Rebel Enchantress (40 page)

“It’s good to have you back,” Jane said with less enthusiasm than Delilah had expected. “To be sure I was glad to have Polly stay, but Mother will be wanting her to help with the holiday cooking.”

And except for Reuben’s insistence that he was going to serve Nathan a bad turn for sending Delilah away in disgrace, that had been it. She was home, things were back to normal, and there was no reason to remember she had ever been at Maple Hill.

But things weren’t the same. In the four months she had been away, Jane had taken the management of the household into her hands. Delilah felt annoyed when she had to ask what to do next. She felt resentful because Jane’s sister had occupied her bed. Still, she understood, and she tried not to feel hurt.

But she did.

No one spoke about her time at Maple Hill. She knew it embarrassed Jane and Reuben, that they were grateful for her sacrifice but didn’t want to be reminded of it. She understood and tried not to resent that.

But she did.

Maybe worst of all, at least in her own eyes, was the way she felt about her home. In the tiny cabin, with rough materials used for clothing and bedding, old and chipped plates, and rough-hewn furniture, its small space occupied by five people, she felt poor for the first time. She tried not to resent the knowledge that people like Lucy Porter, Noah Hubbard, and Tom Oliver had far more than she was ever going to have.

But she did.

“This has nothing to do with fitting into the family or feeling poor,” she lectured herself aloud late one afternoon as she set out to do the evening milking. “It has to do with Nathan Trent and nothing more.”

And of course, that was true.

She cried herself to sleep every night knowing she would never be his wife, that she would probably never see him again, that he would never know she loved him so deeply it was impossible for her to think of loving anyone else.

She wouldn’t allow herself to dwell on that final, horrible evening when all her dreams had come hopelessly unraveled. Instead she remembered the many hours they had spent in the library, arguing over each family’s skills and what Nathan should do to help them. She thought of his smile when he was happy, of the incredible strength of his embrace, of the warmth of his kisses, and of her wonderful feeling of contentment when they were together.

She worried about him. Was he getting enough sleep? He tended to work too late and spend too much time in the saddle. And his eating habits were terrible. All that food and wine every evening. She had gotten him to moderate his habits a little, but she was certain he would go back to sitting down to supper well after dark, eating enough food for five people, and drinking enough brandy to send him to an early grave.

And she could see Priscilla encouraging him. If he died, Priscilla would have all the money Hector needed.

A shaft of fear pierced Delilah’s thoughts and stayed her hands in the act of milking. The cow turned an inquiring gaze in her direction, but in a moment Delilah resumed her rhythmic squeezing and the cow went back to chewing her cud.

She knew Serena had been sent away. That was the talk of Springfield within an hour of the departure, but Delilah distrusted Priscilla more than her mother. Serena was supremely selfish, but she was predictable. Priscilla’s duplicity had proved her ruthless, dangerous, and willing to stop at nothing to get what she wanted, at least when it concerned Hector. Nathan held notes on everything Hector possessed. Would Priscilla see Nathan’s death as a way to give her lover back his holdings?

There’s no need to worry my head about it. Eden if I knew what Priscilla planned to do, nobody would believe me. They would set it down to spite because she exposed me.

Nathan wouldn’t believe her either. She had embarrassed him in front of his family and his peers. Men hated that. And to his mind she had compounded the sin by lying, trying to implicate a member of his family, and destroying his property. He would never forgive her.

But Delilah’s dreams continued to be haunted by a smile which made all the harsh realities of her life fade into insignificance, a pair of arms which offered all the comfort she wanted.

Sometimes she saw Jane watching her out of the corner of her eye. Delilah knew her brother’s wife was aware of her unhappiness, that Jane was afraid somehow she and Reuben might have been the cause of it. And Jane was hurt because Delilah didn’t share the problem with her.

