She nodded, trying not to smile, and a thunderous scowl crossed his face. “An understatement, I know. But the truth is, until I stumbled across you that day at Cedar Creek, I was determined to consign humanity to the devil. I’ll . . . tell you the story,” he continued, his voice low and hard. “It isn’t pretty, but you deserve to know.”
He stood in front of Garnet, his feet planted solidly apart, his mouth a grim line. “You need to know, because you’re the reason I can no longer renounce my faith in God, along with people.”
Twenty
He’d never felt less confident of his ability to control a situation. As clear as a pane of new-blown glass Sloan sensed Garnet’s anxiety. She was drawn to him, he knew, because she lacked the artifice necessary to hide her interest. Yet she was equally determined to deny it. He wondered if she had any idea how transparent she was. He marveled as well at the transformation within himself: His need for her to trust him with her heart as well as her life deepened with every breath.
But until he overcame his past—until he stopped blaming both himself and God, Garnet Sinclair would remain beyond his reach. Physician, heal thyself.
In abiding relationships, trust was a two-sided coin. Like Garnet, he would have to relearn how to expend it. For both of them, he also needed patience. Self-control. Gentleness. I hear You, he thought. I hear. And for the first time in months, he was willing to hear with submission instead of resentment.
“I have a lap robe stored under the seat,” he said. “Why don’t I spread it on the ground, under that dogwood tree?”
“All right.”
She waited, passive and still while he fetched the blanket. He was careful not to touch her, allowing her to settle, hiding his smile at the unselfconscious way she unlaced her ankle boots and tugged them off. She tossed them aside, tucking her stockinged feet beneath her plain gingham skirt and a single eyelet-trimmed petticoat whose hem peeped from beneath the skirt. A woman of contrasts, was this elusive Southern wildflower. Reserved yet artless. Candid yet closed. So vulnerable that she blushed like a wild rose at the merest brush of his fingertips. Intrepid . . . yet filled with fear.
Sloan sat down with her on the blanket and braced his arms across his upraised knees, clasping his hands because he wanted so badly to hold Garnet. Lord, You’re going to have to fill me with a buckboard full of that self-control. “My family home is in Baltimore,” he said. “My paternal grandfather was a shipbuilder, my father as well, though in later years he invested more heavily in railroads.”
“Your family must be very wealthy.”
“Blue bloods for generations.” He plucked a blade of grass and twirled it between two fingers. “I probably would have been a profligate scoundrel like my older brother if it hadn’t been for my grandfather. He died from a particularly vicious cancer when I was ten. I watched him deteriorate from a vigorous strapping man with fire in his eyes and a great booming voice, to a gaunt shadow so weak from pain he couldn’t lift his finger off the bedclothes.”
“That must have been dreadful. My mother died when I was six. Typhoid. Painful death scars children, doesn’t it?” She reached out, as if to touch him, then dropped her hand back to her lap. “Or at least some children.”
Filled with despair, Sloan gazed sightlessly at the blade of grass between his fingers. She was afraid to touch him, even with a simple gesture of empathy.
He’d done that to her, with his misconceptions and self-absorption. In his bitterness he had wounded her, slicing her spirit to shreds with a thousand scalpels. God . . . what have I done?
At that moment he wanted to give up, take her home to Sinclair Run and flee the Valley as well as Garnet. Because he didn’t deserve a woman like her. Didn’t deserve the chance to explain. To atone for his behavior.
Because shame burned the back of his throat like gall, he retreated behind verbosity and vocation. “Your father mentioned your mother’s death to me once. The, ah . . . the germ theory of disease causation—advocated by a Frenchman, Louis Pasteur, and a German by the name of Koch—has been slow in catching on in the American medical community. When I was practicing in Adlerville, it was a constant battle—sorry.” He crushed the blade of grass, wishing he could do the same to his tongue.
The fleeting pressure of her fingers against his forearm brought his head up with a jerk. His muscles tensed, and he could have lost himself in the mist of her compassionate gray green eyes.
