When the Clouds Roll By

by Myra Johnson

  Never mind what he’d told Gilbert that day at the Arlington: “Look me up next time you’re at the hospital.”

  But two weeks had elapsed, and even coming in for physical therapy appointments several times a week, Gilbert had never once darkened Samuel’s office door. Then as the days passed, with Samuel spending evenings and weekends helping Annemarie ready her shop and his nights dreaming about her, he’d ceased caring if he ever saw Gilbert again. Let the louse ruin his life chasing a skirt, stealing forbidden kisses in a storage room. Samuel decided he’d held back long enough. He would gladly pick up the pieces of Annemarie’s shattered heart if she’d let him.

  And lately she’d given him every indication she would.

  I love her. God help me, I do.

  Then why did he feel so guilty?

  “Hey, Padre. Long time no see.”

  He looked up to see Gilbert staring at him, a sleepy smile skewing his mouth. For a blinding moment Samuel couldn’t think of a thing to say. Then he blurted out, “I didn’t know they were holding therapy sessions in closets these days.”

  Balancing on his crutches, Gilbert combed splayed fingers through his tousled hair and chuckled. “You should try it sometime. Works wonders.”

  “I could put a stop to your rendezvous with one word to Mrs. Daley.”

  “Sure you could.” Gilbert’s words slurred. His eyes glazed momentarily before he nailed Samuel with his glare. “But I know you better than that, Padre. You’re too good a man to risk getting Mary fired just to get back at me.”

  Samuel took a step forward, fists clenched at his sides. “Why are you doing this, Gil? To yourself? To Mary?”

  “I’m not doing anything to anyone. Mary and I are good together. She makes me . . .” Gilbert wavered and glanced aside. Then with a stuttering sigh he muttered, “Actually, it’s none of your business. Excuse me.”

  Watching Gilbert limp off on his crutches, Samuel felt hollow inside. He’d already lost too many friends. Some he’d buried in graves marked with little more than a makeshift cross or a helmet propped against a rifle stock. Others he’d bade good-bye to as the war ended, and they went their separate ways. But getting to know Gilbert aboard the Comfort, then requesting this assignment here in Hot Springs, Samuel had hoped he’d finally found the “friend who sticks closer than a brother” spoken of in the Book of Proverbs.

  He’d never dreamed in a million years how one woman—one beautiful, desirable, incomparable woman—would rip their friendship to shreds.

  Trudging to his office, Samuel decided he hadn’t the strength to finish out the day. It would be easy enough to excuse his early departure with lingering fatigue from the flu, so he tacked a note on his door saying he’d return first thing in the morning. Then, instead of catching the trolley to his apartment, he opted for a walk. Maybe the fresh air would help clear his head.

  The next thing he knew, he was standing outside Annemarie’s shop. The fresh butcher paper he’d helped Annemarie tack up last weekend now blocked his view of the interior, but rustling sounds and the indistinct glow of light bulbs told him someone was inside.

  Picturing Annemarie beyond the door, he felt the last vestiges of exhaustion float away on the March breeze. He tried the latch, but wisely she’d kept it locked. “Annemarie? It’s Samuel.”

  Her happy voice carried through the glass. “Hello, Sam! Be right there. I just—”

  A thunderous crash shook the windows. Propelled to a state of instant panic, Samuel yanked on the door handle, but the lock held fast. “Annemarie! Are you all right?”

  Her only response was a muffled groan. Agonizing seconds crept by as he waited for anything more, all the while trying to figure some way into the building. Precious time would be lost if he had to circle the block and find the alley entrance—and the rear door would more than likely be locked as well.

  Then, just as he’d made up his mind to ram his boot heel through the door, it swung open. Annemarie stood before him, her dark hair a disheveled mass and blood seeping through a tear on her sleeve. His hurried glance took in the toppled stepladder next to an upended bucket. Brown, sudsy water seeped across the floor.

  Annemarie’s mouth twisted into something between a grimace and an apologetic smile. “It isn’t as bad as it looks—or sounded.”

  He reached out, longing to crush her against him in relief. Then sanity prevailed. He ushered her over to a chair and peeled back the torn fabric covering her forearm. “Here, let me see how bad it is. Does it hurt much?”

