"Was that a thunderclap I heard?"
He laughed, picking up her hand from the rail and carrying it toward his lips. He didn't quite kiss her fingers, but looked at her provocatively over the curve of them as he held them near his mouth. Lilah turned a little toward him, her eyes meeting his. She was suddenly nervous, but in a nice kind of way. He had promised not to take advantage of her trust and she believed him, so she wasn't frightened that he might go beyond the line. This giddy anticipation was a new sensation, and her skin tingled with it.
"You know, you’ve been looking at me all night as if you're trying to figure out what it would feel like if I kissed you." There was a hint of laughter buried under his pensive words.
Her eyes widened, and she felt a blush creep into her cheeks. Was she really that transparent?
"I-I…" she stuttered in utter confusion, tugging at her hand. He grinned wickedly, and lifted her fingers to his mouth. His lips just brushed over her knuckles with a pressure so light that the depth of the reaction she felt was shocking in comparison. Her lips parted, and her knees quivered.
"Does it tickle?" he murmured, lowering her hand but still holding on to it. With her senses so disordered from that fleeting kiss, it took Lilah a moment to understand what he had said. When she did, her blush deepened.
"How did you know…?" she gasped, then broke off as she realized what she was admitting.
His grin broadened. "You kept shooting shy little glances in the direction of my chin. At first I thought you were fascinated by my mouth, but then I decided it must be my mustache. I was right, wasn't I? So does it tickle?"
"I didn't notice." Lilah tried to hold on to her slipping composure, lowering her eyes primly and pulling at her hand again. Instead of releasing it, he caught the other one, then slid both his hands up her arms to just above her elbows. The feel of his warm, strong hands against her bare skin caused a jolt that shook her clear to her toes. Her lips parted, and her eyes flew to his.
"So you didn't notice?" He was leaning toward her, deviltry plain in the wicked little half-smile that played around his mouth. Not a handsbreadth separated their bodies. She was so conscious of his nearness that she could barely think. Her eyes locked helplessly with his. For the first time in her life she found herself solely in someone else's power. She couldn't have moved or spoken if her life had depended upon it.
"This time, pay attention," he murmured, and lowered his head toward hers. Lilah froze as his lips touched hers, softly, warmly, just brushing the quivering softness of her mouth. His mustache grazed the tender skin above her upper lip. Then he was lifting his head to look down at her with an intent expression that deepened as he saw how the kiss had affected her. The brief touch of his mouth had left her reeling.
"Lilah..
Whatever else he had been going to say in that dark, soft voice was drowned beneath excited yapping. Lilah, shaken out of the dreamworld she had been caught up in, looked around dazedly to see Hercules darting across the floor toward them. Behind him, not quite at the summerhouse steps, came her Uncle George, his expression boding no good.
V
"What the devil are you about, girl, flirting like some demmed Jezebel out here in the dark? You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Your aunt's been looking for you this age!"
Her great-uncle's booming voice finished the process of dragging Lilah back to reality. She took a hasty step away from Joss, who obligingly dropped her arms, and turned to face her fuming uncle as he puffed up the shallow steps. Unlike his wife, Uncle George's bark was far worse than his bite. He was not nearly as gruff as he sounded. She was really very fond of him, and gave him a placating smile as he stomped across die floor toward her. He had once been tall, but he was stooped now with age and required a cane to get around. Still, he was an impressive figure with his thick head of bushy white hair and his elegant black evening clothes slimming a frame that inclined toward portliness around the middle.
"I'm sorry if I worried you, Uncle. But the rose garden was crowded, and-"
"And you wanted to find a spot where your young man here could sneak a kiss," Uncle George finished with devastating accuracy. "No use to try to pull the wool over my eyes, girl, I saw what you was about. But don't let on with your aunt. She's a high stickler, she is. Well, now, am I to expect a visit from you in the morn- ing, young man, asking for my great-niece's hand? Or do I crack this cane over your head here and now?"
"Uncle!" Lilah protested, mortified, as she cast a quick look over her shoulder at Joss. He stood tall and silent behind her, his eyes fixed on Uncle George's face. LUah remembered that he had come to Boxhill on some sort of business that concerned her uncle, and felt a spurt of sympathy toward him. Getting caught kissing one's host's niece was not an ideal way to start a relationship.
