Pamela Morsi by Courting Miss Hattie

Author:Courting Miss Hattie
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-04-25T11:54:58+00:00

The long summer day found Reed working late in the cotton, chopping and thinking. Motion was typical of his life, so he never stopped the rise and fall of the hoe as he worked, the hot sun plastering his shirt to his back like a second skin.

The bruise on his jaw was big and ugly and purple. It would take some explaining, but he wasn’t concerned about that. Other thoughts were torturing him.

The rice field had been so important to him, he’d wanted it so much. He remembered thinking that once he had rice growing, he would be a happy man. He wondered why he wasn’t. He was sure it had something to do with Hattie, but it didn’t take a wizard to figure that out. He was trying to understand what had changed between them and when it had happened.

She was his friend, just as she’d always been. He told himself it was natural for him to worry that Drayton might take advantage of her. Any friend would feel the same concern. But that couldn’t explain the unreasonable jealousy that had assailed him—still assailed him—at the thought of her kissing old snuff-smelling Drayton.

Bringing his hoe down sharply into the hard black dirt, he remembered the lightning-like sting of envy he’d felt when she’d spoken of Drayton. On no occasion in his life had he ever felt the slightest wish to be Ancil Drayton, but he had found himself wishing he was the one making calls to Hattie’s front porch.

Did he care about Hattie? he asked himself. Of course he cared. She was like a sister to him. But he didn’t care about her that way. Or maybe he did. Memories of the past few weeks flittered across his mind like a magic-lantern show. Hattie laughing in his arms in the pigsty, so flushed and embarrassed. A glimpse of pink rickrack on her drawers and her bodice covered in mud, amply displaying her charms. Hot sweet kisses in the fog … All were evidence that his feelings were not entirely brotherly. Even the memories brought a lick of fire to his loins, and he cursed his lack of control.

He was promised to Bessie Jane. That was the reality. A man promised was as good as married, some said. Reed didn’t always believe that. But when a man had bedded a woman, that was a promise as sacred as any spoken in church. It made no matter what his father had said about making choices. Breaching a woman’s innocence was a decision made. Momentarily, though, he wondered. No blood, no pain, an easy entry … Slamming the hoe roughly into a patch of crabgrass, he cast the doubt away. It was unworthy of Bessie Jane. It was unworthy of him. Looking for a reason to do wrong, a man would always find one. What he needed to be doing was resolving to do right.

Bessie Jane was young and sweet, and trusted his honor. She was flighty, but she had a good heart and a depth of feeling in her soul, he knew.

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