The Men of Pride County: The Pretender (22 page)

In that instant, Garnet saw her social doom.

When the last apology was made and the final guest on his away, Garnet left the servants to the disaster in the dining room, and, with the mournful sound of Boone howling on his rope outside, she slowly climbed the stairs. Hannah already occupied her spot on the edge of William’s bed, assuring the little boy that neither he nor the kitten he hugged to his chest would be cast out in disgrace. She watched the older woman tuck the boy in with gentle words, missing her own mother, thinking how lucky Deacon was to have enjoyed the tender care of this woman all his life. She would have entered the room to add her own reassurances, but William snuggled in and was immediately asleep with the purring puff of fur balled up on his chest.

Feeling unneeded, she wandered to her room, having just closed the door when she heard Monty’s low voice mixing with Hannah’s dulcet tones. After they moved along the hall together, a sense of failure and isolation crept in through her downed defenses. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror—the fine lady of the house in wine-stained satin, her features
lined with anxiety and despair. A fraud in her own heart, and now, in everyone else’s mind.

He almost missed her. Her shadow skimmed along the dark tracery of the leafless bushes—a figure in men’s trousers with a most provocative walk. There was such solitude in her lonely travels, but respecting her private thoughts and her need to work through them, Deacon sat on the back porch rail, allowing her the peaceful embrace of the night and himself the pleasure of simply watching her.

He wasn’t alarmed when she disappeared into the darkness, knowing she’d eventually return. Whatever preyed upon her mind, and he had a fairly good idea of what that was, she kept to the moonlight for over an hour before approaching the house with shoulders slumped and spirits dragging.

“Nice night for a walk.”

His voice startled her into drawing up short. For a long beat, she remained safely in the shadows, then finally came to the stairs.

“If you say something cuttingly clever about not making silk purses from sow’s ears, I’ll be forced to shoot you, and I really don’t need the extra burden tonight.”

Because her retort smacked of the impertinent young woman living within hewn wood walls and not the sophisticate he’d seen of late, Deacon allowed a lopsided smile. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for any more of your burdens.”

She stared up at him as if doubting that was true. In the muted light, in her mannish garb, with her heavy hair concealed beneath a flat crowned hat, he was looking once again into the face of innocence that had captured him five long years ago. And as tears made silvery traces down stubbornly held features, that endearing contrast made him lose his heart all over again.

She stiffened at the soft sound of his laughter.

“I shouldn’t be surprised that you’d find my misfortune funny.”

“It’s not that,” he chuckled. “I was just remembering the look on Skinner’s face when that bowl of gravy landed in his lap.”

Garnet drew a pained breath. He could see her shoulders tremble. Feeling poorly about taking amusement from her distress, he was about to apologize when she said in a slightly strangled voice, “Or Tyler Fairfax covered in buttered yams.”

His grin flashed bright and they shared a moment of quiet laughter at the ridiculousness in her social tragedy. Slowly, she came up onto the porch and he stepped aside, expecting her to pass. Instead, she stopped beside him, still chuckling helplessly even as more tears glimmered upon her cheeks. Unable to help himself, he brushed one trail away with the leisurely swipe of his thumb.

“You’ll survive it, Garnet. At least you’ll be the talk of the town tomorrow. Isn’t that a hostess’s fondest wish?”

“As a topic of envy, yes, of sport, no.” Beneath the wry observation lurked a quiver of vulnerability that acted upon a part of Deacon’s soul that he thought he’d lost.

“No one will make sport of you,” he promised, following that claim with a rumbling, “At least, not in my presence.”

She stared up at him, puzzled by his compassion, by his intensity.

Then all curiosities fell away as he bent and kissed her.

Too surprised at first to do more than instinctively part her lips, Garnet let the sweet sensations overcome her staunch defenses. After all, wasn’t this magical taste of heaven what she’d yearned for every night since he’d ridden out of her front yard? A soft sound of confusion escaped as a sigh.

Deacon … don’t … don’t stop
.