"You're not the Burrel boy, are you? Nah, you can't be. His hair's as yeller as Lilah's here. Unless my mind's getting as weak as my knees, I've never seen you before in my life." Uncle George looked at Joss with hard suspicion.
"My name is Jocelyn San Pietro." Joss spoke abruptly, as though he expected the name to have some meaning for the old man. Uncle George glared at Lilah before shifting his eyes back to Joss. Despite her uncle's age and disability, there was suddenly something formidable about him.
"Here in Virginia, we call a man out for less than you've done tonight, sirra. Strangers don't take young ladies out in the dark and kiss them without being called to account for it."
"Uncle…!"
"You hush your mouth, missy! Hell, females got no sense, and this proves it! To come out alone with a man we don't know from Adam-you're lucky I came along when I did! He…"
"I beg your pardon, sir, but you do know me. Or you should. I believe I'm your grandson."
Astounded silence followed this revelation. Lilah stared at Joss, her mouth open, eyes wide. Uncle George and Aunt Amanda had never had children…
"My grandson? What a load of bull feathers! I don't have a…" Uncle George never talked, he bellowed, and he was bellowing now as he reached out to catch Lilah's arm and pull her to him and away from the tall, dark man who stood regarding him inscrutably. The moonlight caught Joss's eyes, making them gleam vividly emerald through the darkness. Uncle George's bluster died. His hand on Lilah's arm tightened painfully as he stared up at Joss. As Lilah watched, her great-uncle's face visibly paled. "Good God! Victoria!"
"Victoria Barton was my grandmother." Joss's voice was expressionless. "Emmelina, her daughter, was my mother. She was also, or so she told me, your daughter. I am sorry to inform you-though I don't believe you ever acknowledged her existence-that she died three months ago. She left some letters for you that I understand were written by her mother, and begged me on her deathbed to deliver them. Once I have executed her commission, I'll take myself off."
"Dear God in heaven." Uncle George sounded as if he were choking. "Victoria! So many years ago! It can't be… You can't be…"
Lilah, suddenly embarrassed, realized that she had no business witnessing this emotion-fraught meeting. Her great-uncle had always longed for a son, and she supposed that this newly discovered grandson would be the next best thing. There were difficulties, of course. Obviously Uncle George had, at some time, fathered a daughter with a woman not his wife, and the man confronting him now was the result of that youthful indiscretion. She looked from Joss's hard, set face to Uncle George's suddenly slack one. The old man looked as if he'd seen a ghost.
"Perhaps you should continue your discussion inside the house?" she suggested, placing her hand on her great-uncle's arm. He shook her off.
"We've nothing to discuss." The old man was more agitated than Lilah had ever seen him. Thinking of her great-aunt Amanda, Lilah understood his concern. If
Uncle George's wife should discover the existence of this grandson, what was left of the old man's life was likely to be miserable indeed. Lilah looked at him in sudden sympathy, only to find that his eyes were fixed on his grandson.
"I want you o
ut of here, now. You hear me, boy?"
"I hear you, old man." Joss reached inside his coat for a slim packet that he held out to his grandfather. Uncle George seemed incapable of taking it. Joss didn't move, didn't relent. After a moment, Lilah reached out and accepted it for her uncle. Neither man spared so much as a glance for her. Their eyes were locked on each other in a silent, bitter war.
"Don't come back here," Uncle George rasped. "Ever. Not to Boxhill, not to Virginia. I don't know what you thought to gain, but there's nothing for you here. You go back to wherever your mama brought you up, and you stay there. You hear?"
Joss moved suddenly, striding across the floor. Lilah's heart was in her throat as she watched him go. He stopped short of the steps, and turned back to look at her.
"I'll see you in the spring. Wait for me."
She nodded. Uncle George made a strangled sound deep in his throat.
"You stay away from her! Delilah Remy, he's no good for you, no good for anything! Damn you, boy, stay in your own part of the world and keep away from me and mine!"
"Uncle George…!"
"I'll go where I please, and do what I please, old man. It's a free world."
