Blue Waltz (13 page)

When she did nothing more than stand there, staring,

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he determined she wouldn't answer. But then, at the very last second before Stephen would have let it go and gone on to something else, without ever looking away from the portrait, she began to speak.

"I see a beautiful ballroom where people dance and laugh, under a huge crystal chandelier, on a high-polished hardwood floor, with a portrait hanging over the mantel —a place of honor, a place of importance."

She pressed her eyes closed. "When does the pain stop?" she whispered. "When will those fragments of useless memories cease?"

The words had barely left her lips when she felt his touch. And suddenly, unexpectedly, the pieces of memory and the shadows of darkness were gone—gone with the simple touch of his hand, light upon her shoulder, strong and firm, his strength almost tangible.

"Belle," he said softly.

She turned abruptly, desperate to question him. How had he done it? But words and thoughts ceased when he ran his hand over her shoulder with an infinite slowness. Her breath caught in her throat as his fingers traced her neck before he cupped her cheek, searing her with sensation.

But then it stopped. He stopped. His fingers stilled. She watched, her breath rushing through her teeth, as he seemed to notice his hand on her for the first time and couldn't imagine how it had gotten there.

The change in him was lightning quick. Only seconds before he had been trying to get her to talk and laugh. Now, after seeing his hand touching her, it was he who seemed on the verge of fleeing.

Panic threatened. Without thinking, she grabbed his hand, refusing to let him go—or at least let the feeling go, whatever it was. After a moment, she forced a smile, and

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after a moment more, his hand held tightly in hers, the smile became real, the distress magically gone.

"You can't desert me now," she said, relief making her voice ring like chimes. "Not after you got me all the way over here."

"You hardly had far to travel."

Her blue eyes darkened. "Farther than you realize." But then she laughed and pulled him toward the center of the room.

"What are you doing?"

"Come on, quit worrying."

Stephen stiffened.

Belle looked him in the eye, never relinquishing her grip. She tilted her head and smiled at him.

"You look like an imp," he muttered.

"You look like a crotchety old man."

After one surprised moment, Stephen gave a short burst of dry laughter. "No one has ever called me a crotchety old man."

"Well, they should have long ago. Now come on." She tugged harder.

At the very center of the room, she stopped, looked around, then dropped his hand before she lowered herself to the floor. Stephen stood very still, watching, something close to shock written on his face as she laid down on the hardwood, her face turned to the ceiling.

"What in the world are you doing, Mrs. Braxton?"

"Belle, remember." Extending her hand to him, she said, "Come see."

Belle watched the emotions scud across his face. Yet again, she knew she had outraged him. She nearly laughed out loud, but held it back. It wouldn't do to insult him any more than she already had. "Come on. I'm sure

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you have the cleanest floor in all of Boston. You won't muss up your pretty clothes."

If possible, he stiffened even more. Good Lord, she grumbled to herself, she managed to insult him without even trying.

"I'm not concerned about my clothes, madam."

"Then what are you concerned about?" she asked, one delicate brow raised in question.

That seemed to get him. He stood there for a while longer, a debate to which Belle was not privy clearly going on in his head. At length, he lowered himself to the floor with an irritated sigh.

"Lie down on your back, just like me."

At the noise he made over this, Belle was certain he was going to leap to his feet and cast her out of his perfectly proper house. Instead, he surprised her by lying back.

They lay side by side on the hardwood floor, he in unrelieved black, she in her favorite blue velvet gown, his black hair perfectly combed, hers slightly askew. They stared up at the ceiling rather than at each other, and for a moment Belle forgot that he was there, until he spoke.

"What exactly is it that we are doing down here?"

"The chandelier. We're looking at the chandelier."

There was a pause. "We are on the floor to look at the chandelier?"

"Yes, the crystal chandelier. Like huge sparkling candle tears." The words were a whisper, barely heard, and she knew that Stephen had strained to hear, and she was surprised that she knew that he had. Rolling her head to the side, she looked at him. His profile was hard and chiseled, breathtaking really. "Sometimes it's as if I can read your mind, Stephen St. James."

