by Craig, Emma
She opened her mouth to spew bile at him, but shut it again before anything emerged. Elijah wondered what was going on in that spinsterish head of hers. She gave him one of her patented sniffs. Damn, she was fun to rile.
“My mother was a strong woman,” she said, her voice tight. “That doesn’t mean she was overbearing. Exactly.”
“No?” His skepticism rang loudly in the one syllable.
She squinted at him from under her brows. “Well . . . no, it doesn’t.”
He tipped his head and squinted back, letting all of his incredulity show.
Joy heaved an aggrieved sigh. “Well, she might have had a—” She was obviously searching hard for a word. “—powerful personality.” She nodded, pleased with herself. “That’s what my father said, anyway.”
Elijah let out with a bark of glee. “Powerful!”
Joy scowled at him. “Yes. Powerful.”
“Powerful, my ass. She was a damned bitch. Admit it, Miss Hardesty. She made you hate a man you loved. She made you hate your own father.”
“She—”
“She did! You loved your father, who sounds like he might have been a real nice man. But your mother turned your love around and made you hate him. That’s not power, that’s spite.”
“But—”
“But, nothing. She was a pernicious, poisonous female, just like my mother.” He beamed at her. “See? We have something in common, after all.”
She wouldn’t admit it without a fight; Elijah saw it in the set of her jaw, and he was delighted. Shoot, they could keep this going for days. He hadn’t expected his convalescence to be so entertaining. She sniffed again, and he laughed, a big, booming laugh that he suspected she resented like fire. She glowered at him for a full minute before she spoke again.
“Perhaps you might have a point.” Her admission was grudging. “But you didn’t know either of my parents, so I don’t think you’re any kind of a judge.”
“I don’t have to know them. I know you.”
He had her with that one and was proud of himself.
Lifting her chin, Joy said, “Well, then, I presume what you said about your own unkind parents is correct, then, because I know you.”
Elijah grinned, acknowledging her barb. “Good one, Miss Hardesty.”
She preened. “Thank you, Mr. Perry.”
Again, conversation flagged. Joy took the watch from Elijah’s slack fingers and turned it over in her hands. “This is a truly lovely old thing, Mr. Perry.”
“I like it.”
He saw her frown. He saw her lips pinch. He saw her squint. He sighed, and waited for whatever she aimed to fling at him this time. It didn’t take her long.
“I think you should write to Miss Gladstone, Mr. Perry. I’m sure she would like to know that you’ve been injured. She must love you very much. After all, if I had a mysterious uncle who had been writing to me and sending me things from all over the United States and its territories since I was two years old, I’d have endowed him with almost mythical properties by this time.”
“I’ll write her, don’t worry.” He frowned at the night stand. “In fact, I had a letter with me when I got here, but I guess it got lost when I was shot.”
She glanced nervously at him from under her lashes. “Er, yes, perhaps it did.”
He nodded. Joy collected herself. He guessed she didn’t like to remember about when he’d been shot. It must have scared the tar out of her.
“But you need to write her now, so she can send you her best wishes. I know it sounds odd, but I believe it helps to have people wishing you well.”
What he wished was that she’d drop the subject. “I said I’d write to her. Besides, I’m sure she wishes me well all the time.”
“That’s not the same, and you know it. You need her to wish you well now, when you need it! I’m sure you’ll sneer at me for saying so, but it wouldn’t hurt to have another couple of people praying for you, Mr. Perry.”
His right eyebrow arched. It did that when he was surprised. “Do you pray for me, Miss Hardesty?”
She looked peeved. “Of course I do! But that’s not the point.”
Elijah thought it was very much the point, but he didn’t feel like arguing. He liked knowing Joy Hardesty prayed for him, though. Damned if he didn’t. “What’s the point, then?”
“The point is that you should establish contact with her now, when you’ll be someplace for a considerable length of time—”
Elijah snorted.
