"Of course. Anything you say." He threw it to her.
She failed to catch it and it fell to the marble table beside her, shattering. "Oh, look what you've done!" she shrieked and gathered up the jagged pieces of her treasure.
Saxon folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall. "So sorry. I guess my aim was off. But really, Grandmother, you shouldn't be at all upset. After all, you said yourself you didn't want anything from those Blue Ridge mountains."
Araminta glared at him, dazed with fury.
"Once, an Englishman visited those worthless Appalachian Mountains," Saxon explained. "He found clay in them. Beautiful clay. As he held it, he thought of his friend, Josiah Wedgwood. After haggling with the Cherokee Indians who lived in those mountains, he was able to take a sample of the clay back to England with him. He showed it to Josiah, and the proof of what Mr. Wedgwood thought about it is now in your hands, Grandmother. Josiah was so delighted with the wonderful clay, he made a trip to the Blue Ridge himself. He took tons of it back to England, and—"
"That is enough!" Araminta stood and shook a piece of the vase at him. "I do not care if the clay came from those Carolina hills or the pits of hell! The fact remains you have destroyed something of great—"
"And suddenly I am filled with the need to ruin more!" It took him a mere second to cross the room and yank the ebony cane from her hand. He stared down at the hateful object for one moment before he tightened his hold on it and took a great, rapid swing at the crystal chandelier above. Araminta pulled at his elbow, but he brushed her away as if she were nothing but a bothersome insect.
"You're insane!" she charged, her fingers quivering around her brooch.
Saxon continued to bash the fixture, ignoring her until there was nothing left of the chandelier but its sterling silver arms. It somehow reminded him of his destructive spree with Chickadee so long ago, and it gave him a curious pleasure to see the crystal scattered everywhere. Spying an unbroken prism, he picked it up and handed it to Araminta. "This crystal is like ice," he growled, his features twisted with disdain. "Cold and hard. Just like your heart."
Araminta raised her hand, the prism locked between her bony fingers, and started to throw it at him. Saxon caught her wrist and squeezed hard. "Spider Woman," he spat, and saw that her stare held the tiniest fragment of fear. "Where is your poison now?"
"Release me!" she screeched.
Saxon laughed before he let go of her arm.
Araminta shivered with apprehension, like an animal that senses its own defeat. Saxon's gaze held not a glimmer of the fear she'd worked so hard to instill. Yes, he'd stood up to her several times in the past, but always with a thinly veiled anxiety. Now it was completely gone. When had this happened, and how? "What are you going to do?" she screamed when he started for the foyer.
He stopped under the arch of the doorway and leaned against it. "Why Grandmother! Have you lost your confidence? Are you so unsure of yourself now that you believe I will disobey you?"
She could read nothing behind the contempt in his eyes.
"I go," he began, then made her wait while he lit a cheroot, "to propose to Myrtle Windsor."
Araminta's eyes widened. "But—you will propose to her? You barely know her!"
He blew a smoke ring and waited until it vanished before he spoke again. "I've seen her once or twice. I think I may even have danced with her on occasion. I don't know. All Boston maidens look and act the same to me."
Araminta was thoroughly baffled. "But surely you do not believe Myrtle will agree to marry you without becoming well-acquainted with you! Why, she is but one of the long list of maidens I have chosen for you to—"
"I choose her."
Araminta looked fixedly at him, trying in vain to understand if he had some scheme that would ruin her plans.
"And as far as her acceptance of my proposal..." Saxon ventured, "Do you think me stupid, Grandmother? I've received over a hundred invitations to various affairs since Keely left. Invitations from every damn matchmaking mother in the city. For what mother wouldn't jump at the chance to see her precious little girl wed to the man who will soon inherit the famed Blackwell fortune? Myrtle will marry me. I will return this afternoon a betrothed man. You may plan the wedding, just as you have planned my entire life."
Araminta was convinced. Everything about Saxon—his voice, his stance, his choice of words...
He would do exactly what he said he would. "Myrtle will make you an excellent wife."
