Behaving Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  But with a cry, she twisted away from him—away from the hand that softly cupped her hip, away from the kiss he could see she wanted, away from the truth of his arguments. “No!”

  And, low-down cardsharp or not, aching for her or not, Jack let her pull away.

  “You are an unfeeling cad!” she accused, backing away. Apparently she put distance between them over giving him the slap he knew he deserved.

  “I came here to tell you, in person, to stay away from us,” she announced, running shaking hands down the sides of her gown, backing away. She bumped into a table but refused to turn her back on him. “Stay away from my pupils. Stay away from my aunt. Stay away from me.”

  “I may know you better than you think,” he insisted. “I know that suffocating yourself for fear of making a mistake is a lot worse than actually making one.”

  She stopped at the door, eyes brimming with pain and thus paining him, too. “No,” she whispered.

  “It isn't. And you don't know me at all.”

  Then she spun away from him, escaped to her proper, regimented little world—a world he'd vowed never to return to.

  Tarnation.

  “You think he meant to kiss you?” asked Melissa, dipping water out of the rain barrel and into the bucket Audra held.

  Jack Harwood's face floated before Audra's unfocused gaze, his blue eyes almost black with an emotion that looked unnervingly like hunger. Even more disturbing, instead of frightening her, his gaze had sparked an answering hunger within herself. His hand at her side felt oddly protective, oddly gentle ... for a masher's. His coat had smelled of the mercantile, a delicious mixture of new merchandise, clean wood, apples, and a faint, familiar whiff of tobacco. Perhaps the tobacco, which she associated with her father, explained why she had not pulled away immediately.

  Or perhaps respectability proved a greater challenge than Audra had feared.

  “I know he meant to kiss me,” she corrected, bracing the first of their two pails against her knee as its weight increased. “Right in the store—in front of Mr. Hamilton!”

  “I can't believe Mr. Hamilton would stand for it!”

  “Perhaps he would not have.” But suspicion whispered that perhaps she should not hurry to see people in so favorable a light. Jack Harwood had taught her that.

  She put down the first bucket, lifted the second with the protection of her leather work gloves, and listened to the metallic ring of water tipped into it from Melissa's dipper. She'd rather not think of Jack as having anything valid to teach. The things he had dared say to her ...

  “Well, good riddance to bad rubbish,” decided Melissa. She sloshed water in her hurry to finish the task and get them out of the chill wind. “Sorry.”

  Audra smiled acceptance, too grateful for the friendship to mind a little damp. For almost a week she had lived with the sharp memory of her encounter at the store, which overrode even her disappointment in Jack and her regret at her own gullibility.

  How could she have allowed such an unwise friendship as one with a—

  “Have you ever been kissed?” asked Melissa, and Audra lost her grip on the second pail.

  It fell to the ground, drenching both their skirts. “Melissa!”

  “The widow Cribb can't overhear,” insisted Melissa with a laugh, rescuing the bucket and handing it to Audra. Then, leaning deeply over the rain barrel's edge, she collected the last of their water, one foot off the ground and her voice echoing. “I just wondered, is all .”

  Aunt Heddy and Claudine had left Candon for the weekend to see Claudine's father about her recent misbehavior. Neither Audra nor Melissa knew if the girl would return or not.

  “At least wait until we go inside!” Audra again propped the bucket on her damp-skirted knee and noticed that she would now have to polish her shoes.

  “There's nobody to hear us but the animals.”

  But Audra took comfort in repeating one of her father's sayings: “Better safe than sorry.”

  She and Melissa were using their weekend of autonomy to pamper themselves in a way that, while not immoral, would likely annoy Aunt Heddy. They were treating their skin with buttermilk and taking the time not only to wash their long hair but to treat the ends with a special family recipe, to soften it before a final rinse in herb-scented rainwater. Now they added to the morning's dissolution by laying their damp dresses and petticoats out to dry and continuing their toilette in their wrappers. For the first time since she'd left Wyoming, Audra got to talk girl-talk. “Yes,” she finally admitted, pouring warm water over Melissa's hair. “I've been kissed.”

