Vows (54 page)

 
"Is that why you're scared to look at me, Emily, because of what he said?"

 
She felt herself color, and gulped. "Yes."

 
"I'd sure like it if you would."

 
"I'm dressed in my barn clothes."

 
"And I'm not complaining."

 
She lifted her head slowly and her lips dropped open, her eyes grew dismayed. "Uh, Thomas…" His face was swollen and discolored. His hair stood in tufts like that of an old buffalo after a hard winter. His left eye was opened less than a quarter inch and the right one squinted without his intending it to. Beneath it a pillow of skin had turned magenta, tinged with blue. His beautiful mouth and jawline were those of a mutilated stranger. "Look at you."

 
"I suppose I'm a mess."

 
"You must hurt terribly."

 
"Bad enough to keep from kissing you the way I'd like to," he admitted, taking her elbows anyway, and drawing her off-balance.

 
She resisted discreetly and said, "Tom, I need to talk to you." There were things that needed airing and they were best said with a minimum of intimacy involved.

 
"So serious," he chided gently.

 
"Yes, it is."

 
He dropped his playful mood. "Very well … talk."

 
She drew a deep breath and told him, "I hated it, your fighting over me I felt helpless and … angry."

 
His eyes probed hers with a hint of rebelliousness in the brows. But after a moment's silence he offered, "I'm sorry."

 
"I hate seeing you disfigured this way."

 
"I know."

 
"I would never have taken you for a fighter."

 
"I never was … before."

 
"I wouldn't like it much if you did it after we were married."

 
They both recognized the moment for what it was; not a squaring-off but a structuring for their future. His answer—the one she'd hoped for—spoke of the deference with which he would hold her wishes when she became his wife

 
"I won't. That's a promise. I didn't
want
to fight him, you know."

 
"Yes, I know."

 
She stood with her gaze pinned on his black-and-blue eyes, wrapped in a queer combination of emotions—regret for having had to take him to task; pity for his poor, abused body; desire for that same body, no matter how unsightly it looked. She wanted badly to reach, soothe, press her face to his naked neck and touch his warm shoulders. A startling thought surfaced
: I love him so much that Papa is right. I have no business here in his house, not even in barn clothes.

 
Instinctively she moved to leave, but reaching the door she turned. "I'm going to tell Tarsy about us this morning. As soon as I feed your horses I'm going over to her house and get it over with. I just wanted you to know."

 
"Do you want me with you?"

 
"No, I think it's best if I go alone. She's probably not going to be any more understanding than Charles was. The two of you will want to talk privately once she knows. I'll understand that and I promise I won't be jealous."

 
"Emily…" He moved toward her.

 
"I've got to go." She opened the door quickly.

 
"Wait."

 
"You know what Papa said."

 
"Yes, I know what Papa said but Papa isn't here now."

 
Advancing, he thumped the door closed and positioned himself between it and her. He hooked an elbow around her neck and drew her lightly against him, resting one bruised cheek against her floppy wool cap. In a husky voice he said, "I think it's a damn good thing I'm so bruised up or we'd be in a peck of trouble here."

 
Oh, his smell. A little musky, a little mussed, a little male, the natural scent of skin and hair aged by one night. Thank God for gloves, she thought, with her own resting against his hard white bindings, inches from his bare chest. She wanted nothing more than to touch all of him that was naked, to learn his texture with her bare fingertips. While she steadfastly refrained, he slipped his hand up inside the back of her jacket and pulled her lightly against him, lazily rubbing her spinal column through a rough flannel shirt. He explored her slowly, his hand moving up, as if counting each vertebra, gently urging her closer. A warm hard hand, a warm hard man—how easy it would be to succumb to both.

 
Her heartbeat hearkened and her breasts felt heavy.

 
"Thomas…" she whispered in warning.

 
"Don't go," he begged softly. "It's the first time without Charles between us. Don't go."

 
She felt it, too, the easing of constraint upon their consciences since her engagement was formally broken. But constraints took other forms, and she drew back reluctantly. "I can't come here anymore, not to your house. We have almost ten months to wait, and that's too long. I have to go," she repeated, backing away from him.

 
He watched her walk backward till her shoulders bumped the door. They gazed at each other with frustrated desire drawing long lines upon their faces.

 
He moved toward her slowly, and her heartbeats seemed to fill her throat. But he only reached behind her for the doorknob. Opening the door for her he said softly, "Let me know how it goes with Tarsy."

 
"I will."

* * *

At ten o'clock that morning Tarsy answered the door herself, wearing a trim-bodiced dress of candy-pink stripes with flattering shoulder-to-navel tucks that minimized her dainty waist, and a generous gathered skirt that exaggerated her rounded hips.

 
Emily wore the same clothes in which she'd fed Tom's horses and cleaned his stalls—a wool jacket, trousers, and soiled leather boots.

 
Tarsy's hair was freshly curled and caught up on the back of her head with a matching pink ribbon.

 
Emily's was jammed up inside her brother's floppy wool cap.

 
Tarsy smelled of lavender soap.

 
Emily smelled of horse dung.

 
Tarsy turned up her pretty nose. "Phew!"

 
Apologetically, Emily left her boots outside the door and stepped into the front entry stocking-footed. Mrs. Fields arrived from the kitchen, her hands coated with flour. "Well, Emily, for goodness sake, this is a surprise. We hardly ever see you this early in the day." She was a buxom woman with wavy blond hair done up in a French twist, the only woman Emily had ever known who wore cheek paint in her kitchen and scented herself at this hour of the day. The smell of honeysuckle toilet water wafted in with her, covering that of yeast from the dough on her fingers.

