Marianne's Marriage of Convenience Page 20

  “Oh. I wondered why it hurts when I take a breath.”

  “Doc says you have three cracked ribs and a bruised collarbone.”

  “Did Annamarie win the race?”

  “She did. Linda-Lou Ness came in second, and old Mrs. Ridley came in last. Folks said she looked madder than a wet bobcat.”

  “Good,” Marianne murmured. “She deserved to lose. I saw her attack Rosie Greywolf’s horse with a whip. I tried to stop her, but… I couldn’t reach them in time.”

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” Lance growled. Now he saw clearly what Marianne had been up to these past few days, not just riding with Rosie Greywolf for pleasure but getting herself ready to race. She had defied him, had risked her life without telling him. White-hot anger flooded his brain. He loved Marianne. But right now he wanted to kill her himself!

  “Lance?”

  “What?” he grated.

  “Are—are you angry with me?”

  “Yes,” he said shortly. “I sure as hell am angry with you.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  He groaned. “To be honest, Marianne, I don’t know.”

  *

  The following day Lance tore himself away from Marianne’s bedside at the hospital long enough to search out Eugenia Ridley and say some things he swore he’d never say to any woman and then joined Abe for the postponed horse races. He fired the starting gun for each race, then returned to the hospital later and reported the results to Marianne.

  “Sammy Greywolf won the boys’ race,” he told her. “Came in three full lengths ahead of his closest challenger, Teddy MacAllister. The men’s race was a real nail-biter. Sheriff Hawk Rivera battled it out with Judge Jericho Silver, and at the last minute the judge won by no more than a nose. The townspeople along the route cheered themselves hoarse.”

  Marianne noticed those were almost the only words that passed Lance’s lips. He sat beside her for hours without saying anything else, and he was obviously preoccupied. He stared out the window in her hospital room, and when Doc Dougherty said she could go home, Lance didn’t even smile. His expression remained frozen, and that sent a tremor of unease through her. She could feel him withdrawing from her, and that hurt more than her cracked ribs and achy collarbone.

  When they walked through the door of the shop, Abe greeted them with a big smile. “Don’t guess you feel much like doin’ anything ’cept readin’ those dime novels of mine, Miss Marianne. I’ll bring up a new excitin’ one this afternoon.”

  “Thank you, Abe. The doctor says I can’t do anything at all for another week, not even get out of bed. So I’ll need a lot of reading material.”

  Lance said nothing.

  “Not sposed to get outta bed, huh? Ya mean yer man here is gonna do the cookin’? Guess I should give him more recipes like my Poverty Pie.”

  “I guess so,” she said, her voice subdued.

  Very slowly Lance took her elbow and helped her up the stairs into their apartment. The first thing she noticed was Abe’s narrow cot sitting across the room from their new double bed. The message was obvious. Lance would not be sharing her bed at night.

  A choking sense of disappointment flooded through her. She remembered the last time they had slept together, the night before the race, when they had made love. How glorious, how beautiful it had been!

  He helped her out of her clothes, and as soon as he deposited her on the blue quilt and tucked it around her, he headed back down to the shop. “Got three new pairs of boots to help Abe with,” he explained.

  She watched the door close behind him and blinked back tears. Not for one minute did she believe Abe needed help making just three pairs of boots.

  For the rest of the afternoon she slept on and off, but when she heard Lance’s step on the stairs, she struggled to sit upright against the stack of pillows.

  “Abe sent you a new book,” he said. “The Outlaw and the Angel.” He laid the slim volume beside her.

  But he said nothing else for the next hour, just sat at the kitchen table staring out the window. Then he started to thumb through the pages of Mrs. Beeton’s recipe book, and she heard him huff out a long sigh.

  “Macaroni and cheese,” he muttered.

  “One of my favorite dishes,” she ventured.

  He nodded. “Do we have any macaroni?”

  “In a big jar in the pantry.”

  “What about…uh—” he peered at the recipe book “—green peas?”

