The tears were welling, unwanted, in the comers of her eyes, and she tried to drop her gaze from Rip’s expression that had been teasing and sweet but had now turned tender and concerned.
With a hint of anger in her motion, she cast the halfeaten peach in her hand into the distant grass. “I’m just being foolish—” she began, trying to turn away.
Rip did not let her. He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. “Are you being foolish, Miss Lessy? Or is it that big farmer of yours who’s a fool?”
Standing in his arms, Lessy looked up at the dark, handsome face above her, and she knew he was going to kiss her. He did not hold her tightly, and his hesitation was clearly to give her time to retreat. She did not.
His mouth touched hers with skill and confidence. He traced the line of her lips with his tongue, causing Lessy to startle.
Ripley grinned at her innocent surprise. “The sweetest peach in Arkansas,” he whispered against her as he opened her mouth to get another taste.
“Dadburnit!” Roscoe swore. “This wagon jack ain’t worth throwing into the scrap heap.”
The men around him were nodding their heads in agreement, but Vass only chuckled. “Now, you can’t go blaming this poor hardworking little jack for not being able to do something that I told you would need a rope and pulley.”
Doobervale threw up his hands in defeat. “Lord love you, Muldrow, I’m just grateful you ain’t a betting man, or I’d a lost money on this one.”
The empty hay wagon was bogged down in the mud on the low side of the barn. Young McFadden, in the ignorance of youth, had left it there when he’d driven it out of the field. Doobervale had insisted that a wagon jack would be enough to rescue it. He might have been right if they’d begun working at it early in the morning, as they’d planned. But after hours of tool sharpening, both their own and Mouwers’s, the muddy ground had hardened, holding the wagon wheels to it like molasses turned into hard candy.
“Get me that rope and tackle that I left on the floor of the harness room.” Vass directed the order to young Tommy, whose cheeks were still alternately pale and flushed with the humiliation of his mistake. “We can throw it over the ridge pole of the bam and get all the leverage we need.” Vass looked up to the timber that extended out from the peak of the bam roof, wondering if there would be enough rope.
“With a whole crew of men this shouldn’t be too much of a chore.” Glancing around, a furrow came into his brow. “Where’s Ripley?”
Doobervale shrugged with unconcern. “That one is the very best to have when a man’s working with equipment. But he’s got a real aversion to putting his back into a job.” The men around him chuckled.
“Ripley,” Claidon Biggs declared, “don’t never lift nothing heavier than a petticoat if he can help it.”
These words gained guffaws all around, and young McFadden, hoping to get himself back in with the boys, added his own little joke. “I know that’s got to be true,” the boy claimed. “Here we are sweating over a stuck wagon, and I spied him walking out into the shade of the peach trees with Miss Lessy.”
The laughter the boy had hoped for fell a little flat as Vass gave him a sharp look. Without further comment Vassar hoisted the rope over the ridge pole and set up the pulley. He worked with certainty and efficiency born of habit, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
Lessy and Ripley alone in the peach orchard? It just didn’t seem proper somehow. Lessy was so innocent and trusting. A man like Ripley might take advantage of her sweet nature. In his memory he could hear the two of them laughing together in the kitchen. And she was so enthusiastic about his drawings. They had been alone together under that camp tarp. Could that no-account rounder be whispering pretty words to his Lessy? Vass could hardly keep his feet in the spot. As soon as he assured himself that the knotting was secure, he handed the end ropes to Doobervale.
“I need to get a drink of water,” he announced lamely. Walking away, Vass didn’t dare to look back on the bewildered expressions of the men he’d left.
Making no pretense of even going near the house, he headed straight to the peach orchard. The thoughts in his mind spun in wild imagining, but he wouldn’t focus on them. Lessy was in the orchard with Ripley, and he was merely going to join them. He was only going for a friendly chat. He was only going to ask Ripley to come help with the wagon.
Lessy broke away from the kiss and stared into Ripley’s eyes. They were smoky and half-closed with such an expression of ardor that she giggled.
His mouth dropped open with surprise.
