Corbin's Fancy

by Linda Lael Miller

  A flicker in Adam’s deep blue eyes, eyes just the color of Jeff’s, thanked her for the diversion. “Active is not the word. Mama will probably recruit you to the cause.”

  “The hell,” growled Jeff with surprising feeling. “No wife of mine is going to go traipsing around making speeches and passing out fliers—”

  Adam laughed. “Your innocence is heart-wrenching,” he told his brother.

  Fancy was nettled. “If I wanted to make speeches and pass out fliers, Jeff Corbin, I would.”

  Adam gave his brother another affectionately mocking glance and again lifted his wineglass. “Don’t try to fight it, Jeff,” he said. “Hell hath no fury like a woman oriented toward politics.”

  Jeff gave Fancy one bone-slicing look and turned his full attention to his brother. From then on, the conversation concerned the upcoming wedding in Wenatchee, their sister Melissa’s escapades at college, and whether or not Grover Cleveland belonged in the White House.

  * * *

  Temple Royce settled back in the bathtub, a cheroot clamped between his teeth, an outdated newspaper in his hands. Christ, he was tired, and every muscle in his body ached, and if he didn’t have lice he’d be lucky.

  Beyond the hotel window, which was open to the breezy June night, he could hear the clang of trolley car bells, the nickering of horses, and the voices of street urchins, prostitutes, and drunks. Shutting Spokane out of his mind, he settled down to read.

  The territorial legislature was harassing the federal government about statehood and Mrs. Katherine Corbin was harassing them, in turn. Wall Street was predicting another panic and three days ago a man had gone crazy up at Colville and murdered his whole family. Temple was about to close the newspaper and fling it aside when the name Corbin caught his eye again. He was used to seeing Katherine’s name, but this was different.

  It seemed, according to the brief item on the society page, that the Reverend Keith Corbin meant to marry one Miss Amelie Rogers on the forthcoming Saturday at the First Methodist Church, Wenatchee. Temple grinned and relit his cheroot, which had gone out.

  Saturday. Wenatchee. And, like as not, the whole troublesome Corbin family would gather in one handy place. Temple suddenly felt buoyant; the grinding fatigue of tracking Jeff from hell to breakfast was gone.

  There was a solid rap at the hotel door. “Boss? You in there, Mr. Royce?”

  “Come in,” said Temple, drawing deeply on his cheroot and smiling up at the cracked plaster ceiling.

  The rest of Temple’s men had long since gone back to Port Hastings, grousing that they were tired of sleeping on the ground and chasing a man who seemed to have all the substance of a ghost, but Rothstein had always been loyal. He’d have gone into the devil’s privy if Temple ordered it.

  “I been watching Corbin’s house,” the massive man said with gruff discouragement.

  Temple was still relaxed, though there was a quickening within him. “And?” he prodded idly.

  “That crazy doctor is there. Now we ain’t just got Jeff to deal with, we got his brother, too.”

  Temple reached for a nearby towel with a wrenching, angry motion of his left hand. There were reasons, and sound ones, why he couldn’t risk a confrontation with Adam Corbin. “Damn it all to hell,” he muttered.

  But then, as he stood up and dried himself and reached for his clothes, Temple remembered the convenient wedding and calmed down again. There was no need to fret about the Corbins, and no need to stay in Spokane.

  “We’ll get some dinner and maybe some women,” he told a surprised Rothstein. “And then we’ll catch a westbound train.”

  “You givin’ up?” Rothstein muttered, slack-jawed and yet a little hopeful, too.

  Temple put on his last clean shirt and reached for a string tie. “You know better than that,” he said, smiling into the mirror.

  * * *

  It was too warm for a fire that night and the windows were open, curtains wafting in the lilac-scented breeze. Fancy cuddled closer to Jeff in their bed, taking comfort from the warm strength of him.

  Their lovemaking had been especially intense and, in the glowing aftermath, most of Fancy’s doubts and fears were at bay.

  “Your brother is very handsome,” she said, her head resting on Jeff’s bare shoulder.

  “Yeah,” came the somewhat grudging response.

  Surprised, Fancy lifted her head to look into Jeff’s face. “You’re still angry with him, aren’t you?” she asked, saddened.

