When the Splendor Falls (93 page)

“No, Stephen, I’m not fooling you. And do you know, the first person I saw was Jolie. A good omen, I think,” he said, laughing. “Now, I’ve got to find Lys Helene. If you’ll excuse me,” Guy said, patting a shaken, still disbelieving Stephen on the shoulder as he turned and walked away without hesitation toward the gate where Lys Helene had disappeared only moments before.

Watching Guy Travers stride away so purposefully, Stephen bowed his head. “Never been so happy. The good Lord’s blessed us,” Stephen said, glancing over to where Jolie was still locked in deadly battle with Lupe, and he blew his nose, content to wait, knowing he knew something Jolie didn’t. And she couldn’t claim she’d heard thunder this time.

Guy followed the path without stumbling, finding his way through the big house easily, his gaze curious as he passed through the big hall that was familiar without being familiar as he looked around, seeing what he’d only been able to envision before. Guy thought he knew where he’d find Lys Helene, but he was suddenly uncertain about following her into the courtyard, not quite courageous enough to face her rejection. She was beautiful and had probably only pitied him. She was the kind to take in stray cats and dogs, and crippled men. Why should she care for him? What could he offer her if she did? he despaired, unwilling now to declare his love. The once proud Guy Travers frightened and humbled as he thought of the loneliness that awaited him if spurned by the one woman he loved.

Lys Helene was sitting in the darkness watching him. It had happened, just as she had prayed, and feared, it would. Guy had regained his sight. She’d watched him glancing around the barbecue like a small boy on Christmas morning, not knowing what to look at first. She’d been so happy for him because she loved him, but she knew she would never be able to hold him now. Now that he’d regained his sight he wouldn’t be interested in her, he wouldn’t even look her way, and she would lose him. And he certainly wouldn’t need her any longer. He would be able to walk around on his own, and she would not have him pity her. And he would, she had heard him say so. He didn’t want her hanging around, Lys Helene remembered, her cheeks flushing in remembered mortification. He had even wondered what was wrong with her for loving him. Well, he would never know.

“Lys Helene?”

“I’m over here. Is that you, Guy?” she asked, pretending not to have noticed him.

Her voice came softly to him across the shadowy courtyard, the fragrance from her flowers drifting around him as he walked the distance to where she sat in the trellised arbor, suddenly feeling ill at ease as he approached her, as if she had somehow gained the advantage over him.

“I can see, Lys Helene,” he said simply, coming to stand before her.

Lys Helene swallowed, ready to pretend ignorance, and show great surprise, but she was not an accomplished actress, and she was an even worse liar.

“I know,” she whispered.

“You know? How?” he asked, startled. “It just happened. Did you see the bolt of lightning that struck me? That was what it felt like.”

Lys Helene smiled despite herself. Even had she not overheard his conversation with Leigh when he thought he might be regaining his sight, she would have suspected something. He wasn’t very good at hiding his feelings.

“You have been acting rather strange all week, as if you were trying very hard to see, and then…tonight, I was watching you when you dropped the goblet. I saw the look of joy on your face. Then you were glancing around at everything and everybody, searching the crowd for faces. I knew.”

“Why didn’t you come over?” he asked, more worried than before, for there was a politeness in her voice that hadn’t been there since they’d first met as strangers. “I saw you standing there. I knew it was you, Lys Helene. I wanted you to know first.”

“How very kind of you. And I am so very happy for you, Guy. I truly am. But I knew you’d want to share the great news with your family first, and I didn’t want to intrude, to be hanging around,” she said, not intending to quote him, but the hurtful phrase slipped out.

“Kind of me? Hanging around?” he said incredulously, having forgotten all about the words he’d spoken in frustration. “You?”

“Yes. Especially now that you’ve regained your sight, you’ll probably want to ride all around the
rancho
. Meet people. You don’t need me as your guide any longer,” Lys Helene forced herself to say, thinking of some of the beautiful women at the barbecue tonight. She didn’t want to see him gaze at them in admiration.

“Oh, I see. Please accept my apologies, for I have obviously been a pest to you since coming to Royal Rivers, but being a guest in your home, and a helpless cripple, you were far too polite to show your boredom and impatience with me.”

