Chasing the Sunset(2)
“You cannot do that!” blustered Jackson. “I never stole a thing! I worked my arse off here. And wot does I get for it? Kicked out like a nothing? Who’s gonna cook for ya now, Mr. high-and-mighty? Nobody will even set foot on this place except that hoity-toity Kathleen’s family,” he sneered. “Ever’body knows how ya pushed your lady wife down those stairs!” He spit on the none-too-clean floor. His features distorted with spite, and he even went so far as to stick a grimy finger into Nick’s chest. “You will starve to death afore you find anybody else to come and live at this place of sin!”
Nick’s face froze. His posture ramrod straight, he used his impressive height to tower over the smaller man. “Collect your things,” he said quietly. “And get off of my property.”
Nick spun on his heel and left the room, his mouth tight with suppressed anger. Jackson was a drunk, and he was only repeating the gossip he had heard in the town, but it was damned hard not to punch him right in his slack, drunken mouth.
It was true that some thought him the murderer of his wife, and Nick was having a hard time replacing the cook who had just left him to go and live with her daughter in Kansas. The daughter was having another child to go along with the six other children she already had, and Mrs. Clark was worried for her. He did not blame Mrs. Clark for going to her poor daughter, he just wanted a decent meal, and he had not had one since she had left two months ago.
The first cook he had hired was a slattern who had thought her job was to provide him with sexual favors. She had left in a huff when he had kicked her out of his bed where he had found her waiting one night after he had been up thirty-six straight hours helping one of the mares through a difficult birth.
The second lasted two weeks, then left vowing that she had rather starve than put up with his ill-mannered criticism of her culinary skills. Nick, who had found that a steady diet of burned ham and plain boiled potatoes did not agree with him, did not miss her very much.
The next one could not have found her way to the outhouse without a map and someone to read it for her. When he had gone to seek out a reference for her, having learned from his last two mistakes, her most recent employer had warned him off, saying kindly that the woman was a bit . . . and here he had paused and coughed delicately . . . hen-witted. Nick had waved that away airily. He needed the cook too much to worry about her intellect or the lack of it. But he had soon found out that the man had been all too kind in his estimation of her intellect. Hen-witted did not begin to describe that woman’s befuddled mental condition. He had lost count of the times he came in after working all day, his stomach aching with hunger, only to find the smell of something burning. He had let her go after she set the kitchen afire with a forgotten pie. It had taken weeks to get the smell of smoke out of the house, not to mention the expense of ordering new cookware to replace all the ones that she had ruined. Jackson was his latest try at replacing Mrs. Clark, and just look how well that had turned out. His stomach was ready to revolt if he could not find someone to cook very, very soon. Kathleen took care of the noon meal, but he needed someone here full time, to provide the other two meals. He was finding it damned hard to live on only one meal a day, and Tommy, who was a growing boy after all, looked half-starved lately.
After Jackson had finally left, spitting and cursing, Nick poured himself a glass of brandy and stared moodily at the walls of his study. As always happened when his spirits were low, he thought back on the events that had led to the untimely demise of his wife.
Damn Mary and her cheating, lying heart.
Essentially all of his current troubles could be traced back to meeting and marrying that faithless, spoiled little schemer. She was probably somewhere in the afterlife laughing at his predicament in that contemptuous way that she had.
Nick swirled the liquid in his glass, studying it moodily. Two years ago, he had been delirious with happiness, newly wedded, ready to found a dynasty and conquer the world. Well, that had all gone to shit, he thought sourly. His wife had destroyed his belief in women. Before marriage, he had thought all women like his mother; soft, and giving, and faithful. Now he knew the truth. His mother had been the exception, not the rule. Most women just did not have it in them to be truthful. Oh, yes, they were all great actresses . . . until you married them. Then you found out the real truth: Dance to their tune, or spend the rest of your life in misery. Nick’s mouth quirked up, but there was no humor in the expression. In his wife’s case, her lack of morals had been matched only by her skill at pretense.
