The Seduction of Shay Devereaux Read online

  “Mr. Shay,” he called out. “Come see my soldiers.” Rising to his knees, he motioned to the area beside him. “You wanta sit with me for a while?” His smile was bright and he reached to find a jar of water. “It’s still pretty cool. Mama said to cover it with part of the quilt, and I thought it would make it warmer, but she said it would help keep it cool.” His brow furrowed as his small hands enclosed the jar, offering it to Shay. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  Shay unscrewed the lid and tilted the jar to his mouth, swallowing the sweet spring water, making no attempt to halt the cooling drops that seeped down his chin. They stained his shirt, dark blots penetrating the fabric, and he looked down, reminded of the hot tears Jenny had shed on this selfsame shirt last night.

  “Your mama knows more than we do, I think,” he told the boy. “Women have a knack of picking up on things. Now, we men,” he said wisely, exaggerating the words for Marshall’s benefit, “we just have to do the best we can, and pay attention to what we’re told.”

  “You, too, Mr. Shay? Do you have to listen to my mama?” Marshall cocked his head to one side and frowned at the idea.

  “Yeah,” Shay said. “I listen to whatever your mama tells me, son.” It seemed the boy had forgotten the moments from the evening before, his qualms buried beneath the ready smile and generous spirit he exhibited.

  “I sure like you,” Marshall offered offhandedly. “I bet my mama does, too.”

  Shay slanted him a grin, uncaring that his scar drew up, twisting his mouth. “You think so?” He thought a minute. “Maybe so, Marsh. Maybe so.” Noah was at the end of the row, Joseph close behind. Another two swipes through the cornfield and he’d be switching places again. Just about time for a nap, he figured.

  His sharp gaze scanned the fields surrounding them, searched the hedgerow briefly, and then settled again on the boy. “You be sure to wake me if anyone comes along, Marsh. I’m gonna close my eyes for a few minutes.”

  Marshall looked up, already absorbed in his soldiers, and nodded distractedly. “I’ll keep an eye out, Mr. Shay.” He bent to pick up a figure, adjusted the angle of its weapon, and sent Shay another look. “Even if my mama comes, should I wake you up?”

  Shay watched him from beneath his hat brim, and chuckled, a low sound that seemed to please the boy. “Especially if your mama comes by, son. You be sure and wake me.”

  “Ess-pesh-ly,” Marshall repeated, emphasizing the sounds, enjoying the flavor of the word. “Ess-pesh-ly.”

  “Our Caleb’s got him a woman,” Isabelle said, her air nonchalant, her words prideful.

  Jenny looked up from her sewing, holding the needle in midair. “Someone from close by? Do I know her?” If Caleb had found a bride, it would mean allotting him land of his own to till and work. And one less hand to tend the fields here, she thought.

  “Remember Sarah and Eli? The pair of them got married soon as they could, after—” Isabelle halted, weighing her words. “I still don’t feel good about how some of our people left here, Jen. Like they didn’t have it pretty good with you and Mr. Carl.”

  “They weren’t free, Isabelle. I can’t blame them for leaving. I might have done the same.” She looked out the window to where the corn was almost as high as the pasture fencing. “Working your own land is different than sweating over someone else’s crop.”

  “Well, if they’d hung around, you’d have give ’em a piece to work for theirselves,” Isabelle told her. “Now they’re doing shares with Doc Gibson, over south of here. And not likin’ it much.”

  “Get back to Caleb’s woman,” Jenny said impatiently. “Is she kin to Sarah and Eli?”

  “Their daughter. More girl than woman, I guess. Almost seventeen years old. She’s been showin’ up here every few days, makin’ eyes at my boy like he’s the cock of the walk.” Isabelle’s smile was tender as she ceased the rise and fall of the dasher. Churning was tedious work and talking made it palatable, but Isabelle tended to break her regular rhythm when she got caught up in storytelling.

  “Caleb’s a handsome man,” Jenny agreed readily. “Tall and strong, and probably more than ready for a place of his own.”

