Always

by Delynn Royer

  “Yeah. Maybe you should have gone to Karl instead.”

  She gaped at him, again taken off balance. “Karl? What’s Karl got to do with this?”

  “Don’t play innocent.”

  “What?”

  “What’s going on with you two?”

  “Nothing!”

  “And I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “I don’t care what you believe.” She shot forward to come toe to toe with him. “And if I want to take up with Karl, I’ll darn well do it without your permission!”

  Ross gave a sarcastic laugh. “Oh. Here we go again. Cutting off your nose to spite your face. Very intelligent, Emily. Karl is a womanizer. You should know that better than anyone.”

  “Why?” she shot back. “Why should I know that better than anyone, Ross? Have you been hearing rumors?”

  She’d obviously flung out the question without giving a thought to the consequences, but now the realization of what she’d done was beginning to dawn upon her. He could tell by the sudden drain of color from her cheeks. But she didn’t flinch. No, not Emily. Maybe she hadn’t meant to blurt the question, but it was done, and now she wouldn’t back down. She held his gaze, daring him to probe old hurts.

  “I don’t pay attention to rumors,” he said evenly.

  “Maybe you should. Maybe some of them are true.”

  Damn her. He’d given her an out and still she pushed him to go a step farther. What did she want from him? “All right,” he said, his mouth going dry. “Then it’s true that you left town four years ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think?”

  The rumors were true. They were true. He’d tried to convince himself they weren’t, but Emily had now made that impossible. So, what was left? Ask her if it was Karl? Did he want to hear her answer if it was? And if it wasn’t...?

  The question strained to pass through his clenched lips, but he didn’t voice it. Instead, he said, “Emily, all I want is for things to be like they used to be between us.”

  He thought he saw a shadow of regret mix with the anger and hurt in her eyes, but then it was gone. Or maybe he’d imagined it. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  He held her gaze for a long, hard moment, then backed off. “Never mind.”

  “Wait—”

  “Never mind.” He turned and strode to the porch steps, feeling like a fool. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Ross, I—”

  He didn’t hear the rest of whatever it was she had to say. He was already pushing his way through the front gate.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After Ross returned home, he tried to get some work done on his novel, but it was no use. He was too angry, and this time his anger had nothing to do with the hellhole at Andersonville. He was learning to deal with that. In fact, it was through re-reading his own diaries and by transforming much of what he found there into thinly disguised fiction that he was beginning to make some manner of peace with it. No, this anger was different. It was more immediate and compelling, and the source was Emily. That stubborn, pigheaded little girl had grown into an even more stubborn, pigheaded woman.

  He gave up on his writing, then paced the floor of his parlor, then banged around the kitchen, rustling up some eggs and fried potatoes for his midday meal. He went outside to see about repairing the front gate but soon learned he hadn’t the patience for that either. He was too restless. He needed physical exertion. And lots of it. With an ax and saw in hand, he tromped out to the woodlot.

  By four o’clock, he’d felled a dying oak and had sectioned and transported some of it by wheelbarrow to his backyard, where he commenced to chop it into firewood. Hell, if Emily kept driving him to distraction much longer, he’d have the Hockstetter woodshed full and all set for winter by next week.

  Using the back of his arm, Ross mopped the sweat from his forehead, then bent to hoist another chunk of wood onto the chopping block. He was determined to exhaust himself. He meant to be flat on his back soon after sundown. Maybe then he wouldn’t lie awake half the night, mentally rehashing each word they’d exchanged, each movement she’d made, each nuance of barely repressed emotion that had crossed her face.

  Even now, despite his efforts to remain focused on his mind-numbing work, he found himself thinking back, trying to recall exactly when it was that Johanna said Emily left town. January of ’62. That was when her last letter to him had been dated.

  He remembered receiving it that month. At the time, his regiment was encamped on Port Royal Island following their first engagement with the enemy. Ross hadn’t been so caught up in the thrill of victory, however, not to notice the distant, almost formal tone of her letter. It contained no hint of their special relationship. Ross knew then, with a sick, desperate feeling, that he’d lost her, but he was too far away to do anything about it.

  His next four letters had gone unanswered, and he’d given up. In fact, with the exception of two annual Christmas missives—one dutifully addressed to Alma Brenner and the other to Nathaniel at his shop—Ross had stopped writing home altogether. With Emily lost to him, what was left there for him to care about?

  Parched and sweating, Ross took a break from his work to cross to the pump shelter where he ran a stream of blessedly cool water over his head, then he took a long drink from the dipper. Settling down on his haunches, he rested back against the stone slab and stared out at the neat rows of vegetables he’d planted in Mrs. Hockstetter’s garden.

  Emily had as good as admitted that she’d left town because she was pregnant. It was a truth that Ross was still having trouble coming to grips with. It was a truth that he’d worked hard to disbelieve ever since the day Johanna had told him of the rumors. It had turned his world upside down, so that now, no matter how much he wanted to deny it, he couldn’t. Now he had to sort out the truth. Who was the father?

