The Men of Pride County: The Pretender (17 page)

What were his choices now? He saw only two, since walking away was not one of them. He could surrender. Or he could turn to clever subterfuge.

No one had ever taught him the humility necessary to give up with good grace. So that left the one thing he was truly good at.

Deception.

He could bide his time, pretending to submit while watching for the best chance to reclaim what was his. And the first thing he could do while waiting was get to know his enemy better.

“I’d like to send a telegram.”

Gates Hargrove glanced up from the game of solitaire he was playing. For a moment, indecision warred in his eyes. Deacon could read it plain. Was he or was he not someone who warranted quick attention?

In the past, the groveling Hargrove would have tripped over himself to be of service to a
Sinclair. But now there was a definite air of insolence in the leisurely way he collected his cards, gave them a shuffle, then set them aside.

“What can I do for you, Deacon?”

Deacon. Not Mr. Sinclair. Even politely said, the omission of respect was obvious.

“Send this for me.”

“You wanna wait for a reply?”

“No.”

Gates scanned the message, then his eyes bugged. “This is going to Washington, D.C.”

“I know where it’s going.”

“Special Judge Advocate of the War Department.” He regarded Deacon with a renewed awe. “You want I should send somebody out to your place with the answer, Mr. Sinclair?”

Deacon smiled thinly. “No, that won’t be necessary. I’ll be right across the street. At the mercantile.”

And as Deacon crossed the dusty road on his way to his first day behind the counter, he was filled with new hope.

Soon, he would know everything there was to know about Montgomery Prior. And somewhere in that information, if there was a God, would be the leverage he needed.

Chapter 12

I
t took Garnet one look to realize her mistake. Surroundings made no difference. Even on his knees, covered with dirt, shirt sleeves waded up to the elbows as he tore into a box of household notions, Deacon was every inch a gentleman. It wasn’t circumstance, it was attitude. He attacked the job at hand with no less determination than he would in going over the ledgers at the Manor. How could she bring humility to such a man when he took pride in even small endeavors?

Why would she want to?

The instant he saw her, the guarded blankness covered his expression. She managed a tiny smile.

Deacon dusted his hands on his trousers as he stood. Her gaze followed the ascension with a detailing interest. Seeing it, his lips quirked in a wry bend.

“Come to see how the laboring class is progressing, Mrs. Prior?”

She ignored the barb. “Just making sure all my orders arrived.”

He gestured wide to encompass the crates and boxes making a fortress of commerce around him. “Everything from garters to fish hooks. There’s an inventory sheet in the office if you want to double-check my count.”

“There’s no need.”

“Then why are you here, Mrs. Prior?”

There was no avoiding his question or his probing stare. What could she tell him? The truth—that she couldn’t stay away? That the need to simply watch him sort merchandise on the floor held a lure she was powerless to resist? Hardly. Instead, she drew off her gloves, using the time the exaggerated movements gave her to compose her thoughts and calm her voice.

“As I told you, this store is my project. I plan to oversee its operation on a daily basis.”

His features tightened. In dismay or disgust, she couldn’t tell. “Then why do you need me here? Afraid it wouldn’t look good for a lady of your newfound stature to be grubbing around in packing crates?”

“This is only one of my interests, so I won’t have time to devote to it exclusively.”

“Just time enough to keep your finger on the pulse of the community and your thumb on me?”

She allowed a grim, “Exactly.” Then her tone softened. “Besides, William is bringing Ulysses to his new home this morning.”

“Who?”

“The store’s live-in mouser.”

“Oh.” Deacon’s face relaxed into a small, genuine smile. That slight softening of his expression melted Garnet’s heart to the consistency of the molasses now sitting on clumsy racks in the back. It brought home with an unfair punch how different he was now from the gentle man who’d courted her affections. Had the war wrought that change from sensitive to somber, or had he just been playing the part for her benefit before? Unable to answer, she turned away in frustration and began a visual inventory of the store’s goods.

“Gracious. Where will we put everything?”

“In its place, Mrs. Prior, and everything has one.”

The cut of his tone brought her around with fire in her eyes. “Everything, or everyone?”

