Roses (25 page)

Mary knew he meant it. The glint in his eye indicated she had maybe a few seconds to decide. “All
right
!” she snapped, and whirled around to march back to the cabin, where three pairs of goggling eyes hastily withdrew behind
the screen door. On the porch, Hoagy regarded her with curiosity. She saw that he’d heard enough of the conversation to deduce
something was going on between her and the almighty Percy Warwick. “Hoagy, I’ll be driving back to town with Mr. Warwick,”
she said, attempting an offhand tone. “You go on and finish up our rounds and then get yourself some dinner. I’ll pick up
my rig at your place.”

Hoagy squinted at her. “Must be important for you to be leaving in the middle of the day.”

“That’s as may be,” she said, annoyed, “but I’ll be back this afternoon.” His face soured, and she read that to mean he’d
have taken the rest of the day off if she weren’t returning. I’m firing his hide first chance I get, she thought as she strode
back to the Pierce-Arrow and Percy.

“This visit of yours will be on the tongues of every tenant on the place by suppertime,” she said, plopping onto the passenger
seat and slamming the door.

Percy grinned. “Well, hell, Mary, don’t you think we’ll be more interesting than boll weevils?”

O
nce the dust of the road was billowing at their backs, Mary turned to Percy. “And just where are we going?”

“To the cabin. We’re going to have a picnic, drink something cool, talk.”

“The cabin…” A nerve jumped in the pit of her stomach. She remembered Percy mentioning the cabin as the place he’d like to
stick her under the shower and soap her all over. It had been the day he’d caught her in the fields at Somerset looking a
fright—a lifetime ago.

“I still use it for fishing and hunting.”

“And as a place to take your women, I suppose.”

He glanced at her. “If you like.”

“Well, I don’t like, Percy Warwick. I do not intend to become one of your women.”

“I don’t want you to become one of my women. I want you to become my wife.”

Now every nerve in her body was jumping. “That’s impossible.”

“I once thought so, but now I’m ready to compromise.”

She let out a little yelp of surprise. “Compromise? Is that what this proposal is about?”

“Uh-huh. I’ll tell you more after I’ve fed you.”

Mary willed her heart to a steady beat. They had been in this snare before. She recalled Percy’s words from that long-ago
day at Somerset:
Call it male conceit or arrogance, or the power of love, but I believe I can make you want to give up Somerset.
Surely by now he knew he couldn’t. He ought to know that if her mother’s suicide had not deterred her commitment to Somerset,
nothing he could say or do would. She’d lost too much, sacrificed too much. In a perverse way that Percy would never understand,
she owed it to her mother to make the plantation a success. She would never agree to a compromise that would interfere with
that goal.

His
wife,
he’d said, not his mistress. Why would he even want to marry her now? She would never expunge from her mind the sight of
her mother’s body suspended by the cream strips she’d knitted for a hangman’s noose. Despite her grotesquely swollen face,
her protruding tongue, there had been an unmistakable look of triumph on her lips. Percy could not have missed it when he’d
cut her down.

A sound of regret escaped her throat. Percy heard it and asked quietly, “A shadow pass over your grave?”

“Something like that,” she said.

Mary had never been to the log cabin that Miles and Ollie and Percy had started building on the bank of Caddo Lake as boys
of ten. The project had taken the whole of their summer that year and a number of subsequent summers and holiday vacations
to complete and refine. She could still remember table discussions regarding its construction and furnishings, and her mother’s
words of caution:
Now, Miles, remember that it must be a place where you wouldn’t behave any differently than you would in your own room at
home.

Even at her ages of five and six, Mary had thought that an inane admonition, judging that the reason the boys built the place
was to behave precisely the way they wouldn’t at home. She’d grown up thinking of it as a highly secret, exclusive, male hideaway—a
place where the boys took girls and drank spirits.

“So this is the cabin,” she said when Percy drew up before the rough pine door. “I’ve never been here before. Not in all these
years.”

“Ever been curious about it?”

“No.”

“Right,” he said.

