Eternity (Montgomery/Taggert 17)
Josh laughed at that in an arrogant way. “The man doesn’t hide his emotions very well at all. He dotes on you. It’s my guess that he may be the softest of your brothers when it comes to you. Your brother would give you anything you wanted; he’d do anything for you. If you wanted to marry a chimney sweep, he’d be happy for you.”
“You don’t know anything!” Carrie snapped. “ ’Ring is—”
“I am what, my dear sister?” ’Ring asked as he entered the room. He was freshly bathed and had on a perfectly pressed dinner suit, while she and Josh looked rumpled and dusty.
“You are my very dearest brother,” Carrie said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his freshly shaved cheek.
“ ‘A goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!’ ” ’Ring quoted.
“What is that?”
“Shakespeare, which you’d know if you’d bothered to finish school. Shall we go down to dinner?”
Carrie and Josh led the way, ’Ring behind them. Last night Carrie had sent one of her employees to the hotel to arrange the best that the Eternity Hotel had to offer, and now Carrie wondered what it was going to be.
A table for three had been set in a windowed alcove of the dining room, and if Carrie had not been so nervous, she would have laughed at what she saw. Instead of the waiters wearing their usual clothes—by the look of them, what they’d dragged from under their beds—tonight they were wearing suits, most of them, by the look of the fit, borrowed. They were carrying napkins over their arms in the French manner, except that the napkins were none too clean and hadn’t been ironed.
As soon as they were seated, the waiter picked up ’Ring’s wine glass, started to pour him some wine, saw that there was something in the glass, blew it out, then poured the wine. Carrie could see pieces of cork floating on the top of the wine and little flaky bits in the bottom of the glass. She held her breath while ’Ring took a sip.
She expected him to do what he did at home: declare the vintage unfit to drink.
Instead, he smiled at the waiter. “ ‘Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.’ ”
The waiter, who helped in the stables when no one was staying at the hotel, had no idea what ’Ring was saying, but he went away smiling. Soon bowl after bowl of food was placed on the table before them.
Carrie pushed her food around her plate.
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Greene?” ’Ring asked.
Looking at Josh, Carrie held her breath. It was one thing to tell Josh that her brother wouldn’t care that Josh had no money, but then again, men were odd about money. She hoped Josh would have sense enough to, well, make his farm sound a bit better than it was.
“I raise worms,” Josh said. “Fields of them.”
Carrie gave a sound very much like a whimper.
“I see,” ’Ring said. “Anything else?”
“A few beetles, a rather nice crop of weeds, but corn worms are my specialty. Nice fat green ones. They eat every ear of corn I grow.”
“ ‘O thou weed, who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet that the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne’er been born!’ ” ’Ring said.
Carrie ignored ’Ring’s poetry spouting. “ ’Ring, it’s not true that Josh grows only weeds and worms, at least it’s not the whole truth. Josh can do many things very well.”
Both men turned to her, both of them with identical looks of interest on their faces.
“Pray tell me what I can do, my dear,” Josh said.
Carrie narrowed her eyes at him.
He was taking this as a joke. When they were dealing with Josh’s brother it had been serious business, but now that her own somewhat difficult brother was here it could be treated like a joke. “He loves his children very much and he loves me and I love him.”
Josh smiled at ’Ring. “She has no reason to love me, she just does.”
’Ring smiled back. “ ‘I have no other but a woman’s reason: I think him so, because I think him so.’ ”
“Exactly,” Josh said and seemed extremely pleased with ’Ring. “More of this fine brew, brother-in-law?”
’Ring held his glass aloft. “ ‘O thou invisible spirit of wine! If thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!’ ”