Blessing in Disguise (23 page)

They needed
Honor Above All
—now more than ever. If Roger Young were to walk, Grace’s book might be the only thing that could maintain Cadogan as the kind of publishing company he loved ... and save his job.

He took hold of Grace’s tiny hands. Her rings, six of them, three for each hand—braided silver, turquoise, agate—pressed coolly into the fleshy pads of his palms like links in a chain.

He couldn’t help thinking how she didn’t belong in this room, with its massive Victorian bed and matching marble-top dresser, the bulky walnut wardrobe against the wall between the two prints he’d bothered to hang—a pair of ancient, acid-stained Blakes.

“Grace, I’m not telling you what to do, just talking off the top of my head. But has it occurred to you that the best way of dealing with this might be to confront your mother face to face? You know, you
could
invite her up for a visit.”

Grace looked stunned, and then, as the prospect of it sank home, a mild panic seemed to take hold of her.

“You’re not
serious.”

“It might not solve everything, but it could be a start.”

“God, it’d be like ... well, like being a devout Catholic and having the Pope visit. I’d be on my guard every second of the day.”

“Are you sure you’re not exaggerating just the tiniest bit?” he asked.

“You don’t know my mother.” Grace was pensive for a moment, then said, “I remember, a long time ago, Mother and Sissy and I were visiting Grandma Clayborn down in Blessing. It must have been around the time Daddy was lobbying for the Civil Rights Act, because a bunch of men showed up in front of the house one night—they were carrying torches and shotguns, and yelling stuff about Daddy being a ‘nigger-lover.’ But Mother ... she marched out on that porch and faced them like they were nothing more than a bunch of rowdy trick-or-treaters.”

“She sounds like someone I know,” Jack teased.

But Grace, hugging herself tightly, cried, “Oh, Jack, what if she’s right? Is my telling the truth about Ned Emory’s death worth all the anguish it’s causing? Not to mention the legal hassles.”

Jack took a deep breath. “Let me handle the lawyers. Just concentrate on what
you
want, apart from your mother or anyone else.”

After a moment’s silence, she said, “I was just thinking about Nola. Ever since we met, I’ve had this feeling that there’s something she’s not telling me. And then it dawned on me: maybe my father really
did
mean to hurt Ned Emory, maybe even kill him. God knows why—maybe he knew Ned was mistreating Margaret, and something in him just snapped. He really cared about her, you know. In some ways, Margaret was probably his closest friend. He
might
have been doing more than just protecting her.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

“Oh, Jack,” she sighed. “These days I don’t know
what
to believe.”

Jack’s gaze drifted over to the deacon’s bench Natalie had decided she didn’t want to keep, which had somehow become a receptacle for his clothes—shirts, socks, ties slung haphazardly over its long spindled back—until he got around to organizing his dresser drawers. He noticed, as if for the first time, the cardboard boxes stacked in the corner, yet to be unpacked after more than eight months, the framed prints propped against the baseboard. And in a flash, he saw this place clearly: as the way station of a man biding his time until he made up his mind.

But when would that be? And how could he be absolutely sure of Grace, when she, too, obviously had her own doubts?

Jack wished fiercely that he could sweep away all her fears ... and his. That he could somehow make everything all right. Like he’d held things together in the bloody aftermath of Hauptman’s acquiring Cadogan. Always putting on a confident face, moving aggressively with their new directives, lest anyone think his leadership had been affected.

Leaning against the headboard, he put out his arms, and she was instantly pressed against him, her face resting on his chest, the top of her head brushing the underside of his jaw. Even her toes: she’d managed to tuck them up against his legs, semifrozen bits of ice thawing against his warm flesh.

He reached down and scooped up a foot, massaged it with strong circular strokes of his thumb. He loved her feet, so small they’d have fit easily into a pair of shoes Hannah had outgrown in the sixth grade. Her rose-colored nails, and the swoop of her arches—like a ballerina.

Grace squirmed in pleasure, her breasts soft and loose against him. Jack felt himself growing hard. Jesus, how could he love her this much ... want her so badly ... if there was all this stuff pushing them apart?