  When Melissa tried to sit up with a squeal, Audra pushed the girl's head back over the washtub. "It was all very proper," she insisted, to set a good example, and continued to carefully ladle lavender-scented water onto her friend's blond hair. "His name was Peter Connors and he was my beau. He kissed me on the cheek at my fifteenth birthday party."

  Odd, how tame that now seemed. It once had been the most romantic thing ever to happen to her.

  “You have a beau!”

  “Had a beau,” Audra corrected, squeezing the excess water from Melissa's hair. She steeled herself against the familiar sense of panic at the thought of the scandal, but time and distance seemed to be leaching its power. “I am a teacher now! Teachers mustn't have beaus.”

  'Teachers mustn't court—that does not mean they can't have beaus back home." Melissa accepted a muslin towel to further dry her hair.

  Audra poured more rainwater into the big pot on the stove to warm, then bent to use the water left in the tub to dampen her own hair and start the process Melissa had just finished.

  Melissa snatched the tub out from under her. “No!” Then, at Audra's surprise, she added, “The widow Cribb isn't here today—you deserve to have fresh.”

  Touched that Melissa had noticed her aunt's stinginess with the bathwater, Audra still protested.

  “We have fresh water for the rinse; no reason to create more work before ...”

  But Melissa had already carried the tub outside to empty. With a sigh, Audra picked up her silver-backed brush and began to draw it through her reddish-blond hair until the water on the stove warmed. Not that anybody would notice her hair anytime soon...

  Melissa returned with the empty washtub, her face flushed from the chill.

  “Sit by the stove,” insisted Audra. “You ought not have gone outside with wet hair.”

  Melissa rolled her eyes, but did as told. “I long to have a beau,” she shared. “To step out together on Sundays. To dance all night in his arms.”

  Checking the water, Audra thought about stepping out with Peter, dancing late into the night.

  She'd felt proud to be on his arm, flattered that he had chosen her. But she could not remember feeling anything powerful enough to merit the dreaminess in Melissa's tone.

  Not about Peter.

  “Have you ever done more than kiss?” asked her friend now.

  “Melissa!”

  But they were not teacher and pupil today—merely two girls boarding together—and Melissa laughed at Audra's shock. “Claudine has done more, and you're older than she.”

  “Melissa!”

  “We know she has! We all but saw them!”

  Too much this week, Audra had thought about. . . well. . . what her sisters, when they spoke of it at all , simply called “that.” Did all married couples really do that? What about unmarried girls like Claudine? What about women who took money for it? Was it as horrid as it looked?

  She also remembered the hunger in Jack Harwood's eyes, the press of his hand on her hip, and her face heated. “I think,” she said carefully, dipping out enough water to wet her hair, “that should stay between Aunt Heddy, Claudine, and Mr. Reynolds.”

  She used her mother's special hair soap, sent all the way from Wyoming.

  “I don't blame Claudine,” Melissa admitted, unwrapping her own hair and beginning to comb it. “If I were to kiss anybody, I'd kiss Jerome Newton. He surely is a go
od-looking boy.”

  “They both behaved disgracefully! Ladies should not give favors so freely.”

  “But surely we have to trust someone with our ... favors. If we're ever to marry, that is.”

  Audra carefully washed away the soap, then applied the conditioning lotion to the length of her hair before wrapping it in a towel Melissa had discarded. Then she broke pieces of rosemary into the now-hot rainwater on the stove.

  She was in no position to give advice about whom to trust with one's affections.

  “Don't you want to marry?” insisted Melissa, standing to help her. “Someday?”

  Audra pictured her parents in quiet conversation, her oldest sisters' shining eyes as they looked at their husbands—and the way she'd felt when Jack Harwood grinned at her.

  She snapped herself out of that foolish reverie. “Of course I do!”

  “Then why are you in Texas if you had a beau in Wyoming?”

