Nicole was stunned at his vehemence and remembered Bianca saying that Clay didn’t seem to care that his brother had been killed, that he went ahead and proposed as if nothing had happened. Yet Nicole had seen what happened at the mere mention of their names.
Standing, she started to clear away the empty plates but stopped. It had been a long day, and she was very tired. Leaving the dusty library, she went upstairs to the room Clay had given her, and it took only moments to undress and climb into bed, where she was asleep almost instantly.
The next morning, the early sunlight and the bright prettiness of the room made her smile. Maybe this room had been Beth’s. As she went to the wardrobe, she thought that soon it would most likely be Bianca’s, but she did not like the thought and refused to linger on it.
As she was looking into the wardrobes, she heard noises through the door. Yesterday, she’d had no time to explore the upstairs. One door led into the hallway, and the second door must lead to the twins’ room. Still smiling, she opened it, only to be confronted by a half-dressed Clay.
“Good morning,” he said, ignoring her blush.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know…I thought the twins—”
He reached for his shirt. “Would you like some coffee?” he asked, nodding toward a pot on a table. “I’d offer you tea, but we Americans aren’t as partial to tea as we used to be.”
Self-consciously, Nicole walked across the room to the coffeepot. It was obviously a man’s room, paneled in walnut, the bed enormous, taking up most of the room. Clay’s clothes were thrown about over chairs and tables so that she could hardly see the furniture. There were two cups by the coffeepot, and she knew without asking that Maggie had assumed they’d be sharing the drink. Pouring a cup of coffee, she took it to him where he sat on the edge of the bed, his shirt unbuttoned, as he pulled on his boot. She couldn’t help a lingering look at his chest, deep tan and thickly muscled.
“Thank you,” he said as he took the cup and watched her turn back to the coffeepot. “Still afraid of me?”
“Of course not,” she said as she poured another cup of coffee, but she didn’t look at him. “I’ve never been afraid of you.”
“I was just thinking that maybe you should be. I like your hair like that. And what’s that thing you have on? I like that, too.”
Turning, she gave him a radiant smile. Her hair hung down her back to her waist. “It’s a nightgown,” she said, thinking that she was glad she hadn’t covered it with a robe. The high-necked, sleeveless bodice was made of cream-colored Brussels lace, and the thin silk that fell away from the high waist was almost transparent.
“I’m late this morning. Here.” He held out his cup and saucer to her in a commanding way.
She took it from him, still smiling, but she didn’t move away as he pulled on the other boot. “How did you get that scar by your eye?”
He started to say something, but as he looked at her he stopped, his eyes twinkling, his mouth soft, unlike its usual grimness. “A bayonet wound during the Revolution.”
“For some reason, I get the feeling you’re laughing at me.”
He leaned closer to her. “Never in my life would I laugh at a beautiful woman standing by my bed wearing only her nightgown,” he said, running one finger across her top lip. “Now put that down,” he said, nodding to the cup and saucer she held, “and get out of here.”
Smiling, she obeyed him, but stopped when she had her hand on the door that connected her bedroom to his.
“Nicole.”
She froze.
“I have a couple of hours of work to do, then I eat at about nine in the kitchen.”
A nod was her answer as, without turning, she went into her own room and closed the door behind her, leaning against it for a moment. He had said her name and said she was beautiful. Laughing at herself for being a silly schoolgirl, after hurriedly dressing in a simple, sturdy gown of brown calico, she left the bedroom to go downstairs.
All morning, Nicole searched for the twins. She’d expected to find them still asleep, but their beds were empty. She asked people on the plantation, but everywhere she got only shrugs, and no one seemed to know where the children were.
At seven-thirty, she went to the kitchen, made crêpe batter, and set it aside to allow the flour to absorb the milk. Afterward, she spent another hour searching before, quite frustrated, she returned to the kitchen. She made crêpes while Maggie peeled and sliced peaches that were so ripe and juicy they fell apart in her hands. Nicole generously splashed the peaches with almond liqueur that was made on the plantation and wrapped the peaches in the thin, delicate crêpes, drizzled them with honey, and added a dollop of whipped cream.
