Halfway Home, page 25
Ignoring his wife, Bess, who reminded Ivadelle of Sara, come to think of it, he’d glared accusingly at his sister, as if she were to blame for everything.
If anyone was to blame, it was Bess, Ivadelle thought rancorously. She’d been after Ivadelle to find herself a husband ever since Ivadelle had moved in with her newly married brother and his bride three months earlier, after Aunt Martha had died and left everything to her scapegrace son instead of to the niece who had nursed the old sow through her last interminable illness.
“Well, how was I to know Edward was married? Is it my fault his wife was spending the summer visiting her folks up in New England and he clean forgot to mention her existence?”
She had loved Edward, and thought he loved her. He had told her so. And she had allowed him to teach her things about her own body that no decent single woman would even dream about, much less enjoy, until she screamed with pleasure.
Naturally, the whole town had found out about it, and Hiram had threatened to send her out to Indian lands to marry the first man fool enough to take her.
He hadn’t really meant it. All the same, it had been a bad time. Edward’s wife had come home and the talk had started up all over again, and Hiram had quit the job he had held for seven years to apply for one far enough away so that no one would have heard about his immoral sister.
The minute Ivadelle had heard that the owner of Wilde Oaks was a bachelor, she had set her sights on marrying him and becoming mistress of the mansion Hiram had described. Only things hadn’t worked out quite the way she had planned. The place was a mansion, all right, only it was in sad need of refurbishing. All that dark, heavy old mahogany and walnut would have to go. She was already planning where to start as soon as Hiram could supply her with enough house slaves when that little trollop had turned up, claiming she was married to Captain Wilde.
At first Ivadelle had thought she was lying. Had wanted her to be lying. It had ruined everything, just when she’d managed to talk Hiram into letting her move into the main house.
Bess, of course, had helped. Her sister-in-law had never liked her, and the feeling was entirely mutual.
For a little while she had thought she might still pull it off. It was a strange marriage, right from the first, with the bride coming home two days after her wedding without her husband.
And then Sara had gone haring off, and a week later, her fool of a husband had come home, bringing his bride over his shoulder as if she were no more than a deer he had field dressed. That was bad enough, because he refused to leave her side.
But the final blow came when he finally bedded the stupid little twit. And in the middle of the afternoon, no less, with people all around to hear what was going on, plain as day.
In Ivadelle’s experience, the act had seldom taken more than a few minutes. But then, with Edward, there had always been that certain furtiveness involved. She had lain with him three times before she discovered he was married, and by that time she’d been so deeply in love she would have spread herself for him in the middle of McPherson Road on Market Saturday at high noon.
What a fool she had been. She, who could have taken her pick of the single men, she had the misfortune to fall in love with a married man. Not only a married man, but a married minister.
The sound of a horse trotting up the drive path caught her attention, and she resumed brushing, allowing strands of her pale blond hair to trail across the brush and drift down over her shoulders. Look at me, she willed. Up here, Mr. Turbyfill, you with your knowing look and your fancy clothes. You might not be the man Jericho is, but I’ll bet even so, you know what to do with a woman. No wife of yours would have to knock you over the head to get your attention.
Mr. and Mrs. Rafael Turbyfill. Squire and Mrs. Turbyfill? Well, why not? With her behind him, there was no reason why he couldn’t rise to a position of power in this miserable corner of the state.
*
Jericho, trying to concentrate on all the things he wanted to go over with his overseer later on in the day, heard Brig barking outside the window. Hiram must be early. Brig was fiercely protective of those people he considered his. He tolerated Rafe, just barely, but he still hadn’t made up his mind about the Moyers. Except for Ivadelle. She didn’t like the dog any better than the dog liked her, which was just as well. Jericho had too much on his mind to worry about how Louisa’s dog treated an uninvited guest.
He thought of the way the retriever had taken up with Sara right off, which was strange. And then he thought about Sara herself, forgetting Rafe and Brig and the overseer as he went over what had happened upstairs in his bedroom the day before.
