Vows (49 page)

 
They pressed together like leaves of a book left out in the rain, with Tom's aroused body pocketed against her stomach, both of them shaken and wanting so much more than allowed.

 
"You feel so good," she whispered. "I think about you all the time. I imagine being close to you like this."

 
"I think about you, too. Sometimes during the day I stand and stare out the window at your dad's livery stable, at the office window, and I know you're in there studying, and it's all I can do to keep from marching up there and hauling you back here."

 
"I know. I do the same thing. I stand in the window and read the sign above your door and tell myself it won't be long. It won't be long. But it is. The days never seem to end. When I bumped into you in front of Loucks's store it was terrible. I wanted to follow you back here so badly."

 
"You should have."

 
"Afterwards I went home and curled up on my bed and stared at the wall."

 
He chuckled—a sound life rife with suppressed desires. "I'm glad."

 
"It scares me sometimes. I never used to be this way but lately I grow listless and I can't seem to concentrate on anything and I miss you so much I actually feel sick."

 
"Me, too. Sometimes I find myself banging away on a piece of iron that's too cool to shape."

 
They laughed tightly, falling silent at the same moment, overwhelmed to learn that they'd suffered the same agonies. They hugged again, straining together, rocking from side to side while his hands stroked her ribs, narrowly avoiding her breasts. With her upraised arms overlapped upon his shoulders she waited breathlessly for the touch she had no intention of fighting.

 
Please
, she thought,
touch me just once. Give me something to survive on.

 
And as if he heard, he found her breasts, but finding them, realized they stood in the main corridor where anyone might enter and discover them.

 
"Come here…" he whispered, and hastily drew her through the smithy door into the warm, shadowed room where he backed her against a rough wood beam. Slipping his hands inside her coat, he captured her breasts straightaway, cupping and caressing them, pushing her suspenders aside, dropping his open mouth over her uplifted one. From her throat came a muffled sound of accession as she rested her arms upon his shoulders.

 
"Em…" he breathed against her face as the kiss ended.

 
She'd brook no endings, but picked up where he left off, keeping his mouth, and curling her hands over his upon her breasts when they would have slipped away. He emitted a muffled groan and dipped at his knees, matching their hips, marking her with a controlled ascent that drove her against her leaning post. His caresses became reckless, splendid, rhythmic.

 
When the effort of breathing seemed to crush his chest, he reluctantly dropped his hands to her waist and his forehead against the post. Resting lightly against each other, they regrouped. For moments their minds emptied of all but the welcome truth—they loved with equal passion; it had not been imagined or embroidered during their weeks apart into something it wasn't. What they had felt then, they felt now, mutually and intensely.

 
"Em?" The name came out muffled against her shoulder.

 
"What, Thomas?"

 
"Please marry me."

 
She closed her eyes and whispered simply, "Yes."

 
He reared back. Even in the dimness she saw the grand shock possess his face. "Really? You mean it?"

 
"Of course I mean it. I really have no choice in the matter." She hugged him rapturously, taking a moment to envision herself as his wife, in his bed, at his table, in this livery barn with a half dozen black-haired stairsteps fighting over who was going to hand Daddy the next horseshoe nail. It surprised her not in the least to be imagining herself with his children after purporting to be in no hurry to have them. She savored the image, breathing the scent of his neck while her breasts lifted against him. "Oh, Thomas, this is how it should be, isn't it? It's what my mother meant."

 
He leaned back to search her face. In the meager light from the forge her eyes appeared as black jets.

 
"I have so much to tell you," she said. "Could we sit down? Close, where we can hold hands, but not this close. I can't think too clearly when you're touching me this way."

 
They sat side by side on a pair of short nail kegs, their finger linked on his left knee. When they were settled Emily began in an evenly modulated voice.

 
"The day before my mother died she enjoyed a remarkable spurt of vigor. She felt strong and could breathe well, so she talked a lot. We all took it as a good sign, and we were so happy. Papa even carried Mother down to the supper table, and she hadn't been strong enough to sit through a meal for months. I've thought about it often since, how we all thought it meant a real turnaround, but it ended up being quite the opposite. It seemed almost as if she was fortified for a very good reason—to tell me the truth about herself and Papa and Fannie."

 
Staring at their joined hands, Emily told Tom the entire story. He sat quietly, moving only his thumb across the creases in her palm. Minutes later she finished, "…and so I'm reasonably certain Papa and Fannie intend to get married as soon as it's decent. But Mama wouldn't have had to tell me, would she? She could have let me go on believing that her marriage to Papa was all a bed of roses. When she died it seemed—this is hard to say because sometimes it sounds absurd even to me—but it seemed as if her death was deliberately timed to prevent my marrying the wrong man."

 
They stared at their hands, thinking of Charles. When their eyes met their gazes held underlying regret for having to hurt him.

 
"If I could only be taking you away from somebody beside Charles. Why does it have to be him?"

 
"I don't know." She pictured Charles and added, "If he were unscrupulous or unlikable this would be so much easier, wouldn't it?"

 
"Emily?" Their gazes remained rapt. "We have to tell him. Now … today. We can't sneak around behind his back anymore."

 
"I know. I knew it at the wake when you came and took my hands."

 
"Would you like me to tell him?" Tom asked.

 
"I feel like I should."