  “I told you, I’m—” Annemarie’s back arched. She sucked air between her teeth.

  “Don’t dare tell me you’re fine when I can see otherwise.” Samuel glanced about for anything he could use to stanch the bleeding but saw nothing more useful than a pile of grimy cleaning cloths. Then noticing the muslin apron Annemarie wore, he grabbed the corner, folded it to a clean spot, and pressed it against the gash on her arm. “This may need stitches. I should get you to a doctor.”

  A moan escaped Annemarie’s lips. Her usually rosy complexion had turned ashen. “It’s just a scratch.”

  “Yes, and scratches can become infected.” Assisting medics on the battlefield, Samuel would have reached for hydrogen peroxide or carbolic acid. He’d flushed out more bullet and shrapnel wounds than he cared to remember. He tugged Annemarie to her feet, praying she wouldn’t faint. “Let’s get you to the sink and run some water over your arm. Then I can get a better look.”

  In the lavatory at the rear of the shop, Samuel held Annemarie’s arm under the faucet and watched the last trickles of blood disappear down the drain. She smiled up at him. “See? I told you it was nothing.”

  At least her color had returned. And now Samuel felt lightheaded. He took a towel from the rack and wrapped it around Annemarie’s wound, then cradled her arm to his chest. “Do you have any idea how badly you frightened me?”

  “My dear, dear Sam. Such a worrier you are.” With her other hand she reached up to stroke his cheek. Her dewy-eyed gaze, her lips so alluring, her touch gentle as an angel’s kiss . . .

  His heart hammered, and he prayed the Lord would forgive him for what he was about to do—but then perhaps he was already beyond forgiveness. Either way, it mattered little, because nothing—nothing—would satisfy him now until he claimed Annemarie as his own.

  Still sheltering her injured arm between them, he moved his other arm slowly, gently, around her shoulders and pulled her to him. His fingers twined in the remnants of her bun until the last of the pins fell free and her mass of black curls tumbled loose down her back.

  Surprise brightened her eyes, and then sweet realization. She tilted her chin. Her lips parted. “Yes, Sam. Yes.”

  Her murmured invitation was all the permission he needed. His mouth found hers with a tender fury, and he drank in the sweet fullness of her lips like an elixir of life.

  Lightness invaded Annemarie’s body, as if a whole galaxy had coalesced into one immense, incredible, unquenchable star. She’d never felt so alive, so replete, so unbearably . . . happy.

  The kiss melted into placid release. “Oh, Sam, Sam . . .”

  He nudged a stray curl off her cheek, his gray eyes shining with unshed tears. His lips curled into the boyish smile she’d come to adore, and he shook his head as if in utter disbelief. “I have wanted to kiss you for such a long time.”

  Leaning into his chest, she grazed his cheek with another kiss and cherished the subtle rasp of his day’s growth of whiskers against her lips. One hand caressing his nape, she moved her mouth near his ear and whispered, “Then why didn’t you?”

  With a sigh, he eased away, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Tenderly he parted the towel covering her arm and examined the injury she’d all but forgotten. “The bleeding has stopped. I don’t think you’ll need stitches after all.”

  “Sam. You’re changing the subject.”

  His glance darted around the lavatory as if he saw it for the first time, and then he fixed her with a stern st
are. “What were you doing on that ladder—and with no one here to help you? Why, if you’d been hurt any worse, if you hadn’t been able to get to the door—”

  “But I wasn’t. I did. And I’m fine.” Annemarie gave a hopeless chuckle. “Honestly, Samuel Vickary, you are worse than a mother hen.”

  Flouncing out of the lavatory, she seized the mop she’d left by the rear door and marched back to the showroom. True, she may have been a wee bit foolish climbing the stepladder to clean the top of a display shelf by herself. But if it took her foolishness to finally break through Sam’s reserve and convince him to kiss her, then the risk had been well worth it.

  Annemarie’s lips tingled with the memory of that kiss, and her stomach did a tiny flip-flop. Partly in ecstasy . . . and partly from guilt, for she couldn’t remember Gilbert’s kisses ever evoking such a thrill of emotion. As she set the bucket aright, she glimpsed Sam pacing to the front window, one hand behind his back, the other stroking his chin. A thoughtful expression drew his mouth into a frown.

