So had he—wasn’t that what brought him onto the veranda in the first place? “Doesn’t that icy water bother your hip?”
“Sometimes. When I first get in. But since I’ve been swimming regularly I think it’s better.”
“Regularly? How long has this been goin’ on?”
“Since right after I first got here.”
“But why do it at night? Why not durin’ the day?”
She crossed her arms tighter, gripped her collarbone and looked away. Water dripped from her hair in magnified dribbles, while across the wooden ceiling shards of reflected lantern light danced like fireflies. Scott’s glance dropped beneath the surface, but her bare legs were an indistinct blur.
“Well?”
“We...” She stopped guiltily.
“Gussie, I’m not upset about your usin’ the pool, only about your usin’ it at night when it’s not safe.”
“During the day the guests are around, and we don’t have proper bathing costumes, so we...” Again she stopped, but her eyes came back to his.
A half grin touched his face.
“Ah, I see.”
“Please, Scott. It’s not proper for you to be here. I’ll come out if you’ll go back up to the house.”
He dipped a bare toe into the water, wiggled it. “I have a better idea. Why don’t I come in? It’s a hot night and I couldn’t sleep either. I could use a dip myself.”
Before she could object, he laid the gun aside and splashed down the steps into the water.
“Scott!” she shrieked.
But he paid her no mind whatsoever. He made one clean dive and came up ten feet beyond her with a roar of shock.
“Waaaah!”
She laughed but stayed where she was while he headed for the far end in a powerful overhand crawl. He turned and came back her way, passing her without pause. On his third lap, he said, “Come on.”
“I told you, I’m not properly dressed.”
“Oh, hell, I’ve seen you in your nightgown.” He struck out again and left her behind, absorbed in the physicality of the exercise. He was using one side of the pool. She decided it would be all right if she used the other.
But only her head showed above water while they shared the pool for the next ten minutes.
She was paddling idly on her stomach when his head popped up beside her like a turtle’s.
“Had enough?” he inquired, smiling.
She backed off and clasped her collarbone again. “Yes. I’m cold now.”
“Come on, then. I’ll walk y’ back t’ the house.”
He grabbed her by the wrist and began hauling her out of the pool.
“Scott!”
He just kept hauling.
“Do you know how many times you’ve said my name since I discovered you in here?”
“Let me go!”
Instead, he picked her up and climbed the marble steps and stood her on her feet at the top, where she shivered in a scrap of white that turned transparent the moment she left the water. He glanced once down her length and let her see the grin of appreciation before doing an about-face.
“I’ll keep my back turned.”
He did, while she executed a slapdash job of drying her face and arms, then slipped into her dressing gown with skin that was still damp and underwear that was soaked.
He smoothed the water off himself with his palms.
“Here, you can use this before I dry my hair with it.”
He glanced over his shoulder and accepted the towel. “Thanks.”
She watched covertly as he whisked it over his bare skin and gave his head a quick once-over, leaving the hair sticking up in spikes. Men were certainly more brusque about their toilette than women, she thought, amused.
He handed the towel back and combed his hair in a single swipe with both hands. Then he gave an all-over shake and grinned at her. “Never saw you with wet hair before.”
She immediately grew self-conscious, bent at the waist, and wrapped the towel around her head. Straightening, she twisted it and secured the ends at her nape.
His eyes made another pass down her body before picking up the gun and the lantern. “Ready?”
She nodded and preceded him outside. On their way up to the house he said, “Leatrice thinks you’re a ghost. Mose saw the lantern down in the pool house and must’ve heard y’all laughin’ down there. He told Leatrice the place was haunted.”
“Must I stop going down at night now?”
“I’m afraid so. But we can set aside a time durin’ the day for you and the girls t’ have the pool t’ yourselves.”
“Could we really?”
“Why not? It’s much more sensible than in the dark. Would y’ listen t’ those frogs?”
