Her heart stopped. She couldn’t breathe. Adam.
She didn’t move, couldn’t move as he approached, could only drink in the wonderful sight of his tall, broad-shouldered form in a dark Italian-cut suit and white cotton shirt open at the throat. He was smiling and the autumn sun turned his dark hair to gleaming ebony. Then he stopped in front of her.
“Selene.” His voice was deep and warm, matching the expression on his face as he surveyed her. “I’m so glad you came.”
“I—” She had to stop and clear her throat. “I just got your note today.”
His dark eyebrows rose. “I was hoping you’d find it. I was prepared to come by here for several Mondays if I had to.” His eyes had been leached of color in the moon-silvered garden. Now she saw they were an unusual hazel, shining almost amber in the sunlight. He offered her his arm. “Would you care for a carriage ride?”
She made a small sound of surprise. “That would be lovely.” She took his arm and let him lead her to the carriage. Beneath the lightweight fabric of his suit jacket, his arm felt solid and muscular. When they reached the carriage, she turned to take his hand so she could step up on the box to get in, but instead Adam set his hands at her waist. Before she could more than suck in a startled breath, he had lifted her into the carriage.
Her hands grasped his biceps to steady herself. She looked at him from beneath her lashes, feeling ridiculously shy. “Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure.” His voice and accompanying smile told her he meant it. Then he swung himself up inside the little carriage.
With the roof up, the carriage was a small, intimate cave. Adam wasn’t a huge man, probably no more than six feet, but since she was barely over five feet, he seemed enormous. “Would you like the roof down?” he asked her.
She hesitated. The sunshine might feel nice…but it was so hot it easily could be too warm. And then there was her deep-seated fear of being discovered…“No thank you. It’s very pleasant this way.”
He smiled and nodded and she realized he’d been hoping she wouldn’t want him to fold back the top. He leaned forward. “Okay, driver.”
“Would you like a tour as you ride, sir?”
Adam glanced at Selene questioningly.
She shook her head. “I think I’d rather just talk with you, if that’s all right.”
He smiled. “That’s terrific.” Turning to the driver, he called, “No tour, thanks. Just a leisurely drive.” As the driver picked up the reins and clucked to the horses, the carriage lurched into a steady rhythm. Adam looked at her again. “Would you like a snack?” He lifted a small cooler he’d stashed beneath the seat. “Grapes, cheese and chilled shrimp with cocktail sauce. And sweet tea and fresh juices.” He grinned. “I would have preferred wine, but I didn’t think you’d appreciate it if we got arrested.”
She nodded, making a rueful face. “Wouldn’t that be awful?” First the carriage ride, then the snacks…“This is wonderful. You’re so thoughtful.”
He was smiling at her, but the smile faded as she spoke and he seemed to be searching her face. “All I’ve been able to think of is you,” he said. “I was afraid you might never come to D&D’s, and you’d never see my message.”
“I was hoping that I might run into you if I went there,” she confessed.
“I wanted to call but I know how you feel about…”
“I appreciate that,” she said. “You can call and leave a message on that line from now on. It’s my cell phone.”
His eyes lit up. “All right.”
He flipped up a special little tray table feature atop the cooler and spread out the food, and as they nibbled, they chatted. She learned that he had been privately educated and that he had a degree in marketing and management. She told him about studying the classics and Greek literature at Oxford. “I graduated last year and haven’t decided what I want to do with my degree yet,” she said.
“The night we met, you said you’d be staying in Savannah,” he said.
“Yes, at least until Father’s campaign is over.”
There was a momentary lull in the conversation and they both concentrated on their food. There was bound to be some awkwardness, she reminded herself, given the topics that were certainly off-limits.
“Have you always lived in Savannah?” She made an effort to get past the moment.
“Yes. Our family home was built in the late-nineteenth century. It’s east of the city, actually, not far from Tybee Island.” He smiled wryly. “We have a few ties to the area.”
“I do, too,” she said, “although I know very little about it. My mother was from one of Savannah’s oldest families.”
“She’s not living, is she?” he asked gently.
“No. I never knew her. She died when I was born. She was the last of her family.” He probably already knew that, just as she knew he’d lost his mother in an automobile accident when he’d been a young child. The media gave political candidates very little privacy these days. She might have learned even more about him if she’d cared to, but she’d deliberately refrained from investigating Adam’s life in more than a cursory manner. It felt too sneaky, somehow.
“My mother died when I was small, too,” he said.
“I’m sorry.” She was well acquainted with being motherless. Growing up with a father who had barely been able to stand the sight of her had made for a lonely childhood. “Do you remember her at all?”
“I have a few vague memories of her, but that’s it. My oldest brother remembers her better than any of the rest of us.”
“Goodness,” she said. “Exactly how many of you are there?” She’d read a number of different Danforth names connected with the campaign over the past few months and had wondered how they were related to Adam. Adam, about whom she’d never stopped thinking.
“I’ve got three brothers and a sister. And a half sister, too. Although we just met last month. She didn’t grow up with the rest of the tribe.”
Her eyes widened. “I bet your household was lively.”
