Then one day the girls ruined another dress. When Scott heard the news he stomped into the downstairs parlor, which doubled as a sewing room, and lashed out at them.
“Dammit! How many dresses do you think I can dig outta that attic! If Agatha were here she wouldn’t have made mincemeat o’ this one!”
It was Jube who hurled back what they’d all been thinking. “Well, if Agatha can do them better, get Agatha! It’s what’s been under your skin ever since you left Kansas anyway, isn’t it?”
Gandy’s face turned formidable. His cheekbones seemed to grow sharp, his mouth thin, and his eyes deadly as rapiers. He pointed a finger at Jube’s nose.
“You’d better watch yourself, Jube,” he growled.
“Well, isn’t it?” She thrust her face toward him and put both of her hands on her hips.
Gandy’s jaw locked and a muscle twitched in his left cheek. “Y’ know, you can be put off this place,” he warned in an ugly voice.
“Oh, sure, as if that would solve your problem!”
He spun toward the door. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about!”
“I’m talking about one Miss Agatha Downing.” She caught his elbow and spun him back. “You’ve been like a bear ever since you left her and it’s getting worse.”
He threw back his head and let out a sharp barking laugh. “Agatha Downin’. Ha!” He glared at Jube and spat out, “You’re crazy! Agatha Downin’, that... that prissy little milliner?”
“But of course you’d be too bull-headed to admit it.”
He jerked his arm from her grip. “Since when am I bullheaded, Jubilee Bright?”
“Since when am I a seamstress, LeMaster Scott Gandy?” She kicked the dress that lay puffed on the floor, then swung on him with combat in her eyes. “You know, we’ve been working our private skin off around here, scrubbing floors and waxing wood—you wanna know how many spindles are in that damned railing out there?” Jube pointed at the hall. “Seven hundred eighteen, that’s how many! We know, because we’re the ones who oiled them! Your old slaves come back to help—fine, we appreciate the help—and we do what we’re told and go out to make the cabins livable again. And we peel onions when Leatrice says peel, and wash bedding when Leatrice says wash, and we polish brass when Leatrice says polish. And now Ivory’s got some addle-pated idea about all of us planting a cotton crop in one of the near fields this spring, just to lend a little touch of the pre-war South to this place. Well, I did all that, and I’ll probably end up planting cotton, too. But I don’t know possum-squat about sewing dresses, LeMaster Gandy!” She poked him in the chest. “And you’d best remember it!” Spinning away, she gave the dress a vicious kick, then fell to a nearby slipper sofa. Leaning back on both elbows, she caught one foot behind a knee, jutting out her breasts. “I’m an ex-prostitute, Gandy. Sometimes I think you forget that. I’m used to working in a reclinin’ position in clothes that take a lot less upkeep than that.” Her voice turned silky with challenge. “I’ll wear it, honey, but you better get somebody else to make it fit me. And if that somebody is Agatha Downing, all the better. Maybe she’d have a sweetening influence on your sour temper.”
Ruby sat in a nearby chair, legs crossed, one foot swinging, one magnificent eyebrow raised higher than the other. Pearl sat equally indolently, ignoring the dress she’d been working on when Scott entered.
He had never before seen three more ornery ex-prostitutes. They were harder than a ten-year drought. As his glance shot to the dress Pearl had discarded, he knew he’d be powerless against them as long as they all stuck together.
With a throaty curse he stalked from the room.
It was a day late in February with spring sending out feelers. Zach had turned out to be as adept a farrier as his father, and he was teaching not only Willy, but Marcus, too, all he knew about horses. Marcus had discovered he loved working with the animals. Like him, they were voiceless. But they conveyed messages just the same. Today the little two-year-old mare, Sheba, was anxious to get outside and kick up her heels. The staid pair of skewbald carriage horses blinked lazily in the sun that streamed through the window as he brought them water. And Scott’s restless stallion, Prince... well, he had other things in mind. His sap was up. His nostrils flared. His ears stood straight and his chestnut tail arched at the whinny of Cinnamon, the brand-new mare Scotty had just bought, who was prancing around the paddock outside and tossing her head in invitation.
