Chapter 10

Cassie

I had never had an experience like that, even though I'd dated and flirted and known men all my life. Yirmeyah's hand on my arm had felt so good that I wanted him to keep it there, even if he was only looking at my bracelet, and really I wanted him to just hold my hand, but instead he dropped my arm like it was hot and acted like a little kid caught playing doctor. He had the manners of someone straight out of the Victorian era, though I've heard that really the Victorian era might not have been as bad as some people think, since Queen Victoria really did love her husband and enjoyed their marriage in every way. Maybe what people think about is after Prince Albert died, when she went into permanent mourning.

But Yirmeyah seemed almost afraid to touch me, once he realized he was doing it. I had never seen him totally embarrassed before, and all it had taken to do it was noticing that he was holding my arm. I wondered whether any woman would have gotten that reaction or it was just me, and for a few seconds I treated myself to the idea that it was me, that he had reacted to Cassie Morrison, but then reality set in and I had to admit that probably any woman would have caused the same reaction.

But we sort of had an agreement now. He would explain Texas to me, and I was getting pretty curious about the place by now, for Yirmeyah was beginning to strike me not so much as a hick, as someone from a different culture that might be worth learning about. It even began to come to me that perhaps to him I was strange in some ways.

And then I was supposed to help him become more comfortable with women, which is how I understood him. I'd noticed that he was very courteous with women, especially young women and older women. That Stetson hat that I'd noticed when he first came to preach for us when we were still looking for a pastor, he tipped to women in the parking lot, and I'd seen him take it off completely when greeting someone in her 20s or in her 60s or 70s. I thought of westerns I'd read and realized that in some ways his manners were those of what the writers had said was the old west, where women were scarce and therefore men respected them, unless they were "scarlet women" and even then they probably got a little more respect than the prostitutes on Central Avenue get. Or at least that's the impression the books had given me.

In fact, that seemed like a good place to start our mutual education. We'd been walking along quietly during all this thinking I'd been doing, and now I stopped and turned to face my companion. "Yirmeyah, I think maybe I've found a place where we can both learn something at the same time."

He also turned to face me, his hands in the pockets of his western style pants. "What's that, Cassie?" At least he'd recovered enough from his embarrassment that we were back to a regular first name basis, which I liked, even though I knew that "Miss Cassie" was in his mind a respectful thing to call me.

"Well, it's the way you treat women, like they're made of fine crystal or something. I don't think I've ever seen a man so polite to women before, and I wonder if that's a Texas thing, and whether maybe we could teach you to be polite our way."

I swear he blushed again, though with his dark tan and outside in the light I couldn't be sure, and if he did it was just a mild flush this time. "My manners are something else, I guess. My daddy told me I ought to have been a Confederate officer, the way I treat women. He says that every time I talk to a woman he expects me to suddenly be in a gray uniform kissing her hand." He smiled at me, and I think it was a smile of pure enjoyment. I got the idea that his father's estimation of him pleased him, though I couldn't see why. I mean it wasn't a negative thing, but why would he be so happy about it?

"You know," I said, "that's not a bad image, because you do everything but kiss women's hands, and I halfway expect you to do it."

Now he was definitely blushing. "I would kiss a woman's hand, if she were the one woman whose hand I had a right to kiss."

"Who's that?" I asked, wondering what on earth he was talking about.

"Oh, I haven't met her yet, at least I don't think I have." He dropped his eyes, those hazel eyes that could look at you so directly one moment and be as shy as a child's the next.

"So whoever this woman is who's hand you'd kiss, the one who's hand you'd have a right to kiss, she's what? I'm missing something here, I think, Yirmeyah, though that's not exactly a new thing, because sometimes I miss just about everything and a lot of times I miss part of it."

He grinned at me, looking right at me again. He had a way of laughing sort of at you, but not exactly at you, that made you see what he found so funny and got you thinking it was funny too. "I guess, Cassie, that I was being too delicate. I grew up not even saying the word 'bull' if a lady was around. My daddy taught me to say 'male cow.' It's not that we were ignorant of that kind of thing. You can't raise animals and be ignorant." It almost sounded like he said ignernt. "It's that there were things we didn't even hint at around women." He shrugged his shoulders. "What I meant was that when I meet my wife – the woman who'll become my wife – there'll come a time when I'll have a right to kiss her hand. And then I'll do it." His eyes dropped again. "In my mind, kissing a woman's hand is a very intimate thing."

I turned and began walking again, slowly, thinking about that. "I know that in Europe it used to be a custom, and maybe still is in some circles, to kiss women's hands as a greeting, but here in the United States I don't know that anyone's done it since the 1800s, or maybe the early 1900s. And now that you say it, I think that in our current society kissing a woman's hand would be something intimate, instead of a simple greeting." I took a breath, and my next words took it right away again. "I think I would like it if I met a man who I'd let kiss my hand."

I kept my gaze rigidly forward, not believing that I'd said what I'd said, but out of the corner of my eye I could see, or maybe just sense, Yirmeyah gazing at me for a few seconds. When he spoke his voice was as gentle as I'd ever heard it, and when he wasn't in the pulpit he could speak very softly, and his Texas accent probably made it seem even softer than it was. "Cassie," he said, "the man who'd be fit to kiss your hand would be some man. He'd have to be someone very special." His voice got even softer. "And if someone presumed to do that, and hurt you..."