A little of the warm light went out of his eyes. “Not really. We all were sent to boarding school at a young age.”
“I attended boarding schools in Switzerland,” she said. “Actually, school felt more like my home than this does.”
“You didn’t come home often?”
“No.” She swallowed, remembering those years when she’d waited in vain for a holiday invitation from her father. “I was only in Savannah twice in twelve years.”
“Our father never came to see us at school,” Adam said, clearly assuming her parent had.
“Oh, mine didn’t, either. He was so busy that he said it would be better if I just stayed in Europe. It would have been a long trip for very brief visits.”
Adam looked sincerely shocked. “You saw your father twice in twelve years?”
She nodded, aware of how very odd that sounded. “But I loved school. I made some wonderful friends and I usually spent the holidays with one of them. I didn’t miss home.”
“I did.” Adam’s cheery manner sobered a bit more. “I hated being away from my family and being separated from my brothers. We also have three cousins we’re very close to, and I missed them and my aunt and uncle like crazy. We always spent school holidays and vacations with them.”
“What a big family!” She didn’t like seeing him sad and she sought to distract him from the unpleasant turn the conversation had taken. “Where do you fit?”
He smiled again. “Smack-dab in the middle. I have two older brothers, Ian and Reid, one younger brother Marcus, my half sister Lea and my other sister Kimberly, who’s the baby of the family. My cousin Jake is older, his brother Tobias is my age and Imogene is younger.” A shadow crossed his face.
She was so tuned in to him that she sensed his mood had suddenly changed. “What are you thinking? You look so sad.”
“I am,” he admitted. “I have another cousin, the youngest of all of us, who disappeared five years ago.”
; “Disappeared? Was she kidnapped?” It sounded like something off Court TV, something she’d discovered she loved watching since she’d come to the States.
“If she was, we’ve never been contacted with a ransom demand.” Adam sighed. “She went to a rock concert with a friend. There was a miniriot and when everything was sorted out, her best friend was located in the hospital but Victoria, my cousin, was missing.”
“What did the friend say? Surely she could tell you where your cousin went.”
“She suffered some injuries.” He shook his head. “Tanya never recovered any memory of what happened that night.”
“Not ever? Sometimes things come back as people grow older.”
He shrugged. “She’s not still in the area, I don’t believe. But if she’d remembered anything helpful, she would have contacted us. I hope. She wasn’t exactly the most reliable person.”
She was aghast. “But…people don’t just vanish.”
“That’s what we thought, too.” Adam seemed to shake himself. “Life goes on and we all want to believe there’s still hope she’ll turn up eventually, but some days it’s harder than others to stay hopeful.”
“I imagine it is,” she said softly. Without thinking, she laid a comforting hand on Adam’s arm. He immediately placed his free hand over hers and squeezed her fingers.
“I don’t think about it every minute anymore,” he said. “Sometimes I feel guilty for that, but another part of me realizes that the rest of us have to continue to live as normally as we can.”
“Do you see your brothers and sisters and cousins often?”
He smiled again and she felt a sense of relief that her question had lightened his heart a little. “I see most of them at least once a week,” he said. “And that’s excluding all this campaigning that we’re doing for Dad.”
“I always thought it would be so much fun to have brothers and sisters,” she said. “Do any of them live close?”
“They all do. And most of my cousins do, as well. I think I told you my cousin Jake and I co-own the D&D chain, so we work together every day. And then there’s Jake’s best bud Wes, who’s sort of been unofficially adopted by the Danforth clan—”
“Gracious! How do you keep them all straight?”
He grinned. “When you grow up with it, I guess it’s ingrained.” Then he pointed to another of the lovely little squares they were passing. “See that big boulder? It marks the grave of a local Indian chief. This is Wright Square. It’s named for James Wright, who was the last man to govern the colony of Georgia before the States became independent.”
“I wish I knew a tenth of what you know about Savannah,” she said.
“I could give you a moonlit walking tour of the haunted spots around the historic district some evening.” He hesitated and she was surprised by the flash of vulnerability that she caught in his eyes. “If you think that would be interesting.”
The conversation she’d overheard at the coffeehouse on her first visit rose to the surface of her memory, and she knew a surprising anger at the shallow women who had hurt this intelligent, interesting man. “It sounds fascinating,” she assured him.
“How about tonight?”
Her face fell. “I can’t. Daddy needs me to attend a fund-raiser at a place called the…the Crab Shack?” She smiled. “He told me to dress down. I have visions of a small one-room cabin with a latrine in the back.”
Adam laughed. “The Crab Shack at Chimney Creek. It’s informal but not that bad.”
“You’ve dined there?”
“The food is excellent and it’s very picturesque.” He took her hand from where it still rested on his arm and linked her fingers with his. “How about tomorrow night, then?”
“Tomorrow evening would be fine,” she said. “Where would you like me to meet you?”
“I could—” he began, but he stopped as she shook her head. “No,” he said, “I guess picking you up is out of the question.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand. “Could you meet me at about 6:45 at the ferry dock? There’s a dinner cruise that begins at seven,” he said. “It’s two hours long and afterward we could walk for a while.”
