True to the Law (27 page)

Moments later, so was he.

Cobb was aware of his weight pressing her down, but when he began to move, her hands tightened at his back.

“Not yet,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to go.”

He remembered telling her once that she would not always get her way, but proving it to her now was tantamount to cutting off his nose to spite his face. He didn’t move.

Tru felt his heartbeat slowing. She realized hers was finally doing the same. “That was very . . . nice.”

Cobb wanted to believe she was not damning him with faint praise. He needed to goad her a little to be sure. “Nice?”

Tru pointed to her temple. “Putty. That’s your fault. I don’t have another word.” She hesitated. “Do you?”

“Satisfying.”

“It was, wasn’t it? I understood the mechanics, but there were nuances that I—”

“Mechanics?”

“Yes. The way things work.”

“I know what mechanics are. I just never thought about their application here.”

“That’s because you grew up on a farm. I never had a pet.” She touched his shoulder. “I think I’m ready for you to move.”

“Thank God. I couldn’t breathe.” Cobb eased away from her and sat up. He stripped out of his trousers and shirt and laid both at the foot of the bed before he buttoned up his flannel. Behind him, he felt Tru squirming under the covers to right her nightclothes. He did not join her immediately. “Do you want me to lay more wood on the fire?”

“No.” She turned on her side and reached for Cobb. Placing her hand against his back, she stroked him. His muscles were still taut, or perhaps it was only her touch that made them that way. “You want to say something,” she said. “I can tell. I’m not going to tell you to leave. You can say anything.”

Cobb thought she probably believed that. He didn’t know if he did. “You understand that what happened tonight was different than the last time we were together.”

“Oh, I understand that.”

He heard soft laughter edging her answer. Cobb drew up one leg as he turned sideways on the bed. Her hand fell away, and he missed it immediately. His body blocked what remained of the firelight, but he could make out the shape of her even if he couldn’t see her clearly. It didn’t matter much about the light anyway. He had memorized her face a long time ago.

“I wasn’t referring to the . . .
nuances
,” he said. “We can discuss them later. At great length, if you like. I need to know that you’re clear about the mechanics.”

Tru felt her face grow warm. She was glad for the dark. “Didn’t I prove that?”

“You did.”

“Then?”

“
My
mechanics.”

“Oh. You’re talking about ejaculating.”

Cobb looked at her in surprise even though she couldn’t appreciate it. He cleared this throat. “I was talking about mechanics, but if you—”

“I never had a pet,” she repeated. “But I am twenty-six years old, and I
do
read. You should also know that Mrs. Winston’s Academy was not a nunnery. There were
medical
journals.”

He took care not to choke. He coughed instead and swallowed the laugh that lodged in his throat. “I see.”

“I’m not sure you do,” she said.

Cobb could only imagine the prim set of her mouth. He didn’t try to resist it. Leaning over, he kissed her.

Bemused, she asked, “Why did you do that?”

“Not doing it was harder.” He found her hand and threaded his fingers between hers. “You understand there might be consequences. A child. I didn’t withdraw this time.”

Tru understood. What she hadn’t done was think about it. There was part of her that wished he hadn’t either. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Why didn’t you?”

“Nuances,” he said.

She smiled faintly, squeezed his fingers. “Yes. That would explain it.” After a few moments, she slipped her hand out of his and raised the covers.

Without a word, he slid under as she scooted back to make room for him. He turned on his side and propped his head on an elbow. Tru was plumping a pillow under her head. He waited for her to settle before he found her plait and began to unwind her golden rope of hair.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Amusing myself.”

Her tone was dry as dust. “Oh, well, that’s all right then.”

Cobb chuckled. He did not point out that she hadn’t tried to stop him. Finger-combing as he went, he separated the heavy braid until most of it lay in waves over her right shoulder. He lightly ran his palm across the ripples. “I like your hair like this. Why don’t you wear it down?”

“Besides being immodest, impractical, and out of fashion?”

He grinned. “Yes, besides all that.”

“It tries to smother me in my sleep.”

“Really?” Cobb slipped his hand under the waves and lifted them. Her hair spilled between his fingers like a cascade of springwater.

“Yes. If it’s not trapped uncomfortably under my shoulder, it’s creeping across my face and neck like ivy. You’ll see. If I don’t braid it again, it will come after you.”

“I had no idea.” Undeterred, he continued to sift through the silken threads. “Tell me about Mackey’s proposal.” Cobb felt the tug on Tru’s hair as she stiffened. “Did you think I was never going to ask you?”

“I thought it would be later.”

“Later than . . . ?”

“Later than now. Later than later.”

“So . . . never.”

She nodded, whispered, “I suppose so. What do you want to know?”

“Why you didn’t say yes.”

Tru blinked, surprised that he would begin there. She reminded him, “I didn’t say no either.”

“You’re getting ahead me. That was going to be my next question.”

Tru said nothing for a time. She concentrated on the comforting play of his fingers in her hair. He would wait her out; she knew that about him now. Cobb Bridger was a man of almost infinite patience. Her small sigh was a prelude to her confession.

“It’s been some time since I imagined myself as anyone’s wife,” she said. “I’m not sure if you realize that Andrew Mackey and I have an acquaintance of long standing.”

Cobb hadn’t, not until this moment. “Because of the church,” he said.

“That’s right. The Mackeys occupied the same four pews every Sunday. Before the fire burned the church, I used to watch Andrew from the choir loft. I was five or six, I suppose. He would have been about ten. He always sat at attention between his parents. His cousins were not so well behaved, but he was a little soldier. His hair was a helmet of copper back then, more like the color that his beard and mustache are now. Sometimes a shaft of sunlight would spear the stained glass and make his hair as bright as a flame. I especially liked it when that happened. I thought he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.”