He stared at her, refusing to reply.

“And just where is
my
place, Mr. Sinclair? Is that what galls you so much? That someone like me, someone from the hill country with no fancy pedigree, could come in and lay claim to what you overweened aristocrats prefer to hoard among yourselves? Would you be so angry, so fierce, if one of your own were standing in my place here today, holding your future in his hands?”

“No.”

His honesty took her aback, then fanned the flames higher. “So it’s your snobbery that upsets you, then, your inability to accept that someone
of my station could intrude upon your genteel life.”

“No,” he said again with the same flat forcefulness. “It’s you. It’s the fact that it’s you.”

Without explaining himself further, he disappeared into the side office. She could see him shuffling through papers on the chest-high desktop. His head was bent so his expression remained a mystery—not that she could have read anything there anyway. Suddenly she had to know what was behind his words.

“What do you mean, it’s me?”

He looked up from the paperwork as she stood in the framed doorway, her arms crossed, her mood challenging. Without a blink, he went back to his sorting.

“It would have been easier to lose everything to a stranger.”

She refused to give the pity she felt a dangerous hold upon her heart. “Just as it would have been easier being betrayed by a stranger.”

He didn’t glance up, but she could tell by the tensing of his jaw that she had his full attention. After a long moment, he said, “Exactly. So this evens that score, then.”

He spoke it blandly, as if he were referring to a card debt or an insignificant tit-for-a-tat. All the rage she’d been repressing since she’d gotten the telegram saying her father was dead surfaced in a blinding rush. All the fear and panic she’d experienced finding herself alone in the
world, then alone and pregnant, returned to scald her senses.

“Deacon?”

He glanced up just in time to take the full impact of her palm across his face. The act surprised her, both with its violence and by the satisfaction that came with it. Before she could pull back, he caught her wrist and yanked her toward him. Off balance, she fell into him. Her bracing hand met hard abdomen. And because her first instinct was to yield along his long, tough lines, she tried to jerked away in a fury. He held tight to her wrist, a painless grasp that was no less unbreakable. His other arm made an imprisoning curl about her waist. Helpless to escape from his closeness or her own frantic desires, Garnet fought against both, but the more she resisted, the more determined his restraint became. Finally she saw the futility of her struggles and went still against him, her glare anything but submissive.

“Our score is nowhere close to even,” came her hiss of conclusion.

“What will it take to settle it?”

Before she could reply, the bell over the front door jangled and the patter of light footfalls announced William even before his cry of, “Mama, come see!”

Deacon’s grasp opened and she was quick to lunge away, hurrying into the main room. William was kneeling on the floor over the wiggling
bundle of his jacket, too preoccupied to notice her high color. She pulled up short to take a composing breath, then was distracted from her own pounding pulsebeats.

“William! Were you outside without your coat on?”

He looked up guiltily. “But Mama, I couldn’t let Ulysses get cold.”

She came down beside him to observe the mewling kitten, immediately taken but adding a scolding aside. “Ulysses is already wearing a coat. You know what happens when you overexert yourself.”

His excitement dimmed at the thought of causing her distress. “I’m sorry, Mama. I guess I wasn’t thinking.” The sight of his bowed head was more than Deacon could take.

“No harm was done,” he interjected mildly, bending down next to the two of them. He could feel Garnet’s censure as clearly as if she’d snarled for him to mind his own business. “Let’s get a look at our new employee.” He lifted the ball of black fluff and bared claws from its worsted swaddling. “Did you check his lineage to see if he comes from mouser stock?”

William blinked then, catching Deacon’s slight wink, and broke into a wide grin. “Just look at all them claws. I’m sure he’ll scare the whiskers off them critters.”

Not mentioning that the sight of the tiny fur ball would probably send any self-respecting cheese stealer into gales of laughter, Deacon
stood, casting about for an empty crate. “Let’s make our friend a bed and get him a bowl of food, then you can help me sort shoestrings while he settles in … if that’s all right with your mother.”

When both looked up at her, William through great pleading eyes and Deacon with the glow of her hand print still fading, Garnet felt cornered into saying, “Just be a help and not a hindrance.”

