Demon Child (21 page)

    Her head seemed to balloon, and she felt dizzy. “What do you mean?” she asked.

    “I thought I'd made it clear.”

    “Make it clearer,” she said.

    He laughed. “Well, I suspect that I have either fallen or am falling in love with you, Jenny.”

    “You don't know which?”

    “Wait until we get this incredible mess straightened out. Then I'll be better able to know exactly what is going on inside my head-and inside my heart.”

    “You're my cousin,” she said.

    “Not blood cousins. We're only related through my father's second marriage.” He stopped speaking abruptly, as if he had just thought of something that he would rather have ignored.

    The horses whinnied, though not in terror now.

    “What is it?” Jenny asked.

    “I just thought-that perhaps I've been standing here making a fool out of myself,” Richard said. “But I don't want you to be afraid of hurting my feelings.” His gaze became especially intense now. “I shouldn't have told you how I feel until I knew what your own feelings were.”

    It was only raining lightly now. The wind was only a breeze. The storm clouds were beginning to scatter as the moon and the stars burned their way through.

    What
do
I feel? Jenny wondered. At one time, I thought Richard was dashing and handsome. I thought he was attractive in a scholarly way. He meant so much to me once, when I needed consolation.

    But what did she feel now? Did she love him? No. She didn't love anyone, really. She didn't love anyone because she had always been too anxious for security to open herself to deeper emotions. But she could love him, in time. She was sure of that. After all this ugliness had passed and she was able to handle her new relationship to the world, after things were normal again, she knew that she could feel that special affection for him. It wouldn't be a false love, based on a need for security, but a genuine love. She could feel the first stirrings of that now. They had been there a long time.

    All the same, she did not want to make a commitment so quickly. She had spent these last few years training to be a teacher and not to be a wife. As Richard Brucker's wife, there would be no time or need to enter a classroom every morning. Whether that would be a relief or a disappointment, she could not yet decide. It would take a while to reconsider a future she had planned in such detail.

    “Well?”

    “It's too soon,” she told him.

    “When?”

    “Give me the summer.”

    “That's a long time.”

    “Until August, at least. Until all of this nightmare has had time to fade from our memories. I need time to think and re-evaluate things, Richard. I can't adjust this quickly.”

    “August?”

    “August,” she affirmed.

    “Fair enough.”

    He bent toward her and kissed her on the lips while his arms went lightly around her. It was a nice, brief kiss that said many things. It made her positively exuberant. As the rain pattered over them, she asked him to kiss her once again, just once, in that very same way.

    He did.

    “Now,” he said, “we've got to get to the house and wrap up this awful business. Dr. Malmont will be there, and we've got a surprise for him. As nice as it might be, we can't remain here all night, kissing in the rain.”

    She giggled and felt younger than she had felt since she was fourteen. There might yet be problems in life. Everything wouldn't go smoothly all the time. But she felt that she was ready to face the rough spots. It was time that she collected the happiness in life that God sets aside for everyone.

    By the time they reached the great house, the rain had stopped completely. The clouds were scattered thinly across the night sky, and the moon shone through, brilliant and huge. If she still believed in omens, in forewarnings of good and bad luck, she would have known that this sudden clearing of the sky meant that the future could
only
be a happy one.

    

    

    [Version 2.0 by BuddyDk - August 2 2003]

    [Completely new scan]