Yesterday's Bride

  Yesterday's Bride

  By

  Susan Tracy

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  "Why Did You Run Away?" Jason Asked.

  "Because I found out why you married me!"

  "And why was that?"

  "You needed a wife and I happened to be available."

  The dark eyes narrowed. His face was a cold, hard mask.

  "You should have made it clearer to me! I was young. I stupidly assumed that you loved me…"

  "Love!" He spat out the word. "You can't base a marriage on illusion."

  Leigh flinched with pain.

  "Our marriage could have worked, Leigh," he added more softly. "You should have given it a chance."

  SUSAN TRACY is another of our American authors. She has lived most of her life below the Mason-Dixon line, and likes to set her novels in the region that she knows and loves. An enthusiastic amateur photographer, her interest in capturing personality is reflected in her thoughtful treatment of her fictional characters.

  Dear Reader,

  Silhouette Romances is an exciting new publishing series, dedicated to bringing you the very best in contemporary romantic fiction from the very finest writers. Our stories and our heroines will give you all you want from romantic fiction.

  Also, you play an important part in our future plans for Silhouette Romances. We welcome any suggestions or comments on our books, which should be sent to the address below.

  So enjoy this book and all the wonderful romances from Silhouette. They're for you!

  Jane Nicholls

  Silhouette Books

  PO Box 177

  Dunton Green

  Sevenoaks

  Kent

  TN13 2YE

  Copyright© 1982 by Susan Tracy

  First printing 1983

  ISBN 0 340 32727 8

  To Susan and Jill

  Chapter One

  "Amen." The minister ended the prayer and lifted his head. The service was over. As they moved away, several of the mourners stopped to speak to the girl standing beside the open grave, a forlorn figure with her bowed head and hunched shoulders.

  Rain that had threatened all day began to fall in a fine mist from leaden skies. A chill wind, more characteristic of March than April, had sprung up and was moving the branches of the few trees shading the cemetery. It was a grim scene, but the girl seemed not to notice. She was staring at the ground, her face giving no clue to her thoughts.

  Leigh Melville had just buried her grandfather, the Judge. She would miss him terribly. He had brought her up, and even if they hadn't seen much of one another in the last few years, they had still been close. She could always count on him to understand, whatever the circumstances. And she had certainly presented him with some difficult circumstances, thought Leigh wryly. Well, she squared her slender shoulders and took a deep breath, he was gone, and although she would never forget him or what he had done for her, she would put the past behind her.

  Leigh started as someone touched her arm. A plump, middle-aged woman wearing a black coat said gently, "It's time to go, Miss Leigh. Come on, you'll get drenched." She urged the girl forward. "There's nothing more we can do here." Flora Martin, the Judge's housekeeper, propelled Leigh toward the cemetery gate.

  As she walked down the graveled path between the headstones, Leigh noticed a tall man standing alone by the gate. Although his face was in shadow, he was looking directly at Leigh and she recognized him immediately.

  She stopped and grabbed at Flora's hand, not taking her eyes off the figure ahead. "I should have known he'd be here," she murmured to herself. "He always admired and respected Grandfather."

  Turning to Flora she asked, "Would you wait for me in the car? I'll only be a minute."

  The older woman glanced apprehensively at the man standing a few feet away. "Are you sure, Miss Leigh? Why don't you just come on with me now? You've been through enough for one day," she prompted loyally.

  "I'm all right, Flora," the girl answered. "Go on to the car."

  Leigh was more shaken than she would have admitted and she wanted to get the next few moments over with as quickly as possible. She schooled her features into a cool mask, thanking her stars she had been so well trained.

  Walking toward him Leigh got a clearer view of his face. He looks older, she decided. Harsh lines that hadn't been there five years ago etched his mouth and eyes and flecks of gray glinted in the thick black hair. But he was still lean, rugged, too attractive for comfort with that controlled strength of his, that air of being capable of handling anything or anyone.

