Jeff left her breast to stand straight again, though his hand still cupped the spoils of a gentle battle long since won. He seemed to be following the train of her thoughts with uncanny accuracy. “Think of your family, Frances,” he urged quietly, deliberately. “Your father wouldn’t have to work anymore. Your mother could have nice clothes, good food—”
“Stop!” Fancy cried frantically. “That isn’t fair! Ever since I left home I’ve been giving and giving—”
He squeezed her breast and smiled at the obvious electrical response that jolted through her. “Isn’t it time that someone gave something back to you, Fancy? I have a lot to give.”
Fancy blushed and swatted at his hand but it didn’t move from her breast—it kept caressing, urging, stroking. “Jeff—” she protested in a distracted whimper.
“You could have everything, Fancy. Everything.”
Reality descended on Fancy like a boxcar full of bricks. Temple Royce had said the same thing to her and for essentially the same reasons—he hadn’t loved her, anymore than Jeff did. He had wanted her in his bed.
She leaned down, caught the blanket in her hands, and wrenched it around her like a woolen shield. “No, I couldn’t!” she sobbed out. “I couldn’t have a husband who didn’t love me!”
Jeff was unruffled. He reached out and took the blanket and spread it on the grass. “All right, then,” he said airily, “have it your way. Lie down, mistress, because I want you. Here and now.”
“No!”
He arched an eyebrow and folded his arms. “No?”
Fancy looked with yearning at her underthings, which would be cold and clammy and wet should she put them on again. Her dress was out of reach and if she moved to fetch it, Jeff would get there first. She shivered and hugged herself and sobbed out, “I hate you, Jeff Corbin!”
He only gestured toward the blanket.
“Suppose I scream?” ventured Fancy, distractedly.
Jeff chuckled. “Everyone would come rushing to your aid and find you gloriously naked,” he answered, in blithe tones.
Fancy gnawed at her lower lip, which, like the rest of her body, was blue with cold. “I—If I did agree to this—this proposal—where would we live?”
Jeff shrugged as though the conversation were perfectly normal. “We have a house in Spokane. We could go there until we decided on something more permanent.”
He sounded so reasonable, so calm. As though he weren’t forcing a freezing, naked woman to choose between marrying him and being ravished on a stream bank. Fancy wanted to tear his eyes out of his head. “I will never, never forgive you for this, Jeff Corbin.”
“We’ll see about that,” he replied, with happy skepticism. “You’ve made your choice, I presume?”
Fancy nodded. “I’ll marry you,” she said, with a sort of broken elation.
“I have your word? No more running off in the night?”
Again, Fancy nodded. And, twenty minutes later, wearing a star-spangled dress with no underwear beneath it, she was wed to Jeff Corbin by a man who draped crawly snakes around his neck during the day. The ceremony cost one dollar and the bride and groom were assured by a pleased Phineas T. Pryor that it had been a legal proceeding.
It was just her luck, Fancy reflected, as her new husband’s lips descended to claim hers, that the snake-man had to be a justice of the peace in the bargain.
* * *
They made their marriage bed along the banks of the stream, with blankets borrowed from Phineas. And despite a bittersweet ache in the shadowed regions of her heart, Fancy was happy. Sitting on the improvised bed, the light of real stars catching on those affixed to her dress, she tilted her head to one side and admired this magnificent man who was now her husband.
“You’ll have to take a bath if you expect to sleep with me,” she announced mischievously, as he shed his shirt with amusing haste.
“That water is cold!” Jeff protested, taken aback.
Fancy nodded, then shrugged. “All the same—”
Jeff opened his trousers and removed them, irritation visible in the swift motions of his hands. He looked so splendid in the moonlight, with muscles rolling under his taut flesh and the fine matting of golden hair covering him, that Fancy almost relented.
He cast one imploring look at her, his manhood rising slowly to power as if to bolster his case. “I’m clean, you know,” he half wailed.