  Isabelle slanted a glance across the kitchen, to where Jenny sat near the window. Taking advantage of sunlight was a double delight, she figured. It made the task of sewing more enjoyable to gaze from the window between times. Catching a glimpse of Marshall now and then as he followed Shay’s tall figure around the place gave her a feeling of contentment that rested easy on her mind.

  “Jen?” Isabelle sounded edgy now, and Jenny looked up quickly, aware that her mind had wandered. “Caleb’s thinking that maybe he could build a cabin here, the far side of the pasture and maybe just work together with his pa. Maybe we could do shares, and put in more cotton, now that we got an extra hand.”

  Jenny’s thoughts traveled the convoluted path Isabelle had traced. It led to Shay. There was no mistaking her theory. Evidently Noah thought Shay was a permanent addition to the place, and Isabelle shared his notion. “Shay hasn’t promised to stay beyond the harvest,” Jenny said quietly. She lifted the garment she was working on and bit at the thread, then spread her work across her lap.

  “I surely hope these pants will fit Marshall for a while. He’s growing like a bad weed.” Carl’s old homespun trousers would provide two pairs of pants for the five-year-old, she’d decided. Sewing was not a skill she’d ever pursued in her earlier years. There’d always been a house servant to do the mending and making of clothes. Now there was just Jenny, and her fingers had borne numerous sore spots from the needle before she’d discovered the knack of using a thimble.

  “Mama used to tell me that ladies must learn to sew a fine seam, and I didn’t know what she meant,” Jenny mused, holding up her finished garment. “I’m beginning to get the idea now.”

  “You do fine, Jen,” Isabelle assured her. The dasher thumped inside the churn as Isabelle resumed the rhythm. “Noah don’t seem to think that Mr. Shay’s got intentions of movin’ on.” Her eyes were narrowed as she awaited Jenny’s reaction to her words. And then she spoke more softly. “What did you tell him the other night? When he carted you out to the barn and hauled you up in the loft, Noah was sure things were comin’ to a head between the two of you.”

  “Marshall told him that a big man had hurt me and made me cry.” Her head was bowed as Jenny folded the small trousers she’d created. “Shay asked me what had happened.”

  “You told him?”

  The room was silent as Jenny stood, carrying her sewing basket to the doorway. “I’ll just put this away, and check on Marshall,” she said quietly.

  “The man’s still here,” Isabelle said from behind her. “You didn’t scare him off, no matter what you told him.”

  “He looks at me differently,” Jenny said softly, poised in the doorway, unwilling to recall the moments when she’d clung to him like moss to a tree, sobbing until her eyes were red and her nose was running, dampening Shay’s shirt with her sorrow.

  “He’s still lookin’ at you like he’d like to climb in your bed,” Isabelle said. “Just like he has since the day he got here.”

  “I doubt that,” Jenny told her, walking from the room and across the wide hallway to the parlor. Behind her the dasher thumped again and Isabelle’s voice lifted, following Jenny’s retreating figure.

  “You’re blind then, girl. Blind in one eye and can’t see outta the other, you ask me.”

  The cabin went up, with all four men taking hours and days from their work to share in the building. Logs were notched, fitted in place and caulked with mud from the swamp. Finally, at sunset on the final day, the hammers still pounded, nailing the roof in place and Isabelle prepared a basket of food to carry to the men. Unwilling to forgo any shred of daylight, they toiled until Jenny forbade one more nail to be driven.

  Taking turns, they sat for a few minutes at a time, eating and laughing together as if they had not worked unceasingly from dawn to dusk, days in a row. Ca
leb was the brunt of jokes uttered in male voices, and stilled when Marshall or one of the women was in earshot. Tomorrow, logs from the pile behind the barn would be taken to town to the sawmill, there to be cut into lengths of flooring.

  Jenny decreed that no bride should have to sweep a dirt floor, and earned Caleb’s thanks. His words earnest, his demeanor grateful, he pledged his loyalty to her. “I feel like a lord of the manor,” she told Shay, sitting on a stump beside him.

