Vows

by LaVyrle Spencer

  Once he twitched and complained, irritably, "Hurry up, I'm freezing." She bit back a smile: so he would have his grouchy moments, as a husband. Maybe, as a wife, she could find ways to sweeten him at those times.

  While Fannie wrapped his ribs with cotton, Emily measured, cut, and wet the adhesive plaster strips. She ordered Tom to drop his hands to his sides and expel his breath, and while he stood so, she wrapped him from back to breastbone with overlapped pieces until his trunk resembled the armor on a gila monster.

  "There. It's not fancy, but it'll help."

  He glanced down, cursed softly in self-disgust, and asked, "How long do you think I'll have to keep this on?"

  "Four weeks, I'd guess, wouldn't you, Papa?"

  "Don't ask me! I don't even know what you came to get me for. I haven't done a thing but watch."

  It was true. Under stress, Emily had performed with proficiency and calm, as she had that day at Jagush's. Though Tom admired the fact, she made light of it, telling Edwin, "You were my moral support. Besides, I wasn't sure if I'd have to lift them. Thank you for coming, Papa. You too, Fannie."

  "Well," Edwin announced, "I guess I'd better hitch up a rig and haul these two home." First he moved back to Charles. "Charles, how're you doing, son?"

  Edwin had called Charles son for so long, doing so seemed second nature to him. But the word caused an uncomfortable lull as he helped Charles to his feet. Until now there'd been distractions to override much of the tension between the two suitors. But as they faced each other across the dim corridor, polarity surfaced between them, at once repellent and attractive. Broken engagements and broken bones and broken hearts. All were present in their silent exchange of glances.

  Then Charles shuffled toward the door. "I'll walk home," he said glumly "I feel like I need the fresh air."

  "Nonsense, Charles—" Edwin began, but Charles pushed past him and left the livery stable without a backward glance.

  In his wake Edwin exhaled a heavy breath. "I guess you can't expect him to be overjoyed, can you?"

  Tom spoke up. "I know Charles means a lot to you, sir. I meant to plan a better time to tell you about Emily and me. I meant to ask you for her hand properly I'm sorry you had to find out this way."

  "Yes, well…" Edwin blustered, searching for words to hide his own dismay at losing Charles as a son-in-law. While playing the part of humanitarian Edwin had set aside his own consternation at the turn of events, but it surfaced now in an unexpected and tactless outburst. "Now I know about it, and she tells me she loves you, but young man, let me warn you…" Edwin shook a finger at Tom. "The period of mourning is a year long, so if you have any other ideas you'd better put them out of your head!"

  * * *

  Chapter 18

  «^»

  Emily rode behind her father, smoldering with mortification while they took Tom home in a four-seater buggy. She could not believe Edwin's crassness!

  Edwin drove—mulling events silently, feeling ambivalent, even a little sheepish after reconsidering his outburst. At Tom's house he cast a reproving eye upon Emily as she anxiously watched her injured swain alight. Tom moved by increments, guarding his ribs as she stepped onto the foot bracket and over the side. When he reached the ground Emily stood as if to follow, but Edwin ordered, "Stay where you are. You're coming home with us."

  "But, Papa, Tom needs—"

  "He'll make out just fine."

  Anger flared and Emily retorted acidly, "I can make my own decision Papa thank you!" She propped her fists on her hips and glared at her father

  Tom looked up and advised diplomatically, "He's right, Emily. You go home. I'll be all right. Thank you for your help, Edwin … Fannie."

  "Yeah," Edwin replied ungraciously to cover his own growing discomposure over his lack of discretion. "Giddap!" He slapped the rains so suddenly Emily sat down with a plop.

  "Papa!" she railed, outraged, gripping the edge of the seat.

  He drove on without turning around. "Don't Papa me! I know what's best for you!"

  "You're being unspeakably rude! And I never thought I'd live to see the day when you became domineering!"

  "You're in mourning," Edwin declared with stubborn finality.

  "Oh, I'm in mourning, so that means I'll have to put up with your surliness for a year?"

  "Emily, I'm your father! And I'm not surly!"

