Vows

  "I'm sorry, Charles," she replied meekly, feeling the color mount her cheeks, dropping her gaze guiltily.

  "You haven't even said one nice thing about the house. You know, I spent most of my summer building it, and I'm pretty proud of it myself."

  "I know." She stood before him with the crestfallen expression of a chastised child.

  "Then act as if you can at least tolerate him." He lifted her chin with a finger and studied her eyes, as shadowed as his own. "All I want is a little harmony between you two."

  "I'll try," she whispered.

  He kissed her, there before the naked windows, with the lamplight spotlighting them in the center of the vacant room: a light resting of his lips against hers while holding her chin up; then a second, briefer kiss: all is forgiven.

  "Now let me show you the rest," he whispered, and led the way from the room, holding her hand. As they moved on, he explained how the rafters were mortised, pointed out double-hung windows, the fit of the doors, the smoothness of the upstairs handrail, the safe, shallow drop of each riser and the extra width of the stairs. At the bottom of them they turned left instead of right and Emily found herself in Tom Jeffcoat's bedroom.

  His bed—of white iron with acorn knots where the bars intersected—stood in a corner flanked by a window on either wall. Instead of a spread the blankets were flung up flat over a single pillow, which looked forlorn on the double width. On a nearby nail keg stood on oil lantern and at its base lay a single black hairpin. Catching sight of it, Emily felt her heart take a leap. Her hand flew to her nape as if the pin had only now fallen. What was it doing beside his bed? But Charles had eyes only for the house itself, and she lowered her hand unobtrusively. He pointed out the double astragal moldings on the doors while her gaze drifted over the windows, temporarily curtained with flannel sheets nailed to the tops of the frames. With the exception of the hairpin, the room looked as austere as a monk's cell.

  "We put a closet in every room," Charles was saying. "I wish I'd thought of it when I built my house." When she turned, he had opened Tom's closet door, revealing a few garments hanging in a largely unused space. She recognized the black dress suit he wore on Sundays and the faded flannel shirt that had absorbed her tears the last time she'd seen him. On a hook at the rear hung one of his tattered blue shirts with the sleeves torn off, and on the floor lay a carpetbag with an underwear leg trailing from it. Braced in one corner was his rifle. The closet smelled like him—of horses and worn clothing and man.

  She could not have felt more discomfited had she walked in on Tom Jeffcoat during his bath.

  "We put rosettes on all the corners." Charles pointed to the woodwork above their heads. "And extra wide mopboards … beaded. This house is built to last."

  "It's very nice, Charles," she replied dutifully. And it was. But she wanted to get out of this bedroom … fast.

  The lower level of the house could be walked in a circle. Parlor into kitchen, kitchen into a walkthrough, which served as a pantry and housed the foot of the stairway, through the pantry into Tom's bedroom, and through a second bedroom door leading back to the parlor again. Entering that room, Emily breathed a sigh of relief. The gramophone crackled out a tinny song and dancing had begun. Tarsy and Tilda Awk were hanging the quilt for display, stretching it across one corner by slamming its corners into the tops of the sliding windows. Tom's kitchen benches had been carried in and a group sat on them, laughing, hanging spoons from their noses. Others were visiting. Tom Jeffcoat stood in the kitchen doorway, drinking a glass of beer, watching Emily and Charles enter from his bedroom. Emily's eyes locked with his as he swigged, then wrist-wiped his mouth. She was first to turn away. She pivoted to join the group on the benches but Charles caught her hand and propelled her straight across the room to another doorway beside Tom, opening it to reveal one last closet. "We even put one in here." It was absolutely empty.

  "Ah," Emily said, sticking her head in, aware of Tom standing two feet away, watching.

  "Oh, Tom, you have closets!" Mary Ess exclaimed, rushing over to poke her head inside, too. "Lucky you!"

  Mary crowded right into the closet while Charles drew Emily out by an elbow. Turning to Tom, aware of the emotional undertow between him and Emily, Charles said, "She likes your house."

  Emily gave Jeffcoat a flat glance. "I like your house," she repeated dutifully, then sidled past him into the kitchen to find something to drink.

