Harlot Page 2

  Caleb might come back, and what if he did? He wouldn’t return to apologize or make amends. He wouldn’t come back to court her. She was a whore. There was only one reason he might return, and he’d thrown it at her in scorn. I can pay.

  So much disgust in that sentence. He’d pay for what they’d meant to do someday in their marriage bed.

  He’d never marry her now. He’d never love her. But he could pay for the privilege of using her body. She should be offended, but what was the insult? She’d taken money for the same act before, and with Caleb she would be paid to do something she’d dreamed of for years.

  But she hadn’t dreamed of it this year. This year she’d learned what it was. Sex. Intercourse. The same crude joining of every animal in the barnyard.

  She’d assumed it would be different for people, something to do with sighs and kisses and the poetry of touch. That was how she’d imagined it with Caleb, as lovely and mysterious and pretty. But now she knew how ugly sex was. No different than two cats mating.

  If Caleb paid to come to her bed, he’d squeeze her breasts a few times, pull at her nipples, and then he’d shove his cock into her hole. His mouth would be slack with animal hunger at first, and there’d be nothing pretty about those kisses. Nothing but wetness and sucking, and then he’d offer a few foul words before his lips twisted into a grotesque grimace that must be pleasure but looked like pain.

  She should be glad she would never marry now. She wouldn’t be faced with a lifetime of doing that with a man at night and then tending his meals and laundry and babies every day, just so he could do that to her again when the sun went down. How did women bear it?

  But somehow she was still a fool. She couldn’t imagine Caleb’s hands digging into her breasts, despite their rough strength. He’d always touched her gently, held her hand as if she’d break. And his lips were so tight, his jaw so strong, she couldn’t imagine his mouth going wet and slack against her skin.

  Some women enjoyed intercourse, surely. She’d seen loving looks between wives and husbands. She’d read the beautiful verses of the Song of Solomon in the Bible. And Melisande loved Bill. She slept with him, stayed with him. There must be something there beyond the mercenary attraction of male protection.

  Maybe with Caleb, it could’ve been beautiful. If he’d still loved her. If they’d married. But no one gave pleasure to a whore.

  The wind kicked up outside, dragging a branch against the house. Jessica squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to let the fear back in.

  It sounded like fingers scratching, but there was no one there. No one trying to get in and devour her. No one shouting whore up at her window.

  The only man who’d come by in weeks had said it quietly and to her face. And if he came back, he’d knock on the front door again. He’d ask for her by name and he’d hurt her with just a look. She didn’t need to be afraid of things hiding in the dark. The night was no longer so frightening; Caleb had come by day.

  Chapter 3

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  Jessica could feel Melisande watching her as they hoed the garden. They hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, but the biscuits were in the oven. Some chores were better done before the sun could take hold.

  “What?” Jessica finally asked.

  “You knew that man.”

  “I did.”

  “A customer?”

  She shook her head, hoping her friend would leave it be. But she knew Melisande better than that.

  “Your eyes are swollen,” Melisande pressed.

  “Everything is fine. It was nothing. You don’t need to worry.”

  “I’m not worried. Not for me and Bill, at least.”

  Jessica cleared her throat and wiped her sleeve over her forehead. “What does he…? Bill, I mean…he doesn’t treat you badly?”

  “No. I told you, he’s a good man.”

  “But you were… When you came here, you were looking for work. As a prostitute.”

  “Yes.” Melisande’s voice was even, as if they were discussing sewing.

  “Yet he still treats you well,” Jessica said, trying to make sense of it.

  “Despite that I’m a whore? Yes, he loves me. I wouldn’t say he likes it, but I was a whore when we met. He kept coming back. Paying for more time. He told me I was beautiful. He was the first man who ever made me believe it. I never felt ugly with him, even when he was watching me wash up from other men. It was just part of our life. A small part.”

  “But not anymore?”

  Melisande shrugged, her eyes on the beanstalks she was working around. “Not right now, thanks to you. And never again if Bill has any say. But the world is a new place every day.”

