Dark Angel (Casteel 2)

"Troy has waited this long. He can wait another hour or so."

I ran up the remaining stairs. I felt his eyes following me until I disappeared into my rooms. The maid Percy was in my bedroom unpacking my bags. She gave me a small smile. "I'm glad you are home again, Miss Heaven."

The look I gave her was distraught. Home? Would I ever feel at home in this huge house?

Quickly I washed my face and changed my clothes and did what I could for my hair, which had not been set after my shampoo in the rebuilt cabin. My dressing room mirror showed shadows under my eyes, and a weakness in my expression, and yet there was strength in the set of my lips.

As I descended the stairs, my makeup only a light dusting of face powder, the door chimes began to sound. Curtis hurried to answer the door, admitting several women carrying beautifully wrapped gifts. They were so taken with the party appointments they didn't seem to notice me, thank God. I didn't want to be seen by any of Jillian's friends, who always had too many questions.

Lightly I tapped on the door to Tony's office. "Come in, Heaven," he called. He was seated behind his desk. Through the row of windows behind him, shades of night were chasing away the soft violet colors of twilight. Because the first floor of Farthy was at least fifteen feet above the ground, his windows gave a perfect view of the maze that seemed so private when you were within it. The maze represented to me the mystery and the romance of Troy, and the love that we had found. I couldn't pull my eyes away from the ten-foot hedges.

"Sit down," he ordered, his face shadowed and hidden in the deepening gloom. "Tell me now about your shopping spree in New York. Tell me again about the days of deluging rain, and the bridges going down, and the flooded roads, and the doctor that couldn't come."

Thank God Logan had talked to me a great deal about the weather when he washed my face and brushed my hair, so easily I could speak of the terrible rainstorm that had brought disaster to the entire East Coast, even as far north as Maine. And Tony listened without asking one question until I had thoroughly hung myself.

"I, despise people who lie," he said when my voice faded away, and I could only sit with folded hands that tried not to twist, just as my feet tried not to shuffle nervously. "A great many things have happened since you went away. I know that you did not go to New York to shop for a trousseau. I know that you flew to Georgia to visit your half-brother Tom. You drove to Florida to see your father. You later flew to Nashville to visit your sister Fanny, whose stage name is Fanny Louisa."

I couldn't see his expression. By this time the room was in deep shadows, and he made no effort to turn on even one of his many lamps. Through the walls I could very faintly hear the voices of many women gathering. Nothing they said was

distinguishable. I wished like crazy to be out there with them, instead of in here, with him. Heavily I sighed and started to stand.

"Sit down." His voice was cold, commanding. "I have not finished. There are a few questions you have to answer, and answer honestly. First of all, you must tell me your truthful age."

"I am eighteen," I said without hesitation. "I don't know why I lied to you about my age when I came and said I was sixteen, except it has always made me a bit embarrassed the way my mother rushed into marriage with my father, when she had never seen him before that day they met in Atlanta."

His silence was so viable it quivered the air. I wished desperately for light.

"And what difference does one year make?" I asked, gone breathless from the scary way he just sat there in the dark and didn't speak. "I told Troy right from the beginning that I was seventeen, and not sixteen, for he didn't seem as critical as you are. Please, Tony, let me go to him now. He needs me. I can pull him out of his depression. Truthfully, I was very sick. I would have crawled back to Troy if I could have."

He moved in his chair, to put his elbows on his desk, and he cradled his head in his hands. The window light behind him made a dark-purplish frame, and the quatter moon slipped in and out of dark, stringy clouds. Tiny stars twinkled on and off. Time was slipping by. Time that could be better spent with Troy. "Let me go now to Troy, please Tony."

"No, not yet," he said, his voice hoarse, gritty. "Sit there now and tell me what you know about how your mother met your father--the month, the day, and the year. Tell me the date of their marriage. Tell me all that your grandparents said about your mother, and when you have answered every question I ask, then you may go to Troy."

I lost track of time as I sat in the dark and talked to a man that I saw only in silhouette, on and on telling the story of the Casteels and their poverty; Leigh VanVoreen and what I knew of her, which was pitifully little, and when I'd finished, Tony had a thousand questions to ask. "Jailed brothers, five of them . ." he repeated. "And she loved him enough to marry him. And your father hated you right from the beginning? Did you ever have a clue as to why he hated you?"

"My birth caused my mother's death," I answered simply. All the security my new clothes gave me had vanished. In the gloom and chill of that early evening, with the party guests so far away now even their loudest laughter couldn't be heard, the hills came again and surrounded me, and I was again a hillbilly scumbag Casteel, no good, no good, no good. Oh, God, why did he stare at me like that? Little bits of all my doubts congealed to form a mountain in front of me. I wasn't good enough for the Stonewalls; I couldn't possibly be suitable for a Tatterton. So I perched, uneasily, waiting, waiting.

It seemed thirty minutes passed after I answered his last question, and he just sat with his back to the window, while the moonlight fell upon my face, and turned the rose of my summer dress to ash. When he spoke his voice was calm, perhaps too calm. "When you first came I thought you were an answer to my prayers, come to save Troy from himself. I thought you were good for him. He's a withdrawn young man, difficult for most girls to know, I suspect for fear he will be hurt. He's very vulnerable . . and he has those strange ideas about dying young."

I nodded, feeling blind in a world that only he could clearly see. Why was he talking so cautiously? Hadn't he encouraged us to marry by not saying anything to prevent us from making plans? And why, for the first time since I'd known him, was he devoid of humor, of all lightheartedness?

"He's explained to you about his dreams?" he asked.

"Yes, he's told me."

"Do you believe as he believes?"

"I don't know. I want to believe because he believes that dreams often foretell the truth. But I don't want to believe his dream about dying young."

"Has he told you . . . about how long he thinks he will live?" His voice sounded troubled, as if a little boy who had cried in the night had partially convinced him--when he should know better.

"When Troy and I are married and there are no more lonely, shadowed nights in his lif

e, he'll forget all about dying. I'll study him. I'll learn what gives him pleasure. I'll make him the core and essence of my life, so he can be set free from worries that no one will ever care enough to stay. For that is the seat of his anxieties, fear of losing again."

At last he turned on his desk lamp. I had never seen his eyes burn so blue, so deeply blue. "Do you think I didn't do my best for Troy, do you? I was only twenty when I hastened into marriage just to give Troy a mother, a real mother and not just some teenage girl who wouldn't want to be bothered with a needing little boy who was frail and often seriously ill. And there was Leigh to be his sister. I was trying my best."

"Perhaps when you explained his mother's death you made paradise seem better than what he could find in life."