Twin of Fire Read online

  “So now, you think you have to marry her,” Reed said with heavy-sounding finality. “Couldn’t you give it some time? You hardly know her. Marriage is forever. You’ll have to spend your life with this woman, and one night’s acquaintance isn’t enough to base that on. Just because she’s feisty in bed doesn’t mean—.” He stopped at Lee’s look.

  “All right,” Reed continued. “So now, you ask for the young lady’s hand in marriage. What happens to Houston? Do you just walk away from her? Women take these things quite hard, you know.”

  “Since all this was started by the twins, I don’t feel too bad. They should have thought of the consequences.”

  “They could hardly have known that you would choose that night to decide the fate of your future. Before you ask Blair to marry you, why don’t you wait a month or so? That’ll give both of you some time to think about what you’re doing.”

  “It’s too late for that. Besides, I don’t think Blair would marry me.”

  “Don’t…?” Reed began. “If she’ll sleep with you, why the hell won’t she marry you?”

  In spite of the anger in his father’s voice, Lee began to smile. “I’m not sure she likes me. She thinks I’m a bigot like Gates, and I honestly believe that if I asked her to marry me, she’d laugh in my face.”

  Reed threw up his hands in despair. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  At that moment, the front door was thrown open, and immediately there was the sound of shouting throughout the house.

  Lee rose from his chair. “That will no doubt be the outraged Mr. Duncan Gates. I went to his brewery an hour ago and told him that I had deflowered his stepdaughter and, to make amends, I would marry the wayward girl. He is bringing Blair and the four of us are going to discuss the matter. Don’t look so glum, Dad. I mean to have her and I’ll use any method I can to get her.”

  Chapter 7

  “I have absolutely no intention of marrying him. None,” Blair said for the twentieth time.

  “You are soiled, unfit,” Duncan raged. “No one else will have you.”

  Blair tried her best to keep calm and not show the turmoil that was boiling inside her. Gates had been shouting at her and trying to intimidate her for three solid hours. She thought about her Uncle Henry’s calmness, how he’d look at what had happened with some humor, and they would sit down and talk about the situation as if they were sane adults. But not Gates. He had the medieval idea that now that she was no longer a virgin, she should be cast down to the dogs—or to Leander, which was about the same thing as far as Blair was concerned.

  “May I ask why you don’t want to marry my son?” Reed Westfield asked.

  Blair could feel animosity coming from the man, like heat waves on the desert. “I have told you that I have been accepted to intern at a major hospital in Pennsylvania and I plan to take the offer. Besides, I don’t love your son. He is engaged to my sister and, as soon as possible after their wedding, I will return to Pennsylvania, and no one in this town need ever see me again. I don’t know how to make myself more clear than that.”

  “You’ve ruined your sister’s life!” Gates shouted. “You don’t think she can marry him after this?”

  “Are you insinuating that Leander was…ah, unsoiled, as you put it, before last night?”

  Duncan’s face turned red.

  “Calm down, Duncan,” Reed said. “Blair, there must be some way that we can work this out to everyone’s satisfaction. Surely, you must have some feelings for my son.”

  Blair looked at Lee, who was standing at the back of the room and appearing to enjoy everything. Not any feelings that she could tell publicly, she thought, and as if Lee could read her mind, he smiled at her in such a way that she blushed and had to look away. “I told you before,” she said. “I was pretending to be my sister, and I was acting the way I thought she would act with the man she loved. I don’t think I should be punished for being an excellent actress.”

  Reed lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t think any actress carries her role that far.”

  “And I’ll not have Houston’s name dragged through the mud by you or anyone else,” Duncan shouted. “She wouldn’t have done what you’ve done. She’s a good girl.”

  “And I’m not, is that it?” Blair asked, torn between tears and outrage.

  “A decent woman wouldn’t—.”

  “I’ve heard all I want to hear,” Lee said, stepping forward. “Would you leave us now? I want to talk to Blair alone.”

  Blair wanted to protest that she didn’t want to see him alone, but perhaps he wasn’t as bad as all of them shouting at her.

  “Would you like some sherry?” he asked, when they were alone.

  “Please,” she answered, taking the glass with shaking hands.

  He frowned when he saw her hands. “I had no idea that he was as bad as that. Houston’d told me, but I hadn’t imagined half of it.”

  Blair drank the wine gratefully and hoped it would calm her nerves. “If you didn’t think he was so bad, why did you enlist his help in your preposterous scheme?”

  “I wanted all the help I could get. I thought—correctly—that if I went to you on my own, you’d laugh in my face.”

  “I’m not laughing now.”

  “All right, then let’s get this settled. The invitations are at the printer’s, and all that has to be changed is your name for Houston’s.”

  Blair jumped up from her chair. “Of all the stupid ideas I have ever heard, that’s the worst. Can’t you hear me? I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to spend another minute in this dreadful town. I want to go home and I want my sister to get her fiancé back. What can I say to you people to make you understand? I want to go home!”

  In spite of her good intentions, she collapsed in the chair, put her face in her hands and burst into tears. “He’s right,” she cried, “I’ve ruined Houston’s life.”

  Lee knelt before her and very gently pulled her hands down. “Don’t you understand that I want to marry you, not Houston?”

  She looked at him for a moment, felt his warm hands on her wrists and considered the matter, but before she could let herself be persuaded, she got up and went to stand before the window.

  “You belong to my sister. Since she was a child, she has planned to marry you. She has a trunkful of linens embroidered with an L and an H intertwined. She’s never wanted to be anything but Mrs. Leander Westfield. She loves you, don’t you know that? And what I love is medicine. Medicine has been my life since I was twelve and now I’ve earned this internship and I want to take it and marry Alan and live happily ever after.”

  Leander lost the concerned look he was wearing and stood bolt upright. “Alan? And just who the hell is he?”

  “Since I’ve returned to this town, no one has asked me about my life in Pennsylvania. Gates shouts at me that I’m immoral, Mother just sits and sews, Houston spends most of her time ordering new dresses, and you…you just stand there giving me orders.”

  Several emotions went across Lee’s face. “Who is Alan?” “The man to whom I’m engaged. The man I love. The man who is coming to Chandler in two days to meet my family and tell them that he would be honored to marry me.”

  “I’m asking for that honor.”

  “I’m sure that you fell in love with me after one night.” To her surprise, Leander said nothing to this.

  He toyed with a letter opener on the desk. “What if I make you want to marry me? What if by the end of two weeks you want to walk down that aisle to me?”

  “There’s not a chance in the world of that happening. Alan will be here soon and, besides, I told you, you belong to Houston.”

  “I do, do I?” he said and, in one stride, he was across the room to her and had her in his arms.

  His kiss was as draining to her senses as it had been last night when she’d pretended to be her sister. She was weak when he released her.

  “Now, tell me I don’t have a chance.” He moved away from her. “Did it e