Authors: Primrose
“Where does shame come into it?”
“By publicly displaying one’s inability to attract a suitor in the traditional way.”
“But the war took its toll on the male population and—”
“I’m afraid most people see that as a convenient excuse,” Zanna interrupted. “The only reason the people here afford me any courtesies is out of respect for the memory of my first husband. Haven’t you noticed how
they keep their distance from Darnella, Lilimae, and Agatha?”
“So, in short, you lost most of your own good reputation by marrying me,” Grandy said.
“That’s correct.”
“Why did you do it then? Don’t you care what your neighbors think of you?”
“I have long since stopped caring what other people think of me,” Zanna said, her voice as cold as ice chips. “Anyone who has taken the trouble to know me understands my decision to marry under this arrangement.”
He studied her with narrowed eyes and unnerving totality. She felt stripped by the time he spoke again. “I believe you, but I wonder how many people have taken the trouble to look behind your mask.”
“I wear no mask.”
“We
all
wear masks,” Grandy insisted. “For protection, usually. I’ve tried to see behind your mask, Zanna, but you’ve resisted me. I’m still not sure who you are.”
“And I don’t know you. I think we’ve both been hiding and I also think—” Her attention was arrested by someone behind him—a large head made larger by a big, brown hat and a smile that sent chills down her arms.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Grandy said, his fingers closing more tightly on her hand. “I think that either the devil himself has popped up from hell or Duncan Hathaway has finally arrived at this shindig. He’ll try to cut in,” Grandy said. “Do you want to dance with him?”
“No, but I don’t want a fight to break out either.”
“Trust me.”
She held her breath as a debate stormed within her.
“Trust me?” Grandy repeated, demanding a response this time.
She looked into her heart and found her answer there. “Yes.” The word was barely out before a black-gloved hand landed on Grandy’s right shoulder. Zanna flinched. Grandy shook off Duncan’s hand as he would a pesky fly.
“I’m breaking in,” Duncan said.
“The lady’s dance card is full. Shove off.” Grandy whirled Zanna through a cluster of other couples, leaving Duncan behind.
Zanna glanced toward Duncan and shivered. “He’s coming,” she warned.
“Let him,” Grandy said, then Duncan’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder again. Grandy stepped and turned sideways to confront him. “What’s your problem, Hathaway? I told you that Zanna’s promised all her dances. That’s what happens to late arrivals; they miss the boat.”
Duncan tucked his thumbs under his belt. “Let me hear that from Suzanna.”
Grandy shrugged. “Fine. Zanna, if you talk, maybe he’ll listen.”
Zanna found courage in Grandy’s hazel eyes. “I prefer to dance with my husband, Duncan.” She placed her hand in Grandy’s again and moved closer to him. “You’ll have to excuse us.”
On cue, Grandy whisked her away from Duncan’s stony glare. Elation touched her lips and lifted her heart.
“That felt wonderful,” she said. “I hope he doesn’t make trouble.”
“He won’t.” Grandy turned her around so that he could keep an eye on Duncan. “He’s left the dance floor and is talking to some men—his hired hands, I think.”
“Thank you, Grandville,” she said, bestowing a special smile.
His scowl was unexpected. “Was I a good dog, Zanna? Are you pleased that I’m so well trained?”
The joy she’d been clutching abruptly deserted her and Zanna wriggled from his loose embrace. Facing him, she made no attempt to hide her hurt or anger at him for giving her pleasure and then snatching it back.
Applause signaled the end of the song and the fiddle player announced that he and the others were taking a break. Most people moved toward the long tables for pie
or a cool drink. Grandy led Zanna farther away from Duncan toward Agatha and Nathan, who were still perched in the back of the hay wagon.
“Join us,” Nathan said, scooting closer to his wife to make room.
“My feet are complaining,” Zanna confessed and gasped when Grandy’s hands spanned her waist. “What are you …?”
Grandy lifted her to sit beside Nathan, then waved off Nathan’s gesture that he should hop up himself. “No, I’ll stand, but I’d accept another smoke if it were offered.”
Nathan pulled out his tobacco pouch and rolled a cigarette.
“Nathan and I were discussing children,” Agatha said, then looked bewildered when Grandy choked and sputtered. Smoke escaped him in little clouds. “When are you and Mr. Adams planning on starting your family?” Agatha asked, pulling her worried gaze from Grandy to Zanna.
