by Prairie Wife
Prairie Wife by Cheryl St. John
No mother should have to bury her child. Amy Shelby had learned this sorrow well. Her heart had gone into the ground a year ago along with her boy's tiny casket. And not even her husband, Jesse, wrestling the same pain, could resurrect any hope in her.
Jesse Shelby mourned two losses--his baby son and his openhearted bride, for when their child died, Amy retreated behind a wall of grief as wide as the Nebraska prairie. But could a chance for a new family heal their wounded marriage--and guide them back to the comfort of each other's arms?
"There's more fire in a bottle of whiskey than I've found in this bed for a long time, Amy."
"What did we just do? Wasn't that okay?"
He slipped his arms into his shirt and glared at her in the darkness. "What did we do?"
Holding the sheet pressed to her breasts, she wondered why she was having this discussion. It didn't make sense.
He came toward her and leaned forward, one hand on each side of her hips on the mattress, his face inches above hers. "I know what it used to be. Lovemaking."
Her chest tightened.
"Do you even love me anymore, Amy?"
Her head roared with confusion and fear. He was her husband. He was Jesse. He'd just known her body intimately for the thousandth time, and yet she couldn't say what he wanted her to say. He needed her.
His need terrified her....
ISBN 0-373-29339-9 PRAIRIE WIFE
Copyright © 2005 by Cheryl Ludwigs
www.eHarlequin.com
Printed in U.S.A.
This story is dedicated to my faithful readers. I appreciate you.
Prologue
Shelby Station, Nebraska, 1867
Amy would never know how many shovelfuls of earth it took to fill a grave so heartbreakingly deep and yet so pathetically small. She'd lost count around two hundred or so. The first falls of dirt had been loud, landing on the sanded and varnished wood coffin with a mind-numbing thud.
A couple of women had urged her away from the grave, but she'd resisted their efforts and had remained to experience the entire ordeal. It was the least she could do.
Jesse had built the casket. A day and a half it had taken him. A day and a half while she sat beside the small, still body laid out on wooden planks in the dining room, barely acknowledging visitors, gifts of food or expressions of sympathy. The finished project, when he'd carried it into the house, was a work of art. An eloquent expression of love and grief. An outpouring of everything he felt and could express only in this final gesture for his son.
The corners of the heavy oak box had been flawlessly fitted tongue and groove, the entire work stained a dark mahogany, then varnished to a shiny gloss. The interior was padded, upholstered and tucked with a rich blue velvet.
Amy had left the room while Jesse and her father, Sam Burnham, placed the lifeless body of her barely three-year-old child in the casket. When she'd returned half an hour later, Tim looked as though he were merely sleeping upon the luxurious fabric. He looked as though at any moment, his eyelashes would flutter and his blue eyes would open; he'd smile that smile that touched every place in her heart and left her aching with pride and love.
But Tim was as still as he had been since she had pulled him from the creek behind the station and tried to breathe life back into him. He wore his Sunday clothing, dark pants and a white shirt, a miniature string tie. His fair hair was neatly combed, and the obstinate curl that had always fallen over his forehead had been tamed into perfection.
As Amy watched, Jesse ruffled the lock so that it fell upon Tim's forehead in the endearing way it always did. She knew just how soft Tim's hair felt beneath Jesse's loving touch. She had finger-combed it back a thousand times.
Taking a step closer, Amy noticed something in Tim's hand that hadn't been there before. A ray of sunlight streaming through the dining room window glimmered on gold. Her boy held a watch. The pocket watch that Jesse's father had given him, and with which Tim had always loved to play. As a baby, he'd sat on Jesse's lap, enthralled with the timepiece. Jesse had promised the child that one day the watch would be his. It shouldn't have been so soon...and it should never have been like this....
The watch's tick was loud in the silent room. The sun caught and reflected droplets on Tim's still tiny hands. Tears. Tears had fallen from Jesse's eyes, tears were still streaking her husband's lean cheeks.
