The Grass Widow (7 page)

Five weeks later, her bleeding hadn’t come and the morning sickness had. Only then did her father call young Mr. Hayward into his study and demand that he make an honest woman of her. Jared agreed readily; Aidan was a handsome woman, and Dr. Blackstone was a wealthy man.

Aidan refused. Her father bellowed and she refused; he beat her and she refused. More gently, her mother tried to talk sense into her. She put her hands over her ears and turned her back. And so she was sentenced to Kansas.

At least it had seemed a sentence then. Now, with her cousin holding her, rocking with her, whispering assurances into her hair and sketching consoling kisses against her face, it felt more like salvation.

She stiffened awake in the gray before dawn, panicking in the alien warmth of arms around her, breath against her neck, legs entwined with her own, before she remembered:
Don’t leave
me, I’m so afraid of the dark, please stay with me—
and then she was embarrassed, and confused by her near-nakedness in only a silk chemise. She struggled through hazy memory to recall the solicitude of hands that had undressed her in the wake of torrential tears, the quietness of Joss’s voice, the consoling length of her cousin’s body against her as Joss held her until, at last, the thick sleep of exhaustion took her.

Shakily, she sighed; she supposed she hadn’t expected Joss might stay through the night, but was glad she had. She drowsed back into her cousin’s warmth, soothed by the protective spread of Joss’s right hand against her belly.

And she blushed; gently, she moved Joss’s other hand, for it

had been cupping her breast in an unconscious embrace—and then wished she hadn’t when her nipple, missing that cradling palm, hardened painfully in the cool morning. Joss muttered a sleeping protest, her hand seeking that fullness again; finding it, she buried her face into the curve of Aidan’s shoulder, shivering a deep sigh before her breath went softly even again.

Aidan let her hand stay. Her breast appreciated the warmth, and she could imagine no sin in the touch of a sleeping woman. She listened to the rhythm of their breaths, and finally, the mourning doves cooed her back to sleep.

When next she awoke it was a glorious day, the sky a dazzling blue, sun blaring through the east window. Voices came from the kitchen: Joss’s, deeper than most women’s, and a sonorous, vaguely-familiar male voice. Sleepily, she imagined Doc’s drooping mustache and gentle eyes, and she dozed a little longer, smelling woodsmoke and coffee and finally the eye-opening scent of bacon, a smell she couldn’t doze through. She waited for her stomach to tell her if she would be able to eat. It obliged her with a hungry growl. She sat up, stretching hugely, and sank lazily back to the pillows; she hadn’t slept so well in weeks. “God love you, Joss Bodett,” she murmured. “If I could have a sister, I’d want her to be you.”

She got up, finally, to find her ewer filled with hot water, a washcloth and towel folded beside her basin, and she had to blink back tears of warm surprise at the small kindness. She had a leisurely wash, humming some song she didn’t remember the words to, and because she felt good she chose her prettiest chemise to replace the plain one she was retiring, and put lilac water behind her ears and inside her wrists, and picked her favorite blue dress from the armoire after she had pinned up her hair. She had been saving the dress for church, but there would be time enough to wash it before Sunday.

She wondered what Joss would wear to church; so far, she had worn only Levi’s and her father’s old shirts. The very thought of wearing dungarees was alien to Aidan, though she admired their pockets and the small treasures that spilled from

them in the evenings: coins and pretty stones and bits of string, Harmon’s watch, a folding knife, the whisker of a horse. Even with Joss yet weak from her sickness, Aidan knew their domains were established: hers was the house and yard, Joss’s the barn and beyond. She didn’t mind; she liked to cook, and didn’t object to cleaning—but that floor was a trial; sweeping it didn’t ever make her believe it was clean. (And recalling her outburst of the night before, she blushed; why had that, of all things, come in answer to an honest question?) She shrugged off the memory, buttoning her dress, and went to investigate the good smells coming from the kitchen.

“Well, Sleepin’ Beauty. Finally decide to try on the day?”

She smiled back at the grin in her cousin’s eyes, loving Joss Bodett and Kansas and life in this fresh morning. “Thank you for the water. That was sweet of you, Joss.”

“I reckon I owe you some sweetness yet, for the care you took o’ me an’ no reason to believe I was worth savin’.” She stirred the bacon. “You look nice,” she offered, shyly gruff. “That’s a pretty dress.”