  "You're surly! Is he surly, Fannie? Tell him!"

  Fannie had opinions but decided it best to withhold them until she and Edwin were alone. She had no intention of playing devil's advocate with Edwin's daughter as witness. A flourish of her hands ordered clearly. Leave me out of this.

  "Not only is he surly but he's rude to my fiancé!"

  "Your fiancé—hmph!" Edwin scowled at the rumps of the trotting horses.

  "You found him totally likable when he knocked on the door earlier tonight. Why, your face lit up like a rainbow when you saw him coming in."

  "You have damn near a full year of courtship ahead of you, young lady, and I won't have you tucking him into bed!"

  "Tucking him into … oh, Papa!" Abashed, Emily fought the sting of tears.

  "Edwin," Fannie unbraided, abandoning her vow to remain silent. "That was uncalled for."

  "Well, dammit, Fannie," he blustered, "Charles is like a son to me!"

  "We know that, Edwin, so perhaps you need not reiterate the fact quite so often. There is a new fiancé to be considered, and he has feelings, too."

  In strained silence they rode the remainder of the way home. Pulling up, Edwin stared straight ahead while Emily leapt from the wagon and stormed into the house in a state of dudgeon. Fannie silently squeezed Edwin's hand before following.

  Inside Emily paced turbulently, spinning to Fannie the moment she entered. "How could he say such a thing?"

  Fannie calmly lit a lamp and drew off her coat. "Give him a day or two to get used to the idea of you and Tom. He'll come around."

  "But to point his finger at Tom and give him orders as if he were … as if he were anything less than a gentleman! I was absolutely mortified! And his remark about my tucking Tom into bed was absolutely inexcusable! I wanted to die on the spot!" Indignant tears spurted into Emily's eyes. "We've done nothing to be ashamed of, Fannie, nothing!"

  "I know, darling, I know." Fannie hooked Emily in her arms and tucked her close. "But you have to remember it hasn't been an easy time for your father. His whole world is in a state of flux. He's lost your mother, now he feels like he's losing Charles. You're making plans to marry and move away from the nest. It's natural that he's upset, and if he displays it in ways that could sometimes be more tactful, we must be patient with him."

  "But I don't understand, Fannie." Emily pulled back, too agitated to be held immobile. "He's always been on my side, and he always said that the most important thing in life is to be happy. Now I am … I … I'm going to be, when Tom and I are married. You'd think Papa would think about that, would want that for me, instead of wanting me to marry somebody I don't love. The remarks he made tonight were totally unlike him. I'd expect Mother to say something like that, but not Papa. Never Papa."

  Fannie studied the younger woman, smiling benignly. For seconds she pondered whether or not it was prudent to speak what was on her mind. Would it be fair to Edwin to speculate on the underlying reason for his outburst? Perhaps not, but it might at least help Emily understand some of the stresses that had come to bear on her father. "Come here. Sit down." Fannie took Emily by the hands and drew her down onto a kitchen chair, taking another herself, clasping Emily's hands across the corner of the kitchen table. She chose her words carefully. "You're nineteen years old, Emily, a full-grown woman." She spoke placidly, in a voice eloquent with understanding and wisdom. "Certainly you're old enough to have been exposed to the temptations that come along with falling in love. They're natural, those temptations. We fall in love and we want that love consummated. Well, it's no different for your father … and me. Perhaps now you can understand that the
warning Edwin inadvisedly issued to Tom was really directed at himself."

  The anger fell from Emily like a stripped garment, replaced by a wide-eyed stare of incredulity.

  "Oh, you mean…" she stammered to a halt, her face still and open. And again quieter, she breathed, "Oh."

  "Have I shocked you, dear? I didn't mean to." Still smiling, Fannie dropped Emily's hands. "But we're both women, both in love, both trapped in this execrably stupid convention they call mourning. Perhaps we just handle it better than men do. Perhaps that's our strength, after all."

  Emily stared at Fannie, too amazed for words.

  "Now, dearling, it's late," Fannie observed, ending the intimate revelation with her usual grace. "Hadn't you better get ready for bed?"

