Garters.htm (22 page)

"Thank the Lord you made it," the eldest Roscoe boy teased. "I was worrying that this she-devil would kill us all afore you got here."

The men laughed companionably as they passed the jug of whiskey around. Even if he hadn't been told, it was obviously not their first of the evening.

"Get the gag off her," Cleav ordered with fury.

Startled at his anger, Will jumped to obey, but Armon told him to stay.

"She was spitting and squealing like a pig stuck in a blackberry bush," Armon explained casually as he leaned down to untie the constricting piece of cloth. "We didn't hurt her none, Cleavis. We's just trying to quiet her down."

"She wouldn't kiss us nohow," the younger Roscoe declared. "With no good use for a mouth, a woman's best when she's shut up."

Freezing the stupid young man with a look, Cleav went down on his knees to help Esme get up.

"Are you all right?"

"These lousy, no-account varmints," Esme complained bitterly. "You've made a mess of my wedding gown, you turd brain," she snapped at Hightower.

"You planning on getting married in it again?" Armon asked.

Esme headed for him, intending to kick him senseless. Cleav's arm around her waist stayed her. "Control yourself, Esme," he said firmly. "I won't have my wife cursing and fighting."

That stopped her, but just barely.

"You've got your jug and your sorghum," Cleavis pointed out to the captors with determined civility. "I'm taking Esme home now."

"Whew-he!" one of the Roscoes proclaimed. "He's hopping mad 'cause we delayed his honeymoon!"

The other Roscoe giggled lewdly. "Ain't marriage something wonderful. They'll be beating the ticks out of the mattress tonight!"

This time it was Cleav who nearly started a ruckus, but Esme grabbed his clenched fist. "We're leaving," she said.

"Not right yet," Armon disagreed firmly. Cleav and Esme both turned to him, challengingly.

"You've paid
your
part of the ransom, Cleav," High-tower stated, gesturing toward the jug in his hand. "But Mrs. Rhy here ain't let a one of us kiss the bride."

"And I ain't about to neither, you scheming low-life polecat!" Esme protested.

"You shouldn't talk so poor about me, now, Esme," Armon warned with a chuckle. "We're practically kin, ain't we?"

"No, we ain't!" Esme insisted. "And as God is my witness, I'll do everything I can to keep you from ever being a relation of mine."

"Not even a kissing cousin?" the handsome hill boy teased.

"Are you looking for trouble, Hightower?'' Cleav asked.

"Guess not," Armon answered tongue-in-cheek, glancing around at the other fellows. "You're the one that married up with
her
."

The other kidnappers hooted with laughter at the joke. Neither Cleav nor Esme was in the mood to see the humor.

"Esme doesn't want to kiss you," Cleav stated tightly. "If I were you, I wouldn't try to force her."

Hightower raised his arms in a gesture of disbelief. "Force?'' he asked."You think my grandmama didn't raise me well enough to know not to
force
a lady?"

There were murmurs of agreement from the other men. Obviously Cleav's insinuated superiority as a gentleman was a sore spot.

"I don't want to kiss her at all," Armon stated baldly. "If I had, I'd a done it years ago."

The others laughed in agreement, and Esme blushed in fury at his boastful supposition.

"But a bride's got to be kissed. It wouldn't be a shivaree without it."

Armon looked to his cohorts, who nodded agreement.

"If we ain't going to get to kiss her," Hightower explained, "then at least we get to see you do it."

"What?" Cleav and Esme exclaimed simultaneously.

"Kiss her," Will Gambridge encouraged. "And not that sissy little peck she got in church. Let's see you buss her for all she's worth."

"Yeah," the eldest Roscoe agreed. "And put some tongue in it!"

"You—" Esme sputtered angrily again, but Cleav patted her consolingly.

"My wife and I have no intention of
entertaining
you," he said emphatically.

Armon laughed. "Suit yourself, Mr. Storekeep," he replied. "Best make yourself comfortable, then, 'cause you ain't going nowhere, and we got a night full of drinking ahead of us."

As if to emphasize his words, Hightower crossed his legs and seated himself on the ground, making himself comfortable. "Tie her back up, Will," he ordered his henchman. "If they won't pay up, they're not going anywhere."

