“Excuse me,” David said, without sounding at all apologetic, “but let me remind you, sir, that this is no longer your plantation. It belongs to Mrs. Roe, not to you.”
Eric’s face darkened.
There was the sound of distant thunder, and the first faint smell of gathering rain.
“I have an interest,” he said.
“I know you do,” David replied, “but you don’t own it.”
Cass turned around slowly to face Eric. “Yes,” she said, so slowly it sounded as though she were hissing. “Yes, that’s right.” And what had been so apparent to everyone else from Melody to David since the day Martingale returned suddenly became just as clear to her. What a fool she had been, and how ignorantly blind! The tension that had risen between them, the uneasiness, the twinge of jealousy she felt when Amos and the others spoke about Eric; all of it was because he had moved in; because he had, as she had thought that first night, acted as if he had never been away. Acted as though Riverrun were still his, despite his absence. No, not acted—believed.
The rain splattered against the panes like pellets of ice. Eric stalked from the room and she followed him down the dimly lighted corridor to his room, a place he seldom spent time in, a place he maintained for propriety’s sake, though there wasn’t anyone in the household who believed it for a minute. He tried to close the door, but she set a palm against it and shoved it open again.
“Eric—”
“Don’t talk to me, woman. I think it’s time I got some rest.”
She was stunned, felt her jaw drop. “I think,” she said, her voice low and threatening, “it’s time you understood how things stand around here.”
“I understand perfectly,” he said, a match flaring in his hand as he bent over a lamp to light it. “I understand what you’ve done to me.”
“I have done nothing,” she said. “I thought you were dead. I came back here because I made a promise to myself—about you, damn it!—and I worked myself nearly to death because I wanted Riverrun to succeed! Not for me—for you! I have been shot at and ridden over and deceived and molested and starved and frightened and … God only knows what-all else.” She stretched out her hands. “Look at them, Eric. Look at them, damn you! Are these the hands of a woman who’s done nothing but sip her sweet drinks in the afternoons while the darkies do their labor in the fields from dawn to sunset?” She pulled at her throat, slapped herself on the cheek. “Is this the way a woman, a lady, takes care of herself when she’s spending tea and cakes in the morning with the neighbors? I do not dance all night and I do not loll all day, Eric Martingale. I work. I work, damn it, and I am not going to let anyone take it from me.”
Eric took a step toward her, but she would not back away. Frustration had taken her, would not release her, and she would not be intimidated by the darkness that settled over his eyes.
“Cassandra, I built this place from nothing—”
“And I took it from nothing and made it something! It works, Eric! It works, and I will not have you or anyone else ruin what I’ve done these past three years.”
His shoulders sagged slightly, though his expression did not soften. “Then you wish me to leave.”
“My God, no,” she said softly. “If I ever let you go again, I’ll kill myself.”
His arms opened, and after a moment’s hesitation, she fell into them and did not resist when his hands moved immediately to her breasts, her thighs. She wanted to shake her head, to tell him this wasn’t the time, not after what had been said, but the blood began once more to race in her veins and she could not stop herself from clawing at him to be sure he was still hers, that she could still have him when she wanted him.
S
he awoke the following morning in her own bed. Momentarily disoriented, she remembered abruptly the argument and the loving of the night before and dressed herself hurriedly. Outside, the rain continued, chilling the air with October’s promise and settling into the woodwork to make it creak like an old man’s bones. She shivered and tossed a ragged shawl about her shoulders and went down the hall to Eric’s room. He was gone, and there was a panic-filled second when she thought that he had left her, left Riverrun, had vanished into the hills as he had four years ago into the sea. But as she dashed down the steps and headed toward the kitchen, she heard faint voices from beyond the partially closed door, and one of them was his. She stopped, sniffed, squared her shoulders, and marched confidently into the delightful warmth of Rachel’s realm. But Rachel was not at the stove. Alice Jordan was.
“I don’t believe it,” Cass said, and the next few minutes were swamped in embraces, in crying, in mutual drying of tears, while Eric sat back at the table and looked on with an amused grin. He had been told the entire story, both Cass’s side and now Alice’s, and why they weren’t at each other’s throats he did not know. He decided immediately that he had better not try to fathom the mystery. To do so would probably only lead to more confusion and grief than he could possibly handle.
