Mood Indigo

by Parris Afton Bonds

  During the intimate dinner served on a linen tablecloth stitched with red lace hearts, Bram talked of politics, naturally— “Dunmore’s burned Norfolk and sailed away for England” . . . “Washington, they say, lost half his army New Year’s Day when enlistments were up.”

  She saw Ethan flash his friend a guarded look, but a few minutes later her husband was speaking quietly with Susan. Was he still enamoured of his neighbor’s wife?

  When Harry Gramble sought to monopolize Jane’s attention with droll conversation, light laughter pealed from her inviting lips, bringing a slashing frown from Ethan. Ethan owned her, had paid for her, and obviously did not like sharing his property. Perversity prompted her into beguiling the handsome dandy only that much more. Once she leaned close enough for Harry to whisper some inanity in her ear, and she thought Ethan was going to bolt out of his chair.

  Later, the guests adjourned to the parlor again for a game of Judge and Jury, which called for the forfeit of kisses. When Jane was appointed the judge she called on Ethan. “Who is the Leper?”

  His eyebrows rose. “I do not know.”

  When Jane replied, “Then, good sir, you must forfeit a kiss,” the guests grinned and wall-eyed Lucy cackled aloud.

  As Ethan rose to his feet, Jane’s heart pumped wildly in expectation. But when, amid the cheering, he bestowed a simple kiss on her forehead, where errant tendrils curled, she barely managed to conceal her disappointment behind a merry little laugh.

  A while later Bram announced that it was snowing heavily, and it would be best if the guests spent the night. Jane realized this meant that she and Ethan would be forced into occupying the same bed. She looked at him with eyes that pleaded, but he also seemed at a loss for words.

  “It could get worse, Bram,” he offered up. “I think Jane and I should start back for Mood Hill tonight.”

  “Nonsense. An expert woodsman like yourself knows as well as I do how easy it is to wander off the road in a snowstorm. Besides, we want the pleasure of your company for another day, don’t we, Susan?”

  “Of course! We have room enough for everyone.” The dainty woman clapped her hands. “Oh, it shall be a delightful weekend!”

  Delightful was hardly the word Jane had in mind as the guests dispersed to their assigned bedrooms. At her side Ethan arched a cynical brow. “Truly delightful,” he muttered beneath his breath. With trepidation she followed Susan to the rear bedroom on the second floor.

  “There now,” Susan said, lighting the candle in the brass wall sconces. “Since this bedroom faces the south side of the house, you two will find it the coziest of the guest rooms.”

  Ethan flicked a rueful glance at Jane. “I’m sure we will, Susan.”

  When the young woman had departed, the two looked at each other over the length of the Oriental carpet. “What can we do?” Jane whispered.

  His fingers loosed the waistcoat’s pewter buttons. “Nothing at—”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting undressed.”

  She swung away, her hands covering her face. “You promised.”

  “Thee didn’t let me finish.” She heard the frockcoat and waistcoat flop across the back of a chair. “I’ll take the chair. Thee can have the bed.”

  “You would sit up all night?”

  He unbuckled the ruffled stock and tossed it on the dresser. “I’ve spent many a night sleeping in the saddle when I rode with the Virginia Riflemen.”

  It was just one more aspect of her husband of which she was unaware. “You patrolled the frontier against the Indians?”

  “After Ezra and Miriam were—after they died.” Settling his tall frame in the flounced chair, he stretched his long legs out and rotated his stockinged feet with a grunt of contentment.

  She eyed him warily. His hands were clasped behind his head, and his lids had already closed. Quickly she began to disrobe, feeling the rush of the room’s cool air about her shoulders as she slid the gown off. She unknotted the stomacher’s strings, stepped out of the side hoops, and untied the ribboned garters around her cherry-colored stockings. When she stood clad only in her camisole, stays, and underpetticoats, goose bumps surfaced along her arms. Something prompted her to look up. Ethan was watching her with a less-than-sleepy look in his eyes. With a small cry her hands flew up before her barely concealed breasts.

  “Get in bed,” he muttered, closing his eyes again. “ ’Tis cold.”

