Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold (19 page)

“Anne said it was the kicking after he was down, but it was all over, even down his legs and feet. Doc Craig says it was weeks before he decided he wasn’t dying slow, he was getting better. But, you see, I thought he was with you then. It never occurred to me Anne was still out there alone with him. When the two of them showed up in town together you could have knocked me over with a feather. I just wouldn’t have figured a woman like that would have anything to do with him once he got better. Surprises me even more they seem to get along pretty good. The way she sasses him he don’t scare her any.”

After thanking Martha for the dinner, Noah took himself off. Luke and Pete followed Noah out, leaving Rob and Leona and the four older Bennetts sitting in silence around the kitchen table.

Ephraim looked at his wife and said, “Do you want to say you told us so?”

Martha just shook her head.

Grateful that Martha wasn’t going to rub it in, Ephraim admitted, “I knew from what we heard in the cafe the other day how wrong we were. Anne didn’t understand what she was really telling us, but he did. How did we ever let it come to this, Frank? We took the haters’ word for it, and we should have known better.”

Frank buried his head in his hands and groaned, “Maybe. Martha, is there any whiskey around? I sure could use a drink.”

Martha went to a cupboard and brought back a bottle of whiskey and one of sherry and poured drinks for everyone.

Leona Wells looked very much the way her daughter would in twenty years, but showed none of the spirit so evident in Anne in the Bennetts’ recent encounters with her. Now, looking pathetically unhappy, Leona sipped her sherry and shuddered.

Still trying to find some ground for disbelief, she voiced a tremulous objection. “My daughter was raised better than that. She wouldn’t walk in that man’s house. Why would she walk in that man’s house?”

Ephraim had listened to every word of the story carefully, not inhibited by disbelief. “Mrs. Wells, tell me, exactly how much had she had to eat, say in the week before she got to Cord’s?”

Leona didn’t have to answer in words. The look on her face was answer enough.

Rob eventually got his mother calmed down enough to take her home, making it clear he still didn’t believe a word of it. They left four quiet and thoughtful people behind.

“So what are we going to do?” Frank said, voicing what was on all their minds.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Ephraim said. “You know if we went out there and tried to apologize he’d just turn his back and walk away. Buying Martha and me lunch the other day was a peace offering of a sort. We’d better leave it.”

So they decided to leave it because they didn’t know what else to do.

* * *

Chapter 20

ANNE BROUGHT UP WHETHER THEY
should attend church several times in their night talks. In the end, they decided to go.

She never mentioned her real reason for pursuing the matter - she wanted to see Cord dressed up in his new suit, which he had not worn since Christmas. She felt it might be nice to let him get a good look at her all dressed up too.

Cord clearly wasn’t enthused about spending time at the service, but said he didn’t mind Sunday as a day of rest. He was also blunt about not wanting another mob in the yard. If Noah Reynolds thought church might pacify the town, he was willing to give it a try.

The first problem was that Anne didn’t think Keeper was a suitable buggy horse. She tried to dance subtly around the point, but Cord went right the heart of the matter. “Not pretty enough for you, huh?”

“Well, he’s pretty enough, but he looks like what he is, a man’s saddle horse. A buggy horse should be more, more….”

“Pretty.”

“No,” she searched for the right word, “More elegant.” She hurried on to take the sting out of her words. “Don’t you have a horse that’s just a little more refined or something that isn’t a very good saddle horse anyway?”

At her words, Cord grew thoughtful. The next day he took Anne out in the pastures and pointed out a group of horses he said were disappointingly small and short-strided. He had culled the mares that produced them, like Lady, from the broodmare band, but there were still half a dozen of the small, rather pretty animals on the ranch.

“Every year I think I should round them up and run them through an auction, but I hate to see them end up as meat. Would one of them do?”

“Oh, yes, that’s exactly the right kind of horse.”

“Choose.”

She chose a black mare with very low almost matching white socks behind and named her Silverheels, Silvie for short.

“Will it take long before she can pull the buggy?”

“No, they’re all already saddle broke. Week or so will make a buggy horse.”

Cord began working the little mare for harness, but they didn’t go to church the next Sunday after all.

Anne felt especially pretty in a dark blue dress with lighter blue trim and a rather pert hat that went well with the outfit, and Cord looked every bit as good as she had imagined in the suit. Just as they were almost ready to walk out the door, however, he suddenly gave her a hard look.

“What the hell have you got on? You look different.”

Hurt, she replied, “It’s one of my best dresses for church. What don’t you like about it?”

“The dress is pretty. You look strange. All squashed in and hard.” A long index finger poked at her rib cage.

Indignant now, and understanding, she answered loftily, “I have a corset on. I can’t go to church without wearing a proper foundation.”

“You’re slim enough you look just fine without that thing. What if you can’t breathe and you pass out in church right in front of the whole town? They’ll think I did something.”

“It’s not even laced tightly. I can breathe just fine. You just don’t want to go. Why didn’t you say so before we went to all this trouble?”

“I’m willing to go. Just take that thing off. It’s probably bad for your innards to be all trussed up like that.”

She had, in fact, after months of not wearing one, forgotten how miserably confining the garment was, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. He was the same as every other man she’d ever known, telling her how to dress.

Furious, she said, “Forget it. I’m not going to church looking like a trollop. No corset, no church.” She stormed back to the bedroom and began to change to everyday clothes.

Leaning in the doorway watching her, he drawled, “Trollops wear those things, you know, black ones - or red.”

Madder than ever, she snapped, “It’s certainly nice to know my husband is such an expert on trollops. Maybe you ought to start taking one to church.”

