Lucy bit her lip as Daniel strode away. Why did everyone suddenly seem like strangers to her? Daniel, her father, the townspeople—it was like she had never known them before, like she was standing on the edge of a stage and watching them take part in something she didn’t understand. All she knew was that Heath was somewhere inside the burning house and that she cared about what happened to him, cared desperately. No matter what he was or what he might have done in the past, she didn’t want him to die. She pressed her hands against her temples to quiet her raging headache and stared at the fire until her eyes were blinded by the brightness.
There was a movement in the doorway. Heath staggered out, dropping the quilt and clutching a white box. He was silhouetted against a backdrop of yellow flames as he took the steps two at a time, while more of the roof and upper walls crumbled inward. The crowd stared at him wordlessly, and some people fell back as he walked past them. His face, chest, and arms were covered with soot. His once-white shirt was singed and gray as it gaped open to reveal a body that was tanned and slick with sweat, a body crisscrossed with scars from wounds that had healed a long time ago. He was limping slightly, but instead of detracting from his fearsome appearance, the limp seemed to make him more threatening, like a wounded animal ready to spring in self-defense. Eyeing them all warily, he approached Mr. Emerson and handed him the manuscript.
“Thank you,” Emerson said, bowing his head and accepting the box with the tender hands of a parent holding a child. “I am indebted—”
“Don’t be. This doesn’t mean I like you or your politics any better,” Heath said gruffly, and he limped away, heading to the woods near the back of the house. Lucy stared at the ground to hide her feelings, almost sick with relief.
As the morning approached, the townspeople all set to organizing the contents of the yard and chasing after the papers, letters, and notes that the wind had scattered around the grass. The fire finally died down, leaving nothing in its wake except a few blackened walls and several feet of rubble and coals. Covertly Lucy glanced in the direction that Heath had gone and followed him when no one was looking. She knew she should have stayed with her father or Daniel, but she was driven to find the Southerner and would not breathe easy until she did.
Heath was sitting on a long, flat rock, his back propped against the trunk of an old white-shelled birch tree. His knees were bent, his elbows rested on them, and his head was buried in his hands. He heard the crackle of her feet on the pine needles and leaves that carpeted the ground, but he didn’t move.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” Lucy said vehemently, handing him a dipper of water. He took it and drank thirstily; the sweet coolness of it spilled onto his chest and shirt. She sank to her heels beside him and folded one of several damp handkerchiefs she had found in the pile of clothes in the yard, hesitating only a second before using the corner of it to wipe some of the dirt off his jaw. Heath rested his head against the trunk of the tree, watching her warily. “A pile of papers isn’t worth your life,” Lucy continued in that same tight-lipped way, “no matter what’s written on them.”
“Some would argue . . . ,” he said, his voice rasping, and then he began to cough.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said sharply, her hazel eyes flashing. She dabbed at his face with increasing confidence. Heath would have smiled at her take-charge manner had he not been so exhausted. He wondered if she knew how proprietary she looked as she sat there and cleaned his dirt-grazed cheeks.
“It’s been a long time since anyone’s done that,” he said huskily.
“How long?”
“About twenty years ago. My mother pretty near wore my face off for scrubbing at it.”
She paused in her ministrations. “Close your eyes,” she said quietly, and wiped away most of the irritating soot that encircled them. “Why are you risking your life up here when you should be at home?” she asked, and he caught her wrist in one large hand.
“That’s enough.” They both knew he wasn’t talking about the handkerchief. Still, she let the cloth drop and let her wrist remain unresisting in his hand until he released it.
“Why does everything have to be such a mystery about you?”
“There’s no mystery—”
“You won’t tell me anything about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?” he demanded with a quick frown.
Immediately they were both quiet. Lucy knew that she was treading on forbidden ground. She shouldn’t want to know anything more about him than she already did. She shouldn’t ask him any questions; she shouldn’t even be here with him. But she would never have this opportunity again.
“Where exactly do you come from in Virginia? And what did your father do?”
“I come from Richmond. My father was an attorney; then, he had to quit his practice and run the family plantation in Henrico County.”
“Plantation? But you once said you didn’t have slaves—”
“I didn’t.”
“But if the Raynes had a plantation, then how—”
“No. Not the Raynes,” Heath said, looking at her expressionlessly. “The Prices. My father’s name was Haiden Price. I never lived with the Prices on the plantation. I was brought up in a hotel in Richmond by my mother, Elizabeth Rayne.”
“Your mother and father were . . . never married?” Lucy felt her ears turn red. She wished that he wouldn’t stare at her so closely, as if to measure her every reaction to his words.
“No. She was a distant cousin who met my father during a family visit. He was already married. He installed her in Richmond after she discovered that she was expecting. Understandably, no one in the family wanted anything to do with us.”
Lucy wondered what it had been like for him as a little boy, raised in a hotel, disgraced through no fault of his own. “Did your father come to visit you?”
“Occasionally. He saw to it that I was dressed well and educated . . . no more and no less than what he did for his legitimate offspring. I was sent abroad when I was eighteen, but a month after I left, South Carolina seceded, and . . . well, you know the rest.”
