Was she being a complete coward? Maybe so. But she’d fought her way back from the terror of the night Annabel died, and she had no desire to revisit that dreadful time.
Please, God. Please let me forget.
That was a petition that was hardly likely to be granted, now that Marc Devlin was coming home.
After helping her aunt to the sunroom that looked over her garden, where she would doze in the winter sunshine, Dinah cleared the breakfast dishes. It was one of the few things Alice Jones, her aunt’s devoted housekeeper, allowed her to do to help.
Alice was nearly as old as her great-aunt, and the two of them couldn’t hope to stay on in the elegant, inconvenient antebellum house on Tradd Street if she weren’t here. She wasn’t even sure when she’d gone from being the cosseted little girl of the house to being the caretaker, but she didn’t see the situation changing anytime soon, and she wouldn’t want it to.
A sound disturbed the morning quiet. Someone wielded the brass dolphin knocker on the front door with brisk energy. It could be anyone. Her stomach tightened; the back of her neck prickled. Instinct said it was Marc.
Heart thudding, she crossed the Oriental carpet that had covered the hall floor for a hundred years or so. She turned the brass doorknob and opened the door.
Instinct was right. Her cousin’s husband stood on the covered veranda, hand arrested halfway to the knocker. A shaft of winter sunlight, filtered through the branches of the magnolia tree, struck hair that was still glossy black.
For a moment, Dinah could only stare. It was Marc, of course, but in another sense it wasn’t. This wasn’t the intent, idealistic young prosecutor her teenage dreams had idolized.
“Dinah.” He spoke first, his deep voice breaking the spell that held her silent. “It’s been a long time.”
“Not by our choice,” she said, before thinking about the implication.
The lines around his firm mouth deepened. “I know.” He quirked one eyebrow, and the familiar movement broke through her sense of strangeness. “Are you going to let me come in?”
She felt her cheeks warm. What was she doing, keeping him standing on the veranda like a door-to-door salesperson? No matter how much his return distressed Aunt Kate, she couldn’t treat him as anything but the cousin-in-law he’d always been to her.
She stepped back. “Please, come in.” She grasped for the comfort of ingrained manners. “It’s good to see you again, Marc.”
He stepped into the wide center hallway, the movement seeming to stir the quiet air, and she had to suppress a gasp as pain gripped her heart. Forgotten? No, she hadn’t forgotten at all. His presence brought her ten-year-old grief surging to life.
Was being here doing the same for him? She thought it might—his face had tightened, but that was all. He was better at hiding his feelings than he used to be.
She had to say something, anything, to bridge the silence. She took refuge in the ordinary. “Did you have a pleasant flight?”
He shrugged. “Not bad. I’d forgotten how warm South Carolina can be in December.”
“That just shows how much of a Northerner you’ve become. Everyone here has been complaining that it’s too cold.”
His face relaxed into a half smile. “Wimp. You should try a Boston winter sometime to see what cold really is.”
“No, thanks. I’ll pass.”
He had changed. He was ten years older, of course. Ten years would change anyone. He looked—successful, she supposed. Dress shirt, dark tie, a tweed jacket that fit smoothly over broad shoulders, a flash of gold at his wrist that was probably an expensive watch. Being a corporate attorney instead of a prosecutor must suit him.
But it wasn’t so much the way he was dressed as the air about him—the air of a successful, accomplished man.
“Well?” He lifted that eyebrow again. “What’s the verdict, Dinah?”
She wouldn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “I was thinking that you talk faster than you used to.”
He smiled. “I had to learn because no one would stick around long enough to hear what I had to say.”
The smile was a reminder of the Marc she’d known. Dear Father, this is harder than I’d imagined it could be. Please, get me through it.
“Come into the parlor.” However much she might wish he’d leave, she couldn’t stand here in the hall with him.
She turned and walked into the small, perfectly appointed front parlor. He’d find this familiar, she supposed. Aunt Kate hadn’t changed anything in seventy years, and she never would. Anything that showed wear was replaced with an exact duplicate. Aunt Kate didn’t bother to decorate for Christmas much in recent years, but the white mantel bore its usual evergreen, magnolia leaves and holly, studded with the fat ivory candles that would be lit Christmas Eve.
Dinah sat on the Queen Anne love seat, gesturing to the wing chair opposite. Marc sat, leaning back, seeming very much at ease. But the lines on his face deepened, and his dark eyes hid secrets.
“You’ve changed.” His comment startled her, but it shouldn’t. Hadn’t she just been thinking the same about him? No one stayed the same for ten years.
“I’m ten years older. That makes a difference.” Especially when it was the difference between an immature teen and an adult woman.
He shook his head. “It’s not just that. You’re not shy anymore.”
“I’ve learned to hide it better, that’s all.”
Marc would remember the shy, gawky teenager she’d once been. She could only hope he’d never noticed the crush she’d had on him.
“It’s easy to see that you’re blooming. How is Aunt Kate?”
And how, exactly, was she going to explain the fact that Aunt Kate wasn’t coming in to greet him?
“She’s…older, obviously. She’d deny it vehemently, but she’s begun to fail a little.”
“So you’re taking care of her.”
“Of course.”
That’s how it is in families, Marc. We take care of each other. We don’t walk away, the way you did.
He frowned slightly, and she had the uncomfortable sense that he knew what she was thinking.
“Is she too frail to see me?”
Her careful evasion had led her just where she didn’t want to be. “No. She just—”
She faltered to a halt. There wasn’t any good way of saying that Aunt Kate didn’t welcome his return.
“She just doesn’t want to see me.” His mouth thinned. “Tell me, does she think I killed Annabel?”
The blunt question shook her, and mentioning Annabel’s name seemed to bring her into the room. For an instant Dinah heard the light tinkle of Annabel’s laugh, caught a whiff of the sophisticated fragrance that had been Annabel’s scent. Grief ripped through her, and she struggled to speak.
“I—I’m sure she doesn’t think that.” But did she? With her firm avoidance of the subject, Aunt Kate had managed never to say.
His dark gaze seemed to reject the feeble words. “What about you, Dinah? Do you think that?”
Before she could find the words, he shook his head.
“Never mind. I don’t suppose it matters.”
She found the words then, at the pain in his voice. “I don’t think you