Morning Song (7 page)

malice. Jessie, watching, was reminded of a beautiful rock she had once picked up that, underneath, was crawling with maggots. Discovering the difference between what Celia pretended to be and what she really was, was exactly like that. "If you don't do exactly as I've told you, I'll have that dreadful dog you're so fond of shot, and your little mare, too. Just keep that in mind."

"Shoot—Jasper? And Firefly? If you even try such a thing, I'll

. . . " Horrified, Jessie came away from the window, taking a quick step toward Celia, her fists clenching.

"You'll do nothing, my dear stepdaughter, because there is nothing you can do. Your father left everything on this place to me. I can do just as I please with those animals. By law, they're mine, not yours."

"If you hurt them, I'll kill you!" "Really, Jessie, there you go again having histrionics, as Stuart might say. Of course you won't kill me. You'll do as I say."

With a satisfied look at Jessie's reddened, twisted face, which screamed of impotent fury, Celia got to her feet, casually shaking out her skirt.

"As far as I'm concerned, we can forget that that unpleasant scene last night ever happened." Celia crossed to the door and unlocked it. Opening it wide, she passed through it, leaving the key in the keyhole as if confident that there would be no need to lock Jessie in again. Jessie breathed a silent sigh of relief that she was leaving. Never in her life had she thought to hate anyone as she was growing to hate her stepmother. Then, from the hall, Celia looked back at Jessie over her shoulder, her brows lifting delicately.

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"Oh, and I'll tell Stuart you've apologized, shall I?" she breathed, smiling, and without waiting for an answer moved off down the hall.

VI

It
was four o'clock that same afternoon, and Jessie was standing miserably in front of the cheval glass in the corner of her bedroom. Tudi, positioned behind her, was sticking the last of a mouthful of hairpins into the precarious upsweep of her hair. Sissie crouched at her feet, industriously sewing a gathered flounce to the hem of the made-over dress so that it would reach past Jessie's ankles. Slanting rays of sunlight poured in through the pair of windows that overlooked the side yard, bathing Jessie and her helpers in their brightness. The effect, as she viewed it in the mirror, made Jessie grimace.

Caught in the bold wash of sunlight, the deficiencies of her appearance became glaringly obvious. The demure white muslin dress, selected by Celia three years ago because it was so suitable for a young girl, had yellowed ever so slightly since then. The tiny pink sprigs with which it was adorned had faded until they were a pale shadow of the shade they had once been. The pink flounce that Sissie was adding, in the hope that it would freshen as well as lengthen the dress, looked hopelessly out of place. So did the pink satin sash, which Sissie had borrowed from Minna, Celia's maid, who had unearthed it amongst a pile of Celia's discarded clothes. The pink flounce was from the same dress that 55

had yielded the sash, and the color of both bore only a general resemblance to the shade of the sprigs.

To make matters worse, although Tudi had tried her best in the matter of the bodice, it was still too tight. For one of the few times in her life Jessie was wearing stays (she'd had to, to get into the dress), but although they whittled her waist to some small degree, they had the opposite effect on her bosom, which was pushing against the cloth covering it as though determined to escape. The once modest scoop neckline did not quite conceal the excess flesh; enough soft white cleavage showed to make the dress too revealing for a young lady of Jessie's tender years. Tudi, scandalized, had been all for jettisoning the dress. Only the sorry fact that Jessie did not possess another in better condition stayed her hand. Borrowing a gown from Celia's vast wardrobe had been considered, but the sad truth was that no dress made to fit Celia's tiny frame could be stretched to cover Jessie. So Sissie, who at age fourteen was the most accomplished seamstress in the house, including Tudi and her mother, had come up with a compromise: she would purloin another section of the pink dress, and use it to make a ruffle around the neckline. With that addition, the gown would be perfectly respectable, if not entirely fashionable.

"Stand still, Miss Jessie." Made a trifle cocky by her new importance, Sissie admonished Jessie in a stern tone as she stood up to attach the all-important neck ruffle. Scrawny and several inches shorter than Jessie, her hair still in childish plaits, Sissie had to stand on tiptoe to do the sewing. Chafing, Jessie stood still under her determined ministrations, hoping that the addition of the pink frill would somehow magically improve her appearance. 56

It didn't. When Sissie stepped back, and Jessie was allowed to admire her handiwork, she looked at her reflection again and felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

"I look just dreadful," she said with conviction.

