Love, Come to Me(48)

On the nights when he got home early, Lucy would turn the lamp down low and get into bed first. She always kept her eyes closed as Heath stripped off his clothes and stretched out beside her, but often when he was asleep, she would open her eyes and let her gaze wander over him. Even though the graceful, pantherish lines of his body became familiar to her eyes, she would always become a little bit breathless. He was an uncommonly handsome man. And since their wedding night, he hadn’t made one move toward her.

At first she had been relieved by his lack of attention to her, and then curious, and gradually even a little resentful. Now she spent a lot of her time wondering how to make herself more attractive to him. Once he had seemed to want her very much. What had happened to change his feelings so radically? Was he ignoring her out of consideration or actual disinterest? She couldn’t bring herself to talk to him openly about it, and since he didn’t seem inclined to broach the subject, it seemed likely that she would end up like Abigail Collier after all—a sharp-tempered, immaculate old maid.

A few weeks after her marriage, Lucy became a part of a young and fashionable set in Concord, called the Thursday Circle. It consisted of several beautifully groomed women who had too much time on their hands. They had servants to do their work and busy husbands who were away too often. The wives volunteered their money for charities and musical organizations in order to get their names publicly acknowledged, and they took on many cultural and social projects, which Lucy joined eagerly.

She was welcomed readily into the circle, since she had all of the qualifications to be a member—she was young, fashionable, and as bored as the rest of them were. They, too, had husbands whom they hardly ever saw. They spent their excessive amounts of free time just as she did, shopping, talking, and leafing through fashion magazines. Their meetings always seemed to end in gossip, gossip about intimate and personal matters that Lucy had never heard anyone talk about so openly before. Privately she was sometimes embarrassed by their frank discussions of lovers and sexual exploits and affairs, and yet for all their careless chatter, she could see that many of them were lonely underneath, as lonely as she was. And they were great fun to be around, priding themselves on being shocking and sophisticated, filling the room to the ceiling with their brittle laughter and tobacco smoke. Many of them liked to smoke factory-made cigarettes, a habit of popular actresses and daring society women.

“Dixie,” Olinda Morrison, a local banker’s wife, drawled smoothly at one Thursday evening meeting, “you must tell me about something.”

“Dixie?” Lucy repeated, lifting her dark winged eyebrows quizzically.

“Yes, that’s what I’m going to call you from now on—I had no idea until yesterday that you were married to a Confederate. I think it’s absolutely delicious.”

“What exactly do you want to know?” Lucy inquired, smiling at the avid curiosity that shone in Olinda’s velvet black eyes. The brash possessor of striking beauty, Olinda had the confidence to ask anyone anything. Only the truly beautiful could dare to be as rude as she was.

“What is it like with him?” Olinda demanded.

“Do you mean—”

“Oh, don’t give me that little-lost-lamb expression . . . you know what I mean! Is he very charming in bed? Are Southerners as soft-spoken as they say, or does he give the Rebel yell at the crucial moment?”

They all howled with laughter. Even Lucy, who had turned bright red, couldn’t help joining in. As they all waited expectantly for her answer, she lifted a crystal glass of ice water to her lips in the hope that it would cool her burning cheeks. She had to maintain their impression of her as a woman who was as knowledgeable and familiar as they were with the subject of lovemaking.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” she said, ignoring a twinge of guilt at leading them all to believe something that wasn’t true, “he told me that I disproved all the things he had heard about Yankee women.”

That set off another gale of laughter and scattered applause.

“In the South they think Northern women are all blocks of ice,” Alice Gregson, the pretty wife of one of the town councilmen, said dryly.

“We are, compared to them,” Betta Hampton replied. Betta was salty and witty; at forty-two she was the oldest one of the group, as well as the most experienced. She often disconcerted Lucy because her knowing smiles and ribald revelations always seemed to contain an unrelieved disenchantment with life. Betta didn’t seem to care for anyone or anything. “It’s the climate. I’m not talking about the weather, you ninnies—it’s the social climate. Here the men are all hardheaded and cold-blooded. They only care about one thing. I’ll tell you how to make a Northerner stand to attention . . . just rustle a wad of greenbacks near his ear. But Southerners . . . that’s a different matter altogether. I had a Southern paramour once, and I can tell you that no matter how many men she’s known, a woman is never truly awakened until she’s had a Southerner.”

“Why? Why is that?” Olinda demanded.

Betta smiled wickedly. “They all have a special secret. Ask Lucy what it is.”

But Lucy would not, could not answer, despite the avalanche of entreaties and playful demands for her to reveal the secret. Secret? She had no idea what it could be. She had never made love with Heath—she barely knew her own husband! She looked up silently and met Betta’s mocking gray eyes, feeling like a fraud.