Morning Song (41 page)

It was generally agreed that Jessie's downcast demeanor was the mark of genuine grief for her stepmother, and the community 358

rallied around her in consequence. Mitch was the most frequent of the many callers who came by regularly to cheer her up. Dear, loyal, faithful Mitch, who, having decided that Jessie was the wife for him, seemed unable to shake the notion. When she'd run away, Clive had had a message sent over to Riverview tersely breaking Jessie's engagement, but Mitch held no grudge against her for that. If anything, it seemed to make him view her as a more valuable matrimonial prize.

To the neighbors, Jessie said only that Stuart had gone away to tend to some business matters of his own. It was common knowledge that he had deeded Mimosa over to Jessie, which one and all agreed was an uncommonly handsome thing to have done. So his image in the community gleamed brighter than ever. In fact, Jessie reflected bitterly as she listened to the dozenth caller that week heap praise upon that absent black head, if Clive were ever to return, he'd probably be greeted as a conquering hero, rather than the cad she alone knew him to be!

Clive, in the meantime, was growing progressively drunker, dirtier, and more dispirited. He'd made it to New Orleans the first week and was back in his old haunts with his old cronies. The problem was, he no longer felt like his old self. For better or worse, Clive McClintock was not the devil-may-care gambling man he'd been less than a year before. Jessie and Mimosa had marked him, and when he was drunk enough to admit the truth to himself, Clive was conscious of a longing to go home. Home! Home to vast cotton fields with the sound of spirituals rising over them, and a big white house with shady verandas, and the smell of Rosa's delicious home cooking. Home to wrestle with the never-ending planter's problems of boll weevils and 359

tobacco worms and blight. Home to good, honest physical labor and a sound night's sleep.

And most of all, home to Jessie.

In his drunkest moments, he considered that he knew exactly how Adam and Eve must have felt when God cast them out of the Garden of Eden. He felt just as bereft, and just as alone. He was living in a hole in the wall in the Vieux Carre, in a single room over a saloon because he didn't care to find better, and because it made staying drunk easier. It might have been days and it might have been weeks since he'd bathed, and it didn't bother him either way. When he was halfway sober he played pickup card games in the saloon for eating money, but he round that he didn't even care much for cards anymore. Dear God, he wanted to go home! But Jessie had called him a fortune hunter, a cad, a liar, and a thief. The bad thing about it was, he decided dismally as he reflected over the self he'd been, he could see where she'd been at least half right.

Much as he hated to admit it, he was ashamed of what he'd done. And there was no way he was going back to Jessie with his tail between his legs and beg her to take him back.

Clive McClintock was going back riding high, or not at all. But still he wanted to go home.

Miss Flora and Miss Laurel were the first ones to bring Jessie the news. They'd ridden over, as they did practically every other day, to see if Jessie had had word of their supposed nephew. Although Jessie had grown to love the old ladies dearly, she was always uncomfortable in their presence. What could she say to them when they inquired about when dear Stuart would be coming home? "Never, and his name is Clive"?

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But on this particular afternoon, nearly a month after Celia's funeral, Miss Flora and Miss Laurel were far more interested in imparting the news they'd just heard than in talking about Stuart. Jessie would never believe it, they assured her, but they'd learned through Clover, who'd heard it from her sister Pansy, who was married to the Chandlers' man Deacon, that a search had just that morning been conducted at Elmway. A poker with traces of blood on it had been found hidden in a greenhouse, and Seth Chandler had been arrested for Celia's murder!

Did Jessie think he could possibly be guilty?

* * *

At first Clive wasn't even interested in playing. The game was twenty-one, not one of his favorites because it required a great deal more luck than skill, and he'd been drinking all day and felt lower than a snake's belly in consequence. But the man who suggested the game was insistent, and since he had nothing better to do, Clive sat down. Then they started to play, just the two of them. Soon it became clear to Clive that his opponent had wanted the drunken ne'er-do-well that he, Clive, was doing a remarkable job of imitating to play because he'd thought he'd found a pigeon to be plucked.

