Vivid (46 page)

Instead she looked around at her
surroundings. She had no idea where she was but she assumed she had the
Graysons to thank for the bed. The big four-poster seemed even larger than the
one Adam Crowley had given her. The canopy over her head was made of quilted
emerald silk, trailing sumptuously down to the posts and tied back.

"Where is this, Mama?"

"Nate's room, darling."

Nate's bedroom was large enough for one
fireplace in the wall near where her mother sat reading, and another in the
wall on her side of the room.

She ran her eyes over the cases filled
with books and the armoire and writing desk whose polished dark wood matched
the wood of the bed. Vivid spied a pitcher on the stand beside the bed and
leaned over to pour herself a cup but stopped in mid-reach upon seeing her
bandaged hands and arms. They were as heavily wrapped as a mummy's. She stared
at them a moment, then heard her mother say, "You burned them fairly
badly, my dear. They'll have to stay that way for a while."

Her mother poured her some water and Vivid
drank slowly. She started coughing immediately afterward. Her mother, sensing
Vivid's confusion about her hands and arms, asked, "Do you remember going
into the tunnel?"

Vivid nodded yes. She remembered the
terror and the pain of the flames cavorting over her hands, then whispered,
"But nothing after that."

"Well, the Underground Railroad
continues to save us. Had it not been for that tunnel, we're all certain you'd
not be here. The arsonist must not have known about it."

Vivid stared.

"Yes, darling, arsonist. Your father
said the air was thick with the smell of kerosene. Someone set that fire at
your front door and at the back. You weren't supposed to get out."

Vivid was still reeling as she listened to
her mother relate the events that followed Vivid's escape from the inferno. All
the men from the ball game had raced to help, but the small cabin was already
engulfed. In the end there was nothing anyone could do but stand and watch it
burn. It took five men to restrain Nate so he wouldn't go run into the flames
to find her.

"Viveca, I will go to my grave
hearing him scream your name again and again," she whispered with tears in
her voice. "It was as if his heart were being ripped right from his
chest."

Once the flames died the men had gone into
the smoldering remains to begin the grim search for her body. The cabin's wood
floor had been completely consumed. Beneath the smoking debris littering the
ground they found the hole to the tunnel. Nate found her lying on the tunnel
floor.

"Your father and I cried like we'd
never cried before," her mother said. "He covered you with the shirt
from his back and brought you up here to his room. Your papa smeared your arms
and hands with the insides of every aloe plant he'd brought with him, and then
Abigail and I wrapped your hands, and here you are."

Her father kept aloe because burns were
part of his profession. Since he invariably wound up cooking wherever he went,
he didn't travel without it. "I want to see Papa and Nate."

"In that order?"

Vivid nodded with a smile.

Her mother left to bring in her father and
Vivid thought back to the fire. Who hated her so much that they wanted her to
burn alive? The question was still echoing in her mind when her father stuck
his gray head in the door.

"Papa!" she rasped happily. He
came over to the bed and hugged her as fiercely as her singed skin would allow.

She began to cough from the exertion but
he waited patiently until she recovered. He said, "You turned every hair
on my head gray with that stunt, girlie. Your papa is getting too old for
this."

Then his face and voice turned serious,
"Did your mother tell you it was arson?"

She nodded.

"Well, when I get my hands on whoever
is responsible they'll know how I feel about someone trying to turn my youngest
into a burned Saratoga chip!"

Saratoga chips, or potato chips as some
folks called them, had been first introduced by a Black chef up in Saratoga
Springs, New York.

"Well, they didn't succeed. But I
can't fathom someone wanting me to die such an awful death."

"Everyone feels that way."

She suffered through another coughing fit
before asking, "How's Nate, Papa?"

"Doing better now that he knows
you're alive. When we thought we'd lost you...his grief rivaled mine." Joseph
Lancaster paused a moment and gazed lovingly at his youngest daughter.
"He's a good man, Vivid. A good, decent man. I'll be proud to call him my
son."

"Thank you, Papa. I think he's very
special, too."

Joseph bent and kissed her brow.
"Rest now, I'll send Nate and your mother up."

When Nate walked through the door moments
later, she began to cry silently. Seeing him made her so incredibly happy, she
wanted to run to him and have him hold her tight.

Nate asked softly, "Are you crying,
Lancaster?"

She answered tearfully, "Yes, Nate, I
am."

Nate sat on the bed. He leaned over and
brushed his lips against hers softly, "I thought I'd lost you,
princess," he whispered. He'd only meant to kiss her lightly, then pull
back, but the taste of her, alive and breathing, made him linger and want more.
She wanted more, too, because death had almost claimed her and she hungered for
the sensations that helped reaffirm her life. "I just want to look at you.
Even with no brows and lashes you're as beautiful as the moon rising."

"What?" She immediately brought
her hands up to feel her face but it was a useless gesture because she was
bandaged. "Nate, get me that hand mirror on the vanity."

"No," he said chuckling softly.
"This first..."

They shared heated, almost desperate
kisses. He instinctively lifted her to his chest, careful not to injure her,
but he needed her near. She needed him also and cried sparkling tears of joy as
she kissed him in return and ran her bandaged hands up and down his back.

He broke the kiss and just held her tight,
tight enough for Vivid to feel the burns on her back sting, but she didn't
care. She was in his arms.

A soft knock on the door made them part
reluctantly. Nate was standing politely at the bedside when Francesca entered,
saying softly, "You should go now, Nate, she needs to sleep."

Nate looked down at her lying so vivid yet
so fragile amid the bedding and wanted to climb in and hold her while she
slept. "Rest up, princess."

Vivid didn't want him to go. "Will
you come back and see me in the morning?"

