As Esme watched him, there was no pity in her eyes, but there was understanding.
He shrugged nonchalantly. "It wasn't all for the bad, though," he said honestly. "With no friends and resolved to succeed, I spent untold hours in the library. I would lose my unhappiness in the excitement of science."
Smiling wryly, he added, "My biology text was so well-thumbed it looked like a risqué novel."
Esme felt suddenly closer to him. She wanted to touch him, to comfort him. She wanted to feel what he felt.
With his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, he looked at Esme, willing her to understand. "The people of Vader, probably even yourself," he said, "think that I am a gentleman. And here, well, I guess that I am. But I know that I would never have been seen as such in the city."
The statement was plain fact, not bitterness.
Esme reached across and touched his hand. The gesture surprised and pleased him.
"I'm not looking for your sympathy," Cleav told her, taking up her end of the clover chain and webbing it with his. "I'm trying to say that I do know a portion of how I made you feel. I'm sorry for what I said about the dress."
"It doesn't matter," Esme told him, and strange as it seemed at that moment, it did not.
"It matters to me," Cleav insisted. "I hurt you. That matters."
Esme felt her hand tremble as it lay against his, and she hastily removed it.
"I don't know too much about you, Esme," he said. "But what I do see in you is pride. You believe in yourself and don't allow the opinions of others to make you doubt I can admire that. I wouldn't want to be the cause of changing it."
"You haven't," Esme assured him.
"That's good." He raised his eyes to look at her, to take in all of the vision before him. "And I wasn't honest, either. I need to apologize for that, too."
"You weren't honest?" Esme was confused.
Cleav shook his head. "When you stepped out from behind that chestnut tree, I thought you were as pretty as any girl I'd ever seen."
At Esme's quick intake of breath, Cleav moved closer. The sweet smell of her tempted him, but he didn't allow himself the luxury of letting his attentions forego his better judgment.
Casually he draped the clover chain around her neck. Like a wreath, he looped the chains over her head, allowing them to drop gently across her bosom.
"You are like a wild mountain princess," he told her, his words soft and warm. "A true creation of Mother Nature."
She stared down at the flowers. The two wild phlox blooms added a bright touch to the pretty green and white clover.
He sat back, his hands on his knees as his gaze wandered across her face, her strong young shoulders, and the profuse garland of flowers that flowed from her throat to her waist.
"Esme Crabb." His voice was a husky whisper that prickled her skin like a ghostly visage on a moonless night. "You are as pretty a young woman as I have ever seen in my life. Any man who says differently is a liar."
She felt her cheeks heat, but she shook her head at the compliment.
"You are kind, Cleavis," she answered, her own whisper sounding strange to her ears. "But I'm sure you were right the first time. The dress is probably not too fashionable."
Cleavis bent toward her, his eyes strangely hot and intent. With two tentative fingers he adjusted the clover chain to his satisfaction.
Esme felt a wildly charged prickle at the gentleness of his touch, and suddenly the white lawn bodice felt too tight.
"Vader is not the place for those who are slaves to fashion."
Esme's answering giggle was as much nerves as humor. He was so handsome and so kind and so, so close.
"That I'm not," she said. "I never cared about clothes at all before . . ."
Esme didn't need to finish the sentence.
"Do you really think that I am pretty?" she asked, her voice not sounding at all like her own. In that instant her whole world seemed balanced on his answer.
His eyes darkened.
"Yes, Esme." His words were almost a whisper. "You are very pretty."
Her heart pounding within her breast, Esme looked longingly at the man before her and dared to hope. A kiss, she begged silently, a kiss.
As if he heard her mute plea, his eyes focused on her lips, causing them to part invitingly.
"Very pretty," he whispered again.
Was he going to kiss her? The dream rushed through her thoughts like a rat in a snake's nest. Here, in this tender moment, would he kiss her?
Oh, yes, please, was her silent prayer.
