Morning Song (42 page)

"Miss Flora said you had something to tell me," Jessie prompted. The thought of Clive being ill at ease in her presence lessened her own discomfort a little. Never in her life would she have imagined him at a loss, and certainly not because of her

"I do." But he said nothing more.

"Well, what is it?" Such hesitancy on his part was so uncharacteristic that Jessie began to worry. Perhaps it wasn't awkwardness in her presence that was the cause of his unaccustomed reticence. Please God he was not going to make some dreadful confession that she'd rather not hear. 367

"I won a property, playing cards. It's nothing like Mimosa, of course, but with time, and money, it can be made profitable."

"How nice." Was that what he wanted to tell her? Surely not.

"I also have some money in a bank in New Orleans. My money. Not one cent of it came from Mimosa."

"Oh, yes?" She must have sounded as bewildered as she felt, because his eyes twinkled suddenly.

"I'm not doing this very well, am I? The point I'm trying to make is that I don't need your damned money, or Mimosa. I can manage quite nicely on my own."

"I'm glad to hear it." If he'd come all this way to tell her he didn't need her . . . !

"Don't get huffy, Jess. I'm not finished. I also want to make it clear to you that I did not, repeat
not,
murder Celia."

"You don't have to tell me that. I had already decided you didn't. Besides, they've arrested Seth Chandler."

"Chandler?" Clive was momentarily diverted. "I wouldn't have thought him the man to—well, never mind. The point is that I didn't kill her."

"I never really believed you did."

"So I don't need your money, and I didn't murder your stepmother. Do you have any other major objections to me?" Jessie blinked at him. "What?"

His lips tightened, quirked. "Oh, sit down, Jessie. If I'm going to do this, I may as well do it properly."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, completely at sea. She was so mystified by his circumlocutions that she let him take her hands and lead her to the settee, where he pushed her into a sitting position. When he dropped to one knee before her, while retaining his hold on her hands, she still did not catch on. 368

"I love you, Jessie, and I'm asking you to marry me," he said quietly. "Me, Clive McClintock. Not Stuart Edwards."

"Oh, my!"

"That's not much of an answer." His eyes never left her face as he lifted her hands, one at a time, to his mouth. He kissed the backs of her hands, and Jessie felt a shiver run down her spine at even that soft touch of his mouth. Only Clive had ever affected her like that. It was likely that only Clive ever would.

"Whatever will we tell the neighbors?" she whispered. It took a minute for that to register. When it did, those sky-blue eyes blazed into hers. "Is that a yes?"

Jessie nodded. He grinned, stood up, and pulled her with him into his arms. "Do you mean it?" "Yes, of course."

"Oh, God." He hugged her tightly. Jessie's arms went around his neck, and she closed her eyes. Against her breasts she could feel the fierce beating of his heart. At that telltale sound, a smile curved her lips. He was not the only one with gambling in his blood, it seemed. Foolish or not, she was going to take a chance on following her heart.

"I've missed you," she whispered, and caressed the back of his head. He kissed her temple, her cheek, the lobe of her ear. "I'm sorry I told you to leave. It was stupid of me. But then, I didn't really think you'd go."

"I've missed you, too," he said, his voice very low. "More than you'll ever know."

Then, when she thought he would kiss her, he held her a little way away from him with both hands on her upper arms. For just a minute he looked down at her without speaking, his expression sober.

369

"You can trust me to take good care of you, Jessie. I've decided that when it comes to scheming, the game's not worth the candle."

"I trust you," she assured him, her eyes tender. Her hands slid along his broad shoulders, absently smoothing the dark blue superfine of his coat. Then they slid back, oh so softly, to catch the lobe of his ear. "I have just one question for you, sirrah: Have you spent the last month with that friend of yours, Luce?

Because if you have ..."

She tugged his ear sharply. He yelped, caught her hand, and grinned. "I've been as celibate as a monk, I give you my word. In fact, I'm ready, willing, and able to prove it anytime." Jessie eyed him. "Lucky for you," she said, satisfied, and slid her arms around his neck to kiss him. Then, finally, he pulled her close against him and bent his head to find her mouth. When at long last he lifted his head, Jessie was breathless and tingling. "I love you," she whispered, shaken, into the warm skin of his neck below his chin. His arms tightened around her.

