by Webb, Peggy
Ann turned away and freshened up as much as she could. She'd brought toiletries and fresh undergarments, but no clothes. She hadn't expected to be stranded in her attic more than the time it took the hurricane to pass over Fairhope.
Little did she know.
On the pallet, Colt stirred, but his chest rose and fell in the steady rhythm of a deep sleeper.
Ann took her grandmother's white dress out of the trunk, then disappeared behind a folding screen painted with street scenes from Paris.
When she emerged Colt was sitting on the only chair in the attic, a sturdy chaise longue upholstered in red velvet. He whistled, then strode across the floor and took both her hands.
"Wow. Look at you."
The dress was an almost-sheer fabric that felt soft against her skin and floated about her legs when she walked.
"It makes me wish styles hadn't changed so drastically," she said.
"While you were back there doing that magician's act, I poked around some."
With a flourish, he removed a dust cloth from the far end of the shelf. And there it sat, grin intact, pop eyes covered with dust, tail just waiting for the opportunity to wag once more. Felix the Cat.
"Incredible," she whispered. "If it weren't for the dust, I'd think it was the one you gave me."
She stood rooted to the spot, unable to take her eyes off the ancient clock.
"Annie." Colt held out his hand. "Come. Let's see what sort of secrets this old clock can tell us."
As they approached the shelf they saw the gift tag, still attached, hanging from the cat's tail with a faded yellow ribbon. "To Annie from Anthony, with all my love, forever and always."
"Do you think the clock still works," she whispered, for it seemed almost a sacrilege to speak aloud in the presence of Anthony Chance's gift of love.
"We'll soon know."
Holding tightly to her right hand, Colt lifted the clock off the shelf.
A bolt of lightning struck something outside with a loud crack that shattered the attic window. The room lit up as if it were on fire, and thunder roared louder than a freight train.
She held tightly to Colt's hand, and she could see his mouth working, saying her name, but the sound of it was as faint as if he were calling to her from the other end of a tunnel. Light blinded her, and she thought about closing her eyes, but she didn't want to lose sight of the man who held her hand, the man who had seen her safely through the night and who would surely see her safely through this latest adventure.
She had a floating sensation, as if her body had drifted away and it was taking her mind a while to catch up. The light changed intensity, from a brightness that hurt her eyes to something kinder, softer.
She closed her eyes, just for an instant, and then she felt the sidewalk under her feet and the warmth of the sun on her face.
For a moment she was disoriented. Woolgathering, her mother called it. Daydreaming. She had been guilty of a lot of that lately.
Shaking her head to rid it of the dream-fog, she looked up and there was the sign, New Orleans Public Library.
Smiling, Charlotte Ann Harris opened the door and went inside.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Stacks of books on architecture were on the second floor. Charlotte Ann browsed until she found the one she needed for her project on Victorian houses. She flipped through the pages to make certain, then started back downstairs to check it out when another book caught her attention, this one on the Greek Revival style, volume one of a set of four.
And she wanted to read them all.
Her mother had teased her just last week about her habit of trying to learn everything at once. "You think you can learn everything your freshman year?" she'd said.
Laughing to herself, Charlotte Ann balanced her stack of books and negotiated her way down the aisle. The pile was so tall, she couldn't see over it, so she used the stacks on either side of her as guides.
Suddenly she crashed into a solid object. Books toppled in every direction, and she saw that the solid object was a man. Not just any man but the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen, one so comely that she stood in the library gawking like a teenager.
"I beg your pardon," he said, then knelt at her feet and retrieved the scattered books.
She was too enraptured to move. And besides that, her toes were curling under, a sure sign that fate had more in mind for her than a career as an architect.
Still on his knees, he was in the process of handing her a book when he froze, the picture of a man zapped by Cupid's arrow.
"You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." He pressed the book into her hand, then held on. "I want to kiss you and paint you, in that order."
Like a woman in the middle of her own dream, she knelt on the floor beside him. Hidden from view, he cupped her chin and kissed her full on the lips, softy, tenderly, and she fell totally, irrevocably in love.
The kiss lasted no more than a few seconds, but it was enough. From the moment he touched her, she knew he was the love of her life, that whatever else happened, she would always love this man.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Charlotte Ann Harris."
He turned her face from side to side, studying it from all angles.
"I'll call you Annie," he said.
"And what will I call you?"
"I've been told that men who fall in love become besotted to the point that they forget everything they ever knew, including manners. Forgive me."
He planted a soft kiss in her palm, and she felt the fever of his lips spread through her entire body. Charlotte Ann was amazed, but not afraid. She didn't know much about love and romance. Her father had died when she was eight, and her mother somehow never got around to explaining the ways of the birds and the bees.
"My name is Anthony Chance." More than six feet tall, he towered over Charlotte Ann. And when he smiled down at her, she felt as if a god on Mount Olympus were granting her favor.