Cobb loosely wrapped a lock of Tru’s hair in a spiral around his finger. He was tempted to give it a tug. He forced himself to listen to what he had asked to hear.

“I don’t recall the precise moment that I decided I would marry him,” said Tru, “but I harbored that notion for all the years I was away at the Academy. I saw him occasionally during that time, usually at a holiday. Once he accompanied his grandmother when she came calling. I allowed myself to be so flattered by his visit, I don’t think I said a word to him.” She smiled crookedly. “Much later I learned that his father sent him with Aunt Charlotte as a punishment, not a privilege. Naturally, none of that had anything to do with me.”

Tru turned her head a little in Cobb’s direction. She wished she had asked him to open the curtains. The silver-blue cast of moonlight would have been enough to illuminate his features. “Andrew was away at Princeton by the time I returned home for good. I saw him at the funeral services for his father, then his mother, and then not again until he graduated. He announced his engagement to Miss Beatrice Pennington shortly after his grandmother officially appointed him to a position in the family business. I judged that engagement not to be an insurmountable impediment.”

Now Cobb did interrupt her. “You tried to end it?”

Taking umbrage, Tru said, “Of course not.”

Cobb bent his finger, pulling on the spiral of hair.

“Oh, very well,” she said. “I may have prayed about it once. Twice. No more than three times.”

“I see.” He was careful to keep all trace of amusement out of his voice. “You must have thought those prayers were answered.”

“The first time, yes, but then that engagement was followed by one to Edith Cumberland. I decided it was left to me to accept it so I prayed about that.”

“And did you accept it?”

“Yes.”

“What about when Edith broke it off?”

“I felt sorry for Andrew. That was all. I never saw it as an opportunity. That’s how I knew I’d made peace with my childhood infatuation. When Julia Durance’s parents announced their daughter’s engagement to Andrew Mackey III, I hoped for a better ending for him, nothing more than that. Perhaps I should have prayed about it, but by then he wasn’t often in my thoughts. I had finished my education at the Normal School and was preparing to be a teacher. I was submitting applications all over the city and assisting my father in the parish just as my mother would have done. That was more than enough to occupy me.

“When Andrew’s last engagement ended, my father was already ill. I barely noticed that he was free again. I don’t know that I gave Andrew Mackey another thought until his grandmother approached me about becoming her companion after my father died. She wasn’t bedridden yet—that came later—but she had already received her first doctor’s opinion. I hesitated, though not because of Andrew. I simply wasn’t sure that it was the right thing to do. It felt something like charity, and I had already accepted so much of that from her.”

Cobb unwound one curl to begin another. “If I’ve learned anything from you about Charlotte Mackey, it’s that she rolled right over your hesitation.”

“I’m not sure that she even noticed it. It was within a week of her making the offer that I agreed to it. I never thought that her family would greet my presence with so much suspicion. None of them lived with her, but they visited regularly.”

“Vultures,” said Cobb.

“She thought so. It didn’t take me long to understand that one of my purposes there was to scare them away. I told you at dinner that when they couldn’t remove me, they applied to me for help. Every one of them wanted something from her.”

“You also said Andrew was the least of them.”

“He was. What he asked for seemed reasonable. He was thinking about the future of the Mackey holdings. The rest of them wanted me to fill Aunt Charlotte’s head with nonsense about one or another of them. She had no patience with their sniping, so they thought it would be better if I carried tales.”

“And the point of all that?”

Tru shrugged. “Her will, I imagine. I always supposed they were trying to position themselves for a more favorable mention in her will.”

“Even Frank?” Cobb felt rather than heard Tru’s sharp intake of air. She recovered quickly just as he expected she would.

“Why are you asking about him?”

“Wasn’t he the youngest of the greats? I thought that maybe he hadn’t had enough time to make an impression one way or another. That could have worked to his advantage.”

“Perhaps it could have, but he was taking no chances.”

“What did he want from you, Tru?”

“What I told you. Aunt Charlotte’s ear.”

Cobb wished he could see the direction she was casting her eyes or whether she had drawn in her lower lip. The lack of inflection in her voice led him to believe she was being cautious with her words. “What did he want you to tell her about the others?”

Tru was a long time in replying. “Hurtful things,” she said at last. “Hurtful, vicious things.”

He believed her. “So he’s really just a cruel little boy poking sticks at things to see what will happen.”

“I don’t know. I always thought he had a good idea what the outcome would be.”

Cobb thought she was probably right. “So what did he do?”

“Do?”

“When you refused to take his tales back to Mrs. Mackey.”

“What makes you think he did anything?”

“Because he’s a cruel little boy. A leopard doesn’t change his spots.” He paused. “Is that Aesop?” His question had the desired effect. He heard Tru snicker.

“That’s the Bible,” she said. “The Old Testament, from the Book of Jeremiah. ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?’”

Cobb finished for her. “‘Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.’ I remember now. And that’s my point. What evil did he do?”

Tru’s sigh was as troubled as it was heartfelt. “He told them all that I seduced him.”

“Charlotte, too?”

“No. He was cleverer than that, or he thought he was. An accusation like that required a more formal address. His uncle Paul took up the matter with Charlotte.”

“And?”

“And then she sent for me and made him repeat the accusation. She did not ask me if it were true. She told Paul that she would take care of it and ordered him out. When he was gone she wanted to know if Franklin hurt me.”