As if in a cocoon of silent unreality, Amy watched without feeling anything. The place where her heart had been was a cavity. Cold. Empty. Jesse had carried on. Jesse had built a coffin. Jesse ate and drank coffee. Jesse cried.
Amy was as lifeless as their son.
The least she could do was stand here now and watch it all. Watch as her father and Jesse scooped dirt and moved it into the grave, their shirts growing damp with sweat. It must feel better to do something. But she didn't have to feel at all, did she? Everything would be okay— she could survive without letting out the scream on the inside.
She watched as Jesse paused in his efforts to wipe perspiration from his eyes. Perspiration—or tears? His blue gaze lifted and discovered her standing across from him. If there was a message in his expression, she didn't receive it. He had tried to hold her the night before, but she'd turned away, unable to allow him into her private world of nothingness.
Amy closed her eyes and thought of her precious Tim in his little shirt and pants, lying against the blue velvet. Thought of the watch ticking... ticking... until it wound down... silent forever. Like her son.
Chapter One
Shelby Station, Nebraska, 1868
Jesse entered the kitchen at twilight. After the stage travelers had eaten and gone next door to their assigned lodging, he and Amy always ate a late supper together, and the help thoughtfully left them alone. The room smelled of beef and gravy. Steam rose from a pan of potatoes from which Amy had recently poured boiling water.
"Can I mash those for you?"
He started forward, but his wife grabbed the pan with a pot holder before he reached it. "I'll do it. You sit."
She used to let him help in the kitchen. She used to enjoy his company and having him near. Now she tolerated him.
The change had to do with Tim. And the day their son had drowned. And the way he had died. And the loss they'd suffered.
That was the day everything had changed.
But Jesse didn't know what to do about it. Nothing he said or did or attempted made a difference. Amy had become a different person. A person who didn't like him much. He doubted she even loved him anymore. As though it had been his fault. As though he hadn't wondered a thousand times if he could have prevented their son from waking from a nap and wandering from Shelby Station unobserved.
So Jesse sat at his place at the table and waited while she mashed the potatoes and set the food in front of him. Sat there like he did every night, waiting for her to talk to him, to look at him.
They ate in silence. Amy was a wonderful cook, and as he did every night, he told her so and ate everything she'd prepared. He didn't bother to pick up his plate or offer to help with the dishes, because that was something else she didn't need him for.
She carried their plates to the sink.
"I have a few chores to finish." Grabbing his hat, he went outside.
In the stable, he drew a bottle half full of whiskey from a nail keg and took a long pull. The fiery liquid immediately warmed his chest and within minutes his tense muscles relaxed. His newfound friend made the emptiness a little easier to bear. A year was a long time to miss a child without someone to share the grief. A long time to miss his wife's touch, her smile, anything remotely resembling comfort or affection.
He worked on repairing harnesses, and by the time the moon was
high in the sky, the bottle was empty and his patience was chafed beyond endurance.
His last chores were to check all the horses, make certain the lock on the luggage room was fastened tight, and extinguish lanterns. Two windows in the austere boardinghouse beside the house were illuminated, indicating overnight travelers still awake.
He washed at the pump, the refreshing cold water minimally cooling his frustration, then he entered the house, where an oil lamp cast shadows in the kitchen. Amy stood beside the table, cutting fabric around a paper pattern.
"There's coffee left on the stove," she said.
"No thanks."
She folded her sewing and tucked it into a basket. "I'll get the lamp."
Jesse walked ahead of her up the stairs, careful to keep his movements steady.
Once inside their room, she placed the lamp on the bureau. Jesse shrugged out of his shirt while Amy removed her dress and underclothing and pulled her nightgown over her head. He watched, glimpsing her slender body in the golden light. She'd lost weight in the past year, enough that she appeared too fragile. He'd hired more help for cooking and for cleaning rooms, but Amy worked too hard.
Still watching her, he pulled off his boots and socks. Avoiding his eyes, she moved to her dressing table, where she sat and removed the pins from her hair.
