Seduced (14 page)

She should have said yes. She should have convinced him she was falling in love with him right now, this moment, but she couldn't. There were some lies even she could not speak.

“Even before the war I was not that kind of woman.” Her engagement to Christopher was born in pride and greed and selfishness. In her will to control.

“Perhaps you are now.”

“Now?” She laughed. “Now, I am barren inside.”

“I thought I was too,” he told her, and then glanced down at the garden. “But now, I am not so sure.”

He was speaking in stupid childish riddles and she would have him be plain.

“What do you want from me?”

“More,” he breathed. “I want more.”

MELODY WALKED ON wobbly legs toward the cabin, away from Cole and his devastating touch. The front door was open and she heard her sister inside, the rattle of the rake as she smoothed the floor.

Unable to go inside and pretend that all was well, she collapsed on the edge of the porch, her hands clasped in the folds of her muddy skirt.

She’d proposed and been rejected.

The October she'd turned seventeen, eight years ago, when the war was just a rumbling in sitting rooms while the men smoked cigars, she’d been proposed to ten times. Ten times. But she’d held out for Christopher, campaigning for his hand with skill General Lee would have admired.

She pushed the back of her wrist into her forehead when the world spun.

There wasn't any
more
in her. Any love. She wasn't sure she'd ever had the capacity for that.

“I don’t believe you,” Annie said, and Melody stiffened. Annie must have seen her kissing Cole, and now she was here to lecture her.

“It was nothing, Annie, really,” she whispered. But Annie didn't respond and she turned.

Annie was still inside the cabin, and she hadn't been talking to Melody.

She was talking to Steven.

“I'm not lying,” Steven said. She could see his feet at the table.

Annie laughed.
She laughed with a man
. “Huge footprints in the stone?” she asked, animated, bright and teasing. Her sister as Melody knew her, not the silent shadow she’d been for the last year. “Am I really to believe that?”

Happiness and relief for her sister roared through Melody, like a storm rolling off the ocean. It wasn't entirely unexpected; of course she would grow comfortable enough with Steven to speak to him. Laugh with him. She'd saved his life.

It had been so long since she’d heard her sister talk to anyone the way she talked to Melody. Almost the entire ten months of their journey. But here, of course, in the safety of this beautiful clearing, her sister would blossom.

The happiness and relief were suddenly squashed with guilt. With failure.

Tears bit into Melody’s eyes.

I can’t secure this for you
, she thought.
I can’t secure it for either of us. He rejected me.

She heard the slide and lurch of her sister’s gait behind her and she stiffened, wiping her eyes.

“Melody, how is the gardening?”

“Fine. We’ll finish tomorrow.” She sniffed and made a big show of looking out at the clearing.

“Melody?”

Melody finally looked up into her sister’s brown eyes. So familiar, those eyes. They’d been her touchstone and her compass for years. Tears spilled over her cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” Annie awkwardly tried to sit and Melody helped her, holding her elbow, bracing her weight as she had a thousand times before.

“I heard you talking to Steven.”

“And that made you cry?”

“It's been years since I've heard you laugh with someone, Annie. Years. “ Annie took Melody’s hand and squeezed it and they sat side by side, staring out at the trees, for a long time. A dizzying array of green. Dark to light, nothing uniform. “You like it here, don't you?”

“It's lovely. Quiet.”

She took a deep heavy breath. “Cole offered us enough money to get home again.”

“There is nothing for us there.”

“That's what I told him.”

“Are you apprehensive about Denver?”

If apprehensive is another word for dread, then yes.

“You’re not apprehensive, are you?” Melody asked.

“A little I suppose. Largely, I am excited.”

“By what?”

“All of it, I suppose. The two of us in our own home with no man to answer to. Honest work. New people. Doesn’t the thought of that make you happy?”

“If you are happy, I am happy.” It came out sarcastic and she immediately regretted it.

“Stop. You have always thought happiness was something you could control through a man. You've never had to do it on your own.”