"Say it again," he murmured into her ear. "But properly this time."

Properly? Then Jessie knew, and smiled. "I love you," she repeated obediently. Then she added what she knew he wanted to hear: "Clive."

He kissed her again. Just as Jessie's bones were melting and her knees were threatening to give way, she heard a faint sound behind them. Clive, apparently, heard it, too. He lifted his head, and Jessie looked around.

The noise they had heard had been the opening of the pocket doors. Miss Flora, Miss Laurel, and Tudi stood in the aperture, their faces identical studies in suspense.

370

"She said yes," Clive reported over Jessie's head, and Miss Flora and Miss Laurel immediately broke into huge smiles. Tudi, however, stalked forward. Watching her old nursemaid come, Jessie felt a niggle of alarm. In defense of her lamb, there was no telling what Tudi might say or do.

"Now, Tudi ..." she began, hoping to ward her off.

"Miss Jessie, this is between him and me," Tudi said, and walked right up to look Clive, who stood a good foot taller but was not nearly as broad, in the eye.

"It's all right," Clive said to Jessie, but she thought he winced a little as he met Tudi's stern old eyes.

"What you done just ain't right, not in my book nor anyone else's." There was a wealth of reprimand in Tudi's voice. "But I'm telling you the truth: if you hadn't showed up hereabouts pretty shortly, I'd have come myself and fetched you. My lamb here's been missin' you real bad."

Clive smiled then, a slow and charming smile that made Jessie's heart turn over.

"Thank you, Tudi. I appreciate your saying that," he said quietly. Then, putting Jessie aside, he held out his hand to Tudi. She looked at it for a moment before pushing it aside.

"You're family, Mr. Clive," she said, and, wrapping her arms around him, rocked him almost off his feet. He hugged her back, grinning, and Jessie felt moisture rise to sting her eyes as she watched the two people she loved best in the world together. Tudi stepped back, frowned, and said as an afterthought, "That is, so long as you're good to my lamb."

Clive laughed out loud. "I'll be good to her, Tudi, I promise you that."

371

Then Jessie went into his arms again, and Tudi walked away, satisfied.

It
was some nine months after Celia's death, and Jessie had been Mrs. Clive McClintock for eight of them. Under the circumstances, the wedding had taken place in the courthouse in Jackson, with only Miss Flora, Miss Laurel, and Tudi, who'd refused to let her lamb get married without her, present. But the honeymoon—that had taken place on the magnificent steamboat
Belle of Louisiana,
and it had been something to remember in more ways than one.

As Jessie had prophesied, explaining the change in her husband's name to the neighbors had proved a little tricky. But with Aunt Flora and Aunt Laurel to stand by them, to say nothing of the staunch partisanship of all Mimosa's and Tulip Hill's people, they had brushed through the awkwardness tolerably well. The community's acceptance of the Stuart Edwardswho-wasn't was helped considerably by everyone's ongoing fascination with the events of Seth Chandler's trial for Celia's murder. Just when his conviction had seemed a foregone conclusion, Lissa Chandler had confessed tearfully that she, not her husband, had done the foul deed.

Jessie and Clive had not been the only witnesses to Seth Chandler's rendezvous with Celia on the night of his birthday party, it seemed. Lissa, unnoticed by them all, had seen that kiss, too. Later, she had confronted her husband, who not only confessed to having an affair but also said he was considering 372

divorcing her to marry Celia. Lissa, terrified at the prospect, had seized the first opportunity to ride to Mimosa and try to reason with Celia. But before she had reached the house, Lissa had seen Celia headed for the privy. So she had waited until Celia came out, passing those few minutes by idly studying a refuse heap behind the privy. Amongst the objects discarded there was an old poker with a broken handle. When Celia had emerged from the privy, Lissa had confronted her with what she knew, and begged her to leave her husband alone. Celia had laughed and taunted her, then started to turn away, still laughing. Lissa, beside herself, had picked up the poker and brought it down on Celia's head. The first blow had probably been fatal, but Lissa, hysterical, had hit her seventeen times.

The daughter of the circuit judge down in Vicks-burg, Lissa had quickly been declared insane. It was doubtful that she would ever face trial.

