The Woman Who Loved Jesse James Read online

  I ignored her and turned the trap onto the shady creek road. I was thinking about what I’d said earlier to Esme—that Mrs. Peabody would read her tea leaves and tell her who she’d marry. I would ask Mrs. P. to read my leaves as well—to tell me of my future husband. Please God, let it not be the unfortunate Mr. Colquit, or any man of his ilk. Give me a man with some spark and sense of adventure. A man with ambitions that went beyond planting the next hemp crop.

  Mrs. Peabody’s cabin sat close to the road, with a small yard swept free of any greenery, behind a sagging wooden gate. I tied the horse to the gatepost and while Esme was pumping a bucket of water for him, Mrs. Peabody came out onto her porch. “Don’t you girls look pretty,” she said, with a Georgia accent as smooth and sweet as thick cream poured over ripe strawberries. She was dressed in a loose wrapper of faded pink cotton, a white lace cap pinned to her closely-cropped curls. “Come in out of this heat,” she urged, and motioned us over to the porch swing in the shade of a wooden arbor onto which wild jasmine had been trained to grow. “Sit yourselves down and I’ll fetch some refreshments,” she said, clearly delighted to have our company.

  Esme and I sat in the swing, arranging our skirts around us. It felt good to stop in the shade, and I even imagined a faint breeze stirring the jasmine.

  Mrs. Peabody returned bearing a silver tray on which sat a cut-glass pitcher of some amber liquid. “Cool sassafras tea,” she explained, filling three china cups. “Very refreshing on a hot day like this.”

  She served us, then sat back in a wicker rocker across from the swing. “Now let me look at you. Are these the dresses you’re to wear to the wedding?”

  “This is the one I made over from the gown you gave me,” I said, fingering the striped satin.

  She nodded. “And a fine job you did. It looks just like a picture from Godey’s.” She turned to Esme. “Did you make your dress as well? It’s very pretty.”

  Esme blushed and smoothed the brown cotton figured with pink roses. “My mother made it,” she said. “I don’t sew as well as Zee.”

  Mrs. Peabody set her teacup on a small round table between us. “Tell me all about the wedding. I hear it’s to be a grand affair.”

  “We delivered a keg of punch to the Browders’s just now and they’re fixing enough food to feed an army,” Esme said.

  “Likely they’ll have enough guests to fit out their own regiment,” Mrs. Peabody said. She leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “My friend, Mr. Henry, tells me you’ll be having some very special guests at the wedding.”

  “Who?” I asked, confused. Why would Sheriff Henry know more about the wedding guests than we did?

  “He’s heard your cousins, Jesse and Frank James, plan to attend—they who’ve lately distinguished themselves with Bill Anderson’s men.”

  “Frank and Jesse James?” Esme turned to me, eyes wide. “I’d forgotten they were your cousins. Are they really going to be there?”

  I shrugged. “They might be. There’s no reason they shouldn’t.” Though I was named after Jesse and Frank’s mother Zerelda, their father, my mother’s brother Robert James, had died many years previous. Zerelda had married a prosperous farmer, Ruben Samuel, and the family lived in Kearney, a two days’ ride from our home in St Louis, so we didn’t see them often.

  “Those boys aren’t very popular with the Yankees at present,” Mrs. Peabody said. “Jesse in particular is said to have quite distinguished himself on their raids, inflicting heavy damage on the Union men.”

  “Jesse?” The last time I’d seen my cousin, he’d been a gangly fourteen-year old, a pale Mama’s boy who had terrorized us girls by throwing mud balls at our skirts. I couldn’t fit this image with that of an elite soldier.

  “No doubt he’s out for revenge,” Esme said. “After the scandalous way the Northern Militiamen treated his mother and step-father.”

  “It was disgraceful, hauling a woman in her condition off to jail simply because she refused to tell what she didn’t even know,” Mrs. Peabody said.

  “And poor Dr. Samuel almost died from their ill treatment of him,” Esme said.