“You love medicine like I do my art,” she murmured. “I think you miss it as much as I’ve missed my freedom. It’s like a calling . . . hard to turn your back on.”
“Mm. I’m beginning to accept that. God knows how I tried to turn my back”—he smiled a little—“as do all the good people hereabouts. But you’re right, sweetheart. I considered it a calling for too many years to disagree with what you say.”
The endearment had slipped out. Sloan was relieved when both of them decided to ignore it. He leaned back, propped on his elbows, and watched a fat white cloud puff soundlessly across the blue-washed sky. “I’ve known I was supposed to practice medicine since I was a boy, watching my grandfather die. Watching an army of bearded physicians strut in and out, all of them pretending they knew what they were doing. They dispensed pompous, empty words to the family and worthless nostrums to my grandfather. Even as a child I knew their presence was a sham. A farce. The day we buried my grandfather, I made a vow to God that when I grew up I would be a doctor. A doctor who would heal, who could stop pain. I asked Him to help me, but I also knew that learning was vital. Education. For the next five years my appetite for medical knowledge was insatiable.”
The white puffy cloud thinned, its contours softening like melting wax. A lone bird drifted above them in the humid stillness. Say it, Sloan ordered himself. Tell her and be done with it.
“When I was fifteen, Jenna Davenport moved down the street from us. She was a year younger, and I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. I fell in love with all the passion and intensity and mindlessness that inflicts half-grown boys.” It was an effort to maintain the level tone, but he plowed ahead, determined not to spare himself. “An experience I wouldn’t wish on a mongrel, but have you ever tried to reason with a young man in the throes of first love?”
“My father would tell you it’s just as impossible to reason with young girls. Meredith—our older sister—has fallen in love a half-dozen times since she was fifteen. Last year, she moved to Winchester to follow a charming salesman who’d taken her fancy. Stubborn and impulsive, that’s my older sister. Meredith’s always had to learn things the hard way.”
“I look forward to meeting Meredith. Sounds like we have a lot in common.”
“You’d love her. People do—especially men. She’s generous to a fault, full of fun, and so beautiful. She loves fine clothes—teases Leah and me all the time about our lack of fashion, then mocks herself for being a slave to it.”
If he hadn’t been watching her closely, Sloan might have missed the shadow drifting through her eyes like the drifting cloud above him. “Meredith,” he stated very deliberately, “might be beautiful, but so are you.”
“I’m not, but thank you.” She fingered the dusty, windblown ends of her hair, which she’d hurriedly gathered at the base of her neck when Sloan had invited her to go for a drive. “Red hair and freckles . . . no, there’s nothing beautiful about me.”
The temptation was almost more than a man could resist, but all Sloan allowed himself was a single brush of his knuckles against the delicate line of her jawbone. “I told you that I thought Jenna was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen?”
Garnet nodded, eyes wide and unblinking, the enchanting blush heating skin he’d scarcely touched.
“Jenna’s hair was red, Garnet. A fiery red-gold flame. When she walked into a room, all heads turned, female as well as male. She was beautiful . . . on the outside.”
“I can tell you thought so. It’s all right, Sloan. I understand what you’re tryin
g to do, but it isn’t necessary.”
“I don’t think you do understand. And it is necessary.” He paused, remembering a cardinal’s feather and a very wise father. “When I met you, it wasn’t you I hated. Just . . . your hair. It reminded me of Jenna. But you’re nothing like her, Garnet. Nothing. I should have recognized it from the first.” Except he was a blind, embittered fool.
“Humans are irrational creatures. We’re supposed to learn from past mistakes. But I’ve come to the conclusion that we tend to learn the wrong lessons most of the time.” His gaze touched on the tangled rope of Garnet’s hair. “I learned to detest redheads, instead of discerning Jenna’s flawed personality and adjusting my attitude accordingly. Jenna’s hair was her glory and her pride. She used it like a weapon, a snare for hapless males. Like me. It blazed in the sunlight, and under the glow of crystal chandeliers, it mesmerized. Jenna knew just how to go about achieving maximum effect—and would have if her hair had been the color of coal or dirt.”