Esme wanted to feel his lips on hers; to breathe in the spicy smell of his throat, to be enfolded in those strong, masculine arms.
She trembled in anticipation, the way she had that day beside the pond. But Esme would not throw herself at him again. She'd wait this time. She'd wait for him to make the move.
His eyes assessed her, caressed her. She could almost feel the kiss in his gaze.
Cleav hesitated.
Esme panicked.
He wasn't ready to kiss her. Maybe he didn't really want to kiss her. Maybe he didn't really think she was pretty. Was he humoring a pitiful mountain girl?
She had to know for sure. She had to be certain. She threw out a challenge. "Am I pretty enough to take to the taffy pull?" she asked.
Cleavis sat frozen, staring at her for an instant. It took more than a few seconds for the idyll to end and for reality to come crashing down around him. More than that before his eyes widened in shock.
"I'm late!" he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. Jerking the watch from his pocket, he glanced at its face in dismay. "I was supposed to pick up Miss Sophrona nearly an hour ago!"
Chapter Eight
Spring in full bloom all around them and the sweet smell of honeysuckle wafting through the air, the attractive young couple sat together on a whitewashed bench beneath the enveloping shade of a giant silver leaf maple.
"Can I get you some more lemonade?" Sophrona asked him.
The Tewksburys' parsonage was a mere stone's throw from where they sat, but it was the closest thing to privacy Cleav had been able to manage.
Glancing into his empty glass, Cleav thought Miss Sophrona's recipe for lemonade relied a good deal too heavily on sugar.
"No, thank you," he answered politely. "It's wonderful but I believe I've had enough."
Miss Sophrona was gowned in somber blue, which may have reflected her mood. It had been over a week since the fiasco of the taffy pull, and Cleav was just beginning to work himself back into Miss Sophrona's good graces. There had been no open discussion of the troubles between them. And that was fine with Cleav. He had no idea how to explain, and he was hoping that he wouldn't be expected to do so.
At least today the dangerous Miss Crabb was nowhere in sight. He wished she'd made herself equally as scarce on the previous Saturday.
After his hasty retreat from the clover-covered hillside with Esme, Cleav had arrived at the parsonage an hour late. He was not surprised to find the house deserted. Sophrona had waited as long as she could and finally gone on with her parents. Cleav had followed miserably and alone.
It might have worked out. Sophrona was so honest herself, the potential for deceit in others rarely entered her mind.
When Cleav arrived at the party, he found her gaily immersing herself in the infectious laughter that was inevitable when a dozen pairs of buttered hands are passing and pulling at a glob of hot candy.
"I'm so sorry I'm late," he apologized immediately.
Sophrona's smile was open and forgiving. "I know. I told Daddy that it must have been your mother's ill health that detained you."
Cleav did attempt not to lie deliberately. "Mother is feeling better this evening," he told her. "And, of course, she sends her love."
Scooting over, Sophrona made a place for him beside her on the bench. Within minutes Cleav's hands were washed and buttered, and he, too, was laughing and joking as the sticky sweet came his way.
As
the young people worked the taffy, children ran around trying to steal a sweet bite, even though it was still hot enough to burn their mouths. The older folks stood watching and talking, some remembering the days of their own youthful exuberance, others gossiping about the current crop of courting couples. Armon Hightower and the Crabb twins came in for more of their share of the speculation. Hightower had arrived with one twin on his arm but was now sitting between both of them, apparently quite content with this double dose of feminine attention.
Yo Crabb played a lively tune that caused more than one foot to tap with an unspoken wish that dancing was not one of Reverend Tewksbury's most oft-preached-upon sins.
It was just bad luck, Cleav decided later, that the lull in the music coincided with the late, unexpected arrival of Esme Crabb. It was not so much that Esme rarely showed up for social occasions, since up to now she'd shown a patent disinterest in gentlemen callers. The problem was her altered appearance captured every eye in the place.
Armon Hightower blurted out what everyone else was thinking. "Don't you look pretty as spring!"