  “Yes. I’ll help you shell them.”

  He sent her a blank look. “Shell them?”

  She laughed, and instantly wished she hadn’t. Laughing hurt worse than breathing. “You have to get the peas out of the pods to cook them,” she explained.

  “Oh. Maybe we should have carrots instead.”

  She laughed again, and then groaned. “Lance, please don’t say anything funny. It hurts to laugh.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be funny. Let’s see, now…” He turned over a page. “How do I cook carrots?”

  She stuffed down another urge to laugh. “It depends. You can slice them up and boil them. Or grate them. Or—”

  “Could I bake them?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

  He ran his forefinger halfway down the page. “Carrots…uh…uh… I can’t pronounce it.”

  “Carrots au gratin,” Marianne said. “That means they are baked in a cream sauce with breadcrumbs on top.”

  “Cream sauce? What’s that?”

  “Well, you cook some flour and butter in a saucepan and then you stir in—”

  “Too complicated,” he interrupted.

  He looked so frustrated she wanted to get out of bed and help him, but when she tried to move her chest hurt so much she gave up the idea. “Lance, macaroni and cheese is a bit complicated.”

  He looked up, a frustrated expression in his eyes. “Complicated? How complicated?”

  “Well, you have to make a béchamel sauce and—”

  “Right,” he sighed. “Too complicated.”

  “Lance, why don’t we have scrambled eggs for supper tonight?”

  He looked so relieved she couldn’t help the giggle that bubbled up. That hurt almost as much as laughing.

  Lance scrambled six eggs and made some toast for supper that night. The next night he made hard-boiled eggs and toast, and on Wednesday he made egg salad sandwiches. The next day he managed a potato salad, and after that he’d exhausted his repertoire.

  But he could still make toast, so on Thursday they had cheese toast. After that it was bacon sandwiches. Then French toast. Then, with Marianne’s guidance, he mastered pancakes, and just when he felt he was getting the hang of being in the kitchen, Marianne decided she had healed enough.

  The next morning she very slowly and carefully got out of bed, managed to pull on a skirt and button a shirtwaist, and began to move around the apartment.

  “You have struggled heroically to feed me and take care of me,” she announced. “And I have been in bed quite long enough.”

  Lance frowned. Yeah, he was relieved to no longer be splitting his time between taking care of Marianne and working for Abe, but he had mixed feelings about something. He hated to admit it, but it would be even more of a relief not to be around her at all. She was noticing how short-spoken he was, and while she no longer commented on the long silences that hung in the air, he knew she was aware of his withdrawal from her. It still smarted that she had purposely deceived him about riding in that horse race.

  Deceiving one’s husband might be a small matter in some marriages, but it didn’t feel small to him. He no longer knew who Marianne was, his wife or a woman who just did exactly what she wanted and kept secrets. He could no longer trust her.

  “Marriage is a mis’ry,” Abe said one afternoon. “A man promises to love and honor and all them things, and then his woman ignores all that and does whatever the hell she wants. Cuts up yer heart in little pieces.” He set a mug of coffee at Lance’s elbow. �
�Drink up, son. It’s half whiskey.”

  “Thanks, Abe.” He studied the older man’s lined face. “You think things will be different with Marianne and me when she gets better?”

  “Dunno.”

  “What should I do, Abe? You got any ideas?”

  “Nope. If’n I knowed ’bout these here mysteries of married life I’d be a rich man, not slavin’ away at Collingwood Boots.” He smacked his hammer on to a tack harder than necessary.

  Lance set his leather shears down and swallowed a big gulp of the whiskey-laced coffee. His heart felt like it was being pummeled into a quivering lump of something he couldn’t begin to describe. He’d lost his appetite, and that was saying something since Marianne was now strong enough to take over the cooking. He couldn’t think straight, and he didn’t want to talk about it, even with Abe. The old man kept poking at him with questions, but Lance didn’t have any answers. Maybe he’d never have any answers.

