The Storm (23 page)

“What do you think everyone's talking about?”

“Oh, the men are probably discussing their crops, the weather, politics, or the War.” Molly shrugged in a most ladylike way. “And the women are gleaning any kind of news they can about what's going on in the world, when they get through chatting about their husbands, kids, and problems on the farm. You'd think they'd compare recipes, since they spent all morning in the kitchen. But we have so few ingredients to work with, especially now with the War on, we usually just cook the same old dishes.”

“I certainly enjoyed the same old dishes, especially your apple pie and Mrs. Russell's chocolate one. I've eaten in some fancy restaurants, but home cooking like this beats it hands down. Oh, I'm keeping you from whatever you were about to do. I was looking for a quiet place.” She raised her quilt.

With a smile like sunrise, Molly said, “I've already visited with everyone I wanted to, and the singing won't start for a while. I'll show you a nice spot, if you'd like.”

“I'd love that.” Jaq shifted the quilt in her arms and gazed at the woods. The pines didn't look quite as foreboding as usual. In fact, she could hardly resist the lure of the path into their territory. She hoped she emerged without a scratch.

*

Molly led Jacqueline down the sandy path to a steep, pine-needle-cushioned hill. Thankfully the trees lowered the temperature, and a spring bubbled through pure white sand near the bottom of the slope.

“You'll never drink better water. Want to try it?” Molly asked.

“Sure. Let's kneel on my old quilt.”

Molly formed a cup with both hands and scooped up a drink. “Hmm, cool and sweet.” She reached for another handful, then turned to Jacqueline, beside her. “Perfect for such a hot afternoon.”

The look Jacqueline gave her, though, made her warmer than before she'd quenched her thirst. Another kind of thirst began to build.

After they bathed their faces and hands, she tried to slow her waltzing heart by saying, “The children come here and slide down that big hill. Let's walk a little farther for some peace and quiet.”

But her heart only danced faster when Jacqueline agreed. When they entered a small grove with a clearing in the middle, it fox-trotted.

“I like to come here alone sometimes, especially when Mother Russell makes me so mad I can't see straight.” She struggled to keep her voice calm and even. “The wind in the pines always soothes me, and I go back to the farm feeling like I've had a vacation.”

Jacqueline spread her quilt and patted a spot. “Sit here. You're not mad now, are you?”

She stretched out and gazed through the sheltering branches toward the blue sky. This was heaven—only her and Jacqueline, no chores and no one to scold her.

“No, not angry. Resigned, almost numb. I've tried to understand and forgive her and, believe me, burning my rolling pin is minor compared to other stunts she's pulled. I don't know what to do, but I can't live with her much longer. She eats at me like a cancer.”

Jacqueline gave her a sympathetic look. “I know. Eric doesn't affect me that way or I wouldn't be here. But I don't want to spend my life with him. I feel trapped too.”

She had an absurd urge to push back Jacqueline's bangs and check her wound, but she was afraid that if she touched Jacqueline she might not want to stop. The soft breeze threatened to lull her to sleep, yet she felt strangely on edge. Jacqueline lay next to her, close enough that if she turned just a hair and reached out, she could—“How did you meet Eric, Jacqueline?”

That was the only way she could think of to distract herself from her shimmying heart.

*

Molly's question about meeting Eric sucked Jaq back into the happy days before the War, before everyone began to cross the Channel and either didn't return or came back damaged or changed. She wanted to linger on those early times, spin them out to Molly, relive them, show her how she was before she went to France instead of the coward she was now.

“I met Eric in London. I lived there with my sister a few years before the War began.”

Sister Mary Therese invaded her mind. Would she ever forget her? She'd opened up so many new feelings. She'd tried to forget them, but right now they were springing to life. Bloody hell. She could probably seduce Molly with her adventures in a world she'd never known. Sister Mary had taught her how.

