The Awakening

by Jude Deveraux

  J. Harker was chewing on an unlit cigar and pacing the library. “I don’t like it one little bit,” he said. “He doesn’t look like a college professor should. He looks too young, too healthy. He looks like he might go out in the fields and lead a strike himself.”

  “All the more reason to keep him where we can watch him. I admit his age and looks threw me for a moment, but I will try to make up for the rudeness of both of us. He must be kept away from the fields. We have to save every penny we can this year or we’ll lose everything.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” J. Harker said bitterly. “It’s just that he don’t—”

  “Doesn’t,” Taylor corrected him automatically. “Doesn’t look as a professor should. Amanda will—”

  “Amanda! Surely you don’t think I’ll let her go out alone with him.”

  Taylor’s face showed little emotion. “I have taught her well and she is obedient. She will help us now that we need her.”

  J. Harker looked hard at the man who was to be his son-in-law. Taylor seemed to have supreme confidence that he was going to get everything he wanted out of his life. Years ago Harker had tried to get him to marry Amanda, but Taylor wanted to wait until she was “trained properly.” Harker hadn’t protested, but now he thought Taylor was making a mistake if he let Amanda go out alone with this good-looking young buck. “I think you’ll be sorry for this,” Harker said. “She has the blood of her mother in her.”

  “I know Amanda,” Taylor said. “There’s something…insolent about that man that Amanda will greatly dislike. Trust me. She will help us.”

  “You have more faith in women than I do,” Harker said, clamping down on his cigar.

  The bedroom the maid led Hank to was quite nice. It was at the front of the second floor, looking north with east and west windows. There was a pretty little private balcony with two wrought-iron chairs and a tiny table. While standing on the balcony, to his left was the roof of the first-story verandah wrapping around the windows of what he assumed was another bedroom.

  His room was dark and clean and the furniture of good quality, but it had none of the homey touches that Hank had grown used to with Mrs. Soames. He looked at the books in the bookcase and found nothing of interest and so began to hang up his clothes. He had refused Martha’s offer of help.

  He removed his dusty traveling jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and headed for the bathroom Martha had pointed out to him. The door was closed, so he knocked.

  “Yes?” came a woman’s voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Hank said, “I’ll come back.”

  “I will be out in three and a half minutes,” said the woman.

  Hank was already on his way back to his room when he heard this. A woman who knew exactly how long she was going to be in the bathroom? Hank stopped where he was and lounged against a wall where he could see the tall clock and the bathroom door.

  As the hands neared three minutes, he reached into his pocket for a coin to flip to lay odds with himself whether or not she’d be punctual.

  At exactly three and a half minutes the bathroom door opened and out stepped what Hank thought was surely the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Tall, thin—too thin—big brown eyes that looked wary, sad, frightened and curious all at once. Deep, dark chestnut hair. He didn’t see what she was wearing, for he seemed to see her in several gowns: medieval velvet, Napoleonic muslin, Victorian taffeta, Edwardian linen.

  The coins in his hand fell to the floor.

  “May I help you?” the woman-vision asked.

  “I…ah, I…” Hank stuttered stupidly.

  The next second the vision was gone and he was able to see again. No, she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world. She was very pretty, true, but, technically, she wasn’t as beautiful as Blythe Woodley. But he couldn’t stop staring at her.

  “Are you Dr. Montgomery?” she asked.

  He began to recover. “Yes, I am, and you are?”

  “Amanda Caulden. Welcome to my home.”

  She held out her hand to him and he almost didn’t take it. What in the world was wrong with him? “Thank you very much. I met your father and his son-in-law. You must have a married sister.” He was doing his best to make conversation but he was getting lost in her eyes. Not again, Montgomery, he commanded, thinking of what had happened with Blythe Woodley. Don’t even consider it.

  “Taylor is my fiancé. Now, Dr. Montgomery, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late.”

  “You’re leaving?” he said, then cursed to himself because he sounded like a little boy whose mother was leaving.

  “No, I shall join you at luncheon. Shall I help you pick up your coins?”

