To Love a Scoundrel (38 page)

Unable to fathom the kind of love a family could possess to be so completely accepting of a child born out of wedlock, Jewel turned her head and squeezed back a sudden rush of tears.

"Jewel darling?" Brent whispered softly as he closed the gap between them. "What is it, sweetheart? Please talk to me. Don't run away from me this time."

But her tears were gathering momentum. Afraid of making a fool of herself, she said, "I can't talk about this."

"But of course you can," he gently persisted as he took her shoulders in his hands and pulled her away from the chair. At that moment the moonlight caught the sparkle of dew on her cheeks, illuminated the trembling lips and eyes that sought to hide this sudden vulnerability from his gaze. "It's all right," he whispered. "Go ahead. Maybe crying will do you some good."

Jewel's eyes flashed opened, spilling their contents in a sudden rush as she insisted, "I don't cry. I
never
cry."

One corner of Brent's mouth curled up in a warm grin as he removed the toothpick and tossed it over the railing. "Come here, Jewel," he said tenderly, the words thick and dark. "Let me hold you while you don't cry."

And because she needed
something
from him at that moment, because her mind was too far in the past for rational thought in the present, she threw herself into his arms and allowed the tempest to run its course. After several minutes of tortured sobs and occasional whimpers, Jewel's humiliation and anger at this, her second bout of foolish weeping in less than a week, slowly evaporated along with her teardrops. Gathering herself, she drew comfort from Brent's strength and the depth of his compassion.

When she felt able to speak in complete sentences again, Jewel lifted her face off his damp shirt and sniffed. "I swear I'm really not one of those weepy females. I'm sorry if I—''

"Don't you dare apologize for having some honest emotions, little lady," he interrupted as he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and gave it to her. After waiting until she finished dabbing at her eyes and nose, he went on, choosing his words carefully, speaking in a voice that was almost a caress. "Please don't feel that I'm pushing you into a corner, but it would mean an awful lot to me if you'd tell me what that was all about."

Stifling a hiccup as she considered his request, she drew in a calming breath and offered something close to the truth. "You wouldn't understand, Brent, not coming from a family like yours. You couldn't possibly imagine what it was like being raised in a home where you were thought of as something less than human."

Jewel dried yet another trickle of tears before she finished what she had to say. "I was treated like a repulsive aberration, bound to that... that''—she swallowed hard, nearly unable to speak the word as she thought of the Flannerys—"
family
only by the accident of my birth. I'm surprised they didn't drop me on a stranger's doorstep. At times, I wish they had."

Brent felt as if his gut had collided with the hub of the ship's wheel. His breath came in a short gasp as he whispered, "Good Lord, Jewel. I had no idea."

"You still don't," she said, curiously willing to share some of her past with him. Her strength renewed, Jewel stepped away from him and resumed her trek around the summerhouse. "How do you think I learned to play billiards?" she went on, her fists clenched. "It sure as hell wasn't because someone took the time to teach me."

Resisting the urge to follow her, to take her back into his arms and comfort and soothe her, he kept his silence, hoping she would feel secure enough about him to reveal more of herself.

She did. "I taught myself, that's how," she replied, answering her own question with more pride than hurt in her voice. "Whenever Grandfather Flannery had guests, whether they were business associates or members of my own family, I was hidden away in the bowels of his mansion. More often than not, I chose to disappear into the billiard room."

Unable to follow her logic, he asked, "Why did you hide if it upset you to do so?''

"I guess I didn't make myself clear," she said, kicking at a wooden post as she passed by. "I wasn't given a choice, Brent. I was ordered to vanish."

At his expression of disbelief, she balled her fists and closed her eyes. Memories of long ago came flooding back, images of Lemuel and his spiteful eyes, Lemuel and the judgmental tone in his voice whenever he spoke to her. The man was fuelled by hatred. He thrived on watching her cringe whenever he rapped his cane against the countertop. "You're long overdue for a good cuffing, you misbegotten daughter of Satan. I'll show you what happens if you behave improperly around me, I will." he would say, rationalizing yet another unjustified beating.

Lemuel's image was suddenly so clear that she could almost feel the ivory cane biting into her tender flesh, so vivid she could smell the sour venom of his breath mingled with the scent of freshly minted money. Jewel gasped, and her eyes flew open. After taking in her surroundings, assuring herself that she was not in the Flannery mansion, she straightened her spine and began pacing again.

Through a jaw so tight and aching she could barely form the words, Jewel forced a nonchalant tone and finished her explanation. "You see, Brent, the way Grandfather figured it, if his rich clients didn't know about me, he wouldn't have the chore of explaining my presence." She stopped pacing and turned, looking Brent square in the eye. "How does the very snobbish president of a bank explain that he harbors a bastard in his otherwise proper home?"

"He was the bastard," Brent growled, the acerbic taste of anger and disgust filling his mouth, turning his stomach. "Did he behave that way toward other members of your family, too?"

Looking away, she said slowly, painfully, "I wouldn't know my own cousins if I fell over them."

"And your grandmother?" he asked, his anger growing, "And what about your mother? She let him get away with that kind of cruelty?''

Jewel shrugged, surprised she was able to relate the story. "I wouldn't know what to say about Grandmama. I usually have pretty good instincts about people, but that woman was the most closed-up, untouchable person I ever met. I don't know what she thought about me, my mother, or even Grandfather, except that she was afraid of him. We all were."

His heart going out to her, still he fought the urge to touch her, to break the spell. His tone carrying his feelings across the distance, expressing the depth of his emotions, Brent asked, "Didn't you have anyone, sweetheart? No one to turn to, to love you?"

