Judith Stacy (10 page)

“Sure.” Brandon took a minute to stack some blocks beneath the tree and stretch a couple of boards across them, making a little bench. Jana settled herself on it, enjoying the play of Brandon’s muscles through his shirt, the close cut of his trousers. He was patient with
the boys, explaining how to read the rough blueprint, which tool to use for which job.

How nice it was to sit and watch. Brandon seldom stayed in one spot for long. Always going somewhere, doing something. Though lately, he seemed often to be wherever she was.

Brandon had come to so many of her luncheons that now Jana actually caught herself watching for him. He left flowers on her pillow so often that she was disappointed the few times she’d gone into her room and found none. How easily he’d become a routine part of her day.

Yet she couldn’t forget the faces at the windows, watching Brandon along with her. Leona Albright floated into her mind.

Brandon had asked if she’d been involved with anyone during their separation.

Perhaps she should have asked him the same question.

S
he simply couldn’t look at another wallpaper pattern.

Jana closed the sample book and gave it a push, sending it to the other end of the settee. Much still needed to be done to the bedchambers upstairs. She wanted to decide on a theme for each of the rooms, then select all the fabrics, paint and wallpaper at once, and have everything in place, ready to be installed. The construction crews were still busy working in the parlor and study downstairs, and she’d endured just about all of the commotion she could bear these past weeks. She wanted the workmen to descend on the bedchambers, complete the job quickly and leave.

All she had to do was make the decorating decisions. Jana sighed. Tonight, she didn’t want to decide on anything. Her thoughts—and her heart—were elsewhere.

Such as at the women’s refuge. Volunteering there
had taken more of her time than she’d anticipated. She’d thought of as but a way to fill her day. Yet now that she’d involved herself there and seen what a worthwhile cause it was, she couldn’t back away from it.

As a result, visits to her aunt’s suite at the Morgan Hotel had become rushed and brief. Some days she managed only a few minutes there. Aunt Maureen assured her she didn’t mind, that it was perfectly all right and everything was under control. But Jana couldn’t so easily ignore her responsibilities and commitment.

And at both places, the refuge and the Morgan, Brandon wasn’t far from her thoughts.

Over supper tonight, he’d talked with her about what had gone on at his office today. He even ate the meals Jana had insisted Mrs. Boone prepare, and he hadn’t complained at all about the work being done on the house. Twice this week he’d come home early to check with the gardeners on the landscaping she’d wanted done in the rear lawn.

It was all a stretch for him, sometimes—she could see that. But he kept at it, kept trying to make her happy.

If only she could believe this was a permanent change, not just the temporary measures he knew were needed to get her to stay.

Jana rose from the settee intending to go up to her room. Brandon had disappeared right after supper and she’d told herself that she should be glad, but instead she’d found herself wondering where he was, what he was doing. The idea of another evening alone in her
room held no appeal. Perhaps she could find Brandon, see what he was up to…just this once.

The size of the house would have required a lengthy search to find him, but since only a few of the rooms were liveable her quest would be simpler if she chose to hunt him down. Instead, she asked Charles. Somehow, the butler always knew where everyone and everything was at every conceivable time of the day or night.

Jana climbed the stairs to the second floor, past the bedchambers, down another hallway to a door that stood open. She gazed up the narrow staircase and saw faint light shining at the top. The attic. She’d never been up there, not even during the first three months she’d lived in the house.

Before, she’d thought nothing of it. Now it seemed odd that she hadn’t bothered to investigate every inch of her home.

She gathered her skirt and climbed the stairs. The attic occupied about half the space of the house’s third floor; the servants’ quarters took up the other half, accessed by a different staircase that led directly to the kitchen. The wide-open space contained the usual clutter of boxes and travel trunks; light fixtures dangled from the high ceiling. Tonight, the windows on all three sides of the room stood open, allowing the evening breeze to cool the space.

A space that seemed to shrink before Jana’s eyes when she saw Brandon in the far corner.

He still wore his business suit, but his jacket and
necktie were off and his sleeves were rolled back. He stood over a worktable frowning down at something, surrounded by pieces of lumber and all sorts of tools. The sweet scent of sawdust hung in the air.

He appeared so deep in thought that Jana wondered if perhaps she should slip away, leave him to his work. But he looked up suddenly and turned to her.

Jana’s heart warmed a little. Could he somehow sense her presence, as she could his?

