Until Spring (31 page)

He went to the window and stared out. They had left the draperies open, and the lights of the town twinkled up at him. Car headlights crawled along the length of the bridge across the Wabash River. His own reflection stared back at him, and he blinked.

Jane's reflection slid into place behind him on the darkened window. She wore a bleak expression, and for once he was tired of it. Tired of always putting her first, tired of constantly thinking of her well-being, tired of the pressure they had both been under for days, even weeks. What about his needs? He loved her. He loved her! And he needed her. They all did, Rooney and Mary Kate and him, they had become a family, and now she was ruining it.

"Duncan," she said, touching his arm.

If they had been at the ranch, he would probably have slammed out of the house and walked over to the barn to cool off. But they weren't at the ranch. They were having a late supper in a pricey hotel room in Terre Haute, Indiana, with a table set with gleaming silver and a rose in a silver bud vase, and a candle flickering mellow light over all of it. A
candle
for Pete's sake, and it was supposed to be romantic, but it wasn't! That made him angry.

"Damn," he swore softly under his breath.

"Duncan, I just don't
know,"
Jane said brokenly.

"Well," he said, "just when will you 'know'?"

She responded to the unexpected sarcasm in his tone by drawing back as though he had struck her, and uncertainty flickered in her eyes.

"What I mean is, now we've found out all the information you wanted, whether you have a home and a family, who you are, where you lived, even right down to old Aunt Hildegarde, and you don't
know.
What else is there to find out, Jane?"

"I—"

"Let me answer that," he said, turning around to face her. He took in the eyes widened in surprise and hurt, the fingernails bitten to the quick, and hardened his heart. He had waited long enough. He'd been patient, and what he wanted now was commitment.

"I'll tell you what there is to find out," he went on. "Just one thing. And that is if you love me or not."

He watched as color suffused her face. The hurt in her eyes almost broke his resolve because he hated to see her suffering. He worked to control his emotions.

"Of course I love you, Duncan, but it's all so hard to deal with. Finding out that I have a real name, that I apparently had a satisfying life at Shanti Village, that I'm fully capable of earning my own living as a weaver—it's a shock." She stopped when she saw the vein pulsing at his temple, then drew a deep breath and went on.

"And the ranch—naturally I'm grateful to you for letting me stay there and helping me get on my feet and for believing in me when no one else did. You and Rooney and Mary Kate have treated me so well. I love all of you. But just because I've found out who I am and where I once lived doesn't mean that the quest is all over for me. I'm still searching. Trying to figure out where I fit in. If I go back to the ranch with you now, you'll be on my mind every second, I'll live only for you. I'd always wonder if I could have made it here on my own and if my previous life was the one I should have chosen." Her chest heaved, and her hands were clenched into tight little fists at her sides.

"I never dreamed that you might want to stay here," he responded, devastated by her words. He'd had such high hopes, and now they were fading one by one

Her voice fell into a gentler cadence. She laid a hand on his arm. "Would you rather I pretended that everything is okay? That would be as bad as lying, and you know how I feel about doing any more of that."

For once Duncan wished that she'd never developed her penchant for telling the truth. Lies could be so much simpler—for a while, at least.

"Duncan?" she said, waiting for him to speak.

Duncan's anger subsided suddenly. He saw her point. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. The anger had been replaced by an ache in the vicinity of his heart.

"I was going to make love to you tonight," he said heavily. "It wouldn't be such a good idea, would it?" He risked a look at her agonized face.

She looked as though she might cry, and he hoped she wouldn't. His jaw clenched in resistance. If she cried, he'd want to comfort her, and that would lead to something more, and all at once he yearned to feel her cool hand against the back of his neck, her soft lips against his.

Although he stood motionless and, he liked to think, stolidly, she reached up and put her arms around him. He forced himself to think of something else, anything else, anything but her small body pressed against his.

But then she pulled his head down. His arms involuntarily circled her and tightened so that she drew even closer, and as she found his lips with hers, his detachment dissolved entirely.

She began to unbutton his shirt, and for a moment his hand stayed hers, but she brushed him away impatiently and kept unbuttoning. He kissed her more deeply, a long, passionate kiss, and by the time it was over he was completely undressed and she was feathering her fingers across his back, something that always excited him.

Somehow he managed to get her clothes off, she was telling him over and over that she loved him, and they fell back onto the bed.

They had shared a bed before, but never like this, throwing back the bed covers, tangling in them, expressing all their pent-up passion. Her ardor surprised him, and he was amazed at the way she abandoned herself to pleasurable sensation. He touched her breast, reverently at first, then cupping it to his mouth so that she moaned and then sighed his name. And when he lifted his head she was smiling at him, a smile full of love. Then he knew that it was real, that she really did love him, and that he loved her more than he had even admitted to himself.

If he had thought she would have said yes, he would have asked her to marry him there and then. For that was what he wanted, to live with her forever at Placid Valley Ranch, and there was no doubt in his mind that it was meant to be. But he had done all he could to help her, and if she wasn't sure what she wanted now, perhaps she would never know. And, as she had once said about his relationship with his wife, it was better to have had something than nothing. Now they would have this night.

