With that Hiram swept past all of them, ignoring the children as he went into the house.
“Why that—” Carrie began and started after him. No one was going to say something like that to her!
Josh caught her arm. “Don’t,” he said, his eyes pleading. “He leaves in precisely two hours and twenty minutes, and I find that one can bear him for that length of time.”
“I don’t believe I can,” Carrie said.
“Someone with your money doesn’t have to,” Josh said meanly. “You’ll never believe what we poor people have to put up with in order to survive.”
Now she had been insulted by both of the men. Looking down her nose at her husband, she went into the house.
“Your rich wife give you all of this?” she heard Hiram saying as she entered the house. He was looking over his fat belly toward the table that she had worked so hard on. “Be sure she doesn’t take it with her when she leaves you,” he said to Josh and began to laugh nastily at his own joke.
When Carrie started to open her mouth, Josh looked at her, his eyes begging her to keep quiet. “When he kicks us off the farm, are you going to buy us another one?” Josh said softly, with such derision in his voice that Carrie clamped her mouth shut. At that moment she wasn’t sure which of the men she disliked the most.
Carrie was determined to endure this odious man for the full two hours and twenty minutes. After all, Josh was making her leave tomorrow and maybe she’d never see this family again, so it wasn’t as though she had any right to care what happened to them. If they wanted to sit still and endure this man’s insults, that was their business.
And insult them he did. He talked about the children’s lack of education, wanting Dallas to quote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” When the five-year-old said that she had never heard of the poem, Hiram gave his brother a look of disgust. Keeping his head down, Josh didn’t answer his brother.
When Hiram looked at Tem’s small hands, he declared them unfit for work, saying that when he was Tem’s age he was practically running a farm by himself. He also berated Tem for getting lost and causing problems that made the Greene name a laughingstock in town.
When he’d finished with the children, he started on Josh, laughing at Josh’s cornfield and announcing that he had always known that Josh could never make it as a farmer.
It was only when Hiram began to talk of Josh’s past that Carrie’s ears perked up. From what she could gather from Hiram’s cryptic tirade, Josh had done something atrocious in his past and that was why he’d lost what money he’d had. Hiram spoke of Josh being “on the run,” and when Carrie looked at Josh, she saw the way he was staring down at his plate, not saying a word.
What could Josh have done that was so bad? she wondered. According to Hiram, Josh had once been quite wealthy, for Hiram mentioned that Josh must be very used to the silver and the pretty dishes, but that Josh had had everything taken away from him.
Taken away by whom? Carrie wondered. By the law? Had Josh gained his wealth in some nefarious way and been caught at it?
Hiram finally ran out of words about Josh, then turned to his wife, telling everyone at the table everything that Alice had done “wrong” that week. He told of clothing stains that she had not been able to remove and food undercooked and overcooked. He told of cobwebs hanging from the ceiling.
Carrie looked at the watch pinned to her breast. Only one hour gone. It was amazing that one person could pontificate for so long.
When Hiram was at last finished with his wife, he paused—not that talking nonstop had caused him to miss so much as a bite—and looked at Carrie.
Carrie was well aware of the other people at the table, all of them sitting solemnly, all of them saying nothing in their own defense at what this man was saying about them. When Hiram turned to her, she didn’t look down at her plate, but met his eyes. Money, she thought. That’s what gave this man his power. He owned his own farm and Josh’s, and because he had the power to evict them, in essence to take the roof from over their heads and food from their mouths, he thought he had the right to denigrate them.
But Carrie knew about money. Many, many times she had felt the power of her family’s money, but, thank heaven, there had always been someone from her family nearby to tell her that money did not give a person special privileges. Just because she had money didn’t mean that she got a free ride in the world. She had to give something back to the earth besides money.
Hiram looked at Carrie long and hard, then turned away with a little smirk and looked back at Josh. “I can see why you got her,” he said in the most leering tone that Carrie had ever heard.
Hiram looked back at Carrie, as though trying to ascertain what she was going to say to him.
When Carrie smiled at him sweetly, Hiram turned away with a smirk of self-satisfaction.
It was his look that broke Carrie. Not his words. She could handle them, but she couldn’t handle that smile, for he seemed to assume that here was yet another person to browbeat and humiliate.
“More corn, Brother Hiram?” Carrie asked sweetly.
With that smirk still on his ugly face, he said, “Don’t mind if I do. Of course it isn’t corn that my little brother has grown, is it? Too many worms for me.”
Picking up the heavy silver dish, she offered it to him, but when he put his hand on the bowl, he leered at her and said, “You may be useless as a wife, but I bet you have some uses as a woman.”
Carrie looked him in the eyes, smiled, then poured the bowl of corn in his lap. In the ensuing silence of horror that came from everyone at the table, Carrie managed to pour creamed spinach on Hiram’s head, coleslaw in his face, and hit him with a greasy ham in the chest. She had her hand on the carving knife when Josh grabbed her wrist.
“He has no right to—” Carrie began.
