An Unwilling Husband

by Tera Shanley

  Oh, how she wished to hear him speak to her, but the sweet heaviness of sleep pulled at her and she couldn’t hold on any longer. It would be a hard battle back and all uphill, but she would fight. Anna Jennings wouldn’t lay her claws on Garret ever again. Over her cold and lifeless body, would she allow it.

  As Cookie often said, “Time to do work.”

  Chapter 19

  A faint ringing sounded in her ears and she stirred. The awful sound grew louder until it almost deafened her. It was the volume of her shrieks that had her ears begging for relief. Lenny leaned over her shoulder, a look of fierce concentration on her face and a sheen of sweat across her brow.

  “What are you doing?” Maggie rasped in shock.

  Lenny shot a horrified glance at Garret, who lay pressed down on Maggie with all his weight.

  He shook his head. “Finish it. Do it quick, and we’ll talk about it after.”

  Lenny pulled a knife away from her shoulder and threw him a dirty look. “He won’t let the doc at you anymore. Only me. I have to drain your shoulder but it’s going to hurt.” She leaned forward to start again.

  “Wait, wait. Wait! Why is the doctor not here?” She panted. Son of a motherless goat, this was going to hurt.

  Lenny sighed. “He believes in bloodletting. Which makes sense around your wound, because your blood is poisoned, but he was letting too much from your arms. It made you sicker. If that is even possible. Garret told him not to come back, so you get me.”

  “Well, can’t you give me a sleeping draught or something?” she asked in desperation.

  “You’ve been out for days,” Lenny exclaimed. “I don’t think you need more sleep. What do you want me to do? Whack you over the head with a pan?”

  Hope filled her. A knock on the head would work.

  “No,” Lenny told her. “Best if you don’t look.”

  Before she went through such torture again, she’d gladly take another bullet.

  Garret and Lenny dipped the knife into a glass of whiskey and heated it in the kitchen fire to sterilize it as best they could. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and knew pain that only belonged in hell. She lay sweating and spent while Lenny re-bandaged her shoulder.

  It was best not to look at the damage. From the feel of it, she would only be good to travel in the roving freak show she’d happened upon once in the city. “Can you leave?” she asked Garret. She didn’t want him to see her in such a desperate state.

  “Good luck with that,” Lenny grumbled. “Only time he leaves is when I bathe you and even then I nearly have to pull a gun to get him moving.”

  How mortifying this situation had become. She cleared her raspy throat. “I could use a drink of water.”

  Garret filled a glass from the bucket in the corner of the room, handed it to her and waited as she thirstily drank the water down.

  “May I have more?” She would quite possibly never be satisfied again.

  “Sorry, but you need to do a little at a time. We’ll wait an hour and see how you do with that much and then give you some more.”

  “I’m famished.”

  Garret grinned at Lenny. “Well, that’s a good sign, ain’t it?”

  The bandage tightened and tied, Lenny patted her hand. “I’ll go fix some broth.” She disappeared into the other room.

  Broth? How very disappointing.

  It was late in the evening, and the candles were lit in the room. Many of them, near the bed to aid in Lenny’s need to see what she was doing. The light glinted off something. A delicate green gemstone set in a thin gold band adorned the ring finger on her left hand. She held it up to study it more closely, but found she hadn’t the strength for long, and looked to Garret for explanation.

  “It was my mother’s. Thought since you’ve stuck to being my wife this long, you should be wearing my ring.”

  The weight of the delicate jewelry meant more than she would ever be able to put into words. “It’s beautiful, Garret.” If she’d had enough fluids in her body to muster a tear, she would’ve.

  Garret pulled his chair closer to her bed and sat down, grabbed her hand and put it to his forehead, shielding his face. “I thought you were going to die,” he said in a thick voice.

  Maggie stared down at his beautiful raven hair for a moment and gave him a smile. “And let you marry that atrocious Anna? Not likely. Your children would be horrible brats.”

  Garret chuckled quietly and the sound warmed her heart. He caressed her face with a tender gaze and kissed her hand, leaving his lips on her skin for a long time.

