Saga: Contance's Story Read online

  Saga: Contance's Story

  by Maren Smith

  Constance tried to look at the bolt, but all she knew was the soft whispers and curious looks that were being thrown her way by the closely-knit group of women in the back of Mrs. Bodine's General Store.

  When echoing praise was not forthcoming, Margo lowered the cloth to look at her. Her smile faded a bit. "You don't like it?"

  "No, no, it's beautiful," Constance said quickly, obligingly.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing." Constance turned into the display of cloth and began to rifle through it, but she wasn't smiling and Margo wasn't fooled.

  Looking from Constance to the whispering women, her mouth turned down in a rare frown of irritation. She planted her hands on her meaty hips and called out, "Hello, Letty. Elmira. Betty Sue."

  Caught, the women froze in mid-speculation. Betty Sue, the younger of the three, still had the grace to blush. "Margo. Constance."

  "Did you hear the good news?" Margo asked, cracking the slightest of smug smiles. "My Connie is getting married!"

  "Yes," Elmira, the matron of the group said slowly. "We've heard. Congratulations, Constance. And such a dashing young man, too."

  "Smart as a tack, too!" Margo boasted. "He obviously knows a good thing when he sets eyes on it. He's on his way north to start his own business, you know."

  "So we've heard."

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  With a tsking sound, Margo put the bolt of cloth down and turned to the store keep. "Mr. Bodine, this simply will not do. Mr. Farris was very specific. He insisted on the finest in the store. Spare no expense, he said."

  Mr. Bodine looked from Margo to Constance and his eyes widened a bit. "Oh, well," he hummed. "I do have a bolt or two behind the counter. But it's very expensive. It's silk. Straight from Paris, France."

  "And it's blue!" Margo crowed as she caught the first glimpse of the cloth as he placed the bolt on the counter and began to unwrap it.

  No longer pinned beneath Margo's censoring stare, the three women fled the shop. It wasn't until the door chimes above the shop door sang out that Margo glanced up and over her shoulder. "Never mind them, dear," she told Constance.

  "They're just jealous. Not only have you beaten their daughters to the alter, but you are marrying very, very well, too."

  Constance reached out her hand to touch the shiny silk of blue that Mr. Bodine displayed for them. A small smile began to tug at her mouth. "I am, aren't I?" Margo grinned back at her. She began to bob up and down as her excitement returned. "Oh yes."

  "Did he really say spare no expense?" Margo's beamed, her face positively shining as she confessed, "You are to outshine every woman in the town; he'll be content with nothing less, he says." 80

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  "He really does like me," Constance said, a note of wonder creeping into her voice. "A man doesn't say such things unless he means them, does he?"

  "No," the shopkeeper interrupted, startling them both.

  "Trust me, Miss Constance. A man doesn't say anything even close to that without meaning every syllable of it. Especially not when he's spending his own hard-earned money!" As incredible as it seemed, every way Constance looked at it, she saw herself perched on the edge of getting everything she'd always wanted. A husband, a home, and a family of her own. And not just any husband, but one who truly wanted her. Her! And not just because he couldn't have her more attractive sisters, either, or because any old warm-blooded body would do. For whatever reason, Judd wanted her. Some of the tension eased from her shoulders and, for the first time in her life, Constance could almost believe she was actually going to get her dream: a man to love and to love her until the Good Lord called her home.

  "He does," she said. She raised her head and smiled at Margo.

  "He does," the older woman agreed. Blue eyes sparkling, Constance said, "Let's shop."

