The Awakening Read online

  J. Harker was chewing on an unlit cigar and pacing the library. “I don’t like it one little bit,” he said. “He doesn’t look like a college professor should. He looks too young, too healthy. He looks like he might go out in the fields and lead a strike himself.”

  “All the more reason to keep him where we can watch him. I admit his age and looks threw me for a moment, but I will try to make up for the rudeness of both of us. He must be kept away from the fields. We have to save every penny we can this year or we’ll lose everything.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” J. Harker said bitterly. “It’s just that he don’t—”

  “Doesn’t,” Taylor corrected him automatically. “Doesn’t look as a professor should. Amanda will—”

  “Amanda! Surely you don’t think I’ll let her go out alone with him.”

  Taylor’s face showed little emotion. “I have taught her well and she is obedient. She will help us now that we need her.”

  J. Harker looked hard at the man who was to be his son-in-law. Taylor seemed to have supreme confidence that he was going to get everything he wanted out of his life. Years ago Harker had tried to get him to marry Amanda, but Taylor wanted to wait until she was “trained properly.” Harker hadn’t protested, but now he thought Taylor was making a mistake if he let Amanda go out alone with this good-looking young buck. “I think you’ll be sorry for this,” Harker said. “She has the blood of her mother in her.”

  “I know Amanda,” Taylor said. “There’s something…insolent about that man that Amanda will greatly dislike. Trust me. She will help us.”

  “You have more faith in women than I do,” Harker said, clamping down on his cigar.

  The bedroom the maid led Hank to was quite nice. It was at the front of the second floor, looking north with east and west windows. There was a pretty little private balcony with two wrought-iron chairs and a tiny table. While standing on the balcony, to his left was the roof of the first-story verandah wrapping around the windows of what he assumed was another bedroom.

  His room was dark and clean and the furniture of good quality, but it had none of the homey touches that Hank had grown used to with Mrs. Soames. He looked at the books in the bookcase and found nothing of interest and so began to hang up his clothes. He had refused Martha’s offer of help.

  He removed his dusty traveling jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and headed for the bathroom Martha had pointed out to him. The door was closed, so he knocked.

  “Yes?” came a woman’s voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Hank said, “I’ll come back.”

  “I will be out in three and a half minutes,” said the woman.

  Hank was already on his way back to his room when he heard this. A woman who knew exactly how long she was going to be in the bathroom? Hank stopped where he was and lounged against a wall where he could see the tall clock and the bathroom door.

  As the hands neared three minutes, he reached into his pocket for a coin to flip to lay odds with himself whether or not she’d be punctual.

  At exactly three and a half minutes the bathroom door opened and out stepped what Hank thought was surely the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Tall, thin—too thin—big brown eyes that looked wary, sad, frightened and curious all at once. Deep, dark chestnut hair. He didn’t see what she was wearing, for he seemed to see her in several gowns: medieval velvet, Napoleonic muslin, Victorian taffeta, Edwardian linen.

  The coins in his hand fell to the floor.

  “May I help you?” the woman-vision asked.

  “I…ah, I…” Hank stuttered stupidly.

  The next second the vision was gone and he was able to see again. No, she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world. She was very pretty, true, but, technically, she wasn’t as beautiful as Blythe Woodley. But he couldn’t stop staring at her.

  “Are you Dr. Montgomery?” she asked.

  He began to recover. “Yes, I am, and you are?”

  “Amanda Caulden. Welcome to my home.”

  She held out her hand to him and he almost didn’t take it. What in the world was wrong with him? “Thank you very much. I met your father and his son-in-law. You must have a married sister.” He was doing his best to make conversation but he was getting lost in her eyes. Not again, Montgomery, he commanded, thinking of what had happened with Blythe Woodley. Don’t even consider it.

  “Taylor is my fiancé. Now, Dr. Montgomery, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late.”

  “You’re leaving?” he said, then cursed to himself because he sounded like a little boy whose mother was leaving.

  “No, I shall join you at luncheon. Shall I help you pick up your coins?”

  “No, I can,” he said quickly, and immediately went to all fours and reached under a table for a coin, then turned to look up at Amanda and bumped his head. She took a step forward and saved a vase of flowers from falling to the floor.

  “Perhaps I should call a maid,” she suggested.

  “No, I’ll be fine,” he said, then bumped his head again.

  Amanda just looked at him, expressionless, then opened the door to the room next to his and went inside, closing herself from his view.

  Hank sat on the floor and cursed for a full five minutes, but he couldn’t get the image of her from his mind. He saw her as something from a painting from Fragonard: on a swing, laughing, satin skirts blowing, exposing lacy petticoats and tiny shoes with jeweled buckles. He saw her running through fields of golden wheat, long hair streaming out behind her. He saw her dancing a tango, wearing a slinky dress.

  He saw her in his arms.

  He stood, his eyes on the door to Amanda’s room, and, without conscious thought, he walked softly to her door and put his hand against it.

  It was at that moment that Amanda opened the door to her room—and almost got Hank’s hand in her face.

  She was too startled to do anything but stare at him, her eyes wide.

  “I…ah, the coins. I, ah…” Hank stammered, then gave her a weak smile.

  “It is time for luncheon,” she said firmly and turned sideways to get past him. She halted on the stairs and put her hand to her breast and willed her heart to stop pounding. Was this man insane or just very eccentric? He didn’t look like a college professor. In fact, he didn’t act as if he had a brain in his head. She had left the bathroom and there he had stood, staring at her as if he’d never seen a woman before. Amanda had looked down to see if perhaps she had forgotten some important article of clothing. Then he’d thrown coins on the floor and floundered about, nearly knocking over furniture as he tried to retrieve them.

  What he had been doing when she opened her door and nearly walked into his hand, she didn’t like to think about. She continued down the stairs.

  “Amanda, you are late,” Taylor said sternly.

  “I…I met Dr. Montgomery.”

  Taylor was watching her. “He is younger than we anticipated and therefore more dangerous. He must be kept occupied. Have you studied the topics for today’s discussion?”

  “Yes,” she said in a faraway voice. She couldn’t possibly voice her complaints to Taylor. She couldn’t say that she didn’t like Dr. Montgomery, or that she was even a little afraid of him. Taylor wanted her to spend time with him and she had to do it—for Taylor.

  Dr. Montgomery sauntered down to the dining room at five minutes after one. At least this time he was fully dressed. Even though Taylor had lived in the same house with Amanda for eight years, had shared the same bathroom, she had never seen him in his shirt sleeves as Dr. Montgomery had first appeared to her.

  Now he wore a simple, rather too casual tan suit and he had a way of sitting in his chair that was not quite proper.

  “Was I late?” he asked. “Sorry. It took me a while to find all the coins. I can’t afford to lose anything, not on my salary,” he said, smiling at Amanda as if they shared some private joke.

  Amanda did not return his smile. “I wonder, Dr. Montgomery, if we might discuss s