disclosure in tones loud enough to make Jessie want to sink through the floor—or, in this case, gangplank.
"Is he? ' Martha looked interested as her gaze swept from Mr. Bowen to Jessie, who was trying without success to pull her elbow from his hold. They had almost reached the end of the gangplank, Jessie saw with relief. Once she was free of this crush of people, perhaps she could rid herself of Mr. Bowen without causing the dreadful scene she feared was imminent.
But what if she couldn't?
"Who asked you to stick your spoon in, you old lard bucket?" Martha's hearing was apparently good enough to catch that. Her mouth popped open and her eyes bulged with outrage. Before Jessie or Mr. Bowen or anyone else had any inkling of what she meant to do, Martha brought her parasol down with a crack on Mr. Bowen's head.
"Oh! Help! Bitch!" Mr. Bowen howled, throwing his arms up to ward off the blows that proceeded to rain down upon his head. Staggering backward, he knocked against the flashy couple. The lady stumbled and fell against the rope railing.
"Henry! Help!"
"Why, you . . . !" The lady's gentleman friend caught her with one hand and turned on Mr. Bowen menacingly at almost the same moment.
"I'll teach you to call people names!" With her befrilled parasol, Martha was the very image of an avenging fury.
"Get him, Martha!" Cornelia was practically jumping up and down as she egged Martha on.
Just as the altercation seemed; about to explode into a free-forall, Jessie reached the end of the gangplank and the combatants spewed out upon the wharf, propelled by the people behind them. 275
Caught up in the ebb and flow of emerging humanity, Jessie felt her arm grabbed again.
But Mr. Bowen, face purple with rage as he advanced on Martha, who was regarding him like a prize fighter ready to take on all comers, was in front of her. Surely she was not being accosted by another—?
Jessie looked around. As she identified her assailant, her face paled even as her heartbeat quickened.
"What the bloody hell is going on here?" Stuart demanded.
XXXVII
Loath as she was to admit it even to herself, Jessie's first reaction when she saw Stuart was pure, unadulterated joy. Her heart pounded, her lips curved into a smile, and it was all she could do not to throw herself into his arms. He looked very much the gentleman planter in a tall black top hat, a black frock coat, and a buff-colored pair of the new, fashionable trousers that were beginning to replace breeches for everyday wear. The bright afternoon sunlight picked up blue glints in the black hair that curled beneath his hat. Long hours in the fields had darkened the color of his skin to a deep bronze, making his eyes seem more vividly blue than ever in contrast. Tall, broad-shouldered, and narrow-hipped, he was so handsome that even Martha stopped ranting to goggle at him. Jessie barely managed to restrain herself from throwing her arms around his neck, but in a very few minutes all the reasons why she must not be glad to see him flooded back.
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With Stuart's arrival on the scene, the squabble almost resolved itself. Taking one look at the size and style of the gentleman who clearly had prior claim to the object of his fancy, Mr. Bowen took himself off. The flashy couple followed suit. Deprived of her prey, Martha was prepared to accept
Stuart's thanks for her intervention on Jessie's behalf when the disjointed tale was explained to him. Cornelia, with a monitory sniff, looked Stuart up and down. Unlike Martha, she was not to be bamboozled by a handsome face and good manners, and said so.
"Will you be all right with this one, dear?" Cornelia asked Jessie, ignoring the fact that Stuart was standing right beside her, his hand still curled around Jessie's arm.
"Oh, yes, ma'am. Thank you."
"Very well, then. Shall we be on our way, Martha? You must be dying for a cool drink after all that exertion."
"Well, you know I am. But did you see the way that rudesby scurried off ? I imagine he'll think twice before he insults another lady!"
"Indeed, so do I! You gave a most impressive account of yourself."
The two ladies were still vivaciously discussing the particulars of Martha's schooling of Mr. Bowen when they moved out of earshot. Stuart's hand on her arm pulled Jessie in the opposite direction. Only when they reached a tiny park just beyond the hubbub of the wharf did he stop. An iron bench was located under one of the three trees in the park. Stuart pushed her down upon it and stood over her. Jessie had to crane her neck to look up at him.
