He stood up and added with a touch of formality, “And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work. Think you can get back to the Manor without trying to pick up any more wiggling sticks?”
“Of course,” said Alison, and her eyes would not quite meet his. “And thank you for a lovely breakfast I am grateful for your interest and your advice.”
“Which, of course, you haven’t the faintest idea of taking,” Sam said, and turned as the back door opened to reveal Amanda, his tall, heavily built housekeeper, who stopped short, staring from him to Alison. “Oh, good morning, Mandy. I brought Miss Parker in for breakfast. Alison, this is Amanda, my housekeeper.”
“How do, Miss Parker.” Amanda’s chocolate-brown eyes surveyed the remains of breakfast and looked accusingly at Sam. “If you’d let me know you was having company for breakfast, Mr. Sam, I’d’ve made you waffles and opened a jar of that honey you like so well.”
“Miss Parker was taking a walk and encountered a snake. She was frightened, and I brought her here for a cup of coffee, since I knew the staff at the Manor wouldn’t be up yet,” Sam explained, and it seemed to Alison there was a note of apology in his voice to which Amanda responded graciously.
“You come back for dinner sometime, Miss Parker, and I’ll prove to you I’m a better cook than Mam’ Chloe up at the Manor.” She added quickly, “Don’t you tell her I said that. She’d be madder’n rips.”
Alison laughed and said, “Of course I won’t. And I’d love to come to dinner any time I’m invited!”
“That will be any time you want to come, miss. Just give me a little warning so’s I can put the big pot in the little one,” said Amanda expansively. She watched as Sam and Alison left the cottage, smiling to herself as she went briskly about her morning duties.
As they left the cottage, Alison looked up at Sam.
“That’s an expression I’d never heard before,” she pointed out. “What does it mean?”
“Putting the big pot in the little one? Oh, it means making special preparations for a super-duper dinner,” he answered. “With Amanda, I think it means giving her time to run down a couple of yellow-legged fryers, and prepare them with her own secret recipe, mushrooms and the like. Haven’t you been south long enough to know that a company meal always involves fried chicken?”
“I’ve never been south before, except to Florida,” she admitted.
“Coney Island with palm trees,” he mocked.
They had reached the path, and she looked back at the white cottage and said impulsively, “What a lovely place. And to have lived there long enough to put out roots! I’ve never lived in any place more than a few weeks or months at a time!”
Sam said dryly, “I suppose it would be rather boring for people like you and Marise.”
She flung up her head. He was startled to see a mist of tears filming her eyes, and her voice was choked when she pleaded, “Oh, Sam, don’t!”
“Don’t what?” he protested.
“Don’t go all cold and formal on me,” she stammered. “Back there at breakfast, you were warm and friendly and kind! I’ve never had a friend, Sam; only acquaintances. Please be my friend!”
And before he could manage an answer, she had turned and was running back along the path that would take her to the Manor.
Judy sat hunched miserably on the big flat rock beneath the shadow of the giant trees, gazing down at the steep slope of greening meadow, which was star-sprinkled with dandelions and daisies, to where the row of willows bent gracefully to admire their own reflection in the slow-moving yellow river.
She sat with her knees drawn up, her elbow resting on them, her chin in her palm. And despite the glory of the spring day, that was more like summer than spring, she felt about her a cloud of desolation. Behind her, yellow jasmine flung itself in trumpet-shaped golden blossoms along the fence; dogwood as white as starch gleamed from the woods; here and there a wild crab-apple tree was dressed like a bridesmaid at a formal wedding, and its tangy fragrance mixed with the smells of spring woods that had always delighted Judy. But now she was completely unaware of the flowers or of their fragrance. She was sunk too deeply in miserable thoughts to be aware of the beauty that surrounded her.
She stiffened and raised her head at the sound of hoof-beats on the path, which ended here at this big rock. Anybody coming along the path would be headed for this spot, because there was nowhere else to go except back.
She expected that it would be Sam. But when the horseman rode up and dismounted, she saw that it was Bix and caught her breath as he dropped the reins so the horse could join Starlight at the edge of the meadow.
“I had a hunch this was where I’d find you,” he said as he came toward her.