  Two hours later Emily lay in bed wide awake, still pondering the unexpected and startling disclosure made by Fannie in the kitchen. Even at their age, Papa and Fannie still experienced carnality! The realization relaxed much of Emily's rancor for Edwin.

  How often she had wondered, but it wasn't a subject about which one inquired, certainly not of a parent. Certainly not of her parents! Lying beside the sleeping Fannie, listening to her measured breathing, Emily absorbed the truth that the other woman had so honestly revealed, truth that Fannie undoubtedly understood every bride-to-be would be wondering about: these feelings that she and Tom felt for one another could and very likely would preserve through much more of their lives than she had ever guessed.

  In recent days, since Tom's first kisses and caresses, Emily had devoted many long insomniac hours to speculation about that very subject. Carnality. It was awesome and overpowering and intimidating. And, before marriage, a woman's responsibility seemed to be to combat it for both herself and the man.

  Contemplating it, Emily conjured up the image of Tom, his lazy blue eyes, his smile, his lips, kisses, hands. She lay with the quilts caught tightly beneath her arms, her own hands flattened over her pelvis where the restive throb beat, deep inside. Warmth came with it, and nubilous images sprawled by memories of the few times Tom had held and petted her.

  It brought speculation on the marriage act. There were words for it—copulation, conjugation, consummation, coupling, intercourse, sowing oats (Emily smiled) … making love (she sobered).

  Yes, making love. She liked that phrase best.

  What would it be like? How would it begin? Would it be dark? Light? Between sheets or on top of quilts like that one night at Tom's house? Would it be halting or spontaneous? What would he say? Do? And herself, how was she expected to react? Or act? And afterwards, would they feel awkward and self-conscious? Or would the marriage act create a magical lingering intimacy?

  The marriage act. Another phrase, though sometimes untrue. Sometimes it happened outside the marriage—Tarsy had educated Emily on that point. Perhaps Tom had done it with someone already, someone he knew before, someone experienced in the proper ways. His former fiancée? Tarsy, even?

  Emily opened her eyes and stared at a streak of moonlight bending around the corner of the room. She gulped at the stone lying in her throat. Suppose he had done it with Tarsy after all. Emily had tried to believe otherwise, but sometimes she wondered.

  Tarsy, who had admitted how close they'd come. Tarsy, who had also admitted that she sometimes thought of "trapping" Tom into marriage. Tarsy, who had changed so much in the past several months because she loved Thomas Jeffcoat.

  Tomorrow I must tell Tarsy. Tomorrow, before word reaches her from any other source.

  * * *

  At 5:30 the following morning Emily left a note on the kitchen table: Going to feed Tom's horses. Back in an hour. Emily.

  She went first to his house. All was dark, so she circled around and knocked on his bedroom window, backed off and waited, but no response came. She banged again, harder, and pictured him rolling from bed, groaning, wrapped in plaster. It took a full minute before the shade flicked aside and his face appeared as a white blur in the shadows beyond the distorting window glass.

  "Tom?" On tiptoe, she put her mouth closer to the window. "It's Emily."

  "Em?" His voice came faintly through the wall. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. Stay in bed. I'm going to take care of your stock today. You just rest."

  "No, you … to … up…"

  Emily lost most of his reply to the buffering wall.

  "Go back to bed!"

  "No, Emily, wait!" He flattened a palm on the window. "Come to the door!"

  The shade dropped and she stared at it, hearing again her father's admonition about tucking him into bed. Before she gathered the intelligence to walk away the shade turned golden as he lit a lamp, then faded as he carried it out of the room toward the front of the house.

  5:30 A.M. The very hour created intimacy, the very fact that he'd been asleep. Emily paused, staring at the shade, fully intending to leave without putting a foot on his porch.

  From around the house she heard him calling. "Em?" Faintly, in a half whisper.

  Firming her resolve, she rounded the front corner and mounted two porch steps, then stopped dead in her tracks.

  His head and one naked shoulder poked through the door. "Come on in here, it's cold!" His breath made a white cloud in the chill predawn air.

  "I'd better not."

  "Dammit, Emily, get in here! It's freezing!"

