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Shock stung her like a slap in the face. Why did he always do that? And how did he know exactly what to say to hurt her? She wrenched her hand out of his grasp and lifted her chin higher. “I’m not pretending. I know you don’t want me, but I can at least try to make the best of the situation. Goodnight, Mr. Shaw.”
She forced herself not to look back at him as she stomped into her bedroom. Though she’d meant to slam the door, the latch only lightly clicked closed, and she pressed her forehead against the cold wooden barrier that stood between her and her unwilling husband.
She closed her eyes tightly and exhaled a shaking breath.
What was she thinking, coming here? She’d been comfortable in Boston. Insulted constantly, yes, but she’d lived through all her days without blisters on her hands and sore legs from riding in a saddle like a man. She’d left the insults of Aunt Elizabeth to fall into the insults of Garret Shaw.
It didn’t seem fair.
Couldn’t he see she was trying?
“Goodnight, Eliza,” came a gravelly voice from the other side of the door.
She took three steps back and stared at the door, wondering if he would try to come in and talk, but he did not.
Instead, she heard his bootsteps saunter across the hallway to his own room, leaving her just as confused as every other encounter with the clearly-not-human husband Roy had shackled her to.
Chapter Ten
Eliza woke to the sound and feel of her own pulse.
It started vaguely in the muscles of her limbs and eventually traveled to her hands. It was a throbbing so acute, she felt as if her fingers twitched with the rhythm of it. When she opened her eyes, however, the hands on the pillow next to her were as still as a corpse. They looked like they belonged to one, too. Her palm was torn with blisters and cuts in different stages of healing, and she winced when she tried to close her hand into a fist.
In the deep gray before dawn, she lit the cold lantern next to the washbasin. To her surprise, she’d risen early without Lenny’s badgering for the first time since she’d arrived in Rockdale. She stretched her arms above her head and breathed in deeply. That she had awakened before the ill-tempered rooster filled her with a satisfaction she’d never felt before.
Her body was adjusting.
She’d wanted to get up and moving before Garret. Escape was the plan for the day. She needed freedom from conversation with this stranger she couldn’t quite comfortably call husband, and a reprieve from the hurt feelings and disappointment he caused. For hours last night, she’d stayed awake replaying everything he’d said yesterday. Today, she needed an escape from thoughts of Garret, Roy, and all she’d lost. A good dose of solitude would do her good. She would try to spend some time with Lenny though. Her friend was as quiet as a thought, and had a comforting presence about her that always put Eliza at ease.
She stood to stretch aching muscles. Would she ever feel normal and pain-free again? Her old life seemed like a dim and distant memory.
After she’d dressed in her new green dress—one that now fit her quite flatteringly, if she did say so herself—she washed her face and braided her hair. She pinned the braid into a bun and turned her face from side to side to appraise her work. Lenny would be proud. Her eyes were puffy from her lack of sleep, though. Nothing to be done about that. She turned from the mirror and tidied the room.
The second she walked out her bedroom door, Operation Avoid Garret failed. He had chosen the same instant to exit his room across the hallway. She froze, as did he. He had shaved his face. The smoothness of his jaw shocked her. “Why did you shave?” she asked.
He shifted his weight and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “It was starting to bother me. I like to shave it every few days.” Then he looked like a jackrabbit in search of a hiding place. “You know what? I don’t need a reason,” he snapped.
She pursed her lips into a tight, thin line. She was angry with herself just as much as she was angry with him. Why? Because she could try to keep herself clear of his emotional upheaval all she wanted to, but the cold hard fact was, she was sorely tempted to reach out and touch the smooth skin of his face. Heat flooded her cheeks at the thought. She turned to go down the hallway at the same time he did, and ran into him.
Garret backed up and inspected the ceiling. “After you,” he said.
“Thank you.” It came out primly, but she was starting to think it was the only way to talk to a man like Garret Shaw.
She skirted him, went straight into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of cold biscuits from last night. After she’d wrapped them in a cloth, she placed them gently into the pocket of her gown and walked out the front door without so much as another glance at him.
She could feel his eyes on her until the moment she closed the door behind her. With a deep inhale to reset herself, she scanned the yard.
Lenny wasn’t near the barn or the corral.
Fat raindrops pummeled down from angry, roiling clouds above, dousing the clearing. The wind whipped at the exposed skin of her throat and encouraged her to stay where it was warm and safe.
She sighed when she remembered her shawl, still slung over the back of a dining chair, but she refused to have another row with Garret, so did not fetch it.
Mud soaked the bottom of her skirts as she sloshed through puddles at a dead run for the barn. She paused only to let the chickens and that blasted ornery rooster out of the coop, then ran behind them for cover as a stampeding herd of mixed species.
She shook the feed pail, and it made a grainy sound against the sides of the wooden bucket. The chickens followed her to the dry middle of the barn, and she loosed grain over the hay-scattered dirt. She squatted by the nicest chicken, Buttons, and ran her hand down the slick feathers of her back. The chicken allowed it as she ate, and a smile took Eliza’s lips. Only when the chicken moved off to peck at more grain did she run back to the coop to collect the eggs. She set the pail of fresh brown eggs inside the barn doorway. Later, when she was sure Garret was not in the house, she would bring them in. And preferably when it wasn’t pouring fit to drown her.
The barn housed the horses as well as the two mild-tempered milk cows. Mild-tempered if you kept up with the milking, anyway. Let their bags fill to painful proportions and one could make an enemy mighty quickly.
