by Tara Brown
“Do you like it here?” I ask, trying to break the silence and delay the inevitable rejoining of the party.
He looks down on me and shakes his head. “I miss home.”
“Why don’t you go back?”
His lips curl into a grin. “I will. One day.” His voice grows serious, “How do you know Mr. Ryan? He isn’t from here?”
I knew it would come out eventually. I have dreaded telling him since I met him. I sigh and spill it, “My parents and the Ryans are making a marriage deal. It's more like a merger than a marriage. It's just how things are done down here for debs.”
His grip on my hand tightens. He turns me to face him. He ain't letting up with the Mr. Ryan annoyance. When he spins me, my shoes hit the grass with a thud. He lifts me to my tiptoes. “You're marrying him?” He's disgusted.
I gulp and nod. “Yeah, but I don’t want to.”
“Are you kidding me? You're joking? They'll sell you off to that little shit? What about us? What is this to you?” He looks at where our skin is touching.
I stammer, “I-I'm s-s-sorry. I sh-sh-should have said s-s-something. The deal ain't final. I'm fixing on getting out of the deal.”
He grips my arms tighter. “Deal? Deal? This is your future and you call it a deal? Are you insane? Are they? He tried to rape you. I was on my way to beat the living shit out of him when you got away. I saw everything. I was crossing the grass just as it happened. You can't marry that man, that boy.”
“I won't—don’t have a choice who they choose. All I can do is tell them I don’t want to.”
He lets go of my arms and turns away from me, fighting his anger. He covers his face and moans. He is angrier than I expected him to be.
I squint up at the house and wonder if anyone has seen me romping about on the grass, getting manhandled the entire party. I smooth my dress and tug the top of it up to cover my breasts that are spilling out.
I clear my throat and repeat myself, “I don't have a choice, Mr. Whitlock. I'm not free the way you are. My parents have a lot of say.”
He paces and runs his hands through his hair. Finally, he turns, anger is spread clear across his face. “You have a choice. You do. It's 1964 for Christ's sake. You are a grown woman.” He is shouting now and pointing to the sky. “The Civil Rights Act is going through this summer. Jesus. You Southern belles with your manners and breeding are about as stupid and ridiculous as a girl can get. You'll let them sell you off like cattle?” His words are spit at me.
I'm ashamed of myself for too many reasons to try to sort through them all at once. I sense a hardening look creep across my face. My lip quivers and my eyes water again, but I will not betray my emotions to him. I pick my shoes up from the grass and turn away. “Good evening.”
He grabs my arm. “Don’t you turn away from me.” My shoes go flying across the grass and my dress makes a tearing sound.
I shake my head softly. “You are acting like an ass. No different than Martin was.” I step away from him but he grips me harder.
There is desperation in his eyes. “Is that what you want? You want him? A savage who would take away your innocence on the back lawn of the governor's mansion?”
I can't blink. My eyes are brimming with their maximum capacity for tears. I manage a whisper, “No.”
He loses the control he has over his emotions and bends his face to kiss me with the kind of passion and intensity I have only dreamt of. When his lips meet mine, my eyes close involuntarily, forcing streams of wetness to slip down my cheeks. My lips are pressed against my teeth roughly.
He pulls me back. “You won't marry him. I don’t care who I have to kill; you won't marry him.” His accent is noticeable when he's angry, like the hold he has over it is undone by his emotions.
He lets me go and walks past me. He leaves me standing in the mist that is building in the humid air under the canopy of a massive black walnut tree.
I abandon the shoes where they are and march back toward the house. I walk past it and down the driveway. The lit torches make it easy for me to see where I'm going.
If my momma could see me she would disown me. What a fantastical daydream that would be.
Instead of taking the road, I cut through the hayfields that separate our plantations.
The tear in my dress has given me room to breathe, but it's still too tight. I unzip the back and slip the dress down my body. My white slip and bra practically glow in the dark, but I don’t care. Who is gonna see me? Who will even care about a girl running through the fields in a white slip?
