Love, Come to Me(42)

“Are you going to write another book?” she asked.

“Hadn’t planned on it. Why do you ask?”

“Well . . . money for us to live on. I mean, the money from your first book can’t last forever, and I thought to make more, you’d have to—”

“Oh.” His turquoise eyes gleamed with sudden amusement. “A man should try to make a living as an author only if he doesn’t value the luxury of eating three meals a day.”

“But your book was a success—”

“Yes, but the total amount of money I got for it wouldn’t last us a week.”

Her jaw dropped open in amazement. Her father had said Heath could provide for her! It had never entered her mind to doubt that, not when Heath’s clothes were so handsome and his expression always so free of worry.

“But I had always assumed . . . then how do you make a living?”

“After the war ended I sold some of the more valuable tracts of land that my father left to me and made some investments. One in particular promises to pay off very well, more than enough to keep us in a comfortable style. Have you ever heard of refrigerated railroad cars?”

“No,” she said, relaxing with sudden relief. Land. Investments. Those words meant money.

“It’s a way for the big shippers to increase their business ten times over, packing their fruit and vegetables in low-temperature cars and sending them on down the line to the larger retailers, bypassing the small merchants along the tracks—”

“But wouldn’t that put a lot of people out of business?”

“Yes. But that can’t be helped . . . especially when they’re standing in the way of progress.”

“How callous you sound! Don’t you feel guilty about it? Responsible for those people you put out of work?”

“I should have known you’d moralize about it,” Heath said, and smiled slightly. But as she continued to stare at him in that half-appalled manner, his smile disappeared and his expression became at once sober and ruthless. What kinds of things was he capable of? “No, I don’t feel guilty,” he said. “I don’t like putting people out of work, but I have a strange fondness for sleeping with a roof over my head.”

“But those people—”

“That’s what war does . . . it shakes the established order up. Some of us rise while others sink to the bottom. And no matter what I’ve had to do to keep from going under, it’s better than drowning.”

“Some men would rather drown than lose their integrity,” Lucy said. Censure threaded thickly through her voice.

Heath’s blue eyes turned to ice, sending a shiver down her spine. “You’d be surprised, Mrs. Rayne, about the amount of things you don’t know about men and their integrity. Including the fact that during the war your beloved Daniel probably did things to survive that would make you sick to your stomach.”

“I didn’t say a word about Daniel! ” she said hotly, but they both knew she had been thinking about him.

“I’ll tolerate a lot from you,” Heath said, staring her down effortlessly, “but I won’t have you sitting in judgment on me—or making comparisons.”

After that they didn’t talk at all, but this silence, cold and unbreakable, was worse than the one before.

After supper was over, they returned to Concord late in the evening. Lucy had a few minutes alone before they retired to bed. Carefully she took off her dress and put it away. All her movements were slow, as if she were in the middle of a dream. Clumsily she undid her corset and swayed as a deep breath of air rushed to the bottom of her lungs. Clinging to the bedpost, she rested her cheek against it and closed her eyes until the dizziness passed.

“Cinda?” She started in response to Heath’s voice and her eyes flew open. “Are you all right?” he asked, walking from the doorway to the bed. His handsome face was touched with concern. Letting go of the bedpost, she backed away a step or two, her bare toes digging into the pliant braided rug.

“I’m fine,” she said defensively, wrapping her trembling arms around her waist. She was unbearably aware of the fact that he was still fully clothed while she was dressed only in her pantalets and the wrinkled camisole that had been crushed underneath the corset all day. “I didn’t know you’d be up here so soon. I haven’t had time to . . . get ready.”

“I didn’t know how much time you’d need.”

“Well,” she said uncomfortably, “why don’t you leave and come back in a few minutes, and by then I’ll have found my nightgown and—”

“Why don’t I stay?” he suggested softly, already shrugging out of his coat. She watched hypnotized as he took off his shoes. “It might be easier if we didn’t make such an event out of this.”

“I can hardly be . . . casual . . . about it—”

“There’s no need to be so jumpy. Remember, I’ve seen you wearing a lot less than that.”

Turning away, Lucy avoided the sight of him as he continued to undress. Her hands went to the straps of her camisole, but then she froze—no, she couldn’t take it off in front of him. Did he expect her to strip na**d right now, with him watching? Or worse, was he stripping na**d right now? And if he was, where would she look, what would she say? This was a hundred times worse than she had imagined it would be. Oh why, why hadn’t someone told her what she was supposed to do? Surely there had to be a proper way to do things, yet no one had warned her of the terrible awkwardness of this moment. Mute, frozen, and shivering, she stood there while her mind raced for some plan of action. Ah—she hadn’t taken the pins out of her hair. That would give her something to do for a minute or two. Fumbling with the pins that fastened the coil of hair at the top of her head, she heard two or three of them drop to the floor at the same time that she heard Heath’s bare feet approaching her.