Chapter Eighteen

Priscilla rolled over and rested her chin on Jimmy’s bare chest.  They were going to have to get some rest.  She glanced out the window; it was still dark so they had a little time at least. 

Jimmy followed her eyes.  “We should probably get some sleep,” he said echoing her thoughts.  “I told Martin I’d help him out with some chores before we left.”

“I don’t want to go,” Priscilla whispered.  She was content here, at Martin and Ester’s farm.  “We’ll go home and our little adventure will be over.”  She would be back at home, cooking and cleaning.  She sighed softly.  How did she end up playing mother to four children before she was even eighteen? She would not include Lorna as one of her children.  She was not her mother.  She just wished Lorna were a little more helpful around the house.

“We’ll still see each other,” Jimmy said, stroking her hair. 

Priscilla arched a brow at him.  “We’d better,” she said with a grin.  “I am just enjoying this little trip.  It’s almost like a vacation.”

“You’re crazy, getting kidnapped is a vacation?”  Jimmy smiled.  “We’re gonna have go home eventually, maybe the day after tomorrow,” he mused, obviously enjoying this escape from reality as much as she was.  “We can send word home and tell them we are safe and on our way.

Priscilla smiled at him. 

 “Can we go out together, alone, once we get back?  Or will you need a chaperone too?  I like Cody but I don’t know if I want to spend all my time with him,” Jimmy asked, a smile in his voice.

“I don’t know,” Priscilla answered seriously.  She did not have her virtue to protect and her father knew this.  Yet he still worried about her.  “But you will have to face the inquisition.  The family dinner,” she intoned somberly.

Jimmy laughed.  “That I will face without Cody,” he replied.  “Guilt by association,” he explained.  “I don’t want your father to think I’m like him.”

“So what are you like?” she asked.

“What you see is what you get,” Jimmy answered lightly.

“No, really.  You told me about your parents and your sisters.”

“What do you want to know?”

“You almost got hung, tell me about that.”

Jimmy studied her carefully.  “I was set up,” he said quietly.  I saw Sarah Downs in town, went on some walks with her.  And I thought we were getting along real good so I asked some fella I thought was her father permission to court her.”  He gave Priscilla a look that made her sit up and cradle him. 

“That was her husband,” he told her, his voice full of anguish.  “She made it seem like he beat her.  She used what I told her about my folks to get me in deeper.  She even slept with me to make me do her bidding,” Jimmy continued, his voice changing for sorrow to anger.  “She was really with some other guy, Gentry.  I told Sarah I would run off with her, in spite of all that, in spite of everyone telling me she was no good.  I promised to take her away and keep her safe and that’s when she and Gentry framed me.  He killed that Downs fella and they pinned it on me.”  His words rose and fell and Priscilla hated to hear the pain and self-recrimination in his voice.

“She didn’t care that I was going to hang for a crime I didn’t commit,” he exclaimed.  “In the end, Kid and Lou found out that this was her and Gentry’s scam.  We went to get them and Sarah went off the jail.

“I tried to talk to her before she was sent away,” he added softly.  “She was hateful to me.”

“Maybe she was pushing you away for your own good.”

Jimmy scowled at her.

“What you did for her, trying to help her, being so willing to run away and even approaching her again before she went to jail, that meant you cared about her, right?” Priscilla persisted.  “She was going to let you hang and you still cared.”

Jimmy shook his head.  “I was over-”

“Bull,” Priscilla interrupted.  She did not know him long, but she knew him.  She could hear it in his voice.  What this Downs woman did had hurt him because he cared so much.  That kind of caring did not blow away like a puff of smoke.  It stuck with a person unless the person decided himself to stop caring or was forced to believe that the person was truly hateful.  “Do you still want to see her?” she asked cautiously.

“No,” he answered without hesitation.  “I fell so hard because I was so naïve about women.”

Priscilla’s eyes danced.  “And you aren’t now?” she teased.

“I used put all women on a pedestal,” Jimmy admitted somewhat reluctantly.  “I only knew my sisters, my ma, the judge’s daughter, Emma and Lou and I don’t really think of Lou as a woman.  I would have trusted all of them with my life.  But I guess women ain’t no better than men.  Some are good, like Emma, and some are like Sarah,” he finished sadly. 

“She did one good thing,” Priscilla told him.  “She set you free.”  She kissed each eyelid and each cheek.  “For that I thank her.”  She moved to kiss his throat and then his chest.

Jimmy deftly pinned her on the bed.  “You got a husband you ain’t telling me about?” he grinned in her face.

“Nope.”

“Good,” Jimmy told her before kissing her.