She’d poked her chin a good three inches in the air. He lightly punched her chin, grinning. “You look beautiful. I like your gown. Is it one of the Duchess’s?”
“Yes. Maggie took a few tucks here and there. She also washed my hair. It doesn’t look too bad, does it, James?”
He hated that ridiculous doubt in her voice. “The streamers are even saluting.” She didn’t look bad for a woman who was clutching Badger’s bread in one hand. He watched her take a bite then push the rest of it down into her pocket. He tossed Bellini’s reins to one of the stable lads, leaned over to kiss his wife’s mouth, and said quietly, “You are my wife. You are now independent of your family. Do you understand? Once we get all this family business over with, once we get furnishings ordered for the house, once everyone is ready to face a ship again, then we’ll go to Ocracoke and get Mr. Tom out of your mind and out of our lives.”
“Yes. The Duchess said the same thing, both about Mr. Tom and about my parents. She told me not to forget I was now a married lady and free of them or she’d write a ditty about me I wouldn’t like.”
“Good for her. Let’s go.” He lifted her down from the carriage, brought her close to him, and said, “Oslow grinned like a fool when I told him we were married. Your father will do the same.”
Portia Warfield pushed past Polly, the black girl in her floppy mop cap who answered the door. “Well,” she said, eyeing her daughter. In truth she could think of nothing more to say because her wayward daughter didn’t look at all as she had when she left Baltimore nearly four months before. She looked elegant. It was disconcerting. It was infuriating.
“I know all about this illicit marriage of yours, Jessie Warfield. James, your mother visited me this morning and told me of this outrage. However, the reason for her outrage is quite different from mine. You don’t look right, Jessie. You don’t look how you’re supposed to look, the way you’ve looked since you were a child. It doesn’t suit you, all this silly finery, your hair all done up like a loose fem-ale’s. You will change everything immediately. You will become yourself again. I order you to do as I say.”
“I can’t, Mama,” Jessie said, squeezing closer to James.
“May we come in, ma’am? Jessie would like to sit down. The voyage was long, and she’s still tired.”
“You might as well. Poor Glenda is prostrate, has been for weeks and weeks. Now today she discovers that you stole away the man she was going to marry, Jessie. She is a shadow of her former self. She is miserable, the poor pet. She barely ate her breakfast.”
“I thought Mrs. Wyndham came here to tell you of our marriage,” Jessie said, confused. “Surely she didn’t come before breakfast?”
“Don’t be smart, miss. Your poor sister didn’t sleep well last night. She probably had a premonition of what treachery was to come. She didn’t have her breakfast, indeed her lunch as well, until after noon, and that is when James’s mother came. You might as well sit down. I will have your poor father fetched from the stables.”
“Is something wrong with Papa?” Jessie asked, thoroughly alarmed.
“Don’t be a fool.” Mrs. Warfield swept from the parlor. James turned to Jessie and grinned. “She puts on as fine a performance as does my precious mother. Don’t heed her, Jessie.”
Jessie ran her tongue over her lips. “I’ll try,” she said. “But she just keeps battering at you. It’s hard to get away from it.”
“Here, eat a bit of Badger’s bread.”
She did and was still chewing slowly when her father strode into the room, shouting with pleasure when he saw the two of them. “Ah, my boy, you married my little girl. A fine day it is for me. Jessie, goodness, girl, whatever have you done to yourself? You look like a princess, that’s it, a princess, with that yellow gown and your hair all shiny and stylish. Just look at those cute little curls.
“And here’s your mother again. Well, we can’t have everything perfect, can we? My dear, can you have some tea fetched? Perhaps some cakes as well?” He waited until his wife had left the parlor, then hugged his daughter and shook hands with his new son-in-law. He held both their hands as he said, “You’
ve pleased me more than I can say. I don’t know if either of you realizes it yet, but you really are well suited for each other.”
“I surely hope so, Papa, since James has gotten me pregnant.”
“What? You’re with child? Now? But you’ve only been married a matter of short months, just a summertime of months, not more than three months and you’re already pregnant? Oh goodness, I’m going to be a grandfather?”
“Papa, I’m going to be ill.”
It was nearly an hour later when Jessie was once again seated next to her husband in her mother’s parlor, her hair brushed, her gown straightened. She was still too pale even after she’d pinched her cheeks, but her stomach had settled. James had fed her weak tea and Badger’s bread until she was lying all relaxed on her old bed.
“When is my grandson going to be born?” her father asked immediately, rubbing his hands together, looking more excited, his wife thought, as she stared at him, than he had when she’d been pregnant with their first. Damn him. Silly old man. So pleased he was when he knew that James should have married sweet Glenda, not her hoyden sister.
“Next April we think,” James said.
Her mother stared at her with new eyes. Jessie, pregnant. It boggled the mind. For a very long time she’d been without anything to say. Now, she found her tongue, remembered her grievances, and said, “I doubt it will be a grandson, Oliver. If she’s this ill, it’s probably a girl. Another one in the family. It seems to be all the Warfields can breed.”
James said easily as he took Jessie’s limp hand, “I would be delighted to have half a dozen girls, ma’am, all of them with splendid red hair and Jessie’s beautiful green eyes.”
“She never before had splendid hair,” Mrs. Warfield said. “It’s her grandmother’s hair. Jessie was cursed with it just as her grandmother was also cursed, but at least her grandmother kept it hidden beneath all sorts of frightful caps and bonnets so no one would gape at her.”
At that moment, Glenda tottered into the room. She looked as pale as Jessie, her eyes red from weeping, her gown wrinkled. James rose and smiled at her. Her eyes fell immediately to his crotch.
27