"Oh, ironing!" the woman exclaimed, with the excitement of a child with a new toy. "Let me do that."
"You're feeling better?" Esme asked, genuinely stunned by the woman's apparent good mood.
"It's the amusement," Yo told them both with conviction. "Now, my ladies," he continued, with the hill version of courtly manners, "I'm going to play this fiddle so well, why, your chores gonna float by like leaves on a lazy river."
And he did. Esme was sure that she hadn't heard her father play so cheerfully since he'd moved to the house. She suspected that recently he had walked up to the mountain when the music mood struck him.
"Can you play 'The Bear That Yearned for Buckshot'?" Eula asked.
Crabb's grin was his only answer as he struck up the lively tune.
Within minutes the twins had brought their sewing into the kitchen and were simultaneously sewing and helping with chores as they laughed and clapped and jigged with the music.
Mrs. Rhy actually showed the girls some fancy clogging steps. "I used to be quite a high-stepper in my day," she confided to the group. "Of course, that was before Mr. Rhy and I became Free Will Baptists," she explained with only the hint of wistfulness in her voice. "We used to go to all the dances and just tear up the floor!"
Esme was amazed. Since dancing of any kind was considered inherently sinful by the Free Will Baptist Church, neither Esme nor the twins had ever danced a step.
As Yo had warned, the chores passed easily and quickly. And it was with genuine surprise that Esme looked up to see her husband standing in the doorway.
"What in heaven's name is going on in here?" His question was thunderous. "I could hear you all the way out at the gate."
"We're just having some fun, Cleavy," Mrs. Rhy told him. "Yohan said he would play us a tune, and I thought I'd show the twins some real country clogging."
"It's kindy a celebration that your mama is feeling more herself," Yo added helpfully.
"Oh." He was clearly at a loss for words. "Well, I'm glad you are better, Mother," he said finally.
"Dinner's almost on the table," Esme told him. "I fixed your favorite, roast chicken."
Her husband's expression was strangely cold. "Roast chicken? Is it Sunday and no one told me?"
The afternoon wasa long one for Cleav. He had been as grouchy as a bear at noontime, speaking in monosyllables. He attacked the succulent roast chicken with the finesse of a mountain lion and the manners of a billy goat. Not one word of appreciation passed his lips. The chill in his own heart froze the phrases to his tongue.
The memory of his mother flushed and laughing, and the Crabbs all caught up in the gaiety, contrasted sharply with his own black mood. Since that fateful Sunday, Cleav had been chafing with the knowledge that his wife, Esme Crabb Rhy, had married him for his house. That was the fact, he reminded himself. And Esme Crabb didn't even have enough taste to appreciate the ambience of the structure he'd built. She wanted it painted blue!
Why should he care? he asked himself over again. He'd married her because he'd had to. Nothing less than public censure could have compelled him to align himself with a snappy little baggage like Esme Crabb.
No one in Vader should have expected a love match, least of all him. But he had. He'd thought that she loved him, desired him, needed him, for himself.
She'd needed him, all right. Needed him to support her father and sisters and put a roof over their heads.
Part of him was furious, but part of him understood. Just as he had felt obliged to give up his schooling to help his mother get through her grief, Esme felt responsible for her family's needs. She was the one who'd seen that there was a roof over their heads and food on their table. He could hardly blame her for seeking a solution that would ensure both of those things. Marriage to him was that solution.
He remembered that long-ago day when she'd come into the store and asked him outright if he wanted to marry her.
Of course she wasn't in love with him. She hadn't even known him then.
Cleav shook his head in self-derision. He'd been so fanciful.
It all made perfect sense, and he couldn't even fault Esme. She'd seduced him with her naive, countrified wiles, and he'd fallen in with the scheme easily enough.
So why did it hurt so much to think about it? Pride? Being bamboozled by a woman? Yes, that was part of it. But he'd been in business a long time and had taken his share of skinnings, enough to know that every man can be a fool at times.
There was more. Something that hurt worse than injured pride. He hesitated to put a name on it. But it was there.
Esme's duplicity hurt because he loved her.
There was no other explanation. He'd suspected as much earlier but had rejected the suggestion. But the pain in his heart could be interpreted no other way.