  Jeff sighed heavily. “No,” he said, at length. “I tried to be, but I couldn’t. Adam did what he had to do—I understand that.”

  Fancy knew that he was not talking about the conflict over Banner O’Brien, but the matter he had mentioned once and then refused to discuss further. Something about their father. Resigned to the fact that she would probably never know anything more about that particular secret, she again rested her head on that sturdy shoulder.

  Jeff’s fingers tangled themselves gently in her hair. “Adam does have something that I want,” he remarked presently.

  Fancy was achingly alert. In the past few days, she had allowed herself to hope that Jeff’s feelings for Banner had settled into brotherly admiration. Was he about to shatter that fragile confidence? “What?” she dared to ask.

  “Children,” replied Jeff.

  Fancy’s beleaguered spirit soared. Her time of the month was overdue by several days and she cherished a tender hope that Jeff’s child might already be growing within her. It was her one security, knowing that, if Jeff did go away to sea or even die at the hands of Temple Royce, she would yet have a living part of him. For always.

  But the time for telling had not come; she couldn’t mention her suspicions until she was certain. “You—you want children?”

  Jeff laughed a low, rumbling, cozy laugh. “Dozens.”

  “Dozens!” blustered Fancy.

  “Well, five or six, at least.”

  Now it was Fancy who laughed. “That’s better.”

  Jeff rolled over so that he was looking down into Fancy’s face. The expression in his indigo eyes was tender, questioning. “Do you like babies, Mrs. Corbin? I just realized that I’ve never asked you—”

  “There are a great many things you have never asked me, Mr. Corbin. But yes, I do like babies. I love babies.”

  He traced the outline of her jaw with an index finger, pushed a gossamer tendril of hair away from her face. “Let’s start one, then,” he said in a gruff whisper.

  “It isn’t as though we haven’t tried,” Fancy reminded him gently.

  He kissed her, his lips searching and warm. “One can’t be too diligent about these things,” he breathed. And then his head was moving downward and his mouth was claiming the peak of Fancy’s left breast.

  “One certainly can’t,” gasped Fancy in fevered agreement, arching her back, glorying in the moist, heated demand of his mouth.

  Whereas their earlier lovemaking had been languorous, building gradually to an almost intolerable pitch, this joining was quick and fierce. Their two bodies buckled in magnificent unison, met violently in the force of a simultaneous release.

  Jeff gave a growling cry, while Fancy sobbed her husband’s name and clutched at him with frantic hands, all the while silently cursing clipperships, the sea, and the man who would separate them forever if he could.

  * * *

  As the time to leave Spokane drew nearer, Fancy found Meredith less of a trial. She had been foolish to be jealous of this woman because it was clear that, if Jeff had ever wanted Meredith Whittaker, he could have easily taken her.

  But he hadn’t.

  Meredith frowned at the billows of pretty gowns and hand-embroidered underthings spilling from this trunk and that. “That Evelyn must work like a demon,” she said without admiration.

  Fancy smiled, folding a pale green shirtwaist and laying it carefully in the largest of the trunks. The parlor looked, she thought with amusement, like the inside of a pillaged baggage ca
r. “Evelyn has several helpers,” she explained.

  Meredith fingered a soft gray skirt trimmed with jet beads and now her frown was thoughtful. “Lovely work,” she said, grudgingly.

  “Isn’t it?” chimed Fancy, going on with her folding and arranging. She didn’t have to do it—Miriam would have—but it was a joy to touch such lovely garments and imagine herself wearing them. “You might want to have Evelyn make some things for you.”

  “Not likely,” bristled Meredith, but then she summoned up a rather shaky smile. “Miriam told me that Adam is here. Is he?”

  Fancy shrugged. “Yes. Why would Miriam lie?”

  Meredith didn’t bother to answer, though her smile faltered. “It’s a shame, the way the Corbin men are marrying off all at once.”

  “Must be an epidemic,” quipped Fancy, struggling against a spate of unmatronly giggles.

  Meredith was scowling, clearly at the end of her patience. “I can’t understand what Jeff sees in you!” she blurted out. “Or what Adam sees in that Banner person, for that matter!”

