Morning Song (12 page)

XIII

Dearly
beloved . . . "

Jessie stood a little to the left and behind her stepmother, clutching Celia's bouquet of white roses and lilies of the valley with fingers that were not quite steady. The sweet scent of the flowers teased her nostrils as she listened to the words that would give Mimosa over into Stuart Edwards' keeping.

In truth, she didn't know what she felt. Less than a fortnight ago, she would have sworn that she would have shot the man rather than see him take title to all that should have been hers. But that was before they had become friends, at least after a fash98

ion. Before she had discovered a kindness in him that was completely foreign to Celia's nature.

The bitter truth was that Mimosa wasn't hers, but Celia's. And in the many sleepless nights she had passed since the disastrous engagement party, Jessie had come to believe that Stuart Edwards would be a far better steward for the property and the souls who came with it than Celia had ever been.

It was also possible that he would continue to be a friend to her. Jessie had discovered that she very badly wanted Stuart Edwards for her friend.

So here she was, acting as her despised stepmother's sole bridesmaid, tricked out in a voluminous silk gown in the same hideous shade of pink as the ruffles Sissie had sewn on her old muslin dress. The gown was new, but that was all Jessie could say for it. Celia had personally selected the style and the material, and Jessie could only suppose that she had chosen both with an eye to making her stepdaughter look as unattractive as possible. Flounces cascading down from her shoulders to her hem, with only a wide sash to announce that she even had a shape, certainly did nothing to flatter Jessie's figure. In fact, when she had looked at herself in the cheval glass in her bedroom before heading for the church that morning, she had decided that she resembled nothing so much as the beruffled pin cushion on Celia's dressing table. The shape and the color were the same.

She had also decided that violent pink was not a good color for a female with glints of red in her hair.

Celia, on the other hand, looked lovely. Her petite figure was shown to best advantage in a shoulder-baring satin gown in the shade of ice blue so pale as to look almost white in some lights. 99

Her blond hair was dressed in an elegant knot of curls that cascaded from beneath the brim of her wide picture hat. As a second-time bride, Celia was not permitted the romanticism of a white gown and veil, but there was a wisp of veiling beneath the ribbons and flowers on her hat, and her dress was lavish with lace. On the whole she looked very bridal.

And, though Jessie hated to admit it, very young and very pretty.

"Do you, Celia Elizabeth Bradshaw Lindsay, take this man…" They were saying their vows. Jessie watched, trying not to look as anxious as she felt, as Celia swore to love, honor, and obey her new husband.

Then it was Stuart's turn.

"Do you, Stuart Michael Edwards . . . "

His voice was very steady, low and perfectly clear, as he promised to love and cherish Celia for the rest of her life.

"The ring, please."

Seth Chandler had agreed to stand up with Stuart, and he fumbled in his pocket for a minute before finding the ring and handing it over.

Stuart slid the ring onto Celia's finger. His hand was large and long-fingered, brown and strong-looking, its masculine beauty marred only by a reddish puckered scar that sliced diagonally across both its back and its palm. Her hand was slender-fingered, delicate, and lily-white, tiny compared with his. Looking at those two joined hands, Jessie felt a spurt of what could only be described as longing.

But what she longed for she couldn't have said.

"I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride." 100

Stuart kissed Celia, his dark head bending over her fair one. She clung to his shoulders for an instant, her nails digging intimately into his dove-gray coat. Then he was straightening, and she was looking around, laughing and rosy as triumphant music filled the air. Again Jessie felt that stab of longing. Then she was handing Celia her bouquet, and Celia and Stuart were retreating down the aisle arm in arm, the epitome of the happy bride and groom.

Just how it started Jessie never knew. When she arrived on the church stoop on Seth Chandler's arm, the guests spilling out behind her, the scene was already in progress.

"She's mine! I tell you, she's mine! She gave herself to me—she promised me—!"

"Why, that's Mr. Brantley, our overseer," Jessie said, shocked, to no one in particular. Stuart and Celia, seemingly frozen in place, stood poised at the top of the steps leading down into the churchyard. Stuart heard her words; Jessie saw him stiffen, and as she realized the significance of what was happening she felt her stomach clench.

