Instead, she rode on, her mind trying to focus on one thing at a time, finding itself veering from one subject to another without satisfaction until at last she rode beneath the portal and spurred the roan up the lane, around the left side of the house, and back to the stable. She saw no one, and decided to ride on to the fields and check on her meager work force’s progress with the corn, and the tending of the tobacco. She really did not want to, but neither did she want to go into the house and face the fact that her dreams were not quite as gold-filled as she had been telling herself.
She was not failing, but she knew she also wasn’t progressing. It was as though she were on a lumber-man’s treadmill, no matter how rapidly or slowly she moved she didn’t seem to gain any ground. The crops came in and went out and the bills were paid and new ones were tallied. David scowled and Melissa drank and Alice grew more surly as the summer coasted on. She had tried to set herself up as matriarch of the house, but the lines of her involvement with all who lived with her had grown too entangled to clear without cutting. And she knew, now more than ever, where the twisted lines of blame finally came to tie—at her own neck. Her own obsession with Riverrun and its survival had blinded her too often to the needs of those around her. And she wasn’t at all sure it wasn’t too late to cure.
She moved, then, along a narrow path through the woodland belt that separated the house grounds from the fields. It wasn’t until a low-hanging branch slapped across her chest that she blinked her reverie away and saw up ahead and to the left a man on horseback waiting at the edge of a small clearing. She frowned, tensed, was ready to call out when she realized it was David. He was watching something, and taking great pains not to be seen. Rather than disturb him, she slid out of her saddle and wrapped the reins quickly around the arms of a shrub, moving off the path onto a smaller, narrower one until, when she was several yards away, David stiffened and turned and saw her. He lifted a hand as though to wave her back, then dropped it in resignation and moved his gaze back.
A moment later she was beside him, puzzled, smiling, her mouth open for a question until she eased aside a pine bough and saw what he’d discovered.
The clearing was veiled in shadow, willows providing the barrier against daylight, thorned shrubs barring easy passage from the outside. The ground had been clumsily harvested of annoying small plants, was blanketed in low, rich grass and scattered beds of soft moss. And on this bed lay Alice and Judah; they were naked, their clothes scattered about them as though torn from their bodies in a mindless frenzy. Their bodies were covered with perspiration that picked up loose blades of grass, small clods of earth, and shone like a covering of diamonds. They were silent. Shades of their brown flesh contrasted and complemented as they clung to each other like burrs, like thorns. A low moan suddenly drifted from Alice’s lips, and she bared her teeth to sink them gently into Judah’s shoulder, her thighs wrapping tightly around his waist as she directed him to satiate her lust.
Cass was struck dumb for a moment, unaware of what she was doing until David’s horse shied at something invisible and brushed against her hip. She blinked rapidly then, and backed away, one hand tugging at David’s trouser leg to snap him out of the seeming trance he’d fallen into.
She felt guilt, embarrassment, a brief and unreasonable flood of anger. She fairly ran back to the roan and vaulted into the saddle, yanked the reins hard and turned the animal around. She waited for David, scowling at him fiercely as his own mount fell into step beside hers.
“How could you!” she said, her voice hoarse, an odd tide of warmth sweeping across her stomach.
“It was an accident, damn it,” he said. His attitude was plain; he didn’t know whether to be ashamed or furious, especially now that Cass had shown up. “I heard the noise and thought it was some of our visitors again.”
“How long were you there?”
He didn’t answer.
They rode into the yard amid a flurry of chickens, once again escaped from the roosts Amos had built for them, who protested loudly. They were shooed away by Melody, who came racing out of the kitchen to take care of the horses.
“Is Mrs. Vessler up yet?” Cass asked the small black girl, nearly fifteen and looking ten.
“No ma’am,” she said with a quick jerk of her head. “She ain’t been down since the misery got her las’ night.”
Misery, Cass thought sourly, but she managed not to look at David, who was teasing Melody about how young she looked.
“Well, it ain’t my fault, Mister,” she piped as she led the horses toward the stable. “Mam says it’s ’cause I ain’t got no worries. Gonna look like this here when I’m old an’ forty.”
