Thurston House Page 9

  Jeremiah Thurston felt a breath whistle through his lungs, as though it might be his last. “I never thought to hear myself say this, sir, but I think there is a distinct possibility that I already do. In truth, I don’t even understand what I feel for her, and I’ve been fighting it since we first met, if for no other reason than out of respect for you. She’s barely more than a child, a young girl, and I am a great deal too old for this. I have a simple, quiet life, as I said, and I’ve long since given up such dreams.” … And yet he had met Amelia on the train, and she had touched a place in his soul, and before that he had watched John Harte’s boy die in his arms … and suddenly, for the first time in twenty years he wanted something he had never had before, a wife to love, and a child of his own … something different than just coming home to Hannah every night, and Saturday nights with Mary Ellen Browne … and suddenly there was Camille, like a vision in a dream, the embodiment of all that he had never had, or even thought he would.… “Something’s happened to me in the past week”—it was all he could say—“and I need some time to think about it.” He wasn’t sure what he felt anymore, after Amelia and now this.

  Orville Beauchamp did not look displeased. “She’s too young now anyway. And I don’t want you to say anything to her.”

  Jeremiah looked shocked. “I had no intention of doing so, sir. I need some time to think myself. I would like to see what happens when I return to my everyday life, my empty house, my mines.” He sighed, suddenly it sounded desperately lonely to him. Suddenly he felt as though he needed her there. And he had never felt that way about anyone before … not since Jennie … or even then.… “I don’t know what I feel for her. Right now, I would ask you for her hand tonight”—his voice was deep and gruff with the power of what he felt for her—“but I want to be sure I’d be doing the right thing for both of us. How old is she now?” Suddenly his mind was blank, all he could think of were her eyes, her arms … her lips.…

  “Seventeen.”

  “I will return in six months to ask you for her hand, if that still seems wise to me then. If not, I will advise you long before that. I will come to Atlanta, if you still agree, and ask her to marry me, then I will return again in six months and take her with me.”

  “Why so long? Why not just take her back with you six months from now, if that’s what you decide?”

  “I want to build her a decent house in town, if she agrees to marry me. I owe her that much at least. Rest assured, Beauchamp, if I marry your child, I will give her a good life in every possible way.” His eyes seemed to emphasize his words, and Beauchamp nodded his head.

  “I have no doubt of that. It’s why I spoke to you at all. I meant what I said. You’ll be the best thing that ever happened to her.”

  “I hope so.” Jeremiah’s eyes were strangely bright. He felt as though he had just made the biggest deal of his life. The nine hundred flasks agreed to only days before meant nothing to him. But Camille … she was a dream come true, and he already knew that he would be back in six months. It made him look differently at Camille when he and Orville emerged from their seclusion in the dining room.

  “What did my father say to you?” she whispered to him. “Did someone see us kiss?” She didn’t seem overly concerned about it though, and Jeremiah was amused. As he looked at her now, it was he who wanted to grab her in his arms and plant a kiss on her lips.

  “Yes.” He whispered back, teasing her now. “He’s sending you to a convent, to be guarded by nuns until your twenty-fifth birthday.”

  “Oh he is not!” She squealed with laughter and shouted at him. “He’d never do such a thing. He’d miss me too much!” It reminded him of what a sacrifice Beauchamp would make, if Jeremiah married her and took her away, but he was right in a way, it was better for her. In some ways she would never be accepted in the South, and she knew it herself. Her blood was tainted by Beauchamp’s, and they wouldn’t be forgiven for that for at least a hundred years, if then. Her brother seemed not to care, but it was obvious that Camille was bothered by it. Even her mother constantly behaved as though there were a bad smell in the house, and she talked of Savannah like a land forever lost to her, no matter how many times she visited it each year. She lived in exile.

  “Actually”—Jeremiah felt strangely relaxed for a man who had just sealed his fate, or as good as—“we were discussing another deal. I might come back to Atlanta to discuss it with him in another six months.”