Feeling strangely impassive about such a personal question, Jewel glanced across the table, seeking his gaze. When it connected with hers, she felt the breath whoosh out of her, and her heart seemed to skip in her breast. Her mouth trembling, her mind racing, she said, "I don't think I really know what love is, Brent. My mother cared about me. I do know that much. When Grandfather wasn't around, she always made a great fuss over me and tried to make up for his cruelty. We had some good times together."

"When Grandfather wasn't around," he qualified.

Embarrassed as much for her mother as for herself, she slowly nodded and lowered her eyes. "Yes," she said, her voice so faint it was nearly carried away on the sultry evening breeze. "Mother had no trouble loving me when we were alone, but I could always count on her to betray me the minute Grandfather walked through the front door."

No longer able to stay away from her, his need to comfort her desperate somehow, Brent edged closer and tentatively took her hands. "I wish I had the power to let you relive your childhood in a home filled with love. Maybe if you let me try, I can help wipe those terrible memories from your mind."

Suddenly feeling stripped, as if her mind were a bashful nude exposed for all the world to see, she claimed, "They don't usually bother me so much. I figure if you just refuse to think about a thing, it can't hurt you."

Brent recognized her discomfort, assumed this was the first time she'd ever discussed the indignities of her childhood at such length, and decided a change of subject was in order. "You remind me of the Mississippi," he said, his grin back in place.

"Oh?" she said through a nervous laugh, relieved he was no longer interested in dwelling on her tormented childhood. "Why? Do I have mud on my face?"

Chuckling along with her, he squeezed her hands and explained. "You and the river have the same characteristics. You're both wild and untamed, and you both do whatever you damn well please, no matter how hard people try to change your direction. Like the river," he said, "you're unpredictable, exciting and deceptive. And like the Mississippi, it seems that whenever I relax and think I've got you tamed, whenever I drop my guard, so to speak, you rise up and overwhelm me, sinking me."

Jewel shivered at the thought. She glanced out of the summerhouse, smiling as she spotted the distant courtship of a few fireflies, and forced a tiny chuckle. "If the Mississippi was that bent on sinking me, Mr. Steamboat Owner, I think I'd make it my business to stay the hell away from it."

But he wasn't letting her off so easy. Not this night. He grinned back and quietly said, "She draws me to her. I can no more stay away from the Mississippi than I can stay away from you." Brent released her hands and cupped her face. His voice a lover's caress, his eyes dark with something more than passion, he pulled her mouth within inches of his own and murmured, "I happen to love that river, Jewel, and I love you."

Her heart began to race, and her mind suddenly exploded with a thousand fragmented thoughts. Jewel tried to pull out of Brent's embrace, but his grip was as determined as the man. In desperation she said, "Please, don't say things like that. I'm not ready to have anybody love me, especially not you. I don't know how to handle it or what to do."

"Then you need a teacher." He was ready for her arguments this time. "I have enough love for both of us until you've learned your lessons. Have you ever been in love before, Jewel? Ever done some poor young man the honor of lending him your heart?''

She strained against him, pleading, "Don't do this, Brent. You don't know what you're asking of me."

But he held fast, sure of his course. "Then I invite you to tell me."

Jewel gave up the fight then and allowed him to tilt her head back until their eyes met again. No longer as firm in her convictions, she said, "I've never loved anyone before, and I don't want to be in love with you, Brent. It's that simple. Love is for the feebleminded, those who are unwilling or unable to rely on themselves."

Remembering the supper conversation, the musings of Raiford concerning her intentions toward Brent, she added, "After listening to the comments of your family, I have to assume you plan to marry sometime in the future. I care enough about you to make sure you understand that I can never be that woman."

His heartbeat suddenly irregular, vibrating with foreboding, he recklessly said, "How can you be so sure of that?"

"I don't ever intend to get married to anyone. I will never be caged by any man again, not like I was in Grandfather's house, and not by the law and some silly wedding ring."

"But, Jewel," he protested, unaware he was practically asking for her hand, "marriage doesn't have to be like that. You simply haven't had the chance to see that for yourself. Our life together would be one hell of a lot better than anything you've described here tonight."

That hand squeezed her heart again, constricting the vessels, inflaming her chest. She raised her fingertips to his mustache and began stroking the silken hairs. "I'm sorry, Brent, but my answer is no. My freedom is all I can depend on. It's my very sanity. I'll never give it up."

Brent's thick eyebrows inched toward each other as he considered her words, the one in particular—
no.
Had he asked Jewel to marry him? he wondered, alarmed. When? Had he spent thirty-one years dodging the question only to ask it by accident, with only a foggy notion of what he'd said? His expression flickering between disbelief and speculation, he began to wonder if he'd proposed automatically because Jewel really was the one, the only woman for him?

She was watching him, her new best friend, guilt coaxing a tear from the corner of her eye. Unable to bear the sight of his torment any longer, she said, "I'm sorry, Brent. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. It might be easier if you consider how much worse it could have been if I'd let you go on thinking we might have some kind of future together."

Her words brought him back to earth. "That's all right," he said, backing away from her. Feeling a curious blend of relief and disappointment, he laughed it all off. "I never seriously planned to marry, anyway. I've always been the independent sort myself. We're probably both better off on our own."

Unconvinced of his sincerity, feeling lower than the river in October, Jewel followed him to the railing. Reaching for his shoulders, she began to massage them through his shirt, kneading the hard ridge of muscle all the way to the back of his neck. "Brent," she murmured, "I wish I could show you how much I
do
care."

Spinning on his heel, he faced her and took her in his arms. "Maybe you can." He glanced beyond her to the house. Only one light flickered in the distance, the soft glow of the lamp in the library. Looking back down at her, seeing the warmth in her usually cool green eyes, he grinned. "If I just had a blanket with me, I'd make you finish paying off your debt from the billiard game. If you remember, we were rudely interrupted."