Four o’clock, Zach had said, as soon as Scott came back from town, where he’d taken the boy visiting while he checked the price of cotton seed.
It won’t be long now, Prince, Marcus thought and wished he could say it to the impatient stallion, whose phallus was already partially distended and hung beneath him thick as a man’s arm.
“Marcus?”
He jumped and spun toward the door. Jube stood in the flood of light wearing a blue dress as plain as any housemaid would wear. Her white hair was caught up in a loose drooping fold. A knit shawl was looped around her shoulders.
He raised a hand in greeting and hurried toward her, hoping to detain her at the far end of the barn away from Prince with his glistening member exposed.
“I was looking for you.” Her face was somber as he halted before her, blocking her path.
She looked beautiful, with loose hair at her temples and her mouth soft. His heart hastened as he silently adored her.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
He loved her for saying things like that—as if he were no different from other men. He nodded and she took his arm and began sauntering along the stalls, eyes downcast. “I had a fight with Scott yesterday.” Marcus stopped, frowned in question, and waggled a hand, catching her eye. She went on quietly. “We’ve never had a fight before, but this one has been brewing for a long time. It was over a dress I ruined when I was trying to alter it. Only it wasn’t really over that at all. It was over Agatha.” At his surprised expression, she laughed softly, then took his arm and sauntered on. “Yes, that Agatha. I think he’s in love with her but he won’t admit it to himself, so he’s driving the rest of us crazy. Haven’t you noticed how grouchy he’s been lately? And how he’s driving us? Well, I, for one, have had enough of it. I told him in rather unladylike terms that I’m not used to working as hard as he’s asked us to lately. I told him I think he should bring her here and maybe it would make him more bearable.”
Marcus squeezed Jube’s arm. He pointed to Kansas, then to the spot where they stood.
“Yes, here.” She lifted her face and placed her hands on his elbows. “Marcus, you’ve never asked, but I’m going to tell you. It’s over between Scott and me. It has been since before we left Kansas. Does that make a difference to you?”
He swallowed and felt his face flood with heat, and his heart started slamming.
“I think you’re too honorable to make a move toward me as long as you think Scott has any prior claims.” Once the words were spoken she became self-conscious. Her cheeks grew bright and she tossed her shoulders, moving unconsciously toward Prince’s stall. “Oh, Marcus, I know it’s not my place to say this, but if I wait until—”
He lunged and grabbed her elbow before she could see into the stall. Her head swung around and their eyes clashed. Tightening his grip, he shook his head—an order.
“No?” she verbalized. “Don’t say it? But, why? One of us has to.”
His eyes darted from her to the stall and back. He shook his head more adamantly, unsure of how to make her understand it wasn’t her words to which he objected.
“What?” She looked back over her shoulder and got a clear shot of the stall and the stallion within. “Oh!” she exclaimed, and her eyes widened.
Prince reared and pawed, his member bouncing lustily. Jube and Marcus stood locked in a moment of embarrassment so intense it seemed to stir the very air around them, lifting dust motes that drifted through the oblique shafts of light falling through the barn.
Then Zach spoke from the do
orway and they leaped apart. “Better keep away from that stall. Horse like that’s dangerous when he smells a mare in heat.”
Suddenly, Scott followed Zach around the corner, entering the barn at a brisk clip, his mind obviously on the business at hand. “Better let him out, Zach. No sense gettin’ the stall kicked apart. Marcus, Jube,” he added, offhandedly, “if you’re goin’ t’ watch y’all better get outside beyond the paddock fence. When he comes out he’ll be in a hurry.”
Marcus and Jube moved outside and stood at a whitewashed fence—apart from the others who’d come down from the house to watch, too. The aroused stallion, Prince, came trotting down the stone rampway into the paddock, his tail arched and streaming like a willow in the wind, his mighty head held high, the nostrils dilated. He halted a good distance from Cinnamon, forelegs locked, eyes turbulent. Mare and stallion stood face to face, unmoving, for what seemed like minutes. He snorted once. She turned away. As if enraged by her indifference, he raised his head and trumpeted long and loud, then shook his head until his mane flew.