Clive's interest in the game immediately picked up. He'd been drawing money from his nest egg in the bank only as he'd needed it, but he had a little on him and he resolved to use it to punish this cocky fellow for his presumption in thinking he could fleece Clive McClintock.

At first he deliberately lost, small sums, until he had the fool well pleased with himself. Then Clive allowed himself to be persuaded to increase the stakes.

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When his opponent lost, he seemed to believe that it was just a run of bad luck that would soon improve. Doggedly he stayed in the game, and lost some more.

Clive was feeling better by the minute. If ever a man deserved to be taught a lesson, it was this clumsy fool who thought to take advantage of a poor drunk.

Finally Clive won all his opponent's money, some three thousand dollars, and was ready to call a halt. But like many amateurs, the fellow didn't know when to stop.

He had, he said, one more valuable: the deed to a piece of property just north of New Orleans. It was worth a lot, how much he didn't know because he'd just won it off another fellow two days before, but he was willing to wager it sight unseen against the three thousand he had lost, and three thousand more of Clive's money besides.

Clive had been a gambler long enough to know that even when Lady Luck smiled on a man, she could be a mighty fickle mistress. It was also entirely possible that the paper his opponent waved was the deed to a dirt farm worth approximately five cents. On the other hand, the cards had been running his way, and he was feeling lucky.

So he shoved his money to the middle of the table, and his opponent threw the deed on top. And when the cards had been dealt, and drawn, Clive was the richer by three thousand dollars and one deed.

It was some two days later before he bestirred himself enough to go visit his newly acquired property. Fetching Saber from the stable where he'd been kept in the luxury that Clive had denied himself, Clive rode north until he reached Lake Pontchar-train. A few miles to the east, along a road that followed the contours of 362

the bank, he came upon the property that, according to coordinates on the land map he'd acquired before setting out from New Orleans, was now his.

He had to check the coordinates twice. There was no mistake. This was the place.

By Mimosa's standards, of course, it wasn't large. A thousand or so acres, with fields gone to seed and outbuildings that needed repair. The house was a sprawling two-story frame farmhouse, sound enough, though it could use a coat of paint and probably some fixing up inside. The place was deserted. Clearly there'd been no planting done on it for some time. But with hard work, and hands to do it, and Clive himself to supervise and plan, he'd have a property that any man would be proud to call his own. Somewhere the gods might be laughing, but this time, praise be, they were not laughing at him. He'd just been handed the means to go home riding high!

XLVIII

When
Jessie received the note asking her to call at Tulip Hill that afternoon to discuss a most urgent matter with the Misses Edwards, she made a face. Undoubtedly the old ladies meant to grill her about Clive's whereabouts. At Mimosa, she'd always been able to wriggle out of conversations with them that got too difficult by pleading the press of work. At Tulip Hill, she would be at their mercy. But there was no help for it. If they specifically asked her to call on them, she would have to go.

Accordingly, she dressed in one of the long-sleeved fullskirted, high-necked black gowns that were her daily attire, and 363

would be for the year she was in mourning for Celia. Sissie brushed her hair out, pinned it in a smooth coil at the back, and trimmed the curls surrounding her face. She'd lost weight since Celia's death, Jessie decided without much interest as she checked her appearance in the mirror while tying on her bonnet. She was almost too thin now, with shadows under her eyes that made them look huge and very dark. Her skin looked very white, almost translucent, against the somber black silk of the dress. Tudi, who had taken to watching over her like a hen with one chick since Clive had left, rode over to Tulip Hill with her. They took the buggy, and Progress drove. At the house, Miss Laurel was in the hall to greet Jessie, while Tudi was sent around to the kitchen to chat with Clover for the duration of the visit.

"Hello, dear. How are you holding up?" Miss Laurel greeted her with a kiss on each cheek.

"I'm doing just fine, thanks. It was nice of you to invite me over."

"Well, we know how it is when one is in mourning. One doesn't get much opportunity to go out."

Miss Laurel sounded almost nervous, and Jessie had never before in her life been kept standing in a hall. She frowned.

"Is everything all right with you and Miss Flora?"

"Oh, yes, yes—oh, good, here is Flora now. Flora, here's Jessica."

