Her fingers closed over him at that moment, and he trembled with the shock of it. She felt him swell in her hand. “Felice told me that men liked this,” she said, her warm breath on his belly. He felt her hair streaking over his chest, down over his groin, and then he felt her mouth close over him. He nearly leapt off the bed.
He thought he’d die.
“I love how you feel and how you taste.”
His fingers were in her hair, and he knew it was nearly over for him. Her inexperience and her obvious interest in what she was doing to him were an exhilarating combination. “Byrony.” He moaned again. “Oh God.”
He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to control. “Stop it, Byrony, now.” His chest was heaving as he pulled her off him and onto her back. He felt her legs close about his hips, felt her tremble as his fingers found her. “You’d make a saint forget himself.” He went deep into her. His control was nearly gone and when he would have pulled out of her, she closed her thighs tightly about his flanks and arched upward.
“I’m giving you nothing,” he panted. “Byrony, you’re my wife.”
There was a wealth of possessiveness in his voice, and to her surprise, Byrony felt her body respond. She was enjoying her power over him until that moment. She wrapped her arms around his back. When his tongue was inside her mouth just as his sex was in her body, she cried out, unable to help herself. He took her soft, keening wails into his mouth, and forgot his fear, forgot everything but her, his wife, her pleasure, and his.
She raised her face and kissed him. She nestled close, and said sleepily, “There’s so much to be done tomorrow if we’re to leave on Friday.”
“I can’t believe it,” he said more to himself than to her as he fitted her against the length of his body. “Seduced by a very proper little lady.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Laurel Hammond breathed in the sweet scent of magnolia blossoms as she walked from her small music room at the back of the house into the garden. A glorious day, she thought, neither too warm nor too humid. She walked slowly through the garden toward the gardenia bushes. She would pick the blossoms for Mammy Bath, bossy old crone, to make her more perfume. The meager supply Drew had dutifully bought her from Paris was gone. The thought of Drew brought a frown. He was a grown man, damn him, yet he was so slippery—no, elusive. If she dared question him, he called her “Stepmama.” She hated that.
As she plucked the gardenias and laid them in her small wicker basket, her thoughts went inevitably to Brent. No word, nothing. It had been well over six months since his father’s death. She had to assume that he’d been notified by the lawyers, for after all, Drew knew he was in San Francisco. Why hadn’t he written? She’d wondered so many times what kind of a man he’d become. What did he think of her? Did he hate her? After nine long years? Of course he couldn’t. It had been he who had seduced her, after all. It hadn’t been her fault, not really. She’d just been so lonely, so unhappy with her husband, cold, domineering Avery.
The will, that wretched document. Laurel shivered under the shade of a huge moss-strewn oak tree, and walked into the bright sun. Drew, insolent bastard, had dared to laugh when that pompous, bewhiskered old fool Mr. Jenkins had read it aloud to them in the library two days after the funeral. She’d been too surprised to say anything, too surprised and too frightened. She dropped a gardenia onto the green grass. The fear was still there.
“You must be more careful, Laurel.”
She watched Drew lean gracefully down to pick up the blossom. He looked like an aesthete and a well-bred Southern gentleman who had never lifted his hands in work—slender, pale-skinned, his light brown hair swept back from a broad, clear forehead. None of the look of his brother, she thought, with his thoughtful brown eyes. But of course, she really didn’t remember all that well what Brent did look like, except for his midnight-blue eyes, penetrating eyes, so compelling and intense, even when he was only eighteen. Drew straightened and handed her the blossom with a flourish.
“Thank you,” she said. “Why aren’t you painting?”
“The beautiful day drew me out. That”—he paused a moment, his brow furrowing—“and a premonition.”
Laurel arched a perfectly plucked auburn brow. “You and that witch Sinda are more alike than I imagined.”
“Oh no,” Drew said easily. “I don’t wring chickens’ necks and dance about a fire preaching the end of the world.”
“That was something, wasn’t it?” Laurel shook her head, smiling at the memory. “I’ll never forget that incident. The slaves refusing to work because the day of reckoning was shortly to arrive. More fear for God’s wrath than Mr. Simmons’s whip.”
