“They look good, Sam. The best ever,” she said. “If it all makes, we’ll have a bumper crop.”
“Oh, Miss Mary…” Sam sighed and shut his eyes in pleasure. “I can hardly stand thinkin’ about it. If the good Lord’ll just keep the good weather comin’ through the pickin’, we goin’ have us some money in the bank.”
“We’ve been blessed all right,” Mary agreed. “Rain at the right intervals and no late frosts. But I’m like you. I won’t rest easy until the last row is picked.”
“Then we can start worrying ’bout next year.” Hoagy chuckled, but his eye on Mary turned sharp and anxious. “That is, if a good wind don’t come along and blow you away first.”
Mary made no comment as the men replaced their hats and got in step beside her to walk to Sam’s cabin. “Mister Hoagy’s right, Miss Mary,” Sam said with the same expression of concern. “You got to start eatin’ ’fore you waste away. How’s ’bout stayin’ and havin’ dinner with us? Bella’s got a big pot a spring peas and backbone on the stove.”
They had reached the porch, where Sam’s wife was waiting for them. She had overheard her husband’s invitation and now added her own: “And I just gone and taken a blackberry pie out of the oven, Miss Mary.”
Hoagy watched her with hope-filled eyes. Mary knew he wanted her to say yes. It would be another two hours before he sat down to his own table, and then to eat a meal gone cold on the back of the stove. She could see the pie cooling on the sill of the open kitchen window, smelling of bubbling blackberries and buttery crust.
“Thanks just the same,” Mary said, “but we’ve got a few more houses to call on. Hoagy, you ready?” The sight of the pie and its fruity smell turned her stomach. Since her mother’s suicide, she could hardly abide the thought of food.
Sam and Bella followed Mary and the disappointed Hoagy into the breezeway that divided the house, where they were met by Daisy, the Johnsons’ fourteen-year-old daughter. “Mama, they’s a fancy automobile headed this way. I just seen it turn off the road.”
“One of them horseless carriages?” Bella said. “Who be comin’ out here to see us in one of them?”
Through the screen door, Mary saw the object of discussion draw to a stop beneath one of the pecan trees in the front yard.
“Why, it’s that Percy Warwick feller,” Hoagy said, his eye narrowing. “What you expect he’s doin’ out here?”
“I believe he’s come to see me,” Mary said. “You all remain here, and I’ll go see what he wants.”
He had finally run her to earth, Mary thought, already weary from the encounter to come. He’d apparently trailed her on her rounds, going from house to house to find her here. He lounged with crossed legs and arms by a new Pierce-Arrow that had replaced the one his father had held for him during the war.
“Hello, Percy,” she said, her greeting unenthusiastic. “I know why you’re here.”
“Ollie was right.” His gaze ran over her critically. “You do look more skeleton than flesh.”
“You’re making that up. Ollie would never say such a thing about me.”
“I’m paraphrasing, maybe. I believe he said ‘more bone than flesh’ after he saw you at your house the other night, but both are apt.”
She knew he was referring to Ollie’s waylaying her when she returned home to replace a harness for Shawnee. With relentless vigilance, he’d waited on her verandah each night hoping to catch her when she returned. “Ollie shouldn’t waste his evenings waiting for me, not after working all day at the store. He needs his rest.”
Percy unwound his legs and straightened up. “Well, you can appreciate his concern. He doesn’t understand why you’ve put yourself beyond the comfort of those who love you.”
But you understand, don’t you? Mary thought. He understood why she had cut herself off from everyone and lived like a hermit away from the house. He’d been privy to a scene that had changed her forever, and seeing him only reminded her of it and added to the crushing guilt she felt every waking minute. She was surprised to see him dressed in layabout clothes. It was a weekday, and typically he’d be wearing a business suit. Still, as always, he shone like a Greek god under the noonday sun, and ordinarily her pulse would be racing. But not now—not anymore.
