Thurston House Read Online Free PDF

called upstairs again. It was unusual for her not to be waiting for him downstairs, and he made his way slowly upstairs to the three tiny bedrooms, one for herself, one for her daughters, and the third for her son, but all of them put together were smaller than any one room in Jeremiah's house. But Jeremiah had long since ceased to feel guilty about it. Mary Ellen took a peculiar kind of pride in supporting her own, and she wasn't unhappy in this house. She liked it. Probably better than she would have liked living in his. Hers had more warmth to it, or so he thought. His had always remained a large, uninhabited house, ever since he built it. He occupied so few of its rooms. It had been a house built for children and laughter and noise, and instead it had been silent for almost twenty years, unlike this house, which showed signs of wear and caring and small fingers dragged along once pink walls until the smudges became part of the decor and one no longer noticed.
    Jeremiah's tread was heavy on the stairs, and he thought he smelled roses in the air as he knocked on her bedroom door. He heard the familiar voice humming in the distance. She was there, for one crazy moment he had wondered if today, for the first time in seven years, she wouldn't be there. But she was. And he needed her so badly. He knocked softly, feeling hesitant and young. She had a way of doing that to him. He always felt a little bit breathless when he came to see her.
    Mary Ellen? This time his voice was gentle and soft, almost a caress, as it reached her.
    Come in ' I'm in ' She was about to say, my bedroom, but she didn't need to add the words as he stepped in, his shoulders seeming to fill the room, and his very presence seeming to stop the blood in her veins as she looked up at him, her skin as creamy as the white roses next to her bed, her hair coppery in the sunlight that streamed through the windows. She had just been about to drop a lace dress over the lace corset she wore, tied with pink ribbons that ran through the lace and tied her pantaloons at the knee. She looked like a young girl as he stared at her, and suddenly she blushed crimson and turned away, struggling with the dress as it tangled at her shoulders. She was usually ready when he arrived, but she had taken longer than she'd planned cutting the roses to put in her bedroom. I'm almost ' I just' oh, for heaven's sake ' I can't! She was all innocence as she fought with the tangles of lace, and he walked toward her to pull the dress gently over her shoulders, but as he began, the gesture suddenly changed direction and he found himself slowly pulling the dress back in the direction from which it had come, pulling it past the silky copper hair and over her head, flinging it onto the bed, and pressing his lips down on hers as he pulled her toward him. It was remarkable to him how hungry he was for her each week when he arrived, seeming to drink in the cream of her flesh, and the rose scent of her hair. Everything about her always seemed to be scented with roses, and she had a way of making him forget that she had any life but this. The children and the jobs and the struggles were all forgotten as she lay in his arms, week after week, year after year, looking into the eyes that she loved, and that never quite understood how much she loved him. But she knew him as well as he knew himself. He wanted his solitude, his freedom, his vineyards and his mines, he didn't want an everyday life with an everyday woman and three children he hadn't sired. He was too busy for that, too wrapped up in the empire he had built and was still building. And she respected him for what he was, and loved him enough not to ask for what he didn't want to give her. Instead she took only what he gave: one night a week, in a kind of abandon they would have never shared had they had a daily life, which enhanced their passion still further. She wondered sometimes if things might have been different if she could have had his