Kentucky Bride

by Norah Hess

  Full of remorse, he said hoarsely, "I'm sorry, D'lise. I don't know what came over me. Do you forgive me?"

  D'lise did not look at him, staring down at the floor and twisting her hands together.

  "I promise it won't happen again," Kane said softly, then persisted gently, "Do you forgive me?"

  He didn't hurt you, D'lise reminded herself. Actually he had only startled her. And if, as he promised, he never did it again, there was really no reason she shouldn't forgive him. After all, it was partly her fault. Knowing how men were, she should have never tried to kiss his cheek.

  She looked up at him with a shy smile. "I forgive you."

  Neither paid any attention to Raven's angry snort as they smiled at each other with warm eyes. "So," Kane said, "I take it you like the yarn."

  "Oh, yes! I've never had new yarn to work with before, and such a pretty color. Rufus only allowed Auntie to spin yarn from the culls he sheared from the sheep. He always sold the prime wool."

  "What are you gonna knit?"

  "A nice warm afghan for the winter." She picked up the knitting needles that lay hidden beneath the yarn. "How did you know what size to buy?"

  Kane grimaced. "Mr. Fancy Majors told me the size you'd need."

  "Don't call him that," D'lise scolded with a smile. "He's a very nice man."

  The warmness left Kane's eyes. He walked over to the fireplace, added a log to the fire, then said gruffly to Raven, "Come on, it's bedtime."

  D'lise stared at the door that had snapped shut with a slight bang. Kane hadn't even said good night. What had set him off again? She sighed and started preparing for bed. These swinging moods of his were very upsetting.

  Sleep eluded her for some time as she relived Kane's embrace and kiss. It was true she had been startled by his action, but in all truth his lips had felt good on hers, soft and warm and demanding. She had felt a little tingling in the pit of her stomach just before she pushed him away.

  When she fell asleep, at last, she dreamed of hungry lips on hers.

  D'lise was jerked awake by an ungentle hand shaking her shoulder. She blinked up at a very angry Kane.

  "Why did you leave your door unbarred last night?" he fairly yelled at her. "Don't you realize that a man, or a bear, could have entered the cabin? God knows what I'd have found this mornin'."

  In her anxiety to calm Kane, D'lise blurted out the truth of why she had forgotten to bar the door. "I'm sorry, Kane. I was troubled that you hadn't said good night, and I forgot to bar the door."

  Kane's face lightened like the sun rising in the early morning. "It bothered you that I didn't say goodnight?"

  "Yes, it did. I couldn't figure out why you were suddenly mad at me."

  Kane lifted a hand and stroked her tumbled curls. "If I promise that from now on I'll always say goodnight, will you remember to bar the door?"

  D'lise nodded and gave him a warm smile.

  "Get up then. We've only got an hour to make it to the buryin'. While you put on a pot of coffee I'll go saddle up."

  As D'lise hurried to get dressed, she remembered with a frown that she had forgotten to ask Kane what had made him angry last night.

  It was blustery, gray, and dismal when D'lise and Kane left for Tilda Jessup's funeral. The clouds hung so low and so heavy that when they topped a hill they were swallowed up in fog.

  "It's an awful day to bury a person, isn't it?" Kane said as they tied their mounts with the others already tied up outside the cabin.

  The same people who had been at the wake were in attendance, with the exception of one new face. "That's Reverend House, the new preacher," Kane whispered to D'lise. "I met him the other day." He grinned ruefully. "I'm afraid he doesn't think much of me."

  When everyone had found seats, the preacher, a lanky, cadaverous-looking individual, rose and walked to stand at the head of the casket. He cleared his throat and began to read from a worn Bible. The older children wept softly as his voice droned on, and sympathetic tears for them glistened in most of the women's eyes.

  The preacher closed his Bible and stepped back so the hill people could pass single-file past the coffin for a last look at their neighbor. The family came last, and tears that had been held back ran freely when the toddler, riding his sister's hip, held out his arms for his dead mother to take him.

  When everyone had gathered outside, Reverend House nodded to the man who had remained inside. He picked up a hammer that had lain beside him during the service, and after placing a flat lid on the pine box, he nailed it shut.

