The grass widow, p.5
The Grass Widow, page 5
Aidan looked up as if the words had reached across the table to slap her, and silence hung long between them before finally, softly, she said, “You’ve not wondered why I was sent here?”
Joss scratched her lower lip. “I wondered what sort o’ folk would send you off to a hard place an’ people you didn’t know, an’ feelin’ you had no home to go back to.”
“You’re not stuck with me forever. Just—” She drew a shaky breath. “Just until the baby’s old enough that I may return with a story of a dead husband. No one will believe it, but the glaze of propriety will be spread.”
Joss drew the place-ribbon across her page and closed her book; she stared at the cover. Tight-lipped, Aidan waited. It was long before Joss spoke. “Do you miss him?”
She looked away, unable to answer.
“Aidan...” Her voice was soft and cautious. “Do you—did you—love him?”
“I—” She jerked loose the bow of her apron, and wadded the cloth and flung it to the table. “Why haven’t you even a floor in the kitchen? A real floor, with boards, not dirt?” The tears that had been dammed up since Doc’s gentle question tried to flood over; she jammed them back and fled for the privacy of her room, slamming the door so hard the iron latch bounced back open.
“A floor?” She gave the door a vicious kick, hurting her toe; the
latch caught and she threw herself onto the bed. “ A floor? Have you lost your mind?” She drove her face into her pillow. “A floor!
She’ll think you’re insane!”
A hand touched her shoulder and she recoiled, barely choking back a scream.
“Aidan, I’ll make you a floor in the kitchen. I’ll make floors all through the house if you want them, but don’t turn from—”
“You know perfectly well a floor has nothing to do with it!”
“I know.” Again, her hand found Aidan’s shoulder; again, Aidan flinched. Joss stood and paced the room a helpless turn.
“Aidan, you don’t have to go back until—or unless—you want to. I thought we’d long since settled that.”
“I don’t need your pity! I’ll not—”
“The day I pity you I’ll send you back to God-damned Maine!”
The roar of temper drove Aidan cringing into her pillow. “Send you back? To what fresh hell? People who discard you like a book whose endin’ they didn’t like? I’d treat a stray mutt with the mange better than they’ve done you!”
Shivering, her breath suspended in her, Aidan waited. She knew that sooner or later a hard hand would come; one always did when such anger powered words. It didn’t matter whether the crime and the punishment fit one another; the crime was awakening the rage, and punishment would be served. Such random service was a quirk of Blackstone character, and Joss was of Blackstone blood.
“I wager they call ’emselves good Christians, too,” Joss growled. “That sort always does, them an’ Effie Richland—always ready to take whatever they think they can steal, right down to your pride an’ your dreams. God damn ’em all to hell!”
Just be done with it and get out and let me— “Oh, no—” It was a moan drawn by a hand at her back; she didn’t feel the gentleness of the touch. She didn’t expect gentleness after such a snarl of words. She only knew Joss Bodett was as strong and hard as tarred rope and could hurt her, and was a Blackstone so probably would. Joss said something, but the roar of blood in her ears blocked all but the buzz of her voice. She didn’t know if she would faint
before she vomited, or after. She felt the mattress shift under the weight of her cousin and she fought not to cry, or cry out.
“Listen to me?” It was a low almost-plea, and a hesitant touch at her back. “Do you fear I’d strike you? I’m not Blackstone enough. Aidan—” Joss’s hand slipped softly across her shoulders.
“Please, Aidan. I’d never—”
Curled around her pillow in instinctive protection of her face and her belly, she managed to breathe.
“Oh, Lord—” Joss’s forehead rested briefly on her shoulder.
“Damn my temper.” The warmth and weight of her went away, but not far; she was still there, touching-close. “I meant but to ease the weight of this, if I could. I didn’t mean to intrude, or frighten you. I’m so sorry if I’ve made it worse for you.” Her finger drew a few errant strands of hair away from Aidan’s mouth, tucking them behind her ear. “How can I leave you alone with such hurt? But it seems I add to it with every word. Should I just leave you be?”