  “No, I can,” he said quickly, and immediately went to all fours and reached under a table for a coin, then turned to look up at Amanda and bumped his head. She took a step forward and saved a vase of flowers from falling to the floor.

  “Perhaps I should call a maid,” she suggested.

  “No, I’ll be fine,” he said, then bumped his head again.

  Amanda just looked at him, expressionless, then opened the door to the room next to his and went inside, closing herself from his view.

  Hank sat on the floor and cursed for a full five minutes, but he couldn’t get the image of her from his mind. He saw her as something from a painting from Fragonard: on a swing, laughing, satin skirts blowing, exposing lacy petticoats and tiny shoes with jeweled buckles. He saw her running through fields of golden wheat, long hair streaming out behind her. He saw her dancing a tango, wearing a slinky dress.

  He saw her in his arms.

  He stood, his eyes on the door to Amanda’s room, and, without conscious thought, he walked softly to her door and put his hand against it.

  It was at that moment that Amanda opened the door to her room—and almost got Hank’s hand in her face.

  She was too startled to do anything but stare at him, her eyes wide.

  “I…ah, the coins. I, ah…” Hank stammered, then gave her a weak smile.

  “It is time for luncheon,” she said firmly and turned sideways to get past him. She halted on the stairs and put her hand to her breast and willed her heart to stop pounding. Was this man insane or just very eccentric? He didn’t look like a college professor. In fact, he didn’t act as if he had a brain in his head. She had left the bathroom and there he had stood, staring at her as if he’d never seen a woman before. Amanda had looked down to see if perhaps she had forgotten some important article of clothing. Then he’d thrown coins on the floor and floundered about, nearly knocking over furniture as he tried to retrieve them.

  What he had been doing when she opened her door and nearly walked into his hand, she didn’t like to think about. She continued down the stairs.

  “Amanda, you are late,” Taylor said sternly.

  “I…I met Dr. Montgomery.”

  Taylor was watching her. “He is younger than we anticipated and therefore more dangerous. He must be kept occupied. Have you studied the topics for today’s discussion?”

  “Yes,” she said in a faraway voice. She couldn’t possibly voice her complaints to Taylor. She couldn’t say that she didn’t like Dr. Montgomery, or that she was even a little afraid of him. Taylor wanted her to spend time with him and she had to do it—for Taylor.

  Dr. Montgomery sauntered down to the dining room at five minutes after one. At least this time he was fully dressed. Even though Taylor had lived in the same house with Amanda for eight years, had shared the same bathroom, she had never seen him in his shirt sleeves as Dr. Montgomery had first appeared to her.

  Now he wore a simple, rather too casual tan suit and he had a way of sitting in his chair that was not quite proper.

  “Was I late?” he asked. “Sorry. It took me a while to find all the coins. I can’t afford to lose anything, not on my salary,” he said, smiling at Amanda as if they shared some private joke.

  Amanda did not return his smile. “I wonder, Dr. Montgomery, if we might discuss s
ome of the issues of your book.”

  Hank was looking down at his plate in astonishment. No bowls or platters of food were served, just individual platefuls of what looked to be invalid food: a pale, soggy fish, about six green beans, three slices of tomato. He was hungry and this wasn’t going to fill a hole in a sock, much less the hole in his belly. He looked at the identical plates of Taylor and Amanda—except Amanda had even less on her plate. He’d have to get something to eat later.

  “Dr. Montgomery?” Taylor said.

  Hank looked at him, at the way he sat, shoulders back, neck stiff, and thought he took a lot on himself. He was just a fiancé yet he sat at the head of another man’s table. And why was he waiting to marry Amanda?

  “Oh yes, issues,” Hank said and took a bite of his fish. It was as flavorful as eating a spongy piece of air. “I guess the real issue is, Who owns the land? Does the rich rancher or the worker? Does the rancher have the right to treat the worker as he wants or was slavery abolished? When are you two getting married?”

  Amanda was speechless at the man’s presumption and rudeness, but Taylor was very smooth. He acted as if he hadn’t heard the last question.

