by Sandra Brown
No! her mind screamed. If only you knew how much I crave your touch! Instead she said with a cracking voice, “No, Zack, it has nothing to do with that. You should know by now that I respond—” She broke off, unable to continue under the implacable blue stare.
“Then what, Camille? What!?” His frustration was apparent.
She twisted her hands and clamped her teeth over her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. I love you. I love you. Why couldn’t she tell him? Perhaps then he would take her in his arms and pledge his undying love for her. She couldn’t; he wouldn’t. He had loved once. Dearly had told her so. Whoever that woman was had hurt him deeply, and he hadn’t been ready to love again until he gave his love to Erica. Now he had been forced to forfeit that.
Camille was in an untenable predicament. Without revealing her love for him, how was she going to explain her torment? She couldn’t allow him to see her true feelings. It would be too humiliating, and he would regard her with more contempt than ever before.
“I… We… At Snow Bird—”
“Dammit, woman, are you never going to forgive me for that?” He smacked his palms together smartly and she jumped. “How long must I be punished before it’s sufficient? We’re married now. What more could I do to redeem myself with you?”
Punishment! This marriage was punishment to him. Somewhere in a quiet, private spot of her heart, she had held on to a thread of hope that he might not view it as such, but his words had dashed that hope. A tight pain was squeezing her chest, and a burning flush of shame swept her body. Zack flung the towel from around his neck and into a nearby chair, slammed one clenched fist into the palm of his other hand, and then faced her belligerently, hands on his hips.
It was his arrogant stance and expression of righteous indignation that snapped Camille from shame and humility to fury. He was blaming her again! Just as always, she saw accusation in his frigid eyes.
“Don’t get angry with me, Mr. Prescott. This whole obscene situation is your fault. It was you who took my innocence without so much as a thought—”
“How in the hell do you know what I thought?” he interrupted. “You have no idea what I was thinking, do you? You ran away, remember. I never had a chance to tell you what I was thinking.”
“Then tell me now. What were you thinking that night when you so peacefully and inculpably fell asleep beside me?” she shouted back at him. He was momentarily shaken by her flare of anger, but he recovered himself quickly, pulling that impenetrable mask over his features.
A short expulsion of breath escaped the grim lips, and he raked tense fingers through his drying hair before answering resignedly, “I don’t know what I was thinking, Camille.” He spread his arms palms up in mute appeal. “I am a single adult male. I met an attractive woman—girl. I enjoyed her company for several days, then shared what I thought was a mutually satisfying physical experience.” He shrugged almost apologetically. “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
I want you to say that you fell in love with me, she grieved silently. She sniffed back more tears and asked, “You thought of nothing else?”
“Yes! Hell, yes. I thought you were highly intelligent. I thought you were amusing, fun to be with. Surely you know I thought—think—you were beautiful and incredibly sexy. I like your hair and the golden lights in your eyes.” His voice grew husky. “I liked the look and feel of your breasts and the taste of your mouth.” He took a tentative step toward her, but when she reacted by stepping backward, he continued with no inflection. “If you want me to say that I planned a glorious future for us in those few hours, I’m sorry. I didn’t think up names for our first three children. Do you condemn me for following through with an instinct as old as time, Camille? A man and a woman meet, and they are attracted to each other, and they have sex together. It happens all the time.”
She bowed her head and mumbled, “Not to me, it doesn’t.” He didn’t respond to that. The room was silent except for the logs popping in the fireplace. Far away, Camille heard Dearly rattling pans in the kitchen and Simon’s low, modulated voice. Tears rolled unchecked down Camille’s cheeks. There was no reason to hide them now.
Finally Zack spoke quietly. “I know it doesn’t, Camille. The fact that I was the first… the only… believe me, it was a surprise. And it makes you special. But do you censure the rest of the population? Do you expect mere humans to live by your standards?” There was the slightest trace of humor in his words, but Camille met his eyes unwaveringly.
“No, Zack, no!” she groaned pleadingly. “Please don’t think of me as a pious prude. But I have to live by my standards. I know what’s right and wrong for me. And without—” She bit off the word “love” and hurriedly lowered her gaze from the blue eyes that had become remarkably tender.
He came to her quickly and softly. His voice was a hoarse whisper when he asked, “Why did you run away from me Camille?” He put his index finger under her chin and raised it so she was forced to meet his eyes.
How would he react if she told him the truth? What would he do if she said, “Because I knew even then that I was falling in love with you. You possessed my heart and soul just as surely as you possessed my body, and I realized that no other man would ever do that. I panicked at the thought that you would reject me. I couldn’t stand the thought of your leaving me once I had found you, so I spared myself that by leaving you first.” She couldn’t make such an admission. She must hold onto one particle of pride. She would convince him that it was something else and find protection in that.
She licked her lips and began, “I told you that it was wrong for me. I felt guilty—”
“Oh, God, no!” he cursed. “Are we back to ‘ruined, cheap, and dirty’? Well, I certainly don’t want to be responsible for a stupid, self-destructive attitude like that,” he sneered caustically. “You may rest assured, Mrs. Prescott, that your husband will demand nothing physical from you. I wouldn’t touch you now if you were the last woman in the world. Rest easy, dear wife, that I won’t subject you to my uncouth, base, lustful, and degrading invasion of your chaste body again.”
