Marianne's Marriage of Convenience

by Lynna Banning

  His eyebrows rose. “Well, jes’ that Mister Lance is…well…he’s… Aw, I cain’t tell ya, Miss Marianne. Pretend I never said nuthin’.”

  Her curiosity swept away the bitter taste Eugenia Ridley’s visit had left in her mouth, but Abe moved away without explaining. For the rest of the morning she tried to concentrate on the columns of figures before her and stop wondering about what was happening tonight.

  Late in the afternoon, Abe reappeared and slipped another one of his dime novels under her elbow. Rusty of the Rio Grande. He gave her shoulder a pat. “Why don’tcha call it a day, Miss Marianne? Them numbers’ll add up jest the same tomorrow.”

  “That’s just the problem, Abe,” she said with a sigh. “The numbers don’t add up. Unless we get some orders, we’re going to go bankrupt.”

  He pursed his lips. “That so? Collingwood’s been down before, honey-girl. Old Mistuh Collingwood, he allus pulled us outta the hole.”

  Marianne snapped the account book shut. “But old Mister Collingwood isn’t here now, Abe.”

  He patted the closed volume. “Miss Marianne, it ain’t ’rithmetic that’s important.”

  “This is a business, Abe. If arithmetic isn’t important, what is important?”

  “What’s important is grit. You got it. Lance got it. I got it. Even Sammy’s got it. Jest gotta keep goin’ no matter what.”

  Marianne tipped her head down so he wouldn’t see the tears flooding her eyes. How could he possibly believe they could survive with no work coming in? When they couldn’t even afford to buy food? She was more worried about Abe than about Lance and herself; she and Lance were young and strong. Abe was an old man.

  She gritted her teeth to suppress a sob. “I—I’m going upstairs to cook supper now.”

  “You do that, Miss Marianne. Me, I’m takin’ supper with Sammy and his ma tonight. That Rosie, she can cobble up a meal outta dribs and drabs like nobody I ever seen.”

  Marianne sent him a wobbly smile, stood up and started to drag herself up to the apartment. Halfway up the stairs she heard a thump and Lance’s voice shouting a profanity. My heavens, she had never heard such a word come out of his mouth!

  Then she shook her head. Why should she be surprised? Lance was as frustrated and depressed as she was. But when she opened the door, he was standing in the middle of the kitchen with a big grin on his face.

  “What was that noise?” she asked.

  “I was…uh…folding up something, and I dropped it.”

  She recognized a hand-in-the-cookie-jar expression when she saw it. “Folding up what?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he turned away and lifted two plates from the china cabinet. “I made supper for you. Baked potatoes and…”

  She sniffed the air appreciatively. “And what? Something smells wonderful.”

  “And, um, cheese. Melted.”

  “Is that the last of our potatoes?”

  “Almost. We still have some cheese, though. Abe’s been getting some from Mrs. Hinckley. Seems her cow gave more milk than she expected last fall, so she made lots of cheese. And I think she’s got a soft spot for Abe.”

  Marianne bit her lip. “What were you folding up?”

  “The cot. Now that your cracked ribs are almost healed I figured we didn’t need it any longer.”

  She caught her breath. Does that mean he’s forgiven me for lying to him? She tried to catch his eye, but he had turned away.

  Lance scrabbled in the cutlery drawer. Marianne’s cracked ribs were one reason why he’d folded up the cot. He didn’t want to tell her the other reason. Not yet, anyway.

  He watched her put one of Abe’s new dime novels on the night table beside the bed and tried not to smile. With any luck she’d never get to read it.

  But he’d have to go slow, not so much because of her cracked ribs, but because of their cracked relationship. Relationships, he was learning, were much harder to heal than bones.

  While he busied himself setting out the plates and forks for supper, Marianne puttered aimlessly about the apartment. He noted that she sent an extra-long look at their double bed, and for the hundredth time in their marriage he wondered what she was thinking. He wondered even more what she was feeling about their relationship. About their marriage. About him.

  He lifted the potatoes out of the oven, split them open and grated the small block of cheese over each half. It was a pretty sparse supper, but he had a surprise hidden in the pantry. He’d slaved over it all afternoon, and he sure hoped she liked it.