They walked the remainder of the way to the house without talking, the chorus of frogs accompanying them. A thin sliver of moon lit the road to a dim ribbon of gray. From the gardens came the scent of night-blooming stocks. Beneath the spreading boughs of the magnolia tree Agatha looked up at the branches lit from below by lantern light. Stepping between the boxwoods, they moved into pale moonlight again. Their bare feet fell like soft drumbeats upon the hollow wooden floor of the veranda. The wide front door swung silently on oiled hinges.
Then they were inside, in the massive rotunda, which swallowed up all but a tiny circle of light from the inadequate lantern that Scott still held. One of her double doors was pushed back. They stopped beside it. She turned and lifted her face, with her arms crossed over her breasts.
“Well, good night,” she said, unable to dream up an excuse to keep him a while longer.
“Good night,” he answered.
Neither of them moved. She stood feeling her heart thump beneath one wrist, and warm water was dribbling down the insides of her legs, forming a puddle on the floor.
Her face was lovely and stark, framed by the white towel, wrapped turban fashion around her hair. He was conscious of the fact that her dressing gown had become soaked wherever there was underclothing beneath it, and that his own trousers clung and formed a puddle that crept along the waxed floor to pool with hers. He wanted to do the same thing himself—cling, pool himself with her.
His eyes dropped to the hollow of her throat, where a pulsebeat fluttered far faster than normal, as did his own.
“It was fun,” she whispered.
“Was it?” he replied, holding the lantern high so it lit their faces to a rich apricot hue. He watched her eyes, wide, uncertain, realizing she was out of her depth in situations such as this, that her guarded posture had come from a life guided by stern moral codes.
Give me a sign, Gussie, he thought. You stand like St. Joan, waitin’ for the fire starter t’ touch his flint. But no sign came. She appeared scared to death, staring up at him with eyes as pale and clear as peridots. A droplet of water fell from his disheveled hair onto his naked collarbone. Her gaze snapped down to follow it, trailing lower and lingering on the wedge of coarse hair upon his chest. He saw her swallow, and the gravity that tugged him toward her became too powerful to fight.
He took her by both wrists and drew them away from her breasts.
Her eyes flew up. “I... should...” she whispered, but the rest went unsaid.
He lowered his head to kiss her, finding open lips, cool yet from the water. He touched them with his tongue and she responded timidly—a soft kiss of introduction and expectancy. He straightened and they studied each other’s eyes, searching for and finding mutuality.
She twisted her wrists slowly until his grip relaxed, then with calculated deliberation curled her hands over his shoulders, looking at them there as if the sight awed her.
He stood stock-still, letting her adjust. “Are you afraid of me?” he whispered. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not.” To prove it, she raised up on tiptoes for a second, longer kiss. Her elbows rested on his chest. When the kiss ended she stood just so—eyes closed, forearms against him, breathing as if a fire had suddenly consumed all
the oxygen around her.
She opened her eyes and met his. Her voice was uneven as she whispered, “What I told you the last night in Kansas was true.”
“I know. It’s true now for me, too.”
She held his cheeks. “Then say it.”
“I love you, Gussie.”
Her eyes closed once more and her nostrils flared. “Please, oh, please, tell me once more so I’ll know I’m not dreaming.”
His hands closed tightly on her shoulders. “I love you, Gussie.”
She opened her eyes and ran her fingertips over his lower lip, as if absorbing the wonder of his words. “Oh, Scott, I’ve waited so long to hear that. All my lonely life. But you must not say it unless you’re certain.”
“I am. I’ve known since the day of the wedding. Maybe even before that.”
She looked pained. “Then why have you waited all this time to tell me?”
“I didn’t know what you wanted first, t’ be told or shown. And you’re so different. You’re fine and special and pure, the kind of woman a man woos for a while.”
“Then put the lantern down, Scott... and the gun...” she begged softly. “And show me.”