When the matter was finally settled, the citizens of the Yazoo Valley breathed a collective sigh of relief. Between Celia's murder and the Chandler trial, they'd never had so much excitement in their small community. In the context of those events, the change in Stuart Edwards' name was worth no more than a lift of eyebrows or a shrug. A man could call himself anything he pleased. But what would happen to those poor Chandler girls?

On this particular day in mid-August, Jessie sat fanning herself on the upper gallery, disgruntled at having to stay home while Clive was out in the fields. But she was eight months gone with child—a living memento of their honeymoon—and he insisted upon treating her like spun glass. In fact, he'd forbidden her to ride Firefly for the duration, which she thought was unbelievably 373

high-handed of him. Backed up by Tudi, who was his ally in nearly every pronouncement concerning Jessie's welfare that he made, Clive was adamant. Jessie rode in the buggy, or not at all. But she didn't have to like it.

The bell announcing the end of the workday had rung just minutes before. Clive would be home at any second. Already the workers, on foot and in mule wagons, thronged the road toward Mimosa. Thomas waited for Saber in the yard. From the house came the tantalizing smell of country ham and yams, Clive's particular favorites.

When he did ride up, he greeted Jessie with a wave, then swung down from the saddle and exchanged a few words with Thomas before the boy led Saber away. Then he climbed the stairs. Jessie waddled over to greet him.

"How's my little watermelon?" he inquired with a grin, placing a hand on her rounded stomach as he bent to give her cheek a peck.

Jessie smiled sourly. "In no mood for jokes about my belly," she replied.

"Crabby, are we?" he answered blithely. "Cheer up, darling, it'll all be over soon. Tudi says you're coming along marvelously."

"Oh, does she?" Jessie muttered as she followed him into the house. He would bathe and change before dinner, and she would lie on the bed and watch him. He wouldn't even let her scrub his back. And Tudi was almost worse than Clive. When she was around, Jessie wasn't permitted to do so much as tie her own shoes.

Both Jessie and Clive shared Jessie's room now. As always, a steaming bath waited for him. He started stripping off his shirt as 374

soon as he entered the room. Jessie closed the door behind him and leaned against it, watching him undress.

He was dirty, sweaty, bulging with muscles, and utterly magnificent. Just looking at him as he pulled off his boots with the help of the bootjack, then dropped his trousers, made her feel warm all over. The one thing he had not forbidden her to do during her pregnancy was make love with him. Jessie rather suspected he felt he should abstain, but when faced with temptation he simply could not. In any case, the fact that they still managed to have intimate relations was the one tidbit of information about her pregnancy that he did not share with Tudi. Tudi had been very frank with him about the need to spare his wife his attentions in her later months. Jessie had heard the lecture he'd been given, and every time she thought back to it she grinned. It had been the one time since she'd known him that she'd seen Clive blush.

Every now and then, when he approached her and she was feeling devilish, she threatened to tell Tudi on him.

"Jess, shouldn't you be lying down?" he called from the tub. There was nothing to be gained by arguing. If she did not lie down, he would simply get up, pick her up, and place her on the bed. Which could get interesting at times, but at the moment she was perfectly content to watch him bathe.

Jessie obediently stretched out on the coverlet, her hand on her stomach as she watched him vigorously lather his arms.

"I've been thinking," she began as he sluiced his face.

"I didn't hear you."

"I said, I've been thinking," she said again, louder.

"I wish you wouldn't do that."

375

"Oh, you!" Jessie snatched the pillow from beneath her head and threw it at him. "Seriously, Clive."

"Seriously, Jess," he repeated, mocking her with a smile as he stood up, wrapped a cloth around his waist, and came to sit on the bed beside her. He put his hand on her swollen belly, and she guided it to where he could feel the child turning somersaults.

"What have you been thinking this time?"

"If it's a boy, I know what we'll name him."

"What?" His eyes widened as the baby kicked his hand. Watching him, Jessie felt her heart swell with love.

"Stuart," she answered, and grinned wickedly. Clive looked at her, groaned, laughed, and bent to kiss her. "You've got to be joking." But she wasn't, it was, and they did: Stuart Clive.

376