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  Joy tried to keep from giggling, and couldn’t. She knew that if her mother was watching from her heavenly home, she would probably send a bolt of lightning down from the skies and fry her on the spot for what she was about to do. She did it anyway.

  Heaving a sigh and muttering, “What a sane Christian woman won’t do for the sake of being kind to dumb animals,” she sat on the spot Elijah had just patted. Then, because her own behavior shocked her, she scooted to the very edge of the bed.

  “Don’t fall off, Miss Hardesty,” Elijah advised acidly.

  “I’ll try not to,” she responded. Her tone was quite snappy, and she was proud of it. In truth, her heart had taken to thundering like an avalanche, and she hoped to goodness Mr. Perry wouldn’t notice the heat in her cheeks. With luck, she’d been toasted enough by the warm spring sunshine this morning that her blush would pass for sunburn.

  She sneaked a peek at him from out of the corner of her eye, and was relieved to see him staring up at the ceiling. Maybe her high color would fade by the time he looked at her again. She also noticed that he had his hands folded over his stomach.

  At least he wouldn’t be attempting to do anything improper to her person. No man would want to. What a relief that was.

  Joy knew she was sliding down the slippery slope of sin and depredation and into perdition when she realized she was lying to herself. It wasn’t a relief at all. Rather, she experienced a strong, ardent wish that she, Joy Hardesty, could inspire lust in the male breast. At any rate, she wished she could inspire lust in this male breast. Jerusalem! What kind of fallen, immoral woman that make her? She didn’t want to think about it now.

  Instead she cleared her throat and said, “Would you like me to read another chapter from The Moonstone, Mr. Perry?”

  He lowered his head, and Joy saw that his brows had creased into a frown, cutting two deep ruts in his forehead. His face reminded her of a weathered board. Elijah Perry evidently had lived hard in his life. Unlike Joy herself, who’d been too scared to live at all. She sighed, wishing suddenly that she’d been born into a different family; a family that had cherished laughter and openness as much as her mother had deplored them. What a wicked woman she was turning out to be. Joy tried to be appalled, and couldn’t.

  “Actually, I think I’d rather just talk this evening, Miss Hardesty, if you’re game.”

  At once, Joy’s heart gave a hard spasm, and all of her inhibitions and trepidations stampeded back into her head like rampaging longhorns. “Talk?” The word popped out like a bullet. “Talk about what?”

  He shrugged and grimaced, then rubbed his wounded arm. “I don’t know. About anything. You know, just talk. You tell me about your life, and I’ll tell you about—” He stopped talking and grinned suddenly. “Well, I’ll think of something to tell you about, anyway.”

  She squinted at him. “If I tell you about my life, you have to tell me about yours, Mr. Perry. Fair’s fair.”

  He tilted his head to one side, and his grin turned devilish. “I might shock you.”

  She sniffed. “I sincerely doubt it. I’m not that innocent, you know.”

  “You’re not? I don’t believe it.”

  “Hmph. Well, I’m not.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about this.”

  Joy, feeling nervous, let her gaze scan the room. It landed on the table beside Elijah’s bed, and fastened on the lovely old silver watch in which she’d found the lock of hair. Before she could think about what she planned to do, she leaned over and picked up the watch. “This is a beautiful old thing, Mr. Perry. Did it belong to your father by any chance?”

  When she made herself glance at him, she saw his expression had softened a good deal. He looked younger and less bored with life. “No,” he said, his voice gentle. “My uncle Luke gave me that. It belonged to his father.”

  “Was your uncle Luke your father’s brother, or your mother’s?”

  “Neither, actually. He was just a close friend of the family’s, and I always called him Uncle Luke.” Elijah took the watch from Joy’s fingers and gazed at it lovingly. “He owned a hotel in Baltimore. I think the only times I was ever happy was when I was working in my uncle Luke’s hotel.”

  “Really? What did you do there?”

  He sighed deeply. “Oh, anything. Everything. Whatever he wanted me to do. I would have scrubbed the stairs with a toothbrush if he’d asked me to, but he didn’t. He was always nice to me.”