The made-over dress was attractive, and Esme's long ringlets were now tossed casually by her run through the meadow. She glowed with pretty disarray in the light of the Chinese lanterns. But what set off the young woman's beauty most effectively was the wild garland of clover and phlox that was draped around her.
"Oh, doesn't she look lovely?" Sophrona asked Cleav in a delighted whisper. "And in my old dress, too. I'm so pleased."
Cleav found himself unable to reply. She was pretty, but he was determined to keep his eyes on Sophrona Tewksbury. She was the woman in whom he was interested.
The music started up again, and a place was made for Esme in the circle. More than one of the young swains gave Esme a long, thoughtful look.
"That's a pretty wildflower chain," Elmer Crossbridge, a blond and buck-toothed young farmer, observed, giving himself an excuse to scrutinize Esme's bosom. "Must have taken you a goodly amount of time to make it." Esme glanced proudly down at the artistic creation. She thought it was pretty, too. The prettiest thing she had ever seen. And the prettiest part of it was the wild phlox that was woven in.
"Cleavis helped me," she blurted out with pleasure.
"Cleavis?" Crossbridge raised a speculative eyebrow at the unwarranted familiarity.
"Mr. Rhy, that is," Esme hastily corrected, her face flaming at her indiscreet blunder. But the damage was already done.
Cleav's face was as white as Esme's was red, and Sophrona was staring at him as if she'd never seen him before.
Now, after a week of trying to explain away the incident to Sophrona's father, Cleav found himself at last welcome in her presence.
"So what is your opinion, Mr. Rhy?" Sophrona was asking. "Do you think that the serpent in the garden walked on legs, or was he just the kind of snake we see today?"
Cleav hated thorny, Biblical catechism. Miss Sophrona, however, seemed to thrive on such. So he forced his brain to participate. "Well, the Bible does state that he was condemned to slither across the ground. That infers that it was not the serpent's original state," he said.
"Then you think the serpent in the garden was just another type of lizard?" she asked.
Cleav hesitated, hating to be pinned down.
"No," he hedged. "The serpent didn't have to be a lizard. It could have been any kind of creature prior to being used by the devil."
"What an interesting idea!" Sophrona exclaimed. As she postulated on the possibilities, Cleav's attention wandered.
Not five feet away from them an incongruous sight captured Cleav's attention. At the foot of the maple tree, propped neatly against the rough, dark bark, was a pair of very worn men's work shoes. Peeking out the tops were some nearly threadbare black wool stockings.
His first thought was how strange it was to find such an item in the Tewksburys' very neatly kept yard. Then he was struck by how oddly familiar the shoes and stockings happened to be. With a sinking feeling of dread, Cleav slowly, casually, without drawing attention to himself, leaned backward and allowed his gaze to drift upward.
Dangling from a sturdy limb almost directly above them was a pair of long, shapely, bare legs that Cleav definitely should not have recognized as easily as he did.
"I suppose it would have to be some animal that no longer exists," Sophrona was saying. "Do you think it would have been in the reptile family?" she asked.
Cleav jerked his eyes and his thoughts back to the woman at his side. Struggling for an answer to her question, all he could think about was how shocked she would be to know Esme Crabb was spying on them. How could he explain it? And God only knew what Esme herself might say. The woman had about as much tact and social sense as one of his fishes.
"Miss Sophrona," he blurted out finally. "I believe I will have another glass of your lemonade."
Since he'd interrupted her musings, Sophrona cocked her head quizzically at him but recovered quickly and reached for the glass he offered.
"'If he thirst, give him drink,'" she quoted with a cheery giggle as she rose to get Cleav another glass of refreshment.
Watching her retreat, Cleav never allowed his eyes to stray to the intruder in the tree above him. In his mind, however, the slim bare calves and ankles waved before him like a red cape before a bull.
Only when he saw Sophrona step into the house and close the door behind her did he look up into the tree.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Esme looked down through her leafy camouflage to the stormy visage of the man seated below her.