As Gambridge made a move toward them, Cleav held up his hand. It was obvious that the drunk quartet had every intention of getting drunker. Shivarees were normally just nasty little jokes, but more than one in the hills had turned ugly.

"You want to see me kiss her?" he asked unnecessarily. "Hell, she's my wife. I don't mind kissing her one bit."

Turning to the woman beside him, he whispered, "Just play along with me, and we'll get out of here."

Esme hadn't time to reply when Cleav pulled her into his embrace, bending her backward over his left arm. With her throat so exposed, he gifted it with a breathy kiss and a gentle bite. His actions brought a startled exclamation to her lips. Then he kissed her.

His kiss was neither gentle nor sweet. It was a kiss of lust and power. A kiss of masculine domination. A kiss designed for his audience. He thrust his tongue deep into the hot, sweet recesses of Esme's mouth. His only hope was that she wouldn't fight him, that she would let him finish the lewd display that would earn them their freedom.

The last thing he expected was her response. But slowly a low, soft moan emerged from Esme's throat, and her arms wrapped around his neck. She was pressing against him and kissing him back.

Cleav forgot his escape plan and his worry about the drunkenness of his captors. He forgot Armon Hightower's scurrilous little scheme. He forgot he was surrounded by slobbering hill boys. The rough kiss melted to one of tenderness, and a moment later he, too, was moaning and pulling the woman in his arms more closely against him.

"Whew-lordy!" The oldest Roscoe brother's exclamation penetrated the hot fog of desire that had blinded him. "Is that Esme a saucy-tail or which?" he asked of no one special.

Cleav jerked away from Esme, shocked at his own loss of control. In two steps he stood before Roscoe. Without a thought to the potential consequences, he grabbed the big, ruddy blond man by the scruff of the neck and slammed him none too gently against the scrub pine at his back.

"You keep my wife's name off your lips," he said with dark fervor. "Or I'll cut your balls off and feed them to that prize hog of yours."

The Roscoe boy choked out an agreeable reply, and Cleav dropped him abruptly. Turning, he held out his hand to Esme.

"Come on," he ordered, and she followed him without a word.

He was halfway down the mountain before he realized that both his anger and his daring were born out of lust. Lust had empowered him to call the bluff of those besotted bullies. At least, he hoped it was only lust. Were there cracks in the gentlemanly veneer that barely covered his rough cracker heritage?

Either way, it didn't set well with him.

The night was black as pitch as the exhausted couple made their way down the mountain to the wide porch of the large, white house. His jacket missing, his knees splotched with mud, his muscles aching, Cleav made no attempt to enter but seated himself on the top step of the porch.

He glanced at Esme as she sat down beside him. She, also, looked a bit worse for wear. Sophrona's made-over dress was no longer white but splattered with dark, dirty stains. Her hair was loose and flying, and her shoes were missing.

"I'm sorry," she said woefully as she propped her elbows against her thighs and rested her chin in her hands. "Sure to graces, you must be just too vexed to live."

A smiled twitched at the corner of Cleav's lip."It wasn't your fault, Esme. I should have imagined those hill boys would have to have a shivaree for us. Truth to tell, I was so busy thinking about the wedding itself, I didn't give the other even a thought."

"I never thought of it, either," she admitted. Then with fury she added, "I swear I'll kill that Armon Hightower next time I see him."

The sincerity of her words struck Cleav as outrageously funny. "I almost pity that poor man," he told her, laughing.

"What are you laughing at? There's not a thing funny about it," she declared.

Cleav shook his head. "Yes, there is, Esme.
We
are the funny thing about it."

"What do you mean?"

"Every decent hill girl that's ever been married has had a shivaree, Esme," he told her. "Poor old Hightower probably does think of himself as family. Your father thought you should have a real wedding. I guess Hightower wanted to make sure that you did."

Esme looked at him quizzically at first, as if she couldn't quite understand. Finally she nodded. "You're right," she admitted. "If we hadn't a-been shivareed, folks would always remember it was a hurry-up wedding. Now they'll be talking about you rolling that cask of molasses up the mountain."

The two looked at each other for a moment and then both burst out laughing.

"Was it that funny?" he asked.

"I didn't get to see it," she confessed. "I was tied up with Cambridge's dirty old handkerchief in my mouth."

