Loe raamatut: «September Morning»

Chapter One

The meadow was dew-misted, and the morning had the nip of a September breeze to give it life. Kathryn Mary Kilpatrick tossed her long black hair and laughed with the sheer joy of being alive. The sound startled the chestnut gelding she was riding, making it dance nervously over the damp ground.

“Easy, boy,” she said soothingly, her gloved hand reaching out to touch his mane gently.

He calmed, reacting to the familiar caress. Sundance had been hers since he was a colt, a present from Blake on her sixteenth birthday. Sundance was a mature five-year-old now, but some of his coltish uncertainties lingered. He was easily startled and high-strung. Like Kathryn Mary.

Her dark green eyes shimmered with excitement as she studied the long horizon under the pink and amber swirls of the dawn sky. It was so good to be home again. The exclusive girls’ school had polished her manners and given her the poise of a model, but it had done nothing to cool her ardor for life or to dampen the passion she felt for Greyoaks. Despite the fact that the Hamiltons’ South Carolina farm was her home by adoption, not by birth, she loved every green, rolling hill and pine forest of it, just as though she were a Hamilton herself.

A flash of color caught her attention, and she wheeled Sundance as Phillip Hamilton came tearing across the meadow toward her on a thoroughbred Arabian with a coat like polished black leather. She smiled, watching him. If Blake ever caught him riding one of his prize breeding stallions like that, it would mean disaster. What luck for Phillip that Blake was in Europe on business. Maude might indulge her youngest, but Blake indulged no one.

“Hi!” Phillip called breathlessly. He reined in just in front of her and caught his wind, tossing back his unruly brown hair with a restless hand. His brown eyes twinkled with mischief as they swept over her slender figure in the chic riding habit. But the mischief went out of them when he noticed her bare head.

“No helmet?” he chided.

She pouted at him with her full, soft lips. “Don't scold,” she accused. “It was just a little ride, and I hate wearing a hard hat all the time.”

“One fall and you'd be done for,” he observed.

“You sound just like Blake!”

He smiled at her mutinous look. “Too bad he missed your homecoming. Oh, well, he'll be back at the end of the week—just in time for the Barringtons’ party.”

“Blake hates parties,” she reminded him. Her eyes lowered to the rich leather of her Western saddle. “And he hates me too, most of the time.”

“He doesn't,” Phillip returned. “It's just that you set fire to his temper, you rebellious little witch. I can remember a time when you all but worshiped my big brother.”

She grimaced, turning her eyes to the long horizon where thoroughbred Arabians grazed on lush pasture grass, their black coats shimmering like oil in the sunlight. “Did I?” She laughed shortly. “He was kind to me once, when my mother died.”

“He cares about you. We all do,” he said gently.

She smiled at him warmly and reached out an impulsive hand to touch his sleeve. “I'm ungrateful, and I don't mean to be. You and your mother have been wonderful to me. Taking me in, putting me through school—how could I be ungrateful?”

“Blake had a little to do with it,” he reminded her wryly.

She tossed her hair back impatiently. “I suppose,” she admitted grudgingly.

“Finishing school was his idea.”

“And I hated it!” she flashed. “I wanted to go to the university and take political science courses.”

“Blake likes to entertain buyers,” he reminded her. “Political science courses don't teach you how to be a hostess.”

She shrugged. “Well, I'm not going to be here forever, despite the fact that you and Blake are my cousins,” she said. “I'll get married someday. I know I owe your family a lot, but I'm not going to spend my whole life playing hostess for Blake! He can get married and let his wife do it. If he can find anyone brave enough,” she added waspishly.

“You've got to be kidding, Cuz,” he chuckled. “They follow him around like ants on a sugar trail. Blake could have his pick when it comes to women, and you know it.”

“It must be his money, then,” she said tightly, “because it sure isn't his cheerful personality that draws them!”

“You're just sore because he wouldn't let you go away with Jack Harris for the weekend,” he teased.

She flushed right up to her hairline. “I didn't know Jack had planned for us to be alone at the cottage,” she protested. “I thought his parents were going to be there, too.”

“But you didn't think to check. Blake did.” He laughed at her expression. “I'll never forget how he looked when Jack came to get you. Or how Jack looked when he left, alone.”

She shivered at the memory. “I'd like to forget.”

