Her face was pale as she stared silently at him.
"I'm really not the type of man you'd want for a husband. You'd really require someone more—more like yourself.
I'm from a completely different world, a world of civilization and scholarship. Where I intend to return at the earliest opportunity."
She stared at him in apparent disbelief for a long moment, then fury took over. "Why you—"
"Believe me. Miss Meggie, I never intended any disrespect or—"
"You lowlife, lowland, city-rounder." She came to her knees, her voice getting higher and shrill. "You worthless excuse for a two-toed varmint."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You sweet-talked me into a kiss and now you're thinking to throw me out like I was a churn of oversoured skimmings."
Roe glanced toward the doorway. Her voice had grown louder and angrier with every word. He was more than anxious to take his leave. He began inching toward the exit.
"Do you think you can come in here in my own house on my own mountain and sweet-talk me out of my virtue over a jar of piccalilli?"
"Miss Best, please, I wouldn't—"
"You wouldn't, would you? Jesse!" Her voice was as loud as hog calling in a thunderstorm and wild with fury. "Jesse Best, get in here this minute."
Farley was still easing toward the door. What if her simple brother were to misconstrue his actions? Despite his later protestations he had kissed the young woman quite of his own free will. And he had touched her in a manner not consistent with polite conversation. He had no idea what the customs of these mountain people might be. But he was fairly certain that he had overstepped the bounds of propriety.
"Miss Best, Meggie, please."
"What's it, Meggie?" Simple Jess, huge and blank-faced, asked curiously as he stood blocking the doorway. When he saw Roe he grinned amiably. "You having a set-to with my new frien'?"
Her eyes were wild with anger as she hurried to her feet. She was clearly outraged. "Your new friend is making unwanted advances to me."
Simple Jess, three inches taller and twice as muscled as Roe, looked at him with surprise.
Roe swallowed nervously. After spending an hour watching the youth split wood, Roe was sure the big mountain man could easily break every bone in his body without even working up a sweat.
"Jesse, I can explain," he began. His voice was calm and rational. "Your sister has misconstrued . . . well perhaps not misconstrued, but . . ."
"He tried to take advantage of me, Jesse!" she snapped. "You're my brother. Beat the tar out of him."
"Miss Best, really. It was only a kiss."
"It was a kiss all right," she snarled angrily as she hurried to her feet. "And it turned you right into a frog! Beat him up, Jesse."
Shaking his head, her brother clearly didn't like the prospect. "He's my frien', Meggie," Jesse protested. "I don't want to fight him."
"There is no need to fight," Roe assured him quickly. "I merely wish to make a humble apology and express to you. Miss Best, my deepest remorse over any distress my presence here might have caused you."
"The only apology that you can make to me, Mister J. Monroe Farley, is to get your worthless hide out of my sight and never venture in these woods again," Meggie stated adamantly.
"I deeply regret any . . . any—"
Roe stopped speaking and brought a hand to his stomach. A strange pained sound emerged from his lips and he bent over as if stricken with a cramp.
Jesse eyed him curiously. "You know yer face is lookin' kind of downright green," he said.
Roe didn't wait to try to make his explanations. In a rush of panic, J. Monroe Farley put his hand over his mouth and raced past Jesse out the door.
A sharp, stabbing pain seemed to rip through Roe's gut as sweat broke across his brow. He ran away from the smoky-smelling cabin, away from the taste of green tomato relish that now burned in his throat. He ran to the cool shade of the Ozarks woods, his head spinning and his stomach in cramps.
Weakly he staggered and dropped to his knees next to the shallow stream that skittered along shiny, slick rocks. He labored to catch his breath. A swirl of green flies buzzed around his head. Ripping open the tight, starched collar, he fought the dark weakness that crept up on him. He cupped a handful of the icy, Itchy Creek water and splashed it liberally upon his face. He trembled from the combination of freezing water and nausea.
"Roe! Roe!" He heard Jesse calling but couldn't waste his strength to answer. He felt faint and the reality of that weakness embarrassed him. He lay down against the cool spring grass hoping to garner strength, but slumped to the ground and blackness swirled around him.
