A Lantern in the Window (7 page)

“
Ohhh, that feels so good,
Noah. Do it again, please.”

He was trembling as he rinsed the
cloth, soaped it again, and resumed the long, sensual stroking.
This time, his hand slid around to cup her small breast, and the
nipple rose hard against his palm.

He groaned and lost whatever battle he
was fighting.

"Annie.” The word was wrung out of
him, low and tortured.

He slid his hands under her arms, and
in one smooth motion lifted her dripping from the tub. She made a
small, startled sound and he gave her a rueful grin.

"I do believe you’re quite clean
enough,” he said with a catch in his voice, snatching up the towel
from a nearby chair and wrapping her in it, blotting her dry,
loosening it to dab gently at a shoulder, a narrow hip, a long
stretch of thigh.

He scooped her up and laid her on the
bed. It was cool in the room, and he covered her naked form with
the quilt until his own clothes were off and he could slide under
the sheets.

The first contact with her warm, damp
nakedness made him shudder. He gathered her close, wrapping his
arms and legs around her, drunk with the feeling of skin against
skin. He took her head in his hands and held it, kissing her lips
and the long line of her throat, taking first one nipple and then
the next into his mouth, moving down the satiny, narrow ribcage,
nipping at prominent hipbones until at last his mouth found her
center.

“
Noah!” There was both
shock and pleasure in her protest.

When she overcame shyness and relaxed,
her body began to move instinctively, in a rhythm impossible for
him to mistake. The small, desperate sounds she was making were
more than he could bear. He slid up and in one long, steady motion,
he entered her, half mad with wanting, but mindful that he mustn’t
hurt her.

Long, careful moments later, she
exploded beneath him in a paroxysm of delight, and he muffled her
cries with his mouth, delight taking hold of him until he lost all
control.

His seed spilled and spilled, and he
was too far beyond thought to pull away. She fell asleep in his
arms and didn’t wake when he gently untangled himself and got up to
blow out the candle.

When he lay down beside her again, he
made certain her bare shoulders were well covered, but he moved
until there was the usual distance between them so that no part of
her warm body was near enough to touch him.

* * *

In the darkness, she awakened from a
dream, knowing that she was falling in love with Noah.

His lovemaking had changed her, and
she knew that her perceptions of herself were forever altered. Her
body had depths and needs she'd never suspected, and in her heart
was amazement and tenderness, gratitude to the husband who’d taught
her these mysterious truths about herself.

But instead of lying warm in his
embrace, she was facing his back. She slid one tentative arm up and
around him, snuggling close and curling herself like a spoon to fit
his sleeping shape.

He wasn’t asleep. His body stiffened
in her embrace, and after a moment he carefully lifted her arm and
moved as far away as the bed would allow.

Annie’s body stiffened with hurt. She
swallowed, her face and body burning with humiliation. She stared
into the darkness, fighting the tears that threatened.

It hurt. It hurt more than she would
have believed possible, this constant, quiet rejection of her love.
It told her more plainly than any words that Noah might succumb to
the desires of his body—he’d even make very certain she, too,
enjoyed the marriage bed—but anything beyond that coupling was not
allowed between them.

Companionship, laughter, conversation,
the elements she instinctively knew constituted deep and abiding
love, those were things Noah was unwilling to share with her. Those
were the things he’d shared with his Molly, and he guarded them
jealously.

It felt to Annie as though the ghost
woman of that first marriage even shared the bed now, lying between
herself and Noah.

With one silent gesture, he’d made it
clear that the wall he maintained around himself and his deepest
feelings was firmly in place, and that although his body might
succumb to Annie, his heart would belong always to
Molly.

Was this, too, something that she’d
get used to as time passed? As the slow, dark minutes of that night
dragged into hours, and the beginnings of a new day drew closer,
she could only pray that it might be so.

It snowed again the following day, and
it wasn’t until early May that the mud began to dry and the first
faint tinge of green appeared on the prairie.

Noah had gone to mend fences right
after breakfast one sunny morning, and Annie, still unable to bake
a loaf of bread that resembled anything but a rock, made up her
mind once and for all that they’d just have to learn to live on
biscuits forevermore.

She’d just taken a batch of popovers
from the oven when Jake’s frantic barking announced
visitors.

"Hello, neighbor.” Gladys Hopkins
greeted Annie with a warm handshake and a wide smile, handing her a
loaf of fresh bread as high as a haystack and a jar of dark red
preserves.

"Set the dough last night, baked it
first thing. That’s some wild strawberry jam to go with. This
here's my daughter Rose. She’s been just dying to meet your little
sister. She’s been at me every day to come over, but we had to wait
for the weather. Now where is that sister of yours? Feeling better
than when she first arrived, I hope?”

"Bets is very well, thanks, Gladys.
Pleased to meet you. Rose.” Annie smiled at the plump little girl
whose golden hair hung in careful ringlets down her
back.

Annie was uncomfortably aware that
neither Rose nor Gladys knew as yet that her sister was
deaf.

"Bets is having a game of checkers
with Mr. Ferguson. I’ll get her.” Annie, feeling flustered and more
than a little apprehensive, hurried into Zachary’s bedroom and
signed to her sister and the old man that they had company. Neither
was particularly pleased at the news—Betsy’s face became anxious at
the ordeal of meeting strangers, and Zachary scowled and slumped
dejectedly into the pillows at this interruption.

Bets and Zachary had become the best
of companions in the past weeks. By now there was a powerful bond
between the young girl whose ears didn’t work and the old man who’d
lost the ability to speak.

Taking Bets’s hand, Annie led her out
and introduced her, adding an explanation of Bets’s handicap as
matter-of-factly as she could.

"She’s—she’s deef and dumb?” Gladys’s
eyes seemed almost to be popping out of her head as she studied
Bets. "I never had the foggiest idea she was deef and
dumb.”