She didn’t want Joss there to see her weakness; she didn’t want to be alone; wordless wants clashed in her, none of them winning her voice. She heard that soft sigh again, sounding much more like resignation as Joss’s hand lifted from her shoulder. “If I can get you anythin’—” That trailed off, as if Joss knew she wouldn’t ask. “I’ll knock in a little while. I’ll just be out at the table.”
Aidan heard the clink of the latch as Joss closed the door. She drove her face into her pillow, trying to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. The ache was huge and hollow, an ache of missing the warmth and nearness of the oddly gentle side of Joss, an ache of residual terror of the coarseness of her cousin’s anger—and an ache of fear that Joss would send her away now that she knew.
“No,” she whispered. “Oh, Joss, please, no. No. No—”
The last glow of sunset had almost faded from the window when she heard the soft knock at her door. Dazed by the sodden ache of tears that still refused to be cried, she couldn’t find words; still curled around her pillow, she could only wait until the door opened. “Aidan? Can I come in?”
She managed a nod, not knowing if it could be seen in the fading light, and heard the scrape of Joss’s boots against the hard dirt floor before the bed creaked under her weight as she sat at the edge of the mattress. “I ain’t much good at comfortin’,” Joss said at last. “Brothers don’t want it, an’ the only sisters I had died when all the comfort they knowed about was dry clothes an’ a tit when they was hungry. What I asked you was none o’ my affair an’ I’m sorry for makin’ you feel so bad. I ain’t here to pester you if you want to be alone, but I know sometimes bein’ alone makes the hurtin’ worse.” She cleared her throat, a nervous, almost shy sound, before Aidan felt a hesitant touch at her shoulder. “Aidan, I know I got the talk an’ the ways of a man. I reckon that’s ’cause I got raised up with ’em an’ like ’em, an’ I expect I must be a oddity to you, but it means I learnt about raisin’ a hand to a woman, too. I’d ask God to strike me dead before ever I’d hurt you. If you’re holdin’ away from me for fearin’ that—”
“I don’t know how not to.” The words felt as dully familiar as a week-old toothache. “I don’t know how to believe you. I’m sorry.”
“How the hell have they treated you, then? Didn’t they ever even love you? You still got color from where he hit you last! I can’t take the place of your mother, but Lord, girl, I can at least hold you an’ let you—”
“Then do it!” She forced the words past a need to cry so immediate her throat ached with it. “Beat me or hold me or something—do something! Do something—”
And even when Joss took her into her arms, she still fought the tears; she had no memory of such gentleness of touch as the hands that held her close to a warm, dusty shoulder to be able to trust it now. “Aidan—oh, little cousin.” Joss’s voice was a low intensity under her ear. “It’s all right, Aidan. Let it go. Let it go. Damn them—damn their hard hearts an’ what they’ve done to you that you can’t trust love! I’ll love you if you let me, Aidan—or even if you don’t. I’ll just love you, so you’ll always know there’s someone who does.”
She was warm; she smelled of dust and sunshine, of fresh easy
sweat and the nearness of horses, and Aidan remembered the day she had first come here: Joss had jumped lightly from the wagon, and from under the porch had come the lean gray cat to wind around her ankles. Joss had scooped it into her arms to bump heads with it, her hands giving it quick, ear-scratching affection. It had wallowed in her arms, trusting her completely, and Aidan had known that no matter what their differences, this odd and unexpected woman would never hurt her. She had forgotten that, this hard night.
She shuddered a sigh into Joss’s shoulder. “Don’t send me away,” she whispered. “Please let me stay—”
“Let you stay? Good Lord, Aidan, why would you think I wouldn’t?”
“My own folk had no use for the shame of me—”
“The shame of you? Their own should take them straight to hell!” Again, that flare of temper, a rupture of tolerance that roughened the arms around her and tightened the fingers in her hair; she shrank from it, ducking into herself in self-defense.
“Oh, damn—” It was a shivering breath into her hair. “Aidan, I’m sorry, I’ve frightened you again—it’s just so hard for me to understand them! Who’s to love someone right or wrong, if not family? Family’s supposed to allow error an’ love in spite of it, an’
damn those Blackstones—”
“There’s a difference between error and sin.”
