Yesterday's Roses (13 page)

His arms wrapped around her waist, crushing her soft length against his steely one. She could feel his muscles ripple beneath his clothing as he pressed his groin against her belly with a moan, and the insistent hardness of his arousal served to remind her of his dangerously potent need.

Hallie's mind sounded a frantic warning, but her traitorous body reacted with a will of its own, undulating against his with an erotic response that sent shivers of fear racing through her brain. Fear of Jake Parrish's overwhelming masculinity, of his almost hypnotic sensuality, and—most of all—of her own uncontrollable response to his silent, carnal beckoning. God help her, she wanted nothing more than to stay in his arms and experience the pleasures at which he had hinted.

But she didn't dare, for to do so would have been madness. Her mind battled with her quickly surrendering body, desperately scrambling for the solution that could save her from succumbing to her own fierce desires.

As her head bent back and his lips began to descend toward hers, she hit upon the answer.

“Saltpeter!” she gasped.

That stopped him short. He tipped his head back to peer into her flushed face. “What?”

She drew a long, shuddering breath. Avoiding his incredulous eyes, she fought to work her way out of his now-slackening embrace.

“Saltpeter,” she mumbled, putting a safe distance between them and straightening her skirts with shaking hands. “I'll have Hop Yung dose your food with saltpeter. That should take care of your problem with these uncontrollable urges.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously. “That might take care of
my
problem, Doctor,” he retorted coolly. “But what do you intend to do about your own?”

Chapter 8

“There's a wild, almost neglected look about this place,” observed Hallie as she stopped to sniff the fragrance of a delicate silvery-pink rose. To her delight, she had discovered the rose garden her second day at the house and had since adopted it as her own secret haven.

She loved the overgrown splendor of the garden, with its riotous colors blooming in every imaginable shade of pink, red, yellow, and white, for unlike the people who occupied the house, the roses burst forth with exuberant joy. In untamed glory the flowers had thrived until they embraced every inch of the small area, twining around the arching bowers above her head, spilling over bushes, trees, and hedges, and snaking across the ground like a carpet created by fairies at a midsummer's night ball.

“It does look in need of tending,” replied Davinia, peering at her aromatic surroundings thoughtfully. “Can't say I'm surprised, though. After all, this is Serena's garden—or was.”

“I don't see what that has to do with anything.” Hallie sniffed. “I swear, the rest of the grounds look as if the gardeners grovel on their hands and knees, and hand-trim each blade of grass individually. Why, I'm almost afraid to walk on the lawn for fear of damaging all that green perfection.” Frowning, she bent down to pull a weed that was threatening to suffocate a miniature rosebush. “It seems to me those same gardeners could manage a simple task like pruning a few roses.”

Davinia merely shrugged. “Probably. But they know better than to touch the garden without Jake or Serena's say-so.”

She took out her rumpled, slightly grubby handkerchief and scrubbed at a stone bench which had been placed in a small bower. After pausing for a moment

to squint through her glasses, she deemed the seat clean and, with a sigh of foot-weary relief, plopped down. Smiling at her companion, who stood glaring at another patch of weeds as if her glance might wither them, Davinia thumped the space next to her in noisy invitation.

“You see, Hallie, Serena refused to entrust the care of a single petal of her precious roses to anyone except herself.” Davinia pushed her beige silk skirts aside to make room for her friend. “Durn stubborn about it, too! Of course, when something was too heavy, too high up, or too dirty, she would simply look at Jake all helpless-like, and he would come running to do her bidding. Him, she trusted.”

“Somehow, I have trouble picturing Jake Parrish grubbing around in the dirt,” Hallie scoffed. Of course, knowing that man, he could probably have planted the entire garden single-handedly without mussing a hair, breaking a sweat, or wrinkling his clothes.

Davinia guffawed with unladylike volume. “Hell and damnation! I've seen Jake as dirty as a hog wrestler. Serena too, for that matter. I'll never forget finding the pair of them lollygagging in the dirt behind the hedge one afternoon. Judging from the streaks of mud running up the back of Serena's gown, I'd guess if I had happened along any sooner, we'd all have been sporting red faces.”

She chuckled at the memory. Then she got that gleam in her eye that Hallie was beginning to identify as trouble. “Can't say as I would have objected to seeing Jake's bare fanny, though.” She sighed remorsefully. “Bet he's got haunches like a thoroughbred racehorse—all sleek and muscular. Probably not hairy, either. Never could abide hairy buttocks.”

Hallie rolled her eyes in exasperation. Lord! When Davinia got on one of her tangents, nothing short of divine intervention could get her off it. She idly wondered what Davinia would say if she knew that Hallie had recently come all too close to observing unclothed the portion of anatomy in question. Knowing Davinia, she probably would have been disappointed that Hallie hadn't examined him and given her a full report on his level of hairiness.

