He recalled the way he’d kissed her and how she had kissed him in return. Her passion had been sweet, innocent, stirring. Everything about her reached out to him, called for him to claim her again. This was love, wasn’t it? “Last night you led me to believe that you were not averse to my . . . suit.” He kicked himself mentally for sounding like a hero in a melodrama.
“Oh, Theran.” With a sigh she took his hand and drew it up to her cheek. “Sometimes I hate them so.”
Her touch flared through him. But her words halted him. “Who?” What had he missed?
“My parents.” She frowned pensively. “I don’t know how you had the . . . courage to stand up to them like that.”
“They’re just parents,” Theran said, kissing her hand. “I didn’t expect them to be crazy about the idea of a poor soldier falling for their daughter. Your mother probably thinks I’m a fortune hunter. But they’ll get used to me. They’ll be forced to. I’m not changing my mind.”
Chloe looked into his eyes. “Will you take me away from them? Truly?”
What was she trying to find out with that searching look? “Sure. If I could, I’d marry you right after I finish training. But I don’t think that would be fair to you. In any event, the war won’t last long and I’ll be back. We’ll marry then. You’ll want a nice wedding and honeymoon.”
Chloe listened in wonder to Theran’s confident words as he made plans for their future. It amazed her how easily he made decisions, without any hesitation.
“I don’t care a thing about all that,” she blurted out. “You said, last night . . . You said . . .” Her gaze implored Theran and she wished she might be able to read his mind. Did he really care for her? It still seemed so improbable that all this was happening.
“I said I’d fallen in love with you.” He squeezed her hand. “I meant it then. I mean it now. I love you, Chloe Kimball, and I’m going to make you my wife.”
Chloe folded her arms around his neck and leaned her cheek against his. “Then take me away, Theran,” she pleaded. “If you love me, take me away from here.”
Theran pulled back. “You sound . . . unhappy. What’s wrong? ”
Chloe tried to think how she could make him understand what her life was like. She couldn’t. He wouldn’t understand. He was a straight arrow. How could she explain the games her parents played with her in order to wound the other? How insignificant they made her feel. “I’m not happy here,” she whispered, knowing it wasn’t enough.
Theran studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Then you won’t have to stay here any longer than you must,” he said, folding her into his arms. “I’ll come back for you after I finish training. The recruiter said I’d get a long weekend at least between training and reporting for duty. I’ll head down here and come for you. We’ll marry on the way back to New York. I won’t get rid of my room at the boarding house. We’ll go and I’ll set you up to stay there.” He stopped and stroked Chloe’s shoulder. “That is, if you really don’t care if it’s nothing fancy. My boarding house isn’t up to what you’re used to.” He nodded his head toward Ivy Manor.
“That doesn’t matter.” Chloe stared up at him, still disbelieving. “I’ve never met anyone like you before. I expected you to make excuses.”
He pulled her close and kissed her. “I’m not a talker. I’m a do-er. Trust me?” He kissed her again.
She didn’t feel like herself. In Theran’s arms, she was a new creature. In his arms she believed she could leave behind the sad shell of her life. “Yes, I trust you.” A lightness, an airiness, bubbled up inside her.
“Will you be my bride, Chloe Kimball?”
“Yes.” She let herself tousle his hair over his ears. “With all my heart, yes.”
“Then leave everything to me.”
Chloe closed her eyes and pressed closer to him. She knew everything was moving dangerously fast. But going ahead could only be better than letting this unlooked-for chance pass her by.
Chloe stood watching Roarke drive away on the road behind Ivy Manor. She clutched the letter he’d just hand-delivered to her this morning. Ten very long and silent days had passed since Theran had proposed to her. April had deepened, reveling in sun-splashed leaves and tiny blue violets in the green grass. But Chloe’s heavy heart had clung to gray winter. Now, she looked down and read the brief note once again:
Dear Chloe, my sweet love,
I have written to you every day since I returned to New York City. I’ve received no reply from you. I cannot believe that you have not tried to contact me. I’m sending this letter in a note to Kitty’s brother and have asked him to hand deliver it to you away from your family. If you have changed your mind and have decided to scorn my love for you, at least give Roarke a note to that effect. I count on your love, though, my little darling. All my heart forever, Theran.
“My sweet love.”
It was as if Theran had caressed her with his words.
He didn’t make a fool of me.
