Night of the Cotillion: Georgia (The Americana Series Book 10) Read online

  “I do,” Amanda nodded firmly.

  “What are you two whispering about?” Brad broke in.

  “We're talking about the dance,” Cheryl fibbed. “Trying to decide what jewelry Mandy should wear with her gown. Let's go upstairs to your room."

  Amanda knew her friend would use one pretext or another to get her alone, so she agreed to the first excuse, deciding it was better to get the discussion over with as soon as possible.

  “Now, tell the truth, Amanda,” Cheryl demanded as they mounted the stairs to her room. “Aren't you excited about meeting Jarod Colby?"

  “No, I'm not. I haven't given that man a thought in over three years. He doesn't mean anything to me anymore.” Amanda walked into her room and crossed over to sit on the blue gingham bedspread.

  “I know that isn't true. Nobody ever forgets her first love, especially if he got away. You end up comparing every man you meet with him. Even if you married someone else, you'd always wonder what it would be like with that one special man."

  “And how did you get to be such an authority?” Amanda teased, smoothing back her shoulder-length hair.

  “It's common sense."

  “Don't let Brad hear you talking that way!”

  “Oh, Amanda, you of all people should know I've had a crush on your brother for years,” the girl laughed, shaking the crop of dark curls on her head. “I imagine I'm speaking partly from experience."

  “You can hardly compare Brad with Jarod Colby,” Amanda replied dryly.

  “Not as individuals,” Cheryl agreed. “But mark my words, no one ever gets over her first love."

  “Cheryl!” Mrs. Bennett's voice called from downstairs. “Your mother's telephoned. She wants to know if you put the meat loaf in the oven."

  “Tell her I'm on my way home now,” Cheryl answered, making a face as she walked to the door. “I'll see you later, Mandy."

  “Tobe wants Brad to call him tonight."

  “Do you know—” Cheryl paused in the doorway “—my main competition for Brad's attention is Tobe Peterson. I could deal with another girl."

  “I wouldn't worry about it,” Amanda laughed.

  But the laughter died when Cheryl disappeared from sight. Amanda walked over to the small dressing table, skirted with fabric to match her bedspread. Before it was a small bench covered in blue. Sitting on it, she stared into the oval mirror.

  She was a mature woman now. There was no dreamy-eyed girl staring back at her anymore. She was twenty-one years old, an adult. Her face and figure were that of a woman retaining no blush of youth. Yet Amanda wondered if people ever did really grow up. Didn't some part of them always remain young and childlike?

  Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel all had their Prince Charmings. In the days and years of budding womanhood with all the fairy tales so fresh in her mind, Amanda had sought hers. It was simple. All you had to do was wish on a star, carry a lucky penny, and put a four-leafed clover in your locket. At fifteen, it had seemed possible.

  Some of her friends had fallen in love with film stars or singing idols. Not Amanda. She was more realistic, she told herself. She had fallen in love with Jarod Colby.

  Six years ago on a brisk November morning, she had been tramping through the woods, dreaming about love and romance and the handsome man she would one day meet—Prince Charmings are always handsome. That was when she had seen Jarod Colby for the first time. Prior to that day the members of the Colby family had been nebulous figures. She knew they existed, but they weren't really real.

  Then Jarod Colby had cantered his horse across the meadow, passing not more than ten feet from where Amanda had stood in the shadow of the trees. The Colby insignia had been emblazoned on the saddle blanket or she might never have connected the dark rider with the family. He had ridden past her without seeing her, his gaze focused on some distant spot on the horizon.

  Although she had watched him until he disappeared, she had only caught a fleeting glimpse of his face. Thick black hair had gleamed like a raven's wing, catching the sunlight as it fell in a tousled, rakish angle over his tanned forehead. His profile had revealed a straight nose and strong cheekbones and chin. Dressed all in black, he had been a very romantic figure.

  Amanda had stayed in that spot for nearly three hours, hoping to see him again, but he didn't come back. It became imperative that she find out who he was. The only one who knew anything about the Colby company was her father. He had worked in their cotton mill since before he and her mother were married. Too shy to reveal the true reason she wanted to find out about the man on the horse, she had inquired about him once she was home on the pretext that the horse had been beautiful.

