Page 98 of Just Imagine
Veronica sent up a maid to help her unpack and prepare a bath. Afterward, Kit lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, too drained of emotion even to cry. She awakened several hours later and numbly put on her cotton wrapper. As she knotted the sash, she walked over to the windows and pushed back the drapery.
It was already dark outside. She’d have to get dressed soon. How would she get through the evening? She lay her cheek against the chilly window glass.
She was going to have a baby. It didn’t seem possible, yet even now a small speck of life grew inside her. Baron Cain’s baby. A child who would bind her to him for the rest of her life. A child she desperately wanted, even though everything would become so much more difficult.
She forced herself to sit down in front of the dressing table. As she fumbled for her hairbrush, she noticed the blue ceramic jar resting next to her other toiletries. Lucy had packed it as well. How ironic.
The jar contained the grayish-white powders Kit had gotten from the Conjure Woman to keep her from conceiving. She’d taken it once and then never again. At first there’d been the long weeks when she and Cain had slept apart, and then, after their nighttime reconciliation, she’d found herself reluctant to use the powders. The contents of that blue jar had seemed almost malevolent, like finely ground bones. When she’d heard several women talking about how difficult it had been for them to conceive, she’d justified her carelessness by deciding the risk of pregnancy wasn’t as great as she had feared. Then Sophronia had discovered the jar and told Kit the powders were worthless. The Conjure Woman didn’t like white women and had been selling them useless prevention powders for years. Kit ran her finger across the lid of the jar, wondering if that was true.
The door flew open so abruptly, she jumped and knocked over the jar. She leaped up from the stool. “Couldn’t you just once enter a room without tearing the door from its hinges?”
“I’m always much too eager to see my devoted wife.” Cain tossed his leather gloves down on a chair, then spotted the mess on the dressing table. “What’s that?”
“Nothing!” She grabbed a towel and tried to wipe it up.
He came up behind her and settled his hand over hers. With his other hand, he picked up the overturned jar and studied the powder that remained inside. “What is this?”
She tried to pull her hand from beneath his, but he held it there. He set down the jar, and his measured stare told her he wouldn’t let her go until she told him the truth. She started to say it was a headache powder, but she was too tired to dissemble, and what was the point anyway?
“It’s something I got from the Conjure Woman. Lucy packed it by mistake.” And then, because it didn’t make any difference now: “I—I didn’t want to have a baby.”
A look of bitterness flashed across his face. He released her hand and turned away. “I see. Maybe we should have talked about it.”
She couldn’t quite keep the sadness from her voice. “We don’t seem to have that kind of marriage, do we?”
“No. No, I guess we don’t.” With his back to her, he took off his pearl-gray coat and tugged at his cravat. When he finally turned, his eyes were as remote as the North Star. “I’m glad you were so sensible. Two people who detest each other wouldn’t make the best parents. I can’t imagine anything worse than bringing some unwanted brat into this sordid mess we call a marriage, can you?”
Kit felt her heart break into a million pieces. “No,” she managed. “No, I can’t.”
“I understand you own that new spinning mill out past Rutherford, Mr. Cain.”
“That’s right.” Cain stood at one end of the foyer next to John Hughes, a beefy young Northerner who’d claimed his attention just as he’d been about to go upstairs to see what was keeping Kit.
“Hear you’re doing a good business there. More power to you, I say. Risky, though, don’t you think, with the—” He broke off and whistled softly as he gazed past Cain’s shoulder to the staircase. “Whoa, now! Would you look at that? There’s a woman I’d like to take home with me.”
Cain didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. He could feel her through the pores of his skin. Still, he had to look.
She wore her silver-and-white gown with the crystal beads. But the dress had been altered since he’d last seen it, the way she’d altered so many of her clothes recently. She’d cut away the white satin bodice to just below her breasts and set in a single fine layer of silver organdy. It rose up over the soft curves to her throat, where she’d used a glimmering ribbon to gather it into a high, delicate ruffle.
The organdy was transparent, and she wore nothing beneath. Only the crystal bugle beads she’d taken from the skirt and placed in strategic clusters over the transparent fabric protected her modesty. Crystal spangles and warm, rounded flesh.
The gown was outrageously lovely, and Cain had never seen anything he hated more. One by one, the men around him turned to her, and their eyes greedily devoured flesh that should have been his alone to see. She was an ice maiden set afire.
And then he forgot his jealousy and simply lost himself in the sight of her. She was savagely beautiful, his wild rose of the deep wood, as untamed as the day he’d met her, still ready to stab a man’s flesh with her thorns at the same time she enticed him with her spirit.
He took in the high color smudging her delicate cheekbones and the queer, voltaic lights that glittered in the deep violet depths of her eyes. He felt his first prickle of uneasiness. There was something almost frenetic lurking inside her tonight. It pulsed from her body like a drumbeat, straining to break loose and run free and wild. He took one quick step toward her and then another.
Her eyes locked with his and then deliberately drew away. Without a word, she swept across the foyer to another neighbor from Rutherford who’d been invited.
“Brandon! My, don’t you look handsome tonight. And this must be your sweet fiancée, Eleanora. I do hope you’ll let me steal Brandon from you every once in a while. We’ve been friends for so long—like brother and sister, you understand. I couldn’t possibly give him up entirely, even for such a pretty young lady.”
Eleanora tried to smile, but her lips couldn’t hide either her disapproval or the knowledge that she looked dowdy next to Kit’s exotic beauty. Brandon, on the other hand, gazed at Kit in her shocking dress as if she were the only woman in the world.
Cain appeared. “Parsell. Miss Baird. If you’ll excuse us . . .”
His fingers sank into Kit’s organdy-draped arm, but before he could pull her across the foyer to the steps and force her to change her dress, Veronica glided toward them in a jet-black evening gown. There was a slight lift to her forehead as she took in the small drama being played out before her.
“Baron, Katharine, just the two I was looking for. I’m late as usual, and for my own party. Cook’s ready to serve dinner. Baron, be a darling and escort me into the dining room. And, Katharine, I want you to meet Sergio. A fascinating man and the best baritone New York City has heard in a decade. He’ll be your dinner partner.”
