Sweetbriar Read online

  “Damn it, Linnet! I don’t want anythin’ to—” He stopped because she was looking at him so strangely. She carefully set the mug down, then began to laugh, laugh in such a way as he’d never seen an adult do before. Her mouth opened wide, and her whole body began to shake. He stared in fascination as her legs turned rubbery and she collapsed on the floor, her laughter filling the air, her legs helplessly entangled in the long skirt. She held her stomach, tears rolling down her face.

  “Linnet, why are you laughing? All I said was I didn’t want to eat any more and you wouldn’t even let me finish that.”

  But Linnet couldn’t explain; she had no extra breath. Damn it, Linnet! Sweet, musical words. He was going to get well! He was going to be Devon again. Nothing else could have convinced her that he was going to recover.

  Devon just stared at her and began to find her laughter infectious. He grinned. “You are the beatinest woman. I don’t guess I’ll ever understand you.”

  Phetna returned with Miranda and looked at the two of them, Devon smiling and Linnet rolling on the floor in a mass of skirts, her face covered with tears.

  “She’s gone plumb crazy,” Devon said.

  Miranda didn’t care why her mother was so happy, only that she was. She ran and jumped on top of her and the two of them rolled together, Linnet tickling her daughter mercilessly, the child kicking and screaming with delight.

  “Here, boy, drink this ’fore it gets cold,” Phetna said.

  Devon watched his daughter and Linnet with interest, never really having seen her so abandoned before, and drank all of the hot, thick broth.

  Finally Linnet lay back on the wooden floor, her sides heaving and exhausted from the romp. Miranda still wanted to play, but she held her away. “I’m afraid I’m too tired for more, Miranda.” Finally the child subsided beside her mother, content to lie close to her.

  “You two plan to stay there all night?” Phetna asked from her lofty position above them. “That boy o’ yourn needs some help gettin’ back to bed and I’m afraid I’m too feeble to give him much help.”

  “I doubt that,” Linnet said as she sat up and looked at Devon.

  He gave her a very solemn look and turned the mug upside down to show it was completely empty.

  She smiled at him. “Please don’t do anything else. I’m sure my stomach will be sore tomorrow as it is.”

  Devon was very serious. “I’ll rub it for you.”

  Linnet’s face turned red and she distinctly heard Phetna snicker. She stood before him. “Put your arm around my shoulders and I’ll support you. Just be careful of your feet.”

  As he stood, the quilt fell away and he made a grab for it, then let it fall. He grinned at her wickedly. “I forgot there ain’t nothin’ about me you ain’t seen—and handled—many times.”

  “Devon!” Linnet felt her entire body turn red, even her ears and her toes. She gave a furtive look to Miranda.

  “I thought you said you didn’t raise no young’un who’d—what’d you say?—get upset at the sight of a man’s bare behind.”

  Linnet couldn’t answer, and when Devon stretched out, face down on the mattress, she tossed a sheet over him, not looking at him. She grabbed a piece of cloth from across the top of her sewing basket.

  “What you doin’, girl?” Phetna asked, her voice betraying her laughter.

  “I think the serpent has just appeared in the Garden of Eden, and Adam will now get his fig leaf.” She held up the cut and burned pants that Devon had worn the night of the fire. “They’ll have to do until I can make new ones.” She still avoided Devon’s eyes.

  Chapter Nineteen

  BUTCH GATHER LEANED BACK IN THE CHAIR, his hands clasped over his enormous stomach. “If you ask me, we got a real problem on our hands. Now I don’t wanta be the one casts the first stone, but there’s more people in this than just me. I mean, we got young kids involved in this. I can’t help thinkin’ about what sins she musta done been tellin’ our young’uns.

  “As for me, I’m wanting to do somethin’ about this. You all know me, I ain’t one to set when there’s a job to be done.”

  The other people in the store agreed with him.

  “And then there’s the burned woman,” Jule said. “I know you all remember the time she let the Willises die. It always did seem funny to me. They was doin’ all right ’til she come. And somethin’ else bothers me, and that’s the way that woman looks. Now I ask you, could any normal person live through a fire like that? Could anybody what didn’t have a line with Satan last through a fire like that?”

  They were silent, staring at Jule and she began to become excited at the attention directed toward her.

  “Now this is the way I figure it: none of us can stand bein’ near the burned woman, and rightly so, bein’ good Christians, yet we never knew why we didn’t like her. But then there was somethin’ inside us told us to stay away from her and I think it was our knowin’, inside like, what’s good and what’s bad.

  “And ’member when that English girl come to Spring Lick? Oh, we tried, all of us did, but none of us could like her. And why, I ask you? What was there about her that caused all of us Christians to stay away from her?”

  She paused, and her body began to shake with the pleasure of having everyone listen to her. “There’s somethin’ born into Christians that makes ’em know evil, feel it, and all of us knew somethin’ was wrong from the start.”

  They all stood quietly, and Jule looked from one to the other.

  Butch spoke again. “Jule said it for all of us, and now what’re we gonna do about it?”

  No one spoke for a moment, and then Ova seemed to have an idea. “You know who I feel for in all this? That young’un. That poor little girl. They got her bewitched, are trainin’ her to follow in their ways.”

  “Ova’s right!” Jule said. “What we oughta do is take that little girl away from them witches and raise her ourselves. It’d be a fight all her life to keep the devil out of her, but it’d be our duty.”

  “Mmm,” Butch murmured. “You ladies are right. Now all we gotta do is decide what to do with ’em, the two women and the man.” His little eyes gleamed as he had some thoughts on what to do with the younger woman.

  “Lynna, come sit beside me.”

  “Devon, I have work to do.”

  “What if I told you my back hurt a lot and I think you could ease the pain?”

  She put her knitting in her lap. “Does it and can I?”

  “Lord! I can’t remember what it’s like not to be in pain and, yes, you could help me.”

  They were alone in the cabin and, although she knew it was a ruse, she went to sit beside him and studied the wounds that were gradually beginning to heal.

  “Could you eat something?”

  He rolled his eyes at her. “Please, no more food.” He whispered something she couldn’t hear, and so she leaned closer to his mouth. He kissed her ear and she began to pull away, but her threw one arm around her waist. “Don’t go away, Lynna, please. I just been thinkin’ and I wanta talk to you.”

  “About what?” she asked stiffly.

  He pulled her closer beside him, his face buried in her neck, his arm about her waist, one leg thrown over her thighs. She struggled to get away from him but even as weak as he was she couldn’t match his strength.

  “I been thinkin’ about that night we made Miranda.”

  She pushed against him earnestly, all the time realizing she didn’t want to leave him.

  “Just let me talk to you, Lynna, what harm can there be in that? Remember the night we spent together? No, don’t move away. I promise not to do anything but talk. What can I do when I’m burned like this?”

  She lay still under his arm, telling herself to move away from him, unable to make her body obey her mind’s commands.

  “You know where I’d like to be?” he whispered in her ear. “I’d like to be on a mountain top, in a little cabin with you. There’d be a stack of firewood and lots of food a