Tears were streaming down her alabaster cheeks.
"Angel, don't cry," he murmured, dismayed to see how much pain she'd locked inside—and how desperately she needed a trusted somebody to reassure her that she wasn't crazy or going to hell.
Part of him wanted to punch Michael Jones's lights out for perpetuating her outlandish fear that she was sick or demon- possessed.
Another part wanted to rock her in his arms and let her cry her heart out.
In good conscience, however, he couldn't do either, so he opted for his last recourse: to tug the bandanna from his pocket and hand it to her.
"Thank you, Jesse," she whispered, her voice stuffy, her eyelashes wet and spiky. "I've been so scared that my visions were getting worse. That they were taking over my mind. That Michael would give up finding a cure and... and that he'd put me in an institution."
Jesse was aghast. "I would never let that happen to you!"
She swallowed, finally raising her gaze to his. "You've given me hope." She brightened with a tremulous smile. "When I pray tonight, I'll ask God and all the angels to be extra nice to you."
The almost worshipful way in which she was blinking up at him was Jesse's undoing. He couldn't bear for her to think he was some Christian martyr. Not when he'd done things that would have made every hair on her head stand on end.
"Sera," he said huskily, his throat constricting with shame, "I have a secret, too. A secret that I've been afraid to tell you, because I was worried you'd feel... well, the way that other people feel about your secret."
She frowned. He watched worry vie with the compassion on her face.
"Is it very bad?" she whispered anxiously.
"I don't know. I honestly can't remember. I was hoping you could help me. The way that my grandmother used to help people."
Twisting the bandanna in her fingers, she struggled with this news.
Then she surprised him. Throwing her arms around his neck, she pressed her cheek against his throat. "I'll find a way to help you, Jesse. I promise."
In that moment, it didn't matter. Bedroom #2 didn't matter. The fact that Sera was willing to suffer an Episode, that she was willing to endure her deepest fear to help him, moved Jesse deeply.
His hand was shaking when it touched her hair. He stroked her unbound curls, breathing in the heady sweetness of her fragrance. No matter where he roamed, and no matter how far, he suspected he would always think of Sera whenever he smelled gardenias.
His heart ached at the thought.
Sera closed her eyes, reluctant to deprive herself of Jesse's embrace. She inhaled his scent: sandalwood soap and leather, plus the enticing aroma of his tobacco—some sort of herbal blend.
Cloves with a hint of oregano, perhaps?
She sighed, wishing he could hold her forever. Somehow, it didn't feel wrong to let him rock her in his arms or stroke her hair—even if she was having her serious beau come to dinner.
As if on cue, the doorbell rang. Henry's unmistakable, pulpit voice reverberated through the hall. Eden greeted him with laughter, saying something about flowers and cherry cobbler.
Reluctantly, Sera withdrew from Jesse's arms—only to freeze about a foot from his length. An apparition was bobbing behind his left shoulder. The elderly woman, who was smiling with great tenderness, appeared to be an Indian. Her semi-transparent form was dressed in a fringed doeskin tunic, a ruffled ankle-length skirt, and beaded moccasins. Through her costume, Sera could see the antique roses of the sun-faded wallpaper and all the family portraits that lined the stairwell.
For some reason, she didn't suffer the usual attack of panic. Maybe her calm was due to the reassurance of generations upon generations of preacher kinfolk staring down at her—or maybe it was due to Jesse's solid comfort just an arm's length away.
In any event, her shock gave way to fascination. She realized that the ghost—or spirit—was trying to communicate with her. The Indian was holding the heels of her hands together, in front of her heart, and making her fingers flutter like wings.
Next, the spirit raised her joined hands to her eyes, repeating the fluttering. Sera didn't understand the message. Something about a bird, obviously. A bird with great vision, perhaps?
The Indian nodded, as if hearing her thoughts.
"Sera?" Jesse's voice had grown wary. He craned his neck over his shoulder, narrowing his gaze in the direction of her stare. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"There's a..."
Sera bit her tongue. The Indian was emphatically shaking her head and holding a finger to her lips.
"Um..."
Now the Indian was rocking her arms like a baby. She pointed at Jesse.
