Verna’s eyes narrowed. “You know very well what treasure. The Montgomery treasure your mother brought with her when she came to this house, the treasure your father talked about on his deathbed. ‘Be sure Ash remembers where the treasure is. Lila wanted him to have it.’ ”
“Funny, Verna,” Ash said emotionlessly as he stripped off his heavy coat. “You’ve never asked me about the Montgomery treasure.”
She reached out and slapped Elmo on the arm. “See what you’ve done? We’ll never get it now!”
Charmaine came to the top of the stairs, and she watched the scene with apparent interest. Nathan was not far behind her. He’d been dressing for dinner, as he did every evening — even when the meal was nothing more than tasteless stew or burnt chicken.
“Would everyone like to see the Montgomery treasure?” Ash asked softly. Nathan smiled widely, and Charmaine waited with curious expectation on her face. Verna’s eyes became bright, and Oswald grinned wickedly.
Ash moved the rocking chair Verna sat in every night, threw back the tattered rug, and dropped to his haunches. It had been a long time, but he was sure he hadn’t forgotten. He pressed against one floorboard, and it held fast. He moved to the next, and this time when he pushed hard the floorboard popped up to reveal Lila Montgomery’s secret hiding place.
“You idiot,” Verna hissed. Ash didn’t turn to see which son she admonished. “I told you to search this room!”
“I did!” Oswald snapped. “Several times!”
Ash didn’t listen to their continuing argument. He lifted another board and then he reached into the space beneath the floorboard and wrapped his fingers around the wooden box that held his mother’s treasure.
It had been years since he’d gone through the contents, and he placed the box on the floor and lifted the lid carefully. There was a silent crowd around him, now. Verna and her boys, Nathan and Charmaine, all looking down at the valuables within.
“The Montgomery family Bible,” he said, lifting the largest and heaviest item in the box. He gently turned back the cover to reveal the family history written carefully there. His name was the last entry in this book. “Her favorite book of poems.” He took the slim volume from the box and leafed through the yellowed pages. How many evenings had she read to him from this book? There had always been something of the dreamer in her, something fragile and much too soft for the life she had chosen.
“Is that it?” Verna wailed.
“Oh, no,” Ash said as he delved one more time into the box. “We can’t forget the Montgomery family blessing.”
“The what?”
Ash smiled grimly at Oswald’s outburst. “The Montgomery family blessing has been handed down from generation to generation for more than a hundred years. Now that’s a treasure.”
Charmaine’s curious eyes were fastened on the contents of the box — and then on him. “Lila Montgomery, my mother,” he said, speaking only to Charmaine, “was a young woman when the War Between the States began. Her family was untouched, at first, and then everything went wrong. She saw her father die, and then her brothers, and then her mother.” He never spoke of this, because he felt his mother’s agony for these ancestors he had never met. But for his wife — temporary though she may be — he would tell it.
“When the Yankees came through and burned her home, she only had a few minutes to grab that which was most precious to her. She left her father’s gold watch, her mother’s ruby necklace, and the family silver, and she gathered these treasures and made her way West.”
“What an idiot!” Verna snapped.
Ash ignored his stepmother. Charmaine’s eyes filled with tears, and she placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. The compassionate touch was warm and wonderful and all too brief. With a flutter that hand lifted away, and Ash replaced the treasures carefully and returned the box to its proper place.
“I can’t believe we wasted all this time searching for a couple of books and a piece of paper!” Oswald shouted.
“That . . . that’s it?” Elmo asked softly.
Verna paced. “There has to be more. There has to be.”
Ash almost laughed. It was rather ridiculous, the way Oswald stormed and Elmo stuttered and Verna ranted. His eyes met and held Charmaine’s, blue eyes bright still with tears for his mother. But she smiled, surely recognizing as he did the absurdity of the current situation.
