Yesterday's Bride (2 page)

"I'll make some tea," Flora offered, looking into Leigh's drawn face.

"No, thank you, Flora," Leigh answered with difficulty. "I think I'll just go to my room. I'd like to be alone for a while." And with that, Leigh fled up the stairs to find what solace she could.

The next morning, both wan-faced and red-eyed, Leigh and Flora were up early, armed with a long list of things to do. Leigh dressed practically in faded denim jeans and an old blue shirt. Before starting, she allowed herself only a cup of Flora's aromatic coffee and one of the ham biscuits that a neighbor had thoughtfully provided.

The first thing she did was to call a real estate agent and place the house on the market. Then, while Flora was packing up kitchen items, Leigh attacked the Judge's study. She had set herself a difficult task for she sensed her grandfather's presence so strongly here, the scent of his tobacco pervading the room. It was to the study that the child Leigh had brought her school reports, had been summoned after mischief, and later, had come to have long, serious talks with her grandfather when she needed advice or guidance.

The study was large, its walls book-lined except for where French windows opened into the garden. Leigh could remember her grandfather strolling to look out those windows when he was deep in thought or when something was troubling him. She walked over to the massive roll-top desk that dominated the room and began the painful task of going through its contents.

By lunchtime Leigh and Flora had finished with all the downstairs rooms, packing away whatever was not to be sold with the house. Leigh wondered how some prospective buyer would feel about the furniture—the ornate, stiff couch with its plush cover, the whatnot shelves, the dark mahogany dining table and sturdy carved chairs, the china cabinet whose treasures Leigh had loved to plunder when she was a child. Leigh's grandmother had decorated the house when sturdiness and formality were the arbiters of taste, and the Judge had never changed a thing, other than the necessary modernizations.

As they sat down in the kitchen to chicken sandwiches and coffee, Leigh and Flora made plans for the afternoon.

"I don't know about you, but I could do with a rest," said Leigh, biting into her sandwich. "All that bending! Every muscle in my body aches and I'm so grimy that I'll probably leave smudges everywhere I go."

"A rest sounds good to me," answered Flora, putting another sandwich on Leigh's plate. "Then we can tackle the rooms upstairs." She hesitated, concern in her kindly blue eyes. "You'll have to go through your old bedroom, Miss Leigh. I'd clear it for you if I could, but there are things in there that only you know what to do with." Flora paused again before continuing. "You know that no one has used that room since you left home."

"It's OK, Flora," Leigh reassured her. "It was silly of me not to sleep there on my visits home, but I just never could. Nothing's in that room but dusty old memories. I'll pack it up if you'll do the guest rooms and the Judge's room. We can decide later about his personal things."

Leigh pushed back from the table and stretched out her legs. "I'm going to collapse on the front porch for an hour," she said.

"Not until you sample this pecan pie," Flora stated with a determined look in her eye.

After they had cleared the table and washed the few dishes, the housekeeper went to her room off the kitchen to nap and Leigh headed for the porch. She sat down on the swing that was suspended by chains from the ceiling, rested her head, and idly pushed back and forth. Leigh had always loved sitting on the porch with the Judge on warm summer evenings after supper. They would listen to the crickets or Leigh would race around the yard to catch fireflies and put them in jars with holes punched in the lids. And later she and Jason used to sit in the swing when he brought her home from their dates. Even when the weather was cold, they would cuddle up and talk. Better not dwell on that, thought Leigh, jumping to her feet.

"I'm going upstairs to exorcise some ghosts," she announced as she marched inside, letting the door swing to behind her with a bang.

She ran up the stairs and threw open the door to her old room. It's just the same, she reflected as she looked around. The bedroom was pretty and very feminine, with white and gold French provincial furniture that suited Leigh somehow. Covered with a white organdy spread and topped by a lacy canopy, the bed was the focal point of the room. Leigh slowly trailed her hand across its pristine coverlet, a faraway look in her eyes.

