Corbin's Fancy (15 page)

She climbed the steps, weary to the depths of her soul, and rapped disconsolately at the door. There would be no jobs in Colterville, that much was clear, but perhaps she could get train passage out of town without too much delay. In the meantime, she would take a room, have a bath, try to sleep, and try
not
to think about what Jeff and Jewel Stroble were probably doing.

A heavy woman came to the door and assessed Fancy with swift, narrowed eyes. “You travelin’ folk?” she demanded, looking wary.

Fancy squared her shoulders. “Please, ma’am—when does the next train leave?”

The woman relaxed a little, though she made a point of inspecting Fancy’s star-spangled dress, her props, and her rabbit. “Tomorrow, if you’re going east—next
day after if it be west. Rooms are twenty-five cents the night and you can’t have that critter in there.”

Fancy dared to hope a little. “I can rent a room, then?”

“Cash in advance, missy. And if you want a bath and supper, it’s fifteen cents more.”

Fancy nodded. She had just over three dollars and that decided her on going east. It would save her one night’s room rent. “Thank you,” she said, and then, on orders from the woman, she put Hershel in the woodshed around back, giving him some dandelion greens and a jar lid full of water.

Her room was on the second floor and hot as the devil’s breath, even though the window was open. Flies buzzed in the close, musty air and crawled on the narrow bed.

Resigned, Fancy closed the window.

“I’d be for bathin’ when it’s cooler, were I you,” said the proprietress. There was a stain on the bodice of her colorless calico dress and she scratched inelegantly at her protruding middle.

Fancy had a headache and the beginnings of a sour stomach. “Yes,” she agreed, mostly to get rid of the odious woman. “I believe you’re right.”

“Forty cents,” she reminded Fancy.

Fancy counted out two dimes and four nickels and placed them in the woman’s outstretched hand. When she was alone, she immediately checked the bedding and the seams of the mattress for cooties.

Remarkably, the bed was clean. She sighed and sat down on it, bending to unfasten her high-button shoes. It was going to be a long night, she reflected as she lay down to rest, and, without Jeff, a long lifetime.

But she was not going to think about Jeff Corbin, not
ever again. If there were to be any sanity for her, she would have to forget him once and for all. Write him off, like a fizzled magic trick.

Lying back on pillows that smelled faintly of a man’s hair oil, Fancy tried to make plans for the future. She would head east, on the next train—to Spokane, maybe. It was a growing city, in the center of the wheat country, and bound to offer some sort of opportunity.

She could wait tables there, or perhaps work as a servant in a fine home. Like Jeff’s?

Fancy turned over fitfully, trying to shut out thoughts of Jeff. She wouldn’t encounter him again, not in a city as large as Spokane—he probably wouldn’t even go there now, for that matter. He’d be too busy with Jewel.

A tear squeezed past Fancy’s squenched-shut eyelashes to slide, tickling, down her face. Jewel. Jeff. Their images, entwined and naked, tortured her, despite her resolve not to consider them. Were they making love on those dear, lumpy, leaf-littered blankets by the stream? Were they bathing each other, laughing and cold, in the water?

Fancy turned her face to the pillow and gave a muffled howl of protest and hurt. For the first time, it occurred to her that Eudora might have been right. Maybe she shouldn’t have left; maybe she should have stayed and explained to Jeff that she’d spoken in angry haste—that she hadn’t married him for his money but because she loved him and hoped that, someday, he would love her, too.

But she couldn’t have done that. He would have laughed at her.

Fancy cried until her throat ached and then fell into a fitful sleep. When she awoke, there were shadows
creeping across the dusty board floor and someone was knocking impatiently at the door. Stumbling a little, disoriented and headachy, she made her way across the tiny room and released the bolt. Probably, the proprietress had brought her bath water.

She was only half-right. Her bath water was being delivered, steaming in two large kettles, but its bearer was Jeff.

“Madame,” he said with a suave bow, stepping around her and into the room before she could recover enough to slam the door.

“Get out,” she managed impotently, as he set the kettles down on the floor and assessed her with bold blue eyes.

“I will. I’ve got two more kettles and a tub to carry up,” he said as though they had never quarreled. As though he had not spent the afternoon tumbling in the grass with Miss Jewel Stroble.

