Corbin's Fancy

by Linda Lael Miller

  He sighed, put one hand to his chest, and offered up a rather shaky smile. “On a grand day like this? Never!”

  Fancy was unconvinced, but she knew that further questions would be pointless. “You’ve been so kind to me,” she said softly. “I don’t know what I would have done—”

  Phineas smiled again and patted her upper arm. “You would have been just fine, Fancy. Just fine.”

  His use of her first name made her feel warm and sheltered, almost as though she belonged. She hummed as she made her way into a stand of fir trees, there to change into her star-spangled dress.

  * * *

  “She’s gone, then?” guessed Keith Corbin, watching his brother’s agitated pacing with mingled sympathy and delight.

  Jeff ran one hand through already-rumpled, wheat-colored hair. “Yes, damn it—rabbit and all!”

  “It’s your own fault, you know,” Keith observed cautiously, over the rim of his coffee cup. Standing at the sink, Alva flung him a red-rimmed look, while Jeff stopped pacing to glare.

  “I know that!” he bellowed.

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  The answer to that was another glare. Jeff stormed out of the kitchen and the screened door of the sun porch slammed in the distance.

  “He loves Fancy,” the housekeeper mused, scouring a frying pan.

  “Yep,” confirmed Keith. Then he drained his coffee cup, set it aside with a thump, and went off to his study to outline next week’s sermon.

  * * *

  Fancy’s act was going very, very well. The crowd of spectators who were gathered before her borrowed table oohed and ahhed appreciatively as she made fire dance from the tips of her fingers, then clapped with delight when she caused a simple wand to bloom with colorful silk flowers.

  Confidently, she summoned a little, freckle-faced boy from the crowd and, with a proper flourish, drew a coin borrowed from Phineas from behind his right ear. The audience cheered and Fancy was so swept up in this success that she dared to produce the top hat, heretofore hidden beneath the table.

  “You see before you, ladies and gentlemen,” she sang out, “an ordinary hat. As you can also see, this hat is totally empty.” She held the hat out and the spectators peered into it, mumbling.

  Bravely, Fancy plunged her hand into the hat. “Remember, Hershel,” she muttered, under her breath, “you can be replaced.”

  For the first time in weeks, Hershel came out of the black bag that hid him without incident. The audience was stunned at such a feat, and they not only cheered but flung precious pennies in a veritable frenzy of acclamation.

  By midafternoon, Fancy was twenty cents richer and flying higher than Phineas’s balloon. Again and again she had performed her act and it seemed that she and Hershel could do no wrong. For once, the tide of fortune was flowing with them.

  But in the space of a heartbeat, everything went wrong. Fancy extended the hat for perhaps the tenth time that day, enjoining the rapt spectators to see for themselves that it was empty. Nothing there, no siree.

  At which time Hershel leaped out of his hiding place and scampered into the crowd, dragging the black bag behind him for several feet before shedding it, like a second skin, on the grass.

  Two old ladies fainted and a man in bib overalls grumbled fraud.

  “Hershel!” Fancy shrieked, rushing after him and colliding with a rock-hard chest in her hurry.

  She straightened, a queer premonition jiggling in the pit of her stomach, and saw what she had both hoped for and feared.

  Jeff Corbin was standing before her, clad in brown trousers and the kind of flowing, open-throated shirt typical of a sea captain, holding a squirming Hershel in both hands. A grin quirked one side of his mouth. “If I were you,” he said, “I’d start singing.”

  Chapter Five

  A BITTERSWEET PANG STRUCK FANCY AS SHE REACHED out, her hands trembling slightly, to take the errant rabbit from Jeff’s hands. She had gone to desperate lengths to avoid seeing him again, and yet she knew a certain joy that he had found her.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, as the people who had been watching her act began to drift away.

  The indigo eyes were unreadable, veiled. If Fancy had hoped for some statement of affection, she was bound for disappointment. “I saw the balloon,” he said, gesturing toward Phineas’s craft. It was aloft now, dancing in the breeze, bound to the earth by four separate ropes.

  “Oh,” said Fancy, biting her lower lip.