"Just enjoying the beautiful day," she answered innocently.
In truth, Esme was almost as horrified as Cleav about her present location. She'd watched Cleav hurrying to call on Miss Sophrona, and she just had to follow.
She'd just wanted to observe them, she'd assured herself. Or rather to observe him. The taffy pull had been a definite setback, and Esme knew she needed to regroup. Esme wanted to see this side of his nature, Cleavis the suitor. She wanted to watch and learn and imagine what it was going to be like when he finally came calling on her. She couldn't bear to think the word was really if. And she wanted to see if he was as hesitant in kissing Sophrona as he was in kissing her. '
Seeing the maple tree a goodly distance from the house but within hearing of the porch, she'd scrambled. She assumed the couple would pass their afternoon on the Tewksburys' slatted swing. Esme was more than a little chagrined to find them taking their ease directly below her spying perch.
There was no humor in Cleav's grin. "You just happened to be enjoying it while hidden in a tree in Miss Sophrona's yard?"
His question didn't require an answer, but Esme gave a halfhearted one anyway. "I'm not hidden," she insisted with only a slight blush at the fib. "Anyone who looks up in this tree could see me."
Cleav nodded in apparent agreement. "Except that no one with any sense in the world would think to look for young women peeping from trees."
"You did!" she shot back.
"It's because I've come to know you." His explanation was terse, and his eyebrow was raised in disdain.
Esme felt the roses building in her cheeks but could think of no snappy comeback.
"Actually," Cleav continued, "it was your shoes that gave you away." He made a gesture toward her discarded footwear. "Aren't you aware that young women of your age do not go around bare-legged?"
His heated disapproval was clearly based on the distraction the sight of those legs was causing him. As Esme realized this, her embarrassment began to fade and a sly smile came to her lips.
"You can't climb a tree in shoes and stockings," she answered him reasonably. "When a woman's got a choice of modesty or breaking her neck," she told him, shifting casually on the thick tree limb, "then it's bare-legged every time!"
Cleav opened his mouth for a scathing reply, but forgot what he was going to say. Esme threw her right leg over the limb, straddling the thick brown tree branch. Her skirts bu
nched around her, giving an ample display of her bare legs and a tantalizing glimpse of the edge of the leg of her cotton drawers.
As Cleav's mouth hung open in shock, Esme tested the strength of her new power, casually bending forward and arching her back in what she hoped was a seductive pose.
To Cleav, it looked as if she were trying to wiggle herself closer to the hard, thick wood that she cushioned so intimately between her thighs. He swallowed the lump that formed in his throat.
"I'm not really spying," Esme said. "I'm just interested in how a gentleman courts a lady."
With deliberate casualness Cleav crossed one leg over his knee.
"Well, now that you've found out what you wanted to know," he told her, "why don't you get down from that tree and get out of here before Miss Sophrona gets back."
Esme disliked his terse order. She disliked his eagerness to be alone with Sophrona even more.
Her smile was a tease. "Leave so soon?" she asked with mock astonishment. "Before anything has even happened? Now, that would be foolish."
"Nothing is going to happen," Cleav answered, his words cold and precise.
"Nothing?" Esme sighed loudly in disappointment. "If that's all that gentlemen do, save to graces, I can't imagine why any man would want to be one!"
"What do you mean?"
“I mean the boys on the mountain, the ones that court the twins, are always sparking and trying to steal a kiss."
She leaned forward, lying on her stomach upon the thick, burly limb. She raised her legs to drape leisurely along the rough brown bark.
"It looks to me that gentlemen don't have near so much fun."
Bending her knee saucily, she waved one long bare foot in the air. Her wide-eyed grin was downright impertinent.
"Instead of sparking, you're Bible-talking. Do you truly care about what kind of critter was in the Garden of Eden?"
As Cleav gazed up at the long-limbed beauty in the tree, there was no doubt in his mind what kind of animal the devil would have used to tempt him.
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