"Oh, lamb, you do not!" Tudi protested, surveying Jessie's reflection from behind her.

"You look fine, Miss Jessie," Sissie added stoutly, but Jessie was not fooled.

"I look like a Holstein cow in a dress."

"Miss Jessie!" Tudi's protest was severe, but there was a giggle underlying Sissie's simultaneous one. Glumly, Jessie knew her pronouncement was true.

"I do. My hair's too red and my face is too round, and as for the rest of me—I'm just plain fat."

"Now you just stop thinking like that!" There was fierceness in Tudi's eyes as Jessie met them in the mirror. Tudi never could stand for anyone to belittle her lamb, as she had called Jessie when she was little. Not even Jessie herself. "You're hair's a nice, rich mahogany color, not red at all. And it curls— my, how Miss Celia would love to have your curls! Minna tells me she spends every night in curl papers. Your face is real pretty, with those big brown eyes and that cute little nose and those soft round cheeks like a young girl should have. And you've got nice skin, too."

"I'm fat as a pig," Jessie said dispiritedly, her shoulders drooping. The topknot that Tudi had spent the past twenty minutes arranging wobbled as her chin dropped, and Jessie knew it wouldn't last. Any hairstyle she attempted never did, which was one reason she never bothered. Itchy strands would be straggling around her face before the night was half over, and the topknot itself would slide into just the right position to look 57

ridiculous. That was what always happened when she tried to get herself up.

"You're healthy, lamb, not fat. It's just that Miss Celia's such a teensy little thing, and you're forever seein' yourself beside her."

"Oh, Tudi." There was no point in arguing with Tudi, Jessie knew. Tudi, seeing her onetime charge through the eyes of love, would never admit that there might be something lacking in Jessie's appearance. Looking at herself in the mirror, Jessie faced the bitter truth. At five and a half feet, she was tall for a female, although that was not so dreadful. But she was also, to put it kindly, plump; or, if one wasn't so kind, fat. The short puffed sleeves of the dress cut into her upper arms, making them bulge just below where the sleeves ended. Her bosom bulged, too, straining at the bodice, and so did her waist. She had no doubt that her hips would strain at the skirt if it had not been cut so full.

"Here, let me put these on you, Miss Jessie. Maybe they'll help." Sissie reached up to screw to her lobes a pair of dangling pearl earbobs that had belonged to Jessie's mother. Tudi fastened the matching necklace around Jessie's neck.

When they stood back, Jessie took another look. What she saw heartened her a little. Perhaps the earrings and necklace did help. At any rate they seemed to call attention to the thick-lashed brown eyes that were her best feature, and away from her figure, which was her worst. If only she did not have those thick dark brown brows that slanted like sable wings across the whiteness of her forehead, and if only the bright pink of the added embellishments did not clash so hideously with the reddish tinge to her hair, she might look almost—pretty.

"Tudi, I've been calling you for this age! Really, I don't expect to have to come looking for servants in my own house!" 58

Celia's voice, coming from behind them, made all three of them start guiltily and turn to her. Framed in the doorway, she looked lovely, her pale hair smoothly upswept, her dress a soft pink silk with the skirt gathered fashionably toward the back in a style that made the most of her fragile figure. Lace gloves covered her hands, and in one hand she held a painted fan, which she swished through the air with languid grace.

"Good Lord," she said, her eyes fastening on Jessie and widening with amusement. Immediately Jessie felt about two inches tall, and about as pretty as a bullfrog.

"Well, I suppose it can't be helped," Celia continued after a brief pause in which no one said anything. "I'm glad you're ready. Stuart's here to fetch us, and I don't like to keep him waiting. Tudi, I want you to be sure to take the linens for my bed outside tomorrow so that the sun can bleach them. They're getting dreadfully yellow—almost the color of Jessie's dress."

"Yas'm." Tudi's face tightened, but Celia had already turned away and did not see.

"And, Sissie, you can start embroidering those tea cloths right away, since you won't have to help Rosa with supper. I've no patience with idle hands, as you know."

"Yas'm." Sissie's voice echoed Tudi's for expressionlessness.

