she were afraid to touch the elegant doll.

Carrie took the sailboat from the bag. "And this is for you." Holding out the boat to the boy, she saw by his eyes that he very much wanted to take the present, and he even took a step forward, but then he stepped back and shook his head no.

"I brought it just for you," Carrie said coaxingly. "My brothers sail s.h.i.+ps from Maine to all over the world, and this is very much like one of their s.h.i.+ps. I'd like for you to have it."

The boy looked as though he were fighting some inner demon, fighting the part of him that so much wanted the toy, and fighting the other part of himself that for some reason wanted to refuse the boat.

At last the boy tightened his lips-and in doing so looked exactly like his father-and said belligerently, "Where's Papa?"

"I believe he's helping a man with my baggage."

The boy gave a firm nod then ran out the door, obviously used to the broken hinge as he seemed to work it without nearly killing himself.

"Well," Carrie said and sat down on one of the unbroken chairs. "I think he's angry at me. Do you know why?"

"Papa said that you were going to be ugly and we weren't to mention it. He said that lots of things were ugly, but they couldn't help it," the girl said, then c.o.c.ked her head to one side as she studied Carrie. "But you're not ugly at all."

Carrie smiled at the little girl. For all that she couldn't be more than five, she was certainly articulate. "It seems to me to be a little unfair to be angry just because someone isn't ugly."

"My mother is beautiful."

"Oh, I see," Carrie said, and she did see. If her own beautiful mother died and her father had married another beautiful woman, Carrie wouldn't have been too happy about it either. If her father had remarried, she would have much preferred him to marry an ugly woman, a very, very ugly woman.

"You don't mind that I'm not ugly, do you? I can be ugly if you want." At that Carrie began to make faces, pulling her eyes down with her fingers, and pus.h.i.+ng her nose up with her thumb.

The little girl giggled.

"Think Temmie would like me better if I looked like this?"

Giggling again, the child nodded.

"Why don't you come here and let me brush your hair and you can tell me what you're going to name your doll."

When the child hesitated, as though trying to decide if this would be something her father would want her to do, Carrie withdrew her silver-backed hairbrush from her case. After a little gasp of awe at the sight of the pretty brush, the child went to Carrie and took her place between Carrie's knees and allowed her to gently brush her hair.

"And your name is Dallas?" Carrie asked, stroking the child's fine, soft hair. "Isn't that a rather unusual name?"

"Mother said it was where I was made."

"Like in a factory?" Carrie said before she thought, then cleared her throat, glad the girl couldn't see her red face. "Oh, I see. What are you called? Dallie?"

The child seemed to consider that for a moment. "You can call me Dallie if you want."

Behind her, Carrie smiled. "I should be honored to be allowed to call you a name that no one else calls you."