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Such teeming thoughts filled her brain, until she heard Eldon speak from beyond the closed door.
“Mister Cain wants you now.” He banged at the door several times.
“Well then, I guess I’m ready,” she called to him.
She brushed back her long hair as she took one last look in the glass and smiled at the woman she saw reflected back to her. Her heart was beating fast; the anticipation in her had brewed to a furious peak as if she wanted the abuse that would surely make this trial more hellish. And yet, she was aware that the demands on her so far had only served to take the edge of disgust and indignation away. She felt meek as a kitten with little of her feisty spirit intact.
The ranch house was cool and dark, so dark after the glaring daylight that Hannah could hardly see a thing. Eldon had pushed her up the steps and told her that Jarrett would be waiting for her inside, but once she moved through the entrance, she had no idea where to go. The front hallway of the massive ranch house was marked by several doors, one leading to the back of the house, another closed one to her right, and a third, a double door that was now wide open. It led to a massive sitting room furnished with leather-covered sofas and thick tables built from roughly harvested trees. The centerpiece of the room was a great stone fireplace. This was a man’s home, rustic, woodsy, smelling of earth and ash and a hint of spirits.
“Ah! You’re ready so quickly.” Jarrett Cain approached from her behind and she whipped around at the resounding sound of his voice. The way he extended his hand in such a gallant manner led her to think for a moment that she was being greeted by a gentleman. She took his hand like she might that of a suitor in some fancy Philadelphia home, while at the same time fighting back the urge to bow graciously as she’d been taught. Jarrett Cain was no gentleman and under these circumstances he could not expect her to conduct herself as a genteel lady. She knew her place. She was his whore.
“My, you’re looking well.” He again was gallant.
“No thanks to the last two days in the company of your men,” she said, but with not half the venom that she honestly felt. That odd submissiveness bred in her during the paddock training was clearly still evident.
“I had my reasons.”
She only nodded.
Hannah watched as Jarrett Cain poured two glasses of spirits.
“Drink this down,” he said as he handed her a small shot glass of amber colored liquor.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t drink.”
“Oh, but you’ll want to tonight.” He reached for her right hand and curled her fingers around the glass. “You should know by now, Mrs. Crowe, that you’re here to serve me and serve me you will. It is in my power to alter your life in ways that would cause you great pain. I know that your husband and your sister have traveled to Springfield where that sweet child, Jolie was put on a train headed for her Aunt’s home in Pennsylvania. Too bad she’s been taken off the chessboard in my game; she would have made a fine piece to play for sexual sport. You, on the other hand, the willful Hannah, the wife of the poor but honorable farmer, Daniel Crowe, you’ve placed yourself right in the center of my game, so I can hardly complain with one so lovely as you to share my carnal appetites. How odd that you didn’t take the trip to Springfield yourself; you would have missed this feast of fleshy delights. But perhaps you knew, perhaps some second sight allowed you to see what was in store.”
“Don’t think so highly of yourself,” Hannah replied.
Jarrett smiled, unruffled. “Drink, Mrs. Crowe. Gulp it down. It’ll relax you.”
He upended his glass and watched as she cautiously took her first sip.
The liquor burned and her mouth screwed up into a terrible wince.
Jarrett laughed heartily, then spoke with some gentleness as he moved a step closer. She felt him breach an intimate barrier no man should cross with another man’s wife, but she allowed him in and did not back up as she would normally have done. Was that sip of whiskey already working? Or was such acquiescence a condition of her battered brain?
“You recall, my dear, when you were young and your mother gave you medicine, that it was best if it went right down in one fast gulp?” He took the hand that held the glass and tenderly moved it toward her mouth, all the while his eyes never left her baffled gaze just as hers were fixed on his. She opened her lips and gulped down the drink as she’d seen him do, experiencing at first the same harsh burn and sour taste she had from that first sip. Within seconds, the heat of the liquor warmed her body from the inside outward, as if the heat of the sun were breeding inside her body and spreading through every part of the whole. The effect began as a physical warmth, then within minutes, she felt an easy intoxication taking away what little will that remained.
Hannah had remembered Jarrett Cain as mean, as brutal and mocking and contemptuous; and she expected the same thing from him now. But at that moment in his home, surrounded by the trappings of a civilized man, he maintained a curious charm that both
drew her in and made her dreadfully frightened. It must be the spirits making her brain go mad, or her tired limbs, or resignation born of little hope. Surely that was so. Or was it more? Could she possibly be attracted to this evil man and the malevolent spirit that craftily wrapped her in its diabolical spell?
“Your poor husband; he should be here to see you,” Jarrett observed.
“He would kill you,” Hannah answered without thinking, in a voice that was surprisingly steely under the compromising circumstances.
The man didn’t flinch. “Indeed he would. He should. But you’ve kept the truth from him, I believe. If he’d known about me, about what threatened your brother, then he never would have left his wife behind. How interesting that you didn’t tell him. Again, I wonder at your motive? Could it be that you desire what I offer? What no other man can offer you? Could it be that you’re a woman of certain sensibilities that run counter to the world that puts your passionate feminine sex into the tight-fitting garments of respectability and Christian morality? Could it be those garments pinch you too tightly, madam, that you’re bursting at the seams with lust you can no longer contain? Tell me, Mrs. Crowe. Do you suppose that is why you never breathed a word about our meetings to your loving Daniel?”
Hannah listened as if in an hypnotic trance, her body quaking, her free left hand twitching with the desire to slap his face.
“I can see that you’re offended by that, but you also recognize the truth in what I say. All those venomous things you want to spit out just go unsaid. You know the truth.”
“Please,” she finally backed away and the seductive spell collapsed.
The effect of the liquor remained, however, to cloud her mind and compromise her judgment.
Jarrett Cain moved to one of his big leather chairs and sank into the soft deer hide with ease. “Come,” he motioned her with his hand.
