“Fibbed? My, my, isn’t that a pleasant word for a huge, hulking lie? I’m surprised at your delicacy, Win. I didn’t think you had a delicate bone in your body.”
“Say, Belle, that’s not—”
“Fair?” She sighed again. “No, it’s not. I apologize. You’re not nearly as bad as my family. You might have deceived me into thinking you cared for me in order to get me to go into partnership with you, but at least you’ve been more honest with me than they.”
Win’s mind got stuck on the word deceived, and he didn’t hear the rest of her comment. He said, “What?”
She’d been gazing morosely at her clasped hands, but she turned her head then. “What? I mean, I beg your pardon?”
“What did you just say?”
She looked blank. “About what?”
“Did you say what I think you said?”
Becoming peeved, she snapped, “How should I know what you think you heard?”
“What did you say?”
“When? For heaven’s sake, Win . . .”
Belle’s sentence ended prematurely with a gasp when Win grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her lightly. “Did you say I deceived you?”
She blinked at him. “Well . . . Yes, I guess I did.”
“Deceived you into thinking I cared for you?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “That’s what you did.”
“Deceived you so that you’d go into a business partnership with me?”
“Deceived me into going to bed with you so that I’d feel obliged to sign the partnership papers.”
“And you don’t think I cared for you at all? You think I’m such a low, slimy creature that I’d seduce you merely to get to keep on photographing you? Because of the money?”
“Well . . .” Belle’s eyes narrowed as she thought. Then she shrugged. “Yes. That’s what you did, isn’t it?”
“You believed me to be that—that—devious? That immoral? That sly? That cunning?”
This time she only nodded.
“Is that what you think of me? Honestly? Truthfully?”
“Well . . . Yes. I guess so.”
“Good God, Belle! I love you madly. Passionately! I’ve never loved a woman until you! I can’t believe you don’t know that!”
Her mouth dropped open.
Win shut it with his.
# # #
Belle went numb. Then she tingled all over. Then she felt as though she were smothering. Then her heart practically flew out of her breast. Then it started singing. Then all of her nerve endings twanged.
Drawing away from him slightly, she stammered, “You—you love me? Truly?”
“I love you more than anything, Belle Monroe. Good God, I can’t believe you didn’t know that.”
“How could I know it? All you talked about was money and business and a partnership.”
“That’s because I thought it was the only way to keep you.”
“My goodness. Why ever did you think a thing like that?”
“Because you only talked about how crass and awful I was, and how you loved Georgia and think the north stinks.”
“I never said that.”
“You did, too! And you kept saying the Civil War wasn’t the Civil War!”
“It wasn’t a civil war!” she cried indignantly. “It was a war of Northern aggression!”
“Forget the damned war for a minute, will you?”
Belle frowned at him, unsure forgetting the war was a good idea. But, then, she could always educate him later. “Very well.”
“Oh, God.” Win passed his hand over his eyes. “I can’t believe you thought I was so much of a snake that I’d seduce you only to further my own business aims.”
“Well, I didn’t think of you as a snake. Exactly. Only, well, a northern businessman who was willing to do anything to get his way.”
He stared at her, his eyes conveying a depth of moroseness Belle couldn’t account for. Just as she couldn’t account for his claim to love her. Come to think of it, now that they’d been chatting for a few moments, she wasn’t sure he’d really said he loved her. She licked her lips. Win stared at them greedily.
“Belle . . .”
“Yes?” She had to clear her throat.
“Belle . . .”
She said “Yes” again.
“Belle . . .”
This was getting silly. She snapped, “What? Spit it out, Win.” Lord, she’d never spoken like that in her life. Northern customs were getting to her in spades.
Win startled the gumption out of her when he flung himself off the platform and onto one knee in front of her. She stared at him in alarm and confusion. “What—what are you doing?”
“God damn it! I want you to marry me, damn it!” He grabbed her hands and hung on, as if for dear life.
Belle’s stare took on an aspect of befuddlement. “You . . . Um, I beg your pardon?”
“Damnation! Say you’ll marry me, can’t you? This is driving me crazy!”
“What is?”
“Not knowing! Every time I think I’m doing something right, it’s wrong! Every time I think I’m doing something wrong, it’s right! The only way I can think of to keep you around until I figure out how to deal with you is to marry you! Damn it, you have to marry me now, anyhow!”
“I do?”
“What do you mean, I do? Dash it, Belle, I’ve deflowered you!”
Belle’s mouth pinched slightly. “My, my, aren’t we poetic all of a sudden. I didn’t think you had a poetic bone in your body, Win Asher.”
As if at his wits’ end, Win hollered, “Will you stop talking about poetry, dash it? Say you’ll marry me before I have a stroke of apoplexy, damn it!”
Belle pretended to consider his outrageous proposal. She only did it to punish him. She knew she’d accept his offer of marriage. Not because she had to, either, but because she absolutely adored this aggravating specimen of northern mankind.
“Belle . . .” His face took on a glowering expression.
“I’m thinking.”
“Think fast, will you? My knee’s getting sore.”
After another few seconds, Belle decided she’d tortured poor Win long enough. “Very well, Win. I’ll marry you.” Then she threw her arms around Win’s strong shoulders and burst into tears.
