T here's an old custom at Polish weddings that the groomsmen steal the bride sometime during the reception. When Joseph Duggan disappeared an hour later, Winnie missed him immediately. She'd danced with Paul, but now he was gone. She wandered from group to group, visiting with acquaintances, but the zest seemed to have fizzled out of the party once Joseph disappeared. She took her makeup bag to an upstairs bedroom, checked her mascara, refreshed her blush, but wiped all vestiges of the scarlet lipstick from her mouth and applied instead a soft pink, as luminescent as the recesses of a conch shell. She touched Chanel No. 5 to her wrists, neck and knees, then went back downstairs to wander around restlessly, listening to the music of the four-piece band that played in the large central hall.
It seemed forever before the front door swept open, and several laughing men crowded through, bearing the bride upon their shoulders. At the sight of Joseph Duggan the night suddenly regained its flavor. He spotted Winnie immediately and was crossing the hall toward her the moment the bride was lowered to the floor.
"I'm sorry I had to abandon you, but duty called." He captured her hand and towed her toward the area set aside for dancing. "But I do keep my promises for better or for worse. Come on, Twinkle Toes, let's make you happy again."
He swooped her into his arms, only to discover her wide hat brim forced them apart. She leaned back from the waist to smile up at him. "I was growing very impatient."
His engaging grin twinkled down at her. "So was I." He tightened his arm and settled her hips to his, but the hat brim still bothered. It nudged the crown of his forehead. He studied it with the look of a police inspector searching for clues, then stopped dancing, raised both hands and reached around her head. He knew where the hat pin was: he'd watched her remove and replace it earlier. When it slid free and the hat along with it, Winnie felt an unwarranted thrill of intimacy-after all, it was only a hat he'd taken off her, nothing more personal. Yet she liked the way he'd done it, without asking, without fumbling.
Unceremoniously he pulled her length back against his, immediately snuggling her close, resting his jaw against her temple while the hat rode lightly against her buttocks as he held it upon the small of her back. The faint brushing movements of the straw brim through her organdy dress brought shivers, and she imagined his blunt-fingered hand and ruffled cuff and how they must look with the hat suspended from them. Then she closed her eyes and simply enjoyed.
He hadn't the smooth expert grace of Paul on the dance floor, but he had superb timing and was content to nestle her against him and circle the floor with small unflamboyant steps. In his arms Winnie felt an immediate shock of difference. Joseph was shorter than Paul. Thus her face was closer to his, touching his; his muscles were firmer, and his hand wider, thicker, harder. His fingers were coarse. He had a workingman's hands, with texture and calluses, in contraposition to the soft warmth of the butt of his palm. He used a different brand of cosmetic than she was accustomed to smelling on a man's neck, for he radiated a pleasant mixture of herb, lime and something resembling cedar. His chin was coarser, and she felt a vague scratching from it against her temple and imagined before the night was over, her hairdo would be disheveled and flattened on that side. She thought again of his hair, but it was beyond her touch, unless she wanted to be so indiscreet as to reach up and feel it above his collar. She'd been wondering what it felt like-all those airy girlish ringlets-ever since she'd first seen it. But she danced in his arms content to know his other textures and scents, realizing they allured far more powerfully than a sensibly engaged woman ought to admit.
"You were gone so long."
He backed away slightly and looked down into her eyes. "Was I?"
Her heart fluttered. "I… I was anxious to dance."
"When I left, he was still here. Didn't the two of you dance?"
"Yes, for a little while, but he left shortly after you did."
"Seems we didn't do such a hot job of spiriting the bride away without being noticed."
"Oh, I noticed, all right." Winnifred Gardner, now you're the one who's flirting.
His hand moved caressingly on the hollow of her back, but he continued looking down into her eyes. "You were right about him. He's tall, blond, handsome, immaculately groomed, well dressed, and I have to confess, I hung around just long enough to watch you two when the music started. He's a darn good dancer. You both are."
"Well, that darn good dancer is laboring over a computer keyboard right now, so what good does he do me?"