He stooped and in one fleet motion left them in the dark. When he came back up their embrace was immediate, their kiss intemperate, all seeking tongues and circling arms and driving breath—a clinging desire filled with impatience and a need to make up for lost time.
She threw her arms up and her head back, and the towel came loose from her head. He plunged one hand into her damp hair while hers spread upon his shoulder blades, running their width to learn the exquisite feel of his cool skin and taut muscle. He clamped an arm around her waist and drew their bodies so close the dampness from his trousers seeped through the dressing gown along her thighs.
One kiss followed another, growing more ardent, slanting this way, then that, while he found her breast with its cold, puckered nipple pressing against the wet garments. The moment he touched it she caught a breath in her throat and held it.
He fondled her until she began to breathe again... as if she were running uphill.
He reached for her belt and she thought of Violet’s words and put up no resistance. The belt joined the towel on the floor and he parted the dressing gown, running his hand inside. She shivered.
“You’re cold,” he murmured against her forehead.
“Yes.”
“I can warm you.”
“Shall I let you?”
He kissed her and found the buttons at her shoulder. The wet undergarment folded beneath its own weight, exposing a single breast. Cupped, it filled his palm, the skin still cold, beaded, drawn. She shivered again from the transfer of heat as much as from the response that skittered down her stomach. Inside her wet clothing he found her other breast, puckered, too, with cold, and warmed it. Warmed her mouth with his tongue. Her wet stomach with his own. Her thighs with his thighs.
So fast, she thought, so fierce the transition from want to wanton. So this is how it happens, not in a marriage bed, but in a hall, standing at a doorway while your knees turn to pudding and your skin to embers and you experience for the first time a man’s turgid body impressing yours.
Ignorant but eager, she lifted to him, took her fill of kisses, touched his damp hair as he’d touched hers, followed the tutelage of his tongue and lips, wondering if in a lifetime she would ever be able to make him understand what he meant to her. Words seemed paltry, yet she whispered, clasping his cheeks and letting her breath mingle with his.
“When you left Kansas I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. My sorrow went too deep. But I grieved daily, and it could have been no harder had you died.”
She kissed his chin, felt his jaw move as he spoke in a voice thick and gruff. “I asked myself over and over why I was leaving you. I didn’t want to, but there was nothing else I could do.”
“I thought about dying,” she whispered. “Sometimes I wished I would.”
“No, Gussie... no.” He kissed her in quick hard motions, as if to force the memory from her head.
“It seemed preferable to living without you. I had always been lonely, but after you were gone I thought I’d never before guessed the true meaning of the word. I despaired of ever feeling this with you, and you were the first man I’d ever lain beside and I knew there could be no other. Not for me. Not ever.”
“Shh! Love, that’s over.”
Again they kissed while his hands moved over her with new urgency, as if to reiterate the promise. Her breasts warmed, his caress grew gentler.
“That night we kissed on the landing it was hard for me to keep from doin’ this.”
“I wouldn’t have let you then.”
“Why?”
“Because you were leaving.”
“But I didn’t want t’ leave you. At the last minute I was sick at the thought.”
“Sick? Were you really? I thought I was the only one who felt like that—sick, from longing, from emptiness.”
“No, you weren’t the only one.”
“But you had Jube. You didn’t have to be alone.”
“When you don’t love someone, you still feel alone.”
“You never loved her?”
“Never. We used t’ talk about it, wish we felt more for each other. But we just never did.”
Inside her opened garment he ran his hand down her cool back, down her cold buttocks. She pressed closer and found herself amazed at how little guilt she felt at letting him fondle her so intimately.
“Scott?”
“Shh!” He kissed her and swept a hand around her hip, to the front, down her stomach.
She drew back gently and halted it. “There’s something I must say to you. Please... please stop and listen.”
He obeyed, holding her by both hips, while she rested her hands on his chest.