  That spring, a group of militiamen had descended on my aunt and uncle’s home and demanded to know the location of William Quantrill and his men. Though Jesse was still at home at the time, his brother Frank was said to be riding with the famous guerrilla. Zerelda and her husband, Dr. Samuel, refused to provide any information to men they viewed as their enemies, and for their trouble Dr. Samuel was beaten and hanged to within an inch of his life and Zerelda, pregnant with her sixth child, had been jailed for many miserable weeks. Shortly after this, Jesse had joined his older brother in riding with the bushwhackers, aligning himself with one of Quantrill’s lieutenants, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson.

  “He and Frank will have to watch themselves today,” Mrs. Peabody said. “Lest some Northern sympathizer decide to try to make himself a hero and take them out.”

  I shivered at the idea. I might not care for Jesse and his brother much, but they were still my kin. “The Browders wouldn’t invite any Yankees to the wedding,” I said.

  “A party that large, who’s to tell?” She smoothed her skirts, then looked at us expectantly. “Now surely you girls didn’t come all this way on a hot day to show me your dresses. What really brings you here?”

  “We were hoping you’d read our tea leaves,” Esme said. “And tell me who I’m to marry.” She glanced at me. “Though my father says such things are tools of the devil.”

  “And who’s to say the devil doesn’t know the truth as well as the Lord, considering Satan was once said to be the highest angel?” Mrs. Peabody laughed at Esme’s shocked expression. Then she turned to me. “What about you, Zee? Do you want to know what type of man you’ll wed?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  Mrs. Peabody rubbed her hands together. “It’s too hot for brewing tea, so I’ll read your palms instead. You first, Esme.”

  Esme hesitated, then thrust out her hand, as if she half-expected Mrs. P. to sever it at the wrist. Our hostess grasped Esme’s arm and held it steady while she bent low over the palm.

  “You will live a long life,” Mrs. Peabody said, tracing the crease across the center of Esme’s palm. With her forefinger, she followed another line. “You will marry a man with three children. A farmer, I think.”

  Esme’s eyes widened. “That sounds like Mr. Colquit! Does my future husband have a mole?”

  “A mole? I can’t tell that. But he will treat you well and you will be happy and have . . .” She paused and studied Esme’s palm again. “You’ll have five children of your own.”

  “Five?” Esme grinned. “I hope you’re right.”

  “My turn.” I offered my hand. Mrs. Peabody took it, her skin cool and dry against my own, her fingers work-roughened and red as she traced the lines across my palm. Deep furrows marred her brow as she studied my hand for a long time, saying nothing.

  Esme and I exchanged glances. “What is it?” I demanded. “What do you see?”

  She hesitated. “You’ll marry a handsome young man.” She released my hand. “A man who will make you the envy of many.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  She shook her head, avoiding my gaze. “Nothing else. I wish you every happiness.”

  “There was something else,” I said. “You saw something that upset you. What is it?”

  She pursed her lips. “I saw that it won’t all be happiness for you,” she said. “There will be . . . hard times.”

  Hard times were nothing new, but the way she said the words sent a cold shiver up my spine—the feeling my mother referred to as ‘someone walking across your grave.’ I wanted to ask for more details. What kind of hard times would these be? But I was a coward and kept silent.

  Mrs. Peabody refilled our cups. “Enough of worrying about the future,” she said. “Tell me what your mother is wearing to the wedding. And your sister.”

  “Mother is wearing the best dress s
he made before the war,” I said. “Lavender checked taffeta with leg-o’-mutton sleeves. Lucy has a new dress—white cotton lawn worn over big hoops and trimmed in yards and yards of handmade lace.”

  “I heard the groom’s friends talked about kidnapping the bride tonight and having a chivaree,” Esme said.

  “Bowling told them if they tried he’d shoot to kill.” I shivered. “I don’t know if he meant it, but my father spread the word he wouldn’t stand for any trouble where his daughter is concerned.”

  “She’ll have enough on her mind with the wedding night, without worrying about a bunch of drunken young men dragging her away from her new husband,” Mrs. Peabody said.

  “Is it so awful?” Esme asked. “The wedding night?”

  Mrs. Peabody let out a bawdy laugh. “Who told you a wedding night is awful?”