The sound brought a question from Willy, who sat on the fence while Scott stood behind him, an arm loosely circling the boy. “Why’d he do that, Scotty?”
“He’s callin’ her. They’re goin’ t’ mate now, you watch. It’s how foals get started in the mare’s womb.”
At the moment it appeared as if nothing would get started anywhere. Cinnamon remained aloof. At the far end of the paddock she pranced back and forth, as far as the fence would allow. Each time she turned it was with a lunge and a dip that tossed her mane aloft. Haughty yet restless, she stood Prince off, racking back and forth along the fence.
He snorted, pawed the soft earth, bobbed his majestic head and, with it, his majestic phallus.
She turned her rump on him, her vaulted tail exposing her swollen genitals, already glistening. Her scent reached him, strong and hot, and his nostrils pulsated, his hide quivered.
Six steps he took before she swung on him in warning. As he halted, his distended organ dipped as if mounted upon strong springs. She shifted left. He shifted with her. She shifted right. He thwarted her once again. Imperiously, he came on, lord to lady, sire to dame.
She would have none of it and, with a quick snort and lunge, shot around him, biting his flank as she sprinted away.
At his grunt, she turned and they eyed each other from opposite ends of the enclosure, standing erect and well matched, their dark hides gleaming in the late-afternoon sun, tails now still. A pair of neon-blue dragonflies hovered in tandem over the paddock as if showing the horses what to do.
Again Prince advanced, one cautious step at a time. This time she whinnied, raising her nose to the air, waiting, waiting, until he neared, nosing her hindquarters. His head dropped and she stood her ground just long enough for Prince to fill his nostrils. Then she turned and nipped him again before dancing away.
Those who watched felt the tension, drawn to its peak. Every palm along the fence was damp, every spine tense. As in human nature, there was a point beyond which the female could taunt no longer without arousing the male beyond endurance. When he rounded on Cinnamon again, Prince was engorged to startling proportions as he moved in for the coup.
Enough of this high-flown loftiness, madame, his approach seemed to say. The time is here.
He stalked in, indomitable, masterful, and caught her in a corner. After all the evasiveness she’d displayed earlier, Cinnamon’s surrender was surprisingly accommodating. She stood as still as the earth itself, only her eyes shifting to follow Prince as he made his final overture. Their velvet noses nearly touched. The coarse hairs on their nostrils fluttered as they blew upon each other like bellows. Then he trotted around behind her and reared only once while she stood docile, waiting. His root found its sleek target and his powerful forelegs circled her sides as he immersed himself to the groin.
She called out at the moment of impact, a high vaulting screech that seemed to quake the budding trees in the orchard and lift shivers on every human hide within range.
There was a wondrous elemental majesty to their mating. It was felt deeply by Marcus and Jube, leaving them exquisitely aroused. They stood with their forearms lining the top rail of the fence, elbows touching, watching the mounting stud and grunting mare before them. Never had they been so aware of each other.
In a life filled with many occasions when arousal had been demanded, Jubilee had experienced none so extreme as the one that gripped her now. In a life filled with few such occasions, Marcus found himself in a similar predicament. As Prince had caught the scent of Cinnamon, Marcus caught the scent of Jube. From the spot where their elbows touched, a current seemed to sizzle to their extremities. He wanted her with a force as primal as Prince’s. But if he approached her now, would she think it was nothing more than lust aroused in him by the horses? If only he could say to her, It’s not just because of them, Jube, it’s because I’ve loved you for longer than you’d ever guess. If only he could say to her, I want solace of heart as well as body, and I believe you’re the only one I can find that with. If only he could say, Jube, Jube, I love you more than any man has ever loved you and I can overlook them all, all the ones who pleasured you first and undoubtedly better than I.
But he could say none of these things. His heart was locked within a voiceless body and he could only stand beside the woman he loved and throb.
Prince’s seed was sown. He emerged from Cinnamon glistening, wet, leaving vestiges of their intercourse on her sheeny rump.
