Sweet Everlasting (20 page)

“Why? This present better not be alive.” He was thinking of the glowworm she’d brought him last week, another “close-your-eyes” kind of present.

“No, this is a gift for your nose. Come on, close your eyes.”

Grumbling, he obeyed. He heard her rustling in the cloth sack again, and a moment later he felt something tickle the end of his nose.

“Guess what it is,” she challenged.

He inhaled something tangy-sweet and pungent. “Mmmm. I’ll say … white birch?”

“No.”

“Ivy?”

She tsked again. “No.”

“I give up.”

“Sassafras. Like it?”

“Mm hm.”

“Now, what’s this?”

Something sweeter this time. “A rose?”

She snorted. “No, bayberry. I guess you can open your eyes.” Her way of saying he’d never guess the rest.

She laid something on his palm, and he blinked down at a motley collection of leaves and twigs and wildflowers tied together at the stalks and spread out like a fan. “Well, look at this. It’s … um …” He didn’t have the slightest idea.

“An olfactory bouquet,” she enlightened him. “Sassafras and bayberry, and this is sweetfern—smell. And this is spicebush, here’s yarrow, and this is catnip.

He sniffed each one, humming appreciatively. “Very nice.”

“I used to leave them sometimes for old Mrs. Urquehart until she passed away. She was blind,” she added in explanation.

“Left them for her?”

“In her door.” Her sweet smile turned a trifle wistful. “Well, I couldn’t talk and she couldn’t see, so there didn’t seem any point in trying to make friends.”

He touched the back of her hand with his finger.

“Do you think she knew who was leaving her the bouquets?”

“Oh, no, she couldn’t have, she didn’t know me at all.” She cocked her head to one side. “Listen. Hear it?”

He heard a bird, making a gurgling sound somewhere on the other side of the meadow.

“It’s a redwing.” She leaned toward him. “The males take more than one wife, you know,” she said in confidential tones.

“Why, those heathenish rascals.” Diverted, he watched her unlace her shoes and shuck them off, toe to heel, then matter-of-factly strip off her cotton stockings. He caught a flash of cream-white calf, long and slim and startling in a bar of golden sunlight. Then she shoved her skirts back down and curled her toes, which were long and bony, into the cool grass, sighing with contentment.

He swallowed, and popped a handful of blackberries, still warm from her pocket, into his mouth. “Got a letter from my mother today,” he mentioned.

“You did?” Her face lit up with interest. “That’s nice.”

“Ah, well. Not altogether.”

“Oh, no? Is she sick?”

“Mother is never sick. Did you bring your scissors today, Carrie?” She nodded. “Do you still want to cut my hair?”

“Yes, if you like.” She ducked her head, coloring with pleasure, and Tyler got that fresh, cool, heartracing feeling in his chest that assailed him at odd times in her company.

She found the scissors in her bag while he took off his collar and stuck it in his trouser pocket. He crossed his long legs, and she came up on her knees beside him. “I didn’t bring a comb,” she explained shyly as she pushed her fingers through his hair to straighten it. The soft, soothing sensation made him close his eyes and moan. “Feel good?” she murmured.

“Mmmm. Don’t let me fall asleep on you again, Carrie.” He opened one eye to see her smiling. “Did I ever apologize for that?”

“No, you didn’t, and it was very rude. Here I go for years without saying a word, and the first person I finally talk to starts snoring in the middle of my life story.”

That tickled him. He started to chuckle, and she leaned against his shoulder to laugh with him; the sound of their hilarity flushed a bird out of the sycamore tree—a warbler, Carrie guessed, craning her neck to follow its flight, maybe a yellowthroat. Bees and crickets droned in the clover. Crows cawed crankily, skulking along a line of trees at the meadow’s edge. Tyler could easily have fallen asleep under the gentle ministering of her hands, but presently she broke the contented silence with two soft-voiced, uncharacteristically personal questions. “What’s your mother like, Ty? Don’t you like her?”

He smiled. “Yes, I like her very much. But she’s what’s called a ‘formidable woman.’ If I let my guard down for half a minute, she’d eat me alive.” Carrie’s fingers stilled; he turned his head and saw her look of amazement. “I take it your mother never tried to gobble you up,” he said blandly.

“My mother? Oh no, my mother was
wonderful.”

