"Do you mind terribly, Silas?" Andrea asked.
Silas's black eyes widened with anticipation. "No ma'am, I wouldn't mind a bit. Fact it would be my downright pleasure to do it. It shorely would." Gathering up Jacksaw's reins around his neck, he unhitched the old plow and started for home.
Andrea grinned and called after him. "You can eat first, Silas."
"Oh, no," he said, half-turning. "I be savin' that for later. I just hitch up this ol' mule an' git Miss Etta where she gots t' go. Yass'm. I do that straight away." The sun glistened on his cropped black hair as he made his way through the corn, disappearing at last between the rows.
Jesse raised his eyebrows, settled down in the shade of the cornstalks and opened his sandwich. "Now there's a man happy about his work."
"I think Etta likes him."
"I think the feeling's mutual." He looked up at her. "Join me?"
She smiled."All right." She sat down beside him in middle of the row, shaded by the tall stalks, and lay the baby across her lap.
Jesse watched her suppress a yawn and frowned. "You all right, Andi?"
"Fine, why?"
"You look worn out."
She touched her hair and glanced away annoyed he would notice. "A little tired is all. It's quite normal, I'm sure."
He studied her as he chewed his sandwich and suppressed an urge to test the tenderness of her pale cheek with the back of his finger. He glanced at her rough hands.
"You should go home and take a rest," he said. "Have you been working in the garden again?"
"Some. The beans are coming in fast."
"You shouldn't be trying to do so much. It hasn't been that long since—"
"I'm fine," she interrupted. "Really, you and Etta are a pair of worry warts." A breeze rustled the still air and she tilted her head back to receive it. "It's lovely out here, isn't it? I love the smell of corn growing and fresh-turned earth. Don't you?"
Jesse's eyes clung for a long moment to that creamy expanse of throat. His body tightened involuntarily remembering the feel of that particular patch of skin beneath his mouth. But that had been a long time ago. It didn't belong to him anymore.
"Just smells like corn to me," he grumbled and tore off a bite of ham sandwich.
Andrea glanced up with a sigh and toyed with the baby's tuft of black hair. "Remember when we used to chase each other through the fields, Jesse? When we were young?"
"Yeah..." A wistfulness stole into his expression for a moment. "Yeah. Seems like forever ago."
She smiled. "It was. You rarely caught me, though."
"Unless I wanted to," he added, a flash of humor crossed his face.
"Hah! Are you saying you let me win, Jesse Winslow?"
He grinned and took another bite of sandwich.
"Humph," she replied, knowing it was true. "Remember the climbing-willow up on the creek? The tree-house you and Zach and I built?"
Jesse closed his eyes, a wave of memory washing over him like rolling heat. He and Andi and Zach. Together. Laughing. "Is it still there?"
She nodded. "We built it like a rock into that old tree."
Jesse shook his head with a smile. "I'll never forget how mad Zach was when you brought that bucket of whitewash over and painted the fort without our knowing." He laughed. "Lord, I thought he'd have a conniption. You could see our secret fort a mile away after that through the branches of that old tree."
Laughter bubbled up in her throat, too. "I was only trying to help," she argued. "I thought it looked better white. Oohh, he was mad." They laughed together for a minute, remembering those long-gone days.
"Yeah, well," Jesse sighed, his eyes going to little Zachary. "I guess my little brother got over it."
The laughter faded in Andrea's eyes. "I... I guess he did." Silence stretched between them filled with unasked and unanswered questions. "Well, I'd better go," she said, but the awkwardness of the baby made it hard to get up from the ground.
He took Zachary from her, stood and offered her his hand. She took it after a second's hesitation and let him pull her up, nearly colliding with him in the process. She caught herself, hands splayed across his hard chest. Her instinctive response to his nearness was so powerful it made her heart thud erratically and her breath catch in her throat.
Nor did he release her as soon as he might have. Instead he kept a steadying hand on her arm. His eyes match the color of the cloudless sky, she thought irrelevantly when his gaze rose to meet hers—deep, faraway blue. This close, she felt the heat of his skin, the dampness of his sweat. For a moment they were so close, she thought he might—
"You all right?" he asked, setting her away from him.