  * * * *

  The back of the Henry's wagon was loaded down with two bolts of that expensive Parisian blue silk, two bolts of white cotton to make a respectable nightgown out of, and enough satin and wool to provide her with enough new bloomers for the trip up into the Washington Territory. Constance had 81

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  never felt so doted upon in her life. But although it tickled her that Judd would be so willing to spend so much money just to give her a wedding day to remember, it was the sentiment behind his generosity that made her happiest of all. At least until Constance and Margo came out of Mrs. Bodine's General Store and Constance spied Judd across the road. He looked to have just come out of Miss Miranda's boarding house and was standing talking to Amanda Gray. Flirtatious, beautiful, eye-lash batting Amanda, and she was in full-blown man-stealing mode. Her cheeks were rosy, her mouth was coquettishly smiling and even from across the street Constance could see that her eyes were merrily shining. She tossed back her head, laughing at something Judd had said, and Constance's entire world shrunk down until it became a tunnel, one that was fixed on Amanda and the man who was supposed to be her fiancé. Beside her, Margo stopped walking when she did, but it took her a second to spot what Constance had discovered.

  "Oh, look. There's Mr. Farris now! We should go tell him hello."

  At which point Amanda laughed again and rose up on tiptoes, flinging her arms around Judd's shoulders and kissing him boldly upon the cheek. In fact, she missed his mouth by the barest distance and only because he only belatedly turned his head.

  Margo gasped; Constance felt as if she'd been slammed in the stomach with a block of ice. When Judd's arms came up to catch Amanda's shoulders, a grip Constance knew felt as warm as the sun and as strong as a bear hug, her world grew 82

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  even smaller. She began to shake with the fury of an emotion she had never truly felt before, one which she was grossly unprepared to handle: jealousy. Intense, blinding, bodyshaking, fist-clenching, teeth-gritting, untamable jealousy.

  "Oh dear," Margo said faintly, but Constance barely heard her over Amanda's tittering giggle. The next thing she knew, she had stepped off the wooden slats of the General Store's sidewalk.

  Constance strode across the street, her eyes locked on her young and pretty opponent, her hands clenched so tightly at her sides that her fingernails cut into her palms and even began to bleed. She barely felt the pain of it. She barely noticed when Judd raised his head to look at her over the top of Amanda.

  "Connie," he said, a flash of surprise crossing his face.

  "Oh dear!" Margo said. "Oh dear, oh dear! Constance, honey?"

  She ignored them both, every ounce of her being was fixed on Amanda, who turned around when Judd let her go. Her mouth curled into the falsest smile that Constance had ever seen in her life.

  "Well, hello, Miss Henry," she drawled. "I didn't see you standing there."

  And then she smiled.

  And Constance punched her straight in the nose. Absolutely no thought went in to the attack. One minute she had stopped walking dead in front of the lovely Miss Gray and Judd, and in the next half of a instant, her fist was flying 83

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  through the air and connecting with the girl's mockingly smiling face.

  Amanda's head rocked back on her shoulders and a spurt of blood arched through the air. Her ear-piercing shrieked as she fell off the sidewalk, landing on her bottom in the dirt, covered both Margo's horrified scream and Judd's shout of surprise.

  Judd grabbed her hands, jerking her around to face him.

  "Constance, what in the world have you done?!" Her narrowed, intense world fixed upon him. "You lying, cheating deceiver," she hissed.

  If anything, Judd looked even more stunned than before.

  "What?"

  Constance swung her fist at him. She missed his face by
inches, due almost as much to his sudden backwards jerk as it was to her complete inexperience with fighting. Except for Amanda, she had never hit anyone before in her life. Not Serenity or Grace, not when she was a child, not even the barnyard mutt when he'd snatched her freshly washed laundry sheets right off the line and rolled with them in the mud.

  "I'm bleeding!" Amanda cried, holding her nose with one hand and crawling backwards on the ground to get away from Constance as she became a kicking, punching windmill of unbridled fury.

  "Constance!" Margo yelled, and then covered her mouth, her eyes huge in her ashen face as people began to spill from the buildings to investigate the ruckus.

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  Judd tried to grab her arms, but even as inexperienced as she was, she put up one hell of a fight. She beat on his chest and clocked his jaw twice when he tried to hold her, and even when he did finally managed to wrap his arms around her, grabbing her in a constraining embrace, she put bruises on his shins and knees that would take weeks to go away.