Fancy shrugged again, looking pained as she removed her dress.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Jeff hissed, striding into the water and swearing again as its chill enveloped him. He splashed around, muttering, for all of a minute, then came storming up the bank toward Fancy.
There was a disturbingly evil leer on his face.
“Oh, no!” Fancy cried, suddenly understanding, but it was too late. He flung his icy, droplet-covered body down upon her warm one. His sodden hair dripped in her face and across her breasts.
She struggled, giggling, and, for a time, they were like children allowed to play outside after dark. They rolled off the blanket and into the grass, and then back onto the blanket again.
Suddenly, though, Jeff drew back from her, kneeling astraddle of her hips, and even in the darkness she could see the stricken look of wonder on his face. “You are so beautiful,” he marveled, running just the tips of his fingers over her shoulders, her collarbone, her breasts.
Fancy’s playful mood was instantly replaced with a passion of such measure that it staggered her senses. What was it about this man that enabled him to ignite such brutal needs in her with only a word, a look, a touch?
He lay down on his back beside her in a smooth motion. “Touch me, Fancy,” he said quietly.
She sat up and felt enthralled by the stark, wholly masculine beauty of him. She touched his nipples, cosseted in their golden down, and reveled in the soft, strangled groan this brought from him. Strictly as an experiment, she bent and tasted one with just the tip of her tongue. He gasped and caught her still-damp hair in his hands and held her close and she felt a certain sweet triumph go through her. She suckled him, first at one delicious nubbin and then at the other.
It was sheer joy to know that he could be pleasured in much the same way that she had been when he’d enjoyed her breasts. As other parallels came to mind, Fancy began to kiss her way softly down over his hard stomach.
He choked her name as she reached the straining objective of her travels and flicked it delicately with her tongue.
Fairly bursting with the swell of this one small victory over him, she became greedy. His back arched and he gave a raucous gasp.
She nipped at Jeff with her teeth and rejoiced inwardly at his moaned, “God—Fancy—Fancy! Don’t—”
“Don’t?” Fancy teased, nibbling.
He writhed, groaning as if in delirium. “Don’t—stop—my God—”
“Ummmm,” boasted Fancy.
And Jeff laughed at her delicious audacity. “You’ll pay for this,” he moaned raggedly. “You’ll pay.”
Still she tormented him.
“W–Witch!” he gasped, after several feverish attempts at the word.
Fancy was a witch in those wild, unrestrained moments—she was all that was magic, all that was powerful, all that was triumphant. And his shuddering shout of glorified defeat echoed in the walls of her heart and became a part of it forever.
Still, Jeff had promised revenge and he extracted it with expertise, hurling Fancy past the moon itself on the wings of an exquisite frenzy, before wrenching her back to earth in dizzying spins. Finally, he fulfilled her, making the fevered journey in her arms.
Fancy lay dazed when it was over, her breath coming in short gasps, her eyes just beginning to focus on the moon and stars, on the shifting branches of trees that made a canopy for them. Making a low, growling sound of appeasement deep in his throat, Jeff sank to her breast, the moistness of his flesh mingling with hers.
They were still for a long time, listening to the nightcalls of an owl, the whispering s
ong of the stream, the distant, settling sounds of the carnival camp.
“Do you suppose they heard us?” Fancy fretted when she could speak again.
“Who?”
“Phineas—the snake man—the fat lady—”
Jeff laughed against her breast and then licked teasingly at its rounded side with the tip of his tongue. “What a wedding party,” he said.
Fancy was stung; suddenly, she was thinking of Amelie and Keith and the wonderful, elegant wedding they would have. Amelie would have a long white dress, a churchful of well-wishers, a bouquet to toss. There would be a tiered cake.…
“Fancy?”
She turned her head to one side, not wanting him to see her tears. But the effort came too late apparently, for he caught her chin in his hand and made her look at him.
“What is it?” he demanded gently—very gently, for a husband who did not love his wife.
Fancy permitted herself to imagine what this man’s wealthy family was going to say when they found out that he’d married someone so far beneath him, and she was filled with horror. “You’ll be ashamed of me!” she sobbed.
