The Devil You Know (21 page)

Willa stared at the bed. “He changed the sheets,” she said under her breath.

“What's that?” asked Israel. He was sitting on a ladder-back chair, one leg raised and bent sideways at the knee as he worked off a boot.

She pointed to the bed. “Happy. He changed the sheets and made up the bed before he left this morning. He had to have done it then, and he did it in anticipation of us spending the night here.”

“I think it's proof that we did not stand a chance.” With a short, final grunt, he wiggled the boot off and dropped it on the floor. “The shotgun was good for insurance, though.”

Willa felt her knees wobble. Before they gave way, she sat down near the head of the bed. The house was quiet now. She could hear the steady ticking of the mantel clock in the front room. It was a sound she hardly ever noticed anymore. She had forgotten how soothing it was, how regular and reliable. She needed that just now. Tonight would be the first night in almost ten years that she would not hear Annalea's soft, sleepy murmurings in a bed next to her.

As a matter of course, the wedding ceremony had been brief. Happy took her by the arm and tucked it under his elbow, holding her in just that way until Pastor Beacon asked who gives this woman. Her father had spoken in smooth, tenor tones, clear and resolute, his voice uninhibited by whiskey. Words were exchanged then. At each of the pastor's prompts, she repeated vows, none of which came from her heart. She imagined it was no different for Israel, although he spoke more
slowly and with consideration of the weight of the words. His eyes, his remarkably sentient blue-gray eyes, never left hers, and she found herself quite unable to look away.

The kiss was awkward. It did not seem to matter that they were familiar with the mechanics of one; they misjudged the distance and the angle. It was more of a collision than a kiss, but it gave the witnesses something to rib them about and put air back in the room.

She signed the document Pastor Beacon presented to her. Israel did the same. It was duly witnessed, folded, and tucked inside Beacon's vest for registering the following day. She did not feel any more married for having signed it than she did when Beacon made his final pronouncement and introduced her to people she knew, some of them all of her life, as Mrs. Israel McKenna.

There were toasts afterward, some solemn, most only mildly ribald in deference to Annalea's presence, all of them requiring a measure of participation from her and Israel. Happy produced a bottle of Kentucky bourbon from under the piano lid that he had been saving, in his words, for an occasion of enormous consequence. It was good liquor, and provided a sore temptation to Willa to drink herself senseless, but she refrained, choosing to do no more than sip when she was pressed to raise her glass. It did not surprise her that Israel exhibited the same caution, but Happy's careful imbibing was a revelation. When it was time for everyone to go to their respective beds, Happy was still standing without wobbling and walking without weaving.

“He thought of everything,” said Willa. She picked up a pillow and hugged it to her chest. “Did you hear Annalea? She's thrilled that she gets to sleep in the bunkhouse tonight.”

“That will last until Zach starts snoring. She'll be back before morning.”

“I doubt it. She sleeps like the dead.”

“Are you worried about her?”

Was she? Oddly enough, she didn't know. “Sleeping there . . . all the men.” Once the words were out, she could not call them back, and she was aware that Israel's stare had
gone from mild interest to penetrating. With no conscious thought, her grip on the pillow tightened. What she said, though, was, “She'll be fine. I'm just used to her being here.”

“If it matters to you, I heard Cutter tell Zach he was going to bed down in the barn loft. Apparently sharing space with Annalea reminded him a little too much of home. He has a lot of sisters.”

A brief smile lifted Willa's lips. “Four, by my count. There are a couple of brothers, too.”

Israel shucked his remaining boot and studied the imprint of John Henry's teeth for a moment before he set it on the floor. “I can go and get her if you like. If she's already asleep, I'll just carry her back.”

Willa shook her head. It was a sincere offer, she saw that, but accepting it would have been unfair to Annalea, Israel, and even to her. This was her wedding night, and if she examined her anxiety to the root of it, she would not find Annalea. “She can stay put. There will be less fussing in the morning.”

“And John Henry's with her.”

