Читать книгу Married By Midnight - Judith Stacy, Judith Stacy - Страница 9

She’d dreamed about Nick.

Amanda came awake as the first golden rays of sunlight streamed into her room. She rolled over and studied the ceiling. If Cecilia’s Aunt Winnie asked her what she’d dreamed about last night, she wouldn’t know what she’d say. She certainly couldn’t tell the woman the truth.

Settling onto the thick feather pillows, Amanda glanced at the window and the slice of sky visible between the drapes. From all appearances the day was dawning clear and bright. If this weather held, Cecilia would have a perfect June wedding tomorrow. Nothing else was acceptable for a Hastings.

Today would be filled with last-minute wedding preparations. Cecilia and her mother, Constance—and Amanda, simply because she was present—would probably spend hours going over them.

“Damn…” Amanda cursed and pounded her pillow. Wedding thoughts were only slightly more undesirable than recollections of Nick and the dream she’d had last night.

A light rap sounded on her door, and the maid she’d brought with her from San Francisco slipped inside. Dolly was a slight woman, no older than herself, with curly brown hair that frequently sprang from under her white dust cap.

“My Lord, Miss Amanda, you should see what all’s going on downstairs, even at this hour of the morning. Everybody’s hopping like grease on a hot griddle—just like home, when the twins were getting married,” Dolly said, pushing back the heavy, green floral drapes. “And when I walked by Miss Cecilia’s room just now, I couldn’t help but glance inside. Her mother, Miz Constance, was with her. I can’t say for sure, but I think she was crying.”

Amanda pushed herself upright in the bed, her first thought to go to Cecilia and see what was wrong. But tears the day before a wedding weren’t uncommon, and Cecilia’s mother was there to comfort her.

“Are you sorry I brought you down here with me?” Amanda asked.

“Shoot, no,” Dolly declared, grinning broadly. “I wouldn’t miss this for nothing.”

While Dolly selected clothing from the closet, Amanda slid out of bed. Even though the house was filled to capacity with out of town guests and relatives, Constance had given Amanda a comfortable room on the second floor.

Amanda walked to the window, her bare feet silent on the carpet. Outside stretched the mansion’s rear lawn—thick grass, shrubs, flower gardens, a gazebo and towering palm trees.

“My, it’s pretty here,” Dolly said, joining her at the window. “One of the cooks told me it don’t hardly ever rain down here. Wouldn’t mind living in a place like this.”

Amanda smiled. “What else did the cook tell you?”

“Oh, you know, just talk,” she answered. “Mostly about Mr. Nick.”

“Nick?” Amanda’s breath caught. She forced herself to look unconcerned, hoping Dolly hadn’t noticed. “What about Nick?”

The young woman grinned dreamily. “How handsome he is. Lordy, he’s a looker, according to all the maids. And just as nice as the day is long. Good to his mama, generous with the staff.”

Amanda’s heart lurched. She wasn’t surprised to hear any of those things about him.

“I’m plum crazy about him already, and I haven’t even laid eyes on him yet.” Dolly grinned. “’Course, that’s nothing you don’t already know, I’m sure, seeing as how you’ve been friends with him for so long.”

“Actually, I haven’t seen Nick in years,” Amanda said.

Ten years. Since that night in the snow…

“Oh, really? Well, how come?” the maid asked. “I thought your families had been friends since way back.”

Dolly had come to work for the Van Pattons only a year ago, so she didn’t know all the family history. Surprising, given how the servants liked to talk.

“That’s just the way things worked out,” Amanda said, and turned away.

“Now, if you don’t mind me saying so, Miz Amanda, there’s a story here you’re not telling,” Dolly said.

Amanda smiled. Dolly was so intuitive she seldom got away with anything around her. She could have simply said that she didn’t want to talk about it, and the maid would have respected her privacy—and remembered her place. But since Dolly had come to the Van Patton household, Amanda found she was more comfortable talking to her than her cousins, aunt or friends.

So telling her now what had happened ten years ago might be just what she needed to put it in perspective, Amanda decided. She’d have to face Nick over the next few days. Perhaps this would help her prepare—and keep her from making a fool of herself.

“It was the autumn I turned fourteen,” Amanda said. “Only six months before that I’d been shipped off to the Van Patton home by my mother, who could no longer care for me after my father’s death.”

She didn’t need to tell Dolly that she’d been born into a distant, poorly regarded branch of the Van Patton family, or that Uncle Philip and Aunt Veronica had agreed to take her in. Amanda was quite certain the servants had already told that part of the story.

“It was a difficult adjustment for me,” Amanda said, but that didn’t begin to describe the problems she’d struggled with.

Etiquette, table manners, conducting herself with proper decorum. Living up to her aunt and uncle’s expectations. Living down her past.

Everything had been uncomfortable. The opulence of their home, the servants, the family meals.

“On top of that,” Amanda said, “I’d suffered through a growing spurt and shot up five inches. I changed, matured. I had long, ungainly arms and legs I didn’t know quite what to do with. Nothing I wore seemed to fit right.”

“Lordy-me, Miz Amanda, do I remember those days!” Dolly commiserated, shaking her head. “Bosoms and hipbones suddenly poking out. The monthly misery. Being angry and sad and happy all at the same time. And nobody understanding.”

Amanda laughed softly. “I suffered no more than any other young girl blossoming into a young woman. But it seemed worse back then, on top of everything else.”

