by Kay Hooper
He frowned slightly as he looked at her, that same hesitant expression returning for a brief moment. “All right,” he said finally. “Ill see you on Friday, then.”
Julia remained where she was long after he’d gone, sitting on the hard bench, staring at nothing. What a peculiar ending, she was thinking, to something that had barely begun. He had come to her today still bent on seduction, but different somehow. Today he’d been more aware of her emotions, and more responsive to them. She had no doubt at all he had decided to stop pressing her because he believed it was tearing her to pieces.
She should have been relieved. He wasn’t a man to betray his feelings unless he chose to. Neither Adrian nor anyone else would see any hint of desire in his black eyes when they rested on her. She wouldn’t have to worry about encountering him in public or in private and having her resolve tested. There would be no more improper or seductive remarks, no more heated kisses.
Her body would forget the astonishing pleasure it had known so briefly.
Julia rose slowly to her feet, feeling nothing but an empty ache now. It would pass, she thought wearily. Pain always did, given enough time.
She went into the house that seemed cool again, drawing the threads of her control around her tightly. She reminded herself that she must not betray knowledge of Adrian inviting Cyrus to the party—and concentrated on schooling her features into an emotionless mask so that she wouldn’t betray herself when he did mention it. She didn’t have to wait long, because Adrian brought up the subject that evening as they were on their way to the concert.
“Julia, I’ve invited Cyrus Fortune to the party,” he said, his tone easy because Lissa was sitting across from them in the carriage. “And he’ll be one of the dinner guests.”
The darkness aided her ability to hide her thoughts, but it also denied her the chance to try to gauge his. She replied in a tone to match his. “Oh? Where would you like him seated at dinner?”
“On your right,” Adrian said.
Lissa spoke up then, asking the question Julia wanted answered. “Is he important to you, Adrian?”
“He could be, if I make a bid for governor one day.” Adrian laughed with a touch of dryness. “ ‘Fortune’ is an apt name. He was rich before he went west, and has more luck than a riverboat gambler. I just heard that in ‘ninety-eight he bought up a few thousand acres of supposedly worthless East Texas property—and where do you suppose they struck oil last year?”
“East Texas?” Lissa guessed.
“Yes. Fortune won’t be able to live long enough to spend all the money he’s making. I’ve heard he’s never had any political leanings, but it can’t hurt to better my acquaintance with him.”
“I like him,” Lissa announced in a definite tone.
Julia managed not to jump in surprise. “I didn’t know you’d met him,” she murmured.
“I’ve seen him at parties, of course, but we were never really introduced until— Well, I know you’ll say it wasn’t proper, Julia, but there was really nothing I could have done. It was the other day when I was coming out of the library. My arms were full of books, and somehow I tripped. I hadn’t even seen him until then, but Mr. Fortune caught me. Wasn’t that splendid of him?”
“It was lucky for you,” Adrian said.
“I know, I might have broken my neck. He was very nice, and even carried my books to the carriage. I don’t know why people say his manners are dreadful. They seemed perfectly all right to me. He was very polite and acted rather like an uncle. And even if his eyes are the blackest I’ve ever seen, they laugh in the nicest way.”
“Don’t lose your heart to him,” Adrian warned in a light tone that deceived Lissa but not Julia. “Rumor has it that the last thing he wants is a wife—unless it’s someone else’s.”
Lissa laughed. “I just think he’s pleasant, Adrian, that’s all.”
They reached their destination then, for which Julia was grateful. All she could think of, unnervingly, was that she had never seen the laugh in Cyrus’s eyes that so many people seemed to notice. It was a strangely painful realization. But she pushed it out of her mind, just as she had all the stray thoughts of him that had been tormenting her since the interlude at the stables. She pulled on her social mask and became the perfect wife.
—
“The other one isn’t big enough?” Noel Stanton guessed, watching two dozen men busily working on the foundation of a huge house-to-be on lovely acreage that sloped gently back to the James River.