All this time they’d been searching for buried riches, gold and silver and gems, when there was nothing to be found. If they had discovered Lila Montgomery Coleman’s treasure, in the course of their search, they wouldn’t have recognized it as the treasure they sought. They didn’t know what riches were.
Oswald sputtered at some new accusation from his mother, lifting his chin and talking incoherently. In response, Nathan suddenly laughed out loud. He got a venomous glare from Verna for his trouble.
“So, there’s no problem if I leave first thing in the morning?”
All eyes turned to Elmo.
“You can’t run off with that . . . that servant.”
“I like Ruth,” Elmo said defensively. “And she likes me. Mrs. Haley said they didn’t want Ruth to travel alone, and anyway she thought I might be interested in going to school there in Boston.”
“School?” Verna said with a shake of her head.
“You’re too old to go back to school,” Oswald sneered.
“Who will take care of you?” Verna moaned.
Elmo straightened a spine Ash had thought impossibly weak. “I’ll take care of myself.”
That silenced everyone. “Maybe I’m not cut out for life on a farm, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything at all,” he continued. “And after I get some schooling and find a job, I’m going to ask Ruth to marry me.”
“She’s not going to marry you,” Oswald scoffed.
Elmo stared his brother down. “She already said that when the time comes, if I ask, she’ll say yes. You’re just jealous. . . . ”
“Jealous because of that mouse? I don’t think so!”
Ash backed up a step as Elmo closed in on his older brother. “Don’t ever say anything bad about Ruth, or I’ll knock out a couple of those pretty teeth.”
“Now, now,” Verna said calmly. “See what you’ve done, Elmo? You’ve allowed a woman to come between you and your only brother.”
Elmo would not be swayed. Seems the boy had backbone after all.
“Ash,” he said as he broke away from his mother and brother. “I hate to see you sleeping in the barn, with it so cold. He cut a cautious glance to Charmaine. “I think I’ll pack up and head on to Salley Creek tonight, so you take my room.”
Ash took the hand Elmo extended. “Good luck in Boston. I hear it’s a great place. The kind of place a body goes and never wants to leave.” He glanced over Elmo’s shoulder to Charmaine, and watched her smile fade.
When they learned that Elmo was fully prepared to walk to Salley Creek, Nathan offered the use of Pumpkin. Elmo was to leave the horse at the Haleys’, and someone would collect the mare in a day or two.
Verna shed a couple of crocodile tears, and Oswald told his little brother more than once that there was no way he’d survive in the big city, but Elmo would not be dissuaded. He rode off with a satchel of clothes, and a hopeful smile on his face.
He didn’t even delay for dinner.
Charmaine watched the clock on the bedside table as the minutes and the hours ticked away. Goodness, it was almost one in the morning and she was still wide awake. Maybe she was sleepless because Ash was back in the house, instead of in the barn where he’d been for the past several nights.
She was miserable, but still she smiled in the dark. She never would have thought Elmo March had a romantic bone in his body, but evidently she was wrong. He was riding away from his family and his home for an unknown future with the woman he loved.
Charmaine scooted up on her elbows. She’d never get to sleep tonight!
It was a small noise, a bump in the n
ight . . . but it caught her attention. Someone was up. Nathan or Ash, unable to sleep? Or Verna or Oswald, pilfering the Montgomery treasure.
She slipped out of bed and grabbed her wrapper against the chill. That parsimonious Verna had done quite enough to Ash, in her opinion. She was spiteful and lazy and didn’t take care of him the way she should.
Charmaine opened the door silently. If she caught that woman near Ash’s treasure. . . .
The fire was dying, but flickers of light lit the main room as Charmaine made her way slowly down the stairs. Someone was sitting on the floor behind the rocking chair, a dark shape she couldn’t make out. The chair had been moved, the rug pulled back, and the treasure box was opened on the floor.
By the time she was close enough to be sure it was Ash, it was too late to turn back.
“What are you doing up?” she whispered.
