Love, Come to Me(33)

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.”