Quiet laughter bubbled. “Yes. She has John Henry. You were insistent about that.”

“I was thinking about my ankles. I don't wear boots to bed.”

A single glance at the pair on the floor beside him filled her face with heat. She remained composed enough to say, “I don't sleep with them on either.”

“Then we have that in common. It's as good a place to start as any. What else don't you wear to bed?”

Willa judged that if her face had been warm before, it was flaming hot now. He was set on provoking this reaction from her, and she told him so. Israel's eyes widened a fraction, but Willa suspected that the surprise and innocence in his expression were feigned.

“It's teasing,” he said. “Not provocation.”

Willa was still uncertain. “Teasing?”

“You're warmer now, aren't you? And you're thinking about what I asked, maybe even wondering what else I don't wear to bed. You might be considering what it would be like to ease
the stranglehold you have on that pillow and slip it under your head. Or quite possibly under your bottom. Women do that sometimes to angle their hips, or men do it for them. It makes for better—” He caught the pillow easily when she lobbed it at his head. Grinning, he smoothed it out and tossed it back. “Perhaps you'll smother me with it later. Something for you to look forward to once the preliminaries are out of the way.”

Willa's hands fisted in the pillow. “Preliminaries?”

“Consummation,” he said. “You remember, don't you? We talked about it. If not for John Henry, it would be behind us and you would not be sitting over there as if you were anticipating a blow. It's not flattering. I am not going to attack you, Willa. I thought that was understood.”

She pressed her lips together, but her fingers uncurled. Lifting her chin a few degrees, she put the pillow behind her. “Last night . . .” She stopped and deliberately cleared her mind of everything but what she wanted to say. When she began again, her voice was quieter but recognizably more confident. “Last night was a succession of spontaneous moments, and I acted—reacted—impulsively, perhaps even instinctively, to every one of them. I was suspicious of your intentions when I accompanied you to the barn, skeptical when you wandered deep inside it to find a lantern, but amused by your transparent attempt to get me into the loft or the stall or wagon bed. You were clever about that because what you let me see wasn't what you really wanted, and then we were talking, just talking, and you asked me to come to you, and I did. It wasn't planned, not by me, and I don't think by you either.”

She looked around the room that Happy had made ready and then vacated for her wedding night and gestured to all of it so Israel would understand her meaning. “All of this . . . it feels deliberate and forced and uncomfortable.”

“This is where your parents slept.”

“Yes. I suppose that's part of it. I haven't had any time to accustom myself to the idea, although I'm not sure I want to.”

“Then we will need a new bed.”

This was said in a manner of such practicality that Willa had to laugh. “All right,” she said. “We'll do that first thing in the morning.”

“We will do that tonight.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “I wasn't serious.”

“Well, I damn well am. Stand up.”

For no good reason that she could think of, she did. So did Israel. He went to the foot of the bed, took a fistful of sheets, blankets, and the down-filled comforter in each hand, and yanked all of it off the mattress in a single sweeping motion. There was considerable fluttering and snapping until he had everything bundled against his chest.

“You take the pillows and bring the lamp,” he said. “Follow me.”

She had a thought that her eyes might be as round and as wide as Pastor Beacon's because she certainly was astonished. Again, without quite knowing why she was falling in with his plans, she scooped up the pillows and followed in his wake. His footfalls were padded by the thick socks he was wearing. Hers were not nearly so silent. Her boots tapped lightly on the wooden floor, which she supposed kept him from glancing back to see if she was behind him.

There were not many places in the house that he could take her. There was the bedroom she shared with Annalea, the kitchen and the adjoining pantry, and a cubby that her grandmother and mother had used for sewing and for storing a cornucopia of threads, needles, bolts of cloth, and every sort of whatnot, but was now a repository for all of that plus items no one knew what to do with. There was also a room with a desk, two chairs, an oak filing cabinet, and shelves for books that after fifty years in the valley still had too much space on them for anyone to mistake it for a library. Happy called it a study. Willa referred to it as her workroom. Annalea knew it as where-Pa-goes-to-drink.

