The Gift of Happiness

by Amanda Carpenter

  Her father’s one love was power. He actually derived enjoyment from his maliciousness, she had discovered, and he would not hesitate to wield situations to his advantage. Katherine, never having stayed at one school very long and having her eyes open to the shallow and petty nature of the spoiled group that she associated with, was quite alone. She had no true friends.

  To be accurate, she had never felt the need for any friends, since the people she knew were not necessarily people that she respected. And also she was a very reserved person under all her apparent extroversion. She did not open herself up to anyone.

  Her thoughts turned to an incident the week before which had set the torch of rage to the dry timber in her starved mind, kindling a flare that threatened to consume her.

  “Darling,” James had said carelessly, kissing her on the forehead and laughing at her slight flinch, “I need you to be nice to someone, a Luke Dalton to be exact.”

  “No,” she had said flatly, surprising herself and him. “You were just cursing the man to hell last month. I won’t be a part of any of your plots.”

  “Cut out the hysterics!” he had commanded coldly. “All I want you to do is to make him like you and go out with him for a while.”

  “I said no. I’ll go out once in a while with your business associates but not your enemies. I can’t understand you!” she had exploded suddenly. “You certainly encourage hypocrisy! How can I forget that you called him an ‘upstart bastard’? Or had the expletive slipped your mind? Perhaps you changed your mind?” She had swung out of her chair in agitation. “No, you’re planning something, and I don’t want any part of it, d’you hear? I know how your mind works!”

  He had grabbed her shoulders and had shaken her hard, throwing her away from him afterwards. She’d fallen into a chair, frightened, and had watched him with large green eyes as he towered over her in a rage. “You’ll do as I say,” he grated while his eyes burned a warning into hers. “I don’t want to hear anything more about it! Don’t defy me, Katherine. You aren’t strong enough, and I won’t put up with it. Not now, not ever! Not from you”—he flicked her with a hurting finger—“nor anyone else.”

  It was the start of what turned out to be a very grim battle, one that did not deal with just one incident in her life, but instead the whole fate of her personality. She knew that James would try to break her if she seriously defied him, and yet this knowledge somehow strengthened her resolve to try and escape from the absolute hold he had over her entire life.

  Well, she thought grimly as she hunched over drawn-up knees, she certainly knew how to ruffle him now. She had angered him beyond any point that he’d ever been with her, and she shivered as she realized that full retribution would soon come down on her head. She had gone to the point of no return, and beyond. She was now at the point where she didn’t care if she lost this battle of wills or not. She had a good idea of what could happen to her, but something deeply hidden and incredibly stubborn had awoken in her. She had grown up in some way in the past few days. James could possibly break her, but he would never, ever bend her to his will. Not ever again.

  She thought of the conversation that she’d overheard as she had been right outside her father’s office the day before, the Friday when she had realized that she would never submit to her father again.

  “…You’re damned right, I’m going to get it! I still can’t believe that he managed to get to Parson and make a bid in private and that Parson accepted! It’s incomprehensible! That sonofabitch bit off more than he can chew when he interfered with me. I would’ve outbid any price that Dalton could have paid on the open market for those waterfront storehouses, and how he gulled Parson into selling for a lower price, I don’t know. In secret!”

  “Well, you were going to do the same if you’d had the chance, weren’t you?” came back the tones of his executive vice-president, Earl Jacobi. Katherine had stopped at the sound of Dalton’s name and, knowing what her father had asked of her, and knowing that the party on Saturday was ostensibly to introduce Dalton to Kentucky society, she had listened without knocking.

  “That’s beside the point. Are you coming to the party tomorrow night?” Her father had suddenly sounded amused.

  “You know I am. What I can’t figure out, though, is what you have in mind, James. I know it’s got to be something, since I’ve never seen you so full of hatred for someone before! And now you’re opening your arms to Dalton in welcome.”

