The Awakening (Montgomery/Taggert 11)
“No, Taylor—” She starte
d to tell him the truth but caught herself. “It was better that I stay here and study.”
“I admire your dedication. I was in school for years but I don’t believe I ever missed a meal while buried in a book. I get hungry and I want food. Nor could I eat what you do. You have enormous self-discipline, Miss Caulden.”
“I guess I do,” she murmured, but at the moment she didn’t feel very disciplined. She felt as if she might sell her soul for a heaping plateful of that strawberry shortcake.
“When do you graduate?”
“Graduate?” she asked, looking at the strawberries.
“Yes, you’re what? Twenty-three, twenty-four? Most women have finished school by now, yet you still have a tutor.”
“I will finish when I marry,” she said, reaching for a strawberry.
Hank began to heap her plate high with cakes and strawberries, drenching it all with thick strawberry sauce. “When you marry Taylor, that is? Tell me about your wedding plans.”
“We haven’t made any yet.”
“Isn’t that unusual? How long have you been engaged?”
Abruptly, Amanda set down her plate of half-eaten food and glared at him. She was beginning to understand now what he was doing and why he was in her room. Just as the devil enticed people, so was he enticing her. “Dr. Montgomery, contrary to your opinion of me, I am not a fool. Will you please leave my room and take your things with you at once?”
“There are more strawberries.”
“I do not want more strawberries,” she said, lying. “Now will you please leave?”
He sat where he was, knowing she would call no one. When she was angry the quiet sadness left her eyes. “Where do we go tomorrow?”
“I think perhaps you and I will not go anywhere. I have things I need to do here.” A lump of fear formed in her throat as she thought of telling Taylor she would not keep Dr. Montgomery occupied tomorrow.
“Taylor wants you to keep me away from the house. He wants you to take me somewhere where the unionists can’t find me, right?”
She hesitated. “I am merely to make a guest’s stay comfortable.”
“Uh-huh,” Hank said, munching on a strawberry.
She glared down at him, her half-eaten strawberry shortcake glaring back up at her. “Dr. Montgomery, you must leave.”
“Not until you tell me what you have planned for tomorrow.”
She was afraid he’d do something embarrassing if she didn’t tell him what he wanted to know. She went to her desk to get the schedule Taylor had given to her at eight P.M. “We are to go to the Pioneers’ Museum in Terrill City tomorrow.”
“That sounds like a barrel of laughs. I should be glad it isn’t to the library to memorize dates of the Spanish-American War.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Where did you get your Ph.D., Dr. Montgomery? From a mail-order catalog?”
He chuckled. “I just like to do things in life besides study, that’s all, and it might do you good to look at something besides the inside of a book. Could we compromise? I’ll go to your museum with you if you go where I want in the afternoon.”
“I do not waste my time on motion pictures,” she snapped at him. “I want to improve my mind and—”
He jumped to his feet. “You ought to try improving your life.”
For a moment they stood glaring at each other, then Amanda backed away from him. No one had made her angry since she was a child, but this man did. But there was something else, too, as she looked into his deep blue eyes, something she didn’t understand at all, something that she was feeling deep inside her.
“Please leave,” she whispered.
He turned away from her and began shoving leftovers and dishes into the rucksack. He had been right, he thought. Somewhere under her icebox exterior was a woman. He could make her angry, and that was a step in the right direction, and just a moment ago he’d seen something else in her eyes. Something that for the first time made him think she’d seen him as a man.