by Pamela Morsi
Cessy was a little self-conscious about this admission. It was no great shame to have lived so long devoid of willing suitors. She had a husband now, the most wonderful husband she could imagine, and he was well worth the wait. So she was determined not to be embarrassed by the truth.
Gerald reached over and ran one long brown finger down the side of her face to her jawline and gently raised her chin.
"You were just waiting on me," he told her.
She smiled at him, admitting the truth of his words.
"Once Daddy has gotten to know you and learns that we've been seeing each other for almost two whole weeks," she said, "I'm sure it won't seem quite as impetuous to admit that we've eloped."
Gerald held her chin in his hand and lovingly stroked her bottom lip with his thumb.
"Cessy, I think that you need to expect that your father may not be too pleased to find that you've married me," he said.
"He may be a little upset at first," she admitted. "But he would never stand in the way of my happiness, Gerald. You can be certain of that. He has always wanted only the best for me."
"Then he and I have a good deal in common already," he said.
"I believe that ultimately you two will get along very well," Cessy assured him. "He'll probably want to make an oil man out of you."
She giggled at the idea of always clean, always perfectly pressed Gerald covered with the muck and mire of working on a rig.
"Can you imagine yourself on a work gang?" she asked.
Gerald looked displeased at the prospect. "Not really," he said. "Surely he will not expect that of me."
"Oh, certainly not rig work," Cessy agreed. "Although I have to tell you that you do look strong enough for it."
She punctuated her little joking comment with a squeeze of his biceps.
"But Maloof is right, Daddy will probably take you into the business."
"Maloof?"
"When you weren't here today, he assumed that, as my husband, Daddy would have you out working already," she said. "I suppose that's what he would expect, since Mr. Nafee has him working day and night already and he and Muna are not yet even wed."
"How droll," Gerald suggested.
"Don't worry, it won't be all work and no play," Cessy said. "Daddy has his business and I have my interests, but we both enjoy giving entertainments and having guests to visit."
"I'm sure our life will be quite diverting," Gerald^ said. "Any life with you, my Cessy, would be that."
The compliment pleased her.
"Daddy and I will, of course, want to introduce you to all our friends," she told him.
"That would be nice," he replied.
"We know a lot of people here in Burford Corners," she explained. "And we know everybody in Topknot. It's Daddy's field, and most of the folks working there were handpicked and have been friends of ours since way back in Pennsylvania."
"How nice," he commented.
"It really is," Cessy agreed. "Most of those people are like family. Many of them helped raise me. Mama died so young and Daddy was always working out on the wells."
"It must have been a very difficult life," he said, taking her hand in his own.
"It was hard, I suppose," she told him. "But it was a wonderful life, too. We were all working together and sticking through the tough times by leaning on each other." Cessy shook her head. "Wait until you meet Ma."
"Ma?"
"That's what everybody calls her. Her name is actually Sadie Pease, but she's like a mother to all of us that grew up in the oilpatch."
"How nice."
"She and Cedarleg, that's her husband, have been as dear to me as my own parents. I've tried to get the two of them to retire here and work at Reverend McAfee's school. Ma would be so good for the boys and Cedarleg could expand the teaching there to include mechanics and industrial training."
Gerald's brow was furrowed as if he was worried. "It sounds as if these people are very important to you," he said.
"They are. I love them dearly," she said.
He was looking very worried now and Cessy was momentarily puzzled. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and offered a reassuring kiss.
"Don't worry, my darling," she told him. "Ma and Cedarleg are just going to love you, I'm certain of it," Cessy said.
He didn't look so sure.
"Cedarleg will take a bit of winning over, I suppose,” she said. "But once he gives somebody his trust, he never falters. Ma won't even need to be won. She's a very generous soul, always. And she has a real sense about people. It's almost as if she can see straight to the heart of a person the minute they meet."
"A worthwhile talent," Gerald observed.
"And such a sense of humor," Cessy added. "She's always got some funny story to tell and she tells it over and over."
"I will try to remember to be amused," he said. "So that she will like me."
"Of course, she usually finds something to like in just about everybody," Cessy pointed out. "But I think she would see you as I do, honest and fair and true all the way to the heart."
He nodded thoughtfully for a long moment. Then to Cessy's surprise he abruptly changed the subject.
"Where do you want to go on your wedding trip?" he asked.
"Wedding trip? Why I hadn't even thought about one," she said. "Do you want to take a wedding trip?"
"Isn't that what newly married couples do?" he asked. "Niagara Falls or perhaps Europe."
"Europe?"
"If it's good enough for Teddy Roosevelt, it's good enough for my bride and me," Gerald assured her.
"I don't know," she said. "I really hadn't considered Europe."
"Then we could stay bound to American soil," he said. "We could take the train to Chicago for a few weeks, it's a wonderfully exciting city."
"I haven't been there since I was a girl," she admitted. "Daddy took me to the Exposition."
"So we see Chicago and then on to New York," he said. "You do like New York, don't you?"
Cessy nodded.
"We could see stage plays, eat at restaurants, peruse the cabarets and the dancing palaces, enjoy ourselves until we are totally exhausted with our leisure."
