From behind him a voice called, “Hey, son!”
Jeff stopped and looked around, his hand on his rapidly expanding and collapsing ribs. His father halted the horse, so Jeff could climb up into the wagon.
When he got his wind back, he said, “You’re getting in late, Dad. Not that it’s any of my business.”
“It’s on your behalf that I’m late. I stopped in to see Miss Albans. Seems she’s got a little problem with her sink. I told her you’d be out to fix it before the end of the week.”
“Is it a big job?”
Sam shook his head.
“Why didn’t you do it then?”
“Don’t know. I reckon it’s better if you do it. Give her a good reason to be grateful . . . well, more grateful. A woman likes a man who can be handy ‘round the house.”
“You’re handier than I am. Remember, I’m the fellow who stepped through the bedroom ceiling while flooring the attic. Scared Mother half out of her wits.”
“Well, anyway, it’ll give you two a chance to be alone. She’d make a choice armful, if you’re still thinking that way.”
“Yeah,” Another shiver of thunder in the sky. “Looks like it’ll be a good rain.”
“We can sure use it. Been hotter than the hinges of hell. Everybody’s complaining about the crops.” Sam squinted up at the sky. A few clouds hid the moon, only to be blown around like the veil of a beautiful woman. “Are you still thinking that way?”
“Sure. What other way could I be thinking?”
The rumble drowned Sam next words but the lantern light showed his mouth moving in the syllables of “Edith Parker.”
“What about her?” Jeff asked.
“Come on, son. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out . . . not after Maribel comes running into the kitchen to holler the news that you’re kissing Cousin Edith.”
Jeff groaned, covering his eyes. “She saw us?”
“They saw you. Maribel wanted to know if it meant she’d have a baby brother tomorrow. Don’t worry—Louise set her straight. Where that child comes by her information . . .”
“Look, Dad, about Edith and me . . .”
“You don’t have to explain to me. I’m not her father.”
“No, but you’re mine.”
“So your mother said. . . .”
“So listen. I’m not denying that Edith had an effect on me. A mighty powerful effect. But how could it be serious . . . matrimony-type serious?” He looked at his father but saw neither approval nor censure.
“She’s a nice girl,” Sam said levelly.
“But she can’t do the things I need a wife to do. Can she cook for a passel of ranch hands? Birth a calf? Mother the girls? She’s city-bred and more . . . she’s a natural-born spinster. I’ll take my dying oath no man ever laid a hand on her before.”
“Before you, you mean.”
“That’s right. Nobody before me.” All his masculinity called out, “and damn well no man after me either,” but Jeff fought the need to say the words out loud. Only Edith should hear that, preferably in the long afterglow of lovemaking.
The horse pulled them along faster and faster as he scented the rain blowing in. This time Jeff saw the flash, a brief flare on the horizon, showing the clouds greenish pale like the belly of a vast fish. He counted until the dull roll of thunder echoed.
“We’ve got a little time before it hits.”
“Yep,” his father said, pitching his voice above the gusty wind. “I agree with what you say about Edith, Jeff. But I don’t think it’s her fault she’s so ... so ...”
“Innocent? I know. That blasted aunt of hers. I never heard of the woman until a few days ago, but I’d like to . . .” He made an impotent fist. “She ruined that girl for any kind of life outside of politeness and prayers.”
“Sounds like it.” Sam pulled back the reins while his son got down to open the barnyard gate. He leaned over to say, “I’m just wondering ... if that’s how you feel, why’d you kiss her?”
Before Jeff could do more than stare at him in surprised inspiration, Sam drove the wagon through to the barn. As a lightning flash sundered the sky, Jeff realized there wasn’t another moment to waste in talking. There was much to do, and the wind was urging the storm to violence.
The two hired men had rolled out of the bunkhouse to round up most of the cows and half-grown calves. The young bulls lowed at the gate, eager to get into their shed. Circling dogs kept them from panicking as the moist wind blew over their backs. Behind them, stately and slow like the dim-witted king he was, came Black Prince Edward, the founder of Jeff’s herd.