"He may not be doing you any good, but I'll have to make it a point to thank old Hildegard for abandoning you the way he did. I couldn't be happier to fill in." Again he brought her up against his body, taking two dramatic swirls, then laughing into her ear when he lost his balance on the second and nearly sent them toppling. She laughed, too, enjoying the feel of her breast flattened to his.
"You were doing just fine before you started getting melodramatic, Joseph Duggan. I don't need Fred Astaire. You'll do very nicely."
The next several songs were fast ones, and Jo-Jo Duggan gamely gyrated his hips and rocked his shoulders, thinking himself rather inept at the sport but enjoying himself immensely nevertheless, just because he was with the prettiest woman in the place.
"Whoever told you you aren't a good dancer?" she queried.
"I can feel it. I don't need to be told."
She glanced at his waist, shadowed within the open panels of his tuxedo jacket, then dropped her eyes a little lower. "Why, look at you. You have exquisite rhythm."
He lifted his chin and laughed at the ceiling, then gave her an open leer that passed from her breasts to her knees and back up again. "So do you, Winn Gardner, so do you."
After that last set of fast songs, he removed his tux jacket and left it hanging over the back of a chair. The back of his vest was made of sleek silk, and beneath it his musculature was easily felt. She moved into his arms when the music started again and gently explored his shoulder blades and the hollow between them. Around her waist his arm tightened, and she made a soft throaty sound and nestled more securely into his curves while he dropped his head until his lips rested just beside her right ear.
"Mmm… whatever that is you're wearing smells much better than the gasoline you wore last night."
She laughed. It felt wonderful, laughing against his firm chest, which lifted and fell against hers, while an answering chuckle rumbled deep within him.
"It's Chanel No. 5."
"I love it. Does it taste as good as it smells?"
"I don't know. Does yours?"
His fingers moved suggestively on her ribs. "Maybe we should both find out later, huh?"
"Uh-uh," she murmured against his neck. "Can't do that. I'm engaged to another man."
"Oh, that's right. Old Silicon Chip. The guy who left you here with me for safekeeping."
"Why is it I don't feel very safe around you?"
"I have no idea. I'm only filling in for your absentee fiance. And with fresh reminders every fifteen minutes that you are promised to him, and you do wear his diamond." His hand left her waist and meandered upward to the small of her back, finding the vertical slit in the overbodice of her dress. His warm palm slipped inside and rode up to her bare shoulder blades, then down over the abbreviated back bodice, remaining inside the lace cover-up.
"What in blazes are you wearing under that dress?"
His point-blank question caught her by surprise, and she answered without thinking of the unsuitability of the subject. "Something old-fashioned and very hard to find these days."
"It feels like you're rigged out with two barrel staves." His hand explored her ribs and side, running down the long plastic stays that held up the foundation garment.
"It's called a merry widow."
Suddenly he lifted his head and met her eyes with his sparkling brown ones. "I wish you were," he whispered.
She cocked her head to one side. "What?"
"A merry widow. I wish you were a merry widow instead of a promised woman."
She came to her senses then, backing away a reasonable distance. But without the length of his warm body, hers felt cold and deprived.
"I think it's time we talked about something nice and safe and… neutral."
"You're right. How did you like the dinner?"
"I liked everything but the asparagus. How about you?"
"I liked everything including the asparagus."
That subject was shot. She groped for another, but her thoughts were taken up by him, his nearness, how much she was enjoying being with him. It seemed a long time since she'd laughed this readily or bantered this freely. Paul was so often serious or immersed and out of touch with earth. Winnifred had fleeting thoughts that it was wrong to enjoy another man's company this much. But when Pete Schaeffer asked her to dance, and she returned afterward to Joseph, it felt like home. Already he felt familiar and comfortable.
They danced another fast set, and after it their brows were damp, their breath short. She was fanning her face with an ineffectual hand, and he'd yanked his bow tie loose and stuffed it into his pocket, then rolled up the ruffled cuffs of his white shirt to the elbows.
