by Pamela Morsi
He looked at her with curiosity and interest.
"You have really thought about this, haven't you?"
Princess nodded. "I believe that we must do the best we can with the gifts and opportunities that we are given. If we do that, we often will move up in the world at least to some degree. It takes a great stroke of good fortune for a poor child like my father to become a wealthy man. It doesn't happen that often. Many of the workers on the rigs were once just as poor, and they will probably never become wealthy. But they can perhaps do better than they are doing now. I believe that they will do better than they are doing now. And if my modest house can give them some incentive to do so, then it suits me even better than a huge mansion."
Gerald seemed to be marveling at her. "You are so unexpected, Cessy," he told her. "So unlike I thought you would be."
Princess bit her lip nervously. "I am strong-minded, everyone says so. Are you disappointed?" she asked quietly.
"Oh no," he said. "Not at all."
His words were so soft, so alluring, Princess felt the undertow surging once more.
"Perhaps we should move back to the porch," she suggested. "The sun is already set and it is far too dark to see anything in the garden."
"But that is the point, isn't it?" Gerald asked. "If we are walking in a garden so dark that nobody can see, then we obviously are both hoping that I'll steal a kiss."
Princess blushed, but honestly adored his teasing repartee. It was such a new and exciting game, even if she wasn't all that sure how to play it.
"I do not believe that larceny will be necessary, Gerald," she told him. "I am only too happy to give you all the kisses you desire."
"All the kisses I desire? Ooooh, Cessy, are you becoming a temptress?"
"What a novel idea," she answered. "A temptress. I like the sound of that. Among my classmates at Miss Thorogate's College in St. Louis, I might have been voted Student Most Likely to End up a Domineering Spinster."
Princess was embarrassed by her hasty confession.
Her years at school were not, to her mind, an unqualified success. Young ladies of good family or good fortune were taught the vagaries of proper etiquette and basics of elegant conversation so they could be appropriate wives for gentlemen of the upper classes. The words had never been spoken aloud, but it was her belief that her father had sent her to St. Louis with the hope that she would find a suitable young man to marry. It had simply never happened. In a school of twenty-six well-heeled, privileged females, she had not been the plainest or the poorest. But she was without doubt the least concerned with the importance of elevating her social position. Each time a gentleman made her acquaintance, he was at the same time being introduced to twenty-five more preferable choices.
Princess had not felt disappointed. She had been waiting for her true love, and it was clear to her that he was not one of the gentlemen in St. Louis.
Gerald stopped walking and turned to her inquisitively. "You think of yourself as domineering, Cessy?"
His brow was furrowed and his gaze intense as he stared down at her. Princess felt the flush of embarrassment steal into her cheeks once more. She had made her peace with the reality of herself. Too many years of her youth had been wasted wanting to be someone else. She was exactly the woman that God had intended her to be. She was learning to accept that. She wanted her true love to be able to do the same.
"When I look in my mirror I see a very ordinary female looking back," she told him. "But, in truth, I do not believe that the mirror tells all. God gave me gifts of energy and leadership. I would be failing in my duty not to use them, and there is a whole world around me that seems to require my constant attention."
Gerald was silent for a long moment.
"The mirror is not the best judge of a woman," he agreed quietly. "It only reflects the most desultory observation."
"Many women would then ask how on earth are they to determine their worth," she pointed out, inflecting a tone of teasing into the question.
He stepped closer. So close that she need only lean slightly in his direction to press against his chest. The warmth of his nearness enveloped her. The scent of his shaving soap was masculine and enticing. She began to tremble.
"Look into my eyes, Cessy," he whispered. "Is the woman you see there not so very extraordinary?"
She did look up into those unfathomable dark eyes for an instant, but she saw no woman at all. And then he turned his head and brought his lips down upon her own.
Chapter Six
Cedarleg was certainly right in his prediction about his wife. Sadie Pease, known by one and all simply as Ma, should have been extremely unhappy about sharing their living space with a young rig worker she'd never met. But in fact she did take Tom in like a son. She fussed over him. She nagged at him. And she kept his clothes clean and his food hot.
Ma was a short, round little woman. She had never met a stranger. And she loved a good joke. Once she heard one, she told it again and again. She worked with the efficiency of a dynamo. And she did it with a light heart.
The tool pusher's living quarters consisted of a canvas tarp that hung over a pitched frame. It had a pine plank floor and was half walled on three sides. Mosquito netting was hung in the "eaves" and across the front "door." It had an appearance reminiscent of a house, but without much of the protection from weather or privacy that such a structure usually afforded.
Tom's army camp in Cuba had not been quite as spartan or primitive, but Ma seemed to take it all in stride.
"I raised three children in places worse than this," she told Tom proudly. "They was ever' day clean and each one went to school through the sixth grade. I don't require much finery to live. My man's in the oil business and he's dragged me from pillar to post since the day we wed. And if there's anything that I've learned, it's that as soon as you've fixed up a place to really suit you, you're going to have to leave it behind."
Ma cackled at one of her favorite stories. "As soon as you've fixed up a place to really suit you, you're going to have to leave it behind," she repeated.