Celia's sins had just caught up with her in the person of Ted Brantley. She had been sneaking down to the overseer's cottage for years. Jessie had even seen her headed that way in the evenings after supper. The only thing that surprised Jessie about it was that she hadn't tumbled to the meaning of those solitary walks before this. But then she'd thought that Celia, who was at least as intelligent as a bird, had enough sense not to foul her own nest.

Apparently she'd been wrong.

The churchyard was filled with people from Mimosa and Tulip Hill. Only the most favored of the house servants had been 101

allowed to occupy the rear pews of the church. The rest of them had waited outside to cheer the bride and groom when they emerged. Most had come on foot, but there were a few wagons drawn up outside the gate.

"She's mine! She's been mine for years!"

Mr. Brantley was on horseback. Surrounded by a sea of mostly black faces of well-wishers on foot, he was as visible as a mountain on a flat plain. He was weaving in the saddle, clearly drunk, so drunk he could barely keep his seat on the horse, so drunk he was crazy with it.

But not too crazy not to recognize Celia on the steps of the church.

"Celia! Celia, my darlin'! What about me? You love me, not him! You said so!"

Celia stood without moving, white-faced and silent, clutching her new bridegroom's arm as she stared out over the crowd at her erstwhile lover.

"He's insane," she said disdainfully. Then, more quietly, "Get him out of here."

The slaves nearest Brantley shifted uneasily, looking up at him and trying with gestures and low-voiced pleas to shut him up. But none of them, even the ones most loyal to Mimosa, dared to lay a hand on the white overseer. None of them cared enough for Celia to take the risk.

Behind Jessie, the crowd continued to swell out of the church, milling about on the stoop and, for those who couldn't get out, in the vestibule, standing on tiptoe as they tried to peer over their neighbor's shoulder to get a look at what was going on. Shocked murmurs rose on all sides.

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"Insane, am I? You bedded me, said you loved me! You can't deny it! What about those times you came to me, those things you said? You're mine, mine, mine!"

Everyone watched and listened with fascination. The crowd was alternately appalled and titillated depending upon the hearer's individual disposition, but no one seemed to know what to do to bring the dreadful scene to an end. Until Stuart, his face utterly expressionless, freed himself from Celia's hold and ran lightly down the steps toward the burly, ginger-haired drunk. The crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Stuart gained Brantley's side, reached up, and grabbed the man by the coat.

"Hey, what the hell . . . !" Brantley sputtered as he was dragged from the saddle. Then, apparently recognizing his danger, he swung a haymaker at Stuart that would have taken his head off if it had connected.

But it didn't. Stuart answered with a punch to the man's face that snapped his head back and sent bright droplets of blood spurting from his nose to shower those nearby. That one punch left Brantley dangling limply in Stuart's hold.

"You there, haul this trash out of here," Stuart said to a nearby field hand, dropping the unconscious Brantley to the ground as if he were no more than the garbage Stuart called him.

"Yes, suh," the worker replied, wide-eyed as he looked from his new master to the fallen overseer. Then the wagon was brought and Brantley, still unconscious, was lifted into it. The buzz of conversation behind Jessie had risen to feverish heights. It quieted abruptly as Stuart swung around and came back toward the stoop and his bride.

Instinctively Jessie drew closer to Celia. She was less than fond of her stepmother, but they were family, nevertheless. Despite 103

the years of antipathy between them, Jessie could not stand by and watch Celia be publicly humiliated, or worse. Any scandal involving Celia would inevitably involve Mimosa, too. Watching her new husband approach, Celia stood as white and unmoving as a marble effigy. Jessie knew that Celia was frightened. She could see it in her widened nostrils, smell it in her sweat.

And who wouldn't be frightened, under the circumstances?

Jessie knew that if she had to face Stuart Edwards' wrath, she would be petrified.

But Stuart surprised them all. He neither shouted nor hit Celia nor renounced the vows he'd just sworn.

"What is it about you that drives men insane for love of you, I wonder?" he said lightly as he rejoined Celia on the stoop. "I'd better take care lest I succumb to that fate myself." Then he smiled at her as if he had not the slightest notion that there had been any truth to Brantley's claims, and signaled for Progress to bring round the buggy.

