Echoes of Tomorrow (29 page)

Any other time Elise would have plowed through a meal like this and sampled everything.  But now she moved slowly through the line, allowing the occasional selection to be placed on her plate, not even aware of what was being given her.

Lil clucked in motherly fashion at the meager fare that Elise now held.

"My dear, I know a lady is not supposed to exhibit a great appetite, but one can carry things too far."

She bustled over to the French doors and stepped onto the veranda.  Elise followed her in a trance-like state, not caring where she went.

They sat on a bench at a far corner of the porch in companionable silence.  Lil did justice to her meal, managing to eat with gusto while at the same time maintaining her ladylike demeanor.

Elise rearranged the food on her plate.  She sliced off a bit of ham and shoved it between her lips.  She had always heard about food tasting like sawdust to a person who was very upset, and now she knew exactly what that meant.  Every bite she forced herself to take had the taste and texture of sawdust.  After just a few bites, she sat her plate aside and stared off into space.

Aunt Lil's pudgy, porcelain hand rested on her knee and patted.

"Now, now, my dear.  These things have a way of working out.  The deed isn't done yet."

Elise snorted for the second time that night and shook her head.  If the deed hadn't already been done she wouldn't be sitting here, feeling sorry for herself.  But she stopped short of uttering the comment.  It wouldn't help matters to broadcast Angeline's pregnancy.  She also didn't deny what Lil was referring to.  It was obvious Lil knew how she and Reed felt about each other.

"I wouldn't place any bets that this one's going to work out, Aunt Lil.  The engagement has been announced.  And I have a feeling that Angeline is not going to want a long engagement."

Lil didn't try to argue the point.  She simply
tsked tsked
and muttered about impatient young people as she rose to her feet.

"Are you coming back in, my dear?"

"No.  I think I'll stay out here for a while.  Maybe the fresh air will do me good."

Elise watched Lil disappear back into the ballroom.  She sat for several minutes, occasionally kneading her temples in an attempt to dispel the growing throb there.  She decided distraction might work better.  She rose from the bench and headed for the solitude of the gardens.

One circuit of the grounds proved to be peaceful enough, but her heart wrenched each time she heard a pair of lovers murmuring to each other in the darkness.  Just as she was about to step back into the ballroom, a dark, staggering shape loomed ahead of her.

"So, what have we here?  The little houseguest from nowhere."

Whiskey fumes and a noisome blast of bad breath forced Elise backward.  With her head held sideways in a vain attempt to avoid a direct assault on her senses, she studied the intruder from the corner of her eye.

She had met him earlier in the evening.  His name was Ballard Fetter, if she remembered correctly, and he was one of the many Angeline had given her "poor Elise" speech to.  Even then he had been so drunk he could barely stand.  His condition had gone downhill during the course of the evening.

Before she could finish sizing him up, he grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the ballroom.

"Had my eye on you all night," he slurred as he swung her into an unsteady waltz.  "We'll dance awhile, then maybe you'll give me some of what you've been giving Blackwell."

Elise couldn't believe her ears.  She tried to jerk free, but he had her by the wrist and an iron grip around her waist.

His cravat was spattered with droplets of red wine and an assortment of food clung to his beard.  The front of his jacket was stained with unrecognizable grease spots.  When he leered at her, his teeth were covered with yellow slime and dotted profusely with bits of green.  Her stomach rolled.

"Mr. Fetter...it is Fetter, isn't it?  I have no desire to dance with you, nor give you whatever it is you think I'm giving Mr. Blackwell.  However, if you continue to breathe on me, I might be persuaded to vomit on you, but then that would be redundant, wouldn't it?"

Elise's smile was so sugary sweet, anyone watching would have guessed her to be enjoying herself.

It apparently took several seconds for the meaning of her words to wade through the alcohol in Fetter's mind.  When he did manage to separate her facial expression from her words, his eyes widened in rage, and his grip tightened.

"I'll show you what you're going to give me," he said, "and if you don't want to make a scene you'll follow me out this door real quiet."

Elise raised her eyebrows with feigned surprise.

"Why, Mr. Fetter, wherever did you get the idea that I don't want to cause a scene?  Why, I have no qualms whatsoever of drawing attention to myself.  After all, what would I have to gain by not doing so?"

Fetter stared at her blearily.  Unaccustomed to women he couldn't intimidate, he made the mistake of calling her bluff.

His hand slid from around her waist to roughly squeeze her breast while he continued to clumsily dance and shove her toward the door.

Elise reacted without thinking.  She stepped back with her right foot, then sent her knee crashing upward into his groin.  She hit her target with brutal accuracy.  Fetter rose several inches under the force of her knee.  A blast of fetid breath swooshed over her in a muffled
Oooomph
that resounded throughout the room.  The alcohol must have dulled his pain, because instead of falling to the floor in a fetal position, he held his crotch with one hand and lunged, bent over, in her direction.

Enough was enough.  Elise stepped back, grabbed a handful of gown and hiked it above her knees, then spun around with a roundhouse kick.  The
blade of her right foot met with Fetter's forehead, knocking him backward onto the gleaming ballroom floor.  When he hit, he slid for over two feet, stopping with his head halfway under Angeline's skirts before she squealed and ran away.

When the adrenaline stopped pumping, Elise became aware of a deafening silence.  She raised her head to gaze at her surroundings.  Hundreds of eyes stared at her, a considerable amount of white showing in all of them.

But the only pair that really mattered was Reed's, wide with shock and concern.  She stood for several seconds, her chest heaving from exertion, before she remembered to drop her skirts.  She smoothed a few imaginary wrinkles from the silk and flicked an invisible piece of lint.  Retreat might be the better part of discretion right now.