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said, lingering near the top of the staircase.

“No, it’s fine,” he said, waving her over, seemingly genuinely pleased to see her. “Come in.”

Jana crossed the room and stood next to him. As always when he was this close, an intimate awareness came to her. How tall he was. His straight shoulders, long legs. Big hands. Strength and muscles. And all of that power exquisitely tempered when he held her hand, assisted her into a carriage, touched her elbow. Gentleness, just for her.

Something changed about Brandon the minute she stopped next to him. Jana sensed it immediately. His shoulders straightened and his chest expanded. A new, different sort of heat wafted from him.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, gesturing to the workbench, pretending not to notice the changes in him, or her reaction to them.

“Designing a trapdoor,” Brandon said, nodding toward the diagram on the worktable. “The boys want a trapdoor in the tree house.”

“The boys at the refuge?” Jana asked. She smiled. “It’s really very good of you to take on this project. You’ve created quite a stir there, you know.”

He frowned. “With the boys?”

“With their mothers.”

Brandon rolled his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” Jana told him. “I’ll protect your honor.”

He smiled, then shook his head. “Are women always looking for a husband?”

“Usually. It’s the goal of every mother to have her daughter marry well,” Jana said. “Though not every daughter wants that. Beth’s young cousin Audrey seems to be one of the new, modern women.”

Brandon shrugged. “That makes her a little out of step with everyone else, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but it seems to suit her,” Jana said. “I think Oliver Fisk has a terrible crush on her. I’m not sure how he’ll feel when he learns that Audrey believes there’s more to life than being a wife.”

Brandon gazed down at her. “Is that how you felt?”

The question startled Jana. For a moment, she hesitated. Several months into their separation the answer to that very question had come to her. She wasn’t proud of it.

But Brandon deserved to hear it.

“I was in love with the idea of being a bride,” Jana said. “I didn’t stop to realize that, afterwards, I’d be a wife.”

Brandon continued to look at her, and she couldn’t tell if her words had hurt him, or confirmed what he already knew.

“My lack of vision created a great hardship on you,” Jana said softly. “I’m sorry.”

Brandon looked away. “I wasn’t much of a husband either. I thought I could go about my life, same as always, and you’d do whatever it was women did all day.”

He turned to her once more. “I’m sorry.”

“I like you better now,” she offered.

“I’m much more likable now,” he said, a little grin pulling at his lips.

“And you’ve become quite a poet,” she added, smiling along with him.

Brandon snorted. “Luckily, I’m better at building things than writing poetry. Otherwise, this tree house would collapse, and what would all the mothers think of me then?”

“I think they would all still appreciate what you’re doing for the boys. Many of them haven’t had a strong male figure in their lives,” Jana said.

He pointed to several pieces of wood cut in odd shapes stacked on the end of the workbench. “These are for the younger boys, the ones too little to help with the tree house. All they have to do is nail them together.”

“What is it?” Jana asked, tilting her head.

“A birdhouse.” Brandon fitted a few of the pieces together, holding them with his fingers. “Walls, floor, roof. See?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Jana said. She shook her head. “I had no idea. Where did you learn to do all of this? From your own father?”

Brandon let the wood fall to the table. He turned away and began sorting through a small bin of nails. “Are you going to the refuge tomorrow?”

“Did I say the wrong thing, asking about your father?”

He kept digging in the bin, his back to her.

“Brandon?” Jana touched his arm. She knew his father—and his mother—were dead; Aunt Maureen had learned that from the private detective she’d hired to investigate Brandon’s past shortly after he’d asked to court Jana.

Yet Jana hadn’t known the mention of either of them would be so painful for Brandon. She mentally berated herself for her thoughtlessness. And for not knowing this about her husband. After all the time they’d courted and been married, living under the same roof, sharing a bed, and she had no idea.

She’d been a terrible wife. And still was.

“I’m sorry,” Jana said softly, apologizing to him for the second time this evening. “I didn’t realize the memory was so painful. I wouldn’t have brought it up, if I’d known. I’m truly sorry, Brandon.”

Another moment passed and finally he looked back at her. His expression was like nothing she’d ever witnessed. Angry? Hurt? Annoyed? She wasn’t sure.

Brandon drew in a breath, as if pulling up his courage—or, perhaps, forcing down his emotions.