Hallie couldn't help laughing, and when she caught Davinia's questioning look, she quipped, “God save us from the evils of hairy backsides,” and the small garden echoed with their raucous laughter.

“Lord! I've missed you!” Hallie exclaimed, giving Davinia a quick hug. “I can always count on you to lift my spirits.”

“Spiritual enlightenment is my duty,” stated Davinia, adding a wicked wink that completely negated her puritanical words.

“I don't know how I would have survived these last few weeks without the visits from Reverend DeYoung and you. Sometimes I get so lonely I could scream. Why, I almost miss Penelope and her scathing remarks.”

The day after Jake and Penelope had joined Hallie for breakfast, Penelope had declared herself unable to tolerate the presence of “riffraff” in her home and had announced that she was going to stay with her sister in New York until after Hallie had left. Jake had merely shrugged and offered to drive her to the wharf.

Davinia rolled her eyes at the mention of Jake's sister. “Spoiled brat, that girl. Jake should have applied a switch to her backside far more frequently than he did. That boy is too durn softhearted where his sister is concerned.”

“Perhaps he's just too busy to notice her bad behavior. Except for breakfast, and an occasional dinner, he's seldom home.” And Hallie treasured those precious moments alone with Jake, when they dined companionably, discussing everything from his expansion plans in Panama City to her dreams for the infirmary. Never had she felt quite so comfortable, or attracted, to a man as she was to Jake Parrish.

Davinia patted her friend's arm. “Never fear. Marius and I will make sure you don't succumb to loneliness.”

“He's so kind to keep Serena occupied while you fill me in on what's happening in the world outside this prison,” Hallie replied. “Besides, she seems to enjoy his ministering.”

“Of course she does. Why, those two used to be closer than sweat on a mule,” Davinia remarked somewhat wryly. “Not only was Serena the head of the Wednesday Afternoon Ladies' Mission Society, she never missed the Monday morning Chinese Relief Fund Committee meetings, Tuesday's Stitching Shirts for Saved Souls sewing circle, or Friday's Food for Foreign Friends fund-raising drive. And, of course, her Sunday churchgoing record was sterling. Never missed a single one of Marius DeYoung's inspirational sermons. Spent a lot of time at that big parish house of his, too. Transcribing notes for him, or some such nonsense.”

Not only had the woman been rich, beautiful, and charming, thought Hallie dismally, she had been a veritable saint as well. And she said as much to Davinia.

Davinia chuckled at that idea. “A saint? Hardly!” she snickered. “When she and Jake were first married, why, you had never seen a bigger pair of heathens. Never attended church once in their first two years together. When I would take Jake to task on the state of his soul, the handsome devil would smile that angelic smile of his, and say how he and his wife had their own way of finding heaven on the Sabbath. Of course, Serena would turn bright red and get all calf-eyed over that mention, leaving little doubt as to the kind of worshiping they really did.”

Breathlessly Hallie recalled the way Jake's body had felt pressed against hers. She had to admit that the feelings he'd incited in her had come pretty darn close to her idea of a religious experience, tempting her with a little taste of paradise as surely as the biblical snake had tempted Eve with that apple. How she had longed to taste the sweetness of the forbidden fruit and find her Eden in Jake Parrish's arms! For a moment, Hallie found herself jealous of what Serena had once had. She wondered what it would be like to be so cherished by a man like Jake.

Almost as if she'd read Hallie's mind, Davinia remarked, “Every flower in this garden is a gift from Jake to his wife. He had the captains of his ships comb their exotic ports of call for new and rare species of roses.”

Davinia reached out to pluck an odd, pale green bloom and presented it to Hallie. “This one came from the garden of the Emperor of China. The pink damask you were admiring earlier started as a cutting taken from a bush adorning the final resting place of Mumtaz Mahal. Of course, everyone knows that the Taj Mahal was built by her grief-stricken husband as a loving memorial, and what could be more romantic than a rose from such a place?”

“I never took Jake to be a fanciful character,” Hallie murmured, a trace of wonder shading her voice.

“That's because you didn't know him before the war. You should have seen the way the ladies sighed over his daring exploits. I heard he almost spent time cooling his heels in an Indian jail over the Taj Mahal escapade. Fortunately, he was saved by his sister, Anne. Never met the girl myself, but I've heard that she's married to some bigwig official of the British Crown and, as luck would have it, her husband happened to be serving in India at the time of the, ah, incident.”

