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Bed of Grass
The Americana Series: Maryland
By Janet Dailey OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1979 Janet Dailey
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4976-1243-3
CHAPTER 1
WITH EFFICIENT, PRECISE MOTIONS, Valerie Wentworth folded the lingerie and laid it in the suitcase. Tucking a strand of toffee-colored hair behind her ear, she walked back to the open drawer of the dresser for more. There was a determined line to the sensuous curve of her lips and a glint of purpose in her light brown eyes. Her complexion had a hint of shocked pallor under its pale gold tan.
A woman stood in the room watching Valerie pack. Her expression was not altogether approving of what she saw. She was in her forties; her figure had the solid build of middle age and her brown hair was beginning to become frosted with gray. Her mouth was pinched into lines that discouraged smiles.
"I still say you're a fool, Valerie Wentworth, to go tearing off to Maryland like this." The acerbic tongue of the older woman repeated an earlier claim.
"He was my grandfather." Valerie didn't pause in her packing as she walked to the closet and began stripping clothes from the hangers. "He didn't have any other family but me."
"Elias Wentworth didn't want you around when he was alive. What makes you think he'd want you at his funeral?" came the challenging retort.
"He isn't in a position to say what he wants, is he?" A trace of anger was in Valerie's voice, an anger caused by the reference to the estrangement between herself and her grandfather. "And nothing you can say is going to make me change my mind, Clara," she warned.
"That sanctimonious old man turned his back on you seven years ago, at a time when you needed him most," Clara Simons reminded her sternly. "Him and his self-righteous ways," she murmured under her breath with a sniff of contempt. "Despite all the letters you wrote him, you haven't so much as received a Christmas card from him in all this time. He disowned you. Blood ties meant nothing to him. After the way he treated you, I wouldn't think they'd mean anything to you, either."
A tailored suit in a rich dark blue fabric was the closest Valerie came to a mourning outfit; her stringent budget couldn't absorb the cost of a new dress. She was inwardly grateful that changing customs no longer made black mandatory at family funerals.
"Granddad took me in and raised me after my parents died," she replied to Clara's comment. "I owe him something for that."
"What utter and complete nonsense!" the woman scoffed at her logic. "How can you feel obligated to that heartless, straight-laced coot? Anyone with an ounce of compassion would have stood beside you seven years ago. They might not have approved of what you'd done, but they would have stood with you and not turned a scared girl like you were out in the cold to fend for herself with no money and no place to go."
"You didn't know me when I was a young girl, Clara," stated Valerie. "I was a wild, irresponsible thing, always into trouble. My escapades would have grayed any young man's head. When I was thirteen, I started smoking cigarettes—I used to sneak off to the stables to smoke. Once I almost set the whole place on fire. I heard granddad coming and threw a burning cigarette away, and it landed in some hay. If granddad hadn't spotted it, the stable would have gone up in flames and the horses with it. Granddad had every right to be enraged with me. It scared me when I realized what I'd almost done, but despite the spanking I got, it didn't stop me."
"All youngster's experiment with cigarettes at some time in their lives." Her friend attempted to rationalize Valerie's behavior. "In your case, I wouldn't be surprised if you got into trouble just to gain that insensitive man's attention."
"You don't understand." Valerie sighed and turned to face the woman who had become her friend, her family and her surrogate mother over the last seven years. "It wasn't just the smoking. I drank his drink until he finally had to lock it up in the safe. I'd take one of his thoroughbred horses and go night-riding. I don't know how many times I led a lame horse home after a midnight gallop. They were valuable animals, his livelihood, and I treated them like toys."
"Children can be thoughtless at times," Clara admitted. Her defense of Valerie was not quite as vigorous as before, but she was still steadfast in her loyalty.
"There was more." She was driven to make a full confession, needing to expose her guilt. "I used to steal money from him to hitchhike into Baltimore and go to movies or just buy things. Sometimes I'd be gone all weekend, but I never told him where I'd been. Can you imagine what I put him through?"
"You're being too hard on yourself," was the stubborn reply. "Don't forget that I know what a frightened, love-starved girl you were when I met you."
"Love-starved," Valerie repeated thoughtfully. An ache that still hadn't receded after seven years flickered in her tawny eyes. "Perhaps," she conceded, since it was the easiest explanation. "But I'll never forget the anguish that was in granddad's face the day I told him I was pregnant." In her mind's eye she could still see the look of knife-stabbing pain he had given her. "He was such a moral, upright man that he felt shamed and disgraced by what I'd done. When he demanded to know who the father was and I belligerently refused to tell him, it was the last straw that broke him."
Tears burned her eyes at the memory of that stormy scene. She hid them in a flurry of activity, hurriedly folding the blouse to her blue suit and laying it in the suitcase.