"Not for the likes of you, it's not! You stay on your own side of the Atlantic, and don't come around here again! You…"
Uncle George suddenly stopped talking, looked surprised, and clutched at his chest. Then without further warning, he toppled to the floor. Lilah screamed, and tried to catch him as he fell. He was too heavy for her; she couldn't hold him. She dropped to her knees at his side. Joss, his face still taut with rage, was beside her in an instant, his hand going under the old man's coat to feel for his heart.
"Get help. He's in a bad way."
Lilah nodded, and scrambled to her feet, the packet of letters forgotten on the floor. She ran toward the house like a jackrabbit, screaming for Dr. Patterson, who was a guest. By the time she returned with the medical bag the doctor had sent her to fetch, a crowd had gathered by the summerhouse. Slaves holding flaming torches hovered about, providing light for Dr. Patterson. Joss stood grim-faced as he watched the proceedings. Amanda knelt by the sprawled form of her husband, the packet of papers that Lilah had dropped clutched in her hand. Her face was paper white, but she was dry-eyed. On the other side of the old man's body knelt Boot, his face awash with tears, and Dr. Patterson, who was looking across at Amanda's suddenly skeletal face instead of down at her husband. The little tableau left no doubt in Lilah's mind that her great-uncle was dead.
VI
"He's gone, Howard?" Her great-aunt's voice was remarkably calm. Lilah felt a sudden fierce surge of pity for the old woman whose unbending ways had caused her so much discomfort during her visit. Whatever else she might do or be, Amanda Barton was a lady right through to her core. Any other woman would be screaming and wailing over the loss of her husband. Amanda was meeting the crisis unbowed, according to the tenets of her birth and breeding.
"I'm sorry, Amanda. He was dead by the time I reached him. There was nothing I could do." Dr. Patterson got to his feet as he spoke, and patted Amanda clumsily on the arm. Then, as she started to rise, he helped her do so.
Her movements were very slow and deliberate, as if the shock she had suffered had in some degree affected her muscles. The gathering of guests and slaves was silent, as stunned as Lilah was herself. It seemed impossible that Uncle George was dead. Not ten minutes before he had been yelling at Joss. Her eyes lifted to that gentleman. His handsome face was hard and set. As if he felt her eyes on him, he looked in her direction. Though he had in a way been the cause of Uncle George's death, she felt a great deal of sympathy for him, too. Uncle George had been his grandfather, after all, regardless of how the old man had behaved toward him. Joss must be suffering some measure of shock, just as they all were. He might even be grieving.
She made her way toward him, sliding unobtrusively between the crush of people, only to be stopped in her tracks by her great-aunt's suddenly strident voice.
"Are you the man calling himself Jocelyn San Pietro?"
Amanda's eyes were fixed on Joss with what Lilah could only describe as absolute malevolence. She looked from Joss to the gaunt figure of her aunt and back again, her sympathies divided. Amanda must have discovered who Joss was, and the role he had played in Uncle George's death. She was an unforgiving woman. That Joss was in no way responsible for his own birth and only circumstantially responsible for Uncle George's death would not deter her virulent tongue in the least.
"I am Jocelyn San Pietro, yes," Joss replied evenly, meeting Amanda's eyes over the gapes of the assembled onlookers.
"The grandson of the woman calling herself Victoria Barton?"
"Victoria Barton was my grandmother."
"You admit it?"
"I believe proof of my identity and antecedents are in those letters that you hold in your hand. I see no reason to deny them."
"So you see no reason to deny them, do you?" A ghastly smile split Amanda's wrinkled face. Lilah, watching her, thought that her great-aunt looked almost evil. She felt a momentary shiver of fear for the man being impaled by Amanda's faded blue eyes. How ridiculous! After all, what harm could an old, embittered woman possibly do to such a strong, healthy man?
"That makes you my husband's only grandchild-that I know of. You have no brothers or sisters, have you?"
"I have a stepbrother. He is no kin of your husband's." Joss's expression changed, softened slightly as he took in the extreme frailty of the woman confronting him. "Please accept my condolences on the loss of your husband, Mrs. Barton, and my apologies. Had I any notion that my errand would have resulted in such a tragedy, I-"
Amanda cut short his explanation with a wave of her hand. "You don't know, do you?" she cackled, staring at him. "You don't have the least idea. What a tremendous joke!" She fell to chuckling, horrifying the assembled onlookers. Dr. Patterson frowned at her, looking as taken aback as any of them, then patted her arm again sympathetically.
