Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold (35 page)

She actually saw one corner of his mouth curl upwards. “Mm. Me too.”

Later that night his voice pulled her back from the edge of sleep. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Umm.”

“Tomorrow I’ve got to fix the thatch on those hay stacks against the rain and catch up on some other things, and I guess you do too. How about after that we take a some time to ourselves and do whatever we feel like? Seems we worked hard enough we’re entitled.”

It was a grand idea, and she told him so.

* * *

Chapter 33

ANNE THOUGHT OF EACH ONE
of their ten days off as a separate gold and blue treasure. Sometimes a slight breeze stirred the trees and grass, but it never became a full force wind. The temperature was neither too hot nor too cold, and only an occasional fat, fluffy, white cloud scudded across clear skies of the deepest blue.

Cord showed her all of the Bennett Ranch. They looked over the big house from a distance, but avoided other people. They played games on horseback, swam and bathed in the creek, lazed over picnic lunches, and made love in one secluded spot after another. They came together with smoldering intensity and with teasing laughter, each time different, each time glorious.

She loved him openly and without reservation. She knew he would never be so open, but little by little the impassive mask slipped for longer and longer. Laughter might still only be in his eyes, but traces of expression began to animate his face.

The terrifying, bloody day of their marriage was less than a year ago. If they had come so far in this time, Anne believed she would in the end hear the words she, like all women, longed to hear, but if he never spoke of it, she would be content with this. He loved her, and she knew it, and he was capable of such tenderness it left her trembling, overwhelmed by her own love for him.

When the morning of the eleventh day dawned unseasonably cold with intermittent drizzle, they reluctantly returned to the demands of everyday life.

Between the showers, Anne cleaned all the overripe, rotting and tough fruit and vegetables from the garden. The pigs would feast for days. She began harvesting the last of the ripe produce for preserving, and tucked vegetables like squash away in the root cellar. Even with the weeks of neglect, there should be more than enough of the garden’s bounty to provide for a varied diet through the winter.

Cord spent the day bringing in the two-year-olds to start working and checking fence, but when the weather persisted dreary and cold on the next day, started helping with mounds of fruit and vegetables in the kitchen.

Shortly before noon Foxface sounded a warning and Frank, Luke, and Pete rode into the yard. Soon the pegs by the door were covered with slickers and big blond men seemed to fill the kitchen.

Anne knew that Cord hadn’t said more than hello and goodbye to his brother since the morning after the race, and he barely looked up for a greeting now. She wasn’t any happier to see Frank, but she was growing fond of Luke and Pete. So she gave all three of them a warm welcome.

She couldn’t get any of them to sit down until they brought the rocking chair into the kitchen and she perched on it for a few seconds, but then she hopped up and went back to what she had been doing, although she chatted with the visitors over her shoulder.

Frank explained the visit.

“Your mother knew you wouldn’t be in town during haying, but it’s been almost six weeks now. She’s worried, and I promised her I’d stop by and check on you. The boys are going to town tomorrow for supplies, so they’ll let her know you’re all right.”

“Pete and I stopped by a couple of times, but nobody was here.” Luke obviously didn’t want anyone thinking things had gotten to the official inquiry stage without an effort on his part.

Anne turned slightly and smiled at them, hands busy. “The haying took almost four weeks is all, and then we took some time to ourselves. We’ll be in next Sunday - if it isn’t still so miserable out.”

“We’ll make sure your mother gets word,” promised Pete.

Cord saw no reason to be sociable with his brother, and the way Frank and the boys were staring at his hands as he cut the vegetables wasn’t softening his attitude. The kitchen table was piled high with green beans, and he was cutting them to the length Anne wanted. He ignored his nephews and his brother and kept the knife flashing. As fast as Anne filled a group of preserving jars, he had another pile of beans ready for her to scoop up and start again. The uncut pile diminished steadily.

Without raising his head, Cord watched Frank watching. He wondered what Frank would come up with to explain the sight of a knife in his hands and no dead men in evidence.

Tearing his gaze from the table, Frank addressed Anne again. “Sure smells good in here. That can’t be beans.”

“No, before any peaches went into jars, I filled a pie with them.” Anne pointed to the jars of peaches on the floor. “If you’d like to stay for lunch, it’s almost done and should be cool enough for dessert.”

Luke and Pete accepted with enthusiasm, leaving Frank tight-lipped with displeasure. He turned to Cord. “How come you stacked hay outside this year?”

Cord wasn’t any more pleased about the accepted lunch invitation than Frank was. “Barns are full.”

“Full of what?”

“Hay.”

“How the hell did you manage that by yourself?”

“Didn’t. Anne helped.”

It was common enough for wives of small farmers and ranchers to help with anything they could. It just was not common for Bennett women. Cord waited for Frank to make a critical remark. With any luck Anne would lose her temper and run the lot of them out of the house. But Frank paused and gave Anne a considering look.

As Cord finished with the last of the beans, Luke and Pete began regaling Anne with stories of their exploits on the range and in town and asking her opinion of one girl after another they fancied or thought they might. Frank was studying Anne covertly over the rim of his coffee cup. The dismal gray day made the light poor in the kitchen, but Anne glowed with her own inner light. Frank Bennett knew better than most men what made a woman look like that, but there was only a puzzled frown on his face.

Still, Frank looked back at Cord and made an effort. “You must be low on supplies. You want the boys to pick you up anything in town? There’ll be room in the wagon.”

Cord’s irritation with his brother was fading to amusement almost against his will. He said, “Annie?”

“That would be nice. I used almost the last of the flour in the pie crust.”