  When the sound of hammering stopped, three of the men waiting outside stepped back into the cabin and Tilda Jessup's remains were carried out and carefully placed on the Jessups' rickety wagon. Then, with the bony old mule leading the way, everyone walked slowly behind the wagon to the cemetery on the next hill.

  Tears ran down D'lise cheeks as she remembered another funeral such a short time ago. Walking beside her, Kane saw her wet face and reached into his breast pocket and handed her a handkerchief. She gave him a wet smile and mopped at her eyes.

  The wind died down, and the sun burst through the clouds as Tilda Jessup was lowered into her grave. A low murmur went up from among those gathered around, and a woman standing next to D'lise whispered, "It's God welcomin' her into Heaven."

  The grave was filled and mounded, and a few women placed bouquets of fall asters on it. The wind came up again and the sun went behind a cloud. D'lise wondered if Tilda had arrived in Heaven as Kane took her arm and they followed the others back down the hill.

  Chapter Eight

  The hammer came down with force on Kane's thumb. He swore heartily and stuck the injured digit in his mouth. Dammit, he was a trapper, not a carpenter, he muttered to himself.

  For two days now he had been working at partitioning off a narrow portion of the barn for the blasted hens Sarah Patton kept nagging at him to come get. He hoped to add on a heavy wire pen for the fowl today and have done with it. He was anxious to get the glass pane installed in the cabin, to be able, after all these years, to open up the shutters and let the sun shine in.

  His plans were to get D'lise out of the house for a while and surprise her with the finished job. Maybe he'd take her with him to pick up the hens. He'd leave her to visit with Sarah and the girls while he hurried back to install the glass.

  Kane stepped back to see if the four nest boxes were level and stepped on Raven's foot. She had silently entered the barn and come up behind him. Irritation clouded his face. Every time he turned around, she was underfoot. He didn't ask himself why this suddenly irked him. Raven had always followed him about.

  He did know, however, why he couldn't sleep with her anymore. Every time he tried to, D'lise's face came between him and Raven and his arousal went limp. It had been three days now, and he was edgy and short-tempered. He hoped that some night, out of pure necessity, he would succumb to Raven's stroking fingers.

  He forced a calmness to his tone when he said, "I wish you wouldn't sneak up on me like that, Raven."

  Raven ran a palm down the front of his buskskins. "Raven did not sneak. You too busy swearing at your thumb. Why you do this?" She waved a contemptuous hand at all the work he'd done the past three days. "You great trapper, great warrior. The white woman in the cabin has brought you to this."

  "I wouldn't be doin' this if I didn't want to, Raven," Kane retorted, annoyed. "I bought six hens and I need a place to put them."

  "But you bought them for her." Raven's fingers were now on the lacings of his fly. "You do all these things for a woman who will not sleep with you."

  "How do you know she won't?" Kane knocked Raven's hand away. "I haven't asked her to."

  "She would say no, and we both know it. The skinny one is afraid of men." She reached for him again. "She is not for you. She could never give you the hard ride that Raven can."

  Before Kane could answer Raven's charge, D'lise called his name from the open barn door. He hissed to Raven to go sit down on a pile of hay, and
she gave him a dark look, muttering, "Fool," before she did as she was bid.

  "Over here, D'lise," Kane called out. "I'm just finishing up with the egg nests."

  "Oh, I didn't mean to interrupt your work," D'lise exclaimed. "I only wanted to show you my new dress. I just finished it." She stood in the path of the sunlight pouring through the door, and when Kane stepped out of the shadows she turned around slowly so that he could take in every detail.

  She's gained weight since I brought her here, Kane thought, his eyes fastening on the ripe breasts filling the bodice. He felt a deep satisfaction that he had furnished her that nourishment. His eyes lingered a moment longer on the bared swell of her breasts that rose just a bit above the lace trimming on the square neckline. When he felt himself swelling, he dropped his gaze to the narrow waist and gently flaring hips. But that only worsened his condition when he remembered that beneath her skirt was the soft mound that had so excited him the day he kissed her.

  Kane made himself look up at D'lise's face and forced a smile to his lips. "You're quite a seamstress, D'lise. The dress is the prettiest I've ever seen. Its blue color matches your eyes."