"Deaf,” Annie corrected firmly. "But
she’s certainly not dumb. Bets talks, but she does it with her
hands. She’ll be glad to show Rose how.”

Rose was half hidden behind her
mother's skirts, peering out at Bets as though expecting her to
suddenly foam at the mouth or grow horns.

The violent hammering of Zachary’s
cane on the floor made them all jump, and Annie realized how seldom
he’d banged it recently.

Bets felt the vibration, picked up her
skirt, and flew in to see what he wanted. Annie knew the girl was
relieved to escape the scrutiny of the Hopkins women.

Gladys whispered, "Ain’t you scared
he'll hammer her with that thing?”

Annie laughed and shook her head.
"Those two are thick as thieves,” she assured Gladys. "See, Bets
has taught Mr. Ferguson to sign, and it's made the world of
difference to him. He can let us know what he wants now, and he’s
much happier. Bets is awfully fond of him. He’s like a grandpa to
her. Come and sit and have some coffee, won’t you?”

Annie sliced Gladys’s bread, envious
of the yeasty loaf. She put out some of her own popovers and set
the butter crock and the preserves on the table.

Rose, with a dejected expression,
slumped down across the table from the women, obviously prepared to
be bored to death.

“
Rose, would you be kind
enough to take this bread and some coffee in to Mr. Ferguson?”
Annie spread jam on a thick slice and thrust the plate and cup at
the girl before she could refuse. "And then ask Bets to show you
her cat. There’s a new litter of kittens out in the shed, too.
She’ll take you to see them.”

“
But—but how can I ask her
anything if she can’t—” Rose’s voice trailed off at a look from her
mother.

"She can read a lot of what you say on
your lips,” Annie reassured her gently. "Just try.”

Rose reluctantly did as she was asked.
In a moment, she and Bets went silently out to the shed where the
kittens were, and just as Annie hoped, it wasn’t long before the
two girls had brought the entire litter of kittens inside and were
giggling together at their antics. Bets showed Rose her sign for
cats, and slowly the two began to communicate.

Gladys watched them and then turned to
Annie with a shamefaced expression. “You must excuse us dearie. We
don’t mean no offense. It's just we ain’t never seen a deaf and—a
deef young'un before,” she amended hastily. "How did she come to be
that way?"

Annie explained, and in the process
revealed a great deal of her and Betsy’s background.

In turn Gladys told of coming in a
covered wagon to Canada from Minnesota with her husband, Harold,
where she was pregnant with Rose. Some of the light weny out of her
blue eyes and tears welled up when she confided that she’d lost
three babies in succession after Rose was born.

"Looks like she'll be our only one,”
she said with a sigh. "It’s a shame. My Harold would have liked a
big family.” She took a sip of her coffee and lathered her own
preserves on one of Annie’s biscuits, lowering her voice so Rose
wouldn’t hear.

“
Easy for men to want more,
ain’t it? They don't go through it all. Why, I remember Noah sayin’
hi wanted a dozen more babies when Jeremy was born and the look on
poor Molly’s face—”

She stopped suddenly, and her already
rosy face turned magenta. “Oh, my. I am sorry. Me and my big
mouth.” She rammed the entire biscuit in and chewed ferociously, as
if to prevent any further in discretion.

Noah wanted a dozen more
babies.

Annie felt as if she’d been hit in the
stomach. She thought of the nights when he made love to her—nearly
ever night, now—and of how careful he was to pull away from her
body so that there’d be no babies.

Only that once had he ever lost
control.

To hide the pain that she knew was
mirrored on her face, she got up and shoved more wood into the
stove and filled their cups again with fresh coffee, coming to a
decision.

Better the ghost you know
.

When she sat down, she leaned across
and put her chapped hand on Gladys’s arm. "Gladys, I need a favor.
I need you to tell me about Molly, please. Noah won’t so much as
say her name, and I need to know what kind of woman she was.” She
gestured at the room. "Every single thing here is hers. It feels
like I’m living with a spirit I never even met."

Gladys looked uncertain. “Oh, I don’t
know. You sure it won’t bother you none, hearin’ about Noah's first
wife?"

Doing the best acting job of her life,
Annie shook her head vehemently and plastered on a smile. “Of
course not. How silly. What did she look like?”

Gladys looked over her shoulder as if
expecting Molly to materialize. Then she leaned forward in a
confiding manner, resting her elbows on the table, her voice little
more than a whisper. "Well, let’s see. Molly was lots shorter than
you are, and she—” Gladys made a motion that indicated Molly had
possessed a good-sized bosom, narrow waist, and shapely hips. “She
was real womanly,” Gladys said discreetly.

Annie crossed her arms over her own
meager bosom. Even though every single syllable Gladys uttered was
a knife in her heart, she nodded encouragement and fixed the smile
on her lips.

"She had pale, smooth hair, sorta like
flax, long and braided up around her head like a crown. She had
these dark blue eyes, and oh, my, she was so sweet. Gentle and sort
of quiet. She had a real nice way with her, did Molly. And she
could turn her hand to anything. Why, her piecrust was the best
I’ve ever eaten.”

The eulogy went on and on, and Annie
died by degrees, her smile feeling more and more like a
grimace.

"How—how did Noah meet her,
Gladys?”

"Oh, they lived in the Hat, her and
her papa. Molly’s father was a fine man, a preacher. When his wife
died back east, he came out west here to the prairies. Molly was
just seventeen. He set up the first church in Medicine Hat. Poor
man, he died last year himself. It was his heart, but folks believe
it was losing his daughter and grandson the way he did.” She shook
her head. “It hit us all right hard when he passed away. He was
well liked by all that knew him.”

Annie thought of her own drunken
father and shivered.