by Debra Glass
“Well,” he offered, “there’s always the possibility you could get with child. Then there’s that ugly word, bastard, that rears its hoary head.”
“I am educated in ways to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.”
“All foolproof, no doubt,” he mused out loud and smirked. “What about your reputation? Have you considered that, Cathleen?”
She bit back a gasp and forced herself to focus on the argument. “Why is a man’s reputation less important to consider than my own?” she asked. “Really, Mr. Byrne, the entire argument is based on a man’s need to propagate his family line—to make certain it won’t become tainted with another man’s seed. Like most things in the world, it all comes down to the owning of property.”
He stood. “Lucky for us, neither you nor I will ever be concerned with such banal matters. Right?”
Was he insulting her? She shot to her feet and her glasses tumbled to the rug. At the same time, they both bent to retrieve them and inadvertently bumped heads. Straightening, they shared a laugh. No. He hadn’t been insulting her. He’d merely avoided a delicate conversation with a presumptuous woman he hardly knew.
She rubbed her head.
“You’re a hardheaded thing, aren’t you?” he asked.
“In more ways than one, I’m afraid.” Her heart skipped a beat when he took her hand and folded her fingers around the glasses he’d picked up.
“Please, do call me Ransom. Good night, my dear Annabel Lee,” he said with a gallant bow. And then he left.
Cathleen’s hands were still trembling when she cupped her palm around the chimney and blew out the lamp’s flame.
Chapter Four
Ransom had forgotten to bring the book he’d wanted back with him. No matter. He’d lost the desire to read anyway. As he walked back up the dark path to the old house, he shook his head at the memory of that shocking conversation he’d just shared with Cathleen Ryan.
She’d advocated ideas that no woman should even think, much less give voice to. The very idea of an unmarried woman dallying with any man she pleased and expecting to hold her head high in the community was ludicrous—and oddly somewhat refreshing.
He drew in a deep breath and let it out. God forbid if Sissy or Aunt Chloe ever found that out. They’d send her packing straight back to Boston regardless of how much she was needed at Byrne’s End.
To Ransom, that would be a grievous mistake. For whatever reason, the unconventional Yankee had made a connection with Jenny—a connection vital to Jenny’s existence.
And yet, regarding the teacher’s eccentric ideas, Ransom was more of a realist. She’d never act on her crazy notions of cavorting with men outside of marriage.
Despite what she said, the prim Miss Ryan wasn’t the type of woman who moved men to behave irrationally.
Well…at least in her day clothes.
In her nightgown, with her hair rippling over her shoulders, she looked like a totally different woman. She seemed softer, more feminine. Her words had brought unwelcome images to his mind. He visualized shapely fingers drawing up the hem of that voluminous nightgown to reveal flawless pale thighs… Higher, where a nest of curls as black as the hair on her head hid sweet treasures from view…
He inhaled. His cock stirred in his trousers and he tugged at his fly. He grunted with frustration. The woman was hardly someone with whom he’d trifle. Her plain mourning clothes, spectacles and outmoded hairdo made her the very type he would overlook. Not to mention her unusual beliefs and frank manner.
Maybe what she needed was a sound fucking. He chuckled at the thought of it. “Espousing free love,” he muttered. “She’d run for the hills.”
Instead of taking the fork in the path to the old house, Ransom turned for the barn. Harriet Bostick never minded being roused from sleep. And he was in the mood to do some rousing.
* * * * *
Over the next week, the family saw marked improvements in Jenny’s demeanor. With limited help, she cared for her puppy. Her teacher required her to select her clothes, dress herself and—in spite of Aunt Chloe’s grumblings—brush her own hair.
Aunt Chloe had always prided herself on the elaborate hairstyles she could create for the Byrne women and complained that Jenny’s less than perfect attempts were a bad reflection on her abilities. But Cathleen had stood toe to toe with the formidable Aunt Chloe and insisted that in spite of the flaws, Jenny needed to learn to groom herself.
