Lorraine Heath (34 page)

She pressed her hand to the center of his chest. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m so sorry they hurt you. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

Shaking his head, he placed his hand over hers and brought it to his lips. “No past, Meg. No future. All I have is now.”

“Then let’s make the most of it. My shoulders don’t hurt anymore—” She took his hand and laid it at the heavenly juncture of her thighs. “But other places long for your touch.”

He didn’t have to tell her he longed for her touch as well. Having a woman with experience had definite advantages. She knew when to touch him, where to touch him, how to touch him in ways he hadn’t dared imagine. She taught him how to touch her. Her moans, sighs, and small spasms pleased him as much as her hands and mouth traveling over his body.

“Come to me, Clay,” she whispered, and he plunged into her warm depths.

All the touching they’d done before had shaped the shadows of desire. Now, they moved in a rhythm that revealed the details and carved out an exquisite fulfillment that left them breathless and melded within each other’s embrace.

She sighed his name like the soughing of the wind as she trembled in his arms. He kissed the dew from her throat. “How are your shoulders now?” he asked in a low voice.

Laughing quietly, she said, “Better, much better. How are you feeling?”

He lifted his head, gazed into her blue eyes, and smiled tenderly. “I’ve never felt so good in my whole life.”

With an appreciation he hadn’t felt in a long time, Clay watched dawn ease over the horizon. The sky had never looked so blue, the fields so green.

Only a few hours of night had remained after he walked Meg home, but he had slept soundly. He thought if it had stormed while he slept, the nightmares would have stayed away.

He heard the rumble of wagon wheels and glanced over his shoulder. The beautiful dawn gave way to the dark clouds of reality. With a deep breath, he stepped off the porch to greet Kirk’s father.

The man drew the wagon to a halt and climbed down like a man of younger years. He removed his hat. His hair had turned pale blond since Clay had last seen him. He supposed losing a son could do that to a man. Mr. Warner studied the hat he was turning in his hands before he met Clay’s eyes. “My mother passed away in her sleep last night.”

Clay wished the man had just punched him in the gut. It would have hurt less than hearing the words thrown at him as though he wouldn’t give a damn. “I’m sorry.”

“I gave her my word that I’d mark her place with the headstone you made for her.”

“I can’t …”—Clay winced as he shoved his injured hand into his pocket—"I can’t carve the date, but everything else is done the way she wanted. It’s in the shed. I’ll get it for you.”

He strode past the man who’d once welcomed him into his home as he might welcome his son. Entering the shed, he walked to the table where he’d carved Mama Warner’s headstone. He trailed his fingers over the lettering that he’d cut as deeply as he could. People would still be able to read her words long after Clay was gone.

He bowed his head. Grieving was unbearable when one did it alone.

“Dear Lord,” a deep voice whispered in awe behind him.

Spinning around. Clay stared at Kirk’s father as he slowly approached the granite.

“That’s my son,” he said in a raw voice.

“Yes, sir. Mrs. Warner asked me to make a memorial in honor of those who gave their lives—”

“My wife?” His face showed disbelief.

“No, sir. Meg.”

With reverence, he stepped up onto the stool and touched his son’s face, carved in stone. “Don’t tell me this is what you were talking to her about in church.”

“No, sir. I’d misunderstood something. She was setting me straight.”

Kirk’s father slowly nodded his head. “My son and I fought the morning he left. Did you know that?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, we did. We fathers were so damn proud of our boys enlisting the way they did. You were a blight on our honor. We’d planned to lynch you that evening if you didn’t leave with them. Kirk found out. Told me if he heard you’d been hanged, he’d desert. I told him if he deserted, I’d hunt him down and shoot him for being a coward.”

He dropped his chin to his chest. “He told me I wouldn’t have to hunt him because he’d come straight to my door. My boy was going off to face death, and my final words to him were spoken in anger. I didn’t tell him I loved him, didn’t tell him how proud I was of him. All the words a father should say to his son, I let pass. Now, I can’t tell him anything.”

Wiping his eyes, he stepped down from the stool. “I talked them out of lynching you because I couldn’t bear the thought of shooting my own son.”