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"Now, then," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. Jessie saw that the urbane smile with which he had soothed Martha and Cornelia had quite faded away. His sky-blue eyes were angry, his mouth grim. "Suppose you tell me just what you hoped to gain from this damn-fool escapade. I had to leave Gray and Pharaoh to do the work of four men to come after you, and for all I broke my neck getting here, it appears that I barely made it in time. There are places in Natchez where a young lady could step over the threshold and never be heard from again, and from the looks of things when I arrived, you were about to discover one of them firsthand. Good God, Jess, do you have any idea what could have happened to you? No, of course you don't. God save me from women who haven't cut their eyeteeth yet!"
This last he uttered in such a savage undertone that Jessie realized he'd been frightened for her. The knowledge was all that saved him from a blast of her temper by way of reply.
"Are you quite finished?" Jessie was proud of the evenness of her rejoinder.
"No, I sure as hell am not!" He fished in his pocket and produced a crumpled wad of paper, which he waved at her.
"This, I'm assuming, is garbage?"
Jessie recognized the note that she'd left to explain her departure. Since it said that she couldn't bear to hurt Mitch by refusing his offer outright, but she couldn't marry him either, and thus was taking an extended trip in the hope that he would forget about her by the time she returned, the note might rightly have been described as "garbage."
"What did you want me to write? The truth?" 278
"Exactly what is the truth? Pray enlighten me." Stuart was speaking through his teeth. The hand that held her note clenched into a fist, crumpling the paper again.
"Celia is with child."
"If she is, it isn't mine."
"Whether it's yours or not is not the point. The point is that I—
that you—that Celia is your wife, not I."
"Very elucidating." It was a sneer. He was very good at sneering, and it maddened Jessie when he did it.
"You know what I mean!"
"No, I don't. The last time I saw you—and very lovely you looked, too—it seems to me that we pledged our love and sealed the bond most thoroughly. Or is my memory faulty?"
"You know why I left as well as I do, so stop pretending you don't!" The outburst was so loud that several people passing on the cobbled street turned their heads toward them. Jessie lowered her voice to a hiss. "Did you really think we could go on as before, after that? Oh, I see, you thought you'd have a wife in the parlor and a mistress in the barn! How very cozy!" His eyes narrowed. "Sarcasm doesn't become you, Jess."
"Sneering doesn't become you, either, but you do it often enough!"
Angry, she jumped up from the bench, brushed past him, and stalked out of the park and down the street toward town, the wide feather that curled up over the brim of her hat bobbing indignantly as she walked.
"Jessie." Stuart was behind her. Jessie's nose lifted higher in the air as she deliberately ignored him.
279
"Jess!" He caught her arm. She whirled on him so fast that her skirts swirled and a few inches of lace-trimmed white petticoat were revealed, attracting more glances from passersby.
"Just go away! Go back to the wife you married for her money and the child that you might or might not have fathered, and leave me alone!"
"If Celia is with child, which is open to doubt, it can't possibly be mine. I haven't lain with her since two weeks after our wedding."
&
nbsp; "Hush!" As the sound of a shocked gasp behind her penetrated her rage, Jessie all at once became aware that they were the cynosure of half a dozen pairs of eyes. Cheeks pinkening, she frowned fiercely at Stuart, then glanced meaningfully around, hoping to silence him.
"My taste doesn't run to whores, whether I'm married to them or not."
"Stuart!"
Two ladies exchanged shocked glances, lifted their noses, and hurried past. A couple slowed down to listen, their eyes avid. Excruciatingly aware of the growing audience, Jessie, her face becoming more pink, tried without success to get Stuart to look around.
"You love me, Jess. And I love you."
"Would you please look around you?"