Ash didn’t jump or turn around at the sound of her voice, so she was sure he’d heard her coming. “I haven’t looked through here for a long time, and since I couldn’t sleep I thought I’d dig it up again.”
He held a sheet of paper in his hand, but it was too dark for Charmaine to read over his shoulder. “Is that the Montgomery family blessing?”
She took a step forward so she could see his face, one half of it, anyway. He smiled in the dark, and touched the paper in his lap with fingers she knew to be gentle in spite of their size and strength. “Yes.”
“Read it to me?” She sat on the floor beside but not too near him, on another small rug.
Ash shook his head. “It’s nonsense.”
“Read it to me anyway.”
He twisted his head to look at her, at last. “My mother believed in fairies and ghosts and ogres and unicorns. I think, after what she went through in the war, that belief helped her survive. Another world, where good always triumphs and evil is always vanquished, makes sense after what she went through.”
“I guess so,” Charmaine whispered.
“She told me this blessing came from the fairies, and it had been passed down for more than a hundred years, from Montgomery to Montgomery. It was a sacred gift, she said, a secret from those who had not been so honored by the fairies. When I was about ten years old I realized that this blessing is written in her hand.”
“You didn’t tell her, did you?”
Ash grinned. “Of course not. Even then I knew that she needed me to believe.” He turned his eyes to the paper in his lap. “Maybe by that time she believed it herself.”
“I’d still like to hear it.”
He was silent for a few long moments, and she didn’t know if he would comply or not. When he did begin to read, or to recite, it was in a voice so low she had to strain to hear it. “A Montgomery of pure soul and kind heart will survive the harshest tests in this life and have as his reward the most precious gift of all. One true love to cherish until the end of time.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “That’s beautiful.”
“It’s nonsense,” he snapped as he returned all the treasures carefully to the box. “Pretty words to make my mother feel safe, that’s all they are.”
One true love. It was a ridiculous notion, as Howard would certainly remind her. Romantic nonsense, fanciful rubbish . . . but no less touching.
“Go to bed, Charmaine,” Ash whispered as he rolled the carpet over his mother’s secret hiding place that was no longer a secret.
“I’m not tired.” She hugged her knees to her chest and studied the dying fire. “I don’t know why, I should be exhausted but I lie in bed and I just can’t make myself be still. I squirm and can’t get comfortable, and I keep thinking about Elmo and Ruth, and. . . . ” and when she’d hear from Jeanette or Felicity. She really didn’t want to mention that at the moment, “and . . . and just everything.”
Ash took her hand and drew her to her feet with a jerk. She fell against his chest, into his arms, and he didn’t let her go. “I said, go to bed,” he whispered.
“I said I’m not. . . . ”
He silenced her with a kiss, not a soft and delicate meeting of their mouths, but a harsh kiss that stole her words and her breath. She tried to pull away, but Ash’s stilling hand at the back of her head stopped her. His tongue plunged deep into her mouth, moving and exploring, and she came up on her toes, just slightly.
She couldn’t take much more of this. She was dissolving, her body, her will, every promise she’d made to herself since becoming this man’s wife. Surely his heart beat in rhythm with hers, surely he could feel what he was doing to her. It was an unerring impulse that made her lift one hand to Ash’s arm, to rest it there on muscle so hard and warm she sometimes craved this simple touch.
It was pure instinct that made her lips part in invitation for an even deeper kiss.
Without warning Ash released her, and she stumbled back before catching her balance. Already he’d turned his back to her. “Go to bed, Charmaine,” he whispered.
She started to take his advice, backing slowly toward the staircase. He was right, of course. They had no future, not even a real, true past. There was no happily ever after waiting for them. But she didn’t want to sleep alone. She didn’t want to spend another night alone in that cold bedroom.
She wanted Ash to love her.
The realization startled her, even as she admitted in her heart it was what she’d wanted all along.
This time she did surprise him, sneaking up behind him to lay her hands on his waist. He jumped slightly before he spun around.