When Clay appeared in the kitchen, Maggie and her three helpers left, mysteriously finding other work they had to do. Nicole set the plate of peaches and crêpes before him, and he got one bite before she asked the question she’d repeated at least twenty times that morning.
“Where are the twins?” When she saw Clayton calmly continue chewing and his shoulders begin to lift in a shrug, she got angry. Pointing the fork she held at him, her voice raised. “Clayton Armstrong! If you dare tell me you don’t know where they are, I’ll…I’ll—”
Looking up at her across the corner of the table, his mouth full, he took the fork out of her hand. “They’re around somewhere. They usually come in when they’re hungry.”
“You mean they have no supervision? They’re just allowed to run free? What if they were hurt? No one would even know where to look for them.”
“I know most of their hiding places. What is this? I’ve never had anything like this. Did you make it?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently. “But what about their schooling?”
Clay was giving his full attention to the plate of food in front of him and didn’t bother answering her.
Snarling and muttering something in French under her breath, Nicole grabbed the plate of crêpes from under his nose and held it aloft—over the slop bucket kept for the pigs’ food. “I want your attention and some answers. I’m tired of getting no answers.”
Clay bounded over the edge of the table and threw his arm around her waist, her back to his chest. When his grip had forced all the air from her lungs and she was helpless, he grabbed the plate of crêpes and set it safely on the table. “You shouldn’t interfere with a man’s food.” He was teasing, but he didn’t release her. Only when he felt her body start to go limp did he allow her any air. “Nicole!” he demanded, and turned her around in his arms. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He held her close to him, but lightly, as he listened to the return of her normal breathing.
Nicole leaned against him, hoping he would never release her.
Turning her gently, he helped her sit down. “You’re probably hungry. Here, eat some of this,” he said, putting a second plate of peaches and crêpes in front of her before retrieving his own.
Nicole sighed heavily, and she caught a teasing look from Clay, as if he could read her thoughts.
After breakfast, Clay told Nicole to follow him. He stopped in the shade of a cedar tree by the servants’ quarters where a very old man sat whittling slowly. “Jonathan, where are the twins?”
“In that old walnut tree by the overseer’s house.”
Clay nodded curtly and started to turn away, Nicole on his heels.
“That your new missus?” Jonathan asked.
“She is.” There was little warmth in Clay’s voice.
Jonathan grinned, showing toothless gums. “Somehow I thought you’d marry a blonde, one a little taller and plumper than that one.”
Clamping his hand around Nicole’s wrist, Clay turned away sharply as the old man’s laugh rang in their ears. Nicole was burning with questions, but she didn’t have the courage to ask them.
The twins were indeed scampering about in the old tree. Nicole smiled up at them and asked them to come down, saying she wanted to talk to them. The children giggled and climbed higher into the tree.
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She turned to Clay. “Maybe if you asked them, they’d obey.”
He shrugged. “It’s not me who wants them. I have work to do.”
With a look of disgust at him, she again asked the twins to come down. They merely looked down at her, their eyes bright and mischievous, and she knew that if she was ever to have any authority over them, she had to win this contest. She turned back to Clay. “What would you do if you wanted them down? Order them?”
“They don’t mind me any better than they do you,” he said, looking up at them in conspiracy. “If it were me, I’d go up after them.”
The twins’ giggle was a challenge, and she knew Clay’s lies were, too. Not for a moment did she believe that the children didn’t obey him. Lifting her dress, she kicked her shoes off. “If you would give me a boost,” she said.
Clay’s eyes lit up. “With pleasure,” he said as he bent and cupped his hands for her.