“What a horrible thing to accuse me of. That’s not true!” Lys Helene said angrily, unable to allow Guy to think that, for it stole from her the joy she’d shared with him this past year, and she would not lose that even if she lost him.

“Isn’t it the truth?”

“Of course it isn’t. I’ve enjoyed our days together,” she finally admitted.

“You do care then?” he asked, raising his hand to wipe the perspiration from his brow, and feeling the black patch over his sightless eye. Perhaps it wouldn’t matter to her.

“Yes, I care. We have become good friends, and I hope we always shall be,” she answered, glancing up, then looking horrified. “Oh, Guy, what have you done to your hand?” she demanded, rising from the bench and stepping close as she took his bloodied hand in hers and stared down at the jagged cut across his palm. With quick efficiency she took her handkerchief and tied it around his hand, stanching the bleeding. “You must have this seen to properly.”

She stood so close to him, her red-gold curls coming just beneath his chin as he had imagined, her perfumed body sweetly provocative.

“Friends,” Guy said the word curiously. “Yes, we are friends, Lys Helene. That is very important to me.”

“And to me too,” she agreed, her hands clasped tightly. “Well, you must go tell Leigh and Althea. And I believe I’m promised to someone for the next dance. And, perhaps the next one after that. He has been very persistent this evening,” she said, as if interested in this man.

Jealousy snaking through him, Guy felt as if his worst fears were coming true. He was losing her. If she walked away now, he knew there might not be another chance to declare his feelings, for as time went by they would drift farther apart. He could sense it already beginning. Desperate, his once great pride forgotten, he spoke from the heart, fighting for what he wanted most in this world. “I would have us become more than friends, Lys Helene. Much more. I love you, and if I were to lose you now that I’ve regained my sight, I would welcome blindness again. You’ve become the most precious person in my life, and I will not lose the deep friendship, and the love, that has grown between us. I-I am in love with you. I want you to become my wife.” His words tumbled one over another almost incoherently; it was not the suave declaration he’d always dreamed he would make to the woman he loved as he swept her off her feet with masculine arrogance, certain the woman he chose would say yes. At one time, no woman would have said no to Guy Travers, but now…

Lys Helene couldn’t believe her ears.
He loved her?

Guy frowned. She was too quiet. He needed to convince her of his love and devotion, he mistakenly thought.

“I’ve wanted to regain my sight so badly, but I’ve been afraid. I almost did not want to see again. If I did, I thought I might lose you. I thought you might have been pitying me all this time. And, when I could finally see again, I was stunned by your beauty. I wondered if you could possibly come to love me. I had almost hoped you would be plain, and then I—” He paused, unable to continue, and perhaps wisely so, but he had already said too much.

“What you’re saying is that if I had been so ugly I caused the milk to sour, then you might have taken pity on me and asked me to marry you?” she asked, but not angrily, for she’d seen the look of despairing uncertainty cross his face and now understood the reasons behind the conversation she’d overheard. Guy Travers was afraid. He’d always been handsome and wealthy, and could have any woman he’d wanted. But now, because he imagined himself horribly disfigured, and destitute, he thought only a homely woman would accept his proposal. No one else, and certainly not a woman with a fair face, could possibly be in love with him. There would have to be something wrong with her, Lys Helene thought, remembering his words.

Then she smiled, her eyes glowing with happiness. He thought she was beautiful. And she had been so worried he would not find her beautiful at all, that he would be disappointed by her freckled face and copper-colored hair, forgetting the friendship they had formed, not letting it develop further because he would not be able to love a woman he found unattractive. “And, had I been this poor creature you hoped, I would have been so grateful to you for rescuing me from my spinsterhood that I would have said yes with unseemly haste.”