“You look like that when you’re old and forty,” David laughed, “and you’ll never get yourself a man, young lady.”
“Oh, I ain’t worried ’bout that neither,” she called back. “They come ’round by ‘a’ by. They always do.”
David shook his head, brushed a hand through his hair, and followed Cass around the side of the house to the porch where she trailed her hand slowly along the railing. She’d barely listened to the banter floating about her, trying desperately to banish the image of Alice’s lovemaking with Judah and the sounds that accompanied it. What had David once said to her? In bed with a ghost. She shuddered and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Cass,” he said softly, contritely, “I’m … well, I’m sorry about what happened out there. I—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she snapped. “What they do is their business, not ours.” She walked away quickly, entered the house through the front door, and stood uncertainly in the middle of the hall. David came in behind her, still mumbling his apologies. She felt him behind her; she could smell the sweat of his work and his anger.
“David,” she said then, “I’ve been after Amos for days to fix the window in my room. It’s still jammed, and I’m baking at night. Would you mind?”
He gave a soundless sigh and brushed past her to the stairs. As he climbed, she watched him strip off his jacket and fling it over one shoulder, scratching idly at the small of his back. The city was gone from him now, she thought as she followed several paces behind. The softness of his hands, the slight traces of fat around his jaw and cheeks were gone along with the marks of his youthful clumsiness that had brightened the offices of Cavendish and Roe.
Judah … Alice … bucking …
She stood on the threshold and leaned against the jamb, watching as he crossed the room and glared at the window overlooking the gardens. The drapes had been thrown back and the sun was glaring in, and he was a stark black figure with edges blurred by the glare. The window frames had swollen slightly during the winter rains, and the windows would open out only a few inches before jamming. David grabbed the curved iron latches and shoved hard. The screech of wood against wood was doubled by the closeness of the warm room.
“Damn … things … won’t let … go!” he muttered, putting one knee on the sill and leaning stiffly into the window.
“David, for God’s sake be careful!”
She took one step into the room and, without thinking, drew the door shut behind her.
David shook his head. “I don’t know, Cass. Have to get the plane from Amos, I suspect.”
Perspiration beaded across her forehead, matting her hair to her skin. She plucked at her shirt just as David turned around.
Judah … Alice … oblivious …
She felt his eyes travel slowly down her chest, felt the cotton press wetly to her figure. He gestured weakly back toward the panes, gave her a half-smile that sobered when he looked over her shoulder at the door.
“Cass …”
The heat, the room … Alice and Judah … she lifted one hand and undid the top button of her shirt, the second, the third, folded the material back and rested her palm on her breasts. The blood pounded, pushing, racing, and she did not move when he stepped toward her; she only fixed her eyes on his and waited.
As though they were circling in an underwater cavern, the light was diffused, the silence total.
He reached out—faster, she thought, faster!—and took her hand away, swallowed, and pulled the shirt from her waistband, easing it down over her shoulders onto the floor. He gripped the binding that held her breasts and pulled it away. It fluttered into the shadows beyond the broad slant of sunlight, disturbing the dust that danced at its passing. Then he knelt and put a hand behind her knee, bent it, lifted the leg and slid off the boot. He did the same with the other. Warm fingers at the belt, the buckle—for God’s sake, she thought—his palms flat against her hips as he slid the trousers down, and away.
Touch me! she screamed silently.
His finger burned as it touched the hollow of her neck and coasted downward, and she arched her back suddenly to force a breast against his palm, her head lifted slightly, her mouth open, her lips gleaming. He kissed her softly and held her loosely while her fingers passed over each of his buttons, his buckles, soon stripping him so she could fling herself against him and feel the fire that made her ache. She gasped when she felt his hardness against her leg. She worked her lips to feel his teeth, to admit the flame of his tongue’s probing that made her want to bite down, hard, to taste every part of him including his blood. Her hands laced into his hair while his swept down her spine to settle on her buttocks and pull her closer. In the heat. In the light. Until she gently pushed him away and hurried to the window to draw the drapes and plunge them into dusk.