His deep chest and thick neck flowed seamlessly into his smooth, square sides. He’d sired a dozen prizewinners, though he’d been a scrub bull when Jeff had come back from the Trinity. Jeff found his prosperity on this animal’s procreative powers.
Now, swinging the door of his stall across, Jeff knew a moment’s jealousy. If only he could treat his affairs as casually as the bull did. If only Edith could be as content as a cow with as little thought for the future. But he wronged the beasts, he knew. At mating season, each cow was more beautiful than the last to the Black Prince, and each cow yearned for her master. No doubt they pledged eternal fidelity to each other, at least until the rutting instinct was satisfied.
Hard raindrops splattered Jeff’s shoulders and back as he ran the last few feet to the back door. His father had cared for the horses and chickens. He’d gone to bed some time ago, as had the hired men. But it was Jeff’s responsibility to see that everyone and everything was safe before he retired. Even to the cats in the barn, snuggled in the hay, sound asleep.
The next crash of thunder was so close and so sudden that Jeff grabbed for the banister to keep from falling down the stairs in surprise. The house shook. “Jesus!” he whispered.
A burst of lightning brightened the windows, followed after only a few seconds by another rolling explosion. Thinking the girls must be cowering under their bed by now, Jeff finished the stairs two at a time.
Their door stood open. Jeff peeked inside, not wanting to wake them if by some miracle they’d slept through the artillery barrage outside. The covers were rumpled but there were no feathery blond heads on the pillows. He bent to look under the bed. No little feet peeped out from under the coverlet.
Combing back his damp hair with his fingers, he looked around in the next lightning glare. Edith’s door stood open too. Following his curiosity as much as his inclinations, Jeff walked down the hall.
With a grin, he counted three heads on a pillow. As he might have guessed, Edith wore her rich dark hair pulled into a prim braid. He noticed that Maribel had tight hold of the end of the braid in one hand while with the other she clung to her new toy sheep. Louise was curled into a ball which reminded him of the cats asleep in the hay.
Despite the noise and the flashes which broke the sky with the intensity of day, his girls were sleeping like angels on a cloud. Jeff’s smile faded as he recalled that Gwen never let Louise crawl beside them when frightened in the night. It had been her firm rule that once the child was put to bed, she must stay there until morning. Often Jeff had crept up the stairs to comfort his crying daughter, knowing that Gwen was undoubtedly right but unable to bear the sound of his child’s sobbing.
Neither treatment had done any harm, he decided as he scooped Louise up to take her back to bed. She was a bright, self-sufficient little thing, despite his doubts about a future with no mother to guide her. Thinking of Edith’s aunt, he decided too much self-sufficiency was not good. Had she ever needed anyone? Had she ever loved anyone? She could not have taught Edith any of these things. How could she?
Edith had needed him once, he thought in triumph. Instantly, however, a doubt nagged at him. Would she have found some way to survive even after a devastating fire destroyed everything she had? Who had needed whom more?
He made a second trip for Maribel, though he had to pry open her fingers to get her to let go of Edith’s hair. Like
a baby, Maribel rode limply against his shoulder and dropped bonelessly onto her mattress. He pressed a kiss onto each girl’s warm face and closed the door as he left.
The rain rattled like needles fired against the windows as Jeff made one last trip down the hall. He told himself his hands had been too full with Maribel to close Edith’s door behind him.
But when he got there, he stepped inside her room, to take a picture of her face on the pillow into sleep with him.
“What the . . .” Her bed was empty.
She stood by the window, the curtain caught back in her hand. Jeff looked at her and forgot to breathe. Her beauty of form showed clearly against the rain-silvered window. Her nightgown gathered over her breasts and flattened across her stomach, leaving much to his imagination but not nearly enough.