He had bungled it. Like the rawest recruit, he had barged in with guns blazing, fired off a round and then struck his colors before the battle was even engaged.
No wonder she didn’t think much of what she called the marriage act. If he were a wife, he wouldn’t, either. He had started out so carefully, arousing her slowly until she was almost ready for him. And then he had jumped the gun.
They both had a lot to learn. By all rights, he should be the teacher, she the student. He was the one with experience, after all. On the other hand, he could hardly go wrong if he set to courting her, could he? Not that he was any great hand at courting, either.
Wine . . . he could serve her wine. Ladies liked sweet wine.
And flowers. Rafe wasn’t the only man that could being flowers to a woman. He’d get Hester to order him some—she’d likely know how to go about it.
And he’d talk to her, get to know her. Say things like, “I like the way you smell.” He could tell her that. Maybe even, I like the way you taste.
No, better start out with something less personal. I like the way you move? I like the way you twitch your behind when you climb the stairs, even though I know damned well you don’t mean to do it?
I like your gentleness, your strength? The way you stand by your friends? I like the way you accept the way things are instead of bellyaching about the way they might have been?
He did admire that about her. She was solid as a six-foot oak keelson, but that didn’t seem a courtly thing to say to a lady.
Should he tell her he liked the way she sighed when he kissed her and forgot for a little while to close her eyes and then scrunched them up tight so that her lashes stuck out like a hedgerow? That he nearly came apart when her hands went to fluttering over his shoulders like a pair of birds set loose from a cage?
Maybe he would log it all first—write it all out to fix it in his mind.
Watching her while she slept yesterday, lying on her side with one knee drawn up and one fist against her mouth, he had felt himself begin to harden again and wondered what she would say if he told her how he felt when he was inside her. Like he was standing on top of the world and about to jump off.
He’d been tempted to slide into bed beside her and try her again, but she would be too tender.
Outside he heard Rafe’s voice, and then Ivadelle’s and that reminded him of something else he had to do. Before he set about courting his wife, he was going to get that woman out of his house, if he had to drive her all the way to Elizabeth City and set her up in the Indian Queen Hotel. He’d nearly tripped over her when he’d left the bedroom yesterday. The look on her face had been . . .
He didn’t know what it had been. All he knew was that one way or another, she was leaving.
Chapter Twenty
Some thirty-odd miles away, in the best bedroom of the widow Geppart’s house, Titus Smithers sipped his bimbo, a deceptively mild concoction of brandy, sugar and lemon, while he plotted his revenge. On the table beside the bed was a bowl of congealed pork stew and a slab of cold corn bread.
Food did not interest him. Ever since he’d realized that he was not going to die, he had been planning for the future, and those plans were better fueled by drink than by food.
Although he still kept up the pretense of being an invalid, through sheer determination he had managed to regain nearly all his strength. If the widow knew just how far along the road to recovery he’d come, she’d have had him back in her bed long before now. Alice, like her late husband, was known for her hospitality, but sooner or later a man was expected to repay that hospitality, and Titus knew he wouldn’t escape scot-free.
He was not looking forward to it. His mind was on more important matters. But he would pay the piper, in case he ever needed to dance to her tune again.
At least his mother had gone back home. If he’d had to put up with her carping and whining one more day, he might really have turned up his toes. After the duel—after Wilde had knifed him in the belly, John Ladymore had been so certain he was on his way out he had lit out for the Gepparts’ place, where they had both spent many a merry time, and dumped him off there instead of carrying him the rest of the way home.
Ladymore was a fool and a coward. Always had been.
But Titus had been in a bad way, all right. More dead than alive. Alice hadn’t liked the look of him anymore than Ladymore had, but she had a certain amount of loyalty to the young men who had shared her bed and board—quite literally. So she’d sent for her own physician, and then sent word to his mother to come cart off his remains.
