Hummingbird (54 page)

Even they made Abbie shiver. There were tent towns Jesse had once described to her, pictured in sun, in mud, at dinnertime, at fight time, even at dancing time—men dancing with men at the end of a dirty day.

At these Jesse laughed, as if he remembered those good times vividly and had shared them. There were faces seamed with silt, backs bent bare over hammers, pot-bellied dignitaries in faultless silk suits with gold watch chains stretched across their bellies, contrasted against the sweat-streaked stomachs of soiled, tired navvies. There were two well-groomed hands clasped above the golden spike. There was a single stiff, gnarled hand sticking out of a mountain of rubble at which men frantically clawed.

"That was Will Fenton," Jesse said quietly. "He was a good old boy."

But this picture he did not dust. He just stared at it while Abbie watched pain drift across his face, and swallowed at a thick lump in her throat. She had the compulsion to reach out and lay a hand on his arm, soothe the tight, sad expression from his brow. Jesse, she thought, what else is inside you that I've never guessed? She looked at his long fingers resting along his thighs and again at Will Fenton's hand in the photograph.

What Abbie saw round her was a gallery of contrasts, a conscientious account of what it had cost to connect America's two shores with iron rails, of what some had paid while others profited, a pictorial statement from a man who'd done some of each—some paying and some profiting—and who knew the value of both.

James Hudson had been right.

"Well, do I pass muster?" Jesse asked, breaking into her reverie.

"Impressively," she answered, quite humbled by what lay around her, no longer sorry he'd tricked her into this room.

"Then why don't you get on all that wedding finery while I put these away?"

He bent to his task as if forgetting that she was there, and she glanced at the clothing still lying on the bed, then at the hinged screen in the far corner of the room and hoped she was doing the right thing as she went to collect her garments.

Behind the screen, she told herself that although she was very impressed by his photographs, she was not imbecile enough not to realize she'd just been soft-soaped by Jesse.

Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly…

But all the while she was getting into her wedding gown, she kept remembering those photographs and the expression on Jesse's face. She hurried, telling herself to be wary of him, whether he'd won her respect as a photographer or not. He was still the wily Jesse DuFrayne.

He was clattering around out there, putting away his plates, whistling, then it sounded like he was shoving a piece of furniture about. When she stepped from behind the screen, his back was to her. He was kneeling down, taking something from the floor beside his camera. While she watched, he put it beneath the rockers of a chair he'd set before the camera. She caught his eyes while he knelt beside the rocking chair, but he continued that nonchalant whistling, obviously enjoying his trade.

"I need to see in your mirror," she said, noting that he'd rolled his shirtsleeves up as if he meant to do business.

"Fine," he said, rising and stepping aside so she could get between him and his camera to the dresser. He watched out of the corner of his eye while she smoothed back her hair and tightened the hairpins holding the severe french knot pulled back. In the mirror she watched him pull a pedestal table and fern over beside the rocking chair, obviously as a backdrop. Surely he wasn't planning to photograph her sitting in a rocking chair! What about her headpiece and the trailing veil? But she didn't question him yet, just lifted the seed-pearl circle. But when she was about to place it on her head, he ordered, "No, don't put that on!"

"But it's my bridal veil. I want it in the picture."

"It will be. Bring it here," he said, gesturing her toward the rocker.

"Surely you don't intend to have me sitting in a rocking chair in my wedding picture. I'm not
that
old, Jesse."

He laughed, a full-throated, wonderful laugh. He'd never known another woman with her great sense of humor. He stood loose, relaxed, hands on hips, letting his eyes take in the sight of Abbie in her mother's wedding dress. "I'm glad I've taught you that fact anyway, but yes, you're sitting in the rocker."

"Jesse…" she started to argue.

"I think I know a little more about this than you, so get over here." When she didn't move, he said, "Trust me."

She thought, look what happened last time I trusted you, but she did as he asked and neared the chair.

He had propped it back at a sharp angle, shimming a block of wood beneath the rockers, and she suddenly realized what he was up to.

"This is supposed to be a picture of a bride, not a boudoir," she noted caustically.

