Free September Morning by Diana Palmer Page B

country?”
    “The coastal plain is called that because…well, because it's low,” she said finally. “Then there's the up country—but you won't see any of it this trip. King's Fort, where the family lives, is low country, too, even though it's an hour and a half away.” She smiled apologetically. “I'm sorry we couldn't fly down to pick you up, but the big Cessna's having some part or other replaced. That's why Blake had to drive down for his guests. There's a company executive jet, too, but one of the vice-presidents had to fly down to another of the mills in Georgia.”
    He studied her profile. “Your family must own a lot of industries.”
    She shrugged. “Just three or four yarn mills and about five clothing manufacturing companies.”
    He lifted his eyes skyward. “Just, she says.”
    “Well, lots of Blake's friends own more,” she explained. She headed straight down I-26 until she could exit and get onto Rutledge Avenue. “We'll go the long way around to the Battery, and I'll show you some of the landmarks on Meeting Street—if you can see them through the rain,” she said drily.
    “You know the city pretty well?” he asked, all eyes as they drove down the busy highway.
    “I used to have an aunt here, and I stayed with her in the summer. I still like to drive down on weekends, for the night life.”
    She didn't mention that she'd never done it alone before, or that she was making this trip without Blake's knowledge or permission. Maude and Phillip had protested but nobody had ever stopped Kathryn except Blake, and they couldn't find him before she left. She could still see Vivian Leeds's smug expression, and her pride felt wounded. If he was involved with the blonde, he should never have touched Kathryn…but, then, she'd provoked him. He'd accused her of it, and she couldn't deny it. All she didn't know was why.
    “I'd like to use this as a location for a book,” he said after they reached the turnoff onto the Battery, with its stone sea wall, and drove along it to Old Charleston.
    She smiled at his excited interest as he looked first out at the bay and then across her at the rows of stately old houses.
    They passed the Lenwood Boulevard intersection and he peered through the slackening rain. “Do you know any of the history of these old houses?” he asked.
    “Some of them. Just a second.” They drove on down South Battery Street and she pointed to a white two-story antebellum house on the right with long, elegant porches. “That one dates back to the 1820’s. It was built on palmetto logs sunk in mud in an antiearthquake design later used by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was one of only a few homes to survive the 1886 Charleston earthquake that destroyed most of the city.”
    “How about that!” He laughed, gazing back toward the house enclosed by its neat white picket fence.
    She gestured toward White Point Garden where a small group of people were just disembarking from a horse-drawn carriage. “There are several carriage tours of the old part of town,” she told him. “They're fun. I'm just sorry we don't have time today, but, then, it's not really the weather for it, either.”
    He sighed. “There wasn't a cloud in the sky when I left home.”
    “That's life,” she told him. “Look on the left over there,” she added when traffic let her turn onto Meeting Street. “That first house was once owned by one of the Middletons who owned Middleton Place Gardens. The second house is built in the Charleston ‘double house’ style—brick under cypress weather-boarding. It's late eighteenth century.”
    “Lady, you know your architecture,” he said with grudging praise.
    She laughed, relaxing in the plush leather seat. “Not like Aunt Hattie did. She taught me. A little farther down, there's a good example of the Adams-style construction—the Russell House. It's now the headquarters of the Historic Charleston Foundation.”
    He watched for it, and she caught a glimpse of smiling