Pamela Morsi (5 page)

“There is no such thing, so hush up about it,” Clara told her in a plaintive whisper.

As the two hastily quit the room, Eulie became a little bit uneasy. It was good and well to know that you did the right thing and that it would all work out for the best, but it was an entirely different case to explain that to anyone. Especially anyone very tall and broad-shouldered and scowling unpleasantly.

Eulie rose to her feet and began gathering the plates from the table. She’d left a dishpan of washing water warming in a small tub on the hearth. She carried the pile of dirty dishes there and slipped them in to soak beneath the brown lye soap that scummed the top of the water.

She had thought to lift the dishpan to the table and wash and dry the dishes there. But the husband-man was standing near the table, and Eulie thought the more distance kept between the two of them the better. She found her soapy scrub rag and knelt beside
the hearth. She concentrated upon her task, but still felt his eyes upon her. He was watching her every move. Evaluating and judging her. And Eulie feared she was not showing at her best. Deliberately she kept her back straight and her face serene as she tried to keep from dropping any of the slippery plates and utensils in her grasp. The skillet in which she’d cooked the hocks was burnt black on the bottom and desperately needed a good sand scrubbing. Carrying it outside for sand, however would involve walking past the husband-man. And just now she was hoping that he would grow tired of his perusal of her and simply quit the place on his own.

Unfortunately, he did not.

She finally had to give up on the hock skillet.

“I’ll let that one soak overnight,” she told him as she rose to her feet.

She’d managed to slosh a good deal of water upon her dress and thought belatedly of her sturdy apron still stowed in her carrying poke. The bachelor kitchen sported no such luxuries.

With the soapy rag, she washed down the cabinets and the shelves, taking as much time as the task could possibly afford. Finally, with no choice left, she made her way to the table and began scouring it with enough energy to strip off the pine tar.

“Should somebody be out looking for your brother?”

It was the first words he had spoken. Eulie took heart that they were not ones of anger, but of familial concern.

“Oh, he runs off like that all the time,” she told him. “He’ll walk a mile or two cooling off, then he’ll realize that he ain’t got no needments nor money and nowhere
to go. That’ll have him back here in an hour or so.”

The husband-man nodded.

“He has a temper with a hair trigger,” she said. Immediately Eulie wished she could call back the words. She didn’t want the husband-man thinking ill of her brother. “But Ransom is a hard worker and very dependable.”

Moss Collier raised an eyebrow at her skeptically.

“He’s a fine fellow,” she insisted. “I’m proud of him always. He just … well he just has a tendency to take umbrage at … being told what to do.”

The husband-man folded his arms across his chest and sighed with resignation.

“Once he gets to know you better, you won’t have no trouble with him. And that’s the truth,” Eulie said.

“The truth?” The husband-man’s voice was deep and gruff, his tone heavy with sarcasm. “I wouldn’t be looking to a woman like you to be telling the truth.”

Eulie felt the heat of embarrassment staining her cheeks. She ignored his words and hurriedly rinsed the soapy rag before hanging it upon the chair back to dry.

“I’d best see about getting my youngers to bed,” she told him.

She made a move for the door, but he was there first standing on the threshold with one arm across the frame blocking her path.

Eulie stopped in her tracks and looked up at him. He would never hurt her, she assured herself. She would never be afraid of him. Still, his tight-jawed countenance was daunting. It was one thing to assure herself that everything was going to work out for the best. It was quite another to keep smiling as she stood here with him glaring down at her.

“Let me pass, Mr. Collier,” she said with as much pleasantness as she could muster. “It’s near to dark and the children won’t know where to lay a pallet.”

“Why did you do it?” he asked quietly. His expression was both inquisitive and intense. “Why did you do this to me?”

Eulie hadn’t planned a speech. She hadn’t even thought up a good explanation. Secretly she’d hoped that he would merely accept his good fortune and be content to live happily ever after. Apparently he wasn’t going to make it that easy for her.

She considered concocting a big lie. Lying was not something that came naturally to her, but she was getting better at it. Perhaps she could tell him that the old soothsayer on Button Creek had warned her that she must marry a dark-haired man before the next full moon. Or maybe she could insist that she hadn’t lied and that she wasn’t at all sure that a woman didn’t get a baby on the way when a man kissed her. At the very least she could try to convince him that she was madly in love with him and that she couldn’t bear to live another day without him.