He bent his neck to kiss her, and she tilted her head up to meet him halfway, her mouth parted slightly, her arms tensing about him with wiry strength, as if he were drowning and it was she who was keeping him afloat.

She extended her leg so that his hand, cradling her foot, slid up her thigh. Silk ... lovely silk, with tiny hairs that tickled his palm. He thought, oddly, of biting into a warm, sun-ripened peach. The sensations she coaxed from him were like small treats doled out one by one, each more tantalizing and exciting than the next.

She was an orchard of peaches, the warmth of her, the taste, as he pushed up her T-shirt and kissed first one breast, then the other.
Ah, Jesus.
She could make him into a teenager, with an appetite that had no bottom.

“Jack ... Jack, I love you so much. ...”

“I know ...” he whispered as the two of them slid down until their heads were resting on the pillows, facing one another, arms and legs entwined. “No, don’t turn over. Stay like that. On your side. Yes, I can ... Oh, yes. There.”

As she arched up to him, one leg slung over his hips, the other pinned against the mattress, he felt himself slide into her ... the tightness of the angle, the syrupy warmth of her like their first time, when he’d come as fast as a kid. He strained to check himself, moving in a slow but deliberate rhythm ... hands cupping her buttocks, guiding her deeper, closer to him, with each stroke.

He felt her breath against his neck, gentle little bursts of air that were bringing him close to the edge. Pinpricks of light danced on the undersides of his closed eyelids. But it wasn’t any one physical movement, any one part of her body that was exciting him so. It was her eagerness, her energy—everything that had made him fall in love with her. Stupid to think it was in the cock, when the real power of lovemaking had to be in the mind and in the heart.

As if he could ever let her get away from him. Jack thought, pulled up short by a rush of feeling so strong he found himself holding her tight enough to crush her ribs, crying out her name over and over.

Later, as they lay entwined amid the tangled sheets. Jack said softly, “I meant what I said before, about asking your mother up for a visit.”

“I know,” she groaned. “But it wouldn’t do any good. She’s oil and I’m water. Whenever I talk to her on the phone, I’m invariably so frustrated that by the time I hang up I’m ready to throw something at the wall.”

“Face to face might be different.”

“She wouldn’t come even if I did invite her.”

“You never know.”

“And you
do?”

Jack didn’t want to keep pushing her. But he had to. “She might. How will you know for sure unless you ask?”

She laughed—a dry, rasping noise low in her throat. “You do not know Cordelia Clayborn Truscott.”

“But since I’m sleeping with her daughter, don’t you think it’s time we met?”

Grace was silent for so long he might have thought she’d dropped off to sleep but for the tautness in her body, like a spring-loaded hinge ready to pop. Finally, she turned her face toward his and, with the glow from the bedside lamp highlighting her cheeks, said in a voice like a tomboy accepting a dare, “All right, then, Jack Gold. I’ll do it. I’ll invite her. But if she
does
accept ... well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Gabe, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. ...”

Cordelia, kneeling at the edge of the tulip bed, placed her trowel in the wicker basket at her side. Along with an array of other gardening tools, each neatly stowed in its own canvas pocket, the basket held a handful of wooden pegs and a roll of twine with which to mark her rows.

...
I know you didn’t receive an engraved invitation weeks ago like everyone else, but will you come to Sissy’s party? My only excuse for waiting until practically the last minute is that I was afraid ... of looking foolish ... and of risking our lovely friendship for some pie-in-the-sky fantasy. ...

No, she couldn’t say that. Gabe would be shocked and distressed to learn she had such feelings about him—feelings he couldn’t possibly share. She’d sound ridiculous. Better if instead she were to invite Jared Fulton, that nice lawyer to whom her old friend Iris had introduced her at Iris’s and Jim’s anniversary dinner party last Saturday. Jared was in his sixties, and he loved music as much as she did—hadn’t he asked her to the Philadelphia Orchestra concert in Macon for next Thursday? The least she could do was return the favor.

Besides, to invite Gabe at the last minute, wouldn’t it seem an afterthought? He couldn’t know that she’d had a perfectly legitimate reason for not asking him sooner.
If I had gotten up the nerve to tell Sissy about Beech cheating on her there wouldn’t even be a party.

