"I only like it when you wake me up in the middle of the night to—" she started, her cheeks turning a bright shade of pink as they walked along Main Street toward Whittier Dry Goods. "Oh, Ash! I voted! I stepped behind that curtain and cast a ballot!"
"And if you win that judgeship by only one vote..."
She slapped him gently on his arm. "It's going to be a veritable landslide. Don't you read the newspaper you sell?"
"Speaking of reading..." he said, fishing around in his pocket for Cabot's latest letter and waving it beneath her nose. "This one's from Paris, France."
She grabbed for it, but he held it out of her reach and opened the door to the store.
"Let's go on upstairs and get settled before I read it to you. How's that?"
"Fair, I suppose," she said, with her bottom lip pouting. "I did get to read you Kathryn's letter last week."
Ash couldn't help smiling. His mother's words had sounded so joyful as they poured from his wife's lips. Maybe it was the way Charlotte sang Eli's name each time his mother mentioned it. Or maybe it was how excited she got when she read that Kathryn was thinking about coming out to Wyoming for a visit in September before Cabot and Davis returned from the grand tour. "You can close your eyes and rest while I read."
She seemed to think that was a good idea, and she lazily let her cape fall from her shoulders as she headed for the stairs. He caught the wrap as it hit the floor and reminded her that he was not Maria.
"No, but you'll do," she said. Her voice was light, but it didn't escape him that she was nearly pulling herself up the stairs by the railing. Wyoming wasn't an easy life. The winters were harsh. For that matter, so were the summers. For his part he enjoyed the challenge, but of late it seemed to be taking its toll on his wife.
At the top of the stairs they could hear Liberty talking to himself in the back room. "Come on, Liberty," the bird was saying. "Stupid bird! Say it! Say it! Come on, say it!" It was all he'd said for a week now. They'd tired of hearing it, but the bird didn't care. "Come on, Liberty! Please! You stupid bird!"
"Shut up!" Ash yelled to the bird while he bent to tend the fire, and Charlotte put up the kettle.
"Say it!" Liberty shouted again as Charlotte, her feet dragging, set two places at the little table between the wing chairs that faced the hearth. "Ash? You're not sorry we're here in the middle of nowhere?"
"No," he said honestly, a little worried that Charlotte might miss the mild weather and the faster pace of Oakland. "Are you?"
She shook her head. "You don't miss your family?"
"Cabot and Mother were always more your family than mine," he said, coming to sit beside her and placing one finger beneath her chin. "Silver Pass has just what I searched all over the world to find."
She dipped her head shyly. He could compliment her all day, every day, for the rest of their lives, just to watch the color rush to her cheeks, and never tire of it.
"And being a shopkeeper after all the excitement you used to have? You don't mind that?" she asked, stretching and settling back into the soft chair sleepily as he placed a cup of tea beside her. She fingered the rim of the treasured cup contentedly.
"Mrs. Fagan came in today," he said, trying to explain what Silver Pass meant to him. "Her little one had the croup last week. She paid me with a dozen eggs. Glen Shumacher came in about noon. They're looking to start a collection for the Grange Hall and he thought I'd want to know." The town amazed him with their warmth and their inclusiveness. "For the first time in my life, Charlie, I feel like I'm part of a community. Like I'm part of a family."
"A family," she said, and her smile grew to be a yawn as she closed her eyes and motioned for him to read her the letter from Cabot.
Ash cleared his throat. "Dear Ash and Charlotte," he began, after he'd settled back himself and gotten comfortable in the chair beside her. "I hope this letter finds you both well. Davis and I are soggy, at best. Paris in the spring is not as beautiful as the guidebooks promise. It has rained nearly every day since we arrived."
She tsked at his brother's penchant for always pointing out the worst first.
"But, he continues," Ash said, rallying, "it has provided ample excuse to drag poor Davis through the Louvre twice and even get him to services on Sunday at Notre Dame. To tell the truth, in Latin and French it was more palatable than I remembered, and I do believe we'll continue the habit at home—for the boy's sake."
Charlotte's mouth drooped open enough for him to realize that Cabot's letter had put her to sleep. He put it down on the table between them and gently slipped his arms beneath her body to lift her and carry her to their bed.
***
She felt his familiar hands wriggling between her tired body and the chair and offered no resistance. What a day she'd had—casting her first vote, and her name among those on the ballot! She put her arm around Ash's neck as he picked her up and carried her to their bedroom, setting her gently on the lacy spread that topped their bed.
