“When . . . ?”
“In sixty-four, during the siege on Richmond. I was ducking some sharpshooters and landed myself in an iced-over pond. Hell isn’t a hot place at all, honey. It’s very, very cold.”
“You fought against . . . us.”
As she lifted her eyelashes, she saw that he was staring at her intently, his startlingly blue eyes filled with pity and something that she didn’t understand. “Yes. I’m from Virginia.”
“Why are you . . . here?”
He didn’t say anything, just looked away from her and into the fire. His arms tightened around her quivering body, holding her still. Lucy thought that if her circumstances had been a little less dire, she would have died of shock. She had never been touched by a Southerner before, much less been wrapped in one’s arms. But no matter who or what he was, it felt good to be held so tightly, anchored, and protected from the cold.
“Better yet?” he asked eventually.
“No. I’m . . . frozen on the inside . . . in my bones.”
Heath shifted her slightly and reached inside his vest for a battered silver flask, which gleamed dully in the firelight. “Some of this will help.”
“What is it?”
He twisted the top off the flask, and instantly she could smell the pungent fumes of strong liquor. “Ever hear of forty rod?”
“I can’t!” Her eyes rounded with horror. She had been raised strictly on the doctrine that drinking was evil and led to all kinds of immoral behavior, especially in women. Her father and the reverend of the First Parish Church, Grindall Reynolds, had always said so.
“This is going to sink right down to your bones, Lucinda. Open your mouth.”
“No, don’t!” She would have struggled away from him had the quilts not been wrapped around her so well. Easily he wedged the neck of the flask between her lips and tilted it upwards, filling her mouth with a noxious flood of whiskey. She swallowed and choked, then swallowed again, until the pit of her stomach was burning with the fire of it. He took the flask away. Coughing, Lucy glared up at him and fought to catch her breath. As soon as she had recovered, she opened her mouth to say something and found the flask pushed between her lips again. This time the liquor went down easier, and she drank helplessly, her head caught in the hard crook of his arm. With a discomfited sound, she turned her face into his shoulder as soon as he took the flask away. No one had ever treated her so rudely before. She was going to tell her father about this, just as soon as she was able. Heath must have had a good idea of what her thoughts were, because he grinned suddenly. As he looked down at her cheek and saw the trace of whiskey on it, he removed the droplets with the tip of a long finger.
“For shame, sweet . . . turning your nose up at good Southern corn liquor. A sight better than what they drink up here—”
“Don’t,” she said, shrinking away from his touch. To her surprise, he was not put off or disconcerted by her rebuff. He only laughed softly.
“To ease your mind—no, I’m not going to take advantage of your helpless condition, despite the fact that you’re as cute as a bug’s ear.”
“I am not,” she contradicted groggily. “I look like something you . . . dragged up from the river . . . which is exactly . . . what I am.”
“You’re the most adorable thing I’ve ever held in my arms. I can see you don’t believe me. Can’t you bring yourself to trust me?”
“You’re a Southerner,” Lucy said thickly, her head spinning from the whiskey. Its warmth was burning deep inside her.
“Before the war started I was a Unionist,” he offered in a conciliatory manner. “I’m sure that makes me a little more appealing, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
He smiled at her tipsiness and at the returning color in her cheeks. “You are adorable,” he said huskily. “Poor little Yankee.”
She was both irritated and fascinated by the way he spoke to her in that soft drawl, as if she were someone to be coddled and cherished. She had never been babied so outrageously by a man, not even by Daniel. Closing her eyes against the dancing firelight that filled the room, she sighed tiredly into Heath’s neck. The dull ache was bearable now, and it was slipping away bit by bit.
“Take me home soon,” she whispered, slumping against him.
“Go to sleep, honey. I’ll take care of you.”