Mary had thought they would stay in Boston after they married. Oh, she knew that he had a horse breeding farm in the wilds of Missouri Territory, and she knew that he was chafing to go home to take care of matters there, but she thought that she could wheedle him into changing his mind. After all, she had been getting what she wanted from men her whole life by batting her lashes, flattering them outrageously, and giving them a pretty smile. She had no idea it would not work with him. And when she had finally figured it out, it was an understatement to say that she was not pleased, but she was not ready to declare him the winner just yet. Even though she had lost the initial battle with her new husband over staying in Boston, surely it would not be so bad. She had never for one moment thought that her new husband had been going to actually work on his horse farm. They had servants for that. Eventually, Nick would come around, and then they could spend all their time in Boston pursuing hedonistic pleasures, being part of the society she had loved so very much. Mary had absolutely no idea what their horse farm in Missouri was really going to be like because she had lived in staid, civilized Boston all of her life. She had romanticized it and envisioned plantations and servants to cater to her every whim, with a rousing, exciting social life.
The reality of the matter was that small farms were scattered across the wild landscape of Missouri and the nearest town contained only a smattering of buildings. She was used to sweet-smelling gentlemen with soft hands who indulged and pampered her. What she got was a husband who worked harder than a field hand and smelled of horse more often than not. And out here, in the wild, there was no social life to speak of, and what there was had bored her. She had loathed the farm and its isolation; she had loathed the ‘common’ farmers and landowners she encountered. Mary had wanted gay parties and civilized company, and it was simply not to be found in Missouri. It must have come as a shock to her, but Nick could not bring himself to feel any pity for her. She had tried her best to ruin his life while she was alive, and even after her death he was paying the price for his decision to marry her.
Nick had been on his annual visit to his cousins in Boston when he had met the ill-fated Mary. The fortnight he spent there every summer was the highlight of his year. Wild Missouri was dear to his heart and would always be his home, but it had none of the excitements associated with a big place like Boston. Nick was a young man, and he needed to kick up his heels now and then, and Boston was just the place in which to do so.
And he had especially needed the time away from the farm that year. His parents had both died of lung fever not six months earlier and he had been devastated by their sudden deaths. He was, quite simply, lonely for his family. His mother’s family, who had lived fairly close by in St. Louis, Missouri, was all gone except for some very distant relations that he had not heard a peep from in years. Oh, he had people who cared about him at the farm, but it was not the same somehow. Something inside of him had demanded that he be with his kin, and his aunt and his cousins were all the family he had left. He had needed to be with them, needed to be with someone who loved him and who had loved his parents.
In hindsight, he realized that Mary had been an effort to fill the gaping hole in his life that his parent’s death had left him with. He had wanted a family to replace the one that he had lost, and a wife and children seemed like a good idea at the time. Not that he had necessarily thought of it that way when the idea of marriage first came to him. He had been head over heels in love with Mary, or rather the fantasy of her that he had concocted inside of his head. His parents had certainly set a shining example as far as married life was concerned, and Nick had naively assumed that most marriages were as happy. But it was not to be; oh, no, a shining example his marriage was not.
His Aunt Clotilde was a no-nonsense type of woman, brusque and outspoken, but he had been so glad to see her that year that he nearly dissolved into tears right at the train station. Which would have embarrassed them both no end, because his Aunt Clotilde was not a demonstrative kind of person and displays of emotion flustered her. She was a big, bosomy lady with an air of competency that was well-deserved, but he had seen the sight of another’s distress nearly bring her to her knees.
Nick knew that his Aunt Clotilde cared deeply for him, though she had a hard time showing it. She was his father’s sister, and Nick had been told by his father that she had once been very lively and very affectionate but a bad marriage had changed all that. Her husband had died years ago, so long ago that Nick could not even remember him, and she had now become used to doing whatever she wanted and speaking her mind. It could be quite disconcerting at times, but Nick had gotten used to it. To be quite truthful, he quite enjoyed his aunt’s forcefulness, not being particularly fond of mealy-mouthed women. All the women in his life had been rather strong characters, and he gravitated naturally toward that type of woman.