  Sammy, though, was another matter. The morning after his victory in the boy’s race, Sammy had taken one look at Lance’s face and started to pepper him with questions. “You mad at Miss Marianne? How come you never smile anymore? Are you leaving Smoke River?”

  Lance had said nothing.

  “Man, I’m never gonna get married,” the boy had muttered. “Must be pure hell.”

  After a while, Sammy clammed up. Ever since then, the boy had worked quietly at his side at the cutting table and rarely said a word beyond “Hand me the hammer.”

  Except for Abe’s constant whistling, these days Collingwood Boots was a mighty quiet shop.

  Then one morning everything changed. Lance gulped his coffee, and the closer he got to the bottom of the mug, the clearer it was to him that he couldn’t go on like this. He had to do something.

  He gazed out the front window of Collingwood Boots and started to make a plan.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Marianne snapped open the latest dime novel Abe had loaned her and let out a cry. “Lance! Lance, guess what?”

  He raised his head from the cot where he’d been sleeping. “What?”

  “Look!” She turned the book toward him.

  He sat up straight and squinted across the room. “What is it?”

  She bent toward him, then sucked in her breath. It still hurt to move in certain ways. “Our advertisement,” she explained. “For Collingwood Boots. It’s right here in the middle of this book.”

  Lance climbed off the cot and padded across the room to where she sat propped up in the double bed. “Yeah? Show me.”

  She turned the page toward him and pointed. “I didn’t expect it to appear so soon.”

  “Abe says they publish so many new books every month they must have presses running day and night.”

  She tapped the book cover. “We should have hundreds of orders pouring in.”

  “You think so?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Orders are sure to come in, and just in time, too. Our bank account is almost empty after buying materials and paying for advertising, and the three pairs of boots you and Abe are making won’t bring in any money because they’re the prizes we donated for the horse races. We need orders. Lots and lots of orders.”

  “And when all these orders come pouring in, you figure just you and me and Abe and Sammy can handle them all?”

  She bit her lip. “We will have to.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t all come in next week, Marianne. You’re not ready to go back to work in the shop yet.”

  *

  But orders did not pour in. A week went by, then two, and Collingwood Boots received not one single order. Every day Marianne walked to the mercantile, which served as the post office, praying she would find their small wooden mail slot overflowing with orders for boots.

  And day after day she found nothing. No orders. In fact, no mail at all.

  At the shop Abe had long since finished the riding boots Annamarie Panovsky had won, then a pair for Sammy and finally a pair of hand-tooled cordovan leather boots for Judge Jericho Silver, who had won the men’s race.

  And then they waited for more orders. Funds in the bank account dwindled until Lance had to open an account at the mercantile just to pay for coffee and flour and sugar. Abe seemed to live on air, Marianne thought. She never saw him unload even a small sack of tomatoes, so what was he eating?

  “I thought I felt low when I fell off that horse,” she confessed to Lance over a frugal supper of scalloped potatoes and applesauce. “Now we’re watching our business fail, and I can’t imagine feeling any worse than that.”

  He listened in a silence that stretched until her nerves began to hum. Finally she laid her fork aside and reached across the table for his hand.

  “Lance, what are we going to do?”

  He squeezed her fingers. “The first thing we do is not panic. Then I think we should publish more advertisements in more dime novels. And after that we pray like hell.”

  She laughed, and then immediately clutched at her chest. “Ouch! It still hurts to laugh.”

  “You don’t want me to make you laugh?”

  She nodded.

  “You want me to be serious.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway.

  “Okay, Marianne,” he stated. “Here’s something serious. First, we like living in Smoke River. Second, we are both intelligent, and neither one of us is afraid of hard work. And third, if we have to, we’ll find something else to do in this town. No matter what happens with Collingwood Boots, we are going to be all right.”

  “What about Abe? What is he going to do?”

  “Abe is a canny old guy, and he’s a survivor. Abe will be all right, too. Does that make you feel any better?”