"This is hot business, your kind of dancing," he chided good-naturedly.
"Whew! I'll say!"
"It's not too bad outside for March. In the fifties. Want to go out for a minute and cool off?"
"We'll probably catch pneumonia."
"We'll only stay a minute, and if you get shivery, we'll come back in. Or better yet, I'll grab my jacket." He retrieved it from the chair, and Winnie found herself crossing toward the great front door without having consciously made the decision to be alone with him.
Outside the moon was at its apex-it was nearly midnight. Stillness surrounded them, for it was too early in the year for frogs, crickets or any of the other night sounds that would bring midnight alive when summer came. They stood on the highest of three white steps, breathing deeply. Joseph slung his tuxedo jacket across his left shoulder, suspending it from two fingers. He scanned the dark star-dappled sky. Winnifred ran a hand up the back of her neck, lifting the tendrils of hair that had come loose. Her nape was damp and the air felt wonderful. Joseph turned, watching the outline of her face as she lifted it, hung her head back and let her eyes sink shut. God, she was lovely. He wondered if she ever had any doubts about her impending marriage; if Hildebrandt was too ignorant to see the dangers of letting a woman like her drift free on a night like this. Around a man like himself.
"Come on…" He slid his hand from the soft inner curve of her left elbow down to her wrist and intertwined his fingers with hers. "Let's walk."
He held her hand loosely, and it would have taken the simplest movement for Winnie to withdraw, but it felt right, ambling down the steps, across the withered pale grass, around the side of the house with her hand innocently in Joseph Duggan's.
The lawn sprawled and rolled in two gentle undulations toward a small creek and a patch of woodland beyond. The Victorian Club had, in its prime, been a property of estate proportions, thus the grounds were measured in spacious acres. Here and there tall oaks lifted their bare branches toward the stars, and a line of evergreens created a black barrier against the slightly lighter hue of the night sky. They sauntered downhill. Winnie felt the heels of her shoes sinking into the grass at times, throwing her slightly off balance. Whenever she lurched, Joseph's fingers gripped hers more tightly.
Ahead of them the white latticed foundation of the gazebo clarified as they approached, its hexagonal rails and roof beckoning as they moved closer and closer. Again Winnie sensed the same queer time-lapse sensation. Deja vu, perhaps, brought about by the fact that the gazebo, like so many other props today, was a hallmark of another time. In her slim-hipped dress and dated hairdo she felt as if she belonged in the nostalgic enclosure.
She shivered at the strong compulsion of yesteryear.
"Cold?"
She turned to meet his eyes but could make out only that he looked her way, for there were two deep shadows from which he studied her. What is it about a man with a coat slung over his shoulder that way that's so alluring, she wondered. The unhurried look of it, perhaps, or the sense that his pose meant he was at ease with her. But just then he pulled the jacket forward and placed it around her shoulders, leaving his arm there, too, to keep her warm. She was surrounded by that lime-cedar scent emanating from the jacket and by a sense of the forbidden, for she knew they were hovering on the brink of something neither of them felt it wisest to begin. They were not dancing now. His arm had no legitimate reason for encircling her.
But the yearning that beckoned to them both was too powerful to fight.
They watched their feet take slower and slower steps, lazy swinging steps in the fashion of idle lovers. They heard the crush of dried grass and within their heads the pounding of their own hearts.
Dammit, Duggan, don't kiss her. Once you do, you're in for a helluva problem.
He told you he had every intention of kissing you again. Will you let him? You must not, Winnifred Gardner. You must not.
The gazebo was made totally of wood. The steps were wide and echoed as Joseph and Winnie lifted their knees in unison, mounting the risers toward the elevated floor in lazy measured steps. Above them the peak of the hexagonal roof couched secret shadows. She looked up, shivered and held Joseph's jacket closed with one hand. Around them ran a hip-high railing supported by white columns and a half wall of lattices. A wooden bench ran around the five trellised sides of the structure. She began moving toward it, but his hand closed gently around the back of her neck. "You'd better not. It's probably dirty, and you'll soil your dress."
