Noelle

by Diana Palmer

  “For two days,” she replied. “He was tired of life in the big city and wanted to come home. He’s feeling his age, I think.”

  “The poor old thing,” Noelle said, with genuine sympathy. “It must have been very difficult for him to get around in a big city like New York with such a handicap. Perhaps he will find a quieter life here.”

  “I hope that he doesn’t interfere too much with our own lives,” Andrew muttered.

  “You’re ungrateful, my boy,” Mrs. Dunn told him bluntly. “Jared paid for this house and everything in it, lest you forget.”

  “I’m grateful for his gifts,” Andrew returned. “But he’s hardly a welcome addition to our household. I remember his earlier visits. He was always glowering, watching, somber. He’s a cold and intimidating presence.”

  “He’s an attorney,” Mrs. Dunn replied. “It wouldn’t benefit him to be frivolous, Andrew.”

  “Yes, well, when he establishes his practice, perhaps he won’t be around so much and things can go on as before.” He looked pointedly at Noelle and smiled warmly. “Because I have hardly had time to get to know my cousin Noelle. Now that I am excused from further travels out of town for a while, we can spend some time together.”

  Noelle’s heart leapt into her throat and she beamed at him. “That would be lovely, Andrew.”

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, covertly drinking in the fullness of her figure, the pretty lines of her face. She wasn’t the sort of woman he would marry, because she was much too countrified and simple for his taste, and she had no social background to speak of. But she would make a sweet little mistress. There was the minor complication of his stepbrother, but Jared would present no real problem. He was confident that he could seduce Noelle without difficulty. Afterward, well, he’d worry about that when the time came.

  * * *

  THE SOFT MEWLING at the back door caught Noelle’s attention even above the rumble of thunder and the patter of hard rain when she was cleaning out the pantry a few days later. She wiped her hands on her white ruffled apron, grimacing at the smudges she left there, and went down the long, wide hall to the back door.

  Outside there was a tiny marmalade kitten with big blue eyes. She picked it up and laughed as it curled under her chin and began to purr.

  As she started back down the hall, Andrew passed her on his way to the study. He paused, scowling. “Noelle, put that filthy thing out. We can’t have a cat in here. They’re nasty.”

  She gaped at him. “But it’s a kitten. And it’s pouring outside.”

  “I don’t care. I won’t have a cat in the house. I hate cats. I can’t stand the sight of them.” He kept walking.

  She glared at his back. “Well, you don’t have to look at it, do you?” she asked under her breath.

  She dried it on a soft cloth and tucked it against her bosom before she peered out the door to make sure Andrew wasn’t nearby, then made a dash for the kitchen.

  In her mad rush to avoid detection, she cannoned straight into Jared and almost knocked him down.

  He cursed sharply, leaning heavily on his cane as he grabbed the door for support, and the eyes he turned on Noelle made her stop short and hold her breath. She’d never seen such an expression on a man’s face. It made her think of guns…

  A minute later she wondered if she’d imagined the look in his eyes. He snapped the door shut and looked at her, unblinking. “What have you got there?”

  “It’s a kitten,” she said, holding it protectively as she recovered from the cold, merciless anger, now gone, in his blue eyes. But they were only a little less intimidating now. “Andrew told me to put it out. I won’t. It’s raining again, and this poor wretched little creature is thin and starved and homeless. If it goes, I go with it!” she said, with bravado.

  He got his balance back with the cane and straightened. His cold blue eyes slid over the cat and lingered on the firm fullness of her bosom. She was just a girl, he reminded himself, and he was no stranger to a woman’s bed. But the pleasure he felt when he looked at her disturbed him.

  His gaze lifted to collide with hers. “It will have to live in the kitchen,” he said. “Mrs. Pate can keep an eye on it for you.”

  “I can keep it?” she asked, relieved.

  “Yes.”

  “But Andrew…”

  “For God’s sake, it’s my house. If I say the cat can stay, it can stay.”

