“Miss Brown?” Jared persisted. “It couldn’t be the flood that disturbs you, after so long a time. Do you have some hidden reason for not wanting to return to Galveston? Are you in trouble of some kind?”
Mrs. Dunn started to speak, but a quick wave of Jared’s hand stopped her. His intent pale blue eyes bit into Noelle’s as mercilessly as if he’d been in a courtroom. “Answer me,” he said evenly. “What do you have to hide? What is it about Galveston that made you fling yourself on the mercy of a distant relative rather than return there?”
She glared at Jared. “You make me sound like a criminal,” she said accusingly.
He leaned back in his chair and watched her with cold, calculating eyes. “Not at all. I just want to know why you’re content to live on my charity, rather than keeping house for your elderly uncle who, presumably, is going to suffer without your support.”
She felt her face heat with bad temper. She gripped the napkin tight in her lap and fought an urge to throw a glass of water over him. Why, the smug, sanctimonious reprobate! Who did he think he was?
She got to her feet, almost shaking with temper. “My uncle has a brother in Galveston who is married and has six daughters. I assure you, he won’t suffer from lack of attention. And if my presence here is so offensive to you, if you feel that I do nothing to earn my keep, then I’m quite content to leave!”
Tears stung her eyes. Jared’s accusations seemed to suffocate her as much as the nightmarish memories of Galveston. She flung the napkin on the table and lifted her skirts as she ran for the back porch.
It had been a long time since she’d cried. But Jared had infuriated her and cost her the control over her emotions that she prided herself on. She wept brokenly, so that it left her shaking, with tears running down her cheeks. She gripped the porch railing hard, trying to sniff back the wetness that threatened to escape her nose, feeling the rain mist in her face, hearing the ping of the droplets on the tin roof while she drowned in her own misery. She’d burned her bridges. She would have no place to go! Well, she wouldn’t go back to Galveston, even so. They couldn’t force her to—
“Here.”
She started as a lean, darkly tanned hand passed her an immaculate white linen handkerchief. She held it to her mouth and then her cheeks and eyes. “Thank you,” she said gruffly.
“My grandmother told me that you lost your entire family in the flood. I didn’t know that. And I didn’t realize that you were still so affected by it.”
She peeked up at him over the handkerchief and found an odd compassion in his eyes, replacing his earlier mockery. “Neither did I,” she confessed.
He knew about bad memories. He had enough of his own. “I’ve never been to Galveston,” he continued conversationally, “but I spoke with several people who were there just days after the flood. You saw your parents, afterward, didn’t you?” he added, because it was the only thing that made sense of her strong reaction to any discussion of the flood.
She nodded and tried to turn away.
He took her firmly by the upper arms and turned her back to face him. His narrow, insistent blue eyes bored into hers, so close that they filled the world, so intense that they made it impossible for her to move.
“Don’t hold it inside. Tell me,” he said firmly. “Tell me everything you remember.”
She was compelled to answer, needed to answer. The memories tumbled helplessly out of her mouth, and she couldn’t stop them. It was such a relief to speak of it, at last, to someone who would listen.
“They didn’t look human,” she whispered. She dabbed at her nose, wincing at the memory. “They were piled up, row upon row upon row of bodies, some so horrible…” She swallowed. “I felt so guilty, you see. I was in Victoria with Uncle. If I had been at home, I would have died with them. We went to town on Saturday, every Saturday, to shop. They would have been in town when it happened,” she told him, “my parents and my four brothers. It was midmorning and the flood came unexpectedly. They said a wall of water covered the entire city, drowning everyone in its path. They wouldn’t have known what happened…or so I was told. Over five thousand people died there in a space of minutes. Minutes!” She stopped to hold the cloth out in the rain, wetting it. Then she patted her face with the cool cloth and paused to choke down the nausea. “They were laid out on the street, and not together. At least they were found…in time…So that they could still be…identified.” Tears were hot in her eyes as she remembered the sight of her beloved family like that. She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth.
He frowned slightly as he studied her drawn, tearstained face. He’d seen death so often in his younger days that it didn’t really disturb him very much. His mother had slipped from life very peacefully, holding his hand. But Galveston had been a nightmare of corpses, they said, more than men saw even during wartime. He could only imagine how it would have been for a sensitive young woman to see her entire family lying dead on the street. Drowning victims of that sort were a nightmarish sight. It would have been even worse a few days later, as people had to be forced to gather the decomposing corpses…
He stuck his hands in his pockets and jingled his loose change as he watched her cope with her outpouring of emotion. He sensed that it was unusual for her to give in to tears, especially in front of strangers. He didn’t touch her. Some part of him wanted to, but he wouldn’t have appreciated a stranger’s attempt at comfort and he didn’t think she would, either.
She got herself back in control at last and wiped the traces of moisture from her eyes. They were red now, like her straight nose and her cheeks. “My uncle’s insistence on returning to Galveston resurrected all the memories. I thought that I’d put it behind me, but I was never able to talk about it. I thought Andrew would be the one person who could let me pour it all out, since he was in the war…but he wouldn’t listen to me. He actually seemed to go pale when I mentioned it. Of course, I must have imagined that.”
He knew that she hadn’t. Andrew had never seen raw death, Jared was certain of it, and the young man had a squeamish stomach. “Go on,” he coaxed.
The sound of the rain grew insistent on the roof. She sighed. “So there was no one else to tell. You accused me of running from something. You were right. I would rather die than go back to live in that city, with the memories of all the faces, the pitiful faces.” She stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said huskily.
“No, I’m sorry,” he replied at once. “I made some cruel remarks. My only excuse is that I didn’t know your entire family had died in the flood.”
The apology was unexpected. She lifted her eyes to his and searched them. “My uncle was down with his back when the flood came. I had gone up to Victoria to keep house and wait on him several weeks before the flood came. I would have gone home the following Monday. I felt so guilty that I hadn’t been with my family when they died.”
“That was God’s decision, surely?” he replied solemnly.
“You mean, that He spared me for a reason?”
He nodded.
She considered that silently. Her grief had made all her memories painful. He had forced her to face them, to face divine purposes as well. “Thank you for listening to me. Most people don’t like to hear of such horror.” She managed a faint smile for him. “And city men as a rule have no stomach at all for unpleasantness.” She frowned as she searched his eyes shyly. “It…did not disturb you too much, what I said?”
He had to stifle laughter. “No,” he said simply.
The twinkle in his eyes puzzled her. “I’m glad. Thank you for listening.”
“Life goes on,” he reminded her. “We do what we must.”
“Have you lost someone you loved?” she asked curiously.
His