"All I want from her is the heir you have badgered me about for years. After I get a son on her, she will cease to exist for me. And hopefully you too will cease to exist. After you see me married and lay eyes on your great-grandson, you may die as you've been forever promising to do. The Blackwell fortune will pass to me, and you may lie in your grave satisfied all has happened according to your commands."
He left the house. As the coach carried him toward the Windsor estate, he thought of Myrtle. He knew her better than Araminta believed. He'd lain between her thighs once, long ago. And the memory of that night was what induced him to choose her for his bride.
She was a cold bitch with not an ounce of passion in her perfect body. She was a living glacier, nothing at all like the warm, loving mountain girl whose spirit accompanied him wherever he went. No, Myrtle would never remind him of Chickadee, and that was exactly why she would be his bride.
The barouche stopped. Saxon stepped out and stared at the magnificent Windsor mansion. Within waited his future wife. He walked mechanically up the alabaster steps and pounded on the door.
*
The day had arrived. Saxon read the letter from Mr. Devonshire, the Blackwell attorney, a dozen times before he finally tore it into shreds and flicked the pieces off the desk in his bedroom.
The divorce would be final today. He had but to sign the necessary papers. Had but to sign his heart and soul away on the dotted line.
Anguish crushed him, as it had ever since she'd left. "Keely, my own true heart," he whispered to her, willing his words to somehow find their way to her. "God, how I miss you, love you."
The rustle of silk caught his attention. He looked up and saw Araminta. "Have you gone to see Mr. Devonshire?" she demanded.
"Maybe I have, maybe I haven't."
She knew he hadn't gone. "I have just returned from seeing Myrtle and her parents. The wedding will take place this very evening at the Windsor estate, in a matter of hours! You must go see Mr. Devonshire now. When you return you will barely have enough time to dress for the ceremony."
"So you arranged it after all. My divorce and wedding the same day. My, how busy you've been."
"It will be a quiet affair with only family present. I saw no need for a grand ceremony—a ceremony that cannot take place until you go sign the final draft of the divorce! Go sign the papers, Saxon! You—"
"I'll go later and not a second sooner. Calm yourself. Remember your heart. Or would you like to add your own funeral to the divorce and wedding you have already arranged? I'll stop and see Mr, Devonshire on my way to Myrtle's. What does it matter if the papers are signed hours before the wedding or mere minutes? Either way, I'll be divorced when I marry Myrtle."
Araminta shuddered with impatience and the urgent need to see him married before something prevented it from happening. "Oh, very well! Get dressed now. Be quick about it! I will wait for you downstairs and accompany you to both Mr. Devonshire's office and the Windsor estate. I will see you properly wed this day, Saxon. Nothing, no one, will thwart the marriage!"
She hobbled out of the room, leaving Saxon to dress for his wedding. He chose a black suit to reflect his black mood and not the pearl-gray outfit Myrtle had requested he wear. As he dressed, he was somehow able to remove a part of himself from his body, and as odd as it was, he felt as though he were watching another man prepare for his wedding. For he was already married. Divorce or no divorce, Chickadee would remain the wife of his heart.
Ready, he went to the door, pa
used, and looked back into the bedroom. It would be the last time he ever saw it. He and Myrtle would share a different room, one that held no reminders of the girl who'd once slept with him here. Gently, so he wouldn't disturb a single memory, he shut the door.
He reached the staircase, but the sound of someone weeping stopped him. He listened again and realized it came from the room Candice was fond of calling the sun room. She often took Desdemona there.
Desdemona. Weeks had passed since he'd seen her. She'd refused to see him. She'd even thrown a pitcher at him the last time he'd tried to visit her. After that he'd given up. She was angry with him, and he knew it was because Chickadee was gone. She blamed him for it, and rightly so, but how could he make her understand why he'd done what he'd done when she wouldn't even let him in the same room with her?
He looked at his watch. The wedding was an hour and a half away. Time enough for him to try and explain things to Desdemona. He'd force her to listen if he had to sit on top of her to do it!
The bright, sunny room down the hall was a cold, sad room in Saxon's eyes as his gaze rested on Desdemona's sobbing form. She sat in the far corner, Chickadee's quilt in her lap.
"Desdemona." He reached for her, pulled her to her feet, and withdrew his handkerchief to dry her tears.