  Fancy was stunned by the outburst and, before she could think of anything fitting to say, Adam appeared.

  “Did I hear my wife’s name fall from your lovely lips, Meredith?” he asked, and though he was smiling, there was a glittering chill in his eyes.

  Meredith stiffened. Color surged up over her snow-white bosom to pulse in her face. “Adam—hello—”

  “Hello,” he returned, with a sort of exaggerated, biting patience.

  Without another word, Meredith grabbed for her beaded handbag and her stylish parasol and fled.

  Adam folded his arms and grinned again. “What did I say?” he asked.

  Fancy smiled and shook her head. “I’m not sure. Whatever it was, our Meredith understood.”

  “I hope so.” Adam replied, perching on the arm of an overstuffed chair and folding his arms. He was wearing a dark suit despite the warmth of the day, and somehow he managed to look perfectly cool. For a time, there was a companionable silence during which Fancy went on with her packing and repacking, her fussing and smoothing.

  Adam broke the peace with a directness Fancy had already guessed was typical of him. “Meredith said she didn’t know what Jeff sees in you. Do you know, Fancy?”

  Suddenly, Fancy’s throat was twisted and tight and her heart was beating too fast. “I don’t think I do,” she answered honestly when she could get the words out.

  “He isn’t good enough for you, you know. Just the way I’m not good enough for Banner.”

  Even if she’d had a week to think Fancy wouldn’t have known how to respond to that remark. So naturally she remained silent.

  Adam smiled. “I knew you were right for my brother the minute you dived into the parsnips to catch that rabbit,” he said.

  Fancy flushed at the reminder. “Right for him?” she whispered, truly confused but hopeful, too.

  “My brothers and I are hard to live with, Fancy. We’re given to towering rages and grand passions and we tend to be attracted to women who are—well—unconventional.”

  Fancy was even more confused than she had been before. In her mind, Amelie Rogers, Keith’s intended, represented the perfect Corbin wife. And she certainly couldn’t be described as “unconventional.” “Isn’t Banner—”

  Adam chuckled. “Conventional?”

  “Well—yes. I was sure that she would be.”

  “Were you? Well, you’ve got a surprise coming, then. O’Brien is a spitfire.”

  Fancy put one hand to her forehead and sat down. “Now that I think about it, a woman doctor would have to be spirited,” she reflected. And then she looked up into Adam’s face with wide and vulnerable eyes. “I’m not very spirited, you know,” she confessed as an afterthought.

  Adam arched one raven black eyebrow. “Aren’t you?” he countered with gentle disbelief. “Jeff tells me that you’ve been on your own for several years, that you’ve traveled all over the territory performing. Do you really think that’s what ordinary women do, Fancy?”

  Fancy felt an intangible light warming her mind, reaching into the shadowy parts of her spirit. “I suppose not,” she said.

  Adam shrugged as though to say that his point was made and quietly left the room.

  Fancy sat for a long time, alone in that sunny, spacious parlor, smiling to herself.

  * * *

  The train chortled into Colterville and came to a noisy stop, whistle shrilling, smokestack puffing. Fancy was reflecting on the changes in her life since she’d been here last and jumped in surprise when Jeff elbowed her gently in the ribs.

  “I’ll get the balloon and put it on the next train,” he said. “I want you to go on to Wenatchee with Adam—I’ll meet you there tomorrow.”

  Adam cleared his throat and looked out the grimy train window, pretending an interest in quiet, uninspiring Colterville.

  “I’m staying with you!” flared Fancy.

  “You’ll be safer with Adam,” replied Jeff, standing up in the aisle now. “Will you just do what I tell you, for once?”

  “No!” Out of the corner of her eye, Fancy could see Adam’s broad shoulders moving in silent laughter.

  With patronizing patience, Jeff bent to kiss her briefly on the mouth. “Frances, Frances, you do try my forbearance,” he said. And then he turned and walked away.

  Fancy looked at Adam in silent question and he gestured for her to follow Jeff. “I’ll make sure your rabbit gets off the train,” he promised, his eyes dancing.

  Impulsively, Fancy stretched to kiss his forehead. “My trunks? You’ll get those, too?”