  Camille looked intrigued. “More quicksilver?” She seemed surprised. “I thought the consortium bought enough to last them a year.” He was constantly amazed at how much she knew, and more than that, how much she understood.

  “It’s more complicated than that. I’ll explain it to you some other time.” He glanced at his watch. “But it’s getting late now. I should get back to my hotel, to make sure that they’ve packed my things. I’m leaving in the morning, little one.” He suddenly felt oddly possessive about her, but he didn’t want it to show. He turned and said something to her mother then, but she seemed not to be paying attention to him, and she drifted away, leaving them alone again.

  Camille looked up at him with big sad eyes. “If I have time, before you come back, perhaps I’ll write to you.”

  “I’d like that very much.” But he wanted time to think as well.

  She looked at him strangely then, as though she knew.… “Daddy said he was going to take me to France this year, perhaps I won’t be here when you come back.…” But he knew she would. Or perhaps he should let Beauchamp sell her to some minor count, or duke. And then suddenly the idea revolted him. She wasn’t an object to be sold, not even to him. She was a woman, a human being … a child … suddenly, more than ever, he wanted time to think about whether or not she would be happy with him. He wanted to look across his rolling hills and out the windows of the room in which he slept, and try to imagine her there with him. “California is so far away …” Her voice sounded tiny and forlorn, and he reached out and pressed her hand.

  “I’ll be back again.” It was a promise as much to her as to himself, and he wondered if he truly would. His life would never again be the same, but he wasn’t sure he wanted it to be. He looked down at the exquisite girl beside him then and said the only words she wanted to hear. “I love you, Camille … remember that.…” He gently kissed her fingers then, and then her cheek, and then with a firm handshake and a knowing look exchanged with Orville Beauchamp, he was gone, leaving none of them quite as they had been, and least of all himself.

  7

  The boat arrived in Napa bright and early on a Saturday morning, and Jeremiah expected to hire a coach to take him home to St. Helena. He had wired the mines that he would be back in the office on Monday morning, and he had a whole weekend at home to sort through his papers and mail, and check on the vineyards. He looked around as he stood on the dock, and took a deep breath of the familiar air. The hills in the distance looked even greener than they had three weeks before when he’d left Napa, and then suddenly as he stood there he saw the boy who had driven him to the station, the boy he had promised the Saturday morning job to. Little Danny Richfield.

  “Hey, Mr. Thurston!” He waved an arm from his perch on the carriage, and Jeremiah walked toward him with a slow smile. It was nice to be met, even by a child he barely knew, and as he walked toward him he realized that the boy was only a few years younger than Camille. It was a strange thought as he flung his bags up and smiled at Danny.

  “What are you doing here, son?”

  “My Dad said you’d be coming in today, so I asked if I could use the carriage to pick you up.” He hopped up beside the boy and caught up on the news on the drive home. The two and a half hours sped by as Jeremiah looked happily around him. He fell in love with the Napa Valley each time he saw it. “You look happy to be back, sir.”

  “I am.” He smiled happily at the boy. “There’s no place in the world like this valley. Don’t ever fool yourself about that. You may get the itch to wander one da
y, but if you do, you’ll never find a place you’ll like better.” But the boy looked doubtful at his words. There were more exciting places in the world, and he knew it. Besides, he wanted to be a banker when he grew up, and how exciting could it be to be a banker in the Napa Valley? At the very least, he wanted to go to San Francisco … or St. Louis … Chicago … New York … Boston.…

  “Did you have a good time, sir?”

  “I did.” But as he sat looking at the boy, once again thoughts of Camille raced into his head. How was she? Where was she now? How would she like it here? Questions like that had been pressing into his mind during the long trip back, and even more so now that he was back in Napa again. Suddenly, he saw everything as though through her eyes, imagining what it would be like to bring her here for the first time.