The sound of her heartbeat drowned out her response but she was quite sure she said, "Yes."
She reached for her son. Jesse's large hands, brown and calloused by Winslow soil, wrapped around the babe's chest. But instead of handing the child to her, Jesse raised him in the air over his head and smiled at the cockeyed grin on Zachary's face—the one he saved mostly for Jesse.
"Hey Corncob, you're growing fast. He feels heavier to me already," he said.
"He's a good eater, like his father."
Jesse lowered the boy, his gaze unconsciously falling to her full breasts, then back to her face. Gently, he handed her Zachary. "Well, I'd better get back to work."
"Me, too. We're having chicken and dumplings for supper. Do you want me to leave the lemonade?"
"Sure." His mouth was already watering for that chicken and dumplings, despite what he'd said about her taking it easy. The fields worked up a man's appetite. "I'll be in before sundown."
He watched her go, and watched Mahkwi follow her back. Traitor, he thought, with a grin, knowing the wolf was growing on Andi. Absently, he fingered the thick growth that covered his jaw. Maybe he did need a shave at that. And a haircut. Maybe he'd even let Andi Mae do the honors, he thought, watching the unconscious sway of her hips as she made her way through the stand of corn.
Then again, maybe he'd find a barber in town. A balding, male barber who didn't know chicken and dumplings from petunias—and knew nothing about shared memories of a childhood best forgotten.
* * *
Fields of wheat, edged by Queen Ann's lace, and sprays of golden tansy, sped by as the wagon wheels of the buggy rattled across the rutted dirt road. A welcome August breeze rippled the ripening fields and cut through the sweltering heat, washing over Etta and Silas as they drove along the lane toward Isabelle and John Rafferty's place.
Etta bounced along the edge of the seat until her knee was pressed intimately against Silas' muscular thigh. With one hand plastered to her straw hat to keep it on her head, and the other firmly around the slender iron rail that fenced the seat back, Etta hauled herself back a proper five inches away from Silas Mayfield.
"You all right, Miss Etta?"
"Mr. Mayfield—!"
"Silas."
"Mr. Mayfield, are you purposely trying to find all the ruts in this road?" Her voice jiggled with the movement of the wagon.
"No, ma'am. Now why would I do that?" A gleam in his smiling eyes told her that was exactly his intent.
"I'm sure I don't know. But I'd appreciate it if—"
The wagon jolted again, this time throwing her fully against him. Stopping herself just short of mashing her face against his chest, she instead crunched the brim of her straw hat on his shoulder, skewing it over to one side of her face. Worse, her spectacles flew right off her nose and bounced off Silas' knee onto the front boot. But the most humiliating part happened when Silas drew his arm around her to steady her against him while he slowed Jacksaw.
"Whoa!" he called, drawing back gently on the reins with a chuckle. "Whoa, now. Look'it what you done, you lame-brained mule."
"Lame-brained mule!" Etta exclaimed, righting herself on the seat. "Well, I've heard of the pot calling the kettle black, but that just beats all!"
Silas couldn't help the grin that crept to his mouth. "This kettle done
always been black," he retorted. "But just the same, I's sorry for janglin' you that'a ways, Miss Etta." He reached down and picked up her spectacles.
"It would've been safer to walk home," she grumbled, yanking the hatpin out of her hat to rearrange it on her head.
He rubbed the lenses with calculated slowness against the front of his pale blue cotton shirt. "It be a far piece for a woman handsome as you to be walkin' on your own."
"Don't you try to pay me any sunshine, Mr. I-can-charm-anyone-with-that-smile Mayfield. You did that on purpose." She reached for her spectacles, but instead of handing them back, he looked at her with amusement.
"Me?" He spread the fingers of one dark hand across his chest. "My, my, Miss Etta, you shore does have a suspicious nature."
"Do have," she corrected with exasperation. "Do have, Mr. Mayfield. And you're quite right, I do. And for good reason." Yanking down the pointed basque of her brown gingham gown, she glared out over the blur of wheat, waiting for him to resume driving. But he didn't. He sat staring at her. "Whatever are you looking at?" she said finally.
