Romance Classics (110 page)

“Hi, now, wait a minute,” Jonathan protested, half-laughing, half-exasperated. “I’m none of those things.”

“Oh, fiddle-faddle, now don’t
you
go getting all self-deprecatory and denying facts,” Cherry insisted. “I’ll bet you that back home you have to use a club to beat off the beauteous damsels with glamorous ways and frabjous clothes who are just dying to be Mrs. Jonathan Gayle.”

Jonathan eyed her curiously. “You’ll go to any lengths to get your way, won’t you? You’ll even spread flattery with a shovel.”

Cherry stared at him, affronted.

“Well, of course if you don’t want to do it — ” she sniffed.

“I’ll be glad to, if you think Loyce will let me,” Jonathan assured her, “because it’s quite true. But you needn’t go to such lengths to persuade me. All you needed to do was tell me that she would allow me to offer her a quite sincere and honest compliment.”

“Well, of course you’ll have to wait for exactly the right moment,” Cherry told him happily.

“I wasn’t planning to run upstairs, bang on her door and say, ‘Hi, Loyce, you’re beautiful,’ and then run like the dickens,” said Jonathan, somewhat annoyed that she should feel he required so much briefing.

“Oh, you’ll find the right moment,” said Cherry happily. “And I’m so glad. I’ve hated to have Loyce feel that she and I could possibly be rivals.”

“You’re a pretty loyal little somebody, aren’t you?” Jonathan’s tone was faintly teasing to lift the tension of the moment.

“Where Loyce and Gran’sir are concerned, you bet,” Cherry told him firmly.

“Who is this childhood sweetheart of Loyce’s? Have I met him?” asked Jonathan after a moment.

Cherry shook her head, the red-gold curls dancing in the moonlight.

“He’s county attorney down at the county seat, and there’s a murder case about to go to trial that has the whole place in a tizzy. Hutch is working day and night getting things ready. I don’t envy him, because the man on trial is a lifelong friend of Hutch’s. Yet Hutch has to prove his guilt. It’s a terrible responsibility.”

“It is indeed,” Jonathan agreed. “I suppose the man
is
guilty?”

“Well, the evidence is mostly circumstantial,” Cherry answered unhappily, “but it’s pretty damaging. The fact that Bob Yorkin is one of the most popular men in the whole county and that the man who was shot was a no-good makes it all the harder for Hutch. Most people in the county think Bob should have a medal for shooting Lafe instead of being tried for murder.”

Jonathan shook his head. “If we followed that kind of law we’d have chaos and barbarism back with us,” he pointed out.

Cherry nodded soberly. “I know. That’s what Gran’sir says. But it’s a responsibility I wouldn’t want: trying to prove a man guilty or innocent in the face of public opinion.”

She looked up at him soberly in the moonlight.

“Was it something like this that disillusioned you about the law?” she asked.

Jonathan’s jaw hardened and he looked out over the scene before him, a brilliant mosaic of black shadows and silver moonlight.

“Something like that,” he agreed.

“Then I hope you and Gran’sir can get to be friends and he can restore some of your illusions. He’s convinced that the law is the finest possible profession for a man. He says there’s nothing wrong with the law; but sometimes there is with the men who practice it,” she told him.

Jonathan nodded. “Your Gran’sir is quite a man,” he agreed.

As the days slid by like bright beads on a string, life at the Lodge followed its accustomed pattern. The week-ends brought four to six fishermen from Atlanta or Savannah or some other large city. They fished with an eagerness and a whole-souled devotion that made them seem to Jonathan rather like small boys spending one day a year at the circus. And they departed at the end of their predestined stay with loud protestations.

Jonathan had slipped into the routine of the Lodge until he was accepted like one of the family. He caught glimpses of Cherry during the week-ends, very gay and busy and efficient. During the week she relaxed and he had the chance to get better acquainted with her and to come to like her enormously.

Loyce, on the other hand, simply flitted in and out of his sight. She was on hand at dinner, sitting opposite her grandfather, the perfect hostess, polite, gracious but aloof. During the week she was scarcely visible except at dinner, from which she always excused herself as soon as dessert had been served and vanished upstairs to her own room.

There had been no chance for Jonathan to keep his promise to Cherry and to offer Loyce a sincere and honest compliment.