  The time shared in building had accomplished more than one result, in Shay’s mind. Jenny was talking to him. That he had missed their time together of late was an understatement, he thought. As though the light had gone from his life, the lack of her presence had dimmed his soul, bringing him to his knees. And it was not a comfortable position to be in. Especially where a woman was concerned.

  He’d never before found himself so enthralled by a female. Jenny was a danger to him, and he felt a sense of doom as he considered a way out of his dilemma. Leaving was out of the question, at least not until the cotton was baled and on its way to the gin. He’d given his word, perhaps not to Carl, back in Elmira, but to Jenny, here and now. A Devereaux never goes back on his word, his daddy had said, more than once. And beneath the skin of the man called Shay ran the blood of a man named Gaeton Devereaux.

  The tools had been put up for the night, and Jenny picked up the basket of dishes and bits of food left over and carried it to the house. Shooing Isabelle and Noah on their way to the cabin they lived in, she looked after them, her expression wistful.

  “Something wrong, Jenny?” Shay walked up behind her and she jolted at his voice, turning quickly to face him. The basket swung in an arc and caught him across his knee, eliciting an indrawn breath and a muttered word Jenny flinched at hearing.

  “Well, hot damn,” he said, his voice grating on the words. He bent from the waist and one hand cupped his knee.

  “Oh, Shay!”

  Jenny dropped the basket and crouched in front of him, her hands covering his fingers, rubbing the knuckles as though she would transfer her apology through his bones. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  He turned his hand, catching both of hers in his palm. “It’s all right. I’m fine. Just took my breath for a minute there.” And indeed the sharp pain had eased. Certainly, it was a far cry from the night a prison guard had deliberately cracked Shay’s kneecap with a shotgun barrel. He’d learned to favor it through the years since, and unless the day called for unceasing walking, it managed to keep him upright.

  Jenny looked up at him, and tears glistened in her eyes. “I didn’t cause that sort of pain just whoppin’ you with the basket, did I?”

  He shook his head. “It’s an old story, one you don’t really want to hear.”

  She rose slowly, then bent to pick up the basket. “I told you something like that not long ago. Remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember, sweetheart. But this story is better forgotten, and you’ve got enough bad memories of your own to add mine to the list.” He turned her toward the house, his palm across her back.

  “Oh, my word,” she exclaimed softly. “I almost forgot Marshall. He’s asleep on a quilt under the tree.”

  “I’ll get him,” Shay said. The boy weighed little and Shay lifted him into his arms, inhaling the sweet scent of childhood that arose from Marshall’s hair. “You been using your soap on his head, haven’t you?” he asked, walking beside her toward the house.

  “Yes. In fact, he said he didn’t want me to. Said it would make him smell like a girl.” She lifted her free hand to smooth back a lock of hair, and glanced up at Shay. “He smells like a little boy to me,” she told him.

  “I was just thinking the same thing. I remember—”

  “You remember what?” she asked, her eyes searching his face in the last dusky glow of twilight.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing important anyway.” The porch was before them and he stepped up, reaching for the screen door with one hand. Jenny walked into the kitchen ahead of him and reached for the lantern.

  “Don’t bother,” he said softly. “I can make it to his room in the dark. I’ll just take off his boots and peel his trousers down. Will that be all right?”

  “Yes. Oh, and maybe undo his shirt, would you. He has it buttoned all the way up to the neck to keep the mosquitoes away.”

  The small task accomplished, Shay came out into the wide hallway. It ran the length of the house with two rooms off each side. A breeze flowed its length with doors to the outside open at either end. Jenny sat on the bottom step of the curved staircase, waiting for him, and he crossed to sit beside her.

  “Will you talk to me about your knee?” she asked.

  “Don’t you need to put away the things from the basket?”

  She groaned as she stood. “I forgot. They need to soak overnight, at least. The food won’t spoil, standing out, but the plates should be rinsed.”

  “I’ll help you.” A candle on the buffet was lit and the basket emptied, Jenny pumping water into a big dishpan in the sink. With a clatter, she dumped silverware in first, then added the pile of plates.

