Kary, Elizabeth (49 page)

Pulling
away in confusion, she slid the bar of soap along his ribs, then moved lower in
a tentative caress. Hayes stirred restlessly beneath her hands, a high flush
rising in his cheeks, but he made no claims upon her. Somehow he seemed to
understand and accept her reticence, though Leigh herself could not.

Still,
it pleased her to touch and hold him, to show instead of tell him of the
changing scope of her emotions. Her fingers trailed along his body, gently,
provocatively, leaving ruddy color beneath his skin. She well knew the effect
her nearness was having on him, recognized how much he must be holding back to
remain impassive beneath her hands. Surely he knew that he could demand and
claim so much more from her than what she had already given. Yet he seemed
willing to wait, willing to give her time to come to terms with what she
wanted. Then, as if in reward for his fortitude and patience, her fingers
drifted to his thighs and the swollen shaft that rose between them.

For
Leigh the touching and fondling of his manhood was an intensely ardent act, and
Hayes accepted the intimacy with joy singing in his veins. Her unaccustomed
willingness, her tenderness, the emotions in her eyes loosed feelings he had
long held guarded. They welled through him, washing away all the restrictions
he had made himself obey, freeing him to express his true feelings for his wife
at last. Leigh might not be able to say the words, but he saw the love in her
eyes, and he could no longer deny the scope of his emotions.

His
breathing shuddered as she sought to please him, his back arching and his
eyelids fluttering closed as he succumbed to a potent mixture of pleasure and
anticipation. Hayes's head fell back against the rim of the pool in a pose of
total abandon and trust. He was making himself completely vulnerable to her,
and Leigh was seduced by his lack of reserve. He was giving her a responsibility
she both welcomed and craved, but it was a responsibility she was not at all
sure she had earned.

Yet
the strong brown column of his throat lay bared before her. The sculptured line
of his jaw and the sinewy yoke of his shoulders tempted her to touch and explore.
She was drawn to press her mouth to his smooth, cool skin; to the half-moon
hollow at the base of his throat; to the fluff of dark hair that sprang beneath
it. On her lips and tongue was the taste of Hayes, the vital, stirring essence
of the man she loved.

In
a blur of welling desire, she felt Hayes's hands creep over her, caressing and
arousing her until Leigh moaned aloud. For both of them the sense of place and
time slipped away, and their world was complete with nothing more than this.
They drifted in a realm of perfect passion, sensing needs and assuaging them,
abandoning self and finding self renewed. Each mirrored the wants and desires
of the other until they were joined together in a perfect whole.

Hayes
was trembling with emotion, and she was trembling, too. He was murmuring words
of love, and she was taking them to her heart. He was arching with the need to
possess her more fully, and she was opening to give him all. There were no
barriers between them now, and Leigh knew that for the first time in their
married life they were truly one.

Then
they were lost to coherent thought, his hips rising up beneath her to thrust
deeper than before, her body taking gladly and giving pleasure in return. Her
hands rose to encircle his throat, feeling his pulse beat wildly against her
palms. His fingers locked around her hips to guide her movements, bringing them
both closer and closer to the edge. She lifted; he arched. He thrust; she
withdrew, twisting and gasping with furious need.

Fulminating
desire masked his face with lines of tension: fierce, primitive, basic,
impossible to control. His eyes were closed, his lips parted, and his breathing
came in gasps. She could feel his approaching crisis and held him closer than
before, wanting to take his essence deep, so deep inside her. Then the strain
in his face was washed away, blurred with blazing joy and incandescent ecstasy.

The
scalding heat of him rose within her, moving with painful, exquisite languor to
fill her very core. And as she arched against him in reply, she felt her nerves
catch fire one by one. The flame spread slowly, radiating from her loins,
building in intensity as it swept along her spine and down her arms. It
enveloped all of her in sweet sensation and left in her veins a lambent, helpless
glow, a warm sense of satisfaction and debilitating bliss.

When
it was over, they sank together against the edge of the pool, spent and limp,
content and happy. The ripples on the surface of the water ebbed away to leave
it calm and mirror-smooth around them.

Leigh
lay pillowed on his chest, and Hayes held her close. He stroked her hair and
kissed her temple; she nestled against him, lost and secure in wonder.

"I
love you, Leigh," Hayes murmured gently. "I'll love you until the day
I die."

His
words drifted through the lazy fog of contentment that engulfed her and found a
place deep in her heart. She felt strong with that knowledge locked inside her,
valiant and brave and sure at last. And she knew that what had been missing
from their marriage these past months had been nothing more or less than the
admission of their love.

"Hayes,"
she murmured, her tone slurred and soft with tenderness. "Hayes," she
whispered, her eyes blazing with emotion. "Hayes, my darling Hayes. I love
you. I love you, too."

October 1862-March 1863—St. Louis,
Missouri

Happiness.
How long she had been wishing for that intangible commodity, how diligently she
had searched, and how elusive it had once seemed. But in the end, finding
happiness and accepting the serenity only complete contentment could bring had
been as simple as falling in love with her own husband.

Leigh
marveled at the change in the life she and Hayes shared. That change had been
wrought in the terror of Quantrill's threat on Banister's life, in the tense
hours on the trail as they fled the guerrillas, and in the icy spring-fed pool
where she and her husband had bared their feelings for each other for the first
time. Now their newfound happiness was echoed a thousandfold in the simple
intimacies of daily life. It was evident to Leigh in being kissed awake every
morning; in being met outside the hospital, as long ago had been their custom;
in being touched and caressed by a man who held nothing back.

