Wild Midnight (35 page)

Rachel turned to stare at her mother, whose complexion was pink.
 

“So don’t think I don’t understand, dear.” She put her hand on Rachel’s knee to pat it briskly. “You came into our lives almost nine months after that night Frank climbed the rose trellis, and no one thought a thing—first babies often come just a little bit early.”
 

“You and father?” Rachel said incredulously. “He ... he spent the night?”
 

“Rachel, that is not the point,” her mother said firmly. “Young people can, and do, get swept away. Love is seldom in error. But one must be sure that it is love, of course, and not just a momentary physical attraction. There is nothing quite so devastating to a woman’s defenses as an impossibly handsome rogue. This young man, Beaumont Tillson, seems to be a man who would dare a woman to love him. But he does seem to have much to recommend in him spite of a rather ... stormy nature.”
 

“Mother—a ‘stormy nature’? Is that what you think it is?”
 

“He has been dreadfully hurt, Rachel. That is the terrible insanity of war. Have you learned nothing from your convictions?” her mother asked. “He is hurt in his heart and his mind as well as his body. To love someone like him is a very large task for a woman as young as you. Dear, he is very different from Dan Brinton. Are you willing to accept this?”
 

“Mother, it hurts me too,” she said thinly, not wanting to look at her. “Love with Dan was warm and good and ... peaceful. This is ... this is not.”
 

“Dan’s life was not very peaceful, dear, he was a very hardworking young doctor. And I regret to say he pushed himself too hard. He sheltered you in his love, perhaps too much so. You will not get this now. You are embarked upon a very rough and dangerous sea, Rachel, and I fear you will be the one to do the sheltering. And the comforting. At least for a while. You must make up your mind.”
 

“Mother, I think you like him!”
 

“I’ve only seen this man twice, so I cannot say. But he is not insensitive—he did give you your freedom. That was a gesture that cost him a great deal, I think. And you certainly did not want James Claxton.” Her mother took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Go and tell him, dear—there’s nothing like plain speaking. And if that doesn’t work,” she said with her calm practicality, “there’s always a home with me in St. David’s.”
 

The road back to Draytonville descended the flat coastal shelf almost imperceptibly on its way to the mouth of the Ashepoo and St. Helena Sound. The afternoon was unseasonably warm, and Rachel’s embroidered dress with its snug bodice and tight puffed sleeves was not comfortable in the muggy heat. Yet she was glad she’d taken time with her appearance and was even becoming accustomed to the bouncing length of her trimmed hair.
 

The purple dusk of southern skies settled slowly, filling the cypress swamps on either side of the highway with deep shadows, and in the open meadows drifting night mist had begun to appear over the level green.
 

Beyond Draytonville the road narrowed to the paved surface of what had once been the old Indian trail that followed the river. With the light fading Rachel paid close attention to the winding curves and the overhanging trees that cloaked the view of the silvery expanse of the Ashepoo. There were more black-gouged gaps in the forest than there had been several weeks ago, and at the entrance to the Belle Haven plantation there were marks of heavy machinery that had invaded even the turnoff, scraping back the bushes and small trees.
 

Rachel bit her lip. “They’re coming through because of that damned road,” Beau had said before the fight in the cornfield. She knew now that she’d contributed to the destruction of at least one thing he loved—his land.
 

The road dipped into darkness crossing the small earthen causeway that led between the lotus-filled lakes and the fenced meadows where humpbacked Brahma cattle stood grazing.
 

It was obvious Beau had visitors. There were several cars in the driveway, and light streamed from the windows as Rachel pulled her station wagon in front. The sound of music from a stereo system filled the air and she could hear voices inside. She didn’t know why she’d expected to find him alone, but she had. Then she remembered Jim Claxton’s words—it was rumored that the big house at Belle Haven was up for sale.
 

Rachel got out of the Toyota and stood for several seconds, smoothing the wrinkles out of the full skirt of her dress, gathering her courage. Perhaps she was too dressed up, she worried. Her dress and the new, shorter hairstyle—which just brushed her shoulder in glistening, tamed dark red waves—had attracted more attention at the airport than she was accustomed to. Perhaps the skirt was too short.
 

Eulie answered the door attired in a crisp white uniform. The blazing lights of the chandelier in the downstairs hall were behind the imposing black woman, and there were very definitely sounds of a party, or at least a fairly large gathering, in the depths of the house.
 

“I’d like to see Beau, please,” Rachel told her.
 

“Oh, Miz Rachel, honey,” the cook said in her soft Gullah speech. “You supposed to be with the people what’s lookin’ at the house? They’s just leaving.” When Rachel shook her head, Eulie stepped aside to let her in. “Well, honey, I don’t know, but I guess if you here to see Mister Beau, I better show you someplace to wait.”
 

She led Rachel to a door that opened onto the large parlor.
 

The room contained exquisite Sheraton chairs and a damask-covered sofa, and the portrait of the stern planter in his eighteenth century court clothes. The prisms of the crystal sconces on the sideboard tinkled in the slight summery breeze from the opened windows that looked out on the yew hedges and the garden.
 

Rachel sat down on the sofa. Minutes ticked by, counted off by the porcelain clock on the mantel, lascivious Boucher figurines of a shepherd and shepherdess romping playfully. The door to the hall had been left open, and she heard voices and the underlying strains of the Modern Jazz Quartet on a stereo. At last there were sounds of footsteps as the visitors left, the front door shutting. A moment later Beau entered the room.
 

