The Forgotten Room (33 page)

J
ULY 1920

Lucy

“Why would you think Harry Pratt was your father?” Lucy looked at John in confusion. “I know you said your father changed his name, but . . .”

But you knew your father,
she had almost said. John knew who his father had become; he didn't know who he had been.

Lucy felt like the Red Queen in
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
, believing five impossible things before breakfast. Harry Pratt, whom she'd believed to be her father, wasn't. Her mother, whom she'd always believed was a lady, had been a servant in this house.

And John, who came from a thoroughly different world, a world away, might be Harry Pratt's son.

“This is his work. I would know it anywhere.” Bemusedly, John looked at the sketch in his hands and then up at Lucy. “And they're all signed H. Pratt.”

Lucy dropped the detective's report on the top of the Chinese cabinet. “So this is really your house.”

“No,” said John, shuffling the papers together. “My home is in Charleston. But this does explain why Prunella Pratt was selling my father's paintings.”

Lucy looked at him in surprise. “She's your aunt. Do you realize? Prunella Pratt is your aunt.”

Not hers. And for that she could be grateful. It meant her father, her warm, loving father, was hers. There was no shadow marring her love for him or his for her.

And if it meant she didn't belong to the contentious, quarreling Pratts, that was even better, no matter how much she might once have believed their world preferable to hers.

John rose gracefully to his feet, the sheaf of drawings in his hands. “No. My father ran away from all that—with reason, I'm guessing. And maybe part of that reason was Prunella.”

Lucy bit her lip. “I think I can tell you the reason.”

There is nothing for me here without you.

She took a step forward and then stopped, her attention arrested by the drawing John was holding. “That's my necklace. And my mother.”

But it was her mother as Lucy had never seen her, never imagined she could look. Her long hair was free, falling down her bare back. Lucy's mother, always so carefully buttoned, boned, and stayed, was naked. Her nudity ought to have been jarring, but it was overshadowed by the expression on her face, an expression of transcendent joy.

“She was beautiful,” said John quietly.

Lucy had never realized that before. Her mother was handsome, true, but she had so drawn into herself that it rendered her looks unremarkable, part of the background like a murky wallpaper.

“She was happy,” Lucy murmured, and with it came a spark of anger. Why had her mother never looked like that for her?

Because all her happiness had left with Harry Pratt.

“When—” It took Lucy a moment to find her tongue. “When did your father go south?”

“He left New York in January of 1893,” said John promptly. “That was part of family legend.” His expression turned wry. “I just never imagined him leaving anything quite like this.”

“He left because of my mother.” Lucy's throat felt very dry. “I found a letter, in the wall. There's a hidey-hole, behind the bricks. He says he can't live here without her.”

John set the drawings gently down on top of the cabinet. “Why did she leave him? I take it she did leave him.”

“I don't know,” said Lucy despairingly. “She never told me.”

She wished, now, that they had had that sort of closeness, that she could have asked her mother. Not only asked, but listened, without judgment. At the time—no, Lucy could see why her mother had never told her. She had been too much her father's daughter; she would have been furious to know that her mother had betrayed her father, even in thought.

I'm ready to listen now.

But her mother wasn't there to tell.

“Well,” said John, “I, for one, am grateful.”

Lucy cast him a startled look. “That my mother broke your father's heart?”

John took Lucy's cold hands in his own. “Without that, I wouldn't be here. And neither would you.”

Something about the way he looked at her made the color rise in her cheeks.

“Whatever they may have suffered, whatever wrongs they may have done each other, we're here now. All of this”—John's gesture encompassed the pile of sketches, the tattered chaise longue, the bright sunshine dappling the sheepskin rug—“it brought me to you. And you to me.”

There was a dark power in his words, an unmistakable invitation that made Lucy's collar suddenly feel too tight, the fine linen of her blouse heavy against her heated skin.

This, she realized. This was what her mother had felt for Harry Pratt. This irresistible pull. The longing for skin on skin, here, in this quiet room, where the sounds of the city were dull and dim far below, alone in the dusty sunshine, rainbows sparkling around them, the room encasing them like a jewel box.

“What would they say to see us here?” Lucy's voice sounded rusty to her ears.

There was only a foot of space between them, so little space. All it would take would be one step, one movement.

“They would most likely tell us to use our time more wisely than they did,” said John raggedly.

But he made no move toward her, just gazed and gazed, with a look of almost painful longing on his face.

“It's at times like this,” he said softly, “that I wish I had inherited my father's talent. I would give anything to be able to draw you, there on the hearthrug, like that.”

“Like this?” Feeling bold, Lucy undid one of the buttons on her blouse.

John drew in a deep, shuddering breath, his eyes riveted to her fingers on the button. “Just like that.”

“And this?” Lucy felt a surge of power as she undid another button and watched him swallow hard, his hands clenched at his sides.

“Lucy.” John spoke with difficulty. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. “Lucy, I don't—”

“Want to take advantage of me?”

John nodded, wordlessly.

It was strangely easy to take that step, to bridge the distance between them. Lucy cradled his chin in her hands, feeling the
unfamiliar prickle of stubble against her palms, breathing in the smell of soap and leather, good clean smells, John smells.

“I love you,” Lucy said quietly. “I never thought I'd say it, but it's true. I can't imagine loving anyone as I love you. I—”

Whatever else she might have said was lost, as, with a low sound deep in his throat, John's arms clamped tight around her, his lips closing over hers with a fervent passion that said more than words just how he felt.

“I love you,” he whispered against her ear, her cheek, her jaw. “I love you, I love you.”