With a shrug directed to Reed, she daintily lifted her skirts and stepped over the unconscious Fetter.

"He just wouldn't take ‘no’ for an answer," she said, and held her head high as she walked out of the ballroom.  She kept her regal bearing all the way down the hall and up the staircase, cringing when the ballroom erupted with the buzz of voices the minute she disappeared from view.  She crumpled in a miserable heap only after shooting the bolt home on her bedroom door.

CHAPTER TWENTY

He was having the dream again, but he couldn’t control it.  Elise was running through the house, calling his name, and when he found her she pulled him into the library.  Only this time he was the one to disappear.  He watched, helpless, as she clawed the air, wearing a tiny, black shift that barely covered her, and screaming "Don't marry her."

He woke with a start.  When he turned onto his back, beads of perspiration rolled downward from his forehead, and trickled along his scalp.  The bed linens were wound around his body, plastered to his sweat-drenched limbs, and they refused to loosen their tenacious grip on him.  He took out his frustrations on the unfortunate sheet and kicked savagely.  He felt an uncharacteristic satisfaction at the loud ripping sound his actions produced.  Within seconds the sodden mass of linen lay in shreds on the floor and Reed was breathing hard, fighting the urge to put his fist through a wall.

Don't marry her.
  He could still hear Elise's words ricocheting through his mind.  They were the last words she'd said to him last night as he walked out the door to announce his betrothal.  He knew her whispered voice hadn't been meant for him to hear.  Earlier she'd suggested Angeline might be lying, or that maybe the baby wasn't his.  How could he tell her he'd forced himself on a woman?  How could he explain that Angeline had known things she couldn't have known?  She had seen the strange clothing.  And now he knew he'd left behind the jacket and shirt in her room after...after...

He couldn't tell Elise, this strange and wonderful person who had appeared in his life, that he had raped a woman.  Even if he could endure the shame of admitting it, he could never stand to see the revulsion on her face when she looked at him.  The hurt in her eyes as he'd stood beside Angeline and announced their plans to marry had been a dull-bladed knife that had ripped into his heart.  Choking out the words that he intended to marry Angeline was the hardest thing he'd ever done.  And being toasted by the well-wishers, forcing a gaiety that he doubted he would ever feel again, was nothing more than an opportunity to numb his senses.

Unfortunately, it seemed to do the opposite.  He was acutely aware of every man who came within two feet of Elise.  And there had been many.  She had insisted on returning to the ball, and it had looked as though she was trying her best to numb her own senses.  She'd had quite a few glasses of champagne and danced several dances before the announcement was made.  Reed knew.  He knew exactly who she'd danced with, how many times, and what type of dance. 

It had been a slow and painful torture to watch her in the arms of other men.  With each of her new partners he'd had to speculate if that would be the man Elise would marry, now that he knew he would never be her husband.  When Jeffrey, in particular, claimed her for a waltz, he had wanted to slam his fist into Vancouer’s face.  The thought of her spending her life with someone else, bearing another man's child, those warm, loving arms around someone else's neck and gazing up at him with those playful green eyes.  Making love...

     Once, he had brushed past her and their arms touched, and he'd reacted as violently as if she had wrapped her body around him.

He'd watched her follow Lilianna onto the veranda and forced himself to remain inside when Lil reported to him
sotto voce
that Elise needed some time alone.

He hadn't seen her return on the arm of Ballard Fetter.  He'd only seen her smiling charmingly up at him while they stumbled through a waltz.  It took him several seconds before he realized her smile was nothing more than a facade.  And just as this knowledge dawned on him, he watched Elise slam her knee deep into Fetter's groin.  It all happened so quickly it was over before he'd had time to react.

He did react, however, when he'd had Big John escort Ballard out by the scruff of his neck.  He'd excused himself from his guests and appeared outside the stables where Ballard was having difficulty finding the stirrup on his saddle.

Reed had proceeded to soundly pummel the man, all the while explaining that he meant for him to never step foot on Blackwell land again.  In between each punishing blow he had calmly proclaimed that, even though Fetter was a cousin to Angeline,
smack
, he was forever
persona non grata, smack
, and if he ever touched Elise Gerard or showed his face on Oak Vista again,
smack,
he could expect the same hospitality he was receiving at the moment,
smack
.  After having vigorously made his point clear, Reed had stepped over the once-again unconscious Fetter and retired to the kitchen to procure some ice for his knuckles.

He now flexed his fingers, working out the stiffness that had set in overnight.  He still had the urge to slam his fist into the wall.

While he shaved he focused his mind on the upcoming events of the day and tried to plan how to get through them.  There was to be a picnic, croquet, a horse race, and
where in the name of God did she learn to do that?
  His thoughts leaped back to the night before.

He'd never seen anyone move in such a fashion - certainly not a woman.  And why had she not simply called for help?  The ballroom had buzzed of nothing else the remainder of the evening, and he was amazed at the different attitudes taken.  Some of the younger women had actually praised her actions, saying they'd wished many times that they'd had the courage and ability to fell Ballard.  He apparently had garnered a slimy reputation among the ladies and was kept at a distance whenever possible. 

Of course, most of the guests were aghast at Elise's unruly methods of deterring Fetter's attentions, but held their tongues in front of Reed.  Instead, they settled for walking around with pursed lips and raised eyebrows.  He only hoped that if she chose to join the events of the day she would not be cut dead.

*******

Elise had been up for hours, after getting all of maybe fifteen minutes sleep during the night.  She brushed her hair mechanically and chastised herself for acting like she was in a bad Chinese movie the night before.  She closed her eyes and shook her bowed head, visualizing herself in a ballgown, kicking a drunk in the head.