The Endless Forest
Page 88

“Still got Teddy on your mind?”
She jumped. He was directly behind her. Martha shook her head and then turned and gave him a reluctant nod. “It is hard not to think of him—” her voice trailed away.
“I reckon his proposal was a lot fancier,” Daniel said flatly.
“Oh Daniel.” She put her forehead on his chest and his arm came up around her. “It was very awkward, to tell the truth. He meant to sound sophisticated but he—” She stopped, searching for a word that wouldn’t sound cruel.
“He’s a boy,” Daniel said. “I’m not.”
She lifted her head and put her chin where her forehead had been. “I know that. I know.”
He smiled at her then. A small, knowing smile that made the knot in her chest draw tighter. When he kissed her there was some hesitation, as if he expected to be rebuffed. If he only knew what he made her feel, that was the last thing he need worry about. The very thought made her flush, and at that moment his tongue touched hers, a tentative brushing that raised gooseflesh along her arms and back. She opened her mouth to him on a sigh, and he pulled her up tighter against him. A kiss that spun out of all imagining and experience. His cheeks were rough with beard but she hardly noticed, the recklessness of the kiss was too overwhelming. She felt it everywhere. Everywhere.
“Come inside,” he whispered. “Come.”
Oh, she wanted to. She wanted nothing more, but there were other considerations, things she could barely admit to herself.
“What?” His expression was puzzled.
“I don’t want people to think of me as they did of my mother.” There. It came out that simply. She heard herself going on, a little breathless. “She was—immoderate. She was—” Words failed her, as they must. How could she speak of something she barely understood?
But Daniel knew. He swung around to half sit on the rail and pulled her to him. This way they were face-to-face and so there was no way to hide what she was thinking.
“Jemima used whatever tools she had to hand to get what she wanted,” Daniel said. “To get what she thought she needed. Is that why you’re here with me?”
She shook her head.
“Nobody could confuse you with Jemima. Nobody with a brain. Nobody with an ounce of fairness in them.”
Now tears did rise and threaten to fall. She blinked them back. “But there will be people like that. Thoughtless and cruel. I don’t want to give them anything to hold against me. Against us.” The last came in a whisper, but it made him smile.
“Is that an answer I’m hearing?”
Talk was terribly overrated in these situations, Martha told herself. She kissed him and he smiled against her mouth.
“I’ll have an answer,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes. Yes.”
His smile grew broader. “A proper answer. A full sentence. ‘Yes, Daniel Bonner, my love, my life, I will marry you and gladly.’”
She opened her mouth to protest and he kissed her. Thoroughly. His hand moved over the line of her hip and down, rested flat on the curve where leg met hip.
Martha felt herself beginning to unravel.
He broke the kiss. “You can say it here, or you can say it inside.” He rocked her toward him with his hand spread over her bottom. Nerves jumped and kicked.
“Yes,” she said. For the third time.
Inside he pressed her against the closed door and kissed her there in the dim empty room. With one hand holding her face he kissed her until something came awake in her, a need she hadn’t known about. But he had underestimated her, or overestimated his powers of persuasion, because she pushed him away with a hand against his good shoulder.
“Wait,” she said breathlessly. “Wait. I have to say something. I have to ask you a question.”
It took a moment to master himself, but then Daniel nodded. He tried to focus on her eyes, though his gaze was drawn to the curve of her lip. Her lower lip, full and plump as a berry.
She said, “Jemima is going to show up here, you know that.”
The hem of her skirt was already in his fist, and he let it go.
“Let her come,” he said. “She don’t worry me.”
“She’ll be your mother-in-law.”
“You’ll be my wife; that’s the important thing.”
She held him off, still. “Daniel, you need to think this through. What it means.”
“She’s nothing but a bully,” Daniel said. He was leaning over her with his hand stemmed against the wall. He bent his elbow and came in closer. “I never could abide a bully.”
Martha curled her hands in his shirtfront and pulled his face down to hers. “People will talk, you know.”
“They do that anyway. Might as well make it worth their while.”
He ducked his head but she held him away to examine his expression. “They’ll say it’s too fast. And maybe it is.”
“I’m not an impetuous man,” he said. His tone was patient. “I could have got married ten times over these last years, but I was waiting for you.”
Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “You were not.”
“I was,” he said. “I just didn’t know it ’til I walked into my mother’s kitchen and saw you standing there.” He gave her an intense look, just edged with playfulness. “Now, if you’re trying to say you don’t want me—”
Martha went up on tiptoe and kissed him, or tried to. Daniel turned, his head cocked at an angle at the sound of voices.