He sat up. With each word he leaned closer, closer to Garnet until his breath drifted across her temple. “Comparing you to Jenna is like comparing a newborn babe to a corpse. As for your hair . . . compared to yours, Jenna’s has all the shine of tarnished silver.”
“Sloan . . .”
He watched the pulse fluttering in the hollow of her throat, watched while she struggled to find words to refute his. He thought about telling her that her efforts were useless.
“Are you . . .” She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “We should leave.”
“Haven’t finished my story. You’re too distracting.”
He couldn’t help it, could no more stem the overwhelming need anymore than he had been able to ignore God’s relentless Spirit leading him to Cedar Creek that long-ago day. He wanted to smile at Garnet, reassure her, explain to her that he wasn’t toying with her, wasn’t “trifling with her emotions.” He wanted, or rather needed, to show her how beautiful she was—outside as well as inside. Wanted to spend the rest of his life—wait a minute, Lord.
Garnet had scrambled to her feet in a flurry of skirts. “I’m not like Jenna,” she stammered. “Sloan, I don’t tease men, don’t flirt. Not any longer. Never again. And I can’t think of my hair as anything but a—a cross to bear. I’m going home. Take me home, please.”
“All right,” he said very gently, rising to stand beside her. “I’ll take you home.” But not just yet. His fingers closed around her balled hand, pried it open until he could run his thumb over the damp little palm. “You took your bonnet off,” he whispered, and lifted that palm to his lips. Then he placed it on his shoulder and laid his own palm against her cheek. “For yourself as well as for me, Garnet. You took the bonnet off.”
He could feel her trembling, hear her quickened breathing, and tenderness flooded his soul with a heat he’d never felt before in his entire dissolute life. “Don’t back down now. You’re safe with me, Garnet. I’m not going to hurt you in any way.”
“Yes. You will.” She covered the hand on her cheek with her own, and her eyelids fluttered down. When they lifted, tears were swimming in her eyes. “You’re a good man, Sloan MacAllister. Like my father. A man after God’s own heart. You . . . talk to Him like I wish I could. Even when you claim to be angry with Him, even though you’ve run away from something that’s hurt you badly . . . you still talk with Him.”
She tugged his hand away from her face. For the space of two heartbeats her fingers clung, then slipped free. “I—don’t have that kind of relationship, not with God, not with any man. But I can’t run, Sloan. And I can’t ask you to stay when I know that, someday soon, God will call you to go back to your home.”
“How about if you let me and God work out the rest of my life?” Sloan took her shoulders and drew her forward, ignoring her resistance. “Garnet, tell me this: Do you and that preacher’s son have an understanding?”
“J-Joshua wants one. I don’t.” She had quit resisting with her body, but her mind was a more formidable obstacle.
“Because you don’t care for him that way, or because you witnessed a murder when you were sixteen? Because you’re afraid those men might harm Joshua?”
“Neither. Both . . . he’s a friend, nothing more. A friend,” she repeated faintly.
“Would you take off the bonnet if you went for a buggy ride with this Joshua?”
One quick shove and she had freed herself, retreating three steps out of arm’s reach. Her back was straight, chin lifted. “Why don’t you tell me what you want from me, Sloan?” Her gaze flickered toward the buggy.
She was inches away from bolting. Good. Sloan wanted her off balance, on the verge of panic. He wanted to push her until she faced her feelings toward him—and realized she had no reason to run. “I told you part of what I want,” he said, and took a step forward. “I want to touch every one of your freckles. But I also want very much to bury my face and my hands in your hair, savor its color. The softness. And I want to kiss you. I want to hold you in my arms, not as a physician comforting a patient, but as a man holding a woman.”
Instead of slapping his face like a proper young miss or batting those mink-brown eyelashes . . . or even hiding her scalding blush behind her hands like a shy innocent—Jenna had employed these and more—Garnet tilted her head to one side and asked a simple one-word question.
“Why?”
It was at that precise moment that Sloan admitted he was in love. “Because I want to, more than I want to take my next breath.”
