Carrie smiled. “I’m so glad you like it, but I don’t think your father does.”
Dallas looked up at her father in disbelief. “But it’s beautiful.” The child sounded as though she were going to cry. “Can we keep it?”
Picking up his daughter, Josh hugged her. “Of course we can keep it. There isn’t any way to return wallpaper.” He looked over Dallas’s shoulder to frown at Carrie, but she just smiled at him.
Carrie looked at Dallas, in her father’s arms, and at Tem, peering from behind his father and said, “If you children would excuse us, I think your father would like to talk to me in private.”
Josh did have some things he wanted to say to Carrie, actually rather a great many things, but he wasn’t going to be alone with her while she was sitting in a bathtub. From what little he knew of her, he wouldn’t put it past her to stand up in the tub and ask him to hand her a towel. If she were to stand up, he knew he’d be lost. “What I have to say can wait,” Josh said as gruffly as he could manage and put Dallas down.
Moving to the tub, Dallas picked up a handful of suds, looking at them in question.
“They are foaming bath salts,” Carrie said, “and they’re from—”
“Let me guess,” Josh said sarcastically. “France. One of your dear brothers brought them back to you.”
“As a matter of fact he did, along with six new dresses,” she said sweetly. She was not going to defend her brothers to this man.
“How charming for you to have been born wealthy. The rest of us slaves of the world have to work for our bread and…” He looked about the room. “We have to work for the rugs and the wallpaper and the dresses.”
Carrie smiled at him. “Then it seems that it’s the duty of the rich people to share their wealth, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps, but charity doesn’t sit well with all of us.”
Carrie refused to allow him to make her angry. She wanted to remind him that they were now married and that what was hers was his, too, and that she had purchased these items for her own family. As for his pride, which seemed to be hurt, she had not bought a house in town, even though there was a rather nice one for sale, but had merely decorated his house.
Carrie bit down on her feelings of injustice and, instead, offered to share her tub with Dallas. The little girl looked at her father for permission, then hurriedly undressed herself, and her father lifted her into the tub. As the child settled into the tub, Carrie was very pleased to see Josh frowning fiercely before he turned away and left the room.
Once he was out of the bedroom, Josh felt that he could breathe again, but that didn’t last for long, for now the parlor was so very, very different from the way it had been. The whole room seemed to reek of Carrie. Everywhere he looked he could see her touch, and when he glanced at Tem and saw that the boy was looking into the big pot that set bubbling on the stove, he knew that his son felt it too. Tem jumped guiltily when his father glanced at him, as though he knew he shouldn’t be enjoying what Carrie had done for them.
Turning away, Josh went to the fireplace. Since the fire was no longer sending clouds of smoke billowing into the room, he was sure that Carrie had had the chimney cleaned. In spite of himself, Josh took a seat in one of the two rocking chairs set in front of the fire, leaned back against the pretty cushions tied to the back and seat of the chair, and enjoyed the sights and sounds around him. When
his father was seated, tentatively, Tem sat on the chair across from him.
Leaning back, Josh closed his eyes, and for a moment he could imagine that life was how he had imagined it would be. He could hear his wife and daughter splashing in the bedroom, and the sound of their laughter seemed to fill the room—and him—with warmth. He could smell food cooking and hear the stew simmering, and he could hear the fire crackling. When he opened his eyes and looked at his son, who was so comfortable in the chair, Josh knew that all of it was almost exactly as he’d hoped it would be. This was how he’d imagined his life would be when he’d sent for a bride who knew how to cook and clean and run a farm. He had wanted the best for his children and had been willing to sacrifice his own happiness for that of his children.
But Josh was too well aware that all of this was an illusion, that it wasn’t real, and that it wasn’t going to last. Looking at Tem, Josh saw that he was about to fall asleep in the chair. It was going to be Josh who had to hold the children and dry their tears after Carrie got bored with her life as a farm wife and left them. And Josh was going to have to try to explain to the children about adults and about selfishness, and he was sure that he was going to be as good at it the next time he had to do it as he had been when the children’s mother had left them.
Looking up when the bedroom door opened, he saw Carrie had dressed Dallas in a white cotton nightgown that Josh was sure was fresh from the shelves of the mercantile store, and Josh felt a fresh surge of anger. It had been a long time since he had been able to buy his children gifts.
But Josh forgot his anger as he looked at Carrie, for her hair was wet and hanging in a tangle down her back, flowing over a gown of dark pink silk covered by a red cashmere robe. When he looked at her, Josh had to swallow, and his hands gripped the arms of the chair until his knuckles were white. More than anything in life he wanted to slip that robe off her shoulders and kiss her clean, white neck.
“And now,” Carrie said, holding up two tortoise-shell combs, “the men may comb our hair.” She looked from Josh to his son, then back to Josh, and she smiled at the expression on his face.
Tem protested. “I can’t do that. That’s girl’s work.”
Immediately, Josh told his son to be quiet. “There’s no reason why you can’t comb your sister’s hair.”
Smiling, Dallas went to stand between her brother’s knees, and, in spite of his protest, Tem began to gently untangle Dallas’s wet hair.
Carrie stood in the doorway, smiling confidently at Josh, the comb held out to him in invitation.
“I don’t think—” Josh began, but then Tem stopped combing and looked at his father in question. His expression said that if his father couldn’t comb a girl’s hair, then he wouldn’t either. With a groan that sounded a bit like a trapped animal, Josh held out his hand for the comb.
Smiling even broader, Carrie went to Josh, handed him the comb, then sat on the floor between his knees. From the first instant he touched her—being careful to touch only her hair and not her skin—Carrie knew two things. One was that the very air between them was charged and, two, that he had combed other women’s wet hair. From the deft, experienced way he gently pulled the comb through her hair, she was afraid that he may have done it several times in the past.
Turning her head a bit to look at Tem, she saw that he was watching his father and learning. But then Josh’s hand touched Carrie’s forehead, and she forgot all about anyone else. Leaning her head back toward her husband, her eyes closed as she felt his touch through her hair and throughout her body.
Josh pulled her hair back from her face and in doing so, his fingertips touched her cheek. At the contact, both of them stopped moving, his fingers pausing as Carrie moved her head just a bit so that one fingertip touched the corner of her mouth. Without moving, sitting utterly still, her body seemed to vibrate with feeling. Turning until his finger was on her lips, she kissed his finger.