Each day brought the tides of spring closer. The trees were beginning to shake out small green leaves; the apple orchard was a fairyland of pale pink-white blooms among which the bees were going joyously mad. The fragrance from the woods was heady, and Jonathan spent more and more time just going for long walks; not bothering to fish; simply relaxing, unwinding, not even thinking very seriously about the future.

On a day so perfect that it seemed new-made and fresh, Jonathan walked down through the apple orchard toward the small willow-fringed creek that lay at its foot. Then, so suddenly that he gasped, a terrific clangor broke into the sweet spring beauty of the day.

He listened for a moment. Someone was banging a tin pan with a mallet; a noise that made the eardrums ache and that seemed so completely without reason that he walked on toward the sound, anxious to discover its cause.

He had just stepped from beneath a flower-laden apple tree when he saw Loyce beyond him. She was clad in khaki pants and boots, a bonnet-like contrivance over her head and shoulders, her hands covered with stout gloves, and she was beating a steady rhythm with a huge wooden spoon on an old tin pan. And above and through the clangor he heard her raised voice calling to him:

“Stay where you are, Gayle! Still! Don’t move!”

Jonathan froze beneath the urgency of her voice and saw that she was standing beside a huge beehive, watching intently as a swarm of bees milled and buzzed about her. She went on making that terrific clamor until finally a small, wedge-shaped mass of bees went into the hive, to be followed a moment later by others, until at last even the stragglers had disappeared inside.

Loyce checked to assure herself that all were inside, then turned and came toward Jonathan, removing the bonnet-shaped contrivance that he now saw had a netting web across the face.

“Sorry I had to yell at you, Mr. Gayle,” she said coolly. “But I was afraid if you came closer, you might be stung.”

Jonathan studied her for a moment as she mopped a perspiring face matter of factly.

“You,” he told her quietly, “are a very remarkable woman.”

Loyce’s brows went up slightly and her smile was faintly touched with mockery.

“Because I can ‘hive’ a swarm of bees?” she drawled.

“That’s only one of the remarkable things about you, as I’ve learned since I’ve been here,” he answered. “I sometimes wonder if there is anything about the Lodge that you can’t do better than any of the men?”

“Oh, yes, quite a few things,’ she mocked. “But I haven’t time to go into them at the moment. That swarm of bees was about to run away, and I had to hurry them into a new hive. I had to neglect other jobs that were not quite so pressing, and now I must get back to them.”

“The amazing thing to me,” said Jonathan as he walked beside her toward the Lodge, “is that a girl as young and pretty as you should be capable of doing so many so-called masculine jobs.”

Loyce paused and her brows went up.

“Oh, now, really, Mr. Gayle,” her tone was touched with contempt, “that’s a very pretty speech but shouldn’t you save it for someone more impressionable? Cherry, for instance?”

“It wasn’t meant as a pretty speech, Miss Bramblett. It was simply a statement that has been in my mind since the first time we met.”

To his amazement, color poured into her face and her eyes went cold.

“I haven’t time for this sort of nonsense, Mr. Gayle,” she told him. “And shouldn’t you be getting back to the Lodge? It’s almost lunch time.”

“Oh, I’m not expected back for lunch,” Jonathan answered, his eyes meeting hers and holding them. “Mrs. Mitchell packed a lunch for me, and I’m planning to find a secluded spot somewhere, eat it and then have a period of meditation. Care to join me?”

“Certainly not,” Loyce answered curtly, but he thought he saw a hint of wavering in her eyes that encouraged him.

“I’m sorry,” said Jonathan. “I really am. I’d hoped very much that we might have a chance to get better acquainted. You’re a very difficult person to get to know, Miss Bramblett.”

“Are you sure it would be worth the effort?” asked Loyce.

Jonathan chuckled.

“Now, from anybody but you, I’d say that was a loaded question,” he reminded her. “But I’ll answer it. Yes, I’m quite sure that getting to know you better would be a tough job but eminently worth-while. I can’t think of anything I’d like better. So why not have lunch with me? I’ll share my sandwiches; I’m sure Mrs. Mitchell prepared enough for two.”

For a long moment Loyce met his eyes. Her gaze was steady, probing, measuring him; and Jonathan stood quite still and waited. Then suddenly she smiled, and her face was transformed. It became younger, almost impish in its gaiety. She nodded.

