The cat waited patiently on the step and she let it inside. Then, allowing the screen door to close noisily behind her, Jenny sat down on the edge of the porch to nurse her coffee. Isabelle stood next to the watering trough, her right arm working the pump handle, forcing water from beneath the earth to fill the bucket, which she’d hung on the pitcher as it filled. She lifted it, dumping the contents into her washtub, and then turned to Jenny.
“I thought you’d sleep the morning away. Mr. Shay said not to wake you when he left.”
“Where’s Marshall?” Jenny asked, her mind working furiously. Shay had gone. But, where? Out to the fields with Noah?
“Noah and the boys took him along on the wagon,” Isabelle said. She walked to the porch and grinned. “You musta been sleepin’ hard.”
Jenny shrugged, and bent her head to sip more of the hot brew. “He didn’t wake me.” And wasn’t that the truth, she thought ruefully. For all she knew, he might have slept with Marshall or on the sofa. Except for the fact that his pillow held the impression where his head had rested all night.
“Did he say when he’d be back?” she asked idly.
Isabelle was silent and Jenny felt a warmth creep up her throat, to settle on her cheeks. “Didn’t he tell you?” Her words were sharp and probing, and Jenny could only shake her head in reply.
“You mad at him?” Isabelle asked.
“We had a few words before I went to bed. He talked about going somewhere to find a young bull. He seemed to think that he could find a couple of heifers around here maybe, but the bull would be more difficult to locate. I don’t know which he’s planning on doing first, though.”
Isabelle nodded. “That’s about what he told Noah while he saddled up that stallion of his. I sent him along some bread and meat from yesterday’s dinner, and he left right at sunup.”
“Well,” Jenny said, rising and dumping the remains of her coffee on the ground. “I’d better get busy. Did you separate the milk yet?”
“No, I was just about to start the wash. You wanta help me carry out the copper tub?”
Within a few minutes, Isabelle was hard at work with the scrub board and a thick bar of lye soap, working on the men’s shirts. “Zora’s bringin’ hers and Caleb’s stuff up after a while. I think she’s lonesome for her mama, now that she’s got their place all fixed up. Sure would be nice if Eli’d let the woman come to visit.”
Jenny lingered, her mind working at something she’d stewed over since the rainstorm the day before. There was no way to ask politely, she decided, and Isabelle was the one most likely to know. “Is Zora in the family way?” she asked. “It’s hard to tell with the dresses she wears. They’re in worse shape than mine. But when I saw her yesterday she was soaked to the skin, and she sure looked like I did when I was about halfway through carrying Marshall.”
Isabelle nodded, her hands ceasing their movement against the corrugated board. “Caleb told me about it when I asked him this morning.” Her eyes were troubled as she met Jenny’s gaze. “I don’t know if Eli was mad about that, or if he’d just been throwing a general fit over the whole idea of her gettin’ married.” She bent her head and picked up the shirt she was working on. “I thought I’d talk to her while we’re scrubbin’ clothes. I’m about the closest thing to a mama she’s got these days.”
“Well, at least she’ll have someone right at hand to deliver the baby when the time comes,” Jenny said with a soft smile of remembrance. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you when Marshall was born.”
“I’ve done my share of birthin’ babies,” Isabelle allowed. Her smile glittered brightly and her words were lilting as she spoke softly. “This one’ll be real special, Jen, even if they did sorta get the cart before the horse. My first grandchild. Noah’s as proud as if he had something to do with it.”
“I haven’t had my monthly since before Shay and I…” Jenny halted, biting at her lip, wondering how those words had slid so easily from her mouth. She’d only just recognized the absence of her menses in the past several weeks, and decided that the changes in her life had somehow delayed her cycle. Now she began to think there might be a more logical reason for the lack.
“I wondered,” Isabelle said. “You haven’t done any woman laundry in pretty near two months or so, have you?”
Jenny shook her head, stunned as the thoughts swirled through her mind.
“No wonder you slept half the day away,” Isabelle said archly. “I always dragged around for the first three months when I was carrying a baby under my apron.” She rose from her knees in front of the washtub and walked to where Jenny stood. Her index finger touched gently at Jenny’s eye and she drew down the lower lid, peering at the exposed membrane.