“Ollie says you’ve moved into the Ledbetter house,” he said. “No wonder we never found you at home. Toby wouldn’t tell us a thing.” He grimaced as if he could picture the emptied, dirty house she returned to every night, the cast-off mattress and left-behind cans of soup she heated when she felt like eating. But at least she could enjoy the comforts of an indoor toilet.
“It was for convenience sake,” she said. “I sent Sassie to her daughter’s, and Toby has been looking after things at the house.”
Percy let out an exasperated sigh. “Mary, this has got to stop. I can’t stand what you’re doing to yourself.”
“You’ll have to.” She cast a nervous glance at Hoagy, impatient to get on with their rounds so he could have his dinner. “I know you and Ollie and your families are worried about me, but there’s nothing you can do about it. I am where I want to be, doing what I want to do. I don’t mean to sound like an ingrate after all you’ve done, but now I want to be left alone.”
“I can’t leave you alone.”
Conscious of Hoagy’s tuned ears, Mary hissed, “Percy, listen to me. There’s absolutely nothing you can do.”
“Yes, there is. That’s why I’m here. I have a proposal.”
“I’ve already heard it.”
“Not this one.” Percy moved closer, and a dogged flicker in his eye warned her not to step away. “Don’t you think you owe it to me to hear what I’ve got to say?”
Ah, there it was. Something to hold over her head for the rest of her life. But he was right. She did owe him. Always.
“If you’ll keep your voice down,” she said, her teeth gritted. “I don’t want this conversation discussed on every front porch in the county.”
“Then go tell Hoagy you have business in town and get in the car. I have a meal waiting for us. He can take your horse and buggy to his place, and we’ll pick it up later.”
She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I will not! I’ve got two more rounds, and then Hoagy and I have to discuss weeding schedules.”
He stepped closer. “You are coming with me or I will pick you up and throw you into the car. How would that be as a topic for front porch gossip?”
Mary knew he meant it. The glint in his eye indicated she had maybe a few seconds to decide. “All right!” she snapped, and whirled around to march back to the cabin, where three pairs of goggling eyes hastily withdrew behind the screen door. On the porch, Hoagy regarded her with curiosity. She saw that he’d heard enough of the conversation to deduce something was going on between her and the almighty Percy Warwick. “Hoagy, I’ll be driving back to town with Mr. Warwick,” she said, attempting an offhand tone. “You go on and finish up our rounds and then get yourself some dinner. I’ll pick up my rig at your place.”
Hoagy squinted at her. “Must be important for you to be leaving in the middle of the day.”
“That’s as may be,” she said, annoyed, “but I’ll be back this afternoon.” His face soured, and she read that to mean he’d have taken the rest of the day off if she weren’t returning. I’m firing his hide first chance I get, she thought as she strode back to the Pierce-Arrow and Percy.
“This visit of yours will be on the tongues of every tenant on the place by suppertime,” she said, plopping onto the passenger seat and slamming the door.
Percy grinned. “Well, hell, Mary, don’t you think we’ll be more interesting than boll weevils?”
Chapter Twenty-three
Once the dust of the road was billowing at their backs, Mary turned to Percy. “And just where are we going?”
“To the cabin. We’re going to have a picnic, drink something cool, talk.”
“The cabin…” A nerve jumped in the pit of her stomach. She rem
embered Percy mentioning the cabin as the place he’d like to stick her under the shower and soap her all over. It had been the day he’d caught her in the fields at Somerset looking a fright—a lifetime ago.
“I still use it for fishing and hunting.”
“And as a place to take your women, I suppose.”
He glanced at her. “If you like.”
“Well, I don’t like, Percy Warwick. I do not intend to become one of your women.”
“I don’t want you to become one of my women. I want you to become my wife.”
Now every nerve in her body was jumping. “That’s impossible.”
“I once thought so, but now I’m ready to compromise.”
She let out a little yelp of surprise. “Compromise? Is that what this proposal is about?”
“Uh-huh. I’ll tell you more after I’ve fed you.”
