Morning Song

by Karen Robards

  "Lamb, why don't you go upstairs now? You've done what was needful, and won't no one say a word against you if you go to lie down."

  "Oh, Tudi." Jessie put the untouched cup of coffee she was clutching on a table at her elbow and turned to lay her head on Tudi's comfortable shoulder. She was tired, bone tired, not only in body but also in spirit. At the moment all she wanted in the world was to be a small child again and let Tudi chase the bad things away.

  "There, child, there." Tudi patted her back, and for just a second Jessie was comforted. Then Miss Flora came up behind her.

  "Jessie, Stuart asked me to ask you to please join him and Mr. Samuels in the library."

  Jessie straightened and turned to look at Miss Flora. Tudi bowed her head and faded away. "Did he?" She was sorely tempted not to go. Clive McClintock might be master of Mimosa now, but he didn't give her orders, and never would. But in the end she went. Miss Flora ushered her there so kindly that Jessie had not the heart to demur. Besides, what difference 344

  could it make? She would go, and play her part a little longer. Then the next day, or even the next, this stunned feeling might leave her and she would be able to decide what she should do. Miss Flora knocked, then opened the door. "Here's Jessie," she said, and gave Jessie an encouraging little nudge when she was slow to go inside.

  So Jessie found herself in the library again, with Clive seated behind his big desk for once and Mr. Samuels ensconced in a chair he'd pulled up to its other side. Miss Flora gently closed the door behind Jessie, leaving her alone with the two men, who rose politely to their feet as she entered.

  "Pray accept my condolences on the death of Mrs. Edwards, Miss Lindsay," said Mr. Samuels. Jessie had heard the same sentiments so many times since yesterday that they scarcely registered, but still she manage a a polite "Thank you."

  "Did you want me?" she asked then, looking at Clive. His expression was still suitably grave, but there was a glint in his eyes that told Jessie he would recover from his wife's death with indecent speed. In fact, though no one who didn't know him as well as she did would ever detect it, Jessie thought he looked almost relieved.

  "Sit down, Jessie."

  The gentlemen could not sit until she did. Although that wouldn't stop Clive, no gentleman he, if they were alone. Jessie took the same chair as before, when she lied to Judge Thompson. Clive frowned a little as she sat so far away, but said nothing as he and Mr. Samuels settled into their seats.

  "Of course, you know that I am—was—Mrs. Edwards' lawyer." Mr. Samuels turned slightly in his chair to address Jessie. She inclined her head. "At his request, I've been going over her will 345

  with Mr. Edwards. It contains no surprises. Upon Mrs. Edwards'

  remarriage, of course, ownership of Mimosa and all its chattels passed to Mr. Edwards, and her death doesn't change that. Nor does it change the provision in your father's will that left you with the right to live at Mimosa for the rest of your life. Since that might be problematical now that Mr. Edwards, who is no real kin of yours, will be living in the same house without a wife, I've suggested to him that he buy out your interest. Did he follow that suggestion, you would be able to live anywhere you liked, in comfort, for the rest of your life."

  "Buy—me—out!" Jessie was almost speechless. Was she to lose Mimosa on top of everything else? She turned huge, shadowy eyes on Clive. Surely he wouldn't do that to her.

  "Hear him out, Jess," Clive advised quietly. With a quick look at him, Mr. Samuels continued.

  "But Mr. Edwards, for reasons of his own—which I am sure are sound ones, although they are strictly contrary to his own interests and, in fact, my advice—has refused to follow that course. The course he has chosen instead is not, in my opinion, in his best interests—but, of course, I am here only to give advice."

  Mr. Samuels and his flowing sentences were losing her. Jessie grasped that Clive had declined to buy her out, and thought that was good. Or did he mean to kick her out without any compensation at all? Surely he wouldn't do that! But this was not the man she had thought she knew. This man was a stranger, and might be capable of anything at all.

  "What Mr. Samuels is trying so nobly to say is that I've signed it all over to you, Jessie. Lock, stock, and barrel, no strings attached." Clive watched her with the air of a cat at a mouse 346

  hole. Jessie frowned. She heard the words, but they made no sense. When she said nothing, he went on with a slight touch of impatience. "Mimosa's yours, as it should have been in the first place."