Only he’d fooled them all. He hadn’t died. Come damned close to it, with both women snapping over his carcass like two dogs with a single bone. Run a fever that liked to have set the bed on fire, but he’d come through it just fine, in spite of all their broth, brangles and basilicum. It was brandy that finally healed his gut. Plain old applejack brandy, liberally applied inside and out. Good for what ailed a man. Lubricated his thinking machine. It had come to him while he’d still been burning with fever that he’d never before been so clearheaded.
Broth, brangles, basilicum, and brandy. Damned if he weren’t clever with words! Clever, clover, cleaver . . .
As clear as day, his whole future spread out before him—what he had to do first. What he had to do next, and so on.
One more day, he calculated. Two, at most. He had finally got rid of his mother by convincing her to go home and get everything ready for his homecoming. He’d instructed her to sell that worthless pair of darkies and use the money to hire a young maid, giving her the name and direction of a slave taker he’d had dealings with in the past. In the proper hands information was worth money, and Titus was always in need of money.
As for those two lazy old sods, they’d been living off him for years. They owed him something for that. It wouldn’t be the first time a free black had been taken up and resold. The old crows wouldn’t bring much on the market, but there was nothing else left to sell.
Nothing left to sell. So far, Titus could only dream of a life in which he didn’t have to scramble for every penny. No gentleman deserved to live like that.
But all that was about to change. Once he set his brilliant plan in motion he’d be richer than any of them. Richer than Rafe Turbyfill, richer than that railroad fellow up north, richer than President Jackson—and all thanks to some old croaker whose name he didn’t even know, who’d been fool enough to hand over his entire fortune to a stupid granddaughter he’d never even laid eyes on.
Titus gulped down the last of his drink, reached for the pitcher to refill his glass and discovered it was empty. He threw it across the room. That ought to bring the old bitch scurrying up here. She ought to know better than to let his pitcher go dry.
Women! Couldn’t stand ‘em no more. The sight of ‘em, the sound of ‘em, the smell of ‘em made him sick to his stomach. Made his head buzz like a damned hive of bees.
Turbyfill should have told him about Wilde. Louisa—his Wilde woman, he’d called her, the stupid drab. Wild? She was dull as a dead dog.
Or dead as a dull dog.
D-D-D. He cackled at his own wit. That was why Wilde had challenged him, wasn’t it? Because Louisa had turned up her toes. Sometimes he had trouble remembering. Other times it was clear as gin. About what had happened when she’d told him she’d got caught and he had to marry her. About how he had tied up her damned dog and then invited her to walk with him in the woods . . .
He’d got more satisfaction from beating her than he ever had from bedding her. She deserved it, the stupid whore, for lying to him—for leading him to believe—
Whatever it was she’d led him to believe. Sometimes it got a bit muddled in his mind. Came from lying abed too long. Muddled a man’s mind. There, he’d done it again! Muddled, man, mind. M-M-M. And B-B-B. Brangle, brandy . . . what else? Bitch?
Oh, he was a clever fellow, no doubt about that.
Her house, that was it. All her lovely money and that great big house of hers. It had impressed the devil out of him the first time he’d ridden out from Turbyfill’s and seen it through the woods. All those pillars and porticoes, fanlights and dormers with the sunset reflected in every pane of glass. It had looked like a bloody palace.
He hadn’t paid much attention to the condition of the place, much less to the condition of the rest of the farm. That was better left to working slobs. Overseers and the like. It was the mansion itself he’d had his heart set on, picturing himself entertaining all the fellows who enjoyed Rafe’s hospitality. Yes, and he wouldn’t invite Rafe, either. Serve him right for . . .
Something or other. Something unpleasant he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
He did remember meeting Louisa, though. Tongue-tied, dough-faced female. He had cleverly got her to talking, though, and like the fool she was, she had told him how many acres she owned, that she was unmarried, and that since her parents had died she’d lived all alone but for one old woman.
