He turned, and did not see how, behind him, her eyes lingered on his back in a long, opaque, impenetrable stare, lasting for several heartbeats before he was out of her sight.
The garden was dark and, except for the distant sounds of insects, silent in the July night. A sliver of moon silvered the leaves of the ginkgoes above the swing. Lightning bugs flickered coldly in the hedges. Farther down the long lawn water rippled and gleamed. The swing creaked as he settled into it and obediently unhooked the tight collar. Then exhaled with relief. His head felt like a ripe plum.
She was not, he mused, a demonstrative girl. Not physically. She could be affectionate in a kittenish way, but he'd never been allowed, even after the ring, to do anything untoward.
He had to respect that. That was, after all, the standards he'd expect for a wife. And it wasn't as if he had no other outlets. Still, it could be frustrating. She was so beautiful — her waist so small and fragile, those long legs so exasperatingly curved, feet so tiny in the heels he'd never seen her without. When she stood close….
He stared at the wandering insect beacons and waited for his drink and dreamed hopelessly of lowering himself between her damp and waiting thighs.
"Here you are, Aubrey." She rustled as she sat down, so close her perfume nibbled at his self-control like subtle acid. To restrain himself he gulped at the drink. No gainsaying it, her father had excellent taste in whiskey.
"Damned fine bourbon."
"It is." She laughed softly. The west Tennessee was still there, but mellowed in her near-whisper. He reached out his arm and she slipped under it, and he felt her warmth through his tunic.
"Now you can tell little old Sharon Sue what's bothering you. You say it isn't the nigras."
"No. They're under control. Nobody hurt but their own people."
"How strange."
"Yes."
"It's not the coloreds? The Railroad?"
"No, really it's the Yankees, if you have to know."
"I don't have to know." She turned her face upward, like a pale blossom in the moonlight, and her lips parted and her eyes went faraway and halfclosed. It was only the third time he'd kissed her and he was surprised and pleased when her lips parted for him.
It was very strange, he thought. Here he was with the woman he loved; a woman of his own class, almost of his own aristocratic breeding; a woman, moreover, of undeniable beauty and charm; a woman who was capable of arousing him with a hundred subtle tricks and wiles, but who drew back with that strange high laugh whenever he tried to grow closer with her. Perhaps if he had what he wanted, he would no longer — no, he could not allow himself to think that. Not about the woman he'd someday marry.
But if only, he thought, feeling guilty even as he thought it, if only she was not quite so witless….
"Yankees?"
"Mmm. Yes. Over't Fort Monroe."
"Making trouble?"
"Might say that."
"Kiss me some more."
The dress was low and now that his eyes were adapting to the dimness of the garden he could make out the sweet thrust of her breasts against it. Her head lay on his shoulder, and he was rigid within and soft as wax without as he traced the line of her neck gently with a finger.
"Your hands are cold."
"From the glass."
"Is it empty? Can I get you another?"
"Why, sure enough it is," he said, genuinely surprised.
When she came back she hesitated, then set the glass on the lawn table beside the swing and raised her hands to her head. Golden waves of hair spilled down in the moonlight.
"Sit here," he suggested.
"Well — all right. For a little while."
With her head on his lap she seemed helpless, crumpled, like a drowned body thrown up by a wave. He stroked her fine soft hair gently. From the darkness came a low humming sound that gradually swelled to a vaguely menacing chorus. "What's that?" she said, stirring.
"Cicadas."
"Cic—?"
"Locusts, they call them. But they're really cicadas. They swarm every — I think it's every seventeen years. You're probably too young to remember — " "Locusts, Aubrey?"
"Not the kind in the Bible. These are harmless. Oh — listen." The unearthly humming of the insects had changed, merging into a distant harmony that rose and fell, rose and fell. Quidley felt her stiffen in his arms. "Aubrey — it's weird."
"I remember when I was small," he said. "On my great-aunt's farm in Carolina. They came one summer, crawling out of the earth under the trees."
"What are they like?"
"Like big bugs, or moths, maybe inch and a half long, with fat bodies. Oh — and wings." He'd almost forgotten his great-aunt, a small angry woman who held him tranced for hours with stories.
"She had to catch one to show me; I was frightened. They have" — he traced the letter in the air with a finger — "a bright red W on their wings. She said it was a warning."
"Of what?"
"War."
"Was there one?"
"Of course not." He laughed. "She scared the dickens out of me, too. That night — when they started that humming — she told me they were calling me. Out in the woods. Au… brey. Au… brey. I believed her."
"What a horrible thing to say to a child." She shivered.
"No lasting effects," said Quidley. He stroked her neck, long, white. Her breasts, rising and falling slowly with her breathing, beckoned him.
"What kind of trouble?"
"Beg pardon?"
"What kind of trouble the damn Yankees making over't the fort?"
"Oh, they're shipping in a new kind of shell. Don't tell anyone about it."
"Of course not. I wouldn't ever—"
"I know. But it's secret. Just so you don't repeat it."
"I feel honored that you tell me things like that. I really do. But after all, we're engaged. That's almost married. And there aren't any secrets between a man and his wife, are there?"
"I suppose not."
"And I do feel — tonight — as if we were really close, Aubrey—"
"Oh yes," he breathed. Only a little move now of the hand —
"This shell, darling—"
"Oh — well, it's coming in on a ship. Army's going to capture it, and then we'll be able to copy it, make our own." His hand, moving as gently as a man catches butterflies, slipped into her bodice. Oh, God, he thought. She lay quiet, eyes closed. "Sharon — I—"
"Aubrey. Yes?"
"It's cold."
"I can warm you—"
"And there are mosquitoes coming out. I hear them. And that creepy sound—"
He knew the tone of her voice and what she meant. She'd let him have this much and now she meant him to stop. He swallowed, half-angry, but admiring at the same time, and slipped his hand out from underneath her clothes.
"Another bourbon?" She sat up, shrugging her dress back into place as if his hand had never touched her. "Really we should go back inside. The bugs are all coming out and I get so bit up—"
"All right," he said unhappily. She laughed, high, and leaned against him for the space of a moment and kissed him chastely on the cheek. "Don't be tiresome, darling. Another year, you know, and we'll be married. I've told you how Daddy feels about short engagements. If not for that I might — well, bend the rules."
"Hm."
"You're not so hard to figure out, Aubrey. I know what you want. But more than anything else I want my husband-to-be to respect me. The way I want to respect him."
He stood and took several deep breaths to quiet the trembling in his legs. He'd never felt like this. No, he had, but years ago — as a cadet at Virginia Military Institute, parading the Post after dark with — what had been her name? — murmuring in his ear.