“Thank you, but I’d rather you left entirely,” Fancy declined with remarkable dignity.

At that moment, the proprietress of the seedy little railroad roominghouse arrived, carrying a huge, round tub and another kettle of water. She gave Jeff a beaming smile. As she was leaving the room, she pointed out that towels and a new bar of soap could be found under the washstand.

“I didn’t think anyone could make that woman smile like that,” marveled Fancy, momentarily distracted. “Not even you.”

Jeff shrugged with feigned humility. “I try to be humble,” he demurred.

“You have never tried to be humble in your life!” countered Fancy furiously, coloring now. “Get out of my room!”

He simply folded his arms. “Our room, dear.”

Mocking him, Fancy folded her arms, too. Since she was incapable of brute force, there was only one other way of getting rid of Jeff Corbin, and she was desperate enough to make use of it. “I told you that I only married you for your money,” she said.

Jeff arched one butternut eyebrow. “And I told you that I intend to have my money’s worth,” he replied. And then, cool as a cucumber picked in the shade, he closed and bolted the door and began filling Fancy’s tub with clean, singularly inviting water.

“Take your bath,” he said finally, sitting down on the edge of the bed in the attitude of a spectator.

“You’ll have to leave first.”

“That water will ice over before I do that.”

“Fiend!”

He lay back on the bed, stretching his long frame out with a hearty sigh, cupping his hands under the back of his head. “I could use a little sleep before we go to dinner,” he said.

“I’ve made my own arrangements for dinner, thank you very much!” sputtered Fancy, glaring at him.

He closed his eyes and, despite her scathing gaze, he did not stir again. After several minutes, he snored.

Fancy didn’t trust him, but the bath water was growing colder by the moment, and everything within her craved its comfort and solace. She stepped closer to the bed and peered into Jeff’s face. “Are you asleep?” she whispered hopefully.

Breathing deeply and evenly, he seemed to be in genuine repose. As if to prove this, he snored again.

Fancy made haste to get out of her dress and underthings and into the bath water. When she looked in the direction of the impossibly narrow bed, she saw
that Jeff was watching her, his head propped up on one hand.

“You are beautiful, Frances Corbin,” he said, unperturbed, apparently, by his own deceitfulness.

Fancy sank deep enough to cover her breasts. “My name is not Frances Corbin, you hateful man!” she bit out, taking up the soap and lathering it.

Jeff only laughed.

“What are you doing here, anyway? Is Jewel indisposed?”

“I think she’s milking a cow or something.”

Fancy stretched one leg out and covered it with soap suds. “How fitting,” she said.

“How are we both going to sleep in this bed? It isn’t long enough for me, let alone wide enough for both of us.”

“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Corbin.
We
are not going to sleep in that bed—I am.”

Jeff grinned and, with that audacity so peculiar to him, came to kneel beside Fancy’s tub. He took the soap and sponge from her and began to methodically scrub her back. “You’re probably right,” he conceded. “I doubt that we’ll sleep.”

Fancy closed her eyes, trying not to succumb to the feelings spawned by the totally innocent washing. “Why are you here?”

“Because my wife is here,” he answered, and set aside the sponge and soap for a moment to repin her tumbling hair.

“Am I really your wife, Jeff?” she dared to ask after a very long time. “Was that ceremony real?”

“Absolutely.”

“But your family—”

“My family didn’t marry you, Fancy. I did.”

She couldn’t argue with him anymore, not tonight, for she had neither the strength nor the spirit to prevail. She said nothing at all, in fact, as he lifted her effortlessly to her feet and completed the bathing process, leaving no part of her unattended.

Just when Fancy was ready for him to make slow, sweet love to her—yes, in spite of everything, she wanted that—he swatted her bottom, handed her the towel, and said, “Get out of there. I want a turn.”

Fancy watched in amazement as he stripped off the clothes he’d been wearing ever since he arrived at the carnival camp and stepped into the tub she had just left. He sang a bawdy saloon song as he washed, ignoring his startled wife completely.

Befuddled, Fancy dressed herself in her spare camisole and drawers, then put on her new lawn dress. She was brushing out her hair before a cracked little mirror affixed to the wall when Jeff finished his bath and took up her discarded towel to dry himself.

“Hurry up,” he said, for all the world like a longtime husband. “I’m hungry.”