Sera's eyes widened in understanding.
Again, the Indian pressed a forefinger to her lips.
"Sera," Jesse's voice was sharper, more edgy now. "What are you seeing?"
"Stazzie isn't afraid," she whispered in some wonder.
Indeed, Stazzie had crept down the stairs, her topaz eyes fixed on the apparition. When she reached a hooked paw for one of the Indian's pewter-colored braids, the old woman grew delighted. She patted the cat's head.
Stazzie purred.
Apparently oblivious to the spirit, Jesse reached past the apparition to pluck Stazzie from the stairs. She protested with a disgruntled yowl, but she didn't scratch. When he set her on his shoulder and rubbed his cheek against her belly fur, she seemed to forgive him. She purred some more.
Lucky Stazzie, Sera thought.
The Indian grinned, flashing a pair of familiar dimples. She blew Sera a kiss before she vanished.
"Now why would Stazzie be afraid of me?" Jesse asked suspiciously.
"Not of you, silly! There was a... um, spider. A big one."
Jesse didn't look convinced.
"Maybe you should go upstairs now," he said gruffly. "And get dressed for dinner."
Sera nodded, her eyes shining. When she gazed at him, her heart was so full, she thought it might burst. No wonder Jesse never talked about his family or his childhood: his Texas neighbors had singled him out for violence because he was part Indian!
In that moment, knowing something of the hell that he'd lived through, Sera could only feel love for him.
"I'll tell Eden. That you brought Stazzie inside before nightfall, I mean."
Jesse's gaze narrowed. He didn't know why Sera was so chock full of glee all of a sudden—and Stazzie, too, for that matter—but he decided to keep his peace as he transferred the cat to her arms. Stazzie waved her paws in the air like a happy baby. She rumbled louder.
"Thank you for having faith in me, Jesse," Sera murmured.
And before he could think to protest, she leaned across the cat to kiss his sun-baked cheek.
As the gentle swaying of her hips receded up the steps, Jesse groaned, running a rough hand through his hair. He yanked it hard in self-punishment.
Focus! He'd come to Blue Thunder for one reason, and one reason only: to restore his memory. This afternoon, he'd gone a long way toward earning Sera's trust. Tomorrow, he'd woo her sympathies still further. Soon, he'd win her loyalties enough to clear his name.
Stick to the plan, he told himself harshly. Stick to the goddamned plan.
Yes, he wanted Seraphina Jones.
No, he couldn't have her.
But as crickets began singing their love song to the moon and a light bloomed beneath Sera's bedroom door, his secret, yearning self whispered, "Where there's a will, there's a way."
Chapter 7
A coyote dream never boded well.
Jesse opened his eyes reluctantly.
Through the window of the carriage house, Venus twinkled like a six-sided diamond in a star-studded field of ebony velvet. Judging by the position of the morning star, he guessed that dawn was still a half hour away. Tempest stomped drowsily in the stall next door. When he sat up on his mound of blankets and straw, Kavi nickered her usual greeting across the aisle.
After six weeks of this pastoral scene, th
e familiarity should have reassured him.
But Jesse was feeling far from peaceful. Guilt nagged at him for keeping so many truths from Sera—truths that were bound to blow up in his face. He'd begun to worry that their friendship was rapidly headed down a road that Sera would always regret. And the worst part was, he was finding it harder and harder to think of reasons why he shouldn't take her in his arms and kiss the daylights out of her.
Take yesterday morning, for instance. She'd arrived bright and early at the corral, looking like a luscious, peach sundae in her froth of pastel lace. She'd confided that she'd just come from church. In fact, since their meeting in the stairwell one week earlier, she'd been spending a lot of time in Henry Prescott's church.
However, Sera had apparently experienced a breakthrough during her morning prayers: she'd asked God to send her a "safe" vision of the future, one which she could readily accept as "practice." Minutes later, Sera had seen herself standing in a crowded auditorium, on a stage behind a podium, bowing her head to riotous applause. She'd appeared some four or five years older than she was now, and her womb had revealed the tell-tale signs of a sweet, little bulge.
