The girls noticed Kurt’s attention to Emma and teased her: “Emma has a new beau,” Jane said with a flirtatious grin.
“What color is your hair, Emma?” Patsy asked, with a look of nonchalance. “Dark brown or black?”
“It depends on the light,” Emma answered, her cheeks reddening. She had no use for such childish foolishness.
* * *
Shortly before noon, the five riders set out from the farmhouse with a picnic lunch. The sun had risen above the peaks, flashing between the billowing white clouds, showering golden light upon the whitewashed house nestled against the hill. The wind murmured in the pines. The sunlight, when wrested from the forest shade, warmed their backs, a perfect day for riding.
Emma, attired in her own riding clothes, noted that Kurt had no trouble with his horse, another point in his favor as far as she was concerned. He sat erect, attentive, and confident on the gelding. She was his match as an equestrian, having ridden for years on the horses that her father raised, but at one point Kurt took the reins of her chestnut mare and led the animal down the trail, past the swiftly flowing expanse of a greenish-brown river, into a valley filled with pines, maples, hackberry, and the misty veil of a waterfall. They stopped by the water and the horses drank.
“Go ahead, we’ll catch up,” Kurt urged the other girls as he jumped easily from his horse and offered his hand to Emma, although she needed no help with her dismount.
“There’s a cleared area about a quarter of a mile ahead,” Charlene said somewhat testily from her saddle. “Don’t be late for lunch.” Jane and Patsy pursed their lips and passed by, as Emma watched with muted amusement.
As she and Kurt stood by the river, the water gurgling over moss-covered rocks, he touched her hand.
The sense of his fingers upon her skin shocked Emma more than she could have imagined, never having felt anything like it before—at once fascinating and astonishing—an electric thrill racing up her arm straight to her heart.
She understood innately from the pounding in her chest, the rush of blood to her face, that Kurt’s innocent touch might lead her elsewhere eventually—somewhere that her mother and father, in their disapproval, would never allow—that she, in this ecstatic moment, might have opened her own Pandora’s box. Something flowered inside her, like a crocus poking through the snow, as urges yet unleashed signaled that the world of men would never be the same.
“Don’t pay attention to my cousin or those other girls,” he said. “Your hair is beautiful. I’d say it’s black, but with shades of red when you step into the light—almost the color of your cheeks when you blush.”
His fingers, like a satin glove, brushed up her arm toward her shoulder. A surge of nervous excitement blossomed inside her, setting her limbs trembling and her mind hurtling, urging Kurt onward with his exploration, perhaps to her breasts. However, not to be ignored, her mother’s voice popped into her head like a protective saint, admonishing her to stop the fiend’s hand.
“No,” she said, brushing his arm away. “I don’t want to disappoint Charlene—she has planned a perfect picnic.” It was the only excuse she could think of.
“You’re young aren’t you?” He took the reins of his horse and led it from the water.
“I’m fifteen,” she said, assured that she was a woman enough.
“Oh, but by the grace of God! Saved by the mouth of innocent truth.” He mounted his horse and left her standing by the river.
Her heart sank and she wondered if she had done something wrong by not letting him continue his exploration. Was it so bad to be close to a boy, perhaps intimate? The feelings of warmth and tenderness flowing through her body had been wonderful. Had she read the same in him, or had she been fooled?
At the picnic, on a blanket spread upon the lush summer grass, he avoided her and spent his time teasing Jane and Patsy, winking at them, laughing at their trivial jokes, stroking their uncovered arms warmed by the sun.
At one point, Charlene snatched a gold-banded ruby ring from Kurt’s finger and slid it over the fourth on her left hand. “Look,” she said, her eyes wide, her pouty mouth screwed up in haughty victory. “I’m married to my cousin. Isn’t that the way it used to be in the old days . . . marrying your cousin?”
“That’s disgusting,” Jane said. “Give him back his ring.”
Kurt lay back on the blanket, his slender form ablaze like white heat in the sunlight, a smile poised on his lips. “Oh, she’ll give it back or pay dearly for it, won’t you, cousin?”
Laughing, Charlene ripped the ring from her finger and flung it at Kurt. It bounced off his chest and landed near his neck. He lifted the gold band, positioning the ruby toward the sun, where it flashed crimson in the brightness.
His attention to her friends brought out a feeling in Emma— jealousy—one she had read about and pondered, but never experienced on this level; but, there was a new, deeper, darker, feeling that she couldn’t shake as Kurt left the farm the next day.
She could have sworn that it was love, but somehow it had twisted into something heated and full of longing, as if she couldn’t live without him; and, there would be no life in her lonely body if he deserted her.
Several days later, after bathing at home in tepid water in the washroom’s stone tub, Emma gathered her pad and charcoal pencil in her bedroom, much as she had done since her father had presented her with drawing materials when she was six years old. She sketched Kurt’s form lovingly, the curve of the jodhpurs on his legs, the
