Installed some time after the turn of the century, when the schoolhouse had been part of the local school system, the blackboard was made of real slate and stretched from a level low enough to be reached by elementary children to the high ceiling. It made a fine surface for the mural Papa Vidal was in the process of painting.
The subject was the family cemetery, as he had told Anna earlier. Its image, sun-glazed and serene, lay on the smooth slate, capturing the weeds and fresh green grass waving over the graves, headstones leaning and covered with lichen in the shade of the cedar and the iron fence lurching in drunken dignity around it Ghostly figures played there: a mother nursing a newborn while seated on a raised tomb, an elderly couple rocking side by side, a pair of children that Anna recognized as twins who had died of diphtheria some time in the late 1890s. It was perfect—a rich representation so uncannily lifelike it seemed to catch and hold the spirit and heart of eternal rest.
It was also disturbing, however. Then she saw why.
Rip stood outside the fence, gripping the iron railing. His figure was not quite finished; his expression had been left blank. Nevertheless, he seemed to be staring into the cemetery’s far corner. Something was there, an ethereal mist that slowly evolved into a figure, a ghost leaning against a plain marble marker with the figure of a white, semitransparent deer at his side.
Tom.
The ghost was Tom, nonchalant and faintly defensive. He watched Rip with friendship and gratitude in his face. Regret was also imprinted there, and distant sorrow that his friend could not enter this place of peace and freedom from care that he had found. On the marker where Tom stood was his name and a date traced in delicate, shaded strokes of paint as if chiseled into the marble.
Anna wasn’t aware of moving, hardly knew what she did or intended until she stood before the mural and reached out with trembling fingers to touch the lines of that fatal date. It was that day, sixteen years ago, when Rip had robbed a service station and her brother had disappeared. As she lifted her hand again, her fingers were wet. The lettering was fresh, as if that portion of the mural had just been completed that morning.
Anguish began in her mind and spread, achingly, to her heart. She closed her eyes tight against the press of tears, clenching her hand into a slow fist at the same time. Papa Vidal moved to her side, touched her shoulder with a shaking hand. She felt its frail weight, his intent to offer comfort. But there was none to be found, nothing that would ever take away the ravaging grief that tore at her.
Opening her eyes, she turned a blind and wavering stare to the elderly painter. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she whispered. “Tom’s dead, has been all these years. And Rip killed him.”
A short sound came from behind her. It was a sudden exhalation, as if from a blow. She turned though she knew what she would find.
Rip stood in the doorway. His hair was tousled, as if he had run his fingers through it in lieu of combing it. He had obviously dressed in a hurry for he wore jeans but no shirt and sneakers without socks. His face was white as death.
He had heard her, knew she thought him capable of murder. The knowledge lay in the pain-scourged darkness of his eyes. Still, he did not move, said not a word in defense. He simply watched her as if memorizing every line and plane of her face, every flicker of emotion that marked it. The sunbeams that fell through the windows so she could feel them dancing in her hair. Every breath she took.
“No, ma’am,” Papa Vidal answered in a positive quaver. “Mist’ Rip never killed him. Mist’ Tom, he shot his own self out of shame for taking the money. He shot himself right here in the graveyard, here at Blest where he’d been happy. Left a note, he did, asking me and Mist’ Rip to see him buried and not tell a soul how or why he died. Put the money back where it came from, he said—he didn’t mean to take it. Don’t never let anybody know, he said. And we did it We did it ‘cause we loved him and didn’t want to shame him. But the price was high. It was sure enough high.”
It was long seconds before the gentle words the old man spoke formed themselves into images that had meaning. Anna turned her gaze to Papa Vidal’s ancient, wrinkled face. Tears tracked down the grooves in his cheeks like the slow trickle of water along a dry branch after a drought.
“Oh, Papa Vidal,” she said, as her own eyes filled. Reaching out, she put her arms around him, holding him close.
