Pieces of Dreams, page 2
“Then I pity the bride,” Aunt Dora said shortly. “Enough sass. Here we go!”
Stepping to the frame on the side opposite Melly, she held the kitten above the center of the half-finished quilt, letting it dangle bonelessly for a few seconds. Then she dropped it.
The small cat landed spraddle-legged, looking startled and annoyed as the quilt bounced and sagged in the middle. Gathering itself with immense dignity, it patted the starburst under it, then took a tentative step.
“Call to it, girls,” Aunt Dora directed. “Come on, now. You have to do your part if you want it to be a fair trial.”
“Here, kitty, kitty,” Sarah cajoled, obliging as always.
“Over here, cat,” Esther said, trying not to laugh.
Biddy eyed it askance. “Don't let that creature come near me or I'll start to sneeze and won't quit till doomsday.”
“Sweet little kitty,” Lydia crooned with a grin and a competitive glance at the others. “Come here, darling bitty kitty. Over here, come to Lydia.”
The cat sat down and started to lick a paw.
A gust of giggles and half-smothered jeers greeted the performance. Melly looked toward her aunt with humor flashing bright in the black-eyed-Susan-brown of her eyes. She made no effort to coax the kitten herself, of course, since she knew perfectly well when she would be married, and to whom. “Now what?”
“Call it again,” Aunt Dora urged the others as she placed her fists on her hips. Her frown was earnest, as if she actually expected the kitten to foretell the future happiness of at least one of their number.
They did as suggested, except for Biddy who made shooing motions in the direction of the others with her small hands. The kitten looked up from its ablutions and pricked its ears, but made no move to leave its seat.
“Oh, dear,” Lydia moaned in mock dismay. “Does this mean we're all hopeless?”
“Don't be ridiculous,” Melly said bracingly. “It's my belief you're all trying to avoid your fate. Call him as if you mean it!”
At the sound of Melly's voice, the kitten blinked and turned his head in her direction. Then as if executing a tiresome duty, the small animal rose and glided into a dainty walk, picking its way over silk and satin and the gold featherstitching that outlined the connecting seams of the squares. At once, the bridesmaids renewed their giggling, cajoling efforts.
The kitten paid no attention. It did not hesitate, did not pause, but made its way straight to Melly. Dropping into a crouch in front of her, it launched into a graceful leap. As she caught it in her arms, it climbed up to snuggle into the tender curve of her neck. Immediately, it began to purr.
“Hey! No fair!” Lydia cried.
Biddy made a sound of mild disgust. “What can you expect? The silly thing belongs to Melly, after all.”
“She is definitely going to be married, you'll have to give the cat that much,” Sarah pointed out on a throaty chuckle.
At that moment, the front door swung open. The young women turned as one to see who had arrived. Their lively chatter died away into sudden, breathless silence.
The man who stepped into the room was tall and broad and bronzed, with hair so bleached by the sun that it had the color and sheen of spun gold. Standing relaxed and four-square in the doorway, he appeared as sure of his welcome as a conquering Caesar. As he saw the women staring at him, his blue eyes took on a brilliant sheen of merriment while a slow grin curved his mouth.
“Caleb!” Melly cried. Driven by amazement for the opportune arrival, she lowered the kitten to the quilt, pushed back her chair, and sprang up. Then, laughing, she ran to fling herself into her fiancé’s arms.
A soft grunt of surprise left him as he caught her against his chest. An instant later, his blue gaze turned smoky with the rise of desire. His firm lips parted for a quiet oath, then he lowered his head and touched his mouth to hers.
It was like stepping into a whirlwind, a spinning fury of the senses. Melly's lips tingled, heating with the contact. Her heart seemed to stop. She felt buffeted, storm-tossed, lost in a delirium of sheer, pulsating magic. Dimly she was aware of the parlor, her aunt, her friends, but they did not seem to matter. All that had being or reason was the warm, hard arms around her and the sweet, tender taste of the man who held her so close to his heart.
“Melly!”
