The Ozark trilogy (36 page)

“Mercy, don’t! I’d feel a fool for sure, sitting in my own room and hearing you sing a song about me.”

“Well, then,” he said, “because you are so highly valued, I’d thought it might be harder to find myself alone with you. I was prepared for . . . oh, at least a Granny in a fury, to bar my way.”

“And so she would, if she knew you were here,” said Responsible.

“And what will she do when she finds me here?”

Responsible shook her head in amazement. “Young Wommack,” she said, “you are downright ignorant, not to mention insulting. Even here, `in the Brightwater outback,’ we know to knock on doors. Even Grannys don’t enter rooms without leavewhy should she find you here? I don’t intend to give her leave.”

He stood up at that, drew closed the curtains at all three of her windows, and went and stretched himself full length on her bed. She liked the look of him against her white counterpane, and she told him so.

He didn’t pause to acknowledge the compliment.

“You learned many things, touring the Castles, having adventures,” he said. “Now come learn something useful.”

She was still thinking she would do no such thing when she lay down beside him. Her counterpane was turned down, and her clothes and his lay in a jumble on her rug, and the thought still lingered. Only when she noted that she had been right, that the copper hair covered him in all but two or three specific places, did she abandon that idea and concede that she was indeed about to learn something.

“I am not
ready for this,” she announced.

And there are times when the land is not ready for the rain, but it falls all the same.

He ran his fingertips over her thighs, and set his lips to her nipples, and he was not overly careful how much of his weight she had to bear.

“I dislike that,” she said clearly.

“This, too?”

“I dislike that even more.”

“You lie,” he said.

She surely did. Everything his body had promised, shirted and trousered and cloaked, it delivered in abundance. Her loins arched toward his touch and she knew most clearly the meaning of longing. She was all out of patience, the aching of her body for him was unbearable, and if she had known any manner of hurrying him she would not have scrupled to use it. Unfortunately, she was operating this time from a position of total ignorance, and she could only grit her teeth till she shuddered, and wait.

“You’re an anxious creature,” he said finally, and he lifted her onto the gold of his belly and set her gently where she might ease her own need. It was not what she had expected at all, and certainly not what her experience in the stables and goatbarns had led her to expect, and she moaned in desperate frustration.

“It’s impossible,”
She
said. “It can’t be
done
this way!”

“Lady; lady,” he answered her, “I promised to teach you something useful, For sure it
can
be done this way, if you will onlythere!”

Nothing she had heard or read or imagined had prepared her for what it was like to have the full thrust of his maleness within her, and she forgot everything in her determination to draw from him every last measure of the ecstasy offered.

“You see?” h¢ said roughly.

She did, most certainly she did, and when he would have held her away from him she, cried out fiercely and slapped at him, frantic in her determination to achieve something-her body knew what it was, though her mind did not-and he laughed and let her have her way for a while.

Until she hovered just on the edge of that achievement. And then, ignoring her teeth and her hands, he held her still in torment against him.

“Oh, dear heaven, dear heaven,” she moaned, “let me
loose!
”

“Shhhhh. . . hush. . .”

“No! I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it another second . . .”

She fell against him, broken in despair, sobbing and past all pride, and he made a soft noise of satisfaction, gripped her in those sure hands, and held her while the shudders racked her, more and more swift, and her breath tore at her throat, and then he said:

“Now, Responsible of Brightwater. Now I shall show you the most useful thing of all.”

And he grasped her hips and moved her, and suddenly she knew that she would die of joy, and he muffled her screams against his shoulders and let her take of him everything that she wanted. It took a very long time, and not once did he make a sound.

She had heard women speak, married women and women of experience, of what happened
after
the act of love. Some men, it seemed, would talk to you. Others would fall asleep. Some would demand food; among the Traveller males, she had heard it said, there were those that would drop to their knees and give thanks for the blessings just received.

This man, however, was doing none of those things. He had raised himself on one elbow and was staring at her as if he had never seen anything like her before anywhere. Responsible had no illusions about her beauty, she had Thorn of Guthrie to compare herself with every day of her life; it could not be that which put such an expression on his face. And she was reasonably sure that the look he bore was not the usual afterlove expression.

“What,” he demanded harshly, “was
that?
What the Twelve Bleeding Gates
happened?”

Responsible reminded him that she had been the virgin here, not him, which made that a foolish question. “There are a number of words to choose from,” she added, “always depending on your degree of delicacy. Pick the one you like the best.”

“That’s not what I meant.” And then, “You didn’t notice anything unusual?”

Responsible made an exasperated noise and climbed over him abruptly, heading for her bath. The bed was a sea-marsh, and she was not much better.

“Young man,” she said over her shoulder, “I have never lain with a man before you. If there was something unusual, I wouldn’t know it. What do I have to compare with you?”

He followed her into the bathroom and joined her in the hot water, still frowning, and the frown lasted until they both were clean and once again clothed, and sitting in the two rockers as sedately as if nothing but conversation had ever passed between them.

“I must have imagined it,” he stated.

“No. I am convinced that it truly did happen. I was there, Lewis Motley.”

“Responsible of Brightwater, do you remember what you said to me, just at the last?”

It hardly seemed proper, but then nothing they’d done in the past hour had been proper. She thought for a moment, and then answered him to the best of her recollection.

“I said . . . `My lovely one, it is so wonderful to be inside you.’
“

He cleared his throat, and directed her to think about that. “Doesn’t it seem to you,” he asked, “that the anatomy is just a tad scrambled?”