"Oh, that would be wonderful," she agreed.
"Then let's do it," he said. "Neither time nor money need concern us, why not enjoy ourselves to the fullest."
"I enjoy every moment that we are together," she told him honestly.
Gerald smiled at her. "We'll get away alone together," he whispered seductively in her ear. "Just the two of us in a pullman berth, our bodies rocking against each other in every state from here to the Atlantic Ocean."
His words sizzled through her, setting her heart to pacing rapidly, and stirring up vivid memories of the previous night that had her squirming restlessly upon the sofa beside him.
Gerald pulled her into his lap and began kissing her. That very special kind of kissing where he stroked her mouth with his tongue and nipped her lips with his teeth. Cessy wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body closely against his own.
"Mmmm, you taste so good," he whispered.
"Oh, it feels so good," she answered.
"If we can get some of these clothes off you," he promised. "I can make it feel even better."
He undid the buttons on her shirtwaist and helped himself to the linen-covered roundness that spilled above the top of her corset.
Gerald ran a fiery trail of kisses from the base of her throat to the valley between her breasts. His tongue snaked out to taste that very tender flesh.
Cessy buried her fingers in his hair and pressed him more closely to her as she threw her head back, eagerly offering him whatever he desired to take.
The parlor doors opened and slammed startlingly into their pockets.
Cessy squealed and jumped to her feet to find herself facing her father. Hastily she covered her exposed bosom. King Calhoun was glaring at them like the wrath of God.
"We're married!" she cried out b
y way of announcement.
Tom would have hoped for a more auspicious introduction to his father-in-law. But they had come to an understanding, at least. Tiredly Tom trudged up the stairway to Cessy's room. She'd gone to bed over an hour earlier, while Tom had been questioned and cross-examined in the library by his new father-in-law.
Having the man catch them spooning in the front parlor had not been Tom's finest moment. Inelegantly, he had kept his seat, but it seemed the easiest way to cover his lap. He met King Calhoun's furious glare with as much raw courage as he had mustered against the Cubans.
"Married! By God, you'd better not be married without asking me!"
Cessy attempted to make her careful, well-thought-out explanation into a quick and concise excuse. And she was not doing particularly well.
"We met at the Fourth of July picnic," she said. "And we knew right then, the night that we met, that we were meant for each other. Gerald and I have? been keeping company on the porch for the past week and a half, and yesterday we went for an outing with Muna and her fiancé and we got married."
King Calhoun had not been easily won over.
"Have you lost your wits!" he had screamed at one point. "You must be addled in the brain," he suggested at another. "Has this fancy talking fellow lured you into something against your will?"
It took the better part of an hour to convince Cessy's father that she was sane, in her right mind and of her own free will, married to Gerald Crane.
"It can't be true," Calhoun insisted.
"Well, it is," she had assured him. "Reverend McAfee performed the ceremony in his little church yesterday afternoon."
King Calhoun paced the length of the parlor like a caged lion. Tom stood protectively at Cessy's side. She held on to his arm as if it were a lifeline as her father bellowed and complained.
"I've always tried to watch over you, protect you," Calhoun ranted. "I've tried to do for you the things that I thought best."
"I know that, Daddy."
"I sent you to that fancy, highbutton school of Miss Thorogate's. I thought you'd be happy among the females there. That you'd go to parties and gala entertainments and make friends. But you were more interested in falling-down tenements than coming out parties."
"I know you were disappointed in me," she agreed.
"Disappointed! Sweet Mother Magee!" he bellowed. "I wasn't disappointed, I was mystified. You come back to the oil fields and I watch you get on with your life and I'm thinking that you are happy and content. I build you this house in Burford Corners. You involve yourself with social obligations of the community, with the Library Committee, that Indian School. But in all this time, not by even the smallest word have you ever indicated that you wished to marry."
"Daddy, it's not that I wished to marry," Cessy insisted. "And you make it sound as if I've kept something from you. There was nothing to tell so I didn't tell you."
"Well, I dang well wish that you had," he told her. "If I'd had one inkling that you wanted to marry up, I'd a found you somebody to wed. You didn't say a word."
"I don't want somebody to wed," she countered. "I . . . met Gerald and I fell in love with him, Daddy."
She'd glanced up at Tom. He nodded at her to give her courage and wrapped his arm protectively around her waist.
"I met this man and I fell in love," she said. "So I just had to marry him."
King Calhoun had not been impressed.
"That's the stupidest thinking I've ever heard in my life," he stated flatly. "Good Lord, Princess, I thought you had more sense. You fell in love," Calhoun repeated her words in near disbelief and exasperation. "Well, there isn't even no such thing. Love between a man and a woman is just something written about in storybooks."
"Daddy, that's not true," Cessy told him, aghast. "I love Gerald. I truly love him with all my heart."
"There is no such thing as love between a man and a woman. There is mutual respect and there is sex," King Calhoun declared. "Princess, you just met the man, so you can't possibly know anything about respect. But from what I see, he's already given you a bit of an education about sex."