  “Only to place the knife in his back, my boy. Katherine is very beautiful, is she not?”

  “You know she is,” Earl replied deeply. “She’s one of the most beautiful women I know.”

  “A piece that Dalton might fancy? I hope she’s able to put him off guard. He might even want to marry her, if I can get her to be nice enough, although that could develop quite naturally without my help. He’s a handsome bastard.”

  “James! You wouldn’t let Katherine marry a man you hated, would you?” Earl asked him, aghast.

  “Oh, no. I’d call an end to it before that. All I need is for her to put him off guard, to stall for time while I devise the best way to ruin him. Hell, she can sleep with him for all I care, but she’ll never get tied up with him—she’s too useful to me in other ways. We need those warehouses, Earl. I’ve been waiting for such an opportunity for years! I want to hurt Dalton; I want him ruined! I’ve had that infernal devil on my mind for the past eighteen months, ever since he began causing us more trouble than a nest of hornets—whatever possessed Parson to sell to Dalton is beyond me…doesn’t he know that Dalton wants to tear down those precious warehouses of his and put up a hotel there? …Have to stop him before he gets that far, may not get another chance at water-front warehouses for another ten years…”

  Katherine had forgotten why she had come to her father’s office, and had crept away, sickened in the very centre of her heart. There had been no one around, since her father’s secretary had been at lunch, and she’d thought to catch him by surprise for some reason or another, but it didn’t matter anymore, not after what she had just heard. The conversation had hit her when her self-esteem had already been lamentably low, and reverberations of shock kept running through her system.

  So that’s why he wanted me to be nice to Dalton! she had thought furiously, running one trembling hand through her hair. And I had assumed that it was a lighter, social matter, never suspecting how deep his animosity really ran! She had driven home, for once not appreciating the lush green pastures of high summer as the phrases of the overheard conversation still echoed in her ears, lashing the words at herself in a frenzy of rage.

  “I’ll see you in hell before I ever let myself be used like some piece of meat to be sold for the highest price!” she’d thrown at him only that afternoon in a blazing fight.

  “I’ll see you in hell,” she whispered now into the darkness, remembering how he had struck her over one ear with one closed fist. He’d taken care not to mark her face, she realized dully, because of the party that evening. It was a frightened whisper now, though, not a bit like the brave-sounding words she had flung at him earlier like a challenge. Her own smaller fist closed over the whiskey glass in an uncontrolled spasm and, weakened by the blow on the exposed root, the hard roundness fragmented. She felt the several pieces shift and, before she could react to relax her grip, she felt a sharp, penetrating pain as a jagged corner bit into her flesh. A warm trickle of blood flowed from the gash in her palm, dripping into the grass. After the first hiss of pain, she dropped the bits of broken glass and watched the flow with interest. The pain was clean and sharp, not at all like the muddy mess of her own emotions, and she appreciated the fact. She almost enjoyed the stabbing throbs that were hitting her now. It was clearing her head.

  “Quite a nice little escape from the crush inside,” a deep voice drawled from her left. She turned quickly, seeing a dark shadow that was strolling her way from under the cover of the trees.

  “Fresh air, and all,” she replied flippantly a
s the shadow materialized into the bulky shape of Luke Dalton. She dropped her hand to her side, a little way away from her to avoid staining her clothes.

  “Er, yes.” He sounded amused. Dropping down on the ground beside her a few feet away on her right, he asked lightly, “Are you hiding?”

  “Good heavens.” It was her turn to play amusement. “Dear boy, from what?”

  “Who knows, apart from yourself?” he asked in return, casually. “From your father’s anger, from me, from your own rudeness—you were, you know, quite rude. From the party and all those well-dressed, snickering women. Can you answer it?”