"But to throw you out!" Clara refused to consider her grandfather's actions as justified.
"For a long time I resented him for abandoning me, even hated him," Valerie admitted. "But I was eighteen. Turning me out was probably the best punishment he could have given, because it made me responsible for myself. Now I know the heartache of worrying over a child, and I only regret that I never had the courage to go back and tell granddad how sorry I was for the anguish he suffered because of me."
"And that's your reason for going to his funeral," Clara concluded, crossing her arms in front of her in a stance that suggested disapproval and challenge. "It's an empty gesture, don't you think? And a costly one, too, considering the wages you'll lose."
"Mr. Hanover has given me the time off and I'm entitled to two days of compassionate pay." She tried to dodge the issue as she closed the suitcase and locked it with a decisive snap.
"What about the other three days you'll be taking off?" The pointed reminder pinned Valerie to the spot. "You won't be getting paid for them. And there's the cost of driving all the way to Maryland, too."
"I'll just have to cut back on a few things." She was determined not to consider the financial ramifications of her decision to attend her grandfather's funeral. Somehow she'd weather it.
"Humph!" Clara breathed out the sound. "You're barely making ends meet now."
"That's my problem." Valerie opened a second, smaller suitcase and set it on the bed. "You can't talk me out of going, Clara. You're just wasting your breath."
Walking to the dressing table, she opened a different drawer and took out haft a dozen sets of little-boy-sized underpants and socks. When they were in the second suitcase, she began adding pajamas and slacks and shirts.
Clara watched in silence for several seconds, her expression growing more disgruntled. "If you must go, there's no sense in carting Tadd along with you."
"He'll think it's a vacation like all his school friends take in the summer," Valerie reasoned.
"Well, you won't think it's a vacation while you're driving there and back with that bundle of energy bouncing all over the car seats," her friend declared. "What will you do with him when you get there? A six-year-old boy isn't going to understand about funerals ... or sit through one."
"I don't have much choice." Valerie glanced at the second single bed in the room, a twin to her own, except for the worn, stuffed teddy bear resting against the pillow. She was aware of the validity of Clara's argument.
"I'll look after him," Clara volunteered. There was a grudging quality to her voice, an impatience that she hadn't been able to persuade Valerie not to go.
She glanced at her friend, her strained features softening as she looked at the stern-faced woman. For all her gruffness, Clara had become her rock. She had been the cook in a restaurant Valerie had stumbled into a week after leaving her grandfather's home. She had been frightened, broke and hungry, looking for any kind of job that would put food in her stomach. Clara had taken pity on her, paid for the meal Valerie couldn't afford, persuaded the owner to hire Valerie as a waitress, and taken her to her apartment to live until she could afford a place of her own, which wasn't until after Tadd was born.
"If school weren't over for the summer, Clara, I might accept your offer," Valerie replied, and shook her head in refusal, pale brown curls swinging loosely around her shoulders. "As it is, you've barely recovered from your bout with pneumonia. The doctor insisted you had to rest for a month before going back to work at the restaurant. Looking after Tadd twenty-four hours a day could never be classified as a rest."
"What about Tadd's father? Will you be seeing him when you go back?" A pair of shrewd blue eyes were watching her closely.
A chill of premonition shivered over Valerie's shoulders. Her hands faltered slightly in the act of folding one of Tadd's shirts. The moment of hesitation passed as quickly as it had come and she was once again poised and sure of her decision.
"Probably," Valerie admitted with a show of indifference. "Meadow Farms adjoins granddad's property, so some member of the Prescott family is bound to put in an appearance at the funeral. I don't know whether it will be Judd or not. He runs the farm now so he may not consider the funeral of an insignificant horse breeder to be worthy of his time, neighbor or not. He may deputize someone else to represent the family."
"No woman ever completely forgets the man who takes her virginity, especially if she eventually bears his child. Do you still care about him, Valerie?" came the quiet but piercing question.
A wound that had never completely healed twisted Valerie's heart, squeezing out a bitter hatred that coated her reply. "I wouldn't have married Judd Prescott if he'd begged me—though he's never begged for anything in his life. He takes what he wants without ever giving a damn about anybody's feelings. He's ruthless, hard and arrogant. I was a fool ever to think I was anything more to him than a means to satisfy his lust," she coldly berated herself. "That's why I never told granddad who the father of my baby was. I knew he'd go over to Meadow Farms with a shotgun in his hand, ranting and raving about family honor and scandal, and I would rather have been stoned than see Judd Prescott's derisive amusement at the thought of being forced to marry me."