  His beard scratched against the smooth back of her hand. “You need a shave, Mr. Shaw.”

  “’Spect I do. Haven’t found the time since you’ve been out.”

  Her stomach growled loudly and on cue, Lenny appeared with a small cup of broth.

  “Still hungry,” Maggie announced after she’d slurped down the last of her tiny portion. “And why am I not allowed vegetables? Or meat?” Rabbit stew, beef roast, steak, fried chicken. Glorious meat!

  From the corner into which he’d retreated, he laughed. He’d been cleaning his gun while she ate, or rather drank, her teeny meal.

  Lenny spoke up. “Broth today, broth tomorrow. If you don’t vomit, I’ll add boiled vegetables the next day.”

  “Lovely,” she grumbled. “It’s not funny.”

  Garret stopped laughing. Mostly. “Of course it ain’t. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t make light of this. I’m just glad you’re back, is all.”

  “Hmm,” she said, satisfied with his answer. “Well, next time you see her, you should thank Anna for giving me the will to live.”

  “Never was a competition between you two, so don’t you worry, Maggie. ’Sides, she ain’t my type. I like redheads. Sassy ones.”

  Maggie turned away to hide her smile, and leaned deeper into her pillows. Though her mind was completely rested, her body was not. How much sleep could one damaged figure possibly hold? She would find out.

  Lenny squeezed her hand, and she thanked her sleepily, for everything. After the girl had left, she squinted into the corner at Garret, who still cleaned his pistols.

  “Sleep beside me tonight?” she asked.

  “I suppose it’d be a might more comfortable than this chair I’ve been sleeping in.”

  “Good,” she said, and snuggled down further under the sheets to wait for him.

  * * * *

  The road to recovery proved to be truly slow and grueling. A crude and barely manageable avenue covered in boulders, potholes, divots, trenches of mud and random rabid wildlife to avoid. Or so Maggie imagined as she tried for what seemed at least the eighty-seventh time to stand on her own. Her legs were determined to stay shaky enough to buckle under her weight. Obnoxious.

  She had kicked Lenny and Garret out of the room much earlier, as their worry only enabled her fear of never recovering and made her lash out. Her caretakers gladly departed, most likely to avoid a verbal lynching every time they gasped and naysaid her efforts to walk. If left up to her concerned wards, she would likely never get out of bed. They would simply take care of her and hover for the rest of her natural born life. She appreciated their concern, but good gracious, she would go stir crazy before they tired of coddling.

  As she leaned heavily on the footboard of her bed, the mirror seemed to offer a reflection of someone else. One emaciated collarbone thinly veiled in pallid skin became visible when her ill-fitting night shirt slid down her shoulder.

  She turned away quickly, biting her lip. Avoidance had never been her way, so she steeled herself and looked long and hard at her reflection. She looked gaunt, yes, but that would mend in time with the regular influx of meals she was receiving. What she needed to see was her injury. Thus far, she’d managed to avoid looking at it, but denial now seemed counterproductive to her mental recovery.

  “Well, don’t be feeble then! Let us have a look,” she encouraged herself.

  She tugged at the nightgown until her scar was on full disp
lay. “Hmmph,” she said in happy surprise. It wasn’t as bad as she’d imagined. From the way she felt when Lenny had to regularly lance it, she thought she likely looked like a burn victim, the pain hurt so badly. The scarring was red, though the swelling and anger had left with the infection. Garret assured her the scar would fade to silver in time. The entrance wound was actually quite small, and despite the slash marks from Lenny’s knife, would heal nicely. Eventually.

  She turned to view her back and gasped. The exit wound had been a different beast altogether. That much was abundantly clear. The slash marks were more marked there, and the wound considerably bigger than the one on her front. Her skin was thick and uneven in places, and though not a huge area of injury, she swallowed back a sob at the sight of her marred skin.

