“It’s locked, all right, Nialla. Keep it that way!”
The phone didn’t ring, and no one knocked. The chambermaid didn’t even scratch to enter either room. I ate slowly to make time pass, and when I couldn’t swallow another sip of coffee, I had to find something else to occupy me.
When I got up to go to the bathroom, however, I was awfully wobbly. My legs were a sight, my arms, my chest, and when I angled the medicine-cabinet mirror, so were my shoulders. Sitting on the toilet, I managed to sponge off the worst. I finger-brushed my teeth with his toothpaste. (For a bride, I was a bust as far as dowry, but my teeth were good.) There was a small bottle of shampoo in his kit, so I could get rid of the singe-stink in my hair. How could Rafe have stood it? Clean, my hair also showed the various lengths more. I groaned. Over my ears I could see the red roots showing. I was a mess!
And Rafe Clery had made love to me. Said he was going to marry me. Dispassionately I surveyed myself in the full-length door mirror. From knee to breast I was unmarred, unless I made a quarter-turn and you saw the vertical red streak. Though my body looked the same, boyish, I looked at it differently. A man had loved it, caressed it, possessed it.
I sighed for that man’s absence, as I put on his shirt. And then my weakness betrayed me. I kind of crept back to bed, bloodstained sheets and all.
I must have dozed off, because suddenly the sound of the key in the lock had me bolt upright, scared stiff. Rafe entered, package-laden, grin-wreathed.
“Orfeo’s okay. I got the check from the State Fire right here, but you’re not to sign a release yet. This is for the car and the trailer, top prices, too. Haworth didn’t give me any jazz. Dice’s been stuffed with lamb kidneys, and Jerry-you remember him?-is bringing up our trailer because the vet says we can move Orfeo. That hoof’s sore, but he can stand a trip. You’ve a hairdresser’s appointment in twenty minutes, a doctor’s in an hour, and I’ve lined up a minister-”
He broke off his monologue to look at me questioningly.
“Sure, Mr. Clery.” What else could I say? So I dressed in the clothes he’d bought and took pleasure in the way the green silk molded itself to my hips. He put other pretties away in the drawers and closet, allowing me a passing glimpse at pants, dresses, a lightweight coat, sandals, Weejuns that matched his, pale green Capezio slippers that were the same shade as the dress.
“There’s a good saddle-and-boot man in East Norwich,” he was saying, and stopped. “You’ll be living on a horse farm in Syosset, did you realize that? Gawd, girl, you don’t know much about me, do you?”
“Yes, I do. You’ve been married twice, divorced twice, in jail, been a jockey, in a war, you fight dirty, have a bad temper, did crazy irresponsible things in your misspent youth-and you’re doing them still-but you’ve a good reputation on the show circuit, and you’re a fine rider, besides which I find you to be kind, sensitive, intelligent, well educated, well bred…”
“Hey, you’ll ruin my carefully built public image!” He put his hands lightly around my waist, squeezing as he grinned at me, a little sheepishly.
“I know more about you than you do about me,” I went on, worried.
He gave me a little pull, tilting his head to one side so that our mouths met and my body rested against his. I could feel the pulsing of him and kind of sagged, wanting him urgently. He set me back on my feet quickly, his eyes wide and kind of surprised.
“Enough of that now. We’ve got other things to do… first.”
Then he took my left hand and slipped a ring on the third finger. I gasped in astonishment, for the stone was an emerald.
“You wouldn’t expect a small-town jeweler to have such good taste,” he said in a sort of deprecating way. “However, if you prefer diamonds…”
“I hate diamonds. They’re so cold. Oh, Rafe, this ring is just perfect.” The setting was old-fashioned, and the stone, that deep rich green that only a good emerald has, was bracketed by two smaller chips. “We could have the stones reset.”
“No!” And I clutched my hand and ring away from him. He grinned, sure he had pleased me, slipping his fingers under my chin to kiss me lightly.
“Come on,” he said then with mock impatience. “I want you clipped around the edges, my proud beauty.”
He supervised. The poor beautician was both nervous and amused. The net result was a hair style that looked deliberate. Pixie feathers about my face, the back layered, fire damage completely erased.
The doctor checked me over far too thoroughly, prescribed therapeutic vitamins, tranquilizers, the pill, told me my hemoglobin was too damned low, and promised to rush the Wassermanns. His final advice, which he delivered caustically, looking squarely at Rafe, was for me to get rest, undisturbed rest. I liked him.
The clerk at the license bureau had ridden in the Ladies’ Hunter Hack Class, or so she told me as she filled out the forms, alternating between beams and clucks of sympathy over my losses. When Rafe left me in the Austin-Healey to take the prescriptions” into the drugstore, weariness began to overwhelm me again.
“That junk’ll be sent to the motel, dear heart. Now,” Rafe said as he returned, “for a very brief look at the beasts, and then back to bed with you. For some of that undisturbed rest.”
Orfeo looked about the way I felt, limp. But he brought his head up and wickered as I stepped in beside him. Dice uncurled himself from his nest in the straw, talking quietly in his throat, respecting the sick-stall atmosphere.
I heard Phi Bete’s demand for attention. She’d been moved to the stall opposite. She pawed, tossing her head. The moment I spoke her name, she stopped her noise, blowing softly through her nostrils, as if reassured.
Someone came charging down the loft ladder. “Who’s there? What’s going on? Oh, Mr. Clery. I was just getting down some hay, Mr. Clery.”
It was one of the men I’d seen with the Tomlinson stock. He looked at me, nodding embarrassedly as he continued more slowly down the ladder. His glance took in my scabby burns, my hair, dress, shoes, and lingered on the ring. His hand went to the hat brim.
“Hope you’re better, ma’am? Scared us, passing out like that last night.”
“Thank you. I’ll be fine.
“The black’s better. Took some mash this morning, but he wasn’t interested in the hay. He’s drunk plenty, and I keep his pail full and cool. Mare’s been shedding, and she’s a mite off her feed, too. And I ain’t left them alone a minute.” He pointed to the loft. “I heard you right away.” I looked at Rafe, feeling all the more apprehension at such vigilance. Then it was all too much.
“Jerry’ll be here in about an hour, Mac. He’ll spell you. Feed the cat?”
“He’s been eating all day, Mr. Clery.” Mac was disgusted.
“Seen Pete?”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t. He’ll turn up soon. Always does.”
“Ask him to call me at the motel, would you please?”
“Sure thing.”
Rafe guided me out, settled me in the car, companionably silent all the way back to the motel. He didn’t talk all the time, after all. As we entered the lobby, the desk clerk beckoned. He handed over to Rafe a white drugstore sack, which clanked.
“You haven’t seen us,” Rafe said sternly, one hand passing over the clerk’s. Judging by the motion of the man’s fingers, our privacy premium had been paid.
The bed had been made up, the room-service table was gone, and there were flowers around-white flowers and a bouquet of sweetheart roses with silver-dyed spikes of something or other accenting the pink.
Rafe grunted when he saw the offerings and gave me a gentle shove toward the bed.
“Sack time, Nialla.” He took a negligee set from the drawer. Evidently he preferred me in green? He gestured at my dress, and I obediently took it off. He’d said “sack-time,” and he meant it, for his hands were impersonal as he helped me into the soft silk gown. Gown? It barely reached my thighs. He threw back the bed covers and yanked out the tuck at the bottom so the sheet wouldn’t drag against my sore feet. When he had covered me, he drew the blinds.