For a few minutes Jessie was fooled. She felt the tension of the crowd ease, and everyone gathered closer, exclaiming over what had occurred as if it were some kind of tribute to Celia's beauty. Celia, for her part, rose to the occasion magnificently. Jessie watched her stepmother and Stuart receive the good wishes of the crowd and parry the inevitable jests, and marveled. Celia had come within a hairbreadth of a scandal over her virtue that would have ruined her name forevermore. And her new husband, the man most intimately concerned with her virtue, or lack of it, had rescued her from the brink of the abyss without even appearing to realize just how close to the edge she had been.

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Which left Jessie wondering if perhaps, just perhaps, Stuart truly did believe that Brantley's boasts were nothing more than the empty bombast of a lovelorn drunk.

Until he'd handed Celia into the carriage and looked around to meet Jessie's eyes.

In those icy blue depths she read the truth: before, when she'd called her stepmother a whore, he'd slapped her face for being a liar. Now he was willing to consider the possibility that perhaps, just perhaps, Jessie had been telling the truth.

XIV

The
wedding trip lasted a mere three weeks. It was to have been twice as long, but near noon on the
first day of July, Jessie was seated on the upstairs gallery with Tudi and saw the now familiar buggy bowling briskly along the road toward Mimosa. The scene was an uncanny repeat of the first time she had set eyes on Stuart Edwards. Only this time, instead of uneasiness, she felt a burgeoning pleasure.

Absurd to think she might have missed a man she barely knew, a man whom by all rights she should still consider her enemy.

"You're all lit up like a Christmas tree," Tudi observed, looking up from the mending in her lap.

"They're back." Jessie got to her feet to stand leaning over the railing, watching the buggy approach.

"You ain't never that eager to see Miss Celia," Tudi exclaimed with a combination of surprise and disbelief.

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"Things will be different now that Mr. Edwards is in charge," Jessie said earnestly, looking back at Tudi over her shoulder.

"He's not like Celia. Truly he's not."

"Well, that bird sure changed its tune mighty fast," Tudi muttered, but Jessie paid her no mind.

It was all she could do not to run down the steps to greet the new arrivals as the buggy rocked to a halt on the drive. She managed to restrain herself, barely, and instead hung over the railing, watching.

The yard boy, young Thomas, Rosa's baby, came running out to hold the horses. Stuart climbed down. He was nattily dressed in a pale gray cutaway coat and bone breeches, with a pale gray bowler on his head. The crisp black waves of his hair gleamed with blue highlights in the sun. Despite the hundred-degree heat, he didn't look as if he knew what it was to sweat.

Jessie dabbed at droplets on her own upper lip and forehead with the let-out hem of the ancient white muslin dress she wore, then waved, but he didn't look up.

Instead he went around to help Celia from the carriage. Celia allowed him to help her down, but released his hand the moment her feet touched the ground. Even twelve feet above them, as Jessie was, she could sense the animosity in the air. A third person alighted from the jump seat. The visitor was a man, tall and gangly with light brown hair. He was dressed almost as elegantly as Stuart, but without the dazzling effect. Celia said something to him, and he nodded. Then the three of them started up the stairs, Celia in the lead and the two men trailing behind.

"You're back early."

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Jessie had seated herself on the railing and turned to greet the new arrivals. For her stepmother she had an appraising look. Celia was beautifully dressed as always in a smart traveling costume in a delicate shade of apple green, with a cunning hat tilted low over her forehead. But she bore little resemblance to a bride just back from her honeymoon. Her face was pale, and there were faint shadows beneath her eyes. As she glanced at Jessie, her mouth was tight.

"Stuart didn't like the idea of leaving the place without someone who was familiar with things to oversee it, so we had to come back. Though why we couldn't just send Graydon on ahead and finish our honeymoon as planned, I don't understand." Celia minded thoroughly put out. As she finished speaking she slanted an angry look at her husband, who h.id just stepped onto the veranda with the man Celia had called Graydon.

"We've been over this a dozen times, Celia. Until your cousin learns the ropes, he can't be expected to run an operation the size of Mimosa without guidance. Besides, I want to go over the books, see for myself how things stand." Stuart's reply was courteous, but it was clear that his patience was beginning to fray.