  “There’s no need to be so unpleasant,” she pointed out. “It’s your leg, isn’t it?” she added then. “I expect the rain makes it ache more. You should sit down and rest it, Mr. Dunn. It can’t be doing you any good to walk around.”

  His thin lips became even thinner and his eyes narrowed, too. “I’m not infirm.”

  “It’s all right, you know. I didn’t mean to be offensive.”

  “And stop talking to me as if I were in my dotage!”

  Her eyebrows both lifted. “My, you are in a nasty temper, aren’t you?”

  “Miss Brown!”

  “One should never meet unkindness with unkindness,” she recited. “I’ll take the kitten to Mrs. Pate, then. May I tell Andrew that you gave it permission to stay, if he asks why I didn’t put it back outside?” she added, not wanting to offend Andrew but determined to help the kitten.

  “Tell Andrew what the hell you like!”

  “Sir!” She flushed. He didn’t apologize for his language or the whip in his voice. After a minute, she continued, “I don’t want to make him angry, but it’s such a very small kitten.” She looked up and met his searching eyes…and felt the ground move under her feet. It was a kind of look that she’d never experienced in her young life.

  She wasn’t alone. Jared was feeling something similarly profound, but his reaction was typical of a man who wanted no part of entanglement.

  “You may have nothing better to do than stand and chat, Miss Brown, but I have work waiting,” he said testily.

  “Excuse me, then.” She moved aside and let him pass, noticing the ungainly gait and the strain on his face. “I could make you some tea—” she began, with compassion.

  His head jerked around and the expression on his face put wings on her feet. Whoever said that people grew crotchety with age had been quite accurate, she thought. But at least he’d let her keep the kitten.

  Andrew, when told of this decision, was less than pleased. He glared at Noelle.

  “I told you to put the thing out, and yet you went to my stepbrother instead. That was underhanded, Noelle.”

  “A cat will keep the mice down,” she said quickly.

  “Mice?” He looked around irritably. “I had no idea… Keep the cat then. I detest mice even more than I detest cats!”

  “Thank you, Andrew.”

  He noticed her adoring glance and it took some of the sting out of Jared’s intervention. He moved closer to Noelle, a soft smile on his face. “You’re very pretty, little cousin,” he remarked. “Very pretty, indeed.”

  She smiled affectionately. “And you are very handsome,” she replied, almost choking on the pleasure of having him pay her compliments.

  “You’ve had little entertainment since you arrived. Would you like to go to a dance with me Friday night? It’s a charity affair, very elegant.”

  “I’d love to go!” she said fervently.

  “Then it’s a date,” he promised her. His hand touched a wisp of hair at her cheek, making her tremble with pleasure. He chuckled at her ready response and dropped his hand. “And I insist that you dance only with me.”

  She sighed. “That’s a promise,” she said dreamily.

  “Oh,” he added, “I left some handwritten orders on the desk in the study. You wouldn’t mind typing them for me, would you? I have to go out this evening…a dinner party.”

  “Of course I
’ll type them for you,” she said fervently, as if she’d walk on hot coals if he wanted her to.

  Her devotion made him strut. “Thanks, Noelle,” he said, with a wink. “You’re a sweet thing.”

  She walked on clouds all the way out of the room, her fingers brushing the cheek he’d touched. She knew her face must be flushed. Andrew was taking her to a dance!

  Then as she gained the hall, it occurred to her that she had no dress grand enough to wear to a society dance. Most of her clothes had been at home in Galveston when the flood struck, and there had never been very many. Since then, she hadn’t had any money to buy fabric to sew new things, and her plain skirts and blouses would hardly do for a large social gathering. Andrew wouldn’t want to be seen with her in anything she had in her closet. He was impeccable in his attire and expected everyone around him to be equally elegant. He had, in fact, been pointedly critical of her few dresses. What he had to say about her overalls was better left unsaid, and she did her outdoor work when he was out of town.