Aidan blushed, shy too; she wasn’t used to compliments.

“Thank you.” She stole a bit of bacon from the plate, evading the unmeant swat Joss aimed at her wrist. “Did I hear Doc?”

“It’s—damn!” Joss jumped back from a spit of bacon fat, rattling the spider to a cooler place on the stove as boots sounded on the porch. Still expecting Doc, Aidan looked up...and into the pale, faintly-smiling eyes of Captain Argus Slade.

“You have company, Miss Bodett.” A lazy smile quirked under his mustache, but his eyes were untouched by whatever humor his mouth had found; they made her feel as she had felt with him a week ago in Leavenworth: like merchandise under consideration. “Please don’t allow me to intrude any further.”

“When’ve I ever took back a offer of a meal to a cavalryman?”

Her tone suggested that the occasional feeding of soldiers was her civilian duty, but no pleasure. “Cap’n Slade, my cousin Miz Blackstone. Cap’n commands a cavalry troop at Fort Leavenworth. He pays a call now an’ again.” Her mother would have added

that it was always a pleasure; Joss didn’t. She had slim use for the Cavalry in general or Captain Argus Slade in the specific, but to be blatantly impolite was to risk a possibility of reprisal she could ill afford.

“Delighted to see you again, Miss Blackstone.” He offered a small bow. “Please, don’t allow me to interrupt your morning.”

“Given your permission, sir, I shan’t.” She tied on an apron, and on her way to the well and woodshed she muttered that a gentleman might have filled the bucket and brought in an armload of wood in an attempt to earn the breakfast he obviously expected to be fed. She simmered over his presence, knowing that without it she and Joss might have lingered over breakfast and coffee, perhaps talking more calmly of the baby...a pretense of Sunday in the middle of the week.

“—Montana,” he was saying, when she returned to the kitchen to bang the wood into the box by the stove; he paused for her noise. She poured a cup of coffee, refilling Joss’s and then the Captain’s; she could feel his eyes following her, and it made her skin crawl. “Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull are raising Cain in the Black Hills, disdaining the reservation order in the Dakotas.” He tilted back in his chair, its legs digging holes in the dirt floor; Aidan raised an eyebrow at them, and at him. He raised an eyebrow back at her and brought the chair to all fours again, his hand going to smooth his mustache; she saw in his eyes the smirk his hand was hiding on his lips and knew as certainly as if his mouth had said the words “white trash” what the Captain thought of the Bodetts—or what remained of them. “But I’m sure the Cavalry will be well able to convince even such brutes as they of the wisdom of honoring their treaty with the U.S. Government.”

Joss dropped an egg. “Shit,” she said, with a flatness so unlike her usual flare of temper when she swore that Aidan could only suspect that the egg had been dropped purposely, to open the door for some sideways observation. “Now ain’t that just a careless mess.”

Slade eyed her. “Eggs are a beast to clean up, aren’t they, Miss Bodett.”

“A body might think to find enough grip on a thing that cleanin’ up a mess ain’t necessary.”

“So true!” Slade’s laugh was cold, liquid. “Best never to lose it at all, but a grip lost must be immediately regained, Miss Bodett, or a mess most certainly ensues, as you can see.”

Aidan wasn’t sure what they were saying, but the last topic of conversation had been Indians; she’d read enough in the newspapers Doc brought to know that in Kansas, opinions about Indians were almost as wildly divided as they had been about slavery. She kept her eyes on her coffee, uneasy with the possibility of veiled politics being spoken. As if trousers and guns and fluent profanity weren’t enough, did Joss think to express political opinion as well?

“Mayhap hands too clumsy for eggs ought leave them be,”

Joss suggested.

“An egg left be becomes a rooster or a hen, begetting ever more eggs. If you break that one under your boot, it’ll soak into the dirt and be gone before you can remember it.”

Joss moved the front burner plate of the stove and bent to scoop the egg into her palms; she dropped it into the fire. “I’ve no desire for a stinkin’ reminder of my ineptitude.”

Land sakes, Joss, he’ll have you tarred and feathered if you don’t
stop!
“Tell me, Captain...” Aidan made her smile part forward, part fawning, over the rim of her cup when his eyes came to hers.

“Do tell me why you’ve honored us with your visit. Such a busy man as yourself must surely have motive past home cooking for a call.”