  “That’ll do for now. I’ll just put the basket in the pantry.” Lifting it from the floor, she crossed to the narrow room that housed their foodstuffs and large pots and pans. Pickle crocks lined one shelf and baskets of various sizes sat at the far corner of the room. Jenny stepped into the darkness and Shay heard the sound of her movements, knew when she turned to face him again.

  Deliberately, he blew out the candle and blocked the narrow doorway.

  “Shay?” No fear marred her speaking of his name, only a curious note as she stood in the dark, just inches from him.

  “Can we pretend, just for a minute, that we’re not Shay and Jenny?” he asked. “Will you be angry with me if I touch you?”

  “Who do you want to be, if not a man called Shay?” she asked.

  “Someone else, maybe,” he told her. “Someone who deserves a woman like you.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “No.” The word was final, definite and though it was spoken softly, he knew she understood that it was irrefutable.

  Her silence was long, and then she stepped closer, her skirt rustling against the shelves. He was immoveable, feet spread, hands at his sides. If she asked him to free her from the small prison he’d formed…he’d do it. And probably regret for all time his gentlemanly behavior. But it was not to be.

  Her hand touched his chest, the palm outspread. His breath caught and he closed his eyes.

  Her shoes nudged between his boots, and he felt the heat of her body, knew the scent of her woman’s flesh.

  Fingers crept up to his throat and then shifted, cupping the nape of his neck, exerting feminine strength to bow his head. He lowered his face, aware of her breath against his mouth.

  Her lips brushed his, damp and wonderfully soft. Her hands met behind his head and she funneled his hair between her fingers.

  Bliss. Heavenly bliss. He reveled in the feel of her mouth moving against his, the weight of her breasts against his chest.

  His groan was muffled as he surrounded her with his embrace. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough, and yet it might be all he would ever have of Jenny. She opened to his kiss, her head falling back as he scooped her from the floor, clasping her tightly against himself, her feet dangling.

  She clung and he inhaled her essence, reveled in the warmth of finely textured skin and scented hair. She gasped and he released her mouth, only to utter one word.

  “Again.”

  Chapter Five

  Dark waves she had only dreamed of smoothing with her palm were in her grasp, and Jenny’s fingertips savored them, testing the texture of silken strands. Shay’s mouth was against her throat, then her cheek, lingering just beside her mouth, his breath warm, his voice murmuring words she’d thought never to hear from his lips.

  “Again,” he’d whispered, and she’d felt a thrill of desire settle deep i
n her belly, known the excitement of passion rising to swell within her breast. His kiss was more than she’d hoped for, less than her hungry body craved. And for this one moment, she gave herself over to the magic of knowing that Shay wanted her as she’d never been wanted before.

  His body was hard, his arousal firm, pressing against her belly with an urgency she could not fail to recognize. And yet, with a deep intake of breath, he lowered her to the floor, held her as she gained her footing, and then pressed his mouth against her forehead.

  “Come, Jenny,” he said softly. “I’ll take you to your bed.”

  Even as the words were spoken, she knew that they were meant in the literal sense. That he would lead her into her makeshift bedroom, and leave her there. The library door opened to his touch and they stepped inside the room that was her sanctuary. Flooded with moonlight from wide windows, it held little mystery. Only the corners were shadowed deeply. The bed itself was a pale rectangle against one wall, and white curtains moved softly as the summer breeze entered through the open window.

  His voice was low, each word an aching reminder that these few moments in time would not be repeated. “Tomorrow, we’ll be Shay and Jenny again,” he told her. “I won’t take advantage of you, sweetheart.” Even the endearment held a sad note, and she shivered as he turned her away from him, his hands on her shoulders.

  Broad palms swept the length of her arms, then his fingers enfolded hers and he lifted her hands, pressing them against her waist. His forearms lent support to her bosom, lifting and teasing the tender undersides of her breasts with gentle care. She groaned, a low, anguished sound, her head dropping back to lean on his chest. And mourned the love he would not share with her.

  This was to be all of it, all she would have from Shay…this brief encounter under cover of night…these fleeting moments of pleasure at his hand. Hot tears slid from beneath her lashes and traced the lines of her cheeks, falling unheeded against the bodice of her dress.