She turned away and folded her arms, staring out at the tangle of rosebushes gone wild. "You don't have to stay," she said quietly.
"Thank you, dear wife, but it's a bit late for that now."
She stiffened at the endearment, which carried no affection. "Reverend Allen didn't put any chains around your neck when he married us," she said. "You're free to leave any time you like."
Was she telling him to go? Uncertain, he frowned at her back, feeling dismayed and angry and oddly bereft. He realized he was beginning to care about her far too much, and knowing that made him immediately rebel. "Or, maybe I'll just sell Vernon the land."
"What?" Stunned, she turned and stared at him.
"He offered me fifteen hundred dollars for it. Since I'm now your husband, it seems I'm in control of the land. Fifteen hundred dollars is a bloody fortune. We could live quite well for a long time on that kind of money. I'd be daft not to sell."
A change came over her as he spoke, the rigid stillness of fear, and he knew she hadn't thought about how her marriage would affect her property. She opened her mouth on a wordless sound and closed it again.
Now was the time to do it, to tell her he was going to take Vernon's offer, but he looked into her face, and damn it all to hell, as angry as he was, as certain he was that he was right, he couldn't do it.
She was looking at him with those brown eyes that melted all a man's good sense and made him do things that were stupid, things that might even get him killed. Vernon was in love with her. He turned away with a curse. "Marriage or no, it's your land, not mine. Do what you want with it."
He kicked the lattice half-wall of the gazebo and put a hole in it to go along with all the holes in his head, then he walked away. Women were the very devil.
26
Reverend Allen was kind enough to give Alicia a ride home, since her husband had apparently forgotten her.
She knew why, of course. Olivia Maitland.
Alicia invited the reverend in for tea, but thankfully, he declined. She went up to her room, pleading a sick headache for the benefit of any callers who might happen to drop by. She wanted time alone to think.
Vernon had always been in love with Olivia. Alicia knew that. She'd known it from the first day she had arrived in this dead little junction, from the first moment she'd seen the woman in faded brown cotton walk into the mercantile Vernon had bought with her Papa's money. She'd known by the way her husband had looked at the woman—with anger and pain. And hunger. The fact that Olivia was now married would make little difference.
Eight years of marriage had given Alicia only the tiniest bits and pieces, for Vernon was not a man who talked about his past, but she knew that her husband was here to build an empire for only one reason: To show them. To lord it over all the people who had once looked down on him, including the woman for whom he'd never been good enough.
Alicia sank down on the edge of her bed and wearily pulled off her hat. She fanned herself with the straw boater and remembered wistfully how cool the sea breezes had been at Newport and how wonderful it had been to call on her friends and shop in the elegant stores. She gazed out the window at the rolling countryside that seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance, and she felt as if she were miles from nowhere. Back in Louisiana less than twenty-four hours and she was already miserably homesick.
Why, why, why did Vernon want to build his empire here? When she met him, he had talked about Louisiana as if he hated it. When she married him, she had assumed that Papa would simply bring him into the steamship company, or the garment factory, or any of the other businesses he owned. Never had she dreamed that the two of them would concoct a new venture that would send her a thousand miles from home.
She wished she could just leave him. Leave him to his new Atlanta and his railroad and his memories of Olivia Maitland. But she couldn't. She knew his childish boasting and his bullying ways were only to disguise a lifetime of feeling inferior. She loved him. But she wanted to go home.
Papa was coming down next week to look over the railroad plans and drive the proposed route. She knew his patience with this project was wearing thin, thanks in part to the seeds of doubt she had planted during the weeks she and Vernon had spent with him in New York and Newport, thanks to the subtle hints she'd dropped to the investors at the parties and soirees. She could only hope that her efforts had been worthwhile. If
Vernon didn't get Olivia's land by the time Papa arrived, and if Papa could finally be made to see how miserable she was down here, and if her hints had made the investors concerned enough to put on the pressure, Papa might finally abandon this ridiculous scheme.
Alicia stared out her window at Vernon's cotton fields that seemed to her like a vast white wasteland, and she hoped so.
After Sunday dinner, Conor spent the rest of the afternoon putting in the window glass Olivia had bought in Monroe. Olivia and the girls went down to the orchard and harvested the last of the peaches, the ones that had been too green for picking a few days before. Long before sunset, Conor finished his task, and when he walked into the kitchen, he found Olivia and the girls surrounded by baskets of fruit and glass jars. The air was thick with the scent of peaches, cinnamon, and cloves.
He would have turned around and left the kitchen, but the girls had other ideas. They immediately drafted him into helping. He looked at Olivia, but she said nothing, and he decided to stay. He proved especially useful at carting in buckets of water from the pump and placing the finished jars on the highest shelves of the pantry to cool.
When he was not needed for those tasks, Conor sat at the table and watched, intrigued. Olivia seemed to have the process honed to the efficiency of a cannery and the girls as trained as any factory workers could be. Miranda washed and dried the jars. Becky peeled, pitted, and sliced the fruit. Carrie filled half the jars on the table with peach halves, then poured in the sugar syrup, while Olivia filled the remaining jars with jam. Then she sealed each one with a two-piece metal lid. Sealed jars were placed in two huge kettles of water on the stove to boil while the next load was filled.