  But that wasn’t her only problem. Andrew watched her at the table when she ate, grimacing when she didn’t hold her fork right, when she forgot to put her napkin in her lap. Often he grimaced and she didn’t know why. She had no knowledge of proper table manners, although she tried to emulate the others at table. She wished she knew how a proper lady was supposed to behave.

  Even if she had, it didn’t solve the problem of the dress. She didn’t have one that wouldn’t disgrace him. So she wouldn’t be able to go with him, after all. And it felt as if her heart would surely break.

  Chapter Three

  ANDREW’S HANDWRITING WAS atrocious, Noelle thought as she sat before the Remington typewriter at the big oak desk in the study, trying to make out the scrawls on pieces of paper as she typed up his brick orders. She was still slow, but at least her work was professional-looking. Her spelling skills were adequate, and actually much better than Andrew’s, she mused.

  She was peering down at the pad and didn’t notice the door open until she heard the knock of Jared’s walking stick against it.

  She looked up, startled. “Hello,” she said shyly.

  He moved into the room, leaving the door open. “What are you doing?”

  “Andrew’s orders needed typing up, and he was going to be out this evening,” she said, with a faint smile.

  He didn’t smile back. “And I thought slave labor had been outlawed,” he drawled.

  She stiffened in her chair, looking as starchy as her high ruffled collar. “I most certainly am not slave labor,” she said haughtily. “I’m doing Andrew a favor, that’s all.”

  “How often do you do this favor for him?”

  Every other night, but she wasn’t telling him that! “It’s little enough to do, since I’m not paying room and board.”

  He leaned heavily on the stick. “You aren’t naive enough to think my stepbrother pays the bills?” he taunted.

  She flushed to her hairline. It embarrassed her that she was living on Jared’s charity. And certainly she wasn’t doing his typing.

  Her scarlet blush made him feel guilty. His lean hand shifted against the cane. “That wasn’t kind of me, was it?” he asked. “You earn your crust of bread.”

  She brightened. “Thank you. I could…type for you, when you open your office, if you like,” she offered.

  His eyebrows levered up. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He would have an office, surely, but in New York, he and Alistair had employed a male secretary. He wasn’t certain that it was quite respectable to offer the job to Noelle. Or that he’d want her that close.

  “We can discuss that some other time,” he said. He moved toward the desk, so that he could see her handiwork on the white sheet of paper. He took out his glasses case and perched his reading glasses on his nose. He leaned forward and frowned. “You’re very accurate,” he said.

  She hadn’t seen him in his glasses before. They seemed to emphasize all his vulnerabilities. They softened her toward him even more. “You sound surprised that I can spell,” she said, with an impish grin.

  “So it seems.” He reached down to pick up one of the forms, his arm brushing her shoulder. She stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. He didn’t like her reaction. “Are you afraid that I might contaminate you with my touch?” he asked. His smile was mocking as he met her startled green eyes. “My taste runs to women, not to little girls playing dress up.”

  She was flustered. “Such a thought never crossed my mind,” she exclaimed breathlessly.

  “Not even with Andrew?” he taunted.

  “Andrew is different,” she said. He rattled her. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “He’s young and—and brave and kind. He’s very kind,” she repeated.

  “Oh, certainly. He’s everything I’m not,” he said dryly, and took off his reading glasses with a quick, efficient movement of his hands.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You meant it.” He leaned heavily on the cane, his eyes biting into her averted face. It irritated him that she didn’t think of him in the same category as Andrew. He could remember women looking at him with fascination, awe, even fear. But Noelle was the first to see him with eyes of pity. He’d noticed it even more when he’d had on his glasses. He wondered if she’d pity the man he really was as much as she pitied the distorted persona.

  She shifted delicately away from contact with his long legs. “You’re a good deal older than I am,” she said.

  “I see,” he drawled. “I’m an elderly, crippled ruin who needs to be offered warm milk to help him sleep?”

