Blue Waltz (35 page)

"Papa," the girl demanded, "the music is starting again. And you promised me every dance."

Belle's mind staggered and swayed. Her thoughts collided, her life tumbling before her. The room closed in on her, hemming her in, making it hard to breathe. She was unaware of Stephen's hands, which tightened on her shoulders, or of Clarisse's look, which had turned to concern.

"I thought perhaps you were related," Clarisse stated uncertainly.

"Papa!" the girl demanded.

Papa. For a second Belle thought she was caught up in a bad dream, as happened so often at night. Her mind pitched back and forth between Wrenville so many years before, and Boston this night, as she tried to make sense of the unimaginable. But this dream, she knew, was all too real—a reality that made no sense.

Her father. With another daughter.

A sob caught in her throat. How was it possible?

It didn't matter that she hadn't seen her father in seventeen years. It didn't matter that a lifetime in which families could be made as well as broken had passed by. The sight before her still made no sense.

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"Related?" The word finally filtered through the dense fog in Belle's mind. She glanced at Clarisse with a start, before she looked back at the man. "No. No, we're not related," she said, her voice laced with an eerie calm. "Another Holly, I'm sure. Now, if you'll excuse me," Belle added, the words carefully enunciated, as if she might get them wrong.

She had to escape, out of this room, so she could breathe. But she knew with a sickening certainty that no matter how far she ran, she would never escape his light gray eyes, or the young girl who had danced in his arms.

Very carefully, trying to breathe, she started to turn away.

"Belle," Stephen began.

"No," she said, her voice catching as she jerked free of his hold.

The small group watched her go. Stephen turned deadly eyes on Browning Holly. "What the hell is going on here?"

Browning didn't seem to hear; he only stared at Belle's receding back, his ruddy complexion turned white.

"Don't leave," Stephen instructed, his gaze slaying him on the spot. "You have some explaining to do." Then he turned toward the door, shock, fear, and dread warring in his breast. Good God, what had he done? he wondered, racing out the front door after Belle.

The skies had opened up. The snow that had covered the ground was rapidly turning to slush under the weight of the rain and ice falling from the heavens like tears of the gods. Wind blew, whipping the elements about at its whim. Stephen raised a forearm to shield his eyes as he searched for Belle in the storm.

"Belle," he shouted, the sound whisked away into the cold, dark night.

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Instinct carried him into the Public Gardens, through the spiked wrought iron fence, down the winding paths, until he saw her. Her limp was pronounced, exaggerated by the cold and her flight. He closed the distance that separated them with a few frantic strides.

"Belle," he called through the wind, catching her, then turning her back to him.

Her face was wet and ravaged, blank, as if she didn't recognize him.

"Belle," he repeated, shaking her. "Belle. Talk to me," he cried, freezing rain cascading down his cheeks. "For once, talk to me. Tell me what is happening—tell me what happened."

A deep, ravaged groan welled up in her and she tried to turn away.

He forced her back. "That was your father Belle. You know it, and I know it."

The wind whipped her hair from its moorings, casting it adrift in the tempestuous storm. And as she stood there, Stephen watched as her frozen countenance began to crack like the ice on the lagoon the day she had tried to save her scarf.

"Dear God, Belle," he said, his voice a desperate caress. "Tell me what happened."

CHAPTER 26

Wrenville 1877

Belle stood silently, her dark ringlets curling down her back, the sketch in her hands, her thirteenth birthday cake sitting on the table, dread filling every inch of her being.

No, everything wasn't going to be all right, her young mind reasoned with a clarity well beyond her years. Her father was too quiet as he stared at the painstakingly executed drawing.

"Papa," she said tentatively, her fingers curling around the heavy paper edges, her half-moon nails biting into the dark brown pigment she had used for her mother's hair. "Do you like it?"

He stared at the sketch of his wife for a breathless eternity. Without warning, his fist smashed into the rough-hewn wall. "I can't take this, do you hear me? I can't take this any longer!"