  He felt it, too—the fear they’d crossed an invisible line with no going back, no return to the easy, bantering friendship they’d forged over the past several weeks. But after that kiss—a kiss she must now admit she’d secretly dreamed about since Sam’s recovery from the Spanish flu—would she even want to?

  She busied herself with the mop in hopes Sam wouldn’t notice the flush heating her cheeks. What if Papa was right? What if God had intended all along that Sam, not Gilbert, would be the one she’d share her life with?

  “Let me.” His hand covered hers on the mop handle, and she trembled.

  “Really, it’s—”

  “I insist.” Samuel wrested the mop from her grip and began sopping up the spilled water with a fervor to match the set of his jaw. “You realize one word to your father about your fall and he’ll put his foot down once and for all about your opening this shop. And I wouldn’t blame him, not in the least.”

  “Sam.” She stepped in front of him, arms locked across her chest—as if her false bravado could still the flutter beneath her breastbone. “Don’t think for an instant you can use threats or busyness to brush aside what just happened between us. You kissed me. You wanted to kiss me.” Her voice fell to a breathless murmur. “And I wanted your kiss.”

  He rested his hands atop the mop handle. His eyes found hers, and in them she read longing, uncertainty, foreboding . . . until his lids closed like a curtain shutting her out. “It was wrong. I tried to convince myself otherwise. I wanted to believe I had every right to kiss you . . . to love you . . . but I don’t.”

  Love her? Annemarie’s heart caught in her throat. When Samuel started to turn away, she clutched his arm, forcing him to face her. “But of course you have a right—every right! Why would you say such a—”

  Instantly she knew: Gilbert. Sam had pledged loyalty to his friend, promised both Gilbert and Annemarie countless times he’d find a way to bring them back together.

  “No,” she said, now gripping both his arms. The mop bounced off the fallen stepladder and clattered to the floor. “I will not let you thrust aside your feelings for me—my feelings for you—because of a man who has turned against us both.”

  His gaze searched hers with a desperation that tore at her soul. “If only I could believe—if I could be certain—”

  “Certain of what? That six months or a year from now Gilbert won’t come to his senses and decide he still loves me? That I won’t someday regret today, our kiss, this moment?” Her hand crept up his arm until she rested it at the base of his neck. Warmth seeped into her palm, and she could feel the beat of his pulse. With a sad smile she stretched upward to brush his lips with the tenderest of kisses. “How can I ever”—she kissed him again—“regret”—and again—“this?”

  She knew the moment he surrendered. A tremor shot through his body and his arms encircled her, drawing her against him until she feared he’d crush the breath from her. His mouth found hers with a hunger equal to her own.

  At the sound of a loud a-hem, Annemarie jerked out of Samuel’s arms. With startled gasps, they both swung around to face the intruder.

  “Thomas!” Annemarie tugged at her bodice with one hand and shoved her unkempt hair off her shoulder with the other.

  “Obviously I’m interrupting something.” Wearing a contemptuous frown, Thomas glanced from Annemarie to Samuel and back again. “I thought you were opening a shop, not making time with the local chaplain.”

  Indignation shot up Annemarie’s spine. “I resent your suggestion of anything improper.”

  “Oh, do you?” Thomas gave a harsh laugh. “Seems it was only yesterday you were engaged to my brother. Didn’t take you long to move on.”

  Samuel stepped forward. “Gilbert had every chance to set things right with Annemarie. He made his choice.”

  Thomas doffed his bowler and slapped it against his leg. “I know . . . I know.” With a pained exhalation, he strode across the room to examine a display cabinet where Annemarie had already set out some of her ceramic creations. “It’s just hard to watch my brother throwing his life away, you know? Wasting it on self-pity and redheaded nurses.”

  Despite every promise to herself that Gilbert would no longer hurt her, the memory of seeing him with Mary McClarney at the Emerald Club that night jolted Annemarie like a jab to her midsection.

