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Paying no attention to their exchange, Sara dried her frozen hands and thought about the past month.
Martha Kingswood
had received the news of the engagement with remarkable calmness. Sara and Perry had told her
together. They had been astonished by her lack of protest. "If marrying Sara will bring you
happiness," Martha had said to Perry, holding his face
in her narrow hands, "then I give my blessing to the both of you." She had bent and pressed a brief
kiss on her son's lips,
and then straightened to look at Sara with a slitted gaze.
Since then, Martha had interfered with and criticized every decision they made. Perry seemed oblivious
of his mother's
badgering, but it never failed to send Sara's mood plummeting. She was afraid that her marriage would
be an endless
battleground. The last week, especially, had been a trying one. Martha was preoccupied with the idea
that Perry was
abandoning her. She had declared her intention of living with her son and his wife after the wedding.
'It's hardly an unorthodox idea," Perry had told Sara. "Many couples reside with their parents and
grandparents, too.
I don't see that there's any need for us to live in seclusion."
Sara had been aghast. "Perry, you're not saying you want to share a home with her, are you?"
A frown crept across his boyishly handsome face. "What if your mother were all alone and she asked us
to live with her?"
'It's not the same. Mine isn't demanding and impossible to please!"
Perry looked hurt and sullen. He was not used to arguments from her. 'Til thank you not to use such
words about Mother,
and to remember that she brought me up and took care of me with no help from anyone."
"I know that," Sara said ruefully, trying to think of a solution. "Perry, you have some money of your own,
don't you? Some
savings put away?"
He bristled at the question, for it wasn't a woman's place to ask questions about money. "That not your
concern."
Excited about her idea, Sara ignored his offended masculine pride. "Well, I have a little nest egg. And I'll
make enough from
the sale of my next book to buy a cottage of our own. I'll work my fingers to the bone if necessary, so
that we can hire someone to keep your mother company and look after her."
"No," he said instantly. "A housemaid would not care for her the way her own family would."
A vision of herself waiting hand and foot on Martha Kingswood, and giving up her writing forever,
caused Sara to flush angrily. "Perry, you know how miserable I would be if she lived with us. She'll
complain about everything I do, how I cook, how I keep
the house, how I teach my children. You're asking too much of me. Please, we must find some other way
"
"You are going to marry me for better or worse," he said sharply. "I thought you understood what that
meant."
"I didn't realize it was going to be better for you and worse for me!"
"If the worst thing that could ever happen to you is living with my mother and I rather doubt that you
should love me
enough to accept it."
They had parted company without making up, each of them refusing to listen to the other's side. "You're
changing," Perry had complained. "Day by day you're becoming a different person. Why can't you be the
sweet, happy girl I fell in love with?"
Sara hadn't been able to answer. She knew better than he what the problem was. He wanted a wife who
would never question
his decisions. He wanted her to make difficult sacrifices in order to make his life pleasant. And she had
been willing to do that
for years, for the sake of love and companionship. But now ... sometimes ... love didn't seem worth the
price he demanded
from her.
He's right, I have changed, she thought unhappily. The fault was with her, not him. Not long ago she
had been the kind of woman who would have been able to make Perry happy. We should have married
years ago, she thought. Why didn't
I stay in the village and earn money some other way than writing? Why did I have to go to
London?
During the evenings when she sat at her desk and labored over her novel, she sometimes found herself
gripping the pen handle
so tightly that her fingers ached with the strain. She would look down to find splotches of ink across the
paper. It was difficult to summon Derek Craven's face clearly now, but there were reminders of him
everywhere. The timbre of someone's voice, or the greenish color of someone's eyes, sometimes gave
her a jolt of recognition that reached to her very foundations. Whenever she was with Perry, she
struggled to keep from comparing the two men, for it would be unfair to both of them. Besides, Perry
wanted her as his wife, while Derek Craven had made it clear that he had no desire to be a candidate for
her affections.
"I will forget you," he had assured her. She was certain that he had wiped his memory clean of her, and
oh, how the thought stung ... for she longed to do the same.
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