“A fraud, am I? What about you, brat? You with your men’s clothes, your hair like a witch’s straggling down your back. You look like one of those hooligans who throw rocks at windows over at Fells Point. No, maybe you’re not a fraud at all. Maybe your father’s wrong. You’re only a female because your body makes you aware of it once a month.” He ignored her snarl. “So tell me, what were you doing at my sister’s party tonight?”
She was as silent as the dark clouds overhead.
“Well? Don’t you have an answer? Is it something outrageous?”
She twitched and he continued to push. “I’ll just bet I know why you were there. You were looking at all the men. Perhaps you were trying to find one close to your size so you could go to his house, break in, and steal some of his clothes. The good Lord knows your mother wouldn’t let you buy men’s clothes. That’s it, isn’t it, Jessie?”
He’d gotten her. She’d sworn she wouldn’t let him get to her, but he had. He always did, when he set out to. She twisted around in her saddle and shrieked at him, “I wanted to see you, damn you to hell, James Wyndham!”
She was trembling now, knowing she’d just opened herself to utter devastation. She felt raw and exposed. She waited for the blow. And waited some more.
The blow didn’t come. Instead, James said, “This is very strange, brat. Why did you want to see me? Is it because Glenda is after my poor male self and you want to make sure I’m good enough for her? You want to make sure I won’t beat her if I marry her? You saw me staring at those breasts of hers that she displays at every opportunity and wanted to make certain I’d manage to restrain myself?”
She could but stare at him. He hadn’t ground her into dust with mockery, but he’d hurt her more than even she could begin to imagine at the moment. He was a man; that was it. A man and thus he was as dull witted and as obtuse as her mother’s pug, Pretty Boy, whom Jessie called Halfwit whenever her mother wasn’t around.
She continued to stare at him and James said, frowning at her, “Well? It’s Glenda, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s it. I’m going home, James. You needn’t come any farther with me. Good night.”
She clicked Benjie forward. To her relief, James didn’t come after her again. She wanted to look back, but she forced herself not to.
James wondered, as he rode Lilac toward Marathon farm, why he’d come after her. His sister would be unhappy with him that he’d left so early. Giff would tease him and poke him in the ribs, all sly and obnoxious, wondering if he’d gone to see someone special. Like Connie Maxwell, who hadn’t been in attendance this evening. James could have told him that Connie’s son was visiting her from Harvard and thus the two of them would wait until Danny returned to school.
A raindrop landed on his nose. Damnation. He clicked Lilac forward, and she, hating rain more than exerting herself, ran like the rising wind toward her stable.
If Jessie was concerned he would make a good husband for her sister, then people must think he was being particular in his attentions to her. He hadn’t been; he knew it. He didn’t like Glenda. She made him nervous because her right hand played over him whenever they danced. She annoyed him with her downcast eyes and her talk of seeing beautiful England, in the spring, in the summer, even in the winter, it didn’t matter to Glenda. To hear her recite poetry had constituted the most painful twenty-two minutes of his life. He shuddered at the thought of having to sit still while she played the harp.
He urged Lilac to go faster. When he reached the house, he was soaked to the skin, in a bad mood, half afraid that Glenda Warfield was on his heels, and ready to lash out at anyone who crossed him.
He was met by pandemonium.
Oslow and ten stable lads were pacing around, oblivious of the rain, obviously waiting for him. Old Bess was holding a large, black skillet. To protect whom? Thomas was standing in the open doorway, looking stately, his arms crossed over his chest. Even he looked ready for action. Beneath the shelter of the front overhang stood a very angry Allen Belmonde. It seemed someone had stolen Sweet Susie from the paddock while James had been at the Poppleton party. Allen was here because he had ridden directly to Marathon when one of James’s stable lads had come to the party to fetch James and found only Allen.
This, James thought, as he was surrounded by shouting stable lads and a furiously cursing Allen Belmonde, was going to be a fine end to his evening.
5
JESSIE’S HAT, A long-ago gift from her father, kept most of the rain off her face, but the rest of her quickly became wetter than the moss beneath Ezekiel’s Waterfall.
She rode with her head down, feeling two parts miserable and one part angry. Damn James anyway.
But damn him for what? What had he done? Nothing, and that’s why she was damning him.
When she heard the neighs and hoofbeats of several horses coming toward her, she pulled up Benjie. “It’s nearly midnight. Who the devil is out in this wretched rain besides me?”
Then she heard men’s voices. They were arguing, cursing the rain, cursing the foul-up with their partners, cursing the mare who was teasing the horse Billy was riding.
Billy was yelling, “The damn bloody mare’s still in heat. Damn ye, stay away from me poor old boy! He’s too old fer the likes o’ ye and yer blood is blue besides, not all mottled and common like my ole boy here.”
What damned mare?
“Shut yer trap, Billy,” the other man yelled back. “Move yer horse, or we’ll be in for it. Jest look, both of them want to mate here, in the road, in all this rain. Damned buggers.”
Jessie heard a horse scream, then the man, Billy, scream even louder. She heard a wet thud. His horse must have thrown him to get to the mare.
She clicked Benjie forward, tugging him to the grass-edge of the road. She came around a bend, pulling him quickly to a halt.
There was Sweet Susie, butting against a horse whose rider was sitting in the middle of the road, wet and muddy and cursing. The horse—the common one that was Billy’s—was obligingly trying to mount her.