  “That must have been Jarod Colby, the son,” her father had answered. “He's the only one that rides. It seems such a waste of money to maintain the stables and horses when he's here only a few weeks out of the year."

  “No one has ever accused the Colby family of not being extravagant,” her mother had commented somewhat dryly. “Someone at church the other day remarked that Mr. and Mrs. Colby are going on another European tour right after Christmas. The way they're always flitting off somewhere it's a wonder that their company manages to keep its head above water."

  “I met young Colby the other day.” Her father had been puffing on his pipe and paused to tamp down the tobacco. Amanda had waited breathlessly for him to continue, unbearably eager to hear anything about the man she had seen. “He stopped in at the mill, something I don't ever recall his father doing. Usually all I see are the accountants. The boy struck me as being very astute."

  “How old is he?” Amanda had murmured.

  “Must be around twenty-six."

  Then the subject had been changed. But Amanda's first love had been in the growing stages. The spot where she had first seen him had become almost holy ground. She would go there at every opportunity to relive the moment and wait for the time she would see him again; but the times she saw him were very few and always at a distance. His parents had been killed in an air crash and his visits to Georgia became increasingly less frequent.

  One year went by, then two. The fantasies and dreams had dimmed somewhat, but they were always there in the background. Amanda dated, even went so far as to go steady with a boy, but he couldn't meet the ideal she had in her mind—Jarod Colby—and they broke up. In the spring of her seventeenth year she had decided to get a job as a tour guide in the plantation home owned by the Colbys—Oak Run. She never admitted it openly that she nurtured secret hopes of meeting Jarod Colby, yet it was there, tucked away in her subconscious. Someday he would meet her face to face and realize that he loved her.

  The Colbys hadn't lived in Oak Run for more than thirty years. A rambling, ranch-style home had been built some distance from the plantation. It was called the Winter House by the local townspeople since the Colby family only occupied it during that season, and Amanda easily acquired a job as tour guide that summer. One afternoon Mrs. Matthews, who was Jarod's aunt, had sent her over the Winter House to pick up some brochures that had been left there by mistake.

  Amanda had no more than parked the car in the driveway when Jarod Colby had come striding out of the house. Never would she forget how her heart had raced. This was her moment—or so she had thought as she had stepped eagerly out of the car.

  “What are you doing here? Don't you know this is private property?” A black scowl had covered his face and he had glared at her, evincing none of the pleasure she had expected to see. Nor did his expression alter as she stood in numb silence, her throat frozen by the derisive look.

  Not even when she was able to speak and could explain that she had a legitimate reason for being there did his attitude change. By the time she had retrieved the brochures and left, she was sick to her stomach. Jarod Colby in the flesh had turned out to be nothing like the Jarod Colby of her dreams—kind, solicitous, tender and romantic. And the humiliation she had suffered at that experience remained. The pain of his rejection, although it could hard
ly be called rejection, had lingered for months.

  Blinking out of her reverie, Amanda turned from the mirror. When she had first heard his name downstairs, her reaction had been to the ideal she had made of him. Even though it still hurt a little to recall that day he had treated her so arrogantly, as though she was someone not worthy to walk on the same ground as he, it was better to remind herself that he was a hard, unfeeling brute. She was too old to be carried away by the fantasies of the past.

  Perhaps, as her grandfather said, when she met him at the cotillion she would spit in his eye. And Amanda chuckled at the thought of his outraged reaction if she did.

  Chapter Two

  A SET OF KNUCKLES rapped impatiently against her bedroom door. “Amanda, will you hurry up!” Brad muttered angrily. “You're holding up everything."

  “She'll be there in just a minute,” her mother answered for her. “Now, hold still, Amanda, so I can get this last pin in."

  Obediently Amanda remained immobile, her brown eyes dancing with excitement as she watched her mother insert the rhinestone-studded hairpin into her hair. Red gold ringlets tickled the back of her neck while shimmering waves framed her face and accented the delicate ivory complexion. Her long, gold-tipped lashes hid the faint hint of green shadow on her eyelids, and a becoming shade of beige pink colored her lips.