“An’ such difference is for the Lord to decide. No one else has right nor power to judge you. What was your sin? Love?”
Do you—did you—love him?
Her voice, when she found it, felt harsh and brittle. “There was no love.” And she waited for Joss to retreat, to have finally heard enough.
Joss drew a jittery breath, and seemed about to speak but didn’t; she seemed frozen, unable to move or speak or, for a moment, even to breathe again, and Aidan’s head went light in the thickness of her cousin’s silence, knowing it would only be a moment before Joss put her away from her, disgusted, repulsed—
0
“Aidan, was it—” Joss swallowed; Aidan felt that, and the hard breath she drew before she asked softly, “Aidan, was it against your will?”
Miserably, she nodded, not daring to think Joss would believe her. “Oh, no—” Joss’s arms tightened around her. “How could they do this to you?”
She held Aidan hard against her, and the ache finally broke; she sobbed like a child in arms giving her the only sympathy she had known for the horror of that January afternoon.
Jared Hayward had invited her skating. She went without a chaperone because he was the banker’s son, because she had known him all her life, because she trusted him. He pinned her against a wall in the boathouse, forcing his kiss to her. He choked her when she tried to scream, and wrestled her to the floor. He tore open his buttons, laughing at her terror when she saw what he had, and what he intended. He took no pause with her virginity the first time, and no care with her pain the next.
Five weeks later, her bleeding hadn’t come and the morning sickness had. Only then did her father call young Mr. Hayward into his study and demand that he make an honest woman of her. Jared agreed readily; Aidan was a handsome woman, and Dr. Blackstone was a wealthy man.
Aidan refused. Her father bellowed and she refused; he beat her and she refused. More gently, her mother tried to talk sense into her. She put her hands over her ears and turned her back. And so she was sentenced to Kansas.
At least it had seemed a sentence then. Now, with her cousin holding her, rocking with her, whispering assurances into her hair and sketching consoling kisses against her face, it felt more like salvation.
CHAPTER FOUR
She stiffened awake in the gray before dawn, panicking in the alien warmth of arms around her, breath against her neck, legs entwined with her own, before she remembered: Don’t leave me, I’m so afraid of the dark, please stay with me— and then she was embarrassed, and confused by her near-nakedness in only a silk chemise. She struggled through hazy memory to recall the solicitude of hands that had undressed her in the wake of torrential tears, the quietness of Joss’s voice, the consoling length of her cousin’s body against her as Joss held her until, at last, the thick sleep of exhaustion took her.
Shakily, she sighed; she supposed she hadn’t expected Joss might stay through the night, but was glad she had. She drowsed back into her cousin’s warmth, soothed by the protective spread of Joss’s right hand against her belly.
And she blushed; gently, she moved Joss’s other hand, for it
had been cupping her breast in an unconscious embrace—and then wished she hadn’t when her nipple, missing that cradling palm, hardened painfully in the cool morning. Joss muttered a sleeping protest, her hand seeking that fullness again; finding it, she buried her face into the curve of Aidan’s shoulder, shivering a deep sigh before her breath went softly even again.
Aidan let her hand stay. Her breast appreciated the warmth, and she could imagine no sin in the touch of a sleeping woman. She listened to the rhythm of their breaths, and finally, the mourning doves cooed her back to sleep.
When next she awoke it was a glorious day, the sky a dazzling blue, sun blaring through the east window. Voices came from the kitchen: Joss’s, deeper than most women’s, and a sonorous, vaguely-familiar male voice. Sleepily, she imagined Doc’s drooping mustache and gentle eyes, and she dozed a little longer, smelling woodsmoke and coffee and finally the eye-opening scent of bacon, a smell she couldn’t doze through. She waited for her stomach to tell her if she would be able to eat. It obliged her with a hungry growl. She sat up, stretching hugely, and sank lazily back to the pillows; she hadn’t slept so well in weeks. “God love you, Joss Bodett,” she murmured. “If I could have a sister, I’d want her to be you.”
