Page 53 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
“He wants milk, Papa,” Nettie said hesitantly.
“Oh. Look at you with all your new words.” Virgil couldn’t help but be proud of the little mite, even though he had nothing to do with how quickly he was learning.
“Harley, come with me. I’ll give you some milk,” Marigold called, still sounding hollow-voiced and unsettled. She bustled around, clattering a can off the shelf and picking up the water pitcher.
It was a stark reminder of her role here. And the fact he was behaving like his father, taking liberties with his employee.
Sickened, Virgil marched away without saying goodbye, hearing Nettie telling Marigold, “Do you know what Uncle Owen said?”
“Everything smoothed over?” Owen asked, falling into step beside him.
“Yes,” Virgil lied.
“Why is your collar wet?”
“Because I had to cool off.”
“Oh? Why’s that?” Owen sent a sideways smirk at him.
“Because I can’t tell Marigold to fuck off the way I can with you.”
“Yeah, I saw what happened when you tried.”
Asshole.
“Nothing makes me more eager to stand in ice water for eleven hours like talking to you, you know that?”
Which was what he did, because he still needed to cool off. The memory of her heat sat like a brand on his skin…and would for the rest of his life.
Chapter Fourteen
Marigold started the beans, adding a dab of molasses. Then she walked Nettie and Harley to a spot on the far side of the stream.
It was late in the day for an outing, but Harley was filled with milk and peach preserves and mischief. He needed the exercise. Marigold needed something to occupy her thoughts so she wouldn’t dwell on what had happened with Virgil. Would one call that lovemaking? Or wanton fornication?
Virgil had said she had nothing to be ashamed of, but men only said that until it was no longer convenient to have a woman of loose morals cluttering up their lives.
She seemed to have an unseemly appetite for relations,Ben had claimed in court.
As newlyweds, were you not trying to start a family?her attorney had argued. Would that not account for Mrs. Davis showing enthusiasm for the marriage bed? A wife is expected to submit to her husband, is she not?
To be frank, sir, she wishedmeto submit toherdesires.
It had been humiliating. Intentionally so.
And had pierced her so keenly because there’d been a grain of truth to it.
Marigold hadn’t been sure what she sought when she and Ben were abed, but there’d been a hunger for something. To learn. To discover. Each time they’d joined themselves together, she had felt teased into welcoming him the next time he reached for her. She had wanted his touch and penetration without fully understanding why it was so beguiling.
Now she knew. That culmination Virgil had drawn forth in her was more than disconcerting. It wasknowledge. It was dangerous because it incited a desire to feel that way again, uncaring that they weren’t married. Even though it was sinful and shameful andwrong.
“What about bears?” Nettie asked with an anxious look into the brush up the hill.
“Hmm? Oh. We’re only going this far.” Marigold took stock of where they were. “See? There are men over there making noise.” One was using a pickaxe against the bank, and another was rocking a wooden box so water and gravel sloshed. “I don’t think we’ll be bothered by anything other than mosquitos.”
Marigold had walked them a little distance downstream from the abandoned Ute camp. Leyohna had told her to watch for blossoms on a patch of brush to turn into berries here. The leaves looked like currant bushes, and the berries were a glossy red with fine hairs all over them. They were tart, perhaps not ripe enough, but they would make a nice marmalade. They would pick some today and check back over the next week to see if they sweetened up.
They stayed until the mountain shadow was across the whole valley. By then, she had also dug up some dandelion greens while Nettie kept Harley amused with catching grasshoppers. Every time she opened her hands to show one to Harley, it jumped away, startling them into squeals of laughter.