  “I'm as nervous as if I were going to my first dance,” Amanda confided, slipping on the long pale green gloves her mother handed her.

  “It's the social event of the year. You'll be rubbing elbows with the élite of the county,” Mrs. Bennett said nodding, and stepping back to survey the completed product with a gleam of love in her eyes. “And they'll all be staring at you, saying ‘Who is that beautiful redhead in green?’”

  “Mom, you do wonders for a person's ego,” Amanda laughed nervously. “I'd better go down,” she declared, unnecessarily smoothing the sleek taffeta material of her gown. “If Tobe waits much longer, he's liable to back out and not take me at all."

  The large hooped skirt of the gown gave the effect that Amanda was gliding down the stairs and across the living room to where her brother and Cheryl and Tobe were waiting.

  “You are a bit overdressed for a pizza parlor,” Tobe teased, producing a corsage that he had been holding behind his back.

  “After all the work I put into that gown, Tobias Peterson, you'd better not take her anywhere else except to Oak Run!” her mother responded in mock anger.

  “If we went anywhere else in these clothes, they'd put us in a loony bin,” Tobe inserted, glancing at Amanda and smiling. “You look gorgeous. I might not mind getting locked up with you."

  “Look on the bright side, Tobe,” Brad spoke up. “Be grateful it's Jeff Davis's birthday we're celebrating and not George Washington's. The men wore wigs in his day."

  “Both of you boys look very elegant in those suits,” Mrs. Bennett stated.

  “I don't know why they couldn't just have a dance,” Tobe grumbled playfully. “Leave it to old lady Matthews to come up with the idea of wearing costumes of the pre-Civil War days!"

  “I think it's fun,” Cheryl declared. “Don't you, Amanda?"

  “A woman certainly feels very feminine in these dresses,” Amanda agreed, taking the corsage from Tobe and, with help from her mother, pinning it to the snug-fitting waistline of her gown. The pale, yellow green petals of the orchid were perfectly set off by the vivid green of the gown.

  “I should have borrowed the truck,” said Tobe.

  “The truck? Whatever for?” Cheryl asked, tilting her head curiously in his direction.

  “I don't know if you girls are going to be able to fit in my car,” he replied impishly. “Those skirts will take up the whole seat."

  “I think we can manage,” Amanda grinned.

  “I keep worrying that I'm going to forget about these hoops, sit down, and have the skirt fly up in my face,” Cheryl murmured. “You're used to it, Amanda, having to wear these gowns all the time at Oak Run."

  “They don't have many chairs at the cotillion except for the older ladies, for fear some woman will forget to adjust her hoops correctly when she sits down,” Amanda explained.

  “Do you mean we have to stand all night?” Brad moaned.

  “When you aren't dancing with me,” Cheryl replied pertly.

  “All they do is waltz,” he grumbled, then smiled at the petulant look on Cheryl's face. “That won't be so bad, I guess."

  Cheryl turned a beaming smile on Tobe. “I don't know if I ever thanked you for arranging things so Brad and I could go to the cotillion, too."

  “You didn't think I was going to go and be bored by myself, did you?” he chuckled, his blue gray eyes sparkling beneath a mockingly arched brow.

  “If you stand there talking much longer,” Amanda's father declared, walking into the living room with his pipe and a newspaper in his hand, tall and lanky like all his sons, “you're going to miss the dance altogether. You're already late."

  “Nobody arrives on time, Mr. Bennett,” Cheryl said grinning.

  “Here, Amanda, take this with you. It might be a little cool tonight,” her mother instructed, handing her a three-cornered shawl of the same material as her gown.

  “Do you suppose we're late enough to leave now?” Brad teased.

  “The sooner we go, the sooner we can leave,” Tobe added, winking at Mrs. Bennett, who wore a pseudo expression of exasperation.

  There was a chorus of goodbyes mingled with “enjoy yourselves” as the two couples made their way out of the house to Tobe's car. Her parents waved from the porch, standing the way Amanda always thought of them, with one of her father's long arms draped over the shoulder of his slightly plump wife. They were more than husband and wife. They were friends, and it was impossible to think of one without the other.