“Did you say something, Noel?” Cyrus asked, looking up from the blueprints spread out atop a corded stack of lumber.
“I was being nosy,” Noel explained with an apologetic air. “Tate left you a perfectly good house closer in to the city, and God knows it’s big enough to hold an army; why’re you building out here?”
Cyrus, his coat off and sleeves rolled up, bent over the plans again. “The city gets more congested with every year, as you very well know. I want room to stretch.”
“You’ll have it,” Noel said. He eyed a growing pile of gray stone nearby as another wagonload was deposited, and said thoughtfully, “That rock reminds me of the old buildings they’ve pulled down recently.”
“It should.” Cyrus glanced up at him again. “I’m using stone dating from colonial days. Since the city fathers have been merrily destroying their heritage, I thought I’d have a try at preserving a little of it.”
Studying his friend, Noel pulled his hat off and began fanning himself absently. They were standing beneath the shade of a huge oak tree, but the heat wave hadn’t relented and there wasn’t a hint of a breeze to disturb the hot, still air. Cyrus, as usual, hadn’t worn a hat, and even though he’d removed his coat, the heat didn’t seem to bother him.
“Preservation, eh?” Noel’s voice was mild. “Is that why you’ve had most of the Fortune family paintings and valuables removed from the house, crated, and stored?”
Cyrus looked up again, this time in surprise. “How did you know about that?”
“Your groom told mine. You’ve got your servants in a tizzy, Cy, they don’t know what to make of all this.”
After a brief frown, Cyrus shook his head slightly. “There’s no mystery. I wanted everything inventoried and decided I might as well get the packing done at the same time.”
“It’ll be months before this house is completed.”
“I’m aware of that, Noel.”
Bushy eyebrows rising, Noel said, “Are you also aware of the fact that a bear with a toothache would be more amiable than you’ve been these last days?”
Cyrus stared at him for a long moment, but then a crooked smile tugged at his mouth. “Don’t say I’ve been that bad.”
“Worse. Your company manners never were much to brag about, but when even the ladies begin to notice you’re in a temper as black as your eyes, the case has to be desperate.”
“What ladies?”
“My wife, for one. Felice passed you on the street this morning, and swore that when she said hello, you growled in response.”
“I’ll offer my apologies the next time I see her,” Cyrus stated.
“I’m less interested in apologies than explanations. Yes, I know you never explain, but this time you’ve really got me worried, Cy. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Chapter 4
“Nothing,” Cyrus said, frowning as he gazed toward the busy workmen.
“Maybe someone else would accept that,” Noel retorted, “but I won’t. I’ve known you for twenty years. When you left after Tate died, I thought you might come back changed, but you didn’t. It’s since you came back that you’ve changed. I thought at first it was because of Julia Drummond, but—” He broke off as Cyrus looked at him, then added quietly, “Maybe she does have something to do with it, after all.”
Wanting to distract his friend from that possibility, partly because he didn’t want to admit to himself how difficult he found it to accept her refusal, Cyrus said abruptly, “I rec
eived a package the other night. A gold-handled cane, very beautiful, in a wooden box. There was a note inside that said my father wanted me to have it.”
“Your—?” Noel was effectively distracted because of sheer surprise. “Your real father?”
“Apparently. Did you ever know Tate to use a cane?”
“No. But who could have sent it to you?”
“I’ve been unable to find out. The package was left on the doorstep after dark. As far as I can determine, no one saw it delivered. I’ve taken the cane to half a dozen shops around town, including two jewelers, and all I’ve been told with any certainty is that it’s very old. The craftsmanship of the gold is exquisite, but if the artist signed his work or left his mark, I haven’t been able to find it.”
“So that is what’s troubling you?”
“Wouldn’t it trouble you? Noel, Tate was always honest with me, and the fact that I’m a bastard never meant anything to him. It didn’t mean anything to me. But now…‘Your father wanted you to have this’ the note said. So who sent it to me? My mother? Is she still alive? Have I seen her across a street without knowing it? Why did she leave me on the doorstep of a stranger? Why didn’t my father marry her?”
