Morning Song

by Karen Robards

  "I didn't bring you in here to discuss Celia." Jessie laughed. The glint in his eyes flared.

  "You take entirely too much upon yourself, Stuart. I neither want nor need you to tell me how to behave!"

  "Really? From the way you were making eyes at that Todd boy, I half expected to find the two of you sneaking off into the dark together. Just like your stepmother would do."

  "You're vile."

  He smiled then, unpleasantly, and stood up. He looked very large suddenly in the small room. "Not nearly as vile as I can be, 172

  I assure you. Nor as vile as I will be if I find you in a situation remotely like the one in which we discovered Celia—or if I hear of you drinking spirits again."

  "Don't you dare threaten me!"

  "You're trying my patience, Jessie." "Good!" His lips tightened. Crossing his arms over his chest, he cocked his head to one side and surveyed her narrowly. Jessie could see that he had got control of his temper again and was trying very hard to retain it.

  "This little tantrum of yours is all because I kissed you, isn't it?"

  "Certainly not! And I am not having a tantrum!"

  "Aren't you? You've been having one all night. The flirting, the spirits—it was all to get back at me, wasn't it?" Jessie felt her face grow red, but whether it was from rage or embarrassment or some combination of the two, she was too upset to guess. He stood there, leaning back against the desk, looking oh-so-superior, while she gibbered like an idiot and he probed unfeelingly at the darkest secrets of her heart. Her teeth clenched, and in that moment she came close to hating him.

  "You flatter yourself!"

  "Do I?"

  Then he smiled, kindly, and that pitying smile was his undoing. With an inarticulate cry of rage she rushed toward him, meaning to claw the smile from his face.

  "Hey!"

  He caught her flailing wrists, holding her off from him while she squirmed and kicked and called him every bad name she had ever heard. But her kicks did no more than scuff his boots, and 173

  her insults made him laugh. His laughter maddened her, and finally he had to pin her back against his body to subdue her.

  "Let me go!"

  "Behave yourself and I will." He was grinning still.

  "I hate you!" "Temper, temper."

  "Maw-worm! Clod!"

  "My mother always told me to beware of redheaded women. Hotheaded, she said." "I am not redheaded!"

  "Yes, you are. And you've got the temper to prove it. Calm down, Jessie, and I'll let you go."

  Jessie took a deep breath and stood very still. She stood with her back to him, her posterior pressed against his thighs, her arms crisscrossed over her bosom while he held fast to her wrists. From the corner of her eye she could see his wide grin.

  "I don't think one tiny little kiss is worth all this, do you?" His tone was almost teasing. Mentally Jessie called him a word so bad that ordinarily she would blush to hear it. But aloud she said, sweetly, "Will you please let go of my wrists? You're hurting me."

  "Behave yourself, now."

  He gave her wrists a warning squeeze, then slowly released his hold on them. Jessie was no sooner free than she whirled on her heel and slapped him hard across his smirking face.

  "That's what I think your kiss is worth!"

  "Ow!"

  He stepped back a pace, clapping a hand to his cheek. His eyes widened with astonishment. For a moment he merely looked at her, his expression so comical that she forgot to be afraid. She smiled at him in malicious triumph. And in so doing made her own grievous mistake.

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  "You—little—brat!" he said through clenched teeth, and reached for her.

  "Oh!" His hands clamped over her upper arms, dragged her close. For a frozen moment Jessie glared up into eyes that blazed as cold and bright as diamonds. Then with a sound that might have been a growl or a curse Stuart bent his head.

  This time when he kissed her, it bore no resemblance at all to the soft sweetness of his previous effort. This kiss was fierce, and rough, designed both to vent his anger and teach her a lesson. Eyes wide, Jessie tried to jerk her head free, but he thwarted her movement by twisting her in his arms so that her head was imprisoned against the unyielding hardness of his shoulder. His mouth clamped down on hers, crushing her lips against her teeth until her mouth was forced open. Then, incredibly, his tongue thrust its way inside. It staked bold possession, stroking the roof of her mouth, the insides of her cheeks, her tongue.