“I'll bet you would. You've been staring daggers at Blake ever since, but it just bounces right off. You don't dent him, do you?”

“Nothing dents Blake,” she murmured. “He just stands there and lets me rant and rave until he's had enough, then he turns that cold voice on me and walks away. He'll be glad when I'm gone,” she said in a quiet voice.

“You're not going anywhere yet, are you?” he asked suddenly.

She darted a mischievous glance at him. “I had thought about joining the French Foreign Legion,” she admitted. “Do you think I could get my application accepted before the weekend?”

He laughed. “In time to escape Blake? You know you've missed him.”

“I have?” she asked with mock innocence.

“Six months is a long time. He's calmed down.”

“Blake never forgets,” she sighed miserably. She stared past Phillip to the towering gray stone house in the distance with its graceful arches and the cluster of huge live oaks dripping Spanish moss that stood like sentries around it.

“Don't work yourself into a nervous breakdown,” Phillip said comfortingly. “Come on, race me back to the house and we'll have breakfast.”

She sighed wearily. “All right.”

***

Maude's dark eyes lit up when the two of them walked into the elegant dining room and seated themselves at the polished oak table.

She had the same olive skin and sharp, dark eyes as her eldest son, the same forthright manner and quick temper. Maude was nothing like Phillip. She lacked his gentleness and easy manner, as well as his pale coloring. Those traits came from his late father, not from his maverick mother, who thought nothing of getting a congressman out of bed at two in the morning if she wanted a piece of pending legislation explained to her.

“It's good to have you home, baby,” Maude told Kathryn, reaching out a slender, graceful hand to touch the younger woman's arm. “I'm simply surrounded by men these days.”

“That's the truth,” Phillip said wryly as he helped himself to scrambled eggs from the bone china platter. “Matt Davis and Jack Nelson nearly came to blows over her at a cocktail party last week.”

Maude glared at him. “That isn't so,” she protested.

“Oh?” Kathryn asked with an impish smile as she sipped her black coffee.

Maude shifted uncomfortably. “Anyway, I wish Blake were home. It was bad timing, that crisis at the London office. I had a special evening planned for Friday night. A homecoming party for you. It would have been perfect…”

“I don't need Blake to make a party perfect,” Kathryn burst out without thinking.

Maude's pencil-thin gray brows went up. “Are you going to hold it against him forever?” she chided.

Kathryn's fingers tightened around her coffee cup. “He didn't have to be so rough on me!” she protested.

“He was right, Kathryn Mary, and you know it,” Maude said levelly. She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. “Darling, you have to remember that you're just barely twenty. Blake's thirty-four now, and he knows a great deal more about life than you've had time to learn. We've all sheltered you,” she added, frowning. “Sometimes I wonder if it was quite fair.”

“Ask Blake,” she returned bitterly. “He's kept me under glass for years.”

“His protective instinct,” Phillip said with an amused grin. “A misplaced mother hen complex.”

“I wouldn't let him hear that, if I were you,” Maude commented drily.

“I'm not afraid of big brother,” he replied. “Just because he can outfight me is no reason…on second thought, you may have a point.”

Maude laughed. “You're a delight. I wish Blake had a little of your ability to take things lightly. He's so intense.”

“I can think of a better word,” Kathryn said under her breath.

“Isn't it amazing,” Phillip asked his mother, “how brave she is when Blake isn't here?”

“Amazing.” Maude nodded. She smiled at Kathryn. “Cheer up, sweetheart. Let me tell you what Eve Barrington has planned for your homecoming party Saturday night…the one I was going to give you if Blake hadn't been called away…”

***

The arrangements for the party were faultless, Kathryn discovered. The florist had delivered urns of dried flowers in blazing fall colors, and tasteful arrangements of daisies and mums and baby's breath to decorate the buffet tables. The intimate little gathering at the nearby estate swelled to over fifty people, not all of them contemporaries of Kathryn's. Quite a number, she noticed with amusement, were politicians. Maude was lobbying fiercely for legislation to protect a nearby stretch of South Carolina's unspoiled river land from being zoned for business. No doubt she'd pleaded with Eve to add those politicians to the guest list, Kathryn thought wickedly.

Nan Barrington, Eve's daughter, and one of Kathryn's oldest friends, pulled her aside while the musicians launched into a frantic rock number.

