The Widow and the Wastrel (8 page)

"Of course." Allan didn't seem perturbed by her sudden desire to end the conversation. "I'll see you Sunday."

"Yes, Sunday," she agreed quickly. "Goodbye, Allan."

She was already replacing the receiver as Allan's goodbye echoed into the room. There was an instant's hesitation as she considered commenting on Jed's bad manners at listening in before deciding such a comment would only lead to an arrogantly mocking reply.

"Dinner will be on the table in a few minutes," Elizabeth stated, turning away from him as she spoke.

"There's no need to hurry on my account," Jed responded calmly.

Clamping her mouth shut, she refused to be baited into replying and walked swiftly from the room. He might not have felt the need for haste, but Elizabeth did. She wanted to get the meal over with as quickly as possible. A little voice told her that she was becoming much too conscious of him and she would be very foolish if she let him disturb the even tenor of her life.

In the middle of the meal, Elizabeth remembered that she hadn't told Rebecca of Allan Marsden's invitation. She disliked bringing it up in front of Jed, but she knew her mother-in-law had a church meeting that evening and would be leaving directly after dinner.

"Amy and I will be out this Sunday afternoon, Rebecca," she said with false casualness. "We've been invited—"

"Oh, are we going to the farm with Uncle Jed?" Amy burst in excitedly.

"What farm is this?" Rebecca demanded, her dark eyes centering immediately on Elizabeth, her interest not nearly as vague as it was a moment ago.

Darting a poisonous look at Jed, who appeared immune to its sting, she replied firmly, "We aren't going to a farm. Amy and I have been invited on a picnic by Allan Marsden on Sunday."

Amy frowned across the table, disappointment starting to cloud her face. "Aren't we going to the farm?"

If it hadn't been for the distinct impression that Jed was deriving some sort of amused satisfaction from all this, Elizabeth's response would have been gentler.

"I just told you, Amy, that we're going for a picnic with Mr. Marsden."

"What is all this nonsense about a farm?" Rebecca inserted, looking pointedly at her son.

"I've been invited to have Sunday dinner with the Reisners." He nonchalantly buttered a hot crescent roll. "Kurt suggested that perhaps Elizabeth might like to join us and bring Amy, but of course, she had a previous invitation from Mr. Marsden and had to decline."

"I see," was his mother's clipped response.

"But I wanted to go to the farm," Amy declared with a defiantly pleading look.

"Well, I'm sorry, but we're going on the picnic." Even as she spoke, Elizabeth knew she was being insensitively cold to her daughter. She should be quietly explaining that they could go to the farm another time instead of making a coldly worded order. It was Jed's fault.

"I don't want to go on your stupid old picnic. The silverware in her daughter's hand was discarded angrily on to her plate, clanging loudly in accompaniment to her mutinous expression. "I want to go to the farm and see the animals. I don't want to go with you!"

"That will be enough, Amy," Elizabeth warned with firm softness.

"Maybe you can go another time," Jed inserted, a warm persuasive smile turning up the corners of his mouth.

"I never get to do what I want." Her lower lip jutted out in a self-pitying pout, as Amy flashed a resentful glance at Elizabeth. "I always have to do what she wants!"

Elizabeth was angered that Jed should attempt to quiet her daughter's temper. If he had not mentioned the invitation to the farm to Amy in the first place, none of this arguing would have occurred. Wrongly she directed this anger at Amy instead of the man at her right who deserved it.

"You will stop this sarcasm at once, Amy," she ordered.

"I don't want to go on that picnic!" Tears began filling the brown eyes of her daughter.

"I think you'd better go to your room, Amy," Elizabeth tried to speak calmly and control her own growing temper. "When you can behave correctly at the table, you may return."

"No, I will not go to my room!" The stiffly held back tears made Amy's voice tremble.

Although Jed might have been the instigator of the quarrel, Elizabeth recognized that she had handled it very badly. Sending Amy to her room was probably unfair punishment, but the open rebellion of her daughter at the order made it imperative that she carry it out, regardless of the knife of remorse that stabbed her heart.

Flashing Jed a speaking glance, Elizabeth rose from her chair and walked round to the opposite side of the table where Amy sat. With a downcast chin, Amy pushed her own chair away from the table. A tear slid down a round cheek as Amy refused to look at her mother, letting her sense of injustice be known.

"Come along, Amy," Elizabeth said quietly. She touched the girl's shoulder with her hand and immediately Amy pulled away to walk rigidly toward the hall.

As Elizabeth turned to follow, she looked fully into Jed's bland expression. "It's not her fault, Liza," he said.

"I'm perfectly aware of that," she snapped. "You had no right to even mention the invitation to the farm without consulting me first. If anyone's to blamer it's you!"

Her long legs moved to follow her daughter's dragging steps. Once she was free of Jed's presence, she would explain to Amy why they were going on the picnic instead of to the farm. She would do so with the patience and understanding she should have exhibited in the first place. Yet there was the nagging memory that she had seized on Allan's invitation in order to have a plausible reason for refusing Jed's.

The large, patterned area rug cushioned the sound of the chair being pushed from the table. Not until a hand grabbed hold of Elizabeth's wrist to halt her forward movement did she realize that Jed had followed her. Her hair swirled about her face in an ebony cascade of curls as her head swung around to face him. His eyes had narrowed on to her expression of astonished outrage before they flickered briefly to Amy, who had paused to listen near the stairwell.

"Go on up to your room, Amy," Jed said firmly, but without anger or an ordering tone. "I want to have a little discussion with your mother."

Amy hesitated, then the stairway door opened and closed. Next there was the sound of her footsteps slowly carrying her up the stairs.

"I don't see that we have anything to discuss," Elizabeth said tautly, tossing her head back to glare into his lean, carved features.

