“Interesting,” Mrs. Warfield said. “I’m not saying that Connie’s an old hag, but she isn’t a fresh innocent like you, dearest. She has kept her figure, I’ll have to say that for her. And I suppose she has a pretty enough face, what with all that blond hair of hers and skin so white I’ve often wanted to shoot her. Ah, well, James is a man, so I’m not at all surprised. But soon he will have to find himself a wife. He must be nearing thirty.”
“James is twenty-seven,” Glenda said, her voice sounding depressed. “Just three weeks ago he was twenty-six, not very old at all for a man, Mama.”
“That’s close enough. Don’t frown, dear, it will wrinkle your angel’s brow.”
“Maybe when James decides to marry, he’ll want to marry another Englishwoman. Maybe he’s already met her. His cousin is an earl, you know, and that’s nearly royalty. He could marry anyone.”
“Why ever would he want another Englishwoman? The first one didn’t even last out the year. Even though his accent hints of an Englishman, he’s only half English, doubtless his worst half, the half that is still wounded, though not so wounded he doesn’t see to his man’s pleasure. Now, your father tells me that James will be here the rest of the year. That gives you a goodly amount of time, Glenda. But listen, dear, there are other young gentlemen for you to consider.”
“Who, Mother?”
“Emerson McCuddle, for one. A nice young man with a very rich father.”
“His breath is bad.”
“Let him kiss your cheek and hold your own breath whilst he does it.”
“Emerson is a lawyer. He has no interest in horse racing or breeding. What would he do with the stud and stables?”
“There is that. As for James Wyndham, perhaps he will recover himself soon. Perhaps he will tire of Connie Maxwell. Perhaps her years will begin to tell on her, but I wouldn’t count on that. You will dance with him this evening. Ah, let’s not pull your chemisette up too high, all right, dear?”
Jessie eased back into the shrubbery. She would have sworn that James had looked right at her, but that was impossible. He was inside in all the light. He could only see the black night and that quarter moon just behind the budding apple trees off to her left. She heard the four musicians set at the far end of the drawing room strike up a waltz. Even though she hadn’t a clue as to how to dance, she loved the waltz, the sound of it, the feel of it, the way it made her want to sweep around in wide circles and laugh and laugh with pleasure. She eased back up and looked through the window. She saw James bow over Glenda’s hand and swing her into the rhythm of the fast German music.
She saw him lean down to listen to something Glenda said. He smiled. Jessie couldn’t remember the last time Glenda had said something that had made her smile. She saw her mother moving to stand beside Wilhelmina Wyndham, James’s and Ursula’s mother. Ursula and her husband were now waltzing, laughing over at James. There was Giff calling something out. More laughter. Soon the whole dancing area was filled. Even Mr. Ornack, as fat as a stuffed clam, was galloping happily about with his thin wife.
She lightly touched her fingertips to her cheeks. The cucumber mixture had hardened nicely. She’d looked very closely this morning. The bridge of freckles over her nose was lighter; she was certain of it. She sniffed. James was right. She did smell like cucumbers. Not a bad smell, but certainly distinctive.
She sighed and watched. She counted off steps, swaying with the music. When it came to a stop, she watched James guide Glenda back to their mother, who was still speaking to Mrs. Wyndham. She turned away from the window when a dark cloud blocked the moonlight. Knowing Baltimore weather, it could begin to rain at any moment. Jessie got to her feet and brushed off her bottom and legs. She heard voices then and recognized James and his brother-in-law, Gifford Poppleton, coming from the open French doors.
“I tell you I saw her with her nose pressed against the window.”
“That’s ridiculous, Giff. You drank too much of your own punch. Filled it with rum, didn’t you? What the hell would the brat be doing here?”
Jessie froze in her boots. Oh God, she had to get out of there. They were coming nearer, coming down the steps that led from the balcony outside the French doors down into the garden. She fell to her hands and knees and began creeping through the low rosebushes that filed all the way to the garden gate, not more than thirty feet away. Just keep down and keep crawling. But she paused when she heard James say, “Does Glenda Warfield stare at your crotch, Giff?”