Eulie looked right into the husband-man’s narrowed brown eyes and told him the absolute truth.

“I needed my family back together,” she said. “I needed a place for all of us.” She halted nervously, swallowing a bit of anguish. It was the truth and it was not so terrible a thing; still, it sounded conniving and selfish when spoken aloud. “You have a pretty good-sized place here,” she continued. “And I figured you were lonely.”

“Lonely!” He spit the word out as if it tasted badly. “What in the dipfoot devil would make you think I am lonely?”

Eulie blanched slightly at the level of mockery in his tone. “Don’t curse at me,” she scolded.

“'Dipfoot devil’ is not cursing.”

“Well, it’s almost cursing, and I don’t approve of it a bit.”

“You don’t approve …” His brow furrowed with disbelief.

Eulie didn’t give him a chance to say more. She ducked under his arm and scurried through the door and up the path. When a husband-man gets into a temper, she decided, it was best just to quit the area.

“Wait just a dadblamed minute!” she heard him calling after her.

The words didn’t even make Eulie hesitate. She had no more explanation to make and she wasn’t about to stand around allowing a fellow to curse at her.

She hurriedly made her way around the cabin and onto the porch. But any thought she might have had of determinedly keeping peace and avoiding conflict drifted further from possibility as she heard the voice of her youngest sister whining plaintively.

“I can’t sleep on no hard floor pallet or with nobody else. I’m used to my own bed now.”

“This bed had been mine for twenty-five years,” Uncle Jeptha said, his voice far too stubborn to broach any disagreement. “I ain’t about to give it up to any passel of sniveling youngers.”

“If somebody has to sleep down there,” Little Minnie insisted, “then it ought to be you rather than me. With no legs, you’re a lot closer to it anyhow.”

Eulie stepped into the cabin to find her youngest sister standing obstinately in the middle of the room, her bottom lip protruding. Her irrational fear of Uncle
Jeptha had apparently been conquered by her selfish nature.

“Of course, we would never put you out of your bed, Uncle Jeptha,” Eulie assured the old man hastily.

Minnie turned to her wide-eyed and furious.

“I ain’t sleeping with Clara or the twins,” she said. “Mrs. Pierce let me have my own bed and I ain’t going back to sleeping with my sisters.”

“Then you’ll have to make a pallet on the floor,” Eulie told her, “It won’t be like the sharecropper’s shack we lived in. Look at these floors, Minnie. Such nice soft pine, they’ll sleep as fine as any feather bed anywhere.”

“No they won’t. It’s still sleeping on the floor,” she said. “A pretty little girl like me shouldn’t have to sleep on no floor.”

“And you won’t have to.”

The words were spoken behind her. Eulie turned to see the husband-man in the doorway. His tone was neither friendly nor conciliatory. Minnie apparently didn’t notice and smiled delightedly.

“You can stand up in the middle of the room, or sleep in that old rocking chair, whichever suits you better than a floor pallet.”

The little girl’s expression turned immediately from delight to dismay.

“He cain’t tell me where to sleep,” she insisted, looking at her oldest sister for corroboration.

Eulie wasn’t given a chance to intervene.

“Oh yes I can, young lady,” the husband-man insisted. “This is my uncle’s house and it runs by our rules. We’ll decide who will sleep in it and where they’ll sleep.”

Minnie made a tiny sound of piteous displeasure and looked again to Eulie to dispute his words.

What could she say? It was the man’s house.

Moss Collier’s tone became more quiet as he made his pronouncements.

“Uncle Jeptha will sleep in his own bed, as usual,” he said. “Miss Clara may sleep in mine. You twins make yourself a place out of the way in the corner there. And you, Little Minnie—and your brother, when he gets back—may stand, rock, or take to the floor as is your pleasure.”

Minnie’s lip was back in much evidence, but with none to gainsay him there was little that she could do.

Eulie gave the little girl a hopeful smile and tried to cheer her.

“You can have my place sleeping with Clara,” she told her.

