Jessica nodded. “Jack, what are we going to do?”
“What did he say?”
“Exactly what I thought he would say.”
“You can’t see me anymore?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“What about at school?”
“‘Hello and goodbye.’ That’s a direct quote.”
Jack muttered something in French that Jessica was glad she couldn’t understand.
“And he says if I disobey him he’ll send me away to school. Really away. Like to Europe,” she added.
He pulled back to look into her face, and she could tell that he was worried now. Nothing much frightened Jack, but this did. He knew enough about Jessica’s father from her descriptions to believe that he would make good on his threat.
“I’ll go to see him,” he said impulsively. “He can’t be that unreasonable.”
Jessica clutched at his hands, dismayed at the resurfacing of his stubborn faith in the merits of communication. “Oh, Jack, don’t talk nonsense. He won’t listen to you. He’ll be enraged that you had the nerve to confront him. He won’t see it as two people getting together to talk over a problem, he’ll see it as a punk kid defying a responsible, rational adult. He doesn’t admire courage, he sees it as a flouting of his will. Don’t you understand? You’d get nowhere, and you have to think of your family. Please, promise me you won’t try it.”
“All right, all right,” he murmured, embracing her again and stroking her hair. “We just need time to think. We’ll come up with something.”
They stood for a few moments in silence, and then Jessica said, “Jack, we have to go upstairs. My father might wake up and come down to the kitchen. We’ll lock my door. My room is at the other end of the house. We can talk and he won’t hear us.”
“Are you sure?” Jack asked doubtfully.
“Yes, come on,” Jessica replied, tugging on his hand. “Sometimes he gets up in the middle of the night and makes a snack.” She led him through the house, and he glanced around, impressed. He’d never been inside before, and compared to his parents’ home it was a palace.
At the foot of the stairs Jessica held her finger to her lips and waved him back. He waited in the hall, behind the balustrade and out of sight, while she checked on her father again. The ship’s clock on the mantel in the living room ticked ominously, and the house seemed to be full of nocturnal noises, creaks and groans that made him skittish, uneasy. After a moment Jessica leaned over the banister and signaled him to join her. They fled to her room, as silent and lightfooted as cats, conspirators who faced certain disaster if discovered.
Once inside her bedroom, Jessica locked the door. Jack stared at the textured wallpaper and sumptuous carpeting, the twin closets, doors ajar, bursting with clothes. The matched furniture was all white and gold, stylized, as pretty and perfect as a doll house. She left this every day to join him, to embrace the drunkard’s son and murmur that she loved him? He shook his head. Maybe her father was right.
Jessica turned to face him. “How did you get out tonight?” she asked as he unzipped his jacket, still examining his surroundings.
“My mom is working the night shift. Dad is passed out and the kids are asleep. I think Lalage heard me leaving, but she won’t say anything.”
Lalage was the eldest girl in the family, the ninth grader Maddy had mentioned. Jack took his jacket off and dropped it on a chair, and then they looked at each other, forced to confront the situation again. Jessica, attired in the floor-length nightgown she had donned to convince her father she was going to bed, appeared so miserable that Jack’s only thought was to comfort her. He tapped his lips with two fingers, asking for a kiss, and she flew into his arms.
“Everything is such a mess,” she whispered. “I wish I were anyone else, some average girl with a sane father who could live a normal life.”
“If you were somebody else I wouldn’t love you,” he answered, seeking her mouth with his.
Jessica responded immediately, eager to lose the concerns of the moment in lovemaking. It was this state of mind that was their undoing. Always before she had stopped him, pulled away before things went too far, but now their whole relationship was threatened by a force beyond their control. Jack, ever impulsive, even reckless, pressed his advantage, unthinking, conscious only of the yielding woman who clung to him so passionately: Jesse, his Jesse. He lowered her to the bed and fondled her through the folds of the nightdress, his hands seeking and finding softness, curves. He groaned, moving on top of her, and she shifted to accommodate him, gasping as she felt him against her thighs.
He was very strong. Jessica knew that from his prowess on the football field, of course, and from the way he lifted her as if she were made of lemon chiffon, but this was something more. Suddenly, there was nothing boyish about him any longer; he had changed, in the space of seconds, into a man. When he reached for the hem of her gown, she arched her hips to help him, enthralled by their mutual ardor.
Neither one of them considered the consequences of the act, since at that moment the future did not exist. Jessica, much more than Jack, realized the peril her father’s enmity presented. It drove her to embrace what she could have now, before Portman moved to take it away.
Jack pulled the nightdress over her head and tossed it onto the floor, gazing down at her, as slim and white as a china figurine against the backdrop of the patterned spread.
“You’re so beautiful, Jesse,” he murmured, lowering his head to her breasts and seeking them with his mouth. “Si belle.” His face was flushed, his skin on fire, searing her as he caressed her eagerly. He luxuriated in her lovely body, desired and withheld from the moment he met her. When he rose to take off his clothes she followed him with her eyes, reaching for him as he joined her and moaning as she felt the weight of a man for the first time.
