During Althea’s short absence, Jeff considered Olivia Ford, but she gave him another bland smile and put a teaspoon of peas on her plate.
“I really think you’ll like Althea’s blackberry jam. My father used to say it was the best he’d ever tasted.”
Allie reappeared with a small bowl of jam and put it on the table.
“Now then,” she said, and put her napkin back in her lap and turned her attention back to Jeff. “What about the corn? We usually plant ten rows, and I’d also like to put in a few pumpkins this year. I think I have some seed in a jar in the kitchen.”
“Althea,” Olivia interrupted. “Isn’t that the shirt you made for Mr. Hicks?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
She studied both Jeff and his shirt with an appraising stare. “Hmm, it looks very nice, like you put in a lot of work on it. Maybe even days.”
“Heavens, no, it didn’t take that long.” Althea added to Jeff, “I had years of practice making shirts for my father.”
“It fits just right,” he said, feeling like a fly under a magnifying glass.
“Yes,” Althea agreed with a faint smile, “it does.”
She returned the topic of conversation to the garden, and Jeff was satisfied. No personal questions came up, and he asked none, either. The food was good and as Allie had pointed out, having dinner in the house was less lonely than eating from a tray in the lean-to.
The one thing he would have changed, though, was Olivia’s presence.
They made an awkward triumvirate, the three of them, with Allie sitting across the table from him, and her sister at the end. He felt Olivia’s eyes on him through most of the meal, and she had her sister hopping up and down, waiting on her as if she were a queen.
Her tea had grown cold. Would Althea bring more hot water?
Was there another piece of meat in the roasting pot that wasn’t quite so fatty?
The breeze was blowing dust through the open window behind Althea and it was falling into Olivia’s dinner. Would she mind closing it?
This last time Jeff got up. He wasn’t sure what Olivia’s game was—the wind wasn’t even wafting the curtains, and the ground outside had barely dried from the spring rains. But he thought Althea ought to have the chance to finish her meal. It was probably already cold, as it was. “I’ll get it, Allie. You go ahead and enjoy your dinner.” He nodded to Olivia. “You, too, ma’am.”
Olivia giggled a bit nervously, her hazel eyes darting between her sister and Jeff. “Allie! Why, I’ve never heard anyone outside the family call you something so personal. Isn’t it—clever? A person would almost think you two have spent some time together.”
Althea, who had been watching Jeff’s shoulders flex as he pushed down on the window frame, snapped her attention back to the cold food on her plate. She wished he hadn’t called her by that name, especially in front of her sister. “Won’t you try to eat something? You’re just picking at your dinner.”
Olivia put her hand to her throat, as though something were caught in it, and her delicate features faded to paper-white. “I-I guess I’m not really very hungry. I’ll just try to finish my tea.” She reached for her cup with a hand that shook.
A chill rolled over Althea, a sudden sense of dread that made her think of being trapped on a railroad tie with the train approaching.
Jeff, obviously unaware, returned to the table and took up his fork again.
Olivia leaned back in her chair and began rubbing her temples with her fingertips.
Not again, Althea thought desperately, not now. “Olivia? Are you all right?”
Her sister’s hazel eyes welled up and her voice shook. “No, I’m not. I don’t think I want—
Jeff looked up, and as soon as his gaze connected with Olivia’s, her eyes rolled back and closed. A deep wail, rising from the depths of torment, worked its way up her throat and escaped her with a sound that would have brought chills to the dead.
“Jesus Christ . . . ”
“Olivia!” Althea sprang from her chair, her napkin tumbling down her lap, and she hurried to Olivia’s side.
With her arms extended rigidly on the table, her sister gripped bunches of the tablecloth in her fists, then snapped both hands to her chest with maniacal strength. The plates and serving dishes flew from the tabletop, landing on the floor and in Olivia’s lap. A river of warm gravy drizzled over Althea’s arm as she tried to grasp her sister’s flailing wrists. Olivia’s body stiffened and she rose from her sitting position so that only her shoulders and thighs rested against chair, as though she were a wooden plank that had been leaned against it.
All the while she kept up that blood-curdling wail.