“Dammit, don’t do this to me,” he whispered hoarsely.
She smiled and stood on her toes to kiss him, a gentler beginning this time. “I want you to share the bed with me again,” she whispered, and Ash groaned into her mouth.
“Don’t. . . . ” he began.
She silenced him as he had silenced her a few minutes earlier, with a kiss, a silent demand as her tongue tested softly.
“You’re not going to stay,” he whispered brusquely. “You don’t belong here and I can’t . . . you can’t. . . . ”
“But we can have this, can’t we?” she answered. “We both want it, we both need it. I can’t say I truly understand why I feel this way, but I can’t deny it either.” She laid her mouth against his, softly, urgently.
With a sigh into her mouth, Ash lifted her from her feet and carried her up the stairs. His mouth never left hers, and his every step was unerringly steady as he carried her to their bedroom. He even had the presence of mind to close the bedroom door softly.
She’d never wanted anything so badly in her life, never needed anything this way. It was overwhelming and frighteningly undeniable.
By the side of the bed, Ash worked the knot of her wrapper and then slipped it off her shoulders. His fingers trembled slightly, as he slid them over her shoulders and down her arms, testing her flesh as surely as his mouth had tested hers.
The nightdress was in the way, binding her throat and her shoulders, chafing her as it never had before. “Maybe I should just take this off,” she whispered, already working the ribbons at her throat. Ash helped, pulling the linen over her head when the ties were loosened.
She stood before him completely naked, only slightly chilled in spite of the cool air. She should be shy, embarrassed. No one had seen her this way before, no one. But she wasn’t embarrassed or shy. Ash reached out to touch her bare shoulder, to touch with gentle fingers the rising flesh of her breasts. And he kissed her again, as those fingers brushed lightly over a nipple that hardened at his touch.
The need was aching and unexpectedly powerful. “And I think,” she whispered breathlessly, “that you should take this off,” she said, brushing her fingers over the waistband of Ash’s trousers.
In a moment Ash had discarded his trousers as carelessly as he’d discarded her nightclothes, and they stood together, naked in the moonlight.
Goodness, he was beautiful. His face, his body, his very soul. Who wouldn’t love a man like this?
“Can I touch you?”
she whispered.
“Yes.”
She closed her fingers over and around his swollen manhood. It was silk and steel, hot and hard. And larger than she’d expected. If she hadn’t already taken it into her body she would have thought it impossible. She stroked the length with gentle fingertips.
“Enough,” he said harshly, taking her wrist and moving her hand away. And then he touched her; big, gentle hands brushing over her breasts and her ribcage, her stomach and her hips, the rounded curves of her backside.
When one of those hands parted her thighs and touched the flesh that ached and throbbed for him, she thought she would drop to the floor with the intensity of the sensations that flooded her. As if he knew, as if he felt what she did, he lowered her gently to the bed.
And kissed her while he towered above her and continued to stroke the damp folds of the most private part of her body. Of their own accord, her legs spread to give him access, and her hips rocked against his hand. It was startling and unexpected, the sensations that shot like fiery sparks through her body. The stirrings grew and became almost insistent, and then he moved his hand away.
What was he doing? Why was he waiting? Ash. She tried to say his name, tried to whisper it against his mouth, but the sound that came out of her mouth was an unintelligible moan.
Then he was there, thrusting, filling her bit by bit until he was buried inside her.
She took his face in her hands and kissed him softly. There had to be something more to this than the physical. Something special, something . . . blessed.
Could she be Ash’s one true love?
He moved again, rocking gently, stroking her body, and as before her body answered. She lifted her hips to take all of him, and her body pitched with and against his in an ancient rhythm.
She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think. Her body reached and danced and sang, until something unheard of happened to her.
She fractured. Shattered, actually. It started from the center of her being, grew until it was a force that could not be contained, and then it shattered. She held on to Ash to keep from falling apart, clutched him as her insides quaked and her breath returned to her in a rush.
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