Marrying Stone (33 page)

MEGGIE LAY WITH her head upon Roe's chest. The only sound she could hear was the beating of his heart. She banished all thoughts from her brain. It was too warm and muddled a moment, with the world too far removed to be wasted by thinking. Outside the rain had ceased and the sun peeked through a break in the clouds on the far western horizon, filling the sky with bright colors of pink and mauve and shining into the doorway of the little woodshed where they lay. The scent of earth and cedar and sex mingled with the scent of the man beside Meggie, and the aroma was very dear. She was very satisfied.

Roe gave a deep sigh and lovingly dragged her atop his body.

"You shouldn't be on this cold dirt floor," he told her in a warm whisper.

She stretched languidly above him and rested her head in the crook of his shoulder. It was a wonderful, safe feeling and she wanted to relish it, drag it out as long as she possibly could. Loving Roe Farley was like all of her daydream fancies coming to life at once. But, of course, it wasn't real. Couldn't last. Fanciful imaginations were pleasant and comforting, but they couldn't be confused with the real world. And as Roe began to stir beneath her, she knew the real world was about to intrude once again.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. "I should have found us something to lie upon."

"I don't mind," she murmured into his neck.

He ran his hand up and down her back as if to warm her. "I meant to take my time, Meggie," he said. "But once I… I touched you, I just couldn't wait any longer."

"I don't mind."

She could feel him smiling against her throat. "I was too rough."

"I don't mind."

Roe chuckled then and pulled her head up out of its comfortable position so that he could smile up into her eyes. "I've never known a woman so easy to get along with."

His teasing warmed the languor in her heart. "And you probably never will." She lay a sweet kiss upon his lips. It did not evoke the fiery passion of earlier, but still its power was dazzling. When their mouths parted, Roe took her face in his hands. He gazed at her with such intensity that Meggie finally looked away.

Her heart was beating like an Indian tom-tom. Deliberately, she tried to quiet the joy that leapt to her breast when he touched her.

"Oh, Meggie," he said. "I thought that singing with you was wonderful. But no music on earth can compare with this."

Meggie felt her lip begin to tremble and she sank her teeth into it to stiffen it. The pain stung. It was time to get up. It was time to walk away. Purposely she moved to do just that.

When she felt his hand upon her breast, she turned back.

"I love to see you naked," he whispered. "I know that you're beautiful, but I still like to view the evidence."

Suddenly, she wanted him to see her again, too. She wanted that moment between them. She wasn't willing to give it all up yet. Meggie bunched the material of her dress in her hand and looked at him questioningly. "I can just take this off," she said.

"Mmmmmm," he moaned as he stilled her hands. He closed his eyes in pleasure as if he'd just tasted something sweet. "You tempt me, Meggie. Naked with a woman in the woodshed was surely one of my boyhood fantasies. But I think we've spent enough time rolling around in the dirt." Reaching up playfully he tugged at her nose. "What I want to do is to try out our new bed. I'm sure Granny Piggott didn't give it to us just for sleeping."

Meggie wanted to try out that bed, too. She was thoughtful for a moment before a frown began to gather in her brow. "We can't do that, Roe. Pa is there."

"I don't mean now, sweetheart," Roe laughed.

The word
sweetheart
sizzled through Meggie's consciousness and she wanted to grasp it like a straw.

Lovingly, Roe ran his hand along her back, teasing and touching. "But tonight, ah, tonight, Meggie."

Once more she buried her face in his neck and kissed him, anxiously. "I'll try," she answered against his ear. "As soon as I hear Pa snoring, I'll try to sneak in there."

"What?"

"I said as—"

Roe sat up and pulled her up with him upon his lap. "I heard what you said. I just don't know why you've said it."

"We can't just go to bed together. Pa wouldn't like it a bit." Meggie felt the weight of reality growing heavier and heavier.

"I thought perhaps… perhaps he would understand."

Meggie shook her head. "Oh, no," she told him. "Folks here are very strict about this kind of thing."

