Romance Classics (76 page)

In the late dusk, beneath a gray, dripping sky, the road was a morass of mud. In a ditch beside the road was a dark blue convertible, its wheels on one side still spinning crazily; and a man, mud-spattered, a little dazed, climbed through the door and stood swaying drunkenly beside the car.

Kate slid from her horse and went swiftly to the man's side. Before she could speak, she heard his slow, angry muttering. He was swearing long and luridly, and Kate listened in simple astonishment. Not once did the man repeat himself, and when at last he was silent, she eyed him admiringly, an imp of laughter in her brown eyes.

“Well, that was really quite a performance. And now may I ask if you are hurt?”

The man seemed to be aware of her for the first time.

“Hurt? Only in my dignity, and that will probably heal,” he told her grimly. “But my car will never be the same again.”

Kate crossed to the ditch and examined the car carefully and came back to smile reassuringly at him.

“Oh, I don't think it's badly damaged,” she soothed him. “I'll have the boys from the farm pick it up and take it down to the garage.”

“I felt sure there'd be a garage somewhere around,” said the man. “A road like this is built especially for the suckers who drive cars, and for the people who repair them. Why else would we be ordered to detour from the main highway over a pig track like this after four solid days of rain?”

Kate stiffened and her eyes grew frosty.

“The detour road ended five miles back,” she told him curtly. “You should have taken the left fork at the crossroad and you'd have been back on the highway within a mile. This road goes nowhere except to River's Edge.”

“A village, I suppose?”

“A plantation, very much in the
Gone With the Wind
tradition, I do assure you,” said Kate dryly.

The man sighed and ran muddy fingers through his disheveled hair.

“I've been driving for two days through this liquid atmosphere, and I had some faint hopes of reaching a place where I could have a decent meal and a good bed tonight. And now this — ” As though forgetful of her presence, he began to swear again.

Kate said quickly, “Be careful or you'll start repeating yourself. I'll have the boys pick you up and we'd be very glad to have you spend the night with us at River's Edge. I'll send back for you as soon as I can.”

And without waiting for his reply, while he was still staring at her through the wet, gray dusk, she swung herself into the saddle and went galloping off down the narrow, winding road.

Before she went on to the house she stopped at the first neat remodeled tenant house, where she asked the tenant-farmer to collect the damaged car and deliver its driver to River's Edge.

Although she and her father and her aunt Jane had been living there for almost four months, she could never think of the place as home. But not for anything would she have let Tim, her father, know that. Tim adored the place, all its thousand acres of farm land, pasture, swamp, and river bottoms; and the house was his pride and joy.

Reining her horse in at the gates, Kate looked about her. Even beneath the sodden sky, which made the giant live-oaks festooned with Spanish moss seem to weep, the place had a dreamlike quality. The huge two-storied house, built of graying tabby-brick, was set deep in flowering azaleas and camellias. It looked, as Kate had said, like something dreamed up by a designer for a
Gone With the Wind
movie; not like a place where three very modern Northerners might be happy.

At the thought of the man in the wrecked car, she touched her heels to her horse's flanks and trotted up the drive. Near the curving drive in front of the wide double steps, she slid off the horse and tossed the reins to a half grown black boy who grinned and went loping off, the horse trotting behind him.

Kate mounted the left-hand side of the steps and pushed open the front door.

Jane, tall, angular, and very businesslike in gray sharkskin, was halfway down the beautiful staircase, and Kate grinned and waved her crop.

“Hello, honey-chile,” she greeted Jane lightly. “Where's Himself? I have good news for him. We're going to have company for dinner, no less,” said Kate.

“No! How did you wangle that?” gasped Jane in honest amazement.

“Well, I admit I had to pluck the dinner guest out of a ditch beside the road into which his car had plunged,” Kate confessed. “But he seems rather a human sort of creature.”

“Tim will be pleased,” said Jane with relief. “It must get a little tiresome for him alone with us, even if we
are
the two gals he loves best in the world.”

Kate grinned ruefully. “Oh, well, if Himself would come down to the Deep South where being ‘unreconstructed' is still something to boast about, and him a Yankee, I suppose there's nothing you and I can do about it.”