“I thought the rain would never start. All that booming and crashing but no water ‘til now. It’s already cooler.” She put the back of her hand to her forehead and then to her temple.
“It’ll come down until morning,” he said, recovering.
“I stood here and watched it come. It was terrible, exciting and terrible. The rain in St. Louis wasn’t like this. You’d look up between the buildings as a shadow crossed the sun and there’d be rain falling. The clouds were never green there, only ordinary gray.”
Jeff sat on the foot of her bed, his bed. “How could anything be ordinary if you are there?”
She quivered as though she would look toward him. Controlling the motion, she went on staring out the window. “Maribel came in when it began to thunder,” she said.
“And Louise?”
“I went for her. Do you know she is terrified of thunder?”
“No, I didn’t,” he admitted to his shame. As though in punctuation, another crash sounded, a little further off now.
“Well, she is. And she wouldn’t ask me if she could cuddle up here, I had to invite her.”
“My wife . . .”
“She told me.”
He felt her smile, rather than saw it.
“Louise wouldn’t join Maribel and me until I told her we needed her, that we were frightened. She takes after you, doesn’t she?”
“Does she?”
“Yes, very much so. She can’t give herself to people unless they ask and you . . .”
Jeff crossed the few feet between them. He didn’t touch her, didn’t pull her into his arms as he longed to do. After all, the only thing he could give her was the security of his word. He’d promised to leave her alone. He must keep that promise.
“And me?” he prompted softly.
Edith had never felt so aware of another person. It wasn’t just that she knew the taste of his lips, the hot urgency of his hard body. She knew every nuance of his breathing. She could tell, not what he was thinking or feeling, but how his frame of mind changed from moment to moment. Right now, he was determined to be chivalrous. She felt a purely feminine wish to break the will that kept him from touching her.
She looked at him over her shoulder, knowing that her eyes must look black and deep in the darkness. “You’re the most important man in town, the leading citizen. What you want to have happen, happens.”
“Is that so?”
“Everybody says so.”
He said, “Not everything happens as I want it to, Edith. Not by a long shot.”
“No?”
“Not even close. If it did, you’d be . . .” He glanced at the bed, the sheets softly rumpled and still warm. It would be so easy to make love to her now. From her response to his kisses, from her confession of desire, he knew she’d put up no resistance to him. Worse yet, she’d assist him in accomplishing her own seduction. He could imagine her smiling at him like a goddess while she let her nightgown drift to her feet.
He coughed. “I should tell you that the Armstrongs hold prayer meeting Wednesday nights. Do you care to go?”
“I’d like that. It will give me the chance to see Dulcie again, and the others. Do you usually attend?”
“No, but I’ll go with you tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Jeff. Dulcie’s intended will be there too, I suppose?”
This was the moment to tell her he’d seen Sullivan himself. But he didn’t want to argue about whether she’d been right about the city slicker, even though such an argument would keep him close to her for another few minutes. That would be a sweet torture, too much to stand. If he couldn’t kiss her as he wanted to, deep, lingering kisses that would send them both tumbling over the edge of desire, then he couldn’t bear to stay.
“Good night, Edith,” he said abruptly. He left the room as quickly as he could without running.
It was about an hour later that Sam kicked Jeff out of bed.
“Go and do your tossing and turning in the barn, son. I’m an old man and I need my sleep.”
“But Dad . . .” He didn’t know whether to laugh or holler.
Sam turned up the dimly glowing lamp by the bedstead. His graying hair stood in spikes. He rubbed his hand over his sprouting cheeks and said, “Okay, we’ll talk.”
‘Thanks. What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know. But until you decide, it’s pretty obvious I’m not getting any sleep.”
Jeff stared at the blanket over his knees. This was like the long late talks he’d had with his father as a boy. He hadn’t enjoyed one since he came home—a man—from the gold rush.
“The problem,” he said slowly, “is Edith.”
“Congratulations on the blinding inspiration.” Sam rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. I’m always sarcastic in the middle of the night. Your mother could have told you that.”