“Wasn’t me who was hurt the worst,” he said, patting her back in an awkward attempt at reassurance and comfort. “Mist’ Rip, he was the one they caught tryin’ to do what was right, tryin’ to put that money back. They caught him, but he never told. I would have, but he said not. So I did my best for him. I testified how I’d seen Mist’ Tom driving past when I never seen a thing, told how I thought Rip was a good boy who made a bad mistake and meant to undo it.”
She drew back, searching his face since she couldn’t bring herself to look at Rip. “Surely he didn’t have to take it so far, didn’t have to go to prison? There was the note, wasn’t there? You could have shown it to the judge.”
“The note was there all right,” the elderly black man said with pained scorn. “I took it to Tom’s mama, and I told her the truth. She took that note and torn it up, men she called me a lyin’, senile old fool.”
Her mother. Her mother had known, but had refused to believe. Matilda Montrose preferred to have people think her son had mysteriously vanished rather than confess what he had done. She refused to accept that he was imperfect, that he had died rather than face his parents with his weakness and faults.
But that wasn’t all. Anna’s mother had chosen to allow an innocent boy to go to prison rather than besmirch the name of her precious son or her family.
She should have guessed, Anna thought. She knew what Rip was like, how he had been with Tom and with her. She knew his loyalty and his need to prove it, understood the streak of nobility that made him put friendship and honor before himself. She, of all people, should have guessed what he was capable of doing. Also what he could never have done.
Anna had shown better judgment as a child. She had recognized the warmth and generosity of spirit that he hid beneath the faded clothes and hands made greasy by honest work. She had seen, and been drawn to them.
Anna didn’t want to face Rip, couldn’t bear to see the condemnation in his face. She was no better than her mother. For a brief moment, she had believed he killed Tom.
She had failed him. She had also failed herself, failed to understand her own heart and mind, to recognize that she had loved him years ago and still did. More than that, she had failed Tom, who never would have wanted Rip to take the blame that had been his alone.
She had to acknowledge her guilt, had to let him know how sorry she was for doubting him, how much she regretted everything that had been done to him. With her heart in her eyes and bitter grief in her heart, Anna forced herself to turn.
Rip wasn’t there. The doorway was empty of everything except the bright, unrelenting sun which shone where he had stood.
“Go find him, Miss Anna,” Papa Vidal said as he stepped away from her and bent to pick up a paintbrush lying across a bucket. “I got me a paintin’ to finish.”
It was all the urging she needed. She left the old schoolhouse and walked back toward Blest, though she didn’t go inside. Skirting the bulk of the main house, she reached the front drive. She paused a moment, glancing toward the cemetery. A movement under the big oak just this side of it caught her attention. She set off in that direction with sure, steady steps.
Rip was sitting against the huge tree trunk with his knees drawn up and his wrists resting on them. She stopped in front of him, studying the taut lines of his face, the stiff set of his shoulders. Then she knelt beside him. Moistening her lips in a nervous gesture, she sought for the right thing to say. Nothing seemed to fit, nothing was ever going to be enough.
This time, she had no candy bar to ease his hurt She had only herself.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, since that was all tha
t was left.
10
Rip rested his gaze on Anna’s mouth for endless seconds before he allowed himself to meet her eyes. There was no accusation there, but only sorrow overlaid by a humility he had never expected to see and didn’t particularly like. So Papa Vidal had told her everything. He had known it was preying on the older man’s mind.
“I’m sorry, too,” he said abruptly. “I’d just as soon you hadn’t found out, not after all this time.”
“I needed to know.” She shielded her eyes with her lashes. “But I think I always suspected. It was so like—both of you.”
“It won’t bring Tom back.”
“No.” She pushed a hand through her hair, sighing a little as she let the breeze filter through the long, silken strands. “Nothing ever will.”
He looked away, trying to ignore the tightening in his groin. In moody explanation, he said, “It was the drugs. He enjoyed getting high, thought he could control it. Though I tried—” He stopped.
