Blue Willow (42 page)

His attention went to the half-empty bottle of bourbon tilted against a hummock of dead grass, and he made an animal-like sound of helpless pain. Sorrow and frustration left little room for kindness. He vaulted to her, sank to his knees, snatched a flannel shirt from her jumbled clothing, and threw it at her. “It’s not even fifty degrees out here. And anyone could have walked up on you like this.”

She shoved the shirt aside. “Only you.” She hunched down, her arms sagging then clenching tight over her nakedness, and gave him an agonized look that radiated fury and ruined privacy. “Leave.
Leave.
”

“If you can’t stand me, then why the hell are you here?”

“My home.
Home
. You thought I’d run? You thought I’d let you make me feel like dirt and not fight back?” She jammed a hand into the ground. “It’s clean here. I’m clean.” She threw a clod of damp earth. It grazed his cheek. Something snapped in his control. He lunged at her, jerked her arms aside, then whipped the shirt around her shoulders. “Get dressed.”

She hissed and drew a hand back, but fell off-balance. He pushed her over and straddled her, his knees clenching the sides of her hips. Her loose-limbed struggling accomplished nothing but the lurid writhing of her belly and breasts. He shoved one of her hands into a shirtsleeve. She caught him in the jaw with her free hand. He clamped her arm down.

Bending over her, he stared into her eyes. Something in his expression frightened her enough to temper the fury. Before the fear could fade, he rammed her hand into the other sleeve and closed the shirt over her breasts. “Hello,
neighbor,” he said with ugly sarcasm, and sat down beside her. The shirttail was draped halfway up her stomach. Her long legs were half-bent, her feet and ankles rust red with dried mud. Artemas flicked the shirt over her thighs and cursed.

She gulped short, shallow breaths. Finally one hand rose to her shirt. Holding it together, she pushed herself upright. “I guess Tamberlaine tol’ you what Mr. Estes and me—”

“Hell yes, he told me.”

“Nothing you can do about it.” She reached for the bottle. Artemas beat her to it and flipped it upside down, then jabbed the tip into soft earth covered in brown pine needles.

“There’s nothing worse than a mean drunk. We can’t talk unless you’re sober.” He leaped to his feet, pulled her up after him, and started toward the creek. She dug her bare heels in and stumbled when he plowed ahead despite her resistance.

He dragged her into the shallow creek, turned, and scooped her legs out from under her. She sat down hard on the sandy bottom. Immediately he was on his knees beside her in the icy, foot-deep water.

Lily gasped. The cold penetrated her bones. She couldn’t believe he was doing this. Hugging herself, she tried to wrench away from him. One of his hands sank into the back of her hair. He held her still and cupped water to her face, scrubbing it vigorously.

“Stop,” she ordered, her voice small and weary. Twisting her head away and shutting her eyes, she hunched over miserably. The water flowed around them with peaceful gurgles, chuckling at their torment without compassion. She heard the ragged sound of his breathing. “God damn you, Lily,” he said, his voice soft and hoarse. “This is killing me.”

She cried—helpless, humiliating, drunken sobs. “I know. I wish you never had to see me again. But I can’t leave here.”

“Oh, God.” It was a groan of despair. “I don’t want you
to go away, but I can’t do anything to help you.” He latched both arms around her waist and, half carrying her, pulled her to the bank. They leaned against each other, her head bowed by his shoulder, both of them shivering.

“Tomorrow, it’s been a year,” she said, struggling to get the words out of her throat. “It seems like forever. It seems like yesterday. I miss them so much. The loneliness—God, the loneliness. It makes me feel crazy things. Friends came up from Atlanta last week. Hai and some others. I wanted them to stay with me—anyone, to stay with me. Richard’s cousins from South Carolina came to visit at Christmas. I could hardly stand to let them leave. They felt so sorry for me—one even asked me to move up there and live near them.” She beat her fist on one knee. She knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t stop. “Richard would want me to go live with them. But I can’t. This is my home. This is where I have to stay—and fight for our honor.”

Artemas leaned his head against her hair. “
Your
honor has never been in question.”

“Oh, yes. He belonged to me. And our son … our boy deserves a better memorial than this gossip and accusation about his father.”

