Making Hay (7 page)

Lessy folded her arms across her chest stubbornly in disapproval. “Which is it?” she asked. “Very important, pretty important, or not important at all?”

Rip looked at the young woman with some curiosity and a good deal of cockiness as he leaned indolently against a tree trunk. “Miss Lessy,” he said, “it’s all three.”

She raised an eyebrow.

‘To find a woman, a man’s got to notice her. If he passes by her in church without ever speaking, it ain’t likely they’ll ever be together. But if she’s a fine looker, say like your friend, Miss Mouwers,” he said, “then it’s not likely he’ll pass by without seeing her.”

Lessy nodded. “So it’s very important that she be pretty.”

Rip shook his head. “Now, most of us fellows meet a gal through family or friends, and usually you get to know her a bit before you’d ever think of walking out with her. If she’s pleasant and sweet, you’re interested whether she’s eye-popping or no. But still, when a man’s got that gal on his arm, he wants her to be looking good. He wants the other fellows to be green with envy. That makes a fellow feel pretty cocky. But a man won’t bother to sashay around with a woman he don’t cotton to.”

“So it’s pretty important,” Lessy said.

Rip reached out a hand and raised Lessy’s chin. He looked into her eyes. She was no beauty, but there was strength and substance to her that held a lure all its own. His smile was warm and bright. “When it comes to walking out, yes. But you said wife, Miss Lessy. In a wife it ain’t important at all.”

Lessy’s eyes widened with surprise.

“Us country boys may act the fool,” Ripley told her. “But most of us are smart enough to know that a pretty child at sixteen may not be worth her weight in beans as a helpmate at forty-five. It’s what’s inside a woman that makes you choose her for a wife. Her heart, her soul, her dreams ... that makes a man want to live a lifetime with her. If the feeling and yearnings all fit, it don’t matter if the gal is belle of the county or fit to wear a cowbell.”

His words scoured a rough tenderness in Lessy’s heart, and she blinked back a burning in her eyes that she feared might be tears.

“But what if the man doesn’t really know who she is inside? And what if he thinks the woman to be a good helpmate but can’t bring himself to sweeten toward her? Could a man marry a woman that he has no ... no yearning for?”

The tears were welling, unwanted, in the comers of her eyes, and she tried to drop her gaze from Rip’s expression that had been teasing and sweet but had now turned tender and concerned.

With a hint of anger in her motion, she cast the halfeaten peach in her hand into the distant grass. “I’m just being foolish—” she began, trying to turn away.

Rip did not let her. He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. “Are you being foolish, Miss Lessy? Or is it that big farmer of yours who’s a fool?”

Standing in his arms, Lessy looked up at the dark, handsome face above her, and she knew he was going to kiss her. He did not hold her tightly, and his hesitation was clearly to give her time to retreat. She did not.

His mouth touched hers with skill and confidence. He traced the line of her lips with his tongue, causing Lessy to startle.

Ripley grinned at her innocent surprise. “The sweetest peach in Arkansas,” he whispered against her as he opened her mouth to get another taste.

“
D
adburnit
!” Roscoe swore. “This wagon jack ain’t worth throwing into the scrap heap.”

The men around him were nodding their heads in agreement, but Vass only chuckled. “Now, you can’t go blaming this poor hardworking little jack for not being able to do something that I told you would need a rope and pulley.”

Doobervale threw up his hands in defeat. “Lord love you, Muldrow, I’m just grateful you ain’t a betting man, or I’d a lost money on this one.”

The empty hay wagon was bogged down in the mud on the low side of the barn. Young McFadden, in the ignorance of youth, had left it there when he’d driven it out of the field. Doobervale had insisted that a wagon jack would be enough to rescue it. He might have been right if they’d begun working at it early in the morning, as they’d planned. But after hours of tool sharpening, both their own and Mouwers’s, the muddy ground had hardened, holding the wagon wheels to it like molasses turned into hard candy.

“Get me that rope and tackle that I left on the floor of the harness room.” Vass directed the order to young Tommy, whose cheeks were still alternately pale and flushed with the humiliation of his mistake. “We can throw it over the ridge pole of the bam and get all the leverage we need.” Vass looked up to the timber that extended out from the peak of the bam roof, wondering if there would be enough rope.