The relief came, so powerful that momentarily she felt it suck all strength from her. But how would she be able to face her mother over luncheon without tossing this note in her face?
Chloe turned to Minnie. “Let’s go.” Sudden anger propelling her, Chloe stalked down the dirt road toward one of her family’s sharecropper’s cabin.
In her maid’s uniform, Minnie trotted beside her, carrying a basket of food and a blue cotton flannel layette for the sharecropper’s new baby son. Minnie touched her arm, startling her. “I think I know what’s in that letter Mr. Roarke just brought you.” Minnie paused, watchful.
Chloe halted and stared at Minnie. “You do?”
Obviously reassured by Chloe’s response, Minnie continued, “My uncle’s burnin’ your letters from that man. You figured that out, right?”
Chloe could only stare at her.
I should have guessed.
Minnie looked her straight in the eye. “Are you ser’ous about that man, Miss Chloe?”
Chloe nodded, surprised Minnie was talking so openly.
“Your fam’ly never let you marry him. If you want that man, you got to run off.”
“I know.” Chloe looked at Minnie, realizing that this was the open way they’d talked to each other as children—before Chloe had been sent away to boarding school at thirteen. After that, her old playmate had addressed her as “Miss Chloe” and rarely looked her in the eye.
“You need help to get away. You can’t make a move they don’t know ’bout.”
“I’m going to marry him.” Chloe let her determination flow harshly into her words.
“Then I’ll help you . . . if you help me.”
Their eyes met again and Chloe couldn’t mistake the message in Minnie’s eyes. It had been the same one she’d seen—over and over—during the past year whenever her father cornered Minnie. Chloe despised her father’s coarse behavior. She didn’t have to ask why Minnie wanted to get away from Ivy Manor. “How?” Chloe asked, her lungs painfully constricted.
“You got to talk that banker’s son up sweet. He got a car. He can help us get away.”
Chloe frowned. “Mr. Black’s promised to come for me and marry me after he finishes army training.”
Minnie began walking again. “That ain’t good enough. If he come here, your daddy can stop him, could even have him arrested. You know he got the whole county in his pocket or on his payroll.”
Chloe hurried to catch up. “I know, Minnie.”
“Mr. Roarke’s the only one can help us. You got to sweet-talk him—”
“But I don’t want to mislead Mr. Roarke.”
“I’m not talkin’ about you vamping him. I’m talkin’ about—” Minnie changed her voice, sweetening it. “Roarke, please I’m so in love. Help me.”
Chloe was forced to smile. “I don’t think that would work, but I think an appeal to his sense of right and wrong would.”
“You mean it ain’t right that your parents burn your letters?”
“Yes. And I know Roarke’s family doesn’t like my father.”
“Who do?”
Minnie’s cool assessment of Mr. Kimball was a revelation to Chloe. Did everyone dislike her father as much as she did?
“Okay.” Minnie started walking even faster. “I’ll start sneakin’ some of your things out little bit by little bit to my fam’ly’s place. That way you be able to leave without rousin’ no ’spicion. And then I’ll run away with you.”
Chloe hurried along with Minnie. She only nodded, unable to say all she was thinking. “Mr. Roarke said he’d let me know tomorrow if he’d help me.”
“That be all right. Miss Lily like Mr. Roarke, think you’d make a nice banker’s wife and then you be settled just down the road right close to home. They be keepin’ a sharp eye on you. Miss Lily tell my uncle not to let you go out alone. That’s why I’m with you. Today he tole me to tell him if you see anybody else or if you just go to the cropper’s house like you say.”
“And will you?”
“I di’n’t see nobody talk to you.” Then Minnie’s face split into a wide smile. “You sweet-talk Mr. Roarke and I take care of the rest.”
Chloe realized she was clasping and unclasping her hands. She forced herself to take a deep breath and grin at Minnie. Hope flickered once again. But everything hinged on Roarke McCaslin.
I
n the end, Roarke found he could deny Chloe nothing. Not even a runaway marriage to the wrong man. But maybe that wouldn’t take place after all. On the appointed evening in May and in a new navy suit, Roarke tapped the polished brass knocker of Ivy Manor. The ivy growing up the front of the house fluttered in the evening breeze. The door opened to reveal Haines standing in the doorway backlit by the foyer chandelier. His white hair was a halo. “Evening, Mr. McCaslin.”