Her aloofness irritating him, Jesse moved behind her, picked up the brush from the table and, starting with the tangled ends, ran the bristles through the silken softness of her honey-colored tresses. Once the tangles were out, he stroked her hair from scalp to ends, the way she'd always loved.
"Your hair smells better than anything," he said, bending to lower his face into the tumble of glossy waves against her neck and inhale. All his resolve to keep his distance melted at her familiar clean feminine scent, and a knot formed in his belly.
"You've been drinking," she said.
It was his turn to avoid her comment. This was his wife, the woman who'd once come to him willingly and eagerly. After placing the brush on her dressing table, he threaded her hair with both hands and then caressed her shoulders through the thin cotton fabric of her nightgown. Her gaze raised to meet his in the glass, then skittered away.
He flattened his palms and slid them down the front of her gown, covering her breasts and cupping them. A groan escaped his throat at the long-missed pleasure of touching her, and he resisted pressing himself against her spine. He'd been in this emotional vacuum too long—way too long, and whiskey could only dull so much.
"Jesse—"
Taking her shoulders, he turned her upper body toward him and bent to cover her mouth with his. She didn't resist, didn't stiffen... didn't respond. He knew she tasted the whiskey on his lips, wondered somewhere in the back of his mind if it had become a familiar—or dreaded taste. Damn her! All she had to do was let his kiss and his touch affect her as it used to do. How had it happened that he'd become unable to reach her—to have any effect upon her? Sometimes he wondered if she'd even miss him if he didn't come to the house for supper. If he never came home again.
A deep aching regret and helplessness surged through him, creating a desperate need to demand the love and acceptance she denied him. He ended the kiss, urging her up from her seat and toward the bed. She turned back the quilt and slipped beneath the covers.
Jesse blew out the lamp, divested himself of his denim trousers and knelt to lean over her. In the moonlight that slanted through the parted curtains, her lovely oval face appeared pale, her eyes dark and luminous. He touched her cheek, skin so soft that every time he experienced its delicacy, he was amazed.
He knew the tender skin at the swell of each breast was just as soft; he raised her gown to pull the garment over her head, and she didn't challenge his right to do so. With his nose and lips, he appreciated the velvety skin of her breasts, pressed gentle kisses in the swells and hollows, inhaled her heady scent and saw stars behind his closed eyelids. He was weak when it came to this woman.
Jesse swallowed back a crashing tide of love and regret and need, greedy feelings that would get the best of him if he didn't go slowly and earn Amy's confidence again. It had been a long, long time.
Cupping her jaw in his palm, he turned her head, touched his nose to hers and kissed the corners of her mouth. I love you, Amy. Amy, where are you?
There had been a time when he'd believed his heart spoke to hers, when he'd listened in the darkness and heard her soul-deep replies to his unspoken feelings, when her caresses had answered his every emotional, sensual wish and satisfied so much more than merely his body. Amy, my love, can you hear me?
Jesse shifted his length over her, felt the dizzying sensation of skin against skin and shuddered with repressed desire.
He kissed her again, hoping against hope for the responses that would tell him she wanted him, too. She kissed him, but there was no flame, merely submission. He pressed himself against her, urged her thighs apart.
Opening his eyes to gauge her expression in the moonlight, he saw the tears that glistened on her cheeks. Fearful at first that he'd hurt or frightened her, he looked hard into her eyes. There were no tears in the haunted gaze she returned.
It was then he realized the tears were not Amy's, but his own.
Before his grief and loss became a wail he couldn't control, he pushed away from her to sit on the bed's edge and collect himself. He had to get away from here. Away from her. Groping, he found his trousers and pulled them on.
"Jesse?" she said softly, the bedclothes tucked against her breasts.
He stopped in the motion of shrugging into his shirt. "What?" It came out more harshly than he'd intended.
She didn't reply immediately, and he almost thought she'd never spoken in the first place. But then she said in a ragged whisper, "I'm sorry."