He kissed her, slowly, tenderly, his lips nibbling and drawing at her own. “Never.”
Fancy was overwhelmed, and she lifted her hands to her face to cover it. Jeff immediately drew them away and held them, stroking her fingers with his own.
“Fancy, I—”
Her heart quickened, almost stopped. But Jeff’s sentence fell away unfinished and the words that would have made everything all right never came.
The silence was unbearable, an aching void where there had been soaring passion only moments before. Fancy began to cry softly, in wretched misery.
“Don’t,” Jeff groaned, and she wept harder because he had used that word so differently during their lovemaking. “Please don’t cry.”
Fancy sniffled, honestly trying to cooperate. It wasn’t often that she gave in to her emotions that way, but the events of the past few days were catching up with her and she simply couldn’t be strong anymore.
Unexpectedly, with a tender, broken look in his eyes, Jeff stood up and then pulled Fancy up after him. He gave her a painless swat on the backside and then started toward the water.
Fancy dug in her heels. “No!” she protested.
Jeff wrenched at her hand and she was tumbling after him, into that chilly creek. She gave a shrill little cry at the insult to her passion-warmed body and tried to break free of her husband’s grasp and scramble back to shore.
But Jeff held her. He kissed her and then began to wash her, his hands making slow, tender circles on her back, her breasts, her thighs. Soon, the cold didn’t matter anymore.
Chapter Six
BIRDS CHIRPED HAPPY SONGS IN THE TREES AND THE stream hummed as it went on its merry way. Even before she opened her eyes, Fancy knew that Jeff was gone.
She sat up on the rumpled blankets and their grassy underbed, and smiled as she reached out for the drawers and camisole that had been carefully spread out, dry now, at her feet. She put them on and then the dress with its bedraggled stars.
Her hairbrush was where she had left it the night before, and she took it up and began the arduous task of working a night’s tangles from her hair.
Phineas was alone at his campfire when Fancy approached it. She was careful to hold her chin high, though there was little she could do about the high blush that pounded in her cheeks.
He extended a cup of coffee and a gentle smile. “Good morning, Mrs. Corbin,” he greeted her, rising from his seat on the tree stump in a mannerly way and then sitting back down again.
Fancy allowed herself a moment of preening happiness at his use of her new title, but there were doubts gnawing at the edges of her mind as she sat down on the wagon tongue to enjoy her coffee. One casual, sweeping glance around the camp revealed that Jeff was nowhere in sight.
“He’s gone into town,” Phineas explained, obviously having looked beyond her attempt at subtlety and seen the fear. “Asked me to tell you that he’ll be back before sunset.”
Before sunset! Fancy was wounded. Was it customary for a groom to desert his bride so soon? For that matter, did Jeff intend to come back at all? It was entirely possible that he’d had second thoughts.
Phineas suddenly thrust a bowl of oatmeal into Fancy’s hands, making her start. “Don’t be borrowing trouble now,” he urged softly. “Jeff loves you, Fancy. He’ll be back because he’s got no other choice.”
There was no point in clearing up Phineas’s misconception by telling him that Jeff didn’t love her—he’d want to know why she had married him then and Fancy would have been too embarrassed to admit to the answer. Furthermore, annulling a marriage performed by a snake-man would probably be an easy matter for someone with Jeff’s money and influence. “I knew a singer in Port Angeles who married a sailor,” she reflected, after a while. “He went off to find a rooming house where they could live and never came back.”
Phineas stirred the small morning fire and sat down again. That gray pallor she’d seen the day before was back in his face, and his lips had the same vaguely blue tint. “I don’t think we’re dealing with a man of that sort,” he comforted quietly.
Fancy had forgotten all her own problems in her concern for her friend. “Phineas, you look wretched. You’re ill, aren’t you?”
“Just tired,” he sighed. “To tell you the truth, Fancy, a few weeks of rest at my sister’s house is sounding better and better.”