But Delilah couldn’t confess that she would do almost anything to be back at Maple Hill. She couldn’t tell Jane her heart was heavy, tears suddenly filled her eyes, and she had dark circles under them because she longed to be near the man Reuben and Jane still thought of as the spawn of the devil. She couldn’t say her love for this man left her no pride and little desire to live outside his arms.

Jane would swear she was mad.

Delilah could hardly listen to Shays’s plans without screaming that she would tell Nathan if they so much as thought about turning their muskets against him. Though Nathan was more and more frequently mentioned with respect by the townspeople, and the insurgents often made him an exception in their universal condemnation of the merchant class, Delilah saw them all as Nathan’s enemies, even the handful of merchants turning to Nathan as the only person who could help them avoid confrontation. She had to tell herself at least half a dozen times a day that it was pointless for her to want to run to Maple Hill and warn Nathan. He could take care of himself.

So she watched as Shays organized his army, and silently prayed Nathan would find some reason to go to Boston before the fighting started.

Nathan stared at the portrait, conscious of a growing sense of dissatisfaction with it. At first he couldn’t understand why. This was his best work. Not even his portrait of Lady Sarah Mendlow compared with this one.

Then he knew what was wrong. He had painted an ideal, not a woman. In the same flash of understanding he realized he had tried to do the same with Delilah. He had made such a point of her honesty, venerating her for being what other women in his life had failed to be, he had almost turned her into someone to be worshiped rather than loved.

He accepted human frailty in others, even himself, but when Delilah had fallen short of perfection, he had been too dazed, too embittered to try to separate the ideal from the woman. Nor had he seen the need to do so. He had turned his back on her.

But he wasn’t in lave with an ideal. He loved a real woman. Delilah.

No ideal could replace the genuine warmth of her smile, the determined jut of her chin, or the sinuous sway of her hips. Flawlessness could not counterbalance her energy, her concern, her joy in life. Nor could it replace the imperfections which had become so dear to him: her generous mouth, her stubbornness, her inability to see when she was being imposed upon.

Every trait that made her real, desirable, absolutely necessary to his existence could be considered a flaw. Yet he wouldn’t change any one of them.

He looked at the portrait again and cursed himself for a fool. He covered it, intending to put it in the attic and forget it, but he knew he wouldn’t. Flawed though it may be, it was all he had of Delilah. He couldn’t give it up.

He looked at the presents piled around the room. He
had
bought the necklace of blue stones and the velvet, as well as a lot of things from as far afield as Hartford, Newport, and Providence. Now they sat in his room, a monument to much more than an empty holiday season.

Nathan struggled with himself. Even though his mind continued to tell him Delilah was guilty, his heart told him with increasing insistence that she was innocent, and he could prove it if he but figured out what had really happened. He had gone over everything said that evening until he could recite the dialogue word by word. After finally admitting he couldn’t sort truth from lies, he realized he either had to accept Delilah’s statements or Priscilla’s.

That made everything simple. He had never trusted Priscilla. He had only believed her because other things had pointed to Delilah’s guilt. And because of Lady Sarah Mendlow Once he’d accepted Delilah’s version, a great weight lifted from his heart. He now had hope. He would get to the bottom of the incident and prove her innocence, but most important of all, he believed in her again.

Suddenly decisive, Nathan gathered up all the presents. He would take them to Delilah. That would give him a chance to see her, make certain she was all right.

Delilah saw him coming and felt a dizzying rush of joy. She had believed she would never see him again, yet here he was, looking just as she remembered. Before she knew it, she had flung away her basket of eggs and was running toward him. She didn’t have time to think of anything except how much she wanted to feel his arms around her.

Nathan had spotted her even before she spotted him. He could hardly believe it when she immediately started running toward him. He whipped his horse into a gallop so as not to waste a single precious second.

They met at the corner of the house. Nathan held out his arms, and Delilah literally leaped into his embrace. She laughed and cried with happiness, her tears making their desperate, hungry kisses wet and salty. But Nathan didn’t seem to notice. His hungry lips covered her mouth, and there was no gentleness in this reunion. Later, perhaps, but now their need was too urgent.