  She pulled the nightgown over herself and sat for a long time, accepting her new look. Garret would never see her body with unblemished skin. But then, why should she care? That man acted like he didn’t even want to see her naked. After he’d been convinced she would live, he seemed as if he couldn’t leave the room fast enough when it was time for her bath.

  Using the anger to try and stand again, when her legs held weight, she whooped in triumph. She glared at the door, judging the distance and determining whether to risk it or not. Risk it she did. Five exhausting steps, then she collapsed onto the floor with a thud. She lay there for a moment to catch her breath, and by the time Garret threw open the door, panicked from the noise of her fall, she was laughing, exuberant at her accomplishment.

  “Five,” she said breathily as Garret picked her up and set her on the bed.

  “Five what?”

  “Five steps, and tomorrow you can bet it will be more,” she exclaimed.

  The bed squeaked as he sat next to her. “You done good, Margaret,” he said with a smile.

  She had always hated her name, but coming from his mouth in that deep Southern accent and in such an intimate way, it sounded quite beautiful. Heat and happiness filled her at his compliment, and he ran the back of his finger over the color in her cheeks, leaving a trail of warmth in its wake. Would she ever get used to the feel of him touching her?

  With every passing day he seemed to grow more comfortable with her and gave his touch and kind words much more freely. His progress brought hope, and though he would likely never feel for her what she did for him, she wouldn’t take improvement for granted.

  Garret’s eyes held reservation while he watched his finger trace her face. He was a man at war with himself. Seemed to watch his traitorous finger do something of its own free will. “Need to talk to you about something,” he said softly.

  My, how one little sentence sent the joy of her accomplishment skittering behind her defenses. “That sounds foreboding,” she said, wary and breathless at the quick change in his mood.

  A half smile touched his lips and none of the rest of his face. “I’ve been thinking on something we talked about right after you were shot. Before you went limp on me?”

  “No.” No, no, no, no, no. “No, Garret. You don’t get to take back what you said. I don’t care if you said it because you thought I was dying. You can’t give that to me and then snatch it from my grasp again. I won’t ask you to say it again, but don’t take it away.”

  His eyes were wide and earnest and his eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “What are you going on about, woman?”

  She pursed her lips. Well, she was in it now. “You were talking about when you said you love me, were you not?”

  His eyes softened before he turned away. “Maggie, I couldn’t take that back if I tried. And Lord knows I’ve tried.”

  A knife. That’s the only thing this kind of pain could compare to. He wielded his words like a blade without care or worry about whom he cut. Could a man love a woman against his will? From the agonized look on Garret’s face, she thought he must. She wanted his love freely. It had never been her intention to rip his love from a clenched heart.

  “What is it about me?” she asked. “What is it that is so horrible you can’t let yourself love me?”

  Garret retreated from his place on the bed, ran his fingers through his hair then put his hat on. He’d come so far. How could he let the apparition of the caring boy he’d once been so close to her again and snuff him out like he’d never existed?

  She said softly, “I know your reasoning. You’ve been graciously open with your disdain for the type of woman I am, but I thought it didn’t apply anymore since you can clearly see I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to stay, so why do you still torture us?”

  He rounded on her. His eyes held the intensity of a wounded animal, and he opened his mouth but no response came. His transformation lasted seconds. Every muscle relaxed, his expression softened, and as he looked away, he sighed. No longer was he a defensive, charging bull of a man but looked vulnerable, uncertain. “I have to go,” he said. “I’ll be gone a couple of weeks.” He took in the shock no doubt on her face and plunged onward. “I’ve received a letter that my benefactor has passed. I have been given instructions on how to close out my accounts in Georgetown but it is something I have to do in person. And in a timely manner.”

  Her disappointment had lost its potency and along with it, the razor sharp edges making it sting so badly. He was hurting. “I’m sorry about your benefactor. Were you close?”

  “Never met the man.” He slid into the corner chair. “But we wrote and became friendly. I like to think we were friends. He first wrote to me when I thought my life couldn’t get worse, and he gave me an out. This man I didn’t even know.” He smiled vacantly at the wall behind her. “With no intention of ever collecting on my debt to him, he paid a substantial amount for my schooling. He was a good man. He said—” His voice trailed off as if he spoke of a partially remembered dream.