Over lunch Cord joined the conversation to some extent. When everyone was replete after sandwiches and pie, he wordlessly fished a cigar out of Frank’s breast pocket. Frank finally relaxed then too. “Why the hell don’t you buy your own?”

“Filthy habit, hate to start.” Cord lit the little black cigar and leaned back. It was a comforting routine that went back over a decade. It wasn’t a peace treaty, but it was a truce, and it was a start.

* * *

Chapter 34

BY EARLY OCTOBER ANNE HAD
been keeping a secret from Cord for almost a month. She just wanted to be absolutely sure she told herself. After all it wasn’t supposed to happen. In a tiny corner of her mind, however, she knew she was afraid of his reaction. She kept remembering what he had said about feeling trapped when Rosa had conceived his child when he was in Texas. Finally, curled on his shoulder one night after particularly sweet lovemaking, she summoned her courage and said the words.

“Cord?”

“Mm.”

“We’re going to have a baby.”

His shoulder turned from a warm pillow to a hard rock in the space of those words. Her heart leapt to her mouth.

“You heard what Craig said, Annie. It can’t be. You’re imagining something.”

“I have every sign I’ve ever heard women talk about.”

“Like what?”

“I haven’t bled for three months.”

“We’d better go see Craig. Maybe there’s something wrong.”

“And I felt sick every morning for almost two months. I never really got sick because we get up and do chores first and then eat, and it would pass before breakfast, but it was there, and my breasts feel the way they do before my time of the month all the time, and I started crying for no reason when I was cleaning out the garden, and laughing hysterically for no reason when I was baking the other day. That happens too, you know, strange emotions.”

He pulled away. “Shit.”

Obscenity had been rare from him for some time now, and it felt like a blow. Fighting tears, she admitted to herself, all right, I knew he wouldn’t like it.

“So it wasn’t that you weren’t in love with Rosa or didn’t want to stay in Texas. You felt trapped when she was with child because you didn’t want to be stuck in a marriage, and you feel just as trapped now.”

“Me trapped? Are you crazy? You’re the one this traps. I never meant to do this to you. I wouldn’t have asked you to stay last year except I thought it couldn’t happen.”

Anne sat up, groped around for matches and lit the lamp so she could see him.

“We are
married
, not trapped. Are you listening to me? I’m not going anywhere, pregnant, not pregnant, with a child or without a child.
I am not going anywhere!
And you could at least pretend to be happy about it.

“Happy? Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what the hell you’re talking about?”

Anne stopped fighting tears. She had never imagined anything this bad. Curling in a ball with her back to him, she gave in and wept.

Instantly she was in his arms. “Don’t cry. For God’s sake, don’t cry. It feels like a knife in my gut. Damn it, Annie, stop.”

Anne made no effort to stop crying. “I guess I am crazy,” she said, hiccupping, “because I was happy about it. I
am
happy about it, and if you’re not that’s just too bad.”

She tried to pull away, but he didn’t let go. “Stop crying, and we’ll talk about it.” He turned her towards him and held her against his chest, stroking her hair, as her sobs dwindled.

“I didn’t tell you weeks ago because I knew you wouldn’t like it,” she admitted.

“Have you really thought about this yourself? You’re not talking about some pretty pink and white baby the world’s going to hug and admire, you know.”

The last traces of sobs vanished as her temper flared. “Do you think I expect our child to look like Frank and Judith’s? Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“What exactly do you think it’s going to look like?”

“Well, I don’t know, of course. Somewhere between the two of us. If I had my choice I’d like a boy to look like you, only with one feature that was obviously from me, so I could see us both, and I’d like a girl to look just like Marie. She was the most beautiful little girl and young woman I ever saw.”

Cord swallowed to control the lump in his throat several times before risking speech. If he lived to be a hundred and tried every day of the time he’d never deserve to have this woman, not for an hour, day, or week, much less this whole past year. And having loved her was going to cause her untold pain.

“There are people in town who tolerate us because they know how it happened and feel some sympathy for you, but this is going to make them downright ugly,” he said. “You must know what your family is going to be like, and mine….”

“Why shouldn’t your family be happy for us? They raised you and Marie and loved you dearly.”

“Take my word for it. They’re not going to like it, and they know it wasn’t supposed to happen, which just makes it worse.”

“What do you mean, they know it wasn’t supposed to happen?”

“Just that. The whole town knows. Letitia Craig went and shot off her mouth at some ladies’ meeting in town.”

Anne gasped. “B-but that’s not right. P-people shouldn’t know that about us, that’s not… oh, damn!” she wailed. “How do you know?”

“I come up on people when they don’t know it and they’re talking is all.”

“So your family knows, your
brothers
know, and my family knows….”

“Yeah, they do. Anybody not deaf who lives around here knows. Look, babe, go to sleep. Let’s leave it for now. We’ll go see Craig tomorrow and worry about it then, yes?”

“Tell me just one thing,” Anne whispered. “If we were the only two people in the whole world, then would you be happy about it?”

“We’re not. There’s no use even thinking about it - we’re not the only two people in the world.”

She fell asleep against him quickly after that, but Cord lay awake staring into the dark. It wouldn’t be true. There was something wrong was all. Oh, God, he didn’t want anything wrong with her either. Something small, maybe, something Craig could give her a tonic or a pill for. He shouldn’t have let her work in the hay fields like that. Deep inside he already knew it was true.

Through a sleepless night he wrestled with it. If it got bad enough he could take her south to live among more tolerant people. Down along the border - realization came in a rush. Among the mixed blood people to the south, he was accepted, as the child would be. Anne was the one who would be the outsider there. He could take her into the far territories where there were few people, but in those places life was constant danger. He could think of no solution to save her the heartache, no way to spare her the pain.