  "Ow!" Judd roared as she snapped her head back, catching his mouth with the top of her bony skull. "Dammit, woman!

  Stop acting like a crazy person and listen to me!" But Constance was beyond listening to anything. She knocked them both to the ground with her fighting and struggled against his hold, kicking up a thick cloud of dirt that engulfed them both until she finally exhausted herself. Judd rolled on top of her, pinning her to the ground, and held her there, panting and gasping for air until he was certain the fight was out of her.

  "Lord Almighty, woman," he finally managed. "Can you ever fight!"

  "Get ... off ... of me," Constance angrily bit out.

  "Not until you settle down."

  "Please, Mr. Farris," Margo hesitantly offered. "People are watching."

  "She brog by dose!" Amanda sobbed. Margo spun on her. "You get yourself home, Amanda Gray!

  Right now, young lady! If your mother doesn't take a switch to you for what you've done here, you can bet I will!"

  "She isn't the only one in need of a stern talkin'-to, either," Judd growled down at Constance, and she glared hotly back at him, her eyes narrowing.

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  "Don't you touch me," she seethed. "Don't you dare ever touch me again!"

  "Oh dear!" Margo wailed again, her eyes growing misty.

  "Does this mean the wedding is off?"

  "Yes!"

  Now it was Judd's turn to narrow his eyes. "The hell it does!" He scrambled to his feet, not only pulling Constance up with him, but ducking down to toss her over his broad shoulder and lifting her into the air. She let out a shriek when her feet left the ground, but instead of struggling, she grabbed onto him as if suddenly afraid he might drop her. Judd stomped up the steps, throwing open the door to Miranda boarding house. "S'cuse me," he told his shocked landlady as he muscled past her into her drawing room and shut the door behind him.

  "Put me down!" Constance cried, and he did, although he quickly took hold of her arm to make sure she didn't try to run from him and marched her over to the rocking chair by the hearth.

  "Just what's got into you?" Judd demanded, giving her a little shake.

  Constance only stared at him, her eyes wide and her jaw agape. "You picked me up," she said wonderingly. "You carried me."

  He blinked in surprise, but his anger didn't diminish.

  "Yeah, that's right. I carried you. Now I'm going to turn you over my knee and blister your little butt!" 86

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  Constance started, the wonderment fading from her face and a flash of fire returning. "No, you can't! You have no right! You—"

  'Can't' and 'no right' had nothing to do with it, and he proved that by sitting down in the rocking chair and tossing her over his lap like a sack of potatoes.

  Constance let out a howl of sheer rage when he jostled her so thoroughly over his thighs that her nose almost bumped the floor and promptly smacked the seat of her skirts. Even with the padding that her dress and petticoats provided, she still felt the force of his hand. The first one was little more than impact, the second left her tingling, and the third had her struggling to get back on her feet once more. And her anger returned full-force.

  She beat at his legs with her fists and kicked furiously, tossing her ample hips from side to side in an effort to roll off his knee. A motion that Judd effectively countered when he wrapped his arm around her waist and pinned her down again.

  "You can't spank me!" Constance bellowed at him. "You kissed her! I saw you! You kissed her!" Judd reached for the hem of her skirts. Constance tried to keep him from raising them, but he grabbed her wrists one at a time and transferred them into the grip of the arm already pinning her down. Despite her yells and muted struggles, he pushed her skirts up over her hips and across the small of her back, leaving a barrier of only threadbare drawers between her bottom and his hand. For her defiance, however, he gave 87

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  her bottom the first real wallop it had felt since the night of the dance.

  His palm caught the lowermost swell of her bottom, right above her thigh with an ear-startling 'SPLAT!' It jolted Constance over his lap and stilled all her struggles instantly. She sucked a pained breath and the tears started instantly, although whether from the spanking or the anger even she couldn't tell.