Giff laughed. “I’ve heard she stares at every man’s crotch. She began doing it about a year ago, Ursula told me. She practiced a goodly bit on me when we arrived from Boston the end of January. It was quite an experience. I understand she’s a bit more discreet now. That is, she doesn’t stare at every single man, just ones she thinks will marry her. Did you get that succulent look tonight?”
“Yes. It was disconcerting.”
Giff laughed. “Perhaps Jessie Warfield will learn it from her sister since she was sitting here watching through the window.”
“I think you’re mad, Giff. Look, here we are. This is the window, right? No Jessie.”
“She must have heard us talking and run off. Yes, she must have gone through the back garden gate. It gives onto Sharp Street. I’ll bet you anything she had a horse tied there.”
“Well, no proving it now. She’s gone. I do wonder why the brat was here, if she was here.”
Their voices faded, and Jessie started to breathe again. If James had gone through that back gate, he would have seen Benjie tethered to a scrub bush just beside the gate. She shuddered, only beginning to picture the humiliation had she been discovered. She couldn’t do this again.
She ran low to the gate and let herself through.
James stood beside the large French door that gave onto the balcony. “Good God,” he said to himself, as he lit a cheroot, “Giff was right. What was the brat doing here?” He wondered if she’d been invited. Surely yes. But he couldn’t begin to imagine her in anything but disreputable trousers and those large shirts and coats of hers. No, she would have turned down an invitation where being a female was a requirement. He ground out his cheroot, turned on his heel, and made for the stables.
“This road needs some work, don’t you agree, Jessie? Lilac here has stumbled nearly a good dozen times.”
She nearly fell off Benjie she was so startled. He must have been riding in the grass on the side of the road. “James! Oh dear, what do you want? What are you doing here?”
“I saw you and followed you. I hadn’t believed Giff when he said he saw your nose pressed against the window, watching all of us. Then I was on the balcony and I saw you slip out the back gate. Why were you there, Jessie?”
“I wasn’t.”
She didn’t say another word. She looked behind his left shoulder, her eyes widened, and her mouth gaped. When he whipped about in the saddle, she was off. But she was riding twelve-year-old Benjie, sweet tempered and slow, so Lilac was galloping next to her in just a few minutes. James leaned over and remarked, “Your hat is just about ready to blow off. Of course your hair is so tangled, it just might hold it on.”
She didn’t look at him, just clapped her palm down on top of her head.
“Actually it looks like one of Oslow’s old hats. Perhaps he gave it to you after it was so old and pitiful he didn’t want to wear it anymore?”
She looked over at him then and if her lips could have curled, they would have. She looked madder than James had the morning when Grand Master had bitten his shoulder rather than the mare he was going to mount. “Go to hell. I don’t have to talk to you, James. Go away.”
Benjie was slowing. Jessie let him. James knew she wouldn’t ride the poor old fellow into the road. Soon they were both at a walk, Benjie blowing just a bit. Lilac tossed her head and snorted.
“She sounds just like you,” Jessie said, staring straight between Benjie’s ears. “Obnoxious and impatient. Did you import her from England?”
“You don’t care for my English accent?” he asked, drawling each word into the most supercilious British English he could manage.
“You sound like a pederast.”
James’s hands jerked on Lilac’s reins and she sidestepped. “What did you say?”
“You heard what I said.”
“How the devil do you know that word? No lady would say that word, much less know of it.”
She turned slowly to look at him, the moon behind her, framing that old hat and the tangles of red hair that hung on either side of her face. “I’m not stupid. I read a lot.”
“The question is, what do you read?”
“Everything. In this case, I agree that pederast is very definitely a man’s word.”
James smote his forehead with his palm. “I don’t believe this. It’s close to midnight. It’s Baltimore and thus it will rain on us any minute and you know about pederasts. Worse, you called me one.”
“It’s how you sound when you speak with that ridiculous accent. You do it to make yourself sound important, to sound different from all of us Colonists. To make us all feel inferior to you just because your cousin’s a bloody English earl. You want everybody to forget you’re half a Colonist yourself. You’re a fraud, James.” She wanted to whip Benjie into a gallop, but she knew she couldn’t.