  His voice had taken on a puzzled quality, as if he didn’t know why his uncle Luke had bothered to be nice to him. A scrap of sadness nestled in Joy’s heart. She looked at the strong brown fingers loosely clasping the watch, and tried to imagine the little boy Elijah Perry used to be. Her imagination, not having been given any scope to operate in her life, failed to produce an image.

  Elijah sighed again. “Luke’s son and I were good friends, though.”

  “Really? Were you about the same age?”

  He nodded. “He was little older than I was. Luke, Junior. He married my sister Eliza, and they had the prettiest little baby girl” He shook his head, and Joy could tell he was remembering something very old and very dear to him. “Prettiest little thing, she was, all blond curls and blue eyes. Virginia, her name was. Is. Virginia Gladstone.”

  Joy tried to stifle her gasp.

  Chapter Ten

  Elijah heard Joy’s short gasp and turned to look at her. “What? What’s wrong with Virginia Gladstone? It’s a perfectly good name.”

  She smiled. She had a damned fine smile for a pickled old maid. “There’s nothing wrong with Virginia Gladstone, Mr. Perry. I’m only surprised to hear you say such nice things about a baby, is all.”

  He gave her a sniff that sounded amazingly like one of hers. “Yeah? Well, it just so happens that I like kids, Miss Joy Hardesty. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Not a thing. In fact, I think it’s a charming trait, considering you’re not exactly the type of fellow a person would normally associate with such soft emotions.”

  His frown deepened until his honesty tapped him on the shoulder and told him to admit she’d spoken nothing but the truth. He released his scowl with another sigh. “Yeah. You’re right.” He fingered his uncle Luke’s watch. It meant a lot to him, although he seldom allowed himself to think about it. “She’s almost your age now. I’ve been writing to her since I was sixteen.”

  He wasn’t surprised when Joy blinked at him. “You mean she’s all grown up now?”

  He nodded. “I haven’t seen her since she was two years old. Damn, she was a cutie-pie.”

  “My goodness.”

  He pressed the clasp, released the latch, and gently opened the watch. Carefully he lifted out the lock of hair he kept in there. “This is hers.”

  Joy didn’t reach for the tress, but eyed it wonderingly. “That’s a lock of hair from a little girl?”

  He nodded. “She’d barely turned two when she gave it to me.”

  “Merciful heavens.”

  He smiled, remembering. “I was planning to leave home for good. I didn’t tell anyone my plans, but I asked her mama if I could have a lock of Virginia’s hair as a keepsake, and she gave it to me. Once I left, I never went back again, but I kept writing to Virginia. I send her things from all over. Everywhere I land, I’ll send her a letter and a little keepsake. I sent her an arrowhead from Mexico once. And a gold nugget from California.” He smiled at the memories, and then his smile turned into a frown. “To tell the truth, I’m not even sure Virginia’s alive any longer.”

  “Good gracious. Do you mean to tell me she’s never written you back?” Joy’s eyes went as round as copper pennies. She had gorgeous eyes, really, when they weren’t squinting at the world suspiciously.

  “I honestly don’t know, Miss Hardesty. I’ve never given her an address where she can reach me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I move around too much.” It was an evasion and didn’t tell anywhere near the full story, but
he didn’t feel like elaborating.

  She puzzled over his half-answer. “I’m . . . surprised, I suppose is the right word, that you’ve never gone home again.”

  He shrugged, being careful not to jar his wounded shoulder. “There wasn’t anything in Baltimore for me. I loved staying with Uncle Luke and his wife, but they were getting old. My cousin, Little Luke was married to my sister and growing a family. I couldn’t impose on them any longer.”

  “What about . . . where were your parents?”

  He felt his features harden as they always did when he thought about his parents. “Oh, they were there. In Baltimore. Still are, I reckon.”

  “Oh.”

  From the expression on her face, Elijah knew Joy wanted to ask him about his folks but was too polite. Her mother’s training again. He shook his head, exasperated. “Go ahead, Miss Hardesty. Your mother isn’t here to spank you if you get nosy.” Not that he wanted to talk about his parents. In fact, at the moment, he wasn’t sure whom he disliked more, Mrs. Hardesty or his own mother. They were nothing alike, but they’d both been poisonous females.