He was wearing the navy flannel blazer Rachel remembered from the night she’d seen him in the Count DeRenne Inn, and its impeccable cut molded his broad shoulders and tapering hips, accentuating his inimitably graceful, leopardlike movements. He’d just pulled off his tie after seeing his guests out, and now he held it dangling from one hand. His white shirt was open at the throat, exposing fine light brown hair and smooth tanned skin in the vee. He looked so elegantly handsome, so much at home in the exquisite eithteenth century drawing room, that it was hard to remember the tough, disreputable-looking brawler who had savagely fought Til in the dusty field.
 

“Rachel,” his husky voice drawled, “this is an unexpected pleasure.” From the polite expression on his chiseled features she might have been any random caller. His slitted look swept her from head to toe and lingered, impressed. “You look lovely.”
 

“Thank you.” It was all she could manage to say.
 

She felt awkward finding him like this, aloof and completely in command of his low-country aristocratic manners and his unearthly good looks. He was suddenly a stranger.
 

“Why did you come to see me, Rachel?” he said, turning to lay the tie on the arm of the sofa. He lifted a cut-glass decanter from the sideboard and poured himself a drink of whiskey. Then he turned back to her with the glass in hand, eyebrows raised. “Did you want to talk about the road some more?” He threw back his head, gulped the whiskey neat, and put down the glass. “It’s too late, the earthmovers have torn it up all the way down to the river. They’ll have a damned four-lane opened up for you in a few weeks. Harborside’s already applied to the county for easement.”
 

He pulled off the blazer jacket and tossed it after the tie, then unbuttoned his shirt cuff on his left wrist and rolled it back to his elbow, showing a tanned forearm. He did the other cuff, carefully watching her with his still, tawny eyes.
 

“I came to tell you something,” Rachel said softly.
 

“Oh?” He raised one fine dark eyebrow even higher. “Then this must be a social visit. Just sit down and I’ll have Eulie bring a pot of tea. You drink tea,” he said smoothly, “as I remember?”
 

Rachel stared at him, her confusion showing openly on her face. A burning awareness of his sheer physical nearness assailed her as he stood watching her with narrowed eyes. She felt a desperate longing to break the barrier of his mocking politeness and have him just put his arms around her and hold her close—no more than that—so she could feel the hard warmth of his body and his comforting nearness. Everything was going wrong.
 

She stared at his hands, brown and powerful, relaxed at his sides. The same hands had stroked her, she was recalling all too clearly, caressed her and driven her mad with desire for him. And now it was as though it had never happened.
 

“I don’t want any tea,” she whispered.
 

“What do you want then?” His husky voice was low. “Do you want to go to bed with me?” He moved a few steps toward her. “Sweet Rachel, is that why you’ve come—because you want me? Because you couldn’t stay away?”
 

She drank in the nearness of him, helplessly bound by the vivid remembrance of how she had lavished her love on his scarred, beautiful body. Was it possible that had never happened? She was beginning to believe that it never had.
 

Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his hand to touch her, hard fingers resting lightly against the hollow of her throat, where her pulse was racing wildly. “Do you want me, honey?” He was so close her senses were filled with him.
 

She closed her eyes, trembling uncontrollably as he lowered his head and his firm, warm lips brushed the quivering corner of her mouth with tantalizing gentleness. “Do you want me to kiss you?”
 

She could hardly breathe with the rapt spell the touch of his mouth cast over her. The silky menace in his voice told her he was still very angry with her, but he had only to touch her and all her fear of his wildness and his reckless cruelty was swept away in a heated rush of feeling in every nerve of her body. Why had she thought it would be any different? Or that he would be any different from what he was now, ruthlessly showing his power over her? She caught her breath on a small sob.
 

At the sound his expression changed. He dragged her to him roughly. “Damn, Rachel, you did come. I sent you away—why the hell did you come back?”
 

His mouth closed on hers with a quick fierceness that flamed with raw desire. Rachel clung to him as the brutal kiss punished her and possessed her all at once, his lips and tongue conquering her mouth, its dark sweetness, and her willingness, as though he were starved for it.
 

“Oh, God, I want you,” he said against her opened lips.
 

“You knew that yesterday when I came out to the field, didn’t you? I could see it in your face.”
 

Was there ever another man like this?
she wondered as his hard body enveloped her. His earthy male scent filled her nostrils, and the drugging heat of his powerful golden body seeped through his shirt and trousers and into the front of her body, driving every thought but one—how much she wanted him—out of her mind. She pressed against him, flowed against him, seeking his tenderness and passion as he rubbed his hands down her shoulders and then her bare arms as if sensitizing himself to the feel of her. She heard him take a shaking breath as his fingers cupped her breasts. His thumbs stroked her nipples through the silk of her dress, finding them already tight, hard aroused buttons, as they had been since he walked into the room.
 

“Ah, Rachel, I need you to want me. I need it so much.” His big hand touched her chin to turn her face up to him. His eyes saw her mouth already swollen with the impact of his bruising kisses, eyes half closed, drugged with the feel of him. “Do you ache for me the way I ache for you,” he murmured darkly, “so that you can’t sleep at night? Do you get up and roam around in the blackness, burning and burning for the touch of me, the scent, the feel of my hands, the way I burn for yours?” His hand held her face, fingers closed tightly about her mouth and chin so that she could not escape from that fierce golden look.
 

“Yes,” she whispered.
 

“Damn.” He groaned softly. She suddenly felt him stiffening, controlling his body, tamping down its desire with the sheer force of will. He withdrew his arms with a visible effort and stood looking down at her for a moment, the strange tawny look in his eyes unfathomable. He abruptly turned from her.
 

“I have to leave you alone, don’t you know that?” His voice was a rasp. “I wish to hell I hadn’t let you see me. It was a stupid damned mistake.”
 

“Why?
Why?
” she burst out. She wanted to hurl herself at him, to touch him, but knew she shouldn’t.