"He's here, Pa!"
Vaguely, he heard a voice calling out behind him. It seemed unearthly and far away but it revived him nonetheless.
"He's here by the crick."
Help was on the way. Help was almost here. The thought bolstered him somewhat. He rolled to his back and felt the warm spring breeze upon his sweat-drenched skin as he gazed at the slate-blue sky overhead. Thickly leafed branches of sassafras trees stretched out into the cloudless sky, but still a gray darkness cast shadows before him. He was sick, green sick, as Jesse had said, and miserable.
He moaned loudly.
The two men rushed up beside him. The one whose face he did not know was gray-bearded and held a hand-whittled hickory staff to aid his unsteady gait. The older man awkwardly knelt down in the grass beside Roe, his pale green eyes concerned.
"Mr. Farley?" he asked. "Mr. Farley, are you all right?"
Jesse stood back, nervously fidgeting. His blank look of bewilderment and guilt was heart-wrenching.
"Are ye sick, Mr. Farley? Mr. Farley, can ye hear me?" The gray-beard spoke louder than was necessary.
"Poison." The word came out a stiff and croaky sound.
"What?"
"Poison," he said again. "She poisoned me."
"Who?"
"Your daughter."
"Meggie?"
"I don't know why, but—" His voice faded as his eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted dead away.
Shocked, the older man turned to the younger standing close by. "What the devil is going on here, Jesse?"
The boy shrugged. "I tole him not to eat none of Meggie's piccalilli."
Chapter Five
"I just don’t understand why we had to bring him here!" Meggie Best complained as her father and brother laid the sick, moaning man in the small rope-sprung one-poster bed built into the far comer of the little mountain cabin.
"It's the least we can offer a sick stranger," her father said. "Good God, Meggie, you nearly killed the man!"
"Maybe he deserved to die!" she exclaimed, before her father silenced her with a look.
"I don't know what happened between you two, but we'd sure to heaven better keep him alive if they's need of him declaring for you."
"Declaring for me! I wouldn't have that no-account if he come with a pink ribbon around his throat."
Her father gave her a long look. Meggie's harsh words shamed her. She was humiliated.
"Nothing happened between us. And besides, he's nowhere near dead. A little touch of bad food isn't likely to kill a sharp-talking wily fellow like Mr. J. Monroe Farley."
She spoke the name in such a disparaging way, her father could only shake his head.
"For that we can be grateful," Best replied. "It's a good thing you didn't know that before you fed him the piccalilli."
"Pa!" Meggie gave a little cry of indignation. "You talk like I did it on purpose."
"We know you didn't mean it," her brother Jesse said quietly. His handsome young face was innocent and without guile. "It ain't your fault, Meggie. Your cooking just makes folks sick. It happens every picnic."
"Not every picnic!" Her expression was stricken.
"Often enough that you ought to give up trying to feed the unwary," her father said.
Meggie raised her chin bravely, made a dramatic huff, and turned to leave the
cabin.
"Where are you going?" her father called out.
"You don't expect me to actually stay in here with a man who tried to sweet-talk me."
Her father shrugged. "No, I suspect not. Tho' why in heaven would this city fellow take a notion toward you is a mystery."
"Pa!"
"I'd not meant it that way, Meggie," he said. "It's just that you've always been so standoffish when it comes to wife-lookers."
"And she cain't cook neither," Jesse added.
"I'm going to the cellar," she snapped.
"What for?"
"I might as well throw out the rest of that batch of piccalilli."
Meggie couldn't quite hear her father's chuckle behind her, but she knew it was there. She had never been so humiliated in her life. She'd been so overwhelmed by the stranger she'd lost her good sense. To think she'd allowed that fast-talking city man to kiss her and hug her and all that cooing and spooning, and he'd not been thinking about marrying her at all.
