Maddie smiled. “I have some silk leaves that I think are the same shade as the dress. Let me go get them and we’ll weave them through the braids.”
Hallie stood, lifting her full skirts so she could stand in front of the mirror. She knew she was still tall, pale Hallie, but the mirror reflected a different Hallie, as if she had a twin who was lovely, softer, prettier. The mirror was magic, the kind that were in fairy tales. Her reflection was that of a woman.
Just what Kit needed.Maddie’s words sounded so familiar. Then Hallie remembered. Her own mother’s words had been much the same.Men needed women to teach them to love.Hallie wondered if she could make Kit love her. She glanced back at the reflection. Of course, she hadn’t really thought of herself as a woman until now. Before, she’d just fought against being labeled a “girl.” Common sense told her that if she didn’t believe it herself, how could she convince anyone else?
But she and Kit were getting married in less than an hour, whatever the circumstances. Her future would be as his wife.The thought made her breath catch in her throat. Wife?
Just then Maddie entered with the silk leaves and pinned them into Hallie’s hair. They were the perfect touch. Maddie went off to see to the children, and Hallie went downstairs to wait for the ceremony. As she descended the stairs, the weight of the heavily embroidered silk trailed behind her, making her feel regal, lovely, and confident, a princess attending her first ball.
When she reached the foyer, Hallie started toward the parlor, but then remembered that Agnes would be there. She wasn’t that confident. Facing Agnes and all her talk of love and weddings and forever. Down the hall was Kit’s study—the safest place to wait—and it would be quiet so she could calm herself, and maybe even plot her next siege on Kit’s unsuspecting heart.
Her hand was on the doorknob, when she heard voices from inside the study and paused, listening. It was Kit; she’d recognize that bellow anywhere. He said her name. Curious, she leaned closer to the door. After all, husbands and wives shouldn’t have any secrets between them.
“Jo’s dead, Lee!” Kit snapped.
“Oh Christ, Kit. I didn’t mean to open old wounds,” Lee responded. “I’m sorry...”
Joe? Who was Joe?Hallie leaned a little closer.
“Forget it. It’s me,” Kit said. “Just the mention of her name can still gut me.”
Her?
Kit went on. “You know, it’s as if that lovely, passionate wife of mine can reach her deceitful hand all the way from the grave and twist her Brutus’s knife a little deeper into my back.”
Hallie sagged against the cold door.A wife. He had a wife!
“Sometimes,” Kit said, “I still blame myself for the change in Jo. If I hadn’t left her for so long, maybe...” The anger left Kit’s voice, and in its place was what sounded like the quiet, wistful tone of a confused and wounded man.
“I thought the bond between us was strong enough to survive one voyage apart. I loved her, Lee, but she stopped loving me. Tell me, how can you leave a warm, loving wife and come home a year later to a cold stranger? She killed something in me, and so help me God, it still hurts. I spent two months trying to find some spark of love in her. Two months of swallowing my pride and almost begging her to stay home and give us a chance. She wouldn’t even try.”
“There must have been some reason,” Lee speculated.
“Oh, she had a reason.” His bitter tone returned. “A reason named Jonathan Hicks. I remember the last time I tried to talk to her. I suggested we take a trip, anywhere she wanted to go. When we were first married she had wanted us to see Paris together. She had been so insistent; she said you had to go to France with someone you loved, because when you were there, you fell in love all over again. That morning I tried to rekindle that excitement, fool that I was. God, when I think of how I almost begged her to go...”
A thud sounded from inside, and Hallie could picture Kit slamming his fist on the desk while he spoke the hurtful, purging words that killed her dreams.
“Do you know what she did? She laughed at me! I’ll never forget that laugh; it was unnatural. Even now it makes me feel empty. Then she made up some lame excuse about visiting her cousin in Boston. She said she didn’t care where I went as long as it was far away from her.”
“Kit, you don’t have to tell me this,” Lee said.
“I haven’t told anyone except my family, and for five bloody years I’ve let it burn in my gut. Jo left for Boston, and I took the ship out for a few months. When I came home, part of me still hoped that maybe by some miracle the old Jo would be waiting. But she wasn’t. She was dead, killed in a carriage accident in Boston along with her lover, Jonathan Hicks.”
The room was silent, like the tears that streamed down Hallie’s blotched cheeks.
“Don’t ever fall in love, Lee. Love is a disease. It sucks the life from your veins and the warmth from your soul. Then it wraps your mind in chains from which you’ll never be free.”
A glass clinked. “Here,” Lee said, “you need a drink.”
“God no! That’s what got me into this mess. Marriage, shit! Just what I need. It was bad enough when I was married to someone I loved. But with Hallie... I don’t feel anything.”
“That’s not what you said last night,” Lee reminded him. “You said you couldn’t keep your hands off her.”
“I was drunk.” He paused and Hallie felt a huge pain in her chest. “I don’t love her, Lee.”
“She’s a lovely girl. You said so yourself.”
The clock chimed four and Hallie pushed herself away from the support of the door. She didn’t want anyone to see her hurting. She turned and ran to the kitchen door. Just as she pushed it open, she heard Kit’s final words.