When his hands fit with a possessive familiarity upon the slope of her shoulders, she swayed into him, surrendering to her need to know again the passionate response only this man woke in her. Heat roared to places too long ignored. Her breasts ached. The juncture of her thighs throbbed in tight little pulses, demanding more than just his kiss to heal the miseries of this night, to bridge the loneliness of the years.

Hands fisting at the collar of his coat, she met the reacquainting movement of his mouth, slant for hungry slant, feasting on the pleasures with a starved urgency. Letting the tide of remembered
emotions catch her in its delicious rip and ebb. Gasping for breath and for some smidgeon of control, she lay her head against his chest, her arms circling his neck in a desperate attempt to remain standing on suddenly unreliable legs. Her body was taut and trembling, the same tension straining her voice as she said his name in a torment of want.

“Deacon …”

He responded, but not in the way she’d hoped. She felt him withdraw before he ever moved an inch. His muscles took on a denying stiffness. His ragged breathing slowed and grew regular upon one lengthy inhalation. And hands that had pulled her to him with such claiming forcefulness, now pushed her away with firm purpose.

She didn’t want to look up to read what was in his expression, but she had to know, and forced her gaze to lift in search of his. His slated stare was impenetrable, keeping her away, just as his kisses had called her closer an instant earlier. The change in signals deepened her confusion and left her vulnerable to his next painfully proper statement.

“I shouldn’t have done that. I had no right. I’ve insulted you and your husband, and for that I apologize.”

He stepped back, setting the distance between them once more, a distance that seemed all the more impossible to breach, considering his shattering aloofness. As if their passion was a fleeting
mistake that could be quickly forgiven and forgotten and not a long, smoldering remnant of their first encounter.

His remoteness gave her the courage to adopt a like attitude. “No apology necessary,” she assured him with a thready conviction. Then she let him walk away while every fiber of her emotional being cried out for her to reach out, to grab on, to not let go of what he’d betrayed with that kiss.

The desire was still there.

But if love lingered along with it, would it be so easy for him to extinguish the same feelings shivering through her with a feverish weakening of heart and mind?

She sank down upon the porch steps, her fragile mood allowing sobs to escape her in silent shudders.

What had she done? Had she outsmarted herself by creating a convenient marriage that was meant to protect her and that now, it would seem, prevented her from achieving the happiness she sought?

How could she ever unravel the web she’d spun, now that she was trapped within its sticky lies?

Chapter 16

T
o Garnet’s surprise, a tray full of calling cards awaited her when she finally managed to shake off the effects of a near sleepless night to brave the new day. She was still staring at the sight incomprehensibly over her morning coffee when Patrice Garrett was announced.

Patrice summed up the significance of the cards with a smile. “Goodness, you
are
a success, Mrs. Prior.”

While waiting for her voluminous guest to make herself comfortable on one of the parlor sofas, Garnet said, “Please, call me Garnet. And why do you say that?”

“The speed in which your hospitality is repaid with cards or visits determines how desirable you are to our fickle society. I would say you are a much sought-after commodity. Congratulations.”

With a confused sigh, Garnet sank into an adjacent chair. “After the disastrous, not to mention messy, evening I gave them? I don’t understand.
I’d think I’d be avoided like some plague.”

“Ah, but you see, you provided unequaled entertainment and handled your embarrassment with proper dignity. That’s what your guests are applauding. They admire nothing more than courage under fire, and you, my dear Garnet, sustained a direct hit without flinching.”

After turning down an offer of refreshments, Patrice got to the point of her visit with another unerring volley. “How do you know my brother? I understand from him that you met during the war.”

Instantly on guard, Garnet found that her curiosity was nonetheless sparked. “He spoke of me?” She phrased the question with infinite care, aware that Patrice would pick up any nuance in her voice. It was one thing to fool a man and quite another to deceive another woman.

“Not by name, but you obviously made a considerable impression on him.” Revealing that tantalizing tidbit, Patrice fussed with the folds of her skirt, pretending not to be shrewdly watching for a reaction to her words. Garnet understood the purpose of the exchange. In order to learn a little, she would have to give a little. She sensed that Deacon’s sister was a cunning barterer. So she would tempt with a sliver of information, too.