At his touch she inhaled sharply, then held her breath. She shrugged her shoulders, hoping he'd free her from the terrible sweetness of his touch. Instead, he began moving his fingers softly on the skin and hair that were so soft beneath his tough skin. Her neck was cool now as the night sipped up the beads of perspiration generated on the dance floor.
"Joseph… don't," she whispered, terrified of how much she wanted him to ignore her demand.
"In your opinion, does a man dishonor a woman by kissing her if she's already engaged to someone else?"
"Oh…" she groaned and dropped her head backward, intending to shrug his hand away. Instead, the back of her skull touched his knuckles, and as her eyelids slid closed, she found her head moving as if to caress him. His fingers stroked her hairline, then just above-then just inside-the stiff collar of his jacket. She shuddered, and a shaft of liquid fire darted to her loins.
"Joseph, we shouldn't have come out here."
"I know," he agreed huskily.
"Then let's go back in. Quick, before it's too late."
"I'm right behind you. Just lead the way."
Her voice was strained and throaty as she remained where she was. "Joseph Duggan, you don't play fair."
"I'm not playing. I'm as serious as I've ever been in my life when I say something very, very special has happened to me since last night. When I looked up and saw you across the vestibule-"
She spun and covered his lips with her fingers. "Don't!" Her plea was shaken, her breathing harried. "Please, don't."
He jerked his head aside to free his lips but captured her hand and held it to his thudding heart. "Then why did you come out here with me?"
"I was hot."
"That makes two of us."
"Don't misconstrue wh-"
"You came out here for the same reason I did. You feel it, too, but now you're getting cold feet." His heart was ramming his chest walls like a jackhammer.
"You're right. I was wrong. Let's go ba-"
"No! Not yet!" He grabbed the lapels of his tuxedo jacket in both fists, jerked and lifted until she was forced onto tiptoe. But his voice lost its harsh bark and turned into a soft caress as he released the jacket and found her shoulders with his broad palms. "Not yet, Winn. I told you in the car I intended to do this again, and I meant it. But keep that jacket on tight if you know what's good for both of us."
She clung to it, turning the lapels inside, gripping them for dear life, covering her breasts with both arms while Joseph Duggan's hands slid to her shoulder blades and urged her close.
"Joseph, I'm eng-"
His warm mouth smothered the word and drove the fact from her mind. The kiss was gentle, exploratory and totally unhurried. It seemed to say, "Let's see what we think." He slanted his head aside, moving it in gentle circular nudges, licking her closed lips with a come-hither invitation until she could fight the urge no longer and opened her mouth tentatively. His tongue slipped immediately inside, and she hugged her chest tighter. His left arm pressed more firmly around her shoulder, his right moved caressingly until he spanned her lower skull commandingly, making her tip her head sideways to accommodate his wishes. When she refrained from moving her head seductively as he did, he moved it for her, gently gyrating it and forcing her mouth open more fully as the provocative seconds passed.
Within her mouth his tongue was sleek and seeking, circling hers, riding over it, under it, as if the world may as well go its way without them-this must be done and done properly. He delved and stroked, learning her every texture-from rough to smooth. She learned his, too: the wet velvet of his undertongue, the sharp edges of his teeth, the resilient softness of his inner cheeks and the hard ripples upon the roof of his mouth.
They became masters of exploration, overcome with a need to experience all they could of each other's mouths in lieu of taking further liberties.
As Joseph kissed Winn, his nostrils were filled with her flower-sweet scent. The taste of her was a surprise, rather like cinnamon, as if she'd been chewing spiced gum. As he enfolded her in his arms, he forced his kiss to remain gentle, swallowing the sounds of rising amourousness that wanted to murmur from his throat. The smooth cool texture of his own gabardine jacket across her shoulder blades created a desire to jerk it from her and feel her warm skin instead. But she clutched the lapels as ordered, and Joseph thought, thank God. Thank God.
