Legacy (9 page)

'Are you afraid of him?'

He nodded, but without losing a bit of his composure. 'I'd be a fool to say I wasn't. Sam Rawlings has a bad, bad temper, and he has the town's law in his back pocket. Why do you think Brad didn't go to the police when he caught that man spiking his logs? But we won't talk about that business any further.'

He swirled his wine and looked at it for a moment. 'I said this afternoon that I didn't want those two dragging us down with them.'

His eyes met mine. And then the warmth of desire I felt for him earlier now suddenly returned. I wanted to touch him. My body ached with a longing to be caressed, and for a moment I felt shamelessly, wantonly excited to be alone with this man in this room.

He was watching me. Could he see my excitement?

I blushed. 'What were we talking about? Something made me forget. I think I'm a bit tired . . .'

Unsteadily, I came over to the sofa and sat beside him, telling myself that I would only stay for a short while. I would excite him, too, as he had excited me, but then I would surely go . . .

'Yes, where were we?' he was saying. 'I seem to recall a conversation about announcing our engagement at Brad's ball next week. As I recall, you were against the idea, being rather severe about it, too, I might add.'

He looked so sure of himself, so confident of his own powers! It would be a pleasure to watch that cool self-assurance turn into passionate longing!

'Oh?' I asked archly as I drew just a little closer to him. 'And have you anything to say in your own defense?'

'Well, actually, by now it's all for nothing. Brad says I've got to be in Harrisburg all next week. I probably won't even be back until the morning after. So I couldn't have taken you anyway.'

He smiled, reaching out to kiss me, and I let him come near me, let him touch my shoulders with his warm hands and draw me up to him, let him kiss me fully, lingering, savoring my lips like a sweet and heady wine.

'Though God knows we ought to tell both of those old fools just exactly . . .'

'Let's not talk now, Steven, shall we?' My lips moved against the smoothness of his cheek as I whispered. I breathed in the nearness of him, the, warm, masculine scent of his body that enfolded me like an intoxicating cloud. Again I felt the longing to touch him, to awaken his passion as he had awakened mine.

He gripped my shoulders, his powerful fingers pressing into my flesh. He covered my mouth with his, and then again came the fierce pressure, the hard, sweet pangs that sent fires racing through me and blotted out all else. I wanted him with a certainty that made me tremble. Oh, I wanted him. The need for his touch, the heat of him, yes, all of him, was suddenly overpowering.

I pressed him close to me, holding him tighter and tighter as I tried to will him away, wishing to escape somehow from this fierce intensity, but the longing only grew. And then he was lifting me up in his firm embrace, and I opened my eyes to see that his own were lit with the same urgent desire. Oh, and I have won, I thought, but the words came faint and small.

Steven made love to me that night, and I thrilled to see him moan with his own pleasure. He brought me again to the brink of ecstasy, holding me helpless, shuddering, and I yearned for him never to release me. I was his, utterly, every fiber open to his touch, his caress, his demand.

Yet something brought me back to my senses several hours before dawn. Silently, under the stars and the setting moon, Steven led me home so that I would awaken in my own bed that Sunday morning.

Chapter Four

When I did awaken Sunday, I had to wash and dress hurriedly so as not to miss church. I was still in a half-awake daze, still hugging the memory of last night to me in its warm, secret glow. I had time for a sweet roll and coffee in the kitchen. Then it was out to the open carriage to join my parents that lovely spring morning for the ride to the new cathedral.

Fourth Street, the 'millionaires' row of houses', looked especially grand in the spring. The cherry blossoms were still pink and white, the dogwoods were in bloom, and everywhere, it seemed, there were azaleas, scattered splashes of red and violet beside the huge houses. The slender flowering trees, spaced apart on the wide lawns, muted the bright azaleas with their cool pastels and reminded me of a Japanese watercolor in their soft tranquillity.

I rode to church that Sunday with no feelings of regret, even though I knew what havoc my secret might have caused. Father has sworn to kill Steven, I thought as I looked at him there beside me, so proud and prosperous, smiling and doffing his silk hat to those we passed along the way. Would Father really commit murder? Well, he would not find out about Steven until I was certain he was ready to accept him. That was all. I felt so good that morning, as if I were seeing the world with new eyes. I knew I would be able to arrange things so that there would be no violence between Steven and Father. And as we alighted from our carriage and walked up the wide stone steps of the church, I fantasized that one day the bitter rivalry between our two families might end here, with a wedding.

Throughout the prayers and the lovely ritual of the service I thought of last night and of the future. Was it wrong, what Steven and I had done? The question was familiar, and the answer was the same one I had always known. Nothing that I did out of love for Steven was wrong. I felt certain of that, even when I repeated the prayer that said the remembrance of my sins was grievous unto me and the burden of them was intolerable.

Towards the end of the service, though, I began to think more clearly. I was sitting in our family pew, the third row back from the altar on the right of the aisle, where Reverend Scott was almost directly above us in his marble pulpit. I looked up at him, splendid in his white-and-gold robes, his manner bold and confident, his brown eyes and russet hair shining. I have no idea at all what he was talking about that Sunday morning, but as he spoke it came to me what I would have to do, as clearly as if someone had whispered the message into my ear. It would be difficult and painful, but I would have to stay away from Steven's lovemaking.