Judy said softly, her eyes wide, “Oh, Bix, you remembered!”
Bix scowled at her, puzzled.
“Remembered that you used to have a habit of sneaking off down here when you were in trouble, or thought you were?” he asked.
Her eyes fell away from his and turned once more to the sloping meadow, the river beyond with its fringe of pale green willows.
“It was here that you and I said goodbye when you went away to college,” she told him huskily.
He dropped down on the big flat rock beside her and studied her intently.
“But Judy, that was years ago,” he protested.
She nodded without meeting his eyes. “I know. It’s been a long, long time, Bix. But I haven’t forgotten.”
Bix said awkwardly, “Well, I’m sure there wasn’t such an awful lot to remember.”
Judy glanced at him and away, fighting against the tears that threatened her.
“I trailed you, Judy, because there’s something I have to say to you,” Bix said after a moment. He was still speaking awkwardly, as though searching carefully for the right words with which to clothe his thoughts. Judging from his expression, they were not exactly happy thoughts, she noted, and her heart felt as though an iron hand had closed over it, squeezing it until she all but cried out in pain.
“Well, go ahead, Bix. What have I done to upset the lovely Marise now?” she asked when he still seemed unable to find exactly the words he wanted.
“It wasn’t about Marise I wanted to talk to you, Judy,” he protested.
“She’s not in a towering rage because Starlight wasn’t in the stable when Marise wanted to ride her?” Thin-lipped, cold-eyed, fighting tears, Judy’s voice was stiff with scorn.
“So far as I know, Marise hasn’t made her appearance this morning,” Bix told her. “I just wanted to talk to you, Judy, about—well, about Roger Mayson.”
Judy blinked in surprise.
“Roger Mayson?” she repeated as though she had never heard the name before.
“The same,” Bix responded, and there was a grim note in his voice. “I know you’ve been seeing quite a bit of him, giving him breakfast in the housekeeper’s quarters and slipping out to the garden in the moonlight.”
Judy cried out sharply, “Bix Bullard, I resent that word ‘slipping.’ Roger asked me to show him the garden, and I saw no reason I shouldn’t, even if Marise does object to her guests fraternizing with the hired help. If it comes to that, Marise herself invited Sam to the Manor for dinner, and Sam is hired help, as much as Mother and I.”
Bix flared hotly, “Will you for the love of heaven
shut up?
”
Judy blinked and stared at him.
“The reason I wanted to warn you about Mayson—” he began.
But once more she cut in sharply, “
Warn
me?”
“Yes, warn you,” he insisted.
For a moment they glared at each other, and then Judy turned away and slashed with her riding crop at a tall, inoffensive weed near her.
“So all right; warn me!” she said sulkily. “But I can’t think what possible reason you could have for warning me against Roger Mayson. He’s really very nice.”
“That’s just the point, Judy.” Bix was deeply in earnest, and Judy stared at him, dumbfounded. “He’s a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ sort of guy, and I don’t want him hurting you.”
“Well, forevermore!” Judy breathed, her eyes enormous in her suddenly pale face.
“I know he’s—well, quite different from the men you’ve known here, but truly, Judy—”
Sheer rage sent words seething from her lips that startled him so that he took a backward step as though the words had been physical blows.
“What you’re trying to tell me is that Roger Mayson could never be seriously interested in a simple, unsophisticated backwoods gal like me. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Don’t be a fool, Judy!” He was angry now as well as bewildered by her sudden savage flare-up. “I don’t mean anything of the kind. You’re a sweet, lovely girl, and any man would be in luck to find you. It’s just that Roger will be leaving here as soon as Marise is ready to go. And once he leaves here, he will forget you.”
“The way you did?” she flung at him.
“The way I did? What are you talking about?” He scowled.
“Right here in this very spot, Bixford Bullard, you and I said goodbye, and you begged me to wait for you. You promised you’d come back and we’d be married and spend the rest of our lives here at Oakhill,” she reminded him, so angry that she could not keep back the words. “But when you did come back, you’d forgotten I ever existed!”