Fancy took another sip from her metal cup, watching Phineas over the rim, then began to eat the oatmeal. “Does she live nearby?”
“Near enough,” shrugged Phineas. “She teaches at a school for young ladies in Spokane.”
Fancy looked down at her oatmeal and her coffee and was reminded of the debt she owed Phineas T. Pryor. If not for him, she might still be wandering the road. “I mean to reimburse you for all you’ve given me as soon as Mr. Stroble pays me.”
“Nonsense,” sputtered Phineas, and there was a flush under the grayness of his skin. “If one traveler can’t help another, the world’s in a sorry state.”
“Some people say it is anyway,” observed Fancy. “A preacher told me once that God was going to smite us all dead, except for the holy, of course. He said it would happen before this generation passed away.”
Phineas chortled. “Every generation since the time of Christ has believed itself to be the last one ever. I think it’s a sort of vanity—there are always people, you see, who can’t imagine the world going on without them. There are others who’d like to see the judgment come because they’re too lazy or too scared to live—they’re afraid to fail, mostly.”
Fancy pondered all the failures in her life and frowned. “I’m an expert at that,” she reflected, without wryness or self-pity.
Phineas chuckled. “Better one grand, magnificent failure, I always say, than a lifetime of piddling successes.”
Fancy was completely bemused by this remark. In any case, she had to feed Hershel, clean his cage, and get ready for another day of performing magic. After cleaning up the dishes—it was the least she could do, since Phineas was providing the food—she went about her tasks and tried not to watch the arriving crowds of carnival-goers for any sign of Jeff.
The morning went well, with no more rebellions on Hershel’s part, and, at midday, Mr. Stroble came through the gathered spectators to pay Fancy her two dollars. His eyes kept dodging hers as he handed the money over, but she didn’t give much thought to his curious manner for there were already people gathering to watch her next performance.
Late in the afternoon, a massive, thick-shouldered young man pointed to the signboard resting in front of Fancy’s table. “That says you sing and dance, too. How come you don’t sing and dance?”
Fancy’s stomach tightened; if there was one thing she’d learned to recognize in her travels around the territory, it was trouble. She smiled broadly and went on with her act.
The young farmer me
ant to be persistent. “I want to hear you sing,” he called out over the sea of calico bonnets and straw hats.
“Leave the lady alone, Rafe,” put in a man’s voice, from near the front. “She’s doin’ just fine.”
“This here’s fraud, that’s what it is,” argued Rafe with a scowl, muscling his way closer to the canopied table. The pinkness of his round, plain-featured face testified that he’d been drinking.
Fancy took up the tiny, sulfur-filled vial that was easily hidden in her hand and made flames leap from her fingertips. The crowd in general was delighted, but Rafe was not appeased.
“I say she sings and does a jig or two!” he growled.
At that moment, Phineas came from out of nowhere, looking affable and guileless in his plaid suit and bowler hat. He approached the mountainous farmer without the slightest hesitation, his hands in his pockets, his smile broad. “What seems to be the trouble?” he asked.
Rafe turned toward him with a lumbering motion that chilled Fancy to the marrow of her bones. “I say it’s a lie, that there sign. I paid good money to see this show and this lady ain’t sung a note!”
Phineas was unruffled, his gaze shifting to a nervous Fancy. “Do you wish to sing, my dear?” he asked politely.
Fancy was terrified, but she shook her head.
“There you have it,” shrugged Phineas, still smiling. “The little lady prefers not to sing today.”
Rafe flung a dangerous, petulant look in Fancy’s direction. “She’ll sing,” he said.
Fancy was just opening her mouth to comply when Rafe suddenly raised his meaty hands and gave Phineas a hard shove, sending him sprawling into the rocky dirt and trampled grass. Phineas winced and grasped at his chest with one hand.
“Phineas!” Fancy wailed, rounding the table to rush to her friend. “Phineas, are you all right?”
Phineas was not all right; his grimace of pain told her that much, along with the absence of color in his face. “I’ll be—just fine—”
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