The suppressed violence in Valerie's denial and rejection of Tadd's father brought a troubled light to Clara's eyes. Her expression was uneasy, but Valerie was too caught up in her own turmoil to notice the gathering silence that met her denunciation. She continued folding and packing her son's clothes into the suitcase.
"Do you know, I believe there's a sensible solution to our problem?" Clara said after the long pause.
"What problem?" Valerie glanced briefly at her friend. There was none as far as she was concerned.
"I'm going crazy sitting around my apartment doing nothing and you're going to have your hands full trying to cope with Tadd on this trip." It was more of a statement than an explanation. "A change of scenery would do me good, so I'll ride along with you to Maryland. Naturally I'll pay my share of the expenses."
"I can't let you do that," Valerie protested. "I'd love to have you come with me—you know that. But you've done so much for me already that I couldn't take any money from you for the trip."
Clara shrugged her wide shoulders, her gaze running over Valerie's shapely, petite figure. "You aren't big enough to stop me." Turning toward the door, she added over her shoulder, "I'll go pack and fix some sandwiches to take along on the trip. I'll be ready in less than an hour."
Before Valerie's lips could form an objection, Clara was gone. A half smile tilted the corners of her mouth when she heard her apartment door closing. Arguing with Clara was useless: once she had made up her mind about something, not even dynamite could budge her.
Valerie didn't like to contemplate what her life might have been like if she hadn't met the other woman. It hadn't simply been food, a place to live or a job that Clara had given her. She had encouraged Valerie to take night courses in secretarial work, to acquire skills that would help her to obtain a better-paying job so she could take care of herself and Tadd.
Many times Valerie had thanked God for guiding her to this woman who was both friend and adviser, supporter and confidante. This gesture of accompanying her made her doubly grateful. Although she hadn't admitted it, she was apprehensive about going back for the funeral. There were a lot of people to be faced, including Judd Prescott.
Walking to the single bed in the corner, Valerie picked up the teddy bear to put in the suitcase. A combination of things made her hold the toy in her arms—the notification a few hours earlier of her grandfather's death, her hurried decision to attend his funeral, her discussion with Clara and the memories attached to her departure from Maryland seven years ago.
Those last were impossible to think about without Judd Prescott becoming entangled with them. Her interest in him had been sparked by a remark she'd overheard her grandfather make condemning the eldest Prescott son for his rakehell reputation. Prior to that Valerie had no interest in the wealthy occupants of Meadow Farms, dismissing them as stiff-necked snobs.
Meadow Farms was a renowned name in racehorse circles, famous for consistently breeding stakes-class thoroughbreds. The farm itself was a showcase, a standard of measure for other horse breeders. Few had ever matched its size or the quality of horses that were bred and raised there.
Her grandfather's low opinion of Judd Prescott had aroused her curiosity. She had ridden onto Meadow Farms land with the express purpose of meeting him. One glimpse of the tall, hard-featured man with ebony hair and devil green eyes had fascinated her. A dangerous excitement seemed to pound through her veins when he looked at her.
In the beginning, Valerie pursued him boldly, almost brazenly, arranging chance encounters that had nothing to do with chance at all. The glint in his eyes seemed to tell her he was aware they weren't, too. It angered her, the way he had silently mocked her initial attempts to flirt with him.
The first few times Judd kissed her, it was with the indulgent air of an adult giving candy to a beguiling child. It didn't take Valerie long to discover that her responses disturbed him and the warm ardency of their kisses became less one-sided.
Her previous experiences with the male sex had been with boys her own age or a year or two older, never with anyone more than ten years her senior. She had kissed many boys, necked with a few, but enough to know that the sensations Judd aroused were not common in an embrace. Also, he was skilled. His mouth knew how to excite her and his hands how to caress her.
What had started out as a lark became something more, and Valerie fell in love with him. Aware that he was a man with experience, she realized that her kisses wouldn't hold his interest for long, and her fear of losing him outweighed her fear of the unknown.
One afternoon Valerie noticed him riding alone through a wooded pasture adjoining her grandfather's land. Saddling a horse, she swallowed her nervousness and her pride and rode out to meet him. They rode only a short distance together before pausing to dismount under the shade of a tree. An embrace followed naturally. When Valerie demanded that he make love to her, Judd's hesitation was brief, his affirmative response given in a burning kiss.
Afterward he was oddly uncommunicative, an expressionless glitter in his green eyes whenever they were directed at her. Valerie suspected it was because he was the first to know her. Secretly she wanted him to be disturbed by the fact, to feel a little obligated, perhaps even guilty. Because she loved him so intensely, she had subconsciously attempted to blackmail him emotionally, making him the seducer and herself the innocent victim. When they parted he had said nothing, but Valerie was unconcerned.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Bed of Grass by Janet Dailey. Copyright © 1979 Janet Dailey. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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