Artemas kept one arm around her back, tight as a vise, holding her to him. “There must be something to look forward to. There has to be.”

“Work. Making something out of nothing. And forgetting. I feel them going away, a little. It hurts. It hurts to feel them fading. I don’t want them to go.”

“We have to let them go.”

“I can’t. Not with all the doubts, everything we’ll never know. Don’t you think about that? Not knowing exactly what happened?”

“Every day. And I think about not knowing what will happen to you. Then, finding you alone and hurting like this …” His voice trailed off. He put both arms around her and kissed her forehead roughly. He was the only warmth in the world, and she couldn’t bear to move away.

She moaned and tilted her face up, blindly yearning to give back his comfort, to make some small sacrifice of bitterness.
He kissed her eyes, a fervent and quick caress, and she sagged against him. His face was wet and cold, his mouth like a smooth fire in comparison.

Connect. Survive. Forgive
. Crying again, she pressed her lips to his, and he responded. For the briefest of eternities there was no need to think of anything except him. Then remorse flooded her. She faced forward, her eyes squinted shut. Gritting her teeth, she groaned Richard’s name.

Artemas caught his breath, then exhaled in one long, exhausted sigh. “I’ll drive you to your aunt’s house.” His voice was flat, dead.

“No.” Dragging a hand over her ravaged face, she stared straight ahead, trying to repress the thought that she’d betrayed Richard and Stephen. And herself. “Don’t come here again. Mr. Estes doesn’t want you to set foot on the place. And neither do I.”

Artemas took her firmly by the shoulders and twisted her to face him. “That’s guilt talking.”

He got up and walked away in grim silence, crossed the creek, and stood, his back to her, his broad shoulders hunched. Several long minutes passed before he heard splashing sounds from the creek. He turned and watched as she knelt on the bank near him, dressed in jeans and a quilted blue jacket over the wet shirt that was plastered to her breasts and stomach. She tied the laces on her thick-soled work shoes, scooped the ragged hair back from her face, and stood, unsteady but in control again.

“This place can’t be what it was,” he said slowly. “Under the circumstances, nothing can be wonderful again. All we can do is accept that.”

“Including Blue Willow?”

“I’ll settle for believing that there are places and memories worth preserving, and something meaningful in saving them.”

“Heady philosophy for a man who remade the family fortune by marrying a senator’s daughter and selling ceramic technology to the military.”

“It beats the hell out of being a victim.”

She shot him a hard glance. “Like me?”

“You’re a victim if you equate blind faith and suffering with nobility.”

“You mean, sitting naked in the cold won’t get me into the Gandhi Hall of Fame?
Damn.
”

He frowned at her sarcasm. “All it might do is get you raped by some wandering hunter who thinks you’re fair game.”

“Well, if that ever happens, I’m sure your family will have a celebration.”

“That’s a vicious and unwarranted thing to say.”

“Is it? They probably think I moved back here to get in your good graces again—and maybe into your bed too.”

“Did that unscrupulous bastard you were married to teach you this gutter-level cynicism?”

“My husband—” She tried to say it calmly, but her mouth trembled and her composure shattered. “My
husband
was the least cynical person I’ve ever met. And he died holding our child in his arms and trying to protect him.”

Artemas winced, as she put her hands over her face and turned away. “Lily,” he said desperately, reaching toward her. “
Lily
. Let me make things easier for you. I can give you the money to buy this place back. I can—”

“Oh, my God.” Her shoulders shook. She twisted from the brush of his fingertips and stared at him. “Do you think I’ll ever take any help from you? Do you still believe you can run my life and get whatever you want?”

Artemas dropped his hands to his side. “Yes.”

She inhaled sharply. “Goddamn you.”

He turned and walked back up the long driveway. Their futures were no less bound together now than they had been the day she was born.

“She’s poison,” James said. “And Artemas doesn’t seem willing to acknowledge that.”

Tamberlaine leaned back in the plush chair of his office, one hand bent to his chin, studying James and the others with deceptive calm. He feared their undercurrent of agitation and bewilderment. It was divisive—something
the family had never had to deal with before. “What would you have him do?” Tamberlaine asked. “Abandon an estate that has great significance for this family simply because Mrs. Porter has chosen to live at a home that has equal significance to her?”