There was nothing temporary or campish about the way Ma and Cedarleg lived. She'd made a home under the tarp and it was in every way as warm and welcoming as any fine house Tom had ever visited. In many ways more so than the great mansions of Ambrose Dexter and his friends.
Each evening when they arrived from work her floor would be scrubbed to gleaming. Dishes would be set upon the plank table and heaping mounds of mouth-watering food would be hot and ready to eat.
She also kept Tom's courting clothes, as she called them, brushed and ready to go. But she made it clear that she had no high hopes for his future with a Miss Cessy Prin.
"A Burford Corners girl will never do for you," she told him plainly. "She'll be wanting you to settle here, and when a oil worker chooses to settle he's likely to starve."
"Ma," Cedarleg interrupted her. "You was once a town girl yourself."
"So I know what I'm talking about," she insisted. "If you think it's been easy learning to live with you, Winthrop Pease, then you're a fool!"
"Winthrop?" Tom asked, wide-eyed and teasing.
Cedarleg grinned at him. "That's the feller I used to be when I had two legs to my credit."
Ma continued her advice. "I'm just saying that there are plenty of nice girls in Topknot without the need for you to go looking over at Burford Corners."
Tom rather liked Ma's advice and attention, even when she was nagging. There had never really been a mother figure in his life. Reverend McAfee was the closest thing to a parent he had ever had. He found being treated like a son by the Peases to be a very pleasurable and unexpected bonus.
"Please don't worry about me, Ma," Tom told her. "I know what I'm doing."
But in truth he was no longer sure that he did. Every evening he spent with Cessy, learning to like and admire her as a person. A development that he clearly had not planned for.
And every day he worked on the rig with Cedarleg. As he became
more skilled he earned the respect of the men around him. He was learning a lot about the tool dresser's trade, the oil business, and about the viability of the well. And, he joked to Cedarleg, he was learning about mud.
Mud, Tom discovered, was the lifeblood of the oil drilling. A shallow, man-made pond next to the rig was kept stirred up and oozing with the stuff. It was pumped down the drill stem to cool and lubricate the bit, to flush out the cuttings and create a counter pressure that prevented both annoying cave-ins and dangerous blow outs. Keeping large quantities of the easily obtainable brown viscous available was part of Tom's job. And the most cursory glance at his work clothing indicated as much.
Daily he worked, covered hairline to boot top in mud. Occasionally he was so splattered with the stuff that only his white-toothed grin was visible.
He saw Maloof one afternoon while he was in that very condition. The peddler's eyes had widened at the sight of him, but he made no comment except to inquire about his satisfaction with his dress suit. Tom was a bit disconcerted to be called Tom by the peddler to whom he had introduced himself as Gerald Crane. But the foreign fellow had obviously heard the other workers call him by that name and didn't seem to comprehend the discrepancy.
At the well Tom listened. He learned from the other men and profited from their experience. The Topknot was a salt dome geological formation underneath the ground. Because the salt was less dense than the sedimentary rock that surrounded it, it bulged up toward the top. The bulging created little traps, empty caverns between the rocks. Over time, as gas and oil moved upward through the natural passageways, it settled in these traps. And it was the oilman's business to find these hidden traps and to get the oil out.
Drilling was a new and still-developing technology. And it was fraught with unexpected difficulties. Yet Tom had begun to believe with all certainty, as did the men around him, that there was indeed oil beneath the ground of the Royal Oil field at Topknot. And he caught the fever that all the men seem to share of wanting to be the first to get at it.
For the next six evenings after supper, wearing his fine clothes and having scraped the mud and grease from beneath his nails, he made his way over to the Calhoun Mansion. His first night there had set up a precedent for the ones that followed. He would meet Cessy on the porch. They would take a walk in the sparse, unattractive garden in twilight. They would talk. She told him everything about her life, her parents, her friends, and her days at Miss Thorogate's College. He let her tell him everything about the oil business. He was surprised to discover a lively interest in her father's company and the labor in the fields. He deliberately showed no interest in it at all. He changed the subject every time it came up. Under no circumstances must she ever suspect that he was after a share of Royal Oil or that he spent his days pounding hot bits and backing a driller.
He told her nothing about himself. Nothing of the Methodist Indian Home or Cuba or any of the places in between. When the subject turned to him and his life, he let Gerald do all the talking. He discussed Gerald's views on politics and economics. Gerald's experiences with the family business and Gerald's successes at Yale. And he told her Gerald's hopes and dreams and aspirations.
As twilight turned to full night, he would find an opportunity to kiss her lips. Then they would return to the secluded darkness of the front porch, where they would sit in the swing, snuggle, and spoon.
"It feels so funny when you put your tongue in my mouth," she whispered.
"Funny? Like you're going to burst out laughing?"
"No, no, not like that. Like . . . like a tiny fluttering bird is somehow trapped in my chest trying to get out."
"A bird trapped in your chest? Where in your chest? Here?"
"Oh, Gerald," she answered him breathlessly.
They were sitting in the porch swing, or rather he was sitting in it. She was sitting atop his lap. They were both fully clothed. He had never so much as loosened a button at her collar. But he did allow his hands to follow their inclination, stroking and caressing her.