“I … well, we …” Zanna fanned herself with one hand. “It’s sultry, isn’t it?”
“Not to me,” Agatha said, her sly glance moving from Zanna to Grandy and back again.
“You want children?” Grandy asked Nathan between heaving coughs.
“Why not?” Nathan said. “Agatha will make a wonderful mother.”
Agatha glowed. “And you will make a wonderful father, Nathan.”
Zanna blew upward, to flutter her bangs and cool her forehead. “Isn’t this a nice get-together? It’s so sweet of Mrs. Jackson and her son to go to such trouble for all of us.” She watched her milling neighbors and enjoyed their friendly chatter, but her pleasure vanished as Duncan entered her range of vision.
He stood with his hired hands, smoking and squinting through the haze across the expanse of field to Zanna. His eyes glittered like wet stones as he smiled knowingly at
her, telling her silently that he knew he could still unnerve her, bully her, terrify her by just looking at her. He raised a gloved hand and touched his forehead, then shoved back his hat to let her get a good look at his feral smirk.
Zanna turned away, overcome by a sudden malaise. She forced herself to listen to the conversation around her, but her thoughts kept moving between Duncan and Grandy. Duncan, whom she wanted to cast out of her life, and Grandy, whom she wanted to keep in it.
Troubled by the dilemma, Zanna felt like a sleepwalker throughout the rest of the evening. The gaiety went on around her, she smiled and responded to comments directed at her, she danced a few more times with Grandy and once each with Theodore and Perkins, but she didn’t involve herself.
She blamed Grandy for that. How infuriating, she thought. How dreadful to be tethered to his moods! But tethered she was and she could find no escape. Increasingly, his feelings were more important to her than her own and she could think of only one reason for this unsettling malady.
She’d fallen hopelessly … impossibly …
inescapably
in love with Grandville Quincy Adams.
The buggy carrying Grandy and Zanna bounced along the rutted road, jostling her against him every so often.
Too often, Zanna thought as she tried in vain to keep an inch of space between them. The silence grew stifling and Zanna released a sigh fraught with nervousness.
“I suppose you’re happy to have met up with your friend again,” she said, then added when his brows inched together in puzzlement, “Nathan Beaumont, that is.”
“Oh, yes.” He nodded. “I’m glad I got to see him before he settles into married life.” He glanced at her carefully composed expression. “Something bothering you?”
“No.”
“What is it?”
“I said no.”
“I heard you. What’s wrong?”
She sighed, sounding harried. “I didn’t care for your comments earlier this evening.”
“Which ones?”
“When you insinuated that I think of you as my trained dog.”
“You do, don’t you?”
“No.” She shifted onto one hip. “I was having such a lovely time until you had to ruin it!” Unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears.
“Me?” He looked surprised, then laughed. “I’m sorry if the truth hurts, Zanna.”
“It’s
not
the truth and it disturbs me to think that
you
think that
I
think of you in such a fashion.”
He shook his head, rattled. “Run that past me again … no, don’t.” His frown was playful. “But you said you don’t care what people think of you.”
“I don’t.” She removed her gloves slowly and tucked them into a tight cuff. “But I’ve come to care what
you
think of me.” Expecting his look of disbelief, she hitched up her chin to deflect it. “I shouldn’t care, but I do.”
He was uncomfortably quiet for a full minute, staring at Milkmaid’s swishing tail. Then he laid one hand over hers in her lap. Zanna tried to read his moonlit profile.
“That wasn’t easy to admit, was it?” he asked quietly.
She stared at his hand covering hers. Her need to be open with him grew until she could find no more reason to fight it. She brought her gaze up to his. Beneath the shadow of his hat brim, his eyes glittered with pinpoints of starry light and his parted lips flashed white in the darkness.
“No, it wasn’t,” she agreed. “Grandville, you must believe that I’ve never thought of you as a mongrel. A convict? Yes. An outlaw? Yes. Someone not to be trusted? Yes. But a dog to be trained? No.” She turned her hands
over to squeeze his and press home her point. “Now that I’ve come to know you, I believe you are a good man. You’ve been more than fair with me.” She released a choppy breath that was close to laughter. “There! It’s said and I feel better for it.”
He laughed with her, patted her hands, and then gripped the reins again. “I’m glad you feel better, although you certainly haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know.”
“You
knew
that I hold you in high regard?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t have allowed me in your bed if you didn’t hold me in …” He paused, searching. “High regard, right?”