  He nodded. “Hurry, Fancy.”

  Soaring on a swell of happiness and rebellion, Fancy leaped out of her seat and rushed down the aisle. Jeff was already a good distance up the road, so long were his strides, and he had almost reached the livery stable by the time Fancy caught up with him.

  He whirled and glared at her, amazed at her audacity. “What the—you little—”

  Fancy laughed and the train whistle shrieked, drowning out whatever else her husband had meant to say. Just as Jeff caught her elbow in a furious grip and started propelling her back, the train pulled out, Adam waving expansively from one window.

  Swearing—he clearly hated to be defied so flagrantly—Jeff wrenched Fancy off in the other direction again. Reaching the livery stable, he literally flung her down onto a bale of souring hay out front.

  “Sit there!” he ordered. “Right there, God damn it! And so help me, Frances, if you move—”

  “I won’t,” promised Fancy, in sunny, docile tones. But already the spiky hay was poking through her skirts in a very uncomfortable fashion.

  Jeff waggled one index finger in her face. “If you do, I swear I’ll beat you.”

  It was an empty threat and they both knew it, but Fancy wasn’t about to push. She had managed to stay here, with him, and that was all she cared about for the moment. “I promise I’ll behave,” she said sweetly.

  “It’s a sin to lie,” snapped Jeff, and then he turned and marched angrily into the livery stable.

  When he came out again, having rented a sizable wagon and a team of two sorrel horses, Fancy was still sitting obediently on that bale of hay, the picture of wifely submission. Except, maybe, for the violet sparkle in her eyes.

  “Could I stand up now?” she asked, batting her thick lashes.

  The proprietor of the livery stable looked at her in stark admiration. “Now there’s the kind of wife a man needs.”

  Jeff reached out, his mouth losing an obvious battle with a smile, and wrenched Fancy to her feet. “Like he needs the black plague and high taxes,” he muttered.

  Fancy was enjoying the game. “Have I displeased you somehow, darling?” she simpered, trying to look remorseful. “Oh, if I’ve been naughty—why, I just couldn’t live with that!”

  The stable manager took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, moved to deep emotion by such a display of old-fashioned womanhood. “G
lory be,” he said in wonder.

  Jeff fairly flung Fancy up into the wagon seat. “Bullshit,” he muttered.

  The drive to Eustis Ponder’s farm was a long one, and it was late afternoon when they arrived. Isabella scurried outside to greet them, her face alight, drying her work-roughened hands on her apron. Fancy leaped down and hugged the woman with unrestrained joy.

  “Land, I’ve missed you, Fancy!” Isabella cried, returning the hug with equal exuberance. “Can you stay long?”

  “Overnight,” said Jeff, busy with the horses. And when Eustis hurried in from the fields only moments later, the men greeted each other with almost as much enthusiasm as the women had.

  Isabella had obviously hoped for a longer visit, but she was a woman conditioned to making do with what was offered and she ushered Fancy into the house for pie, coffee, and gossip.

  “You look a mite happier than when last I saw you,” Isabella remarked when they were settled at the table.

  Fancy was trying to enjoy each moment and not let her mind stray ahead to days when she might be alone again. “I am.”

  “The way you love that man shines out all over you,” Isabella chirped. “Won’t be long till there’s a baby to bind you even closer.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said softly.

  Isabella glowed, having caught some nuance from Fancy’s words and come to a conclusion of her own. “Mercy me, you’re late for the monthly, aren’t you?”

  Fancy nodded. “I haven’t said anything to Jeff, though,” she confided. “I want to be absolutely sure first, and it’s too soon for that.”

  Isabella’s strong, calloused hand came across the table to squeeze Fancy’s. “You make sure to send me a letter the day you find out,” she ordered.

  Fancy promised that she would.

  * * *

  Jeff’s hand was cupped around Fancy’s breast, warm and insistent. The spare room was so dark that she could only make out the wheat-gold glint of his hair, the shadowy slope of his bare shoulder.

  “Stop that!” she hissed.

  “Why?” came the reasonably put response.

  “Because I don’t want Eustis and Isabella to hear, that’s why!”

  A long, chortling, and all-too-convenient snore came through the thin wall.