  She didn’t say much during their meager supper, just listlessly poked forkfuls of cheese-topped baked potato past her lips. But something about the tentative expression in her eyes made him wonder. It gave him a sliver of hope, but he took pains not to let it show.

  When he had finished all of his baked potato and half of hers, he sprang his surprise. “Marianne, I… I made something extra for supper tonight.”

  She looked up, a question in her green eyes. “What is it?”

  “I hid it in the pantry.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “I made some coffee, too. Thought you might want some after…” He didn’t finish the thought, just opened the pantry door, ducked inside and fumbled with the match he’d hidden in his shirt pocket.

  When he emerged with his creation on a china platter, her eyes widened and the expression on her face was worth the hours of frustration he’d spent all afternoon.

  “A cake!” she breathed. “And…a candle!”

  He set it on the table. “Happy birthday, Marianne.”

  “Birthday! Oh. Oh. I’d forgotten all about my birthday!” Her eyes filled with tears which slid slowly down her pale cheeks.

  “Yeah, I thought maybe you’d forgotten about it. But I recalled last year when you thought nobody remembered about your birthday and how surprised you were when Mrs. Schneiderman baked you a cake.”

  “Oh, Lance.” She clasped her hand over her mouth, and the tears trickled over her fingers.

  “It’s an applesauce cake,” he said. “I did everything Mrs. Beeton said in her book, but—”

  The sound of breaking glass stopped him mid-sentence. Marianne jerked upright. “What was that?”

  “Don’t know. Sounded like a window breaking.” He moved to the door, swung it open and peered down into the shop.

  Shards of glass shone in the faint light. He was halfway down the stairs before he figured out what the noise was. Someone had heaved a brick through the front window.

  Marianne came to stand beside him.

  “Why on earth would anyone—?”

  “Because whoever it was wanted to break the window,” he said shortly. “Someone must have a beef of some kind with Collingwood Boots.”

  “But who—?” She broke off with a cry. “I know who. Eugenia Ridley. How could she?”

  “And on your birthday, too,” he murmured. He put his arm around her. With a choked sob she turned toward him, and he pressed her head into his shoulder. “Let’s have some applesauce cake,” he said. “And afterward we can…”

  “Go to bed,” she whispered.

  He opened his mouth to reply, then closed his eyes and held his breath. It wasn’t at all what he expected Marianne to say.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  And it wasn’t what Lance expected later, after she had devoured two pieces of his applesauce cake and wept into her coffee. Later, when she was undressing behind the folding screen in the corner, he could hear her sniffling, and his spirits sank. He wanted to hold her close and assure her that he still cared for her. Even if he was still angry with her, Marianne still mattered.

  He wanted to make love to her, but he guessed it wasn’t going to be tonight.

  She said she liked the cake he’d baked. And she was touched that he remembered her birthday. Even if she was unstrung tonight, he hoped to God she cared about him the way he cared about her.

  Why was she crying? Because that witch Mrs. Ridley had thrown a brick through the shop window? Or wa
s it because they had no orders for boots and they were running out of money?

  He watched her garments appear over the top of the screen, then heard water splashing into the ceramic bowl and the catch in her breathing as she wept. It tore him up inside, made his chest hurt and his eyes sting.

  When she finally stepped out from behind the screen her eyes were red and swollen and her lips were trembling. A knife sliced into his gut. He leaned over and puffed out the lamp and lifted the quilt so she could slide into bed.

  She edged close to him and reached for his hand under the covers. “Lance, I want to say something to you.”

  His belly dropped down to his toes. “Yeah?”

  She delayed so long he knew it was going to be bad. In silence he lay waiting for the ax to fall and chop his heart into little pieces.

  But that wasn’t what happened. She simply held on to his hand and said nothing. If any other woman was upset with her husband she would unleash a stream of harsh words or scream or even pound her fists against his chest. But Marianne, his Marianne, wasn’t like other women. She wasn’t like other wives, and he now knew that she never would be. Marianne was…Marianne.

