Romance Classics (123 page)
“Go after him, girl,” he ordered softly.
Loyce shrank, eyes wide, and there were stains of tears on her cheeks.
“Oh, Gran’sir, I can’t!” she whispered piteously.
“Because you think it might be humiliating to have to plead with him?” asked her grandfather without mercy.
“Well, of course it would.”
“How do you suppose he felt, sitting here listening to us? To me, rather. You didn’t have much to say, come to think of it.”
“You took me so by surprise I couldn’t think,” she replied.
“Well, if you want him you’d better get out there and convince him,” the Judge reminded her. “If you’re worrying about what’s going to happen here after you and Cherry are gone, I’ll tell you. Eben’s son, Ansel, will take over your work and do a mighty fine job of it. Now that’s settled. And as for Cherry, she’s arranged for Betty Marshall to take over her job. So where is the problem?”
Loyce sat very still for a moment, looking first at her grandfather, then at the Mitchells, and last at Cherry, who gave her a tentative but very warm smile.
“Looks as if we’d been bounced from our jobs, Loyce. Let’s face it and make the best of it,” Cherry suggested.
Loyce stood up at last. There was a lovely pink in her cheeks and her eyes were shining as she went out of the room and up the stairs.
Jonathan looked up as she knocked and opened the door. For a long moment he met her eyes and then went back to his packing.
“Jonny, don’t go,” she whispered faintly.
He apparently did not hear her, and she closed the door and came to stand within arm’s reach of him.
“But if you must go, Jonny,” she whispered, “take me with you.”
For a moment his hands that were stuffing articles into his opened suitcases were still. He did not look up, nor did he speak for a moment. And when he did his voice was curt and sharp. “Sorry! That’s out!”
She cringed as though he had struck her, and some of the soft color left her face. But her eyes clung to his, and though her hands clenched tightly she did not give up.
“You said you loved me,” she whispered.
“I do. But that doesn’t mean I’ll settle for any less from you.”
“You don’t have to, Jonny darling. I love you. Oh, darling, I love you so much.” Her voice was shaken, and her hands reached out to him and were drawn swiftly back as he made no effort to accept them.
He straightened, and for a long moment he looked at her coldly. His eyes were bleak, as was his tone when he answered, “Love me so much that your grandfather had to adopt his courtroom manner and sentence you to marry me or get out?”
“He didn’t really mean that, Jonny”
“It certainly sounded to me as though he meant exactly what he said,” Jonny pointed out grimly. “And who can blame him, after the way you behaved about Hammett? And now when, as he pointed out, you get a second chance at love and you’re still afraid!”
“Afraid?”
she stammered, outraged.
“Afraid!” he repeated as though pounding his point home. “Afraid of leaving your snug little dreary nest here and stepping out somewhere to undertake responsibilities and marriage. And there
are
responsibilities, my girl! Make no mistake about that.”
She drew a long, hard breath and admitted her defeat.
For a long moment she met his eyes, and then she said very softly, “I don’t blame you for being disgusted with me, for doubting that I love you. I do, but I know now I could never make you believe that. So you’ll go away and I’ll probably never see you again. But will you kiss me goodbye, darling?”
He stood very still for a moment, his tall body rigid. And then his arms swept out and cradled her close and hard against him, and his cheek was against hers that was tear-wet beneath a lovely rising flush. Their lips found each other and clung. And all confusion and misunderstanding and bitterness was swallowed up in the breath-taking magic kiss….
Downstairs in the big living room, Cherry perched on the edge of her chair and watched her grandfather, who was apparently completely absorbed in his book. Suddenly there was a twinkle in Cherry’s eyes and she leaned forward, took the book from him, turned it right side up and gave it back to him.
“It’s much easier to read if you hold it right side up, lambie,” she mocked him tenderly.
The Judge looked at her sheepishly.
“I suppose it is,” he agreed, and looked up toward the stairs. “They’ve been gone a long time, haven’t they?”
“Well, they’ve got a lot of things to settle,” Cherry answered reasonably.
“You think she’ll win?” asked the Judge uneasily.
Cherry’s laugh was touched with loving scorn.
“Darling, you’re the smartest man in all the world, but you still don’t know a heck of a lot about women, do you?” she mocked.
“I’m smart enough to admit I never expect to, either,” he said frankly. “You
do
think they’ll be happy, honey?”
“Well, gollies, lambie, of course they will,” Cherry assured him with such bright confidence that he was relieved. “Jonny’s a darling and Loyce is a treasure, and why wouldn’t they have themselves a simply super marriage?”
The windows were open to the night. Suddenly she stood up and walked across to one of them and stood leaning there; savoring the sound of the wind through the trees; the faint, faraway barking of a dog; the tinkle of a cow bell from the pasture.