It was the room of a young girl. The Judge had had it decorated for her as soon as she had come to live here, after the automobile accident that took her parents' lives. She had been eight years old, bewildered and frightened, but the Judge's kindness and Flora's brusque mothering had soon made her feel at home. She had had a good childhood in this house, perhaps a rather solitary one spent more with adults than other children, but a happy time nonetheless.

Wandering to the row of windows set in the wall opposite the door, Leigh leaned her head against a windowpane and stared unseeingly out. Some of her memories were painful, but she knew she must take them out, examine them and thrust them behind her forever.

Leigh closed her eyes, thinking back five years. She had been thrilled, she remembered, and more than a little apprehensive when the Judge had told her that he wanted her to make a debut into Raleigh society. The debut would be good for her, he explained, it would make her more at ease socially, polish her off. At eighteen, in her first year at St. Mary's Junior College, she was overly sensitive and young for her years and a bit shy with boys and girls her own age, but somehow she had gotten through the ordeals of teas, parties and dances, and had even relaxed enough to enjoy them. She never lacked for partners and soon learned to engage in the nonsensical chatter that was expected of her.

Then came the highlight of her presentation to society, the Governor's Ball. Dressed in flowing white chiffon, her silver hair caught high on her head, she was quite the most striking girl there.

Trying to catch her breath from the whirl of dancing, Leigh was resting on the sidelines when one of the sponsors of the Ball approached her. Clare Randall, a petite brunette, was a former debutante who was helping to organize this season's festivities. "I have someone here who wants to be introduced to you," she told Leigh. "May I present my brother-in-law, Jason Randall. Jason, Miss Melville."

Leigh looked up expecting to see another college boy, as most of the escorts at the Ball were, but no callow youth stood before her. He must be approaching thirty, she surmised, studying the man through her lashes.

Jason Randall was not handsome, his features were too uncompromising for that. But his was a face full of character. Not an easy man to know, Leigh felt, unless he wanted you to know him, but nonetheless a man you could depend on. She could feel his strength and competence. And he's tough, Leigh decided as she summed him up mentally.

He was a man wholly outside Leigh's range of experience, used as she was to people her own age or considerably older. With a nervous smile, she gave him her hand and said a prim how do you do.

When he smiled, he took her breath away. The smile softened his strong features, making him look younger, even more vital, if that was possible. Watch out, Leigh warned herself, this one's a lady-killer.

His voice was low and attractive, with a slight drawl. "Will you dance with me?" he asked, and almost mesmerized, Leigh gave him her hand and let him lead her onto the dance floor.

"Miss Leigh Melville," he said as if savoring her name. "I wanted to meet you very badly."

Leigh didn't know what to say.

After they had circled the floor a few times in silence, Jason looked down into her gray eyes and asked, "Do you have a steady boyfriend?"

"No, but…" Leigh didn't know how to handle this. He was moving too swiftly for her.

Jason cut into her reply. "Good! We're going to get to know each other better, you and I, and a boyfriend would have been in the way."

Leigh gasped. "You don't waste any time, do you?"

Brown eyes raked her face. "Not if it's something I want," he answered slowly.

Her cheeks burning with anger, Leigh spat out, "You are the most insufferable, arrogant, conceited creature it has ever been my misfortune to meet. In the first place, if I had a dozen boyfriends, it's none of your business. You're a stranger and likely to stay that way. And secondly, what makes you think I would go out with you even if the alternative were to sit home alone every night of my life?"

Breathless from the spate of words, Leigh began to struggle out of his arms.

"Hey, hold on, you don't want to cause a scene. I'll behave." He loosened his hold on her. "I've never been any good at small talk. If I have something to say, I just say it. Maybe I was precipitous and not very adept, but all I was trying to do was tell you that I'd like to see you again," he apologized with a sheepish grin. The grin was not quite as devastating as the smile, but Leigh felt her anger sliding away.

"I'm just a country boy, after all. I don't know how to behave with society ladies," he teased, the grin broader than ever.

Leigh wasn't sure she shouldn't end this conversation and this dance right now. "I get the feeling you're making fun of me," she said.

"Never," he intoned solemnly. "I do apologize and beg you to let us start over. I'll even get down on my knees."