  The sharp blue gaze sliced back to her face and Jeff lifted his hands to his hips. “Did you think I came to swear my undying devotion?”

  “Of course not!” she snapped defensively. But there was still the question of why he had come, and it crackled in Fancy’s heart and mind like a bonfire.

  He looked affronted. “Don’t you believe me capable of such a noble emotion?”

  Fancy was stung because she loved this man, wholly and irrevocably, and she hadn’t planned to feel the things she was feeling, ever. “I cannot imagine you swearing ‘undying devotion’ to anyone. Undying lust is another matter!”

  Jeff laughed and Fancy knew conflicting needs to slap him and hold him close. “That I will admit to,” he said. “Where you’re concerned, at least.”

  Mostly for dramatic effect, Fancy whirled and stormed back to her table, where she thrust the malcontent rabbit into his cage and slammed the door after him. Males! They were all alike—stubborn and self-centered and completely uncooperative! Why, the moment things were going well, one could count on men to snarl them up again!

  When Fancy had secured Hershel underneath the table, she lifted her eyes to Jeff once more and was nettled to see that he had not been paying the least bit of attention to her flouncing umbrage. Damn him, he was watching Phineas’s balloon with the rapt interest of a little boy.

  “Go back to Wenatchee!” she hissed, furious. “I don’t want you here!”

  Now he turned to face her again. The thumb and forefingers of his right hand slid sensuously across his mouth in a motion she knew damned well was meant to remind her of things she didn’t dare think about. “Don’t you?” he challenged, in a voice that was little more than a gruff whisper.

  “I hate you, you reprobate!”

  “I could tell,” he answered smoothly.

  “If you think—if you think for one minute, Jeff Corbin, that you’re going to—that I will—”

  Without apparent upset, he walked away, leaving Fancy to stand there, beneath her borrowed canvas canopy, stammering like an idiot.

  She stared after Jeff for a moment, then picked up the trick wand purchased in more prosperous days and flung it at his broad, impervious back. It struck him between the shoulder blades, burst into ludicrous bloom, and fell to the grass.

  Jeff turned with an ominous laziness, arching one eyebrow. “Don’t ever do that again,” he warned. “If you do, I’ll forget my principles and turn you across my knee.”

  “I could have sworn you didn’t have any principles,” muttered Fancy, furious but too afraid to challenge him further.

  If he heard her, he did not respond. Phineas’s balloon was gliding to the ground, the gondola swinging in a breezy seesaw motion as it descended, and Jeff strode off toward the craft.

  Fancy went to where he had stood, picked up the flower wand in one shaking hand. The bright colors of the bouquet seemed to blur as she stared at them. Drat that insufferable ass, who needed him, anyway?

  You do, taunted a little voice in Fancy’s mind.

  * * *

  Phineas sat on a tree stump near his wagon, sipping coffee. His eyes were mischievous as they touched Fancy’s overheated face, clearly saying, “I told you he’d come.”

  Fancy risked one glance at Jeff, who was perched on the wagon tongue beside her, the top hat in his lap, a ponderous frown on his face. “You need either a bigger hat or a smaller rabbit,” he observed, tugging poor Hershel out and then thrusting him in again. “He’s wedged in here lik
e pork in a sausage skin.”

  Stubbornly, Fancy refused to comment. Why couldn’t Jeff Corbin just go back to where he belonged and leave her alone? In annoyance, she stood up, folded her arms across her chest, and walked around to the back of the wagon to fetch her valise. After taking out a bar of soap and a hairbrush, she started off toward the stream she’d visited earlier.

  The water was ice cold, but Fancy stripped to her camisole and drawers and waded in to her ankles, determined. In the distance, she could hear the sounds of the carnival camp—laughter, the lowing and shifting of animals, the crackle of bonfires. A wounding sadness swept over her, a longing for a house with walls and windows and a roof.

  Teeth chattering, Fancy bent to lather the soap cake in the frigid stream. To distract herself, she went on dreaming. There would certainly be a bathtub in her house, filled with hot, scented water. There would be beds with proper sheets and blankets and, best of all, there would be people.

  “Oh, there’s Fancy now,” they would say to each other, if she chanced to be late returning from some errand. And if she didn’t return, they would come looking for her.