  Joy looked indignant for a moment before her expression relaxed into a small, sweet smile. Elijah felt something catch in his chest. “Well, I am curious. After all, you’re very unlike the men—the gentlemen, I hasten to elaborate—to whom I was exposed in Auburn.”

  He chuckled. “I imagine I am.”

  She looked at him expectantly, and he sighed. “All right. My parents. Well, let me think for a minute.”

  Joy sat patiently on the edge of his bed—he didn’t know how she kept her balance, poised like that—while Elijah tried to find words with which to describe his feelings about his parents. It was a new experience for him, attempting to explain his innermost thoughts and emotions, and he discovered it wasn’t easy. His brow furrowed. Joy cocked her head and lifted her brows. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she presented the very picture of the kind of lady his mother pretended to be and wasn’t. Joy didn’t have to pretend. If it weren’t for all the false pieties her own mother had crammed into her, she’d actually be an ideal lady. Interesting notion, that, but nothing to the point.

  Elijah muttered an oath under his breath. Joy primmed her lips; he could tell she did it comically, as if she were attempting to find humor in her own foibles as well as his. He grinned in reaction. “Aw, hell, Miss Hardesty, I’m trying to find something to say about my parents that won’t shock you.”

  Joy peered coyly at her lap and pinched a pleat in her skirt between two fingers, smoothing it down flat. “I’m sure there’s nothing you can say that will shock me any more than anything else you’ve ever said to me, Mr. Perry.”

  His crack of laughter made Joy’s eyes sparkle. Damn, she had pretty eyes.

  “All right, all right. I expect you’re right. Then it won’t mortify you unduly to learn that I didn’t like my parents—mostly because they didn’t like me.”

  Her eyes stopped sparkling. “They didn’t like you? How can that be?”

  The bitterness he tried to keep locked away leaked into his chest and made it ache momentarily. “Damned if I know. Sure as hell, if I ever had a kid, I’d love it and want to get to know it.”

  He sucked in a breath and told himself to stop swearing. After all, even though Joy knew he was a hardened sinner, he didn’t have to sully her ears so brutally. He cleared his throat. “My sister was ten years older than me, and I guess they figured their job was done when I came along and spoiled everything. They never wanted me around. I guess I got in their way. So, as soon as I outgrew my nannies, they sent me away to school.”

  “My goodness.” She thought that one over for a moment. Her brows knitted. “How old were you when you went to school?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Five or six.”

  “Five or six! Good heavens. You must have missed your home terribly.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. When I was at home, they kept me tucked away so I couldn’t bother them. There wasn’t much to miss.”

  “Mercy.”

  His lips twisted into their customary cynical grin. “There isn’t much of mercy in either one of my parents, I fear.”

  “I should say not. I can’t imagine sending so very young a child away from home. I should think your mother would have missed you dreadfully.”

  “My mother didn’t want me, Miss Hardesty.”

  “She what?”

  “She didn’t want me. Told me so.” Knowing it did him no credit to whine about his childhood—after all, he was a grown man now—he tried to keep his voice light.

  “Why, I never! I’ve never heard of anything so horrid in my life!”

  Her indignation on his behalf pleased him, although he would have been hard-pressed to say why. “I fear not all females are cut out for motherhood. You must have figured that one out by this time.”

  He had the satisfaction of seeing his remark register. Her eyebrows rose again into two high arches, and she let out with a small gasp. “Do you think my mother was like that? Unfit for motherhood, I mean”

  “From what you’ve told me about her so far, it sounds like it to me.” He refrained from saying that she, herself, and the way she behaved, had told him as much as he needed to know about her mother before he’d spoken a word to her. He didn’t want to wound her. Not now that he’d come to like her, he didn’t.

  “Anyway, when I was in Baltimore, I didn’t stay at my parents’ house. I used to hang out at Uncle Luke’s hotel. I loved that place.” He stared over Joy’s shoulder, remembering the fine times he used to have. “I worked, you know. I didn’t shirk. Uncle Luke used to let me do things. Damn, I loved it there.”