“I’m sure Muv prepared enough food for a couple of people, but you must let me provide the drinkables,” she told him demurely. “This way, please.”

She turned and walked away from him across the orchard away from the Lodge. And Jonathan, oddly pleased that he had managed to get even this far past her defenses, followed.

Down a narrow, winding path they came at last to a spot beside a small but very busy waterfall. A huge flat rock offered a resting place, and Loyce walked to the edge of the pool beneath the waterfall, bent and drew up a small rope on the end of which was a quart jar of milk, ice-cold and gleaming frostily. Above the rock there was a hole in the huge tree that leaned above the waterfall, and from the hole she drew out a handful of paper cups.

“I often have lunch here,” she explained to Jonathan, amused at his expression. “So one of the men always puts a jar of milk here for me after the morning’s milking. Shall we dine?”

Her laughter was soft, faintly touched with uneasiness, as though she had laughed so little that she was out of practice. Jonathan was touched by her gaiety as they seated themselves and she spread the sandwiches on a clean paper napkin on the big rock. And as they ate and chatted he felt that for the first time he was getting to know her a little. She did not talk about herself other than to explain something about the farm operation that provided the Lodge with its fresh vegetables, milk, eggs and poultry. She was very casual about it all and seemed to see nothing remarkable in any of her achievements.

“It’s not that I do so much of the actual work,” she said lightly, “but I have to
know
what should be done so I can tell the men what to do. I get bulletins and leaflets from the Agriculture Department at the State University, and of course the county agent is always glad to answer any questions.”

“And what,” Jonathan asked quietly, “do you do for amusement?”

She seemed startled by the question.

“Why, there isn’t an awful lot of time left over for amusement,” she admitted.

“But that’s wrong,” Jonathan pointed out. “You are a young and beautiful woman.”

“Now that’s nonsense,” she cut in sharply. “I’m neither. Cherry is the beauty in this family.”

“Oh, Cherry’s pretty and cute and I’m sure she’s very popular,” Jonathan insisted. “But you are the one who is beautiful.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“You’re so convinced you’re not beautiful that you’ve been hiding behind all this camouflage of a brusque manner and mannish clothes and being so busy you haven’t time for any nonsense,” Jonathan told her so firmly that she could only stare at him, wide-eyed and silent. “I’ve known a great many women, and some of them have been raving beauties. But you have a charm that they all lacked. Oh, don’t ask me to tell you what it is.”

“I wouldn’t embarrass you that way.”

“But it’s something that sets you apart.”

She stood up, on the edge of flight, and Jonathan’s voice sharpened.

“Sit down. I haven’t finished, “ he snapped.

Too taken by surprise to defy him, she dropped back on the rock, her eyes enormous in her flushed, incredulous face.

“Don’t be frightened.” Jonathan’s tone held more than a hint of mockery. “I’m not going to try to make love to you.”

“Well, I should
hope
not.”

Jonathan’s eyes studied her for a moment, and there was a faint twitch at the corners of his mouth.

“At least not quite yet,” he amended, and went on gravely, “Loyce, I’m not being fresh. I do honestly think you are a lovely and a very interesting woman and I do want very much to be friends with you. But you wrap yourself in a cloak of invisibility and brush me off every time I try to talk to you. If I’ll promise to be very good and not even call you ‘darling,’ will you let me take you somewhere to dinner tonight? There must be somewhere around here that has a bit of atmosphere. Maybe I can borrow Cherry’s car.”

“We could use mine,” Loyce said, and was so obviously startled to hear her own words that Jonathan’s pulse jumped slightly. “I mean — that is — well, there
is
a motel ten miles from the county seat that is supposed to have a very good restaurant. Only Muv will be furiously insulted if we walk out on her dinner to go somewhere else.”

“Muv’s a very understanding woman, I’m sure, and I’m also sure she agrees with me that you should have a bit of recreation,” Jonathan told her. “And I’ll do my darnedest to be entertaining and not let you feel the evening has been wasted.”

“Oh, but I’m sure I wouldn’t feel that way,” she assured him.

“Then it’s a date,” he said happily.

“Yes, it’s a date,” she answered, and put her hand in his as he extended it to help her to her feet.

Jonathan came downstairs a little after six. As he reached the foot of the stairs Cherry came from the den and one glance at her small, woebegone face told him something was wrong.