“Mr. Ripley,” she said. “You look at me like I was a peach cobbler myself. And I’m practically an old married lady.”
His surprise melting into delight, he leaned forward once more and teased her lips with his tongue. When she drew back, he winked broadly. “You aren’t married yet, Miss Lessy. Ain’t no sin in taking a last long look at freedom. I am from the haying crew, and they do say to make hay while the sun shines.”
She laughed at his teasing and had actually raised her lips for more of his special brand of haymaking when over his shoulder she caught sight of a large, work-hardened blond man gazing at them in horror.
“Vassar!”
Ripley jumped away from her as if shot from a gun.
His face pale and pained, Vassar Muldrow paced slow, heavy steps toward them.
Lessy had never thought of Vass as a man of violence, but the expression on his face, normally so calm and controlled, was frightening in its intensity.
“Don’t hit him, Vass!” Lessy said, bravely stepping in front of the handsome dark-haired man. “It’s my fault, not his. I let him kiss me. I wanted him to.”
Her words had the same effect on Vass as being kicked in the stomach by an ornery mule. He paled and sweat broke across his brow.
Ripley easily stepped around Lessy, his hands held high in a gesture of surrender. “You want to punch me, Muldrow?” he said. “Well, take your shot. But it was nothing more than a stolen kiss, and it was headed nowhere.”
Vassar’s face was now florid, and his breathing came in frightening puffs of anger, but his eyes, as he looked at the couple before him, were full of pain. He swallowed hard.
“Doobervale needs a hand at the barn,” he said to Ripley, his tone brooking no question.
The young man glanced toward Lessy. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked her. “Are you safe with him?”
Before Lessy could nod her assurance, Vassar exploded. “What kind of man do you take me for? She’s been safe with me for years before she ever knew you existed!”
Lessy nodded to the young man to go. Vass stood, fists clenched until Rip had walked away. Then, with a sigh that seemed to wilt the steel in his backbone, Vassar took a step closer, leaning against the ladder as if he could no longer stand on his own power.
Hearing the pained gasp of his breath, Lessy watched him squeeze his eyes together as if to hold back the tide that threatened to pour from them. Her own eyes were now swimming with tears that she tried to wipe on her apron.
“I’m so sorry Vassar,” she managed to choke out. “I have lied to you, so many lies, I’m not the woman that you think I am. I am lazy and frivolous, and I let a man kiss me just because I wanted him to. I’ve deceived you into believing that I am better than I am, but I never meant harm. Can you ever forgive me?”
It was as if Vassar had not heard her words. “Don’t worry, Lessy,” he said. “I should have seen this coming. I did see it—I just didn’t want to believe it true. I’ll see that he marries you up good and proper. I’m wise to his ways and reputation, and I won’t have him leaving any broken hearts on this farm.”
“What?”
“A fine woman like you is not to be dallied with and left behind. I’ll see that he stands up to his responsibilities if it takes a shotgun to do it.”
She gawked at him, swiping at her eyes distractedly. “Responsibilities?”
“He’s not the kind of man I wou
ld have wanted for you, Lessy. But there ain’t a man living that’s half good enough to husband you. I guess he has no more faults than me.”
“Vassar, what are you saying?”
“I won’t stand in your way, Lessy. I know that you love him, and I care too much for you to hold you back.”
“Oh, Mammy! What am I going to do?”
Lessy’s tears dampened the cotton quilt that covered her bed, darkening the bright yellow and blue patterns of Sunbonnet Sue.
Rip had come to the porch right after dinner. She hadn’t seen Vassar in the background, but she knew he was there as Ripley, with genuine apology in his voice, gave a gentle and impassioned plea for her to honor him in matrimony. Speechless, Lessy had fled from the sight and had been lying across her bed crying her heart out ever since.
Her mother seemed less concerned than entertained. “Lord-a-mercy, I’ve never seen that Vassar in such a lather as at the supper table. If looks were bullets, that Ripley boy would have more holes in him than a sieve.”
Nora Green, clad in her nightgown, stood before the mirror at the washbowl and combed the tangles out of her long gray hair as she listened to her daughter’s pitiful sniveling.
