A Week From Sunday (7 page)

“Do you have a library in town?” Adrianna asked Jesse, ignoring Quinn.

“Yeah,” the boy said grudgingly.

“I’ll have to visit and get some books.”

“When are you going to have time to read?” Quinn murmured. “Don’t forget you’re going to play the piano at the Whipsaw two nights a week.”

Adrianna was surprised to see a grin flirt with the corners of Jesse’s mouth. When he spoke, it was just above a whisper.

“I’d like to see that.”

“Did you say you’d like to come hear me play?” Adrianna asked.

“Quinn won’t let me go in there.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s not old enough,” Quinn said as he dropped the magazine on the bed.

Jesse snorted. “You went in taverns when you were sixteen.”

“It wasn’t a tavern. It was a pool hall.”

“Same thing.”

Lola came to the door and announced, “Supper’s on the table.”

“I’m eating in here tonight,” Jesse said, looking defiantly at his brother.

“No, you’re not. You’re coming to the table.”

Adrianna said as she got up from the chair, “I don’t think it would be much fun to eat in here by yourself.”

“What do you know about it?” Jesse said belligerently.

“Jesse, don’t be ornery,” Quinn cautioned.

“I just asked a question,” the boy said defensively.

“That’s all right,” Adrianna said. “I’ll answer. No, I don’t know. But I know how it was for my mother who had to eat in her room when she wanted so badly to come down and eat with me and my father.” Adrianna went to the door. “I’ll see you later, Jesse.”

“You’ll see him now because he’s coming to the table.” Quinn grabbed the wheelchair and pulled it up beside the bed. “Come on, kid. You’re getting out of there.”

“I should at least be able to say where I’m going to eat,” Jesse grumbled.

“When I’m here, Jesse, you eat at the table. You know that.”

Quinn picked up a pair of pants and threw the covers off Jesse’s legs. He lifted the boy’s thin, bare legs, swung them off the bed, and knelt down to shove first one foot and then the other into the legs of the pants.

“Where are your shoes?”

“Ask that bitchy cow that stands guard over me all day.”

“Watch your mouth.”

Adrianna turned and went into the hallway. She could hear Jesse complaining and Quinn’s voice, quiet for once, talking to him. Moments later, he was pushing Jesse out the doorway and down the hall toward the bathroom. She headed for the kitchen where she heard the rattle of pans.

“Can I help?”

“No,” Lola answered sharply. She ignored Adrianna, continuing to dish up the food. Moments later she brushed past Adrianna and carried two bowls to the dining room table.

“Are you sure I can’t help you with something?”

Lola’s head spun around. The annoyed look on her face made Adrianna wish she hadn’t offered. She heard Jesse and Quinn coming down the hall as Lola brushed past her to go back into the kitchen.

Quinn pushed Jesse to the table. Adrianna noticed that Jesse’s hair was damp and smoothed back from his forehead and his shirt was buttoned; Quinn had made an attempt to make his brother presentable.

“Sit down, Annie.” Quinn pulled out a chair.

“I should help . . .”

Lola, who was coming into the dining room, said sweetly, “I don’t need her help.” She placed a loaf of bread still in its store wrapper within Quinn’s reach. “I’ve been doing things around here for a long time by myself.”

Adrianna looked at the soiled oilcloth on the table and wondered if the dishes were clean
.

Lola smiled graciously at Jesse and Quinn before seating herself at the opposite end of the table facing Quinn; it was as if she were the lady of the house.

Sitting across the table from Jesse, Adrianna watched the boy and wished that he would smile.

Lifting a spoonful of potatoes, Lola put them on Jesse’s plate.

“I’m not a baby. I can help myself.”

“I know you can.” She smiled sweetly. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my arms and my hands. Next you’ll be trying to feed me . . . when Quinn’s around.”

Lola’s face turned a dull red and she clamped her lips shut.

Quinn helped himself to the turnip greens before passing them to Adrianna. She took a small helping, then set the bowl on the table.

“Bread?” Quinn asked Jesse.

“I can reach it.”

“Quinn?” Lola said when their plates were full. “Will you help me turn over Jesse’s mattress after dinner?”

“Didn’t we do that last week?”

“Oh yeah, I guess we did. I’m sorry, I forgot,” she said and smiled at Quinn.

Adrianna heard a small disgusted sound come from Jesse. She glanced at him and found him looking straight into her eyes, then to her surprise his eyelid dropped and he winked. She didn’t understand what he meant, unless he was letting her know that Lola had her eyes on Quinn.

Lola kept up a lively conversation with Quinn, talking about people they both knew, giving Adrianna no chance to join the conversation, not that she wanted to; she was too busy gathering her impressions of this strange family she had been thrust into.

When the meal was over, Adrianna began taking the dishes from the table to the kitchen. Lola didn’t speak to her until Quinn and Jesse went out onto the front porch.

In the kitchen, Lola pointed to the dishpan. “You can wash.”

Not for anything would she tell Lola that she hadn’t washed dishes since she was ten years old. Back then Nettie, the family cook who had been with them since she was born, let her stand on a box and help. At the time, she thought it was great fun. No one scolded her because her dress was wet from neck to hem or because she had broken a cup.

After the dining room table had been cleared and Adrianna was elbow-deep in the dishwater, Lola suddenly left the kitchen. Adrianna heard her voice on the porch with Quinn and Jesse, but not clearly enough to understand what was being said.

Well if she thinks I can’t clean this kitchen, I’ll show her. I’ve watched our cook at home and she would be horrified at the mess here.

An hour later, Adrianna stood back. Her eyes swept over the kitchen. The dishes were washed, scalded, and dried. The stove was clean, as were the pots and pans. She took a soapy cloth to the oilcloth on the dining room table, then dried it with a towel. She found a broom on the back porch and swept the dining room and the kitchen. When she finished, she stood at the door leading to the porch. Lola was laughing at something Quinn said. Their voices reached her as she turned and went slowly up the stairs to her room. But when she heard her name, she turned back and listened. . . .

