The Seeker Page 2

  “Marriage is not sinful,” Charlotte said. “I fear you have been listening to bad advice from those who simply want to gather your land in with theirs.”

  Edwin stiffened at her words, and in the moonlight, the lines of his face looked chiseled out of stone as he stared down at her. The man in front of her little resembled the Edwin she had grown up with. That Edwin had hidden behind his grandmother’s skirts until he was well out of knickers. That Edwin had been afraid of his shadow when she pulled him out into the garden to play hide-and-seek. That Edwin listened without argument to her plans for their lives.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh. “And why have you always said we must wed, Charlotte? Isn’t it to join our properties? Hasn’t that always been your primary purpose? To do your father’s bidding and make his holdings the largest in Mercer County.”

  “Not his holdings, Edwin. Ours. Grayson and Hastings farms together.” She pushed the words at him. “We’ve talked of nothing else for years.”

  “You’ve talked of nothing else. Perhaps it is time you listened for a change,” he said shortly.

  Then without waiting for her to say more, he stepped off the path to go around her as if even the touch of the ruffles on her hooped skirt must be avoided. She stared after him, astounded by his rudeness. And by the determined set of his shoulders. That old Shaker elder with his insidious words of peace was the cause of this, but she wouldn’t let it be the end. Edwin would marry her. Of course he would. He’d come to his senses and crawl back to her, begging to carry out the plans they had made. She’d find a way to see that he did.

  When he opened the veranda door, the noise of the party drifted out. He stepped inside and snapped the door closed behind him, clipping off the sound, but through the glass door and window she could see the guests milling about. Her guests. She was neglecting her hostess duties. Edwin could wait. She touched the pile of hair elaborately styled on top of her head to be sure no strand had escaped its pins and started back toward the house.

  A man’s deep voice stopped her before she had gone a dozen steps. “He must be an extremely foolish man to turn his back and run from such beauty.”

  2

  Charlotte whirled to face the man who stepped up on the path behind her. He must have been sitting out of her view on the stone bench in the shadow of the dogwood that reached its limbs toward the veranda.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “It wasn’t my intention to startle you.”

  In the moonlight it wasn’t hard to see the amused smile playing across his lips under his mustache that gave lie to his words. That had been exactly what he’d intended, Charlotte thought as she stared up at him with no pretense of demurely lowering her eyes. He was tall, even taller than Edwin, but while Edwin slouched to try to keep from towering above his companions, this man stood straight, completely at ease with his height. He was quite handsome with thick dark hair brushed back from his forehead and a strong profile. She had no idea who he was.

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” she said in her most reserved, yet still civil voice. He could be a new political friend of her father’s who had arrived at the party late and unannounced. Best to be polite until his importance was determined. He wore a dinner jacket, so surely he was a guest and not just a passerby attracted by the lights and music.

  His smile was full now. “My introduction got a bit overlooked after the presentation of the new Mrs. Vance. It’s very like her to do a little grandstanding, but your father could have extended the courtesy of letting you in on their little surprise prior to the carriage’s arrival. That way you could have been prepared with your smile.”

  “I smiled.”

  “That you did,” the man said with a half nod of agreement. “Bravely. Staunchly. In spite of the way the color drained from your face and you looked faint.”

  “I have never felt faint,” Charlotte said tersely. She didn’t know why she was continuing to talk to this man who was assuming entirely too much about her without the first bit of knowledge, but something about his eyes held her there. Even in the soft light of the moon, they looked sharp and piercing, able to see past shadows, past pretense. Suddenly she wanted to hurry out of sight of those eyes before they stripped away her every defense and laid bare her soul. She was poised to flee up the veranda steps when his next words stopped her.

  “Then you are an unusual young woman. Our Selena certainly has never hesitated to feign a swoon if such an action fit the occasion and achieved her end.”

  Our Selena. Instead of a political acquaintance, he must be a friend or even relation of this woman who had captured Charlotte’s unwary father, perhaps by feigning a great deal more than a swoon. Charlotte studied the man a moment before she said, “So are you related to my father’s new wife?” She managed to get out the word “wife” without it choking her. She would get used to it. What other choice did she have?

  “Oh no. I fear I am just a hired artisan.” The man laughed out loud and bowed at the waist toward Charlotte. “Adam Wade at your service, Miss Vance.”

  “And for what purpose have you been hired, if I may be so bold to ask? A cupola here in my mother’s garden?”

  “Perhaps artisan is not the proper word. Artist. Although my grandfather’s practical side shudders every time I claim the title. But that is what I am. An artist. A curse I fear I was born with. And I have been commissioned—or a better word might be coerced—to paint a wedding portrait of the lovely Mrs. Vance.”

  “Coerced? By whom? Our Selena?” She carefully emphasized the last two words.

  “Oh no.” He laughed again. Easily, without inhibition. “I barely know the woman.”

  “Neither does my father.”