  Such a strange thing, to listen to kind words for a deceased man neither of them would ever meet on this earth. “And now you must go?” she asked.

  “Yes. You need anything, you ask Lenny or the hands.” The leather of his gun belt squeaked and stretched as he stood, and his boots made a hollow sound against the floorboards as he walked away. At the door, he looked back once before being swallowed by the hallway.

  And just like that, he was gone.

  Chapter 20

  Maggie could tell Garret was gone before she even rose from her bed the next day. The house felt emptier. Sadder. Her heart brimmed with some emotion she couldn’t comprehend. Whether from his sudden absence or the unsettling and sour note with which he’d left her, she couldn’t tell. He’d meant to tell her something else entirely, something important, but failed in his quest somehow. She knew it. Felt it in her very bones, but was at a loss as to whatever could be so dire, it would halt an honest man’s tongue.

  In the days that followed, she tried to regain her strength with adventurous walks around her room. She eventually graduated to the living area and kitchen, and just in the nick of time. Surely, she would have to be sent to an institution if cooped up in that small space for a moment longer. Garret’s room only served to remind her of him.

  When her strength allowed, she assisted Lenny in the kitchen and around the house. She helped, minimally of course, with the laundering. She separated the cream from the milk each day and churned butter, and though Lenny had to help often, Lenny and she were proud of her progress. By the week’s end she was able to make trips to the barn with Lenny to chat with her as she completed chores.

  The hands took to dining in the big house at night, per Maggie’s request, and did their best to assist and entertain her. Desperation to stay busy and keep her mind off Garret’s absence clawed at her soul.

  With each passing day, the need to fill every waking hour with work, or reading, or entertainment of some sort obsessed her. Though tedious and boring, she took up needlepoint. She picked wildflowers daily to fill the rooms with some semblance of cheer and put up curtains, deep cleaned every nook and cranny in the house. And after finishing any and every cho
re she had the strength for, she wrote. Letters to Garret she would never give to him. Some were short stories of her adventures since she had come to Rockdale. Other writings, memories, both painful and happy, of her time in Boston. She piled them neatly and hid them in the bottom of her drawers like a stack of confessions. Finally, though, even writing wasn’t enough for her.

  “I want to go visit Roy’s grave again,” she told Lenny over breakfast one morning.

  Lenny glanced up, concern in her eyes. “I don’t know if you are up for that just yet.”

  “I need out of this house.”

  “Then we can spend the day in the barn,” Lenny said with finality, and went back to buttering a warm biscuit.

  “I’m going to saddle Buck,” Maggie said after a length of silence. “I need this, and will go, with or without you.”

  Lenny sighed. “I bet you can’t even lift the saddle over him.”

  “Hmmph. Winner makes dinner?” she asked with a grin.

  “Fine, but Cookie goes with us. Garret would kill me if I let anything happen to you.”

  “Please. His life would be much improved if something happened to me.”

  Lenny shook her head, but followed her outside and toward the barn. “You try to saddle Buck, and I’ll find Cookie.”

  Maggie waved at her retreating friend’s back and called out, “Sarcasm isn’t attractive on a woman!” This earned her yet another shake of the head from the raven haired woman, who she suspected was smiling, but she couldn’t be sure from behind.

  The ride to Roy’s homestead seemed a lot longer than she remembered. Maybe Lenny had been right about the trip being too much too soon. What could be exhausting about straddling a horse and guiding it with the reins? Sure, she’d made progress in droves, but she was ready to be back to her old self and disheartened by the amount of time it took to get there.

  When Roy’s old house came into view at the end of the long dirt road, her heart clenched. It hadn’t been long since he’d passed, but already his home looked forsaken and dilapidated. Overgrown, an ocean of grass in the field in front of the house waved to an abandoned landscape. The top of the plow poked out of the grass, toppled over and left in the exact place it had been when unhitched from the frightened team. The blade Roy died by.