He kissed the way he flirted-persuasively, skillfully, beguilingly. He was a head mover and a tongue teaser. A stroker. A talented refined stroker, she could tell already, though it was only her tongue receiving his rapt attention, only her shoulders he caressed. He'd had plenty of practice at this, she was certain. But maybe that's what made him so adept.
The hand on her neck was doing delightful things to the soft hollow up its center, then behind her left ear, and he'd managed to insert his fingers within the lace about her throat. But with its limited space the edge of the opening cut tightly at her Adam's apple, as if someone were tightening a single string about her neck.
She reached up to pull his hand away, for the cinching was making it more difficult than ever to breathe normally. But in the middle of the motion she changed her mind and did what she wanted to do more than anything else in the world at this moment: she flung her arms about his neck and sent the jacket falling to the dusty floor.
Surprised, he lifted his head for a second. His eyes were only two dim circles of shadow, but his breath was warm upon her nose. "Damn that man of yours," he muttered. "Doesn't he know better than to turn you loose on a night like this? Especially around a man like me?"
The reminder of Paul brought common sense rushing in, but before she could withdraw, Joseph embraced her again, tipping his head and meeting her lips with a series of brief plucking kisses, at the end of which he stroked the hollow beneath her lower lip with his tongue. Upon her back his hands wandered freely, inside the slitted lace, up her shoulder blade, under the spindly spaghetti strap, then back down, inside the dress top.
She trembled and tried again to pull away, but his head followed, and his tongue moved along the secret valley just inside her upper lip, tickling the sensitive frenulum, then sliding along her gums. She shuddered harder and raised up on tiptoe, wishing he'd tighten his grip around her waist. But he held her lightly, as if not trusting himself to totally eradicate the narrow space between their hips. She felt his hands shift, then both of them went to the nape of her neck, and he slipped the hook from the eye. Her lace drooped. He eased it forward and lifted both his hands to her elbows, forcing her to drop her arms from around his neck so the bodice could fall free, all the time nibbling and teasing her lips. When she stiffened and began to pull back sharply, he commanded her to stay, clasping the back of her head, pushing the lace overbodice down.
She felt his warm palms slide down the angles of her neck, across her shoulders, easing from them the thin straps that fluttered, then hung loose across her biceps.
She pressed a palm to his ruffles and freed her lips. "Joseph, stop. This is madness."
"Yes, I know…" He kissed the crest of her cheek. He nipped her earlobe. He whispered directly into her ear, "Winn, you smell like heaven. Forgive me if I can't help wondering what you taste like." The tip of his tongue wet the skin just behind her ear. Goose bumps shimmied up her belly, and she dropped her jaw onto her collarbone to free her neck to his warm lips and tongue.
His fingertips skimmed up her bare arms, jumping over the straps, then finding her warmth again and riding it around the perimeter of her dress top to the back zipper.
"Joseph, please stop," she pleaded.
"In a minute… shh."
Her head felt weightless, but her lower extremities suddenly grew as heavy as if she were experiencing labor pains. Everything surged and thrust against the juncture of her legs and left her wanting a corresponding upward pressure to relieve the burdensome weightiness. She felt the liquid musings of her body and heeded their warning, turning aside, backing away, denying herself the pleasure she knew could be found beneath Joseph Duggan's hands.
He clasped her elbow to stop her from running. "You're not married to him yet."
"But I'm promised. And I'm breaking that promise."
"Maybe it should never have been made."
"Don't try to justify this, Joseph. It's wrong."
"I want to touch you."
"I know, but if you do…" She left the thought dangling, but more explicit than if she'd completed it. She gasped faintly. "Oh, Joseph… please don't…" But she was adrift in ecstasy, and her voice fell still as her head tolled slightly to one side and back. How could a single finger raise such stirrings of desire?
He slipped it inside the stiff cup of her merry widow and trailed it along, from just under her armpit to the heart-shaped dip at the center of the garment, not quite touching her nipple as he passed.