“Mother hates hard rock,” she confided as the band blared out. “I can't imagine why she hired that particular band, when it's all they play.”

“The name,” Kathryn guessed. “It's the Glen Miller ensemble, and Glen spells his name with just one ‘n.’ Your mother probably thought they played the same kind of music as the late Glenn Miller.”

“That's Mother,” Nan agreed with a laugh. She ran a finger over the rim of her glass, filled with sparkling rum punch. Her blond hair sparkled with the same amber color as she looked around the room. “I thought Blake was going to come by when he got home. It's after ten now.”

Kathryn smiled at her indulgently. Nan had had a crush on Blake since their early teens. Blake pretended not to notice, treating both girls like the adolescents he thought them.

“You know Blake hates parties,” she reminded the shorter girl.

“It can't be for lack of partners to take to them,” Nan sighed.

Kathryn frowned at her. She cupped her own glass in her hands and wondered why that statement nagged her. She knew Blake dated, but it had been a long time since she'd spent more than a few days at Greyoaks. Not for years. There was too much to do. Relatives she could visit in faraway places like France and Greece and even Australia. Cruises with friends like Nan. School events and girlfriends to visit and parties to go to. There hadn't been much reason to stay at Greyoaks. Especially since that last bout with Blake over Jack Harris. She sighed, remembering how harsh he'd been about it. Jack Harris had turned every color in the rainbow before Blake got through telling him what he thought in that cold, precise voice that always accompanied his temper. When he'd turned it on Kathryn, it had been all she could manage not to run. She was honestly afraid of Blake. Not that he'd beat her or anything. It was a different kind of fear, strange and ever-present, growing as she matured.

“Why the frown?” Nan asked suddenly.

“Was I frowning?” She laughed. She shrugged, sipping her punch. Her eyes ran over her shorter friend's pale blue evening gown, held up by tiny spaghetti straps. “I love your dress.”

“It isn't a patch on yours,” Nan sighed, wistfully eyeing the Grecian off-the-shoulder style of Kathryn's delicate white gown. The wisps of chiffon foamed and floated with every movement. “It's a dream.”

“I have a friend in Atlanta who's a budding designer,” she explained with a smile. “This is from her first collection. She had a showing at that new department store on Peachtree Street.”

“Everything looks good on you,” Nan said genuinely. “You're so tall and willowy.”

“Skinny, Blake says.” She laughed and then suddenly froze as she looked across the room straight into a pair of narrow, dark eyes in a face as hard as granite.

He was as tall and big as she remembered, all hard-muscled grace and blatant masculinity. His head was bare, his dark hair gleaming in the light from the crystal chandelier overhead. His deeply tanned face had its own inborn arrogance, a legacy from his grandfather, who had forged a small empire from the ashes of the old confederacy. His eyes were cold, even at a distance, his mouth chiseled and firm and just a little cruel. Kathryn shivered involuntarily as his eyes trailed up and down the revealing dress she was wearing, clearly disapproving.

Nan followed her gaze, and her small face lit up. “It's Blake!” she exclaimed. “Kathryn, aren't you going to say hello to him?”

She swallowed. “Oh, yes, of course,” she said, aware of Maude going forward to greet her eldest and Phillip waving to him carelessly from across the room.

“You don't look terribly enthusiastic about it,” Nan remarked, studying the flush in her friend's cheeks and the slight tremor in the slender hands that held the crystal glass.

“He'll be furious because I haven't got a bow in my hair and a teddy bear under my arm,” she said with a mirthless laugh.

“You're not a little girl anymore,” Nan said, coming to her friend's defense despite her attraction to Blake.

“Tell Blake,” she sighed. “See?” she murmured as he lifted his arrogant head and motioned for her to join him. “I'm being summoned.”

“Could you manage to look a little less like Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine?” Nan whispered.

“I can't help it. My neck's tingling. See you,” she muttered, moving toward Blake with a faint smile.

She moved forward, through the throng of guests, her heart throbbing as heavily as the rock rhythm that shook the walls around her. Six months hadn't erased the bitterness of their last quarrel, and judging by the look on Blake's rugged face, it was still fresh in his mind, too.

He drew deeply on his cigarette, looking down his straight nose at her, and she couldn't help noticing how dangerously attractive he was in his dark evening clothes. The white silk of his shirt was a perfect foil for his olive complexion, his arrogant good looks. The tang of his Oriental cologne drifted down into her nostrils, a fragrance that echoed his vibrant masculinity.