  Esme blushed. “I overheard my mother talking to my older sister, Liz, before she was married. Mother told her a lady doesn’t enjoy lying with a man, but it’s necessary in order to bear children, so the best thing to do is to submit quietly.”

  “That’s the biggest bunch of horseshit I ever heard!”

  The words were as shocking as the sentiment behind them. “My mother says men always enjoy marital relations more than women,” I said. “That it’s part of women’s punishment for what happened in the Garden of Eden, when Eve tempted Adam.”

  “So Adam holds no blame for taking the apple from Eve?” Mrs. Peabody waved away the notion, then leaned toward us and spoke in a confiding tone. “Believe me, girls. Women can enjoy sex every bit as much as men—provided they’re with a man who knows what he’s doing.”

  “But how would we know if the man knows what he’s doing or not?” Esme protested.

  “You know because you learn for yourself what pleases you and you inform him if he comes up lacking.”

  Esme and I exchanged glances again. We had eavesdropped on enough conversations among the older, married women to know that men had strong sexual urges. It was a wife’s duty to satisfy these urges, but the closest I had ever heard any woman come to admitting to enjoying the marital bed was once when my Aunt Zerelda said her husband, Dr. Samuel, was ‘considerate’ of her feelings in this regard.

  “Don’t look so owl-eyed, both of you,” Mrs. Peabody chided. “Don’t tell me you’ve never touched yourself for pleasure.”

  Esme and I couldn’t even look at each other now. Yes, I had touched myself. I had enjoyed discovering the changes in my body as I grew into my womanhood. And sometimes, on lonely nights in my rooms, the caressing and fondling of my own body had been a kind of comfort. But I would never admit such depravity to anyone else.

  “It’s all right if you have,” Mrs. Peabody said cheerfully. “Everyone does. It’s how we learn about our own bodies. And about the most pleasurable ways to be touched.”

  Cicadas hummed in the trees just beyond the porch. Or was that my own head, buzzing with this onslaught of dangerous ideas?

  Esme looked as distressed as I felt. “Is it true what people say—that you and Mr. Henry are lovers?” she blurted.

  Mrs. Peabody frowned at her. “My relationship with Mr. Henry is a private matter,” she said.

  “But he’s a married man,” Esme protested.

  “A man whose wife is an invalid, whom it would be dishonorable for him to leave.” She leaned toward us. “I don’t expect either of you girls to understand this now, but I want you to listen to me and take what I have to say to heart. When you find a man you truly love, with both your body and your heart, you will be willing to endure a great deal of pain for those moments of pleasure. Not merely sexual pleasure, though that is not to be undervalued, but the pleasure of knowing that he loves you with the same intensity and passion.”

  Passion. The word and the sentiment it conveyed were as exotic as a rare orchid or a tropical bird. It was a word that hinted at sex and sin and emotions not kept demurely in check. The ideas made me shiver and started an ache deep inside me. That was the kind of man I wanted—not cool Mr. Colquit and his good manners, but a man of passion.

  “Mr. Henry?” Esme’s astonishment reminded me that the man to whom Mrs. Peabody was so devoted was not the sort to make my own heart beat faster. The sheriff was a stout, graying man who walked with a limp from a ball he had taken in the leg at Antietam.

  Mrs. Peabody laughed again. “A man’s looks and age have little to do with his skill at pleasing a woman,” she said. She patted my knee. “Now that I’ve sufficiently shocked you, why don’t you take off those bonnets and let me fix your hair? I have a new issue of Godey’s that shows some very fetching styles.”

  The wedding of my sister Lucy to Mr. Bowling Browder was the social event of the year in our part of the county. Easily a hundred buggies, traps and saddle horses filled the pastures and lined the drive leading up to the Browders’s house, a two-storied, white-washed manse with a broad front veranda.

  Lucy looked happy and not at all nervous as she stood with her husband-to-be to say her vows. My father performed the ceremony on the top step of the verandah while friends and family looked on. Bowling stammered a little, but recovered enough to plant a not-so-chaste kiss on his new wife, while his friends whistled and cheered.