She knew he could have lifted her to the first branch, but he was going to give her as little help as possible. What none of them knew was that Nicole was an excellent tree climber. There’d been an old apple tree on her parents’ estate that she knew by heart. Pulling herself onto a low branch, she stood up and saw the ladder leaning against the other side of the tree. She looked down at Clay as he stared up at her, his hands on his hips, his legs wide apart. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.
Several minutes were spent scampering around the tree, her skirt held to her knees, showing her bare legs. She caught Alex first and lowered him to Clay, who, she was grateful to see, was willing to help her at least that much.
Mandy climbed out onto a thin little branch and grinned at Nicole. Nicole grinned back and started crawling toward her. As the branch began to crack, Mandy yelled, “You’re too heavy!” Looking down, she laughed. “Catch, Uncle Clay,” she called as she gleefully jumped into her uncle’s waiting arms.
Too late, Nicole realized she was too heavy for the thin branch. It began to break away more. “Jump!” a voice commanded. Without thinking, Nicole let go and landed in Clay’s arms.
“You saved her, Uncle Clay! You saved her!” Alex chanted.
Nicole, more frightened than she wanted to admit, looked up at Clay. He was smiling! She’d never seen such a smile before, or maybe it was that lately whatever Clay did seemed right, and she smiled back at him brilliantly.
“Let’s do it again,” Mandy shouted, and started for the ladder.
“No, you don’t!” Clay said. “She got you, and you’re hers now. You do what Miss Nicole says. And if I get one bad report—” He narrowed his eyes at them, and they backed away.
“I guess you can let me down now,” Nicole said quietly.
His smile faded, and he stared at her in a puzzled way. “I’m curious. Have you always gotten into trouble like you have since I’ve known you, or is this new?”
The smile she gave him had one slightly curled lip. “I kidnapped myself, and I forced myself into marriage with you all for your pleasure.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm, but Clay didn’t take it that way.
Looking down at her bare legs slung over his arm, her dress lifted to above her knees, twisted in such a way that she couldn’t pull it down, he grinned again. “I don’t know which I like better—this, or you standing in front of the light in your nightgown.”
As Nicole realized what he meant, she blushed furiously.
He set her on the ground. “As much as I’d like to stay and see what else happens, I have to get back to work.” Still smiling, he walked toward the fields.
That night, when Nicole couldn’t sleep, she told herself it was because she was uncomfortably warm. After putting on a thin silk dressing gown over her nightdress and tiptoeing down the stairs and out into the garden, she walked along the dark path, the tall hedges towering over her to the tile pool where she sat on the edge and put her feet into the water.
The night was alive with frogs and crickets and the smell of honeysuckle, making it cool and pleasant in the night air. As she started to relax, she began to think. In the years of the terror, and the year she and her grandfather had hidden with the miller, she’d never lied to herself. She’d always known that someday it would all end, and it had.
Now she faced another disaster in her life, but this time she was lying to herself that there wouldn’t be an ending. She was a Frenchwoman, and Frenchwomen were noted for their practicality, but she was behaving like some silly, romantic child.
She had to face the fact that she’d fallen in love with Clayton Armstrong. She didn’t know when it had happened, maybe in that first meeting when he had kissed her. All she knew now was that her thoughts and emotions, her very life, had begun to pivot around the man. She knew she wanted to provoke his anger so he’d hold her in his arms, and she wanted to parade in front of him in a thin little nightgown.
Pulling her knees up and putting her forehead on them, she felt like a woman of the streets because of the way she acted, but she knew she would do anything to have him touch her, hold her.
But what did he think of her? She was not his Bianca, as he’d called her that night on the ship. In a short time he would rid himself of her, and when she walked away she might never see him again.
She had to prepare herself for the end. These past few days had been wonderful, but they had to stop. She’d loved her parents a great deal, but they’d been taken from her, and later she’d transferred her love to her grandfather, and again she’d been left alone. Each time she’d given her whole heart, and when it had been torn out of her she’d wanted to die. She couldn’t let it happen again. She couldn’t let herself love Clayton so completely that she couldn’t bear seeing him finally with the woman he loved.