“With a whole crew of men this shouldn’t be too much of a chore.” Glancing around, a furrow came into his brow. “Where’s Ripley?”

Doobervale shrugged with unconcern. “That one is the very best to have when a man’s working with equipment. But he’s got a real aversion to putting his back into a job.” The men around him chuckled.

“Ripley,” Claidon Biggs declared, “don’t never lift nothing heavier than a petticoat if he can help it.”

These words gained guffaws all around, and young McFadden, hoping to get himself back in with the boys, added his own little joke. “I know that’s got to be true,” the boy claimed. “Here we are sweating over a stuck wagon, and I spied him walking out into the shade of the peach trees with Miss Lessy.”

The laughter the boy had hoped for fell a little flat as Vass gave him a sharp look. Without further comment Vassar hoisted the rope over the ridge pole and set up the pulley. He worked with certainty and efficiency born of habit, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

Lessy and Ripley alone in the peach orchard? It just didn’t seem proper somehow. Lessy was so innocent and trusting. A man like Ripley might take advantage of her sweet nature. In his memory he could hear the two of them laughing together in the kitchen. And she was so enthusiastic about his drawings. They had been alone together under that camp tarp. Could that no-account rounder be whispering pretty words to his Lessy? Vass could hardly keep his feet in the spot. As soon as he assured himself that the knotting was secure, he handed the end ropes to Doobervale.

“I need to get a drink of water,” he announced lamely. Walking away, Vass didn’t dare to look back on the bewildered expressions of the men he’d left.

Making no pretense of even going near the house, he headed straight to the peach orchard. The thoughts in his mind spun in wild imagining, but he wouldn’t focus on them. Lessy was in the orchard with Ripley, and he was merely going to join them. He was only going for a friendly chat. He was only going to ask Ripley to come help with the wagon.

L
essy broke away
from the kiss and stared into Ripley’s eyes. They were smoky and half-closed with such an expression of ardor that she giggled.

His mouth dropped open with surprise.

“Mr. Ripley,” she said. “You look at me like I was a peach cobbler myself. And I’m practically an old married lady.”

His surprise melting into delight, he leaned forward once more and teased her lips with his tongue. When she drew back, he winked broadly. “You aren’t married yet, Miss Lessy. Ain’t no sin in taking a last long look at freedom. I am from the haying crew, and they do say to make hay while the sun shines.”

She laughed at his teasing and had actually raised her lips for more of his special brand of haymaking when over his shoulder she caught sight of a large, work-hardened blond man gazing at them in horror.

“Vassar!”

Ripley jumped away from her as if shot from a gun.

His face pale and pained, Vassar Muldrow paced slow, heavy steps toward them.

Lessy had never thought of Vass as a man of violence, but the expression on his face, normally so calm and controlled, was frightening in its intensity.

“Don’t hit him, Vass!” Lessy said, bravely stepping in front of the handsome dark-haired man. “It’s my fault, not his. I let him kiss me. I wanted him to.”

Her words had the same effect on Vass as being kicked in the stomach by an ornery mule. He paled and sweat broke across his brow.

Ripley easily stepped around Lessy, his hands held high in a gesture of surrender. “You want to punch me, Muldrow?” he said. “Well, take your shot. But it was nothing more than a stolen kiss, and it was headed nowhere.”

Vassar’s face was now florid, and his breathing came in frightening puffs of anger, but his eyes, as he looked at the couple before him, were full of pain. He swallowed hard.

“Doobervale needs a hand at the barn,” he said to Ripley, his tone brooking no question.

The young man glanced toward Lessy. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked her. “Are you safe with him?”

Before Lessy could nod her assurance, Vassar exploded. “What kind of man do you take me for? She’s been safe with me for years before she ever knew you existed!”

Lessy nodded to the young man to go. Vass stood, fists clenched until Rip had walked away. Then, with a sigh that seemed to wilt the steel in his backbone, Vassar took a step closer, leaning against the ladder as if he could no longer stand on his own power.

Hearing the pained gasp of his breath, Lessy watched him squeeze his eyes together as if to hold back the tide that threatened to pour from them. Her own eyes were now swimming with tears that she tried to wipe on her apron.