She looked at Gabe, kneeling beside her, and felt a prickly warmth spread through her, as if she’d been out in the sun too long. Mercy! There had to be some way of ridding herself of this feeling she had around him—hot one minute and shivery the next, almost like when she’d been going through the change.

Cordelia took a deep breath, and the rich smell of the earth, damp from last night’s rain, seemed to fill her whole being, calming her. She looked down at the six shallow reed baskets arranged on the grass beside her, heaped with the bulbs to be planted for next spring. Jonquils, long-cupped daffodils, snowdrops, grape hyacinth, and tulips. Oh, how she loved tulips, even their names—spotted Rembrandt, crimson-streaked Flaming Parrot, the lily-flowered Marietta, snowy Anne Frank, stout-stemmed Triumph.

She thought about how she and Gabe had spent all of yesterday troweling up the soil, working in a mixture of peat, manure, and bonemeal. The weather, except for last night’s shower, had been unusually fine for December. At Blessing’s altitude, this time of year could be nippy, while southern Georgia still basked. But any day now, she’d be waking up to a sugar-coating of frost over the lawn.

She rocked back on her heels, surveying the area skirting the pergola that extended off the house to the left of the back porch. Just right for bulbs—plenty of morning sun, with afternoon shade from the yew hedge that bordered the vegetable garden, now bedded down for the winter under a layer of manure and straw. By April, she’d be able to look out the kitchen and back-bedroom windows and be treated to a magic carpet of bright, nodding blooms. The orchard beyond the hedge would be blooming, too. And the branches of the dwarf-cherry and peach trees, now half bare, would be smothered in fragrant clouds of pink and white.

And where will you and I be?
she wondered, once more taking in the sight of Gabe, hunkered down beside her, wearing a pair of old, paint-spotted dungarees and a dark-green Aran sweater with its sleeves pushed up over his forearms, brown and hard as a pair of thick ropes. In the sunlight that shone square against his weathered face, he sat poised, squinting at her expectantly, his eyes nearly lost in the creases around them.

How would people perceive the two of them, Cordelia wondered, Gabe on her arm, after she’d been with so powerful, so revered a man as Gene? Could he ever really be part of her life-style, the entertaining she had to do for the hospital, the university, fund-raisers? Not to mention dinner parties with old, dear friends—people Gabe didn’t know except to nod hello to on the street.

Thinking about dinner parties reminded her of last night. It had been weeks since she’d first begun toying with the idea of inviting Gabe to supper, and for one reason or another she hadn’t gotten around to it. First there had been Win calling her out of the blue, then meetings at the hospital that had kept her away from her garden. But yesterday, after an afternoon of working side by side with Gabe, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to ask him to stay on.

Over supper, there had been none of the awkwardness she’d dreaded. They’d talked as easily as if they’d been in the garden planting seedlings or pruning fruit trees together—on and on, scarcely aware of what they were eating, though later she’d noted that a good portion of Netta’s chicken pie and berry cobbler had somehow gotten devoured. What had they talked about? The hospital, what kind of person they should get to be the new director. The best brands of coffee at the Winn Dixie. Blessing’s old courthouse, which Fredda McWilliams was turning into an antiques mart.

Afterwards, she’d put on the stereo in the den, and they’d listened to Kiri Te Kanawa sing
Madama Butterfly,
while they played gin rummy. Quiet, friendly, nothing special, but it all kept coming back to her—little things mostly, like the ghost prints left by Gabe’s Redwing boots on the deep pile of the den carpet, the friendly clutter of the dishes they’d left in the sink, and his nice smell, like the thick Hudson Bay blankets folded in the cedar chest at her father’s fishing cabin out at Sinclair Lake.

Oh, but she had to stop this mooning about! All these years without Gene, she’d gotten along perfectly fine ... and once she got over this unseemly infatuation, she would
continue
to get along perfectly fine.

Cordelia became aware of Gabe still poised beside her, waiting for her to finish what she’d started to say.

She quickly swerved to a safer topic, yet one that had also been troubling her. “It’s about Grace,” she told him. “She’s written asking me to visit her in New York.” Cordelia sighed.

“What did you tell her?”

She found herself shaking her head, admitting, “I ... haven’t decided.”

“When did you get the letter?”