All alone . . . He’d nearly shat his breeches. A chance like this, he’d told himself excitedly, comes once in a lifetime. That very day he had set out to court himself into a bloody fortune.
She’d been pathetically easy. He could hardly believe she was still hanging on the vine. She’d been a virgin, of course. Dull as ditch water, but adequate. He’d figured that once he had his hands on her money, he could stuff her in the attic and start living life the way it was meant to be lived. If she behaved herself, he might even allow her to come downstairs and gaze at him from time to time. Women always liked to look at him. His hair, his clothes, his face. They adored him, bless their stupid little hearts.
Oh, God, yes, he’d had it all planned. If Turbyfill had thought his house parties were grand, he’d turn green with envy when he saw the kind of house parties Wilde Oaks would support.
He had briefly considered changing the name from Wilde Oaks to something that included Smithers, but he’d been unable to come up with anything that sounded quite right. Smithers, smoke, smart? Smithers, smooth—
Oh, well. There was time, he’d thought. Plenty of time . . .
Time. By the time he’d found out the only dowery Louisa would bring to any marriage was her stupid self—that there was a brother who owned everything, brick, stick, and cornstalk, he had nearly gone too far with his courting. Making a hasty retreat, he had sent word by one of Rafe’s grooms that he’d been called to his mother’s bedside.
Instead, he’d ridden up to Geppart’s for a stay. That had been just about the time—he couldn’t recall too clearly at the moment—that his mother had sent word about Sara’s fortune. The letter had followed him from place to place and finally caught up with him at Geppart’s, just as he was wondering whether or not to settle for Geppart’s widow.
Or had he been considering whether or not to try his hand with the James girl again? Old fish face and her papa’s bloody fortune.
Damn, damn, damn. He wished his brain wouldn’t spin quite so fast. It was one thing to be clever, quite another to be so clever he couldn’t even keep up with his own thoughts.
He had gone home then, that was what he had done. And that was when everything had started falling apart. He remembered it all now. Sara had laughed at him. Laughed at him!
And then he had gone back to see Rafe, and Louisa had found out he was there and told him about the baby and started pestering him to marry her.
Or was it the other way around? Damn his head, anyway. He couldn’t seem to shake it clear.
There was that damned dog of hers, too. Sara had had a little dog once . . .
Ha! But not for very long.
One of the first things he intended to do when he took over Wilde Oaks was tie a sack of bricks to that blasted mutt and dump him into the swamp for snapper bait.
He needed a drink. He needed a goddamned bloody drink! “Alice! Where the devil is everybody? Can’t a man get any service around here?”
Slouching against the fat, feather-filled bolster, Titus fumed over the injustice of it all. He had never had a fair shake, not a single one. His own father had ruined his life, and then that mealymouthed creep his mother had married had gone and gambled away all but the roof over his head, and then Louisa had lied to him . . .
Turbyfill. He blamed Turbyfill for misleading him about Louisa. For not setting him straight before he got in too deep.
And Wilde. He could hardly remember all the reasons he hated Jericho Wilde. Owning Wilde Oaks—that was one reason. And gutting him. Leaving him for dead. That was another.
And then, in a moment of sparkling clarity, it came to him why he hated Wilde most of all. Not only did the devil own Wilde Oaks, he had married Sara and her fortune, when by rights, it belonged to Titus. Ladymore had brought him that lovely little scrap of news.
“Alice!” he shouted. Damned bitch, she was no better than the rest of them. Sara and her uppity ways, thinking she was too good for him. The James girl. Louisa and her pasty-faced prissiness. Alice, climbing all over him while he was still half dead, palming him and then mounting him and riding him to hell and back. Taking his seed like she had every right to it.
And his mother. Damn her greedy soul, she had a few things to answer to. If she thought she was going to move into that big house at Wilde Oaks after he married Sara, she was in for a little surprise.