“You can’t be sure he didn’t,” Noel objected quietly. “Perhaps he died before you were born, and your mother just couldn’t raise you alone.”
Cyrus shrugged a bit jerkily. “Perhaps. But I can’t be sure, that’s the hell of it. Always in the past I considered that my life began when Tate gave me his name. Whatever came before didn’t matter. Then I got the package…and questions I’ve never asked myself have begun to haunt me. How common are black eyes, Noel?”
The question was abrupt, and Noel blinked. “Well, not very. To be honest, yours are the only ones I’ve seen.”
“They’re the only ones I’ve seen too. I’ve seen dark eyes, particularly out west—Indians, Mexicans, a few Gypsies—but not black ones, not like mine. Doesn’t that strike you as odd, that in more than thirty years I’ve never seen eyes like mine in a single face?”
With a stab at humor, Noel said, “You’ve always struck me as odd, Cy.”
His friend didn’t smile in return. “I suppose I have.”
“Hey, I was joking.”
“No, you weren’t.” Cyrus did smile then, faintly.
A little uncomfortably, Noel shrugged. “All right, but what’s that have to do with anything? We’re all peculiar in our own ways.”
“Yes, but most people can trace their peculiarities to a definite source. They can point to their ancestry as the reason they look and behave as they do; why they’re tall or short, dark or fair, calm or bad-tempered. You yourself got those eyebrows from your grandfather.”
“Family trait,” Noel said automatically, then stopped when he realized his was a response Cyrus had never been able to make. “I’m sorry, Cy. I never thought.”
“I never did either. Just as I never thought about the fact that the date I celebrate as my birthday is actually the anniversary of the day Tate took me in. I was a few weeks old then, apparently, so my actual birthday is sometime in October.” He sighed. “The point is, none of that ever troubled me until the package came.”
“I wish there was something I could say—”
Cyrus waved a hand in dismissal. “There isn’t. And there’s no one I can ask to find the answers I want, unless I somehow manage to find out who sent me the package. That’s the only glimmer of a clue I have to any part of my heritage. Tate tried to find my mother in the weeks after I was left on his doorstep, and if he couldn’t find her then, I’m not likely to have much luck almost thirty-two years later.”
“You have to try, for your own peace of mind.”
“Yes, I know. And I will. But even the basic answers I need aren’t as important as…What disturbs me most of all is the cane itself.”
Noel frowned. “What do you mean?”
Cyrus hesitated, but Noel was the closest friend he had in the world and he needed to tell someone, if only to check his grip on reality. “It’s a feeling I’ve had since the package came,” he said slowly. “A feeling I can’t shake no matter how often I tell myself it’s absurd.”
“What feeling?”
“The feeling that there was a mistake made somewhere along the way, something wrong I should know about. I looked at the cane, and I realized there was something I should understand about it, some knowledge I’m supposed to have. I felt it. It’s almost as if something inside me knows the cane was supposed to be the final piece of the puzzle. Only there are too many other pieces missing, and I can’t even guess what to do with that one.”
Noel’s frown deepened. “Cy, what you’re saying is definitely strange.”
“Strange isn’t the word for it.” Not even to Noel was Cyrus willing to admit the cane seemed to have triggered other things as well, even stranger. His “whims and notions” were more frequent now and far more troubling. Some were literally compulsions, like this house he had to build.
He didn’t know how or why, but he was certain beyond any doubt that the house in which he’d grown up would not be standing come winter. He knew. There was nothing he could do to save the house. Whatever was meant to happen to it was already…decided. Events had been set in motion, a pattern woven, and the destruction of the house was a part of it.
That was another thing, his peculiar recognition and understanding of patterns. He looked at places and felt the history of them, looked at people and sensed the ties that bound them and the emotions that drove them—sometimes even caught glimpses of what he believed were their futures. It seemed instinctive, yet he’d never been conscious of it before, not like this, not so strong and certain. He didn’t like it.