“Father and Mr. Simmons handled the situation very nicely, as I recall. Poor Sinda. When the earth didn’t end, she was severely flogged.”
“So what is this premonition of yours?”
“I’m not really sure,” Drew said slowly. “Something will happen today, something out of the ordinary.” He shrugged and looked a bit rueful. “Don’t mind me. It’s probable that my mind has heated up before the weather has. Perhaps my paints have finally reduced my brain to shadowy mysticism.”
“You need to leave the plantation more often than you do, Drew. There are so many very pretty young ladies here-abouts, just waiting for an offer from Mr. Drew Hammond of Wakehurst. Why, Melinda Forrester was telling me just the other day how she so much admired your paintings—”
Drew held up a slender white hand. “Spare me, Laurel. Melinda Forrester is—well, suffice it to say that I have no interest in the girl.” He got a dreamy, faraway look in his deep brown eyes. “I miss Paris,” he said simply. “Oh, all this is beautiful, but it’s not mine.”
“No, it’s all Brent’s now, isn’t it?”
Drew’s eyes focused on his beautiful stepmother’s face. “Why so bitter, Laurel? I don’t know why Brent left Wakehurst so long ago, but he is father’s heir. Of course the plantation must belong to him. The question is, what will he do about it?”
“And I was your father’s wife. How dare he make Brent my trustee? Why didn’t he leave me money in my own right, like he did you?”
Drew merely cocked an eyebrow at her. He’d been home for two years now, and wasn’t by any means blind. He’d discovered she was having an affair with another planter, the blustery Mr. John Lattimer. If he’d known, surely his father must have. The fact that his father hadn’t left her her own money seemed to be proof. Of course, to be fair about it, Laurel was young and beautiful and his father had been old and infirm.
He reached up and pulled down a piece of Spanish moss dangling from a low branch of an elm tree.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “you should consider remarrying—after your period of mourning is over, of course. I understand that Mr. Elias Standford is infatuated.”
Laurel shrugged. “He’s old and a bore. And his children hate me. No, thank you.”
“I seem to recall that Brent and I weren’t any too happy when father turned up with you on his arm. But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Why don’t you visit New Orleans for a while? Good hunting there, I understand.”
“Drew, don’t be nasty. Lizzie?”
Laurel’s near-yell brought a small Negro girl running toward them.
“Yes, missis?” the girl panted, her eyes on her dirty bare feet.
“Take this basket of gardenia blossoms to Mammy Bath.”
“Yes, missis.”
“Tell her to make my perfume.”
“Yes, missis.”
“So, Drew, have you bedded her yet?”
“For god’s sake, Laurel, she can’t be over thirteen years old.” He stared after the girl, knowing she’d heard Laurel’s words.
“I’ve already noticed the head driver, Josh, eyeing her closely.”
“How odd it is, to be sure,” Drew said in a sardonic voice. “If you had your way, Lizzie would have a baby within a year and be a grandmother by the time she was thirty. How would you like to be a gra
ndmother, Laurel? After all, you are well past thirty, are you not?”
Laurel shuddered, but her voice was hard. “Spare me your European sensibilities, if you please, Drew, and I am not well past thirty.”
“I have been home for two years now, and you haven’t celebrated a single birthday.”
“Drew, why don’t you go visit New Orleans?”
“All right, Laurel, I’ll cease and desist. It’s going to get hot soon. I don’t know how you ladies can bear all those heavy clothes.”
“To be quite honest, it is very uncomfortable. But what is one to do? I can’t very well stroll about in breeches and an open linen shirt as you do.”
He laughed. “A sight to boggle the mind.”
They were drinking lemonade under the shade of a huge cedar when Mammy Bath, wheezing and yelling all at the same time, came dashing into the garden. “Missis. It’s the massa. He’s home, my little boy is home.”
Laurel grew very still. “Your premonition, Drew.”
“It would appear that I do possess powers of which I was unaware. Well, my dear, it’s been nine years, hasn’t it? My wandering, wild brother, home at last.”
