Part 10 (1/2)

”Quiet, or I'll kiss you again.”

Amanda almost smiled at that but she controlled herself. ”Do you know anything about botany?”

”Do you know anything about your mother?” he shot back.

Amanda started to move away from him but he held her hair in his hands and she couldn't move. ”I believe that is personal, Dr. Montgomery.”

”Could I bribe you with lemon meringue pie?” he asked, his big hands gently combing the tangles from her long, thick hair.

In spite of herself, she did give a little smile. At the moment she couldn't seem to remember Taylor. As she sat here in the gra.s.s wearing a man's s.h.i.+rt, a man's hands in her hair, Taylor and her father seemed far away. ”My mother used to brush my hair and we used to eat lemon meringue pies together,” Amanda said softly. She hadn't thought of her mother very often in the last two years.

”And when did it stop?” Hank kept stroking her hair, running the comb through it, letting it wrap around his bare forearms. He just wanted to touch her. He wanted to put his arms around her and kiss her neck and slide the s.h.i.+rt from her shoulders and- ”When I was told-” she said, ”I mean, when I found out the truth about my mother. She was not a good influence on me.”

Hank could hear the wistfulness in her voice. So Taylor had taken her away from a mother who brushed her hair and fed her food with taste. ”I had a cousin like that, one who was a bad influence on me, I mean. He gave me whiskey and cigarettes, took me to a... well, a house of wayward ladies, taught me lots of curse words, taught me how to drive too fast. If it was bad for my health or could possibly kill me, ol' Charlie had me do it. It's a wonder I lived to be sixteen. I guess your mother was like that, huh? Drank, did she? She didn't take drugs, did she? Opium dens? Or men? Did she take lovers in front of you? Or-”

”Stop it!” Amanda said angrily. ”My mother never did any such thing in her life. She was wonderful to me. She used to make all my clothes, pretty dresses with embroidered collars, and she bought me wonderful s.h.i.+ny shoes, and every Sat.u.r.day she took me into Kingman and bought me ice cream and-” She stopped abruptly because she was aware of pain. More pain caused by Dr. Montgomery, she thought.

”I see,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. ”She does sound like a terrible influence.”

She turned away from him, then jerked her hair from his hands. ”You know nothing about it. You are judging-and condemning-something you know absolutely nothing about.”

”Then explain it to me, Amanda,” he said, using her first name for the first time.

She put her hands to her temples. ”You confuse me. Why should I explain anything to you? I don't know you. You're a stranger. You'll be gone in a few days, so why should I tell you anything?”

”Is that it or are you afraid to tell me? Tell me what hideous thing your mother has done, so I can hate her too. I hate oppression. I despise tyrants who hurt those weaker than themselves. Tell me what awful thing your mother has done to you so that you two live in the same house but never see each other.”

”She never did anything to me,” Amanda half blurted. ”She never hurt anyone in her life, but she used to... to dance!” She glared at Dr. Montgomery in defiance. Now he knew.

”Oh,” he said after a long pause. ”Professionally? With or without clothes?”

Amanda could only gape at him. She had told him this deep, dark secret about herself, a secret that Taylor said tainted her blood and made Amanda not quite ”good,” and yet Dr. Montgomery paid no attention to it. He was a dense man! ”With her clothes, of course,” Amanda snapped. ”Don't you understand? She was on the stage. ”

”Was she any good?”

Amanda made a sound that was half anger, half frustration and got up and started toward the car. The man had the sensibilities of a rock!

He caught her arm and turned her toward him. ”No, I don't understand. Maybe you could explain it to me. All I hear is that your mother loved you and you loved her, then somebody told you she used to dance and suddenly you hate her.”

”I don't hate her, I-” She jerked her arms from his grasp. He confused her so much. He made her question things she knew to be true.

Hank saw the pain and anguish on her face and he calmed. ”You know, you never did eat. Why don't you come over here and eat and explain to me about your mother? I can be a good listener and sometimes it helps to talk about things.”