"When I put my tongue in your mouth I get some strange feelings, too," he admitted teasingly. "But it's not like a bird in my chest. It's more like a tentpole in my trousers."
"Oh!"
Cessy was clearly shocked by his implication. She might have a mannish stance, but her reactions to his enticements were completely feminine. She shifted uneasily upon the aforementioned tentpole and he groaned in pleasure that was near agony.
He stilled her with a hand on her derriere and kissed her again, allowing his tongue to trace the definition of her lips. He nipped her very lightly and she used her own tongue with equal effectiveness.
"You learn too quickly, Cessy Calhoun."
"You taught me everything I know," she replied. "I never imagined that people's mouths could do so many interesting things."
"You don't know the half," he told her as he ran his hand across her bosom. He could feel her nipples raised and stiffened through her clothes. "Wait until I put my mouth here."
Her sharp intake of breath was almost a cry of desperation. "Do it, do it Gerald. Put your mouth there."
"I can't, Cessy," he answered back in a hot, tempting whisper. "I won't. I won't compromise you. We must wait until . . . until ... oh, Cessy, I'd better go before we do something that you'll regret."
"I would never regret anything with you," she breathed.
"I'd better go."
"Not yet, not yet," she insisted. "Kiss me, Gerald. Kiss me once more."
He did. He kissed her with all the seduction and expertise that he could manage. He kissed her with his whole body, his whole self. He kissed her wholly.
The moan of desire at the back of her throat was a sound akin to beautiful music. It had been like this every night. Every night from the first he had kissed, caressed, and conduced her toward the sensual pleasures. And every night she had been eager and willing to cooperate, even to offer instructions in her own seduction.
"We mustn't. We mustn't do this, Cessy," he told her as he teased and tantalized the nipple between his fingers, and cupped and clutched the small, firm breast upon which it sat.
He felt her squeeze her thighs together tightly and momentarily he wished that his aching erection was buried firmly between them.
"It's not right, Cessy. It's grievous and I would not lead you astray," he insisted as he teasingly, tantalizingly did just that.
She was squirming atop his lap once more and Tom was enjoying it just a little too much. He clasped her around the waist and set her on her feet, only to stand beside her and pull her into his arms.
"I must leave," he whispered against her neck.
She made a soft sound and pressed her body more firmly against his own. Trailing hot kisses along her neck, interspersed with little love bites, he ran his hands down the length of her back and then clutched her buttocks in his hands and pulled her tightly against his erection.
"Oh, Cessy," he whispered against her ear. "I want you so much. I love you so much. I ... I have to leave. I have to leave now."
He pulled away from her and stepped back.
"Gerald ..."
Tom held up his hands as if to ward her off.
"We're playing with fire here, Cessy," he said. "We're playing with fire and I won't have you burned."
Even in the darkness, standing at a distance, he could see that she was trembling, bereft without his arms to hold her.
"I love you, Gerald," she said. "I love you so very much."
"And I love you, Cessy." He hurried down the garden steps and then turned back to blow her a kiss. "Tomorrow evening, Cessy, may I call upon you again tomorrow evening?"
"Yes, oh yes," she answered as she grasped the air, as if catching his kiss and bringing it to her lips. "You must call on me tomorrow."
Tom walked away from her, facing backward as if unable to tear his eyes from the sight of her. When he reached the darkness of the trees where she could no longer see him, he turned and gave a long-suffering sigh.
"Geez," he muttered to himself as he shook his head. "Hard as a brick and aching worse than a sore tooth. I can't keep going on like this."
He made his way with some haste through the edges of the dark, deserted downtown of Burford Corners and the rough noisy saloon district of Topknot and into the oil camp.
"I can't continue doing this," he repeated to himself.
In truth it had only been a week. King Calhoun lingered in St. Louis and Tom took advantage of the opportunity to see the young woman unchaperoned. Every evening after Ma's great meal, he hurried over to Cessy's front porch. He knew that he should make hay while the sun was shining. Of course, he could have made more hay than he had currently.
Cessy Calhoun was passionately in love with him. That was obvious. But even if he had not been able to tell by looking, the woman frankly told him so. She wanted him and seemed to have no compunction to wait for wedding vows. He could have bedded her a week ago. Truth to be told, he could have bedded her the night that he met her.
But something held him back. He wasn't at all sure yet if he should. It was all working out so perfectly. All just as he'd planned. Except she was not as he'd planned. She was not just an oil heiress. Cessy was a person. A person he found that he liked and admired. That should be good. That should be very good. But somehow it was not. He had a strong sense of foreboding. He was certain that there was some kind of trouble ahead.
If he bedded Cessy, then he would have to marry her—only a cad would do otherwise. And he liked her far too much to break her heart. But of course he wanted to marry her. And if he decided not to, whether he'd seduced her or not, her heart might well be irreparably broken nonetheless.
These nightly enticements were playing havoc with his sleep and his good humor. It had been a long while since he'd lain spent and satisfied in the arms of a woman. Normally that was no problem. He was fastidious enough to do without female companionship when there was none of the superior kind available. But he had never in his life allowed himself to become sexually aroused night after night with no relief.