Garters.htm (19 page)

She stared at him, questioning and a little frightened.

"Have you no shame at all?" he asked furiously. "You flaunt yourself before me like a hussy."

"I am not flaunting myself," Esme defended herself, her cheeks blazing.

"Then what
are
you doing?" His voice was angry and dripping with sarcasm.

"I'm straightening my stockings," she explained haughtily and with a good deal more justification than she felt.

"I know you are straightening your stockings," Cleav told her. "I've watched you do it a half dozen times."

"Well, you should keep your eyes to yourself."

"If I did, you'd be very disappointed."

"Oh!" Esme felt the sting of the words as if they were a slap.

"I've seen more than I care to of those pitiful stockings of yours, and I'd like to request, if you think you can manage it, that you keep your legs decently covered in my presence."

Even knowing she was in the wrong, Esme's chin was high. She would not allow herself to be cowed by Cleav's boorish behavior. "I suppose you would have me just let my stockings sag to the floor until they trip me and I fall flat on my face!"

"Other women don't seem to suffer with that problem," he countered.

"Because other women have garters to hold their stockings up! Garters are not something that arrive in a charity box, and I'll have you know that I've certainly never had the selfish desire to spend good money buying such frivolities."

Cleav opened his mouth but couldn't think of a reply. He searched his, brain momentarily for a snappy comeback and then stormed across the room. Jerking open the second drawer down in the fabric and notions section, he grabbed the first thing that came to his attention.

Striding directly to Esme, he slapped what he had retrieved into her hand. "Here! Take them," he said.

Esme gazed at her hands in wonderment. Brand-new, never-been-worn, store-bought garters. They were pristine white, but sported tiny bows of baby's-blush pink.

"Just consider them a gift from me," Cleav said cynically. "And wear them for me
every
day."

Esme brought the beautiful scraps of dainty cloth up to her heart. Never in her life had she owned anything so beautiful, so feminine, so new.

Cleav might have tossed them to her on a whim, but for Esme they represented all that was fine and beautiful and civilized in the world. And they were given to her by the most wonderful, handsome, intelligent man any woman could ever dream of. She would wear them for him, every day. And each time she put them on, it would be as if he'd touched her flesh himself.

"Save to graces, Cleavis," she murmured. "They are beautiful." Tears welled up in her eyes until she could barely make out the beauty of the tiny pink bows. His expression was still as dark as a thundercloud, but she could no longer see it.

"Thank you, Cleavis," she managed to whisper with breathy excitement. "Thank you so very much."

The tears were now threatening to flow. Esme
wanted
to cry for joy, but not in front of him. She fled to the doorway, intending to run to the solitude of the woods with her treasured gift. Alone, with none to spy her sentiment, she could caress and kiss the pretty pink ribbons and model the feminine garments with none to see but herself and the woodchucks.

Rushing through the door, blinded by her tears, she ran smack dab into Pearly Beachum.

"Lord almighty!" Pearly exclaimed. "You pretty near knocked me down, girlie."

"Sorry," Esme answered, breathlessly, still unbalanced by the collision.

Pearly looked at her more closely.

"You crying, Esme?"

"Oh, no, ma'am," Esme assured her as the first of the welling teardrops took that inconvenient opportunity to dribble from the sides of her eyes.

"You
are
crying!" Pearly exclaimed. "Has something happened? Has
he
done something to you?"

"No, nothing's happened," Esme said, but brought the back of her hand up to wipe her eyes.

Mrs. Beachum saw a flash of pink and white within the young woman's grasp.

"What have you got there in your hands?"

The woman's voice sounded so suspicious, Esme immediately thought she was accusing her of stealing something.

"It's a gift from Mr. Rhy," she explained hurriedly.

Her curiosity unappeased, the older woman, a well-known busybody, grabbed Esme's hands and forced them open.

"Garters!" She nearly screamed the word. Pearly Beachum was clear shocked right down to her toes. "Cleavis Rhy gave you a pair of garters?"

It had rained all morning and the path up the mountain was soggy with mud, but Cleav took no notice. It was exactly the kind of day he expected it to be: morose, gray, and threatening. All his days had been like that lately. Ever since he'd heard Pearly Beachum screeching from the front door.

He'd hurried out to see what had happened. Mrs. Beachum had taken one look at him and slammed him beside the head with her silver-topped parasol. Then she'd put her arm protectively around Esme and had dragged the young woman away.

That was four days ago. The last time he had seen Esme Crabb, but far from the last time he'd heard about her. He'd heard little else.

"The people of this community will not tolerate such shenanigans," Brother Oswald had stated publicly. And Fat Blanchard had backed him up.

"Giving a decent woman a present of underwear is tantamount to a marriage proposal," he stated. "It always has been."

At first he'd thought he could ride out the storm. He would get himself respectably married to Miss Sophrona and eventually the talk would die down.

