Dove's Way (12 page)

Matthew tried to make sense of the rush of words. “Thank-you notes? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Everything! No one ever taught me that I am supposed to write them.”

“Thank you for what?”

“For the dinner your mother invited me to, to begin with.”

“My mother won’t mind. She knows how appreciative you are.”

“Your mother might not care, but my grandmother cares, and Nester cares. And you can bet Adwina Raines and her ilk care.”

“You can’t lose sleep over the Adwinas of the world.”

“I don’t give a fig about Adwina Raines or her like! It’s my family I care about,” she stated with a groan of frustration. “And my family cares about thank-you notes.”

He ground his teeth. “All right,” he conceded. “But now you know to write them.”

Her head fell back. “Yes, I do know… now!” She raised her head and looked at him. “But only because my grandmother made some snide remark about doing it. What else is out there that I don’t know about? How long will it be before I make another mistake? I’m nearly twenty-six years old, and my family looks at me like I’m some sort of dim-witted child. All because I don’t act like them.”

She looked at him with such bewilderment that he felt as if she had struck him physically.

Her voice softened. “Little girls look to older women to see who they will become,” she explained. “But I saw only tribal women whom I loved and who taught me the ways that I have—ways that make me somehow less of a woman here.”

“Surely you saw European women.”

“Of course, when Father brought me into town. I used to watch them, but if I got too close, they looked at me like I was some sort of oddity.” She stared at the thick velvet of her gown. “I’m an outsider. I never truly fit in as a tribal woman; I knew that. It was one of the reasons I came here, to a place where I have family. But I don’t fit in here either. And if I have any chance of gaining my mother’s love, I have to learn to be like her.”

Matthew raised a brow. “I have met many women who swore they would never be like their mother.”

“But I want to be like her! I want her grace and her refinement! And even if I didn’t want that, don’t you see, every woman has to have somebody to measure herself against.”

He brushed a long curl gently behind the tiny shell of her ear, the touch like fire to his skin. “But you knew your father. Not many women are lucky enough to have a close relationship with their father.”

“Yes! And I loved him dearly. But a woman identifies with her mother.”

Matthew had thought that somehow she seemed different when he saw her again in America. When he met her in Africa she was scrappy and fearless and spoke her mind. But here the wildness was tamped down, muted, as if she had put pieces of who she really was and who she wanted to be in a bowl and stirred them up. Only the mix wasn’t smooth like batter, more like oil and vinegar that separated no matter how many times you stirred.

He thought again how he didn’t think she could fit in to this world.

Or if he wanted her to.

He wanted her like she was in Africa. Wild and free.

He could no longer deny that he wanted her. To lose himself in her body. But he didn’t want her for his own. He had meant what he had said to his mother. He had no interest in marrying again. Not Finnea Winslet. Or perhaps especially not Finnea Winslet. He had given his heart once before, and he had the scars to show for it. He would not lose his heart again.

The clock tolled the hour, each bong resonating through the house, the sound seeming to swell beneath the skies that were rapidly growing murky, closing in the windows.

With a shake of his head, his face darkened. “Sometimes there are circumstances beyond your control that people will never be able to embrace. You should accept that fact.”

“My mother isn’t like that! She can’t be! I’m her daughter!”

But he wouldn’t let it go. “Has she seen beyond the girl from Africa yet?”

“No. But only because there is nothing more to see yet.” She stepped closer. “You will teach me to be more. I have to make my mother proud. And the only way to do that is for your lessons to work.”

He stared at her long and hard, watching as the darkness flared in her eyes, and he finally understood that he truly couldn’t turn his back on her—just as he couldn’t in the jungle.

He nearly laughed his dismay but cursed instead. Gruffly, he pulled her close and pressed his forehead to hers. “All right, we’ll see what we can do.”

Chapter Eight

He slipped inside as quietly as a thief. The moon was high and full, lighting his way. All was silent except for the rhythmic tick of clocks scattered about the house.