She could entrance Molly into a state of desire…No! Desire reminded her of quicksilver—here one minute, transformed the next. Or water. Boiling, it scalded, but then cooled and froze. Without Willie, her frozen longing for Sister Mary and Helen could have destroyed her. Willie had showed her sex without guilt, but that was impossible with Molly. Married, innocent, and trusting, Molly had taken care of her when she was hurt and helpless. She
could
control her desire for Molly, who would never know what she was missing and would grow old contentedly with her grandchildren.

She could merely entertain Molly, not involve her in the jaded world she'd discovered in Europe. Maybe she could remember herself as she was before then. If she were still that old self, Molly wouldn't shrink from her as she would when, and if, she told Molly who she actually was, what she did in France, and perhaps even about Willie.

She inched away from Molly, made her voice carefree. “Sorry. I got caught up in my own thoughts. It's a long story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

Molly's curls bounced as she nodded. “Oh yes. Your stories remind me of watching a picture show. Your stories are even better than a movie, though, because they're true.”

Her face flamed as she murmured her thanks and then rewound her mind.

Molly lay next to her on her patchwork quilt with a face that begged to be kissed as she described how she'd admired one woman who'd run away from home to drive an ambulance in France and sent her mother a one-word wire that said SAILING. More than tempted, Jaq reined herself in and tried to distract both of them by describing another woman she'd known.

Toupie Lowther had owned a motorcycle and driven a Peugeot, which Jaq envied. She had been organizing a group to go over to France and drive an ambulance, but Jaq had joined the WAACs before Toupie formed her unit.

Then Molly put her hands behind her head, a question in her eyes, and asked why she'd joined the WAACs.

When Jaq mentioned “In Flanders Fields,” Molly beamed. “Oh, yes. I read it in the paper and cried.”

Her reaction warmed Jaq. The little poem had inspired her to join, and now Molly's face shone with the same idealism she'd felt back then, though it hadn't lasted very long.

“It made me want to pick up that torch the poor men with failing hands were talking about,” Molly said.

“That's how I felt.” She blew out a sigh. “When I got to Europe, I promised myself I'd answer the dead soldiers' challenge to help fight the Germans.”

Then Jaq described the khaki jacket and skirt and tight-fitting cap she'd worn and how she'd envied the women who rode motorcycles because they got to wear tight khaki pants with boots laced over them.

Molly gazed at her with clear longing. “You've led such an exciting life. While you were in Europe, I was milking a cow and raising a child.”

If only she could take Molly to Europe after the War, introduce her to friends, show her the sights—damn it. She couldn't even think about it. It wouldn't do any good to wish for what neither of them could ever have.

She inched away from Molly again as she tried to describe what war was really like. But she'd intended to tell Molly how she met Eric. Her sister had introduced them because she thought Jaq would enjoy spending time with someone from the States.

A ray of sun hit her eyes and she shut them so she could concentrate on what she was trying to say. Her thoughts were jumbled and she was rambling and going into too much detail, but being so close to Molly affected her that way.

Molly loved Jacqueline even more because of the way she'd talked about that poem. She'd been so honorable and idealistic back then and still was, though going to war seemed to have made her lose touch with that side of herself a little.

When Jacqueline mentioned a woman called Marguerite Radclyffe Hall and some books she'd read about sex, Molly jerked to attention. No one said the word
sex
in polite company, but she tried to relax. Mama had taught her to listen first and judge later.

As Jacqueline talked, her dark eyes darted and flashed with life, and her pink-red lips, like a lush rose, drew Molly in. Molly wanted to finger those lips, pull them close to hers, see how they tasted.

Jaq talked about Marguerite's older-woman friend, Mabel, who'd had a lot of affairs, even with the future king of England.

That floored Molly. An affair with a future king? This sounded like a novel. She would never have even daydreamed about something so unbelievable.

As Jacqueline described Marguerite wooing yet being mothered by Mabel, Molly tried to pull herself away from the sight of Jacqueline's seductive lips and picture Mabel. She'd never known a woman who had affairs, at least to her knowledge. Her shoulders stiffened. But if Mabel had mothered Marguerite, she must have cared for her.

She tried to relax as she fixed her attention on Jacqueline's closed eyes and full lips with their Cupid's bow. Those luscious lips certainly made it difficult for Molly to breathe.