Pearl left the fence and ambled toward the house with Leatrice. Jack wandered off toward the woodpile. Ivory and Ruby went in opposite directions. Zach moved off toward his cabin. Gandy lifted Willy off the fence and took him away, answering questions. One by one they left until only Jube and Marcus remained.
Their silence was strained.
“I’ll help you with whatever you were doing in the barn,” Jubilee offered.
She turned and he followed at her shoulder as she sauntered toward the barn, wondering if he’d make a move at last. She’d made it as plain as the blue sky above that she had feelings for him and wanted him in every sense of the word, but he was shy and, in all likelihood, put off by her debauched past. Walking with him, she rued it.
There were ways—blatant ways—to touch a man, to entice him. She knew them all. But because she did, she didn’t want to use them on Marcus. When and if they came together, she wanted it to be because of love, not just lust. And she wanted him to be the one to make the first advance.
The barn was quiet. Only the lazy dust motes drifted in the aisle between the stalls. It smelled of leather and hay and the pleasant fecundity that permeated old wood even years after horses were gone.
Jube stopped in the aisle with Marcus behind her. He watched her chin drop, the fine strands of her angel hair caught on the collar of her blue dress, the distortion of her crocheted shawl as she tightened it with knotted fists. In the rafters above their heads a pair of blue-winged swallows with apricot breasts fluttered about, building a mud nest.
“Marcus?” Her voice came, soft and pained. “Is it because I’ve been a prostitute?”
Is that what she thought? Oh, that she should have been laboring under the impression that it mattered to him.
He pivoted her by the shoulders and waved his hands before her eyes, shaking his head passionately. No, Jube, no. It’s because... because... The ache in his body was nothing compared to his ache to put voice to all he felt. Because I love you.
When he told her, the motions were hard, muscular, tempered by a condensed anger at the slight that life had handed him. He touched his breast, thumped a fist on his own heart, and touched a fingertip to hers: I love you. He gestured wildly, as if to erase all they’d witnessed in the paddock—not that, this. Again he gestured: I... love... you.
She was in his arms so fast she knocked him a step backward. On tiptoe, she kissed him, flattening her body against his, even as his arms drew her close where he’d wante
d her so long. And the tongue that could not speak spoke volumes as it learned the interior of her mouth. And the hands that had become the conveyor of his messages conveyed the most important one of all as they clasped her against his hammering heart, caressing her back, her waist, her head. She drew away and held his cheeks in both hands, her eyes intense and dark.
“Marcus, Marcus, I love you, too. Why did you wait so long to say it? I’ve loved you since that day of the picnic, maybe even before that.”
He wished he could laugh, could know the heady release of the sound against her silky hair. Instead, he kissed her. Again and again and again—a league of impatient strokes that told her all he felt. And while they kissed, his hand fell to her breast, adoring, caressing. Hers stroked his hair, his back, his waist. He found buttons at her nape, freed them, and slipped a hand inside against her smooth skin. Her hands stroked his spine and, lower, until their bodies began moving against each other.
He loves me! she marveled. Marcus really loves me.
She loves me! he rejoiced. Jube really loves me.
But he wouldn’t take her here in a stable, as if they, too, were merely animals in heat. She deserved better, and so did he, after all the time they’d waited.
Gripping her shoulders, he pushed her from him. Much like Prince’s, his nostrils were dilated, his eyes turbulent. Much like Cinnamon, Jube stood docile, waiting, her lips open, the breath rushing between them in short, hard beats.
He pointed to a vacant stall and slashed the air with his hand—not here, not like this. He whipped her around and rebuttoned her dress, tucked two loose pins into her hair, then hauled her toward the door before she realized his intentions. With masterful footsteps and a firm grip on her hand, he led her across the beaten grass from the barn to the yard, along the worn wagon track past outbuildings, beside the formal gardens and the strutting peacocks, who lifted their heads to watch the couple pass. Up the back steps they went, across the deep veranda, and into the vast hall, where their footsteps echoed as they mounted the stairs.