  And as the carriage rolled to a slow stop outside his house, he sat for a long moment and looked around. What would she think of this, he asked himself. Somehow, it was difficult to imagine her here. And there was so much he hadn’t done over the years … planted flower beds, put up curtains, all the things that Hannah had given up badgering him about long since, suddenly mattered to him now. But he was jumping way ahead of himself. He had come home to see how he felt about her, not to redesign his entire world to meet her needs, or was that in fact all he wanted to do? He seemed already to have made up his mind, and yet there was something else he had to deal with here. And he was well aware of it as he thanked the boy for driving him home, and walked quietly into his house. Jeremiah knew full well what day it was. And he wanted to go to the mines and see how things were there, but after that … he had to be fair to her … to whom? To Camille, he asked himself … or Mary Ellen Browne?… He felt as though his head was too full, as suddenly he saw Hannah watching him with her familiar frown.

  “Well, you don’t look none the worse for wear.” There was no rush to give him a hug or a hello, and he smiled at her.

  “You sure could take a man by surprise, standing there. How’s the world been treating you since I been gone?”

  “Not bad. What about you, boy?” He laughed, but he was still a boy to her, and probably always would be.

  “It feels good to be home.” And actually it did. The valley in which he lived meant more to him than anywhere else in the world. Even if he had come to realize there was something missing there for him. But perhaps not for too long. He looked up and saw Hannah staring at him.

  “What have you been up to, boy? You look guilty as hell.” She knew him better than anyone in the world, enough to see that something had happened to him since he left. “You been up to mischief while you were back East?”

  “Some.” His eyes smiled at her.

  “What kind of ‘some’?”

  It was almost impossible to explain and he wasn’t sure where to begin. “Well, let’s see. I closed a very important business deal.” He was stalling her and she refused to be fooled.

  “That don’t interest me worth a damn, and you know that ain’t what I mean. What else did you do?”

  “I met a very charming young lady.” He had decided to put her out of her misery and now the old eyes glowed.

  “Just how charming is that, Jeremiah? Did you pay for it, or was she free?” He roared with laughter and she grinned.

  “That is an extremely rude question for you to ask, and certainly not appropriate for a lady.” He was teasing and she knew it.

  “I ain’t no lady. Now ’fess up.” He grinned. “No, I did not ‘pay for it.’ She is seventeen years old, and the daughter of the man with whom I made the business deal.”

  “You chasing after children now, Jeremiah? Isn’t seventeen a mite young for you?”

  His brows knit at that. She was right, and it was precisely what he feared. She had hit a nerve, without meaning to. And he stood up and tried to brush the thoughts of Camille away. “I’m afraid it is. That’s what I told her, and her father, before I left.” But something in his face suddenly looked pained and grim, and Hannah grabbed him by the arm before he left the room.

  “No, don’t go running off like a wounded cow, you damn fool. I don’t expect you to be running after an old dog like me. Maybe seventeen ain’t all that young after all. Tell me what she’s like.” She had a sudden intuition that it could be serious. “Come on, Jeremiah. Tell me about this girl you met … you like her a lot, don’t you, boy?” Her eyes met his and suddenly she saw it all, and she almost gasped. She had never seen so much love in one man’s eyes, and yet he couldn’t have known her for very long. “Why, Jeremiah … you’re serious, aren’t you?” Her voice was as soft as old burnished wood, and he nodded as he met her eyes.

  “I think I may be, my friend. I don’t know … I need to think it out … I’m not even sure she’d be happy here. She’s accustomed to a very different life in the South.”

  Hannah was gruff when she spoke again. “Well, she’d be a damn lucky girl if you decided to bring her here.” Jeremiah smiled at her prejudice.

  “I’d be the lucky one.” And then, “She’s a very special girl, brighter than most of the men I know, and prettier than any woman I’ve ever seen. You can’t ask for more than that.”

  “Is she good?” It was an odd question and it caused an odd stirring in his soul … good … that much he didn’t know about her. Jennie had been good, decent, warm, loving, kind … Mary Ellen was a decent sort, but Camille? Good … bright, funny, fun, delectable, sensual, passionate, exciting …

  “I’m sure she is.” Why wouldn’t she be? She was seventeen years old. But Hannah had brought another thought to mind, and now their eyes met and held.