“Where is Adrianna?” Quinn asked.

“She said she was tired and went upstairs.”

“Did she help with the dishes?”

“Are you kidding?” Lola said with the toss of her head. “She thinks she’s above doing dishes.”

“We’ll see about that.” Quinn got up to push his brother’s chair. “Ready to go in now?”

“Why?” Jesse said irritably. “Are you wanting to get me back in the bed so you can leave?”

“I’ve got to go to the tavern. You know that.”

“Why did you put Cowboy in the shed?” he asked Lola.

“I always put the dog in the shed when the doctor is coming.”

“Well, the doctor didn’t come, so let him out.” Jesse demanded. “Miss Prissy Tail will just have to get used to him if she’s going to stay here.”

Adrianna slipped quietly up the stairs to her room.

Chapter 6

R
ICHARD
P
OPE RAN
his fingers absentmindedly over the baubles scattered across Adrianna’s bureau. He touched a perfume decanter, then a jeweled compact case, and finally a hand mirror, all of them left behind in their owner’s hurried flight. They, just like him, had been abandoned. While in this they shared a similarity, in one way they were spectacularly different—each of the accoutrements was cold to the touch, in great contrast to the rage that boiled in his chest.

“She was certainly in a hurry!”

All around him was near darkness. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights to her bedroom, preferring to let his eyes wander in the gloom. In what little light remained of the day, he could see open drawers, clothes in haphazard piles, and a discarded suitcase that lay half-hidden under the bed.

Jerking a pair of her silk panties out of a drawer, he held them to his face for a long moment, breathing in the scent, then opened the fly of his trousers and stuffed them inside. They felt so good against his maleness. It wasn’t the first time he had taken a pair of Adrianna’s panties. He sometimes carried a pair in his coat pocket; fondling them made him feel closer to her. He rubbed himself with her silken garment until his erection was stiff and throbbing. If she were here, he would be tempted to slap her for causing him to have to obtain satisfaction in this way.

At some point during the last seven days, Adrianna had decided to reject his offer of marriage. She had moved about this very room, deciding what to take and what to leave behind. What Richard now stood amongst was the unworthy and unwanted. It was the trash . . . and he had been left behind with it. With a hiss of air through clenched teeth, he turned and hurled the perfume decanter against the wall; the sound of it shattering was balm to his frustration.

It wasn’t supposed to have been this way!

He’d spent the week since Charles Moore’s funeral busily getting ready for their wedding. On top of the day-to-day operations of his law firm, he’d worked tirelessly preparing his home for his bride. He’d ordered the house to be cleaned from floor to ceiling. He wanted everything to be perfect when he brought her to her new home. Today was to have been a celebration. Today was to have been their wedding day!

Even now, as he stood in her bedroom, a priest was waiting for him and his bride-to-be. He’d invited only a select few guests, all men and women of substance. The food was ready. Champagne was chilling in the tubs of ice.
How will I explain it when I come back without her?
Some lie or other would have to suffice. The embarrassment would undoubtedly pass, but at that moment, its sting was like a knife in his gut.

As the sweet smell of perfume began to fill the bedroom, he paused and rubbed his crotch again with her silk panties, then left the room and descended the stairs.

When he’d let himself in, he had known immediately that something was wrong. He’d called out Adrianna’s name only to be met with silence. With each step up the stairs, the knot in the pit of his stomach had grown tighter. Even before he’d opened the door to her bedroom, before his hand had even touched the knob, he’d known that she wouldn’t be there.

In the end, the error had been his. He had assumed that Adrianna would be intelligent enough to see that his intentions were in her best interest; that assumption had been a great overestimation. She had been too naive to accept the simple truth that lay before her, but it was not all her fault. The coddling she had received from her father had spoiled her. She wasn’t capable of knowing what was best for her, namely to have Richard Pope for a husband.

But where had she gone? This was the question that truly needed answering.

Moving more deeply into the house, Richard found himself in the room in which he had declared his intentions to Adrianna. Turning on a pair of lights affixed to the wall, he could see her standing there in his mind’s eye, her luxurious hair piled high atop her porcelain face, the grief of her father’s recent passing mixing with the excitement that must have pulsed through her veins as he had spoken.

Why had he not taken her right then and there?

Even as he thought the question, he knew the answer: because he was a gentleman and such coarse behavior was not becoming to a man of his standing. He had not taken her; but if he had forced her, she would have been so shamed that she would have gladly married him, thinking that she had been ruined for any other man.

Opening a decanter, he poured himself a glass of brandy, which he drank in one large gulp. The amber liquid burned as it moved down to his stomach to mix with the bile and anger he was brewing on his own. He drank another glass quickly, before he had a chance to think better of it.

On the mantel above the fireplace was a photograph in a silver frame. He snatched it from its resting place and looked deeply into the image. In the picture, Adrianna stood slightly behind her sitting father, one hand placed upon the older man’s shoulder. As he stared at the image, he ran one finger across the young beauty’s face. She looked so very delicate, like a tender flower that needed constant care. Richard remembered the day the picture had been taken. He’d stood in the background, waiting behind the photographer.

“That’s always been my lot!”

From the moment he’d come into Charles Moore’s employ, all of the success that the bank had achieved had been because of him and him alone. As Charles’s illness had become increasingly debilitating, he’d removed himself from more and more responsibilities. Each and every one of those had then fallen to Richard. But was he allowed to claim the credit he had earned? Was he allowed to bask in the glow of his own success?
No!
He had to stand in the background, just as he had when this picture was taken. Well, no more! Never aga—