“Perhaps because I have been too busy worrying about you!” she snapped.

Annie recoiled. “Why is this suddenly about me?”

“Because Denver is just like that lost little boy—”

“What are you talking about? What lost boy?”

“Remember when we were young and you told me we had a baby brother who was lost? And you had us searching the property for days looking for a little boy who did not exist?” Annie looked confused. “Of course you don’t remember. You live in your head, unaware of the dangers. That’s why Mama said I was to look out for you—”

“Are you talking about Mama’s miscarriage?”

Melody blinked. “What?”

“Mama had a miscarriage when we were young. I think I was six, so you must have been four. I overheard Mama and Father talking about losing a boy. And I guess I thought they meant it literally.”

“Mama thought you were looking for a lost imaginary friend.”

“Well, that’s the most illogical thing I’ve ever heard.” Annie laughed and the sound, so rare, was contagious, and Melody found herself laughing too. Laughing until they were resting their shoulders against each other to catch their breath. “Mama never did think much of me.”

“Father never thought much of me.”

“That’s not true.”

Melody gave her sister a dubious smile.

“I think he was mystified by you, just as Mama thought I was odd because I never cared about the things she cared about. And I know everyone pitied me,” Annie said. “But I have never felt pitiful. Once mother washed her hands of me ever getting married, she left me alone. Everyone left me alone. All I had to do was dress for the parties and stay away from the punch. And I had this freedom because no one cared about me. I read what I wanted. Talked to whomever I wanted. About all manner of inappropriate topics. And I found out who I was when so little was expected of me. When I had no one to please but myself.”

“How novel.” She could not keep the bitterness from her voice.

“Every eye was on you, and I could not understand how you flourished under that attention. But you did.”

“Not all of me,” she said. Not the good parts. The small, pettiest parts of her had flourished. The rest of her had starved. But out here, she found, in the clearing, with this work, these glimpses she had of simple happiness. Here she was finding parts of herself she’d forgotten about. Or perhaps never knew about.

“When the war started I was left even more alone, and then Father needed me and that freedom was galvanized with a purpose. And I like my freedom. You can have that freedom now. It's not a bad thing, Melody. It's wonderful.”

“Of course it is,” Melody whispered.
But what if I don’t want it?

Annie went back inside, but Melody did not get up.

They’d had a barn cat, a terrified tabby who every morning stood at the doorway and never went further. Scared of the outside world. She was that cat.

Or perhaps, she thought, the tabby wasn’t terrified. Perhaps the tabby just understood that the barn was warm and safe and dry, and whatever adventure waited out in the tall grass and bushes, it was not as fine as the home she had indoors.

She had seen enough new sights. Experienced enough adventure.

She’d crossed the Mississippi river, climbed mountains, waded through a sea of prairie with grass as high as her wagon seat. She’d seen Indians and trappers. Whores and missionaries.

A man who wore the skin of a bear like a suit.

And none of it was as interesting to her as sitting still. Watching the seasons change on one piece of land. Watching what would come of the kitchen garden they’d just planted.

Yes
, she thought.
I am that cat
.

And it was a sour thing to realize just as it was being taken away.

MELODY FOUND A cherry tree, and on the south-facing branches the fruit was ripe.

Well
, she thought, biting into one only to have it taste more sour than sweet,
ripe enough
.

They’d been saving the last of their vinegar in order to make more, and with this fruit they could. And she would add the stones to their seed collection.

She was so busy gathering them she did not hear Cole come up.

“What did you find?” he asked.

She started, dropping an edge of her apron, and the cherries she’d gathered scattered on the pine needles and dirt.

“Excuse me,” he said, bending to help her pick them up. “I did not mean to startle you.”

Their hands brushed and she could feel his breath against her hair. He was sweating, having spent the day pulling logs back into the clearing for more of his building projects.

The smell of him made her dizzy.

“These cherries aren’t quite ripe,” he said, spitting out a stone.

“They are ripe enough for my purpose.”

