Holding it up. Maribel said with glee, “It’s a snake!”
Edith was proud of herself for not shrieking in alarm. However, as she toppled over in terrified surprise, she could not claim to have much dignity left.
Both men raced over to pick her up, though Grouchy got there first. He poked his black, wet nose against her cheek. Jeff pushed the hound out of the way and helped her up. He studied her, while his father bent to brush off her skirts.
“It seems to be my day for falling down,” she said blithely.
Recovering, Edith pushed away from Jeff’s warm body, only to discover naked skin beneath her fingers where her hand rested on his chest. Soft, crisp hair curled around her fingers, and seemed to cling as she pulled back.
“Oh, dear,” she said, staring, fascinated by the fact that he wasn’t smooth. She never considered that the male of the species might have anything she did not have. The hair spread out across the strong, solid contours of his chest, glinting golden in the sunlight driving in through the barn doors. His arms, tanned brown, supple with muscles, seemed to ripple as he lifted his daughter up.
“Where’d you get the snake?” he asked.
Edith shuddered as the little girl lifted the limp reptile to show her father the sightless head. “I found it,” Maribel said proudly. “It’s all dead.”
“Hey!” Louise’s outraged voice sounded from the doorway. She ran in, shouting, “That’s mine. I found it first.”
Her bare feet sent up puffs of dust as she slid to a stop in front of her father and sister. “Give it back!”
“Won’t! I found it!”
“Didn’t! I did.”
“No, you were looking in the water. . . .”
“But I saw it first!”
Taking advantage of Maribel being still in her father’s arms, Louise grabbed the tail end of the snake and began to tug. Maribel gripped tighter, howling, “Mine, mine, mine!”
“Hold it!” Jeff bellowed. Two pairs of identical eyes switched onto him. “Leave the poor critter in peace. Dad?”
Sam took the flaccid creature from the girls and measured him out. “He’s a good three feet, son. Wonder how he came to give up the ghost.”
“Feel like tanning him, Dad?”
“Sure thing. Make a fine pair of snakeskin belts for a couple of young hellions I know tell of.”
“Me, Grandpa!”
“No, me, Gran’pa!”
Jeff let the squirming Maribel slide down. “Unless you’d like it, Cousin Edith. Guests should have first choice.”
Edith swallowed. “No, thank you.”
“All yours, Dad.”
Casually, Jeff reached out to shrug on his chambray shirt. He left a few of the top buttons undone, and Edith saw the diamond glints of sweat beading the hollow of his throat. The gentle hands that had roamed her body now rested on his narrow hips. She realized the latent power of his form. His wide shoulders and flat stomach seemed to be the most perfect shape a man could take. For some reason, her lips were dry again.
The milk cow lowed. “Care to make another effort, Edith?” Jeff said, jerking his thumb toward the sound.
“No, thank you. I’d better prepare to go ... freshen up. Get the hay off my skirt. . . .”
She stumbled blindly toward the exit. All she could see was Jeff, as though he were imprinted on her inner eye. The sunlight dazzled her but didn’t conquer the afterimage Jeff had caused.
Troubled by her reactions, Edith sought the sanctuary of her room. Yet even here, thoughts of Jeff pursued her. She’d lain awake for an hour last night, acutely aware that this was his room. As soon as she began to feel sleepy, she’d roll into the hollow in the center of the mattress made by his body. The thing that frightened her most was that she fit so well into the space. It seemed far too intimate a thing for an unmarried lady to experience.
But Edith knew that the difficulties of the night before would pale before those that would keep her awake tonight. For now she knew what it was like to be held by him.
Peering into the mirror propped on top of the dressing table, she sought for an outward change in her appearance. She looked just the same—”like a pickled calf’s head,” she murmured.
The curl Jeff had adjusted had once more fallen into her eyes. She withdrew the long hatpin and laid her hat aside. Her long hair fell in untidy waves to the crest of her bosom. She attacked the waves with her brush.
Someone knocked at her door. It couldn’t be Jeff, she thought. He never waited after a knock to come in.