Ghost and shadow, they moved to the bed from opposite sides and knelt on the mattress. She waited impatiently, her breathing coming hard now as her tongue flicked rapidly over her lips, as his fingers pushed into the firm flesh of her breasts and turned her, lay her down.
Then the fire exploded; she could no longer dam the sparks that ignited her. She grabbed him and yanked him down, her mouth open to his while he entered her roughly and drew from her throat a muffled scream. And another. And another, until he groaned and lay over her, his right hand tracing the line of her side to her waist, to her arm, shifting so that he could drift across her stomach. His lips followed immediately, and Cass wondered where the ice had come from, where the shivers had been born that made her tremble, made her legs jump as though they had lives of their own, made her breasts ache when he left them and ache when he returned.
She tasted the salt of his sweat and grimaced fiercely. She could not stop her hips from rising, twisting, tempting him as he completed the circuit of her flesh and began again; tempting him as he filled her eyes with swirls of color laced in red …
They lay side by side staring at the ceiling. Her mouth was open in a grin as she gulped for air, her arms helpless on the mattress, her chest rising and falling as though she’d run around the world. She did not look at him. That she could feel the pressing of his leg against her was enough, for the moment, to keep her tied to the dream. Slowly, as though from behind a shifting curtain, the sounds returned: faint calls from the livestock, a distant woman’s laugh, singing as Melody and Rachel brought hampers of food out to the fields, a jay arguing with itself in a nearby tree. The rustle of the drapes as the breeze sought to enter.
Cass turned her head and looked to the wall.
She thought then: you’re no better than Alice, you simpleminded woman. What happened to your holy concern for Melissa? Where’s your platform now, Cassandra, to point the finger and damn?
But her life could not be Riverrun to the exclusion of all else; she could not humanly set herself up as more than human. But she would have to be cautious. What she had given herself was a release from a chastity she hadn’t realized she had imposed, but she would have to impose it again before she became little more than a wanton. If she escaped from this moment without complications, she would be lucky—extremely lucky. She would have to be stronger now, far more aware than she’d ever been.
She felt him shift and roll onto his side. She closed her eyes. A finger touched her hip and moved over her stomach. She willed herself to stillness while it trailed between her flattened breasts, around them, over them, lifted them into a palm and massaged them gently. Her lips tightened. She felt a tongue at her shoulder, his breath against her cheek and her sweat-matted hair.
Enough, she thought, but she was unable to speak, and was lost once again in the touch, in the heat.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I
don’t care what you think, m’dear,” David said as he strode angrily toward the door. “The man is not welcome on this property, and I’ll see to it that he’s taken care of immediately.”
Cass watched him storm out onto the porch, then spun on her heel and ran back to the kitchen. Not ten minutes ago, Amos had come riding hard up the lane, his face nearly as pale as his aging hair. He had been, he said, coming back from Meridine after arranging for some salt to be delivered to the plantation when he had come across a slow-moving trap heading in this direction. It carried only one rider, but the old black recognized him from Judah’s description: Gerald Forrester. David, who had been standing at the head of the stairs, overheard the conversation and instantly lost his temper.
“But for God’s sake, after the last time, what can he possibly do to us?” she’d said, more to assuage her own sudden flaring of doubt than to stop his highhanded takeover of the situation.
“Enough,” David said.
“It won’t hurt to be civil,” she said. “After what we—what Judah did to his face, he can’t—”
David exploded, slapping his hand hard against his leg and sending her into a shocked, worried silence. Now, as she darted through the kitchen and out the back door, she regretted more than ever having taken him to her bed. It made no difference what the reasons had been, and it made no difference that she’d scarcely been able to look Melissa in the eye since; David had taken the incident far too seriously. Having breached the sanctity of her body—and despite the fact that it was primarily her doing, not his—he had taken it upon himself to insinuate his presence into as much of Riverrun’s daily life as he could. He had grown a shell of arrogance and propriety that Cass did not understand or recognize until it was too late. Since then, they had done little else but argue whenever their paths crossed.