Mary willed her heart to a steady beat. They had been in this snare before. She recalled Percy’s words from that long-ago day at Somerset: Call it male conceit or arrogance, or the power of love, but I believe I can make you want to give up Somerset. Surely by now he knew he couldn’t. He ought to know that if her mother’s suicide had not deterred her commitment to Somerset, nothing he could say or do would. She’d lost too much, sacrificed too much. In a perverse way that Percy would never understand, she owed it to her mother to make the plantation a success. She would never agree to a compromise that would interfere with that goal.
His wife, he’d said, not his mistress. Why would he even want to marry her now? She would never expunge from her mind the sight of her mother’s body suspended by the cream strips she’d knitted for a hangman’s noose. Despite her grotesquely swollen face, her protruding tongue, there had been an unmistakable look of triumph on her lips. Percy could not have missed it when he’d cut her down.
A sound of regret escaped her throat. Percy heard it and asked quietly, “A shadow pass over your grave?”
“Something like that,” she said.
Mary had never been to the log cabin that Miles and Ollie and Percy had started building on the bank of Caddo Lake as boys of ten. The project had taken the whole of their summer that year and a number of subsequent summers and holiday vacations to complete and refine. She could still remember table discussions regarding its construction and furnishings, and her mother’s words of caution: Now, Miles, remember that it must be a place where you wouldn’t behave any differently than you would in your own room at home.
Even at her ages of five and six, Mary had thought that an inane admonition, judging that the reason the boys built the place was to behave precisely the way they wouldn’t at home. She’d grown up thinking of it as a highly secret, exclusive, male hideaway—a place where the boys took girls and drank spirits.
“So this is the cabin,” she said when Percy drew up before the rough pine door. “I’ve never been here before. Not in all these years.”
“Ever been curious about it?”
“No.”
“Right,” he said.
They entered a twenty-by-forty-foot room partitioned into a kitchen, sitting area, and curtained bedroom consisting of one double bed and two bunks. Percy left her to study her surroundings while he went to retrieve the “something cool” from the well. She recognized a cast-off couch from her father’s study, a couple of chairs that had once graced the Warwicks’ back parlor, and a washstand and mirror of French design, undoubtedly a contribution of the DuMonts. The cabin was clean and cool. She had expected it to be a hot, dark, airless cave infested with flies and mosquitoes and Lord knew what creepy crawlies from the riverbank. Instead, despite the shade of the trees, light flowed in from the tightly screened windows, and ceiling fans moved the crosscurrents of air that drifted in from the lake.
The small table in the kitchen area had been set for two, complete with napkins and a bowl of spring flowers. The carefully placed items, arranged by Percy’s muscled, lumberman hands, moved her in a curiously tender way.
“Why have you brought me here, Percy?” she asked when he returned with a bottle of wine he had chilled by lowering it in a bucket into well water. “Alcohol is not going to help your case, whatever it is. And you better hope Sheriff Pitt doesn’t come poking around out here and find a bottle of that cooling in your well.”
Percy was busy uncorking the wine. “The sheriff knows better than to look where he shouldn’t.”
“You’re saying the Warwicks are exempt from the law?”
She regretted the remark as soon as she’d said it. Percy had the grace to say nothing, allowing his silence to remind her that the Tolivers, too, did not feel obliged to abide by every letter of the law, as events had recently proved. “Only those laws it’s nobody’s business if we break,” he said, filling two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc. “Sit down, Mary. A glass of wine isn’t going to hurt you. You’re wound tighter than a watch spring. Drink up while I set out our picnic. Then we’ll talk.”
“I’d rather talk now,” Mary said, taking the glass with no intention of drinking it. “Why do you want to marry me, Percy? Especially… after all you’ve seen?”
He guided her to a chair, where he took her glass, set it aside, and gently pushed her down onto the seat. Then he pulled up another chair so that their knees almost touched. “Listen to me carefully, Mary,” he said, taking her hands. “I know what you believe I’ve been thinking. You’re wrong. You didn’t cause your mother to take her life. It may be true that she would still be alive if your father had written his will differently, but he didn’t. That’s not your fault, either.”