He entered her inexpertly, almost roughly, and she cried out, causing him to clamp his hand over her mouth. Above his fingers her frightened gaze sought his, and he silently cursed his limited experience. A few frantic nights spent in the back seat of his car with some local girls of questionable virtue had not prepared him to handle this.
“It’s all right,” he whispered, pulling her closer and covering her face with kisses. “It always hurts a little the first time. Just relax and it will get better.”
Jessica relaxed, and it got better. By the end she was clutching him, lost in the experience, and they fell asleep together afterward, curled up like puppies.
Jack woke first, in the thin light of a late autumn dawn. When he realized where he was he shot off the bed, startling Jessica awake. She stared at him in confusion as he wrestled into his clothes.
“Time is it?” she muttered, stretching lazily. She felt wonderful.
“It’s six o’clock,” he replied, jamming his left leg into his jeans, “and if your father wakes up and finds me here you’re going to be exiled to Siberia. When does he go to work?”
Jessica struggled to a sitting position, pulling her robe from the foot of the bed and clutching it to her breasts. As her mind cleared she came rapidly to the same conclusion Jack had already reached. He had to leave immediately.
“He usually has breakfast around seven-thirty,” she answered, admiring the view as Jack turned to snatch up the rest of his clothes. She hadn’t seen him clearly the night before in the faint glow from her table lamp. As she had always suspected, he was gorgeous.
“Are you okay?” he asked anxiously, thrusting his arms into his shirt and jacket at the same time. “You’re not sorry or anything?”
She smiled at him, and it was a mature, satisfied woman’s smile. “I’m not sorry or anything,” she assured him. “I love you.”
He seized her face between his hands and kissed her swiftly on the mouth. “I love you too. Now will you get me the hell out of here?”
Jessica got up and slipped into her robe. She held her finger to her lips and opened the door to the hall. All was silent.
&nb
sp; She gestured for him to follow her and they descended to the first floor like wraiths, not pausing until they were in the kitchen.
“Will they miss you at home?” Jessica asked, as Jack opened the side door to admit a blast of arctic air.
He shook his head. “Mom won’t get back for another hour, and the old man shouldn’t wake up until the afternoon. I’ll just take a shower and change for school. Meet me in the gym after the last bell, okay?”
Jessica nodded, wrapping her arms around her torso and shivering as he stepped out onto the porch.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked again, glancing back at her.
“I’m fine. Get going. You’ll have to run to make the bus.”
He grinned. “It will keep me warm.” He still stared at her, and she shoved him in the direction of the sidewalk. Taking the hint, he jogged off into the rising sun, and Jessica went back inside, smiling to herself.
That morning was the last perfect happiness she was to know for a long time.
* * * *
For the next two months, Jack and Jessica met at Maddy’s house whenever her parents were gone. With the inherent cunning of secret lovers, they managed to get together at unlikely times and places, but the relative security of their previous relationship was gone. They were never alone for very long, snatching minutes here and there, but they planned incessantly for the day when the situation would change and they could admit their love openly. That thought kept them going, and with the natural optimism of the very young, they really believed that things would work out because they had to, because they must.
It was January before Jessica realized that she was pregnant. She had been feeling nauseous and dizzy, and in her innocence went to see her family doctor, thinking she had the flu. The man took one look at her and knew the truth.
“But we only did it once,” she murmured dazedly when the doctor told her the news.
“That’s all it takes,” the doctor replied grimly.
Overwhelmed by the enormity of it, she begged him to keep the news confidential. On the way home Jessica formulated one desperate plan after another, discarding them as fast as they took shape in her mind. She could not tell Jack; she had known that immediately. He would want to get married, and she couldn’t see his future go down the drain because of her. He had his choice of several football scholarships for college in September, and this development would ruin all his plans. She wouldn’t see him saddled with a wife and a child when he was the only member of his family who stood a chance of escaping the mill and its life of poverty and emotional sterility. She would handle this alone, because she knew in her heart that when it came right down to it her father could not intimidate Jack. He had gone along with Jessica, holding back from a confrontation for her sake and that of his family, but in this instance he would take her father on, and he would lose. They would both lose. Jessica could not afford to let that happen.
She was up in her room when her father came home from work that day. When he stopped at the foot of the stairs and called her, she could tell from his voice that he knew. Inwardly shaking, but outwardly calm, she went down to talk to him.
He was waiting for her in the living room, mixing himself a drink at the oak bar. He greeted her with, “I had an interesting phone call from Dr. Carstairs at the office today.”
His tone was the deceptively even one he used when he was about to lop someone’s head off. “I pleaded with him not to tell you,” Jessica replied resignedly.
“The man is a licensed physician,” Portman said. “You’re a minor. He knows I’m responsible for you even if you don’t. I suppose it’s not necessary to ask who the father is.”
Jessica said nothing.
Portman took a large swallow of his drink and went on. “I’ve had all afternoon to think about this. Marriage to that lowlife teenaged lothario is out of the question, and so is abortion. The baby will still be my grandchild. I’ve contacted Arthur Remington in New York. He’s agreed to marry you and give the child a name. You’ll go to stay with him until it’s born, and then you can arrange a divorce. The Remingtons are an old, distinguished family, and you should be very grateful that Arthur is willing to do this for me.”