  The hot, wet invasion frightened her, made her whimper and squirm in protest. To her unutterable relief, Stuart stiffened suddenly and lifted his head. For a moment they stared at each other, Jessie's eyes wide and fearful, Stuart's clouded with emotions she couldn't name.

  Then, all at once, he released her and stepped back.

  "Now you slap my face," he said quietly. Acting blindly, more out of instinct than because he told her to, Jessie drew back her hand and dealt him a blow that resounded through the small room and rocked his head. Then she stepped quickly out of reach.

  He stood looking at her, just looking at her, for countless seconds as long fingers rose to probe experimentally at his face. 175

  Dark blood rushed to fill in the mark she had left; the imprint of her hand was clearly visible on his cheek. Jessie's fingers rose to her mouth. Lips trembling, she watched him without speaking. Finally he broke the silence. "Go to bed, Jessie." His voice was devoid of emotion. His face looked empty, too, as he met her eyes. His fingers still rested against the reddened cheek. Jessie guessed that it had begun to throb and sting. Every instinct she possessed urged her to go to him, to apologize, to find some way to make up for the blow she had dealt him.

  Then she remembered that hateful kiss.

  Without a word Jessie turned on her heel and fled.

  XXIV

  Over the next ten days the domestic situation at Mimosa deteriorated badly. Jessie spent most of her time avoiding Stuart, whom she suspected of also doing his utmost to avoid her. Celia alternated between bouts of bitter sarcasm and sullen silence, lines of discontent springing up almost overnight to age her once youthful face. Though Jessie's bedroom was in the original structure at the front of the house, and Celia and Stuart had separate but adjoining rooms in the newer rear wing, they quarreled so violently late at night that Jessie could not help but hear them. Or at least, she heard Celia, screeching furiously at her husband. Stuart's replies she usually didn't hear, although once he shouted, "I said get the hell out of here, you bitch!" loudly enough to startle Jessie out of a near sleep. On another occasion she heard a resounding thud as though something heavy had fallen or been thrown, followed by Celia's scream.

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  The sounds both upset and frightened Jessie, so she buried her head beneath her pillow and pretended not to hear them. Because the slaves all slept with their families in the quarters, Jessie was the only witness to this almost nightly violence. With the coming of the sun, and the servants, things went on pretty much as they always had, except for the tension that lay over the house. It was so thick that Jessie could feel its weight like a blanket whenever she was indoors. The servants felt it, too. Tudi, Rosa, Sissie, and the rest went about their duties in unaccustomed silence. All of them, Jessie included, had a tendency to start when Celia appeared.

  On the brighter side, Jessie now had a positive surfeit of beaux. In the days following the Chandlers' party Oscar Kastel, Billy Cummings, Mac Wilder, Evan Williams, and Mitch Todd all came to call more than once. Jessie sat with them on the veranda, or walked with them along the drive, or went riding in their buggies, with Tudi or Sissie along for propriety's sake. There was a time when Jessie would have been deliriously happy to have Mitch, in particular, paying court to her. But she was so distracted over the general unhappiness at Mimosa, and the state of her relationship with Stuart in particular, that the realization of a dream she'd held close for years—having Mitch Todd as her beau—did not give her the pleasure she'd always thought it would. To her
dismay, Jessie found herself smiling at his quips and lowering her eyes at his compliments, while all the while she had to make a conscious effort to keep her thoughts from wandering.

  And that, she knew, could be laid squarely at Stuart's door. If Stuart was aware of her newfound popularity, Jessie couldn't say. He spent each day in the cotton fields as the hands labored 177

  to get the rest of the crop picked before the first of the autumn frosts. The cotton flowers had long since turned from pink to purple. When the blooms withered, signaling that the plants were mature, every available man, woman, child, and mule at Mimosa took to the fields, where they swarmed over the acres of whitespeckled plants like an army of ants. The distant hum of rich spirituals floating in from the fields joined with the rush of the nearby river to form a background sound so familiar that Jessie scarcely heard it anymore.

  Only she, Celia, and the house servants were exempt from laboring in the fields.