His shirt covered with the contents of his plate, Jeff dropped his fork and with some trepidation, approached Olivia from the other side to help Allie control her. His boots crunched on broken glass and china. He felt as if he were putting his hands into the spinning blades of a windmill during a hurricane. This seemed a hell of a lot more dangerous than breaking up a saloon brawl, even when the brawlers had been armed.
Allie’s hair flew loose from its pins and ribbon, and long, dark-red strands hung next to her pale, set face while she struggled with her sister’s considerable strength. Olivia anchored her hand on Allie’s sleeve and hung on with the strength of the insane, twice nearly pulling her off her feet.
Jeff grabbed Olivia’s arm and tried to untangle her hand. At his touch, Olivia’s eyes flew open and she snarled, “No! Don’t you touch me! ” She pulled against his hold on her arm and tried to shake him off. When that didn’t work, she began pounding her heels on the floor, and finally with a look of lucid, calculating rage in her eyes, she bent down and sank her teeth into his index finger.
“Ow, goddamn it!” he snapped. He jerked his hand away and clamped it between his arm and his ribs. Never in all his life had he wanted so badly to turn a grown person over his knee and paddle her backside.
“Make him go away!” Olivia screamed between the breathless sobs that had overtaken her. With the dripping tablecloth drawn up to her shoulders like a blanket and her flaxen hair tangled around her shoulders, she buried her face, now crimson with exertion, against Allie’s breasts.
Althea’s right shoulder was covered with blackberry jam, but she rocked her and crooned to her as if the woman were a five-year-old child. “It’s all right, Olivia, it’s all right.”
“No! Make him go away!” she demanded and slid her gaze to Jeff. She pointed at him as though he were the devil himself. “I don’t want him in here!”
Allie looked over her sister’s head at Jeff and sent him a helpless, apologetic expression, one that he had no trouble reading. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and nodded toward the back door. “Please.”
Jeff glanced down at his new shirt, splattered with peas and gravy, and at Allie’s distraught face. Then he fixed the sobbing, hysterical woman in Allie’s arms with a steady, unflinching look. She merely went on howling, and hid her face against her sister’s bodice.
Tossing his napkin on the table, Jeff walked through the kitchen and out the back door. As his footsteps fell heavily on the porch stairs and he crossed the yard to the lean-to, he could still hear Olivia Ford’s shrill wailing.
The prospect of eating his future meals from a tray in the yard was no longer a lonely one. After tonight, it struck him as a wish come true.
~~*~*~*~~
It was well past ten o’clock when Althea stepped out to the back porch and lowered herself into the rocking chair. She felt stiff and old. Her joints creaked audibly, like groaning hinges in need of oiling.
The hush and peace of nightfall surrounded her, enfolded her. The air smelled fresh and from the darkness came soft, familiar sounds of crickets and frogs down at the creek. Leaning her head against the high-backed rocker, she looked at the stars overhead. How much easier their existence must be. They simply lay on their bed of black velvet sky and sparkled. They had no worries about planting or hired hands or lifelong respons
ibilities.
Olivia was upstairs, bathed, combed, and tucked into bed. The convulsion had sapped her of all her strength, and once it passed she became her same docile self, apparently with little memory of what had happened.
Althea remembered, though. After she’d seen to Olivia, she returned to the dining room and was stunned by the full extent of the damage done. It looked as if a terrible battle had been waged there. Broken dishes and glasses littered the floor. The remains of the roast had skidded under the table, leaving a wide, greasy trail on the hardwood. Gravy, water, and jam glued the surviving dishes to the tabletop, and mashed peas formed dime-size green dots on everything they’d touched. Her needlepoint chair seats might never come completely clean.
It had taken her two hours of careful mopping, sweeping, and scrubbing on her hands and knees to clean it up. In the middle of it all, her burned palm had begun to sting unbearably, screaming with pain whenever she tried to use it. Working with just one hand had slowed things considerably. As it was, a blackberry jam stain on the wall would probably remain until it was painted over. Althea’s pale pink dress bore a similar stain on the shoulder and sleeve, and now lay at the bottom of a heap of laundry that must be done tomorrow. The dress would probably be a loss, though.