At Edith’s summons, Louise poked her head around the door. “Ooh, how pretty!” she said, and bounced into the room. Standing slightly behind Edith, she looked at her in the mirror. “Did your hair take a long time to grow like that?”
Edith couldn’t help being flattered by the child’s gaze of open admiration. “Not very long. It was cut very short a few years ago, when I had an illness.”
“Short as mine?”
“Much shorter.” She ran her hand around her head at the level of her earlobes. “Like that.”
“I don’t like mine this short,” Louise said. “All the other girls wear theirs in two long braids with big bows.”
“But yours is such a pretty color.”
Louise yanked on a piece of it. “It’s straight as a board, Grandpa says. Maribel’s is all curly.”
“Many babies have curly hair,” Edith said, aware that she was speaking out of a vast inexperience. “F m sure yours curled too when you were very young.”
Louise looked doubtful. Edith hurried on, “Besides, smooth, straight hair is all the fashion. Ladies even put special compounds on their hair to make it like yours.”
“Really?” The young girl stood on tiptoe to see herself more fully in the mirror. She ran her hand over the bright golden hair that hung on either side of her face. Licking her hand, she flattened the sharp fringe above her eyebrows.
Edith thought the hard angles of the little girl’s hair rather unbecoming to her pointed face. She would not say so, however, not for all the world. Even now, she could feel the unblunted pain of overhearing a visitor saying, “What an ill-looking child! Why ever did you pick her?” Though Aunt Edith had put the impertinent person in her place swiftly and succinctly, the shame of being thought unlovely remained with Edith to this day.
“You know,” she said, getting up. “I have a ribbon here somewhere that would be so nice on you.”
“Grandpa doesn’t hold with ribbons. He says they take too long to fool with ‘em. String is just as good.”
“Oh, but all little girls like a pretty ribbon to set them off.” She rummaged through the drawer she’d filled with her new undergarments. “Here,” she said, pulling the ribbon from the bodice of a nightdress. “Let me put it on you.”
Her hands shaking a little, for she’d never dressed anyone’s hair but her own, Edith tied the blue satin band around the child’s head, hiding the ends under her hair. The broad ribbon softened the severe hairstyle instantly.
“Look how blue your eyes are now, Louise.”
The girl bit her lip as she leaned forward into the mirror Edith held low for her. “It does look kinda . . . okay.” She turned her head from side to side, trying to see the whole effect. Her smile was wavering. “Do I look funny?”
Jeff’s warm voice flowed over them from the open door. “You look like an angel, honey.”
“Look, Daddy,” Louise said, racing across the plain pine floor. “Cousin Edith tied it for me, an’ everything!”
“Pretty as a picture,” he said, dropping a light kiss on the ribbon itself. His daughter glowed at the praise.
“Maribel’ll be sick as a dog when she sees. Huh, who needs any old snake?”
She ran down the hall, with Jeff watching to be sure she didn’t slip on the long rag runner. Then he turned back to Edith. “My daughter didn’t say it, so I will. Thank you, Edith.”
“It’s nothing. I now have so much that a ribbon won’t . . .”
“I’m not thanking you for the ribbon. It’s for caring enough to help her with it. Believe it or not, Louise doesn’t think she’s pretty.”
“No woman ever really believes that she is. Except if she’s vain, of course.” She’d picked up her hairbrush again but could not use it with him watching. That would be another step on the road to intimacy, and she must remember every moment that she’d be on her way at the end of the week.
“She’s beautiful to me. Both my daughters are beautiful. I try to tell them that but . . .” He shrugged.
Edith pictured his unclothed shoulders moving while the muscles in his back worked beneath his brown skin. Suddenly, her high collar was too tight.
Jeff leaned against the post at the end of the bed. “I guess it’s like I was telling you before. They need a woman in their lives. Now that you’ve met Miss Climson, Miss Albans and Mrs. Green, what do you think of them?”
“As I said, I really can’t judge so quickly. I’m used to letters. Meeting these people in reality, well, it puts my concentration off.”