As Lucy fell into an exhausted slumber, she was confronted by confused images, and tumbled dreams: the memories of growing up with Daniel; their antagonism turning to friendship, their friendship turning into a far deeper affection; Daniel going off to war, sharp and neat in a uniform of red-trimmed indigo, his brown eyes twinkling and his face so attractively divided by a smooth crescent mustache. Daniel—her love, but not her lover.
She remembered Daniel’s homecoming after the South had surrendered. Through her joy she had noticed that he seemed tired and so much older, his gaze dark and warm, but no longer twinkling.
“Daniel!” She called his name eagerly as he stepped off the train. She had loved him for years with the adoration a child would have given him, but now she was seventeen, and she wanted him with all the warmth and passion of a woman. And though his family and all his friends were there to greet him, he turned to her first.
“Lucy, is it really you?” he asked, opening his arms, and she ran to him with an exuberant smile of happiness.
“Did you get my letters? Did you read them? Did—”
“I read every one of them.” He bent down and kissed her swiftly. “I kept every single one.”
She remembered Daniel as he had proposed to her, his arms warm and firm around her, the softness of his mouth on hers.
“It won’t be right away,” he said. “We’ll have to wait a year or two while I get established at the railroad company.”
“But I want you now—”
“There are too many things I want to give you. Wait for me, Lucy. Give me your promise that I won’t lose you to someone else.”
“I’ll wait forever,” she told him, with tears shining in her hazel eyes. “You’ll never lose me . . . I’ll be yours as long as you want me . . . as long as you love me.”
Three years, three frustrating years of belonging and not belonging. He was not ready to marry her yet, and there was no sign that he would be ready soon. In the meantime, she would have given him anything he wanted of her, everything she had to offer him, but they had never made love. A gentleman to the core, he would not take her before their wedding night. He was a man of honor, and honor had a stronger hold on him than passion. Restless and troubled, she clung to him in supplication.
“Daniel . . . tell me you love me. Stay with me tonight... stay.”
He brushed warm, questioning kisses on her forehead, his mouth pressing at her temple, caressing her cheeks and the fragile skin underneath her eyes. She sighed, quieting against the warmth of his body. “Shhhh . . . ,” he whispered, cradling her head with his hand and pressing her face against his shoulder. “Go to sleep . . . sleep . . .”
Heath’s turquoise gaze traveled over her features slowly. Lucinda Caldwell, slumbering in his arms. He shook his head in wonder. By a stroke of fate, all his well-thoughtout plans had just been rendered unnecessary. Who would have thought she would have landed in his grasp so easily? He cradled her helpless form, testing the feel of her in his arms. She fit perfectly. So small, so deliciously small, and surprisingly voluptuous.
He had wondered about how she would look this close—what her skin was like, what shape her eyebrows followed, how long her eyelashes were. Now the answers were right in front of him, and his curiosity was more than satisfied. He had seen her before, often enough to know that her smile was merry and full of charm, and that she walked across the street with a lively step. Now he knew details that he suspected no one else had been privileged to know—the natural shape of her body, the smooth, perfect paleness of her skin, the freckle on her left breast.
She looked impossibly young, with tear-marked cheeks and baby-fi
ne skin. Her mouth was inviting; for all that, it was too wide and too strongly set. Her eyebrows were dark and slanting. The combination of those uncompromising features and a round face gave her the appearance of a determined child. The more Heath looked at her, the more fascinated he was. How could any man resist the vulnerability, the sweetness, the contrasts of that face?
Lucy turned over and moaned, aware of a terrible ache in her head as she endeavored to open her eyes. Squinting, she peered through the dimly lit bedroom to the closed window curtains. A streak of daylight peered around the edge of the curtains, betraying the fact that it was morning.
“Father?” she asked thickly, aware that someone was entering the room. “Am I . . .” Her voice died away as she realized that the intruder was not her father, and she remembered what had happened the day before. Her face went white. “Oh! You are . . . Mr.—”
“Heath Rayne,” he said, approaching the bed with a light tread. She shrank away from him immediately, jerking the covers high under her chin and looking so much like the caricature of an outraged virgin that the corners of Heath’s mouth twitched.