“Listen, Gran’sir,” she whispered as though the sound of her voice might destroy the beloved mountain music. “Wind in the pines! Mountain melody! Oh, Gran’sir, I’m so glad I’m marrying a mountain man and can listen to that melody all the rest of my life! It’s the most beautiful music in the whole world. In the winter when the snow is falling; in spring when the fruit trees are budding and the streams are unlocked from the ice; in summer when the wind tiptoes through the pines like this — oh, Gran’sir, isn’t it beautiful music?”
“It is, my dear, it is,” he answered gently.
She turned swiftly and came back to drop to her knees beside his chair and to lay her arms across his blanketed, lifeless knees.
“Darling, are you going to miss us just terribly?” she asked softly.
“Scarcely a bit,” he answered hardily.
“You’re lying, Gran’sir, and I love you for it,” she told him. “But don’t you worry. I’ll be running in every few days, and there’ll be vacations when Jonny and Loyce will come down. And we’ll bring the children to visit you.”
“Well, you’d better,” said the Judge, and his smile was warm and tender for all that he tried to make his voice stern, “or I’ll get out an injunction against you. Could you just possibly name the first boy Bramblett? Or would Job mind?”
“Phooey for Job! The second one can be named Job, Junior.” Cherry laughed and drew herself up so that she could put her arms about him and hold him close. “Bramblett would be a lovely name! Gavin Bramblett Tallent! I think he’ll like that! And then there’ll always be a Bramblett at the Lodge. And that’s as it should be!”
Upstairs a door opened, and there were footsteps in the hall and on the stairs. Cherry stood up with a lovely, graceful movement, her hand still on the Judge’s shoulder as she watched them come slowly down the stairs. One look at their faces, even without Jonathan’s arm about Loyce, told her that all was well with these two, and her heart swelled until she was breathless with its warm sweetness.
The beloved mountain melody that she had always loved had become a love song, and nothing nicer could ever have happened at Crossways Lodge, she told herself joyously as she went forward to offer her congratulations and her heart-felt good wishes.
“He’s forgiven me, Gran’sir,” Loyce said radiantly.
“I had the feeling he would,” the Judge answered, his eyes twinkling. “Congratulations, my boy. I know you’ll both be very happy. Now maybe you’d like to forgive me for playing Cupid with a baseball bat. It
was
pretty rough, I admit.”
Jonathan laughed as he wrung the Judge’s hand, keeping his arm about Loyce.
“Rough it was, Your Honor,” he agreed, “but effective. It made us both realize some important things we might otherwise have overlooked.”
“Fine! That’s good to hear. A Judge likes to know his pronouncements are effective,” said the Judge, and looked up at Loyce. “Do you forgive me, honey, for the scene I made at the table?”
“Of course, darling. How could I not? I deserved every bit of it, and if you hadn’t been so brutally frank, Jonny might have got away from me.”
She was wide-eyed with shock at the thought and Jonathan laughed and drew her close.
“I’d have come back,” he promised her softly.
“Promise you always will?” she pleaded.
“I can’t, darling. I don’t expect ever to go away from you so that I can come back. You and I are a team, honey. ‘Whither thou goest, I will go’ — remember?”
Cherry watched them with a mist of happy tears in her eyes as they turned and went across the living room and out to the verandah. For she knew that the beloved mountain music that meant so much to her would now be ringing in their hearts, and it would be a love song neither would ever forget.
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 1962 by Arcadia House; renewed 1990 by Peggy Gaddis
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-7508-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7508-2
eISBN 10: 1-4405-7509-6
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7509-9
Cover art © istock.com/SolStock
Peggy Gaddis
Avon, Massachusetts
Chapter One
Kristen Dillard perched uncomfortably on the edge of a kitchen chair and looked about her at the rehearsal studio. It was small, drab, dingy. But it was not unlike many others in which she had waited for an audition. Outside, the chill rain of an early October day did nothing to alleviate the dinginess. The room held a chill all its own that added to Kristen’s discouragement. She’d wait half an hour longer, and then go.
Suddenly the door burst open and a tall, dark, spectacularly good-looking young man came swiftly into the room. He wore a somewhat battered raincoat, snugly belted, and looked so much like a television star doing a “foreign intrigue” program that Kristen almost listened for the background music with its slow, ominous beat.
“Oh, hello, were you waiting to see me?” he asked Kristen sharply.
“If you’re Leon Westerman, I am.”
His eyes swept her from head to foot, and he asked, “And you’re who?”
“Kristen Dillard. My agent sent me over to see you about a job as your dancing partner.”
Once more the man’s eyes swept her in a glance that traveled from her copper-colored hair to the tips of her small, neat shoes, and then suddenly he held out his hand to her.
“Come here,” he ordered so peremptorily that Kristen’s green eyes sparkled and her red head went up. “Come on; make it snappy.”
Kristen rose and walked to him. To her startled surprise, he took her swiftly into his arms, and as she stiffened instinctively, he whirled her about so they were both facing a
full-length mirror. It was obvious that he had no interest in her as a woman, and Kristen followed the direction of his eyes.
“We make a very handsome couple, I’d say, wouldn’t you?” he suggested casually.