  Jessica couldn’t imagine that a man could love a woman who’d been a prostitute, much less one who still was. But Bill was calm. Kind. And he’d obviously had no objection to visiting whorehouses himself.

  “What if you have children?” Jessica asked. “You wouldn’t be able to do that kind of work then.”

  “Lots of whores have kids, but I can’t have babies.” Her words sounded hesitant for the first time. “When I was fourteen, I had one taken out of me. Bled for months. Something’s wrong inside me now.”

  Jessica touched her arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “I was too small anyway,” Melisande said. “A baby would likely have killed me. Why are you asking me all this now? Is it that man?”

  Jessica shook her head and moved to the next row of beans, putting some distance between them. “No.”

  “You knew him before?”

  Before. Yes. In her life before, when her world had been endless seasons of reading and stitching and teatime with other young women. Her father hadn’t been rich. He hadn’t had any money at all, apparently, but she’d been sheltered and privileged and protected.

  Melisande ignored her silence. “He came out here to see you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jessica answered quickly. “He knows the truth now.” But not all of it. She hoped he’d never know that. “It just…doesn’t matter.”

  “I guess not,” Melisande said. “But your life isn’t over.”

  Jessica froze, the blade of the hoe poised a few inches from the hard dirt. “What?”

  “You spread your legs for money, and it didn’t kill you. So you pick up and you move on like every other whore who got to walk away from it. A lot of women can’t ever leave. You got away from it, and that’s something for you to celebrate, not die over.”

  Jessica’s skin prickled with a feeling close to terror. How could Melisande say that? It wasn’t true. A whore was a worthless piece of nothing. Used up. Ruined. It was worse than being dead, because no one even mourned for you and you had to go on. Keep moving. Keep breathing. Keep pretending to be alive. But everyone knew you were a dirty, empty shell.

  “A prick ain’t filled with poison,” Melisande muttered. “It’s just spunk. Men walk around full of it, and look how pleased they are with themselves.”

  Jessica’s laugh was more from shock than amusement, but after the surprise faded, she nodded. Her friend’s words were true enough. Men were always pleased with themselves. And whatever a whore did, there was a man doing it right there with them.

  “They’re people’s husbands, though,” Jessica whispered, afraid to have this conversation even in the middle of a rocky field that was supposed to be a farm. “They’re fathers and husbands, and we let them—”

  “Aren’t you somebody’s daughter?” Melisande snapped. “Aren’t I?”

  Jessica’s throat closed. She couldn’t breathe. She stared at Melisande, who looked so strong and beautiful after ten years of selling her body to men. Yes, Melisande was someone’s daughter. So was Jessica. She’d been loved and treasured for twenty-one years, and she’d been a person. A woman. Maybe she still was.

  Melisande nodded.

  Jessica couldn’t nod back.

  “If you loved him and he doesn’t want you now, then you’ll love someone else. Or you won’
t. But you’re still alive. Nothing about him changes that.”

  Was that true? It didn’t feel true.

  “The biscuits will burn,” Melisande said, and that was the end of it. Jessica was left there, staring out at the hazy hint of the mountains forty miles away.

  Maybe she was still alive. If she was, then the real trouble was that she didn’t want to be.

  * * *

  Caleb arrived late for breakfast. It wasn’t because of the bottle of whiskey he’d killed the night before. He had more than enough experience with whiskey to survive that. It was because he’d forgotten a man couldn’t come to breakfast at his mother’s table with two days’ growth of beard and skin that reeked of alcohol. His stepfather had taken one look at Caleb and ordered him out.

  Caleb couldn’t say he liked the man his mother had married ten years earlier, but he respected him. Theodore Durst provided a good home for Caleb’s mother, and he hadn’t been cruel to Caleb, despite that they had nothing in common. Caleb had been fourteen when they married, and already working at the Smith Ranch. The type of boy a rich banker couldn’t understand, but they’d managed to keep the peace.