"You must go back to the house, Amanda, and let me give you something to help you sleep. Boot will take care of the bod- of George, and if you need to you can see him again in the morning. Boot, go up to the house and get a blanket, then come back here and get some of the other boys to help you carry Mr. Barton back to the house. Is Mrs. Barton's maid here? Ah, there you are…"
Boot, tears still streaming down his face, got to his feet and went to obey Dr. Patterson's command. Jenny, Amanda's maid, pushed herself forward from the back of the crowd. She was nearly as old and gaunt as Amanda, with her grizzled hair concealed by a snowy kerchief and her bony frame hidden beneath a voluminous black dress, but she had stood the ravages of time less well than her mistress. She was stooped with age, while her mistress's spine was rigid. Amanda looked at her impatiently, then waved her off.
"Not yet, Jenny, not yet. There's something I must see to. And, no, I've not lost my mind, Howard, so you may stop looking at me in such a way. Where's Thomas? He was about not long ago."
"Thomas" was Judge Thomas Harding. He was politically powerful in Mathews County, and whenever there was any high-level legal business that any of his particular cronies needed taken care of, Judge Harding could usually be counted on to oblige.
"Here I am, Amanda," he said, pushing through the crowd. He looked over at Jocelyn San Pietro as he passed, his expression one of unmasked suspicion. "I understand that you may feel yourself in a somewhat awkward position, now that another heir has presented himself so inopportunely, but-"
"You understand nothing, Thomas," Amanda interrupted brusquely. "Answer me this without any roundaboutation: Have you the authority to secure for me a piece of personal property until Sheriff Nichols can be sent for?"
"What kind of property?" Judge Harding looked both bewildered and a little wary. Like Lilah herself and many of the bystanders, he was clearly beginning to ask himself whether Amanda's mind had been unhinged by the shock of her husband's death.
"A runaway slave," Amanda said
clearly, and Lilah knew her aunt's mind had truly snapped. What had a runaway slave to do with Uncle George's death, or anything else that had happened that night?
"Come on up to the house, Amanda. You there, take her other arm. Where's that niece?" Dr. Patterson was trying to urge Amanda from the summerhouse, his eyes searching the crowd for Lilah.
"I'm right here, Dr. Patterson." She attempted to make her way to her great-aunt's side, and the crowd parted for her. Amanda gave the doctor an impatient look.
"Confound it, Howard, I am not going to let you dose me like some old horse until this business gets done! I want your answer, Thomas: Do you or do you not have the authority to order a runaway slave held?" She shook off Jenny's arm and tried to shake off Dr. Patterson's as well, but without success. He motioned to Lilah to take
Jenny's place. Lilah tried to slide unobtrusively around her aunt's other side.
"I have the authority, Amanda." Judge Harding's voice was soothing.
"Then I want you to detain Mr. so-called Jocelyn San Pietro here. He's the descendant of one Victoria, a high yeller gal who ran away from Boxhill with her girl-child some forty-five years ago. I owned her, and I owned her daughter, too, and I own this man."
"What?" Joss roared, while Lilah and the rest of the crowd turned as one to gape at him with horrified eyes. "You're insane, old woman! My grandmother was no more a slave than you are!"
Amanda smiled maliciously. "That's where you're wrong, boy. My husband bought your grandmother in New Orleans a couple of years after we were married. He said he bought her to be my maid, but I knew she'd be trouble the minute I set eyes on her. She was real pretty, with skin about the color of honey and red hair, and she had an uppity way about her that I would have cured her of if she hadn't gone off when she did. She could pass for white, and I guess she did, later, because you didn't know, did you, boy, or you wouldn't have come around trying to weasel what you could out of my fool husband. But she was an octoroon, her mother had been a planter's chire-amie, and when the planter died the mother and daughter were both sold. Immorality must have been in the blood, because that yeller gal hadn't been here a year before she was with child by my husband. He sent them away-but he never freed diem. They were slaves 'til they died, both of them-and that means you are, too. You're as much a darky as Jenny here, for all your white-looking skin. You're a slave, and I own you. Thomas, I want him held."
Desire in the Sun Page 4