“Don’t tell me you don’t trust me, Lucinda. For the way I exercised such commendable restraint last night, I deserve a medal, not suspicion.” Before she could move or protest, his hand curved over her forehead, nearly engulfing her skull as he measured her temperature. The tip of his thumb lightly grazed the throbbing pulse at her temple before he removed his hand. She didn’t like the way he touched her, as if he owned her. “A fever. No surprise in that, considering all that happened yesterday.” Comfortably he settled his long-limbed body into a nearby chair.
It took her a few minutes to pull together her scattered thoughts. “You pulled me out of the river—”
“That’s right.”
“I . . . I didn’t even thank you.”
“Wasn’t much trouble to pull a little thing like you out.”
“But you’re a Southerner. And I’m a—”
He looked at her with mock dismay. “And you think that a Southerner wouldn’t extend a hand to someone who needs it, even if that person’s a Yankee?”
“Well . . .”
“Don’t even answer,” he said, smiling ruefully. “I’ll tell you one thing, Lucinda. It’s clear even to a degenerate enemy of the Union that you’re much too precious to be used as food for a few miserable little perch and bass.”
She was reasonably certain that he was teasing her, but she didn’t know how to respond. It was alarming to have a stranger treat her so familiarly and casually, as if he already knew her. No matter what he had done for her or what restraint he had exercised last night, he made her uneasy.
“I would like to go home now,” she said uncertainly.
“I know what you would like to do. Unfortunately, Lucinda, you have a fever, and I might as well stuff you back down that hole in the river as let you go out. Also, it’s impossible for either of us to go anywhere. It’s still snowing. One of your famed Northern snowstorms has decided to pay a nice long call.”
“Oh, no. I can’t stay here. I can’t!”
“Is someone going to be looking for you? Your father?”
“No, he thinks I’m still visiting with my aunt and uncle in Connecticut. He doesn’t know that I decided to come back two days early. I took the train and then tried to walk back from the depot—”
“And landed yourself in the middle of the river. Honey, don’t you have someone to look out for you?”
“My father. And my fiancé, Daniel Collier. And neither of them would like it if they knew you were calling me that . . . that name—”
“But it suits you, honey.” He emphasized the word as if to irritate her, and his blue eyes sparkled as he gave her a lazy smile. “I suppose they wouldn’t be pleased to know that you were in my bed, either.”
“They can’t find out that any of this happened. I must leave. There must be some way—”
“Do you actually think you can keep what happened yesterday a secret?”
“I have to. I’ll be in terrible trouble with Father . . . and Daniel . . . Daniel will start a terrible brawl with you!”
“Think he’d get the best of me?” Heath asked thoughtfully.
It was doubtful. But that was hardly something she would admit. “I know he would. He was a hero in the war, and he was a sharpshooter, and he has closets full of medals.”
“Oh.” He paused thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose we could try to keep all of this a secret.”
“You’re not worried about my reputation at all. You’re worried about your own hide!”
“I’m afraid so. I’ve spent the last few years trying to keep it in one piece.” Lifting up his hands and forearms, he inspected them idly, then quirked the side of his mouth at her. Hesitantly she smiled back at him, really looking at him for the first time. How different he was from the men she was accustomed to. He was handsome, but it was a different kind of handsomeness than she was used to. There was something earthy and untamed about him, a quality that was unaltered by the fact that his clothes were perfectly made and obviously expensive. He was one of the largest men she had ever met. His shoulders were broad underneath his tailored white shirt. Gray trousers made without a cuff or crease were fitted to a lean waist. Deeply muscled thighs were spread slightly as he slouched in the chair.
Flushing guiltily, Lucy darted her eyes past his thighs, the buttoned-fly front of his trousers, his chest and shoulders, back up to his face. To her dismay, he smiled at her in a way that indicated he knew that she had been looking at his body in a way that no properly raised young woman should have. At least, not so indiscreetly.
