Vows (24 page)

 
Yes, yes, a forfeit. Everyone in the room recognized a budding romance when they saw one.

 
In the center of the circle Tom kept Tarsy's elbow while perusing her with mock lasciviousness. "What'll it be, puss?" he asked, to everyone's amusement.

 
Two suggestions were thrown at Tom simultaneously.

 
"Make her spend the night on the back-porch step."

 
"Make her take a bath—cat-style!"

 
Tom knew perfectly well what Tarsy was hoping for. His eyes dropped to her lips—pretty lips, full and pink and slightly parted. A kiss would certainly seal within the minds of everyone here which way the wind blew for Tom Jeffcoat. But this was Tarsy's party: if she wanted to start risqué forfeits, she'd have to instigate them herself.

 
"Bring her a saucer of milk," he ordered, still holding her arm while her flush grew becoming.

 
Somebody brought a saucer of milk and set it on the floor. Tarsy promised in an undertone, "I'll get even with you, Tom Jeffcoat. You can't escape me forever." With a flourish of skirts, she gamely dropped onto hands and knees to pay her forfeit.

 
She made a provocative sight, kneeling bustle-up, lapping milk from the edge of the saucer, as provocative a sight as she'd made rubbing her breast against his knee. Watching her, Tom laughed with the rest, but when she'd been in the ignominious position for a mere fifteen seconds he relented and hauled her to her feet. "Poor pussy is excused," he said for all to hear. Then privately to Tarsy, "…for the time being."

 
Not a soul in the room doubted that there was a genuine spark of interest between the two.

 
Emily Walcott watched the entire farce with a queer tightness in her chest and a strange, forbidden heaviness in her stomach. It had been highly suggestive. Sometimes she'd tried not to laugh, but had been unable. Sometimes she'd felt embarrassed, but could not drag her eyes away.

 
What would her parents say? Mother, in particular.

 
She and every girl in the room had been raised upon rigid, Victorian mores. Blatant flirtatiousness was strictly forbidden and physical contact with the opposite sex was limited to a brief touch of hands in greeting or holding an escort's elbow when walking. Yet these games encouraged a good deal of tactile and vocal innuendo.

 
She wondered if the other girls felt as she did, drawn and repelled at once, flushed and uncomfortable. Was it the subtle naughtiness of the games themselves or was it Tom Jeffcoat? Watching Tarsy rub against his trouser legs, Emily had felt an insidious stirring inside. When he'd petted Tarsy's hair and run his fingers down her throat Emily had experienced a startling rush of excitement. And something more. Prurience, she was sure, which made these games indecent. Yet she'd been unable to turn away. Not even when Tom had gazed into Tarsy's eyes and employed his flirtatious grin had she turned away. She'd stared, galvanized by a bewildering jolt of jealousy while everyone in the room expected him to demand a kiss as a forfeit. Then he'd called for the saucer of milk and she'd released her breath carefully, hoping Charles wasn't watching her.

 
Whatever had Tarsy started here?

 
Tarsy knew precisely what she had started, and she'd done it consciously. At the end of the evening she asked Tom Jeffcoat to stay after the others had gone, to help her push the furniture back into place.

 
It was a convenient ruse, Tom knew, but he was a red-blooded American male with a little brandy coursing through his veins, and Tarsy was a tempting young lady whose admiration wasn't exactly unwelcome. Furthermore, Miss Emily Walcott was off limits and he'd been too aware of her all night long.

 
When the punch bowl was carried to the kitchen, the chairs put back in place, and all but one lamp wick lowered, he decided to take advantage of Miss Tarsy Fields's thinly veiled invitation. She had walked him slowly to the door and was reaching for his jacket, which hung on the newel post.

 
"Come here," he ordered quietly, catching her around the waist and swinging her against him. "Now I'll take the rest of my forfeit."

 
She forgot about his jacket as he tipped his head and kissed her, chastely at first, then with growing intimacy. He invited her to open her lips and she did. He brushed-his tongue across hers and she responded. He ran his hands up her back and she did likewise up his.

 
He found, to his enjoyment, that it stirred him. Lifting his head slowly he let her read it in his eyes. "I think you've been planning that all night," he told her.

 
"And you haven't?"

 
He laughed and ran the backs of his fingers along her jaw. His lips softened into a speculative crook as he continued caressing her jaw, letting his gaze rove from her eyes to her mouth and back again. "I wonder what it is you want from me."

 
"To have fun. Innocent fun. That's all."

 
"That's all?"

 
She took another kiss, in lieu of anything more she might want. She had lush lips and knew instinctively how to use them to best advantage. When she pulled away Tom's lips were wet and he found himself pleasantly aroused.

 
"You're looking for a husband, aren't you?" he inquired pleasantly.

 
"Am I?"

 
"I think so. But I'm not him, Tarsy. I might enjoy kissing you and being your partner for parlor games, and letting you rub against my pant leg, but I'm not in the market for a wife. You'd best know that from the start."

 
"How honorable of you to forewarn me, Mr. Jeffcoat."

 
"And how tempting you are, Miss Fields."

 
"Then is there anything wrong with"—she shrugged—"enjoying each other a little?"

 
He kissed her once more, lingeringly, resting a hand at the side of her breast, delving deep with his tongue. Their mouths parted reluctantly.

 
"Mmm … you do that so well," she murmured.

 
"So do you. Have you had much practice?"

 
"Some. Have you?"

 
"Some. Shall we have another go at it?"

 
"Mmm … please."