  The party grew livelier. The gramophone got louder and the dancing got faster. Emily consumed three glasses of beer and began genuinely enjoying herself, neither ignoring nor singling out Tom. She danced the varsovienne and grew pleasantly warm. Between dances, she stopped trying to push Charles's arm from around her waist. Once she glanced across the room to find Tom standing with one wrist draped over Tarsy's shoulders, drawing her against his hip. As if he felt her eyes, he looked over and their gazes locked. He raised his glass and took a drink, watching her all the while. Charles's arm rested around her waist; Tom's rested around Tarsy's shoulder. Emily experienced an irrational flash of jealousy, and again proved the first to glance away.

  Someone opened a new jug of homemade beer, stronger than the first. Spirits levitated and humor grew infectious. The men dragged the new trunk into the parlor and stuffed Mick Stubbs into it, declaring the only way he could be freed was if a lady would kiss him. Tilda Awk volunteered and raised a chorus of ballyhooing and wolf whistles when she did so in the middle of the room, standing in the trunk with Mick; then the men playfully tried to close the trunk lid over both of them, which, naturally, didn't work. Tilda and Tarsy got giggly and secreted themselves in the corner behind Fannie's quilt, whispering. Minutes later they flounced out and dragged the rest of the girls behind the quilt, divulging a new game plan.

  "We're going to have a toe social!"

  "A toe social?" Ardis Corbeil whispered, wide-eyed. "What's a toe social?"

  Tilda and Tarsy rolled their eyes and giggled. "My mother told me about it," Tilda said. "And if she could do it, why can't I?"

  "But what is it?"

  It turned out to be another ridiculous game, and very risqué. The women would strip from the knees down, hike up their skirts, and stand behind the quilt revealing their naked feet and calves while the men would try to guess whom they belonged to.

  "And if they guess, what then?"

  "A forfeit!"

  "What forfeit?"

  It was Mary Ess's idea: five minutes in that empty closet … with the door closed … in pairs.

  "I won't do it!" declared Emily. But the girls were giddy with excitement and chastised, "Oh, don't be such a wet blanket, Emily. It's only a game."

  "But what if I end up with somebody besides Charles?"

  "Sing songs," Mary suggested flippantly.

  When the men heard the rules of the game they let out roaring yells of anticipation, stuck their fingers in their teeth and whistled shrilly, began punching each other's arms, then murmuring secretly among themselves and breaking into bursts of conspiratorial laughter. Emily's eyes met Charles's and she could see clearly that he wouldn't mind spending five minutes in a closet with her. She found her objections overridden and herself swept along as the game proceeded. The men were sent out of the room while the girls sat down to remove shoes, strip off stockings, and pull up their woolen underwear. All the while Emily sat on the floor she tried frantically to remember if Charles had ever seen her feet bare. When they were children, a long time ago, wading together in the brook while their families picnicked. Would he remember what they looked like? Oh, please Charles, remember! You must remember!

  The floor was cold, despite the heater stove in the opposite corner. She stood with the other girls, barefoot, on Tom Jeffcoat's freshly laid hard oak floor and took her place in the lineup behind the quilt like some mindless sheep, afraid to walk out of the party as she wanted to, afraid Charles wouldn't recognize her feet and Tom Jeffcoat would.

  Mary Ess called, "All right, you can come in now!"
The men filed back in, wordlessly. On the opposite side of the quilt they cleared their throats nervously. Emily stood wedged between Tarsy and Ardis, staring at the quilt, three inches from her nose, staring at Fannie's careful coral stitches binding patches of her old dresses and her father's old shirts, feeling as if her stomach had risen to her throat, wondering what in the devil she was doing here, coerced into a game she had no desire to play. The men's shifting stopped, the room grew silent, ripe with tension.

  The girls held up their skirts and felt their faces heat. Some crossed their toes shyly. None of them would look at one another. What would happen if their mothers found out about this?

  The forbiddenness held them in thrall.

  Emily Walcott prayed Charles would choose first … and right.

  To her horror, she heard Jerome Berryman suggest, "It's your party, Tom, and it's your house. Even your quilt. You want to go first?"