Belle stood dumbstruck as he moved toward the door, his head bowed.

The door was closed, but the curtains over the small window to the side were opened. For the first time, Belle noticed the wagon that waited outside, packed and loaded, a horse she recognized as being from the town livery gnawing impatiently on the bit. Slowly, as if in a dream, her father looked back at her, his pale eyes boring

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into her. An uneasy foreboding washed over her, leaving her weak.

"Papa." She forced the word. "What's happening?"

"Go pack." He picked up an empty satchel she hadn't notice by the door and thrust it toward her.

"Where are we going?" she asked, the sketch slipping from her fingers, see-sawing back and forth until it lay forgotten on the rough hewn floor.

"Go pack."

"But—"

"GO PACK!"

Belle stepped back, away from his harsh words. Her mind circling frantically, she took the bag he forced on her and climbed the ladder to her loft. With little thought for what she put into the satchel, she did as she was told, before returning to the main floor.

Where were they going? she wondered desperately, her heart pounding so loudly she could hear nothing else. How could they leave their home? When the teasing thought entered her mind that finally they were going to Boston, to share the life of her father's dreams, the maturity that she had achieved since her mother's death told her it was nothing so simple.

The crisp afternoon sky was clear. Her father thrust her coat out to her. With trembling hands, she pulled it on before he doused the flames in the fire with the bucket of water she would have used to clean the dishes from the party. The angry hiss from the hearth filled the house. Steam billowed up like a thick curtain, and Belle wondered fleetingly if she could hide in it. But the cloud held no safety as her father stepped out the door. Paralyzed, Belle could only watch.

"Come on," he snapped back at her, his broad shoulders hunched against the cold.

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She clutched her satchel, and hurried outside. He was angry now, she reasoned. If only she could pacify him. But how? "I'm sorry about the drawing, Papa," she said. "I'll never do one again."

But her words held no sway. He continued on, never looking back.

He didn't climb into the wagon, but walked around it, then out of the small yard they called their own. Her dread began to grow and take shape as they walked, Belle clutching the large satchel with both of her small hands, her father walking with determined strides in a direction that could mean only one thing.

They were heading down the road that led to no place but the house of the hated farmer.

"Papa?"

His step never faltered.

"Papa." She tried to keep the quiver of anxiety from her voice, having to run every few steps to keep up, the bag banging against her knees beneath her mother's old dress. "Where are we going?"

Still no answer.

At the fence that surrounded the yard of the farmer's house, Belle halted at the gate. She had to be dreaming. This couldn't be happening to her. But when she blinked, then blinked again, hoping to clear her mind, or awaken herself from this nightmare, the only sight that met her was her father, angry and impatient.

"Quit dallying, girl."

Girl. So uncaring and detached. Her head swam. What happened to Blue, or Blue Belle? Dear God, what had happened? "No, Papa," she stated, her tiny voice quavering.

He turned searing gray eyes on her. He took the few

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steps that separated them, grabbed her arm, and pulled her forward.

Every fiber of her being recoiled when she found the farmer waiting on the front porch, a store-bought rocking chair pushed softly by the breeze.

This isn't happening, she chanted to herself, as if when she said it enough she would begin to believe.

"Here she is, Mr. Braxton," her father said curtly. "Just as I said."

Though he stood in the shadows cast by the porch overhang, Belle could tell the farmer's gaze slid over her like she was no better than livestock, a look she couldn't define etching his murky features. Instinctively, she murmured a protest and tried to pull away. Her father held her tight.

When he seemed to have looked his fill, the farmer pulled a small though clearly weighty bag from his coat pocket. After a moment, staring at Belle all the while, he tossed it to her father.

The clink of coins beneath smoothed canvas rattled in her father's hands when he caught it. Stunned, Belle looked on. She tried to formulate thoughts, make sense of the unimaginable, but could come up with nothing more than one thing.

Her father was selling her!

Dropping the satchel, she staggered back and would have fallen if she hadn't caught herself on a neat pile of wood stacked by the porch.