In the midst of Sera's standing ovation, Laura Clay had climbed the steps of the stage. The president of Kentucky's Equal Rights Association had been carrying a small, dark-haired toddler—a boy—who'd reached enthusiastically for Sera. The child had called her, "Mama."
Sera had been deliriously happy to recount the details of that vision. Jesse's throat had ached, especially to hear her description of her dimpled, blue-eyed son. He'd had to fight every screaming impulse to make her his, to lay her down in the sun and the daisies, pleasuring her until they were both too winded to speak.
To hear her joy to speak of children and the brotherhood of man had done strange things to his insides. If Eden hadn't chosen that precise moment to hurry down the drive and beg him to repair the kitchen's water pump, Jesse might have blurted out his own secret yearnings to Sera: that he wanted her to accept him, love him the way that he'd always dreamed that love should be, regardless of race or creed.
But in the real world—his world—no future was possible between a White woman and a Colored man.
Besides, Cass was due to arrive at the rendezvous point in under two weeks. If Jesse didn't show up, Cass would think he was dead and look for someone to punish. Jesse wouldn't be able to live with himself if Cass got himself plugged, and all because Jesse had wanted to see the sun rise and set in the eyes of Seraphina Jones.
Jesse reminded himself repeatedly that he would be bad for Sera. He was an outlaw, a drifter, and her brother's hired hand, all of which should make him beneath her notice. Sera had a serious beau and a good life here in Blue Thunder. He had no right to turn her world upside-down with his lust.
Jesse's four-month abstinence wasn't the only reason why he hungered for Sera, though. He liked to tell himself that Great Spirit had sent Sera, the Eagle Messenger, to help him. But if he was to accept that Great Spirit had sent the Eagle to his dreams, then he also and to accept that Great Spirit had sent the Coyote.
Last night while he'd slept, Sera's Eagle had dodged spears of lightning as it had steered through a storm. From out of nowhere, a Coyote had appeared on an alpine ridge, leaping high into the air and dragging the raptor to the earth for the kill.
Jesse's grandmother had schooled him how to interpret his dreams. To the Cherokees, the Coyote was a wild source of primal power, one that most often represented deceit and cunning, trickery and self-sabotage.
The Eagle, on the other hand, represented higher vision, unique perspective, and leadership. Because the Eagle's soaring took it closest to Great Spirit, the Cherokees considered the Eagle a messenger of the divine, carrying prayers between the Two-Leggeds and Yohewa.
Thus, Jesse was having a hard time not interpreting his dream as a warning: that Deceit would triumph over Vision. Sera's vision.
The notion made him uneasy.
Kavi whinnied, as if scolding him for brooding in his bedroll. After all, those wise brown eyes seemed to say, haven't we just survived a nor'easter that tried to shear the top off our roof?
When Jesse rolled back the stable door, he could hear the swollen waters of the creek that stretched between the Jones property and "Aunt" Claudia Ann Collier's. The sinking crescent of the moon illumined broken branches, shorn leaves, and silver puddles that stretched between his temporary quarters and the Joneses' quaint, stone cottage. A tendril of smoke spiraled from the western-most chimney. Jesse suspected that Eden—or maybe Sera—had fired the stove. Food smells tickled his nose.
"Mmm. Arbuckles coffee. You're right, Kavi." He winked at his mare. "I have more than usual for which to be grateful this morning."
The pink fingers of dawn were stretching across the eastern sky when Jesse finished his furtive Go-to-Water ritual, plunked his Stetson back on his head, and climbed the stream bank. He spied a broad, man-shaped shadow hurrying beneath the dripping maple trees and elms. A lantern flared in the stable. Jesse recognized Michael through the yawning door. The older man was dressed in his usual bowler hat, black string tie, and ebony broadcloth. Michael was carrying a saddle and blanket to his gelding, Brutus.
"You're up early, Doc," Jesse greeted.
Michael nodded, muttering something about storms causing extra rheumatism complaints.
Jesse had learned these past weeks that Michael wasn't a morning person.
Strolling to the bucket that he'd set near the tack room door, Jesse gauged the raindrop level. Shaking his head with a low whistle, he returned to the stable yard to dump out the three inches of water that he'd captured from the leaking roof.