Alice, it seemed, was not as tough as she’d wanted everyone to believe. When she saw what her feminine machinations had produced in the battle between Judah and David, she had fled. Realizing that she would be known in Meridine the moment she set foot on the streets, she had made her way to Burford. There she became the housekeeper for a man whose business she did not know—or had not known until only a few days ago. It was then that she realized what she had stumbled onto and she’d decided to visit Riverrun again.
“Visit?” Cass said. “You mean you’re not staying?”
Alice smiled sadly. “Wish I could, Mrs. Roe, but I got my skin to worry about.”
“You’d have no worries here,” Eric said.
“Yes, I would,” she answered. “Indeed I would. You ain’t asked me what my boss’s name is yet, y’know.” When she received only blank stares, she took a deep breath and turned back to the stove. “Mr. Vern Lambert,” she said.
“By God,” Eric said, too stunned to be angry.
Cass moved to stand beside her, frowning, her head cocked as if she had not heard the name correctly. “Vern Lambert? But Alice!”
“I didn’t know,” Alice said in self-defense. “How was I to know about these things, Mrs. Roe? He don’t hurt me, and he don’t try nothin’, and it weren’t until I heard him talkin’ the other mornin’ with some of his friends that I knew for sure what he was up to.” She looked around the room as if seeking absolution.
“It’s all right,” Eric said. “No one’s blaming you for anything.”
“Of course not,” Cass agreed. “Alice, will you please get away from that stove and sit down? I can’t talk to your back all the time.”
Alice grinned and did as she was asked, but Cass did not miss the look she gave Eric as she settled herself. It was a veiled wondering, and perhaps a hint, and Cass wished she could ask Eric what he had told the black woman before she’d come down from her room. But by now, Eric had taken over the conversation completely and was giving her a shortened and somewhat romanticized version of the travails he’d endured at the hands of Gerald Forester and Geoffrey Hawkins. Quickly, he explained to Alice what had happened to Cass’s hopes of receiving money from Philadelphia, and asked her if she knew anything at all about what Lambert was planning now that his arrogance had been soundly trounced.
“Don’t know for sure,” she said. “We’s down in Meridine for the time bein’, and he’s scarcely home at all. We’s got a place some army man cleared for us, and I’m stiff doin’ the cookin’ and the washin’. Ain’t no one else around so I talks to myself a lot.” She tried to smile, but she could see the anticipation in their faces and she sobered instantly. “I don’t hear everythin’,” she insisted, making sure they understood; and when they nodded, she put a hand to her temple as though pressure there would force her memory to work properly.
“He works for that Yankee captain, you know that. Well, it ’pears that they—”
“Alice,” Cass said then, and Alice blinked at the interruption. “Alice, you’re beginning to sound like Rachel. I know you have a little book learning, and I know how you talk. Come on, you’re driving me crazy with that field-hand talk.”
Alice bristled, then laughed, and looked to Eric. “She know me too well, Mrs. Roe does. It’s Vern, y’see. He thinks that my blackness is the same thing as my dumbness. He expects me to talk like that, and I can’t hardly get out of the trail no more.”
Cass nodded, still smiling, though she felt a hollow begin to form in her stomach, cast a quick glance at Eric, and saw the sullen expression that settled over his face when he didn’t make a conscious effort to banish it. He’s still brooding, she thought; damn it, that’s all I need.
“Seems you really put the fear to that captain t’other night,” Alice said, almost gleefully. “They sneak around the house at night when they think I’m in bed, and they set on the back porch and talk to all hours. That captain there, he thinks highly of you in spite of what you done, but he’s mighty rageful at it, too. From what I can see, they’re awfully mad that Mr. Martingale here done come back from wherever he’s been, and they think you all are going to get out from under, the captain—at least, that’s the way Mr. Lambert put it.
“So … so I don’t know when, exactly, but they’re comin’ back, Mrs. Roe. Mr. Lambert’s got lots of money and he’s been told to get as many bodies as he can.”
