by Indiana Wake
But Marshall had other plans, and so he had hobbled dramatically from room to room, limping all the harder if either one of his parents were present. And his father, for his part, had muttered under his breath every time he set eyes on his son. Although he could not be sure, Marshall was certain that much of the muttering contained open insults to the woman he now loved. But what did his father’s opinion of any of it matter anymore?
Marshall knew how he wanted his life to go now. He knew what he wanted to do, and he knew who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. When Honey had told him the night before in the town barn that she loved him too, Marshall could hardly believe his good fortune. It was as if the years of loneliness, the years of feeling as if he would only ever be on the edge of things, had been rolled up and thrown in the Willamette River, never to be seen again. The sadness would just float away downstream for year upon year until it dissolved entirely.
But if he was going to tell his father what his plans were, he needed to tell Honey first. If he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, he would most certainly need her consent.
Marshall was suddenly filled with an excited confidence and turned away from the window so that he might hurriedly get washed and dressed. He wanted to strike while the iron was still hot, to act while his excited confidence was still in evidence.
He hurried out of the house when he was ready, careful to maintain the last vestiges of the painful limp just in case he would need to rely on it again, and had Jimmy saddle him a horse.
“Are you sure, sir? I could drive you into town in the wagon if that helps any,” Jimmy said, looking at Marshall with some concern.
“I think I need to practice, Jimmy. But thank you anyway,” Marshall said, realizing that he would make a very poor rancher indeed if he let his horsemanship dwindle away to nothing.
Marshall climbed up onto his horse with ease, putting his good foot in the stirrup and swinging his injured knee high over the saddle. Once he was settled, he sat for a moment enjoying just how good it felt to be up on horseback again.
But when he finally set off in the direction of Goodman’s merchant warehouse, he realized just what he had been missing. He clung hard to his horses back with his knees and realized there was only the merest twinge of discomfort. He urged his horse faster and faster, feeling the breeze through his thick hair and the sun on his face as he drew in great breaths of fresh air. This was life; this was where he wanted to spend his working days. A rancher, a man of the land, a man of the outdoors. He had never been meant for a life trapped in an office and he knew then, with certainty, that it would never, ever be his fate.
By the time he arrived at the Goodman place, Marshall was pleased to note that his confidence was still riding high. He jumped down from the saddle, careful to land most of his weight on his good leg, and marched up to the front door, knocking loudly.
“Marshall?” Honey said, opening the kitchen door and smiling brightly. “You weren’t at church this morning,” she added as if she had been worrying about him.
“I slept too late,” he said with a grin. “I had something on my mind last night and I guess it kept me tossing and turning.”
“About what?” Honey still looked concerned.
He peered over her shoulder into the kitchen, fully expecting to see either or both of her parents there.
“Where are your folks?” he asked and suddenly hoped that they were nowhere to be seen; what he had to say didn’t really require an audience.
“Oh, they went over to the Swain place after church. Polly invited them over for dinner.”
“You don’t want to go?”
“I tend to like Sundays to myself.” She smiled slow and beautiful. “Unless there’s a chance to spend it with you.” She stepped back into the kitchen and held the door wide for him to enter.
He walked in and knew the moment had arrived. He wished he had predicted that his excited confidence would evaporate in this very moment, leaving nothing but a little insecurity in its wake. Still, his determination hadn’t gone anywhere and so he would rely upon that instead.
“So, as I said, I guess I had something on my mind last night. Truth is, I guess it’s still there.” It was awkward wording but as good a place as any to begin.
“What is it?”
“Now. I don’t expect an answer straight away, I know it might be too soon for you. But Honey, my beautiful Honey,” he said and began to lower himself painfully down onto his injured knee. “Would you do me the great honor of one day becoming my wife?”
Honey’s mouth fell open and she gasped audibly; if nothing else, he sure had surprised her. But he had surprised himself too, for he hadn’t known until he stared out of the window that morning that he would, just an hour later, ask the woman he loved to spend the rest of her life with him.
“Oh, my goodness,” Honey said and raised both of her hands to her eyes, dashing away tears. “You sure have caught me unawares, Marshall Thornhill.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said apologetically and shifted his weight; it had been a mistake to confidently lean on his bad knee. “And I don’t expect you to answer me, really, I don’t, but I am going to have to get up off the floor because my knee’s suddenly throbbing,” he said and chuckled, hearing his own nervousness.
Honey took his hands and helped him to his feet, reminding him of how she had helped him that night down to her parents’ house, into that very kitchen, when he had been injured.
“Of course, I’ll answer you right now, Marshall,” she began, and his mouth went dry; please let her say yes. “And of course, I’ll marry you. Of course, I will! I love you.”
“Thank God for that,” he said with such relief that Honey burst out laughing.
Marshall had never felt so happy in all his life. He wrapped his arms around Honey’s waist and lifted her from the ground, spinning her around once before his knee began to object again.
