Perhaps at one time, they had come from a similar background, but their dreams, the things they valued were not the same. All Rory had ever desired with her balloon company was to keep it solvent. Never had she viewed her business as an end to riches, but rather as a challenge. Even if someday she were to conquer the skies, she knew it would not change who shewas, make her want to forget that little corner of the world she came from. But it seemed to have been different for Zeke. He had struggled to become rich enough to shut out that part of his life, which had given him pain. Sadly he appeared to have also set aside the happiness he had once known as well.
It had been easier to think of marrying him when they both had been on the run, possessing scarce a dime between them, only the clothes on their backs and borrowed ones at that. All they had had to depend upon was each other.
But back in New York, it was just as she had feared. Life again became complicated. Despite the doubts tormenting Rory, her heartbeat quickened when the door to Zeke’s room opened. Somehow she had known he would never spend the night in the guest chamber as he had said. He slipped inside, clad only in a satin dressing gown, belted at the waist.
“Rory,” he called in a soft voice. “Are you asleep?”
“No,” she whispered, sitting up and drawing the bedclothes around her. As he approached, his lamp cast flickering shadows up the wall. Zeke appeared unusually solemn.
As he set the lamp down on the bedside table, she asked, “Is anything wrong?”
“No, I just needed to look at you.” The longing in his eyes told her that he needed far more than that. “I have been pacing my own room, trying not to come and disturb you, knowing how exhausted you must be.”
At one time she had thought she was, but that feeling seemed to have disappeared. She extended her hand to him, drawing him down to sit beside her on the edge of the bed.
He smiled suddenly, and Rory realized that he had noticed that she was wearing one of his nightshirts, the cotton gaping open at the neckline.
“Funny. It looks much better on you,” he murmured, tracing the column of her throat with his fingertips, moving down to caress the swell of her breast, setting her skin a-tingle.
In spite of the delicious sensations he was rousing in her, she couldn’t help asking, “Is your friend gone?”
“Friend?” He gave a puzzled frown, then grimace as he realized whom she meant. “Yes, a long time ago, thank God.”
She heard nothing but relief in his voice. All the same she was beset by a stirring of apprehension, almost jealousy.
“Mrs. Van H. looked very beautiful tonight.” She fingered one of the wild tangles of her own hair. “Very different from me.”
“The difference between winter and spring,” Zeke said.
“I suppose I am much younger and unsophisticated,” she said.
“And you always will be, even when you are eighty years old.” Zeke caressed her cheek. “Just as fresh as an April morning. I don’t ever want you to change from what you are, Rory. Always be springtime for me.”
She thought she would be anything he wanted when he looked at her that way. He leaned forward, grazing her lips with the warmth of his own. He pulled her into his arm and she was content to lose everything, all her doubts, even her very self, in his loving.
When she lay naked in his embrace, there seemed no room for any qualms, any questionings between them. Their loving was just as wondrous as the previous night, their bodies melding together in a passionate flame. No matter how soul-weary she might be, his kiss, his touch seemed to gift her with a sensation of renewal. Nothing else in the world mattered but Zeke, the way he could make her feel.
It was only when she lay spent, curled up beside him, her head tucked in the lee of his shoulder, that Rory felt the lack of that afterglow of complete satisfaction. She tried to tell herselfthat perhaps the difference was in this museum piece of a bedchamber; not near as cozy as the one in Annie’s cottage. All their whispered intimacies seemed to echo off that vault of a ceiling.
But maybe it had more to do with Zeke, holding her almost too tight, making plans for their marriage. After typical Zeke fashion, he was telling, not asking. He seemed to have forgotten she’d never given him an answer.
Rory listened uncomfortably as he detailed how she could spend any amount she desired redecorating the mansion. When he came to their wedding trip, outlining a whirlwind tour of Europe, she felt she had to stop him, interjecting, “It would be difficult for me to be gone that long, with my company on such shaky ground.”
She felt Zeke tense, but all he said was, “Oh, we’ll find something to do about the warehouse.”
The warehouse— it was a cold way to refer to the business that to Rory was a rainbow array of silks, gusts of warm wind, the visions of both her father and herself. Zeke’s answer disturbed her but he showed no more inclination to talk. His eyes closed, and in a few moments more Rory thought he had fallen asleep.
She wished she could do the same, but the warmth that Zeke’s loving had aroused seemed to have fled, leaving her to the cold comfort of all her doubts again. Wriggling away from Zeke, she slipped out of bed and scrambled back into the nightshirt. She ran her tongue over lips that seemed parched and made her way to the bathroom for a glass of water. Although the lamp had been left burning, that portion of the vast bedchamber was lost in shadow. Rory groped toward what she thought was the bathroom door.
But as she turned the handle and shoved it open, she perceived no gleam of porcelain, no looming shape of thatmammoth bathtub. She thought she had blundered into a large closet, but her eyes adjusted enough to the darkness to tell that she had stepped into a small sitting room of some kind, a place that she sensed was very unlike the rest of the house.
She should have retreated, but the stirring of her curiosity was too strong. Retrieving the lamp, she carried it into the room. The light spilled off a dainty pattern of floral wallpaper, a braided rug covering a hardwood floor.
The furnishings were few. A small table bore some gilt-framed photographs and a lace tidy that was a little crooked, as though fashioned by childish hands. Next to the table stood a wooden rocker, much scarred with age. It emitted a most comforting creak when Rory touched it.
Setting down the lamp on the table, Rory directed her attention to the photographs. The smallest was of a plump woman garbed in her Sunday best, a suit of stiff black silk, looking not quite at ease dressed thus or peering into the lens of the camera. Yet not even the stilted pose could erase the love and patience etched into that careworn face. Rory had no doubt she was gazing into the eyes of Zeke’s foster mother, Sadie Marceone.
Next to her photograph rested an oval frame encircling three young girls in pink gingham dresses with white yokes, the children similar in their dark curls, but their expressions so different. The littlest one who was so bright-eyed, that had to be Zeke’s youngest sister, Agnes, while the tallest one with her sweet, placid features must be Caddie. And of course, there was no mistaking the prim girl that was Tessa.