"Papa," she breathed.

He looked up from the bag of coins he held. He stared at her for long drawn out seconds, and for one brief moment Belle thought he would take her into his arms and tell her that truly it was all a bad dream. He

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dropped his eyes away and shoved the money into his heavy coat pocket instead.

Without so much as a word of love or good-bye, his head lowered, he turned and started away.

"Papa!" she cried, racing after him, clutching his arm. "You can't leave me! You can't leave me here!"

"Go back, girl. You're of a marriageable age," he said tightly.

"I'm thirteen," she cried incredulously.

"As I said, old enough to be married. Now you're his."

It was as if he had slapped her. The words he spoke gave voice to what she had suspected, but to hear them, from her beloved father's lips . . . "Papa, no!" she begged, clutching his arm in a frantic grip.

When she wouldn't let go, he pulled her back to the farmer with a curse. "Have some pride, girl," he bit out, shaking her loose.

Her eyes went wild, her breath short as she stared in shocked disbelief at his receding back. Just when he got to the gate, she felt a staying hand reach out and take hold of her shoulder. She realized with a start of hysteria that it was the farmer.

"No!" she cried, breaking free and racing after her father once again.

This time her father practically dragged her back, his craggy face set against her desperate cries. She hardly noticed the dark rage that was growing on the farmer's face, the tight lips and narrowed eyes. She cared even less. Her father was leaving her, and as evidenced by the packed wagon she had seen sitting outside their house, he was leaving forever.

"Please God, no," she screamed, when the farmer took hold of her arm at the bottom of the steps.

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She kicked and cried, her boot heel catching on a thick branch of kindling.

"Stop it," the farmer ground out, doing his best to hold her back.

But Belle was wild, the last year and all its frustrations overwhelming her. The death of her mother, the silence in her once joyous home. And now, the ultimate betrayal of her father. She kicked and screamed for her life, heedless of the angry grip on her arm, mindful only of her father's receding back.

Her heel caught the farmer in the shin and he roared in pain. But when he tried to capture her again, she kicked and clawed like a wild animal, her hair tangling around her face in a web of black. She escaped, but only temporarily before the farmer caught her, dragging her back, her dress tearing, her boots gouging the earth.

"Stop this!" the man raged, his face mottled with red. "Stop this instant!"

Belle kicked out from the ground, catching him off guard and he tumbled backward, into the wood pile.

"Papa, you can't leave me! It's my birthday," she cried, her mind holding on to what she could manage, locking out the rest. Her sobs choked her, her body racked with emotion. "We haven't had our dance," she cried deperately, her tears streaking the dirt that dusted her face. Scrambling up off the ground, Belle ran after her father.

Furious, the farmer roared, pushing up from the pile of wood, his large hand fisting around a thick, swollen branch. "I said stop!" he shouted, striking out.

The wood caught her leg, hard. A sickening crack echoed in the suddenly still afternoon. With his back to them, her father jerked, and his step faltered. He stood

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frozen in the farmer's yard, his neck taut, his shoulders stiff—but he didn't turn back.

Belle watched, breath held, pleading quietly through her tears. "Come back, Papa. Please come back."

But in the end, he continued on, out of the farmyard, out of her life.

Belle lay in the dirt, the wood falling to the earth by the farmer's side. Dropping her head into her arms, her mind numb to everything but the memory of her father's receding form, she murmured, "Come back, Papa. Please come back. Please come back."

"Papa, please come back."

Tears streaked her cheeks, though this time they weren't mixed with dirt. This time they were streaked with icy rain and snow when she opened her eyes. A cloudy winter sky brooded in the heavens.

Her thoughts shifted and collided when she found not the hated farmer but Stephen hovering over her, his arms holding her protectively. Moments passed in confusion before she finally realized that she wasn't back in Wrenville all those years ago, but in Boston, the story spilling out like the rains from the heavens. The long-suppressed bits of memory that had lurked in the dark murky place in her mind had finally come clear, her moment of undeniable change finally remembered.