Obediently, Amanda followed him to where the cloth was spread on the ground and where the food was waiting. Suddenly, she did want to explain things to him. He kept condemning her, but if he heard the whole story maybe he'd understand-and if he understood, perhaps he'd stop making her angry with his sly innuendos.

He poured her a gla.s.s of still-cool lemonade and heaped a plate full of food and handed it to her. ”Eat and talk,” he commanded.

”My mother was good to me as a child,” she began, her mouth half full, ”but I didn't know that the reason she spent so much time with me was because the other women of Kingman would have nothing to do with her.”

”Because she was a dancer?”

”Yes. You see, my father had no idea of her past when he married her. My mother comes from an ill.u.s.trious family. They came over on the Mayflower and he was introduced to her in good faith.”

”Meaning that he thought she was pure and innocent and had been kept secreted away until he met her?”

Amanda frowned. ”Something of the sort. It was only later, after they were married, that someone recognized Mother. It was a man who'd been forward with her, I believe, a man who she had repulsed. He told everyone in Kingman.” Amanda looked away. ”He had a photograph of Mother in... in tights.” She almost whispered the last.

”So then what?” Hank asked. ”The whole town ostracized her?”

”Yes,” Amanda said softly, and looked back at her food. ”When I was in the third grade a girl said I thought I was so good because my mother rode on the Mayflower but she was just a cheap dancer.”

Hank was beginning to understand a great deal. ”Who had told the townspeople of your mother's background?”

”My father was very proud of his wife.”

Hank watched her eat silently, her head bowed. So, J. Harker had married a woman who he thought was pure, innocent and blueblooded and he'd later found out she had spirit and personality-and probably legs as good as her daughter's, he thought with a smile.

”Dr. Montgomery, I do not believe this is a matter for amus.e.m.e.nt.”

”So your father had bragged to everyone about his wife being better than anybody else, then he finds out she had been on the stage where, I might add, she had turned away the advances of too-forward young men. So the town turned on her, did they? I'll bet they were glad to snub someone they were afraid would snub them first. What did your mother do?”

Amanda hadn't thought of the town being wrong, only of her mother's scandalous behavior. She had run away from her family when she was eighteen, just after she'd become engaged to a man fifteen years older than she, and her father hadn't been able to find her for two whole years, during which time Grace had supported herself by dancing in a chorus with seven other young women on stage in San Francisco. Grace's father had forcibly returned her to his home, and six months later she was married to J. Harker Caulden-a man who wasn't at all of the same social background as Grace, but Grace's father believed that only the bottom of the barrel was good enough for a fallen woman such as Grace was.

”My mother stayed home with me,” Amanda answered. ”We dressed dolls together and she read stories to me and she let me try on her jewelry and-” She stopped because her words were causing an ache inside her. She remembered the soft, powdery smell of her mother, the goodnight kisses of her mother, the times she woke from a bad dream and her mother came to her and held her.

”So Taylor Driscoll came into your life and told you your mother was a bad influence and you've stayed away from her ever since. Is that right?”

”Yes,” Amanda said softly, still thinking of her mother.

”I guess your mother encouraged you to go on the stage,” Hank said. ”Did she let you try on her tights? What about her stories about life on the stage? Were they glamorous?”

”She never mentioned her time on the stage to me. And she certainly didn't try to entice me to run away from home as she did.”

”Then tell me, Miss Caulden,” Hank said softly, ”just how was she a bad influence on you?”

Chapter Nine.

”I don't want to talk about my mother anymore, Dr. Montgomery,” Amanda said sternly.

Hank was watching her. ”I don't blame you. Terrible person she must be. Let's talk about something pleasant, like when you're getting married.”

”Soon,” she said, finis.h.i.+ng the food on her plate.

”Cake?” he asked. ”Or have you had enough?” His eyes were twinkling.

Amanda felt she should have refused the cake he offered but she didn't.