  Jessie looked at Mr. Samuels. "Do you understand what you just heard, Miss Lindsay?" he asked gently, no doubt believing that her incomprehension could be laid at the door of her new and numbing grief. "Mr. Edwards has renounced all rights to Mimosa. The property is yours."

  Jessie's eyes widened. Slowly they moved back to fasten on Clive. He didn't grin at her—but he might as well have. There was amused satisfaction in those sky-blue eyes.

  "It's quite a magnificent gesture, I must say," Mr. Samuels continued, shaking his head. "And he had no need to do such a thing, of course. Everything came to him. Perfectly legal. But he thought, in light of the fact that he has only come lately to Mimosa, the property should be yours."

  Admiration and respect for the man who would renounce such a rich prize as Mimosa were clear in Mr. Samuels' tone. Jessie had no doubt that this evidence of Stuart Edwards' true nobility of character would be all over the Yazoo Valley by nightfall the following day. "What a gentleman he is!" everyone would say.

  "It's all yours, Jessie." Clive spoke very gently, as if he thought that shock at his magnanimous gesture was the reason for her silence.

  Still Jessie said nothing. Her eyes were wide and almost unfocused as they stared at him. In his well-tailored black suit, he looked every inch the elegant gentleman and as devastatingly handsome as always. His expression was sober, but there was a 347

  gleam in his eyes that told Jessie he was feeling pleased with himself.

  It hit her then that the riverboat gambler was taking the biggest chance of his life: he was risking everything on a single turn of the cards. And it was clear from the look in his eyes that he expected to win.

  Jessie started to laugh.

  XLVI

  Hysterics, everyone said as Clive, followed by an anxious Tudi, carried the still giggling Jessie up to bed. Held high against Clive's chest, gasping as she fought to breathe in between the gusts of laughter that claimed her, Jessie wondered if they might not be correct. But she didn't think so.

  It was all just so funny. So hysterically funny.

  So Clive had thought that he would sign her home over to her as proof positive that he was no longer the fortune-hunting gambler who had lied his way into ownership or Mimosa, eh?

  What masterful strategy on his part! She would really have to congratulate him when she could find the breath! But, of course, a leopard didn't change its spots, and a gambler didn't lose his eye for the main chance. He must know that his deception, if revealed—and Jessie could certainly reveal it at any time—

  would make his inheritance of Mimosa something less than a sure thing. In fact, he probably wouldn't inherit at all. Which tended to clear him as far as Celia's murder went. But then, if he'd committed the deed, she had no doubt that he had done so in 348

  a fit of temper, with no premeditation, so perhaps he hadn't had time to consider that he was killing his meal ticket. In any case, with Celia dead, and Jessie already knowing him for the opportunistic cad that he was, he stood a very real chance of losing all that he had gone to so much trouble to acquire. How, then, to keep it? Why, give it to sweet, naive little Jessie, of course, who would be so touched by the gesture with all its ramifications that she would melt with love for him and hasten to accept the proposal of marriage that he would no doubt immediately tender! Then Clive McClintock, river rat, would have it all again: Mimosa and respectability. And this time, Jessie was sure that he would take whatever steps were necessary to make certain that, whateve
r happened, his marriage was perfectly legal.

  Once a fortune hunter, always a fortune hunter. Only this time he'd outsmarted himself. Jessie couldn't wait to tell him so.

  "Get Dr. Crowell up here," Clive said over his shoulder to somebody as he bore Jessie through the door of her room. His face was taut and anxious as he laid her carefully on the bed and remained for a moment, bending over her.

  "Everything's going to be just fine, Jess," he murmured, his hand stroking briefly over her cheek. Then, before she could even think about knocking that hand aside or throwing his base intentions in his teeth or doing anything at all but laugh and wheeze, Dr. Crowell entered the room. Tudi, scandalized at the idea of having any man but a doctor in her lamb's bedchamber, shooed Clive out.