  By the time Caleb scrubbed up and shaved, his mother was on her way out of the dining room. “I’ll let you two men catch up,” she said, pulling Caleb down for a kiss on the cheek. “It’s so good to have you home again, my sweet boy.”

  Sweet boy. Right. Caleb had never been sweet, not even as a child, and he sure as hell wasn’t sweet after two years of working on gold-mining operations.

  He’d set off for California to make his fortune and he had, eventually. He hadn’t meant to be gone for two full years, but in the end, he’d found more and more brutal work and earned enough cash that he could buy a house and land outright. Only now he didn’t have the wife to go along with it.

  When Caleb took a seat, his stepfather looked up from his newspaper, sunlight glinting off his bald head. “You look more presentable,” Theodore said gruffly. “I take it you spent the evening celebrating your homecoming?”

  Caleb wanted to growl at him. Celebrating.

  Theodore had lied. His letter had said Jessica had left town to live with a relative after her father’s death.

  At first Caleb hadn’t been particularly alarmed, though he hadn’t understood why Theodore had been the one to write that letter. He should’ve heard that news from Jessica. But she was grieving and on her way to live with some long-lost aunt. When Caleb asked for an address, the next letter from his mother had ignored the question entirely. Now he knew why.

  What had happened? Had Jessica simply given up on him? Why had she turned to whoring?

  Maybe if he’d written to her instead of relying on his family to pass on news.

  At first, Jessica had sent letters along with his mother’s notes twice a month. Caleb had painstakingly read each of Jess’s words, devouring the letters over and over until the stationery grew soft and tattered. But he hadn’t sent replies. She’d known he wouldn’t.

  After his mother had remarried, Theodore Durst had tried to force Caleb back to the schoolroom, but Caleb had been fourteen and already two years into his position at the Smith Ranch, and he’d refused.

  School had never taken for him anyway. He had a head for ciphering, and he’d always loved listening to the teacher’s tales of ancient Rome. But writing and reading were a chore, and a painful one at that. The letters seemed to jump around, changing themselves on the way from the page to his brain or from his mind to his hand.

  So he hadn’t written to Jessica, too embarrassed to lay his atrocious writing so nakedly in front of her eyes. Jessica’s hand was smooth and elegant. Her words were art. He could see her there, in the loops and flourishes of her letters, and he didn’t want her looking at his ignorant chicken scratch and seeing him.

  She’d asked after his new life in every letter. What he’d been doing, what he’d seen. But he couldn’t tell her about the desperate hardness of a mining town. The rough life filled with mud and blood and vomit and sweat. He couldn’t tell her that the only women he’d seen in weeks had been weary whores and foul-mouthed laundresses.

  And toward the end, his job had been about intimidation and sometimes violence, all to protect a stranger’s money. Better to let her think him a hero living among the big trees and blue skies of California.

  Still, he’d always sent messages to pass on, relying on his mother to decipher his awful writing and polish up his misspelled words for Jessica.

  After the first year, Jessica’s letters had become less frequent. She’d gotten tired of writing to a ghost, maybe. Or angry that he hadn’t returned home after a year. Just a few more months, he’d had his mother tell her. At most, another year.

  Then his mother had written to say Jessica’s father had passed away, and Caleb had finally set aside his pride and sent a letter of condolence to Jess. He’d promised to return soon. Sooner than he’d planned. He’d take on new work, harder jobs, and he’d come as soon as he could.

  She hadn’t written back. And then even Caleb’s mother had ceased to speak of her. Caleb had finally gathered up his earnings and started the ride home, intent on tracking Jessica down. In the end, she hadn’t been hard to find.

  The newspaper rustled when Theodore turned the pages. Caleb’s fork hit the plate too hard each time he set it down. The hallway clock ticked.

  “You lied to me,” Caleb finally said into the quiet.

  Theodore frowned at him above the edge of the paper. “Pardon?”

  “You said Jessica left town to live with a relative.”

