The Gamble (I) (46 page)

Scott’s caustic remarks made everyone lay low for days afterward.

The stables were spotless, the stalls filled with enough horses to provide transit to and from the train depot and enough for the guests’ pleasure riding, too. The equipage had been oiled and, where necessary, replaced. The ice house was stocked with ice, which had been transported from town after arriving on a freight car packed in sawdust. The smokehouse spouted a slow stream of hickory smoke. Two dozen Rhode Island reds pecked about in a screened pen, and a pair of black-and-white cows kept the front meadow evenly groomed and the table supplied with milk and butter. Even the ancient, creaking ferry had been rejuvenated, the idea being to take the guests across the river to picnic on the other side. And, as a final touch, Scott had found a pair of peacocks to adorn the emerald lawn. Everything was perfect...

Everything but Scott. He was fractious and unbearable. Not a person in the house could look at him crosswise without getting snapped at. He stalked around with his heels clomping on the hardwood floors, as if to warn everybody to get out of his way. He snapped at the men and glared at the women and told Leatrice if she didn’t get rid of that “stinkin’ piss bag” her neck was going to rot off.

Scott blamed his sore temper on Willy.

Willy was turning into an obnoxious brat! Probably from hanging around Leatrice so much and picking up her officious ways. His grammar was deteriorating into a deplorable state and occasionally he let fly with an unconscious profanity, learned from the girls, who didn’t always guard their tongues around him as they should. Everybody spoiled him abominably, and when Scott crossed him he grew surly or mouthy or both. He had turned six in January and belonged in school, but short of taking him into town every day, there was no way to facilitate lessons, and nobody
around the place was inclined to take up tutoring him or even to teach him to pick up after himself. When Scott ordered him to do so, Willy charged away and declared Leatrice would make up his bed or pick up his clothes.

Then one day the girls ruined another dress. When Scott heard the news he stomped into the downstairs parlor, which doubled as a sewing room, and lashed out at them.

“Dammit! How many dresses do you think I can dig outta that attic! If Agatha were here
she
wouldn’t have made mincemeat o’ this one!”

It was Jube who hurled back what they’d all been thinking. “Well, if Agatha can do them better, get Agatha! It’s what’s been under your skin ever since you left Kansas anyway, isn’t it?”

Gandy’s face turned formidable. His cheekbones seemed to grow sharp, his mouth thin, and his eyes deadly as rapiers. He pointed a finger at Jube’s nose.

“You’d better watch yourself, Jube,” he growled.

“Well, isn’t it?” She thrust her face toward him and put both of her hands on her hips.

Gandy’s jaw locked and a muscle twitched in his left cheek. “Y’ know, you can be put off this place,” he warned in an ugly voice.

“Oh, sure, as if that would solve your problem!”

He spun toward the door. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about!”

“I’m talking about one Miss Agatha Downing.” She caught his elbow and spun him back. “You’ve been like a bear ever since you left her and it’s getting worse.”

He threw back his head and let out a sharp barking laugh. “Agatha Downin’. Ha!” He glared at Jube and spat out, “You’re crazy! Agatha Downin’, that... that prissy little milliner?”

“But of course you’d be too bull-headed to admit it.”

He jerked his arm from her grip. “Since when am I bullheaded, Jubilee Bright?”

“Since when am I a seamstress, LeMaster Scott Gandy?” She kicked the dress that lay puffed on the floor, then swung on him with combat in her eyes. “You know, we’ve been working our private skin off around here, scrubbing floors
and waxing wood—you wanna know how many spindles are in that damned railing out there?” Jube pointed at the hall. “Seven hundred eighteen, that’s how many! We know, because
we’re
the ones who oiled them! Your old slaves come back to help—fine, we appreciate the help—and we do what we’re told and go out to make the cabins livable again. And we peel onions when Leatrice says peel, and wash bedding when Leatrice says wash, and we polish brass when Leatrice says polish. And now Ivory’s got some addle-pated idea about all of us planting a cotton crop in one of the near fields this spring, just to lend a little touch of the pre-war South to this place. Well, I did all that, and I’ll probably end up planting cotton, too. But I don’t know possum-squat about sewing dresses, LeMaster Gandy!” She poked him in the chest. “And you’d best remember it!” Spinning away, she gave the dress a vicious kick, then fell to a nearby slipper sofa. Leaning back on both elbows, she caught one foot behind a knee, jutting out her breasts. “I’m an ex-prostitute, Gandy. Sometimes I think you forget that. I’m used to working in a reclinin’ position in clothes that take a lot less upkeep than that.” Her voice turned silky with challenge. “I’ll wear it, honey, but you better get somebody else to make it fit me. And if that somebody is Agatha Downing, all the better. Maybe she’d have a sweetening influence on your sour temper.”

