Eternity Read online

  Reaching across the table, ’Ring squeezed his sister’s hand. “I apologize. I think I have my poetry under control now. Tell me about yourself and what you’ve been doing.”

  “I was telling you about Josh. About his farm.” For all that she’d said that ’Ring wouldn’t care about Josh’s farm, the truth was she was a bit worried that ’Ring would find the place a little bit ragged. “And about Josh.” Her face lit up. “Josh can read a story aloud as well as Maddie can sing.”

  ’Ring looked at Josh with new respect. “Can you now? That’s saying a great deal.”

  “Who is Maddie?” Josh asked.

  “She’s ’Ring’s wife and to the world she’s known as LaReina.”

  It was Josh’s turn to look at ’Ring with respect, for LaReina was one of the world’s greatest opera singers. “My congratulations on your choice and on the honor of having such a woman for a wife. I’ve heard her sing many times. In Paris and Vienna and Rome. I’ve gone to hear her whenever possible.”

  “I didn’t know you’d been to all of those places,” Carrie said, but Josh ignored her.

  “Thank you,” ’Ring said. “She’s a wonderful woman and—” He broke off as his eyes widened. “You can read aloud…You’re—”

  With one very swift gesture, Josh flung his arm out and knocked ’Ring’s wine glass over, effectively stopping ’Ring from saying what he’d started to. As Carrie was looking at the mess on the table, she missed seeing the way her husband looked at ’Ring with eyes that begged him to say no more.

  After Carrie finished trying to mop up the spilled wine, she didn’t know what had happened, but she knew that something had. It was as though both men had joined some secret club that excluded her. It was as though, in the space of a few seconds, they had become the best of friends. For the rest of the long dinner, they talked to each other, only now and then acknowledging Carrie’s presence. They talked of all the cities they had seen, plays they had attended, and ’Ring’s wife’s singing. They talked of people they both knew, of hotels and food and wine.

  Carrie sat silent through the meal, ignored and smoldering at the way they treated her: as though she were much too young and untraveled to be of interest to them.

  At long last the two men decided it was time to retire. “I shall see both of you tomorrow,” ’Ring said. “Shall we say at your farm at noon? The wedding is set for five o’clock. That will give me time to meet these children of yours. Tell me,” he said to Josh, “are they anything like you?”

  Carrie felt that her brother was asking Josh a question that had a different meaning from what she was hearing.

  “They are like me with one exception: They have more talent.”

  That seemed to amuse ’Ring a great deal.

  By the time she and Josh said goodnight to ’Ring, Carrie wasn’t speaking to either man.

  As Josh took her arm, he was musing over something to himself and didn’t seem to realize that Carrie was angry at him. Nor did he seem to notice that she wasn’t speaking to him.

  “I brought Hiram’s wagon,” he said. “It’s at the stables. I assume you are going home with me.”

  Carrie’s first thought was to tell him that she was staying at her shop in town, but she wanted to see the children again, and she wanted to tell them that she was staying in Eternity after all. She might never speak to their father again, but she was going to marry him tomorrow—if his wife gave him a divorce, that is.

  Josh went to the stables, got the wagon, helped her onto the seat, then talked to her all the way home. He told her what a fine fellow her brother was, how educated, how wise, how cultured.

  “I guess that’s because he knows all the people you know, has been to all the places you have been. Places that I didn’t even know you’d seen.” Carrie’s voice rang with sarcasm.

  Josh didn’t seem to hear her derision, but kept on talking about ’Ring and what a great guy he was. A man’s man. “A man like him can handle a horse, a gun, a line of Shakespeare, and a woman all at once.”

  At that particular line, Carrie said she thought she was going to throw up.

  “Is it the baby?” Josh asked, concerned, starting to halt the horses.

  “No, it’s you.”

  Smiling, he flicked the reins of the horses.

  Before going to Josh’s house, they stopped at Hiram’s big, sturdy, perfectly clean, perfectly dull farmhouse—not a flower in sight—to pick up the children. Carrie stayed on the wagon while Josh went in to get them, carrying a sleeping Dallas in his arms, a drowsy Tem following. Carrie took Dallas, and Tem climbed onto the seat, snuggling against Carrie.

  “Are you going to stay or leave?” Tem asked, yawning.

  “Stay,” Carrie answered.

  Tem nodded as though to acknowledge that this was the latest decision, but that it might change in the next minute.

  At home Josh took the children up the ladder to the loft, then came back down to the first floor. Yawning, he walked to the bedroom.

  Carrie met him at the door. “What are you doing?”

  “Going to bed.”

  “Not in this room, you’re not,” she said firmly.

  Josh sighed. “Carrie, love, this is ridiculous. I’m tired and I don’t want to have to share that tiny bed with Dallas. Have pity on me.”

  “You are not spending the night with me. You and I aren’t married. In fact, legally, you are married to another woman. If you and I slept together, we’d be committing adultery.”

  “But I was married to her before when we spent the night together.”

  “But then I didn’t know anything.”

  Moving closer to her, the sleepy look left his eyes, and his voice lowered to a silky tone of seduction. “Carrie, my love, I just want a place to sleep. You can’t deny a man that, can you?”

  “Are you tired from raising worms all day or from talking to my brother and ignoring me all evening?”

  “Carrie, honey,” he said, pleading and reaching out to caress her cheek.

  “Don’t you touch me!” she said and slammed the bedroom door in his face.

  Upstairs, when Josh climbed in the narrow bed with his daughter, Dallas sleepily said, “I told you Carrie wanted the big bed by herself.”

  The next morning Carrie was sound asleep when Josh allowed the children in the room to wake her up. But instead of jumping on the bed as they usually did, they climbed in with her and Choo-choo, and soon all of them were sleeping together in a heap.

  Josh stood in the doorway drinking a cup of the world’s worst coffee and looked at his family with love—well, maybe he didn’t love the dog, but even that creature was growing on him.

  Last night at dinner, contrary to what Carrie thought, he had been very aware of her anger. He probably shouldn’t have indulged himself so, but her jealousy had felt so very good. He’d had women jealous when he’d given his attention to others, but those women had meant nothing to him. Those women had not loved him, not loved the man, but had loved who they thought he was. Several women in his past had tried to get to Josh through his children, but his children were very astute: They had universally hated all the women.

  But now, looking at Carrie and the kids, not being able to tell where one person began and the other ended, he knew how very much he loved her. And she was right: He and his children needed her.

  He smiled at the lot of them. Everything was going to be all right now. He knew it. All he had to do was deal with Nora, and then he’d be free.

  As though thinking of her conjured her, Choo-choo jumped out from under the covers and began to bark frantically. Outside was the sound of an approaching carriage, and as Josh turned toward the front door, he grimaced. It couldn’t be Nora already, could it?

  At Choo-choo’s bark, Carrie came awake slowly, and for the first few moments she wasn’t sure where she was.

  Tem raised his head. “Who’s that?” They could hear the carriage as it stopped in front of the house; a man was yelling at the horses.