Page 49 of Daredevil Lady and the Mysterious Millionaire (The Hidden Hearts Collection #3)
As he set the lamp down on the bedside table, she asked, “Is anything wrong?”
“No, I just needed to look at you.” The longing in his eyes told her that he needed far more than that. “I have been pacing my own room, trying not to come and disturb you, knowing how exhausted you must be.”
At one time she had thought she was, but that feeling seemed to have disappeared. She extended her hand to him, drawing him down to sit beside her on the edge of the bed.
He smiled suddenly, and Rory realized that he had noticed that she was wearing one of his nightshirts, the cotton gaping open at the neckline.
“Funny. It looks much better on you,” he murmured, tracing the column of her throat with his fingertips, moving down to caress the swell of her breast, setting her skin a-tingle.
In spite of the delicious sensations he was rousing in her, she couldn’t help asking, “Is your friend gone?”
“Friend?” He gave a puzzled frown, then grimace as he realized whom she meant. “Yes, a long time ago, thank God.”
She heard nothing but relief in his voice. All the same she was beset by a stirring of apprehension, almost jealousy.
“Mrs. Van H. looked very beautiful tonight.” She fingered one of the wild tangles of her own hair. “Very different from me.”
“The difference between winter and spring,” Zeke said.
“I suppose I am much younger and unsophisticated,” she said.
“And you always will be, even when you are eighty years old.” Zeke caressed her cheek. “Just as fresh as an April morning. I don’t ever want you to change from what you are, Rory. Always be springtime for me.”
She thought she would be anything he wanted when he looked at her that way. He leaned forward, grazing her lips with the warmth of his own. He pulled her into his arm and she was content to lose everything, all her doubts, even her very self, in his loving.
When she lay naked in his embrace, there seemed no room for any qualms, any questionings between them.
Their loving was just as wondrous as the previous night, their bodies melding together in a passionate flame.
No matter how soul-weary she might be, his kiss, his touch seemed to gift her with a sensation of renewal.
Nothing else in the world mattered but Zeke, the way he could make her feel.
It was only when she lay spent, curled up beside him, her head tucked in the lee of his shoulder, that Rory felt the lack of that afterglow of complete satisfaction.
She tried to tell herself that perhaps the difference was in this museum piece of a bedchamber; not near as cozy as the one in Annie’s cottage.
All their whispered intimacies seemed to echo off that vault of a ceiling.
But maybe it had more to do with Zeke, holding her almost too tight, making plans for their marriage. After typical Zeke fashion, he was telling, not asking. He seemed to have forgotten she’d never given him an answer.
Rory listened uncomfortably as he detailed how she could spend any amount she desired redecorating the mansion.
When he came to their wedding trip, outlining a whirlwind tour of Europe, she felt she had to stop him, interjecting, “It would be difficult for me to be gone that long, with my company on such shaky ground.”
She felt Zeke tense, but all he said was, “Oh, we’ll find something to do about the warehouse.”
The warehouse— it was a cold way to refer to the business that to Rory was a rainbow array of silks, gusts of warm wind, the visions of both her father and herself.
Zeke’s answer disturbed her but he showed no more inclination to talk.
His eyes closed, and in a few moments more Rory thought he had fallen asleep.
She wished she could do the same, but the warmth that Zeke’s loving had aroused seemed to have fled, leaving her to the cold comfort of all her doubts again.
Wriggling away from Zeke, she slipped out of bed and scrambled back into the nightshirt.
She ran her tongue over lips that seemed parched and made her way to the bathroom for a glass of water.
Although the lamp had been left burning, that portion of the vast bedchamber was lost in shadow.
Rory groped toward what she thought was the bathroom door.
But as she turned the handle and shoved it open, she perceived no gleam of porcelain, no looming shape of that mammoth bathtub.
She thought she had blundered into a large closet, but her eyes adjusted enough to the darkness to tell that she had stepped into a small sitting room of some kind, a place that she sensed was very unlike the rest of the house.
She should have retreated, but the stirring of her curiosity was too strong. Retrieving the lamp, she carried it into the room. The light spilled off a dainty pattern of floral wallpaper, a braided rug covering a hardwood floor.
The furnishings were few. A small table bore some gilt-framed photographs and a lace tidy that was a little crooked, as though fashioned by childish hands. Next to the table stood a wooden rocker, much scarred with age. It emitted a most comforting creak when Rory touched it.