  "All right," Tom agreed.

  Emily's fists formed knots in the folds of her hip-high skirts. A cold draft sifted across the floor and seemed to turn her toes to ice. Through her mind raced the picture of Tom Jeffcoat holding her boot and kneeling to help put it back on, the first day she'd ever laid eyes on him. It had been horrible then. It was worse now. Had she been standing before him stripped naked she could not have felt more exposed. Why had she ever let herself get sucked into this stupid game? To prove she wasn't a wet blanket? To prove she wasn't a prude? Well, what was wrong with being a prude? There was a lot to be said for prudery! She found this distasteful and prurient and wished she'd had the courage to say so!

  But it was too late.

  Tom Jeffcoat moved along the line of bare toes slowly, assessingly, coming to a halt before Emily. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt as if her entire body were puffing with each heartbeat. He moved on to the end of the line and she breathed easier. But he was back in a minute, striking panic into her heart. She glanced down. There were the tips of his black boots an inch away from her bare toes.

  "Emily Walcott," he said clearly and covered her distinctive longest second toe with the tip of his boot.

  She closed her eyes and thought, no, I cannot do this.

  "Is it you, Emily?" he asked, and she dropped her skirts as if they were guillotines. She stood staring at the quilt, unable to move, with her stomach tipping and her cheeks ablaze. Tarsy gave her a nudge. "Get going and don't scratch his eyes out." Then, closer to Emily's ear: "I'm quite partial to his eyes!"

  Emily ducked around the side of the curtain with her face glowing like a cranberry aspic. She could not—would not!—look at Tom Jeffcoat.

  "I think we have to add a new rule," Patrick Haberkorn jested. "You both have to come out of the closet alive."

  Everyone laughed except Emily. She sent a silent appeal to Charles, but he called, "Don't hurt him, Em, he's my best friend!" Again her friends laughed while she simply wanted to liquefy and drain away through the cracks between the floorboards.

  "Miss Walcott…" Jeffcoat invited with a slight bow, gesturing toward the open closet door as if it were nothing more out of the ordinary than a waiting carriage. "After you."

  Like a martyr to the stake, Emily walked stiffly into the closet. The door closed behind her and she stood smothered by darkness so absolute it momentarily dizzied her, confined with Tom, close enough to smell him. She swallowed an imprecation, sensing him at her shoulder, unruffled, while she felt as if her breath were driven from her lungs by repeated blows. She reached out, touched the cold, flat plaster, ran her hand to the corner and moved toward it, as far from him as she could get. Turning her shoulders against the right wall, she slid down.

  He followed suit against the left.

  Silence. Mocking silence.

  She hugged her knees, curling her bare toes against the new, smooth floor.

  She had never been so scared in her life, not even the time when she was four and believed there was a wolf under her bed after her mother had told her the story about her grandfather being chased by wolves when he was a boy.

  She heard Jeffcoat pull in a deep breath.

  "Are you mad at me for getting you in here?" he asked, just above a whisper.

  "Yes."

  "I thought so."

  "I don't want to talk."

  "All right."

  Silence again, thicker than before, while she drew her knees to her chest and felt as if she might explode. It was like being twenty feet underwater and out of air—fright and pressure and her heart banging hard enough to burst her eardrums.

  "This is a stupid game!" she hissed.

  "I agree."

  "Then why did you pick me?"

  "I don't know."

  Anger sluiced through her, rich and revitalizing, replacing some of her fear. Until he admitted, reluctantly, "Yes, I do."

  Her nostrils pinched and her shoulder blades threatened to dent his new plastered wall. "Jeffcoat, I warn you…" She put out a fending hand and touched black space.

  He let the suggestion hover until the walls seemed to shrink. Then he ordered in a voice low and rife with intent, "Come here, tomboy."

  "No!"

  His hand closed over her bare left ankle.

  She recoiled and cracked her skull against the wall.

  "No!"

  "Why not?"

  "Let go!"

  "We've both been wondering. It might be our only chance to find out."

  The anger left her voice, replaced by pleading. "Tom, don't! Oh God, please don't." Frantically, she tried to pry his hand off her ankle, but he pulled relentlessly until she felt herself sliding across the closet floor, still bent at the knee and hip.