“Looks pretty white,” Isabelle said, nodding her head. “That’s a sure sign, girl.” And then she frowned. “Here I went and let you help me tote that copper tub out here. Never should have done it. You don’t be lifting anything heavy for the next couple of months, you hear?”
“I’m healthy,” Jenny answered, the words an automatic response. “I worked hard the whole time I carried Marshall.”
“Well, I’ll be lugging the baskets out of the garden for the next little while,” Isabelle said, turning back to the washing. “Won’t Mr. Shay have a surprise when he comes back home.” She laughed aloud, a triumphant sound. “Come next spring, we’ll have all kinds of new things gettin’ born around here. He told Noah we’d be ready to buy a couple of young sows from Doc Gibson the end of the week, and to go ahead and get us another shoat to butcher. We’ll be eatin’ high this winter, won’t we?”
“I thought he was going to get a pair and breed them.”
Isabelle shook her head. “Changed his mind, I guess. Noah said it’s dangerous to have a boar around. It’s just as easy to have Doc Gibson bring his over when the men get ready to breed the sows.”
“Are Noah and the boys going to butcher right away?”
“No,” Isabelle said, wringing out the last of the shirts she’d scrubbed. She turned to dump them in the rinse tub, then rose, walking to the porch to pick up a pile of work pants. “Mr. Shay said to wait till he comes back. He said they’ll pen up the shoat and feed him good, fatten him up for a while first.”
Jenny walked past her and went into the springhouse, thankful for the cool shade the interior provided. A baby. She should have recognized the signs, few as there were. There was no morning sickness to cope with yet, and her mind recoiled from that memory. She’d hung over a slop jar more than once before Marshall was born. For almost two months, in fact, regular as the sunrise, she could count on wakening with waves of nausea sending her to the covered pail in the corner of her bedroom.
Maybe this time would be different. Then, she’d been dealing with Carl’s leaving and the fear of facing childbirth alone. Her days had been spent in hard work and her nights in mourning the loss of life as she’d known it for twenty years. Marshall’s coming had not been cause for true celebration. Although his birth had given her new reason to put her heart and soul into this place, to preserve the land for his inheritance.
Now…She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Would Shay welcome the news? It could hardly come as a surprise, given the nights they’d spent in each other’s arms.
He hadn’t kissed her goodbye. That bit of painful knowledge came to the forefront of her mind, and she bowed her head. She’d angered him more than she’d realized, and he’d ridden away without allowing her to speak those words that prefaced every parting.
Be careful. Take care of yourself.
Spoken almost as a charm, as if they carried with them some sort of magic that would wrap the traveler in safety, she’d heard them all her life as folks came and went from her childhood home. They rang in her mind now, as she’d called them after Carl. She heard them anew as she remembered leaving home the day of her wedding, when her mother had whispered them in her ear. And now Shay had left, and she’d been prevented from wishing him well.
A chill passed over her. “Just a goose walking over my grave,” she scoffed, inhaling deeply as she turned to the task of separating the cream and setting about with the job of churning butter. And yet, her heart yearned, wishing she could transport herself back twenty-four hours, recall the words she had spoken with such a harsh tongue.
She moped for the next two days, working, staying busy, but aching for Shay’s return.
Joseph worked close to the house during the long days, building a pigpen for the sows and a smaller pen for the shoat. “Mr. Shay’ll likely be back tomorrow,” he predicted to Jenny as she watched him hammer in a final nail. With ease, he righted the feed trough he’d put together and set it in place next to the fence. “I’ll fix up a lean-to and lay some straw in the morning.”
“You’ll be building a cabin for yourself to live in one of these days, won’t you?” she asked. Her forearms rested on the fence he’d constructed, and her gaze swept the work he’d done with such ease and skill.
Joseph grinned up at her. “I got my eye on a pretty gal, Miss Jenny. I’m gettin’ sick of sleepin’ in the tack room. Pa says I’m old enough to have my own place.”