He didn’t hesitate in the foyer; he went straight to the stairs, the sound of his boots muffled by the thick carpet runner. At the top, he paused and listened. But still he heard no sound. No one was awake.

Heading down the hall, his heart began to race. He told himself to turn back, but he needed to see her.

When he came to her room, he turned the knob and the door clicked open. Moonlight drifted through the high windows, and he could see that she slept.

Careful not to wake her, he crossed the floor, then silently lowered himself into the chair next to her bed. She lay curled on her side. He took in her delicate face, soft in sleep, and her hands, fingers slightly curled. He wished he could cradle her to his heart, feel her arms wrap around his neck as she squeezed him tight. But he remained silent. It was enough just to see her. To be close.

“I love you, Mary,” he whispered, willing her to hear him in some recess of her mind.

He settled back in the chair, unwilling to leave just yet, needing to watch over his child in the only way that was left to him.

She sighed in her sleep, but she didn’t roll away. Only then did Matthew feel peace, sweet and intense, settle over him.

Chapter Nine

Lessons began in earnest.

Each day Matthew taught Finnea what he could, while each night he slipped into Hawthorne House to sit with Mary as she slept. He brought little things with him. A new toy. A new book. All left behind when he made his way back through the darkened hallways before anyone woke.

After a week of this schedule, Matthew was exhausted, and Finnea wasn’t much further along in her quest than she had been at the beginning—though not for lack of trying on either of their parts. But if she was aware of that fact, she didn’t let on, showing up at noon each day with a precision he could set his pocket watch to, after having given who knew what excuse to her family as to where she was going. But Matthew didn’t ask what she told them. Like so many things regarding Finnea, he didn’t want to know.

Refusing to give up, they went over everything from sitting to standing, starting to stopping. When she sat, she reigned like a queen. When she stood, she commanded attention. A far cry from Boston’s dictates that a gentlewoman never demand anything, much less anyone’s focus.

When she spoke, her voice filled the room, and when she laughed her green eyes glittered like jewels. While everything she did would send proper Boston matrons fleeing, those very same traits made Matthew want her more.

As a result, the second their lesson for the day was done, he sent her on her way with a grim-lipped dismissal that had her brow furrowed in confusion. He hated the look, but it was either her on the front stoop with the door firmly between them or her beneath him, his body sinking into hers.

To make his frustration worse, he still hadn’t heard from his father.

On Thursday, the day before the lunch was supposed to take place, at noon precisely, Quincy showed Finnea into the study for the day’s lessons. Though not twenty minutes later, Matthew muttered a curse, swearing he would toss her out on her ear.

“I still don’t understand why it matters what the card looks like. A card is a card,” she snapped peevishly.

Matthew dropped his head onto the desk with a thud.

“Now really, Mr. Hawthorne, don’t you think you’re being a tad dramatic?”

Matthew raised his head and gave her a noxious glare. “I’m learning from you.”

Finnea straightened in her chair indignantly, but she didn’t respond.

Matthew’s expression was strained. “Can we continue now?”

“Of course,” she said with a haughty lift of her chin.

“The card you are referring to is more properly known as a calling card,” he explained tightly, “and I didn’t make the rules, I’m only trying to teach them to you.” He drew a deep breath. “Let me read the explanation again.”

Finnea rolled her eyes.

“Do you have a problem with that?” he groused.

“No, no, read away.”

Matthew eyed her with not a little menace in his heart, then flipped open a book he had found in a box in the attic. Our Deportment by John H. Young, A.M.

“I quote,” he began, ” ‘To the unrefined or underbred, the visiting card is but a trifling and insignificant bit of paper…’ ” Finnea snorted.

Matthew determinedly ignored her. ” ‘… but to the cultured disciple of social law, it conveys a subtle and unmistakable intelligence.’ “

“All right, all right, I got that part. I’m a heathen unless I carry a card.”

“A calling card.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Tomorrow remind me to deal with polite forms of conversation.”