Josh’s hand tightened on her wrist. “You don’t know anything,” he said.
“And no one has bothered to tell me, either,” she said, then, with one more look at the children, she ran out of the house. It wasn’t her business. Just because she was married to Josh, just because she loved the children with all her heart and soul, that didn’t seem to count.
She ran until she reached the road, and then she kept on running—wanting to run all the way back to Maine. She kept going until her lungs were bursting and her legs were weak.
When she could go no further, she turned to the nearby river and slipped into the trees to sit on the bank by the rushing water. She hadn’t caught her breath before she started crying.
She cried for a long time, her knees pulled up to her chin, hiding her face in the folds of her dress. She had tried so hard and had failed so completely.
“Here,” said a voice beside her, and a handkerchief was held out to her.
Looking up through her tears, she saw Josh sitting beside her. “Go away. I hate you. I hate all of you. I wish I could leave today instead of tomorrow, and I’ll be glad to never see any of you again.”
Without any comment on her little speech, his eyes on the water, he handed her a bottle of whisky. “It’s good single malt Scotch, the best there is. My last bottle.”
Taking it from him, Carrie swallowed a healthy-sized amount of the smoky liquid, then took another drink and another, until Josh pulled the bottle out of her hands.
“About my brother…” he began.
Carrie waited. The whisky was making her feel better, hazy, relaxed. Leaning back on her arms, she looked at the water. When Josh didn’t say anything more, she gave a nasty little laugh. “I knew you wouldn’t tell me anything. I knew you couldn’t part with a secret.” She turned to look at him. “I must say that your brother doesn’t look much like you.”
“We’re not blood relatives. My mother married his father when I was ten and Hiram was already an adult by then.”
“Was his father like him?”
“No.” Josh took a long drink of the whisky. “I think my stepfather was a bit horrified by Hiram.”
Carrie giggled. “I can understand that. Has he always been like that?” She gestured in the general direction of the house, which was over a mile away.
Taking another drink, Josh handed the bottle back to her. “Men like Hiram are born, not created. He was born thinking he knew the right way and that it was his duty to instruct the rest of us.”
“Why do you live here on land that he owns?”
Josh was silent at that.
Carrie took a deep drink of the whisky. “I beg your pardon. That’s a question I shouldn’t have asked. I forget from one moment to the next that I’m not good enough to be part of the Greene family, that I’m merely an empty-headed little rich girl who has no right to be here.” She got up. “Excuse me, but I think I’ll go back to the house.”
Josh grabbed her skirt. “Carrie, I’d tell you, but—”
She looked down at him. “But what?” she yelled at him.
“It would make you hate me.”
This was not the answer she had expected.
Releasing her skirt, he looked back at the river. “I’ve made a mess of my life and I’ve done some things that I’m not very proud of. The children are the only thing I’ve ever done that was any good.”
Carrie remembered Hiram’s insinuations. Had Josh been a criminal? Maybe they had allowed him out of prison only if he agreed to put himself under his brother’s care and run the farm and take care of the children.
Sitting back down beside him, much closer than she had been, she took another drink from the bottle, then returned it to him. “Let me stay,” she said softly.
“More than anything in the world I’d like for you to stay, but it can’t be. This isn’t the life for you. This isn’t the life for anyone, and I can’t keep living off your money.”
She nodded, not in understanding, but in acceptance. “Josh,” she whispered, then turned to look at him, her eyes full of tears. “This is the last day.”
When he looked at her, he told himself that his life would be better after Carrie left, that she had upset him and that wasn’t good. He knew that the kids would be unhappy for a while after she left, but they’d recover, and soon the little family would be back to normal. And what was normal? His cooking? His farming? His misery, which the children reflected?
“Oh, Carrie,” Josh said, then pulled her into his arms.
The minute their lips touched, they ignited, for they had hungered for each other since they had first seen the other. Their desire for each other had started the first time Josh had put his hands on Carrie’s waist to help her out of the stage, and daily contact had increased it until the two of them were tightly strung.
Day after day they had watched each other, had looked at each other’s bodies, had broken into cold sweats at the sight of so much as an inch of bare skin. For all that they pretended to dislike each other, each of them had felt vibrations whenever the other entered a room.
The children had been well aware of the adults’ reaction to each other, the way their eyes never left the other, the way they were obsessed with each other.
Now they were alone, with nothing about them but trees and rushing water, and there was nothing to stop them from doing what they’d wanted to do since that first day: They tore at each other’s clothes.
Josh was much more experienced at removing a woman’s clothes than Carrie was at taking off a man’s, but Josh had never in his life been this eager. When he pulled on Carrie’s sleeve, it ripped away, but care for her clothing was the last thing in his mind as he stroked the bare flesh of her upper arm and put his mouth to it.
Josh tried to undo the buttons at the back of her dress, but it was easier to tear them away. When he could reach her shoulders with his mouth and he heard Carrie’s moan, he no longer thought of clothes. He thought of nothing but his own desire.
