Page 97 of Just Imagine
She moved toward him, but her resentment about Temptation wasn’t forgotten. Her fear that he would still put a road to the mill across her land was not forgotten. His high-handedness and stubbornness were not forgotten. She stuffed it all inside to boil while she gave in to lovemaking that was growing less satisfying and more necessary every day.
The next morning, even the happiness of Sophronia and Magnus couldn’t keep Cain and Kit from snarling at each other. It had become their pattern. The more passionate the night, the worse they treated each other the next day.
Do not expect daylight to bring a change in me . . . I will give you my body, but do not, dare not, expect more.
As Kit watched Magnus and Sophronia move in a blissful daze through the next week while they got ready for their wedding, she found herself wishing she and Cain could have such a happy ending. But the only happy ending she could imagine for them would have Cain riding away, leaving her alone at Risen Glory. And that didn’t seem right at all.
On Sunday afternoon, Sophronia and Magnus took their vows in the old slave church with Kit and Cain beside them. After hugs, tears, and slices of Miss Dolly’s wedding cake, they were finally alone in Magnus’s house by the orchard.
“I won’t press you,” he said as the December night fell deep and peaceful outside the windows. “We can take our time.”
Sophronia smiled into his eyes and feasted on the sight of his beautiful brown skin. “We’ve had too much time already.” Her fingers trailed to the top buttons of the beautiful silk dress Kit had given her. “Love me, Magnus. Just love me.”
He did. Tenderly and completely. Driving away all the ugliness of the past. Sophronia had never felt so safe or so loved. She would never forget what had happened to her, but the nightmares of her past would no longer control her. Finally she understood what it meant to be free.
As December gave way to January, the lovemaking between Cain and Kit developed a primitive, ferocious edge that frightened them both. Kit left a bruise on Cain’s shoulder. Cain left a mark on her breast, then cursed himself afterward.
Only once did they speak the truth.
“We can’t go on like this,” he said
“I know.” She turned her head into the pillow and pretended to fall asleep.
The treacherous, most female part of her longed to give up the struggle and open her heart before it burst with feelings she couldn’t name. But this was a man who gave up his books and his horses before he could grow too attached to them. And the devils of her past were powerful.
Risen Glory was all she had—all she’d ever had—the only part of her life that was secure. People disappeared, but Risen Glory was everlasting, and she’d never let her tumultuous unnamed feelings for Baron Cain threaten that. Cain with his cold gray eyes and his spinning mill, Cain with his unchecked ambitions that would eat up her fields and spit them out like so many discarded cotton seeds until nothing was left but a worthless husk.
“I told you, I don’t want to go.” Kit slammed down her hairbrush and stared at Cain in the mirror.
He threw aside his shirt. “I do.”
All arguments stop at the bedroom door. But this one wasn’t. And what difference did it make? Their lovemaking had already turned this bedroom into another war zone.
“You hate parties,” she reminded him.
“Not this one. I want to get away from the mill for a few days.”
The mill, she noted, not Risen Glory.
“And I miss seeing Veronica,” he added.
Kit’s stomach knotted with jealousy and hurt. The truth was, she also missed Veronica, but she didn’t want Cain to.
Veronica had left Rutherford six weeks earlier, shortly before Thanksgiving. She’d settled in a three-story mansion in Charleston that Kit had learned was already turning into a center of fashion and culture. Artists and politicians showed up at her front door. There was an unknown sculptor from Ohio, a famous actor from New York. Now Veronica intended to celebrate her new home with a winter ball.
In her letter to Kit, she’d said she was inviting everyone in Charleston who amused her, as well as several old acquaintances from Rutherford. In typically perverse Veronica fashion, that included Brandon Parsell and his new fiancée, Eleanora Baird, whose father had taken over the presidency of the Planters and Citizens Bank after the war.
Normally Kit would have loved attending such a party, but right now she didn’t have the heart for it. Sophronia’s new happiness had made her conscious of her own misery, and as much as Veronica fascinated her, she also made Kit feel awkward and foolish.
“Go by yourself,” she said, even though she hated the idea.
“We’re going together.” Cain’s voice sounded weary. “You have no choice in the matter.”
As if she ever did. Her resentment grew, and that night, they didn’t make love. Nor the next. Nor the one after that. It was just as well, she told herself. She’d been feeling ill for several weeks now. Sooner or later, she needed to stop fighting it and see the doctor.
Even so, she waited until the morning before they left for Veronica’s party to make the trip.
By the time they reached Charleston, Kit was pale and exhausted. Cain left to attend to some business while Kit was shown to the room they’d share for the next few nights. It was light and airy, with a narrow balcony that looked down upon a brick courtyard, appealing even in winter with its green border of Sea Island grass and the scent of sweet olives.