Chuckling to himself, Ransom had watched it all, playing the part of innocent bystander while the teacher turned up her pert nose and Aunt Chloe huffed and snorted like a cantankerous bull.
Always one to want to keep the peace, his mother fretted, wringing her hands and puttering around behind Aunt Chloe, trying to soothe the old servant’s offended pride.
Jenny never complained, but followed her teacher’s instruction to the letter—which, to Ransom’s relief, did not involve her feminist attitudes on matrimony and suffrage.
Just before dinner, as they all began to take their seats around the table, a knock sounded on the door.
Aunt Chloe lumbered into the central hall.
“I wonder who could be calling,” Sissy mused. Years of guerilla raids and soldiers appearing at all hours had made her nervous.
Jenny’s chin lifted. Her lips parted and at once her expression became horrorstruck.
Cathleen touched Jenny’s arm but she shook it off. She stood and darted from the table as fast as she could go, hands outstretched. She stumbled over a chair but somehow remained upright as she fled toward the back staircase.
Stunned, Ransom stared as the teacher shot to her feet and chased after her charge.
And then he realized the reason for Jenny’s terror.
Her erstwhile beau, Andrew Glendale, stood in the foyer, blinking like an owl.
Ransom rose to his feet. “Andy, how are you?”
The boy gulped as his wide-eyed gaze swept the dining room. “I’m well, thank you.” He nodded in deference to Sissy. “I…I stopped by to see if Jenny might…might…”
“Out with it,” Father bellowed.
“There’s a dance, you see,” Andy began. “It’s at the Cheairses’ house. And I’d like Jenny to…to accompany me.”
Sissy began to stammer, but Ransom interrupted. “She hasn’t come down for dinner yet. She wasn’t feeling well this morning. I’ll go up and let her know you’re here.”
Sissy nodded vigorously as Ransom skirted the table and started toward the stairs.
“Come in and have dinner with us,” Father called to the boy as Ransom climbed the steps.
Jenny had refused Andy’s visits since she’d become blind. It didn’t matter that he’d called on her frequently. After the first year, his visits became fewer and fewer, but he still arrived, hat in hand, asking to see her.
But a dance?
Ransom’s heart sank. Before her illness, Jenny would have been the belle of the ball. He sighed.
At the sound of inconsolable sobbing, he stopped in the hallway.
“I can’t face him. I just can’t,” Jenny said. “I don’t want him to see me this way.”
“I’m sure he would understand,” Cathleen said, her voice soft and soothing. “He knows what happened, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, but—”
“Dry your tears. Come downstairs. There’s no reason why you have to hide in your room.”
“But I’m…I’m blind.” Fresh sobs drifted from her room. Ransom’s heart twisted. He’d done this to her. It was all his fault. He squeezed his eyes shut. Sharp-edged guilt pierced his chest.
“Blind people court and marry every day, Jenny.”
“Then why aren’t you married?” Jenny asked acidly.
Silence ensued and Ransom held his breath, hoping this would not turn into some feminist diatribe on the wickedness of matrimony.
“I’ve made a choice not to marry.” Cathleen’s voice sounded careful. “Instead, I’ve dedicated my life to teaching.”
&nb
sp; Ransom quietly let out the breath he’d been holding.
Jenny pounced on that argument. She let out a harrumph. “Is that what you tell yourself to feel better about being unwanted?”
“Unwanted?” the teacher asked, clearly stricken.
“No one will have you so you go about pretending you’ve chosen not to marry.” Jenny’s tone was vicious.
“That’s not true,” Cathleen responded patiently. And yet, Ransom could hear the distress in her voice.
“Not even my brother will flirt with you,” Jenny blurted. “And Ransom flirts with everything in a skirt.”
Ransom could tolerate it no further. He stepped into the room and looked at Cathleen as he spoke to Jenny. “Jenny, you should be ashamed of yourself. This woman is your teacher. I’m sure she has forgone many of life’s…indulgences to move all this way from her home to educate you.”
“Her reaction is quite normal, Mr. Byrne,” Cathleen offered. “She should be allowed to voice her fears.”