  "If you put up too much of a fight they might guess what's really going on in here."

  She stopped struggling … with everything except breath. It fought its way up her throat and caught on the lump of foreboding that had risen from her chest.

  Outside, someone banged on the door, teasing. Emily jumped but Jeffcoat remained unyielding. His hand slid up her calf and came to rest behind her knee. She sat as still as a monument while his other hand searched the dark, found her cheek, then slipped around her nape, pulling, pulling, while she stiffened against it.

  "I'm scared, too, tomboy, but I mean, by God, to find out. Now come here."

  His mouth missed hers by an inch. He corrected his course, trailing warm breath while she sat unbending, holding her own breath keeping her lips stiff as frozen persimmons. His first kiss was cautious, a mere resting of his lips on hers. When she remained rigid he backed up—by the feel of his breath she knew he was still dangerously close—then went at it again, scarcely separating his lips to impart a hint of dampness. "Don't," she pleaded softly, plaintively.

  But he went on as if she hadn't spoken, kissing her compellingly, angling his head, lightly swashing her lips with his tongue, thawing them. "Come on, tomboy, take a stab at it," he encouraged, and took her head in both hands, resting his thumbs beside her unwilling mouth and drawing circles as if to reshape it, rubbing his tongue across her lips persuasively.

  She swallowed once, with her lips still closed, her heart thundering with an avalanche of forbidden feelings. He was very persistent, very poised, drawing wet figure eights upon her mouth—lightly, lightly—his breath warming her cheek until her own could no longer be contained. It came out in a rush, accompanied by a shudder, and her willpower disappeared like frost from a sun-kissed windowpane. Wilting against him, she lifted her arms and returned his embrace. When she opened her lips his tongue swept inside them at once, hot and inquisitive, inciting hers to do the same. Explorers, they circled, stroked, delved…abashed by their mutual, swift excitement.

  It grew too intense, too fast.

  They broke apart, hearts hammering and breaths pelting while he rested his lips against the bridge of her nose.

  "Emily…" he whispered, and tipped her head back, found her lips again impatiently, as if unwilling to waste one moment of this stolen time. No darkness was dense enough to
disguise her acquiescence; none complete enough to hide her pliancy as she drooped against him like table linen slipping to the floor and opened her soft, willing mouth to his.

  The kiss began with full accord, then ripened with eagerness. A swell of impatience rushed up from Emily's toes, finding her unprepared for its impact. It brought heat and deep quivers and the awful need to press her breasts against him. Yet they could not be pressed firmly enough to ease the sudden ache of arousal. He fed it, kissing her full-mouthed, drawing her across his lap, moving his head to seal their fit just right.

  And, oh, it was right. Her mouth seemed designed for his. She coiled around his trunk, drawing her knees up to buffet his ribs, crooking one arm over his shoulder, the other around his side.

  His wide hand folded around her upraised elbow and rode it tight and smooth down to her armpit and to her breast. She shuddered, then lay motionless, steeping in new sensations. Her bodice fit snugly, enhancing the feeling of his whole hand cupping her, his thumb searching out the warmest, hardest spot. Deep within she felt a glorious spill and drew her knees up tighter while his hand brought a sweet, impelling ache to her breast.

  He freed a slim breadth of space between their mouths and whispered, "How much time do you think we have?"

  "I don't know."

  Their rejoining was greedy: a revelation. She had never kissed so before, not with this abandon, as if to do so were an imperative. She had never given her breasts for fondling, as if to resist were unthinkable. He was more than she had expected, facile, warm-mouthed, her perfect complement.

  Reality nagged: the closed door … the ticking clock … Charles … Tarsy … the possibility of being discovered.

  A little longer … only a little…

  Tom dragged his mouth from Emily's, lightly bit her lips, her chin, and her breast, through her tight bodice, as if to take away as much as possible when leaving this black cubicle. She hadn't a thought of pushing him away; each of his advances felt integral, undeniably necessary. He kissed her mouth again, fondling her breast while a hard knot formed in her belly, woman-low.