“That sounds lovely,” she said. “Where is the ferry dock?”
He smiled. “I’m going to have to remember this city is new to you.” He squeezed her fingers. “That will give me an excuse to spend lots of time showing you around.”
She was beautiful, Adam thought the following evening. He watched as she smiled and thanked the captain for the cruise. The man was at least two decades older than she was, but he sucked in his stomach and actually bowed over her hand with the silliest smile on his face that Adam had ever seen.
Adam figured he probably looked just as dazed when she smiled at him.
She’d been beautiful that evening in the garden, her white gown had seemed to glow in the moonlight, but it had been a dreamlike beauty, in gentle shades of shadow. At first he’d thought she was a ghost but in truth she’d looked more like an angel.
But yesterday, in vibrant Technicolor, she had come alive, her eyes not the blue he’d imagined but a deep, mossy, unforgettable green. Porcelain skin, roses blooming just beneath the velvety surface of her cheeks, her nose a pert little slope upon which he could barely resist dropping a kiss. Yesterday her hair had been down, floating around her shoulders, but tonight, like that first night, she’d worn her shining chestnut hair in a pretty twist in deference to the river breezes. She’d donned a nautical-themed skirt and top and she looked…perfect.
He gave up trying to find adequate words to describe her. As she turned and took his arm, she smiled at him and his heart gave a funny little leap. She seemed too good to be true. Beautiful, intelligent, great sense of humor, she even seemed to genuinely enjoy his penchant for spouting historical trivia and ghost stories. She was poised and confident enough to deal with the pressures of being a Danforth—Whoa! he cautioned himself. Slow down. You haven’t met a woman yet who likes the real you. But in his heart, he didn’t feel he was moving nearly fast enough.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “No one should ever visit Savannah without taking a cruise on the river.”
“And you didn’t even get seasick,” he said, smiling at her enthusiasm.
She smiled back, rather smugly. “I took motion sickness medication. Experience has taught me well.”
“Aha,” he said. “So you do have a flaw!”
Her eyebrows rose. “Plenty of them.” She started to laugh, leaning her head against his arm, “But I don’t plan to share them with you. Now where are we going on this walk?”
“We’ll start with the pirate’s house,” he told her. “For years, rumor had it that a tunnel led from the rum cellar out to the river, and unsuspecting patrons of the tavern were sometimes drugged and carried aboard ships that needed a full complement of sailors. One Savannah policeman who stopped in for a drink woke up on a China-bound schooner. It supposedly took him two years to get home. Some people dismissed it until the tunnel was found during renovations.”
“Can you imagine being one of those poor men conscripted in such a way?” she said. “And isn’t this the building that Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have described in Treasure Island?”
“Yes!” He knew he sounded as astonished as he felt. And he felt the last of his doubts sliding away. “You’re the first woman I’ve ever met who knew—or even cared about—a detail like that.”
“Maybe you just haven’t met the right women,” she said, slanting him a shy smile.
“Until now.” He gently removed her hand from his arm and then placed his arm around her, hugging her close to his side. “That’s better.”
“Yes,” she said, letting her own arm slide around his waist. “It is, isn’t it?”
They walked for nearly an hour as he regaled her with stories of Savannah’s history and a few ghostly sightings as well. As they passed the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts and a building said to
be haunted by the ghosts of two of Low’s ancestors, she asked, “Have you ever seen one of these ghosts?”
“No,” he said slowly. His family home immediately sprang to mind and he wondered if she’d think he was crazy if he told her. “I’ve never seen a ghost.”
She hesitated and he realized she must be more tuned in to him than he expected when she said, “But you know someone who has?”
“My family’s home is haunted,” he said baldly. She might as well hear it all.
“By whom?” To his surprise, she didn’t sound skeptical, but was very matter-of-fact.
“We don’t know,” he said. “Let me amend that. We think it’s the spirit of a governess named Miss Carlisle. She was hired by one of my ancestors in the early 1890s but on the night of her arrival, her carriage overturned on the road up to the house and she was killed. She was buried on the estate beneath a young oak tree.”
“Poor girl.” Selene sounded upset, as if they were speaking of someone they’d known. “Where was she from? Did her family ever learn her fate?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure anyone knew very much about her.”
There was a short silence while they contemplated the fate of a young girl from an earlier age.
Finally, Selene said, “Who has seen her? And why do you believe it’s her? This Miss Carlisle?”
“There were no sightings, no rumors of ghostly goings-on at Crofthaven until after her death. She was seen quite a few times during the twentieth century,” he told her. “Every sighting was near the tree where she’s buried. It’s still there,” he added belatedly. “One of my ancestor’s guests described her dress in great detail and a historian confirmed that her apparel reflects turn-of-the-century clothing.”
“How long has it been since anyone’s seen her?” They had stopped walking altogether and she turned to face him, the smooth oval of her face tilted up attentively.
“That’s the strange part,” he said. “In the past nine months, she’s been seen three times.”
“Oh!” Selene rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “I’ve got goose bumps. Tell me all about them.”
The Enemy's Daughter (Dynasties: The Danforths Book 9) Page 3