  Leigh had thought, if she ever saw him again, that she would find his magnetism diminished. After all, she had been so young when she knew him. But it wasn't her youthful inexperience that had imbued him with his power. Anywhere in the world, in any company, she knew this man would stand out.

  His brown eyes stared without expression into her gray ones—she never had known what he was thinking—as he stood there silently, waiting for her to speak.

  "Hello, Jason."

  He inclined his head to acknowledge her greeting. "I'm sorry about your grandfather, Leigh. He was a fine man."

  She tried to relax. "Yes, he was. Thank you for coming, Jason."

  Again he nodded, his eyes never leaving her face.

  Leigh took a breath. "Jason," she said, "I'd like to talk to you."

  The level black brows raised. "Of course," he assented, "go ahead."

  Leigh moistened her dry lips and forced the words from a constricted throat, "Not now, Jason, and not here. Could we make an appointment, some time that would be convenient for you?"

  "Such consideration," he said softly. "I take it you won't be rushing right away."

  Leigh hated him so much she was shaking, and it took all her control to answer calmly, "No, there are legal matters to clear up. I'll probably be in Raleigh for a few more days."

  She couldn't look at him anymore so she peered over his shoulder at the rain-washed street.

  Jason paused briefly before asking, "How does tomorrow suit you—around five? Are you staying at the house?"

  "Tomorrow's fine. Yes, I'm at the house." Leigh gripped her hands tightly together. "I'll see you then."

  Without waiting for an answer she walked quickly past him, through the gateway, and stumbled hurriedly into the back of the waiting limousine. As she sank into the cushions, Leigh closed her eyes. I have to pull myself together, she thought. He's not worth getting upset over. It's just the shock of seeing him so suddenly, without warning.

  With a worried expression on her face, Flora watched Leigh. Rarely had she seen the girl look so vulnerable. Usually she was cool and serene with a slightly detached air about her. And so lovely, thought the woman. Hair that looked more silver than blond, a small, straight nose, a sweet mouth. Although rather tall and quite capable, Leigh sometimes gave the impression of fragility, perhaps because she was slender or perhaps because of the fey expression that could come into her wide gray eyes.

  Turning to Flora, Leigh grasped at her composure and forced herself to speak evenly. "I haven't had a chance to talk to you properly since I arrived yesterday," she said. "The house has been so full of people. The Judge was well thought of, wasn't he?"

  The housekeeper wiped at her reddened eyes. "Oh, Miss Leigh, what are we going to do without him? He was such a good, kind man." She began to weep again.

  After a while Leigh took the woman's work-worn hand in hers and asked about her pl
ans.

  "I thought I'd go to my sister in Wilmington. She's a widow, living alone, and would welcome some company. I hate leaving Raleigh though, it's been my home for such a long time."

  "I wish you would come back to New York with me. I'd love having you to spoil me again. Remember how you used to make me those delicious ginger cookies and then scold me for eating too many?"

  Flora scowled and shook an admonishing finger in Leigh's face. "You look as if you need some good nourishing food. I've never seen you so thin. You'll blow away one fine day."

  Leigh smiled at her. "I'm a model. The camera adds inches, you know. If I gain too much weight, I won't photograph well and then what would I do?"

  Flora sniffed and said gruffly, "You could stay here."

  Sadly Leigh shook her head. "My life is in New York now, more so than ever with Grandfather gone." She looked out the window as the car slowed. "We're home."

  The limousine, provided by the funeral service, pulled up in front of an imposing white Victorian house, and Leigh leaned across the front seat to thank the driver and the representative from the funeral home who had ridden with them. Then she slid out of the car, took Flora's arm and hurried into the house.