She pushed him away. Saxon caught her face and forced her to hold still. The taut feel of her skin and the sharp definition of her bones beneath his fingers made him gasp. His trembling hands traveled over her shoulders, her rib cage, even her ankles. Her frail form horrified him.
"Desdemona! You're nothing but flesh-covered bones!"
His shout frightened her. Fleeing to the side, she tried to escape, but Saxon held her firmly to him. She fought him like a wild thing, scratching and kicking out at him. From her clenched teeth came a hissing sound before she bit her lip, drawing blood. The sight of the red droplets against the gardenia cream of her skin sent a surge of panic tearing through Saxon.
"All right!" he screamed and released her. "Let it all out! Show me how mad you really are!"
She heaved with exhaustion and hostility. Then, flinging herself against him, she beat at his chest. Saxon stood still and allowed her to vent her rage, knowing this was the explosion of many, many years of pent-up, seething emotion. She'd suffered every bit as much as he. She'd suffered then, she was suffering now.
Each time one of her tiny hands struck him, he cringed not from his pain, but from hers. He remembered her as a child. A sweet but silent little girl. He saw her as a lovely but distant young woman. The years had tumbled by, and as they had, he'd paid her very little mind.
"But I did try, Desdemona," he mumbled down to her and then winced when her nails raked his cheek. "Remember? I told you your eyes would make the best marbles if only we could get them out of your head. But you didn't answer me! You never answered me! You were a fragile doll who sat where you were placed, dressed in what someone chose for you, and slept where you were lain!"
He caught her pummeling hands. "I was little too! I didn't know how to play with dolls. And when I grew, I had even less time and patience to learn. You have to understand, Desdemona! I didn't know what to do with you! Dammit to hell, I still don't know what to do with you!"
Swirling from the deep recesses of his mind came the image of someone who had known. Chickadee McBride. It had taken the touch of a whimsical, uneducated mountain girl to bring the doll to life.
Saxon's eyes narrowed as he stared hard at Desdemona. "You're going to die, aren't you? You're willing yourself to die! Without her... without Keely..."
Roughly, he pushed her back into her chair. "Listen carefully, Desdemona. She's gone, and she's never coming back. I sent her away because she wouldn't have been happy here. I couldn't let her stay. Can't you understand that? You love her as I love her! Because of that we have to let her be where she needs to be!"
Desdemona looked up at him, profound sorrow spilling from her huge violet eyes.
"Her departure didn't mean she didn't care about you, Desdemona. One of the last things she told me was to take care of you. You've given me little chance to do that, but I won't let you die, do you hear me? All those things you miss doing with her—making snowmen, building a sled, picking flowers, singing—I can do all those things with you. Hell, I'll go shoot a bear and we'll sew it into a coat if that'll make you start living again! We're going to have a new life together, you and I. We'll do whatever you want, I'll give you whatever you desire. Desdemona, ask me for the world, and I'll see that you get it. Once we inherit our fortune—"
She flew from the chair, her hand slamming across his mouth, her fingers pinching his cheeks. Quickly, she slipped her other hand into his coat and withdrew his wallet. Snatching all the money from it, she shredded it into tiny pieces, flung them into the air, and threw herself on the quilt lying on the floor. There she sobbed anew.
Saxon shook torn money from the top of his boot. Desdemona obviously wanted no part of money. Dammit, she was going to continue to wither away!
Without Chickadee, she was going to be dead before—
His head snapped up. He stared at air, at nothing. Without Chickadee, Desdemona had no will to live. But Chickadee wasn't coming back. She would never set foot in Boston again. His shoulders slumped. What the hell was he going to do now?
"You'd die in the mountains, Desdemona! Life there is too primitive. I can't see you there. You're so delicate! How could you survive the life you'd have in those hills? There are no comforts there whatsoever. There aren't even any doctors for miles around! Betty Jane—she only has herbs. You'd have to bathe in streams, eat bear meat and greens that are so potent you can barely swallow them!"
Iffen I changed the cookin' water o' these here greens, the pot likker wouldn't be no good. Pot likker richens the blood, y'know.