Setting down the lamp on the table, Rory directed her attention to the photographs.
The smallest was of a plump woman garbed in her Sunday best, a suit of stiff black silk, looking not quite at ease dressed thus or peering into the lens of the camera.
Yet not even the stilted pose could erase the love and patience etched into that careworn face.
Rory had no doubt she was gazing into the eyes of Zeke’s foster mother, Sadie Marceone.
Next to her photograph rested an oval frame encircling three young girls in pink gingham dresses with white yokes, the children similar in their dark curls, but their expressions so different.
The littlest one who was so bright-eyed, that had to be Zeke’s youngest sister, Agnes, while the tallest one with her sweet, placid features must be Caddie.
And of course, there was no mistaking the prim girl that was Tessa.
Rory moved to the last picture, obviously one of Caddie grown, a handsome man at her side, three children tucked about her skirts.
After Rory had studied it, she replaced the picture. She cast an uneasy glance about the room, feeling she had strayed into a part of Zeke Morrison’s heart not even she had been invited to enter. Reaching for the lamp, Rory prepared to retreat, but it was already too late.
She found Zeke blocking the doorway, watching her. She feared he might be angry at her prying.
“I am sorry,” she began. “I never meant to?—”
“It’s all right.” His voice was a little abrupt as he cut off her explanation. But far from demanding she leave the room at once, he stepped across the threshold himself.
“It’s not exactly as though you stumbled upon some kind of skeleton in my closet.”
No, Rory thought, only that part of his memories that rendered him vulnerable, that part of himself he tried like death to hide.
He stepped over to the rocker, running his hand along the back.
“These are only a few odds and ends I didn’t know what else to do with.
The rocker was Sadie’s. I went by the old flat after Tessa had moved out.
She was throwing this away, just because the arm was broken.
It seemed so wasteful. So I carted it back here and mended it. ”
“And the pictures?” Rory asked softly.
“I never seem to be able to get rid of anything.” He added almost defiantly, “Besides they are good pictures, good likenesses.”
He hid his face from her as he straightened the photographs, smoothing out the tidy as well, his large callused fingers snagging on the delicate lace. The awkward workmanship was obviously not that of his mother.
“Did your youngest sister make that?” Rory asked.
“No, Tessa gave it to me.”
“Tessa?” Rory echoed in astonishment.
Zeke gave a grudging laugh. “Yeah, I know. It surprised me too. I always thought Tessa more apt to give me the business end of a knife. But the tidy was a present for my sixteenth birthday to decorate the washstand in my room. Tessa said that Sadie told her she had to give me something. So she wrapped this up in tissue paper and practically bounced it off my head.”
Despite Zeke’s tone of wry amusement, Rory obtained a new insight regarding his relationship with the sister who seemed so to despise him.
Maybe Tessa had to give him a present, but she hadn’t had to labor such long hours over the tatting, a task which had obviously been difficult for her.
Nor did Zeke have to keep it all these years.
As he stood gazing at the pictures, there was a taut set to his mouth, but a wistfulness in his eyes.
“You don’t have any contact with your family now?” Rory asked.
“I send presents at Christmas, birthdays, especially to Caddie’s children.”
A smile escaped Rory. So Zeke really did have a niece.
He continued, “I always wanted to help all my sisters, would’ve settled any amount of money on them. But they never would take it.”
“Maybe they would far rather have a visit from you than the money.”
Zeke shrugged. “Tessa’s anger makes that difficult. It would put Caddie and Agnes in an awkward position, forcing them to choose sides. It just wouldn’t be worth it.”
Rory didn’t agree with him, but she merely remarked, “These are splendid pictures. It seems too bad to keep them hidden in here. Are you that ashamed of them?”
“No, only of myself.” He straightened abruptly. “You had best get back to bed, Rory, before you get cold.”
She could tell he wanted her out of that room, wanted to leave himself. She complied sadly, watching him pull the door closed. Zeke was shutting away too much of his life, but it was not something he was willing to discuss, even with her.
She sensed his retreat from her, even before he brushed a kiss on her brow. “You’d best get some sleep while I go back to the guest room and do the same. I have a few details to clear up in the morning regarding the business with Addison.”
Rory regarded him anxiously. “I thought you said that was all over.”
“So it is, but before we can get on with planning our wedding, I have a funeral to attend.”