Reds, grays, and blacks prickled the back of her eyes. The details were crowding in, blasting open the door to her consciousness with the force of a cyclone. She swayed.
The first visions were a confusing montage of Jesse in his youth: stitching a fringed pouch of deerhide; harvesting tobacco; hunting with a bow and arrow; defending himself in a circle of jeering bullies; struggling futilely in the arms of men wearing gunnysack masks.
As that last disturbing vision began to fade, Sera saw a bellows and a forge. Gagged and hogtied to the foot of that anvil, a wild-eyed Jesse lay on his side, naked from the waist up. His shirt lay in tatters around him, and rivulets of sweat rolled down his perfect chest. He appeared to be no older than 15. He was struggling desperately against hemp rope bonds as he watched a blacksmith draw a red-hot branding iron from the flames. The man leered as he turned toward his terrified prisoner. The blacksmith's face twisted in a fiendish mask of triumph.
Sera reeled. That horrible, horrible man was going to torture Jesse!
"Stop!" she wheezed, her hands flailing, seeking something solid to anchor her in her own world of ponies and daisies. Her palm struck Jesse's chest.
His arms folded around her.
She gulped ragged breaths. Heedless of the conventions, she clung to his rugged length like a lifeboat in a hurricane. His earthy scents—leather, tobacco, and sandalwood—pervaded her senses. Dimly, she was aware of his strength, the manly breadth of his shoulders, the rippling planes of his chest, the rock-ribbed leanness of his abdomen.
But it was the tenderness of his embrace that sang a siren's call to her female core. In that moment, with her cheek pressed to his shoulder and his heart beating a soothing tattoo below her ear, she felt safe to weep—not because she'd been exposed and humiliated by her Episode. She wanted to weep because anyone would dare to brutalize the precious, caring spirit that lived inside of Jesse.
"It's not real," he murmured against her hair. "It's just a picture. A vision. It can't hurt you. Let it pass."
He guessed that I had a vision?
She shuddered. Despite all the pain that she'd experienced as a child—the beatings to "exorcize" her demons; the refusal of the other children to play with a "freak"—she had never been hurt the way that Jesse had. What had been the matter with that blacksmith? Had he been insane?
"Don't be afraid, Sera," he murmured. "Whatever else you might have been told, your visions aren't bad. They can help people. People who need you. They're a great gift from Spirit."
Awed to hear anyone say such a thing, she blinked back tears. No other man had ever told her that her visions were a gift: not the great, intellectual minds at Michael's university; not the spirit-centered men who'd dedicated themselves to her father's religion. Only Jesse, a wandering waddie, whose compassion had been forged from great personal pain, had dared to fan her hope that she wasn't sick or full of sin.
"But how do you know, Jesse?" she whispered. "How can you be sure?"
"My grandmother raised me," he said huskily, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. "She used to have visions. She told me that they elevated her spirit and brought her closer to God. Because of her visions, people used to consider her a wise woman. They would come to her in reverence, asking for her help, hoping she could answer their questions or ease their pain. And that's how people should treat you, Sera."
Did he really believe that?
Timidly, she raised her head. She dared to peek past his chin. She saw that he was gazing down at her. There were oceans of caring inside those green eyes.
A tear slid down her cheek. His thumb caught that tear, brushing it away. His skin was warm, his fingers callused, but they were gentle as they slid along her jaw, tucking a stray hair behind her ear.
Then his fingers lingered there.
Just lingered.
Her heart was hammering so loudly that she thought he must surely hear it. Rainbows danced before Sera's tear-glazed eyes. Time stopped, imprinting every second—every semi-second—indelibly on her mind.
For days, she'd been nursing the hope that Jesse would kiss her. She'd even dared to imagine what he might taste like after a plunge in the river or a leisurely bath of fresh rain water.
Secretly, she would delight in her memory of the riverbank: how she'd surprised him there. How the water drops had trailed down his magnificent chest, past his trail of ebony man fur, into the waistband of his dungarees. That memory never failed to make Sera's feminine places throb.
Like they were throbbing now.
