Dark Angel (Casteel 2)

In seconds he finished both letters. "I see nothing alarming enough to put that desperate look on your face. All we have to do is send your sister the money she needs, and we can help Tom in that way, too."

"Tom won't take money from you, or from me. Fanny will, of course. But it's Tom I am most worried about. I don't want Tom stuck down there doing whatever Pa is, giving up his life in order to help Pa support his new family.

"Troy," I said, daring to disappoint him with my plan. "I must go visit my family before our wedding." I grabbed his hands and kissed them over and over again. "Do you understand, darling? I'm so happy, my life is so good, I must do something to help them before I begin my wonderful new life with you. I know I can help both of them, just by visiting them, showing them I still care, showing them they can always count on me. And they can, can't they, Troy? You won't mind if my family comes to visit us after we're married, will you? You'll welcome them into our home, won't you?" With pleading eyes I waited for him to reply.

Troy pulled my hands that grasped his, and brought me down on top of him on the bed. "I've been waiting to tell you my news, Heaven, for several days. I hope you'll forgive me for postponing it, but I couldn't bear for our idyll to come to an end and I knew as soon as I told you that you'd rush off." He kissed me again and again before he smiled and continued: "I've heard from the attorneys. Darling, I have such good news for you. Now you'll be able to visit your entire family, for we have found Lester Rawlings! He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and is the father of two adopted children named Keith and Jane!"

It was difficult to breathe, not to be drowned by everything that was happening so fast.

"It's all right, all right," Troy soothed as I began to cry. "There's plenty of time before our wedding for you to set everything straight. I'll be happy to go with you to visit the Rawlingses and to see your younger brother and younger sister; we can then decide just what action you want to take, if any."

"They're mine!" I cried out unreasonably. "I have to have them under my roof again!"

Again he kissed me. "Decide later what to do. And after we've seen Keith and Our Jane we will travel on to visit your brother and father, and finish our trip by visiting Fanny, and in the meanwhile, let's telegraph Fanny a few thousand dollars to see her over until we arrive."

Unfortunately, it wasn't to be that way.

While I slept safe and secure in my

Farthinggale Manor bed, thinking now that Troy and I should deny our passion until we were married, Troy fell into deep sleep with all of his bedroom windows open. And a terrible northeaster swept in to blast us with rain, hail, and blustery winds. The worst of the wind and rain didn't waken me until six in the morning. I looked out of my bedroom windows to see the devastation of the perfect lawns, now littered with uprooted trees, broken branches, and other debris. And when I ran to Troy's cottage, I found him feverish and congested, barely able to breathe.

I was truly terrified as I called Tony and an ambulance came to rush Troy to the hospital. Just when he was supposed to be the most happy, he had fallen deathly ill with pneumonia. Had he somehow brought it on purposely, unable to accept the love and happiness he deserved? I would not let this happen again. When we were married, I would be there always to protect him from his worst fears, which now seemed to have a way of making themselves come true.

"It's what I want," whispered Troy from his hospital bed, days later. "The worst of my pneumonia is over, and I know you are anxious to see Keith and Our Jane again. There's no need for you to hang around while I recover my strength. By the time you are back, I'll be totally well."

I didn

't want to leave him, even though he had the best of care, with private-duty nurses around the clock, and time and again I protested. Still, he kept insisting I should have what I'd wanted for so long, my chance to see Keith and Our Jane again. And as he urged me, and assured me he'd be fine, something kept insisting that I hurry, hurry, before it was too late.

"You're leaving him?" Tony shouted, when I told him I was planning a short trip. I didn't want to tell Tony the truth about where I was going, fearing he'd try to stop me. "Now, when he needs you, you are shopping in New York for a trousseau? What kind of idiocy is that? Heaven, I thought you loved my brother! You promised me you would be his salvation!"

"I do love him, I do, but Troy is insisting I go ahead with our wedding preparations. And he's out of danger now, isn't he?"

"Out of danger?" Tony repeated dully, "No, he will never be out of danger until the day his first son is born, and maybe then he can give up his belief that he will not live long enough to reproduce himself."

"You love him," I whispered, awed by the pain I saw in his blue eyes, "really love him."

"Yes, I love him. He's been my responsibility and my burden to carry since I was seventeen years old. I have done everything I can to give my brother the best life possible. I married Jillian, who was twenty years older, though she lied to me about her age and said she was thirty, not forty. I believed with boyish naivete that she was what she pretended to be at that time--the sweetest, kindest, most wonderful woman in the world. Only later did I find out that she disliked Troy on first sight. But by that time it was far too late to change my mind, for I had fallen in love, stupidly, madly, insanely in love."

His head bowed down into the cradle of his hands. "Go on, Heaven, do what you feel you have to, for in the end you will anyway. But remember this, if you hope to marry Troy, you hurry back and don't bring with you even one member of your hillbilly family." His face lifted to show me the knowing look in his eyes. "Yes, silly girl, I know everything, and no, Troy did not tell me. I am not gullible or stupid." He smiled at me again, devilishly mocking. "And what is more, dear child, I was aware all the time that you were slipping through the maze to visit my brother."

"But . . but," I stammered, gone confused, awkward, and embarrassed, "why didn't you put a stop to it?"

A cynical smile quirked his lips. "Forbidden fruit is the most compelling. I had a wild hope that in you, someone totally different from any girl or woman he'd met before, someone sweet, fresh, and

exceptionally beautiful, Troy would find, at last, a good reason for living."

"You planned for us to fall in love?" I asked, astonished.

"I had hopes, that's all," he said simply, appearing for the first time totally honest and sincere. "Troy is like the son I can never have. He is my heir, the one who will inherit the Tatterton fortune and carry on the family tradition. Through him and his children I hope to have the family Jillian couldn't give me."

"But you are not too old!" I cried.

He winced. "Are you suggesting I divorce your grandmother and marry a younger woman? I would if I could, believe me, I would. But you can sometimes trap yourself so deeply there is no way out. I am the keeper of a woman obsessed by her desire to stay young, and I have feeling enough for her not to shove her out into the world where she wouldn't survive two weeks without my support." Heavily he sighed. "So go on, girl. Just make sure you come back, for if you don't, what happens to Troy will give you such terrible guilt to carry for the rest of your life, you may never be happy again."

Fourteen Winners and Losers

. THE SECOND FLIGHT OF MY LIFE TOOK ME FROM Boston's Logan Airport to New York City, and there I changed planes and headed straight to Washington, D.C. My veneer of sophistication was pitifully thin. I wanted to appear cool and controlled while underneath I was ridden by anxiety, terrified of doing everything wrong. The bustling activity of LaGuardia confused me. I had hardly reached my gate when passengers began to board. I wanted a window seat and was grateful when a young businessman eagerly stood up and offered me his. Soon I found out there was a price to pay for the seat, for he plied me with too many questions, wanting me to meet him later, and share a drink, and keep him from being lonely. "I'm on my way to meet my husband," I said in a cool, forbidding voice, "and I don't drink." Shortly after that, he abandoned his seat and found another unaccompanied young woman to sit beside. I felt much older than I had when I flew away from West Virginia last September.