“I just can’t wait to be your wife,” Honey said when he finally set her back down on her feet. “But you have to do something for me now.”
“Anything.”
“You have to tell your father that you want to be a rancher. I love you so much, Marshall, that I couldn’t bear to spend my married life watching you go out every day to a job that isn’t in your heart. You follow your own dreams because that will give me more happiness than you can ever know.”
“I will,” he said in a determined, strong voice. “Today,” he added and nodded, knowing that he must.
Chapter 16
“A ranch hand! A ranch hand?!” Kirby Thornhill bellowed at the top of his lungs.
Marshall was taken aback; he hadn’t heard his father shout like that since long before he’d left town for university. In truth, he had almost forgotten the wrath of Kirby Thornhill and it took him right back to younger, more vulnerable days.
“No, not a ranch hand, a rancher. A man with his own ranch,” Marshall said, raising his voice to compete with his father’s.
“This has something to do with that woman, doesn’t it? Oh yes, I’ll bet she’s behind all of this!”
“It’s my own plan, Father. It’s what I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember.” Marshall realized his father must know something of his continued friendship with Honey, for who else could he be blaming this on?
Marshall did not know anybody else, and nobody else had visited him at the Thornhill house since he had returned from university but Honey Goodman.
“Then why is this the first that I’m hearing about it?” His father’s voice had lowered a little, but Marshall thought it was more on account of fatigue rather than an attempt at reasonable behavior.
“Because you never asked me before, not once, but it is what I want to do with my life. My life, Father, not your life. And how could I have told you? As a child, how could I have come out with such a thing when this is how you behave? It is hard enough to listen to now and I am a grown man.”
“No grown man who has th
e privileges you do can call himself a man and make such a choice. I have made a good life for you, but you would still choose to roll around in the dirt with the rest of town! Perhaps I should not even have bothered sending you to school, never mind university. Why don’t you go and become a farm laborer somewhere if this is the sort of life that would suit you?”
“You are being ridiculous now, Father. And being a successful rancher is hardly rolling around in the dirt, is it?”
“Compared to what you could be, of course it is. You may not agree with my methods, but you cannot deny that I have set you on a path towards the very best that life can offer.”
“The best for who, Father? What if the very best thing that life can offer me is nothing more than the opportunity to follow my own dreams, to be my own man?”
“Your own man? I can’t tell now if this is the excesses of a university education or the ramblings of that little blonde tramp.”
“How dare you talk about Honey Goodman like that!” Marshall surprised himself with the depth and volume of the shout that flew from him. “You know nothing about her; all you’re doing is satisfying your own tattered ego because you cannot get over the fact that her mother didn’t want you. All these years of spite, ruining the lives of everybody around you, just because you couldn’t shrug your shoulders and move on when a young woman said no to you. And all these years later, when that woman’s daughter says no to two rough mannered cowboys, you know whose side you’re on, don’t you? What kind of man does that make you, Father?”
“You know nothing about being a man, Marshall. God knows, I ought to teach you a lesson right now.”
“That threat might have worked ten years ago, maybe even five, but not now. To threaten me like that today is to start a fight you can’t finish. The only thing you will achieve out of that is to finally finish this ugly little family once and for all.”
“I’m telling you now, boy, that you’ll end things with that girl. Oh yes, I know you’ve been seeing her. I know you’ve had that witless stable boy driving you over to that darn warehouse and I won’t have it, do you hear me? I’ve given you enough time to get over your little bit of fun, not that you’ve shown me any gratitude for indulgence. But the fun times are over, Marshall, it’s time to start taking your responsibilities seriously.”
“My responsibilities are to myself and to Honey,” Marshall said, almost enjoying the way his father’s eyes flew open. “Yes, that’s right, I mean to marry her.”
“Oh no, you don’t.”
“Look at you, so sure that you still have a right to control my every move. So sure that I will bow my head and apologize and never see Honey again. How wrong you are.”
“So, you think that you and the Goodman girl are going to set up your own ranch and live the good life out of my purse, do you? What money do you have of your own, Marshall? Where do you intend to find the funds to buy the land, the stock, the equipment? You haven’t even thought about it, have you? You probably just assumed you’d be handed the money, just as you’ve been handed everything else in your miserable little life.”
“No, I don’t want anything from you anymore,” Marshall said and sounded incredibly relaxed for a man who realized that his father was, to some degree, right.
The truth was, he had never really believed that he would become a rancher as he had always wanted. But then, he’d never imagined for a moment that he would end up with a wonderful woman like Honey Goodman. He had never made a plan for how he would pay for his land, how he would set himself up. Perhaps that was the real plight of the privileged man; never expecting he would really have to forge his own way in the world from scratch, from nothing.
But Marshall had gone too far now to go back. And even if he could go back, even if he could erase the last ten awful minutes, he knew he wouldn’t. Everything he had said had needed to be said for such a long time and, despite his serious misgivings about the future, he felt as if a burden had been lifted from him. He was shaking off his father’s shackles and it felt good.
