by Cheri Chaise
“Now Drew.” Essie smacked his arm playfully as she came up to him, stopping him from saying something I had no doubt was entirely inappropriate – most likely about their tits. “We’re sisters, not twins.”
That got a chuckle out of most everyone.
Cole glanced around and half-turned my way. “And this is my brother Bret.”
I tugged my hat from my head and tried to hide as much of my bare chest as possible as I smoothed my long, dark hair with my other hand before I stuck it out. “Nice to meet you.”
Brown eyes widened, but she successfully averted them from my bare torso. Thin lips pressed tight together as her throat bobbed. The vein in her neck throbbed as her small chest heaved.
And then she did something I didn’t expect. The lips tipped up at the corners. Crinkles appeared at the edges of her eyes, though not from the pain of a headache this time. Abby let go of where she’d rested her hand atop Cole’s arm and took my outstretched hand in both of hers.
Hesitantly. Then warmly. Accepting. Her smile relaxed and even grew.
“Bret, it’s…a pleasure to meet you too.”
In astonishment, I glanced over Abby’s head to see Essie dabbing at the tears in her eyes. From fear or relief I wasn’t sure. But before I could ascertain the reason, Mrs. Barker opened the front door, letting the children out to swarm around us.
And ruined the moment.
“Estella, you poor dear, you’ve exhausted yourself.” Edna held the screen door open wider. “Come inside now and sit down. A woman in your condition shouldn’t be on her feet so long.”
“Condition?” Abby said, releasing my hand and facing Essie. “You’re…with child?”
Essie nodded and continued to dab at tears that turned from what I could only describe as happy to fearful as her gaze cut to me – however briefly.
“Again?” Abby’s brown eyes darted to where Jake and Jude hovered in their mother’s skirts, pausing on Meg between me and Cole with a murmur. “Four children in five years.”
Abby glanced between her sister and Cole with a smile that had tightened. “Congratulations are again in order, I see.”
Cole mumbled out something that sounded like a thank you.
Abby seemed to regain a modicum of her composure and squared her ruffled shoulders. “What are you hoping for this time? A boy or a girl?”
The question was directed at my brother. Essie slowly slid in to stand next to her sister with a pained expression that winked across her face when she glanced at me – and then was gone like a shooting star across the Montana sky.
Cole cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable talking about the child Essie cradled in her belly. My child. He glanced my way just as his green eyes brightened and a grin edged into his cheeks.
“Meg, what would you like? A little brother or sister?” he asked my daughter.
She wrinkled up her tiny nose and thought about it for a split second. “A sister.”
“And why a sister?” Abby asked.
Meg shrugged and nodded at her brothers. “To help me kick their asses.”
Abby gasped and covered her mouth. Edna grumbled something about negative influences – most likely directed at me. Essie dropped her head with a shake as a blush rushed into her cheeks. The rest of simply made our way back to the work awaiting us.
Leaving our wife to deal with the fallout.
Chapter Fifteen
Estella
My daughter’s foul language was forgotten by the time a scandalized Edna returned inside the house to finish packing up the food while I continued Abby’s tour of Carston Ranch.
However, Edna had also likely returned indoors in order to provide an opportunity for my sister and me to talk openly.
No accusations were advanced concerning the stark difference in Meghan’s appearance from her brothers. Neither did it seem as if any were forthcoming. I’d been prepared with an excuse of sorts that Meghan spent an inordinate amount of time outdoors.
But that flimsy excuse would’ve collapsed the moment all of the children rushed past us into the yard to chase the chickens.
Abby steadied herself with a gloved hand to the porch railing and shielded her eyes from the morning sun as she took a deep breath. Or as deep a breath as that damnable corset allowed.
“How is your head?” I asked, noting her squint.
That small hat did little to protect her eyes from the bright sunlight. More of a lovely little confection for societal engagements than anything of practical use under the Montana sky.
“I have no complaints,” she replied. “Though this sun is…rather bright.”
“We can return to the house is you like. Or I could fetch you a parasol.”
“No need.” She breathed in a shallow breath then sighed. “Perhaps this fresh air will do me some good.”
The men once again busied themselves with stacking hay bales into the wagon before heading back into the barn for further preparations. Two-by-two, Drew brought out the rest of the saddled horses and hitched them to the corral posts, waving each time he went in and came back out, stopping to instruct the hands on where to put supplies in the second wagon.
As we slowly strolled across the yard, we stirred the dust until it clung like my children to the bottom of her silk skirts.
“I hadn’t realized you were plagued with headaches like mother once had.”
“Oh, I don’t get them like mother did. At least not until…” Her voice dropped off before she shook her head as if to rid it of unwanted thoughts. “It was likely brought on by fatigue from travels.”
Her tiny nose wrinkled as her gaze swept from the henhouse, to the barn, across the stables, and over her shoulder to the bunkhouse as Cookie struggled under the weight of his burden before one of the other hands assisted.
I could only imagine what went through her head at the ruggedness of our lifestyle. But I wouldn’t trade any of it. Not for all the ribbons and lace in her trunks.