  Wasting not another moment, she smothered the candle’s flame and in the darkness sought the concealing covers of the bedstead. Ethan rose from his chair, and her heart thumped like a loom’s waft. But he merely drew the heavy brocaded bed curtains. Enclosed by utter darkness, she shivered between the cold bed sheets. How much colder and uncomfortable must Ethan be. If only the bed had one of those New England bundling boards.

  “Ethan?” Was he already asleep? “Ethan?” she called in a louder whisper.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Come to bed.”

  If possible, the bedroom seemed even quieter than before she had spoken. After an eternal minute, his voice asked, “Is thee certain that is what thee wants?”

  Her tongue stumbled. “ ’Tis not fair that you should be uncomfortable.”

  “Thee desires only my comfort?”

  “Yes ... of course.”

  In a moment she heard his white linen shirt slither to the floor and felt his weight sag the mattress. She lay rigid, afraid some part of her would touch him. His body heat stole over her. For a long time she waited to hear the even breathing that signaled he was asleep. Yet eventually it was her own breathing that filled her ears and lullabyed her into sleep.

  In the deep of night she stirred to find herself cuddled against the warm flesh of his side, her head pillowed on his arm. Instantly she stiffened. Her husband had shed all his clothes!

  When after a time he made no move to embrace her, she relaxed. A little later she drowsily slid her arm around his wide, barrel-like ribs and pressed her entire length against him. Her leg slipped up to wedge between his heavier, more muscled one, and her cold toes snuggled against the hair-matted calves. In her sleepy state, she thought contentedly that this was a decidedly pleasant aspect of marriage that she had almost missed.

  She did not even feel alarmed a little later about the lips that kissed her widow’s peak then dropped a tenderly brushed kiss in the soft hollow just before her ear. And when his tongue teased the pox pit in the center of her chin, she dipped her chin to seek that warm, wet mouth in a quite unconscious manner. The pleasurable kiss changed imperceptibly, though she could not identify that moment she came wide awake to the exquisitely sensual arousal that claimed her, to the liquid excitement that coursed through her. She only knew she almost hurt with some deep, insatiable need.

  She lost the arm that had been her pillow when he raised on his elbow to look down at her. His eyes glittered. He drew away from her and kissed her forehead. “Go back to sleep, Jane.”

  “But . . .”

  “Go to sleep. With the first light of day sometimes come regrets.”

  Her hand sought his shoulder only to come in contact with the hard mound of his chest. She left it there, savoring the crisp tangle of hair beneath her fingertips. “But Ethan . . . I liked you kissing me.” She was glad that the darkness hid the color that surely flooded her cheeks at the bald admission.

  “There’s more to loving than kissing,” he told her in a harsh tone.

  “Show me,” she taunted softly, unwisely.

  A guttural rasp tore out of his throat. He rolled half over her, pinning her on the goosedown mattress. His callused hands gripped her bare shoulders, and he slanted his mouth down over hers. His lips crushed hers like an unheeding bootheel would fallen rose petals. His tongue filled her mouth, and she wanted to feel its slashing tip sabering clear down to that aching pit in her stomach.

  She slid one hand behind his neck, loosening the queue so that his thick hair swished free, tickling her wrist. Her other hand sl
id around his waist to press against his back, pulling him against her. Against her own volition, her fingers followed the fine hair that veed down into the firm, rounded buttocks.

  A small gasp fluttered up her windpipe, but his mouth silenced her sudden modest outcry. “Jane,” he growled low against her lips in a voice that she hardly recognized, “ ’tis too late . . . all is lost.”

  Now an undefinable fear crept up her spine as his fingers worked nimbly at her wooden pins and tumbled loose her heavy hair. Remnants of its powder flurried about them.

  His fingers buried in the thick tresses, tugging to arch her neck, and his mouth traveled down the creamy column to the base of her throat. But she was insensitive to the feverish kisses. The thick, engorged organ against the inside of her thigh, announcing its inevitable intent, terrified her. The swollen, tumescent member was incredibly large; as large, surely, as that of Wychwood’s brood stallions.

  “No,” she whispered in a tight, panicky voice.