“Was King Beecroft involved at all?”
“Tom never said so. He may or may not have put him up to it, but it was Tom who knew my boss at the service station kept cash on hand in an old office safe. I told him myself, laughing at how the old man didn’t trust banks, never dreaming Tom would…”
“So it was Tom who broke in, jimmied the safe’s lock.”
“He wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t put temptation in his way. I was responsible.”
“No, you weren’t. It was Tom’s choice. Then he couldn’t stand what he had done once he came down from the drug high. I understand. At least I’m glad it’s over at last.”
“Even the way it turned out?” Rip allowed his skepticism to creep into his voice.
“Even so. The wondering, thinking no one might ever know, was far worse.”
“I doubt your mother will feel the same.”
“She has a great deal to answer for,” Anna said quietly. “I never knew about Tom’s note. She never said a word, I swear.”
“I realized that, after a while.”
“Still, she knew you had seen it. She’s been so on edge, waiting, I think, for you to do something, say something to show everyone what she’d done. It should be a great relief to her to know you have no intention of doing that.”
“Don’t I?” he asked tightly. “What makes you think so?”
She looked at him, her gaze clear to the bottom of her soul. “Because,” she said unsteadily, “I know you.”
He was lost in that moment. He stared at her with hot eyes, fighting a yearning that went back years. Her eyes shimmered in a mist of tears and her silk blouse rippled gently in the breeze, conforming to her warm curves. Her long legs, exposed as her short white skirt fell back from her knee, were golden and just right for wrapping around him. The moment was there, and might never come again.
He reached for her, drawing her against him, into his lap, tucking her head into his shoulder. All he meant to do, or so he tried to tell himself, was offer comfort and shared consolation for old pain, for lost youth and vanished dreams. Still, she came so willingly, fitted herself against him so easily. He needed her, needed the comfort she could give, far more than she needed him. Or ever would.
“Anna,” he said on a stifled groan.
“Yes,” she answered, and lifted her mouth to his.
She was sweetness and light and beguiling glory, and he had to taste those things at least once more before he left Blest. He took her lips, blindly questing, savoring their softness, their gentle curves and tender surfaces. He inhaled her scent that had haunted his nights for an endless time, been the constant companion of his desperately slow days.
She opened to him as naturally as a flower opening to the sun. He gave her his heat, his limitless need, half expecting her to shrink from it. Instead, she met it, matched it, twining her tongue with his in a sinuous dance of endless giving.
They had been here before beneath this oak. Then, as now, he held her close, loved her in the dappled, moving sunlight. She had pressed her hands upward over his chest to clasp them around his neck. He had taken advantage of that movement to brush his hand over her rib cage, then close his fingers gently over her breast. The soft moan she made had been incredibly sweet, but he had gone no further.
Now he would, must, or he would die. As he had died a thousand deaths in prison while thinking of the past that had been and the future that would never come.
Anna would die if he stopped. The heat of his body, the sure clasp of his hand on her breast and gentle abrasion of his thumb across her nipple mounted to her head until she felt dizzy with need. She murmured wordless encouragement while she memorized the firm molding of his mouth, tasted the corner with her tongue, then dipped deep inside, searching for greater depths, closer adhesion.
He gave it to her, following her lead in a smooth plunge as she retreated. He wanted what she wanted, needed as she needed, and he would deny neither of them.
The buttons of her blouse parted under his quick fingers. She felt the sun’s warmth on her skin. Then came the heat of his mouth, the wet glide and swirl of his tongue, the abrupt capture and suction at her breast that beaded her skin with a shiver of erotic gratification. She threaded her fingers through his hair, holding him closer, tilting her head back so the sun made shimmering patterns of exquisite colors against her closed eyelids.