“You’d better be here for a goodly length of time, anyway, or you’ll never heal.” Her voice was as sour as an unripe crabapple. “Then she can write you, and you can establish a relationship with her. Wouldn’t that be nice? To have someone—a relative—to care about you?”
Elijah wasn’t prepared for the cold dread that crept over him when he heard Joy’s suggestion. He said, “No.”
It didn’t surprise him when she looked puzzled. “But why not? Don’t you think she’d like to know what’s happened to you? I’m sure she’d want to know you’ve been injured. I know I would.”
“No.”
“But why not? Don’t you think it would be nice to get to know her now? When you’re both grown up? I’m sure she’d be delighted to meet you in person at long last. Why, you were younger than she is now when you left home. And you’re neither of you getting any younger, you know.”
“I know it. And no, I don’t think it would be nice.” He’d begun to growl and couldn’t seem to help himself.
“But why not?”
“Because I don’t want to know if she’s grown up to be a simpering, silly, stupid, worthless female, dammit! And I don’t want her to know me, either. Dammit, leave me alone about it.”
Joy eyed him consideringly. He expected her to give it up, because she generally did when he got mad. Her mother’s training again, he supposed. He didn’t expect Mrs. Hardesty had tolerated dissension in her household, especially not from the daughter she’d bullied so hard. He was, therefore, unprepared when Joy kept it up.
“You’re being ridiculous, Mr. Perry. The poor girl doesn’t even know what you look like.” She glanced down at the watch in her lap. “I’m sure she’d be pleased to see for herself that she has such a dashing uncle writing letters to her.”
“Dashing?” Incredulous, Elijah could only stare at her. Did she really consider him dashing?
She lifted that little chin of hers again. “Well, you’re certainly not dull and boring. And you’re also rather good-looking.” She frowned at him defiantly. “As I’m sure you know good and well.”
Caught between astonishment and immense self-satisfaction, Elijah could only open and close his mouth uselessly for a moment or two. Then he recalled the people with whom Joy had spent her life, and his vanity collapsed with a bang. “Balderdash.” Feeling abused, and with cold fear still clutching at his heart, he turned to stare at the wall next to his bed. “Besides, she knows what I look like.”
“How can she possibly know that? You were sixteen when you left home, and she was only two. I don’t know about you, but I don’t recall a single thing from when I was two—well, except for my mother making me sit at the breakfast table until I finished my oatmeal porridge.”
His head swiveled around and he gazed at her again. “What? Why’d she do that? You didn’t like porridge?”
She wrinkled her nose, a gesture that made her look more like a young human female than anything she’d done yet in his presence, save laugh her head off. “It made me sick to my stomach.”
“So why did she make you eat it?”
She heaved a sigh. “It was good for me.”
“It made you sick. How could it be good for you?”
Her eyes thinned. “Well, but—”
“But, nothing. The old battle axe was trying to force you to do something she was determined was good for you, whether it was or not, because she wouldn’t brook defiance in any form. She was mean as a snake, Joy Hardesty. If she thought y
ou should eat pig slop or soap, she’d have made you do that too.”
She opened her mouth and shut it again. She reminded him of a sparrow when she tilted her head to one side and pursed her lips. “She did wash my mouth out with soap and water when I was bad.”
“Bad? How can a kid be bad? Ignorant, maybe, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.
Shaking the moment off, Joy said, “All of this is totally beside the point. We were discussing you and Miss Gladstone. You were going to explain to me how she could possibly know what you look like.” She gave him a good hot glare to let him know she wasn’t going to accept any more waffling on his part. He grinned. She was getting to be more and more fun with each passing minute.
Then he remembered Virginia, and his amusement faded. “I sent her a tintype a few years back.”
Joy nodded. “That was nice of you.”
“Yeah. I figured she’d want to know what her black-sheep uncle looked like. I used to cut a fine figure of a fellow, you know.”
She smirked. “I’m sure you did. How long ago was that?”
He gazed at the ceiling as he counted back through the years. “Must have been right after the war started, because I was in my brand-spanking-new, shiny gray uniform.” He shook his head and a soft sound of regret escaped his lips. “That didn’t last long.”