  When they arrived at Oak Run, the two-and-a-half-story brick mansion was ablaze with lights shining from every window. Spotlights had been discreetly secreted among the ancient oaks and hidden in bushes edging the portico. Their light illuminated the six towering white columns, each five feet in diameter, that graced the front entrance of Oak Run.

  “I feel like a pixie in grown-up clothes beside you,” Cheryl declared in a nervous whisper as she and Amanda mounted the portico steps ahead of Tobe and Brad. “I should have worn a wig.” Her hand self-consciously touched the short brunette curls that so artfully framed her angular face.

  “You look lovely,” Amanda insisted, glancing at the pink gown that emphasized the petite femininity of her friend.

  “Remember that time we hid in the bushes to peep through the windows at the cotillion?” she whispered.

  “And nearly got caught,” Amanda reminded her.

  The gleaming white-enameled double doors opened into the main hall, three times the size of the Bennetts’ living room. A Y-shaped staircase dominated the hall, accented by a brass and crystal chandelier hanging above the center landing. Amanda noticed that the scrolled antique table had been removed from the hall, replaced by one less valuable, but the portrait of Colonel Colby still hung above it. Her poor grandfather would be enraged if he knew a painting of a Yankee soldier was displayed in this antebellum home.

  A gentle melody from a string quartet floated through the open doors on the right where the ballroom was located. After the girls had passed their shawls to one of the several uniformed servants, the four moved toward the sound of the music. Cheryl still walked beside Amanda, her face filled with the bubbling excitement that consumed her. Amanda, too, caught the contagious feeling as they approached the ballroom.

  They reached the doors to enter at the same moment as two men were going out, and a wave of giddiness washed over Amanda as she stared into Jarod Colby's face. All four stopped, including Tobe and Brad, who were walking behind the girls. Vitality radiated from the man in front of Amanda. His features were more firmly drawn, exhibiting no remaining softness of youth; his expression was cynically aloof almost to the point of harshness. The hai
r was still as ebony black as his eyes, and a masculine aura emanated from his tall, muscular frame. He was a rogue, flagrantly challenging a woman every second.

  As her mind instantaneously registered all this, Amanda was aware of his gaze on her, sweeping over her gown and the nipped waistline, lingering for insolent seconds on the shadowy hollow of her breasts revealed by the gown. Then his unrevealing eyes moved to her face, again in obvious appraisal. The boldness of his cynical gaze made her feel stripped and naked. Light-headedly Amanda was conscious of pain in her left arm. It took her a moment to realize that Cheryl was gripping it so tightly no blood could flow through it.

  “Ladies.” Jarod Colby's low-pitched voice was accompanied by an imperious nod while he and the man with him, whom Amanda hadn't even looked at, moved aside to allow them to enter.

  Her feet automatically carried her into the ballroom, although she wasn't aware of ordering them to do so. Through sheer force of will she calmed the wild fluctuations of her clamoring heart and resisted the impulse to turn to see if he was watching her.

  “Did you see the way he looked at you?” Cheryl whispered. “I could have been King Kong for all the notice he took of me. I knew something like this was going to happen!"

  “Nothing happened,” Amanda said firmly, more to convince the romantic winging of her heart. “In five minutes he won't even remember he saw me."

  “Honey, you were imprinted in his mind with indelible ink,” Cheryl declared with a laugh.

  At that moment Tobe moved forward to Amanda's side, preventing her from commenting on Cheryl's last remark. “You were right—there isn't a vacant chair anywhere."

  A glance around the room with its polished oak woodwork and cream yellow walls indicated that the few chairs scattered around the edge were taken by the older participants in the celebration. To prevent her gaze from straying toward the door, Amanda directed it toward the French doors leading into the garden. The gold damask curtains were drawn back and flickering torchlights filtered through the white sheer insets on the doors. Only a dozen couples were gliding over the highly polished white floor, waltzing to the strains of the “Blue Danube.” All the interior light came from two enormous crystal chandeliers, one at each end of the room.