  As they stood in the hall shaking the rain from their coats, Leigh swallowed a lump in her throat. This house won't be home much longer, she thought. Suddenly the events of the past two days caught up with her. The phone call from Flora that the Judge had had a fatal heart attack. Rushing to get here. Trying to stay calm to talk to the dozens of people who had called, bringing sympathy and food in the Southern tradition—neighbors, old friends of the Judge, people he had helped. Finally, the strain of the funeral. Now the house was quiet. Their friends were considerately giving Flora and Leigh solitude in which to deal with their grief.

  "I'll make some tea," Flora offered, looking into Leigh's drawn face.

  "No, thank you, Flora," Leigh answered with difficulty. "I think I'll just go to my room. I'd like to be alone for a while." And with that, Leigh fled up the stairs to find what solace she could.

  The next morning, both wan-faced and red-eyed, Leigh and Flora were up early, armed with a long list of things to do. Leigh dressed practically in faded denim jeans and an old blue shirt. Before starting, she allowed herself only a cup of Flora's aromatic coffee and one of the ham biscuits that a neighbor had thoughtfully provided.

  The first thing she did was to call a real estate agent and place the house on the market. Then, while Flora was packing up kitchen items, Leigh attacked the Judge's study. She had set herself a difficult task for she sensed her grandfather's presence so strongly here, the scent of his tobacco pervading the room. It was to the study that the child Leigh had brought her school reports, had been summoned after mischief, and later, had come to have long, serious talks with her grandfather when she needed advice or guidance.

  The study was large, its walls book-lined except for where French windows opened into the garden. Leigh could remember her grandfather strolling to look out those windows when he was deep in thought or when something was troubling him. She walked over to the massive roll-top desk that dominated the room and began the painful task of going through its contents.

  By lunchtime Leigh and Flora had finished with all the downstairs rooms, packing away whatever was not to be sold with the house. Leigh wondered how some prospective buyer would feel about the furniture—the ornate, stiff couch with its plush cover, the whatnot shelves, the dark mahogany dining table and sturdy carved chairs, the china cabinet whose treasures Leigh had loved to plunder when she was a child. Leigh's grandmother had decorated the house when sturdiness and formality were the arbiters of taste, and the Judge had never changed a thing, other than the necessary modernizations.

  As they sat down in the kitchen to chicken sandwiches and coffee, Leigh and Flora made plans for the afternoon.

  "I don't know about you, but I could do with a rest," said Leigh, biting into her sandwich. "All that bending! Every muscle in my body aches and I'm so grimy that I'll probably leave smudges everywhere I go."

  "A rest sounds good to me," answered Flora, putting another sandwich on Leigh's plate. "Then we can tackle the rooms upstairs." She hesitated, concern in her kindly blue eyes. "You'll have to go through your old bedroom, Miss Leigh. I'd clear it for you if I could, but there are things in there that only you know what to do with." Flora paused again before continuing. "You know that no one has used that room since you left home."

  "It's OK, Flora," Leigh reassured her. "It was silly of me not to sleep there on my visits home, but I just never could. Nothing's in that room but dusty old memories. I'll pack it up if you'll do the guest rooms and the Judge's room. We can decide later about his personal things."

  Leigh pushed back from the table and stretched out her legs. "I'm going to collapse on the front porch for an hour," she said.

  "Not until you sample this pecan pie," Flora stated with a determined look in her eye.

  After they had cleared the table and washed the few dishes, the housekeeper went to her room off the kitchen to nap and Leigh headed for the porch. She sat down on the swing that was suspended by chains from the ceiling, rested her head, and idly pushed back and forth. Leigh had always loved sitting on the porch with the Judge on warm summer evenings after supper. They would listen to the crickets or Leigh would race around the yard to catch fireflies and put them in jars with holes punched in the lids. And later she and Jason used to sit in the swing when he brought her home from their dates. Even when the weather was cold, they would cuddle up and talk. Better not dwell on that, thought Leigh, jumping to her feet.

  "I'm going upstairs to exorcise some ghosts," she announced as she marched inside, letting the door swing to behind her with a bang.