"Well, bring her into the parlor, silly."

"I
didn't want to do it alone. . . ."

"You didn't want to do what alone?" Jessie inquired, mystified. No one replied. Miss Flora beckoned her and Miss Laurel imperiously toward the front parlor.

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"Oh, dear, I hope you won't be too angry. I didn't want to do it like this," Miss Laurel muttered, to Jessie's complete bewilderment, as Miss Flora slid open the pocket doors and shooed them ahead of her into the front parlor. "I thought we should come over first and get you used to the idea." Jessie had been in this room many times since the disastrous evening when the furniture had been removed and she had danced with Mitch and Clive. It was a pretty room, decorated in the style of perhaps twenty years before, but kept so clean and fresh with vases of just-picked flowers that it never seemed out of date. Today the curtains were open (they were usually kept pulled so that the furniture would not be faded by the sun) and there was a lovely view over the sloping front yard. A small fire burned in the hearth.

Miss Flora had closed the pocket doors behind her and stood with her back to them. Miss Laurel stood beside her, her hands clasped in front of her. Both ladies looked absurdly nervous. Suspicious, Jessie opened her mouth to demand an explanation. But the words never left her mouth.

"Hello, Jess," said a husky voice. Jessie's heart leaped. She whirled so quickly that her skirts belled out behind her to see the heart-shakingly familiar form of a tall, black-haired man rising to his feet from one of the wing chairs before the fire.

"Clive!" she gasped, then immediately clapped her hands over her mouth as she realized she had given him away before his supposed aunts.

Incredibly, he smiled, a crooked smile that lit up his face with devastating charm. "It's all right. They know."

"They know!" Jessie looked sideways at Miss Flora and Miss Laurel. Miss Laurel nodded vigorously.

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"He told us everything, Jessie, dear," Miss Flora said. "He shouldn't have pretended to be our nephew, of course. But you know, the real Stuart had never visited us once in his life, and he probably never would have. This Stuart is everything we'd ever hoped our nephew would be. He's been good to us, Jessica, and we've grown to love him. Our feelings haven't changed, just because his name has."

"No, indeed," Miss Laurel chimed in.

"And we've talked about it, and decided that he's as much our nephew as ever. In our hearts, which is where it counts."

"Oh, yes," Miss Laurel said.

"He wants to tell you something, Jessica. We think you should listen to him."

"We'll be just outside if you should need us," Miss Laurel added as her sister opened the pocket doors again.

"Now, why should she need us?" Miss Flora scolded her in an undertone as the two ladies whisked themselves out of the room.

"I don't know. Don't take me up so, sister. 'Twas ..." The rest of their argument was cut off by the doors sliding shut again. Jessie's heart began to pound erratically. She was alone in the room with Clive. Clive, whom she'd both longed for and dreaded to see. . . .

Slowly her eyes swung back to him. He was as handsome as ever, devastatingly so, his black hair waving faultlessly back from that perfectly carved face with the incredible blue eyes. He looked very tall and masculine in the dainty, feminine room. Jessie had to fight the urge to run straight into his arms.

"Don't look so scared, Jess. I'm not going to eat you." He moved away from the chair to stand in the center of the room a few feet from where Jessie herself stood. He was clean-shaven 366

and as immaculately dressed as always, but as Jessie looked at him more closely she realized that, like herself, he was a good deal thinner than when she'd seen him last. She realized something else, too: despite the crooked smile that curved his mouth, and the teasing glint in those sky-blue eyes, he was at least as nervous as she.

"I'm not scared," she said, although it was less than the truth. She was afraid, not of him but of herself and the way he made her feel.

"I'm glad one of us isn't," he muttered, and Jessie wasn't sure if she was supposed to hear that or not.

For an awkward moment they merely looked at each other. A hundred words crowded Jessie's mouth, but she rejected all of them for one reason or the other. The curse of being tongue-tied, which she'd thought she'd long outgrown, afflicted her just as it had in this same room so many months ago— until it occurred to her that Clive was having difficulty finding words, too. For silver-tongued Clive McClintock, that was eloquence in and of itself.