He rolled his head to the side and met her gaze.

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"It's as if we were of one mind," she continued. "I felt it the first time I saw you." She looked at him closely, intently. "What does it mean, Stephen?"

"What? What does what mean?"

Her blue eyes widened and she jerked her eyes back to the ceiling. What had she just said, to this man of all men? "Nothing."

She could feel him staring at her for a long time, and just when she thought he would question her further, Adam returned.

"Tea any—"

Belle heard the china rattle as he came to an abrupt halt.

"Good God! What has happened?" Adam demanded.

Stephen sprang to his feet and dusted his pants off with a few quick, stiff strokes.

Belle pushed up into a sitting position. "We were studying the chandelier."

Adam glanced between his brother and Belle, then up to the ceiling. After a moment, a smile sliced across his face. Putting the tray aside, he strode to the middle of the room and dropped down beside Belle. Belle watched Stephen, who watched his brother. What was it that she saw? What did Stephen feel? A mixture of resentment and love, she determined. And she wondered if it actually bothered him that his brother could so easily drop down on to the floor when he couldn't? She wondered as well what this dark, dangerous pirate-man felt for his brother, so light and amiable in contrast?

"It's beautiful," Adam said. "I've never really looked at it before. Especially not from here."

She wanted to reach out to Stephen as he turned away and headed for the door. She wanted to ask him to

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come back. When he had touched her, she remembered with a start, the memories had stopped and the murky darkness had been held at bay. With the simple touch of his hand. Gentle yet firm. The sensation penetrating down to her core.

She sucked in her breath. How easy. How simple. She should have suspected. She should have known that he could vanquish the darkness, just as the music had done before it had stopped. Yes, she should have suspected, especially after having seen the look in his eyes that evening when she had met him at the Bulfinch House.

But despite the look and despite the fact that she understood a great deal about him, Belle knew that Stephen didn't understand her and never would.

"Belle." Adam laughed. "Such a treasure you are. From here the chandelier looks like huge sparkling raindrops."

At length, she dragged her gaze away from Stephen, who hesitated in the doorway. "Huge sparkling candle tears," she corrected him quietly, as she laid back down.

"Yes! Of course! Huge tears, sparkling with prisms of multicolored light. Just think of the show we would have if the sun was bright."

She took a deep breath, forcing Stephen from her mind. "I would love to have a chandelier of my own," she said, the words barely audible.

"Then get one."

She jerked her head around to look at him. "What do you mean?"

"Go out and buy a chandelier, of course."

"Buy a chandelier? Where would I put it? I don't have a ballroom."

"Then build one," he pronounced.

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Her breath caught in her throat. A ballroom. Of her own. "Do you think?" she breathed.

Adam glanced at her as if realizing for the first time that she might be serious. He stared at her for a moment before he shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?"

Why not, indeed? she thought. She came up on her elbows and glanced around the room, studying it. How perfect! To build such a room in her own home.

She could put it on the second floor, where she had her own suite of rooms now. She could manage to climb one more flight of stairs, maybe even two, and then she could put her room at the top of the house—where she could see all the world.

It was perfect. Excitement raced down her spine. "A ballroom."

"It would be marvelous!"

"Yes, I think you're right."

Adam's delighted laugh mingled with Belle's. A room where she could see the world by day and the heavens at night. And a ballroom of her own. How perfect.

But her delight vanished when she heard Stephen's heels resound against the floor as he suddenly turned, then quit the room.

She stared at the empty doorway, the chandelier forgotten. "Stephen," she whispered beneath her breath, "can you really vanquish the pieces of memory and darkness in my mind?"