“Well, yes…no, I mean, that’s not really what I meant at all, because I loved you without ever having seen you. I’ve never felt that way about anyone. I’ve never been able to talk to a woman as I have you. I’ve never been able to talk to
anyone
as I have you. You could have three eyes for all I care, but I thought if you were beautiful, as indeed you are, then you wouldn’t want me and—”

“What are you so afraid of, Guy Patrick Travers?” she demanded. “Were you really so afraid that if you found I was not frightful, then I’d be the shallow kind of person who’d marry
only
a handsome, wealthy gentleman? How little you think of me. How little you know me,” she told him. “I used to see that type in Charleston. Handsome, wealthy, and so callous. I would never marry a man like that,” she told him. “And, at one time, had you asked me to marry you, I would have said no, because you were once that kind of man. You’ve said so yourself. Although the man you were then would not have asked me to marry him. The man you are today, the man you’ve become, is the man I am in love with and would be honored to marry,” she said decisively, almost breathlessly, but she had to speak her mind, and leave him in no doubt of the kind of man she wanted. Standing on tiptoe, her hands on his shoulders, she pressed her lips against his in a soft, shy kiss. Then she pulled his head down lower, touching her lips to both his cheeks, then his eye, and finally, she gently lifted the black patch, and Guy felt her lips touch his scarred eyelid. “My love,” she murmured.

Guy stood deathly still. She said yes. And she kissed his scarred eye. Still disbelieving, though, his hand closed around her slender arm and he pulled her into the light shining from the house.

“Guy, please, what are you doing?”

He tipped her face up to his, looking deeply into her light gray eyes for the first time. They seemed almost too large for her small face, and she could not hide the tenderness in them, or the love revealed in their depths. Yes, there was love. No pity. He knew her too well, she wouldn’t deceive him. She wasn’t that kind, and that was why he had fallen in love with her without ever having gazed upon her beautiful freckled face, or seen the glory of her red-gold hair—like his sunset tonight.

“My dearest heart,” he said, touching her nose with his fingertip, then lowering his mouth to hers, his lips touching hers lightly, then when he felt the softness of them parting beneath his, his kiss deepened, his arms sliding around her waist as he lifted her easily against him, kissing her hungrily, and with all the expertise he possessed, determined she would always remember their first kiss of passion and never regret taking a disfigured man as her husband.

“You do realize what this means?” he finally asked, holding her slightly away from him.

“After kissing me and touching me like that, it had better mean you intend to make good that proposal of marriage,” she said in a breathless voice, staring up at him in amazement, for she’d never dreamed a kiss could be so wonderful, and she was thankful he still held her in his arms.

“Just try to say no to me now,” he warned, resting his chin on top of her head, her curls soft and fragrant. “I intend to return to Virginia, to Travers Hill. I’m asking you to leave here. And once we are there, it will be a long way back to Royal Rivers. You will miss your family. Knowing that, do you still wish to marry me? Will you come with me, Lys Helene? It will be hard at first, but it is my home and I want to live at Travers Hill and raise a family there.”

Lys Helene rested her cheek against his shoulder and sighed with a contentment she’d never known. “Just try keeping me away,” she said quietly, thinking of his mother’s rose garden as she turned her face up to his to seal the promise of their future with a kiss.

* * *

“This is quite delicious,” Althea commented, biting into a warm corn tortilla she’d loaded down with chunks of grilled meat and garnished with
guacamole
and
salsa
. Leigh eyed her sister’s plate in amazement, noting the pork strips that had been marinated in red chile sauce and cooked crisp over the fire, for Althea was the last person she would have thought would like spicy food.

Althea was careful not to drip any sauce on her gown. It was of mauve-flowered, pale amber silk trimmed with blond lace, and had been quite fashionable three years ago. It was the last gown she’d made when living in Richmond, intending to wear it to a grand, much-promised celebration ball, but she’d never had the opportunity—a festive occasion never having arisen. “I understand from the Parisian fashion magazine Solange received from her friend in France that cashmere shawls are considered quite provincial nowadays,” Althea said in mock despair as she pulled the soft mauve wool over her chilled shoulders. “Of course, that magazine is almost a year old, fashion may already have changed again.”

Leigh glanced down at her own gown of sapphire blue velvet. Like a magician, Jolie had somehow managed to unearth the bolt of material from one of the trunks they’d brought with them from Virginia. The soft blue velvet had been purchased four years ago, with the intention of fashioning a ball gown for her trousseau, but it had been forgotten during the ensuing years. Learning of the barbecue to follow the end of the lambing and shearing, with half of the territory invited, Jolie had gone through her wardrobe, a look that boded ill on her face as she realized Leigh had precious little to wear. From an illustration in Solange’s French fashion magazine, she and Althea had made her a gown that even Beatrice Amelia could not have found fault with.