  "Thank you, Kane." D'lise smiled shyly, then looked past him. "You're doing a fine job fixing a place for my hens. When do you think we can bring them home?"

  "Maybe tomorrow if I can get the pen ready today. Would you like to come with me, visit Sarah and her daughters awhile?"

  D'lise's eyes sparkled. "I'd like that. I enjoy Sarah and her daughters' company. They are all so jolly and fun-loving."

  They stood looking at each other a moment; then D'lise said, "I'll be getting back to the cabin now. I'm going to bake an apple cobbler for supper."

  "Hey, that sounds great, D'lise, and to show my appreciation I promise to get the chicken pen finished today."

  With a happy little laugh, D'lise left the barn, unaware that Raven sat in the shadows glaring at her.

  Raven watched D'lise and Kane ride away the next day, her eyes boring hatred into D'lise's slender back. Another night had passed without Kane touching her. It was as if the white bitch had taken away his manhood.

  Well, she decided, she knew of one man who was always ready for her. She calculated that Kane would be gone at least an hour, giving her plenty of time to visit Albert Bracken, get from him the release that Kane wouldn't give her.

  She gave a bitter laugh. She could be gone all day and the trapper wouldn't even notice it. She might just stay with Bracken all day, she thought defiantly, striking off for the cabin two hills away.

  Snowy didn't at all like the sack of squawking chickens slung across his back. He tossed his head, rattling the rein buckles. Kane sympathized with him. "We're almost home, fellow." He patted the white neck. "I don't like their infernal noise either, but their eggs sure will taste good for breakfast."

  A quarter of an hour later, Kane was releasing the chickens into their new home. Before he and D'lise had left to go fetch them, D'lise had put out a pan of cracked corn and a pan of water for them, and they headed for the water right away. Then, clucking a contented sound, they started pecking at the corn.

  Kane watched them for a while, then went to the cabin and pulled the sheet of glass from beneath D'lise's bed where it had lain all the time.

  Back at the Patton cabin, D'lise sat at their kitchen table, eating cookies and enjoying her first friendly visit with her own sex. "Make sure Kane brings you to the corn huskin' Saturday night," Milly Patton said, reaching for her fifth cookie.

  "Yeah, do that, D'lise. Milly's hopin' he'll find a red ear and that he'll pick her to kiss," sixteen-year-old Becky teased her sister.

  "I do not," the eighteen-year-old denied, her face a bright red.

  "Oh yes, you do," Becky insisted. "All you talk about is Kane Devlin—how handsome he is, how broad his shoulders are."

  "Ma! Will you tell Becky to stop it!" Milly was near tears.

  "Hush up, Becky," Sarah ordered. "I see you peekin' looks at Kane all the time too." She shook her head as if mystified. "I don't understand Kane," she said. "He's past the marryin' age and still he keeps Indian women and whores. And if that's not bad enough, he picks the ugliest ones he can find." She looked at D'lise. "I hope he's dropped that squaw, Raven."

  D'lise hesitated to answer Sarah's question. She hated to talk about Kane in a derogatory manner, but she found that more and more, she dreaded bedtime when Kane would take the Indian woman to the barn. She was afraid that someday all her bitter feelings would burst loose and she would say something that would anger Kane, make him send her away.

  She lifted her eyes to the waiting Pattons. "I'm afraid Raven is still with us," she said quietly.

  Shock came over the three faces. "You mean to tell me that he lies with her, the three of you in the same room?" Sarah's eyes were outraged.

  "Oh, no!" D'lise hastened to say. "They sleep in the barn."

  "With the rest of the animals." Sarah's lips curled contemptously.

  "What is this red ear of corn you're talking about?" D'lise asked, steering the conversation away from Kane.

  Sarah's face showed that she was reluctant to let the subject go, but she said no more on the matter when Milly began explaining the meaning of a man finding a red ear of corn.

  "When it's corn huskin' time in the fall, the farmer slips some red Indian corn in with the yellow. When a man finds a red ear, he gets to kiss any woman there that he wants to." There was a slight pause before she added, "Kane never attends the get-togethers. That's why we're hopin' you can get him to bring you."