She felt the warmth of his breath on her cheek; she smelled the primal scents of earth and leather. A swarm of giddy butterflies launched in her belly. Was he going to kiss her? Was he really going to do it?
Her toes curled in anticipation.
Suddenly, he sucked in his breath. Even she could hear the hoof beats now, clopping cover the dirt ruts of the road. In her panic, Sera bolted from his arms and tripped over her fallen journal. She would have fallen flat on her bustle if Jesse hadn't caught her waist. Mortified, she pushed his hands away.
"They mustn't see us together!" she hissed, her cheeks flaming.
A heartbeat later, she wished she hadn't been so vehement. Not after all the kindness that he'd shown her. Jesse's jaw had hardened with insult.
The buggy was crunching upon the gravel of the drive now. Eden was seated on the passenger side, with Becky Cassidy bouncing in her lap. Allison was driving the vehicle. The women were laughing, and Becky was grinning, as the chestnut gelding pulled them toward the stable.
Sera choked down an oath. Allison Cassidy! Of all the rotten luck!
Jesse was wearing a Poker face now. She desperately wished that she could recapture their tender moment, but her potent Sixth Sense could feel his distraction—a distraction that was growing with each second that Allison's horse was bringing her nearer. Like a puma sniffing its mate on the wind, Jesse was sucking down air, his slitted green eyes focused on Allison.
A lancet of jealousy stabbed Sera.
"Please don't say anything, Jesse. About my vision, I mean," she added lamely, trying to spark some show of interest in her again. "Michael will turn all Grizzly Bear on me and forbid me to go to the Founder's Day Dance—"
"Your secrets are safe with me, Miss Sera," Jesse reminded her absently. "I'll distract Miss Eden while you put on your gloves."
And then he was strolling toward the buggy, as nonchalant as a man who'd been handling his employer's horse all morning long.
Sera was shaking with feminine outrage as she thrust her hands into the cotton sheaths. She didn't know what bothered her more, to be dismissed so thoroughly in Allison's presence, or to be denied the kiss that she'd been secretly dreaming of every night for three weeks. And all because Allison Cassidy had such awful timing!
Reining in her temper, Sera gathered her fallen journal and pamphlet, then made certain to bolt the gate so Tempest wouldn't follow her. Finally, she turned grudgingly to greet Eden's best friend.
She hadn't walked ten feet before Becky spied her. The child anchored her straw hat to her flaxen curls with one hand and sprinted across the drive, calling, "Miss Sera!"
"Becky, don't you be running with glass!" Allison called.
The child slowed her charge, but barely, her heart-shaped face alight with an eager sort of yearning as she clutched a calico-wrapped canning jar to her chest.
"Hello, Miss Sera!" she panted, bobbing a curtsey as she intercepted Sera beside the root cellar.
"Hello, Becky."
Sera pasted on a smile. Cassidy or no, Sera liked Becky. In truth, Sera even liked Allison. It was just hard to like Allison today, knowing that she and Jesse shared some secret past.
But Sera came from a long line of Kentucky belles to whom hospitality was a badge of honor. She was too much of a lady to behave like a churl to a guest—especially an innocent, 10-year-old guest.
"I declare, Becky Cassidy, that's the prettiest jar of strawberry preserves I've ever seen."
/> "Thank you, ma'am." The child beamed. "I wrapped it special for Collie. And I made the jam, too. I hope he likes strawberries as much as I do."
Sera fidgeted. Now she understood the desperate question in Becky's greenish eyes.
But Collie had been missing for nearly two months, ever since Sheriff Truitt had tried to interrogate the boy—again—about Kit McCoy. Collie hated Truitt, and Sera couldn't blame him, considering how the sheriff had arrested Collie to question him about Berthold Gunther's murder last autumn.
Delaying the news about Collie's absence, Sera squatted before Becky, making a fuss over the pink and yellow fabric that protected her jam jar, the matching yarn bow that wrapped the lid, and the sweet little paper heart with the words, "Made with love by Becky Cassidy," written in a thick, childish scrawl.
"Miss Eden said Collie hasn't come home yet," Becky confided. "But you know him better than anyone, Miss Sera. I was hoping you might know where I could leave this jam for him, so he doesn't go hungry and start stealing again..."