"But I do," he answered in the same firm voice that he had used with Amy.

"Perhaps we do," she agreed suddenly with a haughty lift of her chin. She didn't attempt to pull free of his hand. The iron grip of his fingers already told her it would be useless. "I'd like to hear your explanation. After I'd already turned down the invitation I think you were terribly cruel to mention it to Amy and try to use her to persuade me to change my mind."

"In the first place, I didn't tell Amy about the invitation," Jed answered curtly.

"Do you expect me to believe that?" Elizabeth demanded. "I hadn't even mentioned to her that we were going on the picnic Sunday, let alone tell her that we’d turned down your invitation. There's no one else who could have told her about it, except you!"

His mouth thinned dangerously narrow. "The only conversation I had with your daughter concerned my whereabouts this morning. I did tell her I'd been at the Reisners' farm."

"And that you were invited on Sunday and so were we," she inserted.

"I did tell her that I was going there on Sunday," he admitted tightly, "but I didn't mention that you were invited. Or that you'd made other plans for the day."

"Then where did she get the idea that we might visit the farm?" Elizabeth asked with cold disbelief.

"As I recall," amber lights were flashing warning signals in his eyes, "Amy asked if she might go over some time to see the puppies I had told her about. I said she would have to ask you."

"That's a likely story," she scoffed contemptuously. "Why can't you admit that you were trying to prejudice her into influencing me?"

"Because I don't care whether you ever go to the Reisners' or not," Jed snapped. "I merely extended Kurt's invitation. If I wanted you to change your mind—there are other means of accomplishing it without involving a child."

"Then why did you bring the farm up with Amy at all?" Elizabeth continued to protest angrily. "Were you jealous of the fact that we have a warm relationship? Did you want to make it as miserable and bitter as the one between you and your mother?"

"I don't give a damn what you think!" He released her wrist abruptly, glowering fury in his face. "If you want to paint me black, then go ahead! The only opinion that matters to me is my own."

In the next second he was striding away and Elizabeth was staring after him in open-mouthed and angry amazement. He disappeared into the front hallway. Then the front door slammed with resounding violence.

"Elizabeth!" Rebecca Carrel's voice called to her imperiously from the dining room. "Was that Jed who just stormed out of the door?"

"Yes," she acknowledged, her voice trembling in indignation that he should have walked out on her like that.

"You might as well come back in here and finish your meal," her mother-in-law ordered.

Elizabeth glanced to the dining room archway, then toward the stairway and the room at the top where Amy was waiting. She forced herself to swallow back the tight knot of anger.

"In a moment, Rebecca," she said in a more controlled tone. "I want to have a talk with Amy first."

"I think it would be best if you left her alone for a while. It will give her an opportunity to consider how unforgivably rude and cheeky she was. An apology is definitely in order after her ill-mannered behavior at the table." There was a light pause before Rebecca added in a bitter tone, "I don't see why she doesn't take after her father."

Instead of Jed her uncle, Elizabeth finished for the older woman. Yes, Amy's aggressively independent nature was more indicative of Jed than Jeremy. Amy was never satisfied that things were to be done in a certain way because that was proper or expected.

Breathing in deeply, she walked toward the steps. In the back of her mind, she knew that when she had explained to Amy why they were going on the picnic, she was going to find out exactly what Jed had told her about the farm. She couldn't believe that her daughter-might think they would go to the farm only on the strength of what Jed had indicated that he had told her. As soon as Amy had given her the proof she needed, she intended to confront Jed with it.

The outcome of her discussion with Amy did not produce the satisfying results that Elizabeth had anticipated. She had been forced to accept the fact that Jed had told the truth. It had been Amy's imagination that made her leap to the conclusion that they were going to the farm. It was a fairly logical deduction, Elizabeth had decided silently, since it was the farm that was uppermost in Amy's mind.

As for the picnic, her daughter's lack of enthusiasm at the prospect didn't improve after their talk. She had grudgingly agreed to go, but had refused to return to the dinner table. The sulky droop to her mouth had remained despite Elizabeth's lighthearted cajoling, a portent of things to come.

Amy's boredom on the picnic couldn't have been expressed more plainly if she had spent the entire afternoon sitting on the blanket and yawning. Elizabeth had been too self-conscious and irritated by her rudeness to react naturally. The responses she made to Allan's attempts to lighten the atmosphere were stilted and false, increasing the discomfort that saturated each moment of the outing. Her embarrassment had increased when Allan had suggested they call it a day at four o'clock, a scant two hours since it had begun.

To make matters worse, Amy had mumbled an ungracious 'thank you' and bolted from the car the minute Allan stopped it in front of their house. Elizabeth had stared after her for a full minute before turning to Allan, the wryly twisting line of his mouth marking his expression.

"I must apologize for my daughter," she murmured self-consciously. "Her behavior today was unforgivable. She really isn't usually this sulky and—"

"You don't need to explain," Allan smiled understandingly, taking one of the hands that were twisted together in her lap and holding it in his own. "Children tend to be a bit selfish about their parents, especially if they have only one."

"It wasn't jealousy." Elizabeth shifted uncomfortably. "I took my anger with someone else out on her the other day, and she hasn't forgiven me for it."

"I can't imagine you being angry. You're much too beautiful." The smooth compliment sprang easily from his lips.

"I am human," she smiled nervously to shrug it aside.

"That's encouraging." His gaze swept over her wind-touseled hair, curling jet black against her lightly tanned skin, then it returned to the jade greenness of her eyes. Leaning forward, Allan pressed a warm, lingering kiss against the roundness of her lips. "I'll see you at the dinner if not before."

When he straightened away from her, Elizabeth reached for the door handle, then paused with the door partially ajar. "Thank you, Allan, for—for everything," she offered in gratitude for his understanding.