The Ballad of Hattie Taylor Read online

  He stopped unseen in the doorway when he realized Nell was there, battling disappointment. Then he shrugged it aside. There was always later, and Hattie had missed her friend’s company. He watched them for a moment.

  Their heads were together, cups of tea untouched on the table in front of them, while Nell, her expression a curious mixture of disbelief and rapt wonder, hung on to every word Hattie whispered to her. Hattie was using her hands to illustrate her words, spreading her thumb and index finger wide of each other as though to demonstrate a measurement. Then she added something in a low voice and her two hands spread about a foot and a half apart, looking for all the world like a fisherman describing the one that got away.

  Nell looked downright horrified and Jake’s curiosity got the best of him. He strolled into the room. “What in tarnation are you ladies discussing? Looks mighty interesting.”

  Two heads whipped in his direction, hot color staining faces that were a study in consternation. Nell’s glance skittered nervously off the front of his pants, then quickly rose to stare unseeingly over his shoulder. And comprehension exploded in Jake’s brain. By God, his wife was telling her friend how his cock changed size when he was aroused—and giving more credit to his hard stage, he might add, than he fairly deserved.

  For the first time in an age, Jake blushed. And he couldn’t even look at Nell. “Hattie?” he croaked. “Uh, could I see you out in the hall for a moment? Excuse us, won’t you?” he added to the top of Nell’s downcast pompadour.

  “Of course,” Nell murmured in reply, speaking to her cup of tepid tea, which she’d picked up from the table in front of her. My goodness, it must be true then. She thought Hattie was funning her, until she’d seen the look on Jake’s face when he realized what they were discussing. Perhaps she and Moses should reconsider their marriage plans.

  Then again, Hattie did say it was the most marvelous experience. And she was clearly happier than Nell had ever seen her.

  Hattie grinned at her husband’s embarrassment as she trailed him out into the hall, quickly attempting to wipe the smile from her face when he whirled to face her.

  “You were discussing our sex life?” he demanded in a low voice choked with disbelief. He ran his fingers through his hair, staring down at her. “Good God Almighty, Hattie!”

  Hattie looped her arms around his neck and leaned into him, pressing her breasts into his chest. “Shouldn’t I?” she whispered innocently, then added with wicked emphasis, “Isn’t it allowed?” She raised her head to press a soft kiss on his lips. Pulled back. “After all, we are married.”

  Jake had a hard time thinking straight when she did things like that, but a wry grin finally twisted his lips. She was onto that, was she? He should know better than to underestimate her. He ran his knuckles down her smooth cheek. “We are, Big-eyes, but Nell’s not.”

  “No, but she and Moses are talking about getting married sometime in the not-too-distant future. I just thought I’d give her a little information so she wouldn’t be as unprepared as I was.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said in a low voice, his hands on her backside pressing her closer to him. “You were a pretty quick study. If Moses is half as lucky as I am, Nell will be too.” He pulled away before he gave in to the temptation to drag her into the closet beneath the stairs. “I have to get back to work. Try to confine your conversation to something innocuous while I’m gone, will you?”

  “Why, certainly, Jacob,” she agreed demurely. “Whatever you say.”

  Jake didn’t believe her demure act for a minute. If he knew his Hattie—and he was learning more about her all the time—she’d be back in the parlor within seconds of his departure, imparting all sorts of scandalous facts. In boundless detail, no doubt.

  37

  MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1909

  Jake stopped demanding the name of Hattie’s rapist, but he hadn’t forgotten about it. Since it seemed important to her peace of mind, he made an honest attempt to erase it from his memory. And because he was happy, he was mostly successful. Yet, out of the blue sometimes, the look on Hattie’s face that night in the stable would flash before his eyes and he would hear the bitterness in her voice again. I didn’t give myself, you sonovabitch. I was handed over on a silver platter.