“And after the war . . . ?”
“I went to the plantation like a damn fool, thinking that they might need another pair of hands to help around the place. And they did. But not my hands.”
No home. No family. Lucy felt like weeping at her own tactless questions about his home when he’d had none to go to. “How . . . how did he die?” she asked, and he shook his head silently, refusing to answer. He looked at her with weary challenge in his eyes. “Why did you come up here?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not? Because you don’t know?”
“Because I don’t want to tell you.”
She smiled suddenly. “That’s because you’re so contrary.”
He relaxed and closed his eyes. “I suppose you’re right.”
“You scared the wits out of me when you went back into the house,” she said reprovingly. “Why did you do it? To prove something?”
“To preserve Emerson’s manuscript for posterity,” Heath said, imitating Bronson Alcott’s ponderous way of speaking so perfectly that she almost laughed.
“Horsefeathers.”
“And I’m not afraid of fire, while it was clear that everyone else capable of going after the manuscript was.”
“Why weren’t you afraid?”
“When the worst happens, there’s nothing to fear anymore.”
The words, said so matter-of-factly, struck at her heart. Lucy could not stop herself from smoothing the tumbled, smoke-scented hair off his forehead. He made no response to the gentle touch of her hand. “The worst? What was the worst that happened to you?”
“When I was in my teens, the hotel caught on fire. I came back late, after a night of . . . ah, what should I call it? . . . ungentlemanly behavior, and I saw the smoke from a few miles off. My mother was sleeping upstairs. No one got to her in time.”
She murm
ured something soft and indistinguishable. Her fingertips drifted lightly through his golden hair in a repeated stroke.
“Cinda?” he said after a long while, his voice drowsy from the effects of exhaustion and her stroking.
“Hmmn?”
“I’m still going to raise hell with you for going in that goddamned house.”
“I can take chances if I want to. You did.”
“There’s a difference,” he said, his dark lashes lifting as he looked at her. She took her hand away as if she had been burned. “I’ve had more experience at taking care of myself.”
She frowned in a troubled way, her forehead creasing. “Heath . . . do you think I’m a child?”
“No. I wish to hell I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I wouldn’t feel this way about a child.”
He reached out and stroked the curve of her throat with his fingertips. The lines of his mouth gentled as he looked at her. His stare was so concentrated and intimate that she couldn’t move, not even when he sat up and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck. Before she knew it, she was leaning against his chest, surrounded by the scent of his bare skin. “Cinda,” he whispered, and she shivered at the purring sound of his voice. “You shouldn’t have come out here.”
“I had to see if you were all right.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
When had she been held so carefully, so possessively? He seemed to relish the feel of her against him. It was a heady sensation to be desired like this. His touch was different, special, and for a despairing moment she wondered why it couldn’t be this way with Daniel. Daniel’s embraces were familiar and comfortable, but they never caused sweet, summer-hot joy to surge through her.
Did she want Heath because he was forbidden? Because he was a Southerner? Her fingers curled into the tattered remains of his shirt as she clenched her fists.
“What is the matter with me?” she whispered.
“Nothing. You’re a woman . . . and you want to be needed.” He smiled slightly. “And need to be wanted.”
“But Daniel feels that way about me.”
“Then why is he so set on changing the best things about you?”
“The best things?” she repeated incredulously. “You call my temper—”
“I like your temper.”
“And my crying—”
“You’re tenderhearted.”
“And my useless daydreaming—”
“Your imagination,” he corrected softly. “I wouldn’t change any of it. Except for one thing. You don’t look well-loved, Lucy . . . you don’t look satisfied.”
Heartsick, she looked away from him. “Don’t say any more. You’re right, I shouldn’t have come here to find you—”
“But you did. And we both know why. You want to be rescued again.”
She was startled by his words. “W-what?”
“Pretend you’re mine,” he urged, his arms closing around her. “Just for a minute. Pretend there’s never been anyone but me, that I’m the one you’re promised to. Do it for me . . . I’ll never ask again.”
It was her secret fantasy. How had he known? He knew her well enough to tempt her when he knew she couldn’t refuse. She tried to think of Daniel, but his image fled from her grasp, and something she had no control over was urging her to tilt her head and surrender her mouth to his. Heath kissed her slowly, hotly, making the rest of the world seem to fade away. He was so warm, so gentle. She forgot she didn’t belong to him, forgot that there was anything wrong with wanting him. Drugged by the magic of his kiss, she let reality slip through her fingers.
Heath bent over her and pressed her down on the flat surface of the rock, his forearm supporting the back of her neck. She caught a glimpse of the beginnings of sunrise lightening the sky, and aware of what their closeness would lead to if she didn’t stop him, she tried to struggle away.