"If your duenna gives
permission."

Nate looked over at Francesca, and she
smiled. "We'll see what can be arranged."

Vivid said softly, "Good night,
Nate."

"Good night, brave princess."

That night Vivid was awakened by a severe
throbbing pain in her hands. Anna Red Bird, who had stayed on to make sure
Vivid would recover, brought up some willow bark tea for her to drink. A short
time later, the fiery pain began to subside and Vivid went back to sleep.

Nate was allowed to help Vivid with her
breakfast each morning. Her hands were still bandaged, though not as heavily.

The first morning he'd come in to assist,
the meal had consisted of her favorite, hot oatmeal sweetened with maple syrup,
butter, and sweet cream. He'd also brought her toast and tea. Vivid was
ravenous and told Nate so, but her mother, seated across the room reading the
Grayson
Gazette,
instructed Nate to feed her at a slow pace.

So he did. Nate slowly teased the tip of
the first spoonful across her lips, then whispered, "Open for me, princess..."

The words were spoken so heatedly, and
conjured up such sensual memories, Vivid felt herself flush with a familiar
warmth. As he held her captive with his blazing eyes, she opened her mouth and
the spoon slid in gently. Her lips closed and he glided the spoon out again.

He spooned up more and repeated each step:
first the brush with the spoon, then the heated invitation, then in
and—ever so slowly—out.

Her senses were spiraling in response by
the time he'd coaxed her to eat a few spoonfuls.

Vivid was certain her mother had not
counted on the meal turning into such an erotic exercise, and neither had
Vivid.

Just about then, he slowly tore off a
small piece of the toast. She watched him dip the bread gently into the sweet
cereal and heard him say, "I know you like to dunk your toast...so here..."

Vivid took the offered morsel, then slid
her tongue against his finger before he drew back.

His eyes flared in response to her play,
and she whispered sensually, "You started this."

"I'm simply feeding you, nothing
more."

For the next few days Nate fed Vivid her
breakfast and fed her senses with his eyes and his voice. Were it not for her
mama's presence, Vivid was certain she and the Thunder God would have wound up
sharing the big canopied bed. With just a simple look he had the power to make
her nipples harden and call to him from beneath her gown; make her lips part
for the kisses he promised she'd receive once she was well enough. One morning
as he fed her the most erotic stack of flapjacks with maple syrup she'd ever
consumed, he described in a hushed voice the many ways he planned on loving her
when she healed. Every morning when he walked into her room, her breakfast tray
in hand, her desire awakened and flowed.

Vivid declared herself well a few days later.
She told herself Nate's teasing had not entered into her decision—after
all, she had recovered and was especially tired of being in bed—but
Nate's eyes burned in her memory as she got up to get dressed.

Her hands no longer needed the dressing,
but it would be a while before they were fully healed. Her palms had sustained
most of the damage but faithfully, twice a day, she rubbed cocoa butter on them
to help speed the process. The cocoa butter had been sent over by Miss Edna.
Francesca had purchased every tin in the store.

She couldn't put on her stockings,
however, or button her skirt or blouse. That problem was solved by Magic and
Satin, who'd been visiting off and on for the past few days. When she asked for
their assistance with her buttons and stockings, they helped eagerly, even as
Magic asked, "Did they say you could get up today?"

"No, but I'm the doctor, right?"

"Right," Magic agreed.

When they were finished Satin looked up
and said, "We're awful glad you didn't bum up, Dr. Lancaster."

She kissed each girl on her brow and said,
"Me, too."

The Grayson front parlor was filled with
people when she got downstairs, and at her entrance, the room erupted into
cheers. She saw Abigail and Adam, Anna and her son Isaac, Nate, Eli, her
parents, and Maddie.

Someone moved so Vivid could have a seat
on the settee, and when she was settled in she said, “I want to thank everyone
for all you've done. If I had to be burned out of my home, I couldn't've had it
happen in a better place."

That brought on a few chuckles and many
smiles.

Vivid then asked about the search for the
arsonist.

"We have nothing but this, so far. We
assume it's his."

Nate held up a tattered red flannel shirt.
Even after a week it still reeked strongly of kerosene.

"Or hers," Maddie pointed out.

"The shirt is pretty saturated on the
front," Joseph said. "Maybe the arsonist accidentally sloshed a good
bit of it on himself and then took it off as a precaution before setting the
fire."

Everyone else had already agreed that
Joseph's conclusion seemed logical and Vivid deemed the theory sound as well.

"But who would do this?" Magic
asked. "And why?"

Magic and Satin had been so quiet, no one
had even noticed them come in. Nate turned to his daughter and said softly,
"Majestic, this is not a conversation for little ears, so why don't you
and Satin go outside and play."

"But Pa, we want to help, too."

"I know you do, darling, but I don't
want you or Satin poking around. The person that tried to hurt Viveca is very
dangerous."

Magic glanced over at Vivid, who said,
“Your father is right, Magic. I gave everyone a bad enough scare. We don't want
anyone else hurt."

"Okay," she said, obviously
against her better judgment.

Nate turned his attention to Satin.
"Satin, I want your promise, too, no poking around."

She hesitated just as her sister had done,
then gave a weak, "Okay, Uncle Nate," in reply.

He kissed them both and sent them on their
way.

"Did anyone believe that
performance?" he asked after their departure.

Laughter filled the room.

Vivid spoke up when the humor faded,
"I do hope they'll take us seriously though."

Her mother snorted and said, “And this
from La Brat Trabrasera herself. May your father and I live long enough to see
your hair grayed by a child like you. She lived in a tree house for nearly two
years. She'd come home some days looking like she'd been raised by bears."