When the last jar had been sealed and placed in the water bath, Olivia and Becky made a quick supper, while Conor gave Carrie and Miranda some of his tallest Irish tales, keeping his face as straight as if this were a poker game and he had fifty dollars in the pot and nothing in his hand. The pair of them hung on every word, just as he had done when he was a lad, and by the time the dishes were done, he had them absolutely convinced that leprechauns were real.
They wanted another story, but Olivia declared it was time for them to take their baths and get ready for bed. She held up both hands to halt the flood of protest that followed.
"Kate told me at church today that you didn't have your baths last night when you were supposed to," she said, "and school starts tomorrow, so upstairs you go. You can have another story afterward."
The girls trooped out of the kitchen, and she glanced at Conor. "You'll tell them another story, won't you?" she asked hesitantly.
"Aye, if they want it."
Unexpectedly, she smiled at him, then she took a kettle of boiling water from the stove and went upstairs. Conor went to his room and took a cigar from his pack, then pulled one of the chairs from the kitchen out onto the back porch and sat down.
The night was still and warm, and the full moon cast a glow over the yard. Fireflies—"lightning bugs," the girls called them—occasionally flickered past. Crickets chirped, and frogs croaked, a once-hated chorus that he must be getting used to, since he hardly noticed it anymore.
Through the open window above, he could hear Carrie and Miranda arguing over the soap again. It wouldn't be bath night without that, he supposed.
He leaned his head back against the wall behind his chair and closed his eyes, smiling as he listened. Olivia put up with their fight for about ten seconds.
"Another peep out of either of you," she finally said, "and it's straight to bed. No bedtime story from Conor."
Miranda was the first one back down, barefoot and dressed for bed, her hair damp from her bath. Chester, her shadow, was right behind her.
She crawled up onto Conor's lap and curled one arm around his neck, studying him with a solemn expression. After a moment, a tiny frown knit her brow as if she were thinking about something very important.
"What's going on in that head of yours, mo paiste"' he asked, brushing back a damp lock of hair from her forehead.
She tilted her head to one side. "Since you and Mama are married, does that mean we can call you Daddy now?"
His hand fell away from her hair and everything inside him seemed to explode in a rush of panic. The marriage was a farce, and he wasn't their daddy, but he looked into the child's eyes and could not have refused her if he had tried. "If you want to."
She smiled, pleased, and tucked her head beneath his chin. "Tell me another story," she ordered. "About leprechauns."
"We ought to wait for your sisters, I'm thinking," he said, but the words were barely out of his mouth before Carrie appeared. She saw that Miranda had beaten her to what he assumed by her disappointed face must be the coveted seat of honor, and he shifted Miranda to one knee with a resigned sigh. "C'mon."
Carrie settled herself happily on his other knee, and that was how Olivia found them. She paused beside the door, eyeing them in some amusement.
Conor was reminded of the night she'd come home to find her daughters piled over him, sound asleep, but this time it didn't seem quite as embarrassing. "Becky's not coming down?" he asked.
Olivia's smile widened. "I have been informed that she's fourteen now and much too old for bedtime stories." She brought a chair from the kitchen out onto the porch and placed it beside Conor's. "I, however, am not. You may begin."
This time Conor was able to tell the story of "Cuchulain and the Courtship of Emer" without finding that his audience had fallen asleep, wrapping up the tale with the words, "So, Emer was finally courted as she had desired to be, and that was how Cuchulain won her fair hand and made her his queen. They lived happily ever after," he added. That wasn't quite true, but he didn't think Cuchulain's legendary infidelities were really appropriate for the bedtime stories of little girls.
They wanted another story, of course, but Olivia negated that idea. "It's bedtime," she said firmly, and rose to her feet. "First day of school tomorrow. C'mon."
The girls reluctantly slid down from Conor's lap, and followed their mother into the house.
Carrie's frustrated voice floated back to him. "I don't see why we have to go to bed so early. I'm not even sleepy yet. I'll just lie there and lie there, wide awake, when I could be hearing a great story."
He grinned. Trust Carrie to come up with sound, logical reasons to get her way. It never worked with her mother, but she did keep trying.
Suddenly, he heard the pad of quick footsteps, and Miranda came running back through the doorway. She skidded to a halt beside his chair. "I forgot to say goodnight," she told him breathlessly. "Good night, Daddy."
She stood up on her toes and planted a kiss on his cheek, then turned and ran back into the house, leaving Conor reeling under the impact of that simple word. It carried with it a host of responsibilities that he was not prepared for. What he had told Olivia two nights before had been the plain and simple truth. He just didn't know how to be a father.
Suddenly restless, he rose and left the porch. He pulled out his cigar and lit it, then crossed the yard and walked amid the dilapidated outbuildings that were silvery gray in the moonlight.
Daddy.