That voice. Her name, spoken in syllables that held accusation, disbelief, disapproval. Yes, and pain.
It was the last that reached her. The pain.
She pushed free, stepped back, though she had to hold to the arms of the man she had just greeted for balance. Turning her head slowly, she stared at the person who had called to her, the man who now moved from behind the first to enter and then stopped at his side.
It was the same as seeing double. There were two of them, two men of devastating power and appearance, two men dangerously alike.
And the second, the latecomer, was Caleb, her future husband.
Melly's heart sank, shivering inside her, as she saw what she had done. The first man through the door had been Conrad. It was the second who had called her name.
She had kissed the wrong twin brother.
Chapter Two
“I'm sorry,” Conrad said in husky tones as he gazed down at Melly. “I—I didn't mean, that is, I just—” He stopped and took a deep breath to prevent himself from stammering like a school boy. “It was the surprise.”
The apology was a sham and Conrad knew it. He had taken shameless advantage, and he didn't regret it for a minute. In fact, he'd do it again, given half a chance. If that made him a low-life, then so be it. He wasn't a man to turn down a taste of heaven when it came his way.
And it had been heavenly. He would never forget the intoxicating taste of Melly's lips, that fresh and tender assault on his senses. Not if he lived to be a hundred.
He hadn't seen it coming—how could he have? For a single instant he had thought it was just plain surprise that caused him to react with such stunning intensity. But that wasn't it at all.
Melly was what had shook him, left him wanting more. Melly herself—the rich welcome and joy in her eyes as she came toward him, the entrancing shape of her face, the slender curves of her body pressing against his in a fit so right, so perfect it was as if he had been born to hold her. She had stolen his breath and his common sense, knocked his notions of proper behavior for a loop. For a single instant she had made him forget who she was, who he was—forget, in fact, that he was not his brother.
He had kissed Melly, his twin's promised wife. God, how stupid could he be?
Caleb, he saw, was mad as hell, and who could blame him? If Melly belonged to him and he had seen Caleb kissing her, he would be ready to wear the mark of Cain right square in the middle of his forehead.
That was, of course, one of the major curses of being a twin. It was too easy to put himself in his brother's place. Far too easy.
“Come in here, you rapscallion!” Aunt Dora cried, stepping forward to envelope him in a quick, well-padded hug. “Have a seat, both you boys. Have a cookie while I bring two more glasses. Mercy above, Conrad, if it's not just like you to drop in out of the blue!”
“Not quite,” he offered with a grin. “I only stepped off the steamer, like anybody else.”
“Which is still enough to give a body heart palpitations when we thought you were on the other side of the world. You might have let us known you were coming! Though I expect we should have guessed you'd not let Caleb marry without you.”
“So you should,” he said promptly, his gaze bright.
“Cheeky as always, Conrad. But maybe we should be calling you Captain Conrad now?”
His shook his head and tried to look doleful. “Not when you'll probably have me swabbing the deck before the night's done.”
“Now when did I ever do such a thing?” Aunt Dora demanded, setting her fists on her hips in mock irritation.
“Often!”
The older woman laughed. “Maybe so, but I'll let you off tonight, seeing as how you're the prodigal. But I make no promises about tomorrow!”
Conrad was grateful for the teasing welcome masked as scolding. It was exactly what was needed to ease the strained atmosphere and return things to normal. More than that, it made him feel as if he had come home.
As the older woman trundled off in the direction of the kitchen, Melly reached to take Caleb's hand and give him a swift peck on the cheek that made his brother blush scarlet. Falling back on her role as hostess, then, she directed Caleb to draw up the single chair that sat against the near wall. As that was being done, she turned back to him.
“You remember everyone, Conrad?” she said with careful politeness. “That's Lydia there on the end, of course. Her father owns McDougall's Mercantile. And my cousin Sarah, seated there next to her?”
He smiled, responding easily to the greetings as Melly continued quickly around the sewing circle. He was glad of the reminders. The ladies had changed out of all recognition since he’d left Good Hope. Except for Melly.