Davinia shuddered as she fixed Hallie with a look of horrified fascination. “That boy was damn lucky, if you ask me.
Damn
lucky! I'd hate to think of what might have happened to him otherwise. One hears such lurid stories about those foreign infidels. Nothing more than a pack of godless
sodomites
in those awful jails!” She waved at Marius DeYoung, watching as the man strolled across the lawn with Serena.

Hallie smiled at Serena, who had caught sight of her and was racing across the lawn like a puppy overjoyed at the return of a long-absent master. Dressed in a frilly gown of white muslin, with her hair tied back artlessly in a blue satin ribbon, Serena was the very picture of childlike innocence. She came skidding to a halt in front of Hallie, nervously sucking on her left fist and staring around her with wide eyes. An old, parian-headed doll with a crack snaking across its face was clutched in her right hand.

“Did you have a nice visit, Serena?” Hallie inquired, reaching out to pull the woman toward her.

Serena gave a vague nod of assent and then sank to the ground to sit at Hallie's feet. With her knees in the air and her legs apart, she appeared to be completely indifferent to the fact that she was exposing far more undergarment than was decent. She was so involved with crooning to her doll that she didn't appear to notice when Hallie bent forward to rearrange her skirts in a more modest fashion.

Watching as Serena wrapped an expensive cashmere shawl around the doll, Hallie wondered, not for the first time, where her charge had found the filthy, battered toy.

The doll was truly hideous to behold, with bulbous glass eyes and a smirking, garishly painted mouth that was open to display a set of rather alarming ivory teeth. To add further to its bizarre appearance, the wig had been lost, leaving the top of its hollow head gaping open.

Yet in Serena's warped mind, she had somehow identified the doll as her baby, and she treated the sawdust-stuffed figure to her own confused brand of mothering. Hallie had caught her watching the wet nurse and herself with guarded interest as they tended the infant, though she never attempted to make contact with her child. No, she seemed to content herself with observing and imitating, using her delicate handkerchiefs as diapers, and forcing milk into the doll's open mouth. Which reminded her …

Hallie wrinkled her nose with disgust. Serena's “baby” was beginning to smell worse than the milking room floor at a dairy farm on a hot day. The odor of souring milk had permeated the sawdust-stuffed kidskin body of the doll, with nauseating results.

Perhaps a lesson in the fundamentals of infant hygiene would help, she mused, glancing back down at her charge thoughtfully.

Her eyes widened with dismay as she saw Serena fumbling with the hooks at the front of her bodice. Oh, Lord! Serena had been watching the wet nurse suckle the baby again and was apparently about to try it on her doll.

“Uh, Serena, don't you think your baby would prefer a nice sugar teat?” Hallie suggested, relieved that Marius DeYoung was still far enough away not to have caught the exchange.

Serena looked up at her companion solemnly and then back down at the bundle in her arms. She raised the doll to her ear, pausing to listen to an imaginary voice. With a sigh, she nodded her assent to Hallie and lovingly kissed the doll's ugly parian face.

“Now there's a face only a mother could love,” commented Davinia, as she glanced down at the monstrosity cradled in Serena's arms.

“I think she takes after her father,” the woman replied pensively, holding the doll up for Davinia's closer examination. “What do you think?”

Hallie and Davinia exchanged glances, perplexed.

With a shrug, Davinia agreed, “Well, I have seen Jake bare his teeth like that a few times. Especially when I've suggested that he improve on his church attendance record.”

Serena just stared at the woman blankly.

“How did you do today, Marius?” inquired Davinia, looking up as the man came to a stop in front of her.

He cast an approving glance in Serena's direction. “Quite well. We took tea and I gave Serena an uplifting lesson on the importance of returning to the path of righteousness from which she has strayed.” Reverend DeYoung turned his penetrating gaze on Serena. “Tell them what you learned, my child.”

Serena looked up at him and promptly jammed her fist back in her mouth, making frantic sucking noises.

“Serena? I'm waiting,” he commanded in a sonorous yet firm tone, his well-favored face now starkly forbidding.

Marius DeYoung prided himself on the rich, almost seductive beauty of his voice. It was that, and his theatrical flare, that packed the pews at the Ascension Tabernacle every Sunday. He had occasionally reflected that if God hadn't blessed him by setting him on the path of righteousness, he might have made quite a name for himself on the stage. Not that he often indulged in such thoughts, for to do so was vain, and vanity was a sin of such magnitude that it required him to serve penance of daunting severity.

Marius frowned at the woman on the ground. “Well?”

Suddenly Serena dropped her hand from her lips, and a jumble of words rushed out. “I will obey God's word as instructed by Reverend DeYoung, pray for His forgiveness for my terrible sin in attempting wanton self-destruction, and—” She broke off with a desperate little gasp, staring at Marius helplessly.