“I’m so sorry Vassar,” she managed to choke out. “I have lied to you, so many lies, I’m not the woman that you think I am. I am lazy and frivolous, and I let a man kiss me just because I wanted him to. I’ve deceived you into believing that I am better than I am, but I never meant harm. Can you ever forgive me?”

It was as if Vassar had not heard her words. “Don’t worry, Lessy,” he said. “I should have seen this coming. I did see it—I just didn’t want to believe it true. I’ll see that he marries you up good and proper. I’m wise to his ways and reputation, and I won’t have him leaving any broken hearts on this farm.”

“What?”

“A fine woman like you is not to be dallied with and left behind. I’ll see that he stands up to his responsibilities if it takes a shotgun to do it.”

She gawked at him, swiping at her eyes distractedly. “Responsibilities?”

“He’s not the kind of man I would have wanted for you, Lessy. But there ain’t a man living that’s half good enough to husband you. I guess he has no more faults than me.”

“Vassar, what are you saying?”

“I won’t stand in your way, Lessy. I know that you love him, and I care too much for you to hold you back.”

“
O
h
, Mammy! What am I going to do?”

Lessy’s tears dampened the cotton quilt that covered her bed, darkening the bright yellow and blue patterns of Sunbonnet Sue.

Rip had come to the porch right after dinner. She hadn’t seen Vassar in the background, but she knew he was there as Ripley, with genuine apology in his voice, gave a gentle and impassioned plea for her to honor him in matrimony. Speechless, Lessy had fled from the sight and had been lying across her bed crying her heart out ever since.

Her mother seemed less concerned than entertained. “Lord-a-mercy, I’ve never seen that Vassar in such a lather as at the supper table. If looks were bullets, that Ripley boy would have more holes in him than a sieve.”

Nora Green, clad in her nightgown, stood before the mirror at the washbowl and combed the tangles out of her long gray hair as she listened to her daughter’s pitiful sniveling.

“I can’t marry Ripley, Mammy,” Lessy declared adamantly. “He’s funny and sweet, but I just don’t love him.”

“Well, of course you don’t,” her mother agreed easily. “You love Vassar and you have ever since you laid eyes on him.”

Her mother’s words started Lessy wailing again. “But Vass doesn’t want me, not now. Maybe he never has. He never saw the real me, just the perfect angel I pretended to be.” The words were a pitiful whine that ended with Lessy face-buried in the quilt. “I tried to tell him in the orchard, to confess at last about how I’d tried to trick him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

In fury and frustration Lessy pounded the feather tick beneath her. “I can’t believe I was so foolish! It was as if I’d taken leave of my senses completely.”

Raising her tear-stained face to her mother, she admitted her culpability. “I just wanted to know if I was pretty enough,” she said, shamefaced. “I wanted to know if I could attract a man on my own. If maybe I could have attracted Vass for me. Oh, Mammy, I want him to want me for... well, not for my hard work and my high morals, to want me for... oh, for sweet things and sinful things.”

Nora Green lay the brush on the chiffonier and moved to the bed, where she knelt and began rubbing her daughter’s back in the strong circular motion that had comforted her daughter when she was still a baby.

“Lessy, Lessy,” she told her coaxingly. “There is nothing sinful about wanting your man to desire you. And nothing unnatural about wanting a little bit of romance. The man you marry must see more in you than a strong back and a willing hand.”

“But that is exactly what he does see. It’s all that I’ve let him see.”

Shaking her head, Mammy didn’t agree. “If he’d known you for only a few months of this perfect pretense you’ve been putting on, then I’d worry. But no one can keep up a lie for four years! The truth about who you are comes shining through you every day, in the way you move and the songs you sing. Believe me, even if his eyes don’t see you as you really are, his heart does.”

Lessy looked at her mother, wanting desperately to believe her. “But I’ve ruined everything, Mammy,” she said. “I’ve kissed Ripley, and now Vass wants me to marry him.”

“Pooh!” Nora waved away the complication. “That load of manure smells to high heaven. Vassar Muldrow wants you for himself. He thinks you want that Ripley fellow. And the only way he’s going to know any different is if you swallow your pride and tell him yourself.”

Lessy’s breath caught in a shuddering sigh.