  What the hell did that mean? During odd moments, he dissected her words over and over, worrying them like a dog with a bone. And he was no closer to understanding them. I was handed over on a silver platter. The words stuck in his craw. To be handed over had connotations of someone purposefully colluding to deliver her into the hands of a rapist. Yet that made no sense. No one in their right mind willingly dispatched a helpless virgin into the hands of a vicious debaucher.

  Unless it was unintentional. While pitching fresh hay into the newly cleaned horse stalls early one evening, he decided accidental made more sense than anything else he’d considered. If a person didn’t have an inkling of an acquaintance’s or even a friend’s perversions, then it was entirely possible that arrangements were made all unknowingly for Hattie to meet or dine with someone, or even spend the night in a home recommended by a friend. Folks made such arrangements quite often, and in the case of an unattached female, she had little choice but to comply. Hell, he himself had—

  I was handed over on a silver platter . . . handed over on a silver . . . handed over—

  “No.” It squeezed up through the breath-stealing constriction in his throat like the croak of a faraway frog. God, please, please, please. No.

  But truth was being caught in a burst of fireworks, and pitiless, savage shards of agony flayed his nerve endings. His legs buckled and his hands slid down the shaft of the pitchfork as he crumpled to his knees on the ground. The tool toppled unnoticed as he doubled over until his forehead ground into the packed-dirt stable floor.

  Oh Christ. It fit. It all fit. Her refusal to see him after the night he’d nearly relieved her of her virginity up in her room. Doc’s coolness. Her vow to hate him until hell froze over. His mother’s request that he assume responsibility for the family’s legal matters. Lord’s inexplicable fall from grace with the town leaders. Augusta’s knowledge of his dalliance with Hattie that night. Hattie’s refusal to write, to speak, to— It was him. He was responsible for the brutal theft of her virginity.

  Jake vomited on the dirt.

  Twilight lengthened and shadows crept across the floor as he knelt in the stall, unaware, in his unbearable pain and guilt, of the passage of time. He didn’t hear the creaking of the outer door opening, but he stiffened all over when Hattie’s voice called softly in the gloom, “Jake? Are you in here?”

  He didn’t answer, but her footsteps grew progressively nearer, halting momentarily outside each stall. “Jake?

  “Where is he?” she muttered only moments before reaching his stall. Then she was at the entrance. The smell of sickness and his crumpled posture must have registered, because Hattie rushed in, crouching down at his side, reaching for his forehead. “Jake?”

  “Don’t touch me!” He knocked her hand aside. God, he was so unclean; let her not be contaminated by him.

  Hattie drew her hand back. “What is it? Oh God, not influenza. Everyone knows how deadly that can be.”

  Jake blinked at her, not really absorbing what she was saying as his mind spun in sick turmoil. But he saw her shake her head.

  “No, that doesn’t make sense,” she murmured. “No one’s reported it this summer.” She stretched a hand toward him once again.

  Jake struggled upright. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he backed out of her reach and stared at her. She was his pure, beautiful, redheaded bride, and he . . . Hell, he was the filthy procurer for her rapist. His eyes slid away, too ashamed to maintain contact with hers.

  “It was Lord, wasn’t it, Hattie?” he asked of the space somewhere beyond her right shoulder. His voice was low and as dead in tone as he felt. “He raped you
the night I made you stay with him. The night you begged me to send you somewhere—anywhere—else. The night I handed you over on a fucking silver platter.”

  Hattie’s body jerked in shock. Then the hand extended to touch Jake dropped to her side as she went still as a stone. She felt as though all the blood was draining from her head. Oh God, he knew. How did he know?

  It didn’t matter. What mattered was Jake wouldn’t look at her, he didn’t want her to touch him, and clearly, she literally made him sick to his stomach. She knew this would happen when he learned what Lord did to her! Somewhere deep inside, she had always known she must guard the identity of her attacker for her and Jake to be happy. Yet somehow, he’d found out. And now it was too late.

  “Wasn’t it?” Jake insisted in a harsh near growl, and Hattie stared at him in sick helplessness. He stood rigidly, his hands fisted at his sides. He was tightly clenched all over: the veins in his arms, his hands, his neck, all standing in stark relief. The small muscles along his jaw bunched, and his eyes stared past her.