Leigh
did her best to make Hayes aware of the change in her feelings, though for her
the expressions were more difficult, less spontaneous. It was the difference in
their two personalities, the difference in the way they had been raised, that
made the show of affection come less readily to Leigh. But Hayes seemed so grateful
for her attentions, so delighted by the simplest gestures that Leigh practiced
less and less restraint.

With
the approach of winter weather the offensives in the West dwindled, and with
them the demands on both Hayes's and Leigh's time. Because fewer ships were
being built, his duties at the shipyard were lighter. At the hospital the
number of patients had dropped to manageable levels as some were furloughed
home or discharged from the Army, as others were sent to the convalescent
hospitals that had sprung up around the city, or succumbed to their wounds.
This lull in the war effort gave Hayes and Leigh time to travel into the
country on the crisp, gold and blue days of autumn: to picnic at Glencoe and
magnificent Castlewood overlooking the Meramec River, to drive the pleasant
winding road that followed the Mississippi north. They attended plays at the
Varieties Theater and fundraisers for the various aid societies that were
active in the city that winter. And there were long, lazy afternoons when they
would retire for a "nap" but would drift to sleep only when other,
more pressing needs were satisfied.

It
was not at all what Leigh had thought married life would be. It was far better.

One
quiet evening in late November, Leigh looked up from the sock she had been
knitting. As Dr. Phillips had prophesied in the opening days of the war, her
knitting had improved, and she was proud of having mastered a skill that had
vexed her in her youth. Across the sitting room Hayes was reading the
Missouri
Republican
as he smoked a last pipeful of tobacco before bed. With the
filmy gray smoke wreathing his head, his carpet-slippered feet propped up on a
footstool, and the crumpled paper bowed between his hands, he seemed the very
image of domesticity. And somehow that pleased Leigh immensely.

"Hayes?"
she began, almost reluctant to disturb the serenity of the scene before her.
"How has Mother seemed to you these last few weeks?"

Hayes
lowered his newspaper to look at his wife. "Why dc you ask?"

"Well,
she's been different somehow since we came back from Nevada with Bran. I can't
put my finger on it exactly. She seems vague, preoccupied."

"That
started before we got back," Hayes observed thoughtfully. "When
Nathan and I returned from down south and found you and Delia gone, I could
hardly get her to settle down long enough to tell me where you'd gone. Though I
suppose the change in her could be tied in to your father's absence. He's
hardly been home at all since the end of August."

"I
don't know why that should make a difference. They fight the entire time
they're together." The shudder that ran through Leigh at the thought of
her parents' arguing was not lost on her husband.

"His
presence does make a difference, though," he went on, "at least to
your mother."

Leigh
let the knitting sink to her lap. "How do you mean?"

"It's
obvious that your mother craves your father's attention, and she's not
particular about the kind of attention she gets from him."

It
took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in. "Do you mean she baits
him to make him notice her?" Leigh was incredulous.

Hayes
nodded. "I'll warrant there was a time in their marriage when she got all
the attention she needed in much more pleasant ways, but as your father got
busier with business and politics, he had less and less time for Althea. Since
then she's found some very effective ways to make him pay for slighting
her."

"But,
Hayes, they've fought for as long as I can remember," Leigh protested.

"Yes,
but from what you've told me, they always used to make up."

Leigh
pondered her husband's words. Was Althea so desperate for Horace's attentions
that she would prefer anger and discord to being ignored? Had her mother found
a frightening, destructive way to make her husband pay for turning from her?
Was the reason for the volatile relationship between her parents based in
something other than the marriage of convenience forced upon them by Leigh's
conception? To her it was a revolutionary thought, one that deserved to be
considered at length.

"If
you're right about why she's baiting him, Mother is behaving like a spoiled
child!"

Hayes
weighed his words before answering. "And since both you and Horace treat
her as a child, why shouldn't she behave like one?" he asked softly.

Leigh's
forthright nature battled with the need to deny the truth in her husband's
quiet accusation. She and Horace had always sheltered her mother, saving her
from any unpleasantness. Althea wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with life's
realities, and what they conspired to do was meant to protect her. Surely they
hadn't been wrong to see that Althea lived the kind of life she had been raised
to lead?

Hayes's
question broke into Leigh's thoughts. "Why did you ask me about your
mother? Has something happened to concern you?"

"I
noticed a difference in her when we got back from Nevada, but I was too busy
taking care of Bran to think much about it. Since then she's seemed"—Leigh
groped for the word—"restless, impatient, almost angry. But it's as if she
has turned those emotions inward. Instead of lashing out at Father or me as she
might have done in the past, she broods. Mother has never been one for
brooding. And she said the most extraordinary thing to me today."

Leigh
could feel her husband's gaze on her, bright with interest and concern, warm
with love and understanding. "What did she say?"

"She
told me she was going with a group of other women to the Confederate prisons in
the city to see to the care of the men being held there."

"Don't
you want her to go?"

"Good
Lord, no! She's not strong enough to do something like that. Do you know what
things are like in those jails?"

"No
worse than the prison camps in the South, I suppose."

"I've
heard horrible tales of the sickness and the lack of sanitation, of the
inedible food and the vermin." Leigh shuddered again.

"It
sounds as if those men need whatever help they can get," Hayes offered
mildly.

"They
do! But my mother isn't able—"

"I
think your mother is capable of far more than you give her credit for,
Leigh," he interjected. "Althea has finally made a decision about her
part in the war effort, and I give her credit for taking on such a difficult
and unpopular task."