“How?”
Edith made a futile gesture with the brush. “Two of them are going to be disappointed. They may get their feelings hurt. If it were just a matter of choosing among a stack of letters, then the personal element doesn’t enter into it. It’s just yes or no, this pile or that. I don’t get entangled.”
“Your emotions, you mean.”
“Yes. Now, I shall be imagining two of them hurt, and that makes me uncomfortable.”
“What about that couple you were telling me about? The girl who had to really like cows.”
“That was different. I knew as soon as I read Miss Fiske’s letter that she would be the perfect person for Mr. Hansen. There was no question of choice.”
“What do you mean . . . you knew?” Still leaning against the post, Jeff crossed his arms and gave her a hard, straight look.
“I ... knew.”
From downstairs, she heard Sam Dane shout, “Come on if you’re ready, Miss . . . Cousin Edith!”
“Just a minute. Dad!” Jeff yelled back, only just turning his head. He fixed his eyes on Edith to compel an answer.
She sought for one, something believable. As though he read her thoughts, he said, “Don’t try to lie. You can’t deceive me.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she answered, stung. “I’m just trying to think how to . . .”
A sound of heavy boots came clumping up the stairs, and Sam appeared in the open doorway. “Come on, Edith. If you two start talking, it’ll be Christmas before we get going.”
“Just a moment, while I pin up my hair.”
“No time,” Sam said. “Got to get to the depot so I can sign for the goods that are coming in.”
“What goods?” Jeff asked.
“Never you mind, son.” His father lay his finger alongside his nose. “Just get your hat on, Edith, and let’s go.”
“But I must put my hair up. It isn’t decent . . .”
“Ah, heck! I’ve never seen a woman yet that wouldn’t primp if she got half a chance.”
“That’s true, Dad. Do you remember how Gwen and Mother would keep us waiting? First one would come down and then the other and then they both trot back up because they’d forgotten something, or the other one would notice something wrong with the first one’s hair or dress.”
“Yep, that was it. We were five minutes late to church every single Sunday.”
By the time they’d finished their complaints, Edith was waiting by the door, her dark red hair smoothed into its dull bun. “Well, come on, if you’re in such a hurry,” she said.
The Dane men exchanged a wink. Then Sam followed her.
Jeff lingered a moment. It made him feel warmly sentimental to see the brush and comb sitting on the dressing table, while a green ribbon, caught when the drawer was closed, peeked out. It had been a long time since a woman’s dainties had adorned this room. He liked it and hoped it wouldn’t be long before such things were here to stay.
He could trust to Edith’s sense of responsibility. She’d stay, he knew, just as long as it took to find him a suitable wife. In the meantime, he’d have to keep his hands to himself. Soon enough, he wouldn’t have to be so careful. There’d be a nice woman here to warm his bed.
After all, it was only celibacy and Edith’s nearness that made such a dangerous combination. He couldn’t, in honor, do anything about the first fact, but he could keep her at arm’s length. He’d simply have to manage not to be alone with her.
Glancing at the white coverlet, he wondered how well Edith had slept. Probably she slept like the virgin she was, peacefully, dreamlessly. Her sleep could only be restful, untroubled by any ardent dreams.
He hadn’t slept well at all. He woke himself shivering in the cool breeze that blew through the windows his father left open year-round. His father tended to take up more than his fair share of the mattress, and he was a cover stealer as persistent as Paul Tyler, his partner of the Trinity gold days. Jeff shook his head ruefully, remembering those wild, carefree days.
The nights had been wild too. Edith, shocked by the thought of him taking an occasional drink, would be horrified by those all-night poker games that had been carried on in an atmosphere of heavy smoke and easy virtue. On occasion, he’d paid for his pleasure, for there were no respectable women near the gold fields.
Yet no kiss, not even from the most expert and wanton woman, had aroused him the way naive Edith Parker’s had done. Perhaps it was knowing that it had been her very first. He’d never tasted lips so sweet or so innocently responsive. Not even with Gwen, for she’d been wildly popular with the boys since her girlhood and had kissed a dozen boys or more before he’d come back into her life.
