Echoes of Tomorrow (38 page)

Reed remained quiet.  There was not much he could say in front of Jeffrey, but his eyes made a silent plea for her not to go.

The fist around her heart squeezed tighter.  He looked as miserable as she felt.  What could it hurt if she stayed?

It could hurt them both.

"And besides, I'm sure Aunt Lil would like to go home, and Angeline will be wanting to put a feminine touch on this bachelor...uh...home."  Yeah, she'd probably even have the walls covered in ruffles and bows.

Just as she'd expected, Reed put up no further argument.  But she wasn't prepared for the raw pain in his eyes.  The two stared at each other across the table.  His eyes pleaded with her not to go; hers pleaded with him not to marry Angeline.

Tendrils of steam from the coffee cup poised at her lips caused her eyes to tear up again.  It snapped her out of her trance.

"Well," she said, placing her cup back on the saucer, "I have a million things to do.  I'd better hit it."

She nodded a good-bye to Jeffrey out of politeness and saw that he had been taking great interest in the conversation and interaction between herself and Reed.  He looked much too interested, and there was a sense of anger in his face.

When she reached the foyer she overheard him say to Reed, "The lovely lady has an odd turn of words, does she not?"

*******

"Why, I am offended that you should even ask.  Of course you are welcome to stay here, for as long as you want."  Marisa hugged Elise, then guided her to a satin brocade settee near the empty fireplace.

Elise was relieved at her welcome, even though she expected nothing less from Marisa.

"In fact, I could send Noah over for your things so you wouldn't have to make that hot, dusty trip back.  Unless, of course you need to say good-bye to Reed."

"Oh, no.  I told him good-bye this morning."

Actually, she had made a beeline to Nell, and then to the stables, after leaving Reed and Jeffrey.  She wanted no opportunity for Reed to get her alone and talk to her.  Her resolve would never stand up to even his slightest request that she stay.  In fact, if she was only a little less of a woman, she'd be tempted to stay on as his mistress.  Anything to keep from losing him.  But she hadn't fallen that low - yet.

"I just felt like a fifth wheel there, what with all the wedding plans and all.  Besides, I need to get on with my life, and it would be hard to do, living with the new...newlyweds."  She turned the catch in her voice into a half-hearted cough, then ducked her head and rummaged in her reticule for a handkerchief long enough to blink the blasted tears away.  She was going to dehydrate if she didn't get a grip on her emotions.

Her fingers closed around a small tin instead of a hanky, and she was forced to break into some serious coughing to account for the tears that spilled over onto her cheeks.

Marisa was beside her in an instant with a cool glass of water, patting her gently on the back.  Elise took several sips, dabbed the hanky she finally found to the corners of her moist eyes, and shrugged when she laughed.

"There must be something in the air that I'm allergic to.  I even noticed this morning that my eyes were all red and puffy."

She turned a bright, watery smile to Marisa.  Her friend smiled back, but it was a knowing smile, filled with sympathy and compassion.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"Ride with me, little one.  Please.  We need to talk."

Elise was torn between the urge to throw herself into Reed's arms, and the urge to run away as fast and as far as she could.  Instead, she found herself rubbing her thumbnail across a velvet stripe on the arm of the chair while she gathered her thoughts.

"Reed, you're getting married tomorrow.  What could we possibly have to talk about?"

When her eyes met his she felt as if a fist had punched her in the stomach.  The pain in his eyes extended into his face, and even in the way he held himself.  Fine lines were etched around his mouth and eyes, and dark circles gave him a haggard look.

She hadn't seen him up close since the day she'd left, at first because of circumstance and then because of choice.  She'd ridden by the plantation every day with one lame excuse or another.  But every single time she'd ridden by, there was evidence of Angeline's presence.

The last time she'd gone, she stopped at the edge of the woods just as the front door opened and Angeline stormed out.

Reed had strolled out behind her and propped himself against the door frame.  Elise expected Angeline to continue her tantrum.  Instead, she'd plastered herself against him and held his head while she forced a kiss on him.

Elise had almost gagged.  She'd reined her horse around and headed home, trying desperately to rid her mind of the image of Angeline kissing Reed.  If a kiss could devastate her so, what would she feel on their wedding night? 

She hadn't gone far when the sound of thundering hooves gaining on her made her turn around and stop.

"Oh, hell," was all she managed to mutter before Angeline skidded her horse to a stop just inches away.  Her smug smile begged to be slapped off, but Elise overcame the urge to accommodate her.

"Well, worshipping from afar, I see.  I suppose I will allow it, as long as you maintain your distance."  She narrowed her eyes and smiled with only one side of her mouth.  "But don't be too upset if I decide to perform for you again."

Elise could only stare. 

"Perform, Angeline?  So you admit this is all an act.  You don't give a damn for Reed."

"Of course I do, sugar.  I give a big damn for his money and his position.  I have invested years cultivating him for marriage.  He is a much better catch than the pimply-faced boys still wet behind the ears.  And who wants a smelly old man constantly pawing at them?  Even if he were rich, it wouldn't be worth letting one touch me."

"So you're prepared to force Reed into marriage even though you know he loves me and not you, just so you don't have to be bothered with young boys and old men."

Angeline inspected the fingernails of her right hand.

"That about sums it up."

"I thought it was because you're pregnant with his child."

The nail inspection stopped.  She dropped her hand and turned her head slowly until she stared Elise in the eye.  She took her time answering, her voice filled with venom.

"That, too."

Elise threw her head back and stared at the sky.

"Angeline, you're so stupid.  Don't you realize you'll both be miserable if you force him to live this lie?  That baby is no more his than the Pope's."