"In the top drawer," she said with her eyes still closed, as she listened to the sounds of him rummaging for her buttonhook.
"We'll have you out of these in a jiffy," he said, working at her boots with a good deal of huffing and puffing. "Why do women insist on buying their shoes a size too small? Don't they hurt?"
She opened one eye to look down at her swollen ankles and wished Kathryn wouldn't wait until autumn to come for a visit.
"You seem awfully tired," he said as he worked at her shirtwaist buttons. "You feel all right?"
"Better than all right," she said, reaching out for him and pulling him to her. "How do you think I feel?"
After her buttons were undone, he worked the blouse out from her waistband and spread it to expose her chemise. Trailing the ends of the ribbon against her collarbone, he toyed with the bow, then ran his hands over the exposed skin above her corset cover. "Soft," he said almost reverently. "Softer than soft."
They'd been married nearly two years, and still every time he touched her, warmth rushed to her belly and spread through her like a prairie wildfire. And if she was. the meadow aflame, he was the fire itself—white hot, raging, and out of control.
Like now, as he bent down to rain kisses over her neck, her collarbone, her chest, to trail his lips across her breasts and down her ribs. And all the while he kissed her, his hands were pulling at what was left of her clothes, and then at his own—as if they didn't have all the time in the world to lie naked in each other's arms.
She loved his hurry and his need for her. Loved lying there naked with him as he stoked her fires and brought her back from the edge of sleep with the warmth of his touch. Brought her back to hold him close.
He traced the mark the seam of her chemise had left down her side, ran the tips of his fingers in the myriad lines that crossed her waist from skirts and petticoats and drawers. "But how do you think the good people of Silver Pass would feel if they knew their justice of the peace was going about without her corset again today?" he asked as he began to kiss the marks her clothing had left upon her body.
He was driving her crazy, mumbling against her skin about what seeing her, touching her, did to him. The heat of his breath, the roughness of the stubble on his chin— his need was fueling her own and she pressed herself up against him until he simply gave up on her underthings and just raised the last of her petticoats to circle her waist.
"How do you think they'd feel about their justice of the peace in such a rush she can't even get properly undressed?" What did she care? Who mattered but him, as his kisses fell everywhere—her eyelids, her neck, lower and lower still? There wasn't a place he neglected, a spot that didn't burn at his touch.
And she did for him what he was doing for her, until there was no distinction to where each one's pleasure began and ended.
And when the fire was over and only the glowing of the embers remained, she cried in his arms, shaking against his chest while he held her.
"Not to mention how they'd feel about their justice of the peace crying every
time it was good for her," he said, tucking the covers around her and pulling her against him once again.
"Judge," she corrected him, struggling to turn on her side and press her bottom against him, "... with any luck," she added before starting to drift off to sleep.
"Hey!" he complained, shaking her gently. "Aren't you hungry? What about supper? How do you think they'd feel about their new judge letting her husband starve?"
She yawned, rousing herself just enough to turn over within the circle of his arms and open one eye.
"How do you think they'd feel about their new judge having a baby?" she asked.
Oh, what a smile that man had! What pure delight was written all over his face, mirroring her own. "I think," he said after giving it a moment's thought, "they'll be almost as happy as we are."
"Awk! Happy!" Liberty squawked, strolling in from the other room and climbing up the footboard of the bed to look down on them. "I love you, Charlotte! Come on, you stupid bird! Say it! I love you, Charlotte! Oh! Oh! Don't stop now."
Charlotte's giggle turned into a yawn. "You're a little late," she told the bird. "We already did that part."
Liberty paced back and forth on the footboard, rocking his head to and fro. "Shut up, you stupid bird! S-S-see you s-s-soon!" He worked his way, beak over claw, down the bed and waddled toward the kitchen. "I want some of that!" he shouted as he passed the new cat with the sore ear who was lapping up milk from a saucer by the sink.
"I do love you, Charlie Russe," Ash said as he brushed the short chestnut locks off her cheek. "And I'm a very happy man right now."
"Do you think Silver Pass will really be as happy as we are?" she asked nervously as a big yawn escaped her lips.
"Nah," he said softly, easing her down by his side and letting his hand drift to her belly, where, deep inside her, their future was growing. "They'll be happy, but not half so happy as we."
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
Mittman, Stephanie Page 34