  "Let's set one thing straight right here and now," Judd thundered, punctuating each scolding word with a vigorous swat. "I did not kiss that girl. She kissed me!" Constance lost herself to kicking and crying as he blistered her backside, leaving no inch of her untouched by fire and hurt. For one brief moment, the spanking stopped and if only she weren't already crying, she'd have wept out of sheer thankfulness.

  And then she felt him untie the back of her drawers and those came down over her flaming rump, leaving her completely vulnerable and exposed from behind. The spanking resumed long before she was ready.

  "If you think I've got even a shred of interest in that little trollop, you've got another think coming!" Judd continued, paddling her bare bottom and darkening the already scarlet nates until they took on a slightly purplish hue. "Lord Almighty, woman! Just what do I have to do to prove myself?

  I don't want anyone else, and I sure as hell am not going to tolerate your running around, punching women and hitting me, just cause you're in a jealous snit! All you had to do was 88

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  trust me, and that silly infant out there would be nursing a smarting bottom instead of you!

  "Now—" he grabbed the back of her dress and hauled her up off his knee. He didn't allow her the luxury of standing long enough even for her to rub some of the burning agony out of her bottom. With one strong tug, he plopped her down again to sit, yelping and squirming, on his lap. "Now," he said again, calmer, "what do you have to say for yourself?" It was as if a demon had taken control of her. Constance swiped at the tears on her face and glared balefully back at him. "I hope you and Amanda are very happy together."

  "I don't want Amanda," Judd bit out through tightly clenched teeth. "I want you."

  "You wanted her enough to kiss her!" Constance snapped back. "And don't start that she kissed you nonsense! I saw you and you sure didn't look all that unhappy about it!" His mouth opened, but he froze on the verge of saying something more. "You didn't like it," he blurted in surprise.

  "You didn't like the sight of someone else locking lips with me."

  Constance glared at him, her mouth compressed tightly together. "She's very pretty," she finally said, and averted her eyes.

  "She is," Judd admitted, beginning to smile. "But she's not for me."

  "I don't want to see you kissing anyone else," Constance sniffed. She tried to stand up, but Judd wasn't about to let her go and she f
inally gave up and settled for rubbing what 89

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  parts of her sore bottom weren't in unreachable contact with his lap.

  "All right," he agreed with a nod. "But I don't want to see you hitting anyone else, either." He took her hand, the warm caress of his palm making her shiver. "These hands are too precious for that." Judd smiled. "And I don't want to spend all my life punishing your pretty bottom." His thumb stroked her knuckles, but the fleeting moment of tenderness was ruined by his reference to spanking her. Especially when her bottom was smarting and burning to the point that she was certain she could feel each and every print of his palm pulsating on her skin.

  "I have to go." Retracting her hand from his, Constance pushed out of his arms and walked out of the boarding house.

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  CHAPTER SIX

  Buster could smell the hot apple pie as he was coming in from the south field. He was dirty, hot and tired and there were bugs eating the hell out of his fruit trees. He was going to have to deal with that tomorrow, but for now the sun was going down and he was ready to go home. Still, he paused to pick a basket full of fresh corn and carried it up to the house. Leaving the basket on the porch, he took off his filthy field shirt, tossed it over the rail, and then headed for the rain barrel. He had just submerged his arms and was bending over to scrub the dirt and sweat from his face when he heard the front door open.

  "Bust—OH!"

  He jerked up out of the rain barrel, swiping to get the water out of his eyes. "What? What's wrong?" By the time he swiped the water away and got his eyes to focus, Margo was standing in the door, her back to him and she wouldn't turn around. Her hands were up over her mouth and the few times that she turned her head partway around—

  as if she were fighting herself just to say something to him—

  he could see her face was a bright, bright red. He stalked up the front porch steps, a seed of concern burrowing into his gut the closer he got to her. "Margo?" He reached out to touch her shoulder. "What's the matter with you, girl? Are you ailin'?" He looked past her into the house.