Glancing up at the dark windows of the house, she saw a red glow that could only be the tip of Clay’s cigar. He knew she was down here, knew she was thinking of him. She knew she could get herself into his bed if she wanted, but she wanted more than a night with him, as sweet as it would be. She wanted his love, she wanted him to say her name the same way he had said Bianca’s.
Standing, she walked back to the house. The upstairs landing was empty, but the smell of cigar smoke was strong.
Chapter 6
NICOLE LOOKED OVER THE TOP OF THE BOOK SHE WAS holding to watch Clayton walk toward the house. She saw that his shirt was torn, his trousers and boots muddy. When he glanced her way, she looked back at her book, as if she hadn’t seen him.
She and the twins were sitting under one of the magnolia trees at the southwest corner of the family garden. In the three weeks since the night she’d sat alone by the pool, she’d spent a great deal of time with the children—and very little with Clay. Sometimes she could have cried when he had asked her to join him for dinner or breakfast and she had pleaded fatigue or someone who needed her help. After a while, he’d stopped asking. He began to eat more meals in the kitchen, with Maggie for company, and sometimes he didn’t come back to the house at night but slept in the quarters with his men—or women, for all Nicole knew.
Janie was still very busy in the loom house getting ready for winter, and Nicole spent several afternoons with her friend, who never asked questions like Maggie did.
Inside the house, Clay stood for a long time at the upstairs hall window looking out at the garden and at Nicole sitting with the children. He didn’t understand her sudden coldness to him, why she’d changed from a laughing, friendly woman to one who was always tired, always working.
Striding across the floor of his bedroom to a tall chest, he removed his torn, muddy shirt and carelessly tossed it across a chair. The drawer he opened was full of clean, ironed shirts, and as he went to grab one he paused and looked around him. For the first time since his brother had died, his room was clean. His dirty clothes were taken away and returned clean and mended.
As he thrust his arms into the shirt, he went to Nicole’s room. It also sparkled with cleanliness and sunshine. An enormous bowl of flowers stood on top of the bow-front che
st, and a small vase of three red roses was on the little table by her bed. The embroidery frame held a half-finished piece of work. He touched the bright silk threads.
She’d been in his house less than a month, but already the changes were enormous. Last night, Alex and Mandy had shown him proudly how they could write their names. The food served on the plantation had always been good, if plain, but under Nicole’s supervision new dishes had been added daily.
Clay had always thought he didn’t care one way or the other what his house was like—only the fields interested him—but now he suddenly realized he liked the smell of beeswax, and seeing the twins clean and cared for. The only piece missing was Nicole’s company, the way she laughed and made him laugh.
On his way down the stairs, he stopped and wondered how she’d been able to get the help to clean the house. Everyone on the plantation had a job, and as far as he knew about it, no one had neglected his or hers. It dawned on him that Nicole had done the scrubbing herself. No wonder she was always tired!
Smiling, he took an apple from a bowl on a table in the hall. She probably thought she was repaying him for those damned dresses he had bought her. First he went to the kitchen and told Maggie to find a couple of girls to help Nicole in the house, and then he went out to the garden.
“School’s out,” he said as he took Nicole’s book away from her, and the twins were gone before either of the adults could blink an eye.
“Why did you do that? It isn’t time to stop yet.”
“They need a holiday. Or at least you do.”
She backed away from him. “Please, I have a lot to do.”
Clay frowned at her. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you acting like you’re afraid of me?”
“I’m not. It’s just that there’s so much to do on a place this size.”
“Are you trying to tell me I should get back to work?”
“No, of course not. I just—”
“Since you don’t seem capable of finishing a sentence, then let me. You work too hard. You act as if you’re one of the slaves, except that I don’t work them as hard as you work yourself.” Grabbing her hand, he pulled her forward. “Maggie’s packing us a picnic lunch, and you and I are going to spend the rest of the day in idle pursuits. Can you ride a horse?”