Undaunted, Jenny twisted toward him. “It’s true, isn’t it? She’s as plain as they come, otherwise you’d trifle with her.”
At that, Cathleen averted her gaze and Ransom thought he noticed a faint blush coloring her cheeks. “Your teacher is a fetching woman,” he said. “But it’s hardly gentlemanly of me to…to trifle with her. Your education is far more important than my foolish behavior.”
Ransom debated whether to mention the dance or not. He feared the knowledge would send Jenny into further hysterics. But hope sparked that a dance might be just the tonic she needed to get her back into society.
Jenny folded her arms over her chest. “I’m not going downstairs. You can’t make me.”
“You don’t even want to know why he’s here?” Ransom prodded.
“Probably to cut me loose,” Jenny said. “To tell me he’s courting that awful ol’ Frances Hastings. I can’t face hearing it.”
“No,” Ransom told her. “He came to ask you to accompany him to a dance at Nat Cheairs’ house.”
“A dance? At Rippavilla?”
Ransom couldn’t tell if she was excited or mortified. For a moment, she seemed buoyant, almost optimistic. And then her expression fell. “I couldn’t dance if I wanted to.”
“That’s not true,” Cathleen chimed.
Jenny turned away and refused to listen anymore.
Ransom shook his head. “I’ll tell Andy you’re not feeling well.”
“I don’t care what you tell him,” she shot back.
As Ransom walked away, he heard Jenny whisper a heartfelt apology to her teacher, and then utter, “I’m afraid he won’t want me when he realizes what I’m like now, Miss Ryan.”
He didn’t remain behind to hear the reply. His heart broke for his sister. And Jenny’s words had sparked a different view of Cathleen Ryan’s hard shell. Did all her bravado stem from the fact she didn’t feel desirable?
Is that the life to which he’d doomed his sister? A life of making brash statements to cover insecurities?
Because they were only statements. She was dead wrong if she didn’t think she was desirable. After that night in the parlor, he’d been unable to get her out of his head—even when he’d put Harriet Bostick on her knees and covered her like a wild stallion.
Cathleen…
He inhaled deeply, letting her given name slip through his thoughts. A little thrill rippled through him at even thinking of giving voice to that name, of whispering it in her ear while he moved sensuously above her.
Even last night with Harriet, it had been Cathleen’s moans he’d heard. It’d been her soft flesh he’d plied and gripped. And it had been her body in which he’d utterly lost himself.
He shook his head, trying to wrest free of the thoughts that threatened to render him unable to walk down the stairs and present himself in mixed company. Tugging at his trousers, he tried to adjust his semi-erection.
Realistically, he wasn’t attracted to the Yankee teacher. She merely presented a challenge. All her talk of carrying on as she pleased had incited him in myriad ways that he couldn’t sort out in his mind.
Like him, she’d chosen to walk this world alone and he could do nothing but admire her for that decision.
It would be easy to marry one of the Tennessee belles who so readily flung themselves at him, to take the reins from his father and continue the business of breeding horses. But something prevented him. He’d fought for this land. He’d watched friends, cousins and neighbors die on the soil of his home state—all in vain. When the war was lost, he realized a piece of his soul had died with the Southern cause.
If it weren’t for Jenny, he’d have already gone.
But now it looked as if she were on the road to some semblance of a normal life. Thanks to Cathleen Ryan.
Soon, he promised himself. Soon, he’d be able to leave.
He bounded down the steps and back into the dining room to let Andy know Jenny wouldn’t be joining them.
* * * * *
“No one can see you except for Sally and me,” Cathleen told Jenny.
“You better hurry up, child,” Sally said from her perch on the piano stool. “Aunt Chloe’s gon’ give me what for if she catches me in here dawdling.”
“I can’t,” Jenny protested.
“You’ll never know until you try, will you?” Cathleen said, taking the girl’s hands and dragging her to her feet.
Jenny stumbled two steps forward. “I can’t even walk across a room without bumping into something.”