Tom could hardly allow Cessy's father to continue to berate her. And he certainly was not willing to allow the older man to tell her that she was not "in love with Gerald.
"Mr. Calhoun," he began.
Cessy's father continued as if Tom had not spoken at all.
"I always thought you were like your mother,” he said. "She was Presbyterian clear to the bone, never had an earthy desire in her whole life."
The cheeks of Tom's young bride were flushed bright red.
"Mr. Calhoun," he tried again.
King ignored him and continued walking as if still unable to face his daughter. "Lord knows, it's my fault."
"Your fault?" Cessy's question was incredulous.
"It is not a thing I would ever wish my daughter to know about me," he said. "But the truth is, Princess, your daddy has a very physical nature and I suspect that along with your looks and your good health, you've inherited it."
Cessy appeared nearly rigid with her own embarrassment.
"Mister Calhoun!" Tom practically bellowed his name.
The big man stopped his pacing to turn and give Tom a long, perusing once-over from head to toe.
"Have I directed a question to you?" Calhoun asked sarcastically.
Tom's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps you should," he had answered, blatantly refusing to be intimidated.
"Oh, I should? Why in the devil would I do that?"
Tom took a step forward, putting Cessy slightly behind him, not so much for her protection as for illustrating his point.
"Because I am your daughter's husband and this is our home," Tom told him smoothly.
He heard Cessy's small intake of breath behind him, but it was nothing compared to the sheer red-faced rage of his father-in-law.
Tom continued, his words quiet but firm.
"I am of age, your daughter is of age. We have been united in marriage before God and in the eyes of this territory. You have raised a very loving and dutiful daughter, Mr. Calhoun. And one of the things that you have taught her so well is to trust her own mind and her own judgement. I think you are now mistaken in calling that judgement into question."
"It was not judgement," Calhoun insisted. "It was an impulsive decision."
"That is your opinion, sir. But Cessy and I are very happy with our marriage. We have every hope that you will be happy with us. You will be a very welcomed guest in our house."
Finally it had sunk into Calhoun's brain. The power had shifted. Cessy owed her loyalty to her husband and if her father wanted any influence with her at all, he would have to deal with Gerald. Cessy's father was up to the challenge.
He had ceased his pacing, and the three of them sat in the front parlor for a more polite and civil discussion of the facts.
Cessy had spoken with gushing sincerity of how much she loved Gerald and how happy she was to be married.
Clearly Calhoun had not liked it, but he kept his opinion to himself, at least until she went up to bed.
The two had shared a glass of port in the library. Tom had barely touched his. He was certain that he would need a clear head for any discussion with his new father-in-law and he was not wrong.
"I don't like fancy men and I don't like fancy ways," King Calhoun had stated flatly. "I suppose you could interpret that as, I don't like you."
Tom had smiled without warmth.
"Yes, I suppose I could," he agreed.
"I've seen your kind all my life," he said. "Soft, slithery snakes you are. Thinking you're better than the rest of the world, but couldn't earn an honest dollar if your good name depended on it."
"One never knows when one's good name might depend upon it," Tom replied, fastidiously picking a tiny piece of lint from his trousers.
"My Princess is a sweet and loving girl, honest and kind-hearted clear to the bone."
"Yes, I know," Tom replied.
> "She's tough and strong-minded though," Calhoun said. "She ain't a bit missish at all. And it don't seem quite right that such a fine-faced feller like you would take up with her."
Tom shrugged elegantly.
"I am curious about this business of falling in love at first sight," he went on. "Was this like a spiritual attraction, like the merging of two celibate souls?"
The man's tone was disagreeable.
"Certainly there was a physical aspect to it also," Tom replied.
"A physical aspect also," Calhoun repeated. "Tell me, Mr. Back-East, Better-Than-Everyone-Else, what was it about my daughter that stiffened your pecker? Her frying-pan figure or those bottle-thick spectacles?"
Tom straightened his shoulders and deliberately glared at his father-in-law as if he were a worm.
"Crudities about my wife, Mr. Calhoun, even from her own father, will not be tolerated."
The two men glared at each other.
It was King Calhoun who relaxed first, almost chuckling as if he admired Tom's defense of his daughter.
"Princess likens you to one of those English remittance men that come out to adventure in the West, while being supported by their families back home," he said.
Tom nodded. He'd heard Cessy's explanation.
"What I'm wondering is if you are actually more like those impoverished aristocrats who broker their honor and titles to marry into the fortunes of the five hundred."
Tom's only answer had been to take a generous sip of port.
"Gerald," a sleepy voice called out to him.
"I didn't mean to wake you," he said as he followed the sound to her bedside.
He sat down and she raised her arms for his embrace. In the darkness she was warm and soft and scented with soap. She was dearly familiar and innocently seductive.
"You smell good," he told her.
"And you taste good," she replied. "Daddy broke out the port for you. That's a good sign."
Tom's response was noncommittal as he nuzzled her face and neck and gathered up a generous handful of her hair.
"Oooh, sweet Cessy," he whispered. "I want to be with you, inside you, tonight again. But perhaps you are . . . ah . . . sore. Remember, you can tell me no."
