She’d offered herself the explanation so many times that she’d almost come to believe it. It had been easier to accept the endless stream of tasks if she convinced herself that she was doing it purely by choice.
“I’ll bet that pinch-nosed aunt of yours made sure to remind you of just how obligated you were,” Luke said shrewdly.
Familial obligation demanded a denial but Eleanor couldn’t get one out. She lowered her head, one finger picking out an aimless tune on the ivory keys. “They didn’t have to take me in,” she said, reminding herself as much as Luke.
“I suppose not.” Something in his tone suggested that he could have said a great deal more on the topic of her aunt and uncle’s charity but, to Eleanor’s relief, he didn’t add anything to that simple agreement.
“So, if it wasn’t Miss Brown from Boston, who taught you to play piano?”
“My father. After my mother died, we never lived in one place long enough to have a piano of our own. Not that Papa ever had the money for that kind of luxury,” she added. “But there was usually someone in each town who was willing to let me use their piano.”
“You moved around a lot?” Luke shifted position, leaning his elbow on top of the upright piano and looking down at her.
“We did a lot of traveling.” Eleanor picked out the first few notes of “Aura Lee.” “Papa couldn’t seem to settle in one place after Mama died.”
“Your uncle said he was a gambler.”
“He was.” Eleanor looked at him, her chin tilted up, as if daring him to say something critical.
“Can’t be many gamblers who tote a child along with them. Must have been hard to always be on the move.”
“I didn’t mind,” she said. It was a half-truth. She’d hated never having a home. It hadn’t taken her long to learn that any friends she made would soon be left behind, so she’d stopped trying to make friends at all, preferring loneliness to the pain of saying goodbye. She’d longed for a real home and a chance to put down roots. But whatever roots Nathan Williams might have grown had been severed by his wife’s death. She’d sometimes thought that he was running from his grief, always moving on for fear that, if he stayed in one place, he’d have to face the depth of his loss. And much as she’d hated always being on the move, she would have hated being left behind even more.
“Papa always made everything an adventure.” She played a quick, light tune, her mouth curving in a reminiscent smile. “When I think of him, I always remember him laughing.”
“Hard to imagine Zeb Williams having a brother like that,” Luke said thoughtfully. “I’d be willing to bet the ranch that the only time Zeb laughs is when he gets a chance to foreclose on someone.”
Eleanor gave a choked little laugh at his accurate summation of her uncle. “Uncle Zeb isn’t exactly a jolly man,” she admitted with careful restraint.
Luke had a sudden image of a fourteen-year-old Eleanor, all dark hair and big brown eyes, entering her uncle’s house and finding scant welcome. Though it was years past and he hadn’t even known of Eleanor’s existence, he felt angry on her behalf.
“Do you play?” Eleanor asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“Play?” Luke stared at her blankly, his thoughts elsewhere.
“The piano,” she clarified, playing a rippling series of notes as if to remind him of the instrument’s purpose.
“Not me.” Luke shook his head, his mouth curving in a quick grin. “My mother tried to teach me a time or two but I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Can’t play piano, and my singing is enough to set every coyote within forty miles howling in pain.”
“You can’t be that bad,” Eleanor protested with a laugh.
“Worse.” Luke shook his head regretfully. “My mother finally made me promise to stop practicing because she was afraid the noise I made might do permanent harm to her piano.”
“So, she was the only one who played?”
“Daniel can hold his own. Or he could. He hasn’t played much since she died. Running a ranch doesn’t leave much time for piano playing.”
“You must miss your mother a great deal,” Eleanor said softly. She brushed her fingers across the keys, a quick, caressing movement that made Luke’s thoughts turn in a slightly more carnal direction than music appreciation. “I was only six when my mother died. I hardly remember her at all.” Eleanor’s voice was wistful. “But I remember that she always smelled of lilacs. There was a beautiful lilac bush outside our house in St. Louis and when it bloomed in the spring, she’d cut big bunches of blossoms for the house. The smell seemed to linger on her clothes and hair all year round.”
“Roses,” Luke said, memory washing over him. “Before the war my mother grew roses. In the summer my father used to complain that the house smelled like a perfume shop because of all the roses she brought inside. When we came west, she brought cuttings of some of the bushes, but they didn’t take here. Too hot and dry in the summer, too cold in the winter. I think leaving her gardens behind grieved her more than leaving the house.”
“Where did you live?”
“Virginia. My father and his brother grew tobacco.”
“I’ve never been to Virginia but I’ve heard that it’s lovely.”
“It’s green.” Luke stared at the window just past her shoulder but his eyes were unfocused as he looked through the closed curtains and into a past he rarely thought about. “In the summer I used to think even the air tasted green.”
“It sounds beautiful.”
“It was. Oakwood had been in the family since before the War for Independence. My greatgrandfather built the house.”
“Why did your family leave it?”
“After the war there wasn’t much reason to stay in Virginia,” he said simply.
“I was only a child when Lee surrendered, but my father used to talk about the damage the war did and wonder how long it would take for the country to heal.”