Leigh's indignation turned to laughter, as he had intended it to. "I doubt if you often apologize or beg, so how can I refuse you?" she capitulated.

Begin again they did. After that first dance, Leigh spent the rest of the evening with Jason. She learned that he and his brother Bob, for whom Jason was deputizing tonight to escort Clare, farmed more than five hundred acres of land in central North Carolina, just over an hour's drive from Raleigh. He was persistent in his efforts to make her go out with him, saying he could drive to Raleigh from the farm whenever Leigh was free, so she laughingly gave in. She would have been inhuman not to, feeling Jason's magnetism as strongly as she did. He was charming and interesting and before the night was over Leigh was bemused.

He courted her assiduously. The Judge and Flora were almost as captivated by him as Leigh who had completely lost her heart. The one flaw in her happiness was an uncertainty of herself. She could not understand what a man like Jason, worldly and confident, could see in her, little more than a schoolgirl. She feared that she would be unable to hold his interest for long. He was tender and protective toward her, and teased her gently. But he was always in control, never carried away by their kisses, always able to put her aside and say good night. There was a part of him she couldn't reach. But when he asked her to marry him, she said yes at once. If he wanted her enough to marry her, he must love her, Leigh felt, so she stilled her doubts and told herself it would work out.

They were married three months after the Ball in the garden at Leigh's home. It was early spring and the weather was chancy, but Leigh insisted that the ceremony be held out of doors. She was right to do so. The day was beautiful and sunshiny, as only certain spring days can be, a gift after the cold of winter.

After a small reception for the few close friends they had invited, Leigh slipped away to change into her going-away clothes. Clare, her new sister-in-law, went with her. Leigh was floating with happiness and knew she needed someone to hold her down to earth long enough for her to change out of her wedding dress.

Clare quickly brought her back to reality.

As she was unfastening the tiny buttons down the back of Leigh's white lace gown, Clare spoke, "I like you, Leigh, and I'm glad we're going to be sisters."

Leigh was touched. She had met Clare only at the Ball and barely knew her. "Thank you, Clare. I'm glad, too."

Clare finished unbuttoning the dress and lifted it over Leigh's head. Then she took the gown to the closet and carefully hung it up.

"I don't quite know how to say this, but I'd like to give you some advice," she said as she moved to sit on a white and gold Louis XV chair.

Leigh hadn't expected such an offer. She peeled off her white satin shoes and long silk slip before answering. She didn't want any advice, however well meant. Trying to joke, she said, "If it's the birds and bees, Clare, I know all about them."

"I'm serious," the other girl said tersely.

Resigned, Leigh shrugged. "All right, what is it?"

Clare watched Leigh don delicate underwear and reach for the pale blue wool dress lying in readiness on the bed. "It's about your behavior with Jason. You act so naive and wide-eyed with him. He isn't going to put up with that for long."

Leigh stiffened. "Jason has never complained of my behavior, Clare," she said. "He must like me as I am or he wouldn't have married me."

Clare fidgeted with her gloves as Leigh sat down at the dressing table to touch up her makeup. "You think I'm interfering in something that doesn't concern me, don't you? It's just that I don't want to see you being taken advantage of. I'm going to tell you something that I think you ought to know."

Quietly Leigh asked, "Exactly what is it that you're trying to say?"

Upset and nervous, Clare jerked out the words, "Didn't you ever consider it strange that Jason took one look at you and practically proposed on the spot? Do you think that's what usually happens?"

"In some cases," Leigh answered, "people know right away, love at first sight does exist."

Her eyebrows drawn together in a frown, Clare chided, "Oh, come on, Leigh, be realistic. Does Jason strike you as the impulsive type? Do you know how many women have been in his life?"

Leigh didn't answer, just sat looking at Clare through the mirror.

"Jason decided before he escorted me to the Governor's Ball that he was going to choose a wife there. It didn't much matter whom, just someone pleasant to look at, with the right background—proper schools and family— and of course, most important, someone young enough to be malleable."

Leigh carefully put down the tube of lipstick she had been holding and said, "You don't know what you're talking about."