by Kate Whitsby
Alma got another volley of acid words ready to launch at him, but the look in his eye stopped her.
“I’m sorry I said that,” he growled. “I didn’t mean I didn’t want to have anything to do with you. I’m just worked up about the things he said about me. That’s all.”
“You made your own bed,” Alma grumbled. “You could stop his mouth with a single word explaining that you’re too young to be in the war, but you won’t. I don’t understand it. I told you a dozen times I know you’re innocent. I just can’t figure out why you don’t clear your name with him the same way.”
“He won’t listen to me,” Jude muttered. “He has his mind made up about me, and nothing will change it.”
“You haven’t tried,” Alma repeated.
“I haven’t tried,” he agreed. “And I’m not going to try. I wouldn’t stoop so low.”
“Then just wait a little while,” Alma told him. “Just wait until he goes back to his chair and Amelia and Allegra go to bed. Then we’ll go back up to the house and slip into bed. We’ll wake up tomorrow morning and ride out to work like nothing ever happened.”
“Do you really think that’s the best way to handle this situation?” he asked. “There has to be a better way.”
“Well,” she returned. “Running away sure isn’t it.”
“I guess you’re right,” Jude replied. “I guess I let my head get away from me.”
Alma smiled at him. “Does that happen to you a lot?”
Jude stared down at the toe of his boot. “I guess it does. I guess I don’t really think things through all that much. Maybe I should.”
“Maybe you should,” Alma agreed. “But you’re married now, and two heads are better than one. I know how to handle my father and my sisters. If you just listen to me, I can smooth things over for you.”
“All right,” he replied.
“Take my word for it,” Alma continued. “If you don’t pay Papa’s accusations the slightest attention, you can live peacefully enough with me and Amelia and Allegra. Don’t talk to him until he gets over it on his own. Pretty soon, he’ll run out of steam and he won’t accuse you anymore. He’ll sort the whole thing out in his own mind, and that will be the end of it.”
Jude averted his face toward the barn wall. “I don’t like it. I don’t like giving ground when I know the other man is in the wrong.”
“In his mind,” Alma told him. “He’s in the right. If you won’t explain to him about being too young to be in that battle, then just ignore him.”
“And what if he starts ranting and raving like he did tonight?” Jude asked. “What if he starts foaming at the mouth and saying he won’t eat at the same table with me or have me staying in his house and sleeping with his daughter? What then?”
“If he says that,” Alma replied. “Just keep eating and sleeping with his daughter. What can he do to stop you? We’re married, and it’s as much my house as his. Where does he think you’re going to sleep, if not with me?”
Jude fidgeted. Then he stole a peek at Alma. “That part’s alright, don’t you think?”
“The part about you sleeping with his daughter?” Alma grinned. “It’s all right with me. It’s worth putting up with the ranting of an addled old man. That’s the only reason I put up with it.”
“All right,” Jude replied. “In that case, I’ll put up with it, too.”
Alma beamed at him. “Thank you. I don’t think we’ll have to put up with it for long. Then it will be in the distant past and we won’t even remember that he said anything.”
Jude sighed. “How long do you think we have to wait out here before we can go back inside?”
“We don’t have to wait long,” Alma told him. “We can go in any time now, if you want to. I just thought….”
“What?” he asked.
“I thought,” she continued. “This might be a good chance to spend some time alone together. No one will come out looking for us in the dark. They’ll think we’re having a quarrel or something.”
Jude cracked a mischievous grin. “Leave it to you to think of that. Aren’t you tired from last night?”
“Not too much,” Alma replied. “Are you?”
“I’m wiped out,” he told her. “I wouldn’t be much good to you.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Alma replied. She took him by the hand and led him to the far back corner of the barn, where a place to stable a horse stood empty with fresh clean dry grass spread out on the ground.
Alma kicked the grass into a pile in the corner and drew Jude down onto it. She leaned her back against the hardened clay wall of the building. Jude slouched down and stretched out next to her.
He looped his arm under the small of her back and pillowed his head on the soft flesh of her shoulder where it met her chest.
“So we’re alone together,” he murmured. “I don’t suppose you want to spend the night out here. I don’t think I can stay awake another night, no matter how interesting things get.”
“I wasn’t thinking of staying out here all night,” Alma replied. “I wasn’t even thinking about making things interesting. If you’re tired, we can just sit together and talk until we go back inside. Like you said, we probably won’t get much chance. We should take the opportunity when and where we find it.”
“It sure is nice to lie here with you without a bunch of other people around,” Jude remarked. “This is the first time we’ve been alone together, apart from this morning when your sisters went out shooting.”
“We weren’t really alone then,” Alma pointed out. “Amelia and Allegra were just over the hill and they could have come back at any moment. They won’t come now. They’re probably all sound asleep now.”
“You people sure go to bed early,” Jude replied. “You don’t even sit up working in the evenings the way most people do.”
“The longer you stay up,” Alma told him. “The more money it costs in candles and lamp oil. We get up at sunrise, anyway, so it’s best to go to bed as soon as supper’s over. That’s the way we’ve always done it. And then….” She stopped.
“What is it?” he asked.
“If you do anything else,” she stammered. “You wind up staying up for a while, so it makes up for it.”
“Oh, I understand,” Jude replied. “Kind of like we did last night?”
“Something like that,” Alma replied.
He chuckled into her shirt. She slid her hand up his back where the pointy bones of his spine broke the smooth surface of his skin. She felt the hardened bands of muscle underneath the velvety cover of skin. When her hand reached the cleft of his neck, she squeezed and rubbed the tight bands of sinew between his shoulders and the bony base of his head. He hummed and sighed.
“I was thinking about what you said about us having our own house,” Alma murmured. “There are lots of nice spots down along the river where we could build something. If we start having children, this house is going to get pretty tight once they start growing up. We could build a house down by the river in the shade of the willows. That would be nice.”
Jude didn’t answer.
“I know what I said about people around here living with four generations under one roof,” she continued. “But now that we’ve spent one night in the house with my father and my sisters, and now that we’ve had a couple of times alone together, I think it would be nice to have our own house. And I know what I said about getting the money to build it. But if you want to, we could sell some my share of the stock now to get the money to start the house. Then we could use our share of the auction sales in the fall to pay for the rest.”
She caught her breath to stop herself from babbling excitedly and to give Jude a chance to answer. She held her breath, waiting for him to respond. But he still didn’t answer.
A queer heaviness in his limbs made her pull her hand away from his neck, but he still didn’t move a muscle. Then a long snore reverberated through the quietness of the barn. He had fallen asleep.
Chapter 26