“A fraud, am I? What about you, brat? You with your men’s clothes, your hair like a witch’s straggling down your back. You look like one of those hooligans who throw rocks at windows over at Fells Point. No, maybe you’re not a fraud at all. Maybe your father’s wrong. You’re only a female because your body makes you aware of it once a month.” He ignored her snarl. “So tell me, what were you doing at my sister’s party tonight?”
She was as silent as the dark clouds overhead.
“Well? Don’t you have an answer? Is it something outrageous?”
She twitched and he continued to push. “I’ll just bet I know why you were there. You were looking at all the men. Perhaps you were trying to find one close to your size so you could go to his house, break in, and steal some of his clothes. The good Lord knows your mother wouldn’t let you buy men’s clothes. That’s it, isn’t it, Jessie?”
He’d gotten her. She’d sworn she wouldn’t let him get to her, but he had. He always did, when he set out to. She twisted around in her saddle and shrieked at him, “I wanted to see you, damn you to hell, James Wyndham!”
She was trembling now, knowing she’d just opened herself to utter devastation. She felt raw and exposed. She waited for the blow. And waited some more.
The blow didn’t come. Instead, James said, “This is very strange, brat. Why did you want to see me? Is it because Glenda is after my poor male self and you want to make sure I’m good enough for her? You want to make sure I won’t beat her if I marry her? You saw me staring at those breasts of hers that she displays at every opportunity and wanted to make certain I’d manage to restrain myself?”
She could but stare at him. He hadn’t ground her into dust with mockery, but he’d hurt her more than even she could begin to imagine at the moment. He was a man; that was it. A man and thus he was as dull witted and as obtuse as her mother’s pug, Pretty Boy, whom Jessie called Halfwit whenever her mother wasn’t around.
She continued to stare at him and James said, frowning at her, “Well? It’s Glenda, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s it. I’m going home, James. You needn’t come any farther with me. Good night.”
She clicked Benjie forward. To her relief, James didn’t come after her again. She wanted to look back, but she forced herself not to.
James wondered, as he rode Lilac toward Marathon farm, why he’d come after her. His sister would be unhappy with him that he’d left so early. Giff would tease him and poke him in the ribs, all sly and obnoxious, wondering if he’d gone to see someone special. Like Connie Maxwell, who hadn’t been in attendance this evening. James could have told him that Connie’s son was visiting her from Harvard and thus the two of them would wait until Danny returned to school.
A raindrop landed on his nose. Damnation. He clicked Lilac forward, and she, hating rain more than exerting herself, ran like the rising wind toward her stable.
If Jessie was concerned he would make a good husband for her sister, then people must think he was being particular in his attentions to her. He hadn’t been; he knew it. He didn’t like Glenda. She made him nervous because her right hand played over him whenever they danced. She annoyed him with her downcast eyes and her talk of seeing beautiful England, in the spring, in the summer, even in the winter, it didn’t matter to Glenda. To hear her recite poetry had constituted the most painful twenty-two minutes of his life. He shuddered at the thought of having to sit still while she played the harp.
He urged Lilac to go faster. When he reached the house, he was soaked to the skin, in a bad mood, half afraid that Glenda Warfield was on his heels, and ready to lash out at anyone who crossed him.
He was met by pandemonium.
Oslow and ten stable lads were pacing around, oblivious of the rain, obviously waiting for him. Old Bess was holding a large, black skillet. To protect whom? Thomas was standing in the open doorway, looking stately, his arms crossed over his chest. Even he looked ready for action. Beneath the shelter of the front overhang stood a very angry Allen Belmonde. It seemed someone had stolen Sweet Susie from the paddock while James had been at the Poppleton party. Allen was here because he had ridden directly to Marathon when one of James’s stable lads had come to the party to fetch James and found only Allen.
This, James thought, as he was surrounded by shouting stable lads and a furiously cursing Allen Belmonde, was going to be a fine end to his evening.
