Chesapeake Summer (3 page)

Amanda's lips were pale as chalk. Her eyes were very bright. “Mark my words, Quentin. You're going to hell, and sooner, not later.”

He dropped his arms and laughed cruelly. “My, my, Amanda. If I thought you were actually threatening me, I might have a little respect for you.”

She stepped away from him. “Take it any way you like. You and your fancy woman will pay, and that's a fact.”

I
n the purple night of the swampland, the moon was white as bleached bone and the stars so brilliant and numerous they blanketed the sky like a spangled mantle. Still, it was dark, too dark to be driving alone on the dirt road bisecting the wetlands. Quentin Wentworth wasn't concerned about safety or darkness. He knew the twists and turns of the path as well as he knew the lines of Lizzie's body. He'd become intimately familiar with both over the past eight years and even though neither was in his own best interests, he had no intention of abandoning Lizzie or the road that led him to her.

He knew exactly when and where his obsession began. Cybil's Diner was a trucker's pit stop, a dive, not up to his usual style. He no longer remembered why he'd allowed himself to be talked into a card game in the back room. He did remember that he'd lost nearly every hand. He'd never been a gambler. Deciding to cut his losses and quit while he was still sober enough to drive home, he'd stumbled out of the small room into the smoky dimness of the bar. A jazz band played on the makeshift stage. They were good enough for Quentin to cross his arms and lean against the wall, waiting until the song ended. Gradually, his eyes adjusted to the light and he could pick out the couples on the floor.

He told himself he wasn't looking to start anything, but the woman caught his eye immediately. She was young, early twenties at most, and her body moved with the lissome grace of a professional dancer. Her hair was long and straight and very dark. He couldn't see her features in the dim light of the room, but he watched two men cut in to partner her within the same score. His brain had barely registered its intent before he found himself crossing the room, stepping into the squeeze of dancers. He reached for her arm and looked down into her face. She was lovely, ivory-skinned with black eyes and sharp features, clearly of mixed race, mostly white with a hint of Indian or dark blood. Her lips were painted a deep, vivid red. She looked back at him, steadily, without a hint of coyness, knowing exactly what it was he wanted.

The hammering began in his left temple. Heat speared through his chest and down into his groin. The music began again. He pulled her into his arms. “Who are you?” he asked through her curtain of hair.

She looked at him through lashes thick as feathers. “Don't you recognize me, Judge Wentworth?”

He had to think to breathe. “No.”

“I'm Benteen Jones's daughter, Lizzie.”

“Lizzie.” He tested the name on his tongue. “Lizzie.” She smelled like the star jasmine bushes his mother had planted around the porch when he was a boy.

He held her closely, pressing against the blade of her hips, the lines of her legs, the lush roundness of her young breasts. Moving her hair aside he kissed the flesh below her ear and moved down to the spot where her neck and shoulder met. He felt the intake of her breath, the slight stiffening of her back. He turned her head to find her mouth but she resisted.

“For you, I'm expensive,” she whispered.

He ran his hand down her body, cupping her buttocks. He was rock hard. “How much?”

“Two hundred.”

It could have been two thousand and he would have paid. “Where?”

“This way,” she said, keeping hold of his hand. She led him out the door, away from the light to the back of the lot where a dented Ford station wagon sat parked under the trees.

It was the first and only time he paid for the pleasure of Lizzie's body.

That was eight years ago. If he'd been a betting man, he would have laid odds their affair wouldn't last six months. They were polar opposites. He was a superior court judge, well educated, well traveled, highly respected, with family money behind him. She'd barely graduated from high school, never ventured more than fifty miles from Marshy Hope Creek and, by the time she was fourteen years old, she was turning tricks to keep Benteen Jones in liquor and tobacco. And yet, he kept coming back.

To describe a woman like Lizzie by laying out only the facts would be the same as describing
Gone With the Wind
after reading the book jacket. Quentin had never known anyone like her. She laughed easily and often, and she made him laugh, as well. Her compassion was equal to her irreverence, and her lack of inhibition, unusual in a woman, turned him inside out. Her sense of humor showed itself in a thousand different ways and after he'd been with her he felt renewed. He felt young.

In the beginning, the other men didn't bother him. Lizzie was who she was and didn't pretend to be anything more. As long as he could have her when it suited him, he couldn't complain. And it suited him regularly, two or three times a week, without interruption, except for the brief period after she told him about the child.

Quentin hadn't counted on a child and he was furious with what he believed to be her carelessness. She said nothing while he berated her, called her names and swore they were finished. She looked at him calmly, her hands resting on her knees. When he was finished, she turned away from him, picked up a paring knife and continued peeling potatoes. “Don't forget to close the screen door on the way out,” she said.

“It's probably not even mine.” The minute the words were out he wished them back. Of course the child was his. Lizzie was incapable of lying.

She turned on him, brandishing her knife, her voice deadly calm. “Don't say that. I know who fathered this baby. I'm not asking for anything, but don't you ever say that again.”

He left her, storming out to his car, and didn't come back for nearly a month. When he did, they never spoke of her condition, simply continuing as they had before except, now, Quentin paid all her expenses.

The baby, a boy, was black haired and black eyed with the clean, chiseled features of his mother. Quentin avoided him, always visiting Lizzie after he was asleep. They'd gone on that way for years until three weeks ago when Lizzie announced, without explanation, that they were finished.

Quentin threatened, pleaded and offered money. But this time she hadn't wanted money. She wanted what he couldn't, or wouldn't, give: respectability, a wedding ring and a name for her child.

Where once Lizzie was warm and giving, now she was cold, single-minded and stubborn. They could go away, she'd said, somewhere fresh where no one knew them. He told her it wasn't possible. He'd argued his case well, explaining that social status was harder to come by than a wedding band. His career would be forever stalled. Supporting his own family would take most of what he had and he wasn't young anymore. His reasons were valid but dishonest.