“Hello, Blake,” she said nervously, glad Maude had vanished into the throng of politicians so she didn't have to pretend more enthusiasm.

His eyes sketched her slender figure, lingering at the plunging neckline that revealed tantalizing glimpses of the swell of her small, high breasts.

“Advertising, Kate?” he asked harshly. “I thought you'd learned your lesson with Harris.”

“Don't call me Kate,” she fired back. “And it's no more revealing than what everyone else is wearing.”

“You haven't changed,” he sighed indulgently. “All fire and lace and wobbly legs. I hoped that finishing school might give you a little maturity.”

Her emerald eyes burned. “I'm twenty, Blake!”

One dark eyebrow went up. “What do you want me to do about it?”

She started to reply that she didn't want him to do a thing, but the anger faded away suddenly. “Oh, Blake,” she moaned, “why do you have to spoil my party? It's been such fun…”

“For whom?” he asked, his eyes finding several of the politicians present. “You or Maude?”

“She's trying to save the wildlife along the Edisto River,” she said absently. “They want to develop part of the riverfront.”

“Yes, let's save the water moccasins and sandflies, at all costs!” he agreed lightly, although Kathryn knew he was as avid a conservationist as Maude.

She peeked up at him. “I seem to remember that you went on television to support that wilderness proposal on the national forest.”

He raised his cigarette to his firm lips. “Guilty,” he admitted with a faint, rare smile. He glanced toward the band and the smile faded. “Are they all playing the same song?” he asked irritably.

“I'm not sure. I thought you liked music,” she teased.

He glowered down at her. “I do. But that,” he added with a speaking glance in the band's direction, “isn't.”

“My generation thinks it is,” she replied with a challenge in her bright eyes. “And if you don't like contemporary music, then why did you bother to come to the party, you old stick-in-the-mud?”

He reached down and tapped her on the cheek with a long, stinging finger. “Don't be smart,” he told her. “I came because I hadn't seen you for six months, if you want the truth.”

“Why? So you could drive me home and bawl me out in privacy on the way?” she asked.

His heavy dark brows came together. “How much of that punch have you had?” he asked curtly.

“Not quite enough,” she replied with an impudent grin and tossed off the rest of the punch in her glass.

“Feeling reckless, little girl?” he asked quietly.

“It's more like self-preservation, Blake,” she admitted softly, peeking up at him over the empty glass as she held its coolness to her pink lips. “I was getting my nerves numb so that it wouldn't bother me when you started giving me hell.”

He took a draw from his cigarette. “It was six months ago,” he said tightly. “I've forgotten it.”

“No you haven't,” she sighed, reading the cold anger very near the surface in his taut face. “I really didn't know what Jack had in mind. I probably should have, but I'm not very worldly.”

He sighed heavily. “No, that's for sure. I used to think it was a good thing. But the older you get, the more I wonder.”

“That's just what Maude was saying,” she murmured, wondering if he could read people's minds.

“And she could be right.” His eyes narrowed to a glittering darkness as he studied her in the revealing little dress. “That dress is years too old for you.”

“Does that mean it's all right with you if I grow up?” she asked sweetly.

One dark eyebrow rose laconically. “I wasn't aware that you needed my permission.”

“I seem to, though,” she persisted. “If I try to do anything about it, you'll be on my neck like a duck after a June bug.”

“That depends on what sort of growing-up process you have in mind,” he replied, reaching over to crush the cigarette into an ashtray. “Promiscuity is definitely out.”

“Not in your case, it isn't!”

His head jerked up, his eyes blazing. “What the hell has my private life got to do with you?” he asked in a voice that cut like sheer ice.

She felt like backing away. “I…I was just teasing, Blake,” she defended in a shaken whisper.

“I'm not laughing,” he said curtly.

“You never do with me,” she said in a voice like china breaking.

“Stop acting like a silly adolescent.”

She bit her lower lip, trying to stem the welling tears in her soft, hurt eyes. “If you'll excuse me,” she said unsteadily, “I'll go back and play with my dolls. Thank you for your warm welcome,” she added in a tiny voice before she pushed her way through the crowd away from him. For the first time, she wished she'd never come to live with Blake's family.