  “What are you going to do about Mary Ellen, lad?”

  “I don’t know yet. I thought about it all the way home on the train.”

  “Have you made your mind up about this girl? It sounds like you have.”

  “I don’t know that yet. What I need more than anything is time … time to myself … to make up my mind.…” But that meant keeping his distance from everyone. He knew what he had to do, but he cringed at the thought of telling her. He remembered her words on that last Sunday afternoon … “Don’t find the girl of your dreams in Atlanta.” … Don’t be silly, he had said … don’t be silly … and yet he had.… How could he have done a thing like that, and after all these years, and suddenly he was thinking of turning his whole life upside down in a way he had done for no one else, certainly not Mary Ellen Browne. All he had ever given her was one night a week, and now he wanted to offer his whole life to this outrageous child … but he felt something for her he had never, ever felt before. A passion that seared through his very soul. He would have walked a hundred thousand miles for her, carried her across the desert, torn his heart out and put it in her hand. Suddenly he saw Hannah staring at him.

  “You look sick.”

  “I think I am.” He grinned. It was a kind of sickness, an insanity he had never felt before. “What does one do about something like this?”

  “Go after her, if you want her that bad, but first, you’ve got something else to do.” They both knew he did, and he dreaded it now. She’d been good to him, and he didn’t want to hurt her after all these years, except that he knew he would. There was nothing else that he could do. He turned away and looked out over the valley then. It was such a lovely place, it was difficult to imagine anyone unhappy there, except there were those who were. He turned back to Hannah then.

  “Have you see John Harte?”

  She shook her head. “I hear he won’t see anyone. Locked his doors and stayed drunk for more’n a week, and now he’s working in the mines alongside his men. He lost almost half of them by the time the sickness went.” She looked sadly at Jeremiah then. “We lost two, you know, but it never hit us bad over here while you were gone.” She told him who the two men were, and he looked at her unhappily. Why was there no way to stop things like that? How unfair life was at times. “They say John Harte is like a wild man now. He works all night, works all day, shouts his head off
at everyone, and gets drunk the minute he leaves the mines. I guess it’ll take a while.” It reminded Jeremiah of his lost fiancée again, and suddenly frightened him about Camille. What if she fell ill while he was gone, if he returned to find her dead? A sudden wave of terror swept over him, and Hannah read it on his face and shook her head. “You got it bad, boy.”

  “I know.” He could barely speak after the fear of a moment before.

  “I hope she’s worth it, ’cause she’s getting a good man.” She sighed. “And I suspect Mary Ellen Browne’s about to lose the best man she ever had.”

  “Don’t …” He turned away again. “Don’t, dammit.…” Maybe it was wrong to end it now, and yet it would be worse if he went on and married Camille in the end … he could give Mary Ellen a choice, of course, but that wouldn’t be fair to her. He sighed deeply and stood up. He wanted to bathe and change before going to the mine, and then he had to face Mary Ellen again. It was odd, only weeks before he had left her with regret, and now he was going to say good-bye to her. How strange life was. He looked at his old housekeeper and smiled. “Maybe in the end, what happens will be for the best.”

  “I hope so for you.” He smiled at her and left the room, and half an hour later he was astride his horse and headed for the mine.

  8

  When Jeremiah tied his horse to the tree behind Mary Ellen’s house that night, there was no sign of the children anywhere. He went around to the front door and knocked, and she was quick to pull the door open when she saw him. She was wearing a pretty pink cotton dress and the coppery hair shone, and before he could say a word, she had thrown her arms around his neck and kissed him hard. For an instant he held back, and then he felt the familiar surge of passion rush through him and he pressed her to him, enjoying the feel of her body in his arms as he always did. And then remembering himself, he pulled away, and his eyes avoided hers as he walked her into her parlor.