Fancy shrugged. “You can’t very well eat naked,” she observed, putting the finishing touches on her coiffure.

“I can do almost anything naked,” he replied, in sunny tones, as he dressed again. “In fact, some of my favorite activities are things that I do naked—”

Color ached in Fancy’s cheeks, even though she knew that he was teasing her, deliberately maneuvering her into just such a reaction. “Preferably with bosomy milkmaids,” she declared acidly.

Jeff laughed, his shirt still gaping open to reveal a broad expanse of muscular midriff matted in a golden
tracery. “Next time you shop for a husband, my love, you might want to be a bit more choosey.”

“I might want to be a
lot
more choosey!” snapped Fancy, too angry to tell him the truth. Let him go on believing that she’d married him because he was wealthy. What did it matter?

He sat down on the edge of the bed and, in a lightning-quick motion, he caught Fancy’s hand and pulled her onto his lap so that she was straddling his thighs and looking away from him. “I do have my redeeming virtues,” he breathed against the bare, tingling flesh along her neck.

“I have yet to see them!” hissed Fancy, scrambling to rise. But he held her fast, his hands sliding up to cup her breasts in a bold display of mastery.

“Let me refresh your memory,” he enjoined gruffly. And then he undid the buttons at the back of Fancy’s dress and drew downward on the front, causing her breasts to spill out, covered just to mid-nipple by her camisole. This, too, was easily removed.

“Jeff,” Fancy choked out, in dazed protest.

He was stroking her, at once soothing her and setting her afire. “Is it really such a bad bargain, Fancy?”

“Jeff, I didn’t mean—I don’t think—”

“Hmmm?” He turned her with idle strength so that she was lying on the narrow bed, looking up at him. And then he lifted her skirts.

Fancy struggled. “No—not now—you’ve got to listen—”

“I have something else in mind.” He made short work of her drawers, then knelt on the floor. She could not close her legs for he was blocking them with his body.

A jolt shot through Fancy as he parted and then tasted her. “Damn you—is this—what you did to Jewel?” she rasped, already caught up in sweet anguish.

“No. But it is sure as hell what I’m doing to you, lady.” He enjoyed her for a while, idly, and then went on, his strong hands pressing her knees farther and farther apart. “Furthermore, I intend to go on doing it. In carriages, on trains, wherever the mood strikes. And when I do this”—he paused, running the fingers of one hand across his lips—“it means that I plan to exercise this particular pleasure at the first opportunity.”

“That is”—Jeff came back to her, with savage hunger, and Fancy had to pause to cry out—“despicable!”

“Nevertheless,” he replied presently between kisses that made her writhe and toss on the narrow little bed, “that’s the way things are, Mrs. Corbin. God, you are a sweet—delicious—little morsel—”

“Oooh,” Fancy cried, shuddering even as her back arched in a spasmodic, furious surrender. Again and again her body buckled, and it was a very long time before Jeff allowed her to descend to that little room again.

They ate their supper alone in a little café down the street. There were dusty potted palms everywhere, and the windows were fly-speckled, but the food was surprisingly good. Fancy devoured her Swiss steak, mashed potatoes, and peas, not only because she was hungry but because it gave her a brief respite from all the contradictory thoughts and emotions inspired by the man across the table from her.

“I didn’t notice this place when I arrived,” she said over strong coffee and peach pie.

Jeff grinned. “You were too full of righteous wrath to
look around you, no doubt,” he replied. “What a pity that it was all unfounded.”

“You went off into the bushes with Jewel Stroble!” Fancy blurted. Of course, the sole waiter’s attention was immediately drawn by this unfortunate remark.

“Must you shout the scandalous details to the world?” retorted Jeff, not seeming particularly upset. “And I did not ‘go into the bushes’ with Jewel Stroble.”

“You did so! I saw you!”

“I meant, you thick-headed little wench, that I did not figuratively—”

“Figuratively?!”

Jeff sighed, looking pained. “Damn it, I’m trying to say that we didn’t do anything there. I just wanted to make you mad, that’s all.”

Fancy was skeptical and wildly hopeful. “Then how come it took you so long to get here?” she demanded.

“Phineas was sick.”

The glorious rage Fancy was working up instantly deflated. “What? What’s the matter with him? What happened?”