Free White Doves at Morning by James Lee Burke Page B

right," she said.
    She went back outside and
walked up the street toward her house, staying in the shade under the
colonnade. Men tipped their hats to her and women stepped aside to let
her pass, more deferentially and graciously than ordinary courtesy
would have required of them. Her face burned and sweat rolled down her
sides. Again she felt a sense of odium and duplicity about herself she
had never experienced before and heard the word traitor inside
her head, just as if someone had whispered the word close to her ear.
    That evening Ira Jamison was
at her door again, this time with a carriage parked in front. He was
out of uniform, dressed in white pants and black boots and a green coat.
    "I thought you might like to
take a ride into the country," he said.
    "Not this evening," she replied.
    "I see." He looked
wistfully down the street, his face melancholy in the twilight. A
mule-drawn wagon, mounted with a perforated water tank, was sprinkling
the dust in the street. "I worry about you, Miss Abigail. I've read a
bit about what some physicians are now terming 'depression.' It's a bad
business."
    He looked at her in a
concerned way.
    "Come in, Mr. Jamison," she
said.
    After he was inside, she did
not notice the glance he gave to his driver, who snapped the reins on
the backs of his team and turned the carriage in the street and drove
it back toward the business district.
    He sat by her on the couch.
The wind rustled the oak trees outside and blew the curtains on the
windows. She saw heat lightning flicker in the yard, then heard
raindrops begin ticking in the leaves and on the roof.
    "I'll do whatever I can to
help find the whereabouts of Robert Perry," he said.
    "I'd appreciate it very much,
Mr. Jamison."
    "This may be an inappropriate
time to say this, but I think you're a lady of virtue and principle,
and also one who's incredibly beautiful. Whatever resources I have,
they'll be made immediately available to you whenever you're in need,
for whatever reason, regardless of the situation."
    She was sitting on the edge of
the couch, her shoulders slightly bent, her hands in her lap. She could
feel the emotional fatigue of the last two days wash through her,
almost like a drug. Her eyes started to film.
    "It's all right," he said, his
arm slipping around her.
    He leaned across her and
pulled her against him and spread his fingers on her back, pressing his
cheek slightly to hers. Then she felt his lips touch her hair and his
hand stroking her back, and she placed her hands on the firmness of his
arms and let her forehead rest on his chest.
    He tilted her face up and
kissed her lightly on the mouth, then on the eyes and cheeks and the
mouth again, and she put her arms around his neck and held him tighter
than she should, letting go, surrendering to it, the heat and wetness
in her own body now a balm to her soul rather than a threat, the wind
blowing the curtains and filling the room with the smell of rain and
flowers.
    He extinguished the oil lamp and laid her back on the couch. He bent
down over her and
she felt his tongue enter her mouth, his hand cup one breast, then the other, and
slide down her stomach toward her thighs. His breath was hoarse in his
throat. He pressed her leg against the swelling hardness in his pants.
    She twisted her face away from
him and sat up, her hands clenched in her lap.
    "Please go, Mr. Jamison," she
said.
    "I'm sorry if I've done
something wrong, Miss Abigail."
    "The fault isn't yours," she
replied.
    He hesitated a moment, then
stood up and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
    "If I can make this up—" he
began.
    "You need to fetch your
driver, sir. Thank you for your kind offer of assistance," she said.
    For the first time she
realized one of his eyes was smaller than the other. She did not know
why that detail stuck in her mind.
    That night she woke feverish
and sweaty and tangled in her sheets, her head filled with images from
a dream about a sow eating her farrow. She did not fall asleep