Stunned, Mary sputtered, “How—how can you deny that you’ve always blamed me for Papa leaving Somerset to me? It’s been the cause of all our arguments. And don’t tell me you don’t hold me responsible for Mama taking to her bed and—and dying. You know you have.”
“My argument with you has been about your obsession with Somerset to the exclusion of everything and everyone else, but your mother did not have to die because of it. She did not have to languish in her bed. She could have chosen to live, to love you and support you no matter who your father favored in his will.”
Mary gawked at him. “But you believe Somerset should have gone to her!”
“Of course I do. But I also believe her death should not have been a consequence of your father’s action, and it was despicable of her to leave you thinking it was.”
Hot, incredulous tears shot to her eyes. “You… you really mean that, Percy?”
“Oh, honey, with all my heart,” he said, standing and pulling her into his arms, cradling her like a child rescued from a bad dream. “I’m an idiot for not realizing what you must have been thinking. That’s one reason I brought you out here, to clear up that misperception. We have our differences, but your mother’s death isn’t one of them.”
“Oh, Percy…” She sighed, letting her resistance fall. His arms were a dangerous place to be, but what utter heaven to have them around her, offering refuge and strength and… forgiveness.
He kissed her between the eyes and set her back from him. “I’m feeling nothing but bones here,” he said, kneading her shoulders. “Let’s get some food into you, then we’ll finish this discussion. Drink your wine. It will whet your appetite.”
Mary sat down again, feeling light and unburdened, even a stirring of hunger. She watched Percy set to work in the kitchen alcove, humming quietly. He was so comfortable with himself, she thought, sipping her wine. He seemed to live life effortlessly, rolling with its waves like a seaworthy ship. Was it possible for them to be happy if they married? He was a man of steel, like her father. Vernon Toliver had needed no alloy to complete him, the reason he could afford to marry a woman like her mother. But she was made of sterner stuff. It was inevitable that she and Percy would clash… steel against steel.
The alcohol was beginning to take effect. She must watch herself. This was the reason her mother had started drinking. To feel better, to stimulate her appetite, to dull her pain. “Need an
y help?” she called. He was at the counter, chipping at a block of ice melting in the sink.
“No. Sit there and relax.”
Yes, she would do that, Mary thought. She would enjoy these rare moments of peace. Settling more comfortably, she let her gaze wander about the objets d’art the boys had deemed worthy to drag from home. On one wall was an Indian chief’s headdress that had once hung in Miles’s bedroom. Mary thought of her brother with a sorrow that was like a dull, persistent ache. There had been no reply to the long letter she had written describing their mother’s last days. She had tried to make them sound happy, relating how Darla had sat in the parlor day after day and seemed content to knit the afghan with which she’d surprised her on her birthday.
“Chow’s on,” Percy announced, and Mary laughed when he bowed with mock formality and took her by the hand to lead her to the table. She made an effort not to make a face when she saw the heaped plates. Her stomach felt the size of a thimble.
“It looks… enticing,” she said, forking up a bite of the concoction on her plate, new to her palate. It was a salad of diced chicken, green grapes, and toasted almonds combined with a clear, sweet dressing that burst tart and refreshing in her mouth. After she’d chewed and swallowed, she closed her eyes in bliss. “Hmmm. Percy, this is delicious.”
He held out the breadbasket. “Try one of these.”
She helped herself to one of the light, buttery rolls in the shape of a crescent and bit into it. “Oh, my,” she said.
“They’re called croissants, one of the few pleasures I enjoyed in France. The DuMonts’ cook has taught our cook how to make them.”
She ate every bite of the salad and two of the croissants. At the meal’s end, she pushed away her plate and put her hands over her stomach. “I don’t know where I would put the peaches and cream, Percy. There’s absolutely no room in here.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “The cream’s on ice. We’ll have it with the peaches later.”
The mention of “later” brought Mary back to the reason he’d brought her out here. All through the meal Percy had steered the talk to news of local happenings, family, and friends while their knives and forks clinked companionably on the Willow Wood plates. The main topic of discussion had sat far off in the distance, like a potential rain cloud.
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