Ruby sat in a nearby chair, legs crossed, one foot swinging, one magnificent eyebrow raised higher than the other. Pearl sat equally indolently, ignoring the dress she’d been working on when Scott entered.

He had never before seen three more ornery ex-prostitutes. They were harder than a ten-year drought. As his glance shot to the dress Pearl had discarded, he knew he’d be powerless against them as long as they all stuck together.

With a throaty curse he stalked from the room.

It was a day late in February with spring sending out feelers. Zach had turned out to be as adept a farrier as his father, and he was teaching not only Willy, but Marcus, too, all he knew about horses. Marcus had discovered he loved
working with the animals. Like him, they were voiceless. But they conveyed messages just the same. Today the little two-year-old mare, Sheba, was anxious to get outside and kick up her heels. The staid pair of skewbald carriage horses blinked lazily in the sun that streamed through the window as he brought them water. And Scott’s restless stallion, Prince... well, he had other things in mind. His sap was up. His nostrils flared. His ears stood straight and his chestnut tail arched at the whinny of Cinnamon, the brand-new mare Scotty had just bought, who was prancing around the paddock outside and tossing her head in invitation.

Four o’clock, Zach had said, as soon as Scott came back from town, where he’d taken the boy visiting while he checked the price of cotton seed.

It won’t be long now, Prince,
Marcus thought and wished he could say it to the impatient stallion, whose phallus was already partially distended and hung beneath him thick as a man’s arm.

“Marcus?”

He jumped and spun toward the door. Jube stood in the flood of light wearing a blue dress as plain as any housemaid would wear. Her white hair was caught up in a loose drooping fold. A knit shawl was looped around her shoulders.

He raised a hand in greeting and hurried toward her, hoping to detain her at the far end of the barn away from Prince with his glistening member exposed.

“I was looking for you.” Her face was somber as he halted before her, blocking her path.

She looked beautiful, with loose hair at her temples and her mouth soft. His heart hastened as he silently adored her.

“Can we talk?” she asked.

He loved her for saying things like that—as if he were no different from other men. He nodded and she took his arm and began sauntering along the stalls, eyes downcast. “I had a fight with Scott yesterday.” Marcus stopped, frowned in question, and waggled a hand, catching her eye. She went on quietly. “We’ve never had a fight before, but this one has been brewing for a long time. It was over a dress I ruined
when I was trying to alter it. Only it wasn’t really over that at all. It was over Agatha.” At his surprised expression, she laughed softly, then took his arm and sauntered on. “Yes,
that
Agatha. I think he’s in love with her but he won’t admit it to himself, so he’s driving the rest of us crazy. Haven’t you noticed how grouchy he’s been lately? And how he’s driving us? Well, I, for one, have had enough of it. I told him in rather unladylike terms that I’m not used to working as hard as he’s asked us to lately. I told him I think he should bring her here and maybe it would make him more bearable.”

Marcus squeezed Jube’s arm. He pointed to Kansas, then to the spot where they stood.

“Yes, here.” She lifted her face and placed her hands on his elbows. “Marcus, you’ve never asked, but I’m going to tell you. It’s over between Scott and me. It has been since before we left Kansas. Does that make a difference to you?”

He swallowed and felt his face flood with heat, and his heart started slamming.

“I think you’re too honorable to make a move toward me as long as you think Scott has any prior claims.” Once the words were spoken she became self-conscious. Her cheeks grew bright and she tossed her shoulders, moving unconsciously toward Prince’s stall. “Oh, Marcus, I know it’s not my place to say this, but if I wait until—”

He lunged and grabbed her elbow before she could see into the stall. Her head swung around and their eyes clashed. Tightening his grip, he shook his head—an order.