“I suppose it’s time for me to face my trustee,” Laurel said. What is he like? she wondered yet again. Will he still find me beautiful? Of course he would. There would be no problem, she would see to it. And if there were—
Byrony allowed Brent to assist her from the open carriage. “Wakehurst,” he said.
“It’s beautiful, and just as you described it. But the trees and flowers, Brent. I couldn’t have imagined anything so old or so glorious. Those are azaleas, are they not? And magnolia trees? And gardenias? Everything is so green, so lush.”
Brent smiled at her excitement. “Yes, yes, and yes, and I agree,” he said. “Now, are you ready to meet the inhabitants?”
The first inhabitant was Mammy Bath. She flew down the deep steps of the mansion and into Brent’s arms. “My baby. Lordy, my baby is home. Oh, you handsome boy. And so big.” Her gnarled black hands explored every inch of his face, her smile huge and unwavering, her teeth as white and healthy as Brent remembered as a child.
“Mammy, come now, you’ll make this lovely lady jealous. I want you to meet my wife, Byrony Hammond.”
“Mercy, mercy, you’ve got yerself a missis! Look at that little alabaster face. Where did you find this sweet baby?”
Byrony was too taken aback to move or say a word. She was hugged tightly by the scrawny little woman and examined just as Brent had been.
“Mammy’s an institution,” Brent said once the old slave had ceased her wild chatter. He looked up at that moment, and his eyes met Laurel’s. God, but she’s beautiful, was his first reaction. He supposed that he’d imagined she would be an old, tired crone after the passage of nine years. And Drew. A man now. Brent broke away from Mammy Bath, his stride firm, his eyes intent.
The two men met on the bottom step of the veranda.
“Brent,” Drew said. “As I live and breathe, you do exist. Lord, but you’re big.”
“And you’re all grown up. I remember a skinny little kid who was always covered with blobs of paint.”
They embraced. Laughed. Embraced again.
Laurel stood stiffly quiet, her eyes not on the two brothers, but on the woman who remained in the drive beside Mammy Bath. Brent’s wife. Byrony’s face was shadowed by her bonnet. Her clothes were wrinkled and travel-stained, and her hands were clutched in front of her like a nun. She looked like a nonentity. Laurel smiled, and gracefully made her way down the steps. First things first, she thought, and waved.
“Welcome to Wakehurst,” she called out. She hugged Brent’s wife.
“How tired you look, you poor creature. May I call you Byrony? Thank you. Please call me Laurel. After all, not many years separate us. What a terribly long trip you’ve had, no doubt. All the way from San Francisco. Did you spend some time in New Orleans? Ah, what a lovely city, so unusual. And your riverboat trip up the Mississippi? A week was all, isn’t that right?”
Byrony felt dull-witted. All she was required to do was nod or shake her head.
“Brent,” Laurel called. “Come, your wife is ready to sink to the ground with fatigue. You and Drew can reminisce and joke and insult each other to your heart’s content, but later. Othello. Lloyd. Come out here and get the master’s luggage. Mammy, why don’t you see to Brent’s little wife. Would you like your own room, dear? No? How odd, well, no matter. Mammy, take her to the master’s suite. I vacated it, of course, after my dear husband passed away.” She felt a slight frisson even as she said the words. She couldn’t wait to be gone from that dreadful, dark room with its smell of sickness. “It’s Brent’s now. Come along.”
“Thank you,” Byrony finally managed to say, and trailed after the beautiful woman.
Laurel felt a knot of fury build in her stomach. The girl was so young, damn her. And lovely. Dear God, what was she to do?
No sooner had all of them come into the gigantic entrance hall than they were surrounded by Negroes of all ages, all crying out, yelling actually, Byrony thought, blinking, all crowding around Brent. All she heard was “Massa. Massa.”
The outside of the plantation had struck Byrony with its clean, simple lines, the two and a half stories supported by slender white columns, and graceful galleries surrounding three sides of the house. But the interior carried the Spanish influence that Brent had described to her. The walls were painted a soft pink, and a black wrought-iron staircase gently curved to the upper floors. Fresh cut flowers were in delicate vases on every surface. She tried not to feel overwhelmed, but she did, nonetheless. Ira’s home in San Francisco had been elegant, rich, but it had none of the Old World grace of this mansion. It looked new and ugly by comparison. She wondered what Brent was thinking. Did it seem to him that their apartment above the saloon was a meager hovel compared to his old home?
