The Awakening Read online

  As Amanda started down the stairs again, she vowed she’d try harder to please Dr. Montgomery and therefore please Taylor.

  Chapter Four

  Hank was late for dinner and he felt Taylor’s cold displeasure as soon as he walked in the door. Was this house run like a military school? Again, J. Harker did not appear and it was just the three of them eating. If you could call what was on the plate eating. He’d been wrong about the menu. It was boiled chicken, boiled rice and boiled beets.

  He couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “You feed your hands this well? No wonder unionists are choosing you to picket.”

  Taylor gave him a look to freeze. “It is better for the body to eat lightly. Amanda and I constantly fight gluttony.”

  “You’ve won,” Hank said and pushed his plate away. “You mind if I’m excused? I have some reading to do.”

  “Amanda is finished also,” Taylor said. “She would like to show you the almond orchard.”

  “That’s all right. I’ve seen a lot of the ranch today.” He got out of his chair and started toward the door.

  Taylor gave Amanda a glare that let her know she was to follow the professor. With a yearning look toward her half-eaten food, she followed Dr. Montgomery.

  Hank stopped when he heard her behind him. “Afraid I’ll see something I shouldn’t?”

  “I have no idea what you mean, Dr. Montgomery,” she said honestly.

  “You wouldn’t know where the kitchen was, would you?”

  “Through there,” she said, pointing, then followed him. She had not been in the kitchen for years, not since Taylor had found her there one day eating milk and cookies. He had been horrified at her impending obesity.

  In the center of the big kitchen was an oak table covered with many dishes: roast beef, gravy, at least five vegetables, yeast rolls, butter, fruit salad, green salad, and on a counter were three kinds of cake. The servants were sitting down to dinner, food halfway to their mouths when they stopped at the sight of Hank and Amanda.

  “Miss Amanda!” the cook gasped and sprang to her feet.

  Hank just gaped at the food. “Mind if I join you?”

  “No!” Amanda said, knowing that Taylor would be furious with her if she allowed him to sit with the servants. “I mean—”

  The cook, who had been with the family since Amanda was a baby, knew a great deal of what was going on. She also knew what this big, strapping, healthy Dr. Montgomery had been given to eat today. “I’ll fix you a plate,” she said to Hank.

  “Yes,” was all he could say, his mouth watering. “And from now on, I want real meals.”

  She smiled at him. “If Mr. Taylor will allow—”

  “I will allow it,” Hank said, taking the heaping platter of food from her.

  “Miss Amanda?” the cook said, holding out an empty plate.

  Amanda didn’t remember having seen so much food in her life and she felt fairly faint for wanting it. But Taylor wouldn’t approve; he didn’t like plump women. “No, thank you,” she said at last.

  “All right,” Hank said, “take me to the almond orchard or someplace where I can sit down.”

  Amanda went out the back door behind Hank, leaving the delicious smells behind her and following his fragrant plate like a hungry dog.

  “There,” Hank said, his mouth full and pointing with a loaded fork toward the little summerhouse. It was a floor, a roof and four latticed posts, and inside seats all around.

  She followed him into the summerhouse and sat opposite him and all she was aware of was the smell of the food.

  “You aren’t going to tell me when this was built?” Hank asked, wolfing down roast beef. “Or what kind of wood this is?”

  “It was built in 1903, right after my parents and I moved here. It is made of cypress and is an exact copy of an English gazebo my mother saw in a magazine.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I guess you don’t like to talk about your mother.”

  She was surprised that he knew. Everyone else in Kingman knew, so why not this stranger? He was eating a buttered roll. Taylor did not believe in bread and certainly not butter. “I’d rather not talk about her.”

  “I understand. When did she die?”

  “Die?” Amanda asked. “My mother is not dead.”

  “But she doesn’t live with you, then?”

  “My mother stays in her room. Perhaps, Dr. Montgomery, we should change the subject.”

  She turned her head away and Hank sat there, eating, and watched her. Seeing her profile in the moonlight made him remember his first impression of her, as if she came from another time and place, as if he’d known her before. But her coldness, her haughtiness, her snobbery made him know he was mistaken. He wondered if her thin little body was capable of emotion.

  He turned at a noise and saw the cook coming through the darkness and bearing two plates, each heaped high with three slices of cake.

  “Thought you might like a little something else,” she said, setting the desserts down and taking Hank’s empty plate, then leaving.

  Hank offered a plateful to Amanda, but she shook her head. “Suit yourself, but it’s awfully good.” Little prude, he thought, too cool to even accept a piece of cake. No doubt she thought her purity would be threatened if she touched devil’s food cake. He wondered if she and Taylor kissed at all. Probably it would be a kiss as tasteless as that afternoon’s fish.

  Amanda didn’t dare look at him while he was eating the cake. Her stomach was rumbling and the smell was making her mouth water. But she didn’t dare eat any because Taylor might smell it on her breath or see bits of chocolate between her teeth. He wouldn’t like her if she were so weak-willed as to eat cake that wasn’t on the schedule.

  “Better,” Hank said as he put his cleaned plate aside and leaned back against the post, his legs stretched out. “What do you have planned for us tomorrow? I assume you do have my day planned.”

  She frowned at his tone then began to quote Taylor’s schedule. “We go to the Kingman Museum in the morning, then home for luncheon, and then a scenic tour of the area. That should take us to dinner time.”

  “What do you do for fun?”

  “I do watercolors and sew,” she answered, smiling to herself. Taylor gave her excellent grades on the watercolors and they were used as a reward for other subjects well done.

  “How do you stand the excitement?” he murmured. “What do you and your lover do on nights on the town?”

  “We do not go into town,” she said, confused. Taylor said Kingman was too provincial to be worthy of his time, that he’d not visit a city smaller than San Francisco, where he went once a year to buy clothes and other necessary items. Other than those two weeks, he rarely left the ranch.

  “Too good for it, are you?” Hank asked and realized he was getting nasty. Something about her primness, her smugness, her refusal to even bend enough to eat a piece of chocolate cake, brought out the worst in him.

  He stood. “I’m going to bed. You coming in?”

  “Yes,” she said softly, and gave one last look at the shadow that she knew was the second plateful of cake.

  Moments later she was in her room, and on her desk were pages of notes on the history of Kingman that she was to commit to memory before going to bed. She sat down heavily in her chair and wished for the thousandth time that Dr. Montgomery had never come. For some reason he seemed to dislike her a great deal, more with each passing minute, and to earn this dislike she was having to work twice as hard, miss meals, and repeatedly incur Taylor’s wrath.

  So tonight she would have to stay up late studying, and tomorrow she’d have to take him to a museum, and no matter how hard she’d try to be a good guide, she’d no doubt displease him. Why was he so hard to please and Taylor so easy? If she did what Taylor had written down, in the exact order, exactly on time, Taylor was happy. Perhaps she should ask Dr. Montgomery what he wanted of her. But no, that wasn’t a good idea, because if it conflicted with Taylor’s schedule, she’d have to ignore Dr