He tucked in his shirttail and grabbed his socks and boots. "I'm sorry too, Amy," he said. "I'm sorry, too."
And he left.
***
Jesse hadn't returned the night before. Amy wrapped a towel around the handle of the coffeepot and removed it from the heat. Deftly, she turned bacon, then cracked eggs into a sizzling skillet. There was a bonafide restaurant across the road, but Shelby Station took an ample portion of the stage passengers' business. All the drivers knew the tasty food was reasonably priced and the beds were clean, so they advised travelers thusly.
Jesse could have slept at the stable, or even in an unoccupied room in the building next door. During their five years of marriage, only trips to trade or sell horses had kept him from their bed—those and the night he'd built the coffin.
She didn't blame him for staying away. Nor did she blame him for the way things between them had deteriorated. She just didn't have the energy to worry about it.
Her father greeted her with a peck on the cheek, poured himself coffee and took a seat.
A well-dressed couple traveling through from Salt Lake City to Washington arrived, introducing themselves as the Buckinghams and taking seats. Amy greeted them. Her kitchen helper, Mrs. Elthea Barnes, poured milk and coffee.
Pearly Higgs, a stage driver with an accomplished reputation, entered the kitchen and doffed his hat. "Mornin', Miz Shelby. Smells mighty fine. I told the Buckinghams here, yours was the best vittles between Atchison and Denver City."
"Why thank you, Pearly. I'll have to take that corn bread out of the oven now, so you can test it."
The slim-as-a-whip driver rubbed his hands together and grinned, overlapped front teeth showing beneath his gray-streaked mustache. "Yes, ma'am!"
Jesse entered the kitchen just as she placed the steaming cast-iron pan of golden corn bread on the table. She nodded, but he hung his hat and the holster that held his Colt on a peg inside the door and took a seat without acknowledgment. His hair was damp and neatly combed, his cuffs spotted from his recent wash at the pump. He wasn't the handsomest man she'd ever laid eyes on—his face was a little too chiseled—but his elemental masculinity gave him an appeal beyond comeliness. He was plainspo
ken, candid, earthy. She had loved him from the first time she'd seen his smile.
"We need more cooks like your missus on the Overland Trail," Pearly said to Jesse, accepting the generous chunk of corn bread Amy cut for him.
"Mrs. Shelby's a fine cook," Jesse agreed, referring to her the way he always did in front of guests.
"As good a cook as her mama was," her father agreed.
Mrs. Buckingham nibbled at the food on her plate, but mostly pushed it around with her fork. Her husband ate heartily, even asking her if she was finished and then polishing off her share.
"My wife is feeling poorly," he explained. "I have a business in Salt Lake City, but we're going home for a year so she can see her doctor and rest."
The woman blushed, and her husband patted her hand.
Amy immediately knew the woman was expecting a child, a subject too delicate for a gentleman such as Mr. Buckingham to mention in mixed company. Amy turned away from the table and dished eggs onto a serving platter beside the bacon.
"Do you and Mrs. Shelby have children?" Mrs. Buckingham asked sweetly.
Amy gripped the platter. With concerted effort, she relaxed her fingers and placed the food on the table. Jesse had looked up at her, but she kept her gaze on the checkered tablecloth.
"No," he said in reply. "We don't."
Simple. Honest. No hint at the cost of that statement or the pain behind it. No explanation. No words could convey the unfathomable truth.
Pearly ate his meal oblivious to the tense undercurrent in the room, though he had been traveling through this Nebraska station for enough years to have remembered the cherubic infant who had once sat in a wooden chair at this table—the toddler who had followed his father's every step whenever permitted.
Sam gave his daughter a look that conveyed sympathy.
"Pony up with Shelby, here, for your meals and room," Pearly said to Mr. Buckingham, finishing his coffee and pushing back his chair. "We're gonna pull foot so we make Omaha by breakfast tomorrow."
The man took a leather pouch from inside his jacket and paid Jesse in gold coins.
