Read Online Thurston House by Danielle Steel - Free Book Online Page B

would be arriving in Savannah, and she would be busy with her daughter, but all Jeremiah wanted was to fold her into his arms again. It troubled him as he took a long sip of the mint julep and strolled out onto the terrace to look at the city. It had grown a great deal in the twenty years since the war, and in many ways it was a booming city. But much about it was as it had been before the war, and he knew that the Southerners still resented being dragged into the Union. They liked their old ways and were still bitter about losing the war. He wondered briefly what Beauchamp and his friends would be like. He knew that they had plenty of money at their disposal, but he suspected that Beauchamp was newly rich and painfully flashy. It was easy to guess that from the heavily gold-encrusted suit the man's footman wore, and the enormous gold seal on the letter.
    Jeremiah bathed before dinner and attempted to have a nap, but as he lay on the large canopied bed in his hotel room, all he could think of was the tiny woman with the raven black hair and huge dark eyes, almost as dark as the jet beads on the suit she wore the night that she met him. Why was it that he could remember every detail about her dress? He had never done that before. But she was elegant and so beautiful and sensual that he wanted her desperately and he felt a knot in his throat, which he tried to dissolve with another mint julep, but nothing seemed to chase her from his head and Jeremiah found himself wondering how he was going to do business with his head so full of her. But this evening was just a matter of social amenity. He knew that he wouldn't be expected to begin discussing their business deal until the next day. Southerners were far too correct to mix business with pleasure. This evening would more than likely be a quiet dinner at Beauchamp's home, to show the uncivilized Westerner a little Southern hospitality. Jeremiah smiled at the image as he put on his jacket and looked at the white suit in the mirror. It seemed in sharp contrast to his deeply tanned skin, and dark hair, the same color as Amelia's ' Amelia ' Amelia ' Amelia ' he wished he had never gotten off the train, as he walked down to the lobby and out to the waiting carriage Orville Beauchamp had sent for him.
    The footman was quick to jump to the ground and hold open the door for Jeremiah, and then he hopped up beside the coachman again as elegant ladies swept past them in glittering evening dresses, accompanied by well-dressed men on their way to dinners and concerts and the other social events that made up the night life of Atlanta.
    The carriage sped down the broad splendor of Peachtree Street and into the residential section of the city, to the Beauchamp house, which stood in small but stately splendor farther down on Peachtree Street. It was a relatively new house, obviously built since the war, and it was not wildly extravagant, but it was definitely handsome, and Jeremiah was suddenly sorry that Amelia wasn't there with him to share the evening. They could have gone back to the hotel afterward and discussed the various costumes and foibles of the guests, and laughed as they sampled more of the wine he had brought with him from Napa. And it was Amelia he was thinking of as he shook hands with Elizabeth Beauchamp, Orville Beauchamp's once pretty but now faded-looking wife. She was a washed-out blonde with pale skin the color of milk glass, and eyes that seemed to water with despair. The impression Elizabeth Beauchamp left one with was one of extreme fragility, as though she might not live out the week, and one wasn't even sure she would care to. She had a plaintive, sad little voice, and talked constantly about the days before the war, and life on her Daddy V plantation. Orville seemed not to hear anything that she said, except that now and then he would snap, That's enough, 'Lizabeth, our guests don't want to hear about life on your daddy's plantation. That's all gone now, but the very