He shifted with her, stretching full length on the ground. His face blotted out the sun as he took her mouth once more. With her hands freed by the movement, she spread her palms over the firm muscles of his shoulders, enjoying their latent power. Letting the fingers of one hand drift down the ridges of his bare back, she pressed her palm closer to absorb the heat of his skin.
So intent was she on her explorations that it was an instant before she felt the waft of air under her lifted skirt, the pressure and sureness of his hand at the juncture of her thighs. The careful friction he created made her gasp and surge against him. He dragged her underwear down and off, then returned to his ministrations. His lips curved in the most tender of smiles as, a moment later, he sent her spinning into the vortex of arousal.
She was on fire, simmering with moist heat and urgency. She pressed against him in wordless need, trembling as she sought his belt buckle, lowered the zipper of his jeans. She wanted to touch him, and did, inhaling in sharp pleasure at the silken, turgid thickness, the weight and springing power of him. With a tried whisper, he gave her access, permission, showing her his shuddering pleasure as he bent his head to trail hot, wet kisses along her forehead, her hairline, into the spiral of her ear. He nipped her earlobe delicately, soothed it with his tongue, then sought and found her mouth to thrust deep inside.
At the same time, he covered her, settling between her thighs. He guided himself to the hot, wet core of her, then entered in a swift, desperate plunge. She took him with internal pulsing, clutched with urgent hands to draw him deeper. And held him while her being stretched, relaxed, then reshaped itself, tightly and forever, to fit his hard length, his savagely tender need.
Shared delirium. Sun-spangled wonder. Timeless magic that blended past and present. It met in their bodies and in their eyes. Holding her gaze, he withdrew until she refused to let him go further, then sank into her until she sighed and her lashes fluttered with strained repletion. Again. And yet again. Over and over until their breaths came in hard gasps, their muscles quivered and perspiration dewed their skins. She took him and clung, clasping him internally while turning her head from side to side with the amazing, near-intolerable pleasure of it. He took her and filled her, driving for her heart, embedding himself there in luxurious wonder.
Blending, striving, they moved against each other until, only half-conscious, Anna sensed her hold on reality slip, felt herself spinning, falling into the heated magic. She whispered his name as the dark contractions of her body took him with her, beyond earthly orbit, into oblivion.
They lay for long moments, gasping for breath and sanity. Rip reached it fi
rst. He sat up, lowered her skirt, found her panties and drew the edges of her blouse together.
Anna did not want to be sane. Didn’t care if she could no longer breathe. She had felt the finality of the love he had made to her, knew its fierce magic had been designed to last for long years, a lifetime, if need be. It had been a goodbye—unless she could find some way to stop him.
Without opening her eyes, she said, “Marry me. Please.”
Rip heard the entreaty in her voice and steeled himself against it. Zipping his jeans with an abrupt gesture, he said, “One sacrifice between us should be enough.”
“Sacrifice?” She lifted her lashes, and the dazed vestiges of surfeited passion cleared from her eyes like fog from a mirror. “Who is sacrificing what?”
He said plainly, “I have no use for a pity marriage.”
“Certainly not,” she said in quiet assurance, “though not so long ago you were willing to take one based on duty.”
He watched her sit up and rise to her knees, fastening her clothes with the dignity of a duchess. “I thought I would take you any way I could get you. I was wrong.”
“I see. It was revenge after all.”
“No!”
“No? It was all right, then, as long as there was no emotion involved. But you can’t stomach the idea if it comes with love attached.”
He hesitated, then said with choked finality, “You don’t love me. What you feel is compassion and gratitude, and damned Montrose notions of honor. You think I should be repaid for what I’ve lost. Fine. Consider what just happened repayment.”
Tears rimmed her lashes, but she wiped them away with a furtive gesture. “It was more than that and you know it.”
“Was it? Did I presume too much, take more than you wanted to give? Don’t give it a thought. I’ll deed Blest to you. You can do whatever you like with it. That should make us even.”
Southern Gentlemen: John Rip PetersonBilly Ray Wainwright Page 12