They entered a twenty-by-forty-foot room partitioned into a kitchen, sitting area, and curtained bedroom consisting of one
double bed and two bunks. Percy left her to study her surroundings while he went to retrieve the “something cool” from the
well. She recognized a cast-off couch from her father’s study, a couple of chairs that had once graced the Warwicks’ back
parlor, and a washstand and mirror of French design, undoubtedly a contribution of the DuMonts. The cabin was clean and cool.
She had expected it to be a hot, dark, airless cave infested with flies and mosquitoes and Lord knew what creepy crawlies
from the riverbank. Instead, despite the shade of the trees, light flowed in from the tightly screened windows, and ceiling
fans moved the crosscurrents of air that drifted in from the lake.

The small table in the kitchen area had been set for two, complete with napkins and a bowl of spring flowers. The carefully
placed items, arranged by Percy’s muscled, lumberman hands, moved her in a curiously tender way.

“Why have you brought me here, Percy?” she asked when he returned with a bottle of wine he had chilled by lowering it in a
bucket into well water. “Alcohol is not going to help your case, whatever it is. And you better hope Sheriff Pitt doesn’t
come poking around out here and find a bottle of that cooling in your well.”

Percy was busy uncorking the wine. “The sheriff knows better than to look where he shouldn’t.”

“You’re saying the Warwicks are exempt from the law?”

She regretted the remark as soon as she’d said it. Percy had the grace to say nothing, allowing his silence to remind her
that the Tolivers, too, did not feel obliged to abide by every letter of the law, as events had recently proved. “Only those
laws it’s nobody’s business if we break,” he said, filling two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc. “Sit down, Mary. A glass of wine
isn’t going to hurt you. You’re wound tighter than a watch spring. Drink up while I set out our picnic. Then we’ll talk.”

“I’d rather talk now,” Mary said, taking the glass with no intention of drinking it. “Why do you want to marry me, Percy?
Especially… after all you’ve seen?”

He guided her to a chair, where he took her glass, set it aside, and gently pushed her down onto the seat. Then he pulled
up another chair so that their knees almost touched. “Listen to me carefully, Mary,” he said, taking her hands. “I know what
you believe I’ve been thinking. You’re wrong. You didn’t cause your mother to take her life. It may be true that she would
still be alive if your father had written his will differently, but he didn’t. That’s not your fault, either.”

Stunned, Mary sputtered, “How—how can you deny that you’ve always blamed me for Papa leaving Somerset to me? It’s been the
cause of all our arguments. And don’t tell me you don’t hold me responsible for Mama taking to her bed and—and dying. You
know
you have.”

“My argument with you has been about your
obsession
with Somerset to the exclusion of everything and everyone else, but your mother did not have to
die
because of it. She did not have to languish in her bed. She could have chosen to live, to love you and support you no matter
who your father favored in his will.”

Mary gawked at him. “But you believe Somerset should have gone to her!”

“Of course I do. But I also believe her death should not have been a consequence of your father’s action, and it was despicable
of her to leave you thinking it was.”

Hot, incredulous tears shot to her eyes. “You… you really mean that, Percy?”

“Oh, honey, with all my heart,” he said, standing and pulling her into his arms, cradling her like a child rescued from a
bad dream. “I’m an idiot for not realizing what you must have been thinking. That’s one reason I brought you out here, to
clear up that misperception. We have our differences, but your mother’s death isn’t one of them.”

“Oh, Percy…” She sighed, letting her resistance fall. His arms were a dangerous place to be, but what utter heaven to have
them around her, offering refuge and strength and… forgiveness.

He kissed her between the eyes and set her back from him. “I’m feeling nothing but bones here,” he said, kneading her shoulders.
“Let’s get some food into you, then we’ll finish this discussion. Drink your wine. It will whet your appetite.”

Mary sat down again, feeling light and unburdened, even a stirring of hunger. She watched Percy set to work in the kitchen
alcove, humming quietly. He was so comfortable with himself, she thought, sipping her wine. He seemed to live life effortlessly,
rolling with its waves like a seaworthy ship. Was it possible for them to be happy if they married? He was a man of steel,
like her father. Vernon Toliver had needed no alloy to complete him, the reason he could afford to marry a woman like her
mother. But she was made of sterner stuff. It was inevitable that she and Percy would clash… steel against steel.