He carried her books with one hand and kept the other on the small of her back, guiding her. And Charlotte Ann Harris, who had never let anybody tell her what to do, not even her mother, allowed herself to be propelled through the stacks by a handsome stranger she knew only by his professional reputation. Anthony Chance was the most renowned portrait artist in New Orleans.
"Where do you live?" he asked when they were on the sidewalk.
Independent from the top of her head to the tip of her toes, she always maintained her distance from the boys who tried to court her until she decided how much of her private life she wanted to reveal to them. Which was usually little, if any.
But this Anthony Chance was no boy. And he certainly wasn't the kind of man who would wait politely for her to make up her mind just how the courtship would go.
Charlotte Ann was secretly pleased. Until she had met him she was beginning to think all men were so much putty she could mold any way she wanted. And of course, Laura Ellen was no help at all in the matter.
"Boys will be boys," was her mother's sole comment on the opposite sex.
"St. Charles. Garden District," she told Anthony. "Why?"
"Because I'm going home to meet your parents."
"Parent. It's just my mother and me. Two against the world is the way she puts it."
"And how would you put it?"
"One swept along by events, the other standing with heels dug in defying the world at every turn."
He laughed. "The latter would be you."
"How do you know?"
He set her books down, then caught her around the waist and swung her aboard the streetcar.
"The way you hold your chin, square and upright, determined." He sat beside her, close enough so that their thighs were touching. "What I don't already know about you, Annie Harris, I intend to find out."
The bell clanged, the car rattled, and they were off. Anthony lifted her hand and boldly branded her palm with another kiss, in broad daylight with six people in the back of the car loo
king on.
Charlotte Ann thought it was altogether appropriate that they were riding on a streetcar named Desire.
o0o
Her mother was everything Anthony had imagined, beautiful, charming, and totally dependent on her strong-willed daughter to give her life meaning and direction.
They sat in the parlor on three velvet-covered Victorian chairs so small that Anthony's knees were practically touching his chest. The parlor was an ultra-feminine woman's room full of bric-a-brac and lace doilies and heavy velvet draperies that shut out the sun.
The first thing Annie did when they arrived was fling open the curtains so the sun streamed inside and they had a view of the courtyard beyond the French doors.
Anthony fell in love with her all over again. Though he should have been uncomfortable with his knees stuck practically under his chest, he was supremely at ease, a man who had finally found what he'd been searching for all his life.
The funny thing was, until he saw Annie he hadn't even known he was searching. All he'd known was a restlessness that took him from city to city, filling canvases like mad, painting from five in the morning till midnight sometimes, like someone possessed. And in between painting sprees he was on the water racing his sailboat or up in the air pushing his little plane to the limits, testing himself to see just how far he could go.
"Mr. Chance, I can't tell you how honored I am to have you in our home." Laura Ellen Harris sat with her legs primly crossed at the ankles and her hands folded in her lap, the picture of decorum. "I've seen your work, and I think it's marvelous."
"Thank you, Mrs. Harris. And call me Anthony, please."
"Oh, I couldn't possibly. That's for too informal for a man of your stature."
"What about for a son-in-law?"
Laura Ellen nearly dropped her teacup, but Annie merely smiled. She'd known from the moment they met, just as he had. It pleased Anthony that she wasn't going to play silly, time-consuming games with him.
"I intend to be your son-in-law, Mrs. Harris. I've come today to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage."
Laura Ellen turned to her daughter. "Charlotte Ann, you haven't told me a thing about this. Why, you've never even mentioned his name."
"That's because we just met, Mother."
Laura Ellen patted her face with a lace handkerchief. "It's just like you to keep things a secret. You met last month at that cotillion, I suppose."
"No. Today. In the library."
"I just don't know what to say. If I were the swooning kind, I'd swoon."
Annie laughed heartily, then left her chair, planted a kiss on her mother's cheek, and fondly ruffled her hair.
"You are the swooning kind, Mother. Only you're too curious right now to swoon."
"I am curious."
"I hope I haven't caused you undue stress, Mrs. Harris. When I want something I don't beat around the bush, I go after it."
Annie patted her mother's hand. "Don't worry, Mother. I plan to lead him a merry chase before I let him catch me."
"Charlotte Ann! Where's your gentility?"
Anthony laughed. "I fully intend to marry your daughter, Mrs. Harris, but not without a courtship. I want to give you plenty of time to get to know me."
"What about me? Don't you plan to give me time to get to know you?" Annie said, grinning.
"We knew each other the moment we met, Annie."
o0o
True to his word, Anthony began a courtship of Annie the next day.
When she left her classes, he was parked on campus outside the architecture building.
"Fancy seeing you here," she said, leaning against his car.
He opened the door for her, and without even asking where they were going, she stepped inside. He drove effortlessly, as he seemed to do everything.
"I'm going to paint you today."
"That wouldn't be a ploy to get me to pose nude, would it?" Her smile told him she was teasing.
The sidelong glance he gave her made her sizzle, and she wondered what demons had made her bring up a subject that was sure to lead down a dangerous pathway. But then, she'd never been one to run from danger.
"When you're nude, Annie, you won't be posing."
