He shook his head. “You look fantastic.”
That was not the reaction I expected from a churchman. The cold air was stealing my meager heat and I stepped back to let him in. He shut the door behind him and I walked away, knowing my backside in the tight jeans was . . . moving . . . in front of him. I wanted to wrap up in the shawl to hide, but I tossed it on the couch. I wasn’t a churchwoman. Not anymore. Except that I went straight to the woodstove, just like a good female in her homemade dress, and put a tea bag in a mug with the water I’d left heating. I put coffee on the Bunn, a strong French roast I knew a churchman would like. My tall heels clomped on the floor. I hadn’t offered Ben a seat. I was equally mortified and electrified.
I got myself under control and turned back to him. “Have a seat.” Not Whyn’t you’uns take a chair and rest a spell. Not Welcome to my home. Hospitality and safety while you’re here. Not the old God’s Cloud of Glory sayings. The church and I were truly parting ways. At long last. My cell dinged with a text. I ignored it.
Ben looked squirmy and twitchy, standing by the couch, looking everywhere but at me. Cello jumped up on the sofa and went to him for attention, sticking a demanding cat nose in his hand. Ben jerked away, his eyes wide. There was a cat on the sofa. Cats weren’t allowed in most church homes except when there was a mouse problem. I stifled a giggle.
At the soft sound that escaped me, he flinched, but then he laughed and shook himself like a wet dog. He held out a basket in his other hand. I hadn’t even noticed it. “Your mama suggested you might like some fresh eggs. She has some new laying hens. Easter Eggers and Ameraucanas.”
I accepted the basket and pulled back the cloth that covered the contents. There were greenish and bluish eggs inside. I put the basket on the long kitchen table. One designed and built for a multiwife family with dozens of children. It was dusty. Unused. There were cat tracks across it. The floor beneath was dusty too, the result of a wood-heated house and a homeowner too busy to clean. Another sign I was following the yellow brick road to hell. My silence had gone on too long.
I glanced at Ben and away, fast. He was staring at me. “Please tell my mama thank you. And that I’ll be over to see her soon.” The Bunn stopped drizzling and I asked, “Cream? Sugar?”
“Black, please. Um, Nell, your hair—” He stopped.
A feeling like shame whipped through me. I knew what he had to be thinking. What any churchman would be thinking. “I’m not a scandalous woman.”
His blue eyes widened. “I know that. I’m—”
“I’m a law enforcement officer.” Still speaking, I placed the cup with a cloth napkin on the coffee table and turned back to the stove. “I have an interview with a girl who dresses like this. It’s to make her feel comfortable so she’ll talk. Like Paul when he went into the pagan temple and talked about the missing god. He didn’t condemn. He started where they were.”
“I know my Bible, Nell,” Ben said, amusement in his voice. But he sat on the edge of the couch and tasted the coffee. “This is good.”
“Thank you.” I carried my tea to the armchair and sat. It was totally inappropriate for me to have Ben Aden in my house, unchaperoned. Alone. Me, wearing sinful pants that showed off my feminine form. I fought a smile and sipped my tea. It needed to brew much longer, was weak and unsweetened. I sipped anyway, fighting the giggle that wanted to erupt from me. “My mama—”
“Sent me to see you. Away from family.”
“She’s matchmaking,” I said, thinking that she woulda never done such a thing except that I’d been widowed and the social mores were different for widder-women. “Being devious,” I added.
“Oh yes. She is. It’s what churchwomen do whenever there’s a single man looking for a wife.”
Looking for a wife. I sipped my tea. Placed the mug on the table with a soft thump. “Ben, I like my job. I like my life. I love my farm. I’m not a churchwoman anymore.” I was, however, babbling. “I ain’t—I’m not ever going to live on church grounds and be part of a huge family. I don’t even know if I want kids.” I stopped suddenly. I’m not human. That was the important part. I couldn’t say that. Some of the churchmen might still be desirous of burning nonhumans at the stake. It had happened before, long ago. A woman accused of being a witch, burned to death. Mud. Esther. Priscilla. Judith. Mama. Or perhaps Daddy. Or my whole family, every man, woman, and child. It would be a midnight fire, source unknown, fast burning. The church would never call a fire department. Everyone inside would die.
Ben’s full lips moved in an easy smile that was slightly crooked, his teeth strong and white. “Nell . . .” It sounded like a caress.
I shook my head no. My cell dinged with another text. I pulled it from my pocket and cradled it in my hand without looking at it.
Ben said, “I love the land and the people. I don’t love the lifestyle of four wives and forty children running around all over.” Forty children wasn’t an impossible number, if a man kept four wives and a few concubines all busy, but it made my frozen face crack a smile. “I came back to the church to effect change. Along with Sam and his other friends, we want to see the church move into the twenty-first century. I want a wife who can help that happen.”
I stilled. Wife . . . I’d been a wife. It hadn’t been all bad. John was an old man when he told me it was time to come to the marriage bed. I was fifteen. I’d been an old bride by church standards. John wasn’t too demanding. A few times a month. And it had kept me safe. Until he fell sick and died and left me a widder-woman and landowner and far better off than the churchwomen. John had left Soulwood to me.
Being in John’s bed had been unpleasant, but I’d thought it was worth it to be safe from the man who wanted to own me. It was the kind of compromise women made all over the world: sex and nurturing and nursing for safety. Prostitution of a different kind.
“I don’t know if we would suit,” he said, “but I’d like to get to know you better. I’d like to take you to dinner.”
I had been staring into the distance, and whipped my eyes to him.
Dinner.
His dark hair had fallen across his forehead in a long curl. Too long by church standards. And Ben Aden wanted to take me to dinner. Like Occam did. Occam who had kissed me. Playing the field, JoJo had called it once when I was in the room with her and T. Laine as they talked about men. Dating. “Oh. Umm. Oh.” I looked around the house as if I had never been there. Dusty. Cat prints. Lumpy brownish couch. Tattered chairs. I hadn’t noticed they were in such bad shape. John’s and Leah’s things. So little that was mine. I didn’t know what to say to Ben.