Читать книгу A Season For Love - Bj James - Страница 9

He watched her.

From a small alcove above the atrium of the sprawling museum, he could see every patron and every celebrant, read the nuance of each gesture or expression. But it was only she who had the power to captivate. Only this woman who fascinated.

As he watched, music and laughter filled the grand hall from marble floor to gold leaf ceiling. Dancers, resplendent beneath the light of 18th-century chandeliers, reflected in one ornate mirror after another. Antique blue satin draping doors opening onto small galleries shimmered as darkly as the sea beyond.

The atrium was magnificent, an exquisite replica of the past the very cliquish Southern town of Belle Terre revered. In all its rich, Low Country grandeur, this was the heart of the museum, the piéce de résistance. An ironic setting for the beautiful woman.

There was a time she wouldn’t have been welcome. Venerable denizens greeting her familiarly tonight wouldn’t have spoken to her on the street. Men strutting in dusted-off tuxedos, lusting for a word or a smile, in the past lusted only for her nubile body.

She’d been brutalized and reviled by Belle Terre. Yet she moved among its self-appointed aristocracy graciously, as if she were one of them and had always been.

Politely refusing hors d’oeuvres, flutes of champagne, and invitations to dance by the dozens, she accepted the fawning acclaim, yet remained quietly aloof. In a gown that flowed like liquid gold about her, tastefully revealing the qualities that once sparked scorn and lechery, Maria Elena Delacroix, the outcast of Belle Terre, held court with the regal dignity of a queen.

Most of the men in the room were half in love with her. And one completely, irrevocably.

“Sheriff Rivers.”

Turning at the sound of his name, Jericho Rivers found Harcourt Kerwin Hamilton IV, better known as Court, and more recently as Deputy Hamilton, poised on the top step of the curving stair. “Something wrong, Court?”

“No, sir.” Moving to the sheriff’s side, Court looked out over the atrium. “It’s a grand affair. Grandmère says parties like this were common in her day.”

Grandmère. Jericho smiled at the term, a part of the pretentious idiom of the historical coastal town. The only name he’d been allowed to call his own grandmother. “I imagine a lot of things that are rare now were commonplace in her day.”

“But there’s something that isn’t commonplace in any day.”

Because he’d been taught from birth that it was rude to point, Court only nodded. But even the nod was superfluous. Jericho hadn’t a doubt Court’s youthful gaze was as drawn to Maria Elena Delacroix as any male’s in the room.

“My sister says you were friends of Ms. Delacroix in school. When she was part of your class at the academy.”

Court was still in short pants when his sister was in high school—he wouldn’t remember that Maria Elena was looked upon as the sort proper young girls of Belle Terre’s society shunned. Jericho doubted the older sister ever deigned to speak to her. Most certainly there had been no friendship.

Even he hadn’t been the friend he should have. Remembering how he had failed her, his voice was grim. “We knew her. All of us.”

A smile of masculine appreciation firmly in place, Court’s gaze followed the elegantly clad woman as she detached herself from the crowd, stepped between satin curtains, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. “With a face and body like that, she must have been the most popular girl in the whole school. But I bet none of you expected she would become a famous newscaster.”

Jericho was silent as he remembered the sad young girl who sat apart in morning assembly and walked the halls of Belle Terre Academy alone. As the hurt, bruised look that had haunted him for years loomed in his mind, he replied in a low, thoughtful voice, “I don’t think any of us knew what to expect of Ms. Delacroix.” After a long moment he added, “We still don’t.”

Court Hamilton was like an eager puppy. Too exuberant, too excitable, and far too inquisitive. “It’s good to have her back, though. Isn’t it?”

Was it? Jericho wondered as he pondered the consequences of her return. What dormant fear had she wakened? What upheaval would this single night bring to settled lives? Who would suffer or profit most, the denizens of Belle Terre, or she?

Angry for the past, distracted by contemplations of the near future, he lashed out when he shouldn’t have. “Is that why you came up here, Hamilton? To gossip?”

Beyond a puzzled look, Court Hamilton did not react to the rare barb. “No, sir. I came to take a turn here in the crow’s nest. I thought there might be some folk you would like to speak with before the last dance.”

Ignoring Hamilton’s joking title for the alcove, Jericho glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight. The celebration would be ending shortly.

“Thank you, Court.” Jericho Rivers smiled, rancor gone, but with no humor touching his calm gray gaze. “There is someone.”

Descending the stairs with the distinctive and uncommon agility of an extraordinary athlete, despite a ravaged knee, in seconds he was paused on the landing. Towering above the tallest of the celebrants by inches, his thick, dark hair gleaming with the soft sheen of coal, in the spinning kaleidoscope of lights, the sheriff of Belle Terre stood observing the crowd.

Unlike Maria Delacroix, he was one of them by birth. Born into the mystique of the merit and excellence of history, a scion of influence and old money. Schooled in charm and gallantry, as handsome as Lucifer, as magnetic, he could have been the prince of society. Yet he held himself apart. Apart from the pretenses, from the bluster and posturing. Apart and immune even from the playful flirtations of its polished, sophisticated femmes fatales.

Handsome as sin, yet aloof. Indeed, he was an intriguing enigma, an everlasting challenge. But tonight, as his silver-gray gaze moved over the crowd, there was an unapproachable look about him that discouraged even the most persistent of covetous ladies.

When the slow, steady perusal was done, his concern for any breach of security in these last minutes of the gala was allayed. Only then did he move through the throng, a distinguished figure with an air of authority. His formal wear draping the striking breadth of his shoulders and the deep musculature of his chest only a bit more impeccably than the khaki uniform of his standard daily wear. Given his size, his astounding presence, and the look of haunting secrets in his level gray gaze, the merrymakers gave way as if he were a human tide.

Crossing the marble floor quickly, speaking pleasantly but abruptly disengaging himself from any insistent conversations, Jericho didn’t pause until he reached an open door.

As he stood, remembering, the orchestra finished the last of a Cole Porter classic. One of his favorites. He didn’t notice.

Into the lull, almost too quietly to be heard, he murmured, “Good evening, Maria Elena.”