Jeff supposed he should be ashamed of himself for stealing that kiss from Edith, without, after all, having honorable intentions. Yet he didn’t regret it. As a matter of fact, he wondered when he’d have the chance to do it again before remembering that he had vowed not to.
Chapter 11
As soon as they’d driven away, Sam said, “You know, my wife and I met through a professional matchmaker.”
“Is that so?” Edith asked. “I have never met anyone who owned an agency like mine, although I believe they are very popular in the West. One sees advertisements for brides to come out and get married in almost every paper.”
“It’s a gamble.”
“Especially if one knows nothing about the man except that he wishes to marry. Why, at least with my service, I have had the chance to judge, to some extent, the character of the man. I don’t simply take whoever walks in off the street.”
“It’s a gamble for both, I reckon,” Sam said, giving a little grin. “The woman can’t know much about the man from three thousand miles away, but then, he doesn’t know much about her. She could be a nag or crabby.”
“Or one of them could be married with the intent to deceive. I always ask for a letter from a good reference, like a pastor, before I send any information on prospective brides or grooms.”
“The one that matched up Louise and me ... her style was a little different from yours. I was living in Boston at the time. Before that, I lived in Atlanta. The southern girls are the most beautiful in the world . . . present company excepted, of course.”
Edith dared to tease a little. “Were you this gallant as a young man? I can’t believe the girls of Atlanta let you leave.”
Sam chortled. “I was awfully shy, then. Louise . . . my wife . . . cured me of that. She walked right up to me, the first time we saw each other, and said flat out, ‘If you want to marry me, you’re going to have to talk more.’“
“How bold!” Edith said, trying not to smile.
“Yes, she was bold with as brave a heart as a ... as a lioness. She wasn’t from Boston either. She was from Connecticut, staying in Boston with friends. It was kind of like fate, our both being there on the same night.”
“And this matchmaker?”
“What was her n
ame?” Sam squinted up at the sky. “Miss Eudora something. I remember her first name because she looked just like an Aunt Eudora a childhood friend of mine used to have. Both of ‘em vinegary old maids in loose purple gowns.”
“Purple is not very old-maidish, is it?” She’d once seen a woman in a purple silk gown all spangled with gold braid like a military uniform. At sixteen, such a showy garment had had definite allure for her, though her aunt had sniffed and talked coldly about “a certain type of woman.”
“Lots of old maids keep a purple dress for special times. That kind of dull color, like widows wear when they first come out of their mourning blacks.”
He murmured under his breath, “Pratt, Pryor, Pringle . . . no, I can’t remember. She ran a dancing place where young bachelors could go to meet nice young ladies. My friend Ross dragged me along one night. God, Louise was beautiful,” he added reverently. “She wore white gardenias in her hair.”
“What were you doing in Boston?”
“I was clerking for a dry goods firm.”
“Then you haven’t always been a farmer.”
“A rancher,” he corrected gently. “No, not always. I worked in a stuffy old office until the War. Afterwards, the doctors said I had to get out into the air more. Louise decided that we should move to Missouri as the Armstrongs had moved here. She’d known Mrs. Armstrong when they were girls and not even the War could stop them corresponding.”
“I have no such friends.” Edith feared her tone was wistful.
“Well, you have ‘em now. Even after Jeff marries one of these girls, I’ll write you. Maybe you can find a nice wife for me, after you solve Jeff’s troubles. I miss Louise. I miss having a woman in the house. Mostly, I hate to cook biscuits.”
Edith laughed. She pretended to make a note on her sleeve. “Must bake biscuits. I’ll let you know, if I can find someone to fulfill your stringent requirements.”
“You know, you talk like you’re from Boston yourself.”
“My aunt always insisted on correctness of speech. She said that a lady could always be known by the way she spoke.”
“My granddaughters must be a shock to a lady like you, Jeff hasn’t had the heart to scold them much since their mother died. I try, but I don’t know how to raise little girls.”
Summer Lightning Page 13