  Afterwards, Esme and I joined the crowd making its way to the buffet spread beneath trees behind the house. Darkies in crisp white aprons delivered trays of smoked meats, pickled and fresh vegetables, fried chicken, baked beans, and steaming rolls. To finish, there was a huge white-frosted cake decorated with sugared flowers, its layers rising three feet above the table where it sat, watched over by a small black boy who kept away the flies with a palmetto fan.

  Esme and I filled our plates and found a spot on a blanket beneath a spreading oak, from which vantage point we could observe the crowd. “There’s Mr. Henry,” Esme said, nodding toward a group of men who loitered near the cookhouse. The sheriff stood at their center, gleaming pistols just visible beneath his open coat. I studied his stout, stocky figure. This was Mrs. Peabody’s skilled lover?

  “He must be over thirty-five,” Esme said. “Almost as old as my father.”

  “Mrs. Peabody must be at least that old,” I said. Though I still couldn’t imagine wanting to sleep with a man like Mr. Henry.

  “Have you seen your cousins yet?” Esme asked.

  “Frank and Jesse?” I shook my head. “No.” Then again, would I even recognize the boys if I saw them again?

  We were almost finished eating when Fanny and Rachel Grace, friends from school, joined us. “There’s a group of young men here, recently returned from the war,” Fanny said, her eyes shining.

  “How many of them are there?” Esme’s face brightened. Young men meant possible suitors.

  “I heard half a dozen,” Rachel said. “Though if any of them are worth knowing, I can’t say.”

  “I say any eligible young man is worth knowing in these times.” Fanny glared at her sister. Already twenty-two, she was in danger of being labeled an old maid, while Rachel was just eighteen.

  “Or even an eligible older man,” Esme said, giving me a knowing look. “If he’s nice and can support a wife I wouldn’t say no to him.”

  “Frank and Jesse James might be worth knowing,” Rachel said. “I hear Jesse in particular is a handsome one.”

  “Are they here?” Esme asked.

  “So I hear,” Rachel said. “Though never having met them, I couldn’t say.”

  “Frank and Jesse are Zee’s cousins,” Esme volunteered.

  Fanny regarded me with renewed interest. “Then perhaps you’ll introduce us.”

  “Perhaps.” I stood and excused myself, pretending I had to visit the outhouse, when all I really wanted was to escape from the cloying desperation of these women who were so determined to snare a man at any cost.

  Yes, I wanted a husband, and a home and children of my own. But our visit this afternoon with Mrs. Peabody had made me more certain than ever that I wanted to do more than settle for the first
man who would ask me. I wanted the grand passion she’d spoken of—a man I could love with both my body and my heart, who would add color and adventure to my life, and not merely more drudgery.

  Chapter Two

  I slipped around the side of the house, toward a grove of trees along the edge of the back pasture, anxious to return to the relative coolness of the shade. I leaned against the gnarled trunk of an elm and squinted up at the pattern of light and shadow filtering through its slipper-shaped leaves. The hum of voices from the party seemed very far away, the indistinguishable conversations of a dream.

  “Don’t you think it’s dangerous for a young lady to be wandering into the woods by herself?”

  I gasped at the low, deep voice so close to my ear, and whirled to face the speaker. He laughed at my obvious discomposure, but swept off his hat and sketched a bow. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

  “What did you expect, sneaking up on me that way?” I studied him through lowered lashes. More than the sudden fright made my heart race now. He was a handsome man, near my own age, with fine, sharp features, thick sandy hair and broad shoulders.

  But his eyes were the feature that caught and held me. Eyes as blue as the summer sky, as full of light and heat. Eyes that looked directly into mine without flinching, seeing not just the picture I presented of myself as a nicely dressed young lady, but seeing me—the secret self few others bothered to notice.

  “Cousin Zee, don’t you recognize me?” he asked.

  My gaze fell to the hat in his hand—a flat-brimmed felt pinned up on one side, of the type favored by Quantrill’s guerrillas. “Jesse?” I gasped.

  “At your service, ma’am.” He sketched another bow, lithe and graceful in a black suit, gray-striped waistcoat and string tie.