  Katherine sensed a certain tension in the dark figure that seemed suddenly too close. She threw back her head and laughed, this time in genuine amusement. “Do you really think that I care about those stuffy, snobbish hags in there?” she asked contemptuously. “Half will go home determined to invite me to their next party, and the other half will go and gossip bitchily about me at their next intimate conversation with their twenty closest friends! It doesn’t concern me, I assure you, in the slightest!”

  “Honey,” he said cynically, “I’m quite sure of that! You’ve really gauged the reactions in there well, haven’t you? Should I think of you with admiration?”

  “I don’t care what you think,” she said bleakly. There was silence.

  He was leaning back a little, half in and half out of shadow, both hands linked around one knee. “I can’t think,” he said mildly, “just why you would be in such an abominable temper, unless you are a shrew by nature? Or perhaps it was that excellent meal that you so deliberately missed? Do you get a kick out of trying to ruin dinner parties?”

  “Ruin?” she said tonelessly. She was beginning to tremble from the lack of food since she hadn’t eaten all day. “I don’t ruin parties, Mr. Dalton, I add color. Ask any hostess around here.” The bitterness, tasting like gall, was appallingly apparent.

  He asked suddenly, harshly, “Why do you do it? Why are you doing it? Why make a spectacle of yourself if you feel so bitter about it, Kate? What makes a person like you tick?”

  “What difference does it make to you, Mr. Dalton?” she countered, measured and cold. Inside she was beginning to feel frightened. She was trying her hardest to make the man hate her, to send him as far away from herself and her father as possible, and after all her rudeness in the middle of what was for him a very important social event, here he was in the dark talking to her! She would try harder. “For future reference, the name is Katherine to my friends. You may call me Miss Farlough.”

  “You are missing your supper, aren’t you?” he commented calmly, ignoring her little speech.

  She lost her temper. “Go to hell, Dalton. Just stay out of my life, will you? Go and crawl back under whichever rock you came from and leave me alone!” She felt ridiculously close to tears and clenched her hands into fists. A fresh and frighteningly full spurt of blood gushed from her right palm. The grass beneath her fingers was wet and slick. She didn’t care. She really didn’t care.

  “You are such a little bitch. Where did you get such viciousness from—your father?” He leaned forward, putting one hand down to support himself as he talked. “You strike out with no provocation at all— What the hell…?” He put his hand to his face, and then shifted fast from the tree’s shadow to peer at his hand. “My God,” he breathed, and reached out, quicker than a snake, and grabbed her wrist to jerk it up none too gently. “That’s your blood! What have you done to yourself, you stupid fool?” Not able to see her hand but able to feel its slickness, he pulled her across the ground until she too was out of the shadow, and he stared at her hand that was still clenched tight in a fist. Dark liquid was smeared all over, and it dripped from between her closed fingers. “What did you do to yourself?” he snapped, shaking her hand. “Open your fingers and let me see!” His reaction was one of fear, but she misconstrued the rather violent tone of voice as anger and she shrank away from him. He swore under his breath at her silence, and then tried again. “Come on, Kate, open your hand and let me see it.” But she was not paying attention to his words, and he attempted to pry her hand open with his long, strong fingers. The blood made his grip slip and she doggedly gritted her teeth from the pain, and kept it closed.

  And suddenly the sickening tension that had been with her for far too long snapped and she turned on him in a fury, swinging her free hand up and slapping him hard across the cheek. “Leave me alone,” she enunciated clearly and precisely. “I do not, repeat, do not want or need any help from you or anybody else!” She could not tug her hand free and she wrenched hard to catch him off guard, gasping with the pain that shot up her arm. “Damn you to hell, let go of me!” His hold slipped, and she was free. She whirled, took a step, and then collapsed under a weeping willow tree on that balmy, gentle summer night.

  Chapter Two

  Something firm and smooth was under her cheek. It also moved up and down regularly, and when she opened her eyes the moonlight illuminated the dark, sleek hair and firm jaw of the man so close to her. Her head lay on Luke Dalton’s shoulder, and he was carrying her toward the house. Her hand, which throbbed painfully, was wrapped up and tied with something. She looked at it incuriously; the red material had once been a handkerchief. “It’s quite ruined,” she commented conversationally, indicating her hand.