“I will give you this last opportunity to rethink your ridiculous stance. You will give up that girl, and you will give up any pathetic notions of becoming a rancher. You will start work for Garrett Cleaver next week without complaint, and you will keep your head down and work until you have made your way into government.”
“And if I don’t?” Marshall said, knowing that he most certainly would not give in to his father now but wanting to know exactly how far the man would go regardless.
“You will leave my house immediately. You will never get another penny from me as long as I’m alive and you most certainly will not inherit from me when I’m dead.”
“Then I will truly be free of you, won’t I? My answer is a simple one, Father, I do not accept your terms in any way, shape, or form.” And with that, Marshall turned and walked away from his father.
Chapter 17
Honey hadn’t heard a single thing from Marshall all week. Her extraordinary excitement at having been proposed to in the kitchen of her parents’ home on Sunday was slowly beginning to wear off, being replaced by uncertainty and a little insecurity.
Marshall had been so excited when he’d asked her to marry him that she could never imagine him changing his mind. But now that he had stayed away from her, not even sending Jimmy with a note, she began to think that he must surely have decided that he’d made a mistake. He regretted his decision, she was certain.
Of course, she realized that his father would undoubtedly have played a large part in it all. How hard it must be for a man to go up against such a formidable parent, especially one who had always provided such obvious advantages. Even if his father had never openly shown his son any love, Honey knew that it would be almost impossible not to feel at least a little gratitude for the privilege of a good education and a fine home. But it made her blood boil to think of how a parent might use such things against their child; molding them, pulling off some bits, sticking on others, just to make them become exactly what they wanted them to be. Nobody had a right to do that to another person, whether they loved them, whether they had paid for every aspect of their life, they had no right at all.
She was glad she hadn’t let her excitement overwhelm her and lead her to tell her mother and father about the proposal. She hadn’t wanted to take that away from Marshall, especially since he was such a gentleman. She knew he would have wanted to approach her father himself, to do things right.
And now that it seemed that Marshall had changed his mind, or at least had it changed for him, Honey was simply pleased from her perspective of pride. She loved Marshall, and it gave her great pain to be left in a sea of doubt, but that sea of doubt would have been so much harder to manage if humiliation had been thrown in too.
It was a chilly early autumn Friday afternoon and, for the first time ever, Honey was not particularly looking forward to Saturday. She didn’t want to spend the morning with her mother, that wonderful, wise, caring woman, who would soon discover, whether Honey wanted her to or not, exactly what had happened.
Instead, Honey wanted to work right through, not just Saturday, but Sunday if she could have got away with it. She wanted to stay in the warehouse and busy her racing mind with stock, sales, profits, even reorganizing shelves. Anything to stop her from standing still, thinking about her fears, and turning to dust, only to blow away on a gentle breeze.
“Honey?” Marshall said, striding into the warehouse with barely a hint of the limp which had beset him for weeks and weeks.
“Marshall?” she said, her heart pounding and her eyes filling with tears just at the sight of him. “I thought I was never going to see you again,” she said, honesty pouring from her like water from a jug.
“I’m sorry, I’ve had so much to do this week. I haven’t stopped moving since I saw you on Sunday.” As he took her into his arms, Honey realized she could smell the wonderful musky odor of a man who had been busy at work—hard work.
She wriggled free and
leaned back to look at him again; he was wearing thick dark blue trousers, work trousers, and his red plaid shirt was not quite as immaculate as every other one she had seen him in before that day.
“Marshall, what have you been doing?”
“I’ve been working, Honey. And no, not at Garrett Cleaver’s law practice.” He chuckled and peered down at her, his ordinarily clean-shaven chin showing the first signs of dark stubble. “I went to see Sonny Reynolds—he’s a real good man,” he said and Honey nodded furiously, wondering what on earth was going on. “Anyways, he got me a start with Felton Lowry on his ranch. Just a ranch hand for now, but I need the money as well as needing to learn the job.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I told my father everything. About us, about the ranch, about not wanting to continue to be his little puppet, working my way into government just to please him.”
“It didn’t go well then?” Honey said and winced, making Marshall laugh.
She was so relieved to see him, so relieved that he was standing in front of her now, her hands clasped tightly in his, that he could have told her anything and it would have been all right.
“I suppose that’s one way of describing it. The truth is, Honey, it was awful. I’ve never seen him that angry. Really, I thought he was going to strike me for the first time since I was a child.” Despite the lack of feeling between father and son, Honey could see that the idea of that hurt Marshall.
“I’m so sorry. He didn’t, did he?” Honey let go of his hands and leaned against him, wrapping her arms around his back.
“No, he didn’t. He demanded that I never see you again, and that I give up any idea of becoming a rancher. Or a ranch hand, as he kept calling it.”