Sera's heart swelled. The poor child had a bad case of puppy-dog love.
"Of course I do!" she said, giving Becky a hug. Sera had learned the hard way that worrying about Collie was a thankless task. Besides, if anyone knew how to take care of Collie, it was Collie.
"Collie will be pleased to know you thought of him, Becky. I'll leave the jar in the kitchen window this very afternoon. That's our secret signal. He knows if I leave a treat on the windowsill, he's allowed to eat it—as long as he brings me flowers, of course.
"You make sure Collie always brings you flowers, Becky. No man should ever expect something from you for nothing."
Becky nodded obediently, her eyes wide with innocence.
Sera bit her tongue on the rest of her lecture about sweet-talking men. She was privy to secrets about Allison that most people weren't. Thanks to her visions, Sera knew that a pregnant, unwed Allison had fled Texas when she'd been roughly 16-years-old. "Cassidy" wasn't Allison's real last name. Her Texas Ranger husband had never existed.
Becky's illegitimate birth was just one of the sad little secrets that Sera hated to know about her neighbors.
Slipping her hand into Becky's, Sera took the child back to her mother, who was coaxing Jesse into unloading a bundle of clothes from the buggy. Apparently, Allison, who made a respectable living as a seamstress in the rooms above Aunt Claudia's store, had finished letting out the waist in several of Eden's day dresses.
"Hello, Sera," Allison greeted warmly. "Did you and Becky have your secret girls' talk?"
Sera's smile grew strained. What was that supposed to mean? That she was barely older than a child?
Jesse, she noticed, was keeping his eyes fixed on the stack of garment bags that he was dragging out of the buggy. No doubt he didn't want Allison to guess that he'd been close to sparking another woman!
Traitor.
Sera steeled herself to politeness. "Becky is a darling child. She can bring me strawberry jam anytime she likes."
Becky looked relieved to know that Sera was keeping her secret.
Eden winked at Sera. "We're overstocked on berry preserves ourselves these days. I daresay half the households in Blue Thunder are, what with the Founder's Day bakeoff so close on the horizon. Sera has been canning like a fiend."
Allison's expression was wistful. She didn't appear to be listening to Eden. She was too busy watching Jesse's rolling gait—or maybe his buttocks—as he walked with his stack of garment bags toward the front porch.
Sera bristled. Alleycat.
Eden cleared her throat. "Will you be entering the competition this year, Allie?"
Allison started, blushing. "Maybe for quilting." She'd finally averted her gaze from Jesse's magnificent physique—probably because he had turned around and was heading back toward the buggy. "I'm leaving the canning to Becky. She really does have a knack for it, and she's old enough this year to enter the junior competition."
"I made gooseberry jelly and crabapple jelly last autumn, and I'll be entering them in the canning competition, along with my strawberry jam," Becky said proudly.
Sera continued to smile politely. Great. Even the kid can cook.
As if on cue, Eden's cat came tearing out of the root cellar, trailing purple paw prints in her wake. An ominous pop echoed in the shed behind her, followed by another.
Stazzie yowled and bolted for a tree.
Becky giggled, pointing at the cat. "Look, Mama! Stazzie's whiskers turned blue!"
Sera groaned. Not again.
Excusing herself as the dreaded popping sounds continued, Sera hurried to the root cellar and peeked inside the door. A moment or two passed as she blinked, adjusting her eyes to the dimness, but sure enough, the light from the doorway was plenty bright to reveal the chaos within.
Every single one of Sera's 16, freshly filled pints of jam had exploded, spilling blackberry goop down their sides to the floor.
"Oh, no." It was Eden's voice. She'd hurried up behind Sera in concern, her hand cradling the small bulge in her womb.
Now Sera's red-haired, green-eyed sister-in-law was trying not to laugh as she peered over Sera's shoulder at the sticky mess on the cooling rack within. "You tightened the ring bands too far on the jars again."
As witnesses to Sera's shame, Allison stood behind Eden, biting her lip to keep a straight face. Even Becky wore a profound look of pity. Every female in that yard knew what the exploded lids meant to Sera's hopes for a blue ribbon.