  She ran up the stairs and threw open the door to her old room. It's just the same, she reflected as she looked around. The bedroom was pretty and very feminine, with white and gold French provincial furniture that suited Leigh somehow. Covered with a white organdy spread and topped by a lacy canopy, the bed was the focal point of the room. Leigh slowly trailed her hand across its pristine coverlet, a faraway look in her eyes.

  It was the room of a young girl. The Judge had had it decorated for her as soon as she had come to live here, after the automobile accident that took her parents' lives. She had been eight years old, bewildered and frightened, but the Judge's kindness and Flora's brusque mothering had soon made her feel at home. She had had a good childhood in this house, perhaps a rather solitary one spent more with adults than other children, but a happy time nonetheless.

  Wandering to the row of windows set in the wall opposite the door, Leigh leaned her head against a windowpane and stared unseeingly out. Some of her memories were painful, but she knew she must take them out, examine them and thrust them behind her forever.

  Leigh closed her eyes, thinking back five years. She had been thrilled, she remembered, and more than a little apprehensive when the Judge had told her that he wanted her to make a debut into Raleigh society. The debut would be good for her, he explained, it would make her more at ease socially, polish her off. At eighteen, in her first year at St. Mary's Junior College, she was overly sensitive and young for her years and a bit shy with boys and girls her own age, but somehow she had gotten through the ordeals of teas, parties and dances, and had even relaxed enough to enjoy them. She never lacked for partners and soon learned to engage in the nonsensical chatter that was expected of her.

  Then came the highlight of her presentation to society, the Governor's Ball. Dressed in flowing white chiffon, her silver hair caught high on her head, she was quite the most striking girl there.

  Trying to catch her breath from the whirl of dancing, Leigh was resting on the sidelines when one of the sponsors of the Ball approached her. Clare Randall, a petite brunette, was a former debutante who was helping to organize this season's festivities. "I have someone here who wants to be introduced to you," she told Leigh. "May I present my brother-in-la
w, Jason Randall. Jason, Miss Melville."

  Leigh looked up expecting to see another college boy, as most of the escorts at the Ball were, but no callow youth stood before her. He must be approaching thirty, she surmised, studying the man through her lashes.

  Jason Randall was not handsome, his features were too uncompromising for that. But his was a face full of character. Not an easy man to know, Leigh felt, unless he wanted you to know him, but nonetheless a man you could depend on. She could feel his strength and competence. And he's tough, Leigh decided as she summed him up mentally.

  He was a man wholly outside Leigh's range of experience, used as she was to people her own age or considerably older. With a nervous smile, she gave him her hand and said a prim how do you do.

  When he smiled, he took her breath away. The smile softened his strong features, making him look younger, even more vital, if that was possible. Watch out, Leigh warned herself, this one's a lady-killer.

  His voice was low and attractive, with a slight drawl. "Will you dance with me?" he asked, and almost mesmerized, Leigh gave him her hand and let him lead her onto the dance floor.

  "Miss Leigh Melville," he said as if savoring her name. "I wanted to meet you very badly."

  Leigh didn't know what to say.

  After they had circled the floor a few times in silence, Jason looked down into her gray eyes and asked, "Do you have a steady boyfriend?"

  "No, but…" Leigh didn't know how to handle this. He was moving too swiftly for her.

  Jason cut into her reply. "Good! We're going to get to know each other better, you and I, and a boyfriend would have been in the way."

  Leigh gasped. "You don't waste any time, do you?"

  Brown eyes raked her face. "Not if it's something I want," he answered slowly.

  Her cheeks burning with anger, Leigh spat out, "You are the most insufferable, arrogant, conceited creature it has ever been my misfortune to meet. In the first place, if I had a dozen boyfriends, it's none of your business. You're a stranger and likely to stay that way. And secondly, what makes you think I would go out with you even if the alternative were to sit home alone every night of my life?"