"At you... without them spectacles. You gots—" he stopped, correcting himself with an effort, "have the purtiest eyes I ever did see on a woman. Gray like the underside of rain clouds in summer, with the color of spring grass wove through 'em." He shook his head. "Can't see that color true for them spectacles."
"I—" Struck speechless, Etta stared at him. Never had a man spoken to her in such poetic terms about the strange color of her eyes. Not even Marcus. For an uneducated ex-slave, Silas Mayfield could certainly be... lyrical.
She squinted, wishing she could see him clearly, see what was really in his eyes. But he was a blur. Her heart thudded like the clip-clop of hoofbeats.
"Why you need 'em?" he asked.
"I... I beg our pardon?"
He handed her the spectacles, his work-roughened hands brushing hers. "Why you need these?"
She gulped. "S-so I can see, of course. If you must know, I'm nearly blind without them." She fitted them tartly over the bridge of her nose. Silas Mayfield came into sharp focus. He was still grinning, but those dark eyes of his were warm and filled with something more than humor.
"Well, then," he said, gathering up the worn leather traces. "I guess you best be wearin' 'em. I wouldn't want you to be missin' the way I look at you... Miss I-don't-fall-for-smiles Gaines." Naturally he punctuated that jab with a smile and gave the traces a flick. "Giddap!"
They rode the remaining mile without speaking. Silas missed each and every rut in the road. Every now and then, he'd hum a little verse of a Negro spiritual and glance surreptitiously in her direction. Most of the songs he sang, she'd heard here and there. But several contained lyrics about slavery and freedom she'd never heard before. It occurred to her there was much of this man she knew nothing about. They were as different as two people of the same color could be.
She frowned, realizing the boundaries she'd already placed upon their relationship in her mind. He was an ex-slave, she an educated freewoman. Her whole life had centered on her struggle to overcome others' preconceived perceptions of her as a woman of color. While Marcus, in his own way, had given her a certain respectability because of his teaching and the abolitionist articles he'd authored for the cause in Illinois, Etta had always craved more from her life. And long before Marcus had died, fighting for the cause in which he so dearly believed, she'd realized that while respect and love were not mutually exclusive, a couple could sadly have the first without the second.
She glanced at Silas out of the corner of her eye. With little in common, and no mutual ground, she wondered then, about the inexplicable attraction she felt for the man. Why, every time he was near her, she seemed to make a fool of herself and found her usually glib tongue tied in knots.
She kept her eyes trained straight ahead, wishing she could think of something intelligent to say. But absolutely nothing came to mind. It seemed his very presence beside her robbed her of sensible thoughts and gave her the weak trembles.
All too soon they pulled into the Rafferty's yard. He parked under a spreading elm that stood at the very center of the well-kept yard, dwarfing the neat two-story farmhouse there. The children spilled out of the house, waving to her and starting an impromptu game of leapfrog beside the waving fields of wheat that spread to the horizon.
Etta sat stiffly on the seat, waiting for Silas to climb down and come around her side to give her a hand. Indeed, he walked around the wagon, but instead of taking her hand, he wrapped his big hands around her waist and lifted her down as if she weighed no more than a feather.
"Oh..." she gasped, "I—thank you."
"Welcome. Afternoon, Miss Etta," he said pleasantly, touching the brim of his hat with his dark fingertips.
"Good after—" she began, but he'd already hopped up into the wagon again, "—noon."
He clucked to the mule and gave the reins a quick shake. Standing there like some pillar of stone, Etta racked her brain for something, anything to say before he left so he didn't think she hated him.
"Silas—" she called.
He pulled back on the reins and looked back at her.
She moistened her dry lips. From nearby the children's laughter rang out across the yard. "I... uh..."
His eyebrows went up expectantly.
"I like the way you sing," she blurted. Resisting the temptation to squeeze her eyes shut in mortification, she wondered why on God's green earth she'd blurted that out?
A grin spread slowly, easily across his face. "You do?"
"I—I said so, didn't I?" She fussed with her crooked hat and found it hopeless.