  Fancy waded deeper into the stream, the pebbled bottom slick and icy beneath her feet, the water numbing her knees. When the creek gurgled around her stomach, she removed her drawers and camisole and flung them ashore, nearly going under in the process. With an industry born of almost intolerable cold, she washed her hair, scoured the rest of her body, and started back toward the grassy bank.

  “Are you crazy?” demanded an all-too-familiar masculine voice.

  Fancy stumbled backward, shuddering. The shrinking moon revealed the strong planes of Jeff Corbin’s face, the breadth of his shoulders, the narrow power of his hips. “Not crazy enough to come out of the water with you standing there!” she sputtered furiously. “Go away!”

  “I brought a blanket,” he chimed in reply, teasing. “Don’t you want it, Frances?”

  “Leave it on the bank!”

  Jeff threw back his head and his laughter thundered in the night, stilling the songs of crickets and frogs. “You dreamer.”

  Tears smarted in Fancy’s eyes and goosebumps rippled over her bare skin. Her feet were so numb that she could no longer feel the stream bottom. “You bastard,” she hissed, and then she stomped up out of the water and stood facing Jeff on the shore.

  He chuckled as he draped her in the blanket. There was gentleness in the sound, as well as in the brief, warm touch of his hands. Leaving her to shudder inside the blanket, he bent to fetch her discarded underthings. With all the flourish of an experienced housewife, he gave them a brisk, snapping shake and hung them over a nearby bush.

  “I can’t leave them here,” protested Fancy.

  “Would you rather hang them by Phineas’s campfire?” asked Jeff with tender sarcasm.

  “Well—no—”

  “You didn’t plan this bath very well, did you?”

  There was no arguing the point. Fancy had wanted to be clean and she hadn’t thought beyond that point. If she had, she would have left her underthings on the bank in the first place or else brought dry ones along. “I didn’t plan on seeing you here!” she snapped, hedging.

  He sat down on a large, flat boulder at the streamside, drew his knees up, and wrapped his arms around them. “I’m sure you didn’t,” he said.

  Fancy was at a loss. She wanted to put her dress back on and head for Phineas’s campfire—Lord knew the warmth would be glorious—but something kept her there by the stream. “I should have known you wouldn’t be gentleman enough to let me bathe in peace!”

  Jeff laughed. “Yes, you should have. Come here, Fancy.”

  “Said the spider to the fly!”

  The magnificent face sobered. “I promise not to touch you,” he said, patting the rock’s smooth surface with one hand.

  Fancy believed him, though she couldn’t for the life of her have said why. She picked her way to the boulder and sat down, keeping the blanket tucked tightly around her.

  “Why didn’t Temple Royce make love to you?” Jeff asked after several seconds of thoughtful silence.

  The question, improper as it was, should have come as an insulting surprise to Fancy, but it didn’t. “I wouldn’t let him,” she said softly, drawing her knees up and resting her chin upon them.

  “Did you love him?”

  “I thought I did.” Fancy remembered Temple’s pleasure over what he’d done to Jeff Corbin and ached with shame. “I didn’t really know him, as it turned out.” Any more than I know you, she added silently.

  Jeff made no comment.

  “Why did you follow me, Jeff? Why didn’t you just let me go away? It would have been better for both of us.”

  “I’ll grant that it might have been better for you,” he said, on a long, ragged breath, as he leaned back to lie flat on the rock, his hands cupped behind his head. “For me it would have been the end.”

  Fancy sniffled and she wished that the water in that stream could have numbed her heart the way it had her toes. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  He shifted, so that he was facing her, his head propped up on one hand. “You changed everything, Fancy. I didn’t want you to, but you insisted.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, confused, shivering in the chilling breeze that danced over the muttering stream.

  “Sorry? Damn it, woman, you resurrected me! You made me laugh—you made me mad as hell—you made me—”

  Fancy colored and covered her head with the blanket on the pretext of drying her dripping, tangled hair.

  “You made me feel again, Fancy.”

  Fancy shot to her feet suddenly, nearly losing the blanket. “Well hurrah for me!” she shouted, all but strangling on a hoarse sob.

