Eternity (Montgomery/Taggert 17)

“Not at this moment, they’re not.”

With a grin at her, he clapped his hands once. “Bed, you hams. Bed, this minute.”

They ran up the ladder, but not before taking bows and waiting for the long, loud applause they so very much deserved.

“What extraordinary children,” Carrie said when she and Josh were alone.

Rolling up his sleeves, Josh turned toward the sink full of dirty dishes. “I’m going to teach you about dishes.”

Carrie didn’t shudder, but she came close. “Sorry, but I can’t tonight. I have to run an errand.”

“You can’t go out now,” Josh protested, then stopped, knowing from experience that it was useless to tell Carrie what she could and could not do. “Where are you going?”

“I am going into Eternity to arrange the most heavenly meal your brother has ever eaten,” she said. “And don’t you say a word about what I can and cannot do. You can’t give orders to someone who isn’t part of your family, someone you don’t share your secrets with.”

With that she flung on her short, wool cape and left the house.

After staring at the door for a moment, Josh smiled. She was a handful, he thought, as he turned back to the dishes. “And I’m the one who’d like to have my hands full of her,” he said aloud. Still smiling, he thought of Tem and Dallas’s performance tonight, knowing he hadn’t seen them that happy, that animated, since their mother—

He cut himself off and poured water into the dish pan. He was not going to think about their mother.

Chapter Ten

By the time Josh’s brother and his wife arrived for Sunday dinner the next day, Carrie was so nervous she was shaking. She’d had only four hours of sleep the night before, because she’d spent hours in Eternity arranging the dinner. Josh had waited up for her and he’d made it clear that he thought asking other people to do the cooking was the easy way out. He seemed to think that a “real” wife spent the day hanging over a hot stove.

Without bothering to answer him, she went to bed and slept until the next morning when the first woman arrived with a covered dish. To wake her, Josh opened the bedroom door and allowed the children to jump into bed with Carrie.

After that ruckus, she got up and dressed, then, with the children’s help, began rummaging in her trunks. By noon she had set the dining table with an Irish linen cloth and napkins and porcelain dishes from France, and the centerpiece was Georgian silver. The serving dishes, filled with de

licious food that had been cooked by nearly every woman in Eternity, were either silver or French porcelain.

“Golly,” Dallas said, for she didn’t remember having seen anything like the table.

At exactly one o’clock, Hiram and his wife Alice pulled up in what Carrie knew was a very expensive carriage. Hiram was a large man, with a belly that stuck out like a shelf in front of him. Looking down at Tem in conspiracy, she smiled, for Hiram looked just as Tem had portrayed him.

While Josh and his children stood in the doorway looking glum, Carrie, after a look of disgust tossed their way, went forward to greet Hiram and his wife. As Carrie crossed the yard, she got a closer look at Alice. Alice was a thin little woman, who probably wasn’t as old as she looked, but she looked to be the tiredest person in the world, so tired in fact that Carrie wanted to take her in the house and give her a chair to sit on.

Smiling at them both, Carrie continued across the yard, her hand extended in welcome. For all that Josh had warned her that his brother was a formidable person, Carrie wasn’t afraid of anyone, for in all of her short life she had never been treated with anything but respect and love. Her family was the richest in her hometown, in fact, there were very few people in the town who didn’t work for her family. On top of that, she was pretty and generous and she was fun to be with. Until she’d met Josh, no man, woman, or child she’d ever met had failed to like her.

“Good afternoon,” she said cheerfully to Hiram. “May I help you?” She said the last to Hiram’s wife.

Looking at Carrie with startled eyes, as though she were surprised that anyone saw her, Alice’s tired expression changed to one of pleasure.

Hiram leaned back and looked at Carrie, looked her up and down in an insolent way. Had Carrie been at home and some visiting sailor had looked at her as this man was doing, one of her brothers or one of her family’s employees would have knocked the man down.

Ignoring Carrie’s extended hand, Hiram looked away to Josh standing not too far behind her. “So this is the little wife you sent away for,” he said, smirking. “I heard her cooking was as good as your farming. It’s just like you to marry a useless woman.”

With that Hiram swept past all of them, ignoring the children as he went into the house.

“Why that—” Carrie began and started after him. No one was going to say something like that to her!

Josh caught her arm. “Don’t,” he said, his eyes pleading. “He leaves in precisely two hours and twenty minutes, and I find that one can bear him for that length of time.”

“I don’t believe I can,” Carrie said.

“Someone with your money doesn’t have to,” Josh said meanly. “You’ll never believe what we poor people have to put up with in order to survive.”

Now she had been insulted by both of the men. Looking down her nose at her husband, she went into the house.