He stood now watching her, studying her like he might study a work of art, watching the play of light on her features, looking for the secret meaning to her expression and pose. She sat curled on the dark green sofa, embracing a book as a child might embrace a teddy bear, her eyes squeezed tight in concentration on a thought that would doubtless remain a mystery to him.
Lord, she was lovely. So simple, so pretty. He'd been watching her now for four days and he couldn't get over her mixture of innocence and hidden fire, the sweetness of her smile and the bright curiosity in her eyes. He didn't feel worthy of touching her, but at the same time it was what he most wanted to do. He wanted to hold her as she was holding her book and have some of that simple purity wash away the dark edges of his soul. Hell, he just plain wanted her. He was at one of life's great crossroads, and at the moment the only path he wanted to follow was the one that led across his sister's library to Sarah Tftyer. He didn't question the urge; he merely gave in to it, being a man used to having his own way.
“Doing a little light reading, I see”' he said diyly.
Sarah jolted out of her meditation, her eyes widening, her heart racing from something more than just the start he'd given her. He stood before her looking rumpled and irresistible in soft-looking baggy gray trousers and wool socks that fell around his ankles. He was eyeing the stacks of books she'd placed around her with amusement. There had to be thirty of them, all sizes and types, piled in groups of four and five on the arm and seat of the sofa and on the floor in front of her. If she'd sat in that chair for a week, she wouldn't have been able to read them all.
“You shouldn't be out of bed.” It was the first thing that came to her mind and she cringed inwardly, wondering if she was thinking of his welfare or her own.
Matt decided it was a rhetorical comment and made no reply as he eased himself down on the middle cushion of the sofa. He plucked the encyclopedia out of Sarah's hands and glanced over the page she'd had it opened to.
“I guess a person can never know too much about the manufacture of ball bearings. I haven't kept up with it myself. My ideas are probably horribly out of date.”
Sarah pulled the book out of his hands and closed it, her mouth twisting into a wry little smile.
“Ah, a smile. Does that mean you're not still mad at me?”
“I wasn't angry with you. Why would you think I was?”
Matt lifted his arms in an exaggerated shrug. “Oh, I don't know. I guess the last time a woman shot daggers at me with her eyes, largely refused to speak with me for two days, and ran out of my room at the first opportunity, she was angry with me. Something about my lack of charm.”
“I can't imagine that,” Sarah muttered dryly.
“Really?” He grinned engagingly. “You find me charming? Even in my current state of dishabille?”
Sarah fidgeted, picking at the wrinkles she'd pressed into her dress with books, uncomfortable with his line of questioning. “I don't find you … anything. You're Ingrid's brother. A guest here.”
“Mmmm … I see,” he murmured, nodding doctor-style. “I take it you enjoy reading,” he said, fingering through the pile nearest him. A collection of Mark Twain, a book on restoring Victorian homes, a hefty tome on the Civil War.
Sarah stroked her hand over the big book in her lap the way she might stroke a cat, absently, lovingly. “I love to read and to learn,' she admitted quietly. “I read all I can about everything,”
She loved to learn even though she had been given only a minimal education. Matt thought of the inner-city kids he had dealt with, the opportunities for education that were handed them courtesy of the taxpayers, and which they casually, disdainfully tossed aside in favor of making money selling dope and stealing cars. He imagined what Sarah could have done, given their opportunities.
“Did you ever think of going to college?” he asked.
Think of it? She had dreamed of it constantly as a teenager, but the dream had been well beyond her reach. “I couldn't,” was all she said.
“Your people don't believe in encouraging bright young minds?”
The remark hurt, regardless of her own private opinions. She shot Matt an angry look. “My place was on the farm. We are farmers and carpenters and wives of farmers and carpenters. What sense would there be in spending money on fancy schools?”
“None, I guess,” Matt replied softly. Her answer sounded like a line she had memorized out of a book of Amish philosophy. He had the distinct feeling it was not her own. No one with such a desire to learn could have subscribed to such an idea. But he didn't push the issue.
He picked up her kapp and examined its sheer fine mesh, the carehil workmanship, the delicate ties. She stared at it, too, with a look that was akin to horror, as if she'd just realized she'd been sitting there half-naked. Her hand went self-consciously to her hair. Impulsively, Matt reached up and covered her nervous hand with his own, overlapping it so that his fingertips stroked the crown of her head. He got the impression that she would have sunk down into the netherworld of the sofa with the lint and cracker crumbs and loose change if she could have.
“You have very pretty hair,” he said soffly. It had the texture and sheen of sable, and there were masses of it wound and pinned and knotted at the back of her head. It nearly took his breath away to imagine what it must look like down. “Why do you hide it?”
“It is the way of my people. A woman's hair is her glory and only for her husband to see, else it would be Hochmut, pride. Pride is a sin.”
“I think the sin is in hiding away something so lovely.”
Sarah herself had long wanted to go with her hair loose and flowing for the wind to tease and tangle. She associated the sensation with freedom of spirit. But it irked her that she wanted to agree with this outsider who was already so dangerous to her, so she answered with one of her father's most famous infuriating lines. “It's the way of our people, not for you to agree or disagree. Its just our way.”
“Well, it's not mine,” Matt said pleasantly, smiling when she scowled and batted his hand away from the pins that were holding her bun in place. He slouched against the cushions, letting his arm fall along the curve of the back of the couch. “And I have a feeling it wouldn't be the way of an expert tree climber either.”
Sarah shuddered at the thought of him reading her mind so easily. “I was a little girl then. Now I'm a woman.”
“I noticed, believe me,” Matt said dryly. “In spite of the lengths you go to, to hide the fact, I noticed.”
“Again you make fun,” Sarah snapped, deliberately taking offense. It seemed safer to keep him at an arm's length with bad temper, so she dredged up all she had. She vaulted out of her seat to pace the floor, knocking over a stack of books in the process. “Always with your teasing and cracking wise, making fun.”
“No!” Matt protested, pushing himself to his feet. Dizziness swam through his head but he couldn't decide whether it was from his condi tion or from the sucker punch Sarah had just delivered.
“A kiss and a pinch and make sport of the little Amish maid—”
“Wait a minute!” He grabbed her shoulders, effectively halting her pacing if not her tirade.
“Just because I wear simple clothes and live a simple life doesn't mean I'm simpleminded, Matt Thorne,” she declared, glaring into his face.
“I never said you were. I never implied you were. Jeez, Sarah, this isn't the Victorian Age. I'm not the kind of man who goes around tumbling housemaids for a cheap thrill.”