The world spun dizzily around her, all time reduced to that small, square room, to the space between John's arms, to the feel of his lips on her neck, her breast, his hands in her hair, the muscles in his back moving beneath her palms as she wrenched his shirt free of his trousers, slid her hands up in the space beneath the fabric, skin to skin at last, marveling in the new sensations, the feel of him, the closeness of him. Hers. He was hers and she was his, forever and ever and ever. Lucy knew it as surely as she knew her name, knew the goodness of him, the rightness of what they were doing, a generation delayed.

Whatever her mother and Harry Pratt had lost, she and John had gained, and she would hold on to it, Lucy thought fiercely, digging her fingers into John's back, the pressure of his chest against hers driving the ruby pendant against her breast.

Her blouse fell from her shoulders, her skirt slithered to the floor, leaving only her slip, silky against her legs.

“Lucy,” John breathed against her ear, and Lucy wrapped her arms around his neck, determined never to let him go.

Her hip bumped the Chinese chest and papers fluttered to the floor around them like so much confetti: Harry Pratt's letter; her mother with the ruby pendant and little else; the Pinkerton report, all meaningless now, just so much paper.

“Lucy. Lucy.” It took Lucy a moment to realize that John's tone had changed. He pulled away from her, his breath coming hard. “Before we go any further—there's something you should know.”

His hair was disarranged, his color high, his shirt half-undone, revealing a tanned chest covered with dark hair. He looked, thought Lucy giddily, like a man who had been thoroughly ravished.

“If it's the birds and the bees, Sissy Romich told me all about that in junior high.” Lucy put a hand to his chest, feeling his muscles contract beneath her touch, tracing her way up until she could feel the beating of his heart. Daringly, she said, “I could use some help with the practical application, though. I haven't—that is—”

John touched a finger gently to her cheek. “I know,” he said, and took a step back, away from her.

“But that doesn't matter. Why wait when—well, you know?” Lucy met his eyes frankly as she said it, even though she could feel herself blushing. Lucy Young, known as the girl who wouldn't. But with John, it felt right. Fumbling for the right words, Lucy rested her hands against his chest. “We're going to be together forever. What's a week more or less? If there are, well, um, consequences . . . well, it won't be that much time for people to count on their fingers.”

John pressed his eyes shut, as though he were in pain. “There's something else you need to know—Lucy, when I asked you to come to Charleston with me—well, there's a complication.”

His voice sounded so grim. Lucy froze, her hands on his chest. “A complication?”

“It doesn't change how I feel about you,” John said quickly. “Or that I want us to be together. Married. Eventually.”

“Eventually?” Lucy took a step back to see him better, but his dark face gave nothing away, nothing but a grim resignation that set alarm coursing through her. “Is it your mother? Your sister?”

John gave a brief, unhappy laugh. “I wish it were. No—it's my wife.”

“Your wife.” Lucy felt like she was falling, tumbling down, down, down. She reached out a hand to steady herself, the corner of the Chinese chest digging into her palm. “Your
wife
? You're . . . you're married?”

Please, please, let her have misheard, have misunderstood . . .

But John Ravenel was hanging his dark head, his expression somewhere between misery and shame. “Just before the war. Annabelle was one of my sister's friends. We'd gone out a time or two, nothing serious. But when the war came—I was so terrified at the thought of marching off into the unknown that—well, we seized the day, as they say. When Annabelle realized she was expecting, there was only one thing to be done.”

The ruby pendant was cold and heavy between Lucy's bare breasts. The flesh on her arms prickled. She felt suddenly cold, cold and very bare.

“You have a child?” Lucy wrapped her arms around herself, feeling as though she were caught in a nightmare, one of those nightmares where you find yourself naked in a public place, hearing horrible and impossible things.

Slowly, John nodded. “A son. Cooper. He's just turned two.” Beneath the sheepishness, there was no mistaking the pride in his voice. “He's a bright boy. Smart as a whip. But Annabelle and I—you have to understand, there's nothing there. Just Cooper. We lead separate lives.”

Lucy just stared at him, horror freezing her tongue. He was a married man. And he had never told her. He had let her go on believing he was free.

John was still speaking. “It will take a bit to get a divorce, but—”

“You wanted me to be your mistress. You were going to make me your mistress.”

As her mother had been Harry Pratt's. From the floor, her mother's youthful face gazed up at her in silent reproach.

“Not my mistress,” said John rapidly, reached for her. Lucy yanked away. “My wife. Just as soon as Annabelle agrees—”

“To a divorce.” The word was ugly on Lucy's tongue. She was shaking, shaking uncontrollably. One thing to go knowingly into an affair, but it was quite another to be tricked into it, to be made the other woman against one's will. If she had known—Lucy shied away from the thought. She hadn't. John hadn't told her. “Do you really think I would take your son's mother away from him?”

John looked slightly sheepish. “It's not as though you'd be taking her away from him. And Annabelle—Annabelle has a flame of her own. She's been discreet about it, but I don't think she'd be pining over me.”

Lucy just shook her head, feeling as though she'd been bludgeoned. “So two wrongs make it right?”

“No.” His voice was so warm, so sincere, that Lucy could feel herself weakening, could feel herself leaning toward him, yearning for the comfort of his arms, the press of his lips against the top of her head. For a brief, treacherous moment, she allowed herself the indulgence of letting his hands close around her elbows, sliding up her arms, let herself sway toward him as he said, in his low, deep drawl, “We're right, Lucy. You know that as well as I.”