“I hope the journey wasn’t too difficult for you. And that Cole was at least somewhat considerate.”
I remembered all too well how my impatient husband had acted with me once. So sharp and short when his temper flared. He’d gotten much better in the years since, but I’d no doubt seeing all those trunks again had set his teeth on edge.
Abby touched my arm, stopping our forward progression. “Your husband was more than conscionable of my needs, Estella. Rest assured, you’ve married well.” Her glance away toward my squealing children gave me a moment to compose myself at her words, and I barely caught her murmur. “Better than I did, it seems.”
I struggled anew. But this time it was to hide my astonishment. To know that despite our more humble circumstances than what we’d grown up with – what she’d married into – she considered my marital bliss more advantageous than her own.
Now if only I could share with her just how full was that marital bliss.
I glanced over at my children and smiled to see Meghan cradling an egg that had been missed in the morning’s gathering. Or perhaps the mother had tried to hide it to keep it from our table.
Protect it – like a good mother was supposed to do. Like I’d do for any of my little ones.
Abby’s tone grew wistful as my twins gathered around their sister to see the treasure she’d unearthed, their hair glistening so differently in the sunlight. “Three children in five years.”
And they were all mine. I pressed to my belly but remained silent with the reminder of the fourth.
“And to think, you were so worried at one time about the possibility of barrenness. Especially after…” She stopped short of mentioning the reasoning behind my coming to Montana and painted on a tight but practiced society smile. “Well, we will leave that sore subject in the past where it belongs.”
I offered up a reassuring smile. No need to mention the presumptuous and odious Alan Westford or the lover I’d taken in a most public fashion to avoid his matrimonial entreaties. The love and pleasure of
my husbands covered over those old and long forgotten wounds.
But it was obvious my sister was harboring wounds of her own. Wounds that festered beneath a carefully crafted surface.
I broached them with cautious trepidation – and ulterior motives. “Now don’t worry, my dear sister. When you return home, you will have every eligible gentlemen begging for your hand.” I took hers in mine. “Who knows? Once word spreads of your visit, you’ll even have plenty of hale and hearty Montana ranchers beating down our door.”
She gasped in scandalized surprise. “But I’m still in mourning.”
I took one last look at the children as we passed them by and then opened the stable door. “Society’s mores mean little out here, Abby. When you’re a living, breathing, available woman, that’s all men are looking for in the Montana Territory,” I emphasized before getting to the crux of the discussion. “That is, if you have any intentions of staying with us longer than a few weeks.”
The hushed dimness of the stables offered a reprieve from the harsh sunlight – and I hoped a lack of listening ears since the men outside appeared nearly ready to leave. However, the dimness couldn’t disguise dark eyes that filled with tears under my pointed stare.
Abby’s countenance crumbled with an inconsolable wail, “I have nowhere else to go!”
The assurance of Edna’s pronouncement upon their arrival sent a momentary stab through my heart. The realization that circumstances with my husbands were not only changed in the short term but into the foreseeable future.
But I set concerns for my own wellbeing aside and wrapped my arms around my desolate baby sister.
“Shhh…do not trouble yourself so. You are welcome here for as long as you need to stay.”
She spent her initial tears upon my shoulder before she raised her head. My heart broke anew to see her so despondent.
“Even if that stay means…I will have to reside under your roof for the remainder of our lives?”
I cupped my hand around her tearstained cheek. “Of course.” There were no other words I could say. We were family.
I held her to my breast as if comforting one of my babes after a skinned knee. “Though I wonder why you do not plan to return to your home in DC or the Davies home in Baltimore. Even the Harrisons in Pennsylvania will offer a better chance at capturing the eye of a well-heeled society gentleman.”
She shook her head, lips pressed tightly together. After an indecorous sniff and a hiccup, she responded, “The Harrisons want nothing to do with me. Not after…after…”
I encouraged her to take a deeper breath, afraid she’d pass out with the corset’s restriction. “After what?”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t.” Though I had not a single inkling as to what she referred.
“How could I have known?”
“Known what?” Concern rose and fought against the cold heartbreak that echoed hollowly in my chest.
She shook her head even more fervently and fought against the wash of tears. All she succeeded in doing was biting her lower lip until I expected blood to seep past her teeth as the silent tears continued unabated.
I didn’t speak. But waiting her out was almost impossible before she had managed to calm herself enough to glance around the stables before speaking a bit more coherently. “There was a reason…we never had…children.” She bit down on her knuckle this time after the pronouncement.
The chill of concern melted away like a breath as I thought I finally understood her distress. “Abby dear, you are still a young woman. There is plenty of time for children of your own. I worried needlessly for all those years that I wouldn’t have any.”
A deeper, shuddering breath. “It is not barrenness of which I speak, Ee.”
I warmed to hear the old familiar endearment. Much like how my men had each bequeathed me with their chosen variation on my name to suit their individual desires. Though I found it interesting that the only brother who’d yet come to my bed had chosen the most sentimental endearment of my sister’s.