 
The next "go" was wetter, more promiscuous. When his hand strayed to her breast she drew back discreetly—a woman who knew how to leave a man with something to anticipate. "Perhaps we'd better say good night now."

 
He found himself mildly amused but scarcely heartbroken. She was a pleasant diversion, nothing more, and as long as they both understood it, he was willing to dive as deep or shallow as she'd allow.

 
"All right." Unhurriedly he reached for his jacket. "Thank you for a truly amusing party. I think everyone agreed it was an unqualified success."

 
"It was, wasn't it?"

 
"I think you've really started something with these parlor games. The men loved them."

 
"So did the girls, though they don't think they should admit it. Even Emily who's as prudish as they come, and Ardis, who's decided to have the next party. Will you be there next week?"

 
"Of course. I wouldn't miss it."

 
"Even if it's you who has to pay the forfeit?"

 
"Forfeits can be fun."

 
They laughed and she smoothed his lapel. On her porch they shared one last lingering good-night kiss, but in the middle of it he found himself wondering if Charles was doing the same thing with Emily right now, and if so, how obliging she was.

* * *

He caught only glimpses of her that week. He chose his carriage horses without her aid, and signed a hay contract with a rancher named Claude McKenzie who said he'd be cutting his crop by mid-July. He talked with the local harnessmaker Jason Ess, about the harnesses he'd need. Ess told him Munkers & Mathers Hardware down in Buffalo handled new Bain wagons, and he made the thirty-mile trip to place an order.

 
Emily, Charles said, had been called out twice that week: to diagnose and treat a cow whose paunch was bound up by a hairball, and to extract a decayed tooth from a horse. In both cases she'd been paid in hard cash and was elated to have earned her first money as a veterinarian.

 
Frankie came by and said his sister had been trying to ride Fannie's bicycle and had fallen and knocked the wind from herself and gotten so angry she climbed back on, fell a second time, and scraped a patch of skin off her hand and another from her forehead.

 
"You should've heard her cuss!" Frankie exclaimed. "I never knew girls could cuss like that!

 
Tom smiled and thought about her for the remainder of the day.

 
On Saturday night she showed up at Ardis Corbeil's house sporting a pair of strawberry-red scabs, one just below her hairline and another on her nose Tom was near the door when the two of them walked in. He offered Charles a congenial hello, but glanced down at Emily and made the mistake of chuckling.

 
"What are you laughing at!" she snapped, scowling at him.

 
"Your battle scars."

 
"Well, at least I tried riding it! If you think it's so easy, you try!"

 
"I told Fannie I'd love to."

 
Charles put in, "The subject of the bicycle is a touchy one right now."

 
Smiling, Tom tipped a shallow bow of apology. "I'm sorry I brought it up, Miss Walcott.

 
"I'll
bet
you are!" She turned and stalked away.

 
"Mercy, she really doesn't take teasing well, does she?"

 
"Especially from you, I'm afraid."

 
The crowd played a new game that night called "Guessing Blind Man" and what Tom had feared, happened: when it was his turn, he was blindfolded surrounded by a ring of seated players, and ended up on the lap of Emily Walcott. Something told him immediately it was she. The reaction of the others, perhaps. To his left he heard a soft "Oh-oh!", then "Shh!"

 
Everyone in the room knew that from the moment Tom Jeffcoat had come to town Emily Walcott had considered him her archenemy. She would as soon bury him as look at him. Yes, she'd helped him buy horses, but she'd done it begrudgingly, at Charles's request. Even tonight, at the door, she'd snapped at Jeffcoat the moment she'd stepped into the house.

 
Now here he sat, blindfolded, on her lap, surrounded by titters.

 
The rules of the game were simple: he had a free pair of hands and three tries to guess who she was.

 
The tittering stopped. The silence grew pregnant and Tom imagined Charles looking on. The games were getting more and more daring. There was no cushion in use this time, and if his hand groped in the wrong place, no telling what it might touch. Emily sat stone still, scarcely breathing. Someone snickered. Someone else whispered. Beneath him he felt the contact with her slim knees but he let them bear his full weight—anything to make this look as if he were continuing to nettle her for his own amusement. Behind his blindfold he pictured her cheeks, burning with embarrassment, her breath indrawn, her shoulders stiff.

 
He reached … and found her right hand gripping the edge of the chair seat. For a moment they engaged in a silent tug-of-war, but he won and lifted the hand by its wrist, much smaller than the circle of his fingers.

 
The game gave him license to do what he might never get a chance to do again and he'd do it, by god, with Charles watching, and satisfy his curiosity. Those looking on would see only what they'd been seeing all along—a teasing man having his fun with a woman who could scarcely tolerate him.

 
Still holding her wrist, he explored with his free hand each long, thin finger, each nail clipped veterinarian-short; calluses (surprising) at the base of her palm, then the palm itself, working it over mortar-and-pestle fashion. Sure enough: a scab—undoubtedly caused by her fall from the bicycle. He felt an acute forbidden thrill.

 
"Ah, tough hands. Could it be Charles Bliss?"

 
Everyone roared while Tom concealed his own disturbing reaction beneath a veneer of teasing. He lifted his right hand and found her cheek. She stiffened and drew back sharply. His hand pursued, examining everything but the two scabs he knew were there—one silky eyebrow; one eye, forcing it to close; a soft temple where a pulse drummed crazily; a velvety earlobe. He leaned close and sniffed: lemon verbena … a surprise.

 
"Mmm … you don't smell like Charles."

 
More laughter as he examined her gauzy hair and the curls outlining her face. "Charles, if it's you, you've done something new with your hair."