"Come along, Jessie. And remember what I told you, dear." Celia was already halfway down the stairs, and her voice floated back to Jessie, suddenly as sweet as spun sugar. Jessie guessed, and rightly as it turned out, that Stuart Edwards must be waiting within earshot in the hall below.

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VII

You may kiss me, Jessica, as we're to be family now." Miss Flora Edwards presented her crumpled cheek. Jessie, doing her best not to scowl, had no recourse but to give it a peck.

"You may kiss me too, if you like, Jessica," Miss Laurel Edwards said as Jessie straightened away from her sister. Jessie took a deep breath and gave the other elderly lady's cheek a peck. Then Miss Laurel took her hands, and both ladies beamed at her while Jessie did her best to smile back. It was an effort, and she did not doubt that her smile looked halfhearted.

The picnic supper that the Misses Edwards had put on in honor of their nephew's engagement had concluded as darkness had fallen. The party, which included all the nearby neighbors and some of the ones farther away, had then moved indoors. The picnic had been bad enough, but when Jessie had discovered that dancing was the next order of the evening, she had ducked into a rear parlor to escape. There, to her horror, she had run into the old ladies, who were arguing spiritedly about whose fault it was that the ices had melted before they could be served. She'd known Miss Flora and Miss Laurel from birth, but vaguely, as one did neighbors separated by several miles. Certainly they had never expressed any particular fondness for her before this moment. But, as they proceeded to tell her in great detail, since their nephew was marrying her stepmother (dear Celia, wasn't she just the sweetest creature?), that made Jessie (more or less) their grandniece by marriage.

Frequently digressing from the point, and more frequently interrupting each other, the Misses Edwards gave Jessie to 60

understand that their dearest wish was to see their nephew, who was their closest living male relative, settle down near them. To that end, they had invited Stuart to visit, not once but many, many times. Imagine their delight when he had at last shown up on their doorstep! And he so charming, and the spitting image of their baby brother, who had been his father!

Of course Tulip Hill would be his one day, when both Miss Laurel and Miss Flora had passed on to their reward. Although their family (except for their baby brother, who had died in an unfortunate accident at the age of forty-two, leaving little Stuart without a father during his growing-up years) was quite longlived—their mother had lived to be ninety-one, and her mother had passed on one month short of her hundredth birthday! So Miss Flora and Miss Laurel concluded, with a titter shared between them, that it might be some few years yet before Stuart inherited, as Miss Flora was in her, um, sixties, with Miss Laurel some three years younger.

"And why aren't you dancing, miss?" Miss Flora demanded of Jessie at last with a mock frown. With her masses of silky hair, which had presumably been dark like her nephew's but was now somewhere between white and silver, she must once have been the beauty of the family. She was taller than her sister and not quite as plump, but both had silvered rather than grayed and had the fine white skin prized by all Southern women. Age had wrought fine lines in Miss Laurel's face; Miss Flora's was frankly wrinkled. But still, the sweet scent of powder and lotion emanated from their skin at close range, both complexions were carefully tended, and both ladies were beautifully dressed.

"I—I don't—" Jessie stuttered, caught by surprise. The truth was that she didn't know how to dance. Worse than that, she 61

didn't expect to be asked. She'd grown up with the boys; she knew each and every one of them by name, and they knew her, too. As a child, she'd met them on their own ground—throwing rocks, climbing trees, giving as good as she got in everything from fist fighting to daredevil horseback riding. But now—now she was a young lady, and they were gentlemen. To them, she seemed to be invisible. With them, she had no idea how to act. As for the girls, they might as well have been from a different species. She felt even more awkward around them than she did around the boys.

The picnic had been uncomfortable enough, with all the young people polite to this near stranger in their midst but gravitating quite naturally to their particular friends. After the initial, politely masked surprise at her presence had died down, Jessie had found herself quite alone. The Misses Edwards had hustled Celia and Stuart off as soon as their carriage had arrived. (Not that Jessie was sorry about that; the ride had been miserable, with Celia fawning all over Stuart while Jessie, in the rear, had maintained a sullen silence.) Once the announcement and laughing toasts were over, the engaged pair had made the rounds of their friends together with Stuart's two proud aunts, accepting congratulations that barely masked the envy the women felt toward Celia for having carried off this matrimonial prize. Watching ladies of every age slaver over Stuart, Jessie had scarcely managed to hide her scorn. What fools they all were, not to see further than a handsome face!