“When I was leaving Proffitt, Violet said something to me that has been on my mind a lot since then. She confessed that when she was young she had a lover. She called it the most wonderful experience of her life, one that no woman should miss.”
“Violet?”
She sensed his surprise, though she could see nothing of his face in the blackness. “Yes, Violet.” With her fingertips she feathered the hair on his chest. “Then she said she hoped Mr. Gandy would see the light and take me for his lover, if not for his wife. I imagine that’s where this is heading, and I want you to know, Scott, that if you want me for only a lover, I’ll agree. I’ll invite you into my room and... and... I would learn to... that is... I would do whatever...”
In the dark he tipped her chin up and kissed her, then folded both arms around her and clasped his hands at the base of her spine.
“How brazen of you, Miz Downin’.”
She knew the dimples had appeared, though she couldn’t see them. Flustered, she rushed on. “But if it’s possible that you want me for something more than a lover, I’d like to request respectfully that we put this off so that it can happen in the master bedroom, in the bed where you were conceived and born, because I should not want to conceive any of your babies anyplace else in this house.” She felt the chuckles building in his chest and her face became hotter and hotter, but she drew a shaky breath and forged on. “And if there is not even the remotest possibility, well, then I respectfully request that we delay this until I have the opportunity to ask some personal and highly feminine questions to Leatrice, because I’m quite sure she would know how I might prevent myself from getting with child.”
Now she was certain she felt his chest shake with silent laughter.
“Why, Agatha, is this a proposal?”
She bridled slightly. “It most certainly is not. I’m simply stating my wishes before it’s too late to do so.”
“But you’ve even brought up conceivin’ babies—it certainly sounds like a proposal t’ me. Shouldn’t we have the light on for this?”
“Don’t you dare, Scott Gandy!”
She felt his hands enclose her upper ar
ms and put her away from him. When he spoke again, all vestiges of teasing had left his voice. “Button up anything you want buttoned, and tie anything you want tied, because I’m goin’ t’ turn the lantern back on, Gussie.”
“Please, don’t, Scott.” She would wither with self-consciousness when the lamp shone on her flushed face. But it flared to life and she had no choice but to cover herself hastily and confront the man who’d just caressed her wet, naked skin in the dark.
He held both her hands and looked her full in the face, utterly sober now.
“Agatha Downin’, will you marry me?” he asked—just like that. Her mouth dropped open and not a word came out as he rushed on. “In the wedding alcove with everyone we know and love actin’ as witnesses? Just the way my parents planned it, and with Willy there to put his stamp of approval on us, which is the way it oughta be since we’re already a family, right?”
She covered her lips with three fingertips and her eyes flooded.
“Oh, Scott.”
“Well, you didn’t think I was goin’ t’ let you conceive my bastard babies in the downstairs bedroom just so Willy could have some playmates, did you? What kind of example would that be for the boy?”
“Oh, S... Scott,” she blubbered again. But she was clinging to his neck and crying. “I love you so much.” She kissed his neck, hard. “And I’ve wished for this, for Willy and you and me, for so long, but I never thought it would happen.”
With his excitement growing, he held her far enough away to delve into her eyes with his own. “Say yes, Gussie. Then we’ll wake up Willy and tell him.”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
She hugged him once more. Then they kissed, standing in their mutual puddle, with her bare toes on top of his and her hair plastered to her head and his drying in spikes.
When she backed away, she laughed and covered her hair with both hands. “Scott Gandy, you’re awful, asking a woman such a thing when she’s wet and bedraggled. If you knew how many times I’d imagined this scene, and how many times I fussed with my hair and primped with my dresses because I knew I was going to be with you. Then you pick a time like this to ask me. I look awful!”
He grinned. “I was just goin’ t’ mention that, Agatha.” Then he handed her the lantern—“Here, hold this”—and plucked her up in both arms. “You look fine t’ me,” he told her as he headed for the grand staircase. “However, if you’re goin’ t’ turn into a nag, I may decide t’ change my mind.”