“Some wounds never heal completely.” Luke spoke softly, half forgetting that Eleanor was there. “My father didn’t believe in slavery, but he did believe strongly in states’ rights. He went south to fight for the Confederacy. My uncle believed in preserving the union at all costs. He went north. When they came home they vowed that there’d be no mention of the war, no talk of battles won or lost. The past was past. They’d fought, they’d survived, that was all that mattered.”
“They sound like very wise men,” Eleanor said quietly.
“But only men.” Luke remembered half-heard arguments, ended but never resolved because no resolution was possible. The tension that had stretched between the adults had soon lapped out to encompass him and Daniel and their cousins. The quarrels their fathers were so determined to avoid were soon exploding among their children. Fights had become a weekly and then almost a daily event until his mother and his aunt had finally pointed out the truth no one wanted to face—there could be no going back to the way things had been before the war. The changes had been too fundamental for that.
“It didn’t take long for it to become obvious that too much had changed,” Luke said, speaking half to himself. “My uncle scraped up enough money to buy my father’s half of the land and we moved west.”
“It must have been a terrible time for your family.” Eleanor’s fingers stroked the keys.
“We were better off than many. My father came home sound of mind and body. That was as much as anyone could hope for and more than many got.”
The haunting notes of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” filled the silence after he spoke. The mournful tune brought back halfforgotten memories—the grim stranger who’d returned in his father’s body, his mother’s tears, the emptiness of the land, the taut silence of the house, broken by those carefully controlled nonarguments that were somehow worse than open fighting.
“It was a long time ago,” Luke said as the last poignant note of the song faded. He straightened away from the piano, forcing the memories away. if there was one thing the war and its aft
ermath had taught him, it was that there was never any point in looking back. The past was past and there was nothing to be accomplished by thinking about it.
“Do you ever think about going home?” Eleanor tilted her head to look up at him, her dark eyes soft with sympathy for all the war had cost his family.
“This is home,” Luke said without hesitation. “Virginia is just a place I once lived. A lot of sweat and blood has gone into building this place. Lord willing, our sons will build on what we leave behind.”
Eleanor flushed a little at the mention of sons, her eyes dropping away from his, and it occurred to Luke that he’d all but forgotten his purpose in coming into the house tonight. The sound of the piano and Eleanor’s gentle company had driven thoughts of seduction from his mind. Shaking off the last ghostly tendrils of the past, he focused on the present.
His present was tied to the woman sitting in front of him—a not unpleasant thought, despite the current situation. He noticed the way the lamplight picked out reddish highlights in her dark hair, which was swept up into a soft knot at the back of her head, baring the nape of her neck. His fingers itched to pull out the pins and see her hair tumble down her back, sable and silk in his hands, against his skin. He wanted to loosen the buttons that marched primly up the front of her dress all the way to her neck and set his fingers against the pulse that beat at the base of her throat.
“So many people come west looking for new beginnings,” Eleanor said, speaking half to herself. She brushed her fingers over the keyboard, creating a quick ripple of sound. She slanted a quick look in Luke’s direction. He was looking at her but the lamplight cast shadows across his face, making it impossible to read his expression.
Dropping her eyes back to the keys, she picked out an aimless little tune, her thoughts on the man leaning against the piano rather than on the music. When he’d first appeared, she’d thought it must be providence taking a hand in her life. She’d been wrestling with herself for nearly a week, ever since he’d given her the kitten. She wanted to tell him that she’d had enough time to consider their situation; that she’d realized it was time to move on with their lives.
It hadn’t been an easy decision. She’d had to turn loose her girlish dreams of romantic love and accept reality. Luke didn’t love her. It would be foolish to believe otherwise. But he must care for her, at least a little. How else to explain the flowers and the kitten and his patience with what many would consider her unreasonable attitude? Certainly, he would have been well within his rights to insist that they share a bed. The fact that he hadn’t might have been the result of indifference rather than kindness but Eleanor didn’t believe he was indifferent to her, any more than she was indifferent to him. No, he’d given her the time she’d asked for because he cared enough to try to please her. And if that wasn’t the passionate love she’d dreamed of, it was more than she might have had.
But now, how did she go about telling him that it was time for him to come back to their bed?
“I have a present for you,” Luke said, interrupting her thoughts.
“A present?” Eleanor’s hands dropped into her lap as she lifted her head to look at him. “For me?”
“Didn’t I just say so?”
“What for? It’s not my birthday.” Not that she’d received many birthday presents in recent years, she thought to herself.
“It’s something I meant to give you a long time ago but I forgot.”
Eleanor had been so absorbed in the simple fact of his presence that she’d barely noticed the package he’d been carrying when he entered the parlor. Now she looked at it with sudden interest as he picked it up from where he’d set it on the floor near the sofa and brought it over to her.
“For me?” she questioned again as she took it from him.
“Well, it’s certainly not for the cat.” Luke’s teasing smile made Eleanor’s heart thump against her breastbone.
She looked down at the package in her lap, half afraid of what her eyes might reveal. The way he was smiling at her and the warmth in his voice made her long for him to love her the way she’d always dreamed of being loved. She wanted to be the center of his world, the source of his greatest joy and deepest happiness. Eleanor plucked at the string that tied the plain brown paper package.