Kate opened the door into the library. For a moment, so quietly had she moved, Tim was unaware of her. The room was large and handsomely furnished and along three walls there were book shelves from floor to ceiling, with a break for two long French windows. The fourth wall had a huge chimney and a big open fireplace where a log fire looked cheerful on this damp spring afternoon.

Tim, almost two hundred pounds of bone and muscle, his florid face topped by a balding head fringed with graying red hair, wore a smoking jacket and held a book in his hand. His eyes were on the fire and there was a droop to his shoulders.

“Oh, is that you, Katie, me girl?” Tim's brogue was so very faint that it was little more than a flavor about his words, except in moments of stress. He held up his book. “Did you know, now, that River's Edge has a ghost? It says so here in the book.”

“Of course. Don't you know a ghost story is standard equipment in these parts for any place more than ten years old?” Kate teased him.

“Now don't you go getting fresh with the ‘ghosties,' me girl,” Tim protested, not entirely in jest. “They are sensitive creatures.”

“Sorry, darling, I wouldn't annoy your ghosts for anything,” said Kate lightly. “I saw a car plunge into a ditch beside the road. The man's car needs a good deal of attention before he can go on, so I invited him to stop for dinner and the night while the car is being attended to.”

“Good! Splendid!” Tim was delighted and interested. “Who is the man?”

Kate laughed. “He seemed in no frame of mind to give his name, but he's from up North somewhere, because he was detouring from the main highway and got lost at the crossroads. That's how he slid out of our private road into the ditch. He'll be along any minute now, so look after him while I get into something warm and dry,” said Kate cheerfully, and dropped a light kiss on his forehead before she went out of the room and up the stairs.

Her father was excited about the possibility of a guest for dinner, and the thought made her see red with anger. For her father had come there, fallen in love with this beautiful old ruin of a house, and bought it in the eager hope of making friends and having neighbors — anticipating a cheerful, peaceful exchange of dinner invitations, hunting trips, and the like. And what had happened? From the day the house had passed into Tim's hands, he and his sister and daughter had been treated like social outcasts. They had taken up their residence at River's Edge four months ago and not one single person had come to call!

Kate and her aunt Jane, in their happy innocence, had waited in the afternoon, with a well-laden tea tray hospitably ready, quite sure that the women would call to welcome them.

Instead, such men as had business with Tim came during the morning hours and managed not to stay for lunch; and when Jane and Kate were in town at the county seat people carefully looked the other way.

Oh, well, she told herself grimly as she slipped into a simple white crepe dinner dress, she and Jane and Tim had lived on construction jobs since Kate could remember; they had been sufficient unto themselves and they could go on being so. They had friends in New York and in other Northern cities, and as soon as the capricious spring had her mind made up about blowing hot or cold, they would have a house party. To heck with the people of Betsy Hamilton County, and the town of Hamilton.

As Kate went down the stairs a little later, she heard the pleasant sound of mingled voices and laughter in the big drawing room.

As she came into the room, Tim and the young stranger stood up, while Jane watched the young man with a friendly interest.

“I believe you two have already met,” said Tim. “Katie, this is Doctor Etheridge. Doc, my daughter, Kate.”

“Doc's opening up shop in Hamilton,” Tim explained as he offered Kate a cocktail.

Kate stared round-eyed at the tall, good-looking young man who had obviously had time for a shower and fresh clothes since she had seen him, mud-stained and irate, in the ditch.

“In Hamilton?” she asked incredulously.

Scott looked mildly puzzled and there was a gleam of humor in his eyes. “From your tone, I take it you don't like Hamilton,” he suggested mildly.

Kate swung a swift glance at Tim and hastily dissembled. “Not at all,” she assured Scott. “It's just that I am a little surprised that a young man would choose even such an attractive backwater. I imagined young men starting out in practice would want some scope for their abilities.”