Everything had changed between the two of us since I had come home. I had wanted Steven to take me last night, but was that love enough? I did not know. I had been strongly attracted, so physically drawn to him that I ached to remember it. But Steven wanted me to give him my life. What would our future be like if we married? Our times with each other had been all secret lovers' meetings. Would the magic fade when our times were no longer secret? We had never talked about the things we would do in the future. I could not risk everything until I knew that I would be happy with Steven outside of the bedroom, as well.

'Are you all right, child?' Mother whispered. I realized that I was standing for the recessional hymn without having my hymnbook open.

But I felt better, having made a choice and set my mind on what I was going to do. That afternoon, as I set out for my carriage ride to Dr. McKay's clinic, I was still in a holiday mood. I came around to the front of the carriage outside our house and looked up at the startled Jared. 'I should have been furious with you, Jared,' I told the flabbergasted coachman, 'but I'm not. You were only doing your job to report on me.'

'Yes, miss,' he said, not knowing, I think, whether to smile politely or not. As I stepped up into the carriage, helped up by Perkins, our butler, Jared was still shaking his head in amazement.

We drove away, and passing along the row of mansions for the second time that day, I noticed Steven's - a deep, red-brown frame house with many gables. I noted that it was the only one without flowers or cultivated shrubbery around the lawn. Only a dark green hedge grew around the sides of the property, leaving the front plain and bare.

Where was Steven now? I wondered. Probably on his way to Harrisburg. He would come to me soon enough. I was certain of that. The sight of the house reawakened the memory of last night, but I would have to think of other things now.

As we rode, we swung down closer to the river and drove along the streets where the mill workers lived with their families. These houses were smaller, of course, but almost every one had its own front yard and front porch, where I could see children at play. Fathers, many of them in their Sunday black vests, sat out on the porch rocker awaiting Sunday dinner. Which of these men, I wondered, worked for my father, and which for Brad Graybar? I knew that at least some of them were likely to work for other mill owners such as Justin McKay, but the mills owned by the Rawlings and the Graybar families accounted for three of every four mill jobs in Grampian. That was three thousand jobs during the cutting season, which had now begun. Many of these men counted on making enough in the mills to last through the winter until the next cutting season, though I knew that most would leave their families after work slacked off in the fall and head for the lumber camps, where they would join the gangs of woodsmen in the dangerous work of cutting the logs and skidding them with horses and sledges over the cold, wet ground and down to the river.

Were these the men I would be meeting this afternoon at the clinic, these hard-working family men? Or would most of them be roughnecks from the barracks of cheap rooms and hotels that lay further along the river, closer to the mills? These were a rough and brawling lot, most of them dirty and unkempt. We saw them at their worst some Saturday nights if we drove into town to see a play or an opera, for the taprooms were not far away. Hundreds of the 'jam-crackers' and 'boom-rats' wandered through the muck of the streets when they had drunk so much that no saloon keeper would serve them. Then they would mill about outside, looking for a fight. And when our carriage rolled by we could see them cursing us, their red eyes glaring and their wet mouths gaping. Once from out of the mob someone had thrown a glass at Father just as he was getting out of the carriage and knocked his silk hat to the ground. Father picked the hat up, mud and all, and shouldered into the crowd until he found whoever it was who had thrown the glass. From the carriage I could not see what he did, and Father would not tell me. I only heard a terrible scream and saw a man in torn black overalls, writhing in pain, being carried away to one of the dark clapboard houses.

Today these grey wooden buildings were quiet. Only a few men slouched in doorways, and an occasional woman stood near one of the closed dark taprooms where men drank, even though illegally, on Sundays. So, too, closer to the river, the mills were quiet. Their great fires would not be raging until 5 a.m. tomorrow. The huge steam saws would not move until a short while after that, when the first log of the day's thousands would be pushed through to be cut apart and added to the huge walls of stacked boards, some fifty feet high, and to the great mountains of sawdust that rose high beside the back of each mill. In the winter this sawdust would give the poor of the town some inexpensive fuel.

Each of the mills and its nearby lumber yard was quiet as I had passed by. Yet tomorrow these silent streets would be swarming with activity as men stacked the boards fresh from the mill and prepared thousands of others to be shipped all over the country.

Inside Dr. McKay's clinic there was very little quiet. Some of the men had seen me getting out of the carriage, and I could hear them calling from their windows as I walked into the neat, plain reception area, where there was some sitting-room furniture and a desk.

The voices still came from the rooms upstairs.

'Oooh, will ya look at that!'

'Hey, now, ya just come to the right place, honey!'

'Don't listen to him! He ain't got...'

I thought for a moment that perhaps I should have worn a sun bonnet and chosen a jacket that did not show off my figure to such advantage. But it was clearly too late to do anything about that now.

Dr. McKay was not available, so a nurse in dark grey dress showed me the room of the men that I was to read to. Amanda Scott had not arrived yet. I did not wait in the first-floor area for her. The nurse explained that several of the patients in the closed ward nearby might have smallpox. So up the stairs I went and was soon in a large, airy, whitewashed room with seventeen beds and as many lumbermen, most of whom were very much awake.

The cries began again as soon as they saw me.

'Oooh, that's appetizin'!' 'Over here now, honey . . .'