She thought about it, and saw what he meant.

“Isn’t it always like that?” she asked. “After all, it’s mighty close contact.”

“Not that close,” he said. “No. It is not always like that. In fact, it is not ever like that.”

She set her lips, and found that she was no longer afraid of his eyes.

“It
was
like that,” she declared. “I was there, and so were you, and for certain sure it was precisely like that. And if you didn’t want it to be like that, you should have provided a lecture as you went along.”

He was going to be a very stubborn man, she thought, immovable as a mountain; a natural force like a tide or a storm, against which you could break into a thousand pieces, and he would never notice. And she thought, somewhat more than a little belatedly, of the Time Corner Prophecy. There was a lot in there about what would happen if she “stood before him.” She doubted that what she’d done could be so described.

“Law,” she whispered, more to herself than to him, “I wonder what will happen now?”

He swore, and stood up to stand with his back to her, staring out of her window, holding back one curtain with his hand.

In honest bewilderment she asked him, “Why are you angry?”

“I’m not angry,” he said, but he didn’t turn around, and she knew that now
he
lied.

“Lewis Motley Wommack,” she said, “go eat with the children. They’ll be serving them now.”

He left her without another word, and she sat there rocking until the last light was gone from her room and she rocked in full darkness. She wasn’t sorry for what she had done; nothing that pleasant could be a thing to regret. And her fear of him was gone for good and all. But the consequences of what she had done, now there was something to ponder on. For one thing, she was vulnerable to a number of unpleasant things that her virginity had protected her from until now. The Magicians of Rank would not need to be half so constrained in their constant wearing away at her, now that she lacked her maidenhead, and the first to take a look at her tomorrow would know that. As would the Grannys, one and all. But the Prophecy had been most specific: whatever it was that she would loose upon this world, she and Jewel of Wommack’s brother, the harm would not come from knowledge shared by their bodies. That was laid out unmistakably.

She knew his body well now, and intended to know it a great deal better; and with his skill he no doubt knew everything there was to know about hers. But if it was not that, not that knowledge that held the danger, what
was
it then? They had not talked as much as you did over the ordinary cup of coffee.

“Botheration,” said Responsible, and decided she didn’t want any supper.

She would take off her sheets, for they reeked of salt, and sleep that night on her counterpane. Let Granny Leeward lie on the other side of the wall and wonder why the daughter of this Castle had not appeared for supper; the daughter of this Castle would be sound asleep and not caring.

Tomorrow would be burden enough, when she had to face them all and see in their eyes-even Leeward’s-that they knew of the change in her. Tomorrow there’d be no eternal agenda of ceremonies and prayers to hold back the plans of the delegations set to bring down the Confederation, the fools! Tomorrow she would sit in the balcony and watch, alert for the slightest move, the least word, the beginning of crisis, the turn that would mean it was time to call on the loyal delegations and find a way to put the necessary words in their mouths.

Tonight, she would sleep.

Responsible was sitting over the last cup of the pot of tea the servingmaid had brought her when the knack came at her door. She set the cup down, made sure her nightgown was decently arranged, and called, “Who’s there?”

“Granny Leeward here, Responsible of Brightwater. Granny Leeward of Castle Traveller. May I come in?”

“You sound nothing
what
soever like a Granny,” said Responsible deliberately. “I do believe you’re a fraud and a sham, whoever you may be.”

There was a silence, time enough for her to have another sip of her tea. It was her favorite cup, emerald-green china with a rim of silver, and sturdy enough to drink from half awake without worrying that she’d crush it, the last unbroken one of a set used for company meals when she was still in Granny School. She despised the cups her mother and grandmother chose to start their days with, delicate white porcelain with the Brightwater Crest on the side, big enough to hold maybe three good swallows, and so frail they felt like eggshells in your hand. She could face those later in the day if need be, but not before breakfast, and at no time did she admire them.

“Responsible of Brightwater, you bar your door to me, you’ll rue it! A fine day it’ll be when a wench of fourteen keeps me standing in a hall saying howdydo to the bare boards, and I’ll thank you to keep that in mind, missy!”

“Ah,” said Responsible, “now I hear you use formspeech, I recognize you for a Granny after all! Please to come in, Granny Leeward.”

The old woman was dressed and ready for the day, all in her customary black, and her pale-blue eyes so cold in her bony face that they put Responsible in mind of two small dead fishes, side by side.

“Have a rocker,” she told her, “and make yourself comfortable. Have you had your tea this morning or shall I send for you some?”

“I’ve been through with my tea this past hour,” said Granny Leeward, chill and snappish, “and waiting till I heard the sound of your cup on your saucer so I’d not wake you. You keep mighty highclass hours, to my way of thinking.”

“Proceedings don’t begin at Confederation Hall till nine,” said Responsible, “and it’s a while yet till it strikes seven. Ample time for what I have before me today.”

“You’ve mighty little before you, this day and some days to come.” The Granny sat down in a rocker, carefully settling her heavy skirts around her, and folded her hands in her lap. “That’s what I’ve come to tell you about-and mind, I’ll have no sass from you.”

Responsible had some more tea and waited the move, and after the silence had stretched a ways Granny Leeward continued. “You’ll recall, I expect, that I was present-and quite a number of the other members of our delegation with me-when you put on your disgraceful performance at Castle Traveller a while back.”

“I do recollect that, yes.”