Another man might have been flattered, even delighted, at the prospect. Conor was not. He was just plain scared. How ironic that a child's word could strike more fear in him than all the bullets, prisons, and pain he had ever faced. The desperate need to run came over him, but he could not run. It was too late for that. He was a daddy now.
Perhaps he ought to start thinking about the future, but he could not. He could not think about the endless stretch of days, months, and years that lay ahead. He couldn't accept the idea that he was here for good, that he could never leave, could never find peace. All he could do was what he had always done. Get through the days, one at a time.
When he returned to the house, Olivia was there. She watched him as he came toward her across the yard. He stopped at the bottom of the steps and dropped the end of the cigar into the dirt. He crushed it beneath his boot. "I went for a walk."
"It's a nice night for it." She gestured to the chair beside her own. "Sit with me a spell."
He didn't want to, but he found himself moving toward her instead of away. He sat down. He felt he should say something, but he did not know what to say. He did not know what she expected. He leaned forward in his chair, then leaned back. He shifted, trying to find a comfortable position, but he could not relax.
"Pity we don't have the porch swing anymore," she said. "It would be a sight more comfortable than these chairs."
It wasn't the chair that made him restless. "Porch swing?"
She nodded. "There used to be one out here. My daddy gave it to my mama as a gift. I think, of all the gifts he ever gave her, that was her favorite. It was painted white, I remember, and it had chintz cushions. Mama and Daddy used to sit out here on summer nights, rocking back and forth and holding hands as if it were still their courtin' days."
She smiled. "One night, I sneaked downstairs to get some cookies after I was supposed to be in bed and I saw them out here. They were—" She broke off and smoothed her skirt, looking suddenly flustered. "Mama was sitting on Daddy's lap and they were kissing. It was quite a shock to me. I never dreamed my folks did things like that."
Conor had never really thought about what husbands and wives did on summer evenings, but if they were in love, they probably sat out on porch swings after their children were asleep and kissed. "What happened to it?"
She took a moment to answer. "After Mama died, it was so hard for Daddy to look at the swing every day and know she wasn't ever going to sit in it again. One night, I came out here and found him with his head in his hands, crying. The next day, I took the swing down and gave it away. Perhaps that was wrong of me, but I couldn't bear to watch him suffer like that."
That was love, too. Pain and loss. He turned away and stared out at the moonlit yard. He thought of all the people he had loved. All of them were gone, and the pain of losing them was something he never wanted to feel again.
The silence fell again, but she made no attempt to break it. He realized that he wasn't expected to make conversation, and some of the tenseness began to ease from him. It occurred to him that perhaps she just wanted exactly what they were doing, to sit in the stillness and share it with him. Somehow, as the silence lengthened, it became almost comfortable.
"It's getting late."
Her soft voice shattered the companionable silence. He did not move, but every muscle in his body tensed. He knew what she was saying; from the corner of his eye, he could see her hand pluck nervously at her skirt, pleat the faded blue fabric.
"It's time for bed," she added, and rose.
He was not prepared for the onslaught those words evoked, the sudden, overwhelming need for her, and the need for the aftermath—to hold her, cradle her against him, protect her from every danger there was in the world; but when the dreams came again, who would protect her from him?
"Good night," he said evenly, without looking at her. "Sleep well."
She hesitated, hovering beside his chair. "You aren't coming up?"
He thought about that night in Monroe, and how he had fallen asleep holding her in his arms, a dreamless sleep with no ghosts from the past, no demons to taunt him. But they would come, and he could not be with her when they did. "No."
Still, she did not move away. "Conor, I wish you would come upstairs with me."
She laid a hand on his shoulder, and he st
iffened beneath her touch. "I can't," he said. "I'm sorry."
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, waiting. It seemed an eternity before her hand tightened briefly on his shoulder then fell away, and she walked back into the house.
That night in Monroe was still vivid in his memory, every button he unfastened, every curve of her body, every pleasured gasp she gave, every ounce of his control lost. He remembered drifting into sleep, waking up to the scent of her, the feel of her—all of that almost as pleasurable as the lovemaking itself had been. The peace of it, peace he hadn't known since he was a child, peace he'd never thought to find again.
But peace was an illusion, and it would not last. His dreams would come back when the dark side of him emerged without warning—enraged and snarling, bathed in sweat and screaming, or worse, begging for mercy, pathetic and broken. She'd seen glimmers of that other man, and he knew that man frightened her. He might even hurt her—strike out at her in the dark when he did not know where he was, when he could not recognize her, when he could not separate what was now from what was past.
He imagined her upstairs in her room, lying in bed with her hair spread across the pillow, that nightgown with the pearl buttons down the front tangled around her legs, nothing beneath the delicate fabric but her softness and warmth. Desire pulsed through his body, hungry and hot and needy.
It was unbearable to want her with such intensity, unthinkable to need her with such desperate longing, dangerous to believe that she could somehow keep the demons away. He did not want to need her, for in need, there was dependence. He could not trust, for in trust, there was betrayal. Better never to see heaven at all than to catch a glimpse of it, grab for it, and lose it.
He went to his room. He slept with his demons, and he woke alone.
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