"You have wonderful skin. Hard, firm, toned-I love the feel of it. I'd begun to think there was no part of you that was soft, but I've found one soft place." The finger made its return journey but stopped at the nipple and bent the stiff cup downward as he rubbed the erect tip with the backs of his fingers only. "Mmm… I spoke too soon."
She was shriveled and goose bumped-it was cold in the March air, and what Joseph Duggan was doing wasn't helping matters at all. She conjured up a picture of Paul's face and backed away, taking Joseph's hand from her breast, folding it between her palms.
"Put my dress back the way you found it. I don't want to walk around with a guilt complex for the next three months."
"Why should you feel guilty? Engagements are meant to give a man and woman time to decide if they've made the right choice. Maybe you're learning here."
"And maybe you're just justifying again."
His warm palms now contoured her ribs. "I'm enormously attracted to you, Winn Gardner. What should a man do about a thing like that? Let it go unexplored? What if-"
"And what if this were just a… a passing urge? It's part of the mood of a wedding, wouldn't you say? People get caught up by romance when they see a bride and groom walk down the aisle. They do as Rodgers and Hart put it-'falling in love with love.' And we were more susceptible than most because we walked down that same aisle ourselves."
"Winn, your first impression of me-"
"Shh. Let me finish. You and I are different today than we'd be on a normal day. We're wearing luscious clothes that carry us away from the present and sweep us to the past, just as the ride in your car did. At times today I've even experienced the weird feeling that I'm living in my second life, that I've been reincarnated, and this-" she gestured and looked up "-this gazebo and your Haynes and my Gibson Girl look are all part of the time in which I lived before. That's why it felt so familiar, returning to it again. But, Joseph, that's not true. You and I have to be more careful than most on a day like today. We have to see things for what they truly are." She slipped her spaghetti straps up. "You know what they say about spring and a young man's fancy, don't you?" She turned her jaw aside, not quite glancing back at him. He rested his hands on her hipbones.
"No, I've forgotten. What do they say?"
"You know perfectly well what they say, but I'll repeat it, anyway, since it applies. 'In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.'"
He watched as she inserted her arms into the lace overbodice, dropped her chin to her chest and lifted her arms. Joseph moved to find hook and eye and close them. As he did, her fragrant hair brushed his nose, and it took stern discipline to obey her wishes. But he bent and retrieved his jacket from the floor and draped it across her shoulders again. She clutched it from inside as before, then turned to face him.
"I'm your spring fancy tonight, Joseph Duggan. And before either one of us gets carried away any further, I think we'd both better admit this is more mood than anything else."
He considered her words. She might very well be right. He'd never been affected by a woman quite this suddenly, quite this strongly. He was twenty-seven and had sampled his share of feminine companions, and the one before him now raised his sexual thermometer more rapidly than any he'd met. Was it the occasion? The hat? The hair? The dress? The car? Even his own tuxedo and ruffles and shiny shoes, so different from his usual mode of dress?
Yes, she probably was right. And if so, he had no business upsetting the equilibrium between herself and Hildebrandt.
He drew a deep breath, jammed his hands into his trouser pockets and stepped back.
"So…" he said, pulling in a jerky sigh.
Silence hovered between them.
"So," she repeated.
The air seemed detonated by repressed sexuality. "So, I suppose you don't want to dance with me anymore, either?"
"I always want to dance. Shall we go back and join the others? I think we'll be safe enough inside now. And anyway, there's only about half an hour of music left, then we'll politely say goodbye and exit from each other's lives, as if today and tonight never happened. And in the meantime we'll only talk about nice safe subjects again. Agreed?"
He said nothing for a long time, then finally squared his shoulders and answered, "You're right. That's wisest. Should I apologize for what I just did? I don't want to."
"No, Joseph, no apology is necessary. You see-" she chuckled softly and perhaps a trifle sadly "-you're my spring fancy, too."
Then she turned, and her high heels sounded on the hollow floor as she crossed to the steps. He frowned, wishing she hadn't been so sensible. Then he checked his watch to find it was twelve-forty. He had only twenty minutes to come up with a reasonable excuse to keep her with him a little longer after the dance broke up.