  "Yeah, half the women in Piney Ridge want to kiss Kane," Becky quipped.

  "It sounds like a lot of fun," D'lise said weakly, remembering the hungry kiss Kane had given her.

  "Oh, it is," Milly said with sparkling eyes. "So are the box suppers we hold at church."

  "And what are those?" D'lise asked.

  "My goodness, child," Sarah said, "what did you do for entertainment where you lived before?"

  D'lise felt the embarrassed flush that spread over her face. She couldn't tell these new friends of hers that she had been allowed to associate with no one but her aunt and two bound-boys. They would never understand it, probably wouldn't even believe her.

  "My father was sickly and I mostly stayed home with him," she said and hoped she wouldn't be questioned further.

  "That's a shame," Sarah said with genuine sympathy, then explained the box supper to D'lise. "We have those often, mostly in the winter when there's nothin' else to do. The young single girls make up a light supper and put it in a box. Most of them fry a chicken, and all of them bake a pie or cookies for dessert. At the church the preacher holds the boxes up, one at a time, and the single men bid on them. The money goes to support Reverend House's family."

  "And sometimes there's a lot of it," Becky put in. "Sometimes a couple of men will bid against each other if they both like the same girl and they know which box is hers. Remember, Ma, that time them two trappers kept biddin' on that trashy Rosy Davis's box? The one who finally got it had to hand over five dollars."

  "I remember." Sarah nodded. "It was the highest price anybody had ever paid at one of the socials. And didn't Rosy put on airs about it."

  "Hah!" Milly snorted. "Everybody knew it wasn't the box supper bein' bet on. It was what came with it. Remember how the trapper took her outside to eat? You know dang good and well that box was never opened."

  "You mean…" D'lise looked questioningly at Milly.

  "That's what I mean. Them three Davis girls ain't nothin' but sluts. The only difference between them and the whores in Piney Ridge is they don't take money from the men."

  The three Patton women gaped at D'lise when she snapped, "They're fools then."

  "Well, maybe," Sarah finally agreed weakly. "I guess they think that by not chargin' the men they ain't whores."

  "Well, that's silly thinking." D'lise tone was sharp. "They don't receive any more respect from their neighbors than the whores, do they?"
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br />   "Yes, that's true," Sarah said lamely. "Ain't no man in the area that would ask one of the girls to marry him." She looked up with relief when Kane opened the door and stepped inside. D'lise Alexander had a strange way of thinking, even if she did make sense. She was awfully old for her age to think so straight.

  "Did you ladies have a nice visit?" Kane asked of everyone in general.

  "Speaking for myself, I certainly have," D'lise answered at once.

  When Sarah and her daughters echoed her sentiments, a pleased look came over Kane's face. "Sarah, you and the girls will have to come visit D'lise."

  "We intend to," Sarah replied. "Milly and Becky can't wait to see D'lise's dress patterns. Your little ward sure is handy with a needle and thread. I've never seen a prettier dress than the one she's wearin'."

  Pride was in the eyes Kane turned on D'lise. "She's a fine little cook too. And speaking of which, we'd better get home, D'lise. My stomach is beginnin' to say it's hungry."

  "Yes, I expect it's getting that time." D'lise stood up. "I want to take a look at my chickens before I start cooking, though."

  The Pattons followed D'lise and Kane outside and stood waving until they were hidden on the other side of the hill. "What do you think, Ma?" Milly asked. "Is Kane fonder of D'lise than he lets on?"

  "It's hard to say. He's a deep one. The girl ain't his usual choice of woman, and besides, she's decent. Kane's an honorable man for all his wild ways. He'd never use her like he does the others." Sarah's lips firmed in displeasure. "And he's still got that red squaw with him. I don't think he'd have her around if he was interested in D'lise."

  "That's true, but he has a tenderness in his eyes when he looks at her," Milly said, chewing thoughtfully on her bottom lip.

  "Well, we'll just have to wait and see." Sarah walked back into the cabin, saying, "You girls do your chores while I get supper started."

  The sun had swung well westward as Kane and D'lise rode along, neither speaking much. D'lise's mind was still back in the Patton cabin, going over the things they had talked about.