# # #
Exhausted and happier than he’d ever been in his entire twenty-six years of life, Win stroked Belle’s breasts, gleaming now with perspiration after their energetic bout of love-making, and gazed upon her perfect body with disbelief. She’d agreed to marry him. Him. Win Asher. Loathsome Yankee personage and defiler of the virgin Belle. Not to mention loud, obnoxious, crass, and . . . He couldn’t think of all the ways in which he fell short of Belle’s ideals.
“I can’t believe you agreed to marry me, Belle,” he mumbled, kissing first one delicious breast and then the other.
“I can’t, either,” said she.
Disappointed that she hadn’t yet confessed to being wildly in love with him, Win said, “You might sound more enthusiastic.”
She turned on her side and smiled sweetly. “I love you, Win. God alone knows why, because I surely don’t.”
He smirked in spite of the singing in his heart. “You just couldn’t resist my Yankee charm.”
She laughed. “That must be it.”
He wasn’t satisfied. “Dash it, Belle, I told you I was madly in love with you. The least you could do is sound as if you mean it when you say you love me.” Win was glad the lights were low, because he was sure he was blushing.
“Oh, Win.” She threw her arms around him and hugged him hard. “How can you even doubt me for a second. If I didn’t love you madly, would I agree to marry you. You? A man whom I thought was a masher when you accosted me on the Midway? A man who sweet-talked me into doing something antithetical to my very upbringing? A man whose station in life is so far different from mine, there’s hardly any common ground at all?”
“Shoot, Belle, keep it up
, and I might just get cold feet and back out of this marriage scheme. I thought we’d worked most of those things out.”
Pushing him hard, Belle then flopped onto her back and mashed the pillow with her now-messy hair. “Ha! I have a feeling we’re going to be working things out for years to come, Win Asher.” Pushing herself to a seated position, she grinned down at him. She’d shoved him to the edge of the bed, and he was struggling to keep himself from falling to the floor. “Personally, I’m looking forward to it.”
He grabbed her and wrestled her onto her back. They were both laughing so hard, it was difficult to breathe. “Oh, yeah? Well, just don’t forget who wears the trousers in the family, Belle. You’re a delicate Southern lady, don’t forget. You’ve been taught to kowtow to the man of the family, remember?”
“Oh, my, you big brute.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “I know my mama taught me that all you big men are wild beasts.” She dropped the honey-thick southern accent and went back to her more mellow, less drawly normal tone of voice. “I also know she taught me exactly how to get what I want from you big, strong men.”
Win collapsed at her side, laughing. “Ah, Belle, we’re going to have quite a life together. I wonder who’ll give in first.”
“You will,” she averred positively.
Win lifted his right eyebrow in an arch of incredulity. “And exactly how do you figure that?”
“‘Cause I’m going to make you go to Georgia to get married. And Mr. H.L. May can write all about it if he wants to.”
“Georgia?” Win swallowed, visions of Belle’s irate southern relatives swarming in his mind’s eye, all scowling hideously and making threatening gestures, some holding shotguns. “Um, I suppose you have your heart set on getting hitched in Georgia.”
“I do.”
He liked the I do part, but had grave doubts about the Georgia part. “Will they lynch me, Belle?”
“What?” She sat up abruptly. “Whatever do you mean, Win Asher? If you think all southern folks are illiterate lynch mob members, you can just clear your mind of that image! You wretch!” She smacked him on his shoulder. The blow stung, since he was buck naked and his flesh tender.
“Ow.”
Belle looked stricken. “Oh, Win, I’m so sorry.” She lavished kisses on the red mark.
As he watched her, his sex growing hard with renewed energy and his heart filling with love, Win guessed the next twenty or thirty years might be painful in spots, but they’d never be dull.
# # #
Winslow Montgomery Asher and Rowena Belle Monroe were married at the Blissborough, Georgia, Baptist Church on November 20, 1893, less than a month after the World’s Columbia Exposition closed its gates, after six months of universal acclamation. Almost all of their friends attended the nuptials, even the Richmonds, who had been happy to take the train to Georgia to view the happy event. Amalie was Belle’s flower girl. Garrett, scowling the entire time, bore the rings down the aisle on a blue velvet cushion. He’d already made his opinion of the blue velvet suit he was forced to wear plain.
Kate Finney, whose mother had passed away recently, was unable to attend the ceremony because she was taking an around-the-world honeymoon trip herself. She wrote a lovely note, however, and Belle was so happy for her, she cried. Win was sure he’d never understand women. They cried at a word and blew up at silence. Still, they were better than nothing.
Belle made a ravishing bride, and Win was a most handsome groom. H.L. May made sure the whole world knew it, because he took pictures of the ceremony, the attendants, the church, the minister, Belle’s parents, his parents, assorted kinsmen and women, and even set up a delayed-action camera to capture several likenesses of himself and his wife with Win and Belle in their wedding finery.
Neither Win nor Belle were sorry to leave Blissborough. As Belle herself said to him, “I do believe I’m turning into a Yankee, Win Asher.”
Win sincerely hoped so.
Just North of Bliss Page 30