Wednesday's Child

Mrs. Bedford’s house was no longer a commercial establishment. It was someone’s home. And she needed a favor from the owner. Whoever this was, he might be able to exert some influence in that direction.

“My name is Susan Chandler.” She tried to make her voice as pleasant as possible, considering the circumstances. As she talked, she walked back around the front of the car and headed toward the steps. “I had hoped Mrs. Bedford might rent me a room for a few days. I’m aware she’s no longer in business—”

“Then why ask to rent a room?”

He had apparently turned on a light in the front of the house as he’d come to the door. His body was silhouetted against its glow, wide shoulders almost filling the frame.

Looking up at him from the foot of the steps, Susan’s impression was that he was also taller than average. In spite of the width of his shoulders, his torso narrowed to a lean waist and slim hips. She could still see nothing of his face.

“Because Sheriff Adams suggested I ask her. It’s…”

She let the sentence trail. She might have been willing to try and explain her compulsion to stay in town to another woman, but something about this man’s attitude made her doubt he would sympathize with anything she might say.

“It’s what?”

“Are you a relative of Mrs. Bedford’s? Or…”

A guest? The yardman? As she tried to settle on a second option, he made the process unnecessary.

“You seem to have a proclivity for unfinished sentences.”

Obviously not the hired help. Not unless handymen were better educated down here than she was accustomed to. And just as obviously determined to be rude.

“My husband’s body was pulled from the river here two days ago,” she said, deciding she had nothing to lose by a matching bluntness. “I need a place to stay until the coroner can tell me how he ended up there.”

The silence stretched longer this time. In the few minutes she’d been here, the night creatures had joined the insect chorus, the combined noises the only sound for several seconds.

“I’m Jeb Bedford. Lorena is my great-aunt,” he said. “At the moment I’m also her guest—a paying one, in case you were wondering.”

She hadn’t been. She didn’t give a damn about whatever arrangements he had with Lorena Bedford.

Actually, she was beginning not to give a damn about any of this. The commute back and forth to Pascagoula was becoming more appealing by the second.

“Lorena’s gone to the monthly fellowship supper at the church. Judging by previous ones, she should be back in less than an hour.” His tone had changed. Still not welcoming, it didn’t contain the edge of sarcasm. “If you’d like to wait.”

Would she? A better question might be whether there would be any point. After all, she still didn’t know that Mrs. Bedford would rent her a room.

“Actually…” she began, and then hesitated, unwilling to burn any bridges. Of course, she also didn’t want to be reminded of her so-called proclivity for unfinished sentences. “I’d rather not wait if she’s likely to turn me down. If I’m going to have to try to find a room in Pascagoula on a Friday night, I should probably get started in that direction now.”

“Lorena’s not going to turn you down. Not…under the circumstances. However, you might want to see the accommodations before you decide. What some people consider quaintly charming, others view as not having all the modern conveniences. All the rooms have private baths. And despite the area’s reputation, those are inside the house.” There was a hint of amusement or self-deprecation in that, but no sarcasm. “No coffeepots or microwaves, but with Lorena around you aren’t likely to need either. She enjoys waiting on people.”

Which sounded more inviting right now than he could probably imagine.

“The beds have feather mattresses,” he went on. “Not orthopedically sound perhaps, but you soon get used to them.”

He certainly seemed to have changed his tune. She hadn’t intended to play the grieving widow, but he’d driven her to it. Given the results, right now she couldn’t regret that she had.

“She should hire you for PR. You’re quite a salesman.”

“I couldn’t sell ice in hell, but frankly Lorena can use the money. If you’re going to spend it somewhere, it might as well be with her. Do you want the grand tour or not?”

The abrasiveness was back. For some reason her remark, intended to be humorous, hadn’t had the desired effect. So much for trying to mend fences.

“With you as guide?” she couldn’t refrain from asking.

Something of her irritation must have come through in the question. He responded in kind.

“Since I’m all that’s available. Take it or leave it.”

Her inclination was to tell this arrogant jackass what he could do with his aunt’s room. Only the knowledge that she would be cutting off her own nose prevented her from getting back into her car and heading toward the interstate.

“Lead the way,” she said, stepping onto the bottom step.

The screen door creaked again. She glanced up in time to watch him step back into the hallway. Although she was aware there was something awkward about the movement, it was not until he was inside and illuminated by the overhead chandelier that she understood what. He moved a couple of steps back in order to allow her to enter, heavily favoring his left leg.

Despite the fact she had continued to climb the steps as if nothing had happened, an unfamiliar emotion stirred in the pit of her stomach. Guilt, perhaps, that she’d returned his rudeness with her own? Embarrassment? Pity?

As he held the screen door for her to enter, she kept her eyes averted, examining the hallway instead of looking directly at him. The floor was of some dark wood that had been fashioned into narrow, irregular planks. It was probably a dozen feet wide and stretched into the darkness at the back of the house.

Pocket doors opened onto a formal parlor on one side and a dining room on the other. Both were furnished in keeping with the age of the house. In the sitting room an old pianoforte sat in the corner. Several pieces of sheet music were scattered on its stand and on the upholstered bench.

“When Lorena operated the house as a bed-and-breakfast, all the downstairs rooms were available for the use of the guests,” her guide said. “I’m sure that will still be the case.”

With his comment, there was no way Susan could avoid looking at him. She turned, prepared to make some politely conventional reply. All of them, instilled in her brain since childhood, flew out of her head.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected Mrs. Bedford’s great-nephew to look like, but certainly nothing like this. His close-cropped hair was so black the chandelier over their heads created no highlights in its midnight depths. In contrast, his eyes were a deep, clear blue. Black Irish, her grandmother would have said. Given the strong Celtic heritage of most of the South’s population, in this case she would probably have been right.

His skin was almost as darkly tanned as the sheriff’s. It didn’t have the same weathered texture, but then this man was probably a decade or so younger. Although Jeb Bedford wasn’t handsome in any conventional sense of the word, no woman would ever have overlooked him in a crowd.

She suddenly became aware that her lips had parted to reply to what he’d said, but no words had yet emerged. She was simply staring at him, stupidly open-mouthed.

“That’s nice,” she managed.

He was probably used to having this effect on women, she thought with a trace of disgust. She, however, wasn’t accustomed to reacting to a man in this way. Not to any man. And certainly not in this situation.

She owed no loyalty to Richard, of course. He was the one who had walked away from their marriage. The sense of guilt her attraction to this man’s rugged good looks produced was because she had something far more important to concentrate on right now—her desperate need to find out what had happened to Emma.

“The guest rooms are upstairs.”

He tilted his head down the hall to where a narrow staircase climbed to the second floor. It was uncarpeted, its wooden treads visibly worn from the passage of thousands of feet going up and down them through the years.

“How old is the house?” she asked, more as an attempt to get back on some normal footing with him than because she had any real interest in its history.

He had already taken a step forward, but at her question he turned, looking back at her over his shoulder. “It was built in 1852. It’s been in the hands of the family ever since. When Lorena dies…” He shrugged a dismissal.

“But surely there’s someone—”

“My grandfather and Lorena were joint heirs to the property. Now that he’s dead, there is no one else.”