Free Alice's Tulips: A Novel by Sandra Dallas Page B

cherry juice all over my face and my sleeves rolled up and my bodice unbuttoned on account of it being hot enough to roast corn in the stalk. Then I looked up, and there was Mr. Samuel Smead laughing at me.
    “I heard something and thought it was a cow stuck in the mud,” he says.
    I should have been embarrassed, but I just laughed, and I says, “Why, can’t you see? That’s what it is.”
    “You might moo like a cow, but I recollect you dance like an angel,” he says, and took a handful of cherries out of the bushel basket and popped one or three into his mouth.
    “Pick your own,” I says.
    “They wouldn’t taste as sweet,” he replies. Why, Lizzie, the sweetest thing was the way he talked. Have you ever heard anything so pretty in your life? I almost near swooned.
    He took out a handkerchief and wiped cherry juice off my face, then rubbed the back of his hand across my cheek, as light as a rose petal.
    “Sir, you overstep,” I says, although I did like it. “I have a husband.”
    “No matter to me,” he replies.
    Lizzie, I hope you don’t think the worse of me when I tell you the rest. I took a step backward, because Mr. Smead had come altogether too close. He took a step forward, moving right along with me, and each time I stepped back, he followed, just like we were dancing. Then he gripped my arms with his hands and looked into my eyes. When I looked him right back, bold as the queen of France, he tried to kiss me, but I slapped him. I never did that to a man before—well, just that once with the awful Carter boy, who got off light because he deserved a horse whipping—and for a second, I wondered if Mr. Smead would slap me back.
    His fingers pinched into my arms and his eyes got dark; then he laughed. “You got spirit, Miss Alice. Yes you do. I like a woman with spirit. But don’t you ever do that to me again.” He let go of me and started to walk off, then stopped. “I’ve been keeping watch for you.”
    “We’ve seen tracks. Were they yours?”
    “You better hope they are. You wouldn’t want guerrillas around, now would you?” He ran his tongue over his lips and smiled at me, and Lizzie, so help me, I got all warm inside, just the way I do when Charlie starts talking lovey. I’m not going to be a bad girl, because I love Charlie more than anything. But I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with flirting, do you? After all, I’m stuck on Bramble Farm and never have any fun, and I’m likely to be more than twenty when Charlie gets back. Besides, if I can hold off the Carter boy, I can handle Mr. Smead.
    I was surprised to read in your last letter that you agreed to give up your house, but on contemplation, I believe it makes good sense. Who wants to keep up such a big place with thewar on, when you can’t get servants for love nor money, and you don’t have the money anyway? The nicest thing about this farm is that the house is small, so there is nothing to keeping it clean. And now that your place isn’t big enough to entertain, you won’t have to belong to that awful sewing group. They should be ashamed of themselves sewing beaded purses and crocheting tidies when they ought to be rolling bandages and knitting stockings for the soldiers.
Your loving sister,
    Alice Bullock
    September 12, 1863
    Dearest Lizzie,
    Oh, my poor darling Lizzie! You have had such heaps of trouble already that I can’t bear for you to have this, too. I know “skins” are costly, at five dollars the dozen, and money is close. Still, that was a poor choice not to purchase them, because now look at what you’ve gone and done—or James has gone and done. But that is all water under the bridge, which is a most appropriate saying, the bridge being where you and James should not have walked out that day and stopped to have connection. Lizzie, what if someone had seen you? But that is the least of your worries at present.
    What can’t be helped must be endured, as Miss Charlotte Densmore used to say, and