Morgan's Child (15 page)

Her arms fell to her sides and then flew to her face in an attempt to mask her embarrassment.

"I don't mean to interrupt," he said.

"I was just—well, um..." she said, at a loss for words. She turned down the volume on the radio and came and unhooked the door, holding it open for him. She looked so pretty with her face colored pink with embarrassment, and he wanted to tell her so, but she flitted to the other side of the room where she busied herself with something at the sink.

"You dance beautifully," he said, still charmed by her.

"Don't be silly, Morgan. I'm as big as a house."

"Do you always dance around the kitchen by yourself?"

She dried her hands on a towel and turned slowly. "I wasn't by myself exactly. I was dancing with the baby," she said.

"Oh. I see," Morgan said. He hadn't realized that the baby was so real to Kate.

"I mean, the baby can hear things, you know? Like the ocean and my voice and—well, I like to play rhythmic music for it, and waltz music seems to settle it down when it's too lively for my comfort. Okay, okay. I see that you're skeptical."

"It's a side of you I haven't seen before," he said.

"You thought I had no imagination?"

"One doesn't usually think of scientists as imaginative," he told her.

She laughed with only a trace of self-consciousness.

"It's a good thing you weren't around the summer when I was a sea gull," she said. "When I was eight, I thought the gulls looked as free and as happy as I wanted to be, so I turned into one. I held my arms out like wings and 'flew' everywhere I went, wheeling and dipping on the air currents. And when my parents talked to me, I refused to answer—I mewed like a gull."

"And they mewed back?" he asked, glad to have something to tease her about. He liked thinking of her as a little girl.

"Neither of my parents was inclined to play the game, so it drove them crazy. Finally they became concerned that I might try to fly off the top of the lighthouse or something equally stupid, so my father sent for a chemistry set and I became interested in science. After that I was never a gull again." She looked momentarily wistful.

"What a charming child you must have been," Morgan said, meaning it.

She was quick to disabuse him of that notion. "I was tall and gangly and always had scabby knees," she said. "I wasn't charming. I wasn't like a—"

"Like a what?" he asked, prodding gently.

"I was going to say that I wasn't like a Rhett. Not cute and clean in little cotton playsuits like Joanna's children. Like this baby will be. I'm glad you're going to take the baby, Morgan."

He cleared his throat. "Actually, there's a problem," he said.

She focused wide, unsuspecting eyes on him. "What kind of problem?" she asked.

He felt uncomfortable bringing up this topic, but he plunged ahead. "A problem with the contract you signed. It specifies that the baby must be adopted by a married couple."

"I don't remember that part," Kate said.

"I've read the contract. It's true," he said, and quickly he related Courtney's nocturnal visit and his call on Ted Wickes this morning.

"I didn't realize," Kate said in consternation. She sank into a kitchen chair, her face ash pale.

He sat down beside her. "Didn't you read the contract before you signed it?" he asked.

"I skimmed over it, but at the time all I could think about was my happiness at being able to bear a baby. I would have become a surrogate mother for Courtney even with no contract, so signing it was only a necessary formality." She stared at him with eyes in which he divined borderline panic.

His only thought was to calm her.

"Don't get upset," he said. "There's a way—"

"A way! What way? I thought this was all taken care of, I'd actually started to feel good about this pregnancy again, and now I find out that because of my own stupidity and shortsightedness, there's a major stumbling block." She stood up, and he grabbed her arm.

"Kate! Let's talk about this," he said.

She pulled away. "I don't want to talk. I want to think about it in private," she said.

"A lot of good that will do," he replied heatedly.

"Oh? And you have some other suggestion?" She glared at him, and he saw the slightest hint of moisture on her lower lids.

"Yes! We could get married!"

Suddenly it was very quiet in the house. The two of them stared at each other over a tremendous void.

Kate was the first to speak.

"You're joking," she said.

"I am not. It's the solution to the problem."

"You wouldn't marry me," she said.

"Under normal circumstances, perhaps not. These circumstances are anything but normal. I can't let this baby go to anyone but me."

Her laugh was bitter, and he said, "Kate."

"What do you want me to do?" she asked in a low tone.

"Say you'll think about it."

She turned away from him so he wouldn't see the anguished expression on her face.

"Can we at least talk about it?"

She let her shoulders rise and fall in a futile gesture. "We'd better, I suppose, but do we have to stay in the house? I could use some fresh air."

"We could walk on the beach if you'd like," he said.

"Okay," she said. He didn't like the look of defeat in her eyes.

When they had reached the deserted beach, he dared to slide an arm around her shoulders.

"Would it be so bad to be Mrs. Morgan Rhett?" he asked, smiling down at her.

"This has to be the all-time irony," she said. "I'm probably the one woman in the world who really doesn't want to be married."

"I never wanted to be married again, either," he said.

She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Why?" she asked.

"I thought once was enough."

"You loved Courtney at the beginning of your marriage, didn't you?"

"I believed I did at the time. I loved what I thought she was, I suppose. Later, when I found out what she was really like, I couldn't stand her. Which is why our marriage—yours and mine—might be successful. With you I know what I'm getting."

"Somebody who is cantankerous, crabby—"

"Cantankerous Kate, Crabby Kate, and also Courageous and Comely Kate," he said.

