But Susan went on. Her rage was at the flood and would not be turned aside.
"Thee wept and said we'd be turned out, turned west, that we'd never see my da's homestead or Hambry again . . . and then, when I was frightened enough, ye talked of the cunning little baby I'd have. The land that was ours to begin with given back again. The horses that were ours likewise given back. As a sign of the Mayor's honesty, I have a horse Imyself helped to foal. And what have I done to deserve these things that would have been mine in any case, but for the loss of a single paper? What have I done so that he should give ye money? What have I done save promise to f**k him while his wife of forty year sleeps down the hall?"
"Is it the money ye want, then?" Aunt Cord asked, smiling furiously. "Do ye and do ye and aye? Ye shall have it, then. Take it, keep it, lose it, feed it to the swine, I care not!"
She turned to her purse, which hung on a post by the stove. She began to fumble in it, but her motions quickly lost speed and conviction. There was an oval of mirror mounted to the left of the kitchen doorway, and in it Susan caught sight other aunt's face. What she saw there - a mixture of hatred, dismay, and greed - made her heart sink.
"Never mind, Aunt. I see thee's loath to give it up, and I wouldn't have it, anyway. It's whore's money."
Aunt Cord turned back to her, face shocked, her purse conveniently forgotten. " 'Tis not whoring, ye stupid get! Why, some of the greatest women in history have been gillys, and some of the greatest men have been born of gillys. 'Tis not whoring!"
Susan ripped the red silk blouse from where it hung and held it up. The shirt moulded itself to her br**sts as if it had been longing all the while to touch them. "Then why does he send me these whore's clothes?"
"Susan!" Tears stood in Aunt Cord's eyes.
Susan flung the shirt at her as she had the orange slices. It landed on her shoes. "Pick it up and put it on yerself, if ye fancy. You spread yer legs for him, if ye fancy."
She turned and hurled herself out the door. Her aunt's half-hysterical shriek had followed her: "Don't thee go off thinking foolish thoughts, Susan! Foolish thoughts lead to foolish deeds, and it's too late for either! Thee's agreed!"
She knew that. And however fast she rode Pylon along the Drop, she could not outrace her knowing. She had agreed, and no matter how horrified Pat Delgado might have been at the fix she had gotten herself into, he would have seen one thing clear - she had made a promise, and promises must be kept. Hell awaited those who would not do so.
3
She eased the rosillo back while he still had plenty of wind. She looked behind her, saw that she had come nearly a mile, and brought him down further - to a canter, a trot, a fast walk. She took a deep breath and let it out. For the first time that morning she registered the day's bright beauty - gulls circling in the hazy air off to the west, high grasses all around her, and flowers in every shaded cranny: cornflowers and lupin and phlox and her favorites, the delicate blue silkflowers. From everywhere came the somnolent buzz of bees. The sound soothed her, and with the high surge of her emotions subsiding a little, she was able to admit something to herself... admit it, and then voice it aloud.
"Will Dearborn," she said, and shivered at the sound of his name on her lips, even though there was no one to hear it but Pylon and the bees. So she said it again, and when the words were out she abruptly turned her own wrist inward to her mouth and kissed it where the blood beat close to the surface. The action shocked her because she hadn't known she was going to do it, and shocked her more because the taste of her own skin and sweat aroused her immediately. She felt an urge to cool herself off as she had in her bed after meeting him. The way she felt, it would be short work.
Instead, she growled her father's favorite cuss - "Oh, bite it!" - and spat past her boot. Will Dearborn had been responsible for all too much upset in her life these last three weeks; Will Dearborn with his unsettling blue eyes, his dark tumble of hair, and his stiff-necked. judgmental attitude. Ican be discreet, madam. As for propriety? I'm amazed you even know the word.
Every time she thought of that, her blood sang with anger and shame. Mostly anger. How dare he presume to make judgments? He who had grown up possessing every luxury, no doubt with servants to tend his every whim and so much gold that he likely didn't even need it - he would be given the things he wanted free, as a way of currying favor. What would a boy like that - for that was all he was, really, just a boy - know about the hard choices she had made? For that matter, how could such as Mr. Will Dearborn of Hemphill understand that she hadn't really made those choices at all? That she had been carried to them the way a mother cat carries a wayward kitten back to the nesting-box, by the scruff of the neck?