The alcohol was beginning to take effect. She must watch herself. This was the reason her mother had started drinking. To
feel better, to stimulate her appetite, to dull her pain. “Need any help?” she called. He was at the counter, chipping at
a block of ice melting in the sink.

“No. Sit there and relax.”

Yes, she would do that, Mary thought. She would enjoy these rare moments of peace. Settling more comfortably, she let her
gaze wander about the objets d’art the boys had deemed worthy to drag from home. On one wall was an Indian chief’s headdress
that had once hung in Miles’s bedroom. Mary thought of her brother with a sorrow that was like a dull, persistent ache. There
had been no reply to the long letter she had written describing their mother’s last days. She had tried to make them sound
happy, relating how Darla had sat in the parlor day after day and seemed content to knit the afghan with which she’d surprised
her on her birthday.

“Chow’s on,” Percy announced, and Mary laughed when he bowed with mock formality and took her by the hand to lead her to the
table. She made an effort not to make a face when she saw the heaped plates. Her stomach felt the size of a thimble.

“It looks… enticing,” she said, forking up a bite of the concoction on her plate, new to her palate. It was a salad of diced
chicken, green grapes, and toasted almonds combined with a clear, sweet dressing that burst tart and refreshing in her mouth.
After she’d chewed and swallowed, she closed her eyes in bliss. “Hmmm. Percy, this is delicious.”

He held out the breadbasket. “Try one of these.”

She helped herself to one of the light, buttery rolls in the shape of a crescent and bit into it. “Oh, my,” she said.

“They’re called
croissants,
one of the few pleasures I enjoyed in France. The DuMonts’ cook has taught our cook how to make them.”

She ate every bite of the salad and two of the croissants. At the meal’s end, she pushed away her plate and put her hands
over her stomach. “I don’t know where I would put the peaches and cream, Percy. There’s absolutely no room in here.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “The cream’s on ice. We’ll have it with the peaches later.”

The mention of “later” brought Mary back to the reason he’d brought her out here. All through the meal Percy had steered the
talk to news of local happenings, family, and friends while their knives and forks clinked companionably on the Willow Wood
plates. The main topic of discussion had sat far off in the distance, like a potential rain cloud.

Now she folded her napkin and laid it on the table. “Percy, I think it’s time for you to present your proposal.”

Percy picked up their plates. “I’ll wash these up first. Privy’s outside if you care to use it. Select any tree and be careful
of the chiggers. Well water’s drawn and towels beside it. We’ll finish up the wine on the porch.”

She was feeling too logy to argue, like a contented, well-fed cat. She strolled outside into the green stillness of the waning
afternoon and found herself a private spot, washed and dried her hands at the well, then returned to the porch, where Percy
was pouring out the last of the wine. Shaded by cypress trees, the porch had been built to catch the lake breezes and screened
to protect against mosquitoes.

“I don’t need any more of that,” she objected, drawing out the chain of her lapel watch. “It’s after three o’clock. I really
do need to get back.”

“What for?” Percy asked. “Can’t Hoagy handle things?”

“Hoagy has to be supervised. He’s too fond of visiting and taking coffee breaks.”

“The joys of running a plantation, huh?”

“Let’s not ruin a perfect picnic by bringing that up, Percy.”

“Oh, but I have to. The plantation’s the main point of my proposal.”

Mary tensed. Here it comes, she thought. Another ruin to another perfect day together. “And what is that?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve been doing some reconsidering of what’s important—what I can live with and what I can’t live without. And I’ve
decided”—he swirled the wine in his glass with utmost attention—“that I can live with a weevil-infested plantation, but I
can’t live without you.”

Mary strained to make sense of his words, sure she’d heard him incorrectly. “What… are you saying, Percy?”

“I want us to get married—just as we are… I, a lumberman, and you, a planter.”

She felt her eyes grow as large as the Willow Wood plates. “You mean you’d take us both—me and Somerset?” It wasn’t possible,
she thought. Her ears were tricking her.