He took another step, and when she didn’t retreat, he drew her back into his arms. “Because for reasons beyond my comprehension, God seems to have brought us together, and I’m tired of fighting it.”
He began to touch each cinnamon freckle, featherlight touches that singed his fingers nonetheless. When he at last cupped her face in his hands, she closed her eyes. Her arms lifted to rest upon his chest, her right palm directly over his heart.
Sloan lowered his head and kissed her.
Twenty-One
Garnet at last finished the rhododendrons. This project had proven a challenge because she’d gone with the engraving effect, which lent a distinctive texture appropriate for this distinctive flower. Brow puckered, she stood back to study the finished work. Phineas, roused from his nap, padded over to sit at her feet, his head tilted as if to ask why she’d woken him up.
“What do you think? Better than the calendula I finished Tuesday? Be honest with me, please. And don’t think you can just sit there and smile without committing yourself one way or the other.”
The fox grabbed the hem of her skirt in his jaws and tugged.
“I’ll come outside with you after I clean my pens.” She knelt and took the narrow head between her hands. “You’re such a scallawag . . . and I don’t know what I’d do without you, especially with Leah leaving in less than a month.” Abruptly she sank onto the wide plank flooring and gathered Phineas into her lap. Not a day passed that she hadn’t thanked God for sparing this creature’s life, not an hour passed when she hadn’t thanked Him for the man who had been His instrument. Not a moment passed when she was free from the awful burden of an impossible love, seemingly placed in her heart by that same unknowable God.
Twice a week Sloan paid a call, his manner scrupulously proper even as his gaze kindled with sparks every time he bowed over her hand or helped her into the buggy for a drive. Only once had she gathered the courage to broach a tentative question about his circumspection.
“I don’t want to hurt you again,” he answered, searching her face. “Garnet, if I thought I could—” His lips had clamped together then, and a shadow of that old bitterness reappeared. “Bear with me . . .”
“All right.” She had no choice. She’d fallen in love with this dark, difficult man. And she fought demons of her own.
For some reason, Sloan appeared at times to be almost as afraid of her as she used to be of him. The realization bewildered Garnet, for after her one tentative query, she’d m
ade no more demands, even preventing herself at each visit from asking when she would see him again. Uncertainty was as familiar as an old friend, since for years she had lived with the constant worry of exposure; Sloan’s refusal to commit himself might hurt, but she dreaded renunciation far more than uncertainty.
Garnet wished she could talk to Meredith, because she was the only person who would understand at least a small portion of Garnet’s turmoil.
“Garnet?” Leah called up the stairs. “Mrs. Ward is here.”
Sighing, Garnet set Phineas aside with a reassuring pat and headed downstairs for the parlor. Over the past weeks she and Felicity Ward had met on several occasions, mostly due to Felicity’s persistence. A childless widow in her forties, obviously accustomed to having her own way, the woman was determined to gain Garnet’s cooperation. But Garnet was equally determined not to be bullied, charmed, or maneuvered, regardless of Mrs. Ward’s stature as an artist. She had agreed, however, to show Felicity some favorite scenic spots, and the two of them had made several forays about the countryside.
Most of the time Felicity felt compelled to point out alternative sites that Garnet, of course, had missed, by being “much too focused on the minutiae of your flowers, instead of framing the landscape. Look”—she was forever grabbing Garnet’s arm as though Garnet were a misguided toddler—“see how those rocks offer a stunning contrast to the blowing meadow grass and the wisps of clouds?”
Zeke, the rawboned son of the Chalybeate Springs Hotel’s concierge, functioned as driver and protector. Garnet concealed her qualms about their “chaperone,” not telling her father that, while she and Felicity explored field and forest, Zeke pulled his hat over his face and went to sleep.
“Can’t you at least keep that animal outside, in a pen, when visitors pay a call?” Felicity asked when Leah and Garnet returned to the parlor with Phineas shadowing Garnet’s feet. “For heaven’s sake, what if he bites someone?”
Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1) Page 16