There was a loud choking sound from the bed and Meggie heard her father call out, "Hand me the basin, Jesse." She hurried out the back door, unwilling to listen to any more. Maybe he wouldn't survive. At least then she wouldn't have to see his face again. What had she been thinking?
On the far side of the porch, she opened the trapdoor to the root cellar. The ladder was narrow and steep but Meggie negotiated it easily. She lit the small tallow candle in the lantern that hung from the ceiling. In its yellow glow, the brightness of unshed tears shone in her blue eyes.
"Dad-burn and blast!" she exclaimed quietly to herself. She knew exactly what she'd been thinking. She'd been thinking the same silly, foolish thoughts that had been flitting in and out of her mind since she was old enough to know the difference between little boys and little girls.
It was that reader that she'd found in Mama's trunk. At the schoolhouse they had McGuffey, good lessons about good boys and girls. But Meggie had found the worn, faded book of fairy tales. They had been much more interesting than the stern admonitions of McGuffey. And her imagination had taken flight. Fanciful, that's what her father had called it. And when she'd read about Rapunzel, she'd decided that none of the local boys would ever do. A real prince was coming up the mountain for Meggie Best someday. She was sure of it. Unfortunately, this morning she'd thought that he'd arrived.
Meggie shook her head and gritted her teeth against the pain of embarrassment that welled up inside her. It wasn't bad enough that she had blurted out her secret thoughts and thrown herself at the fellow. She had been rather rudely thrown back, and now she'd gone and made him gut-sick. Pa would see that he stayed 'til he was on his feet.
How would she stand it? To look into those dark, handsome eyes and remember that she'd gone after him like a bear to a honey pot. What a fool she had made of herself. Meggie moaned aloud and covered her face with her hands.
Making her way to the back shelf, she found her piccalilli on the top right side. Lined up in perfect order and looking downright beautiful were sixteen quarts of the relish. Shaking her head, she sighed. She couldn't figure it out. She was twice as smart as most of the women that she knew. And yet even the silliest women on the mountain could stir up a light, airy batch of biscuits or a mess of cooked greens with both eyes closed. Meggie did everything that they did. But somehow, in Meggie's kitchen, the results could never be guaranteed. Cooking was definitely one of her failings. A fanciful nature was the other. And, dad-burn and blast, the city stranger had discovered both of them in one day.
With a sigh of disappointment she began loading the piccalilli jars into an empty bushel basket.
"With my luck, it'll make the hogs sick, too," she said.
Her thoughts drifted back once more to the handsome young man now lying ill in her brother's bed: J. Monroe Farley.
"Who ever heard of such a name," she whispered indignantly.
She certainly hadn't heard anything like it, not before that very morning.
Roe Farley's eyes fluttered open. It was late, the last light of evening pierced through the window at a sharp angle. The room had stopped spinning, but the memory of his sickness lingered. For a long moment he didn't remember where he was. His mouth tasted bitterly sour and his stomach felt empty and hollow from his breastbone to his spine. Then the memory came. A gleaming blue quart jar of piccalilli and Meggie Best.
He glanced over toward the fireplace that glowed brightly orange in the dim light of the cabin. She favored her brother some, he thought. But her hair was a darker blond and her eyes were not as blue. And of course, he was simple. And she was deranged.
He heard the soft sounds of her bare feet padding across the floor. He remembered those feet. He'd heard jokes about barefooted Ozark women, but somehow he hadn't expected to encounter it in one so young. The feet that had captured his attention were neither dainty nor prettily pink. They were long, narrow feet with high arches and skinny little toes. Those very sturdy, very ordinary, very feminine feet had captured his imagination. In all his years of being enticed and attracted by the opposite sex, never before had the woman's feet ever played a part.
Enticed and attracted! He quickly pushed the thought away. Even now with his stomach still quaking and his head still spinning a bit, he swore to himself that he was not in any way attracted to Meggie Best. Still, the thought of those bare female feet brought a smile to his face even through his sickness.