“I will. No doubt you could benefit from a lesson or two,” she replied with a scowl.

His jaw muscle ticked. He counted to ten, then back again. “Now, for folding the calling card.”

“Are you saying that not only do I have to leave a card, but I have to fold it, too?”

“Yes,” he stated, a sharp pain beginning to stab in his temple—a pain that had nothing to do with his injuries and everything to do with the irritating woman who called herself a student. “If you leave the card in person,” he explained through gritted teeth, “you should turn a corner down. As an example, if the call is made on all or at least several members of the household, the card is folded in the middle. If you’re calling for a simple visit, you fold the right-hand upper corner. If you’re calling for some sort of felicitation, fold the left-hand upper corner. A condolence call, the lower—”

“Stop!” she screeched, slapping her hands over her ears. “I can’t take any more!”

“Neither can I.” He slammed the book shut, then pushed up from the table.

“Where are you going?” she demanded, her elbows still on the table, her hands still covering her ears as she peered up at him.

“Away.”

Her hands came down and slapped against the table. “But we haven’t finished!”

“But we are finished, Miss Winslet, and if you don’t leave now and give me a chance to regain what little good humor I have left these days, I might be inclined to be finished permanently,” he warned.

“That is not fair!”

He slashed her a crafty look. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that life isn’t fair?”

“You can’t quit now,” she cried out, leaping up from the table.

His raised brow flattened, and he heaved a weary sigh. “And why is that?”

Suddenly she dropped her gaze to the floor, shuffled her feet, and bit her lip. “Because you promised to discuss my walk.”

“Your walk? What are you talking about?”

Her head shot up. “Yesterday! When I was leaving, remember? You said I walked like a horse.”

Matthew grimaced. “Oh, that.”

“Yes, oh that! And you said we would deal with that another day. Well, this is another day, and I refuse to go another second without knowing what I am doing wrong.”

He had said she walked like a horse, but only because he had been badgered enough for one day with questions about etiquette and the reasoning behind it that didn’t have answers. At least there were no answers of which he was aware.

A woman sat up straight… because.

A woman put her ankles together rather than crossing her legs… because.

A woman never spoke to a man who was not first introduced to her by someone else under any circumstances… because.

Everything was just because. How was he supposed to know why women were supposed to do the senseless things they did?

He didn’t like the fact that she had caused him to question yet another facet of the life he had lived so happily before the accident. And when she had reminded him that she would be back the next day, his mood had grown less than charitable.

“What kind of a horse?” she persisted in all seriousness, breaking into his thoughts. “A stock horse, an old swaybacked horse?” She groaned. “A clompy old dray horse?”

Instantly, the image of a massive, huge-footed dray horse came to mind, and he chuckled. “Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of a racehorse, if you must know.” And it was true.

She moved like the wind, a wisp beyond reach. Like a fast-moving storm or a whispered breath against skin—depending on the day and the depths of darkness that scudded through her eyes. To a man, it was stunning to watch her. But to Boston society, she simply walked much too fast.

It was one of the many things that made her so fascinating.

One of the many things she wanted to change. Though why she wanted to change so badly, he wasn’t altogether certain. Was it simply because she wanted acceptance from her mother? He had the feeling that there was more to it than that.

What was that piece to her that he sensed but could never grasp? Or put into words? That piece that somehow seemed to be the key to both of them?

He didn’t like the thought, never did when he felt they were tangled together inextricably.

“What do you mean, a racehorse?” she demanded, her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“You move too fast.”

Her suspicion turned glum. “Oh yes. I know I do, though even when I think I’ve slowed down, my grandmother gives me that displeased look that says I haven’t.”

“Slow down, yes. But it goes beyond that. Think of it as carrying yourself. Walking into a room like you are a gift to all those present. A vision to behold.”

She gave an unladylike snort. “Gift? To all those present? I think not. I might be a vision, but as far as Nester is concerned, the vision is a nightmare.”