"Don't be so suspicious, Ab, I know what I'm doing. David will love it when he sees it."

That made her more suspicious than ever.

"I want you to take my picture standing up."

"I'll be standing up. Don't worry."

"Don't be ridiculous, you know what I mean."

"Yes, of course I do. Just some facetiae of my own. But either we do this my way or David wonders why there's no picture to show for all your time up here today."

He reached out a palm, stood waiting to hand her into the chair. Stymied, she had to do as he wanted.

With grave misgivings she let him take her hand and help her into the tilted rocker. His hand was hard and warm and somehow very secure-feeling as he squeezed hers, lending some balance while she lowered herself into the propped-back chair. This rocker was larger than her little sewing one, and had arms and a high back decorated with turned finials on each side of the curved backrest. The way he had the thing listing at such a severe angle, once she fell back into it she was quite helpless to get back out again. She felt positively adrift with her feet dangling free, and tried to hold her head away from the back of the chair.

Jesse took the veil from her hand and moved around behind her to lay it on the bed. He stepped to the back of the chair and looked down at her hair. Laying a hand on her forehead, he pulled her head back against the carved oak which caught her just above the nape of the neck.

"Like this," he said, "relaxed and natural."

At the touch of his hand, her heartbeat became pronounced within the high, tight collar of Mechlin lace.

As her french knot touched the back of the chair, she found herself looking at Jesse upside down. They stared at each other for a moment and she wondered frantically what he was going to do to her.

In a velvety voice he began speaking as he slowly moved around the chair, never taking his eyes off hers.

"What we have here is the bride not before the ceremony, but after—the way every groom wants to remember his bride. When her hair is a little less than perfect and she doesn't know it."

He seemed to be moving in slow motion, reaching toward a pocket, producing a small comb while her eyes never left his, but she saw the comb coming toward her temple, where it bit lightly, loosing some strands from their moorings while she failed, for once, to protest. She knew she should put her hands up to stop him from this madness, but he seemed to have hypnotized her with those dark, probing eyes and that low, crooning voice.

"There is a look a man likes about his bride," came that voice again. "Call it tousled maybe… less than perfect after all the cheeks that have pressed hers that day and all the arms that have hugged her, all the losers that have danced with her and touched her temple with theirs." He leaned toward her slowly, reaching a dark hand again to hook a wisp of hair in front of the opposite ear, not smiling, but studying, studying. She knew her french knot was being annihilated, but sat entranced while he freed the fine strand, then moved around the rocking chair while she followed him with her eyes.

"He likes tendrils that cling here and there and stick to her damp skin."

No, Jesse, no, she thought, yet sat mesmerized while he wet the tip of his own finger with his tongue, touched it to the crest of her cheek, then stuck the curl onto it. She saw and felt it all as if only an observer at a distance—the tip of his tongue, his long finger, the wet, cold spot of his saliva on her cheek.

She tried not to think of how many places on her body he had touched with his tongue, but his finger went to his mouth again and he did the same on her other cheek, then backed away a little, approving,

"Oh, much better, Abbie. David will love this."

She gripped the arms of the chair and stared up at him, her errant pulse skipping to every part of her he had touched and many he had not.

"Oh, but you're so tense. No bride should clutch the arms of her chair as if she's scared to death." His hair came very close to her face as he took both of her hands from the arms of the chair and ordered in that same dreamlike voice, "Loosen up," then shook them lightly until her wrists acquiesced and grew limp. "Just like in your bedroom that night when you first laughed," he reminded her. "Remember?" She let him do what he would with those lacebound wrists. He turned one over and laid it palm-up on her thigh. "That's right," he murmured, then ran one of his fingertips from its wrist to the end of her middle finger, flicking it, finding it relaxed. Shivers ran across her belly. He rose and disappeared momentarily, and her wide eyes only waited for the return of his dark face before her.