“I know it myself. I once woke you up coming home late from some hell-raising and you blistered me with a dozen words.”
“What were they?”
“‘If you were visiting a lady, she sure must be disappointed.’"
“Were you visiting a lady?”
“No, sir. A woman—and she didn’t complain. Not that I heard, anyway.”
Sam chuckled reluctantly. “Sometimes, when you were raising that kind of hell, I envied your opportunities. There was never any woman for me but your mother.”
“I envy you your fidelity. And you had the time to prove your faithfulness. I didn’t have near long enough with Gwen.”
“No, son, you didn’t. But right now ‘the problem is Edith,’" Sam prompted.
Jeff thought about Edith. Was it just physical, this attraction between them? The kind of heat that would burn itself out after one or two encounters? Or was it the imperishable flame of two people destined for one another?
He flinched away from the thought as though it were a knife’s blade against his skin. Love was not something he wanted ever again. He’d seen what pain it could cause when, for no good reason, Gwen died.
That was why he wanted to marry a woman he liked, one he could respect, but one for whom he’d never felt the slightest frenzy. Miss Albans, Miss Climson or Mrs. Green . . . any one of whom he could take to his home as an ornament. Sex wouldn’t be a problem as he was young and healthy. Those responses depended more on the moment than on love.
“The problem is Edith.” he repeated again. “She’s different from anyone I’ve ever met. She seemed so helpless when she appeared at my hotel, carrying nothing but that canary. And yet, if I hadn’t been there for her to come to, why do I think she would have managed to get along?”
“Probably ‘cause she would have, somehow. Most people manage to survive even the worst calamity. I survived when your Mother died, though I sometimes hoped I wouldn’t.” Sam ducked his head in embarrassment. “Ah, heck. You know what I mean.”
“Yes. I do know. It’s a terrible thing to be left alive when the one you love has died.”
Sam coughed to hide his emotions. “What do we keep talking about them for?”
“Maybe because the subject’s marriage and we don’t know anything about it ‘cept what we’ve done so far.” Jeff tossed the covers off and sto
od up. Pulling on his jeans over his drawers, he said, “Okay, Dad. I’ll sleep in the parlor.”
“Good. But listen, Jeff . . . maybe the reason you keep thinking about Gwen is Edith’s got you thinking about marriage.”
“Marriage has been on my mind for a year. You know that.”
“Not marriage with Edith Parker.
Instantly, Jeff protested, “Are we back to that? I’ve already told you . . .”
Sam held up his hand. “All right. You told me. Now tell yourself, ‘cause I swear you keep circling ‘round and ‘round this business like ol’ Grouchy looking for the scent.”
Jeff knew his father was right. He couldn’t be thinking of Edith as a wife, but at the same time, he wanted no one else. But that was just his body talking, and a man had to be ruled by his head. His head told him he’d only known her for a very few days. After a moment, he heard from a part of himself that very rarely spoke up. His spirit said very quietly, You have known her for always and always.
“The problem,” he said as his mind began to work again, “is Edith’s sense of duty. She has come here to see me ‘safely married’ to use her words.”
“Married to one of those three gals.”
“That’s right. Now I could delay making my choice and keep her here that way. That would give me more time to know if she really is ... the one.”
“Sooner or later you’d get tired of living like that. Hands off all the time,” Sam said, stifling a yawn.
“I’m already tired of it. Or I could come right out and ask her to marry me.” He found himself grinning daftly at the idea. “I could marry Edith, Dad.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Why not?” Quick as a lightning bolt, Jeff’s merriment vanished. His frown would have made a lesser man back off instantly. But a father is a father forever.
“Because the problem is Edith’s sense of duty.”
“Isn’t this where we started?”
“Hey, you want to talk about her, that’s fine. But don’t expect me to make much sense at this hour of the night.” This time Sam didn’t bother to hide the yawn that cracked his jaws.
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