After a few moments to recover her dignity and her calm, Molly raised her chin to squarely meet that salacious gaze. “I don’t know you, Quinn. I don’t know what’s happened. This whole past week, you’ve been so kind and sweet to me. Why—why would you speak to me this way...now?”
“Now? Because now you’re my wife. I can be who I am; I don’t have to put on an act any longer. And, let me tell you, it’s been a burden, having to wear this mask around you all the time. What did you tell me—not to worry, that we’ll work it out?”
Heartsick, Molly felt as if she had aged ten years in just a few hours. “Well, to begin with, let’s talk, shall we? We have all the space in the world. I know nothing about your background. Or your family. Or your qualifications, your experience.”
“Back to the employment problem again, eh? I’ll get work, Molly. I’ll support us. There’s always something around for an enterprising fellow like me. Hey, you miserable beast, kick up your heels and move along.” Annoyed, Quinn snapped his whip at their horse, who, startled, gave him a look of deep distrust and dislike before reluctantly obeying.
Her first glimpse of the home that had been rented for her left Molly feeling even more shaken.
What she could see of it through an overgrowth of trees and shrubbery, that is. A small one-story frame edifice, its white paint peeling down to bare wood, its gutterworks rusting, its brick chimney’s condition questionable. Only long tangled grass and dirt surrounded a porch tacked onto the front, with wildflowers blooming here and there and squirrels chattering from the overhanging trees.
Molly couldn’t restrain a shiver, almost of foreboding.
“It seems so—lonely...” she ventured.
“Private,” Quinn corrected.
Smiling, in what seemed a return of his pre-wedding mood, he suddenly clutched at her shoulders, holding her fast, and covered her mouth with his. It was a kiss almost hurtful in its passion, and Molly, unused to such treatment, finally broke free and pulled away with a little mewling cry.
“We’ll be able to do whatever we want, here,” her husband, breathing hard, said significantly. “That’s what privacy is for. No interference from town folks.”
Leaving the horse to browse at sweet fresh grass, even tastier than that by the side of the road, Quinn assisted his wife in climbing down to the ground. Hand in hand, she followed along, making her trepidatious way toward the set of three rickety steps.
Off-putting as the outside might be, the inside was far worse, and Molly visibly quailed when Quinn pushed open the warped front door upon what must pass as a communal room, both parlor and kitchen.
Two windows, draped with cobwebs instead of curtains, let in just a smidgen of green-tinted light. On display: a floor littered by scraps of paper, several empty liquor bottles, old rags, dry crumpled leaves from various trees from various seasons, a semi-plastered wall stained by leaks or some other ugly substance.
The room directly behind, as Molly tiptoed toward it, was even worse. A bed frame, topped by a mattress that should only be touched with kerosene and a match, jostled for space with a huge nicked and scarred bureau, some sort of fireplace screen that held indescribable pieces of clothing, and junk and tattered rugs everywhere.
Her face drained of blood, her insides twisting with the need to empty themselves out, she stumbled away to the fresh air of the porch, where she clung to one of the pillars for dear life.
“No working kitchen?” she cried at her husband, who had thundered along behind her. “No indoor or—apparently—outdoor facilities? Quinn, this place is—it’s ghastly!”
The blackness of his beard made his face appear as white as hers. Not with horror, however, but with temper. “I’m not exactly swimmin’ in legal tender here, Molly,” he snapped. “It just needs cleaning. Some elbow grease, some soap and suds, and it’ll be fine. Or is all that beneath you?”
“Beneath me! Quinn, you must see we can’t live here! It’s barely habitable for—for animals! How can you expect me to—to clean, when I have nothing to clean with?”
His nostrils were flaring. “Some partnership this is turning out to be! Not only penniless, but lazy to boot! All you’ve done so far is complain!”
“Oh, please, please just listen to me, dear! No broom, no scrub brush, no pails—how, pray tell, am I to get this place livable?”
Now a muscle was flickering ominously along the side of his jaw, and, from only a few feet away, his hands curled into fists. “That isn’t my job, Molly. It’s yours. That is the very least you can do—to fix the food and straighten up.”
“I can, Quinn, and I will,” she babbled, feeling suddenly nervous. “But not without the barest minimum to scrape by! Why, we haven’t even any furniture here. How will we—”
And it was at that moment that he struck.
Chapter Seven
“HE HIT ME UP FOR A couplea sawbucks,” commented Ben. The words were spoken without heat or rancor, as an observation only.
“Yeah?” Sheriff Paul Winslow, relieved of official duties for the evening by Deputy Austin Blakely’s turn on duty, leaned back in his wicker chair on the Forresters’ front porch and cranked one ankle atop the other knee. “Not surprisin’. And that’s the last you’ll see of it, too.”
“Figured.”
Earlier, Ben, needing, he explained to his wife, to palaver a bit and get some advice, had stopped over at the jail to invite his friend back for supper. After a light meal put together by Camellia’s own hands, namely a pot of split pea soup, sliced hard-boiled eggs, and leftover wedding cake, the two men had retired outside to share a bottle of Ben’s prized bourbon and light up a couple of atrociously rank imported cigars.
The smoke did at least deter a crew of suicidal mosquitoes, who, attracted by the scent of fresh red blood, were dive-bombing in clusters and in sequence. Other than the warning high-pitched whine of the nasty little critters as they came swooping in, and the bark of someone’s dog off in