She stared at her hands, feeling hot and uncomfortable as her face flamed with embarrassment. “Yes, well, that’s true. I’d forgotten about that.”
“Oh-ho!” His brows shot up. “That’s a fine thing to say to a man, Zanna. You really know how to wound a fella, don’t you?”
“I didn’t mean that I’d forgotten …” She slapped his arm playfully. “Oh, never mind. I wish I hadn’t spoken so baldly. I should have known you would poke fun.”
“I’m not. Not about your confession.” He sobered, his smile melting away but his eyes still holding the light of laughter. “Thank you for telling me. Now if you’ll only let me out of your sight from time to time, I might believe you.”
“Grandville, you know as well as I that under the contract you signed, you—”
“What’s that?” he asked, sniffing the air.
She breathed deeply and panic spread through her. “Smoke.” Zanna saw that Milkmaid’s ears were flat against her head. “Fire.”
“Where?”
She scanned the horizon, although much of it was obscured by trees. “I don’t know, but it’s close.” Without
thinking, she grabbed the reins from Grandy and laid them across the white mare’s back. “Yaaa!”
Milkmaid was a blur against the night and her hooves sounded like thunder. The buggy rattled and rolled. Grandy clutched the side and turned wide eyes on Zanna, but he kept his complaints to himself as she shouted Milkmaid on over the rise that she knew would give a clear view of the horizon.
The buggy topped the hill. A long gray cloud rose in the northeast. Primrose land.
“Looks like the hay field,” Grandy said, leaning close to Zanna’s ear to be heard above the creaking buggy.
She nodded, praying that it was a field and not her home, the barn, the stables, or the bunkhouse. Please, not those. A field, the hay—let them burn. Not the house. Not her belongings which could not be replaced by sowing a few seeds and waiting for rain.
It seemed to take hours before the buggy rolled onto Primrose land, racing under the wooden arch and along the well-trodden road that led to the house. No shooting flames could be seen among the buildings. Grandy shook her arm and pointed.
“Over there. It’s the hay field,” he said, his face set in grim lines, his tone flat and unfeeling.
They both jumped from the buggy and raced across the land. Three men stood silhouetted against the orange and yellow backdrop and as Zanna ran closer she saw that they were Perkins, Packsaddle, and Donny. She grabbed Perkins’s arm.
“What happened? When …?” Turning to stare at the field, she was mesmerized by the carpet of black. Only the edges of the field were still burning, sending out tongues of flame. The air was steamy.
“We got here just ahead of you,” Perkins said, shouting above the crackle and roar of the fire. “I don’t know anything more than you.” He nodded toward Packsaddle. “But Packsaddle thinks he knows something.”
“What?” Zanna whirled on the man. A stitch caught in her ribs and she pressed a hand there. Every breath she took was painful, filled with smoke and too hot to keep in her lungs for long. “What do you know about this, Packsaddle?”
The old cowboy scratched his whiskers and squinted against the choking smoke. “I was asleep when I first smelled the smoke. I threw on my clothes and ran out to see what was burning. It was ablaze by the time I got here, but I saw a man running away. He jumped on his horse and off he went. If I’da had my shotgun, he’d still be here.”
“Who was it?” Zanna asked. “Did you see?”
“Naw.” He extended his hands in a helpless gesture. “It was dark and smoky. I couldn’t make out much. I just know that somebody started this here fire. It weren’t no act of God.”
“What should we do?” Perkins asked.
Zanna stared at the dying flames. “Nothing. It’ll burn to the edges of the field and stop: The rest is too green to burn.”
“Why would somebody burn a hay field?” Donny asked. “Most of it has already been put up in the barn. Wasn’t much left out here, was there, Grandy?”
“No, only twenty or so stacks.” Grandy took off his hat and ran the back of his sleeve across his forehead in a weary gesture. “I don’t think the hay was the target. I’m going to unhitch the buggy.” He walked off, leaving them to watch the dance of flames.
Zanna stayed with the others until the fire turned to smoldering embers, then dragged herself to the house, her feet leaden as the events of the night weighed heavily upon her. The horse and buggy were gone. Inside the house, lanterns had been lit. She paused just inside the front door, blinking tiredly at her surroundings and wondering what she should do next. Grandy entered the front room, barefoot and wet-headed. He was dressed in old
trousers and a bath sheet covered his damp shoulders and chest.