Vows (27 page)

 
She distracted herself by picking up the conversation. "We took him back to Pinnick and said to reshoe him, but he only did a remove instead of a replace."

 
"He's a queer little man, that Pinnick. Came in here drunk one day and stood staring at me and weaving on his feet. When I asked if I could help him he muttered something I couldn't hear and stumbled back out again."

 
"Think nothing of it. He's always drunk, which will work in your favor, I'm sure. You'll get plenty of shoeing business."

 
He headed for the door, taking the hot shoe along. "Come on. I'll show you what I've done."

 
In the corridor a blessedly cool draft sailed door-to-door. Surrounded by the mingled scents of new wood, and hot iron and horse, Emily crouched beside Jeffcoat, catching, too, a faint whiff of his sweat as he lifted Sergeant's off forefoot to his lap. Sizing the shoe, he pointed out, "I've put the copper plate on the side, and the longer shoe will give added protection to the wall. This hoof will be like new by the next shoeing. Maybe even before then—in four weeks, I'd say."

 
"Good," she replied, studying his dirty arm only inches from her own.

 
The shoe was slightly wide. He took it back inside while she waited in the cool corridor, watching as he gave it several deft raps, then returned to lift Sergeant's hoof again. This time the shoe fit as if it had been cast in a sand mold. He took it back into the shop and she watched from the doorway as he picked up a punch and drove holes in the horseshoe on the flat end of the anvil.

 
Lifting the shoe, whistling softly through his teeth, he checked the holes against the light of the coals. "There, that should do."

 
Stepping to his left, he plunged the hot shoe into the slake trough. It sizzled and steamed while he glanced back over his shoulder.

 
"Grab a handful of clenches from that table, will you?" He gestured with his head.

 
"Oh … oh, sure."

 
She picked up the nails while he found a square-headed hammer and together they returned to Sergeant. She stood, looking down on his head while he assumed the pose as familiar to her as any a man could assume, thinking how different it looked when he did it. She studied the curve of his spine, the wet blue streak down the center of his shirt, the taut britches belling out infinitesimally at the waist.

 
He swung on the balls of his feet and caught her staring.

 
"Nails," he requested, holding out a palm.

 
"Oh, here!" She dropped four into his hand but he held them without moving. Their eyes locked and fascination multiplied until the air between them seemed to burn like that above his forge.

 
Abruptly he swung back to work. "So how was the party last week?"

 
"All right, I guess." She had changed her mind and gone in hopes of seeing him there.

 
"Charles enjoyed it."

 
She had gotten caught and had to kiss Charles during French Postman.

 
"It was silly. I don't like playing those games."

 
"He does." Tom centered a nail and rapped it in while she stood beside him blushing, unable to think up a reply.

 
"Did everybody come?" he inquired.

 
"Everybody but you and Tarsy."

 
He finished the last nail and straightened, letting the hoof clack to the floor. "Oh, she and I were painting the sign that night." He gestured toward the door with the hammer.

 
"Ah. Yes. It looks nice."

 
Their eyes met and parted discreetly. "Well … I'd better clip those clenches." He got the proper tool and spent several minutes nipping the ends of the protruding nails from all four hooves while Emily glanced around his barn at the fresh-milled lumber and cobwebless windows, reminding herself that he and Charles had done all this, and while doing it, had become friends.

 
Tom finished the nails and asked, "Want to lead them toward me and I'll see how the new shoes look?"

 
He squatted near the smithy door while she led Sergeant away, then back to him, feeling his eyes on her own feet as much as on the horse's When she approached, he stretched to his feet and scratched Sergeant's nose. "Feels good huh Sergeant?" To Emily he added, "I should see him at trot and gallop to make sure they're perfectly flat."

 
"Pinnick's never in his life taken the time to check things like that."

 
"That's the way I was taught."

 
"By your father?"

 
"Yes."

 
"He was a farrier?" She glanced into Jeffcoat's clear blue eyes.

 
"Both my father and my grandfather were." While he spoke he removed his red headband and swabbed his face and neck, then stuck it in a hind pocket. "The bellows and the anvil were his, my grandfather's. My grandmother insisted that I take them when I came out here. For luck, she said." They both raised their eyes to the horseshoe above the smithy door.

 
"Don't you know you're supposed to hang it heels up so the good luck will get caught inside?"

 
"Not if you're a blacksmith." He looked down at her. "We're the only ones allowed to hang it heels down, so the luck will run out on our anvil."

 
Their eyes caught and held. The shoeing was done. She could ride Sergeant out the door any time, and they both knew it. So they dreamed up conversation to keep her here.

 
"You're superstitious," she observed.

 
"No more than the next man. But horseshoes are my business. People expect to see them up there."

 
She glanced up at the horseshoe again and he watched the curve of her throat come into view. He dropped his eyes to the line of her breasts flattened at the tips where her red suspenders crossed them, her thumbs hooked into their brass clasps at the waist of Frankie's britches. He found her as attractive in boy's wear as he did in a mauve gown. He'd never met a more unpretentious woman, nor one who shared as many of the same interests as he. Suddenly he wanted her to see all of his realm, to understand his joy in it, because only another livery owner could appreciate what all this meant.

 
"Emily, the night of my party you wouldn't look at a damn thing in here except the loft. I'd like you to see the rest. Would you like a little tour?"