“Are you planning to stay on here?” she asked, already confident of his reply.
He nodded. “Family’s too hard to come by to throw them away and move off somewhere else. There’s nobody who’ll do for you like your own folks.” He rose and gathered his tools, placing them in a denim bag. “And one of these days, it’ll be my turn to take care of my ma and old Noah.”
Jenny thought of the man she’d left behind, for the second time, only a few weeks ago. Jonah Harrison needed looking after, and her resolve built as she thought of bringing him home with her. Shay would agree. She knew, as surely as night followed day, he would back her in this. She turned toward the house, her gaze seeking the avenue, where surely Shay would appear today. If he’d found the heifers he looked for, he’d return soon.
Zora was at the house, peeling potatoes for dinner, and she looked up quickly as Jenny came in the door. “Isabelle told me to help inside,” she said. “She don’t want me in the fields when it’s so hot.”
“Isabelle’s right,” Jenny told her. “You’ll be worn out when we all start picking cotton next week. Everyone has to pitch in then.” She walked on through the kitchen and across the corridor to her room. The nightgown she’d begun last evening waited for her and she picked it up, gathering scissors and her spool of thread into her apron pocket. The window beckoned and she stood before the open expanse wishing for a cooling breeze, but the white curtains hung limply in the heat.
It would be cooler under the oak tree, she decided, and turned to seek out the comfort of the wooden swing Shay had built. The grass was deep under her feet and grasshoppers jumped from her path as she disturbed their hiding places. From the field beyond the pasture she could see the men moving about, and then Marshall’s slight form jumped atop the wagon bed and he waved in her direction.
She lifted her hand in greeting. Isabelle had told the boy to find some corn for dinner, if there was any left fit for the table. It was time for him to carry them to the house, and Jenny wondered if he would be able to tote them all. Perhaps Noah would help. Even as she watched, Marshall jumped from the wagon and disappeared from sight, the tall cornstalks concealing his progress.
The swing moved at her nudging and she settled into one corner, opening the fabric she’d folded the night before. The gown was almost done, only the buttonholes to be stitched and the hems to be sewn. Isabelle had shown her how to circle the slits she’d cut for buttons to pass through, and now she bent her head to ply her needle with care, catching the thread and tugging it in place.
From the field a sharp cry caught her attention and she glanced up, her needle piercing her finger as she moved quickly. Lest a drop of blood stain her gown, she pushed the material aside and sucked at her fingertip, rising to see what the men were about. Caleb shouted a command and Joseph answered him, pushing his way through the rows of corn, disappearing in the direction Marshall had gone only moments before.
Marshall. The sound of his name rang like a church bell in her mind, and Jenny heard it as through a mist. Whether by a mother’s intuition or simply a sixth sense that served as a warning, she knew that her son was in danger. The gown tossed aside, she picked up her skirts and ran.
Across the grassy area beneath fruit trees to where the pasture fence blocked her path, she raced without thinking. Her lungs ached with the effort of breathing as she climbed the pasture fence, and she bent low for a moment, hands on her knees as she caught her breath. Then, as she lifted her head, Joseph appeared just beyond the expanse of grazing area where the horse and cow spent their days.
He carried a limp bundle in his arms, and Jenny’s heart paused for an almost imperceptible moment, then resumed pounding with ferocious strength against her breastbone. Marshall’s arm hung limply, his small form held tightly to Joseph’s chest as the tall, long-legged man hurdled the fence and ran toward the house. Jenny turned in her tracks, seeing the direction Joseph took, and retraced her steps.
Isabelle was at the door, and she held it wide for Joseph’s entrance. Jenny’s mouth opened as her feet flew over the parched earth, and she heard the sound of her son’s name cried into the wind, only dimly aware that it was her own throat that sounded the wailing agony aloud.
And then she was there, bursting through the doorway, into her kitchen. Marshall lay on the floor, Joseph on his knees beside him, bending over the boy’s leg. Joseph lifted his head and spat on the floor, then bent again and took Marshall’s flesh into his mouth.