  Ross had left to join the army late in September of ’61. At the end of January, Emily left town carrying an unborn child. Ross counted back four months and wondered what had happened during that intervening time. Karl and Emily had been seen together during those months before Karl, too, had left for the war. Was it true? Had Karl and Emily slept together?

  Ross had no way of being sure. The truth was, he didn’t know what was going on in Emily’s life at that time. Prior to the night he’d left for Camp Curtin to join his regiment, she hadn’t spoken to him for almost three months, not since the beginning of the summer when he had resigned from the Gazette to go work for the Herald. Karl had been working his way through college by then, and Ross was immersed in his own new job. And even aside from the fact that their adult lives had taken different turns, Karl wasn’t on speaking terms with Ross, either. They hadn’t exchanged words since the night of that chestnutting party in Brenners’ Woods.

  Ross dropped his head and groaned at the memory. What a calamity that had been. And in hindsight, disastrously prophetic. He’d had excellent reason to be in good spirits that night. After years of ups and downs in his quest for Johanna’s attentions, she’d had a public tiff with his despised archrival, John Butler, squelching all rumors of an engagement announcement. Ross’s path had seemed clear once again.

  Johanna had happily accepted his invitation to the chestnutting party, and as they picked their way through Brenners’ woods, collecting the fallen nuts in a basket, they’d taken their earliest opportunity to slip away from the group to steal a few kisses in private.

  Later, when an early dusk had begun to settle over the autumn countryside and a bonfire was lit to call the remaining excursionists from the woods, Ross was in high spirits. That was, until he noticed Emily was missing.

  He’d left an indignant Johanna perched on one of the logs around the bonfire as he set out to find Emily among the flirting young couples in their group. If it hadn’t been for Karl showing up at the party without a female companion, he might not have been so concerned, but he remembered Karl’s earlier remarks upo
n spying Emily in the woods. “Is that little Emily Winters?” he had inquired slyly before letting out a long, low whistle. “Lordy, lordy, but I almost didn’t recognize her. That little spitfire has finally grown up and filled out, hasn’t she?”

  “She’s only sixteen,” Ross had replied tightly. “Leave her alone.”

  “Leave her alone?” Karl turned to Ross, feigning innocence. “That would be a flagrant waste, don’t you think?”

  Karl had sauntered away then, first in Emily’s direction, then, with a teasing wink to Ross, changing course and heading instead toward a group of other friends. That had been the last Ross had seen of Karl, but that had been hours before. Ross’s anxiety rose another notch when Emily’s best friend, Melissa, told him that Emily and Karl had last been seen heading across the open meadow toward the Brenner homestead. Ostensibly, they’d gone to fetch some more apple cider for the group. A likely story.

  Ross had barely kept his anger in check as he’d strode across the darkening meadow in the direction Melissa had indicated. It wasn’t long before his suspicions were confirmed. A low murmur of voices drew him to a springhouse.

  Reaching the side of the small outbuilding, Ross pressed back against the cold stone wall and listened. Emily’s voice reached his ears.

  “It’s getting cold. They’ve probably got the bonfire going by now. We’d better get back.”

  “Forget the bonfire,” Karl said. “There are other ways to warm up.”

  “Oh? And how is that?”

  Karl chuckled. “Why, with a few kisses, of course.”

  “Kisses?” Emily repeated dubiously. “Are you trying to tell me that kissing makes heat?”

  “You better believe it. If you’ve ever been kissed before, and it didn’t warm you up some, then you haven’t been very well kissed at all.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  “I am. You want to find out what I mean?”

  Emily sounded coy. “Is that a challenge, Karl Becker?”

  “That depends. Are you up to the challenge, Miss Emily?”

  “What do you think?”

  By then, Ross stood rigid, his jaw clenched as he tried to keep a tight rein on his skyrocketing temper. Listening to their ridiculous banter had been bad enough. Withstanding the lengthy silence that followed was worse. It was all Ross could do to keep from springing from his hiding place and yanking Karl away from her.

  “There,” Karl said finally, sounding like the conceited rogue that he was. “How was that? Warm you up any?”

  Ross held his position by telling himself that Karl would soon get his comeuppance. Emily would put him in his place. Any second, Ross anticipated the satisfying sound of a resounding slap to Karl’s cheek.

  “I liked it,” Emily said brightly. “Let’s do it again.”

  She liked it? Ross was too stunned, too infuriated to move. Let’s do it again?

  Karl chuckled at his victory. “All right, Miss Emily, this time I’ll give you an advanced lesson.”

  That was it. Ross’s paralysis fled. His temper exploded. He bolted from his hiding place and did what he should have done before. He grabbed his debauched friend by the back of his collar and yanked him off balance. During the scuffle that followed, Ross’s fist shot out to connect with Karl’s nose. That rash act had promptly ended whatever was left of their boyhood friendship, but even that, as it turned out, was not to be the end of the evening’s folly.

  After Karl had stormed off, nursing his bleeding nose with a handkerchief, Ross had been left to face Emily, who had remained behind. She stood with her back against the springhouse wall, her dark hair disheveled, her arms at her sides, palms pressed flat back against the stone. She stared at Ross, saying nothing.

  “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously. In the deepening shadows of dusk, he couldn’t read her expression.