“Oh no,” the husband-man said.

Eulie turned to him. Surely he’d seen that he had won and there was no call to belabor the point.

“She’s learned her lesson,” Eulie told him. “And really I don’t mind the floor. I can sleep anywhere.”

“You mistake me, Mrs. Collier,” the husband-man said, stepping forward and unexpectedly wrapping a thick muscular arm around Eulie’s waist. “My new bride will naturally sleep with me.”

M
OSS
didn’t know why he’d said it. Why he’d even thought it. He suspected it was because he had even fewer brains than the grasping, conniving female who now shared his name. The woman might have been able to force him into taking her as wife, but no one could force a man to take a woman to bed.

This fact being what it was, no explanation could be found for why, after seeing his uncle and her sisters to bed, he led the woman back down the path to the privacy of the kitchen.

Beside him she walked with obvious hesitation. His grip upon her arm was not forceful, but he had to consistently pull her along. The blankets slung over his shoulder left no secret of his intent. She should plainly understand what he was up to, even if he was a bit unsure of it himself.

Moss glanced over at his new bride. In the sparse silvery light of a crescent moon, she appeared nervous and pale. He was grateful, at least, that he’d finally wiped that ever-cheerful grin off her face.

That’s all he wanted, he reminded himself. He wanted to scare the wits out of her. She’d soon learn to be sorry for what she did to him. He would not be so
foolish as to bed and breed the woman. That would serve her purposes far more than his own. As soon as her belly began to swell, every man on the mountain would nod his head in self-righteous certainty that in forcing the marriage, they had done what was just. Moss wanted the satisfaction of being vindicated. He wanted all of them to know that they had been wrong. He wanted them to see that she had lied.

So if he was only going to affright her and make a bluff, why was his heart pounding like he’d run up a ridge row? Why was his fevered skin chilled by the coolness of the evening breeze?

The doorway stood wide open. Moss stepped across the threshold first. She dug in her heels, reluctant to take the final step. He gazed at her with feigned curiosity. In the faint light of the moon he could see her chin trembled, as if she was near tears.

Good, he thought to himself. He wanted her to cry, to beg, to plead for mercy.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, dropping the blankets just inside the door. “I’m supposed to carry you inside.”

Her startled expression was purely priceless. Moss stepped toward her, but did not wrap his arms around her back and knees and pull her to his chest. Instead he bent to grasp her about midthigh and flung her across his shoulder like a sack of meal.

The sound she made could have been protest or surprise. Moss didn’t know or care which. He carried her into the empty silence of the kitchen. The coals from the banked fire glowed red in the darkness but offered little light for him to see by. She was wiggling a bit as if trying to get free of him but was apparently too
overcome with astonishment to put up much of a fight.

Moss turned a full circle inside the dimly lit building before deciding the perfect place to put her down. He walked up to the edge of the table and bent forward at the waist until the woman lay with her back against the scuffed, soap-scrubbed wood.

He did not immediately move away, but leaned over her there. His elbows on either side of her shoulders, he straddled her knees, entrapping Eulie beneath him.

He would frighten her with his nearness, Moss told himself. He would scare her with the coarse nature of his sexuality. She’d be begging forgiveness quick enough. Pleading for mercy, no doubt. Sorry she’d ever schemed him into her wicked little web.

Moss lay over her in the darkness. His chest to her bosom, he pressed her back against the hardness of the table. Her flesh was soft, yielding, more rounded than he would have suspected. He inhaled the sweet, fresh feminine scent of her and enjoyed it more than he should have.

His past experience with women had been raw and ribald and infrequent, more transaction than tryst. Those women smelled of cheap perfume and cheaper whiskey. This woman exuded fragrance that could never be priced. The wholesomeness of it was alluring, enticing. Moss could feel his own heart pounding against the softness of her breast.

He felt the gentle flutter of her breath upon his cheek and realized how close her mouth was to his own.

He could kiss her. He could kiss her now within the cloak of inky blackness of the unlit kitchen. He could
kiss her as he had wanted to that day by the creek. Not with the halting, hesitant respect he had shown, but with the full force of his most carnal nature. And there was nothing she could do to stop him. Nothing she would do to stop him. It was his right. He was her husband. Lustily he opened his mouth above her lips.