"Now the veil…"He brought it, a cloud of white in his swarthy, masculine hands, "the symbol of purity, about to be discarded." Her heart leaped wildly as his arm came toward her, but he only hung the headpiece on a spooled finial beside her temple and brought the lace train over one arm to lay in a flowing heap cascading from her lap. "Palm-up, okay, Ab?" The texture of netting crossed her palm as he placed it there, as if she had just tiredly removed it from her head. Then he lifted her other arm and draped its wrist like a willow branch over the chair arm. He knelt on one knee before her.

"It's the end of the day, right? Far too late for tight shoes and stiff collars." And before she realized what was happening, he had swept David's satin gift from her feet, his palm sliding over her sole in a sensuous fleeting touch. She gazed, awestruck, into silence as he rose and moved behind her again, hypnotizing her with his dark eyes above the slash of moustache which curved in the direction of a smile as she once again viewed it upside down. She knew he was reaching for the buttons at her throat but was powerless to stop him. His fingers slowly freed the first one, relieving some of the pressure where her heartbeat threatened to shut off her breath. He freed a second button, then a third—tiny buttons, close together, held by delicate loops that took time, time, time before he had finally exposed the hollow of her throat.

She stared up into his black eyes. His hands slid from her throat to the finials of the chair and tipped it farther back, holding it as he looked down into her tortured eyes and asked throatily, "What man would not like to remember his bride this way?"

His eyes, even upside down, burned like firebrands, scorching her cheeks, making her want to cover her face with the inverted palm that lay instead lax upon her lap. Had she wanted to get up and run from him she could not. She had no recourse now but to submit to his narcotic voice and eyes.

Looking down at her, Jesse could see a tricky sunshaft emphasize the heartbeat in the hollow of her throat behind the filigreed lace which lay open and inviting. He released the chair slowly until it rested against its shim again, then equally as slowly moved to its side, never taking his eyes from Abbie's face, trailing one hand on the finial very close to her cheek.

"Wet your lips, Abbie," he said softly. "They should be wet when the picture is snapped." But he made no move toward the camera, neither did she wet her lips.

"Wet them," he urged, "as if David has just now kissed them and said… I love you, Abbie." Jesse stared down at her soft, parted lips, his eyes roved up to hers, then back down to her mouth again, waiting. The tip of her tongue crept out and slipped across her lips, leaving them glistening, opened yet as the breath came labored between them.

He leaned down, placing one hand on each arm of the chair, his face only inches from hers, his voice like warm honey. "Your eyes are opened too wide, Abbie. When a man tells his wife he loves her, don't her eyelids flutter closed?" She fought for breath, staring at his handsome, handsome face, so near that when he spoke, she felt the words against her skin. "Let's try it once more and see," he whispered, still leaning above her.

"I love you, Abbie." And her eyelids lost their moorings.

"I love you, Abbie," she heard again… and they were at half mast.

"I love you, Abbie." And they closed against his cheek as his mouth came hungering. She no longer wanted to get up from the chair, for his open lips claimed hers and his long hands cinched her shoulders, thumbs reaching to stroke the spot where he'd seen her heart fluttering in her throat. He knelt on one knee at the side of the rocker while he kissed her back against it, his tongue dancing and stroking upon hers while everything in her reached and yearned for more.

But suddenly she felt panic rise within, tightening her lungs, her throat, her scalp. "No, I'm being married tomorrow," she choked, turning her head aside from his kiss which taunted her to forget.

"Exactly—tomorrow," he murmured softly into her neck.

Her eyes slid closed, and she turned sharply away from him in a vain attempt to combat the feelings he unleashed in her. "Let me up from this chair," she pleaded, close to tears.

"Not until I get a proper kiss from the bride," he said, kissing the underside of her jaw. "Ab, you're not his wife yet, but when you are, I won't be here to kiss the bride. Just one day early, that's all…"

When she still refused to turn toward him, he said, "Why not, Ab? Let's make you look like a kissed woman for David's photograph. That's how a woman looks on her wedding night, isn't it?" Then a strong hand spanned her chin and turned her mouth to his. But when he swooped to kiss her again, she began struggling against him, using arms, hands, and elbows. But he captured her arms effortlessly and lifted them around his neck, holding them there forcibly until he felt her struggling begin to quell.