  She sighed. “No, not really. I keep thinking about our wedding vows, and the ‘for better or worse’ part.”

  “Yeah, I remember. What about it?”

  “This must be the ‘worse’ part, don’t you think?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m not giving up, Marianne.”

  She stared at him. “You’re not? Why not? Why would any sane man put up with a failing business and a wife who—”

  “Deceives him?”

  She closed her eyes. “Well, yes.”

  He reached over and touched his forefinger to her cheek. “Damned if I know. Guess I must like scalloped potatoes.”

  Marianne choked back a burst of laughter. “Oh, Lance, please don’t say anything funny. It hurts too much. Please!”

  “Sorry, honey. Guess I didn’t realize I was so amusing.”

  Honey? He still thinks of me as ‘honey’? After deceiving him the way I did?

  Tears stung her eyes. “Oh, Lance, I am so s-sorry for lying to you. What I did has s-spoiled everything between us, hasn’t it?”

  He stood up and very gently put his arms around her. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t need to. She breathed in his scent, part wood smoke and part sweat with a whiff of pine soap, and suddenly she felt much better.

  “Are we friends again?” she asked shyly.

  “Nope.” He bent his head and tipped her face up to his. “Not friends,” he murmured. “Maybe lovers. Maybe.”

  He kissed her, very gently, and rested his forehead against hers. “But not tonight,” he breathed.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Marianne had been back in the shop for only one hour when the already shaky stability of Collingwood Boots was further threatened. It started when Eugenia Ridley paid a visit.

  The woman bustled through the front door and swished her considerable bulk up to the table where Marianne sat poring over the account books.

  “Well, dearie,” the woman said in a grating tone, “I see you’re still here.”

  Marianne leveled an icy gaze on the woman. “Yes, we are still here, Mrs. Ridley,” she said evenly. “What do you want?”

  The woman leaned over conspiratorially. “You can do this town and yourself a favor.”

  “Oh? What favor would th
at be?”

  “Get rid of that Indian boy I’ve seen skulking around your shop.”

  Very deliberately Marianne laid her pen down on the table, drew in a steadying breath and looked directly into the woman’s narrowed eyes. “Mrs. Ridley, who Collingwood Boots employs is the business of no one but Collingwood Boots. Do I make myself clear?”

  Mrs. Ridley drew herself up until the buttons that marched down her bosom threatened to pop off. “You don’t understand. Indians are untrustworthy. They’re lazy. And no one in Smoke River wants anything to do with them.”

  “On the contrary, Mrs. Ridley, I understand perfectly. You just don’t like Indians. I am afraid Collingwood Boots does not share your prejudice.”

  “I’m not prejudiced!” the woman shot back. “It’s a fact. Just ask anybody in town.”

  Marianne clenched her fist under the table. “I have heard not one single thing from anyone in Smoke River that supports your feeling. And even if I did, Collingwood Boots would not alter the employment of a valued employee.” She stood up. “I bid you good morning, Mrs. Ridley.”

  She resisted the impulse to add “and do not come back.” A good businesswoman could not afford to insult anyone, even someone as reprehensible as Eugenia Ridley. But she was glad, glad, glad she had thwarted this woman’s vicious attack on Rosie Greywolf during the race. She never wanted to lay eyes on Eugenia Ridley again.

  Without dropping her gaze Marianne waited until the woman pulled her shawl around her ample shoulders and swept out the shop door. Then she sank back on to her chair and dropped her head in her hands.

  Someone slid a mug of coffee on to the table in front of her. “Brung ya some coffee, Miss Marianne,” Abe said. “Consider it yer reward fer not killin’ that old biddy.”

  “I don’t suppose you added any whiskey?” she asked, her voice hopeful.

  He barked out a laugh. “I sure thought about it, but then I figgered you’d want to stay sober fer tonight.”

  “Oh? Why tonight?”

  A crimson flush turned Abe’s dark cheeks even darker. “No partic’lar reason,” he said lightly.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “What about tonight?”