  “No,” she said.

  At the odd flatness in her tone, something twisted in Ross’s gut. He grasped her by the shoulders, pulling her to him. “Did he hurt you? Did he touch you? By God, if he—”

  “No,” she repeated, “I am not all right. I am mortified.”

  “What?” Then he felt something in his gut again, only this time it felt more like a breath-stealing sucker punch to the solar plexus.

  Probably because that was exactly what it was.

  He released his hold on her to gape downward. Emily’s small fist was still clenched and drawing back for a second blow.

  “Whoa!” He jumped back and threw out a hand to deflect a second attack. He jerked his head up just in time to catch the warning flash of hellfire in her eyes.

  “Blast you, Ross! What are you doing, following me around like that? Who do you think you are? What business is it of yours who I choose to be friends with?”

  This barrage of questions came in a flurry of flying fists, first from the left, coming up for his jaw, which he sidestepped neatly, then from the right, which he managed to duck before he would have gotten clipped in the ear. Hell! What was the matter with her?

  “Do you enjoy embarrassing me?” She swung out again, wildly this time, missing him by a foot and nearly tossing herself off balance.

  “Stop it!” Ross found his voice along with a fortifying shot of indignation. He’d rescued her. She should damned well be grateful for it. He caught her forearm on a new backswing. “Emily, stop this! You’re hysterical.”

  “Hysterical? I’ll show you hysterical!”

  Ross caught her other wrist before she could do any damage and ran her arms back up against the springhouse wall. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “What’s the matter with me?” She let out a yelp and tried to free herself. “Me?”

  Realizing that she was capable of bringing a knee up to wreak havoc with his personals, Ross closed the slight distance between them, sandwiching her to the wall to hold her still. They were uncomfortably close.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded, pushing back with all her might.

  Too damn close, Ross thought, breaking into a sweat. He imagined that he could feel every distressing detail of her plump young breasts against his chest, yet he couldn’t think of any way to disengage from their indecent clinch without getting himself nailed silly.

  “Why can’t you mind your own business?” she yelled.

  “I saved you!” he shouted back. “What did you think you were doing, going off with a fella like Karl? You want to ruin your reputation?”

  “My reputation is none of your business!”

  “It sure as hell is my business! Where’s your common sense? You want to get yourself in trouble?”

  “Trouble? Ha! You should talk! Where do you spend your Saturday nights, Ross? In the taverns with fancy women?”

  “That’s different!”

  “How?”

  Ross opened his mouth, ready to give her an earful, then clamped it shut when an earful failed to occur to him. He still felt a little crazy with the anger and whatever else it was that had driven him to follow her and then flatten Karl with a vengeance that far outweighed the provocation. He knew this, and yet he was helpless to control it or identify it.

  “How is it different?” Emily repeated, tilting her chin up so that her mouth came dangerously close to his own.

  “It... it just is, that’s all! I’m a man, for one thing, and you’re a—” He shut his mouth again. Woman. He was going to say woman, but she wasn’t a woman. Not yet. Neither was she a child. This was a fact that was becoming impossible for Ross to ignore. As they pressed too close, Ross felt the heat of his own anger rapidly changing to something else.

  He realized too late that his hot young blood cared not to differentiate between platonic female curves and those of a more available nature. The warm flush that spread from his loins to the singing nerves of his very fingertips was distracting enough to make him nearly forget the self-disgust he should have felt at his inappropriate reaction to a girl who had always been like a sister to him.
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  But not quite.

  Releasing her, he backed away, putting distance between them. This was Emily, he reminded himself. Emily. His boss’s daughter and his closest friend. Who else could she trust with her virtue if not Ross? Even just thinking of her the wrong way made him want to burn in hell.

  “I was just trying to help,” he said, trying to mask his own bewilderment and dismay at what had just happened.

  “Then stop treating me like a child!”

  He wondered for a panicked second if she had somehow sensed his thoughts. Breathless from her struggles and with her shining ebony hair streaming over her shoulders, she leaned back against the wall as if she needed it for support.

  “I don’t treat you like a child,” he denied.

  “If I want to take Karl as my beau, then I’ll damn well do it! There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  Ross could think of no coherent reply. Take Karl as her beau? Karl? Had she lost her senses?

  “Go back to your precious Johanna. That’s where you belong, isn’t it?”

  Ross had just stared at her, trying to sort through his maddening confusion, then he’d turned away. He didn’t have an answer to her question. With his tumultuous emotions still running high, he’d left her behind at the springhouse.

  After that, things had never quite returned to normal between them, even as they’d worked together at her father’s shop during the months that followed. They made up and became friends again, certainly, but something had changed.

  Emily turned seventeen that year, and Ross became much too uncomfortably aware that she was now a young woman. He went out of his way to make sure that he didn’t touch her or end up alone with her for any length of time. Above all, he didn’t want to experience a repeat of the inappropriate emotions that had taken him by such bewildering surprise behind the springhouse.

  It didn’t help, either, that Emily despised that Ross was still vying with John Butler for Johanna Davenport, or that Ross bristled whenever he thought of Emily continuing to be friends with Karl.