Morning Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

deserve."
    Jessie stared at him, looked deep into eyes that were as cold and unyielding as ice, and felt such rage and hate fill her that she trembled with it. She was so angry that she caught her breath on what was almost a sob. But she couldn't cry. She never cried, and she would perish before she would sink so low in front of him—
    them! Her chin came up, belying the wet glitter in her eyes. She didn't know It, but she looked very much a child suddenly, an angry, lost child. The corner of Edwards' mouth turned down impatiently as he saw the incipient tears, and he made a move as though he would lay a consoling hand on her shoulder. Jessie saw the sudden pity in his eyes and bared her teeth at him. How dared, he feel sorry for her!
    "Miss Lindsay . . ." His hand actually touched her arm, gave her a little pat. Violently Jessie knocked his hand away. 26

    "Don'tyou dare touch me!" she spat, her eyes blazing hatred at him through the tears she refused to shed. Then with a wild cry she whirled and ran for the steps, shoving roughly past him, past Celia— who had recovered from her tears and was sniffing dolefully against his chest while her eyes, peeping sideways at Jessie, gleamed with triumph.
    "What the hell. . . !" The exclamation came from Edwards when Jessie shoved him, but she never once looked back as she fled down the steps and toward the stables. Thus she never had the small satisfaction of realizing that the hand she had pushed him with was the one that had held the cherry tartlet—and her action had smashed the oozing pastry all over the sleeve of his immaculate black coat.

    III

    Itwas dusk when Jessie turned down the long drive that led to the house. Beneath her, Firefly's sleek sorrel hide was flecked with black mud, and her steps were slow even though they were approaching home. Jessie felt a momentary pang of conscience over the wild gallop that had taken them deep into Panther Swamp. At the end, the mud had come almost up to Firefly's hocks, and it had been toughgoing making their way back out of the oozing, slimy muck. At Firefly's heels trotted Jasper, the rough-coated, enormous hound of indeterminate parentage who'd been hers since he was a pup. Jasper was even muddier than Firefly, and his tongue hung out, but he'd had a high old time of it chasing possums and squirrels, so Jessie didn't feel too guilty 27

    about him. But she did feel bad for Firefly. She should have had more sense than to take the dainty mare to the swamp. However, at the time she'd been too upset to consider consequences. Celia was going to remarry. The notion was so shocking that it seemed unreal. Jessie had wrestled withthe news throughout the course of the afternoon , but she was no nearer to accepting it than she had been when she had fled the gallery hours earlier. The idea was simply unthinkable. It was not to be borne. The drive, a dirt lane, was two-pronged, with one branch forming a circle in front of the house and the other leading to the stable. Huge old oaks, already green with new leaves, linked branches overhead to form a canopy all the way to the stable and beyond, to the slave cabins and the overseer's house. Jessie headed Firefly toward the stable. Twin columns of smoke rose from the cookhouse next to the big house and from the communal kitchen in the slave quarters. The pungent smell of hickory smoke scented the air.
    As Jessie drew closer to the house, its long mullioned windows illuminated one by one, first in the ground-floor reception rooms and then upstairs, in the family quarters. Sissie, Rosa's young daughter who was being trained to one day take her mother's place as cook, was going from room to room lighting lamps and candles, as was her job each evening. The light from the windows lent a warm glow to the whitewashed brick of which the main part of the house was constructed. Originally built as a solid brick rectangle before the turn of the century, Mimosa had been added to over the years, so that it now