  But there was no stopping Ethan. He was far stronger and beyond the reach of pleas or hands that shoved ineffectually against his chest. For too long he had repressed his volatile desire for her. And that desire was damning her. He was a volcano erupting. His violation of her was inescapable, unavoidable.

  God, let it end, let it end soon, she prayed.

  But neither God nor Ethan seemed to hear her. Instead, Ethan took his time. Anchoring her wrists at either side of her hips, he slid down her, his thick silky fur brushing her breasts, her belly, the insides of her thighs. He kissed her nipples softly, harshly, tenderly until the aureoles’ nerves became so taut they hovered on the threshold of pain. He worked his way down past her navel until his breath warmed the furred flesh.

  Shocked, she tried to thrash her hips up out of reach, but his viselike grip on her wrist prevented but the merest movement, and that movement only intensified the action of his tongue. Her hands began to go numb from the lack of blood, but after a moment she did not notice because there was nothing else for her but the steadily rising pleasure he was engendering within her. His tongue softly worked up and down her, its stiff tip like a searing branding iron on the taut knot between the folds. Her body began to respond. Warm fluid mingled with saliva.

  She was sobbing weakly at her helplessness—and her pleasure in the humiliating act; her rage at helplessness and her pleasure were all drawn from the same well.

  “Jane, Jane,” he rasped against her flesh, “let go—try to enjoy it. I am thy husband.”

  She attempted to repress the lust rising in her and maintain her revulsion and anger, but it was impossible. The sexual arousal he stirred in her overcame her efforts to isolate herself, to turn herself completely cold. The sounds of sucking and licking and nibbling joined with her inarticulate mouthings. She was laughing and crying. And then a pulsation started deep within her. The soles of her feet planted themselves against the mattress, and she raised her hips, offering herself to him.

  He slid up her, pressing her down, and the hot cylindrical flesh drove beyond the ring of muscle, deep, deep with rhythmical thrusting. She felt her jaws go slack and her eyes begin to glaze. Then abruptly Ethan collapsed on her with a hoarse outcry.

  She lay rigid, afraid to move for sudden pain—and unable to move beneath his colossal weight. Tears brimmed behind her tightly squeezed lids. Surrendering her virginity to Ethan extinguished her hope of going to Terence pure in body.

  Between her legs she could feel the slow seep of wetness—her blood mixed with his semen. The mere thought enraged her, burned away her tears of self-pity.

  “Jane,” his voice husked at her ear. “Jane, I’m sorry . . . I had gone too long . . . it will be better next time.”

  “Next time!” she spat through clenched teeth. “What in Heaven’s sweet name makes you think there will be a next time?” Fury rendered sensible speech impossible. “You—the smell of—of your lovemaking—revulses me. Your giant’s body has—has no beauty—is repugnant. Dear God in Heaven, get off of me—no, don’t touch me again!”

  His hand dropped from her cheek, and the mattress shifted as he rolled from her and turned his back.

  With first light, she was still considering his statement about regret coming with the morning. Her regret knew no bottom.

  She tried to conjure up Terence’s face as a source of comfort. And to her consternation, she couldn’t recall its handsome lines at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  With both Porhatras and Polly to help around the house, idle time weighed heavily on Jane. Beckoned by the shafts of warm sunlight on the wooden floor, she left the harpsichord and went to stand in the doorway. Spring had come early to Mood Hill. In the snowy blossoms that kissed the plum trees, in the scent of the tender indigo shoots, and in the way of a man with a maiden, March brought the promise of life renewed.

  In the fields she could see deaf Josiah pause in his hoeing to watch Porhatras walking toward him in that uneven gait of hers. The Indian maid had eagerly volunteered to take a pitcher of water to the men, and Jane knew the reason. For some time now it had been evident that Porhatras and Josiah were in love. And for the deaf mute, Porhatras’ language presented no problem.

  Likewise, Peter was courting Polly. Or as the blushing Polly so delicately put it, “The Peter, man-of-war, and the Polly, frigate, wot soon shall be moored ’ead and stem along side of each other in Blanket Bay, missus.”