The man stood with slumped shoulders and a bowed head. Clay didn’t know if Kirk’s father expected him to drop to his knees and thank him for sparing his life. He didn’t know what to say, couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. “Here’s the marker.”

Kirk’s father hefted it off the table. “I appreciate it.” He headed for the door and stopped. “I was here that night.”

Most of his life, Clay had paid a great deal of attention to silhouettes and shapes. The flour sacks had hidden their faces the night of the attack, but the midnight shadows had revealed their identities. “Yes, sir, I know.”

“Kirk told me you weren’t a coward, and I called him a damn fool. I was wrong. It’d mean a lot to my ma if you’d come to her funeral tomorrow.”

The steady rain began at sunset. The thick branches laden with their autumn leaves shielded Clay from the force of the storm. All he felt was an occasional raindrop as it traveled along a leaf and fell to the earth.

His arms shielded Meg as she pressed her back against his chest. She hadn’t come to see him today, but then he hadn’t expected her to. He knew she’d be helping the Warners deal with their loss, would be grieving herself. She’d been as close to Mama Warner as he’d been.

But he’d also known he’d find her here this evening, waiting on him. They had shared their deepest emotions at the swimming hole. In spite of the rain, they had felt a need to come here to grieve. They’d wept, held each other close, and now they watched the rain fall.

“Did she go peacefully?” he asked quietly.

“Yes. It was as though she just went to sleep.”

“I’m glad, but I sure do feel her loss.”

“Mr. Warner showed me the headstone. It’s beautiful with the buffalo grass carved in it, so simple and down-to-earth like she was.”

“I couldn’t carve the date.”

“Maybe in time—”

“Maybe.”

The lightning flashed and its brilliance revealed the place where they’d first made love.

“Will you go to her funeral?” Meg asked.

“Haven’t decided. She doesn’t deserve to have hatred surrounding her when she’s laid to rest.”

“She’d want you there.”

“I don’t know, Meg.”

Turning in his arms, she laid her head against his chest. “We could go together.”

“No,” he said gruffly.

“I thought after last night—”

“Last night didn’t change anything, Meg. Just like the night we spent together here didn’t change anything. I’m still the coward of Cedar Grove. That’s all these people will ever see. I’ve been fighting their opinions and hatred for years now. It hasn’t made a damn bit of difference, and it won’t make a damn bit of difference tomorrow. It’s best to just surrender. Hurts less that way. Hurts those I love a lot less, too. When we finish the monument, I’ll be moving on … alone. If you were smart, you’d start spending your mornings with Robert.”

“Do you love me?” she asked softly.

“More than my life.”

M
EG
’
S HANDS TREMBLED AS SHE PLAYED THE ORGAN
. S
HE
thought she’d released all her tears last night as she stood within Clay’s arms. But she was wrong.

Now, she yearned for his compassionate embrace more than she longed for Reverend Baxter’s words of solace.

Her tears increased as she unexpectedly pressed the wrong keys. The resounding chords more closely resembled the wail of a lost child who suddenly realizes she’s alone than the comforting strains of “Amazing Grace,” which she was supposed to be playing in memory of Mama Warner.

The last notes lingered as she clasped her hands in her lap and bowed her head. Tears clung to her eyelashes. She remembered the touch of Mama Warner’s gnarled fingers as she gathered Meg’s tears the day she cried because Kirk had grown a beard. She remembered the woman’s smile as Clay lifted her into his arms, and the peace that radiated through her as she trailed her hands over Kirk’s features carved in stone. She held the remembrance of Mama Warner even closer to her heart because woven throughout the memories were moments shared with Clay.

Quietly, the minister eulogized a woman who had touched the hearts of many and helped to shape the destiny of Texas.

Glancing toward the back of the church, Meg saw the door open slightly. Clay slipped in as quietly as a snowflake falls to the ground. With his hat in his hand, he slid into the last pew and bent his head until his hair fell forward and obscured his eyes.