I step away from the dress and break into a run. Ramón and I used to run barefoot a lot. Momma hated it. My shoe size went from a six to an eight. The running flattened my feet out, this was her theory. My theory was that my feet grew because I grew. If she coulda stunted my growth by the time I was twelve, I think she woulda. At eighteen, nearly nineteen, I'm too tall, too fat, and my feet are too big. She calls them manly. She calls everything about me manly.
Her criticism makes me run harder. I'm flying through the field. My toughened feet hit rocks and sticks and hay but it doesn’t hurt. It will tomorrow, but tonight my heart hurts and that takes precedence over any other pain.
Chapter 5
Danger, Lorelei!
You're in danger now!
Voices whisper with icy breath over my face.
I groan and roll away from the cold breath. I'm too tired to feel it against my face. There is warmth in my bed and I roll to it. I think it's Em until it too whispers to me, “Sleep, my love.”
It's like there is a battle on my bed. Cold on one side whispering of danger and warmth whispering of sleep. I choose the warmth and sigh in the warm whispers, “Sleep, Lorelei. My sweet, Lorelei.” The warm breath hits my face as a kiss is planted against my forehead.
I nuzzle into it, whispering back, “Emily?” Sometimes she sleeps with me. Sometimes when the whispers get to be too frightening, I scream out in my sleep and she comes to calm me.
“No. It's me,” a man's voice whispers back.
I freeze.
I know that voice.
I gulp and tiptoe my finger over the solid mass in the bed next to me. My heart is racing and my throat is dry. I open one eye to find the man who got angry with me and left me on the grass after calling me stupid. I'm nervous he’s here but more annoyed that he wounded my pride after making me like him. Like it matters more than him being in my bed.
“Lorelei, forgive me.” He pulls me into him and kisses the top of my head. “I'm sorry. I came to say sorry.”
I'm confused. I try to scream but there is no air. I push him away. I'm panicking, clawing at the bedding to escape. He pins me to him and shakes his head, putting a finger to my lips. “I came to explain.”
“No, get out of here.” I gulp. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“I know.” He kisses my hand. “I'm sorry I grabbed your arms like that and shook you, and got angry, and actually, the list is too long to say it all. Lorelei, I'm sorry. I can't even express how sorry I am for everything. I couldn't go to sleep thinking about it. I rescue you from that wanker and then I end up doing the same thing.”
In the darkness of the moonlit room, his sad eyes dissipate my fear. My body trembles. “How about sorry for sneaking into my bedroom? How did you even get in here?”
He points to the balcony. “Do you want me to be sorry for climbing in your window?”
I nod and lick my lips. My momma's bad habit is like a hereditary disease that always has my lips chapped.
“I’m not.” He lowers his face and kisses me. He presses my body against his and slides us both back into the bedding.
His fingers trail down my side, brushing softly along my hip.
His face is against mine and the cold whispers are nowhere to be found. The heat of him has overtaken the room and pushed away the cold.
He whispers into my nape, “I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry at all. You're mine.” His Scottish accent seems more noticeable.
I'm his. I have no denial inside me. I'm his. Body and soul. Two weeks doesn’t feel long enough, and yet it feels like an eternity. We have played chess and laughed and joked when he visited me in the hospital every day. I know him better than the man I am to marry.
“You have to stop this. It's inappropriate. I'm not this kind of girl. I've only known you for a few weeks,” I protest.
He kisses me again. “You feel it too, don’t you?”
I shake my head, the automatic response for a proper girl, denial of emotions.
He laughs. “Why are you kissing me back?”
“I don't know. To be polite,” I lie and squeeze my lips together.
“You feel it. We have a connection.” The warm softness of his kisses could feed me. I inhale his breath, it's familiar and sweet.
I sit up sharply. “No. No. No. This is improper.”
He grins. “I want you. All of you. Your virtue, your heart, your soul.” He says it all too loudly.
“Oh my gosh.” I put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh. My daddy will shoot you if he finds you here.”
His eyes sparkle with madness. “I'll kill him if he tries to separate us.”