  Jealousy? No. She truly believed she’d moved beyond such raw emotion where Gilbert was concerned. But, like Thomas, she hated seeing the man she once loved—the friend she’d grown up with—forego the life he’d worked so hard for. She carried no ill will toward the young nurse. Miss McClarney was probably an innocent victim in this sad turn of affairs, little more than a plaything, a distraction for Gilbert as he coped with war’s ravages on both his body and his spirit.

  She felt Samuel’s hand upon her shoulder, and he cast her a concerned half-smile. She wanted to reassure him but questioned whether her feelings toward him weren’t her own way of dealing with Gilbert’s rejection.

  Thomas spoke again, interrupting her thoughts. “I didn’t stop by looking to pass judgment. I saw the door open and thought I’d see how the shop was coming along.” He paused to peruse his surroundings, then gave a brisk nod. “Looks like you’ll be opening soon. I’d be happy to bring over your pieces from the Arlington anytime you’re ready.”

  “Thank you, Thomas.” Annemarie walked behind the counter and retrieved the small sign she’d ordered from the printer:

  ORIGINAL CERAMIC DESIGNS

  BY ANNEMARIE KENDALL

  STUDIO AND SALESROOM LOCATED ON

  CENTRAL AVENUE

  ACROSS FROM FORDYCE BATHHOUSE

  She handed the placard to Thomas. “You’d offered to keep a few pieces on display. Choose any you’d like.”

  “My pleasure.” Thomas heaved a groan and pulled Annemarie into his chest for a hug. “Still love you like a sister. You know I wish you every happiness, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Annemarie kissed his cheek. “And I wish the same for you and your brother.”

  With a tip of his hat to Samuel, Thomas marched out the door.

  Annemarie turned toward Samuel, and the look on his face nearly ripped her heart in two. He shoved his hands into his pockets with a tired shrug. “What have we done, Annemarie? What have we done?”

  What have I done?

  Gilbert rolled onto his side, the silver-framed portrait of Annemarie cradled in shaking hands. Darkness shrouded the room—his own bedroom at long last, now that he could manage the stairs. Not expertly by any means, but at least he no longer felt like quite such an invalid.

  Still a cripple, though. Still impaired. Still . . . less.

  A knock sounded outside his door. “Gilbert, darling?”

  He groaned and slid the picture frame beneath his pillow. “What do you want, Mother?”

  She nudged open the door. “Aren’t you feeling well, son? I thought you were going out again.” Disapproval crept into her tone. �
��It’s so rare these days to find you at home on a Friday evening.”

  “Slight change of plans.” Could she detect the slur in his voice?

  “Not another headache? Oh, darling . . .” Sweetness and sympathy once again, his mother strode to his bedside. She hovered over him to stroke his temple. Her thick, bejeweled fingers felt cold against his skin, and he longed for Mary’s soothing touch.

  Mary, Mary. He would think only of his sweet, giving Mary.

  Except he wouldn’t be seeing her tonight after all, thanks to that witch Mrs. Daley changing Mary’s schedule at the last minute.

  “Shall I have Marguerite bring dinner to your room?”

  “Not hungry.” He wanted to slap his mother’s hand away, beg her to leave him in his misery.

  “I am quite concerned for you, Gilbert.” Pouting, she settled her bulk onto the edge of the mattress. “You cannot disguise the fact that you have been drinking more heavily since returning home.”

  “What of it?”

  “Besides the fact that overimbibing is unhealthy, it is unbecoming for a man of your station.” She sniffed. “As are certain other activities in which you have indulged of late.”

  Gilbert clenched his jaw. Of course, she referred to his relationship with Mary. He should have known neither Thomas nor their inscrutable driver, Zachary, would be able to keep his secret for long.

  Although Mother would be even more displeased to know the spunky Irish nurse was the most virtuous of her son’s indulgences. Pure as new-fallen snow, Mary remained the one shining light in this dark valley through which he traveled. Though he’d pressed for more—begged for more—she granted him only her kisses, her caresses, her inexhaustible trove of empathy and understanding.

  And if he couldn’t be with Mary tonight . . .

  “Get up, Mother.” He elbowed her in the spine until she rose, then swung his legs off the side of the bed and reached for his prosthesis.