She had little doubt that he had closed his eyes and fought his tears and grief as strongly as she did. When the final words of the eulogy drifted into silence, Meg would receive comfort from Kirk’s father and Robert, from her father and Daniel, from Helen, and Sally and every other person to whom she’d ever given comfort.

Who would comfort Clay?

With his large scarred hands, he had cut the names of their children, their parents, and their loved ones into wood or stone so they would be remembered. He’d rescued their slain sons from a mass grave and buried them with dignity.

The monument she’d asked him to carve paled in comparison to the testimony of his love that he’d already given them, that he continued to give them. He had touched the people of this town in a way more profound than the sculpting of any monument, and yet none of them knew of his actions, and if they had known, their hatred would not have allowed them to acknowledge the gift.

Just as her hatred had prevented her from daring to reach beyond the wall of despair to grasp another chance at happiness.

She knew Clay would leave after the closing prayer, before she played the final hymn. He held within his breast a deep respect for people, a respect that had been denied him.

Searching the mournful faces of the congregation, she wondered how many men believed in anything as strongly as Clay believed in his convictions. How many would stand alone?

How many women believed strongly enough in the man sitting by their side to stand beside him when the whole town stood against him?

These women had surrounded her, their fingers working as busily as hers, to sew gray uniforms for their husbands and sons. They had ripped the seams on silk gowns they’d worn on happy occasions to make a flag honoring the most terrifying day of their lives. In the lamplight, they’d gazed into each other’s eyes and known that none of them wanted their men to leave.

With meticulous stitches and perfect seams they’d sewn their doubts into the cloth, so that when they met the gazes of their soldiers that final morning, nothing was visible but their love and their belief in that love.

Clay was right. Meg didn’t know what had driven Kirk to enlist. She knew only that he believed in what he was doing, and his belief was all she had needed to stand at his side.

The bench scraped across the floor as she moved back. The reverend stopped speaking and snapped his head around to stare at her. Meg took a deep shaky breath, gave him a tremulous smile, and rose from the hardwood bench.

If possible, the congregation became quieter, and she felt their silence wrap around her like a heavy suffocating shroud. Her legs trembled and her knees felt as though they’d turned into the sandy bottom of the swimming hole in which she swam at midnight.

Skirting the bench, she somehow managed to descend the stairs without tripping. Each step she took echoed off the rafters and vibrated against the stained-glass windows as she walked down the center aisle. She halted beside the last pew, and she could have sworn she heard necks pop as people strained to see what she was doing.

Clay stared at a knothole on the back of the bench in front of him.

“I’d be honored to sit with you,” Meg said in a voice that rang through the building.

The brown depths of his eyes pleaded with her as eloquently as his words. “Don’t,” he rasped with raw emotion. “Don’t do this, Meg. Not here. Not now.”

“I said those same words to you once. I was wrong to say them then. You’re wrong to say them now. I love you, Clayton Holland.”

Gasps sounded, hymnals thudded to the floor, groans, moans, and sighs rose from the crowd like a psalm thrown toward the heavens.

Clay sprang to his feet. “You’re grieving today. You don’t know what you’re saying.” He strode past her to the door.

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” she called out, but he closed the door on her final words. She rushed through the door after him, with the disbelief of the congregation echoing in her ears.

She staggered across the porch as someone pushed past her. She glanced over her shoulder. “Daniel!”

“I’ll take care of it, Meg!” he called as he stalked toward the waiting wagons.

Meg felt a moment of panic and then relaxed. They never brought rifles or guns with them to church. Clay was striding toward the muddy road that went past the church and through the center of town.

Meg stepped off the porch. With a force that caused her to bite her tongue, she found herself jerked back and held in her father’s ironclad grasp.

“What the hell is going on here, girl?” he bellowed as people gathered around them.

She twisted but couldn’t break free of her father’s hold.

“Meg, are you crazy?” Helen asked. “The town coward—”

“He’s not a coward.” Stretching her neck, she peered over her father’s shoulder to the road. She was afraid she’d see Daniel attacking Clay, but Daniel was nowhere in sight. Clay was trudging away … alone once again.

“Clay! You’ve never run away from anything in your life! Don’t run away from me now! Don’t run away from our love!”