He ain't kidding. I see that now. He scares me, finally. Finally, my body and mind have a sane reaction to him. I jerk away. “You have to stop threatening to kill people. You're scaring me.”
“I love you, Lorelei. Tomorrow I am asking your father for your hand. I have more money than the entire Ryan family put together. I will buy you if I have to.”
“You're insane. You can't love me already. You hardly know me,” I whisper as I watch his face. He's struggling with something.
“I know you. I have watched you for so long. I know you better than any man may claim to know a woman.” He's intense. I think he's telling the truth. I think he's been watching me. It's creepy—well, it damn well should be creepy and not sexy and weird in a way that makes my tummy twirl like a twister is going through it.
What is going on with me?
“Marry me.”
“W-w-what if I don’t want to marry you? I'm just getting used to the idea I may never marry. My whole life's been planned out for me, and now I feel free to choose. Maybe I'll be a schoolteacher like my sister. Or a journalist like Angie.” I swallow hard. “Besides, you shouldn’t be here. I think I have to ask you to leave.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
I shake my head. “I'm afraid of my daddy coming in and shooting you and the scandal.”
“You are so Southern.” He laughs and kisses my cheek. “You should fear me.”
“Please stop. It's indecent.”
He pulls me back and looks at me. “I love you.”
“How? How, when you barely know me?”
He seems lost when he speaks. “When you're as old as I am, you just know. You appreciate love more once you've lost it. Finding it again is better than any feeling in the world.” His words confuse me.
“You're not old enough to speak that way. Who have you loved before?” He loves too easily. It's obvious. I am no doubt the tenth girl on the list. And his half-assed proposal is the kind that screams of a one-night stand.
I suspect I am being tricked by him again.
But then he speaks, “A long time ago there was a girl. I loved her and she loved me. But it wasn’t enough. My love couldn’t save her. She died of a sickness a lot of people in my country had at the time.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “You're a mood killer.”
“What? She died?” Is this a ploy? Do men do this?
I wish Ramón were here. He’d know.
“She did.” He sighs. “Anyway.” He holds me to him. “I love you and that's what matters.”
“Don't say that. I can't say it back to you.”
He smiles softly. “You will.”
I narrow my eyes. “You don’t know that.”
Our lips meet softly. “I do.” He whispers into my mouth, “But for now, sleep. Go to sleep and tomorrow I will ask your dad’s permission to marry you.”
“Don't,” I mouth faintly as my eyes close. I can't sleep with him here, but I'm exhausted and unable to fight it.
He kisses my eyelids. “Sleep and feel safe.”
I fight the urge to sleep but it's useless. The darkness behind my eyes takes me before the struggle even begins.
When I wake, the room is filled with sunlight and he is gone. His smell is on the pillow beside me where the dent from his face is.
He was here.
He was real.
He truly climbed in my window and slept beside me, on top of the covers of course. I lift the covers and check my nightgown, relieved. I'm still dressed.
My room feels new and fresh in a way. The burden of wedding Martin Ryan is gone. My daddy will likely agree to the marriage with Mr. Whitlock. All they care about is status, and he is a lord and rich. I'm excited about not having to tell them what Martin did to me. My momma would find a way to spin it to make me out as a tramp.
My cheeks flush when I think about the way I acted last night. I was a tramp. The sensation of the hardness of him grinding against me was delicious and mysterious. I have seen the pictures; I know the general science of it. I just don't know how it feels. With Mr. Whitlock I can imagine it would be fun. It would feel good. I can't believe I fell asleep with him in the room. It was the weirdest feeling, as though my sleep claimed me against my will, sort of like Mr. Whitlock has.
My Mr. Whitlock. I will have to start calling him Whit or something beyond his surname. Especially, if he's gonna ask me to marry him.
I emotionally slap myself. “Wake up, Lorelei.”
Of course. He was saying that to get me to give him my virginity. My stomach flutters and I can't believe he would want to marry me. Maybe it was all a dream. I smell the pillow once more to let the dream linger.