Her anguished moan must have penetrated, because, finally, he did look around. As he saw the small crowd of onlookers who had slowed down or stopped altogether to gawk, he stiffened. Under the glare of his icy blue eyes the passersby immediately began to move on.
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Stuart's hand tightened on her arm, and he turned her around. Jessie found herself being marched back toward the wharf.
"Where do you think you're taking me?"
"Where we can have a little privacy. You have a cabin on the River Queen, right? We'll finish this discussion there." With the memory of the crowd their quarrel had attracted still fresh, Jessie bit her tongue and let him drag her aboard the River Queen. She tried to look marginally pleasant as Stuart hurried her along the deck in the direction she reluctantly indicated. They didn't attract any undue attention, for which she was thankful.
Stuart stopped outside her cabin door and held out his hand.
"Key." Jessie extracted it from her reticule and held it out to him without a word. He opened the door, ushered her inside, pocketed the key as if he owned it, and closed the door again, leaning against it as he eyed her.
Jessie crossed to the opposite side of the small cabin, where she had spent the morning sitting in the sole chair, and turned to face him with the width of the room between them.
"I'm not going back to Mimosa." Her voice was very quiet.
"That's the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard in my life. You damned well are going back to Mimosa. It's your home. You love the cursed place."
"Nevertheless, I can't go back there. How can I, feeling about you the way I do?"
He swore. The succinct profanity brought color to Jessie's cheeks, but she did not look away from him.
"There's no need to swear."
"I'll swear if I feel like it. And I damned well feel like it." 281
He broke off, scowling, then took a deep breath and pulled the cheroot case out of his pocket. Extracting a cigar from the case and lighting it was the work of just a few moments, but it gave him enough time to think.
"Did it ever occur to you that we could go away together? The two of us?" The question was carefully casual, but the almost nervous way he puffed on the cigar belied his tone.
It took a minute for that to filter through. Jessie's eyes widened.
"You would leave Mimosa?" A wealth of disbelief colored her voice.
"What a pretty opinion you have of me! Yes, I would leave Mimosa. With you."
"You married Celia to get it."
"It was a mistake. I should have known that nothing on earth was that easy."
"Are you actually suggesting that we should—run away—
together?" Jessie practically held her breath.
"Why not?" He smiled then, a roguish smile that gave him a devilish charm.
"And never go back? What about Tudi, and Sissie, and Progress, oh, and your aunts . . . ?"
"We'd write them every week." He was flippant, but Jessie was starting to believe that he meant it.
"How would we live?"
"Don't you trust me to support you?"
"You'd still be married to Celia."
"Maybe we could change that, somewhere along the line."
"You mean you'd try to get a divorce?" "Something of that nature. What do you say, Jess? Shall we run away together?"
"Think of the scandal." "Why? We wouldn't be there to see it." 282
"Oh, Stuart." She was tempted, so horribly tempted. She'd been prepared to give up everything for him, but it was almost more than she could bear that he should give up everything for her. He took a last drag on his cheroot, dropped it to the floor, and ground it out with the toe or his boot. Then he crossed to stand in front of her, throwing his hat on the bunk on the way.
"Well, Jessie? Will you give up your home, and your friends, and all the rest of it for love?"
"That's what I was doing. Only I never thought you'd want to come along, too." Her reply was almost inaudible. Her eyes were wide as saucers as she looked up into his face.
"Is that a yes?" He took her hands. Jessie felt the warmth and strength of his fingers as they curled around her suddenly cold ones. "Stuart, are you sure?"
"Am I sure? Jess, anything I'm giving up was never really mine. It's you who will be sacrificing home, and friends, and security."
"None of that means anything, without you." He smiled then, warmly, tenderly, and pulled her closer. "That's precisely how I feel," he bent his head to whisper, and then he was kissing her mouth.
XXXVIII
Jessie wrapped her arms around his neck and clung with such fervor that after a moment he lifted his head and laughingly protested that she was strangling him.