The introductions done, Melly resumed her seat and drew Caleb down next to her. Conrad, left to fend for himself, dragged a chair closer to the group of females, though not quite near enough to be a part of it. That was always the way it had been for him, or so it seemed—outside the charmed circle.
“Well, I have to say Melly's mistake seems perfectly natural to me,” Sarah Franks declared as she looked with raised blonde brows from him to his brother. “I think I might have trouble telling the two of them apart if we met on the street tomorrow.”
“Maybe so,” tall, auburn-haired Lydia McDougall said with a sly and laughing glance at her friend, “but Melly never kisses Caleb hello like that.”
Now that was interesting, Conrad thought, his gaze on Melly's flaming face. Why, he wondered? No cooperation? But the answer ceased to matter as he caught the fleeting glance she flung in his direction. That look reproached him, castigated him for his presumption—and sent a shaft of sheer yearning winging through him.
“Yes, and maybe it's just that we've never seen her do it,” Ester Montgomery said.
Conrad didn't care for that idea. He didn’t care for it at all.
“She used to be able to tell Caleb and Conrad apart with a single glance, the one person in the whole town who could,” the little one, Biddy, commented. “Seems she had better start practicing that trick again.”
They were all looking at him and his brother now. Conrad shifted uncomfortably, feeling the tips of his ears grow hot. At the same time, he knew that Biddy was right. Melly had usually been able to recognize him on sight back in the old days. He could fool her sometimes, if he tried hard enough, but not often.
Aunt Dora came scurrying in again just then. Taking charge without effort, she steered the conversation into safer channels, demanding to know where he had been and all the things he’d done in the long years he had been gone. Conrad obliged with a version that was considerably more colorful than actuality in some places, considerably less in others. Mustn't disappoint the ladies, but heaven forbid that he should shock them.
Even as he spoke, however, his mind was busy elsewhere. Melly had been—what?—all of thirteen when he left? He remembered her as a princess in pig-tails, one of those girls who never seemed to go through an awkward stage. Smart, sweet, tender-hearted, she had her temper, maybe from being a little spoiled after what she went through in the steamboat explosion, being thrown into the water and half-drowned, and losing her parents. She had ruled the play yard with a high hand, ordering all the boys around like so many hired hands. He had not been among them, of course, being nearly ten years older, but he had enjoyed watching her antics and always felt a warm spot for her in his heart.
All the signs had pointed toward Melly being a beauty one day, but he hadn't been able to stick around to see it. The sea had called to him—or so he had thought. Mostly, he had just needed to get away from his old man and Good Hope, Missouri, to see the world, be on his own, make something of himself.
Conrad hadn't gotten along with his father at all. His greatest fault, he sometimes thought, was that he wasn't Caleb. Caleb had been the good twin, a fine son, steady, hard-working, obedient, good with animals, especially horses. In short, he had been everything that Conrad was not.
Conrad had cordially disliked anything that ate grain back then, still did if the truth were known. As his father owned a livery stable and acted as the town blacksmith, that had been the ultimate sin.
The old man had expected his sons, both of them, to follow in his footsteps. Caleb had seemed content for it to be so; Conrad couldn't stomach it. The punishment for that rebellion had been unremitting. He had escaped it finally by stowing away on a river steamer heading down to New Orleans. There, he had found a ship that would take him on as a seaman.
And the sea had embraced him with its siren arms and treated him well. He had learned a lot about himself from it, had grown up with it. Over the years, the roving, deep sea life had taken a strong hold on him, one almost impossible to break even for a visit home.
He had managed to pull away this time because he felt the tug of something stronger, some need he didn't fully understand but had been forced to heed.
It had begun when news of Caleb's engagement to Melly had reached him, by means of a water-stained letter left waiting in a letter box in a distant port until he picked it up. Not long afterward, he had come across the bolt of pearl-colored silk in a tiny shop in Hong Kong. He had held the heavy, fluid material in his hands, captivated by its smooth texture. In that instant, he had seen Melly's face, seen her with his twin who had looked so much like himself, might even have been himself. He had bought and shipped the silk as a wedding present, but the damage had been done.