"I've a mind to fix your roof, Doc," he called. "You got a problem with that?"
Michael glanced Jesse's way briefly before tightening Brutus's girth strap. "Much obliged."
Jesse returned the feed bucket to its proper shelf in Michael's scrupulously tidy storage area. "You must get a lot of storms in these parts," he said, doing his best to make idle conversation.
No response.
"I reckon that's how Blue Thunder got its name."
Michael was busy warming the bridle bit for Brutus.
"I don't think I've ever seen a lightning display quite like the kind you get over that mountain. Kind of cobalt-colored. With purple sparks."
Still no response. Not even a grunt. Jesse wondered how Eden endured it.
Cass damned near talked his ear off, morning, noon and night. When they were together on the trail, Jesse longed for the relative quiet of a brothel. But after more than a month alone, night after night, he'd started to miss the rollicking skirt-chaser. More to the point, Jesse missed the companionship of someone whom he didn't have to pretend with.
He tried a direct question this time.
"Ever been to Texas, Doc?"
"Nope."
"We get some real howlers in the Panhandle."
More silence. But Jesse could be ornery too.
"Sera gets worried for the orphans—or maybe a certain orphan," he persisted, "when the skies unleash like that."
Finally, a response: Michael set his jaw.
"We're all worried about Collie," the sawbones admitted gruffly, drawing the bridle's head piece over Brutus's twitching ears.
"Sera said Collie lit out of here like a cottontail in a brush fire when he got wind that Sheriff Truitt wanted to talk to him."
"Collie's afraid that Ben will try to put him in the orphanage."
"I thought this was his home."
"So did I."
Jesse folded his arms across his chest. Doing what he did best—watching and listening—Jesse had heard a great deal about this Collie MacAffee over the last six weeks. He'd gathered that no townsfolk other than the Jones family and their "backdoor neighbor," Aunt Claudia, expected the boy to turn out on the right side of the law. Most folks in Blue Thunder expected Collie to follow in the footsteps of his pa, who, apparently, had been lynched by vigilantes after they
had stormed the county jail.
"So why do you figure Ben wants to talk to Collie?"
"Kit McCoy would be my guess. McCoy came skulking around here last summer, claiming to be Collie's long-lost cousin. They bear a passing resemblance. Blond hair. Gray eyes. But..." Michael shook his head. "I figure that McCoy got wind of some stage coach loot that Collie's pa supposedly hid in these hills. Bart MacAffee liked to claim that he was Black Bart."
Jesse had already learned from town gossips that Bart MacAffee enjoyed the notoriety that came from being mistaken for a war criminal. But the real Black Bart had been murdered eight months ago. Yankee folk in Blue Thunder apparently weren't aware that "Berthold Gunther" had been one of several aliases that the Confederate deserter, "Black Bart," had adopted to deceive decent folks in Texas. The wily old skunk had let the moonshiner, MacAffee, take credit for his war crimes.
Yankee lawmen didn't much care that Black Bart had murdered Confederate soldiers, burned Texas homes, or robbed southern stage coach lines. MacAffee had been safe to live out his lie in the Kentucky backwoods, hunting coons, distilling moonshine, and stealing occasional chickens to keep himself entertained.
"I heard Collie got arrested for the murder of some taxidermist by the name of Gunther," Jesse said. "But then Luke Frothingale got Collie's charges dropped."
Michael didn't confirm or deny this rumor. He pushed past Jesse, leading Brutus into the muddy yard.
Already, steam was rising from the puddles. The lush, hardwood canopy that shaded the drive looked black against the golden sky. Occasional raindrops could be heard plopping to earth from the leaves. A busy orb weaver was spinning a new web between the rain barrel and the stable wall. The smell of cinnamon drifted on the breeze.
Letting his nose follow that mouth-watering scent, Jesse turned his head toward the main house.
He spied Stazzie leaping off the bottom half of the kitchen's back door. As the feline sauntered across the rain-flattened grasses, Sera's voice floated after the cat:
"Eden has retched enough for one morning, you hear me? She wants no more goldfinches. And no baby squirrels either. You keep your claws to yourself, hellcat!"
Seduced by an Angel (Velvet Lies, Book 3) Page 10