I recall his brief tale of his love before and wonder if he does fall in love too easily. Has he too tasted the whole world, where as I have barely sipped from the chalice I only just discovered?
My fluttering and disjointed thoughts are disrupted when my door bursts open and Emily runs in.
She looks panicked. “You are gonna have a bird, Lorelei. A bird. Martin Ryan's downstairs talking with Daddy. Earlier a man came with a fancy car and asked to speak to Daddy. I listened at the door and it sounded like there might be a duel in the yard. Another man asked for your hand. The man from the hospital, Mr. What's-It—with the title.” She laughs and jumps onto my bed.
My feet should be killing me but they're not. I'm just tired. I can't get out of my bed with Martin in the house. “Who is the man?” I play dumb.
She shrugs. “Some servant for that Mr. Whitlock. You know, the guy who saved you and came to the hospital every bloody day. Momma looked like she was gonna start screaming and burn the house down when Daddy told her. She said she would be damned if you would be Lady Lorelei.”
I frown. “She was upset?” I'm confused. As far as debutants succeeding, Mr. Whitlock is the cream of the crop.
She nods and lies back next to me. “I figured Martin would be so angry. I almost asked Daddy to tell him you were gonna be courted by two men, just so I could watch his reaction.”
“I would rather marry Mr. Whitlock if I have to be married.” The name leaves my lips with curiosity.
She nudges against me. “It doesn’t matter. Daddy turned him away after he talked it over with Momma. Told the servant you were spoken for and a deal had been arranged. He said he had a gentleman's agreement with the Ryans and gentlemen never go back on their word. It made Momma smile wickedly. I nearly lost my breakfast.”
My heart sinks. He has promised me to Martin. It was true. All of it was true. He never even spoke to me about it. I truly am just a cow to sell. I wonder what the price was. “He never even asked me if I wanted to marry Martin.”
“You can't marry that cad. You can't. He is a womanizing scoundrel. Someone said they saw him out in the yard making out with some girl last
night. Imagine.”
I cover my eyes. “Oh no. No one saw, did they? Saw who she was?”
Emily laughs. “Was it you?” I nod with my eyes still covered. She laughs harder. “Testing out the merchandise, I see.”
“Running for my life is more like it. He practically assaulted me on the grass under one of the huge trees. Mr. Whitlock actually saved me.”
Emily stops laughing. “He did what?”
I lift my hand and peek out at her with one eye. “He nearly assaulted me last night. He held me to him and forced me to kiss him and said filthy things to me. It was disgusting.”
Her jaw drops. “Daddy needs to know.”
She tries to leave but I grab her hand. “No, leave it. I will just tell Daddy I don't wish to marry him.”
Emily scowls. “He is a pig. I guarantee he forced himself on that poor Margery Banks.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“He's still downstairs.”
“Have Cook send my breakfast up.” I can't face him. Not knowing he won. I am to be his.
Emily walks away, grumbling, “You need to tell Daddy.” She leaves and I fall back to sleep. I can't bear the idea of marrying him. I need a plan.
When I wake, the sun is setting. I've slept the day away tossing and turning.
“Are you sick again?” Her voice bothers me before I even see her face.
She is picking clothing out of my closet.
“No. Just exhausted. I walked home last night.”
She turns and smiles bitterly. “Yes, I did notice that. I reassured your father you had let Angela give you a ride. Where's your dress and shoes?”
“I don’t know. In the wash.”
She seethes, “You let that stranger bring you home and you have the indecency to lie to me? At least we can relax, knowing you won't see him again. Your engagement party is in two weeks.”
I ignore her and roll over. I sense weight on the bed.
“Put this on. We are going to his uncle's house.”
I turn to her. “I'm not marrying him so you can stop the act. He's a cad, and frankly, a pervert.”
She leans in and whispers, “You will marry him, Lorelei. You will enjoy your marriage, just as I have.” Her face is cruel. Her words are spoken through a sick smile. My insides twist and I nearly gag from the vile things I'm thinking.