Nights without end, he had stayed awake in his bunk thinking of Good Hope, of the simple life in the little river town, of Caleb and Melly and all the good, decent people he had known as he was growing up. Mr. McDougall at the mercantile who handed out licorice whips when he wasn't drinking. The fire-and-brimstone preacher who harried his flock like a sheepdog, keeping the strays in line. Gandy Jack, down at the riverfront saloon just across from the livery, who used to give him two-bits now and then for sweeping out the place. And especially Melly's Aunt Dora, who, with no children of her own, had taken pleasure in feeding half-grown boys who were always starving.
His restlessness had ended when he had decided to start homeward. His ship, the Queen of the Sea, had needed to go into dry-dock to have the barnacles scraped off her bottom anyway; a ship needed to be clean to compete in the China trade where every ounce of extra weight meant slower time, therefore less money for the captain. He had left his ship in Baltimore while he continued on to Good Hope by steamer.
Now he was here, and Melly had kissed him. Funny, but it had not seemed like a mistake. Rather, it had felt like a home-coming.
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Melly could not stop staring at Conrad. He looked so familiar: the broad forehead and thick, gold-dusted brows, the straight line of his nose, and rugged planes of his face. She knew precisely the way his hair grew in a wheat-straw whorl of a cowlick on the back of his head, and the angle where the strong column of his neck merged with his wide shoulders. He was so very like Caleb.
Yet he was also different. His eyes were a more brilliant blue, his hair bleached a shade lighter by an equatorial sun; his skin carried a darker, golden-oak glaze for the same reason. The way his firm lips shifted into a smile was not the same, nor were the lines that bracketed his eyes. He had seen more, done more, felt more, and the experiences had etched themselves into his features in ways that baffled and intrigued her.
Caleb's fingers tightened on her hand where he still held it. She glanced at him, and saw what appeared to be a warning in his eyes. She gave him a reassuring smile. An instant later, her gaze dropped to his mouth, and she remembered the kiss he had given her two evenings ago as he said good night. It had been brief, circumspect, pleasant enough. The contours of his mouth had been smooth and gentle. But her heart had not tripped into a hammer beat, her head had not spun or her body shivered as if with fever.
“What's this?”
It was Conrad who spoke from the other side of the quilt, leaning toward one corner where Lydia had been making arabesques of stitching around the square she had inscribed. With a long, brown finger, he touched the small motif that Lydia had embroidered there.
“It's a ship, of course!” Lydia answered with a glance of mock indignation. “Can't you tell?”
“Indeed I can, but it seems a bit unusual.” His smiling glance held inquiry.
Lydia gave a small shrug, even as she sent a quick look at Melly. “It's just to remember me of when Melly and I used to fancy ourselves taking a steamer down the Mississippi to New Orleans, then sailing away on a fine, tall ship, maybe living in places with strange, foreign names like Tahiti.”
“I've been there,” he said softly.
“Oh, I know—we both knew because you wrote about it to Caleb. Which is what brought it on, I expect.” Her lips curved in a faint, disconsolate smile. “It was just silly make-believe to pass the time. Of course we outgrew it.”
“Too bad,” he said, and looked straight at Melly.
She wanted to look away, to deny that she had ever thought of him while he was gone, that she had ever indulged in make-believe.
It was impossible.
She was not quite that good at pretending.
Chapter Three
The trees shading Good Hope's Main Street made islands of coolness on either side of its arrow-straight length that stretched from the church at one end to the riverboat landing at the other. Great oaks and elms had been left standing when the town was laid out soon after being established by French trappers and traders. The searing heat of the last two days had made their leaves droop, sucking the moisture from them so they rustled in the warm wind.
It was not a particularly good evening for a box social at the church. But that didn't matter much, since it was also too hot for anything else.