Roe nodded. "I understand. I just thought that since we'd already jumped the Marrying Stone… but if we need to stand up before the preacher, then we do. How soon do you think old Pastor Jay can marry us?"

"Marry us?"

"Yes, marry us."

Meggie smoothed the hair away from her face and began to rearrange her clothes. "Roe, I told you that it's not necessary for us to get married."

She kept her words calm and deliberate, hoping to avoid any conflict.

Roe was silent for so long, she finally looked up at him to find him staring in disbelief. "Meggie." His words were quiet. "Didn't you just tell me that you were going to marry me?"

"I didn't say anything like that."

"What was this all about?" he asked, gesturing to the place they had shared on the floor of the woodshed.

"It's not about anything, it's—"

"Damn it!" Roe rushed to his feet, unceremoniously dumping her on the cold damp dirt. "You tricked me."

'Tricked you?"

"I wouldn't have done this again if I'd thought you weren't going to marry me."

Meggie gave him a disbelieving look and shook her head. "You didn't even give a thought to marriage. If you were thinking at all, you were just thinking about loving, just like I was."

"All right," he said. "I admit I let my passion get ahead of my good sense. But I did ask you to marry me, and I'm sure I had your consent."

"I didn't agree to anything. I just didn't answer."

Roe stared at her as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He shook his head and tried again. "Meggie, people don't do this without getting married."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. "People do this without getting married all the time. I may be an ignorant Ozarker, but I know that much about the world. Fornication, the Bible calls it, and it happens all the time. You know that as well as I do. I bet it even happens in the Bay State."

"Well, certainly it happens, but it shouldn't."

Meggie nodded. "That's because people would talk or they could have a baby or something bad. But I told you before, those things are not a problem for us. Nothing has changed. When you finish your work, you can go on back to where you came from. I'll tell folks that you've died and none will be the wiser."

"You think that having a baby or what people might say are the only reasons people don't do this without marriage?"

"Well, no, those aren't the only reasons. I know it's a sin and all that."

"And all that doesn't bother you?"

"Of course it bothers me," she snapped.

"But not enough to make you marry me."

"I think heaven will surely understand. It's not like we're hurting anybody."

"What about a child?"

"I told you there isn't any child."

"There could be now," he said, somewhat louder. "Do you think I would have risked that again if I had thought you weren't going to marry me?"

"If there is a child, he'll be fine."

"No, he won't. He'll be alone. He'll be hurt."

"Everybody on the mountain will be his family," she said. "I can promise you he won't have a day of being alone. He'll just think that his father has died."

"And what will his father think?" Roe asked. "Will his father think that the boy is fine, living on a subsistence farm with a crippled old man, a simple boy, and a woman?"

"Don't worry, I do intend to marry eventually," she assured him. "Then the child would have a father."

Roe's eyes were blazing. "What's wrong with the one he already has? If you're going to marry eventually anyway, why not marry me now?"

"I can't marry you. It would be a permanent mistake."

"It's not right," Roe repeat in angry disbelief, and then began pacing across the floor as he raked his hair impatiently. "What do you mean a permanent mistake?"

"You know exactly what I mean. You want to marry me because we've… we've done this together."

"That's what usually happens. When a couple… anticipates their wedding night a bit, then they get married."

"What usually happens is that men do this with women, and if they don't
have
to marry them, they walk away. Don't you listen to these songs you collect? That's what most of them are about. A man doing this and walking away."

"We're talking about real life here, not songs."

"Songs are like the echo of real life. Men lay with women and then just walk away all the time. I don't know why you can't be just like the rest of them."

"Is that what you really want? You want me to be some heartless cad who just leaves you here?"

"That's exactly what I do want. I cannot go where you're going and I won't have you stay here. And I won't be tied to a man that's not around. I want to be free to marry for the right reason."

"And what reason is that? Love? Is that what you're trying to make me say, Meggie? That I love you?" Roe was clearly angry now and had raised his voice loudly. "Well, maybe I do. I've never been in love. I don't know anything about it. Maybe this is it."