  “Did you used to spend the night there, too?”

  “Yeah. Uncle Luke and Aunt Genevieve didn’t mind having me around like my parents did. I’ve liked hotels all my life because of Uncle Luke.”

  “I can understand that, I guess.”

  “I used to wish I could stay with Uncle Luke at the hotel instead of going off to school. I didn’t mind being away from my parents and their house, but I sure missed that hotel.”

  He cocked his head as an amusing thought struck him. “Y’know, actually, you might have been better off if your own mother had sent you away to school. I don’t think the nuns twisted me up inside as much as your mother twisted you, all things considered. At least I never expected the nuns to love me, so I wasn’t disappointed when they didn’t.”

  “Nuns! Good heavens! You mean to tell me you went to a Roman Catholic school?”

  She sounded more shocked about the Catholic part than when he’d said his mother didn’t love him. Her judgments—courtesy of her mother, Elijah was sure—tickled him enormously. “Is that bad? Are Catholics wicked sinners, Miss Hardesty? Well, if it’s any comfort, I haven’t set foot in a Catholic church since I was sixteen years old and left home. Or any other church, for that matter.”

  There went her eyebrows again, arching over her pretty eyes like rainbows. Elijah was charmed.

  “You left home when you were sixteen?”

  “Yeah. That was before the war. I went west. Then, when the war started, I joined the army.”

  Her eyes widened until he wasn’t sure they weren’t going to pop out of her head. “Oh, hell, Miss Hardesty. I was a man grown by the time the conflict began. There were a lot of boys younger than me dying for the right to own slaves.”

  She blinked at him, and he wished he hadn’t allowed his bitterness to taint his opinion of the great Confederate cause.

  “Oh, but . . . but . . .” She swallowed. “Yes, I know many young men died.”

  “They weren’t all young. I was—shoot—twenty-three or twenty-four when I joined.”

  “That’s still awfully young, Mr. Perry. I’m only twenty-five, and I only recently found a calling.”

  “The missionaries,” he said, trying not to sound contemptuous.

  “Yes. The missionaries.” She frowned down at the pleat in her skirt. She’d been r
unning it between her fingers for several minutes now. Elijah figured it would never uncrease at this rate. “But war seems like such a dreadful waste of life and energy. My goodness.”

  “Maybe, but it was the patriotic thing to do.” Again he regretted his sarcasm, but realized almost immediately that Joy hadn’t noticed it.

  “Oh. Well, but you were so young when you left home. And even when you joined the army—such a young man as you were. And boys even younger than you! Why, I think I’d die if any son of mine ever had to go to war, no matter how old he was.”

  “That’s because you have a heart tucked away somewhere in that prim-and-proper body of yours, Miss Joy Hardesty. Neither my mother nor my father seemed to possess such an article. Anyway, nobody expected the war to last more than a few weeks.”

  She thought for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I remember hearing that too. It did last, though. For a long time.”

  “It sure did.” His shudder was brief and involuntary. “I, ah, still have dreams about it sometimes. Nightmares, I guess is what they are.”

  Her sympathy was almost palpable. Well, fancy that. Miss Joy Hardesty really did have a heart. Elijah was strangely moved.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Perry. It must be awful to carry those memories around with you.”

  The topic was making him feel uncomfortable. “I guess.”

  Conversation lagged for a few minutes as he thought about the war and Joy thought about whatever she was thinking about. Because he was afraid she’d get nervous and bolt, Elijah decided to initiate another subject. “So, tell me, Miss Hardesty, do you think your father was the sinful weakling your mother considered him? Or was he merely a nice, placid fellow who couldn’t stand up to his overbearing wife?”

  That jolted her. Elijah saw her give a start. There went her frown. And her eyebrows dipped into a harsh V. He grinned. “What’s the matter, Miss Hardesty? Can’t stand to hear the truth? She was overbearing. You’d admit it if she hadn’t browbeaten you into a quivering, quaking pudding.”