Why don't I just advertise in the Trumpeter that I'm a kitchen failure and pack my bags for a convent?
"Um... I don't think Preacher Prescott likes blackberries all that much anyway," Allison said, trying to be helpful.
Sera shot the seamstress a withering glare. 'Allison should know,' she thought snidely, 'considering how Allison is usually toting a pie tin, cookie jar, or soup kettle to my beau on Sunday morning!'
Then again, Eden, Betsy Frothingale, Bonnie Harragan Frothingale, and the other members of the Ladies Aid Society rotated turns, cooking at least one meal per week for the bachelor preacher. Henry Prescott was the most pampered man in Blue Thunder—which was one of the reasons why he hadn't discovered yet that Sera wasn't exactly blue ribbon material in the kitchen.
Jesse cleared his throat. Sera looked at him helplessly.
"Why don't I clean up the shed, Miss Sera, so you ladies can visit a spell?"
"I'll help!" Becky said brightly.
Jesse fidgeted, but he hid his discomfort from the child with a paternal smile. "Why, that's mighty kind of you, Miss Becky. But I wouldn't want your pretty she-stuff to get splattered with jam."
"I'll be careful!" she said, thrusting her jar of preserves into Sera's hand and dashing into the shed to grab the broom.
"That's quite the little helper you have," Eden teased her friend. "What's your secret? I'll need to train mine."
Allison laughed nervously, darting a furtive glance at Jesse. "Becky just always pitches in. Since the day she was born, she has always been the sweetest child..."
Jesse was wearing his Poker face again. Resigned to working alongside Becky, he doffed his hat and stepped inside the root cellar.
That's when a disturbing idea occurred to Sera.
Was Jesse Quaid the real father of that child?
Chapter 6
Carefully, cannily, Sera cracked open the doors of the storm cellar to survey the daisy-dappled yard above her. She looked left, past the cedar corral; past the white-washed carriage house; all the way to the first bend in the road, where the long shafts of an afternoon sun had turned the tip-top leaves of the oaks a fiery shade of orange.
She looked right, past the rocking chairs on the back porch; past the bunny-repelling cans that warded Eden's vegetable garden; all the way down the elm-shaded path of river pebbles that led to Aunt Claudia's white picket fence.
Sera even looked above her to the roofs, the weather vanes, and the breeze-riffled canopy of sugar maples that dotted her 100
-yard dash between the storm cellar and the main house.
But as far as the eye could see, Jesse "The Panther Man" Quaid was not in view.
Sera knew better than to trust her eyes, however. The minute she left her hiding place and raced for the sanctuary of her bedroom (which was quite possibly the only place on the property where she could be certain of not finding Jesse), she worried that he would spot her with those feral, feline eyes. That he'd pounce upon her path and waylay her with questions—like he'd tried to do two times already since The Disaster.
That's what Sera had dubbed yesterday afternoon's twin debacles of her Episode and the exploding jelly jars.
Just to be certain that the coast was clear, Sera twitched her nose like she'd seen Stazzie do a thousand times, so that she might sniff out tobacco smoke or sandalwood soap on the wind.
But the nose-twitching didn't help.
In fact, the nose-twitching only made Sera feel more foolish than when she had first hidden with her journal two hours earlier amidst the corn meal and cider barrels, blankets and bandages, pots and candles, and whatever else Papa could think of to make a home away from home during the Storm-to-End-All-Storms. (Papa had always been an apocalyptic thinker. The tendency had only gotten worse after his church had burned down six years ago.)
Now the sun was setting, and Sera was expected to change her clothes and present herself at the dinner table, because Henry Prescott would be calling at seven o'clock, like he did every Friday night, to eat Eden's roast chicken and stake his claim on Sera's affections.
Never once, in the previous six months worth of Friday nights, had Sera thought that she would be glad for an excuse to sit on the back porch, sip lemonade, and listen to Henry debate "these troubling times," when women felt compelled to compete in a bakeoff to win a beau.
Seduced by an Angel (Velvet Lies, Book 3) Page 8