Then Jacqueline said something that riveted her. Marguerite and Mabel had become
lovers
. She tried to look nonchalant but grabbed hold of the quilt as if it were the side of a rocking boat on a stormy sea.

She gritted her teeth and grabbed a bigger piece of the quilt when Jacqueline described how Mabel wanted to tell everyone they were as much a couple as Lord and Lady Clarendon, her sister. She'd nicknamed Marguerite
John
, after her grandfather, and herself
Ladye
, to mock her sister.

Surely Jacqueline had made this up. But Jacqueline kept talking, far away in another world that Molly could barely imagine.

It turned out that Jacqueline's friends had nicknamed her too, but Molly had almost reached her limit. She needed to get back to the church. They expected her to play for the—

“Jaq.” That was what her English friends called her, and then Jacqueline said that if they ever visited any of her English friends, she would have to get used to that name.

Molly took a deep breath. Would it even be possible to visit any of them? Maybe someday when Patrick was grown and she'd saved every cent from teaching piano lessons, she might be able to…
No.
Jacqueline could leave any day now, and she would probably never see her again. Jacqueline had better, more interesting things to do than go anywhere with her.

Suddenly she quit feeling so panicky and thought about college. She
did
know a little about couples like Jacqueline had been describing. She relaxed her grip on the quilt a fraction. But her two teachers would
never
have been that open about their special friendship. In public they always acted like nothing more than companions.

She needed more time to absorb all this information, so she said, “Do you want to hear something strange?”

“After all this, you can tell me almost anything.”

“My real name is Marguerite, though everybody has always called me Molly. But isn't it odd that two women can have the same birth name and one be nicknamed John and the other Molly? A name makes all the difference, doesn't it?” Her remark seemed to please Jacqueline, so she lessened her grip even more.

“If I called you Marguerite and you called me Jaq, would that change how we feel about each other?” But as soon as the words left Jacqueline's lips, she bit them and blushed.

How would it feel to be Marguerite, a sexy Frenchwoman who could stir the heart of a suitor without even trying? She let go of the quilt. What a contrast to Molly the milkmaid and pianist, who could stir only her mother-in-law, usually not in a pleasant way.

She decided to experiment.

“Jaq.” She practically purred. “If I were your Marguerite, would you give me flowers and jewelry, and write poems for me?”

Jacqueline blushed and stared at her like she had that first Sunday in church. Then she moved nearer and lowered her head alarmingly close.

She instinctively pulled back, and Jacqueline retreated to the other side of the quilt. She didn't know whether she wanted Jacqueline or Jaq by her side.

She sat as still as if the sun had turned to ice. She wanted Jacqueline, or Jaq, or whatever she decided to call her as near as she was when Marguerite had summoned her. She wanted to hear her sharp intake of breath again, to let those lips come closer until they relieved the pressure building in her own.

But she still needed time. She was about to change her life forever—do something even more radical than vote. Something shimmered between them like heat rising from hard-packed earth during a drought and drew her to Jacqueline, like parched earth calling out for water.

Jacqueline seemed to read her mind because she propped her head on one elbow and continued to talk about John and Ladye, Molly's blood pounding so loud in her ears that she missed a lot. Jacqueline really did know some important people, so why would she waste her time talking to her? She flinched at her own insignificance, but Jacqueline apparently didn't notice. And when Jacqueline later asked if she was tired of hearing her ramble, she told her not to stop. In fact, she almost called her Jaq, just for fun, but their little charade earlier had scared her.

Then Jacqueline described how John had met another woman, and when Ladye had later died, John felt so guilty about taking up with the other woman that she and her new lover went to séances, and John was certain she had contacted Ladye.

Molly sat up, brought her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them in a most unladylike fashion. Her world seemed tiny. How shocking that Jacqueline mentioned the word sex so casually, and John went to séances. She wanted to know more. Papa probably wouldn't approve of such activities, but Mama was a lot more open-minded than Papa, so she guessed she took after her.