“Then pray, speak plainly,” I urged. “I could never think ill of you for doing so, and wouldn’t dream of revealing a confidence.”
Especially when I had so many of my own to conceal.
She steadied herself on a nearby rugged bench, looked around once again, then lowered her voice. “Phillip wasn’t killed by a runaway carriage.”
It took a moment for the full truth of what she’d spoken of her husband to widen my eyes in shock. “You lied to me?”
“I had to,” she blurted out in a most unladylike way. “I couldn’t even think on the truth back then, much less write to you about such things. But now, after Father…”
“What about Father?” I dropped down beside her and gripped her thin shoulders. “Please tell me you didn’t lie about him.”
“I didn’t lie,” Abby admitted. “I…I just kept the worst to myself.”
“The worst…?”
“But only until I could reveal it to you in person.”
“It’s just you and me now, Abby.” I squeezed my hands together in my lap. “Tell me the truth…about everything.”
She twisted on the narrow bench beside me, unconcerned with the snags the silk was likely to endure. Or the bits of debris from cleaning horse hooves embedded in the wood’s surface.
It was a comfort to feel the warmth of her hand against mine as the chill in her words washed through me.
“It wasn’t even a year into our marriage before everything changed with Phillip,” she began. “He came in to me less and less and stayed out later and later of an evening.”
She sighed before continuing. As if now that she’d begun, she couldn’t wait to rid herself of the lies to mask the truth. “I deluded myself with the notion that he was out late, working hard in service of his constituency. Serving long hours for the people of Pennsylvania.” Her fingers tightened before releasing my hand to crease the dark silk of her dress. “But it wasn’t until his death that I learned…it was all a lie.”
Much like how I lied to her now by omitting the truth about the love I shared among the Carston brothers.
“How then did he die?” I finally asked gently.
Abby looked up at me with fresh but unspilled tears swimming in her eyes. “He was shot.” Her bottom lip quivered. “Over a…a whore in an opium den.”
My hand sought hers out this time among the silk, and I squeezed in what I hoped was reassurance. “I’m so sorry.”
My throat was tight as tears rushed behind my closed lids. But they weren’t because of the lie I was currently living. I thought of Cole’s confession long ago about how he’d relieved himself with a whore the night before our wedding. At least in our case, we hadn’t been married at the time.
But had he or any of my husbands felt the need for such release with someone else since I’d come into their lives? If one woman wasn’t enough to satisfy one man, had I been deluding myself all these years that I was enough to keep all of my husbands content in bed? Or out of it? Were the Carston men slipping into a saloon and another’s bed during their trips into town without me?
If they couldn’t have me while Abby was around, would Bret or Drew content themselves with someone else? A new thought struck me between my ribs – was that why Evan had refused thus far to come to my bed?
I swallowed the thick knot of emotion that welled in my throat – then silently berated myself. How had I turned my sister’s pain into unfounded worries of my own? This wasn’t about me. This was about my sister and the torment she’d endured throughout the last years.
All alone. “And what about our father? Did his heart truly fail him?”
Instead of more tears wasted on the man, Abby took a shaky breath in and released it in a huff. “That part I wrote was true,” she confessed. “But what I didn’t say was that he died while…while under a whore of his own.”
While I’d been shocked by the idea of Phillip Harrison being discovered in
such wretched circumstances, the idea that my father had succumbed to such pursuits didn’t hold quite the same sting of surprise.
“But what about the genteel society? I thought such places were outlawed back east.”
“Apparently a man can pursue any depraved vice,” she said, ire giving rise to her tone. “As long as it is done outside of proper society’s notice.”
I’d learned such things the hard way. When word got out that I’d taken a lover, I was the one shunned from society while my lover went about his daily pursuits. For years my father had avoided my presence and restricted my movements, only allowing a roof to remain over my head to avoid further scandal.
And all the while, he’d courted scandal of his own. The only difference being, as Abby had put it so succinctly, he’d kept his exploits out of public purview – and was a man.
“Please don’t misunderstand me, dear sister, and you are more than welcome to stay here as you need,” I began. “But as a widow, you no longer need a chaperone to appear with a man in proper society. Surely you would be more comfortable with modern conveniences and the familiar trappings of your home.”
“I have no home left,” she admitted. “Phillip only rented the house in Washington, and I…I had to let the Baltimore property go in order to pay Father’s debts.”
I hesitated to ask. “But what of his business? A dividend there should allow you to rent a modest home quite comfortably.”
She slowly shook her head. “His interest was sold to his partner years ago, after his reelection to Congress.”
That meant only one thing. “Mr. Westford?”
She nodded. “Alan’s father now controls it all. And after the manner in which his son was rejected…”
My heart nearly skidded to a stop as Abby’s voice faded away with the reminder of my past. But now that horrible family ran the business started by our great-grandfather. I’d never known why Father had brought in Mr. Westford as a partner before I was born. Even if I’d gone through with the arranged marriage, I’m sure Alan would’ve found some way to keep me from ever getting my hands on it.