"Richens the blood," Saxon whispered Chickadee's words. "Desdemona..." Pot likker richens the blood.
Desdemona's sobs slowly ceased. For one long moment she gazed up at Saxon, a plea in her amethyst eyes.
"You'd survive there, wouldn't you?" he asked incredulously. "If Keely were with you, you'd survive in hell! You'd not only survive, you'd thrive!"
Desdemona knifed to her feet and threw herself into his arms, her head bobbing on his chest.
"No!" he bellowed down at her and snatched her from him. Misery smothered him. Anger at the injustice of it all. "Desdemona, I can't take you to her! I had to make her hate me! There was this bear cub... she was like that animal. Wild, Desdemona, wild! I could think of no other way! Sticks, rocks—I had to throw them at her! I had to hurt her!"
He stormed toward the window and viciously kicked at a potted plant in his way. "I told her things she won't ever forgive me for! I made her loathe me! If I went to her, tried to explain they were only lies... she'd never believe me! I tried to make a lady out of her. She'll remember that and see it as proof that I wanted her to be someone other than who she was! I made her bleed... The wounds... they'll never heal. They're too deep, too severe!"
Desdemona rushed to him. She took his hands and placed them over her heart, then she put her hands on his.
"Hearts," Saxon bit out. "Love? No, Desdemona. She doesn't love me anymore. I destroyed her love for me on purpose. That was months ago. By now—dammit, by now she's probably already seeing someone else! And why shouldn't she? She thinks she's repulsive to me and that I'm humiliated by her! I made her believe that!"
He left Desdemona and stalked to the other side, of the room, stopping in front of the chair. He stared blankly at it before sinking into it. "In less than an hour I'm to be married, Desdemona. Wed to a woman I can't stand the sight of! And here I sit, and there you are. Neither of us wants to be here, yet it's here we must stay. You will die, and I? I already have, Desdemona. I died the day she left.
"Look all around us, sister. This world—this diamondlike world with its brilliant facets has destroyed us both. You were caught in its coldness, shivering through year after year. And I... I i
mmersed myself in it and was soon frozen within its frigid walls. And then came the sun, the warmth, Chickadee McBride. The only person either of us has ever known who had the ability to melt this ice castle we live in, and what did I do? I sent her away! Dear God, Desdemona, what did I do to all of us?"
He welcomed the horrible ache inside him. But no matter how much it hurt, he knew the pain he'd given Chickadee had been far worse. That she'd suffered at his hands, cried her rare tears for him... Her hatred was no more than he deserved for not having enough faith in their love. For not believing in its powers to overcome all obstacles as she'd begged him to.
His chin fell to his chest. He saw her quilt lying at his feet. Bending, he picked it up and ran his hands over its colorful design, for the first time noticing one side of it was patchwork, and the other side was intricately embroidered. "She was working on this the day she left," he mumbled. "She seemed desperate to finish it."
The need to see her threaded picture suddenly seized him. He spread the quilt out on the floor and felt his body grow alternately cold and warm as he deciphered Chickadee's beautiful embroidered message.
There were four separate scenes stitched on the covering. The first, at the top left-hand corner, portrayed buildings, gray and ugly. Boston? Saxon wondered. His brows knit in determination as he tried to understand, and then he noticed a shiny gold thread woven through the city scene. Curious, his eyes followed it. It left the city and ran through a large section of blue he took to be the ocean and entered the next scene.
Chickadee's Appalachia. Hills, some green, others turquoise, were the background for a tiny brown cabin. Patches of green Saxon knew to be mountain laurel surrounded the cabin, and there was even a black bear peeking out from behind the lush vegetation.
The golden string twined through the hill scene, swam through another piece of ocean-blue, and led up to the top of the quilt again, where there were more stitched buildings. Yes, this was Chickadee's ugly interpretation of Boston.
The thread then traveled through more sea-blue and down to the right side of the quilt, where there was another Appalachian scene. It curled through sapphire streams, twisted through emerald treetops, and wreathed around verdant shoulders of more mountains. The string seemed almost alive as it danced and glimmered through all the soft hues of the Blue Ridge.
The Barefoot Bride Page 34