  Audra had been reaching for a bottle of vinegar; now she clutched it so tightly her knuckles went white. Here it came again—the scandal. Would it haunt her forever? Or might she possibly disarm it with the assistance of a friend who could help her follow the rules?

  She put down the vinegar. "I would like to tell you something. But you must promise not to ever tell anyone else. especially not Aunt Heddy."

  Melissa's eyes rounded at the seriousness in Audra's tone. “I swear!”

  Still, Audra hesitated. She'd hurt herself so badly in the past, especially the recent past, trusting too readily. On the other hand, she and Melissa had lived in the same house for a month now.

  Though teacher and pupil, they'd found an ease between them, as if they could move from being friends to something closer to surrogate sisters. And, oh, how Audra missed her sisters.

  “Would you like me to spit-swear?” asked Melissa, eyes gleaming as she raised her palm toward her mouth. It seemed so like something Audra's sister Laurel would have done, Audra could not help laughing as she grabbed the younger girl's wrist.

  “No! I trust you. Truly.”

  “Then tell me!”

  So, adding the tangy vinegar to the spiced rinse water and leaving it to simmer, Audra made herself remember the end of the respectable life she had once known.

  Peter Connors had courted her for some time. He had offered to walk her home from school from the time she turned twelve, but she'd explained that she could not have beaus until she turned fifteen—and so he'd waited. occasionally he had tempted her with a surprise gift, or “accidental y”

  met her in town, but each time she'd reminded him of the rules and, graciously, he'd obeyed. Still, by the time she turned fifteen and Peter's courtship official y began, complete with a kiss on her cheek, no one else came courting. Everyone knew that Peter had set his cap for her.

  Luckily, she thought Peter Connors one of the nicest, most polite boys in town.

  For almost a year they'd attended parties and dances together, went on Sunday-afternoon drives, and sat together in her family's parlor, where her parents or sisters could chaperone. Audra's mother fretted that she would marry too young. Her plainspoken father sometimes had low words with Peter, which had always ended in Peter's wholehearted agreement to whatever instructions he had received. Audra's five sisters, older and younger alike, asked questions like Melissa's—had Audra and Peter kissed? Had they more-than-kissed?

  But of course they had done nothing of the sort. Audra's three older sisters seemed to have attracted the most, well, unsuitable of men. She saw how that upset their father and determined never to bring such distress to her family. Peter sometimes held her hand, though he let go before anyone noticed. Anything more, they could reserve for their engagement, then their marriage.

  But then, somehow, something went wrong.

  “He'd gone away to college,” she told Melissa now as they began to mix honey, lard, and wax to soak their fingernails. "To become a banker, like his father, And when he came back for the Christmas holidays, he seemed different."

  “Different how?”

  Audra struggled for a gentle way to frame Peter's change. “Less ... polite.”

  And Melissa's eyes widened with understanding. “Oh.”

  Sitting with her in the parlor, left alone for a moment, Peter had tried to kiss her again—on the mouth! When she pushed him away with a surprised protest, he'd scowled at her as if she had misbehaved. Walking her home from church, later in the week, Peter boldly put his arm around her waist, with the same result. Only later did he offer a begrudging apology.

  She should have told her parents; she knew that now. But... this was Peter! And she was one of Jacob Garrison's daughters. Everyone in town knew that to accost one of the Garrison girls was to take one's life into one's own hands.

  Surely she was overreacting.

  Still, when Peter borrowed his father's buggy for a Sunday-afternoon ride, Audra had felt misgivings. Her sister Kitty had even asked if something was wrong. But Peter's family, taking Sunday dinner with hers, had stood right there. How could she decline his invitation without making a scene? Besides, she had gone riding with him in the past. And as late in the afternoon as it was, they would not go far. Peter agreed to her father's usual instructions that they stay on the main road, where folks could watch out for them. What could it harm?

  But despite his promise, Peter had barely left the town limits before he tried to take a side road off toward the river and its concealing trees. When Audra protested, he argued that it would be fun.

  Only when she threatened to jump from the moving buggy did he reluctantly pull the horse to a stop and set the brake, still blessedly in the open.