  He caught her hand in his and pulled her back down beside him, irrespective of his promise not to touch her. “Marry me,” he said gruffly.

  That again. Anguish swept over Fancy, for she knew his reasons for proposing without his even stating them. He wanted to use her. “Damn you,” she choked out, “why can’t you just find yourself a whore and leave me alone?!”

  His hand was strong on her chin, forcing her to face him. His touch made her heart tumble and skitter inside her, like a stone flung over a steep cliff. “I don’t want a whore, Frances. I want you.”

  A tear trickled down Fancy’s cheek and glittered like a jewel on the side of his thumb. “Why, Jeff? So you can forget Banner? So you can take something that Temple Royce wants?”

  The hand tightened on her chin, fierce now, instead of tender. “What do you mean ‘so I can take something Temple wants’?” he demanded, in a sharp undertone.

  Fancy hadn’t meant to say that, she hadn’t even been aware that she was thinking such a thing. “Well—I mean—”

  “Tell me!”

  It was no use trying to evade him now, for he was not going to allow it, that was clear. “Temple has been looking for me,” she whispered.

  “What?!” Jeff was sitting bolt upright now and, mercifully, his hand slipped from her jaw. His eyes were demonic in the moonlight and the chill was back, reaching into the depths of Fancy’s bones.

  She lowered her head, ashamed and miserable and, now that she had permitted herself to think about it, scared. “W–When I was with Mr. Shibble’s show, I had to hide sometimes. Men would come around, asking questions about me.”

  Jeff’s hands closed over her shoulders, hurtful in their strength. “You left without telling Temple?” he hissed.

  Fancy nodded. There was more, of course—Temple wanted to silence her, so that she couldn’t go to the authorities and tell them who had ordered the explosions onboard the Sea Mistress— but she couldn’t very well explain that to Jeff. Not when he himself had been the captain of that ship, the object of the attack. “M–Maybe he’s tired of looking for me—maybe he’s forgotten—”

  Jeff laughed and this time the sound was bitter, void of humor or warmth. “Temple? Woman, he’ll dog you until it ra
ins in hell! And I hope to God he finds you!”

  Fancy blanched. “What?”

  The reply was a raucous shout of triumph. “In fact, I intend to make sure he finds you!”

  “No!” gasped Fancy, terrified at the prospect. Temple was not a man who took kindly to betrayal, and she would sooner have faced the devil than that man.

  Jeff didn’t seem to be listening; he was on his feet, wrenching Fancy after him. “We’re getting married tonight,” he announced.

  “We most certainly are not!” sputtered Fancy, shivering inside her blanket despite the strange heat fostered by the idea.

  It was then that Jeff caught the blanket in his hands and slowly parted it. It slithered off Fancy’s naked shoulders and pooled around her feet.

  Brazenly, Jeff cupped both her breasts in his palms, deliberately chafing the nipples to a state of throbbing response. Fancy groaned, helpless to escape, her mind swirling through a kaleidoscope universe.

  “You belong in my bed,” Jeff reminded her, in a soft, firm voice that seemed to deepen the treacherous trance. “And you will be there, tonight and every night, as my wife or my mistress—the choice is yours.”

  Some shred of dignity made Fancy whisper, “But we don’t love—each other—”

  “Maybe we have something better,” he breathed, and his fingers were plucking at Fancy’s nipples now, making them stand erect.

  Fancy hadn’t thought it possible to feel both misery and reckless joy, all of a piece, but it was happening to her then. Still, she argued. “Th–There isn’t anything better than l–love—”

  He made his counterpoint by bending his head to sip languidly at her right breast. “Ummm—so true—” he conceded, as shards of raw, jagged pleasure pierced every part of Fancy’s trembling body.

  As best she could, considering that Jeff was making a feast of her, Fancy thought about her predicament. She could not resist this man and there was no pretending differently. She loved him. If she married him, there was at least some chance that he might come to love her in return one day. And suppose she was pregnant? Suppose, even now, his seed was growing inside her? If she agreed to take his name, their child would have it, too, and a Corbin child would lack for nothing.