He was alone in the cabin, except for her. Deliberately he remained quiet so that she wouldn't know he was awake. If she threw herself upon him when he sat in a chair, there was no telling what she might do to a man in bed. And he was too sick and weak to even attempt to fight her off. Fight her off? Mentally he reprimanded himself. He had been as much to blame for their moment of indiscretion as she. More so, since he was a learned gentleman with some experience and she was . . . she was . . . well, he wasn't sure quite what she was.
He settled more snugly into the soft clover ticking that covered the rope-sprung bed. The cabin was one big room of hand-hewn logs with a big river rock fireplace on the south wall. It was a primitive cabin, but there was a softness to it, too. The softness no doubt stemmed, at least in part, from the multitude of homespun throws, covers, and curtains that appeared to be draped and tucked into every conceivable location.
The upper loft made the ceiling low in the half of the room where the bed was built into the corner. The half near the fireplace was open to the rafters, from which hung skeins of onions and peppers, bunches of drying herbs and long strips of jerked venison. Near the fireplace an old dried sycamore trunk was set up on legs as a meat block. In the center, near the hearth, was the small square table covered with a carefully pressed homespun tablecloth. It was the place where he'd sampled Miss Meggie's special near-deadly piccalilli.
Just the thought made Roe groan. It must have been audible because the young woman glanced in his direction. He tensed.
"Jesse," she called out through the door. "He's waking up." Without another glance in his direction, she untied her faded apron, hung it on a nail by the doorway, and hurried outside.
A moment later a familiar blond head peeped into the open door. With concern in his bright blue eyes the simple young man made his way to Roe's bedside. "You better, frien'?"
Roe smiled bravely. "Hello, Jesse," he said. "Yes, I believe I'm much improved over earlier in the afternoon."
Jesse nodded solemnly. "Pa said you'd probably wake up hungry." He gestured to a pot left warming over the fire. "Got some bear broth to make you strong again. It should gentle your belly some."
Roe looked toward the kettle warily.
"Don't worry," Jesse assured him. "Meggie ain't laid a hand on this soup. Pa and I put this up ourselves last winter. I shot the bear myself."
Roe swung his feet to the side of the bed and waited for the room to stop spinning. He was famished, he couldn't deny that, but he wasn't very interested in trying any more unusual Ozark food. Still, he supposed if the two big, brawny Best
men could tolerate the stuff, he'd probably live to tell about this meal.
"If you'll hand me my shirt," he said to the anxious young man at his bedside, "I'd be pleased to take some soup at your table."
A few minutes later, and still somewhat weak, Roe was assisted into the cane-bottom chair.
Meggie and her father came inside and she immediately began stoking up the fire in the grate. Pinching biscuits into the bake oven that she set in the hot ashes at the edge of the fire, she did not even glance at him.
"Good to see you up and around," Best told him, slapping Roe smartly on the shoulder. "You eat up good, that bear broth is better than mustard plaster for what's ailing you, boy."
Roe smiled amiably. The carved wood spoon, her spoon, lay beside Roe's plate. He hesitated momentarily before touching it and then mentally scoffed at his own foolishness. It was simply a spoon and would work as well as any other. He dipped out a bit of food and tasted it. The strongly flavored broth almost burned his tongue.
Roe's glance settled on the young woman who had fed him the nauseating piccalilli. Though her form partially obscured the hearth, he could see the fire which seemed stoked a bit hotter than necessary. One of the pans hanging on the crane was smoking ominously. The young lady, herself, was cleaned up and better dressed than earlier in the day. Her dove gray dress was neat, and she held herself with the prideful carriage of a society belle. But her long, brown feet were just as bare as they had been that morning.
"You'll be back to your old self in no time a'tal." Jesse's father remarked, taking the empty chair at the head of the table. "Meggie, your brother and I are ready to give your cooking another chance. We cain't live forever on bear broth."
Roe smiled at his host. He remembered that nigged face leaning over him, the long gray beard untrimmed, cooling his brow with a damp rag, and holding his head over a chipped metal basin. He was not used to people taking care of him. It had always been necessary for him to take care of himself.
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