“Don’t. It’s all right. Don’t be afraid,” he murmured against her throat, savoring the taste of her fragile skin against his lips. His body eased over hers, and his mouth muffled what she had been about to say. Through their clothes she felt his thigh intrude between hers, riding against the vulnerable softness of her. It was surprisingly natural to be fitted against his body like this. Lucy slid her hands underneath his shirt and across his wide back, exploring the silken surface of it until she reached a long diagonal scar. Slowly she raised her hand to touch the scar at his temple, pulling her mouth away from his. His eyes burned with a steady blue flame as he looked down at her.
“Where?” she asked breathlessly. “Where did you get this?”
“The war.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. Do they offend you?”
“No . . . I . . . don’t like to think of someone trying to hurt you.”
He smiled slightly. “I wasn’t enthusiastic about it myself.”
“Heath, let me go.”
He couldn’t. His willpower had vanished. “One more minute. Just one more.”
She closed her eyes and shivered as he kissed her throat. His lips searched out the most vulnerable places and lingered over them. “Why did you move up North?” she asked, trying to divert his attention. Her hands pushed at his chest.
“Because you’re here.”
She laughed shakily. “No that’s not why . . . that’s not . . . oh, Heath . . .”
His lips were at the highest slope of her breast, and she could feel his fingers tugging at the buttons of her basque. “Please, you can’t—”
“I’m just going to kiss you.”
“No, I don’t want . . .”
But his lips had slid down an inch, and then another, and then his mouth was on the tender peak. She felt her nipple contract inside his mouth, responding to the feathery strokes of his tongue, and she moaned deep in her throat. A terrible struggle raged inside her—it was wrong, she shouldn’t encourage him—but what he was doing felt so good that soon she didn’t care. Her fingers twined in his hair, tightening as she felt his hand skimming the surface of her bodice. Boldly his hand slipped inside her dress, cupping her breast and stroking the tip of it with his thumb.
She was dissolving in a warm, heavy rain of feeling: the weight of his body on top of hers; the tickling hotness of his mouth on her skin; the hard strength of his muscles, able to crush her but imprisoning her so gently; his low, unsteady breathing; the pulse that beat so feverishly.
“This is what it’s like,” he said huskily, “to have a man want you more than anything else . . . who would kill to have you—”
“You’ve got to stop—”
“Not yet.” He took her mouth in a scalding kiss, and she thought dizzily that after this she would make him stop—after one more kiss. Her slender hands slid across his shoulders, holding him closer as he bent his head to whisper her name. “Lucy . . . my Lucy . . . God, how I want you . . .” His hand covered her breast again, massaging gently. Her toes curling, she went boneless, lying helplessly underneath him and groaning his name. Her heart pleaded silently for it to last forever. But just as she writhed closer to him, she heard a woman’s sharp cry.
Startled out of the haze of pleasure, Lucy opened her eyes. Her lips red and swollen, she looked groggily to the side where the sound had come from. Standing only a few feet away were Daniel and Sally, both of them white-faced.
Heath cursed viciously, sitting up and pulling Lucy behind him in one swift movement.
“We . . . we were looking for you . . . Lucy,” Sally stuttered, her hands going to her mouth; then she turned and ran off, her feet crashing noisily through the leaves.
Daniel did nothing except look at the pair of them, his expression of shock gradually changing into hate. The forest was still except for the sound of rustling leaves. His bitter brown eyes met taunting blue ones; then Daniel smiled faintly.
“I would put a bullet right between your eyes,” he said to Heath in a thin voice, “but you’re not worth the trouble.”
Lucy
buried her face in her hands, listening to the sound of Daniel walking away. The heat of passion faded from her body and left her with a cold, sick feeling.
Lucy would never forget the misery of the ride back home, during which every one of the Hosmers stared at her wordlessly. Mrs. Hosmer drew her youngest son under her wing and watched Lucy balefully, as if she thought Lucy was a threat to the moral health of her family. After they were dropped off, Lucy sat alone in the parlor while her father went downstairs and minded the store. She couldn’t think straight. She merely stared at the wall and sorted through bits and pieces of what had happened, over and over again. She prepared lunch mechanically and set the table, wiping the endless stream of tears from her cheeks. Lucas Caldwell’s feet were unusually light on the steps, as if he dreaded having to face her as much as she dreaded it.
“How was business?” Lucy asked in a quavering voice. There was a feeling of unreality about the whole situation. How could they talk about commonplace things when her whole life was upside-down?
“Slow,” her father answered, and sat down to the table with a long sigh. She watched him while he ate, knowing that if she touched even a morsel of the food on her plate she would be sick. Finally Lucas set his fork down and met her swollen eyes with a resolute stare. “Knowing how you feel about Daniel, I would have believed it of any girl in town except you. Not only that, but”—his expression was bewildered and severely troubled—“doing what you were doing, with the whole of Concord a few yards away.” Lucy nodded, putting a shaking hand to her brow, unable to meet his gaze any longer. “I’m surprised at your actions, not his,” her father continued, sounding unbearably tired. “Everyone knows what Southerners think of Northern women. Of course he would take advantage of you, given half a chance. Mind you, he’s not a bad man for a Southerner, but he’s got the same faults as the rest of them.”