  “I believe it is the rancher’s land. The workers are not slaves, they can leave when they want,” Taylor said.

  “And let their wives and kids starve?” Hank answered. “Look, maybe we better not get into this yet.”

  “Of course, you’re right. This afternoon Amanda will take you on a tour of the ranch and you can see how a ranch of this size operates.”

  Hank looked across the table at Amanda and thought it would be better not to be alone with her. He wondered how long her hair was when it was down. He’d already finished his meager meal, so he watched Amanda and Taylor eat their tasteless food ever so slowly. They seemed so prim and proper, yet they were in love and about to be married. Did they kiss passionately beneath the palm trees? Did Amanda slip into Taylor’s room at night?

  “If it’s all the same to you, I thought I’d find a hammock and doze for the afternoon,” Hank said, then saw the two of them gaping at him. Now what did I say? he thought.

  Taylor recovered first. “It has been arranged and there is no hammock,” he said, as if he expected no further change of his plans. Hank wanted to defy the arrogant bastard, but if Taylor was forcing the lovely Amanda on him, why should Hank fight him? Besides, they could go into town and get something to eat.

  Amanda had hoped Taylor would allow the man to waste the afternoon lying about in a hammock, but he hadn’t, and Amanda knew he must have his reasons. She added laziness to the list of Dr. Montgomery’s attributes. She already had clumsy, poor table manners, aggressive, slovenly dresser. How many others would she discover this afternoon?

  At the end of luncheon, Amanda said, “I will meet you at 2:15, Dr. Montgomery, in the north vestibule.”

  His eyes twinkled. “Which end of the vestibule?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He smiled at her. “I will be there precisely at 2:15, not thirty seconds later.”

  When she turned away from him she was frowning. For some reason she seemed to amuse him. She went upstairs to get ready, and when she came down he was waiting for her, leaning against the wall as if he were too tired to stand up straight. “Shall we go?”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  She didn’t know why, but his every word seemed to grate on her. The chauffeur waited for them, but Dr. Montgomery hesitated before getting into the back seat with Amanda.

  Amanda did her best with him, oh how she tried, but he never seemed to be listening to her. Taylor had drawn a map for her that showed the route they were to take around the ranch and he’d listed facts she was to tell Dr. Montgomery, facts she’d memorized about how much it cost to run a ranch the size of the Cauldens’. She told Dr. Montgomery acreage, number of hops produced, number of employees fed and sheltered. She showed him the other crops grown on the ranch: figs, walnuts, almonds, corn, and strawberries and asparagus in the spring.

  But he just sat in the back of the limousine and stared out the window and said nothing.

  She showed him the grape fields and the small winery.

  “How about a bottle?” he asked, pulling one from its holder.

  “My family does not drink alcohol,” she said. “This is for sale.” She turned away from him and continued telling him the facts about the winery.

  “You’re a regular little encyclopedia, aren’t you?” he said as they got back into the car.

  Amanda, under other circumstances, might have thought his words were a compliment, but somehow his tone was not that of a compliment. She didn’t know what to reply to him.

  At 3:51, as Taylor’s schedule said, she had the chauffeur return them to the ranch house so that they arrived back at precisely four P.M. Amanda suggested that Dr. Montgomery make use of their library, but he had given her an odd look, said he could take care of himself and had left the house. Later, Amanda had seen his little two-seater, topless car speed down the road toward town.

  She sat down at her desk and tried to study her French textbook, but her hands were shaking. He was a very unsettling man. She had never been very good with strangers, but this man made her feel awkward and strange and, well, she didn’t like to think this, but he somehow, well, made her feel angry. He didn’t exactly sneer, he didn’t ridicule, but somehow, she felt disapproval coming from him. Not disapproval of the ranch—at times he’d shown some interest in things, such as listening for the rustling sound a hop made when it was ripe—but she felt he disapproved of her.