5
JESSIE’S HAT, A long-ago gift from her father, kept most of the rain off her face, but the rest of her quickly became wetter than the moss beneath Ezekiel’s Waterfall.
She rode with her head down, feeling two parts miserable and one part angry. Damn James anyway.
But damn him for what? What had he done? Nothing, and that’s why she was damning him.
When she heard the neighs and hoofbeats of several horses coming toward her, she pulled up Benjie. “It’s nearly midnight. Who the devil is out in this wretched rain besides me?”
Then she heard men’s voices. They were arguing, cursing the rain, cursing the foul-up with their partners, cursing the mare who was teasing the horse Billy was riding.
Billy was yelling, “The damn bloody mare’s still in heat. Damn ye, stay away from me poor old boy! He’s too old fer the likes o’ ye and yer blood is blue besides, not all mottled and common like my ole boy here.”
What damned mare?
“Shut yer trap, Billy,” the other man yelled back. “Move yer horse, or we’ll be in for it. Jest look, both of them want to mate here, in the road, in all this rain. Damned buggers.”
Jessie heard a horse scream, then the man, Billy, scream even louder. She heard a wet thud. His horse must have thrown him to get to the mare.
She clicked Benjie forward, tugging him to the grass-edge of the road. She came around a bend, pulling him quickly to a halt.
There was Sweet Susie, butting against a horse whose rider was sitting in the middle of the road, wet and muddy and cursing. The horse—the common one that was Billy’s—was obligingly trying to mount her.
If Jessie hadn’t realized that these men had stolen Sweet Susie from James’s farm, that they were probably very dangerous, she would have laughed at the sight of Sweet Susie and Billy’s horse nipping at each other, their eyes rolling, their manes flying as they reared at each other as the torrential rain poured down.
The other man was trying to pull the horse away from Sweet Susie, trying to keep his balance at the same time, and screaming at Billy to get off his ass and help him. He wasn’t having much luck. Billy’s horse wanted to mount Sweet Susie, and he looked set upon his course. Sweet Susie looked set upon the same course.
> This was her chance, Jessie realized. She wouldn’t get another opportunity like this. She shrieked at the top of her lungs, sending Benjie into a furious gallop, steering him right between the two horses, nearly hitting Billy, who was trying desperately to scramble on his hands and knees through the mud out of the way. She saw Billy’s horse break away from the other man, jump a ditch, and gallop into the field next to the road. She grabbed Sweet Susie’s lead and slammed her heels into Benjie’s sides.
He snorted and leaped forward. Sweet Susie, liking Benjie’s snort, snorted herself, kicked up her back legs, and ran as fast as she could to catch up to Benjie.
Jessie heard the men shouting behind her to bring back their horse, that she was a thief, and she laughed aloud.
Now all she had to do was make James’s farm, Marathon, before they caught up with her. She didn’t want to think about what would happen to her if they did catch her. She prayed the man wouldn’t leave his partner, Billy. It would take them a while to catch Billy’s horse, a good ole boy.
She was only about three miles from Marathon. If she stayed on the road, they’d probably catch her. She waited until Benjie rounded a bend. She guided him off the road into a copse of elm trees, forcing Sweet Susie behind him since it was a very narrow path until they reached Gympsom’s Pond, now overflowing its banks from the heavy rainfall. It was tricky, but they made it through. Beyond the pond was a field of hay surrounded by oak trees. Sweet Susie was hungry as well as in heat. Jessie kept telling the mare that Benjie would do whatever she wanted if only she’d keep running with him and not stop to eat. Sweet Susie twitched her tail and ran.
The gunshot startled Jessie so, she nearly fell off Benjie’s back. She twisted around and saw just the one man about fifty yards behind her. No Billy.
Before she could flatten herself, there was another shot and this one, to her utter astonishment, hit her. She felt a cold shiver along the side of her head, nothing more, just that blast of cold. If she didn’t feel anything, then it couldn’t be bad. At least the idiot had shot her and not Sweet Susie. She shouted, “Benjie—run, you devil! Run!” She couldn’t fall off. She couldn’t pass out, or everything would be lost.
The Valentine Legacy Page 4