  “Lance, that first morning when I sneaked out to go riding with Rosie I felt just awful. And then when I deliberately didn’t tell you about riding in the women’s race I felt even worse.”

  “Yeah,” he said cautiously. He knew what was coming. He didn’t want to hear it.

  “But then something happened, and I turned some kind of corner. About us,” she added. “About being married to you.”

  He said nothing. The truth was he didn’t trust his voice.

  She brought her hand to rest on his thrumming heart. “I think that our marriage is a real marriage,” she said in a watery voice. “I know it’s not always going to be happy, but…”

  Lance gritted his teeth.

  “I made a terrible mistake by not telling you what I intended to do, but I have learned something. I learned that it matters. Our relationship matters. You matter.”

  He rolled toward her. “Marianne…”

  She laid one finger across his lips. “I am not finished.”

  Oh, God, here it comes. He tensed, waiting for the blow.

  “This has been a really dreadful time. Everything was awful. I hurt our marriage, and I hurt you. And what did you do?” She swiped tears away with her fingers. “You baked me a birthday cake.”

  “And folded up the cot,” he reminded.

  She brushed her lips against his cheek. “I am so glad you—” Her voice broke, but she went on. “F-found Mrs. Beeton’s recipe book.”

  “Yeah? How come?”

  “I think that should be obvious,” she said softly. She shifted her body closer to his and tucked her head under his chin. After a long while he realized she had fallen asleep. God in heaven, his Marianne was asleep in his arms!

  Very slowly, he reached out and touched her hair.

  *

  Marianne woke to bright sunlight streaming in the window and Lance sound asleep beside her, one arm stretched out on the pillow and the other draped across her waist. It was lovely to wake up this way, enveloped in his warmth. If she wasn’t feeling a twinge from her still sore ribs every time she moved or took a deep breath, she would wake him with kisses and…more. Much more.

  She rose, dressed carefully in her denim work skirt and blue striped shirtwaist and stirred up the coals in the stove. Then she filled the speckleware coffeepot, added a handful of ground beans and set it to boil.

  In the pantry she found three eggs and half a loaf of bread. She would have to bake today, and that meant a trip to the mercantile to buy flour and coffee beans and whatever else Mr. Ness would let her put on their overdue account. If they didn’t get some work orders soon, they would use up all their credit. And if that happened, they would be without food.

  That thought was so paralyzing she brushed it out of her mind and whipped up the eggs with the last few tablespoons of milk. Then she cut four thick slices of bread and laid them on the oven rack to toast. By the time she poured the eggs into the iron skillet, Lance was awake.

  She knew he was watching her. She could feel his gaze so keenly it was difficult to concentrate on scrambling the eggs.

  They ate slowly, without talking. She felt close to him this morning, maybe because she had confessed her feelings the night before. Or maybe because she had slept all night in his arms.

  How surprising relationships were! Just when she thought she knew who Lance was, she discovered something new. Last night she learned he could be angry and not lash out at her, and that she could hurt him. He had revealed a vulnerability she had never seen before. That knowledge sent a shiver up her spine. Knowing you could hurt someone made a person cautious.

  “I’m going to help Abe chop wood this morning,” he suddenly announced. “His wood box is low, and so is ours.”

  “I am going to visit Rosie Greywolf,” Marianne announced. Lance raised his eyebrows, but she took a deep breath and continued. “I feel more and more uneasy about Eugenia Ridley. If she could throw a brick through our shop window, who knows what she might do to Rosie’s place?”

  When she went down to the shop, Abe looked up from his broom and tipped his head toward the pile of broken glass on the floor. “I see you got a taste of Indian fever last night, Miss Marianne.”

  “Indian fever?”

  “Nuthin’ new to me. It’s ’xactly like Negro fever, and I seen plenty of that in my time.”

  “Here? In Smoke River?”

  “Naw, not here. But when somebody like that Miz Ridley gets her dander up, you kin bet yer boots sooner or later she’ll be rilin’ up others.”

  “Oh, Abe, surely not.”

  “People are funny, Miss Marianne. Somethin’ comes along an’ scares ’em, and they start lookin’ fer a scapegoat.”