  “You have a point, but not one, I am relieved to say, that can poke me. My sister, Phoebe, knew our Selena back home in Boston, and she is the one whose coercion I cannot ignore. Not and maintain any sort of familial peace. I’ve oft explained to her how I detest doing portraits, but my sister thinks one can slap a few dobs of paint on a canvas, make the subject look beautiful whether they carry beauty or not, collect the commission, and everybody’s happy. To Phoebe, one picture is like any other and a brother’s duty is to do as she says. Or else.” With a rueful smile, he chopped his hand down through the air in front of him before he looked at her with something akin to sympathy as he continued speaking. “I fear you will find the new Mrs. Vance has some of the same characteristics. I will be much relieved to have the portrait finished and hanging over your mantel.”

  “Where Mother’s hangs now.”

  He raised his dark eyebrows at her. “You can hardly expect her portrait to remain there. Lovely though it is.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Charlotte sighed, surprised at how she was stepping into acceptance of the change coming to Grayson. Change she was beginning to see she could not hold at bay. Her father was married. That would change everything. Perhaps even more than Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration. She mentally shook her head at her foolish thought. A house changed couldn’t compare to a country torn asunder.

  “I’m sorry,” Adam said with honest sincerity in his voice. She shivered slightly, feeling the chill of the night air for the first time since she’d followed Edwin out without grabbing a wrap, but now her anger had drained away, leaving her vulnerable to the cold and a kind word. She pulled herself together and smiled at the man in front of her, determined to be the proper hostess again and not even let her mind consider how much of her conversation with Edwin he might have overheard. It was of no concern to him. But he was a guest to be treated as such.

  “Then if you don’t generally do portraits except under coercion, what sort of art do you do?” she asked, as if they had just met inside in the double parlor and weren’t standing in the shadowy chill of her mother’s garden while the party played on with no notice of their absence.

  “I daresay you’ve read Harper’s Weekly and perhaps leafed through some of the other northern newspapers and magazines your father must
bring home on occasion.” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “If so, you may have seen my work. The illustrations.”

  “Adam Wade. Of course. I have seen your work in Harper’s.” She stared at the man with fresh eyes. “I should have recognized your name.”

  “Don’t pretend,” Adam said. “I liked you better when you were too upset to trot out your manners.”

  “A lady always remembers her manners.”

  “Tell your young man that.”

  Charlotte ignored his words, refusing to let him bait her. He was the guest. She was the hostess. “No, really. A few months back, in a January issue I think, there was a man on horseback somewhere in the Western regions. He was hunched down in the saddle trying to escape the snow and wind. Just thinking about it now makes me cold.” Charlotte wrapped her arms around her middle and shivered.

  “Quite a compliment to have you shiver just at the thought of the illustration. Believe me, it was every bit as cold as I was able to make it look. But I think your chill now may have more to do with the night air.” He slipped off his jacket and stepped closer to drape it around her.

  He let his hands linger on her shoulders. She told herself to step back from him, but she didn’t move as she soaked up the warmth of his jacket and breathed in his scent. An outdoors odor mixed with a light trace of manly sweat and linseed oil. She wished she could just stay wrapped in his jacket there in the garden until all the guests had gone home. Then she could sneak in the back door and creep up the servants’ stairway to Aunt Tish’s room. Aunt Tish would help her see what to do. There had to be a way to keep her world from crumbling.

  “I’d like to paint how you look right now here in the moonlight. So winsome. So pure.” He moved his right hand off her shoulder and rubbed his thumb down her nose and across her cheek, measuring her face for his painting. The pad of his thumb was rough against her skin, but still she didn’t pull away. “So beautiful.”

  “No one has ever told me I was beautiful. No one but Aunt Tish.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Not even the young man who was with you in the garden?”

  “Especially not Edwin. I frighten him.”

  “Then he’s not much of a man.”

  “I’m going to marry him.” Charlotte didn’t know where the words were coming from or why she was saying them. She felt mesmerized by his eyes on her, measuring her, seeing past her façade, doing what she had most feared he could do. Seeing into her soul.

  “I think not. That would surely be a waste.” His fingertips walked across her face gently probing the shape of her cheekbones.

  “That’s what Mellie says.”

  “A true friend if she tells you the truth.”

  “Do you tell the truth?” Charlotte peered up at him. She thought she would be able to see on his face if he lied.

  “Always. If I know it.”

  “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? Knowing it. Recognizing the lies.”

  “And has your Edwin lied to you?” His voice was soft, insistent. “No. It might be better if he did.”

  “And why would that be better?” His eyes didn’t waver on hers.

  “He could tell me he loved me.” She couldn’t believe she spoke the words out loud. What kind of spell was she letting this man’s eyes put on her?

  “Sometimes that is spoken in actions better than words.” He brought his finger over to trace around her lips. “Has he kissed you? Surely he’s kissed you.”

  She just looked at him without saying anything. She couldn’t answer that.

  His eyes pierced straight through her as he waited for her to speak. At last he said, “Then have you ever been kissed, my beautiful Miss Vance? Really kissed.”

  Without giving her a chance to respond, to consider his words, to recognize the alarm rising in her as she thought of her position there in the shadows with a man she didn’t even know, he stepped closer and dropped his mouth down to cover hers. And she let him kiss her. Not only did she let his lips touch hers without protest, but her lips reached for his. Sought the touch.