  When not occupied with her callers (who soon grew to be as much nuisance as pleasure, since their arrival meant that Jessie had to entertain them), she spent most of her time in the saddle. Twice she rode to Tulip Hill to spend the afternoon with Miss Flora and Miss Laurel, to whom she was growing steadily more attached. Almost always, she took care to return long after supper, which Celia and Stuart still ate together in grim silence. One place she no longer rode to was the fields to join Stuart. Chaney Dart finally asked Nell Bidswell to marry him, and the Bidswells hosted a dinner party to make the gala announcement. To Jessie's surprise, Celia turned down the invitation. Stuart also declined to attend on the grounds that he had too much work to do getting in the cotton. On her own initiative, sparked by a desire to show him that she was not as backward socially as he thought, Jessie went alone, attended by Tudi and Progress, and to her surprise she had a good time. She suspected that Celia's unaccustomed refusal to take part in a neighborhood gathering had been engineered by Stuart, who she guessed was bent on avoiding a repetition of Celia's indiscretion with Seth Chandler. 178

  Though, to Jessie's thinking, such precautions on Stuart's part were a waste of time. Celia had men in her blood, and if she didn't find a willing partner in one place, she would in another. Like on her own property during the long, hot afternoons. October came. The weather cooled. Mitch Todd rode over with Billy Cummings late one day, surprising Jessie just as she was getting ready to slip away from the house. Celia had vanished as she usually did after luncheon, not to return until it was time to dress for dinner. Jessie wanted to make sure that she was out of range of Celia's verbal arrows before her stepmother got back to the house. Lately Celia was lashing out at everything and everyone with increasing viciousness. Besides Stuart, Jessie was her favorite target.

  "Will you be going to the Culpeppers' next week, Miss Jessie?" Jessie was seated on the topmost of the steps leading to the upper veranda. Billy Cummings, a lanky blond twenty-year-old, sat some two steps below her. He was looking up at her eagerly as he spoke.

  "Well, I . . ."

  "You have to come. The dance won't be any fun if you don't." Mitch flashed his lopsided grin, and Jessie wondered why it no longer made her heart go pitty-pat. He sat on the same step as Billy Cummings, on the extreme left of the stairway instead of the extreme right. With Jessie positioned above and between them, she could converse with both equally well. Looking down at them, she wondered that she had ever been in awe of these two. Both were handsome, tall, upright young men, and both were older than she by a year or two, but still, they were no more than boys. She felt older than they by far.

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  "You know as well as I do that I'm no great shakes on the dance floor, Mitchell Todd." Jessie spoke pertly, with a glimmering smile for the boy who had once owned her heart. His grin broadened.

  "Who cares how well you dance?" he answered. "What matters is how pretty you look doing it."

  "And you sure do look pretty," Billy chimed in, anxious not to be outdone by his rival. Jessie smiled at both of them. She was wearing a short-sleeved, tight-to-the-waist afternoon dress of white muslin trimmed in emerald green. The neckline was edged with a cunning stand-up frill of white lace, and more white lace trimmed the sleeves and hem. Her hair curled down her back to her hips, and was caught away from her face with an emeraldgreen satin bow at the crown. The dress was lovely, the color flattering, and she did look pretty, she knew. That knowledge enabled her to reply to the compliment with a laugh instead of a blush.

  "You tell the biggest fibs, Billy Cummings," she said in the same teasing voice she'd heard the other girls use. Billy protested, a hand pressed to his heart to underline his sincerity. Jessie laughed at him.

  "Entertaining, Jessie?" Celia stepped out onto the veranda from inside the house, which she must have entered from the rear. Jessie looked around at her stepmother, her gay smile faltering. Celia's behavior of late had been unpredictable, but surely she wouldn't embarrass Jessie in front of the sons of her neighbors.

  "Afternoon, Mrs. Edwards." Mitch spoke up, saving Jessie from answering. Billy echoed the greeting as both boys rose politely to their feet.

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  "Hello, gentlemen." Celia was already dressed for supper in a lavender-blue gown whose flattering hue eased some of the new hardness from her face. She smiled at the visitors, waved them down again, then turned to Jessie. As she looked her stepdaughter over, Celia's smile stayed in place, but her eyes chilled.

  "Where's Tudi? Or Sissie?"