CHAPTER 10

Three days later, Stephen nearly choked on his coffee at the deafening, reverberating sound that suddenly shook his house. Wendell stopped dead in his tracks, his white-gloved hand nearly losing its grip on the silver coffee pot. Janie, the parlor maid, screeched, then, unlike Wendell, lost her battle and dropped a silver tray of fine bone china on the floor.

Then silence. Only the slightly swaying chandelier over the dining room table and jagged pieces of dishware on the floor bore proof that something out of the ordinary had occurred.

Stephen and Wendell stared at the light fixture, transfixed. Janie, apparently unsure which she was most afraid of, the noise or the trouble she most undoubtedly would get into for having a tray of broken china at her feet, stared wide-eyed at her still extended hands. But then the reverberating sound crashed and echoed once again. Her fear of the noise won out.

"Oh, Lordy, the house is tumblin' down around our very ears, I tell you," Janie wailed, frozen to the spot.

Before Stephen could pull his thoughts together and react, Adam staggered into the dining room, his robe hastily pulled over his nightclothes, his blond hair askew.

"Good God, what's going on?" he demanded, an angry red crease from his pillow slashing across his jaw.

"It's all the sinnin', I tell you," Janie supplied, her

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hands fisted in her skirts. "All the sinnin'. Too much sinnin', and God has finally had enough. He's shakin' all the world in his fury, making us pay, every one of us. Just like the Reverend Barthalomew said would happen—"

The next bang sounded, cutting short her ramblings, causing her to leap a good foot into the air before she landed with a humph, then scrambled out of the dining room, no doubt to repent whatever sins she might have committed.

Stephen, Adam, and Wendell stared, mouths agape, at the maid's retreating back.

"The wrath of God?" Adam stated.

"Sinners?" Wendell added.

But then the pounding came once again, and all thoughts for the terrified maid fled.

"Good God, it's coming from my house!" Adam stated.

Stephen cast him a dry glance.

"All right, my old house, but still, I've never heard such banging." He glanced at Stephen suspiciously. "You haven't been trying to get her over here again, have you?"

"Hardly," he snapped.

"Then what in the world could she be doing over there?"

"That is what I am about to find out," Stephen said, before pushing up from his chair, tossing his napkin on the table, and heading for the door.

Despite the fact that Adam wore nothing more than nightclothes, with his slippers slapping against his feet, he followed.

They slammed out the front door, down the stairs, then around to the Widow Braxton's front door. Soon,

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Stephen thought irritably, there would be a path worn in the pavement from all the trips he'd made recently.

Their knock went unanswered, and after a moment Stephen simply tried the knob. The door was unlocked.

"Hell, hasn't the woman ever heard of crime?"

Adam chuckled. "I doubt our Belle thinks twice about people doing her wrong."

Stephen stilled, the memory of her leg jarring through his mind. He doubted Adam was correct.

Once inside the foyer there wasn't a soul in sight, though there was enough noise echoing within the walls to deafen a mule. The noise led them up the stairs to the second floor.

And there, in what for Stephen was always a breathtaking experience, they found her, along with an assortment of large, burly men who were applying sledgehammers to an interior wall.

Furniture was gone. Curtains removed. Rugs nowhere in sight. The only things left in the room were chunks of plaster and splinters of wood lying here and there as if a tornado had set down, leaving a huge gaping hole that reached into the next room.

"What are you doing?" Stephen demanded, anger shimmering in his voice, bringing the workers to a halt.

Belle turned to him, surprise in her eyes. "Stephen! Adam!" But at the sight of Adam's attire, the surprise fled, replaced by concern. "Did I wake you?"

Adam opened his mouth to speak, but Stephen cut him off. "You could wake the dead with all the racket you're making. What the hell are you doing?"

The workers shifted their weight and glanced uncomfortably between Belle and Stephen. Belle looked confused. "I'm tearing down the wall," she stated simply,

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before she offered him a slight smile. "Or rather, they are tearing down the wall."

Stephen made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl. "I can see that, Mrs. Braxton, the question is why are they tearing down the wall?"