  It was as if somebody else had taken over her body. As if she had given up control and now was drifting without thought, without sense, toward disaster. The yearning swelled up inside her to step into his embrace, to slip her arms around his back, to touch his dark hair, to surrender completely to the feelings his lips were pulling up from deep inside her. Even her toes in her dancing slippers felt warm.

  His hand moved from her shoulder to slide down her back to pull her closer, to swallow her completely in his strength. She’d be powerless to do anything but lay her head on his shoulder and surrender to his will. There would be no more arranging, no more shaping events, no more making sure things happened as they should. As she planned. As they must. She’d turn into one of those fine ladies who sat in sunny windows, pulling bright-colored threads through flat squares of cloth as they let life drift past them without ever raising a finger to change their circumstances. She would be her mother waiting, always waiting.

  The thought was like a dash of cold water and she jerked back to free herself from his embrace. She put her fingers over her lips as her face burned with the ignominy of allowing a stranger such an intimate kiss. A man she’d just met.

  The man looked amused at her embarrassment. “Go ahead. Slap me if it will make you feel better.”

  “Then I would have to slap myself as well.” Charlotte dropped her hands to let them hang limply down under his jacket still around her shoulders. Perhaps he had taken advantage of her unsettled spirit and the moonlight, but that hadn’t been reason for her to melt into his embrace as she had. She was as much to blame as he was.

  He surprised her by laughing. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a Southern belle with such refreshing candor.”

  She did not allow a smile back on her face. She would not let him charm her again. “If you are a gentleman as well as an artist, I will expect no mention of this. If not, then my refreshing candor will force me to reveal how you startled me and kept me in the shadows against my will.”

  “Never fear, milady. I may not be a high-ranking gentleman like the scared rabbit you chased back inside, but I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “Thank you.” She slipped his jacket off her shoulders and held it out to him. She ignored the shiver chasing up and down her back that was not entirely due to the chill of the night air as she said, “It was kind of you to loan me your jacket. Now I must see to my guests.”

  “I have no complaints about your fine hospitality.” He took the jacket with another infuriating smile.

  She turned and lifted her skirts to hurry away from him toward the veranda steps. Behind her, she heard him chuckle, and she hoped he would remain in the garden the rest of the evening. Even better, that he might stop worrying about what his sister said for him to do and instead ride to the West to paint some cacti or sagebrush and take her reason for shame with him.

  How could she have surrendered to his kiss so willingly? The evening’s events had surely unbalanced her thinking. Something she could not allow to happen again. She was Charlotte Mayda Vance, the daughter of Senator Charles Vance and the granddaughter of Richard Grayson, strong men who knew what they wanted and made it happen. That was the blood flowing through her. And she knew what she wanted. It was more than a casual kiss in the shadows of her mother’s garden. Much more.

  She paused on the veranda to look out over the land stretching away from the house. She couldn’t see past the copse of trees at the edge of the grounds, but she knew how it rolled gently across the horizon. All good fertile land. Grayson land. Her land. Her father speaking a few vows with that woman couldn’t change that. Nor could a kiss. Or the lack of one.

  3

  Adam Wade couldn’t keep from laughing softly as the pretty red-haired girl lifted her hooped skirts to race up the veranda steps with no outward show of concern about revealing her well-turned ankles. Her guests would think she’d come across a snake in the garden. His laugh
ter faded. Perhaps she had. One who had entranced her as surely as the serpent in that first garden had Eve.

  When she paused on the veranda, he expected her to glance back at him, perhaps with another blushing appeal to not sully her reputation and give her young man more reason to weasel out of his promises to her. But she didn’t turn toward him. Instead she became still as a statue as she looked out over the grounds. For what he didn’t know or even care, but his fingers itched for his pencils and sketchpad.

  Since he didn’t have so much as a scrap of paper in his pocket, he traced her figure there on the edge of the veranda in his mind. The ginger-colored hair elaborately curled and piled on top her head, the graceful neck flowing into soft, creamy shoulders bare above the satiny dress the color of emeralds. Just a shade deeper than the green of her eyes. He couldn’t see those eyes now as she stared into the distance, but the lift of her head, the set of her shoulders made him believe it was more than trees and fields she saw. Although she gazed outward, it was something within that she sought, and that’s what pulled at the artist in him. The image of yearning.

  Then she turned, smoothed the skirts billowing out from her slender waist made even more slender by one of those tortuous corsets women seemed compelled to wear. Even his sister Phoebe wore one, though she had long since passed the possibility of slender no matter how tightly the lacings of her corset were pulled. She claimed such an undergarment was a necessity for the current fashions. So it was little wonder the young ladies who peeked at him from behind their elaborate fans at social gatherings were always so breathless.

  Charlotte Vance hadn’t seemed at a loss for breath or to fear facing the truth. Even after her father’s unwelcome surprise. He had obviously given his daughter’s reaction to his new wife no thought at all. He was a man wrapped up in himself. Adam had seen that from the first handshake a week ago in Frankfort. A politician through and through with his eye constantly on how to broaden his base of support in the state.