“What didn’t last long? The uniform?”
“Its niceness. By the end of the war we were in tatters. Nobody’d seen gray wool for two years or more. We were in butternut rags, and most of us were barefoot.”
He saw her shoulders twitch with her shudder. “How dreadful.” Her head lifted and she peered closely at him. “But that was—what?—twelve years ago? Twelve years ago! Do you mean to tell me she hasn’t seen a likeness of you for twelve years?”
“Dammit, I don’t want her to see me now. I want her to remember me with hair!” Shit, he hadn’t meant to say that. He felt very grumpy that Joy Hardesty should have wrung such a confession out of him. He frowned at her to let her know it.
She giggled. Why wasn’t he surprised?
“You have hair!”
He lifted his good hand and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Not as much as I used to have.” Damn, he hated getting old.
“I believe that’s a fairly universal complaint among men, Mr. Perry.”
“How would you know?”
There went her giggle again. Even if it did prick his vanity, he liked hearing it. “I’ve seen men worry about their hair before. The organist’s husband, Mr. Crowder, used to brush five thin little strands of hair across his perfectly bald head every morning of his life. It looked silly, but I expect those five hairs made him feel more the thing.”
Hell, at least he didn’t do that. “Yeah, I expect you’re right.”
She aimed a smile loaded with sympathy at him. He didn’t know whether to be appreciative or resentful. “So you don’t want Miss Gladstone to know that her devil-may-care, dashing, romantical uncle is a human male, just like all the rest of the human males in the world. Your vanity is pricked by the notion that she might find out who you really are. Is that it?”
Elijah considered his slight paunch and the gray in his sideburns. Yeah, that was it, all right. He’d never admit it. Not out loud and to Joy Hardesty, he wouldn’t. “Don’t be ridiculous.” The words rang false in his ears.
Joy heard the falseness. Her smile broadened and she tipped her head to squint at him harder. He felt like a side of beef hanging in a butcher’s shop, awaiting her judgment. It was a very uncomfortable feeling.
“I don’t think I’m being ridiculous at all. I think I just hit upon the truth.”
He snorted. “A lot you know about it.” It wasn’t one of his more forceful rejoinders.
She lifted a finger and shook it in front of his face. “I may not know much about men, Mr. Perry, but I know all about not wanting people to know what’s inside of me, or to perceive my weaknesses.”
Her words must have startled her because she shut her mouth and looked as if she hadn’t expected to say them, at least not out loud. Elijah, who must have been even weaker than he knew himself to be, felt a clutching in his chest when he saw her eyes widen.
Poor kid. She really had been ruined by her mother. Well, he amended, not ruined, exactly. In fact, Elijah saw much potential in Joy Hardesty. She only needed to have her mother’s barnacle-like tenets loosened some more, have some decent values implanted in their place, and she’d be quite a tolerable woman. Actually, he admitted, not for the first time, she had the potential to be a truly lovely woman. The kind any man would want to love and to cherish. Almost any man.
He cleared his throat. “Well, then, you see? We have something else in common, Miss Hardesty. Who’d have thought it?”
Her gaze dropped immediately. “Certainly not I.” Her voice had gone soft.
Elijah discovered his good hand reaching out and his fingers tucking under her chin and lifting it. “Are those tears I see in your eyes, Miss Hardesty?”
She jerked her chin from his fingers. “Certainly not!”
“Don’t fib, Joy. You mother wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, bother my mother!” She reached up and dashed her hand across her cheek to catch the tears.
He chuckled. “Good idea, my dear. But you know, Joy, you’re not a bad person. Or weak. Your mother tried to turn you into one, but you’re stronger than she was. You’ve never been comfortable trying to be the mean old prune she wanted you to be. Admit it. Your mother was a hard-hearted woman, and you’re not.”
For a second, he could see the struggle going on inside her. Then she heaved the biggest sigh he’d ever heard. “You’re right.” She had to wipe her eyes again.