“My father died when I was a child,” he said softly. Then he cleared his voice and pushed on, forcing a little more strength into his voice. “I never knew the man.
My mother and I lived in Europe until I was about ten years old.”

When his mother died, Jana knew from the private detective’s report that Brandon had been raised by his grandfather, Winston Delaney, owner of New York’s largest shipyard, several shipping lines, and most everything else in that state.

Jana gazed up at Brandon, saw the pain in his expression that the memory had brought on. She pressed her palm to his cheek and he turned into her caress, closing his eyes for a few seconds.

Yet that wasn’t enough. Jana rose on her toes to loop her arms around his neck, wanting nothing more than to comfort him, ease his suffering, make things better for him.

Brandon held back, then circled her waist and drew her near, burying his face against her neck. They clung together for a long time, then Brandon lifted his head. As they gazed into each other’s eyes, another long moment passed. Then he kissed her.

Softly, he touched his lips to hers, blending their mouths together. Jana gasped at the delight of it. Brandon moaned low in his throat. He deepened the kiss, and she let him, parting her lips and welcoming the familiarity that their time apart hadn’t erased.

He pulled her closer, full against him. Jana dug her fingers into his hair. Their kiss grew hotter. His thigh snuggled against her intimately and she felt the hard length of him through her skirt. His palm cupped her
breast. She gasped. He groaned and leaned her back over the workbench. Jana looped her leg around his, keeping him close.

He lifted his head, passion burning in his eyes. “You…you told me you didn’t want us to…”

“I don’t,” she said, then pulled his head down again.

He gave her a searing kiss, then raised up once more. “Then we should…stop.”

His hot breath puffed against her mouth. Her heart raced. “Yes…yes, let’s stop.”

“All right.” Brandon devoured her lips once more. She let him. Jana kissed him back, welcoming his touch, his warmth, the intimacy she’d done without for so long.

Brandon pulled his lips from hers and gazed into her eyes. She slid her palm to his chest and felt his heart pounding. Then he eased away, standing upright, drawing her up with him, off of the workbench.

Yet he didn’t release her completely. He held her in his arms, but not so close that they touched. Full contact between them would bring on an outpouring of emotion that would end only one way. Jana knew it. The look on Brandon’s face told her that he knew the same.

He backed away, letting the cool breeze swirl between them. Jana straightened her blouse and smoothed her skirt. Without another word, they left the attic. Brandon stopped at the door to his bedchamber and she walked on to hers. With her hand on the knob, she looked back down the hallway at him.

Go to him? If she did, Jana knew she could never
leave his side—let alone this house. She turned away and went into her room, closing the door soundly behind her.

Brandon stared at the empty space she’d just occupied, the thud of the closing door still ringing in his ears. He grumbled under his breath and pushed into his own room.

Fine thing. Acting the gentleman, dropping by luncheons, eating at places like that ridiculous Peacock Tea Room, writing poetry, sending flowers—and here he was still hard and achy and going to bed alone.

Brandon stalked across the room, dropped his suspenders and yanked off his shirt. He stopped at the window and pulled his undershirt over his head, then sent it flying across the room.

Fine thing. Hard and achy and going to bed alone while his wife—
his wife
—slept only yards away.

Cool air drifted through the open window causing his hot skin to tingle. He braced his arm against the casing and gazed into the moonlit yard.

He’d done everything he knew to court Jana. Wracked his brain for poems, left flowers, brought gifts, eaten strange meals, let her turn the house upside down, asked about her plans for the day, told her about his. Yet none of it seemed to help their situation.

And, certainly, none of it had gotten him into her bed. He was nearly at his wits’ end. He didn’t know what else he could do to make her happy.

Oh, she was pleasant enough. Friendly, kind, but still distant.

The memory of their first three months of marriage sprang into Brandon’s mind. The ache deepened at the recollection.

He and Jana had made love so easily. They fit together perfectly, mind and body. As a new bride, she hadn’t minded his gentle direction, his suggestions. She’d whispered to him things that she enjoyed, things she wanted to do.

Yet their lovemaking hadn’t ended there. They cuddled all night. In the mornings when Brandon had to leave for work, he couldn’t get out of the bed for her reaching out to him. Not always to make love again, but just to touch him. To rub his back. To feel his chest. She let him caress her.

More often than not, Jana asked him to stay. Not to go to work that day but to crawl back in bed with her. He always gave her a tender kiss and left anyway.