“Byrony, come and meet all the house slaves.”
Brent introduced her to several of the older slaves, then paused to allow Laurel to give the names of the newer slaves.
Othello, Desdemona, Portia, Lear, and on and on. Good grief, Byrony thought, it was like a Shakespearean festival. She wondered what their real names had been. She smiled until she felt her face cracking. Everyone smiled back at her, calling her the Little Missis. There wasn’t a shoe on any foot present.
Suddenly Mammy Bath clapped her hands. “Enough. Off with you, you lazy blackies. Missis, you come with me. We’ll get you a nice bath.”
Byrony smiled at Brent, and he nodded. “Yes, go on upstairs. I’ll join you shortly.”
She looked over her shoulder as she preceded Mammy Bath up the stairs. Brent was talking to Laurel. She looked incredibly fragile and delicate and her charming laugh seemed almost intimate. Well, he’d known her intimately. She felt an alarming wave of jealousy. She met Drew’s eyes for a moment, and had the feeling he’d read her feelings. He winked at her, an action so unexpected that she very nearly laughed.
The long hall on the second floor was covered with a thick, patterned carpet. Mammy Bath kept up a nonstop monologue until they reached the end of the corridor. She threw open the double oak doors.
Byrony shivered at the sight of the dreadful room. The furnishings were dark and heavy and thick, and musty-smelling gold draperies covered the windows. Byrony walked quickly to the windows and pulled back the awful brocade. Sunlight poured in. Mammy Bath dutifully opened the glass doors and Byrony breathed in the sweet warm air.
“That’s better, I think,” she said more to herself than to the hovering Mammy Bath. She walked out onto the gallery and leaned over the white wood railing. “So beautiful,” she said, breathed in deeply as she stared down into the immaculate garden.
“Old Massa have bad eyes and the sunlight hurt him. All that change now, missis. We get rid of all this stuff, give it to Josh. Make that boy feel more important than he does already. He’s the head driver, a smart boy.”
Mammy Bath
turned at the entrance of two slaves and directed the placement of their luggage. Within twenty minutes Byrony was submerged to her neck in a huge cedar tub filled with jasmine-scented water. I’ve died and gone to heaven, she thought, in my first full bath since I left New Orleans.
She leaned back and closed her eyes. I’m in Mississippi, she thought vaguely, taking a bath. And there are barefoot slaves about who belong to Brent. Her mind skimmed over the long weeks of travel, dwelling more on her husband’s behavior than on the strange places they’d visited. Just when she thought she was beginning to really understand him, he would change, withdraw. He’d passed part of his time gambling, and they’d arrived in New Orleans with an extra thousand dollars. He’d spent most of it on her. She pictured the new gowns now hanging in the oak armoire in the corner of the bedroom. Had he been afraid that she would shame him? But of course he’d also had new clothes made for himself. She found herself a bit uncomfortable with the elegant Southern gentleman he’d become during the past week. His accent had broadened and he had developed an inexhaustible charm. She wondered if she would ever understand him. And now there were Laurel and his brother, Drew. Beautiful Laurel, who looked at him so intimately.
Byrony forced herself not to stir when she heard Brent’s voice.
“Hello, mermaid. You look as if you’re getting as much pleasure from that bath as I give you.”
She opened her eyes at that and saw his smile. She gave a soft, replete sigh and his smile widened.
“Shall I join you?”
“I’m sure you need to, but with your size you’d best wait.” She began to wash her hair, saying in her most offhand voice, “Your stepmother seems quite charming, as does your brother.”
“Were you expecting recriminations and screams of rage? My dear, this is the South. Ladies are ladies, at least superficially. Laurel will bide her time.” He paused a moment. “This was my father’s room. He refused to allow Laurel to make changes, according to Drew. Lord, it’s depressing. Do what you wish to—anything would be an improvement.”
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