  She flushed. “Mr. Dunn!”

  He laughed. “When I think of the old days, and how women looked at me then…” he said half to himself. “Perhaps I am old, and growing fanciful, because I can’t remember a time when I needed admiration from a marmalade kitten!”

  She stood up, too close to him and too angry to care. “I’m not a kitten!”

  He deliberately moved closer, threatening, taller and broader than he’d seemed on first acquaintance. At such close range, he towered over her slender form. He smelled of cologne and soap, and she was surprised that she didn’t find his nearness intolerable. He was too old, a cripple, citified…

  Her eyes lifted and were swallowed whole by his. She couldn’t have imagined feeling frozen by a look, but he had her as helpless as if he’d roped her. She looked into those piercing pale blue eyes and couldn’t seem to stop looking, while her heart thrust into her throat and her legs seemed to tremble.

  “Your face is red,” he remarked in a colorless voice. His lean, elegant hand moved to her face and slowly tucked a strand of her hair behind her small ear.

  The touch was electric. Andrew’s similar contact had made her smile. Jared’s fingers made her blood race through her veins, made her mouth swell, made her eyes dilate. The contact ran through her like a lightning flash.

  Jared, who knew women, watched her unexpected reaction with an almost clinical scrutiny. He smiled slowly to himself. So she thought she’d given her heart to Andrew, did she? Apparently she was untried and untouched. The thought galvanized him. His jaw clenched and his eyes looked briefly violent.

  Noelle moved backward and dropped into her chair, retreating from him. His eyes were hypnotic, threatening. “Don’t…” she whispered.

  “Don’t what?” he asked in a new tone, and without moving.

  She swallowed. “I—I don’t know,” she faltered. “You—you looked as if you might strike me.”

  He slid his eyes to the frantic, rhythmic ripple of the lace at her throat. “I haven’t ever raised my hand to a woman,” he said, placing the slightest emphasis on the last word.

  Her fine auburn brows drew together. “Or to a man?” she asked absently, implying that he wasn’t a fighter at all.

  His f
ace closed up into an impassive mask that gave away nothing. “I noticed you watching my grandmother at table,” he said abruptly. “You don’t know proper table manners, do you?”

  “How dare you!” Impulsively, her fingers closed over the big paperweight on the desk as she glared at him. “Don’t you make fun of me!”

  The movement of her hand hadn’t gone unnoticed. “Or you’ll do what?” he challenged, smiling at her. His eyes danced with unholy glee. “Throw that at me? Go ahead,” he said, and the glitter in his eyes made him look like a different man.

  She hesitated. There was something there, something that warned her not to underestimate him.

  “What’s the matter?” he persisted. “No guts?”

  She drew in her breath. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  He took a step closer, and she moved the chair back a little farther.

  He laughed with pure pleasure and halted his advance, leaning heavily on the cane. “You intrigue me, Miss Brown,” he murmured. “I can’t say that I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.”

  “I can’t believe that,” she returned, relaxing a little now that she’d put some distance between them. “New York City must be full of women.”

  “Certainly,” he said agreeably. “Elegant, sophisticated women with beautiful clothes and excellent manners and sparkling conversation.”

  “Everything that I am not,” she said quietly, echoing his own earlier words.

  “You lack the advantages of wealth,” he corrected. His practiced eye ran over her assessingly. “But you have potential. In fact, you have a grace of carriage already. You simply don’t have social graces. That isn’t your fault.”

  “How comforting to know it,” she said, stung by the knowledge that he thought her lacking. She was already unsettled because she couldn’t accept Andrew’s invitation to the dance.

  “You misunderstand me. You’re young enough to learn,” he said.

  “And who’s going to teach me?” she asked belligerently.

  “Andrew?” he suggested dryly.

  She flushed. “I couldn’t possibly ask Andrew; it would be too humiliating to admit to him that I’m a social moron, even if he already knows it.”