"Well, now, that's a start, Etta," he said, flicking the reins again. The team pulled off with jingle of metal and leather. "That's a start."
Chapter 9
The lantern light in the barn told Andrea that Jesse was still there, doing whatever it was he did out there 'til all hours of the evening. She let the faded gingham curtains slide back over the window.
What was it he did out there every night, anyway? Was he cleaning tack? Mucking stalls? Or was he simply avoiding her? The last seemed most likely. She was long in bed by the time she heard him come in from the barn most nights. Frankly, tonight she was lonely and wished for someone besides a three-week-old baby to talk to. Zachary was sound asleep in the drawer beside the fireplace where she let him sleep in the evenings.
She glanced at the half-eaten blueberry pie sitting on the shelf. Jesse hadn't gotten a piece of it tonight. He'd excused himself after wolfing down his food and gone to the barn. She'd baked it especially for him, though Silas had, at least enjoyed it.
On impulse, she cut a generous slice and slid it onto a plate. Checking her reflection in the darkened glass pane of the window, she lifted the lighted lantern that hung just outside the kitchen door, and made her way to the barn.
Awash with a million pinpricks of light, the velvet night sky domed over the land. Croakers chorused down by the banks of the creek with a steady hum. The familiar sound made Andrea's throat tighten as she made her way through the shadowy darkness. Willow Banks was home. Her home—as much a part of her as that baby sleeping inside. The thought of losing it was too awful to contemplate, and she thanked God for sending Jesse Winslow home to help her save it.
Slipping inside the double doors of the barn, she heard the sound of sandpaper rasping against wood and Jesse's voice. The mules shifted restively in their stalls, shuffling the straw at their feet. Jesse's appaloosa snorted over the cribbed door of his stall in welcome. Andrea moved silently to the door of the tackroom, listening for a moment.
"I know, I know," Jesse was saying. "You'd rather be off chasing females." The sound of rasping sandpaper again. Who was he talking to?
"It won't be long. Neither one of us was meant to be tied up to this place," he went on. "You'll have to put up with that rope for a while longer though. Andi just doesn't understand about you. Doesn't understand me either, for that matter," he muttered.
Andrea pressed her back against the wall and listened to Mahkwi's yawning whine of agreement. A smile crept to her mouth at the idea that Jesse spent his evenings in the barn talking to a wolf.
"What do you think about this tree?" Jesse asked after a few seconds. "Too big? Too small?" He sighed. "I guess it'll put her in mind of a willow, more or less."
Curiosity overcoming wisdom, she stepped into the tack room, the piece of pie clutched in front of her.
"Hi."
Jesse jumped along with Mahkwi, who had seen her a split second before his master. "God Almighty, Andi. You shouldn't sneak up on a man that way." He pulled a tarp up over whatever he was working on.
"I wasn't sneaking," she retorted, trying for a look at it anyway. "I just came to bring you a piece of pie."
He eyed the slab of blueberry pie hungrily as she handed it to him. "Thanks. You didn't have to do that."
She shrugged, circling around him, her feet crunching the fragrant straw-littered floor. "I wanted to."
Mahkwi, on her feet, wagged her tail as Andrea drew closer to her. She reached for the animal's ears and gave her a short scratch. Mahkwi leaned into her hand.
"So..." Andi observed, moving to the tarp covered object in the middle of the room and running a curious finger over it, "this is where you spend your evenings."
Jesse nodded, his mouth full of pie.
She glanced around the tack room, noticing how orderly he had made it. Reins, traces and whips all cleaned, polished and hung from spanking-new hooks in the wall; the broken saddle-trees had been repaired and sported freshly cleaned saddles; his own and her seldom-used sidesaddle. The room smelled of saddle soap and wood shavings.
And, of course, of Jesse.
"I must say, you've made good use of your time. The tack room hasn't looked this clean since... well, since Zach left."
Jesse cleared a box-full of tools off a pile of grain sacks. "Here, have a seat."
"Thanks."
He settled one hip against an empty saddle tree and took a bite of pie. "M-mmm. Oh... this is good."
A ripple of pleasure stole through her. "It used to be your favorite."
Renegade's Kiss Page 11