She was stunned by the vehemence of his bitterness. As Camille stood mutely in the center of the room, he went to the closet and grabbed a pair of jeans, then crossed to the bureau and jerked open one of the drawers. He cursed expansively as it opened to its full extent, spilling some of her lacy undergarments onto the floor. He finally located the drawer containing his underwear and, extracting a pair, slammed the drawer shut.
Before he went out of the room, he stopped and said smoothly, with surprising calm that sounded more deadly than shouting, “You can move your things into the other bedroom. This is my room, and, as long as you aren’t going to be under the covers, I don’t want you to be underfoot either.”
With a contemptuous leer, he whipped the terry wrapper from around his waist and flung the scrap of material to her feet. He stood there before her brazenly exposing her to his nakedness before he stamped out of the room carrying his clothes.
Camille stumbled to the bed and collapsed upon it, sobbing into the pillow that was fragrant with Zack’s scent.
Eleven
Breakfast that morning set a precedent for each morning thereafter. Camille and Zack sat across the table from each other barely able to conceal their hostility. They spoke politely about inconsequential topics. Camille knew that Dearly and Simon were dismayed at the strange attitude of the new bride and groom toward each other. She and Zack didn’t fool them.
This time of year wasn’t a busy season for the plantation, and the routine chores could have been handled by Zack’s employees there, but he left early every day and returned late in the evenings. He answered Camille’s courteous questions in monosyllables, but she gathered that he was devoting most of his time to horse breeding. He never went out in the evenings, but retired early to his room with a book or watched television in what was now referred to as “Rayburn’s den.”
Camille wasted no time in moving
her things to the bedroom that comprised the other half of the master suite. It was a comfortable room, though not as large as Zack’s. There was no fireplace. The furniture was rosewood and graceful in design, much like that in the dowager house.
Her mother telephoned often. Once she asked if she should send the rest of Camille’s things to Natchez. Camille always tried to sound cheerful and give the impression that she and Zack were deliriously happy, but she hedged on her mother’s sending anything else to her. Wasn’t this only a temporary arrangement? Was she ready to accept it as such? She must. However, she told her mother that she and Zack were planning a trip to Atlanta soon, and she would decide then what to throw away, give away, or bring back with her. It was a feasible lie, and her mother didn’t suspect her true reason for not wanting any more of her belongings at Bridal Wreath. The less she had to move out when she left for good, the better.
While Zack filled his days with work at the plantation, she continued working on the restoration of the house with fanatic zeal. She relaxed a little bit when Rayburn’s new suite of rooms was completed. The rest of the house was all but finished, lacking only the final artistic touches. A few pieces of furniture had yet to be reupholstered, but she could now begin the fun part of arranging silk flowers, rehanging portraits and other pictures and mirrors, rearranging bric-a-brac, and choosing the other appointments of each room with utmost care.
Zack had never again referred to the color in the dining room that he had found so offensive. The room had turned out to be beautiful, just as Camille had planned that it would. The contrasts between light and dark and pastel blended so well that one didn’t notice them. One only saw a gorgeous, serene room. But if Zack had given attention to the results of her hard work, he didn’t comment on it to her.
She carried through the Southern theme wherever she could, using silk dogwood blossoms in one arrangement in the parlor and real cotton bolls still attached to their dried stalks to fill a tall, crystal vase on a table in the entrance hall.
While she arranged the latter, she had the strong urge to submit to the tears gathering behind her lids. She had come to love this house, and it was going to be painful to leave it once it was finished and Rayburn was home and in good enough health to tell him about her and Zack’s separation.
Any former job she had undertaken had been just that—a job. No matter how satisfied she was with the finished product, and even if the customer shared similar taste with her, she was always ready to leave the project at its completion and accept the challenge of another. Why was she so attached to Bridal Wreath? Was it because she was in love with the owner?
She gazed out the front door to the broad expanse of lawn. Zack had surprised her by hiring gardeners to do remedial work on the trees and shrubs. They had been pruned and fertilized. The flowerbeds had been weeded, and new bulbs had been planted. In the spring, the front lawn would be as lovely as Rayburn’s backyard. Gone was the aura of neglect and disrepair that Bridal Wreath had radiated when Camille arrived several months earlier. She sighed. Were there never to be any happy, laughing children to play on those lovely yards?
How she wished that things could have been different. If only she and Zack could live here happily in this gorgeous house and raise a family to carry on the traditions. But it wasn’t to be.
Living with Zack Prescott these days was like living with a stranger. When their eyes happened to meet, his were cold, indifferent, implacable. She could hear him lock her bathroom door whenever he went in there from his bedroom. She would listen to the splashing water and imagine him standing before the basin shaving, the terry cloth wrapper snug around his hips. If he minded or even noticed her makeup, hair curlers, and other feminine implements in his bathroom, he made no mention of it. Only once, when she was soaking in the bathtub, did she hear him try the door from his bedroom. When he discovered that it was locked, he said nothing. She heard him turn away, and he didn’t try the door again while she was there.