Within moments there was a flurry of garments flying through the air. There was a torn silk dress, petticoats made of yards of soft cotton, and hoops that entangled Josh, but he dispatched them quickly.
Carrie had seen her brothers in various states of undress and had a good idea of how to get Josh’s clothing off of him. She found that she was very good at pulling off shirts and even socks.
By the time they were nude, there was no caressing, there was only lust, pure and simple lust. Frantic lust. A lust both of them had waited a lifetime to relieve.
With his mouth fastened on Carrie’s breast, with his hands on her hips, Josh entered her, making Carrie cry out in alarm at the pain, but the pain didn’t last for long. She had wanted Josh for too long to allow a little pain to get in her way.
Moving with him, as frantic as he was, as greedy and as wanting, Carrie cried out in ecstasy when they at last came together, and Josh buried his face in her neck.
For a long, sweaty moment, they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, their skin feeling as though every nerve ending was alive.
“I never—” Josh began, but Carrie put her finger over his mouth.
“Don’t say that you didn’t mean to,” she whispered. “Whatever you do, don’t apologize to me.”
Smiling, he kissed her fingertips. “I was going to say that I’ve never experienced anything like that before. I’ve never lost control like that before. Lovemaking is an art, but that was…”
“Need?” she whispered.
“Need and something more.” Rolling off of her, he pulled her into his arms, holding her and stroking her hair.
“Josh,” she whispered, but he silenced her with a kiss.
“We have to go back,” he said. “The children are alone, and we’ll have to get up early in the morning to catch—” He broke off as though the words were too painful for him to finish.
She lay in his arms for a few moments more, then moved away from him and began to dress, her torn dress making it difficult for her to pull the pieces together. Josh’s fingers brushed hers away. “Allow me,” he said, and as expertly as any lady’s maid, he dressed her, his hands touching her as much as possible.
When they started walking back to the house, they were silent, but then Josh slipped his hand into hers. Carrie at first tried to pull away from him. How could they do what they had just done, then Josh talk of her leaving in the next breath?
At the house, the children laughed at their torn clothing and the red faces of the adults. The kids were in high spirits after what Carrie had done to their Uncle Hiram. Gleefully, they reported that Hiram had left in a rage and had said some terrible things about Carrie and about his stupid brother who had married someone like Carrie. Flinging her arms around Carrie’s waist, Dallas hugged her and told her she loved her.
Not able to bear the thought of having to leave tomorrow, Carrie ran to the bedroom to change clothes. She almost wished she could leave today instead of tomorrow, almost wished she could get her parting over with.
When she had composed herself again, she went back into the parlor where Josh and Tem were washing dishes.
“We could show you how,” Tem said to Carrie with great sincerity in his voice.
Dallas stood beside Carrie, her little shoulders straight. “I don’t think I want to learn either. I don’t want to be a farmer’s wife. I want to be a great actress.”
That made Carrie laugh and pick the child up. “If you were an actress, you’d have dreadful people for companions,” she said. “And you’d have to travel all the time and you’d never be accepted into the best homes. No, it’s better that you marry some nice man and have babies.”
Dallas made a face. “I should like for men to give me roses.”
“If you marry the right man, he’ll give you roses.”
“If he can afford them,” Josh said angrily, then threw down the dishcloth and left the house.
“Now what did I say?” Carrie moaned. She would have thought that their intimacy would have made them closer, but with Josh it just seemed to make him angry.
Josh disappeared for the rest of the afternoon, and Carrie was left alone with the child
ren. At least he thinks that I can take care of them, she thought. He doesn’t think that I’m going to burn the house down.
In the late afternoon, she and the children sat outside on the porch, where Carrie told them stories about Maine and her brothers. She had every intention of telling them that she was leaving in the morning, but she couldn’t seem to say the words.
An hour after sundown, Josh returned, hugged his children to him and told them to get washed and get into bed, that it was late.
Gloomily, Carrie got out of her chair and looked about her. Now she could smell roses, whereas before she came, the only smell surrounding the house was horse manure. Trying not to think of tomorrow, she went back into the house, and when the children kissed her goodnight, she had to work very hard not to burst into tears.
Dallas was nearly up the ladder when she looked back at her father. “Are you coming to bed soon?”
“I’m not sleeping with you tonight,” Josh said. “I’m sleeping in the big bed.”
“With Carrie?” Dallas asked.
“With Carrie,” Josh said, as though it were the most common thing in the world.
When the children were out of sight, Josh turned to her.
“I’m not sure…” she began, but she didn’t know what else to say. Should she say she wasn’t sure they should spend the night together? Was she afraid that she’d fall more in love with him and his family if they spent a whole night together? It wasn’t possible to love them more than she already did. Was she afraid that she’d cry more when she left them? Couldn’t happen. If she spent the night with Josh, would he want her to stay in the morning?
She looked across the room at his eyes, dark eyes hot with desire for her and all thoughts left her mind. She opened her arms to him. “Josh,” she whispered.
Moving swiftly toward her, he swept her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom.
Chapter Eleven