"When?”
"That's right. When."
"You're awfully sure of yourself, Anthony Chance."
"I'm awfully sure of you, Annie."
"That has to be boring. I thought men loved the chase."
"Games are for fools. I love substance, not silly pretense."
They drove to the river, and there he set up his easel and painted Annie, sitting on a patchwork quilt beside the water, head bent over her books, long hair sliding across one rosy, sunlit cheek.
It was like that for a week. Every day when she got out of class, he was waiting for her. Sometimes they strolled around campus, hand in hand. Other times they drove along River Road with the top down through avenues of live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss.
Charlotte Ann lay awake in her bed at night, eyes wide open, heart pounding double time, heat spreading through her body, dreaming of him. Though she was a virgin, she wasn't naive. She understood her symptoms. She wanted Anthony Chance. It was that simple.
What wasn't simple was making a decision to do something about it. The mores of her time dictated that young women of virtue remain virgins till they were married. Women who did not earned names and reputations that embarrassed their families.
Charlotte Ann had never been bound by convention, but she'd never flouted convention in any way that would be considered immoral.
She kicked aside her sheets and flung open her window to let the night breezes cool her off. Her relief was only temporary. The minute she was back in bed she was thinking of Anthony, wanting him, needing him.
Why was it that men could do just about anything they wanted and society wouldn't raise an eyebrow, but women were branded immoral for the same acts? Feeling defiant and frustrated and more than a little angry, Charlotte Ann slid deeper under the covers.
o0o
Laura Ellen was waiting for her at the breakfast table in the sunroom the next morning.
"Have you thought about a date for the wedding?" she said.
"I'd marry him tomorrow if he asked me to."
"Charlotte Ann! What would people say? Everybody in polite society would call it a shotgun wedding."
"I don't give a fig for polite society."
"I know you don't, but I do." Laura Ellen spread an assortment of magazines on the table. "What I was getting at earlier, is that we're going to need at least a year to plan this wedding." She flipped rapidly through the pages. "Now here's the latest fashion in wedding gowns."
The doorbell rang, and joy flooded Charlotte Ann. "Whatever you want, Mother. You plan it."
She kissed her mother's cheek, raced toward the door, then raced back and grabbed three pieces of buttered toast with orange marmalade.
"Might need something for energy," she said.
o0o
Anthony's upstairs apartment in the French Quarter overlooked the St. Louis Cathedral. The minute they arrived Annie threw open all the doors and windows then stood on the balcony with her face tipped up to the sun and her arms spread wide.
"Glorious," she said, smiling at him over her shoulder.
"It certainly is," he agreed, but he wasn't talking about the view from the balcony. Annie was the most appealing woman he'd ever met, a rare combination of wholesome innocence and heady sex appeal. Stopping at a kiss was increasingly difficult for him. And in the privacy of his apartment, he dared not risk even a simple kiss.
"Listen," she said. "Hear that. Birds are singing as they fly around the bell tower." She laughed. "If I could sing I'd join them."
He slid his arms around her waist, and she leaned against his shoulder.
"What would you sing, Annie?"
"A happy song. You make me very happy, Anthony."
"It works both ways."
She swayed, keeping time wit
h the song of the birds and the song in her mind, and that small movement caused his libido to riot.
"We should start packing that picnic lunch if we want to go sailing." He started pulling back, and she turned to face him.
"What do you want, Anthony, right this very minute?"
"You."
She held him spellbound with a long, deep look, then she turned her face upward, toward the crystal bowl of a sky, as if she could find the answer she searched for there. When she turned back to him, he could see resolve in her eyes, in the set of her jaw, in every line of her body.
"Make love to me, Anthony."
He'd heard that the wonder of love can sometimes make a man's heart stand still, but until that moment he hadn't known it was true.
"You don't know what you ask, Annie."
"I may be naive and totally innocent, but I know exactly what I want and what I'm asking."
She took both his hands and lifted them to her breasts. Her blouse and the camisole underneath were the softest batiste, and he could feel the tight budding of her nipples underneath. He closed his eyes, stealing the moment, reveling in this forbidden touch.
Abruptly he broke contact. "I won't sully your reputation."
"You want to take a virgin to your wedding bed. Is that it?"
God, how she could challenge a man.
"I want to take you to my wedding bed, Annie. The rest is irrelevant to me."
"To me, as well."
She swept past him through the French doors, then stood in a bright patch of sunlight and unbuttoned her blouse. He watched from the safe distance of the balcony, mesmerized.
Not that the nude female body was new to him. He'd used it as a subject for his passion as well as his art. But he'd never been in love. And love made the difference.
Annie stripped the camisole off, then stood before him, creamy breasts tipped as pink as camellia blossoms.
"You tempt me so, Annie."
Her eyes riveted on his, she unfastened her skirt and it slithered to the floor. Then hooking her thumbs into the elastic waistband, she peeled off her half-slip and her panties.
"My God. You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
"I'm yours. Come and claim me."
"Don't think I don't want to."