“Would you like to tell me that purpose?” He was trying to tease her into pretending that nothing happened between them, but she would not play along.

She let her silence be answer enough.

“My mother used to make brandied cherries. Sweet—”

“I am making vinegar.”

“Of course you are.”

She stood up. “Is that a joke about my disposition?”

He stood as well, and she noticed how tired he looked. How worn. “No,” he said. “It is a comment on the nature of sweet things to turn sour.”

That too seemed pointed. Too pointed and she hurried to gather the rest of the cherries.

“They gave us a ration of vinegar in the war. Well, in the beginning anyway. To keep away scurvy.” He continued to chat as if she had not thrown herself at him, only to be cast aside.

She stood, flustered and embarrassed. “There is no point in your pretending.”

“Pretending?” He stood, his hands full of red cherries.

“Your charade is unkind.”

“Melody—” She turned, but he grabbed her elbow and it felt as if she’d set her skin against the hot kettle. “This is no charade. I care for you. I like you.”

“Not enough for marriage.”

“Not enough for marriage with a woman who does not care for or like me. Your desperation—”

“Yes, you’ve made that clear. You don’t like my fear. Or my worry. Or my desperation. You are like Jimmy in that regard, aren’t you—”

“I am nothing like Jimmy!”

“You would have me only show you the parts of myself that you enjoy. And hide the rest of my ugly feelings—”

To her shock he grabbed her elbows, pulling her closer, so close the cherries fell again. So close she took a breath and felt his body against hers.

“I would have you show me everything, Melody. Everything.” His breath, his voice, his gaze, it burned.

She yanked herself away from him, feeling as if her skin were too tight. “You forget yourself,” she whispered.

“I don’t think so.”

“These things you want,” she spat, feeling wild. Hysterical. Jimmy and Christopher's mother went mad during the war, screaming and running around in soiled clothes. Melody was a breath away from that. “There is a price to pay for them. You can't just be . . . happy. Or loved. Not without grief and pain. And I cannot stand anymore suffering! I would rather feel nothing for the rest of my life if it meant I would never again hurt so much!”

He reached for her, his face contorted with sympathy, and she smacked at his hands so hard her fingers stung. And she would have kept slapping but forced herself to step back, clench her hands in fists under her armpits.

“What if happiness and love is the reward for having survived what we've survived?” he asked.

At his words she felt her heart strain, leaping like an unbroken horse toward hope. Toward belief. Toward him.

But when she opened her mouth, laughter poured out. “Don't be such a fool.”

He made an exasperated, frustrated sound in his throat, and then he picked up the saplings he’d been dragging through the wood and headed back to the clearing.

For a very long moment she stood there and caught her breath and then she knelt to once again gather her sour cherries.

SOMETHING HAD TO be done with the mare, Lilly. She’d gone into heat and Duke and Jacks were about to kick down the barn to get to her.

Cole was not indifferent to the sentiment. Melody had built a fortress of ice around herself since that alarming scene in the forest two days ago, and he could not get through it.

He understood her pain and her fear, and with time and patience he thought he could melt that ice, but she was not giving him the chance.

“Sit,” he told his brother, who lowered himself onto a stump while Cole went into the barn to get Lilly. He set her loose to graze on the tall grass and stood by his brother.

“We can make an offer to buy the mare,” Steven said.

Cole agreed. “It would probably be best coming from you.”

Steven looked up at Cole, but Cole couldn’t read him. Steven had never been mysterious or opaque. Steven had been a bright light and now he was entirely made of dark shadows.

“Are you all right?” Cole asked. “Your head?”

“Fine.”

“Your eyesight?”

“Still blurry in my left eye. I am beginning to think it will not come back.”

That was true about so many things.

“What have you done to make the widow so angry?” Steven asked.

“She proposed marriage and I said no.”

The old Steven would have found this situation ripe for teasing. He would have sat Cole down and interrogated him for hours, but this new Steven only lifted one eyebrow with mild interest.