  “Yes,” she whispered. She wanted to say something to make him look at her and see her again, instead of used goods. But she couldn’t find the words. And feeling lost, she turned and walked away.

  Back in their bedroom, she waited for Jake to come to bed, but he never did. She eventually fell into a restless sleep sometime before dawn, only to toss and turn beneath dream after disturbing dream.

  * * *

  —

  Jake eased open the door to their bedroom and tiptoed in. For a moment, he allowed himself to stare hungrily down at his wife. She was curled on her side amid tangled bedclothes, her hair a wild mass of tumbled curls blocking her face, her left leg exposed where her nightgown had ridden up to twist around her hip. She whimpered softly in her sleep and her legs moved fitfully. The nightgown twisted around her even more.

  Forcing himself to turn away, he swiftly pulled his clothes out of the wardrobe, then let himself out of the room. After leaving instructions with his foreman, he drove from the ranch. The sun had just cleared the horizon when he parked in front of his mother’s house.

  He went around to the back door. Through the window next to it, he saw Mirabel, who replaced Cook for the breakfast meals. He tapped softly on the glass before letting himself in.

  Mirabel turned from the stove where she was replacing a pot of coffee. “Jacob! My, you’re out early.” Then she looked closer and saw his grim expression, the paleness beneath his habitual tan, his swollen, reddened eyes. “Are you all right? Nothing has happened to Miss Hattie, I hope.” She began to worry in earnest when Hattie’s name produced a spasm of pain across Jake’s features.

  “I need to speak to my mother,” he said in a gritty voice. “Please. I know it’s early, but it’s important.”

  “Certainly. I’ll go wake her.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Augusta stepped into the room, tying her wrapper’s belt. “I heard Jacob’s automobile.” She crossed the room. “What is it, son? Has something happened to Hattie?” Not even when Jane-Ellen and the baby died, not even when he learned of Hattie’s rape, had Augusta seen Jake so devastated.

  “I happened,” he said in raw agony. His posture was rigid as he stood in the middle of the kitchen. “I handed her over to Roger Lord on a silver platter. Oh God, Mom, how can I live with this? She was so honest and giving and innocent, and I hand delivered her to that, that—”

  Augusta sank onto a kitchen chair. “How do you know this?”

  “It just came to me.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I kept thinking about something she’d said, and suddenly I just . . . knew. I can’t believe I didn’t realize the moment I learned she’d been raped. It seems so damn obvious now.”

  Augusta stared at him. His voice had the raw hoarseness of vocal cords strained beyond endurance by sustained bouts of throat-ripping, gut-wrenching sobbing. “Sit down, Jacob,” she urged. “Mirabel, pour him some coffee.” When Jake automatically responded to her command, she reached across the table and laid her hand over his tanned fingers. “When did you last eat?”

  “What?” He looked at her as though she spoke a foreign language.

  “When was your last meal, dear?”

  “I . . .” He shrugged impatiently. “Dinner, I guess.”

  “You need to eat.” She looked to her housekeeper and companion. “Mirabel, perhaps some eggs?”

  Mirabel nodded and pulled out a skillet.

  “I’m not hungry. I doubt I’ll ever have an appetite again.”

  “Don’t be self-indulgent, Jacob. I realize this has come as a shock to you, but you can only wallow in your own guilt for so long. You have an excellent mind, son. You need to use that, not your emotions.”

  He stared at the tabletop as if she hadn’t spoken, and she squeezed his fingers until he raised his head to look at her.

  “Roger Lord raped Hattie three years ago, Jacob. It’s a fact that cannot be changed. You are partially responsible by sending her there in order to keep from seducing her yourself. The question is: how are you going to use your knowledge?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I want to castrate the son of a bitch with a rusty ax.” But he began to think rather than react. “I won’t, of course. It would drag Hattie’s name through the mud and land me in jail, where I couldn’t do her a damn bit of good.”