“There’s no reason to cry, Miss Hardesty.” His own gentleness surprised him. “You’re a better person than your mother ever could have hoped to be, because you’re kinder than she was, and you see goodness in people she only wanted to condemn. See? You’re much more like Jesus than your mother ever was.”
“What would you know about Jesus?”
“The nuns taught me all about Him. Trust me. And I know He didn’t go around making people miserable like your mother did.”
She sniffled. “Do you really think so, Mr. Perry?”
“I really think so, Miss Hardesty.” He reached for a clean handkerchief in the drawer of the table beside his bed. “Here. Use this. Blow your nose now.”
With a small show of reluctance, Joy took his handkerchief and did as she’d been told.
“There,” said Elijah. “That’s better.”
In a little voice, she said, “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Joy. I’m pleased to have gotten to know you.”
“You are?” He could tell she didn’t believe him.
“I am.”
Because he suspected she needed more convincing, he took her by the hand and gently tugged her into his arms. His brain registered its extreme shock when his lips settled on hers and a fire ignited in his loins.
Chapter Eleven
Alarm bells sounded in Joy’s head. This was wrong. It was wrong, wrong, wrong. It was . . . it was . . .
She sighed. It was delicious. The clappers on her alarm bells took up soft leather pads. The clangs they made softened and lengthened until they refashioned themselves into the gentle cooing of doves. Her mother’s admonitions, which had taught her that kissing a man, any man, and especially a man like Elijah Perry, was an unconscionable iniquity, sagged and wobbled and melted away.
Her body, which had gone rigid with bewilderment and fright, relaxed. She swayed into Elijah’s embrace until her very bones seemed to thaw, and her torso molded against his. A tender sweetness filled her. Her skin tingled all over. Her nipples tightened. Lightness buoyed her spirit. She felt as one with Elijah. All of her senses responded and thrummed with a delightful, liquid heat. A deep, primitive pulse throbbed through her.
Desire. She was feeling human desire for the first
time in her life. How perfectly astonishing.
And there was more to this than mere desire as well. His strong, long hands held her close. Everywhere he touched her, her skin vibrated with life. She no longer felt isolated and alone in the universe, a stranger in an alien, hostile land she didn’t understand. Rather, she had become part of a pair with Elijah Perry. She was half of a wonderful partnership; she had become part of a luscious, intimate blending of bodies; a melodious duet. A—
“Good Lord!”
She yanked herself out of his arms.
“Ow! Dammit, be careful of my arm! I’m a wounded man!”
Joy pressed her hand to her lips and stared at Elijah. His expression was that of a man in sore pain, and he was rubbing his gunshot arm with the hand that had lately been tenderly cupping the back of her head. He looked both surprised and, to her surprise, offended.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
Sorry? You’re sorry, all right, Joy Hardesty. You’re the sorriest excuse for a Christian woman I’ve ever seen. You’re fallen past redemption now, you scarlet hussy!
Oh, no. Not her mother again! Joy clapped her hands over her ears.
Elijah frowned at her. He still rubbed his shoulder. She must have really jarred it when she pulled away from him. “What’s the matter, Joy? Did I hurt you?”
Listen to him, Joy Hardesty; all sweetness and light now that you’ve come to your senses. The vile sinner is trying to lure you back into his clutches, you foolish, foolish girl! I knew you were no good, Joy Hardesty. I could tell you were wicked from the moment you were born.
“No! That’s not true!”
Elijah peered at her, puzzled. “What’s not true? That I didn’t hurt you?”
Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, Joy Hardesty. Just look at him, the wicked bounder. And you! You’re such a fool, child!
Joy shook her head hard, hoping in that way to exorcise her mother’s relentless, scolding voice. She wanted to shut her eyes and scream and scream and scream until that voice in her head was drowned out forever.
“Well, I’m glad of that, but you don’t have to look so scared, Joy. I’d never hurt you on purpose.”