She got up, finally, to find her ewer filled with hot water, a washcloth and towel folded beside her basin, and she had to blink back tears of warm surprise at the small kindness. She had a leisurely wash, humming some song she didn’t remember the words to, and because she felt good she chose her prettiest chemise to replace the plain one she was retiring, and put lilac water behind her ears and inside her wrists, and picked her favorite blue dress from the armoire after she had pinned up her hair. She had been saving the dress for church, but there would be time enough to wash it before Sunday.
She wondered what Joss would wear to church; so far, she had worn only Levi’s and her father’s old shirts. The very thought of wearing dungarees was alien to Aidan, though she admired their pockets and the small treasures that spilled from
them in the evenings: coins and pretty stones and bits of string, Harmon’s watch, a folding knife, the whisker of a horse. Even with Joss yet weak from her sickness, Aidan knew their domains were established: hers was the house and yard, Joss’s the barn and beyond. She didn’t mind; she liked to cook, and didn’t object to cleaning—but that floor was a trial; sweeping it didn’t ever make her believe it was clean. (And recalling her outburst of the night before, she blushed; why had that, of all things, come in answer to an honest question?) She shrugged off the memory, buttoning her dress, and went to investigate the good smells coming from the kitchen.
“Well, Sleepin’ Beauty. Finally decide to try on the day?”
She smiled back at the grin in her cousin’s eyes, loving Joss Bodett and Kansas and life in this fresh morning. “Thank you for the water. That was sweet of you, Joss.”
“I reckon I owe you some sweetness yet, for the care you took o’ me an’ no reason to believe I was worth savin’.” She stirred the bacon. “You look nice,” she offered, shyly gruff. “That’s a pretty dress.”
Aidan blushed, shy too; she wasn’t used to compliments.
“Thank you.” She stole a bit of bacon from the plate, evading the unmeant swat Joss aimed at her wrist. “Did I hear Doc?”
“It’s—damn!” Joss jumped back from a spit of bacon fat, rattling the spider to a cooler place on the stove as boots sounded on the porch. Still expecting Doc, Aidan looked up...and into the pale, faintly-smiling eyes of Captain Argus Slade.
“You have company, Miss Bodett.” A lazy smile quirked under his mustache, but his eyes were untouched by whatever humor his mouth had found; they made her feel as she had felt with him a week ago in Leavenworth: like merchandise under consideration. “Please don’t allow me to intrude any further.”
“When’ve I ever took back a offer of a meal to a cavalryman?”
Her tone suggested that the occasional feeding of soldiers was her civilian duty, but no pleasure. “Cap’n Slade, my cousin Miz Blackstone. Cap’n commands a cavalry troop at Fort Leavenworth. He pays a call now an’ again.” Her mother would have added
that it was always a pleasure; Joss didn’t. She had slim use for the Cavalry in general or Captain Argus Slade in the specific, but to be blatantly impolite was to risk a possibility of reprisal she could ill afford.
“Delighted to see you again, Miss Blackstone.” He offered a small bow. “Please, don’t allow me to interrupt your morning.”
“Given your permission, sir, I shan’t.” She tied on an apron, and on her way to the well and woodshed she muttered that a gentleman might have filled the bucket and brought in an armload of wood in an attempt to earn the breakfast he obviously expected to be fed. She simmered over his presence, knowing that without it she and Joss might have lingered over breakfast and coffee, perhaps talking more calmly of the baby...a pretense of Sunday in the middle of the week.
“—Montana,” he was saying, when she returned to the kitchen to bang the wood into the box by the stove; he paused for her noise. She poured a cup of coffee, refilling Joss’s and then the Captain’s; she could feel his eyes following her, and it made her skin crawl. “Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull are raising Cain in the Black Hills, disdaining the reservation order in the Dakotas.” He tilted back in his chair, its legs digging holes in the dirt floor; Aidan raised an eyebrow at them, and at him. He raised an eyebrow back at her and brought the chair to all fours again, his hand going to smooth his mustache; she saw in his eyes the smirk his hand was hiding on his lips and knew as certainly as if his mouth had said the words “white trash” what the Captain thought of the Bodetts—or what remained of them. “But I’m sure the Cavalry will be well able to convince even such brutes as they of the wisdom of honoring their treaty with the U.S. Government.”