But not even the cloud of euphoria which surrounded them could long withstand the sharp pricks of reality, so Nathan slowly allowed Delilah to slip through his arms. The moment her feet touched earth, common sense, like an evil talisman, returned with dreadful finality.

“I think I dropped my eggs,” she said, looking for anything to say except the words in her heart.

“You have nothing in your hands,” Nathan replied. His hands touched her face, caressed her skin, felt the wetness of her tears, absorbed the warmth of her flaming cheeks. Simply being with her brought life to the cold, barren plain of his soul.

“Jane will be angry.”

“Maybe she won’t notice.”

“She notices everything.”
But not the most obvious thing of all, that I would trade everything in the world to be back in this man’s arms.

“Are you getting along all right? Are you glad to be back home?”

Delilah’s throat closed; she couldn’t answer. How could she tell him she had never been more miserable in her life? How could she explain that he had changed her life forever? The things she did with her family, the house, her mom—they used to give her pleasure and happiness, but no longer. Now everything reminded her of him. She feared he no longer loved her, that he would never love her again. In the end, she didn’t give him any answer.

“How about you?”

“Mrs. Stebbens tries to spoil me. She’s convinced I’d be happier if I ate more. You’d be appalled at the food she puts before me.”

It was a small confidence to share, just one of the threads that bound their lives together.

“Her cooking’s not quite what it used to be. I think she misses you in the kitchen.”

Even if everything came out of the kitchen burned to a cinder, Nathan knew he couldn’t miss Delilah more than he did already. He’d been so absorbed in saving his fortune he hadn’t realized how much he had come to depend on her being in the house.

She was his ally, his secret companion, his advisor. She gave him encouragement when he was disheartened; she praised him when others looked at him with hard, calculating eyes. It was as essential to him to know she was in the house as it was to spend time in her company.

“Where are your brother and his family?”

“They’ve gone to visit Jane’s parents. He wanted to take the presents early so we can spend all of Christmas Day together.”

“They’ve left you to do all the work by yourself?”

He sounded so worried, so indignant on her behalf, she had to fight back the tears. Don’t be a sentimental fool, she told herself angrily. A little bit of caring changes nothing.

But it did. This proved his feelings for her weren’t dead, that no matter what he thought of her, some part of him still wanted to know she was being cared for. Just like a man, she thought, worrying about a little physical labor when it’s the two feet of space between us that’s breaking my heart.

“All the chores have been done, and Reuben will help with the feeding when he gets back. I was just collecting the eggs to have something to do. I don’t know what Jane will say when she learns I broke them all”

“I’ll buy you some more.”

“No,” she said quickly. “I can tell her I stumbled or was frightened by a snake.”

He smiled for the first time, the same old smile that caused her to go weak in the knees and silly in the head.

“Have you ever stumbled, or been frightened by anything?”

She had to return his smile. “No, but I’ve been acting so peculiar lately she’ll believe anything.”

Delilah hadn’t meant to let that slip. Funny, she’d been trying so hard not to tell him she still loved him, still thought of him every minute of the day.

“I brought the rest of your clothing.”

She had hoped he’d never know she’d left behind the dresses Priscilla had given her and the ones made from the material he had provided.

“I was checking to see if you’d left your trunk.”

He hadn’t been checking anything. He’d been going to her room every day, sometimes more than once, just to stand at the window, sit in her chair, or read some of the books she had brought up from the library. It made him feel closer to her when it was too painful to look at her portrait.

“I’ve brought some other things, too.”

“I couldn’t have left so much.”

She had checked everything several times. What else had there been to do through the long hours of that dreadful night? Since it had been impossible for her to close her eyes, she had filled the long, cold hours by packing and sorting through her things, deciding what she would leave … remembering the times she had worn each gown, the look in his eyes when he had seen her, the sly comments he’d made when she had passed close enough for him to whisper, the swelling of his body in their more private moments.