 
"Funny … I feel the same way." They thought about it for a moment before he suggested, "We could tell him together."

 
"Either way, it won't be any easier … for him or for us."

 
Abruptly Tom dropped her hand and covered his face, heaving a deep sigh into his palms. For minutes he sat thus, knees cemented to elbows, the picture of gloom. She felt dejected for him, wishing she could ease his sense of traitorousness, yet it was no greater than her own. Her eyes stung and she touched his forearm, fanning a thumb over the coarse black hair that reached well past his wrist into the back of his hand.

 
"I didn't think love was supposed to hurt this much," she ventured at length.

 
He laughed once, mirthlessly, scrubbed both hands down his cheeks, then flattened his lower lip with two fists, staring at his anvil. Minutes passed, bringing no solution to the anguish both felt.

 
"You want to know something ironic," he mused at length. "While you've been keeping him away, he's been spending more time with me. Every night I've been listening to him wail about how much he loves you and how he's losing you, but he doesn't understand why. Christ, it's been torture. I was on the verge of telling him so many times."

 
She searched her mind for consolation and found only one. "But Thomas," she told him honestly, "I've never loved him the way I love you. It would have been wrong to marry him."

 
"Yeah," he mumbled, only half-convinced, and they sat silently until their backsides began feeling the raised rims of the nail kegs.

 
Finally Emily sighed and pushed to her feet. "I should go so you can shoe Pinky. Papa is probably wondering where I am."

 
Tom withdrew from his moroseness and stretched to his feet. "I'm sorry I got so moody. It's just hard, that's all."

 
"If you took it lightly, I wouldn't love you as much, would I?"

 
He wrapped both arms loosely around her shoulders and rocked her from side to side. "This might very well be one of the hardest things we'll ever do, but afterwards we'll feel better." He stopped rocking and asked, "Together then? Tonight?"

 
She nodded against his chin.

 
"Emily?"

 
"What?"

 
"Could I pick you up at your house?"

 
Her stillness warned him that she'd guarded their secret well. Again he drew back to search her face. "There's been enough cat and mouse. If we're going to do this, let's do it right. Your father was honest with you, isn't it time you're honest with him?"

 
"You're right. Seven o'clock?"

 
"I'll be there."

Chapter 17

«
^
»

H
ow does a woman dress for the breaking of her engagement? In her bedroom that evening, with the lamp at her elbow, Emily studied her reflection in the mirror. She saw a worried face framed by coal-black hair, troubled sapphire eyes, a frowning mouth, and a scoop of bare throat above a white shift. She had little choice of dress—not for a full year—yet mourning garb seemed appropriate for tonight's mission.

 
The dress was plain, trim above, full below, constructed of unadorned black muslin. As she buttoned it up the front she saw her body shape it, rounded here, concave there, until the high cleric collar drew the last inch tight and she studied herself as a woman. She had rarely thought of herself in the feminine sense, but since she'd fallen in love with Tom she saw herself through his eyes—thin, trim, not unpleasantly curved. She touched her hips, her breasts, closing her eyes, recalling the swell of feelings aroused by Tom. A year … dear Lord, a year…

 
Guiltily she opened her eyes, plucked up a brush, and began punishing her hair, currying it mercilessly before winding it up in a severe figure eight and ramming the celluloid pins against her scalp.

 
There. I look like a woman filled with remorse for what I have to do.
 

 
But minutes later she felt more like an anxious schoolgirl as she waited in the dark at the top of the stairs for the sound of Tom Jeffcoat's knock. From the parlor below, beyond her range of vision, she heard Fannie playing the piano while Papa, she knew, read his newspaper. Earl had come over tonight; he and Frankie more than likely lay on their bellies on the floor, building card houses.

 
When a knock sounded Frankie exclaimed "I'll get it! Maybe it's Charles!" He shot across Emily's range of view while she clattered downstairs in an effort to cut him off.

 
"I'll get it!"

 
"But it might be Charles!"

 
"I
said
…" She skidded to a halt in the entry and forced his hand off the knob. "…
I'll get it, Frank!
"

 
He backed off, looking maligned. "Well, get it then. What're you standin' there for?"

 
"I will," she whispered through clamped teeth. "Go back to your cards." Instead, he sat down on the second step to be a thorn in her side. Peering through the lace curtains she saw the outline of Tom's shoulders and felt a twinge of desperation. Fannie stopped playing the piano. Papa's paper rustled as he lowered it to his knee, waiting to see who appeared around the stub wall. Earl was probably gawking, too, and he'd certainly spread the news as soon as he got home.

 
"Well, for pity's sake," Edwin called exasperatedly, "will one of you open the door!"

 
"Open the door, Emileeee," her little brother repeated in a sing-song.

 
She drew a fortifying breath and did the honors.

 
"Hello, Emily."

 
He looked incredible! Ruggedly attractive in his sheepskin jacket, with cheeks freshly shaved and ruddy from the cold, hat in hand, and hair flopping attractively over his forehead. Emily stared, tongue-tied.

 
"Emily, who is it?" Papa called from the parlor.

 
He stepped inside, closing the door. "It's Tom, sir."

 
Tom!" Dropping his paper, Edwin hustled to the foyer, followed by Fannie. "Well, this is a surprise." He reached for Tom's hand, inviting enthusiastically, "Come in! Come in!"