“Good evening, Haines.” Roarke handed him his hat and Roarke noticed how lined the old man’s hands were. All day, things he usually didn’t notice had hit him with startling clarity. Whether for good or ill, he was bound to remember this day in his life. “I’m here for Miss Chloe.”
“Yes, sir.” Haines bowed and motioned Roarke to precede him down the hall to the parlor. Exactly six weeks had passed since Kitty had brought Theran Black home with her and destroyed all Roarke’s hopes. As if walking to his judgment day, he entered the ornate parlor and found Chloe and her parents waiting for him.
“Roarke.” Mrs. Kimball, lounging on the blue sofa in one of her pale, gauzy dresses, beamed at him. “So you’ve come for our Chloe again?”
Looking frail and lovely, Chloe rose and offered Roarke her hand. It was icy cold within his palm; he squeezed it to encourage her. “I’ll take care of you,” he whispered to her and then raised his voice. “We need to go right away, Miss Chloe,” he said as they had rehearsed, “if we’re going to make it to the first showing.”
“I’ll just be a moment.” Chloe left the room.
Roarke’s eyes followed her. When would he see her again after tonight? Or would she belong to him after tonight? The odds were against it, but . . .
“I’m mighty glad,” Kimball boomed, rolling an unlit cigar between his forefinger and thumb, “that New York boy finally woke you up. You nearly lost your chance with my little girl.”
“Yes, sir.” Roarke felt better about what he was helping Chloe do. It might not be what he’d always wanted, but he’d never been able to stomach Chloe’s father or her haughty mother. He was happy to be confounding her selfish parents. He grinned.
Either way, I’m enjoying outsmarting you and later telling you about it.
“I’m ready, Roarke.” Chloe had donned a perky straw hat and white gloves. She peeped up at him from under the brim that secreted half her face. Her blue eyes were round with anxiety.
Roarke closed the distance between them and imagined pulling Chloe close and kissing her. “Let me help you with your wrap.” She handed him a light pelisse that complemented the green of her sprigged muslin dress. He lifted it around her shoulders and felt an ever so slight tremor shudder through her. His back to her parents, he gave her shoulders one quick squeeze.
She glanced up at him and gave him a decided nod, though her lips quivered. Then she turned. “Good-bye, Mother, Daddy.”
Mrs. Kimball laughed in a practiced, cultured way, always the aristocrat—another thing that had always irked Roarke. “Have a nice evening, dear.”
“Don’t keep her out too late,” Kimball said, pointing the cigar at Roarke. “I’m making a speech tomorrow and Chloe’s comin’ ’long to bolster my confidence and to show the voters what a pretty little thing my daughter is.”
Mrs. Kimball pursed her lips, grimacing at her husband.
Roarke’s palms itched to box the man’s ears. Using his daughter for cheap political advantage. Disgusting. With a blowhard for a father and a souse for a mother, how Chloe had turned out so sweet and honest was a mystery.
“Come along, sweetheart.” Roarke relished using this endearment both because he had long wanted to use it and because it threw more dust in her parents’ eyes. Outside, he led Chloe to the car. Neither of them said anything incriminating; the windows of the house were open. Sparrows chattered in the boughs over the drive and the sky was still blue.
In the car, Chloe sat stiffly beside him. His own stomach felt on edge. Without a word, he drove them to the end of the rutted lane and turned down the road toward town. Soon a slender figure stepped out from the summer green bushes on the edge of a field of young spear-leafed tobacco and Roarke stopped.
“Get in, Minnie,” Chloe said, her voice sounding dry, forced. “Hurry.”
Roarke got out and opened the back door for the black girl, who wore a faded blue dress and a plain straw hat. Then into the trunk of the car he stowed the two valises she’d brought with her—one expensive leather and the other cheap cardboard.
“Thank you, Mister McCaslin,” Minnie murmured.
Chloe waited while Roarke got back in and started on down the lane. Then she looked back at Minnie. “Your mother didn’t guess?”
Minnie shook her head, her large brown eyes shining in the shadows under the arching trees lining the road. “If she did, she di’n’t say nothin’. Miss Chloe, I hid everythin’ and packed it just like I tole you.”
Chloe nodded and turned to face forward.
Roarke paused before turning onto the main road. “Minnie, it might be uncomfortable, but lie down on the seat until we get out of the county.”