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“Oh,” she said again.
Zane gave himself a mental jab in the ribs. “You are not to get out of bed again until I say so, understood?”
“I think—I think I am...flattered.”
He blinked. Her remark was irrelevant. Well, perhaps not so irrelevant, considering where the previous conversation had strayed. And then his mind jerked back to the matter underlying everything.
“Flattered,” she breathed again.
“Flattered?” Hell.
“Yes, flattered.”
There was a stunned silence.
“Zane, you look just like Papa used to when I shocked him.”
“Did you shock him often?”
She looked up at him, her eyes amused, a little smile playing around her mouth. “As often as I possibly could.”
Zane dragged in a long breath, then blew out a sigh. “You must have been a difficult girl to raise. A trial, in fact. I feel a great deal of sympathy for your father.”
Winifred laughed softly. “Papa adored me. And I adored him, even though I was away at school for months at a time. But he did love me, and that helped.”
Zane studied her. He could believe “difficult.” And he could most definitely believe “adored.”
She laid one arm over her eyes. “Were we finished?”
“We were, yes.”
Well, no, they weren’t, in fact. But Winifred was still too weak from her illness to take things any further. In fact, at this moment, he himself was feeling somewhat weak. He fought an urge to mop his forehead with his handkerchief.
“Get some rest,” he ordered. He backed out of her bedroom and headed down the stairs, straight for the brandy decanter.
* * *
For the next few days, Winifred rose each morning, dressed and waited until she was sure Zane had left the house. When she heard the front door close, she carefully made her way downstairs to breakfast, played peekaboo with Rosemarie and tried a few passages on the piano just to keep her memory sharp. She had a concert early in September.
Then she climbed slowly back up the stairs to lie down, acknowledging that Zane was right about demanding that she rest. She would need all her strength when she returned to the conservatory for the fall term.
In the afternoon Sam or Yan Li would bring up tea and later would wake her for supper. But this afternoon was so clear and beautiful outside, and she felt so much stronger she decided to take a book of Milton’s poetry out to the front porch and rock in the lawn swing while she read.
She had just stepped into the entry hall when the front door opened abruptly and a face wreathed in blond ringlets poked into the hall.
“Oh!” the young woman said, her cheeks turning pink. “What are you doing here?”
Winifred’s hands clenched as she opened her mouth. “A better question, Mrs. Bledsoe, is what are you doing here? Do you make a habit of entering private homes without first ringing the bell?”
Darla Bledsoe stared at her. “I thought you lived in St. Louis?”
“I do live in St. Louis. I am a guest here.”
“But why?” Darla’s eyes narrowed into two hard stones.
“I came to visit my niece, my sister’s child.”
But Darla’s question whirled around and around in Winifred’s brain. She had to think about that. Yes, why was she here?
She felt she owed it to Cissy to be a presence in Rosemarie’s life, but it was more than that. She had fallen in love with her sister’s baby girl at first glance. She was so beautiful, so tiny and perfect, her fingers delicate and her eyes...oh, her eyes were that same blue-green Cissy’s eyes had been.
Her breath stopped. Rosemarie filled an aching hollow in her own life.
Good heavens, that could not possibly be true. Her life in St. Louis was crammed full of everything she loved, her music, her students, her colleagues at the conservatory. She was sought after for piano performances, and she had her teaching, endless preparation for concerts and recitals, faculty conferences, even an occasional picnic or opera with a fellow professor. And before Papa died, she’d had him to love and care for.
Was that not enough?
Of course it was enough. Her existence was dizzyingly busy. In fact, the pace had been so frantic these past months she had felt continually exhausted. So exhausted, she admitted, that she had fallen ill with pneumonia and was now struggling to regain her strength. Zane said even now she was still “run-down.”
Darla was saying something, but Winifred couldn’t focus on the words. “I beg your pardon?”