  She remembered feeling relieved that she need not embarrass them both. "He said it would be more romantic to do it in private,“ she told ”Melissa now, keeping her voice steady. “And then he asked me to marry him.”

  At least Melissa's face showed doubt as to an appropriate reaction. Some of Audra's school friends hadn't understood why she would hesitate, much less feel somehow let down by the long-awaited, now anticlimactic proposal. They seemed to feel that the rest of the afternoon had somehow been Audra's fault. That Melissa understood better reaffirmed Audra's decision to share the story.

  “So what did you say?” asked her friend now.

  “I said we should wait until he finished college before making so big a decision.” She'd hoped that once he moved home, Peter might again become the safe, quiet boy she'd known most of her life.

  That strange desperation he'd brought home for the holiday frightened her.

  “What did he say?”

  More than anything except the scandal itself, that had most upset Audra. She'd answered as properly as she knew how. She'd made her alternate suggestion in her gentlest voice. She had not robbed him of al hope. But Peter had refused to accept her answer.

  He'd argued with her, as if she did not know her own mind. He'd pleaded with her, as if mere sympathy would sway her— and about so important a decision! He'd shown her the ring he'd bought, as though she would change her mind for a piece of jewelry. When Mr. Scott, riding out toward his ranch, called to them to make sure they hadn't had trouble—parked there off the main road as they were—Peter had barely contained his rage at the interruption.

  Once we 're engaged, we can be together, Peter had insisted. When Audra, confused, pointed out that they were together, he'd laughed a surprisingly ugly laugh.

  Melissa waited, fascinated.

  “He took it badly,” Audra summarized. “So I asked him to take me home.”

  Melissa nodded her support at the decision.

  “But . . .” Here came the hard part. “He was angry, and he whipped his gelding into a canter. I tried to jump out of the buggy, but fell back into the seat, and it started running ...”

  Oh, but she'd been frightened! The wind had roared past her ears, torn off her bonnet, stolen her hairpins. The buggy had bounced and tipped horribly as it hit a rut here, a rock there—at one point th
e gelding had raced right over a small coulee, and Audra had shut her eyes, sure they would die, but instead they had flown over it—flown!—and landed with a lurch that should have broken the axle. Peter had laughed, tried to hold her protectively, but she'd beaten him off of her with her fists, like a scene on the cover of a dime novel. She'd grabbed the reins from him, tried to pull in the horse, but it felt like trying to pull back a train.

  Only then did Peter realize they were out of control.

  He took the reins back and tried to stop the gelding himself, then yelled curses at it when he hadn't the strength. Finally Audra had managed to pry the right rein out of his hand, and shouted over the noise for them each to take one. Together, with their joint strength, they somehow slowed the horse, then stopped him.

  In the middle of the rolling Wyoming foothills.

  At least Peter had had enough sense stay as far on his side of the seat as possible. Only knowing that the buggy would be easier for the menfolk to track than she would be, walking alone, and that December in Wyoming was no time to go afoot, had kept her from stalking away from him.

  Now in Texas, unbelievably far from that horrible afternoon, Audra wiped her hands clean, then stood to set the rinse water off to cool, to strain the herbs out of it. “By the time my brother found us, the sun had already set,” she told Melissa calmly, as if she had not thrown herself, weeping, into Thaddeas's arms.

  “No!” Like any well-bred girl, Melissa understood what that meant.

  Audra nodded. “My family knew that we hadn't... that I...” No, she could not even say what she'd escaped, only to be accused of anyway. “But my reputation ...”

  “Just for staying out after dark?”

  “Several hours had passed before anyone found us.” She decided not to mention that when Peter had returned home from college four months later, he'd had a wife with him. The new Mrs.

  Connors dressed and spoke crudely, raising serious doubts about her background, and she was quite obviously “in the family way.” Obviously Peter had flouted the dictates of society, and if he would make a baby with this new bride of his, before their marriage, then he might have behaved so with Audra.