He’d been changing since the first night he’d spoken to Julia, beginning with his strange dreams of pain; since he’d received the cane all the sensations and emotions had been growing stronger every day. Patterns. He was in the grip of one. He felt as if he were a pawn on a chessboard, all the moves planned out in advance, and it was a decidedly unsettling sensation for a man who had never believed anyone other than himself was the master of his fate.
“Cy?”
He looked questioningly at Noel.
“Going to the Drummonds’ party tonight?”
The distraction, it seemed, had been only temporary. Cyrus had been trying not to think of Julia, but Noel was obviously too curious—and perhaps concerned—to let the subject drop.
“I was invited,” Cyrus said briefly.
“That isn’t an answer. Are you going?”
“Yes, Noel, I’m going.”
“Is she a piece of the puzzle?” Noel asked softly.
The question surprised Cyrus, because Noel asked it and because the reply, spoken silently but emphatically in his head, was, Yes, she is. He went very still, consciously listening, but nothing else came to him. Julia was a piece of the puzzle, his puzzle, he was certain of it.
“Why did you put it that way?” he asked slowly.
Noel shook his head. “Because you’re different. Because a few minutes ago, when I suggested you might be different because of her, I could see it in your face. You are. She matters to you, doesn’t she?”
That was something Cyrus wasn’t willing to think about, to question. There were so many damned questions already. Looking back down at the plans for his house, he said dryly, “Rejection matters to me. God or the devil must be trying to teach me a lesson after all. She doesn’t want me.”
“And you’re accepting her refusal?”
Cyrus looked up quickly, his eyes fierce. “Dammit, Noel, does everyone believe I’m a lecher? That I’d seduce a woman no matter how unwilling she was, and not care how much it hurt her?”
Noel whistled softly under his breath. “You are certainly touchy these days. No one’s called you a lecher as far as I’m aware, Cy. I certainly haven’t, and I don’t think it of you. It’s simply that I’ve never seen you give up, much less this quickly.”
>
“Let’s drop the subject, shall we?” Cyrus’s tone was testy.
Noel decided he’d better do as he was asked. It seemed as though Julia Drummond’s refusal, combined with an enigmatic clue to Cyrus’s beginnings, had pushed his friend well past the limits of his usual tolerance. Noel was more than a little worried about him. As odd as he sometimes was, during his entire life the one thing all of Cyrus’s friends had been able to count on was the complete absence of a temper. No matter what was said to him or about him, Cyrus had always reacted with calm, sometimes with mockery, and often with amusement, but never anger.
And there was more to it, Noel thought. There was something Cyrus hadn’t chosen to tell him. He knew his friend too well to push, but it bothered him.
“Take a look at the plans and see what you think,” Cyrus invited Noel now, his voice normal again.
Noel joined him in bending over the blueprints and made a couple of idle suggestions to improve the design, neither of which Cyrus agreed with. But the discussion helped to ease the remaining tension between the two men, and seemed to restore Cyrus to his usual calm temper. It wasn’t until a few minutes later, when he was rolling up the plans, that Noel noticed something he’d forgotten about since long-ago childhood days of games and swimming in the river.
“I see you still have that birthmark. I’d forgotten it was so dark.”
“Age changes everything, I suppose.” Cyrus glanced down at the inside of his left forearm and felt an odd little chill feather up his spine. The mark he’d been born with was hardly bigger than a gold piece, a perfect crescent shape a shade darker than the surrounding flesh and hardly noticeable. Or at least, it had always been only a shade darker. Now it was deeper in color, almost blood red, and it was very visible.
“We’d better start back if you don’t want to be late for the Drummond party,” Noel said casually, obviously not noticing anything unusual in his friend’s expression.
Cyrus rolled his sleeves back down. He heard himself ask, “Are you going?” and his voice sounded normal to him.