  She thumped up the steps and inside, keeping her hands in her pockets and her eyes on the floor. He closed the door and rubbed his arms to warm them. She knew without looking, that his feet and chest were bare, and he wore only trousers and the white bindings around his ribs. Again, Emily wondered what her father would say.

  "I'm sorry I woke you up."

  "It's all right."

  "I didn't want you to get out of bed. I thought if I just knocked on the window I could tell you and leave." Her glance flickered up to his shoulders, then quickly down.

  "What time is it?"

  "Five-thirty."

  "Is that all?" He groaned and flexed gingerly. "Lordy, I couldn't get to sleep last night. My ribs hurt."

  "How do you feel this morning?"

  "Like I've been pulled through a keyhole." He spread a hand over the bandages, then reached up and tested his incisors, adding, "I think some of my teeth are loose."

  "To say nothing of your bones. You've got no business throwing hay with cracked ribs. I'll take care of your livery stable today."

  "I want to say no, but the way I feel I think I'd be wiser to say thank you. I really appreciate it, Emily."

  She shrugged. "I don't mind, and I know your horses by name."

  His eyes drifted fondly over her face and her boyish attire. "Besides," he said softly, "someday they'll be yours, too."

  She swallowed, feeling herself blushing, realizing once again that they were in his home, in total privacy, and he was far from decently dressed. To remind him of the same thing, she broached the subject that could not be avoided forever.

  "I'm sorry about what my father said last night."

  She felt his eyes probing and studied his bare toes, imagining them beneath her own as the two of them curled together like spoons beneath the quilts.

  "Is that why you're scared to look at me, Emily, because of what he said?"

  She felt herself color, and gulped. "Yes."

  "I'd sure like it if you would."

  "I'm dressed in my barn clothes."

  "And I'm not complaining."

  She lifted her head slowly and her lips dropped open, her eyes grew dismayed. "Uh, Thomas…" His face was swollen and discolored. His hair stood in tufts like that of an old buffalo after a hard winter. His left eye was opened less than a quarter inch and the right one squinted without his intending it to. Beneath it a pillow of skin had turned magenta, tinged with blue. His beautiful mouth and jawline were those of a mutilated stranger. "Look at you."

  "I suppose I'm a mess."

  "You must hurt terribly."

  "Bad enough to keep from kissing you the way I'd like to,"
he admitted, taking her elbows anyway, and drawing her off-balance.

  She resisted discreetly and said, "Tom, I need to talk to you." There were things that needed airing and they were best said with a minimum of intimacy involved.

  "So serious," he chided gently.

  "Yes, it is."

  He dropped his playful mood. "Very well … talk."

  She drew a deep breath and told him, "I hated it, your fighting over me I felt helpless and … angry."

  His eyes probed hers with a hint of rebelliousness in the brows. But after a moment's silence he offered, "I'm sorry."

  "I hate seeing you disfigured this way."

  "I know."

  "I would never have taken you for a fighter."

  "I never was … before."

  "I wouldn't like it much if you did it after we were married."

  They both recognized the moment for what it was; not a squaring-off but a structuring for their future. His answer—the one she'd hoped for—spoke of the deference with which he would hold her wishes when she became his wife

  "I won't. That's a promise. I didn't want to fight him, you know."

  "Yes, I know."

  She stood with her gaze pinned on his black-and-blue eyes, wrapped in a queer combination of emotions—regret for having had to take him to task; pity for his poor, abused body; desire for that same body, no matter how unsightly it looked. She wanted badly to reach, soothe, press her face to his naked neck and touch his warm shoulders. A startling thought surfaced: I love him so much that Papa is right. I have no business here in his house, not even in barn clothes.

  Instinctively she moved to leave, but reaching the door she turned. "I'm going to tell Tarsy about us this morning. As soon as I feed your horses I'm going over to her house and get it over with. I just wanted you to know."

  "Do you want me with you?"

  "No, I think it's best if I go alone. She's probably not going to be any more understanding than Charles was. The two of you will want to talk privately once she knows. I'll understand that and I promise I won't be jealous."