Angeline sucked in her breath with a hiss.  "You don't know what you're talking about.  Why, I have half a notion to give you a piece of my mind."

Elise laughed and patted the air in a frantic signal to stop.  She'd just about had enough.  Maybe it was time to take the gloves off.

"It makes sense that you only have half a notion.  You don't have enough sense to formulate a complete one.  And please, don't give me a piece of your mind.  You have so little to spare as it is, I wouldn't want to be the one responsible for you rendering yourself into a vegetative state."

Angeline was furious, her body quivered, but she couldn't keep the hint of confusion from her face.

Elise laughed with disgust.

"Geez, Angeline.  If a gnat dove into your well of intelligence, it would break its neck."

God, that felt good.  Angeline's gasp at the insults was the icing on the cake, but Elise couldn't resist one parting shot from the nineties.  As she wheeled her horse around to leave, she bestowed a sweet smile upon her adversary.

"If you followed me here for a battle of wits...sugar...you shouldn't have come unarmed."

Angeline's shriek had been sweet music to her ears.

Reed's voice snapped her back into the present - back into Marisa's parlor and the problem of having to face him the day before his marriage to that airhead.

"Elise, I feel I owe you an explanation.  Maybe it's a selfish way of getting this off my chest, but I feel you have a right to know."

He'd been standing by the fireplace, running the brim of his planter's hat around and around through his hands.  Now the hat was mangled almost beyond recognition.

The tiny bubble of hope she'd held floated away with his words.  But at least she'd know the whole story now.

"All right, we can talk.  But we'll talk here.  Under the circumstances I don't think we should be any more alone than we are right now.

Reed glanced about, as if expecting the household to invade the parlor.

"Don't worry.  Marisa's helping with a birth in the slave quarters, and the boys are with Nick's tutor."  Elise assumed Marisa's husband, Jean Paul, was with the overseer.  He was never here this time of day.

"What is it you have to tell me, Reed?"

He cleared his throat and abused his hat some more before finally attempting to speak.

"I raped Angeline."

Elise released an explosive "Ha" before she realized he wasn't joking.

"You're serious."  She flopped back in the chair and fought a wave of dizziness.

"I was drunk.  I don't know how I got drunk.  I don't even remember getting drunk.  But that isn't an excuse.  I apparently decided to marry her during my intoxicated state and decided not to wait for the formalities to take place.  I forced myself on her.  Now I'm paying the consequences for a night I don't even remember."

A chill prickled up her neck and stood her hair on end.

"Exactly what night was it that you...got her pregnant?"

Reed's formerly brick-red face now faded to an ashen gray.

"In March I gave a ball with the hope of finding a lady who attracted me enough that I could consider marriage.  People had expected Angeline and me to marry, but I found her...  Anyway, when the ball was over I went up to my rooms to sleep.  The last thing I remember is lying down and teasing Nell by faking a snore after I drank her herbal tea.  But I woke up the next morning out in a field, half-dressed and with no memory of how I got there."

I could tell you how you got there, Elise's mind screamed, but you'd never believe me.  You'd come closer to believing you got drunk and raped a woman.

Her heart thundered in her chest and her mind raced to find all the pieces to this puzzle.  Her thought processes were hampered, though, by the excruciating memory of watching a half-dressed Reed disappear from her life.

Reed continued his monologue.

"I remember being plagued the next day with an overpowering sense of emptiness.  It was almost as though a part of me had been amputated during the night.  Looking back now, I realize it must have been guilt, not grief, that I felt."

Oh, dear God, darlin', it was grief of the worst kind.

"I decided that day to stop looking for the woman of my dreams and just marry someone who could give me a family.  That's when I went to Angeline."  He stopped for a moment and shook his bowed head.  He muttered something under his breath, but the only words Elise caught were "consummate fool."

"I didn't remember anything when I saw her.  In fact, that whole night is still blank.  She said nothing at all about it, until the night of the betrothal ball, when I tried to break it off.  That's when she told me, in painfully vivid description, what had happened.  She'd been so upset she'd burned my shirt and coat, which I'd left behind after...  She even mentioned how the clothes I was wearing were strange.  They were like nothing I'd ever seen, and I still don't know how I came to be wearing them.

"Oh, God, Elise.  Now do you see why I have to marry her?  I owe it to her."  He stopped his pacing and dropped to the loveseat, his hat now a woven pile of straw.  "Angeline isn't the nicest person in the world.  In fact, she can be downright...but no woman deserves to be raped.  And my child will be a product of that act."

That child is probably a product of a roll in the hay with a traveling salesman.

Couldn't he see that he wasn't the type of man to force himself on a woman, no matter what his condition?  How could she convince him that he was not the father of this baby without telling him he was with her, in the future?  He would never believe that.  It would sound like the ravings of a woman willing to say anything to avoid losing her lover.

Should she tell him she was the woman he was with that night, and not Angeline?  It would be her word against Angeline's.  But how could she explain why they were together?  As far as Reed was concerned, he'd never laid eyes on her before that morning she'd arrived in the past.

Her head began to throb, and she was sure her blood pressure was at stroke level.  She shook her head to clear it, then cradled her forehead in the palms of her hands while she thought of a way out of this mess.

Reed obviously misread her actions.  He stood, his head bowed, and tossed what was left of the ragged hat onto the seat he'd just vacated.

"I don't blame you.  No one can feel more disgust at my actions than I do, myself.

Her head shot up at his words and the sense of misery he exuded.  Her mouth took over and ignored any signals her brain might have sent.