She closed her eyes and set the chair in motion, rocking slowly. At least Olivia hadn’t wet herself this time. That was generally the way her convulsions ended, with everything soaked in an astounding quantity of urine.
Olivia couldn’t help it, Althea insisted to herself, massaging her forehead with her fingertips. It wasn’t Olivia’s fault, it wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t.
If anything, tonight had been her own fault for having a weak moment, for craving Jeff’s company at dinner.
Poor Olivia. Yes, poor, sick Olivia. Motherless Olivia.
She had to remind herself of Olivia’s frailty every time one of her convulsions occurred in order to stamp out the spark of resentment that flared in her heart. She had given her most of her life to her sister’s care, and chances were excellent that the rest of her years would be sacrificed to the same.
When Althea realized where her thoughts had turned, involuntarily she glanced in the direction of her parents’ graves. The dark night hid their detail, but the moon was bright enough to reveal the outline of the low fence and the shape of the headstones. She pressed her fist to her mouth.
No, she hadn’t meant it—she wasn’t sacrificing her life. It was her duty to care of Olivia; what would happen to her if Althea failed in that duty?
Don’t let me down again, girl.
No, she wouldn’t—she’d promised on her father’s deathbed, and even now she knew he must be watching her . . .
“How are you, Allie?”
Althea gasped and nearly jumped from her chair as the tall, rangy form of Jeff Hicks emerged from the darkness. Lantern light from the kitchen gleamed softly through the open door and highlighted the angles and planes of his handsome face.
“Good lord, you took a year off my life sneaking up on me like that!” she whispered impatiently. She made a supreme effort to avoid thinking that it would be one year less that she’d be bound to her duty.
“Sorry.” He’d changed his shirt, and now he wore one of the old ones she’d given him, unbuttoned, with its sleeves rolled up on his powerful forearms. Althea tried not to stare at the expanse of bare, muscled flesh revealed by the open shirt front, but it was nearly impossible. His maleness was not easy to overlook.
Without waiting to be invited, he pulled up the stool and sat down next to her. He twirled a long stalk of grass between his fingers, wagging its seed top like a tiny mop.
“What are you doing up at this hour anyway? Dawn will come early enough, and you’ll need to be out in that field.” After everything that had happened, the brief kiss Jeff had given her seemed like a long-ago dream that faded in the reality of Althea’s life. It was just as well.
In the shadows she saw his shoulders lift in a shrug. “I couldn’t sleep. It took a long time for my heart to slow down.” His voice was rich and close, familiar.
“Oh, well, yes—I imagine that’s true.” Althea fiddled with a piece of old twine that was tied to the chair arm. Olivia’s spells were startling—someone who hadn’t seen one before would be understandably rattled. “I’m sorry about— Well, I’m sorry I had to ask you to leave. The sooner poor Olivia recovers from one of her convulsions, the better—for some reason, having a stranger in the house made her worse. Thank heavens, she seems to not remember them.”
“Does she have these fits very often?”
“She used to when she was younger, and then when my father died three years ago. But she’s only had one other since then.”
“Yeah? And do you know what caused it?”
“It’s not a matter of ‘cause.’ ” No it couldn’t be. It had been only a coincidence that the last one happened the day Lane Smithfield had dinner with them. “They just come over her.”
He shook his head, Althea assumed in pity for Olivia. “It was more than my being a stranger.” He looked at her, half of his face hidden in shadow, the other half revealed in the kitchen lamplight. “I know what upset your sister. And I think you do too.”
She brought her chair to a stop and stared at his cleanly hewn profile. “Whatever do you mean?”
“It was when she heard me call you Allie. She didn’t like it, and I’ve got the teeth marks on my finger to show it.”
“She shouldn’t have—I’m sorry that she bit you. Anyway, I don’t know why you want to call me Allie. My name is Althea.”
“But it doesn’t suit you. Althea sounds the way the moon looks on a clear winter night. Beautiful, but as cold and hard as a diamond, and far away. That’s not you. You’re more like that—” He pointed to the low slung pale-butter orb in the eastern sky. “Warm and close enough to touch. That’s your moon up there tonight, Allie, full of promise. And beautiful in the bargain.”