“That’s where trust in your partner comes into play,” Cathleen explained.
“Andy’s going to take one look at me and turn tail.”
“No he’s not,” Cathleen said and turned toward Sally. “Can you play something in three quarter time?”
“I don’t play by lookin’ at a page, Miss Ryan.”
“A waltz then. Ba-bum-bum, ba-bum-bum.”
“Ah.” Sally spun on the stool and began to plunk out a waltz.
“For this dance, you will never leave your original partner,” Cathleen said, taking Jenny’s hand and placing it on her shoulder.
“I know how to waltz,” Jenny mumbled miserably.
“Then we are one step ahead of the game,” Cathleen told her as she assumed the part of the male and urged Jenny into motion.
True to her word, Jenny tripped over her feet.
“Try again,” Cathleen said firmly but patiently.
Jenny’s head bobbed in time with the music before she tried again. This time, she trampled Cathleen’s feet.
“I should have worn a pair of trousers,” Cathleen said with a laugh.
“That, I’d like to see,” Ransom’s voice boomed from the doorway.
Sally’s fingers stopped moving and music died away.
“Keep playing,” Ransom said as he came into the room. He took Jenny’s shoulders, indicating she should stand still.
Cathleen’s heart skittered as he took her hand and guided her behind his sister. He moved around to the other side so that Jenny ended up sandwiched between them. Cathleen placed her hands with Jenny’s and Ransom took them in his. He put his other hand at Jenny’s waist. “One, two, three, one, two, three,” he counted and began to dance.
With Cathleen to guide her from behind, Jenny began to execute the steps.
“Lovely, Jenny!” Cathleen exclaimed.
Ransom’s gaze met Cathleen’s over the top of Jenny’s head. “Very lovely.” His smile deepened the dimples at the corners of his mouth, making Cathleen wish it were she who’d been invited to a dance.
They moved around the room with such ease, Cathleen almost forgot they were conducting a lesson. When her senses returned, she gently backed away and allowed Ransom to waltz with Jenny.
Cathleen folded her arms over her chest and admired them. Ransom cut a stunning figure as he executed the steps with a grace a man his size didn’t seem capable of possessing.
In his arms, Jenny moved like a sighted person. Realizat
ion inundated Cathleen that Jenny’s ease stemmed from the unconditional trust she had in her brother.
Trust like that was earned.
Sally ended the waltz with a dramatic flourish and then whirled on the stool to face them.
Jenny’s face was flushed as she stopped moving. For the first time since Cathleen had met him, Ransom’s smile reflected in his ice-colored eyes. He was beautiful, though his features held none of the prettiness of a boy. No. Ransom Byrne exuded masculinity, from the chiseled lines of his face to his aquiline nose and the searing intensity of his eyes. The transformation stunned her and she drew in a quick breath, which evidently caught his attention.
His gaze found hers and lingered until a blush heated Cathleen’s cheeks.
“Do you really think I could do it?” Jenny asked. “Could I go to the dance…with…with Andy?”
“Of course you could,” Ransom told her.
“Oh, you must,” Cathleen added, reluctantly tearing her gaze from Ransom. “You truly must.”
“But…what if… He hasn’t seen me like…like this.” Jenny struggled with the words. “He doesn’t know the difficulty I face.”
“Nonsense,” Ransom said.
“What if he has second thoughts about me?” Jenny wrung her hands.
“Dear, how will you ever know what he thinks of you unless you allow him to court you—as he’s so earnestly desired?” Cathleen asked.
Jenny looked indecisive for a moment and then she nodded as if she’d come to an agreement with herself. She turned in Cathleen’s direction. “Would you help me write him a letter, Miss Ryan?”
“Of course I will.”
* * * * *
“Where’s Charlie?” Ransom asked the boy’s father. “I promised to let him help with the foals.”
Straightening from inspecting a horse’s shoe, Morris Hunt raked his hat off his head and mopped the sweat from his brow with a red handkerchief. “He took that Yankee teacher down to Spring Hill.”