Jessica stared at her father in horror, too stunned to speak. Arthur Remington was the son of one of her father’s business acquaintances, in his mid-twenties, a bespectacled MBA who wore polo shirts and wing-tipped shoes. She didn’t want to think about what her father must have promised Arthur in order to get him to cooperate: the Portman mill payroll account for eternity, probably. The Remingtons had status. What they didn’t have was money. As shocked as Jessica was, she was still impressed by the Machiavellian turn of her father’s mind. In one stroke, he had got his pregnant daughter a blueblood husband and himself a Remington under this thumb. He never missed an opportunity to turn adversity to his own advantage.
“I will not marry Arthur Remington,” Jessica said in a strong voice, once she recovered it.
“Oh, yes, you will,” her father answered softly. “Unless you want that guttersnipe boyfriend of yours charged with statutory rape.”
“Rape,” Jessica whispered, shocked, barely able to frame the word.
“Statutory rape,” her father repeated with satisfaction, pleased at his complete mastery of the situation. “The Chabrol boy is over eighteen, you are not. In this state the penalty is a prison term—quite a long one, I understand.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Jessica said, swallowing hard, feeling suddenly ill. “Even you wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Try me,” her father said equably. “Now do I call Arthur and tell him to make the arrangements and expect you tomorrow, or do I call the district attorney’s office? I know Cal Williams, the DA, personally. That Chabrol whelp will wind up in a cell at Walpole, I can guarantee it.”
“Why?” Jessica said hopelessly. “Why do you hate me so much?”
For the first time George Portman showed a softening of expression. “I don’t hate you, Jessica. I’m doing this for your own good, and in the future you will realize that I was right. I don’t expect you to thank me now, but someday you will.”
“Never,” she murmured. “Never.”
He waited and saw the exact moment when she made up her mind. “If I do this, you won’t hurt Jack or his family?” she asked, eyeing him levelly.
Portman’s mouth hardened. “That kid will get what he deserves eventually.”
“Promise me,” Jessica said. “Promise, or I don’t go.”
“You have my word on it,” Portman said grudgingly. Then, almost to himself, “Let him try to latch on to someone else’s money by seducing their daughter. He won’t get mine.”
“If I find out you’ve done anything to him I’ll come back and take out an ad in the paper telling the whole story to the world,” Jessica said fiercely, knowing this was the direst threat she could utter. Portman’s reputation was everything to him. It was the main reason he was shipping her off to Arthur’s waiting arms.
“This is no time to blackmail me, young lady,” Portman replied. “You’re hardly in a position to bargain.”
“I mean it. You leave Jack alone.”
“I think you had better go upstairs and pack,” Portman said mildly, ignoring her last statement. “I’ll get Arthur on the phone and tell him to meet your plane. I’ve already checked the schedule, and there’s a flight out of Bradley at one tomorrow. I’ll have to inquire about your finishing high school. I’m sure there’s a night course or something that can be arranged.”
“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?” Jessica asked bitterly.
“I try to be thorough.” Jessica moved toward the hall, and he called after her. “And Jessica, I wouldn’t try to contact that boy in any way. Just a warning.”
“He’ll try to find out what happened to me,” she replied, sickened at the thought of Jack’s bewilderment, his desperation at her disappearance.
“You leave him to me,” P
ortman said.
“What will you tell him?” she asked anxiously.
“Something that will shut him up and keep him from running after you. That’s my affair. You go and get your things together.”
Jessica heard him on the phone as she climbed the stairs, feeling as if her whole world were collapsing around her. It was all too sudden, too awful to absorb. But there was one thing that made her absolutely determined to go through with her father’s plan: it was the only way to save Jack.
When the plane left Springfield the next afternoon, she would be on it.
* * * *
“Jessica?”
Her sister’s voice floated up the stairs, ending her reverie.
“Jessica, are you up there?” Jean called.
“Yes, I’ll be right down,” Jessica answered, coming back to the present with a jolt. Jean must be home from school on her lunch hour.
Jessica stood and smoothed her skirt, wiping away the tears her painful reminiscence had brought. She glanced in the mirror as she walked to the landing, thinking that the past was a closed book, and there was enough for her to deal with in the present to keep her occupied. She must not indulge herself that way again.
She adopted a cheerful demeanor and descended the stairs to meet her sister.
Chapter 3
Jean was standing at the foot of the stairs and rushed to embrace her sister as Jessica reached the hall.
“It’s so good to see you,” the younger girl said happily. “I spotted the car outside so I knew you were home. When did you get in?”
“Early this morning. I went to the hospital first and then to see Ransom.”
“How is Dad?” Jean asked, her voice concerned, her blue eyes large and full of doubt. The nine-and-a-half-year gap in their ages had given Jean a different picture of their father. She thought of him as old and sickly, struggling to maintain a failing business. She had no memory of the tyrant Portman had been when Jessica was Jean’s age.
An Indecent Marriage Page 4