She watched them together, feeling both pleased and powerless. It was so unlike her shy son to warm so quickly to an adult, and the prickly Deacon Sinclair seemed such an unlikely subject for his admiration. But the two had formed a firm bond whether she was comfortable with it or not.

But William wasn’t her concern. Her own reactions were.

Perhaps she’d been wrong to place her and Deacon into such close proximity. She’d underestimated the dangers that accompanied the rewards. They would be behind closed doors, often just the two of them together. Romance wasn’t what worried her, it was retribution.

She’d struck him, for heaven’s sake! Her own actions appalled and frightened her, making her as much a stranger to herself as he was to her.

She’d taken his heritage. She’d battered his pride. Now she was threatening his future. Was she naive to think he would accept all that without malice?

Watching him with William, those uncertainties
fled and her answer was no. Here was a man of innate decency who was somehow, somewhere, led to stray into darkness. By his severe father? By the hardships of the war? She could only guess at this point. But she wanted to know. She had to know.

If only to see if he could be coaxed back.

Montgomery Prior leaned back with a good cigar and a glass of Fairfax bourbon warming in his hand. He smiled at his host’s inquiry as to his comfort.

“I assure you, I am as content as a babe.”

Tyler Fairfax exchanged a knowing glance with Judge Banning, who had opened his home and his box of fine Havanas for the occasion.

“I thought the two of you would get on well,” Tyler boasted. “The judge, like yourself, sir, enjoys playing at politics. He can fill you in on the local climate much better than I.”

“Are you a member of the legal community, Mr. Banning?”

The handsome older man chuckled. “An honorary name, I assure you. It comes from folks ‘round here deferring to my advice. And you, Mr. Prior, are you looking to get your feet wet in our community pool?”

“I think one is obligated to take an interest in his surroundings.”

“Well, we would more than welcome your input and influence, isn’t that right, Tyler?”

Tyler smiled and swallowed the contents of his glass in a single gulp.

Monty chuckled modestly. “I’d be more than happy to lend you my opinions, but as for influence, I fear I’m just a stranger in a strange land.”

The judge waved aside his misgivings. “Nonsense. You own Sinclair Manor and are now privy to their power in the community. And I assure you, it is considerable. If you speak, folks ‘round here will listen.”

Tyler stood up, wobbling slightly, a condition he’d arrived in. “Well, I’ll leave the judge to acquaint you with the community issues. And if there’s any other way I can be of assistance, you be sure an’ call on me.”

Monty gave him a hopeful look. “There is something you might do.”

“I am at your service, sir.”

“I need a knowledgeable fellow to oversee the management of my properties. I’m frightfully ignorant of such matters. My dear wife would like to believe herself capable of handling it all, but I hate to place such a burden on her.”

Both men made agreeing sounds.

“What about Sinclair?”

Monty viewed Tyler’s suggestion with disfavor. “I’m sure he is the best suited, but I prefer to distance him from the running of my estate. I’m sure you can understand the delicacy of the matter.”

“Ummm, yes. He is a difficult man to … control,
though I’d say your wife has brought him to heel quite nicely.”

Monty’s jovial features went still, his eyes growing steely. “My wife shouldn’t have to handle Mr. Sinclair. I prefer to distance him there, as well.”

Tyler arranged his hat carefully as he mused, “Could be I know just the man for you. He’s clever and discreet. I had dealings with him during the war and found him … useful in many areas. Would you like me to set up a meeting, Mr. Prior?”

“You know the area and the men far better than I, Mr. Fairfax. I’d appreciate your intervention.”

“Well, now, I’ll see what I can do.”

When he was gone, the two older men enjoyed the bourbon and the silence for a long while. Then Monty broached the subject.

“Tell me, Judge Banning, how can a man go about gaining influence in this town?”

The judge grinned wide. “Mr. Prior, you’ve come to the right man for advice.”

The remainder of the workday was without incident. With William as a buffer between them, Garnet and Deacon whipped the mercantile into shape. There was absolutely no mention of what had happened earlier or trace of an apology from either side.