That hadn’t been a part of their bargain, she reminded herself sternly. She might not have known about the short straw he’d drawn but she had known that Luke wasn’t marrying her because he’d fallen in love with her. He’d made no secret of what he wanted—a wife to take care of his home and give him children. And she’d wanted desperately to escape her uncle’s household. Theirs hadn’t been a bargain based on love. If she’d come to wish otherwise—well, that was her problem.
“Are you going to open it or just stare at it until age turns the paper to dust?” Luke’s dry question broke into her thoughts.
“I like to take my time when it comes to presents,” Eleanor said. With an effort she pushed aside her thoughts and glanced up at him with a quick smile. “Patience is a virtue, remember.”
“Maybe, but that ain’t a side of beef that needs aging.” He nodded to the package she held.
“I’m relieved to hear it.” Focusing solely on the moment, Eleanor plucked at the knot that tied the string. When it didn’t yield, she started to pick at it with her fingernails.
Luke clucked his tongue with exasperation. “A man could grow old and die waiting for you to undo that knot.”
Without waiting for a response to his comment, he leaned over and took hold of the string with both hands. A quick jerk and it snapped in two.
“I was going to save the string for another use,” Eleanor said, casting him a look of mild reproach. “One long piece is more likely to be useful than two short ones.”
“I’ll buy you a roll of the stuff,” he promised, unimpressed by her frugality. He was anxious to see her reaction to the fabric. She’d seemed very taken with it a few weeks ago. He hoped she still felt the same. If he’d thought about it, he might have been surprised to realize that, at the moment, he was more concerned with the pleasure he hoped the gift would give Eleanor than in persuading her to let him back into their bed—at least for the time being. He had the feeling that there’d been too few presents in her life.
“Oh, my!” Eleanor exclaimed breathlessly as she folded back the paper to reveal the soft, rich length of blue grenadine. She stared at the fabric for a moment before brushing her fingertips across it as if to confirm its reality.
“That’s the stuff you were looking at that day in Webb’s,” he said, a little uneasy in the face of her silence. “You seemed to like it.”
“You remembered that and went back and found it for me?” Eleanor lifted her head to look at him, her expression full of wonder.
“Actually, I bought it then.”
Her eyes widened. “You bought it that day? For me?”
“That’s right.”
She ran her palm across the fabric again, almost kneading it with pleasure. “Why would you have bought something like this for me when you didn’t even know me?”
Luke shrugged. He’d wondered that a time or two himself. He offered her the only answer he’d come up with. “I thought it would suit you.”
“It’s a wonder you’ve a penny left to your name if you make a habit of buying fabric for strange women just because you think it would suit them. Besides it being highly improper.”
“I don’t think doing it once is likely to ruin me, and I was never much inclined to waste time worrying about what’s proper and what’s not. Do you like the fabric?”
“Like it?” Eleanor stroked it again, her fingertips caressing the rich weave in a way that made Luke’s skin tighten with sudden awareness. “No one has ever given me anything half so beautiful.”
Seeing the glitter of tears in her dark eyes, Luke felt a twinge of guilt at the ulterior motives behind the gift, but not enough of a twinge to change his mind. He’d had enough of sleeping in the
barn. It was time to put this business of that damned broom straw behind them and get on with their lives. It was what Eleanor wanted, too. She was just too stubborn to admit it.
“Thank you, Luke.” Eleanor set the fabric on the piano stool as she rose, the paper rustling against the oak. “It’s a wonderful present.”
She stepped toward him, rising on her toes to brush a quick kiss across his cheek. She’d baked an apple pie for dinner and Luke caught a faint whiff of cinnamon as if the scent still clung to her skin and hair. There was something remarkably sensuous about the wholesome smell, or maybe it was just the fact that he seemed to find that nearly everything about his wife aroused him.
When she started to step back, he caught her hand, holding her in front of him. “Is that all I get?” He saw Eleanor’s eyes widen at the husky question and forced his mouth to curve in a teasing smile. “I seem to recall getting more than a peck on the cheek when I brought home that kitten. You’re not going to tell me that you like that mangy cat more than you like the fabric, are you?” he asked lightly.
“I’m very fond of Rascal,” Eleanor said, glancing at the kitten, who was still asleep on her cushion. When her eyes met Luke’s he could read her uncertainty and knew she was remembering the last kiss they’d shared, a kiss that might have gone considerably further than it had if it hadn’t been for the kitten sinking her claws into his chest. He did his best to look as if he wasn’t remembering the same thing, as if he wasn’t hoping for a repeat—minus the cat, of course. Perhaps he succeeded, because Eleanor’s mouth curved in a smile that held more than a hint of coquetry. “But it really is very nice fabric,” she admitted.
“Nice enough to deserve a proper kiss?” Luke asked even as he used his grip on her hand to draw her subtly closer.
“I suppose so.” Their eyes met and held for a long, silent moment, and it seemed to Luke as if a message passed between them—an acknowledgment that this night would see an end to the distance between them, an end to this foolish game they’d been playing out.
Short Straw Bride (Harlequin Historical) Page 19