 
She knew it would be wisest to get out of here with all due haste, but she couldn't resist the appeal in his voice.

 
"All right." In deference to Charles, she added, "But I can't stay long. Fannie will have supper ready soon."

 
"It'll only take five minutes. Wait a minute." He ducked into the shop and leaned over the slake trough, swabbing off his face and arms with the wet bandana. From the doorway she watched the masculine procedure with a growing lump in her stomach.

 
"Sorry," he offered sheepishly, straightening and turning to find her watching. "Sometimes I smell worse than my horses." He draped the wet bandana over the warm bricks, dried his palms on the rear of his britches, and said, "Well, we might as well begin in here. Come in." He waited until she stood at his elbow. "The bellows were made in Germany in 1798. They'll last all of my lifetime and longer. The anvil is the one my father learned on, from his father, then taught me on. The one I'll probably teach my sons on." He gave it an affectionate slap and rubbed his hand over the scarred iron. "I know every mark on it. When I left Missouri my mother sent me off with four loaves of her homemade bread for the road. Don't get me wrong—I loved it, but eventually I ate them up. This, though…" He gazed down at the anvil, his hand lingering upon it with great affection. "…the marks from their hammers will never disappear. When I get to missing them it helps to remember that."

 
It was an odd, passionless moment in which to recognize that she had fallen in love with him, but it happened to Emily in that instant while she met Tom Jeffcoat's eyes, while he let her see the soul inside the body, and admitted how he longed for his family and how he valued his birthright. It struck her with the force of a blow—
Pang-pang!—
I love him.

 
She turned away, afraid he'd read it in her eyes. The heat of the room pressed hard upon her flesh, joining the heat from within, an awesome heat spawned by the sudden, jolting admission.

 
"The slake trough I made myself," Tom continued, "and the base for the anvil—out of railroad ties—and the tool bench. The bricks came from the brickyards in Buffalo." He gestured her ahead of him through the doorway. They walked the length of the barn separated by a full six feet of space while Emily applied herself to the view of box stalls, windows, tack room, and office, when all she wanted was to look at him, at the face of the love she'd only now discovered.

 
They stopped at the foot of the loft stairs while his monologue continued. "I sleep up there now. No sense paying for a hotel room if I don't have to. It's plenty warm this time of year, and Charles says the house will be finished well before cold weather sets in."

 
She glanced up the steps, caught the sweet scent of new hay, and pictured herself climbing these stairs some night. Denying the possibility, she turned away.

 
"You haven't shown me your turntable."

 
"My turntable. Ah…" He laughed and raised one eyebrow. "My folly?"

 
"Is it?"

 
They sauntered back to the center of the barn. "The children don't think so. They come in and beg for rides on it."

 
Stopping on opposite sides of the wooden circle, Tom nudged it with a foot while Emily watched it turn. It scarcely made a sound, rolling on ball bearings.

 
"So smooth," she commented.

 
"Folly or not, it comes in damned handy when I want to turn a wagon around. Want to try it?"

 
Her chin lifted and she gazed at him with a feeling of imminent disaster thrumming through her veins. Ignoring it, she answered, "Why not?"

 
He halted the turntable and she stepped on. He set it in motion with the toe of a boot and she lifted her face, watching the ceiling beams spin slowly, distracted by the knowledge that he watched her as she circled. The faint tremble of the ball bearings shimmied up her legs to her stomach. She came around and passed him—once, twice—with her face to the rafters. But on the third pass she gave up and dropped her eyes to his as she came around the last half circle.

 
She reached him and his boot hit the turntable, stopping it.

 
They stood transfixed, with their pulses drumming crazily, fighting the compulsions that had had them on edge ever since he'd seen her standing silently in the smithy door, watching him. At his hips his fists opened once, then closed. Her lips dropped open but no sound came out. They stood together in a whorl of uncertainty, two people unspeakably tempted.

 
"Emily…" he said in a constricted voice.

 
"I have to go!" She tried to shoot past him but he reached and caught her forearm.

 
"You haven't seen the horses." It was not why he'd detained her and they both knew it.

 
"I have to go."

 
"No … wait." His hand burned on her arm, a poor substitute for the touches they wanted to share.

 
"Let me go," she pleaded in a whisper, raising her eyes to him at last.

 
He swallowed once thickly and asked in a tight voice, "What are we going to do?"

 
"Nothing," she replied flatly, jerking her arm free.

 
"You're angry."

 
"I'm not angry!" But she was, not at him, at the hopelessness of this situation.

 
"Well, what do you expect me to do?" he reasoned. "Charles is my friend. He's out there right now, building my house while I stand here thinking about—"

 
"Don't you think I know that!" Her eyes blazed into his.

 
"I've intentionally stayed away from the parties," he argued as if in self-defense.

 
"I know."

 
"And I've been seeing a lot of Tarsy, but she's—"

 
"Don't say it. Just … please, Tom, don't say any more. She's my friend, too."

 
They gazed at each other helplessly, each of them breathing as if they'd just sprinted over a finish line. Finally he stepped back and said, "You're right. You'd better go."

 
But now that he'd released her, she couldn't. She had taken no more than two steps away from him before she stopped in the middle of the corridor and dropped her forehead into her hands. She neither cried nor spoke, but her dejected pose spoke more clearly than tears or words.