“He could pressure her to leave,” Cass interjected. “Instead of telling us he’s accepted the situation.”

Tamberlaine shrugged elegantly. “That doesn’t imply he intends to hand out a welcome mat for her.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Tammy, this friendship they’ve always had—is there any reason to think it was ever more than that?”

“No. As I’ve said before, he spent time with her family, as a child. He and she corresponded with each other over the years. It was quite innocent and sentimental.” Tamberlaine carefully hid his remorse at lying. Artemas had confided the truth to him years ago. It was a confidence he would never break.

Elizabeth sighed. “Do you think she’s deliberately trying to harm us in some way now?”

“No. I believe Mrs. Porter is a very honorable person, who feels she has as much right to her heritage as Artemas does to his.”

Michael leaned forward. “But she must realize that she’s exacerbating a painful situation.”

Tamberlaine scowled. “It has been widely publicized that the architects as well as the contractor bear the responsibility for the bridge collapse, and that your brother has pursued their liability to the hilt. No one can claim that he let his friendship with Mrs. Porter hinder his duties to Colebrook International—or to this family.”

James cursed. “We’ll never have any peace as long as she’s living near the estate. And that’s exactly
why
she’s there—to show us she can do as she damned well pleases.”

Tamberlaine’s patience for James’s bitterness had faded months ago. James seemed intent on destroying the future, not rebuilding. He scanned the assembled group with deep sorrow.

James, dressed in tailored black pinstripes, stood by a
black marble fireplace as if drawing from its coldness, rigid and alert, one hand white-knuckled on the handle of a metal cane—one of the generic, tripod-footed devices furnished by his physical therapists. Alise sat near him in an armchair, her slim, fashionable black dress making her look even more subdued than usual.

Cassandra looked ready to dine on Lily’s pride as she prowled the room in snug red silk, a brilliant scarf fluttering over one shoulder. Elizabeth sat in a prim little armchair with her knees pressed tightly together under a demure gray suit dress, her blond hair curling sweetly around her face, her toddler drooling on her jacket sleeve. She was tall and imposing, but her face had a perpetually timid look, as if she suspected someone might creep out of a corner and shout “Boo” into her ear at any moment.

Michael, kind, gentle Michael, sat in a chair nearby, his long denimed legs extended and crossed above suede loafers, a houndstooth jacket hanging over a rumpled sports shirt, sandy brown hair shagging over his pale forehead and large hazel eyes.

They were deeply decent and loving human beings, all of them, and seeing them descend into vindictiveness and suspicion made Tamberlaine sick. He shook his head slowly. “James, you seem to forget—all of you are forgetting, I think—that Mrs. Porter has done nothing more heinous than love and trust her husband.”

“She said that Julia knew the bridge was faulty, and ignored it,” James retorted. “She said that Julia bullied her husband into compromising standards. There’s no excuse for accusations like that, and there never will be.”

Alise moved a hand wearily. “I think we should try to understand Lily’s point of view, even if we don’t agree with it. She’s lost so much. Her bitterness may be misguided, but it’s not surprising.” Alise looked at James. His fierce gaze made her clench her hand in her lap. “We have to get on with our lives.”

He gestured sharply toward his bad leg. “Yes, I know how much you’re looking forward to cheering for me when I try out for the Olympic track team this spring.”

Alise flinched and turned away. There was awkward silence. Cassandra halted her pacing and scowled at her brother. Elizabeth and Michael seemed equally dismayed.

Tamberlaine rose to his feet. “
James.
” His voice was like soft thunder. “Alise has a great deal more respect for you at the moment than I do.” He left the large office, slamming the door behind him.

The brooding silence became oppressive. James limped to Alise, hesitated, then dropped a hand to her shoulder. She put hers over it, but her expression remained drawn. Finally Cassandra bluntly summed up their mood: “We have to keep a close watch on Lily. That means spending time at the estate. Artemas has said he considers it the family’s home. Given that excuse, we can make certain—discreetly—that she doesn’t worm her way into his life.”

There were general nods of agreement. James’s face was as closed as a vise. He turned from them, frowning. He would keep his own counsel, and make his own plans.