“No?” she verbalized. “Don’t say it? But, why? One of us has to.”

His eyes darted from her to the stall and back. He shook his head more adamantly, unsure of how to make her understand it wasn’t her words to which he objected.

“What?” She looked back over her shoulder and got a clear shot of the stall and the stallion within. “Oh!” she exclaimed, and her eyes widened.

Prince reared and pawed, his member bouncing lustily. Jube and Marcus stood locked in a moment of embarrassment so intense it seemed to stir the very air around them,
lifting dust motes that drifted through the oblique shafts of light falling through the barn.

Then Zach spoke from the doorway and they leaped apart. “Better keep away from that stall. Horse like that’s dangerous when he smells a mare in heat.”

Suddenly, Scott followed Zach around the corner, entering the barn at a brisk clip, his mind obviously on the business at hand. “Better let him out, Zach. No sense gettin’ the stall kicked apart. Marcus, Jube,” he added, offhandedly, “if you’re goin’ t’ watch y’all better get outside beyond the paddock fence. When he comes out he’ll be in a hurry.”

Marcus and Jube moved outside and stood at a whitewashed fence—apart from the others who’d come down from the house to watch, too. The aroused stallion, Prince, came trotting down the stone rampway into the paddock, his tail arched and streaming like a willow in the wind, his mighty head held high, the nostrils dilated. He halted a good distance from Cinnamon, forelegs locked, eyes turbulent. Mare and stallion stood face to face, unmoving, for what seemed like minutes. He snorted once. She turned away. As if enraged by her indifference, he raised his head and trumpeted long and loud, then shook his head until his mane flew.

The sound brought a question from Willy, who sat on the fence while Scott stood behind him, an arm loosely circling the boy. “Why’d he do that, Scotty?”

“He’s callin’ her. They’re goin’ t’ mate now, you watch. It’s how foals get started in the mare’s womb.”

At the moment it appeared as if nothing would get started anywhere. Cinnamon remained aloof. At the far end of the paddock she pranced back and forth, as far as the fence would allow. Each time she turned it was with a lunge and a dip that tossed her mane aloft. Haughty yet restless, she stood Prince off, racking back and forth along the fence.

He snorted, pawed the soft earth, bobbed his majestic head and, with it, his majestic phallus.

She turned her rump on him, her vaulted tail exposing her swollen genitals, already glistening. Her scent reached him, strong and hot, and his nostrils pulsated, his hide quivered.

Six steps he took before she swung on him in warning. As he halted, his distended organ dipped as if mounted upon strong springs. She shifted left. He shifted with her. She shifted right. He thwarted her once again. Imperiously, he came on, lord to lady, sire to dame.

She would have none of it and, with a quick snort and lunge, shot around him, biting his flank as she sprinted away.

At his grunt, she turned and they eyed each other from opposite ends of the enclosure, standing erect and well matched, their dark hides gleaming in the late-afternoon sun, tails now still. A pair of neon-blue dragonflies hovered in tandem over the paddock as if showing the horses what to do.

Again Prince advanced, one cautious step at a time. This time she whinnied, raising her nose to the air, waiting, waiting, until he neared, nosing her hindquarters. His head dropped and she stood her ground just long enough for Prince to fill his nostrils. Then she turned and nipped him again before dancing away.

Those who watched felt the tension, drawn to its peak. Every palm along the fence was damp, every spine tense. As in human nature, there was a point beyond which the female could taunt no longer without arousing the male beyond endurance. When he rounded on Cinnamon again, Prince was engorged to startling proportions as he moved in for the coup.

Enough of this high-flown loftiness, madame,
his approach seemed to say.
The time is here.

He stalked in, indomitable, masterful, and caught her in a corner. After all the evasiveness she’d displayed earlier, Cinnamon’s surrender was surprisingly accommodating. She stood as still as the earth itself, only her eyes shifting to follow Prince as he made his final overture. Their velvet noses nearly touched. The coarse hairs on their nostrils fluttered as they blew upon each other like bellows. Then he trotted around behind her and reared only once while she stood docile, waiting. His root found its sleek target and his powerful forelegs circled her sides as he immersed himself to the groin.

She called out at the moment of impact, a high vaulting screech that seemed to quake the budding trees in the orchard and lift shivers on every human hide within range.