  She left her desk and went to the small mirror over the dresser. What was it about her that he disapproved of? Did he find her physically repulsive? Stupid? She had tried to be as accurate a guide as possible and had spent several days memorizing Taylor’s facts about the ranch, but she felt she had failed. Were Dr. Montgomery’s female students so much more erudite than she that by comparison she was a moron?

  Again, she had that feeling of anger but she pushed it down and returned to her desk. Tomorrow she was scheduled to take him to a museum in Kingman and she had to tell him about Digger Indians, the Donner Party and early mining in the area. She had better review her facts.

  Hank sat on a bar stool eating a three-inch-thick corned-beef sandwich and drinking a beer—his third.

  What a little prig she was, he thought. What a self-righteous, know-it-all, fact-spouting little prig! She lectured him as if he were an elementary school student. She was the lady of the manor and she had been given the onerous task of entertaining the town blacksmith, an uneducated lout who didn’t know a knife from a fork. He’d seen the way she looked down her little nose at him while they were eating that tasteless meal.

  No doubt she thought of him the way her father thought of the laborers, that they should be grateful to get to work for so illustrious a family as the Cauldens and how dare they ask for decent wages? Why, it should be enough that he allowed them to bask in his sunshine, to touch his crops. She, that sanctimonious little Miss Amanda, probably thought he was thrilled to get to stay in a house like theirs. Tomorrow she’ll probably ask if I’ve ever seen a flush toilet before, he thought, slugging down the rest of his beer.

  He wasn’t sure what he should do. His instinct was to leave the Caulden house immediately, but he felt an obligation to the governor and, most of all, to the unionists. Maybe his presence could prevent trouble. Maybe he could watch out for the laborers’ rights better if he were inside the Caulden house. Just being there, he might be able to stop something before it started. Logically, he knew he should stay. Emotionally, he wanted to get away from the cold little Amanda and her even colder fiancé. And to think that when he’d first seen her he’d—

  He didn’t know what it was that he’d felt, but she’d snowed on it and killed the seed.

  He left the cool, dark bar and stepped into the bright sunlight, thrust his hands into his pockets and went to his car. It was about time for dinner at
the Cauldens’. Wonder what they were having? Boiled chicken and boiled rice and boiled potatoes?

  Amanda had never seen Taylor so angry.

  “That is not the dress I told you to wear to dinner,” he said under his breath.

  Amanda tried to keep her back straight and not cry. Taylor hated tears. “I forgot. Dr. Montgomery upset me and—”

  “Upset you how?” If possible, Taylor made himself taller. “Was he forward with you?”

  “No, he doesn’t…I mean, I think he dislikes me.”

  “Dislikes you?” Taylor was aghast. “Amanda, I am surprised at you. I thought you above these female vapors. Did you follow the schedule? Did you explain to him each part of the ranch?”

  “Yes, I did it exactly, to the minute as your schedule said.”

  “Then there can have been nothing wrong. Now go upstairs and change your clothes and do not tell me any more of your fantasies. You are going to make me think that I have chosen the wrong woman to marry.”

  “Yes, Taylor,” she whispered and went to her room. Alone in her room, dressing as fast as she could, she felt it again, that little gnawing sense of anger. She hadn’t felt anger since Taylor came to live with them. Before he came she often felt anger. She used to get angry at her mother, at her father, at her friends at school.

  Then her father had hired Taylor and given him absolute control over Amanda. He had taken her out of school in Kingman and started giving her private lessons. Things had changed then. Amanda soon learned that anger and/or defiance was a useless emotion; Taylor didn’t allow either. He had put Amanda on a schedule that didn’t allow for anger (4:13 P.M. temper tantrum). No such thing was permitted. And he had hired Mrs. Gunston to make sure Amanda did what she was told.

  Besides the classes, Taylor had said Amanda’s mother was a bad influence on her. After all, didn’t Grace Caulden have a “past”? J. Harker had agreed, and Grace had been sent to some expensive spas around the world, and when she returned, her daughter had not even been allowed to hug her hello. Grace had retired to a spare bedroom at the back of the top floor and had rarely come out since.