  With the summer Icabod’s term of indenture would expire. But rather than going back to the Old World, he was sending for his wife and children—bringing them to settle on the fifty acres that was the freedom dues given a servant at the expiration of his term. The Scotsman was in love with that primeval land with its spring carpet of brilliantly colored yarrow, trumpet creeper, and Queen Anne’s lace growing in riotous profusion in the fields and woodlands.

  And Ethan? Did he feel any of the stirrings that marked the rites of spring? She hardly knew, since the two of them said little more to each other than was required. Her anxious eyes sought out his huge figure. He was nowhere to be seen, and she felt a vast sense of relief. That night with him—at the Fairmonts’—had changed her. He had implanted within her the seed of desire. She was angry with this new side of herself only slightly more than she was angry with the man who had violated and mastered her.

  Images of her stretched beneath him hounded her so that she knew no peace. He had dominated her, and in her submission she had discovered within herself a sensuality she had not known existed. Now her fingers surreptitiously touched her aching breasts at night; the soft globes which had once seemed foreign appendages. Now they were a part of her, had come alive beneath the lips of a man, the lips of her husband.

  “Mistress Gordon,” Icabod said, rounding the comer of the house.

  Jane jumped guiltily. “Aye, Icabod?”

  He removed his cap and rubbed his round, balding head. “The master kinna make it for the nooning.”

  Icabod was clearly embarrassed. Everyone at Mood Hill seemed to know of the estrangement between the master and mistress. Had Ethan found her so clearly lacking in matters of intimacy that she held no appeal for him at all? She cared little if he did, for she had no desire for a repeat of the crude, painful performance. But she did want a demonstration of his respect before the others!

  “Try rubbing rosemary on your head for baldness,” she snapped at Icabod and, oblivious to his startled glance, stalked past him.

  King George nipped at her heels as she crossed the yard toward the log vat house, where hammering could be heard. At the vat house’s door she could make out Ethan, naked to the waist, kneeling before the lower vat as he hammered at the yellow-pine siding. In the vat house’s dimness his flesh glowed like polished copper. She stepped inside and the smell of the fermenting indigo swept over her. Flies buzzed incessantly about the small room.

  Ethan looked up. “Aye?”

  She knotted her hands at her side. “I will not have you ignoring me.”

  His
eyes flicked past her to the sunlight streaming through the doorway. “ 'Tis for thy own good.” He turned back to his work, sticking an extra nail between his lips.

  “I am your wife, and—”

  His shoulders rose with a deeply drawn breath, and he took the nail from between his lips. “Mistress, thee—”

  “Jane.”

  “Jane,” he amended without turning to face her. “Thee is courting trouble.”

  She knelt at his side, wetting the hem of her skirts with the excess water that sluiced into the bottom vat to form a muddy-looking sediment. Her voice was low, strained. “We can’t go on forever with this farce of a marriage.”

  He looked down at her, his glance taking in the soft rise of her breasts beneath the thin gauze shade of the pale-yellow dimity dress. “Leave me, Jane,” he commanded sharply. “Go back to the house.”

  “Certainly, milord,” she spat out.

  Furious, she rose to dip a mocking curtsey—only to catch her pump’s heel on her hem. Too late his hand grabbed for her as she toppled over the vat’s edge into the shallow mixture of lime water and steeped indigo sediment. Sputtering she pushed herself upright. A bluish red coated her bodice and skirts and ran in rivulets from her hairline down over her cheeks. The rank smell of the fermenting indigo oozed from her straggling hair and clothing. “Ohhh!”

  Then she heard Ethan’s deep chuckle, and her lacerated pride exploded. “How dare you laugh!” Her hands balled and she sprang at him.

  He caught her pummeling fists. “ ’Tis not my fault, Jane,” he said, but his mouth was crimped trying to restrain his laughter.

  “You swore to humble me!” she raged, still thrashing ineffectually in his more powerful grip. “Does this not delight you?”

  His gaze dropped to where the drenched gown clung to her breasts, revealing the small button nipples. “Aye, that it does, Jane,” he rasped.

  Renewed fury swept over her. She gave a sudden jerk of her wrists, so that both of them went sprawling into the vat, splashing the indigo on King George, who made a frenzied dash for the doorway. Jane braced her arms behind her and sat up, her soaked skirts tangled unladylike about her thighs.