  Augusta watched some clarity come back into her son’s gaze as it met hers across the table.

  “I have to find something to make him pay without further hurting Hattie,” Jacob said in a hard voice. He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip, eyeing his mother over the rim. “How did you knock him off the upper pinnacle of Mattawa society?”

  “I defended him staunchly against a number of unethical charges.”

  Jake looked at her blankly. “I don’t understand.”

  “I used the telephone to inform him he wasn’t welcome to attend Jane-Ellen’s funeral. Since Central is quite unable to keep news that juicy to herself, rumors began to circulate. When several people approached me at the funeral reception, I simply told them you would be handling our affairs henceforth. I may have looked befuddled when I assured them, while all the legal ramifications were quite beyond me, I was certain the tales of Mr. Lord’s unethical activities were most untrue. I begged them to disregard whatever they may have heard and to please, please not pressure you for details.” She smiled demurely. “They understood you were grieving, so of course they left you in peace. Aren’t people thoughtful?”

  Jake bared his teeth in appreciation of her tactics. “That was all it took?”

  “Well, Doc Fielding was seen conversing with the sheriff for a long time on the day of the funeral, and he did, when questioned, say they were merely discussing the weather. If in the next breath, he dropped a gentle hint here and there that perhaps it would be an appropriate time to consider a change of lawyers, well, who can account for the way people’s minds work?”

  Jake’s mind was beginning to click over with cold precision. He consumed the eggs Mirabel placed in front of him without tasting a bite as he extensively cross-examined Augusta. By the time he finished, he was fairly satisfied he’d extracted every bit of knowledge she possessed concerning Hattie’s attack. He also had the name of everyone else who knew anything about it. Sickness still lay like a rock in his stomach when he left his mother’s house. But at least he had gained new purpose. Somehow, someway, he would find a way to avenge his wife.

  For the next several days, he interviewed people and kept a discreet surveillance on Roger Lord’s house. Except for the constant rage burning in his gut, Jake could, for the most part, treat his preparations like any other case he’d undertake.

  It was when he returned to the ranch and his wife that the shell encasing his emotions cracked wide open, and he could no longer maintain the façade. Combined guilt and sickness oozed like po
ison through his system, coloring his every action. He barely saw Hattie; it was easier that way. Gone all day, catching up on his chores half the evening, he joined his wife only for dinner. And that was pure agony, for he no longer knew how to act around her.

  Everything he had taken for granted was gone. He couldn’t look at Hattie without seeing her terrified eyes in the three-year-old sepia photographs Doc had shown him. He sure as hell couldn’t talk to her, for what was there to say? An apology not only seemed feeble, but was too little, too late to make reparations for the pain she’d suffered because of him.

  More than anything, he missed holding her, missed talking and laughing with her. But he kept his distance, convinced his were the last arms she’d want around her—and doubtful they would ever laugh again. He slept on the leather couch in his office.

  Hattie, who had lived for nearly three years with the knowledge of that night in August of aught-six, didn’t see Jake’s pain and guilt. Therefore, she interpreted his actions as the worst-case scenario. She’d had years to come to terms with his part in her ravishment and didn’t take into account that, for Jake, learning of his culpability was as devastatingly new as if it had happened yesterday. She only knew he was absent all the time now and withdrawn even during the few moments they did spend together. She assumed it meant she disgusted him now that he knew the identity of the man who’d defiled her. The old specter of inner ugliness rose to haunt her anew.

  It tore her up, resurrecting all the shame she’d thought once and for all behind her. She felt unclean and assumed Jake, too, was ashamed of her, repulsed by her. Before their marriage, she’d been prepared to accept that he might not love her the way he’d once loved Jane-Ellen. She’d told herself that was all right, for she wasn’t pure and good the way Jane-Ellen had been. But she’d been willing to work hard, to give Jake all her love, and truly, he had seemed so satisfied with her. Happy even. She had come to believe he was perhaps beginning to love her just for herself.