She pushed past him and banged the kettle down on the stove. Maybe a cup of tea would help calm her down. Her tea was made and she was sipping it when it came to her that Cord’s preference for her natural shape was not really a criticism - it might even be construed as a compliment. Perhaps she really had gotten too angry too fast.

Then it occurred to her that he was taking much longer than it would take him to change his clothes. Curious, and thinking she might even apologize, she went to take a peek in the bedroom. Gawking at the sight that met her eyes, she told herself, I should be angry. I must be angry. But it took all her strength not to double over with laughter.

He had indeed changed his clothes, and then had gone through her things and found her other corset. Made especially to go under fancy gowns, it was edged all around with lace, and bits of lace were now floating through the air as Cord very methodically used the knife he always had somewhere on him to cut the two corsets into tiny pieces.

It was certainly fortunate that the dress she had chosen for church, although fashionably draped at the back, was not bustled. Most of her wardrobe was going to need modifying before she could wear it without provoking mayhem. Anne walked further into the room, giving up the fight to stay angry. What she wanted to do was start pulling the small bits of lace out of the black hair, smooth them out of the wings of his eyebrows, sit down on the bed beside him and have him hold her and kiss her, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Instead she sat a careful distance from him and said, “All right, you win. I’ll never even think about wearing a corset again, to church or any place else, but you remember in ten years when I’m not so slim and you start to think maybe I’d look better all trussed up, you’re going to have to request me to wear one, complete with please.”

Cord watched her walk out of the room and thought
in ten years
.
I wonder if I’ll even know where she is in ten years.

The next Sunday they made it to church.

Since the purpose of attending services was to pacify the townspeople, Cord decided no matter how things stood with his brothers, folks might as well be reminded that he was part of a large and clannish family. He made sure that they arrived early enough Sunday morning to join the rest of the Bennetts as they walked from Ephraim’s to the church.

He was spared introductions. Anne was not only already acquainted with all the Bennetts, she had told him that Frank’s wife, Judith, was one of the women her family regularly held up to her as a model of all she should be and wasn’t. Even featured, still slim after bearing Frank three sons and a daughter, the pale blonde beauty usually had a serene air about her.

Cord, however, had over the years endured quite enough of the half-crazed behavior his mere presence often provoked in Judith. He had strong ideas about which woman ought to be emulating the other and had told Anne so. Anne’s quick, mischievous smile at him after she greeted Judith told him she was remembering what he had to say on the subject.

Frank and Judith’s three youngest children, Gil, Martin, and Beth, were properly polite, but Cord did not miss the contemplative way Luke, Frank’s oldest at 21, and Ephraim’s son, Pete, who was the same age, regarded Anne. They were wondering if there was a way to use her to provoke the fight they were spoiling for. And damn them, they might be right that they now had a lever they could use to get what they wanted.

Anne looked surprised to find herself sandwiched among Bennetts in a pew close to the front of the church, but it wasn’t long before she focused such an unforgiving glare on Pratt that he started stuttering. For the first time in his memory, Cord found the service entertaining.

As they left the church, Cord heard a moan, and Leona Wells enveloped his wife in a hug, weeping uncontrollably. Maybe Rob couldn’t get her home yelling at her, but this just might do it.

Anne got her mother seated on one of the benches in the churchyard and he heard her say, “Now, Mother, either you stop crying right now, or I’m just going home without even talking to you. Come on now, I’m fine, get hold of yourself.”

Feeling definitely better, Cord headed for the buggy, only to find Armand and Helene LeClerc petting his new buggy horse.

“Morning, Mr. LeClerc, ma’am.”

“Armand, call me Armand, and my wife Helene. From a man whose wife wears one of my prettiest rings I want no mister. This is your horse, yes?”

“Yeah, Anne had a notion what kind of horse should pull a buggy, so she picked her out. Too small for a saddle horse anyway.”

Armand’s round cheerful face fell. “Then she’s not for sale? My wife and I used to have a buggy horse. We spent many a happy hour driving around. We had no particular place to go. It was just for fun, but we could never find another one like him when he got too old. I could pay you a hundred and fifty dollars for a horse like this. We’re not horsemen. We need something that doesn’t frighten us on the ground or in the buggy.”

Seeing LeClercs talking to Cord, Anne almost dragged her mother over as fast as she could and heard this last. “Why, Mr. LeClerc, Mother had exactly the same problem after our old Mollie died. You’re right, Silvie would be just perfect for you.”

“Silvie?”

“Her name is Silverheels, but we call her Silvie.”

“Ah, such a pretty name for such a pretty mare. Well, if she’s your own special horse….”

Anne winked at him. “Just a minute.” She pulled Cord to one side. “Would it be awful to let them have her? They were so nice to us. I liked that bay with the narrow blaze too. Couldn’t you just work him for us? Is a hundred and fifty dollars a terrible price?”

“It’s highway robbery for a horse like that.”

“But it’s worth it to them. She’d
suit
them.”

“If one of the others will suit
you
, sell her.”

Anne turned back to the elderly couple. “Mr. LeClerc.”

“Armand, Armand and Helene.”

“Armand, why don’t you and Helene take a drive around town with Cord and make sure Silvie is really just what you want, and if she is, you can have her for a hundred and fifty dollars. There’s a bay gelding I almost picked he’s going to fix for me - unless you’d rather come to the ranch and choose from several.”

“No, no, we can’t believe you have anything nicer than this lady.” Armand and Helene were still stroking the soft muzzle.