“He arrived at my door early in the war. I treated him for a bullet wound from some deserters looking to steal his horse.” She said that smoothly, as if she didn’t know now that
nothing about his arrival was coincidental. “He was on his way here to tell you your father had died.” Patrice looked so perplexed, Garnet paused. Had he lied about that, too?

“Deacon never came home with that news.”

“Your father didn’t die in battle?”

“He did, only Deacon didn’t bring us the news in person. It was more than two years before we saw him, just briefly, and then not again until after the war was over. I wasn’t aware that he’d been wounded. My family owes you its thanks, then.”

“Just doing my Christian duty.” As Deacon had been doing his Confederate duty. He hadn’t taken the news of his father’s death home because he’d been busy betraying her. Some of her anger must have shown in her expression, for Patrice pounced like an expectant cat.

“And what duty prompted you to come here to pull his future out from under him? What did he do to make you hate him so very much?”

Garnet looked her squarely in the eye. “He used information that he got from me to put my father wrongfully in prison. Where he died.”

No shock, no denial appeared on Patrice’s face, just sadness. “I’m sorry for your loss, Garnet. I can’t pretend that I know exactly what my brother did for the Confederacy. My guess is that they were unpleasant things, things that had him risking his life and telling lies to protect it.”

Garnet came up out of her chair to pace in short, fierce strides. “I didn’t have your brother
at gunpoint, Mrs. Garrett. He came to me with deliberate lies and used them to destroy my family and my trust.”

“It was war.”

She cast off Patrice’s excuse with a flick of her hand. “It was unfair. And it was unconscionable. He didn’t have to do his job so … well.” She clamped her lips together to seal in the rest of her disgrace and disillusionment. But she could see from the softening of the other woman’s expression that she’d guessed more than Garnet had intended.

“Then I apologize for my brother, because he won’t, no matter how much he might regret what he did. He wasn’t raised to say that he was wrong or that he was sorry. A prideful failing in my family, I’m afraid.”

“My father is dead. My home was lost, burned to the ground. I don’t want an apology or excuses.”

“Then what do you want?”

Garnet hesitated at that gently asked question. Then she knew, with a crystal clarity. She wanted to hear that it hadn’t all been a lie. She wanted to know that her trust and her love hadn’t been wrongly given. She needed to learn that the father of her child was not a cold, emotionless monster. But that was not what she told Patrice.

“Who was Jassy?”

She could see by Patrice’s sudden blankness that she’d fired a well-placed shot.

“Jassy? She was my childhood playmate, my best friend. Deacon told you about her?”

“He said she was a servant here.” And that he’d been in love with her. “Where is she now?”

“She was sold.”

“Sold?”

“She was a slave. She was sold South when she and I were thirteen and Deacon sixteen.”

Reeling with that information, Garnet resumed her seat in a daze. He’d been in love with a slave girl. And his family had sold her to save themselves from the disgrace. Dear God … poor Deacon.

“Mama, can Boone come back inside now? Mr. Sinclair took Ulysses back to the store with him, so there won’t be no more chasing.”

William skidded to a halt when he saw his mother wasn’t alone.

“Darling, I have company. We’ll talk about this later.”

“But Mama, Boone’s been out all night—”

“William, you know Mrs. Garrett, Mr. Sinclair’s sister.”

William bobbed a quick acknowledgment, then returned to his petition. “It weren’t Boone’s fault, Mama. It was mine. Maybe I should be tied up in the yard instead a him.”

Garnet’s stern look dissolved into a tolerant smile. “You may let him inside, but make sure his feet are clean.”

“I will,” he vowed cheerily, darting for the
door. He pulled up short, remembering his manners. Turning toward Patrice, he assumed a stiff posture and bowed.” ‘Scuse me, Mrs. Garrett.”

Patrice began to smile, then the gesture froze before full completion.

“Patrice, are you all right?”

She blinked when the boy disappeared down the hall, seeming to come out of her sudden trance. “I’m sorry, it’s just that he looked so much like—”

Deacon
.

She didn’t have to finish. Garnet knew with a sick certainty that Patrice had recognized her brother in the boy.