As the laughter continued, Cleav wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her closer. As he rested her head in the crook of his neck, their laughter began to fade. Tired muscles and foolish embarrassments were forgotten in the still summer quiet of the Tennessee mountains as they sat together for the first time as man and wife. Esme laid one tentative hand against Cleav's chest.

The touch fired Cleav, and he vividly recalled the lusty kiss on the mountain. She was his wife. His brain screamed the words to him joyously. There was no reason in the world for him to wait another minute. "You ready to go to bed?" he asked abruptly.

Esme pulled back, startled. She gave him a frightened look and then swallowed bravely. "Yep," she declared daringly. "I'm ready when you are."

Cleav could hardly hear her for the roaring in his ears. Rising to his feet, he graciously offered her a hand, and she took it.

They moved in silence toward the door, neither having the vaguest idea of what to say. Esme's attention was momentarily drawn to a wadded gunnysack left on the porch.

"Oh, look," she said, pointing to it eagerly.

"What's this?" Cleav's noughts were already upstairs, and in his mind he was laying Esme across his bed and throwing her skirts up over her head. Glancing inside the bag, he saw worn and faded material. "Somebody's left a ragbag on my porch," he commented distractedly, and as they stepped into the foyer, he moved to throw the gunny and its contents back to the porch.

Esme jerked the sack out of his hand. "That's my things," she explained defensively. "And my dowry."

"Your dowry?" Cleav's brain couldn't quite grasp the word. At that moment the word he most associated with Esme was not
dowry
but
legs
.

Reaching deep inside, Esme pulled out a corner of lacy white cotton that glowed in the moonlight.

"This is my mama's crochet tablecloth. By rights, it should have gone to one of the twins, since they're older. But I thought that since I'm marrying so high, I ought to bring you the best that we own."

"Oh, for heaven's sake." Cleav felt strangely uncomfortable with her confession. He pulled her forcefully into his arms, pressing the hard evidence of his desire into the softness of her stomach. "Give it to one of your sisters. Mother's got dozens of tablecloths."

A cold flash of anger swept through Esme that the warmth of Cleav's embrace could not assuage. As he brought his mouth down to capture hers, Esme struggled against him.

"
Your
mother doesn't have any tablecloths made by
my
mother!" Esme told him.

Cleav pulled back slightly and let his thoughts momentarily clear. "You're right, sorry," he answered offhand-edly. "Let's forget about tablecloths right now." He pulled her against him and rubbed himself suggestively against her. "We'll just go up to bed and enjoy ourselves. We have a whole lifetime together to argue about unimportant details."

Esme found at that moment that her only desire was to "argue about unimportant details." She was an equal partner in this marriage. Suddenly she was afraid that maybe she wasn't.

"I'll have you know, my mother's tablecloth is very important to me," she stated a bit too loudly. Self-doubt fueled her anger.

"Esme, I didn't mean—"

"My family don't have much and you know that, but what we do have we value!"

"Esme sweet," he whispered against her throat. "You already know the things I value about you." He ran a hand down the length of her spine and then naughtily cupped the temptingly curved behind he found there. "Why don't we just lay ourselves down in that soft feather bed I've got upstairs"—he soothed the hot words against her throat— "and talk this out in the morning."

Her heart pounding in her throat, Esme decided that she'd made a terrible mistake. This wonderful man she thought she wanted for a husband was an insensitive, unfeeling clod who thought himself far too good for her. Did he think her some stray cat that had just wandered up on his porch? With a hasty glance at her surroundings, the shiny pine floor at her feet, and the massive, elaborate hall tree, Esme wondered if perhaps she was.

Angrily she pushed him away. "I don't care to talk to you in the morning," she claimed in a near shriek. "In fact, I don't care to talk to you at all. I'm going home."

"What?"

"You heard what I said," she snapped. "I'm leaving. I may be poor and got no learning, but I won't be looked down on by anyone. Surely not the man who's supposed to be my husband!"

"I wasn't looking down on you."

"Well, what do you call it?"

"I call it asking for my rights as a married man. This wasn't my idea, you know. I wouldn't have married you in a million years if you hadn't trapped me into it."

"Oh, you…" Esme raised her hand to hit him, but he caught it easily, and his expression was black.