Eric rose and stalked to the door, staring out at the yard with his hands clasped behind his back. Cass watched as Alice turned to follow him with her eyes, and saw her gaze settle on the shiny black glove.
“The man is insane,” he said. “He has Garvey in his pocket and everyone else in town scared to death of him and his men, and he intends to drive us into war. The more guns he can buy, the less chance we have.” He shook his head and turned back to the room. “I don’t know, Cass. I don’t know if we can do it.”
Cass took a long minute to absorb what she had just heard before allowing herself to rise and kick back her chair. “What the hell are you talking about, Eric Martingale? Just who the hell do you think you are talking to like that?”
“It’s common sense, Cass,” he said. “The way I see it—”
“The way you see it?”
“Mrs. Roe—”
“Hush, Alice. This is between me and Mr. Martingale.”
“But Mrs. Roe, there’s someone on the porch.”
They froze, and the sound of rain filled the room. The pounding came a moment later, a solemn, almost stately knocking that reverberated through the house and made the walls seem to tremble. Eric took a step forward, looked to Cass, and stopped. She waited, then realized he was not going to answer it himself; with a puzzled glance at him, she hurried out to the hall, pulled open the door, and stepped back, one hand behind her waist clenched into a fist.
Geoffrey Hawkins, water cascading from the folds of his black slicker, doffed his broad-brimmed hat and shook it carefully over the porch boards.
“May I come in?” he said, gesturing with his iron claw.
“I don’t see why you should,” she answered tightly.
“Perhaps you’d think better of it if I told you I had a proposition to make, one that should satisfy … well, just about everyone in this unfortunate situation.”
“There is no situation you have not created, Geoffrey,” she said.
“Let him in, Cass,” Eric said from the stairway. “If all he’ll do is talk, there’s no harm in it.”
“My word as a gentleman,” Hawkins said. He smiled briefly at Cass, stepped around her, and followed Eric into the sitting room. Cass slammed the door, thinking to return to Alice in the kitchen, but she decided that it would do her no good at all to lose her temper now. Patience and logic were what she needed to keep Geoffrey from mesmerizing Eric. She stood staring into the room for a long moment while they waited for her. She heard Alice moving about furtively, heard the rear door open and close softly and the muffled sound of a horse picking its way through the muddy garden paths. A cold draught swirled around her ankles. She considered asking the others to wait while she fetched David, but she vetoed her own suggestion when she realized that she could not depend on his being as lucid as he had been recently. His cough was getting much worse, and now he was spitting phlegm in peat gouts. Suddenly she felt unpleasantly alone.
T
he few pieces of furniture she had gathered were settled in a small area directly in front of the fieldstone fireplace. Eric was already seated in one corner of the couch, Geoffrey in a wing chair canted toward the hearth. Cass nearly went to sit beside Eric, but recognized the error that would have been when she saw the flash in Geoffrey’s eye; instead, then, she took her place in the opposite corner and crossed her legs as a man does. Geoffrey seemed unsettled, but he covered it quickly and pointed his metal hand at the slicker now draped over a hook in front of the low-burning fire.
“Barely keeps you warm, that thing,” he said. “A relic from my days with the Union. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you, Mr. Martingale?”
Eric shook his head. His gloved hand was resting lightly in his lap, but Cass could see his forefinger tapping his thigh impatiently.
“Nevertheless,” Hawkins continued, “I did not come here to indulge in reminiscence. I said I have a proposal for you, and I intend to make it. It is a fair one, I believe, and it should once and for all put enmity behind us, where it should be.” He smiled and wiped a finger across his eyepatch. “You see, my boys are getting rather restless these days.”
“I might have thought that had been … cured,” Eric said.
“Like your Mr. Vessler,” Hawkins said. “Stabilized, but not cured.”
“I think I’ve had about enough of this,” Cass said suddenly. She could not stand the urbane tone of the Union officer, nor the way Eric sat there taking the scorn that was heaped on him in the name of civility.
“But my proposal,” Hawkins protested lightly. “Surely, now that I’ve come this far, you don’t intend to cast me out again.”
“I did it once, I can do it again,” she said.
Hawkins looked around the room slowly. “I don’t see your man here, though, do I?”
The insult to Eric made her choke, but he did nothing to defend himself.