  "Inside, I would imagine." Jessie's tone was guarded. She'd heard that brittle note in Celia's voice before, and it usually presaged trouble.

  "You should not be receiving guests on your own, you know, dear. These gentlemen will think you have the manners of a ragamuffin." Celia smiled her crocodile smile at the young men, who were beginning to appear uncomfortable. Inwardly Jessie cringed. Celia was not going to be deterred by the presence of guests after all.

  The big bell on the plantation began to ring, signaling the end of the workday and saving the situation at the same time. No sooner had the first peal reverberated over the landscape than Stuart rode up with Gray don Bradshaw. At the sound of the horses, Jessie looked around. In the distance she could see the fields emptying, and the long column of the slaves as they walked and rode muleback down the road toward home. The volume of the spirituals swelled as the weary singers drew closer, then turned off on the other side of the orchard to head for the quarters and their evening meal.

  Stuart and Graydon Bradshaw dismounted. Thomas ran up to take the horses. The two men started up the steps as Thomas led Saber and Bradshaw's mount away. This time Jessie stood up along with Mitch and Billy to get out of Stuart's way as he 181

  climbed. Though she despised herself for it, her eyes greedily drank in the first sight of him she'd had in days. He was sweaty, his black hair curling damply around his head where he'd taken off his hat, his stubble darkening cheeks that had been tinted the color of teak by the sun, his white shirt sporting a long smear of dirt, his black breeches and usually immaculate boots dusty. It was one of the few times she had ever seen him disheveled. Curiously, it didn't detract from his dazzling attraction one whit. Behind him, Graydon Bradshaw was in a like state, but Jessie had eyes for no one but Stuart. For her, Bradshaw might not even have existed.

  In the distance the bell pealed one last time and stopped. The spirituals faltered as one after the other of the singers dropped out, then finally died away altogether.

  "You're going to be late for supper, as usual." Celia was looking at Stuart, who had just stepped onto the veranda. Her voice had an edge to it that Jessie hoped only those who knew her well would catch.

  "I'll be changed in a minute. Gray, you're welcome to join us if you'd like. Jessie, did you invite your friends to eat?" The very idea of sitting in the dining room with Stuart and Celia taking potshots at each other while she strove to distract Mitch and Billy made Jessie squirm, but there was no help for it now. So she forced a smile at Stuart, then turned to the young men, wh
o stood behind her.

  "We'd be glad to have you to supper, if you'd care to stay." Both Mitch and Billy assented eagerly. After exchanging pleasantries with them and waving Bradshaw off to change, Stuart turned to say something quietly to his wife. Celia had been conversing with Jessie's guests for some few minutes, her 182

  manner one of brittle flirtatiousness that was designed, Jessie had no doubt, to infuriate Stuart. That he noticed and was annoyed Jessie could tell by the tightening of his face. The stage was clearly set for a terrible quarrel, and the knowledge made her dread the coming meal more with every moment that passed. Whatever Stuart said to Celia was inaudible to everyone else, but it made her face redden furiously. Jessie held her breath; the explosion she had feared was clearly at hand. But Stuart headed off the threatened scene with a single warning look at his wife. Moving quickly, though without giving the least impression of speed, he then caught Celia by the arm in a hold that Jessie supposed might look loving to an observer who had no idea how things stood between them, and drew her with him toward the door.

  "Jessie, you can tell Rosa we'll be ready to eat in twenty minutes," he said over his shoulder, his manner still perfectly pleasant. Jessie thought that only someone who knew him as well as she did would be able to detect the anger that simmered beneath the untroubled front he presented to their guests. She supposed that to a casual acquaintance his hand on Celia's arm would look possessive rather than confining, and despite their differences he and Celia still made an attractive couple, her petite blondness the perfect foil for his dark good looks. But Jessie had no doubt that a fierce marital quarrel would ensue in the next few minutes, and she only hoped it would be one of their quieter ones. She had no wish to be embarrassed before their guests. A marital quarrel. Even such unpleasantness as that had an intimacy about it that bothered Jessie. It brought home to her the fact that, however much Stuart might despise Celia, and vice versa, they were married. Joined until death parted them. Stuart 183