The Measure of a Lady by Deeanne Gist

and the sparseness of music, the night was winding down and morning would soon be calling.
    Weariness consumed her, yet she knew sleep would not rescue her from its clutches. Images of the gruesome dream that had jerked her awake flashed through her mind.
    She squeezed her eyes shut but could not hold it at bay. Sweet Lips screeching in pain as a grossly oversized grizzly with horns growing from its head snapped the sorrel in half with its jaws, then gored her with its horns and trampled her with cloven hooves.
    Rachel curled up into a ball. She’d returned home last night only to discover Michael had attended the fight. The aftermath of the thrill consuming him, he had described the event in graphic detail to Lissa, who had listened raptly with an unhealthy glow in her eyes.
    Rachel pressed a fist to her mouth. For she was no better. Hadn’t Johnnie tried to take her away? But the very grotesqueness of the display had held her transfixed.
    She covered her face with her hands. This town was just one big trapdoor spider—lurking in its camouflaged lair waiting to pounce on any insect that strayed too close. And when that victim passed by, the spider would rush out and plunge its fangs into it. Paralyzing it and eating it alive.
    She swallowed. What was to become of her? Of Lissa? Of Michael? O Lord. Help me be strong. Help me be wise. Protect me from the spider’s lair .
    Conviction over her behavior with Johnnie washed through her. She could not believe she had actually sat in the man’s lap, allowing him liberties no lady ought.
    Still, she couldn’t deny the pleasure and comfort his embrace had provided. ‘‘And in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge, until these calamities have passed by.’’
    That’s what it was like, Lord, she thought. It was as if he took me into the shelter of his wings and gave me refuge until the calamity had passed .
    Yet she knew she had no business finding sanctuary in the arms of a gambler.
    But where were you, Lord? Where were you?
    She untied the ribbon at the tail of her braid, then unraveled it, pondering the delicious feeling he had induced when he hand-combed her hair.
    Lissa’s eyes had been wide with curiosity at Rachel’s disheveled state last night, but she had stopped just short of asking.
    Michael was not so gracious. Scowling, he’d squared up and demanded an explanation. She’d hedged, saying the mad scramble after the fight had frightened the horses, her bonnet had fallen off, and her hair hadn’t held up like it should.
    He was still young enough to accept her account at face value.
    Lissa was not. The girl had eyed Rachel the rest of the evening, fraught with speculation.
    Rachel brushed her lips with the ends of her hair. Just last year she had clandestinely read one of her father’s medical books written by a New York physician of wide experience where he most decidedly stated that the full force of sexual desire is seldom known in a virtuous woman; that nature had provided a more susceptible organization in males than in females.
    The entire discourse seemed to suggest that some nameless and horrid immorality would result if the two parties, even in a legal union, were equally passionate.
    And that was why it was the female’s responsibility to set the moral climate within the family and society.
    Tears welled in her eyes. Was her purity nothing but superficial? Something so easily dissolved that she would fall from virtue at the mere touch of a man?
    She glanced at Lissa sleeping soundly beside her. And Michael, curled up by the fireplace. They were dependent upon her not only for their basic needs but also for their moral needs.
    Slipping from the bed, she stoked the fire and then lit a lamp, turning low the flame before retrieving her Bible from the table. Crawling back beneath the covers, she turned to Proverbs and started with chapter two. The chapter on avoiding adulteresses. She did not stop until she’d read through chapter five,