  “Shut up.”

  “Now who is being rude?” she asked. “Put me down. I can walk.” He didn’t bother to answer this directive, and she wriggled experimentally. The jaw tightened and so did the arms around her. She could tell he was angry. The set of that jaw was very expressive, even in the dark.

  “I said, shut up,” he replied pleasantly. Katherine did not appreciate his tone. After walking a few more steps, he continued as if goaded, “I have never met a more obstinate, stupid, idiotic person in my entire life. I’ve never seen a more spoiled, rude and selfish brat. You surpass belief.” The moonlight, until now leaving most of his face in shadow, seemed to be caught in the glitter of his eyes which were flashing with rage. “Your father should have taken his belt to you years ago—”

  She merely closed her eyes and her mind to this low-voiced and furious tirade.

  She had given up. All the fight and all the anger had drained away, leaving an emptiness that she felt would probably never be filled. There was nothing inside, no wellspring of joy from merely being alive, no hate or resentment for her father, no rebellion. There was simply a vacuum, an ache where something had once been, a pit filled with a weary boredom and a desire to sleep. She wanted nothing more than to go to sleep.

  It was, however, impossible. As they neared the house and the light that spilled out from every open window, the dark, strong figure carrying her spoke. “Where can we go to escape the guests?”

  She didn’t answer right away. “Around the back,” she finally told him as his grip on her tightened. “We can get into the kitchen from there.”

  He altered his steps to take them round the corner of the house. They reached the back door, and he hesitated. “Do you feel like you could stand for a moment?”

  She flashed him a speaking look and remained silent. He put her down carefully and kept one arm around her waist as he tried the door handle experimentally. It was unlocked. He pushed it open and took care to help her up the few steps and into the house. The large kitchen, though full of light and somewhat cluttered from party glasses and trays, was luckily, if temporarily deserted.

  He looked around swiftly. “All right,” he said, leading her to the double sink. “Let’s have a look at your hand.” His tone was expressionless, and she looked at him quickly. What she saw in his stern and uncompromising face made her accompany him without demur.

  “Was it deliberate?” he asked evenly. She turned her gaze on him, startled.

  What?”

  “I said, was this deliberate?” He spaced out each word slowly, as he roughly tied a towel around her injured hand, ignoring her gasp of pain. Katherine stared into his e
yes. She received another shock as she saw in those dark depths the anger that was submerged, and she began to wonder if she had made a terrible mistake in underestimating this man. She wished that she’d never provoked him to begin with.

  His irritation was, she thought, understandable. She had behaved very badly all evening, and she was sure that he saw this incident as a rather childish bid for attention, an attempt to stay in the limelight. She mused on the sudden clarifying insight that he had probably thought she had cut herself deliberately and was about to go back to the party, make a stupid fuss, and try one more time to ruin the gathering. She had acted in a way that would have tried the patience of a saint.

  It was the regret she felt for provoking him so that made her answer him relatively mildly. “If it had been deliberate, I wouldn’t have been so clumsy.” She smiled a very small smile, but the first sincere one he had seen, and his grip on her arm loosened. “The wrist would’ve been a better target, don’t you think? I assure you, if I wished to take such an irrevocable step, no one but no one would find me before it was too late. And”—her eyes twinkled briefly—“I don’t need to stoop to such measures to get attention.”

  The anger had faded from his eyes, leaving an expression that she could not define. “I can believe that,” he murmured. Then, “Why didn’t you mention to me that you were hurt? You sat there for some time, bleeding everywhere.”

  Her eyes dropped. “Does it really matter what my motives were?” she asked quietly. “Excuse me. I think I’d better get someone to phone the doctor.” She made as if to go, but was forced to halt as his hand tightened on her arm.