The tension in the house was almost palpable, but the hardest times to endure were their hospital visits to Rayburn. Camille and Zack would drive together, usually in complete silence. When they arrived at the hospital, they would put on their happy faces, like actors of Greek theater putting on masks. They acted out their parts, playing to their audience of one, presenting him with the image of a happily wedded couple. They had never talked about their charade, it just came about with both of them understanding that it was crucial to Rayburn’s health that nothing at this point should agitate him.
The second week of November, Dr. Daniels told them that his patient could come home by the end of the week. Plans for Rayburn’s homecoming overshadowed everything else. Even Zack refrained from going to the plantation in order to help make everything ready in time. He and Simon filled the den-conservatory with plants until Zack grumbled that if they ever needed money, they could open a nursery. Dearly planned meals around Dr. Daniels’s strict diet for Rayburn and improvised how she could change the bland and tasteless food into dishes more appetizing in an effort to keep Rayburn within his restrictions. Camille was anxious about his liking his new rooms. She checked every detail and rearranged the furniture a dozen times before she was satisfied.
Her relationship with Zack weighed heavy on her mind. Dearly and Simon were too polite to comment on it, though she knew they sensed the tension. And, of course, they knew she had moved to the other bedroom and that she and her husband didn’t sleep together. Now that Rayburn would be on the first floor and forbidden to climb the stairs, he wouldn’t know about that. At least not right away. But could she keep up this tormenting play-acting at home as she did for an hour at the hospital? When they would walk through the corridors of the hospital, his thigh would press against hers. As they stood together at Rayburn’s bedside, Zack often draped an arm across her shoulders or around her waist, drawing her close. He held her hand and stroked his thumb over the pulse in her wrist. He kissed her fingers lightly with warm lips before relinquishing her hand. Once his fingers had trailed up and down her arm in an absentminded caress that made her heart pound. A few times, he had leaned down and brushed a soft kiss on her forehead. His breath stirred the hair at her temples.
She knew these gestures were for her father-in-law’s benefit, but she responded to them just the same, and it never failed to leave her with a feeling of self-loathing at her own body’s susceptibility. If he continued these tiny ministrations when they were constantly around Rayburn at home, how could she bear it? She longed to fall into Zack’s arms and beg him to still the rapid beating of her heart and satisfy the desire that engulfed her even as she denied that it existed.
* * *
George Daniels had insisted that he bring Rayburn home in his car so that the family would be able to greet the head of the household properly.
Zack and Camille stood on the new front porch, watching the sleek car drive over the lane that Zack had had resurfaced. As it drew nearer, Zack put a possessive arm around her waist. It must have been her imagination that his fingers deftly brushed the underside of her breast. But why then did her breath catch in her throat, and Zack’s body stiffen in a jerking reaction?
Dearly was weeping copiously into her handkerchief as Rayburn mounted the steps and hugged her. He shook hands with Simon and then embraced Camille and Zack together.
“Welcome home, Dad. We’re glad to have you back.” Zack’s voice had a slight hoarseness to it, and Camille knew that he was struggling to hold on to his composure. He loved his father very much. She should know better than anyone to what extent that love went. How many men would marry a woman they detested just to please a parent?
They were all filled with expectancy as they led Rayburn into the house. He stood inside the front door for long moments and stared at the transformation the house had undergone with Camille’s supervision. He walked slowly to the opening of each room leading off the entrance hall and gazed in wonder at the restored beauty of the home he loved so much. She saw tea
rs glistening in his eyes as he turned toward her and extended his arms. She went to him without hesitation and returned his warm embrace. Over his shoulder, she surprised Zack in an unguarded moment and met his eyes. They had softened; the lines around his mouth weren’t grim and set as they had been since the morning after their wedding. His expression was tender. When he realized that she was looking at him, he shook his head slightly and said quickly, “Dad, Camille has another surprise for you.” Whatever she had read in his face a moment before had vanished.
“I don’t know if I can stand any more surprises this morning. Camille, it’s… I…” he floundered and then chuckled. “I guess I’m trying to say that it’s better than I ever imagined it could be. Thank you, daughter.”
She blushed at his flattery. “You helped with the selections, remember, Rayburn.” He had insisted that she call him by his given name ever since the wedding. “Come see what else we’ve done.”
She took his elbow and, with the others following, led him toward the rear of the house where the screened porch had been. When Rayburn saw the new den with the window blinds opened to reveal the late autumn landscape outside, the tropical plants dappled by filtered sunlight, and the new furniture mixed with all of his favorite things, he was truly taken aback. He wandered through the new den and then went into the bedroom and accompanying bath. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief as he said with a touch of awe, “I love it!”
The rest of the morning was spent settling Rayburn into his new rooms. Even more plants and flowers, his gifts while in the hospital, were moved in, much to Zack’s consternation. Dearly and Simon were ever at Rayburn’s beck and call, though, just before Dr. Daniels left, he admonished them not to spoil his patient too badly.
Rayburn was reluctant to let Zack and Camille out of his sight. He seemed hungry for the sight and sound of them. They stayed near him all day except for the times that Zack demanded Rayburn take his naps.