“I can’t marry Ripley, Mammy,” Lessy declared adamantly. “He’s funny and sweet, but I just don’t love him.”
“Well, of course you don’t,” her mother agreed easily. “You love Vassar and you have ever since you laid eyes on him.”
Her mother’s words started Lessy wailing again. “But Vass doesn’t want me, not now. Maybe he never has. He never saw the real me, just the perfect angel I pretended to be.” The words were a pitiful whine that ended with Lessy face-buried in the quilt. “I tried to tell him in the orchard, to confess at last about how I’d tried to trick him, but he wouldn’t listen.”
In fury and frustration Lessy pounded the feather tick beneath her. “I can’t believe I was so foolish! It was as if I’d taken leave of my senses completely.”
Raising her tear-stained face to her mother, she admitted her culpability. “I just wanted to know if I was pretty enough,” she said, shamefaced. “I wanted to know if I could attract a man on my own. If maybe I could have attracted Vass for me. Oh, Mammy, I want him to want me for... well, not for my hard work and my high morals, to want me for... oh, for sweet things and sinful things.”
Nora Green lay the brush on the chiffonier and moved to the bed, where she knelt and began rubbing her daughter’s back in the strong circular motion that had comforted her daughter when she was still a baby.
“Lessy, Lessy,” she told her coaxingly. “There is nothing sinful about wanting your man to desire you. And nothing unnatural about wanting a little bit of romance. The man you marry must see more in you than a strong back and a willing hand.”
“But that is exactly what he does see. It’s all that I’ve let him see.”
Shaking her head, Mammy didn’t agree. “If he’d known you for only a few months of this perfect pretense you’ve been putting on, then I’d worry. But no one can keep up a lie for four years! The truth about who you are comes shining through you every day, in the way you move and the songs you sing. Believe me, even if his eyes don’t see you as you really are, his heart does.”
Lessy looked at her mother, wanting desperately to believe her. “But I’ve ruined everything, Mammy,” she said. “I’ve kissed Ripley, and now Vass wants me to marry him.”
“Pooh!” Nora waved away the complication. “That load of manure smells to high heaven. Vassar Muldrow wants you for himself. He thinks you want that Ripley fellow. And the only way he’s going to know any different is if you swallow your pride and tell him yourself.”
Lessy’s breath caught in a shuddering sigh.
“But the kiss, Mammy?”
“What about the kiss?”
Lessy’s cheeks were flushed with shame. “I liked it, Mammy,” she said. “I liked it a lot.”
Nora rested her chin in her palm thoughtfully. “Did you want it to go on forever?”
“Forever? No.”
“Did you feel like you were home at last?”
“Home? We were in the peach orchard.”
“Did your heart tell you that you couldn’t live without that man?”
Lessy blushed and shook her head. “No, Mammy. My heart kept wishing it was Vassar who kissed like that.”
Nora grinned, her expression now completely unconcerned as she shrugged. “That Ripley is the kind of fellow that’s been with lots of women, Lessy. A man may learn a few tricks about kissing women that way. Now, maybe your Vass ain’t as wise in loving ways. But it ain’t an unpleasant study, and I’m thinking you two could learn together.”
Lessy swallowed hopefully. “Do you think so, Mammy? Do you think Vass could learn to kiss me like that?”
Her mother chuckled. “I suspect he’d be willing to die trying.”
For the first time in hours, Lessy smiled. Maybe things were not as hopeless as they had seemed.
“Of course he’ll learn to kiss me like that when we’re wed,” Lessy assured herself happily. “Why, he’s so fine and upstanding, I don’t suppose that Vass has ever kissed a woman before in his life.”
Out of the comer of her eye Lessy caught a strange expression on her mother’s face. “What is it, Mammy?”
Nora began readying herself for bed as if she hadn’t heard Lessy’s question.
“Mammy?” Lessy’s tone was insistent.
Hesitating, as if weighing her words, Nora Green finally shook her head. “I think that he has.”