The light from the bedside lamp was shining full into his eyes, and she reached over to turn it out, the vulnerable slender white underside of her arm brushing his face for a brief moment. When it was dark he tumbled her over and slid his thigh between the gentle softness of hers.

As his eyes adjusted to the glow from the candle on the table, she seemed to float beneath him, light and buoyant, and then he was part of her, being absorbed into her body, knowing her,
knowing.

Now it didn't matter if there were things that she still didn't know, that there were uncertainties, because for all time he would know, would know
this.
And for the moment, it was all he wanted.

* * *

He drove her to Shanti Village the next morning. She sat close beside him, her face pale and drawn, her lips swollen from their lovemaking the night before.

"I'll call you," she promised as they stood on Moonglow's doorstep beside her suitcase.

"I wish you'd come with me," he told her. He had misgivings about leaving her here even though he knew she would be safe with a friend who cared about her.

She tried to smile. "I know," she answered, and bent to lift the suitcase.

"I'll stop by Mrs. Beasley's store and pick up the dress to take to Mary Kate," he told her, wanting to postpone his leave-taking as long as he could.

"Thank you, Duncan. For everything," she added. She wished she knew what else to say. She was more grateful than he could know, but she was on a journey of self-discovery. He couldn't follow her, nor would she have wanted that.

"It's all right." Icicles were melting off the roof overhang. One fell and broke with a tinkle on the porch railing. He tried to make a joke. "This place is a far cry from California, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes," she said. "I guess it is."

"You'd better go in," he said. He didn't know whether to kiss her out here or not.

She nodded, then put the suitcase down again. "Oh, Duncan," she said, and went into his arms. In that moment she thought her heart would break.

As he tried to memorize the way she felt in his embrace, he remembered the first time he had held her. It had been the night he found her in the mine, and she'd lain naked in his arms all night long. Like last night, except that on that first night she had slept. Last night neither of them had slept much. There had been other things to do.

"I won't say goodbye," she said. "It seems so final." She told herself to stay brave, but it wasn't easy.

"Give Moonglow my regards."

"I will. Tell Rooney hello, and tell Mary Kate—" Here her voice broke. She swallowed and began again. "Tell Mary Kate I love her."

Duncan nodded, backed down the steps, then turned swiftly and walked to the car. His feelings still raw, holding back tears of disappointment, he drove away without looking at her. When he summoned the strength to glance into his rearview mirror, the porch was empty.

He stopped to pick up the dress for Mary Kate, evading the questions of the kindhearted Alice Beasley. He hand carried the package all the way home but didn't give it to Mary Kate. That was something for Jane to do.

If she came home.
No,
he corrected himself.
When
she came home.

Chapter 16

Jane and Moonglow moved Jane's old bed into Moonglow's room, and Jane settled into the household routine. Up early in the morning, breakfast with Moonglow and Sonora, scheduling time on Moonglow's loom so that they each had a turn. She took to wearing tunics and leggings and high boots, or sometimes loose dresses the way Moonglow did. She bundled her bright hair in a snood. When she looked in the mirror, she seemed to have become someone else, someone she didn't know very well.

It was a life that Jane—Moonglow called her Celeste, but somehow she still thought of herself as Jane—that Jane remembered, but it didn't seem quite real to her. Even though Moonglow was delighted that she'd returned, Jane found it a major adjustment to resume living in that household. This was no longer her home, and these weren't her people. It was as though this was a movie she had seen and liked a long time ago, not a real life.

And if some mornings she woke up and expected to see the yellow walls and flowered draperies of her room at Placid Valley Ranch, well, maybe that too was a movie she had seen once. With a real-life hero who had rushed to her rescue, who had treated her with unfailing kindness and consideration, and who loved her. Now that she was caught up in life at Shanti Village, her life at Placid Valley Ranch sometimes seemed more like a dream than a movie.

She wove an afghan and sent it to Duncan, thinking that it would warm him on cold nights when he sat reading in his chair by the fire. He called and thanked her, but communication between them was stiff and awkward. They had many such conversations, and Duncan was always terse. He seldom told her anything that was happening at the ranch. He never texted, saying that it was too distracting.

After their phone conversations, Jane always felt sad. She missed the warmth and happiness she'd felt when they were together. She missed the get-togethers with Rooney and Mary Kate, and long Sunday dinners with them, and being in and out of each other's houses, and Mary Kate's laughter as she ran up the path to the house.

"Why don't you go back to him? To them?" Moonglow asked once when they were having one of their frequent heart-to-heart talks.

"Because I don't have a real sense of who I am yet," Jane said, staring at the floor.

"If you and Duncan love each other, you should be together."

"If only it were so simple," sighed Jane. "You see, when I came into Duncan's care I was lost and angry and defiant, and he let me know that he cared about me, so all I wanted to do was to be like him. It worked for me then. But now I've learned that I had a life before that, and I want to live it for a while. Then I'll know if I can go back to the ranch and pick up where I left off."

"What about California?" Moonglow asked.

"A new life in California was a dream I had. Maybe it wasn't realistic, although it kept me going through the hard times. Oh, I don't know. All I want right now is to live here and do my work, and I'm so grateful to you for letting me stay."