“Lucky girl—being eaten isn’t any fun at all. Carolivia swallowed my father whole. All he wanted to do was read books and write scholarly papers nobody would ever read, but she had other plans.”

She went back to cutting his hair. “What plans?”

He closed his eyes, savoring the flutter of Carrie’s breath behind his ear, soft as a caress; the elusive fragrance she used activated another pleasant chest spasm. “My mother was a Morrell before she became a Wilkes. Do you know the Morrell name, Carrie?” She shook her head. “It’s famous, at least in Philadelphia.”

“What does it stand for?”

“Money,” he smiled. “Specifically,
old
money. The Morrell Company is one of the oldest shipping lines in the country; it imports and exports commodities all over the world. When my parents married, the idea was that my father would learn the business and eventually become its head. But he was completely hopeless, a dreamer instead of a schemer. My mother, on the other hand, was a natural. So the inevitable happened: he became a lovable figurehead, and Carolivia ran the company.”

“ ‘Carolivia,’ ” she repeated, drawing out all the vowel sounds. “How important it sounds. Is your father still alive?”

“He died when I was fourteen.”

She made a sympathetic sound. Because it was Carrie, he knew it came from the heart, no reflexive gesture of compassion. “And now,” she guessed, “your mother wants
you
to be the head of the company.”

“She’s given up on that, although it obsessed her for years. No, she’s finally become reconciled to the deplorable fact that I’m a doctor. Now she has something else in mind for me.”

“What?”

“She wants me to be president.”

“President? Of the company, the—”

“Of the United States.”

Carrie sat back on her heels and gaped at him.

“Well, I can see I won’t be able to count on
your
vote.”

“Oh—no—you’d make a
wonderful
president, I’m—I just—”

He laughed at her. “Relax, Carrie, I’m not running.”

“Oh.” She laughed, too. “But—what a strange thing, Ty, for her to have in her mind! Isn’t it? I don’t know, but I thought presidents were always senators first, or lawyers at least, or generals—”

“Usually, yes. But both the Wilkes and Morrell names are very old and very well connected, politically and socially. Stranger things have happened, as Mother likes to say. And her master plan begins on a smaller scale, with me being elected to something in Philadelphia first and then Congress, she doesn’t care which House. You’re not cutting too much off that side, are you?”

“What? No, I’m almost finished.” She was leaning close, frowning with concentration, the tip of her pink tongue between her teeth. The breeze blew a long strand of her hair across his throat, and he wondered what it would be like to trace the delicate outline of her ear with his fingers, or his lips. She bent closer to blow hairs off the back of his neck, and his whole body tightened.

“And so—when she writes you letters, it makes you feel sad? Because you love her but you don’t think you can ever please her, not if you please yourself at the same time?”

“That’s it,” he said softly, half his mind on what she was saying, the other half on the shapes her mouth made when she spoke.

She shook her head, perplexed. “But how could she not be proud of you—you’re a
doctor.”

He chuckled; she might as well have said, “You’re a
god
,” her voice sounded so awed. “But my mother thinks of herself as part of an enlightened aristocracy, Carrie. She wouldn’t admit it—she thinks she’s a Republican—but personal power is important to her. She wants her only son to be a leader of men, she wants the Wilkes name to be venerated. Power, glory, noblesse oblige—you can’t achieve them by taking care of sick people, so she doesn’t value that profession.”

Carrie thought about that in silence. “Does your sister have to fight against her all the time, too?”

“No, Abbey stays out of it, above it, I’m not quite sure how. I suppose she got the best of both my parents—my mother’s strength and my father’s gentleness.”

“But you’re strong. And gentle.” She’d laid her scissors in her lap; she was resting her hand on his shoulder. “I think you’re the kindest man I’ve ever known. I wish …”

She didn’t finish. Her gray eyes were wide, luminous with emotion, and utterly without guile. He couldn’t look away. He didn’t ask her what she wished because he already knew, and it was time to end this risky, tantalizing moment. There were many reasons why an emotional entanglement with Carrie was out of the question, and remembering them had always—eventually—swamped his desire for her at dangerous times like this. She was too young for him, much too innocent; something from the past had wounded her, and he couldn’t take responsibility for her; they came from different worlds, and one day, perhaps soon, he would go back to his and leave her here.

But she tempted him so powerfully. He reached out to touch the whitish wildflower, wilted now, she’d threaded through the buttonhole of her new dress, beneath the low collar. Her fingers on his shoulder tensed. He drew the flower out and brought it to his nose. A revelation. “This,” he murmured wonderingly. “Carrie, this is your scent.”