“Oh, come now, Judy. I didn’t forget—”
“You did, too! And I, like the prize idiot I was, had kept a lantern of love burning for you in my heart! Oh, go ahead and laugh! That’s pretty corny even for a simple, unsophisticated backwoods gal like me, isn’t it? Mother and Sam tried to tell me you’d forgotten me and all the plans that we had made. But I wouldn’t believe it, being the simple, unsophisiticated creature I am, until you stepped off the plane and didn’t remember me. And then Marise and that gang of hers arrived, and I saw that she had you hogtied and branded. And now, because Roger Mayson has shown me a little attention, you want to warn me about him. I don’t see how you could possibly have the brass-bound gall!”
Bix snapped furiously, “If you’ll shut up for about a minute and a half and let me get a word in edgewise—”
“Why? You’ve warned me against Roger. Now just get out of my way, and I’ll go back to the Manor, and you can go on forgetting my very existence. And that’ll be just apple-pie dandy with me!” She tried to thrust her way past him, but his hands shot out and caught her arms and held her despite her struggles.
“You’re going to listen to me, if I have to strap you down,” he said through his teeth. “So all right; maybe you and I did have a kid love affair, and I
did
forget. And I’m sorry as the dickens. But how could I know you’d grow up into such a beauty? And I’ve been pretty busy since I finished college.”
“And a more feeble excuse nobody could ever want to hear.” She spat the words at him, not struggling any longer, enduring his hands that grasped her arms so tightly that she could feel the aching pressure through the thin sleeve of her pongee shirt. “You were so busy you couldn’t spare even a week in all those years to visit the grandfather who set his heart on you? Not until he was so ill that he couldn’t even recognize you, and even then you had to be dragged home against your will.”
She caught her breath and raced on, fury stiffening her voice.
“And you couldn’t come without your cute little playmates, could you? You were afraid you’d be bored here in your own home, where generations of Bullards have been happy and contented and have built the place into one of the finest plantations in the whole low country. Oh, no, that was not good enough for you! And now all you can think about is how soon the Old Gentleman will be gone and you can sell Oakhill.”
He shook her by no means gently, and his goodlooking face was a taut mask of anger that matched her own.
“Have you quite finished?” His voice grated with the effort he was making to control it.
“No, I haven’t finished! There’s lots more I’ve been wanting to say ever since you got here, and especially since that Marise creature arrived.”
“Then you can just shut up and listen to me for a few minutes,” Bix told her furiously, still holding her arms so she could not escape. “I had no idea that Grandfather wanted to see me.”
“Ha!” There was a world of scorn and contempt in the expletive, and he shook her again.
“Will you kindly shut up?” His voice grated beneath the lash of his anger, and he was too upset to realize that more than half of that anger came from a feeling of shame and the knowledge that she was right to fling such accusations at him. “I am very sorry indeed that I’ve been away so long. But whether you believe it or not, I was trying very hard to justify his faith in me. I was trying to make something of myself so that he could be proud of me.”
“When all he ever wanted from you was to take over Oakhill and keep it operating as it has always done. But no, that wasn’t exciting enough. You had to have your fancy friends here so they could go around sneering and being high-hat and reminding you that New York was much more exciting. Oh, I suppose it is, if you like that kind of thing, and it’s pretty plain that you do.”
She stopped for breath, and Bix studied her for a long moment. Then he turned his head and looked out over the lovely sweep of flower-sprinkled meadow, the willows bending above the river. Slowly, while she watched him with bated breath, he nodded.
“It
is
beautiful,” he admitted reluctantly.
“It’s the most beautiful place in the world!”
He looked down at her, and now he let her release herself from his hands that had been holding her tightly.
She flung up her head and said hotly, “Of course it’s practically the only place I’ve ever seen. And I’m sure Marise wouldn’t care for it. I wonder she’s forced herself to stay here this long.”
He nodded at that, apparently completely undisturbed.
“I do, too. But I’m very glad she has,” he said quietly.
She caught her breath as though he had smacked her.
“Well, of course you are. Think how bored you’d have been if she hadn’t stayed,” was the best she could manage by way of an answer.
Once more he studied her, and then he grinned.
“Because now I know her much better than I could have known her in years in the city,” he pointed out “You have to live under the same roof with somebody before you get to know them really well. Marise is a—well, a funny sort of girl.”