The truth, as he saw it, was so much more indefensible. He didn't want to nest with Lizzie, to settle down into the kind of life he knew with Amanda. Lizzie was exotic, alluring, beautiful. He didn't want to wake up with her in the morning, share the newspaper, discuss finances. He certainly couldn't see their families mingling—Benteen Jones, town debaucher, and Gaylord Wentworth the Third, businessman turned politician.

The passion he felt for Lizzie was based on the excitement of forbidden fruit, the clandestine meetings late at night, stolen moments, secrecy, unpredictability, frantic, raw sex performed in silence while her boy slept on the other side of the wall. Respectability would kill the fever. They would settle in. The adventure would end. Normalcy would accentuate their differences. Life would be one long unalterable regret.

Quentin didn't want to go there, not again, not with Lizzie. He stayed away, hoping she'd cool off and reconsider. Three weeks passed and he hadn't seen her, until tonight. Watching her with another man, knowing she'd gone back to her former trade enraged him. He'd behaved badly in front of the Delacourtes. Amanda had been publicly humiliated. She would take her pound of flesh. She always did.

He pulled up to the house he'd paid to have built while Lizzie waited for their child to be born. Hers was the only car parked out front. The house was dark. Quentin hadn't considered what he would do if she wasn't alone. Mindful of the boy, he knocked softly. She didn't answer. Carefully, he turned the knob and stepped inside. A single candle flickered on the coffee table. Lizzie was lying on the couch, smoking a cigarette, one leg bent over the other to form the number four. She still wore the red dress.

Circles of smoke spiraled toward the ceiling. Her eyes were closed.

“Lizzie,” he began and stopped.

“I know it's you, Quentin. Go home. We have nothing to say to each other.”

“How can you say that after—” he faltered.

Her eyes opened. She challenged him. “After?”

“After all we've been to each other?”

She sat up, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder. “What have we been to each other?”

He searched for words to convince her. “A comfort. We've been a comfort to each other.”

She laughed the light, silvery laugh that wound itself around his heart and made him believe all things were possible. How could he live without that laugh?

“We've been nothing to each other, Quentin. You despise your wife and the daughter she's raised in her image. You say you love me and yet you won't name the child we share. What do you want from me? What's to become of me? I have nothing to show for eight years with you.” She shook her head. “I'm moving on. It's over. Go home to Amanda.”

He stared at her, realizing for the first time that this wasn't a ploy. She was leaving him and she wouldn't be changing her mind. “What about this house? It's mine.”

“Take it,” she said wearily. “I want nothing of yours.”

“And the boy?”

“Bailey's mine. You never wanted him.”

“How will you live?”

Her mouth twisted. “Like I've always lived.”

“That's no life for a child.”

“I'll worry about that.”

Thrusting both hands into his pockets, he leaned heavily against the wall. “I can't leave you like this. What can I do?”

She sat up. “What did you come for, Quentin? Is it sex? From now on, if you want sex you'll have to pay just like the rest.”

Even now, his body stirred at the thought of sex with Lizzie.

Headlights lit the window and bathed the table and chairs in white light.

Quentin frowned. “What in the hell—? Are you expecting anyone?”

She didn't answer. Rising from the couch, Lizzie pulled back the curtain and looked out the window. “My God, we're in for a scene. Whatever happened to discretion, Quentin? Since when did you start informing your wife that you were visiting your mistress?”

“What are you talking about?” Pulling her away from the window, he took her place, squinting at the glare from the headlights.

“What is Amanda doing here?”

Lizzie's mouth turned up in amusement. “This is just a wild guess, Quentin, but I think she came for her husband.”

He gritted his teeth. “I won't tolerate this.”

She taunted him “Are you familiar with the term
paying the piper?
”

“You sound as if you're enjoying this.”

“Oh, I am. Believe me, I am.” Lizzie dropped the curtain, flipped on the lights and walked to the door. “Do you think she'll knock?”

“I know you're in there,” Amanda cried. “Open the door or I'm coming in.”

Lizzie threw open the door. “By all means, Mrs. Wentworth. Join our little party, but please lower your voice. My son is asleep.”

“Bitch!” Amanda hissed. “Whore!”

Quentin strode to the door and grabbed her arm. “Go home, Amanda. You don't belong here. Think of Tracy and Tess.”

“How dare you.” Her voice shook. “You've never once thought of them. Do you think no one knows about you and this slut? Do you imagine they believe the boy isn't yours?” She pulled a revolver from her coat pocket. Steadying it with both hands, she aimed at his chest.

He stepped in front of Lizzie. “Amanda, my God!”

Lizzie was still and silent as stone.

Quentin held out his hands. “Easy now, Amanda. You don't want to do this.”

“I think I do, Quentin. I really think I do.”

He forced himself to speak gently. “You don't mean that, Mandy. Put the gun down. We'll go home. Everything will be all right. Just give me the gun.” He held out his hand. “You don't want it to go off. Hand it to me, Mandy, and we'll go home right now.”

She shook her head. “It's too late.”

“It's not too late. It's never too late.” He'd nearly reached her.

Rubbing his eyes, seven-year old Bailey Jones appeared in the hallway. “Mama. I heard yelling.”

“Bailey, go back to bed, honey,” his mother shouted.

Brandishing her revolver, Amanda whirled toward the sound at the same time Quentin threw himself at her. They fell to the floor, a tangle of writhing limbs.

Lizzie leaped over both of them and grabbed her son, sheltering him with her body. Seconds passed as Quentin struggled with his wife. A single shot rang out. More seconds passed. Blood gushed on to the floor. Lizzie screamed and then there was silence.