“Don’t you think it’s too dark in here?” she said.

He stopped short. “What?”

“Don’t you think that it’s way too dark in here?” she repeated. “I cain’t even see what’s right in front of my face.”

“I’m right in front of your face,” Moss answered, only inches above her.

“Well, it could be you, or somebody else,” she told him. “I cain’t see nary a thing.”

Nonplussed, Moss straightened up. “Someone else?” he muttered.

“Well, it could have been someone else,” Eulie continued. “I’m no forest creature what can see things in the night and all. Don’t you have no candles?”

“What?”

“Don’t you have no candles?” she asked again. “Iffen you don’t, well, I can make you some. Just some alum, tallow, and cotton cord, and a bit of wax myrtle goes good when it’s prime. Melt it down and pour it in the molds. Have you got molds? If you don’t, I can dip them. My mama taught me to make dip candles. I ain’t done it in a while, but I still can. I make some of the best tallow candles on the mountain, even if I do say so myself. They don’t hardly smoke none at all.”

Moss was tempted to put his hand over the woman’s mouth.

He walked over to the kindling box and pilfered
through it until he found a good-sized pine knot. He laid it on the fireplace hearth and stirred the fire momentarily before he speared it with the poker. He held the pine knot in the red hot coals for a minute or two until it flamed to light. The strong scent of scorching resin filled the room.

“Can you see good enough now?” he asked her.

She was sitting up on the table, still wide-eyed but smiling at him sweetly as if she weren’t the most exasperating woman on the face of the earth.

“Much better,” she answered.

Moss banged the pine knot into the heavy firebowl on the mantel. Its shiny tin reflector threw the light back into the room, bathing every corner with a bright yellow glow.

His stringy-haired bride continued to chatter, explaining to him the advantages of candles, as if she were the wisdom of the Good Book itself and he a know-nothing oaf.

“And candles last a lot longer than pine knots,” she said, barely pausing to take a breath.

“I don’t think we’re going to need all that much time tonight,” Moss interrupted. “Take off your dress.”

That shut her up.

She sat on the table with her mouth open, but silent at last.

Moss folded his arms over his chest and leaned cross-legged against the chimney rock to watch her. She didn’t make a move.

“Take off your dress,” he repeated. “You wanted to be my bride, didn’t you? Well, you may be ignorant of a lot of things. But surely you know that to be a perfectly reasonable husbandly request.”

He watched her hands flutter nervously at the front fastenings of her bodice, but she made no move to undo them.

“Are … are you going to shag me?” she asked in a wary whisper.

The coarse term from her lips had Moss standing up straight in shock.

“Where’d you hear such a word as that?” he asked her.

“I heard it,” she answered, her chin raised bravely. “I know what it is. I don’t know what else you call it.”

“Well, decent women sure call it something else,” Moss told her. “I don’t want to hear things like that from you.”

His scolding tone actually seemed to please her. But then, Moss figured he shouldn’t be surprised. The woman made no sense at all.

“What do you want me to call it?” she asked him.

Completely at a loss, he had no answer.

“You don’t need to call it anything,” he answered.

“Well, I sure need to call it something.”

“Just … just call it obeying your husband,” he said finally.

She nodded. “Are you going to … have me obey my husband?”

It was truly annoying. The woman didn’t show nearly enough fear to suit him.

“Just take off your dress,” he ordered.

Nervously her hands went to her throat and she clumsily began to undo the fasteners of her bodice.

Moss watched as his throat became dry.
Are you going to shag me?
He could hear her bawdy question again and again in his mind. He no longer knew the answer.

She removed the bodice completely and scooted off the table. Carefully she hung it on the ladderback of the chair, as calmly as if she were unaware that thin material of her josey chemise barely covered her, leaving exposed the length of her arms and the enticing flesh between the curve of her throat and the swell of her breast.

She was thin, he noted, though her arms and shoulders appeared more muscled than emaciated. His new bride obviously worked too hard and ate too little. Beneath the worn thin fabric of her josey, there was more than a hint of a shapely rounded bosom.

“You’ll not regret that you married me,” she was telling him.