"Don't lather it on too thick, Morgan, or you'll have a Kate who collapses under the weight of it," she said.

"I mean it. I admire you, you know."

"I didn't know, but thanks. Still, no matter what the circumstances, marriage is a big step. I've never been married before."

"As my wife, you'd be entitled to Rhett family standing in the Charleston community. That means that Joanna would invite you to join the Junior League—"

"I thought it was a kids' baseball league until a few years ago," she informed him.

"Well, they'd probably let you play first base if you want. And I'm a patron of the theater, and I'm invited to many dinners and a ball or two every year."

"Let's get this straight. If I married you—and that's a big
if—
you'd want me to live with you? Participate in the upbringing of your child?"

"We could give it our best shot," Morgan said, trying to imagine life with Kate.

Kate rolled her eyes. "I'm not good with babies, and I wouldn't want anything to do with Charleston society. I don't know Rosenthal china from Lenox, and I never even came close to having a debut. I like to dig around mud flats and pole johnboats through marshes. I'd be a terrible wife for you." She managed a brief smile.

"Marrying me would provide you with a place to live," he said. "You told me you have no place to go after you leave the lighthouse."

"True," she admitted.

"I've thought this out carefully, much more than I thought out my decision to marry Courtney. The more I consider it, the better it seems. We could be good for each other. Will you marry me, Kate? There would be real advantages for both of us."

"I don't love you," she said.

"At our ages we know how treacherous love can be and how complicated relationships can become. Perhaps love isn't important in our case."

"I've never thought I could marry someone I didn't love," she said.

"Unusual circumstances call for unusual measures," Morgan replied in a reasoning tone.

Kate shook her head doubtfully. "Against my better judgment, Morgan, I'll think it over. I can't rush into what amounts to a marriage of convenience. Recent experience has shown me the error of taking on responsibilities without investigating all the angles."

He cast a long look at her, saw the curve of her lashes against her cheek, and remembered the silken softness of her lips.

"Well, then," he said softly, "consider this one," and he pulled her close and lowered his mouth to hers, capturing her in a kiss in which she participated willingly and which engendered a surge of erotic longing that made him wonder how long she could go on ignoring the tension between them.

Translucent lids drifted closed over her sea-gray eyes as she melted into the sensations, her lips parting, her hands sliding up his chest to grip his shoulders tightly. He longed to mold his hands to the curve of her hips and to bring her body into line with his, and he ached with longing. When he stopped kissing her, she had opened her eyes, and he saw briefly reflected in them proof of a fiery passion that he'd only suspected.

"If we were married, we could do that often," he said coaxingly, his lips close to her ear. "Come to think of it, we could do it often before we're married."

She pulled away. She wrapped her arms around herself and scowled, which was not the reaction he had hoped for.

"So you meant it last night," he said, resuming their walk. She trudged along beside him, keeping a self-conscious arm's length between them.

"Meant what?"

"That it was the second biggest mistake in your life to kiss me."

She lifted her head. "It's just that—"

"Don't use pregnancy as an excuse," he said flatly. "Last night you wanted it as much as I did. I saw it in your eyes, and only a moment ago you wanted to take it to the limit."

She considered this. "Yes, I suppose I did," she said slowly. "That still doesn't mean that I think it was a good idea."

"You don't want to get involved with me when you're going to have to give up the baby and leave," he guessed.

"Something like that," she said, turning back toward the lighthouse.

"So marry me. Then you don't have to leave."

"If I married you, I wouldn't want to go to balls, banquets or meetings of any group where ladies sit around and drink tea," she said.

He was afraid to ask it, but he had to. "No sex?" he said.

"Morgan, I'm pregnant."

He could only be blunt. "I desire you," he said.

She swallowed, but she kept her eyes straight ahead. "How you can desire a seven-months-pregnant woman is beyond me," she replied.

"You're beautiful," he said.

The sound she made fell halfway between a snort and a chuckle. "Only if you're into whale watching."

"Cut the smart remarks, Kate. They can't hide the fact that you want to sleep with me as much as I want to sleep with you."

She walked silently, and Morgan considered that this heavy-duty attempt at persuasion might be too much for Kate to absorb at one time. He
was
asking a lot. She'd been through so much—the loss of her job, her father's death, the historical society's insistence that she leave the island, her pregnancy and abandonment by Courtney and now the matter of the contract. Her stress level must be sky-high.

As he was trying to figure out if anything he might do could lower it a bit, they reached the path through the dunes. As they grew closer to the lighthouse, they heard an unfamiliar metallic clanking noise that here, on the island, made no sense at all.

They exchanged a mystified glance.

"What's that?" he said.

"Probably Tom and Tessie Tourist rappelling down the side of the lighthouse—or worse," Kate said, stepping up her pace.

When they came into the clearing and rounded the lighthouse, they saw a big yellow bulldozer and beside it a crew of four men studying a blueprint.

Kate stopped dead in her tracks. "What are you doing?" she asked in alarm. "Who said you could bring that—that
thing
onto the island?"

"Willadeen Pribble, ma'am. We're here to put in a new septic tank for the museum. You mean she didn't tell you about it?"

Chapter 8