Then, looking down into her face, he saw something that chased the laughter away and made his eyes narrow.
283
"Tears, Jess?" he whispered, and reached up to wipe the telltale moisture from her cheeks with his thumb.
"I thought I—would never see you again," Jessie confessed, leaning her forehead against his shoulder so that he could not see the tears that persisted in squeezing past her closed lids.
"I'm harder to lose than a bad penny. Besides, you should have known that I would come after you. Did you think I would just let you go?"
"I thought you'd stay—at Mimosa."
"You thought I'd choose Mimosa over you." There was censure in his tone.
"You married for it."
"I wasn't in love then. I am now." His hand beneath her chin coaxed her head up until he could see her face. "Crazy in love, Jessie."
"You must be, if you're willing to give up Mimosa." That inspired her to assay a shaken laugh,
which was immediately followed by more tears. Stuart groaned, gathered her up in his arms, and sat in the nard-backed chair with her on his lap. Jessie let him settle her against him and attempted to hide her face in his neck, only to be thwarted by the wide brim of her hat.
"Don't tell me you're going to turn into a watering pot. I can't abide females who cry." But his hands were gentle as he removed the pin from her hat and tossed it on the bed to join his, then pushed her head down to lie against his shoulder.
"I'm sorry." She swallowed a sob, and immediately hiccuped.
"That's all right." He turned his head to kiss her mouth again even as his hands explored the intricate swirls of her hair in search of pins. "I'm prepared to make an exception—for you." 284
"Have you had many women, Stuart?" His remark about
"females who cry" had awakened her curiosity about any other who might have wept on him.
"What a question!" He removed the last of the pins from her hair. It fell around them like a sable cloak. Stuart smoothed the tumbled mass with a stroking hand.
"Have you?"
He sighed. "A few, Jessie. I'm almost thirty years old, and I stopped being a virgin about the time, I reckon, that you were learning to walk. But I've never taken a woman who wasn't willing, and I've never loved any of them. Until now."
"Is that the truth?" She sat up to regard him suspiciously.
"On my honor." He held up his hand as though to take an oath, a grin twisting his mouth. "Good God, I've got a feeling you're the jealous type."
"I think I must be." Jessie said it quite seriously as she settled b
ack against his shoulder. "I hate the idea of you with anyone else. You're mine."
Stuart turned suddenly serious, too. "I won't cheat on you, Jessie, and I won't lie to you. I'll take good care of you, I promise. You won't have what you had at Mimosa, but you won't be in want. I've got a little money put away. And I can make more."
Jessie sat up again as a dreadful thought occurred to her. "Oh, do you think that Miss Flora and Miss Laurel will be so shocked by what we've done that they'll write you out of their wills?"
"It's very likely." Stuart's voice was extremely dry.
"You're giving up so much. . . ."
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"But I'm gaining you, and you're what I want. Now hush your blather, woman, and kiss me. All the squirming around you're doing has made me randy as a goat."
"Stuart! How crude!"
"You'll have to get used to it, and all my other bad habits, too."
"Gladly." The word was muffled by his mouth. Jessie twined her arms around his neck and kissed him back. When his mouth left hers to move along the line of her shoulder, bared by her dress, she made a sound much like the purr of a contented kitten.
"I don't like you showing so much skin in public." It was a growl as his mouth traced the neckline of her bodice.
"This gown is perfectly modest," Jessie protested.
"If you say so. In future I'll take you shopping for your clothes. My aunts apparently have a pretty broad view of what's proper for a lady." As he spoke his fingers found the hooks at the back of her bodice and began to undo them, one by one.
"If this gown was any more proper, I'd be covered from my chin to my ankles!"
"That," said Stuart with a wicked grin, "is precisely what I had in mind. In public."
And with that he tugged her bodice down. Beneath it was a filmy chemise and lace corset cover.
Stuart looked at them—and the flesh they revealed as much as concealed—with interest. Jessie flushed rosily, but made no move to hide herself from his gaze.
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