  From the darkness of the room and the utter stillness of the house, it was very late at night when Jessie awoke from the sleeping potion that Dr. Crowell had administered. It took her a 349

  few minutes to orient herself, but at last she remembered what had happened, and realized, too, that she slept in her own bed. Gentle snores ensuing from the truckle bed across the room told her that she was not alone. Getting to her feet, Jessie tiptoed over to discover Tudi fast asleep.

  Dear Tudi, guarding her lamb.

  Jessie turned back to her bed, where her wrapper was laid out neatly across the foot. Shrugging into it, she tied the sash, then made her way out of the room on noiseless feet. Tudi was a great believer in the efficacy of fresh air at night for one's health, and had left her windows cracked despite the chilly November night. Through the slightly open windows had come the smell of a rainwashed world—mixed with the pungent aroma of cigar smoke.

  Clive, apparently unable to sleep, was smoking on the upper gallery. Jessie meant to join him there.

  The fairy lamps were lit in the hall, and the interior of the house was scented with the flowers for the funeral that had not yet been removed. An eerie stillness lay over everything, as if the house somehow sensed that its mistress had died just the day before. The queen was dead. Long live the king!

  The door to the upper gallery was ajar. Jessie stepped through it quietly and turned to look for Clive.

  He was seated, as he had been before, in the rocking chair at the farthermost end. Barefoot, she moved toward him over the rainslick boards. As yet unaware of her presence, he rocked slowly back and forth, staring out into the drizzle and puffing on his cigar.

  When at last he looked around at her, his hand holding the cigar froze midway to his mouth, and his eyes widened. Jessie realized 350

  that, in her white wrapper, with the dark shadows of the gallery obscuring her identity until she drew close, she must look disconcertingly like a ghost. The notion pleased her, and she smiled. But his alarm, if alarm it was, did not last long. In less than a minute his eyes narrowed in recognition, and his cigar resumed its journey to his mouth.

  "Did you think I was Celia?" It was almost, but not quite, a taunt.

  He ignored her question. "What are you doing up?"

  "I smelled your cigar."

  He looked at her again, a faint smile curling his mouth. "So you came out to join me. Does that mean you've decided to forgive and forget, Jess?"

  "It means I think we should talk."

  "Talk away." He took another puff from his cigar.

  "Suppose you start by telling me whether or not you killed Celia."

  His mouth quirked. "So it's going to be that kind of conversation, is it? Let me ask you something, Jess: What do you think?"

  "That's no kind of answer."

  "That's the best I'm prepared to give. I'm in no mood to be cross-examined at the moment."

  "You wanted me to lie to Judge Thompson."

  "Did I?"

  "Yes. You'd already told him the same thing yourself."

  "Maybe I just wanted to see if you loved me enough despite our disagreement to lie to protect me."

  "I don't believe that."

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  "What do you believe, then? That I rode nearly two hundred miles in two days to beat you back here, and on the way decided to take a little detour and murder my wife?"

  "You could have stopped to change clothes and found her—

  with—someone." Jessie vividly remembered how furious he had been when he'd come across Celia with Seth Chandler. He'd threatened her with murder then—and had looked perfectly capable of carrying out his threat.

  "I could have."

  "Why won't you give me a straight answer?" Jessie clenched her fists in frustration.

  "Because I'm tired of your questions." He stood up suddenly, tossed his cigar over the railing, and caught her by the upper arms before she could so much as take a step back. "In fact, I'm tired of talking altogether. Come to bed with me, Jess."

  "You can't be serious!" "Oh, I am, believe me. Very serious."

  "We just buried Celia today!" "I didn't love her, and you didn't, either. Don't be a hypocrite, Jessie." "A hypocrite!"

  "A very lovely little hypocrite." Before Jessie had any inkling of what he meant to do, he scooped her up in his arms and started walking back along the gallery with her.

  "Put me down!" He was carrying her into the house.

  "Shhh! You'll wake Tudi. Think how shocked she would be, to know I'm carrying you off to bed with me."

  "I don't want to go to bed with you!"

  He turned down the corridor that led to his bedchamber. "One thing I have learned about you, my darling, is that you don't know what the hell you want."

