Galveston Read Free Page B

the field. He waved with one black-gloved hand and motioned for me to join him. I went slowly as he had come to me the first time we met. “It’s blasted hot today, for this time of year,” he said as I drew up. “Would you like to rest in the shade?”
    He handed me down from my gelding, the breeze stirring his auburn hair, a mischievous smile across his face. The fleeting thought strayed across my mind that the hands locked around my ribs could just as well crush them with a simple change in mood. He pointed toward a broad-trunked oak and, sitting down beside me, told me he had already had as much as he could countenance of dry land—his ship had pulled in better than a month ago—and would soon be off to sea once again. This confession of his dictated my movements from the moment it rustled the quiet air around us.
    I leaned across him to pick up an autumn leaf, one of thousands fallen from the tree. He sensed my design in doing this and lightly fingered my hair. Now, Damon was not a man inclined to go less than all the way in any pursuit, so he took my face between the black-gloved hands and studied it for a moment, then kissed me, lightly at first as the way he had touched my hair, then harder and harder still, and then his arms went around me and I felt along my back the motion of the black gloves being removed.
    A thrill of fear rose up inside me but I was powerless to stop the hand that now made its way with ease into my blouse and around my breast, and the force of the body that laid me down upon a nest of newly fallen leaves and arched itself above me.…
    When it was over I knew I had been won by Damon Becker, and, knowing too, of his fickle nature, asked quickly, “How soon did you mean to leave?”
    He was not one for commitments of even the shortest span. “I’ll meet you tomorrow again, here,” he said, and mounted the horse and rode away. I brushed the autumn leaves from my skirt and buttoned up my blouse. I wanted to shout with joy and cry with relief and cover my face with shame, all at once. But I mounted my horse and rode from the thicket thinking of nothing further away than tomorrow.…
    We had twelve tomorrows, each at the same place, and I had never felt so fulfilled, so happy or blessed, so sure the future would hold nothing but lovely joyful things and beautiful, faraway places and days and nights of bliss; oh yes, I had begun to hope I was in Damon’s eyes different from the other women he’d known.
    But then on the thirteenth day he did not come.
    I waited an hour or two before riding back to town, thinking maybe something kept him from coming, some simple explanation for his leaving me to wait, and all I found, when I returned home, was Charles’s buggy out front and him waiting on my porch to see if I’d like to go on a picnic.
    â€œI had a special basket packed for us at the hotel cafe,” he said. “Everything’s here we need. All you have to do is board the wagon.”
    â€œWhere is Damon?” I asked dazedly.
    He looked at me in puzzlement. “Why, Damon left town early this morning; you know him, gone off to sea again, I think to Spain, though he promised to write, not that I count on letters from him. Why?”
    â€œOh, nothing. Picnic, you said? Sure. Why not?”
    I waited four days, to see if a message would come to me from Damon, and when none did I made up my mind. I called at Charles’s office and right there, amidst the clutter and stuffiness, said, “Let’s not wait any longer to get married. I’m willing to go ahead right away, that is, if you still want me.”
    He came around the desk, his face alive with bewildered happiness, and took me in his arms. “I have to travel for the next couple of weeks on business,” he said. “When I get back, we’ll call the preacher and set the date.”
    And so, within six weeks of my first and last taste of the