“I'm a throwback to a grandfather who was completely happy in a small town as an old-fashioned country doctor,” said Scott. “I used to ride with him on his calls when I was a kid. I suppose that's how I got the bug. But after medical training in New York at one of the big metropolitan hospitals, I seem to yearn for the simple life.”

“Simple life, in Hamilton?” Kate's tone was lightly derisive. “My dear Doctor! Never let a Hamiltonian hear you indicate that this is not the Promised Land. If you can count your grandfathers back to the early Colonial days and lost all your money in the War Between the States — and while we are on the subject, Doctor, never, as you value your life, call it the Civil War — well, then you are considered one of the worthwhile Hamiltonians.”

“Oh, now, Kate — ” protested Tim uneasily.

And because she loved him very dearly and did not want him to worry, Kate laughed and shrugged and said carelessly, “I'm sorry. I'm being a cat. Hamilton is really a lovely place and I'm sure you'll be very happy there, Dr. Etheridge.”

“The name, to rescuing angels, is Scott,” he reminded her firmly.

“Of course,” she smiled at him.

“What ever possessed you to select Hamilton as your base of operations? And that wasn't meant for a very bad pun, even though it turned out to be one,” said Jane firmly.

“Oh, the resident chief under whom I did special work this last year in New York was a Hamilton man,” answered Scott. “He hasn't been home in twenty years, I understand, but still calls Hamilton home.”

“He would,” commented Kate dryly, and added, “see what I mean?”

Scott laughed, but his eyes were interested, a little curious.

The dining table was beautiful with flowers and candlelight, and the furnishings of beautifully rubbed old rosewood delighted Scott's eyes. Dinner was delectable and superbly served. The conversation was cheerful and friendly, and Kate felt warmly toward Scott, knowing how much Tim was enjoying his being there. Afterward, they had coffee in the big drawing room, and when Tim was called away to the telephone and Jane had excused herself to go to her room, Scott sat beside Kate on the big Chesterfield before the open fire and said, “Look, if I'm getting out of line, smack me down and tell me to mind my own business. But I got the impression that you dislike Hamilton more than a little.”

“You're quite mistaken, Doctor.” Her voice was thin and her eyes were on the fragile coffee cup in her hand.

“And since I am planning to make it my home, and it's all quite strange to me, why couldn't you give me a few pointers? Things not to do, things to be sure to do — sort of how to win friends and influence patients?” He went on as though she had not spoken.

Kate was still for a long moment, and then she shrugged and put the coffee cup back on the beautiful silver tray.

“You mustn't pay any attention to me, Scott,” she said after a moment. “It's just that my father's a pretty special person to me, and seeing him snubbed every time he tries to be friendly, and having people look down their noses at him, doesn't make me very happy.”

“Well, naturally it wouldn't,” Scott agreed. “But why should they?”

She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug, trying to dismiss the whole thing.

“Oh, it's so silly — But the moment we came, we stepped into an ice water bath of hostility. Simply because Dad had bought a place that had been for sale for years and years, everybody decided that he had done an inhuman thing in throwing the Parhams out of their ancestral home.”

“The Parhams? I have a letter to them,” Scott remembered aloud.

Kate sat erect, her eyes wide.

“The Parhams? You have a letter to the Parhams?” she gasped.

“Why, yes.” Scott was puzzled by her vehemence.

“If I'd known that,” said Kate through her teeth, “I'm afraid I'd have let you languish in the ditch.”

Scott laughed, and then he saw that she was in deadly earnest. “Aren't you being more than a little ridiculous?” he suggested dryly.

Kate flushed and her chin went up. “Of course, Doctor Etheridge,” she said frostily. “Do forgive me. Shall we talk of something else?”

Scott studied her for a moment and then he said quietly, “I think not. I think I'd rather get this all straightened out.”

Kate laughed grimly. “That would definitely be the neatest trick of the week,” she assured him. And when Tim came back, she began talking of something else.

But for the rest of the evening, Kate was conscious of Scott's eyes following her thoughtfully, even when he was listening to her father with sincere interest. And when she had gone to her room for the night, she scolded herself severely for being such a fool and for letting this attractive young stranger know that she very much resented the local people and their treatment of her father.