 
"Hello, Mrs. Fields."

 
"How is your father?"

 
"Fine."

 
"And Miss Cooper?"

 
"Fine."

 
"Will she be leaving soon, going back East?"

 
Emily detected a bit of nosiness and took pleasure in replying, "No, ma'am. She's staying."

 
"Oh." Mrs. Fields's left eyebrow elevated.

 
"She has no family back there. Why should she?"

 
Mrs. Fields allowed her eyebrow to settle to its normal level and blinked twice, as if taken aback by Emily's quick defense of Fannie.

 
"Well … I thought that since your mother is gone—may she rest in peace—Miss Cooper's services would no longer be needed."

 
"On the contrary, we all need her very badly and begged her to stay. You see, I've decided to continue my veterinary studies after all, and to work at … at the stables indefinitely, so I'm abandoning most of the domestic duties to Fannie. I just don't know what we'd do without her anymore."

 
Mrs. Field's mouth drew up as if she were attempting to pick up a coin with her lips. "I see." She flashed a glance at Tarsy, then added, "Well, give your family my best," and returned to the kitchen.

 
When she was gone, Tarsy took Emily's arm and turned her toward the steps. "Come upstairs and see the new piece of organdy that Mama's going to make into a spring gown for me. It's called pistachio—whatever that means!—and we've decided on the most absolutely smashing design from the latest issue of
Graham's
. Mama has agreed to let me have a soiree here—don't you just
love
the word?—soiree…" Reaching the top of the steps, Tarsy lifted her skin in two fingers and performed a dipping swirl toward her bedroom door. Whisking through it, she caught up a piece of green fabric from the tufted stool before her vanity. Petting it, she swung back to Emily. "Isn’t it de-
lusc
ious?"

 
Emily dutifully touched the organdy with a knuckle that hadn't been washed since she'd been handling a pitchfork, gazing down absently in a way that Tarsy took for longing.

 
"Oh, poor Emily, I just don't know
how
you'll tolerate wearing black for a whole year. I would simply wither away and die if it were me. Maybe someday you can sneak up here and try on my pistachio gown after it's made up!"

 
Emily remained stone sober. "It's very nice, Tarsy, but I have to talk to you about something important."

 
"Important?" Tarsy's brow wrinkled delicately: what could be more important than a new gown of pistachio organdy for a soiree?

 
"Yes."

 
"Very well." Tarsy obediently laid the cloth aside and plunked onto the foot of the bed in a billow of pink skirts, her folded hands lost in her lap.

 
Emily dropped onto the tufted stool facing her friend, wondering how to begin.

 
"Well?" Tarsy's hands flashed, then disappeared once more into the folds of her skirt.

 
"I've decided not to marry Charles."

 
"Not to…" Tarsy's jaw dropped. Her eyes widened. "But, Emily, you and Charles are … are … well, heavens! You two simply go together … ham and eggs! Peaches and cream!"

 
"Not really."

 
"He's absolutely going to
die
when you tell him."

 
"He already knows."

 
"He does?"

 
"Yes."

 
"Well, what did he say?"

 
"He was very angry … and hurt."

 
"Well, I imagine so." Tarsy plucked fussily at the peaks of her skirt. "My goodness, you two have known each other forever. What reason did you give?"

 
"The true one, that I love him more as a brother than as a husband."

 
Tarsy considered, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "But how do you know, Emily, when you've never … I mean…" Tarsy shrugged and gave Emily an ingenuous gaze. "You never have…" Her head jutted forward. "…have you?"

 
Emily colored, but answered, "No."

 
"Well then, maybe you'd feel different." Hurriedly she added, "After you're married, I mean."

 
"No, I won't. I'm sure of it."

 
"But how do you know?"

 
"Because…" Emily clamped her palms between her knees and forged on. "I know now what it feels like when you really love somebody."

 
Tarsy's face lit like a gas jet. Her eyebrows shot up and her expression turned avid as she bent forward. "Oh, Emily … who?"

 
How ironic it felt to be confronting a woman of Tarsy's pulchritude: the ugly duckling telling the swan she had won the drake. Ironic and frightening. Emily's heart felt as if it would flop clear out of her body as she answered steadily, "Tom."

 
"Tom?" Tarsy repeated in a faint, colorless vice. Her face flattened and she straightened cautiously, reluctant to assimilate the truth.

 
"Yes, Tom."

 
"Tom Jeffcoat?" Tarsy's pretty mouth distorted.

 
"Yes."

 
"But he's—" She stopped herself just short of adding,
mine
. Nevertheless it reverberated in the air between the two women. Tension suddenly buzzed as Emily watched Tarsy struggle to understand. A gamut of reactions fleeted across her face—disbelief, doubt, and finally amusement. Flinging her arms high, Tarsy fell back onto the bed, throwing her breasts into prominence—a woman who believed she had no competition from this unfeminine, board-chested veterinarian who didn't know diddly-squat about charm, enticement, or flirting. What man would prefer a woman who boldly admitted hating housework and disdaining babies? Not that Tarsy herself was any too anxious to embrace either, but Tom would never guess the truth until she was comfortably sleeping in his bed nights.