“So what happened between you and Mr. Nick?”

“We vacationed near Tahoe with the Hastingses. They were strangers to me. The twins were quite young then, but my cousin Rachel was sixteen, Daphne seventeen, both beautiful young women at ease with everything and everybody around them.”

Dolly raised a brow. “Including Mr. Nick?”

She nodded. “Including Nick.”

He’d been nineteen that autumn. The most handsome young man Amanda had laid eyes on in her life. She’d spent the whole holiday too addle-brained to think of anything to say to him, and too tongue-tied to speak even if she could have thought of something to say.

Until that night…

Amanda still remembered how warm it had been, despite the snow that blanketed the ground. A full moon illuminated the forest around the magnificent mountain home the Van Pattons referred to as a cabin.

“It was late. Daphne and Rachel slipped outside and I went with them. We met Nick and two other young men from the neighborhood. It was all quite innocent. A playful snowball fight broke out.”

Amid squeals and laughter, the six of them had scattered into the woods, scooping up the cold snow, hurling it at each other as they darted among the trees. One of the young men had picked up Daphne and tossed her into a snowbank. Another had chased Rachel, threatening the same.

“Then, somehow, I found myself alone with Nick. I threw a snowball at him. He dodged it easily and charged right at me.”

Quick as a wink, he’d swept her feet from under her and sent her crashing toward the ground. But at the last instant he’d caught her, kept her from falling. He’d pulled her upright and held her by both arms as she gripped his sleeves.

Moonlight had shimmered through the pines, casting beams across his face as they stood staring at each other. Breathless, Amanda had marveled at his strength—the strength of a man. Had marveled at his quickness. His agility. His masculinity.

He’d knocked her to the ground, but he’d saved her from the fall just as effortlessly. In that instant Nick Hastings had taught her how a man should treat a woman. With tempered strength, compassion, gentleness.

At once, her arms and legs had seemed to fit her body, and she knew why she’d been saddled with the womanly curves she’d found so uncomfortable. Suddenly, Amanda had been at home in her body, glad for the first time that she was a young woman. Understanding, too, that Nick was a young man.

“The next thing I knew, I was in his arms,” Amanda said, looking out the window at the yard, but seeing that snowy forest instead.

They’d stayed that way for a long moment, gazing into each other’s eyes. Nick’s beautiful green eyes, looking only at her. His fingers clutching her arms possessively…

He’d eased closer. She’d smelled his masculine scent, seen the shadow of dark whiskers on his chin. Only the two of them had existed in the snow-covered world.

“Then he kissed me,” Amanda said.

It wasn’t anything more than a pressing of lips, a brush of bodies. But it had taken Amanda’s breath away, left her shivering and shaking.

“So, what happened then?” Dolly asked, leaning forward.

“The others came crashing through the trees and Nick ran off with them.”

Amanda had stood there alone, knowing she’d never be the same again. She’d fallen in love with him. And he’d ruined her for every other man she met afterward.

“And that was that?” Dolly asked.

Amanda drew in a breath, remembering the aftermath of the moment that had changed her life.

“The next morning when Nick walked into the dining room for breakfast, he took one look at me and walked out again.”

Dolly uttered a disgusted grunt. “You are kiddin’ me.”

“No, I wish I were. After that, if we happened upon each other, he never so much as made eye contact, just turned and left at the sight of me.”

“Humph,” Dolly said, and her expression soured. “I don’t like that Mr. Nick at all, anymore.”

“Rachel mentioned that Nick had asked about me later that night, the night we kissed. Afterward, he wouldn’t even look at me,” Amanda said.

“Why do you reckon he did that?”

“I’m not certain.”

She didn’t know for sure. But she was left with the crushing assumption that he’d learned who, exactly, she was. Not a real Van Patton, only a distant, destitute relative they’d taken in out of the goodness of their hearts.

“And you never saw him again?”

Amanda shook her head. “He never came with the Hastings family when they visited San Francisco. He was in college, traveling in Europe, then working at the family business.”

“What about when you all came down here to visit?”

“I always found an excuse not to come. Aunt Veronica never seemed to realize the situation. She had four daughters to contend with and probably appreciated that I wasn’t one of her problems.”

Dolly shook her head. “A young woman never forgets her first kiss. Especially if it’s from a good-looking older boy like Mr. Nick.”

That was certain. Amanda had never forgotten that night. Never stopped measuring every man she met by her one encounter with Nick. She’d often wondered if he even remembered that night. And if he did, had it meant anything to him?

Surely not what it had meant to her.

“So,” Amanda said briskly, shaking off the memories, “that was that.”

Dolly grunted again. “Still, I don’t like the man. I don’t like what he did. Kissing you, then treating you like you were dirt, or something.”

“It was a long time ago. He’s probably changed.”

“I still don’t like him,” Dolly declared.

Amanda was glad Dolly hadn’t asked any more about Nick. She didn’t want to admit that, after all this time, thoughts of him left her as breathless as they had that moonlit night so many years ago.

“I’d better take a bath,” Amanda said, leading the way across the bedchamber to the bathroom down the hall. She was better off pushing the whole matter out of her mind. She’d grown up, filled her life with things that mattered to her.

Somehow over the next few days, she would get through this wedding and return home. Amanda was confident she could pull it off.

All she had to do was keep her distance from Nick.