“You think that he’s kissed women before?”
“Yes.” Her answer was firm and simple, but there was something in her mother’s tone of voice that prompted questions in Lessy’s mind.
“What is it, Mammy? Is there something you should tell me?”
Sighing heavily before she answered, Lessy’s mother seemed clearly unhappy about the revelation she was about to make. “I understand from Jake that the main reason he wanted Vass to come out here and work for us was to separate him from a woman.”
Lessy’s eyes widened with surprise, and a lump of anxiety settled in the back of her throat. “He was in love with another woman?”
“I don’t know if he loved her. He was... ah, seeing her.”
Jealousy warred with confusion in Lessy’s mind. “Why didn’t he marry her? Did Cousin Jake not approve of the match?”
Lessy’s mother cleared her throat nervously and looked her daughter straight in the eye. Nora hoped she was ready for the truth. “I don’t believe it was possible to approve or disapprove, Lessy. The woman was already married.”
Staring at her mother in stunned silence for several seconds, a tiny puff of disbelief emerged from Lessy’s mouth before she rolled over on her back to contemplate the ceiling.
“Vassar Muldrow and a married woman.” She whispered the words incredulously. Her Vass, the purest of souls, the finest of men, the noblest of the breed, carousing with another man’s wife. It was a shock. She didn’t know him any better than he knew her.
Her mother blew out the lamp before coming to bed. With a gesture of her hand she urged Lessy to her own side of the bed and crawled in to tuck them both in for the night. “He was young, Lessy, and it was a long time in the past. These things happen sometimes in life,” she told her daughter in a sympathetic whisper. “It’s best neither to judge nor ruminate. Just put the past behind you and go on. Like that kiss you shared with young Ripley, it was a mistake better outlived and forgotten.”
“We don’t know each other at all,” Lessy whispered, her gaze still focused on the dark ceiling above her.
7
Vass saw her bringing the water bucket when she was still half a hayfield away. He’d tried to avoid her for the last three days, and he’d managed to do a pretty good job of it. The woman he’d hoped to marry just a week ago had become a polite stranger, and he supposed it was all for the best.
He began moving away from the group. H
e didn’t want to be close when she dipped water for Ripley. He didn’t want to see them laughing, their heads together like happy children. He wanted her to be happy. But wanting her to be happy and watching her be that way with another man were not the same thing.
The bright gold of newly cut hay touched the deep summer blue of the sky behind her. Lessy was like a painted picture on a feed calendar. In his heart she had never looked more beautiful. And she did walk as if she floated off the ground, Vass thought to himself. And then hated that it was Ripley who had pointed it out to him.
He turned away from the sight of her and began hand-raking a long swath of alfalfa. There was a tiredness in his movements. He hadn’t slept well for days. He’d always wondered what the early mornings were really like, and now he knew for sure. Frequently he was still awake when they arrived.
The hay was nearly all in the barn. By this time tomorrow the crew would be gone. Would Ripley be staying here with them? Or would he be taking Lessy with him until the season was done? He hoped it was the latter. Within a month he could get things in order and head back to Arkadelphia. He didn’t think he could stand to live even a day at this farm with Lessy as a bride to another man.
Strangely his thoughts flew to Mabel Brightmore. Not to sweet memories of illicit indiscretion or wild stories of misspent youth, but to the pain he’d caused her poor old husband. For the first time he thought past his own sin to the pain Brightmore must have felt knowing another man claimed his woman’s love. Now he, too, felt that pain.
“I brought you some water.”
Vass started at the voice behind him and turned to see Lessy, her hair tucked in a bright blue bonnet smiling up at him in her so-familiar fashion.
He glanced over at the other men.
“Oh, I left them a bucket,” Lessy said, guessing his thoughts. “But I brought this jar for you.”
“Thank you,” Vass said quietly. “But you needn’t have gone to the trouble.”
“I wouldn’t have if I’d thought you’d stay near the men to get a drink, but you’ve been avoiding me so much, I was afraid you might be fainting in the field from thirst.” Her complaint was warm with teasing.
Making Hay Page 7