He heard the words as if they came from a great distance, the sound nearly drowned out by the pounding of his own pulse.

“Me and my youngers, we’re all hard workers,” she said. “We can fix this place up, care for your uncle, and give your life a bit of ease. A man is bound to marry anyway. You might as well do it where he makes a fine bargain and brings a family together at the same time.”

Moss was hardly listening. He was watching the rise and fall of her not-inconsequential bosom beneath the gauzy covering.

Her fingers went to slip the knot on the ties of her skirt Her movements were practical and no-nonsense. But Moss could see that her hands were shaking. The circle of worn calico dropped to the floor and she stepped out of it Her josey came to just above her knees, and as she bent to retrieve the pile of discarded calico, Moss got an expansive glance at the back of a pair of bare thighs, no evidence of pantaloons within sight.

“Don’t you wear no drawers?” he asked her.

Her hand went protectively to the tail of her chemise. Her face was bright red with embarrassment.

“It’s … it’s a waste of good muslin,” she answered defensively. “If a woman keeps her skirts long and stays out of the wind, why, there’s no purpose for them at all.”

Her adamant declaration hinted at defensiveness.

“The old grandmas never seen fit to wear them,” she said. “And what’s good enough for grandma is good enough for me.”

Moss could hardly argue with that. And at the present moment, the usefulness of such a garment was inconceivable.

“You’ll find that I’m a thrifty wife as well as hardworking,” she assured him. “I won’t be pestering you for pretties or gewgaws or fancy raiment of any kind.”

There was nothing fancy about the raiment in which she was currently clothed. As his bride stood next to the table, he could see that the much-washed josey was thin, gray, and worn. It revealed as well as it concealed.

He covered the distance between them in haste, no longer even attempting to deceive himself about his own arousal. He could shag her once, he told himself. He’d always heard that a woman never got with child the first time. He could shag her once and enjoy himself. That was fair enough. She did trap him into marriage. She deserved it. And she was his wife, anyway. In truth, she wouldn’t legally be his wife if he didn’t. So in a way, it was his beholden duty to her to do it.

The width of the kitchen was only a few paces, but he was inexplicably out of breath when he reached her side. His instinct was simply to press her against the
wall, spread her legs apart and bury himself inside her. Moss clamped down on that reflex and solaced himself with the idea of touching her.

His palms were sweating, and he wiped them upon his trousers before raising his hand to the narrow sleeve of the undergarment. Slowly he pulled it down, exposing inch by inch the pale flesh beneath it.

He glanced up into her wide, frightened eyes, but she could not hold his gaze. There were more amazing things to look at. The soft secrets of her womanly bosom was being unveiled before him, and the sight captured every fiber of his attention. Down, down the fabric came, displaying in the warm yellow glow of light an unexpected abundance of flesh.

Standing stiff as a board and, staring straight, she began once more to chatter like an old game hen.

“I’m not used to anything high-step of any kind. I told you I’m hardworking, but I’m also easygoing and thrifty. I’m very thrifty.”

The josey seemed to catch upon her upraised nipple as if reluctant to reveal her to him. Moss tugged slightly and down it came, uncovering her right breast. The firm, feminine mound was topped with a dark pink bud as thick and tempting as a brambleberry. A minute earlier he had been panting audibly; now it seemed he could not breathe at all The silence was broken by a strange, almost whimpering sound from her throat.

He looked up at her face. She held her chin bravely high, but her lower lip was trembling.

“Did I tell you I can pull a plow?” she asked. “When Daddy didn’t have no mule, it was me and Rans what pulled his plow.”

Moss eased down the other sleeve, baring her completely
to the waist. He swallowed. His body was screaming to touch her. He held himself frozen, as if reaching out for her might unleash passions he could never control.

The woman stood unflinching before him. But his hesitation apparently increased her anxiety.

“I know I’m too bony,” she told him defensively. “But my teats are good-sized for a thin girl.”

They were indeed. Moss was far beyond commenting on the fact.

Finally, keeping a tight rein upon the desires that urged him, he reached out to touch her. One sun-browned, work-callused finger caressed the rosy peak that protruded so prettily in the cool night air.