His eyes were so blue, so vivid against his burnt-in tan that they were the color of pure turquoise. There was a thin scar that slashed across his temple, almost reaching the outward corner of his eye. It disappeared into a tracing of laugh lines that deepened when he smiled. A rakish touch, that scar; it lent character to his handsomeness. Turning her face away, she shifted around on the goosefeather mattress, trying to get comfortable. Immediately Heath stood up and reached across her for the pillow on the other side of the bed. “Here, I’ll put this behind your back—”
“No, I can do it—”
“I don’t want you lifting a finger, do you hear?”
Sliding an arm behind her shoulders, he lifted her up enough to tuck the pillow in place. For a few seconds Lucy was aware of nothing but the power of his body, and how ridiculously easy it was for him to support her weight. There was an attractive scent that clung to his skin and clothes, a fragrance of cleanliness, health, and vitality. It was the nicest thing she had ever breathed. Of course, she corrected herself loyally, he didn’t smell as good as Daniel, who wore fancy cologne that came all the way from New York.
As Heath let her down and resumed his lounging in the chair, she suddenly realized what it was about him that was so different from the men up North; he was completely clean-shaven. She was used to seeing men with sideburns and beards or mustaches. A crescent mustache like Daniel’s, or a handlebar with waxed tips, a horseshoe, or the kind of neatly trimmed vedette that most of the military men wore. But there was no such refinement about this man’s appearance. The line of his jaw was almost startling in its cleanness, as were the contours of his straight mouth. She wondered for one traitorous second what it would be like to kiss a man without a tickling mustache. You should be ashamed, Lucy Caldwell! she berated herself instantly.
“Anything you like in particular?” Heath inquired lazily.
Suddenly she wasn’t afraid of him anymore. “You look like any ordinary overgrown Southerner, as far as I can see.”
“They do grow us taller down South. You scrawny New Englanders spend too much time indoors, and the Lord knows you don’t eat well—”
“We most certainly do!”
“If you call fish and chowder good eating. In Virginia we fill a plate right to the edge with real food, not with the dabs of colored paste you call a meal. A li
ttle here, a little there . . . a man could eat for days and not get full.”
“How long have you been up here?”
“Almost a year.”
“You don’t look like you’ve suffered too much from our cooking—even if we don’t serve peach cobbler or fried chicken too often—”
“Fried chicken,” he said wistfully. “Or good smoked ham. Or black-eyed peas and bacon . . . or buttered yams . . .”
Lucy couldn’t help smiling. He possessed an artless charm that was difficult to resist. Suddenly she wanted to fix him a good dinner: corned beef and cabbage, brown bread flavored with blackstrap molasses and steamed in a pail for hours, apple pie for dessert. That would show him that Northern cooking could satisfy him just as much as whatever it was they ate down South.
“Why did you move to Concord?” she asked, and the sparkle left his turquoise eyes abruptly. “It hardly seems to make sense. Now that the war is over and Reconstruction—”
“Reconstruction. Like most everyone else around here, you have no idea what it is.”
“Yes, I do. It’s to help the South get on its feet—”
“And brace us up with hollow crutches. I’ve never understood why people here seem to expect us to be grateful to you for taking over our newspapers and our right to vote, and denying us the chance to say a word about it—”
“Obviously it will take some time for the South to restore itself,” Lucy countered in a dignified manner, “but eventually—”
“Eventually? Never.”
“What do you mean? Of course it will.”
He looked at her with disturbing concentration and quoted softly, “ ‘. . . how thy ways have changed, and thy sweet, smiling summer face altered its expression. But those times are gone . . . The soldiers have left thee little but the past and thy loneliness.’ ”
She stared at him, hypnotized by the rise and fall of his voice, the subtle cadences that fell so gently on her ears. “I . . . I don’t understand . . .”