JAMES’S SMILE DIDN’T slip, something he considered quite an accomplishment. “Hello, Glenda. You’re looking lovely as usual. I’m now your brother-in-law. And you are my new sister.”
Glenda looked from James to Jessie, groaned, and said through tight lips, her voice quavering with pain, “I’m betrayed. I’m ground into the dirt. It’s all your fault, Jessie, and yours too, James, for not paying heed to the one woman—me—who would have given you grace, beauty, and wit. Now look at what you’ve got and she will just breed more of what she is.”
“What do you mean, Glenda, that I’ll breed just more of what I am? Surely that doesn’t make sense.”
“You stole James from me, you miserable traitor! You were ugly, a pathetic girl who looked like a boy, and I never worried about you for an instant except to laugh at you because you looked and acted so stupidly. But just look at you. You’ve changed. You’ve become different, and it isn’t right. I hate you, Jessie. You will breed just more of what you were, not what you’ve become. You’ll change back, James will see that and hate you as much as I do.”
No one had a thing to say to that. Glenda tottered out of the room. She stopped just outside the doorway, whirled around, her face mottled, and shouted in raw fury, “I’ll kill you for this, Jessie! You ruined yourself and forced James to marry you. You even seduced him. Well, it won’t last. You’ll see. You’ll bore him by the end of next week, if not by the end of today. You interest a man? It doesn’t matter that you look different. You’ll never interest any man. Ha! You don’t know how to. Ha, again.”
Oliver Warfield cleared his throat. “My dear,” he said to his wife, “I ask that you speak to our daughter. Her behavior is tedious, if the truth be told. James never gave her a moment’s encouragement.”
“He didn’t give any encouragement to Jessie, either, but she’s pregnant.”
“That’s different,” Oliver said comfortably as he rose. “Come, Jessie, let’s go to the stable. The horses have missed you. You too, James.”
“Oh yes, Papa, I’d like that very much. James?”
While Jessie greeted all the stable lads and patted all the horses and gave them carrots and sugar, Oliver Warfield pulled James into his office. He sat down behind his battered desk, pulled a bottle of port from one of the drawers, and poured two glasses. “Here you are, son. Ah, that sounds nice. Here’s to your marriage to my best daughter.”
“I’ll drink to that,” James said, and clicked his glass to his father-in-law’s. The two men drank slowly without speaking.
Oliver leaned back in the rickety old chair that was the most comfortable one he’d ever sat in, and said, “ Remember when Jessie ate an entire watermelon to keep you from having a piece?”
“Good Lord, that must have been at least five years ago. I don’t think she’d even look at a watermelon now. There must be a point somewhere in this, Oliver.”
“Only that you will make her content, James. Why won’t she eat watermelon now? I have no idea, James.”
James smiled into his port at the suddenly stern father’s voice. “I will try. There are a lot of changes coming. Do you know that the English Wyndhams, their two sons, and their four servants traveled here with me?”
Oliver Warfield looked horrified. “They’re all staying at Marathon? They’re all in that house?”
“Unfortunately so. The Duchess—she’s the Countess of Chase, you know—she assures me that I’m not to worry, that all of them understand perfectly and indeed applaud how I spent my money.”
“I thought you did too much, but that’s neither here nor there. Those slaves now live better than many citizens.”
James felt the familiar curl of anger in his gut, but he held his tongue. He sipped more of his port and waited.
“Speaking of money, James, we need to speak about Jessie’s dowry.”
James shifted in his chair. In his new role as husband to Jessie Warfield, he was frankly uncomfortable with Oliver, the man whose horses he’d tried to beat for years at the races, talking about giving money to him.
“You want more port?”
“I think I’d better have some,” James said, and held out his glass.
An hour later James and Jessie finally left the Warfield Farm to return to Marathon. Jessie was talking like her old self, as chirpy as a magpie and excited about her father’s horses. “Rialto will take on Tinpin with no trouble in the race on Saturday. Oh goodness, whom am I to cheer for? This is a problem I hadn’t considered.”
James cleared his throat. “You’re feeling well?”
“Marvelous. What will I do, James? And there’s Friar Tuck and Miss Louise. I trained her myself. She’s nearly three now and ready to race. She—”
“Jessie, when your father dies, you and I will own the Warfield Farm.”
She stared at him. “He’s giving us everything? But he didn’t tell me that.”
“No, not everything. He told me he’s been very lucky the past few years. I suppose I didn’t want to know how he recouped his fortunes. There is a dowry for Glenda, a sizable one, he said, since he’s not all that certain she can catch a husband without one.”
“But Glenda’s very pretty. She’s not at all like me, she—”