She wasn’t sure where her biggest trouble loomed: with Joss, her anger sizzling as hot as the bacon on the stove and just as likely to spit and burn, or with Slade, eyeing her as if she were half chocolate, half whipped cream, and all his. He leaned onto his elbows on the table, his voice lowering to exclude Joss. “Had I known this was where I’d find you, Miss Blackstone, I’d have called much sooner. I’ve spent the time since last we met with the

memory of your smile.”

She managed to hold her smile. Her stomach was queasing horribly.

“But I had a much less fortunate errand when I departed the garrison this morning.” He offered the words like a breath of regret.

“Aware as I am of your cousin’s uniquely precarious circumstances, I felt it my duty to warn her that given the possibly prolonged absence of much of the Cavalry, there is the not-unlikely possibility of savages making sorties into the more remote areas of the county. This section of the post road is unquestionably remote.”

I’ve interest in the Station myself...a farm that’s caught my eye,
only recently and tragically come available,
she remembered, and knew with repulsed certainty that he was sitting at that farm’s kitchen table. “Then I shall certainly have Miss Bodett teach me to shoot,” she said tightly. “It becomes ever more obvious that a woman need be capable of defending herself against the various evils that may descend upon her doorstep when least she expects them.”

An unpleasant smile twitched at his mustache as he eyed her; she let her own smile suggest a sudden and offensive odor. “It would be my pleasure to provide that instruction,” he said at last.

“It’s unquestionably a skill you should have and hone.”

“How many eggs, an’ how d’you want ’em?” Joss thrust the words between the Captain and her cousin. “I know how to do

‘em fried.”
Or scrambled, poached, boiled hard or soft, shirred or made
into an omelet, but you, Slade, get them how I make them or you can
go hungry. And you—
She shot a look at Aidan.
You don’t know the
rules of this game, nor the stakes, so fold your hand, girl.

“Four fried would be excellent, if you’d flip them once in the fat of the bacon—and mind your biscuits. They smell hot.”

Joss potholdered those out of the oven, skittering the tin onto the table. “I ain’t so sure Miz Blackstone’s feelin’ up to lessons today,” she said coldly. “Long train ride left her a mite puny.”

She had suggested Aidan learn to shoot, applying gentle pressure

until Aidan reluctantly conceded the wisdom that women in such harsh country should have certain skills, and Joss had looked forward to the lessons. “I’ll give her some teachin’.”

“I’m sure you’re most capable of providing excellent tutelage at your leisure, but I suspect leisure is such a precious commodity for you of late.” The mockery of sympathy in his tone made Aidan think of Effie Richland. “And given your precarious circumstances, you may appreciate the Army buying the bullets.”

Deliberately, he tilted his chair onto its hind legs. “Miss Bodett, surely you’re not thinking of wintering here alone? If you are for lack of options, I’ve an offer that may leave you room for consideration.”

Aidan saw the slim, throbbing cord of anger in her cousin’s neck; she wondered if Slade had ever considered how it might feel to catch a ten-pound cast iron skillet full of sizzling grease with his face. He was apparently unaware of, or unimpressed by, Joss Bodett’s hair-triggered temper. “She isn’t alone,” she said flatly. “And her options, given the resources of the Blackstones, are wondrously varied; ergo, there’s naught to consider. But you may teach me to shoot, Captain. I’m sure I should find it most amusing.”

Slade regarded the rigid, angry back of Joss; he slid his look back to Aidan, letting it linger at her breasts. “If you’re wintering here, it’s past my pleasure.” He didn’t bother to try to hide the smirk. “It’s my duty.”

Joss delivered his plate: four flipped, a rasher of precious bacon, a gob of grits. “Go well fed to your duty, then. Have a biscuit.”

He had five, with a quarter-pound of butter. His table manners were casually and maddeningly impeccable.

Harmon Bodett had been a drinker, and their dump was liberally scattered with bottles. Slade lined up twelve on the fence and unholstered his Colt. “Mightn’t it serve better if I learned to shoot the one I may be required to?” Aidan asked; the captain raised a faintly approving eyebrow and strolled back to the house for Joss’s revolver, the rowels of his spurs clanking musically.

Wearily, Aidan rubbed the nose of the big bay gelding who had come to the fence to visit with her. “I may have won small battles of words, but I lost the war, Charley, and now I’m stuck with this. What might he do if I vomit on the toes of his boots?”