And finally there was the front room. In homes Willa had visited when she lived in Saint Louis, she had heard the room referred to as a parlor, a drawing room, sometimes a salon. Some homes had all three, although the purpose of that had eluded her then and still eluded her. The front room was a serviceable name for what it was, a gathering place for the family, a place to welcome guests, and it was situated along
the full front of the house. They rarely used it anymore, tonight's ceremony being an extraordinary exception.

But it was back to the front room that Israel led her. There was a stove in one corner that had gone cold hours earlier. After the first toast, Happy had declared there should be a fire in the hearth because on such a momentous night as this, a home needed more than heat. There needed to be sparks and crackling flames. Willa had smiled rather numbly in response, but at Israel's nudging, she lifted her glass and sipped.

There were no sparks now, literally or figuratively. Willa felt a little cold inside. Because Israel's hands were full, he tipped his head to indicate the rocker positioned to the left the fireplace. “Sit there. Hold on to the pillows if that helps.”

If it seemed as if she took his suggestion, it was only because the rocker had always been a place of comfort and she had no intention of surrendering the pillows anyway. She set the lamp on a side table and adjusted the wick for more light.

Israel dropped the bundle of linens and blankets in the middle of the long, thickly upholstered couch. “It's claret,” he said.

“Pardon?” His back was to her and she was sure she had not heard him properly. The thought of a glass of wine chasing the whiskey she had already drunk made her stomach roil.

He turned around and pointed to the curved back of the sofa. “The couch,” he said. “Not as deep a color as burgundy, not as red as a cherry. Claret.”

She stared at him, unblinking, and her thoughts fell back to their somewhat heated exchange in Beech Bottom. “I think you mean my goddamn couch.”

There was no hint of embarrassment in his quicksilver smile or in his short laugh. “That's the one.”

Willa's cheeks puffed as she blew out a mouthful of air. “What are we doing here?”

“Well, I am going to improve on what's left of this fire, and you, unless you have a mind to do something else, are going to watch me.”

It bothered her some that she did watch him. He exerted
no effort to compel her attention, and yet he had all of it. She did not watch him build the fire; she simply watched him. He moved with unconscious grace, lightly and fluidly. There was a rolling rhythm in his step when he strode across the yard. More than once she had stopped what she was doing to take it in. He had never caught her at it, but Annalea had, and she made gooey, smacking noises until Willa threatened to throw her in the watering trough.

Israel had not merely healed since he arrived in the valley, he had become strong. Incarceration was not meant to be kind, and it hadn't been to him. It was not easy to tell in the beginning, but beneath his bruises, his skin was pale and pasty. When healthy color should have returned, he had almost none of it. Work had been a balm for him. His shoulders had filled out, straightened, and muscles, not bone, defined his arms and chest and back. If he was aware of the transformation, it was probably because his shirts fit a bit more snugly or tasks that he had once performed with labored breathing no longer stressed his endurance.

It was a pleasure to watch him hunker in front of the fireplace. The match he struck bathed his flawless profile in a flash of golden light, and when he set it against the kindling, the glow enveloped him. He regarded the fire for several long moments, mesmerized perhaps, or merely thoughtful, the threads of silver at his temple glimmering like ice, and then he suddenly turned his head toward her and met her eyes.

She did not, could not, look away from one of the Lord's fallen angels.

“I'm not sorry that we're married,” she said.

“Then that's something else we have in common. Probably should keep a list.”

“You start it. I'm too tired.”

“Later. I'm tired, too.” He stood, brushed his hands off on his trousers, and inspected them. “I'll be right back.”

Willa smiled to herself when she heard the pump in the kitchen and the sound of running water. Ranching had not made him any less fastidious. She was still smiling when he returned to the front room.

“What?” He halted in the archway and leaned casually against the frame, arms crossed, one foot on top of the other.