  “Scapegoat? You mean us? Collingwood Boots?”

  “Folks don’t like to be scared. They need somethin’ they can point to an’ say ‘it’s their fault’.”

  “Yes, it was the same back in St. Louis.”

  “It’s jes’ human nature for people to slide outta takin’ responsibility fer their mistakes or failures or whatever ain’t to their liking at the moment. So they look fer somethin’ besides theirself to blame. It’s ’cuz they’re scared, like I said.”

  “But why would Mrs. Ridley be scared?”

  “Aw, who knows. She’s a female, fer one thing.” He pushed the glass shards into a pile, leaned his broom against the wall and reached for the dustpan. “She’s losin’ control over that man of hers, Oliver Ridley. Works at the sawmill, and a sorrier lookin’ gent I never seen.”

  “Abe, is Oliver Ridley ill?”

  Abe scooped up bits of glass. “Naw, he ain’t sick. Just lazy. Started as a tree-skinner and never advanced none in all the years he’s been at the mill. The other fellers can saw up seven or eight big logs in the time it takes ol’ Oliver to roll one itty-bitty one on to the green chain.”

  “I’m going to visit Sammy’s mother this morning,” she announced.

  Abe shook his head. “Rosie won’t be home, Miss Marianne. She’ll be at the restaurant, washin’ dishes like she always does. Good worker, that Rosie.”

  “Sammy is a good worker, too.”

  “Oh, sure, Sammy works real hard. Jes’ wish I had somethin’ fer him to work on.”

  Marianne turned away. She fervently wished the same, but a business didn’t survive on wishes. She waved goodbye to Abe and started off for the Smoke River restaurant. When she arrived she walked around to the back kitchen door to find Rosie.

  She was bent over a huge double sink, scrubbing away on a tower of dirty plates. “No time for talk,” she said. “Too busy.”

  Marianne picked up a dish towel and lifted a wet platter from the hot rinse water. “This isn’t a social call, Rosie. It’s a fact-finding visit.”

  The woman’s eyes flicked up. “Find fact about what?”

 
; “About your life here in Smoke River.”

  “Nothing to tell, Missy. Husband die. I bring baby son to town, get job.”

  “I understand you sent Sammy to school. He has grown into a fine young man, Rosie.”

  “Not man yet,” she insisted. “Still a boy.”

  Marianne slid the dry platter into the rack of china and picked up a plate. “Nevertheless, Sammy drives the delivery wagon for Mr. Ness at the mercantile, and he is working as an apprentice at Collingwood Boots. You must be very proud of him.”

  Rosie splashed a stack of dirty plates into the sudsy wash water. “Sammy is good son. He work hard, like I do. Together we buy house near town. Very proud day when we move from tent.”

  “Rosie, has anyone in town ever made trouble for you?”

  “Lots of trouble when first move to house,” she said. “Someone try to burn down, but stable man smell smoke and help put out flames.”

  “Did anything happen after that?”

  “One boy at schoolhouse start fight when Sammy was little. Sammy punch him hard. No trouble since.”

  “Did anyone ever object to your having a job here at the restaurant?”

  Rosie looked puzzled. “Why you ask?”

  “Because of what happened during the horse race. When Mrs. Ridley purposely interfered with your horse.”

  Rosie barked out a laugh. “More than interfere. I think she try to hurt me.”

  “Yes,” Marianne said slowly. “I think so, too.”

  Another stack of china splashed into the soapy water. “When I first come to restaurant to work, was big noise in dining room. Somebody not like me washing dishes. But—” her grin spread wide “—I wash anyway. I could maybe spit on plates, but I didn’t.”

  Marianne laughed out loud, then caught her breath as a shard of pain laced into her chest. She liked Sammy’s mother. The woman had real grit.

  “You drink dandelion and comfrey tea for hurt in bones,” Rosie advised. “I bring dried leaves to shop.”

  “Thank you, Rosie.”

  “Is there other reason you ask about trouble?”

  Marianne bit her lip. “Yes. I’m afraid someone in town doesn’t think Sammy should work at Collingwood Boots. And last night someone tossed a brick through our front window.”