He owned the only general store for miles. Even those who disapproved of him would think twice about heading over the mountains to Russeliville just to buy coffee and sugar. It was simply a matter of time and the whole thing would be forgotten.

Unfortunately, he was wrong. …

When he went to speak with Miss Sophrona, the preacher had slammed the door in
his face. It was only his refusal to leave the parsonage porch that finally brought Reverend Tewksbury out with the word that Miss Sophrona had taken to her bed with such a malaise that her parents were worried for her health. The preacher made it crystal clear that as far as he and his family were concerned, the pink-and-white unmentionables that Esme Crabb had carried out of the store that day meant that Cleavis Rhy was now a married man.

The store remained empty, and his neighbors refused to speak to him. And his home was even worse. Eula Rhy put on her mourning complete with black satin shoes and a veil, claiming that she could never outlive the shame. Every few moments she would sniff daintily into a black lace hankie.

Only the fish continued to treat Cleav as they always had. He began to wonder if they had just not heard the gossip yet.

Slipping on the steep narrow slope, Cleav grasped a rhododendron vine as if it were a lifeline and managed to keep upright, but only just. He gave a smile that was devoid of humor.

"That's what I should do," he suggested sarcastically. "Falling face down in the mud would definitely make my new life as the local scoundrel absolutely complete."

In a normal week, Friday afternoon was certainly not the time for Cleav to be making a trip up the mountain, but he'd closed up the store. There was no reason to open it.Even Denny and Tyree set up their checker game under the oak tree across the road.

"You've got to own up to your responsibilities," Reverend Tewksbury had advised him. "You've danced to the tune, now you must pay the fiddler."

"I haven't danced… or anything else, for that matter, with Esme Crabb."

The preacher shook his head. "That's not the way it looks to this town." The older man folded his arms obstinately across his chest. "A decent girl must be treated decently. Giving a girl fancy drawers just ain't decent."

"Fancy drawers!" Cleav was incredulous. "I gave her a cheap pair of garters."

Reverend Tewksbury's expression was livid. "It's bad enough that you ruin the girl's reputation. Must you brag about how little it cost you!"

"I didn't ruin her reputation," Cleav insisted.

"It's ruined," the preacher said flatly. "Are you suggesting you didn't do it?"

"It's not me that ruined her," Cleav told him obstinately. "It's Pearly Beachum and you and the rest of this town who have jumped to conclusions, conclusions that are completely untrue."

The reverend looked somewhat pacified. "I believe you are sincere when you say that, Cleav," the older man told him. "And I'm glad to think that you haven't taken advantage of the young girl's foolish infatuation for you."

For an instant Cleav thought he might win the preacher over, but Reverend Tewksbury quickly quashed that hope. "Be that as it may, Esme Crabb has lost her good name. It's only decent that you as a gentleman do the right thing."

Cleavis Rhy knew defeat when he faced it eyeball to eyeball. That's why he was slipping and sliding through the mushy damp woods on his way
to
the Crabb shack. He was going to Do the Right Thing.

He heard the Crabbs before he saw them. The giggly lilt of girlish voices reached him, and he hurried his pace. Stepping into the clearing, he spied the twins, who were laughing and talking as they gathered water from the rain barrel. When they spotted him, the smiles faded from their faces, and they stared in undisguised distaste.

Cleav stared them down, unwilling to allow the two hill princesses to look down their noses at him.

"Tell Esme I've come to talk to her," he said arrogantly.

Without a word Adelaide and Agrippa took their buckets into their shack and closed the door behind them.

Alone, Cleav studied his surroundings. He'd never been on this part of the mountain, and he'd certainly never seen the place the Crabbs called home.

"It's nothing but a cave," he whispered to himself, almost in horror. While he mentally postulated the significance of nineteenth-century cave dwellers, the door opened.

It was not Esme who walked toward him, but her father.

"What do you want up here, Rhy?" Yo Crabb's anger was visible, and Cleav wondered momentarily if the old fiddler might try to do him harm.

Politeness being his only defense, Cleav smiled with as much amiability as he could manage. "Good afternoon, Mr. Crabb," he said. "I've come to speak with Miss Esme, if I may."

Crabb raised a disapproving eyebrow.

"Miss Esme ain't receiving callers at this time," he answered, mimicking Cleav's prim form of speech.

"Perhaps she'll receive
me
, if you were to ask her," he suggested.

Yohan Crabb put his hands on his hips and stared down the younger man before him.

"Now, why on earth would I want to do that?" he asked.

Cleav squared his shoulders, channeling his anger into innocuous actions. "Because," he answered evenly, "I plan to ask her to go down the mountain with me to get married."

Silence between the two men lingered to the point of discomfiture.

"So you've decided to marry up," Crabb said.

"Yes," Cleav answered civilly. "It seems the only thing to do. If she's ready to come with me now, I'm sure we can get Reverend Tewksbury to marry us this evening."