  Theodore’s ears turned red. He lowered the paper. “Now see here—”

  “I rode into town expecting to find she’d gone east to live with some maiden aunt, but do you know what I heard instead?”

  “Son—”

  “I heard she was living on that old farmstead past Black Rock Creek.”

  Theodore stared at him, mouth finally shut as he waited for Caleb to continue, but he didn’t look like a man set to apologize.

  “Why did you lie?” Caleb pressed.

  “Because I thought a lie was kinder than the truth.”

  “The truth that she’s a whore?” Caleb spat out.

  Theodore slapped the table hard. “Watch your language in this house. Yes, I thought a lie was kinder than telling you what that…that harlot had done. She was practically a daughter to us. Do you know how humiliated your mother was? The whole town was whispering!”

  But Caleb couldn’t get his mind around the most basic fact. “I don’t understand. How did this happen?”

  “Who cares how it happened?” Theodore barked. “It’s disgusting, and I don’t want you stirring up talk again. Stay away from her. The worst of it has died down at long last.”

  Caleb let the subject drop, but his mind spun, circling and circling around the knowledge of what she was.

  The first person to tell him had been a stranger. He’d meant to see his mother first, of course, but he’d found her home empty, so he’d headed to the big house Jessica’s father had once owned.

  He’d asked after her, and the kitchen girl had stared at him with big eyes. “You’re Caleb Hightower, right? You went to school with my brother Ricky.” Then she’d leaned closer to whisper something ridiculous. “She’s a whore now.”

  “Who?” he’d asked in confusion.

  “Jessica Willoughby. She lives in a whorehouse.”

  Caleb had backed up one step, looking past the maid toward the doorway beyond. He’d waited to hear howling from within or a cackle of insane laughter. This girl was clearly not right in the head. Perhaps the building was being used as a madhouse of sorts. Perhaps it was part of the clinic now.

  “Hey!” she’d called when Caleb had spun and fled toward the street.

  Just one block over was the general store where he’d spent pennies on peppermint sticks for Jessica, small offerings to make up for his work-rough hands and large size. He’d thought of going in to ask afte
r her, but no, he couldn’t inquire there. Word would get out that some girl had told a vile lie about Jessica, and she’d be mortified.

  He’d walked three doors down to the saloon and found nothing but strangers.

  Caleb had ordered a whiskey and tossed it back. When the barkeep had offered another, he’d downed that one too. “Any of you know a Miss Willoughby?” he’d finally managed to ask, his head buzzing with something far more destructive than liquor.

  The barkeep shrugged, while the other men looked blankly at each other.

  “She lived a couple streets down,” Caleb added. “Her father was a doctor at the consumption clinic. Died a few months back.”

  Two of the men shook their heads, but a third had leaned forward, his mouth loose with drunkenness. “He’s lookin’ for that fancy whore,” he’d slurred. “Moved out past Black Rock Creek.”

  The oldest man laughed. “You don’t look like you can afford that kind of pussy, friend. You’d do better to head over to Ella Mae’s place.”

  The buzz in Caleb’s ears turned to a roar. “How far past Black Rock Creek?” he’d asked instead of shooting all of them.

  “About a mile, I’d say. There’s a black girl out there too, if you like that kind of thing. Probably more girls than that now, but this place is only for rich folk. Gentlemen and the like. You’d better flash some gold or you’ll get run off like the rest of us.”

  The drunkest one added, “I hear they come all the way up from Denver to fuck that Willoughby woman, but I can’t imagine what she’s got under her skirts that would be worth that kind of trouble. Maybe highfalutin pussy tastes different.”

  Their laughter had tumbled over Caleb’s head like rocks. He hadn’t realized he’d reached for his gun until the barkeep put his hand on the rifle that hung below a mirror. “Mind moving your hand, son?” he’d suggested calmly.

  Caleb had done so. He’d also left, barely registering the outraged talk behind him. “What?” someone had snapped. “How are we supposed to know what kind of whore he can afford?”