  Then he bent his head to catch her mouth. Jessie didn't even try to turn her face away. Suddenly she realized the truth: this, this

  352

  was why she had crept out on the gallery to join him. Her bruised heart ached for his kisses, she discovered as his mouth sought and found hers. Her body burned for his touch.

  In the morning would be soon enough to do what she had to do, and call his bluff. Tonight she would give in to the devil's temptation one last time.

  As he shouldered through his bedroom door with her, Jessie slid her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

  "You know you love me, Jess," he murmured maddeningly near her ear as he kissed the soft hollow beneath it. Then he found her mouth again, and she was given no chance to reply. His boot shoved the door closed behind them. The latch caught with no more than a soft click. What passed between them was wild, and glorious, and wanton, both shaming and exhilarating. Clive left not so much as a centimeter of her body unexplored, and insisted that she return his ministrations in kind. When at last he allowed her to doze, the sky was turning gray in preparation for the dawn. Jessie didn't sleep long, not more than an hour, but when she opened her eyes the sky outside his uncurtained bedroom windows was bright salmon pink. He was already awake, sitting up in bed, naked except for the sheet he had dragged over his lap, and smoking one of his cigars. His eyes were possessive on her as she stretched like a contented cat against his side.

  "Good Lord! I have to get back to my room. Tudi's probably already awake." Suddenly realizing how bright the dawn was, Jessie sat up as she spoke. She was naked, her bare breasts rosy from where his jaw had scraped them the night before, her mouth slightly swollen from his kisses, her hair a mass of tangled curls.

  "If she's scandalized, you can always tell her you're going to marry me."

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  That stopped Jessie in her tracks. Her head turned, and she looked at him without answering. Broad-shouldered and lean, his skin dark against the sun-bleached whiteness of the sheets, he was so handsome he took her breath away. The black hair, the blue eyes, even the red-tipped cigar, were the stuff of every girlish dream she'd ever had.

  Was she going to allow Clive McClintock to dazzle her into giving him on a silver platter everything he'd schemed and tricked and cheated to take?

  Jessie climbed off the bed, found her nightgown where he had tossed it on the floor, and pulled it over her head. Then she recovered her wrapper, too, and shrugged it on.
r />   "Is that a proposal?"

  "It is. Are you going to accept?"

  The sound that came from Jessie's mouth then was a creditable imitation of a laugh. "I'm a fool, I admit, but not quite fool enough to agree to marry an admitted fortune hunter when I've just acquired a fortune. You signed Mimosa over to me—how very generous of you, considering the fact that your marriage to my stepmother was probably illegal!—and now you want to marry me to get it back! Was last night supposed to seduce me into agreeing? It didn't succeed. In fact, since you've been so very obliging as to give my property back to me, I want you off it before tonight."

  He went very still. Even his hand holding the cigar froze. Watching his eyes, Jessie saw them flash. Then all outward signs of what he was feeling disappeared beneath a curtain of silverblue ice.

  "If you want to cut off your nose to spite your face, then go ahead. Now get the hell out of my room, fast. Because if you 354

  don't, I'm liable to lose my temper and kick the new mistress of Mimosa right in her very pretty ass."

  XLVII

  Clive couldn't remember ever being angrier in his life. He was so furious that it was all he could do not to rant and rave and curse, not to storm down the hallway and kick in Jessie's door and apply his hand to her backside until her soft white skin was red and blistered. He loved the little bitch, damn it, loved her as he'd never loved a woman in his life. Loved her as he'd never thought to love anyone. After the night they'd just passed, to have her call him a fortune hunter and, sneering, throw his love and the only heartfelt marriage proposal he'd ever made back in his face infuriated him. If the reason he was so furious was because she'd hurt him, badly, well, that was something he refused to even think about.

  His newly vulnerable heart was not lacerated; he was just damned mad!

  So he dressed, slammed a few of his belongings into a bag, clapped his hat on his head, and stomped out of the house. Without waiting for Progress, whom he could hear moving around in the loft but who had not yet made it down the ladder, he saddled Saber himself (he'd given Jessie everything else; the horse she couldn't nave, even if she had him clapped up for horse stealing!), tied his bag behind the saddle, and was up and away. She wanted him off Mimosa, so, by God, he'd give her what she wanted, and be damned to her!