"If it was love, you'd know it."

"Would I? How would I know it?"

"You just would."

"Oh, I suppose all
princes
are experts on love and immediately recognize it on sight," he said sarcastically.

"You are no prince," she replied.

"Well, thank you, Meggie Best. At least you are right about one thing. I am not a prince. I'm a man."

He stopped and drew a deep breath. He clenched his hands at his side. The sight of him standing in the small woodshed, holding back his temper, sent a strange little thrill through Meggie's body.

When it seemed he'd gained control of himself once more, he turned to look at her. "All right, Meggie. I understand that you don't want to come with me and that you don't want to be left alone. I think I can understand that. I can even respect it. I realize what a fanciful nature you have and that you probably have dreamed of marrying for some grand passionate love."

Meggie's face flushed. She was the one being practical here. She was the one who figured out the plan so that he wouldn't have to marry her, but she didn't reply.

"Perhaps I don't know enough about love to offer it to you," he continued. "But I can offer you this. I'm willing to give up my home, my career, everything with which I am familiar to stay on this mountain and make you legally my wife."

Meggie's mouth went dry as dust and her heart nearly leapt out of her breast. "Now why would you want to do a fool thing like that?" was all she said.

Roe paled visibly, but he answered quickly enough. "Because it's my obligation to do so."

His words acted like a splash of cold water. "No thank you, sir. You are relieved of your obligation," she said. "I don't need any favors."

"I'm sure you don't," he snarled. "Any day now some real prince is going to come walking over one of those ridges and have all the right reasons. Well, I wish him all the luck in the world, because he's going to need it."

Roe lay in the new room in the new bed and stared at the ceiling above him. His confusion made him unable to sleep. He should be glad, he told himself over and over again. He'd enjoyed himself, found some pleasure with her, and he was still free to return to his life. It would have been a disaster to stay here and marry her. She was not at all the kind of woman that he should marry. She would never understand his work; she could never be a help to him socially. Meggie Best might well be the best speller on Marrying Stone Mountain, but she certainly wouldn't shine at a Cambridge garden party.

Yet, he couldn't quite conquer the nagging thought that he wanted to marry her. With pleasure, he recalled not the passion they'd shared, but those moments they'd spent singing. Her voice mixed with his own. With that kind of sharing, a man could never be lonely again.

In the main room he heard Onery stirring. The old man had been a little bit better at suppertime, but he was still clearly in a lot of pain. Even after drinking two full cups of Meggie's bark and herb brew, his rheumatism was still paining him to distraction.

"Jesse!" the old man called up toward the loft. "Jesse, my leg's a-cramping. Come walk me about."

"I'll do it, Pa."

The voice Roe heard was Meggie's and she sounded wide awake.

"Jesse didn't get back with the snakeroot 'til after dark," she told her father. "And he was so cold and wet I sent him straight to bed. Just let him sleep and I'll help you."

"You ain't got the strength for it, Meggie-gal," her father answered. "I need a big fellow to lean on."

Without another thought, Roe rolled out of bed and pulled on his trousers. He slipped the galluses over his bare shoulders and walked across the wide, slightly raised block that served as the threshold separating the main cabin from the new room.

"Am I big enough?" he asked.

"Did we wake you up, Farley?" Onery answered his question with one of his own.

"I wasn't asleep," Roe said.

He walked across the main room to the fireplace. Taking
a tallow candle from the mantel, he used a stick to stir the ashes in the fireplace just enough to get a light.

He set the glowing candle on the table. Its meager flame revealed just a hint of the room around him.

In the far right corner he saw Meggie sitting up in her pile of bedclothes on the floor. She was sleepworn and tousled. The faint glow of candlelight shimmered on the untidy mess of hair that hung down her back. Roe felt a strange clutch inside him.

"Go back to your pallet, Meggie," he told her quietly. "I'll walk Onery around until his cramp eases."

She didn't answer, but she did scoot farther down into the covers, turned to face the wall, and lay down. She pulled the bedsheet up to her neck.