like to see you in your nightgown.” He reached for the overflowing bucket and effortlessly lifted it down from the hook beneath the spout. “Why don’t you go inside and get out of those wet clothes. I’ll heat up water for you to wash.”
Thomas waited for her to move away but she stood rooted on the spot. His expression softened. “Go on now, Maude,” he said gently. “You can undress in the bedroom, in privacy.”
The name broke the spell between them. “Call me Charlotte,” she said, her voice rising with a touch of despair at how little control she seemed to possess over her situation. “I dislike the name Maude. I want you to call me Charlotte.”
“Charlotte?” Confusion flickered across his features. Then his frown eased and he gave a slow nod, his eyes steady on her. “I like that.” He lowered his voice and added in a low murmur, “More syllables for a man to whisper in the throes of passion.”
Charlotte gave a shocked gasp and fled inside.
Thomas sat on the porch steps and watched the twilight thicken over the valley. A chorus of frogs croaked in the muddy pond near his irrigation station. In the creek, a beaver splashed its tail. A hawk soared overhead. The scent of blossoms from the pomegranate orchard by the lake floated on the breeze.
Sundown was his favorite part of the day. The chores were done. Horses were safe in their stalls, the milk cow in its pen and chickens in their coop. It was the time to relax, time to allow his aching muscles a moment of rest. Time to look forward to supper, and then to sitting down by the fire to work on a piece of furniture, or to read a book by lamplight.
Ever since he’d finished building the house in his second year on the farm, Thomas had sat on the porch steps in the evenings. And every night, he’d wondered what it might feel like, to have someone inside waiting for him.
All his life, he’d longed for that.
To enter a room and feel welcome.
Would he achieve it now? Would his wife smile at him, her face bright with pleasure as he stepped across the threshold? Or would it forever be his fate to live with the silent hostility that had ruined his childhood and youth, until he could no longer take it and had chosen to leave his Michigan home.
There was a risk in marrying an unknown woman.
It was a risk he’d felt compelled to take.
For not trying at all would have been cowardice.
Thomas pushed up to his feet, slapped the dust from his knees. He should have changed into work clothes instead of taking care of the animals in his Sunday suit.
One corner of his mouth tugged up in a wry smile. Didn’t matter. He’d not wear the suit again until someone died. His smile deepened. Or perhaps for the christening of his child. Their child. For, according to the law, any child born to his wedded wife would be his, even if another man might have planted the seed.
“Charlotte.” He tasted her name on his tongue.
“My wife,” he whispered into the silence, enjoying the sound of it.
He raked one more satisfied glance over his valley, now shrouded in deep shadows, and then he walked up the porch steps into the house.
The parlor was empty, the lamps unlit. Thomas turned toward the bedroom. The doors were closed. He didn’t know what to make of it. He understood it was common for women to fear their wedding night. It made sense. Most women had little idea what to expect, and it was human nature to fear the unknown, but that should not be the case with Charlotte. The proof of her experience was growing in her belly.
With hesitant steps, Thomas set off across the floor. Before he reached the bedroom door to the left of the fireplace, the door on the right side opened. His wife stood in the opening. The last glimmer of daylight from the window behind her silhouetted her, rendering her thin white nightgown transparent.
Thomas felt his mouth go dry. His heart hammered in the confines of his ribs. He wanted to rush up to her, rake his hands down the dark curls that cascaded past her shoulders. He wanted to frame her face between his palms, tilt it up toward him and kiss her until his body hummed with joy.
She moved.
A step toward him.
Not away from him.
And then she laughed—a tingling, feminine laughter that crawled up his spine and fanned the needs he had just spent an hour trying to bank down.
“Why do you have two doors to the bedroom?” she asked. “I can see us going round and round, looking for each other, one of us going in through one door while the other one is coming out through the other door.”
Thomas had trouble speaking. He had to clear his throat before the words came. “It is so that the bedroom can be divided into two later, creating a separate bedroom for the children. That’s why I put in a window on both sides, rather than one big window at the end.”
She spun around to survey the bedroom. The transparent nightgown gave him a view of her back, different, but just as fascinating.
“I see,” she said. “What a clever idea.”
Thomas smiled. Tomorrow, he would show her his irrigation station, and some other inventions he’d made to ease the burden of farm chores. She might be surprised to discover that despite his lack of formal education he possessed as much knowledge of mechanics as a trained engineer.
“I’m hungry,” he told her. “Will you eat supper with me?”
She whirled back around to face him and edged closer. Either she lacked modesty, or she had no idea how much the flimsy nightgown revealed. Thomas would have bet his life on the latter. When she was only two steps away, she clasped her hands together in front of her in a manner that was becoming familiar to him.
“I haven’t cooked supper for you,” she said, her expression crestfallen.
Another wave of warmth spread in his chest. This was exactly what he had hoped for. A woman to help with the chores. “It’s all right,” he reassured her. “I didn’t expect you to cook anything. Not on your first night. I was just going to have some bread and cheese.”
She pressed the flat of her palm against her belly and held it there. Thomas guessed a pregnant woman might like to do that, to feel the new life growing inside her. His eyes lingered at her waistline. Five months. Shouldn’t she be bigger? Without thinking, he blurted out his thoughts.
“You look too thin. Is there something wrong with the baby?”
“No,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong.”
“Are you sure? Have you seen a doctor?”
She shook her head in silent reply.
“Not at all?” he pressed. “Not even in the beginning?”
“No.” She came closer to him, touched the back of his hand in a gesture of reassurance. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with the baby. Nothing at all. I’m just small, that’s all. Some women don’t show until they go into labor.”
He studied her guarded expression for a second, then nodded. He couldn’t help the niggling feeling that something was wrong. Maybe earlier Miss Jackson had tried to get rid of the baby. Maybe she had taken some potion and it had harmed the development of the child, stunting the growth in the womb.
Miss Jackson. Thomas frowned. Strange, how it seemed to him as if that person, the person in the tintype photograph he had filed away, was someone else altogether, and not his wife, the woman who had asked him to call her Charlotte.
Turning to the kitchen cupboard, Thomas took out a loaf of bread from a stone jar and a wedge of cheese from the milk safe. “If you keep