Loving Against the Grain (Into the West #2)

Chapter 17

 

She’d been doing laundry all day. Noah knew, because he’d been working on his latest wood-working project for just as long across the yard, and had been watching her do so. Problem was, while he enjoyed his task, he knew for a fact that Emmaline did not relish her current chore. He could tell in the set of her body; her face. She’d been leaning over that washtub for hours it seemed, dress sleeves rolled up to her elbows and hair pinned on top of her head, where it fell out in haphazard tendrils to curl around her neck damply.

Emmie’s arms plunged methodically into the sudsy water, rubbing garment after garment along the washboard, taking full advantage of the rainless Sunday to ready their clothing for the following week. She had to be tired. Nearly seven months pregnant, Noah’s wife moved about her daily chores automatically, as if she had a checklist she needed to tick off mentally before going to the next one. And Noah hated that living with him had reduced beautiful Emmaline Townsend Lawson to a lifetime sentence of washing, ironing, cooking and dusting. She deserved better.

Ever since that night over a month ago when he’d lay bare his deepest, darkest secret and she’d accepted him and his violent past with kisses and embraces that comforted and bolstered him, Noah had fallen completely, irrevocably head over boot heels in love with his wife. She’d seen past the broken, unworthy, unlovable façade of a tormented man and taken him into her heart, healing him with her acceptance and solace, showing him that his present mattered to her; not his past.

Nothing had been the same after that night of his confession. Trite, but true. He’d awakened at dawn still in Emmaline’s embrace, head upon her breast, clinging as if to a life boat, her heartbeat under his ear the steady beacon drawing him closer to the safety of her shore. As the memories of his demoralizing confession came flooding back into his consciousness, Noah had attempted to withdraw from her shelter in embarrassment, only to feel Emmie’s arms tighten around him, holding him to her warm, comforting body, inviting him to let go of his disgrace once and for all.

“Don’t,” she’d admonished softly, voice echoing within her chest. “Don’t bury it again, Noah. The memory isn’t yours alone anymore. We don’t have to speak of it ever again, if you prefer, but now it’s ours. Together. Don’t hide it away in shame.”

He’d raised his head then from her chest, ravaged face meeting hers only inches apart, and he’d nearly humiliated himself with more tears. If he hadn’t loved her before, he had then, with a ferocity that surprised him at its intensity. In gut reaction, Noah had nearly blurted those three little words right then and there, but somehow he’d managed to hold them back, not wanting this moment to be the time he expressed his deepest feelings. He’d done enough soul-stripping the previous night without adding that life-altering declaration in the daytime. But he realized without a doubt that Emmaline Townsend Lawson had become more important to him in that one moment than his own life. He would be nothing without her.

So now, as he watched his light, his guardian angel, struggle to complete her thankless job, one of many thankless jobs she’d been saddled with since their marriage, Noah came to the conclusion she didn’t deserve this day in, day out monotony of chores, only to fall exhausted into bed beside her snoring husband, to start all over again at daybreak. And what did Emmie have to look forward to? Another mouth to feed, another body to bathe, another pile of clothes to wash in just over two months! Her marriage to him would become a punishment of never-ending days filled with never-ending toil.

If he had any chance at everlasting happiness beside the one woman he burned for, Noah realized he needed to show Emmaline that life with him promised more than this daily grind. That he had a romantic side as well as a practical one. Consequently, as was his wont, he’d been turning over and over possible solutions to this problem in his mind. He needed Emmaline beside him to make him whole; to keep him sane. If life with him became unbearable, if marriage to a horse wrangler proved to be too dreary to her and she left, Noah knew he would sink below the surface of his dubious sanity for good. He wouldn’t survive Emmie’s leave-taking. And so he thought some more. And at last was rewarded with a sublime notion; a perfect plan so easy to execute Noah felt embarrassed it had taken so long to come up with it.