“Snakebite.” Isabelle spoke the single word, her hand holding a small knife, its blade stained red, and Jenny recognized it as the one Zora had been using to peel vegetables.
“What kind?” she asked, her heart pounding in a relentless rhythm. She clutched at her chest with one hand, as if she could cease its rapid beat, and felt the heavy weight of despair fall upon her shoulders.
Joseph spat again. “Not a cottonmouth,” he muttered, then bent to his task.
Marshall’s eyes were open, his lips pressed tightly together. A trembling seized him, even as Jenny watched, and he shivered violently.
“Watch he don’t have a fit,” Zora said quickly. “My least-size brother got snakebit and went into fits, right off.”
“Hush!” Isabelle said, her voice sharp as she glared at the girl. “Marshall’s just scared, is all. He’s gonna be fine. Probably just a garden snake bit him. Joseph’s just makin’ sure.” Yet, her eyes were dark with fear as she looked up at Jenny. “Y’all better be prayin’, just in case,” she said. “He’s not but a little mite.”
Noah stood in the doorway behind her and Jenny moved from his path. His big hand rested on her shoulder, as if he would lend strength. “I’m sorry, Miss Jenny. I just sent him off to pick the corn for dinner before we headed back up to the barn. Just like always. I told him watch for snakes and don’t go too far.” He wiped sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve and dealt her a look fraught with sorrow. “I heard it rattle, Miss Jenny.”
“It’s not your fault, Noah,” she said quickly, astounded that her voice was so calm, so steady. Joseph backed away, still kneeling, but giving Jenny room beside him. She sat on the floor, her hands touching her son, registering the chill of his skin, the pallor of his face. Bending low, she kissed his cheek, then his forehead, a calm settling over her. And her heart sent a petition to heaven as she held Marshall’s hand in hers.
Isabelle came with a quilt and covered him, and the boy nodded, a mere whisper escaping his lips. “Where’s my new papa?”
So forlorn a plea, Jenny thought, as she tried in vain to form a reply. Where indeed was his papa?
Caleb’s feet resounded on the porch as he leaped there from the ground. “Man comin’ on horseback,” he said through the open door. “Looks like it might be Mr. Shay. There’s a couple animals followin’ him.”
“Run on down and fetch him,” Noah told him. “The boy wants him here.”
And so do I. The thought was fervent, and she sent another entreaty after the first, with a note of thanksgiving for Shay’s return. As if he’d been sent by a heavenly messenger, and that thought didn’t seem too preposterous right now, she decided.
In moments, Shay was in the kitchen, tossing his hat in the corner. He knelt by Marshall, and met Jenny’s gaze, his own eyes dark and forbidding. “What happened?” Even as he spoke the query, he reached for the boy, touching him as had Jenny, his forehead, his hands and then leaning closer to peer at the bite on his shin.
“Get it all out?” he asked, scanning the men, seeking the one who’d suctioned the wound with his mouth, even though he might have risked his own life for the child.
“Yessir, Mr. Shay,” Joseph answered. “I drew blood three times.” He glanced toward the spot where he’d emptied his mouth over and over, where even now Isabelle was scrubbing with a rag and lye soap. “I don’t know what got him. Sounded like a rattler, but it looked like a pine snake to me. They rattle, too. Anyway, I wasn’t takin’ any chances. A fella as little as Marshall can get sick from less.”
Shay’s look was level, and he nodded. “You have my thanks, Joseph.” He bent over Marshall again. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Marsh. Something told me to hurry home this morning, but I should have run the legs off those cows, and gotten here sooner.”
Marshall attempted a grin, but his mouth was rigid with fear and his voice was a whimper. Shay placed his face beside the boy’s, turning to kiss the downy cheek. His big hands gripped the narrow shoulders, and he spoke quietly. “I’m going to move you, Marsh. Just into your room, and on your own bed. Then your mother and Isabelle are going to put drawing poultices on your leg and make sure we get every bit of that snake’s spit out of you. If it was a real bad snake, you’d be sick by now, son. I think Joseph’s right and it was a pine snake. You should be right as rain by morning.”
The Seduction of Shay Devereaux Page 18