Althea squeezed the chair arm under her uninjured palm. Despite her frayed nerves and bone-deep weariness, a quiver of joy ran through her that made her forget them both. The pleasure of hearing his words was almost excruciating, like rain falling upon a drought-stricken flower. No one had ever told her something like that before. Certainly no man had.
And for a single irrational, selfish, immodest moment, she wished she could put her head on his shoulder and rest, to feel his arms around her, and hear his heartbeat under her ear. In the tableau she envisioned, there were no worries, no responsibilities . . . no Olivia. Just her and Jeff and the night.
Then her gaze wandered to the two graves again. Her spine tensed against the spindle-backed rocker.
“That’s not the kind of thing we should be talking about.”
“I think it is.”
“And I don’t think this is a proper topic of discussion. Besides,” she added, and turned her gaze to her lap, “you don’t know anything about me.”
He put the end of the grass stalk in the corner of his mouth. “Maybe I do, more than you think.”
She froze. It sounded like a threat, a secret that he’d discovered about her. He couldn’t know about that. Hardly anyone did, except for Dr. Brewster and Father and Olivia. Father was dead, Olivia never talked to anyone, and surely Dr. Brewster wouldn’t have told Jeff. Doctors took a vow of silence, or something like—
“What do you know?” she asked, struggling to keep the tremor out of her voice.
He put his elbows on his knees and hunched forward, studying the dark, featureless planking between his boots. “I know that you weren’t close to your father, that you might have even been afraid of him.”
Althea’s spine grew rigid as she sat upright in her chair. “What gave you such an idea?”
“You did, Allie. I’ve noticed how you tend those two graves over there. It isn’t out of respect as much as fear. You let the rest of this place go, but the area inside that fence—it’s as tidy as a park.”
“That’s ri
diculous—”
Jeff didn’t know how far he should push Allie. Her sister’s display at dinner had been very revealing. “Is it?”
“Please, if you want to discuss tomorrow’s work, fine. If not, I’ll say good night.” She gathered her skirts in preparation to rise from the rocker.
Jeff couldn’t explain to himself why he pressed this. Time and again he told himself he shouldn’t give a damn about this woman beyond their arrangement, but he couldn’t get her off his mind. He’d ended up working here because Will Mason sentenced him to this job. Yet he sensed that Althea was just as much a prisoner as he was. More so, in fact.
“Stay in your chair, Allie. We’ll talk about something else.”
She looked at him and then settled back into the rocker with a sigh. He could see the weariness in her pretty face. “All right.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, the quiet broken only by familiar night sounds and the soft creak of Allie’s rocker. In another time and place, Jeff wouldn’t be wondering what to say to this beautiful woman on a shadowed porch on a soft summer night. He’d take her hand in his own and press his lips into her palm. Then, to overcome her shyness—Allie Ford would be shy, he knew—he’d dust her temples and cheeks with soft kisses before he took her mouth with his own.
But he was here and this was now, with years of experience and disappointment behind him. And Jeff was different man than he’d once been. So instead he said, “You must know this land pretty well, watching your father work it year after year. Ties like that run deep.”
“I guess so. But sometimes I’ve thought I could leave this place without a even a glance over my shoulder.” Astounded, Althea blinked at Jeff with her mouth open slightly, as if someone instead of her had said those words. “I mean it’s been so hard the last few—of course I would never leave.”
“Never?”
“Well, no. I was born here and my parents are buried here and—”
“What if a man asked to marry you?” His voice was lulling, warm.
Althea felt a flush of confusion, then almost laughed. In her mind, the very idea had become as far-fetched as a man walking on that yellow moon in the sky. “I can’t leave Olivia. I’m all she has. Besides,” she added in a moment of tart candidness, “not too many men would be interested in making a home for both of the crazy Ford sisters.” She shifted in the rocker. Heavens, what personal thought would pop out of her mouth next? And what was it about this man that made her admit things she’d never said aloud to anyone else?
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