Love, Come to Me(107)

“I don’t want you to beg. I just want to be alone.”

He followed her to the door and braced his hand on the doorjamb, momentarily preventing her exit. She looked up into his turquoise eyes and wrapped her arms around her middle, embarrassed about the scene she had made and vaguely anxious that he wasn’t going to let her go.

“Remember the months right after we moved to Boston?” His gaze seemed to strip away her pretensions and pierce through to her heart. “For a while it was good between us. Very good.”

“Y-yes, it was,” she stammered, mesmerized by the intent expression in his turquoise eyes.

“No matter what our differences were, you never withheld yourself in order to get back at me for something I had done or said.”

“No! Of c-course not—”

“I wouldn’t let you go right now, Cin, if I thought that this was some kind of punishment.” He read his answer in her stricken face, and he nodded slightly, appearing to be satisfied. Lowering his arm from the doorframe, he turned the knob for her and held the door open. “Go on. You’ve bought yourself a little time.”

Thankfully she fled, wrapping her robe more tightly around herself and heading into the adjoining bedroom.

“Oh, there you are,” Lucy said, walking into the library and smiling as she saw Amy rifling industriously through the bookshelves. Amy paused as she saw her, abashedly holding a precariously balanced stack of books in her left arm. “I saw that Raine is taking a nap, and I couldn’t find you.”

“I thought I’d look in here for some books—” Amy began.

“You really do like to read, don’t you?”

“Novels,” Amy said, and Lucy laughed in delight.

“Let me see what you have . . . mmmn, some of my favorites. Snow Bound . . . The Hidden Hand . . . Wuthering Heights—”

“That’s my favorite.”

“Have you ever read St. Elmo? No? I’ll find it for you—you must read it. It’s about a long, passionate love affair, and a poor girl who becomes rich and successful . . . I see you’ve only looked through the books on these shelves—”

“The ones on the other side of the room look dull.”

“Yes,” Lucy said, wrinkling her nose briefly. “Those are Heath’s shelves. These are mine.”

“You have so many new books,” Amy said, her blue eyes reverent as she looked at the neat rows of well-bound volumes.

“When I was younger, my father used to scold me for spending so much money on books instead of more practical things.” Lucy grinned reminiscently and sat down in Heath’s chair. “Thank goodness Heath never says a word, no matter how many I buy.”

“Clay fussed at me for reading too much. We couldn’t afford books, not when we needed the money for . . . other things.”

“Doctors’ bills?” Lucy asked softly, thinking about the letters that had detailed Clay’s back problems and constant illnesses.

“And hired help—we couldn’t get along without it,” Amy said, setting the books on Heath’s desk and leaning on the edge of it. “It was only Clay, Raine, Mother, and me on the plantation. None of us were very good at that kind of work. We paid one of the neighbor’s boys to help—he was lazy, but when he was pushed he did a good job.”

“I’m sorry.” Impulsively Lucy reached over and patted the girl’s hand.

“Sorry for what?”

“I’m sorry that things were so hard for you . . . and that you didn’t have books or—”

“It didn’t seem that bad at the time—you never realize how bad something really was until you look back on it. Course, it all could have been much easier if Heath had been there to help . . . but he wasn’t.”

That must have been when Heath moved up here. Lucy felt compelled to defend his absence. “It’s not like him to turn his back on someone who needs help,” she said. “Maybe if someone had just tried to make him understand—”

“It wasn’t his fault. He wanted to help. Heath came to the plantation after the war, but they wouldn’t let him stay.” Amy regarded her with surprise. “He never told you about that?”

“Not really,” Lucy admitted, her mind scheming on how she could extract further revelations from Amy. If she could get her to talk, Amy might prove to be a windfall of information. “I do know that there were a few problems between Heath, Clay, and Raine—”

“And Mother too. She never liked him. You know why, don’t you?”

“Because he was . . . he was . . . another woman’s son?” Lucy asked tentatively.

“That’s right. Clay and I were born Prices. Mother always said that we were the real children. And”—Amy looked around and lowered her voice—“she said Heath was just a mistake. She said it to his face, too, lots of times.”

“What did Heath do?”

“He just smiled. He had this smile that would make her hopping mad . . . oh, she just couldn’t stand to be around him. It would take days to calm her down after Daddy had brought Heath to visit.”

“How did you and Clay feel about him?”

“I always liked him. Clay didn’t seem to, but the two of them never fought. Not ever, until Raine.”