“Honeysuckle,” she confirmed, lips curving in a slow, unknowingly seductive smile. “My mother taught me to use it. I put some here, and here. “She touched the back of one ear, then the other. “Do you like it?”

Her shy coquetry was new and disarming, and her throaty voice was devastating. He slid his fingers along her jaw to the back of her neck and bent toward her, nuzzling wisps of her hair aside with his lips and breathing in the faint, subtle fragrance that was part honeysuckle, part Carrie. “I like it better on you.”

“Oh, Ty,” she whispered, and closed her eyes. She started to tremble. “You can kiss me if you want to.”

The sun gilded her hair and the fragile line of her cheekbone; her soft, delectable mouth was an invitation he was weary of refusing. He grazed the pad of his thumb across her lips. Her lashes fluttered, dainty and nervous, casting elegant shadows on her skin. “Carrie,” he breathed, “how beautiful you are.”

She opened her eyes—and the undisguised wanting in them finally brought him back to earth. When she touched his cheek, he took her hand away and kissed her fingertips, then straightened away from her. “But if I kiss you,” he said, in a rough approximation of his normal voice, “I’ll be late. You wouldn’t want all those swollen Shindeldeckers on your conscience, would you?”

For a long moment she didn’t return his determinedly lighthearted smile; she studied him gravely, alert for the faintest sign of rejection. She was too intelligent for guessing games;
words
were what were needed between them now, if he was to be honest with her at all. But he didn’t know his own mind well enough to explain himself to her, and all the reasons he could give for turning away from her would hurt her. So he didn’t speak. And when she finally smiled—because he’d reassured her, or because he’d taught her to play his game?—he knew a coward’s relief.

She put her stockings and shoes on in silence, gathered her belongings, and rose gracefully to her feet. He grasped the hand she held out for him and stood with her. As soon as he was upright, she dropped his hand and moved back a step. She swatted a fallen lock of hair back over her shoulder and cocked one eloquent eyebrow at him. “Of course, I’m new at it and maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t help thinking.”

“What, Carrie?”

“That kissing must be like anything else—quick sometimes, other times slow. You must’ve had in mind the slow kind, Ty, but to tell you the truth I wouldn’t have minded a quick one. Those Shindeldecker children wouldn’t even have noticed.”

She sent him a twinkling look, spun on her toes, and danced away across the wildflower meadow.

“T
O YOU,
C
ARRIE.
T
O
the start of your new career.”

She lifted her glass and touched it to Tyler’s mug of beer. The pride in his eyes warmed her all the way through to her bones; a glass of French champagne couldn’t have tasted any sweeter than Erma Stambaugh’s ice-cold buttermilk did right at that moment.

“Well, look at this, now. What’re you two celebrating?”

She glanced up to see Mrs. Stambaugh herself, carrying a wide black tray with two plates of food on it—ham steak for Ty, honey-dipped chicken for Carrie; “honey-dipt,” the menu read—and smiling at them while she tried to pretend she wasn’t wild to know what they were doing together in her restaurant. Other people were wondering it, too, Carrie could tell from the stares they’d gotten when they’d come in, and were still getting when people thought they weren’t looking. Well, they couldn’t be any more surprised than she was, for she’d never been in a restaurant before, and now here she was in Pennicle’s, Wayne’s Crossing’s finest, at a table with a white cloth on it, sitting across from—this was the best part—Tyler A. Wilkes, M.D.! She folded her hands in her lap and squeezed tight, nearly quaking with excitement.

“We’re celebrating the imminent purchase and publication of Carrie’s new book,” Tyler spoke up, answering Mrs. Stambaugh’s question.

Mrs. Stambaugh used the minute it took to set their plates down to get her face in order, and say with less astonishment than she surely must’ve been feeling, “Carrie’s what?”

Ty beamed across the table at her, and Carrie could feel her cheeks getting hot from pleasure and embarrassment. “You mean you didn’t know Carrie’s an author?”

“Why, I declare. No, I can’t say I did. What kind of a book did you write, honey?” She rested her hands on her big hips and looked at Carrie as if she’d never seen her before—as if she wasn’t the mute girl she passed in church every Sunday, or the shy, backward girl her son Carl used to throw mud balls at every day after school.