Deacon drew up, his impatience plain. “Are you talking about those cowards who ride around in the night scaring poor people to death with their torches and their threats? Where’s your hood, Tyler?”
His smile lost none of its brilliance. “Why, I don’t wear it when I’m out socializing.”
“Only when you’re terrorizing. I’m not interested in getting help from you or your friends.”
“They’re more than friends, Deke. They’re family. They see to their own. If you was to ask, I’d have two dozen men with lumber and strong backs over at your place in an hour. You’d be tucked in snug by the end of the week. What do you say to that?”
Deacon started walking again, his stride brisk and purposeful. “I’d say you’re wasting your breath and my time.”
Tyler lagged back, slowing his pace so that Deacon outdistanced him. Then he called cheerfully, “You need help—with anything, Rev, jus’ give me a holler. I’ll be nearby.”
“Just stay out of my sight, you little weasel,” Deacon muttered to himself as he stepped up onto his ragged mount. He kicked it into a jarring canter, eager to escape all the frustrations he’d found in town.
But later, as he pounded in another board from his fast-dwindling pile, he mulled over the conversation. Sweat blinded his eyes, and the ache in his arm seemed to expand all the way to the roots of his hair. Finally, he leaned his forehead against the interior wall he was replacing. Water from the roof leak had rotted it from inside out, leaving an irreparable mess. He’d had to rip the whole section down, and now he hadn’t the material to finish. That black gaping hole mirrored his prospects as the hammer clunked to the floor from his slackened fingers.
He wasn’t a carpenter. He wasn’t a mason. He was a man with a superior mind and shrewd instincts lost in a maze of drudgery. He’d been clever and quick enough to evade detection and capture by the Union’s best spy hunters. He’d lived off his cunning for four long years, and now he was totally stymied by the lack of 120 board feet. Shoulders slumping, he closed his eyes and considered the unthinkable.
Ignorant bullies like Tyler Fairfax were a plague. Everything they stood for went against the grain of honor. Yet, when he looked back on all the things he’d done to survive, he was surprised that he’d balk at this one small point of dignity.
He knew why Tyler approached him. His skulking Home Guard was seeking a way to earn respectability now that they no longer had the sentiments of a war-torn county behind them. If a Sinclair backed their cause, their prestige and power would grow at a frightening rate. Giving in to terrorists was one thing, siding with a mighty Sinclair was quite another. If he bent to ask assistance, he’d never break free of their association, and that crafty schemer Fairfax knew it, too.
He hated it. The whole thing. The helplessness. The feel of strangling debt. The uncertainty in the eyes of his mother and sister when he made them vows he knew he couldn’t keep.
With brow pressed to the hallowed wall of his father’s empire, he felt himself sinking in a quagmire of desperation.
“Show me another way. Please, give me another way.”
“You talkin’ to me, sir?”
Deacon drew a labored breath and turned to meet Jericho’s questioning stare. “No. Just talking to myself.”
“You look all in, Mista Deacon. Why doan you go on back to the Glade and lets me finish up here? Gets some sleep. All this can wait ‘til morning.”
Deacon sighed heavily. It could wait. That was the problem. It would have to wait a damned eternity unless greenbacks started falling from the skies.
Or until he made a deal with the devil—Tyler Fairfax.
At first, Reeve thought he was alone in the Glade’s big library. The lamps were unlit, and shadows stretched long and solemnly along its wall to
ceiling volumes. However, as he took a step in from the hall, a sharp odor reached him, the unmistakable grain scent of rye whiskey.
When he recognized the figure hunched down in an engulfing wing chair as that of Deacon Sinclair, he started to withdraw, unwilling to disturb his privacy or initiate a strained conversation. Then, oddly moved by the other’s crumpled state, and alarmed by the tumbler full of whiskey about to be upended on his father’s expensive woven rug, Reeve crossed the room quietly, reaching down to relieve Deacon’s dangling hand of the glass. He paused at the sight of the other man’s palm, at the ugly rawness of burst blisters searing across it. Deacon Sinclair, who’d never done any task more strenuous than jotting numbers in a ledger.
Deacon muttered, his long fingers curling over the sores. Then, with a jerk, he came to a defensive awareness, focus sharpening at the possibility of danger. Seeing no threat in Reeve’s presence, he relaxed back into the curve of the chair.
“Musta drifted off,” he mumbled, rubbing at his eyes, then wincing as the skin pulled at the open wounds on his hand. He squinted down at them, his expression one of wry humor.
Without comment, Reeve left the room, returning moments later. Deacon glanced up in question when a pan of cool water was settled on his knees.
“Stick your hands in there,” Reeve instructed with a gruff indifference. Deacon eased in, fingertips first, tensing as the medicinal soak met raw flesh. But he didn’t withdraw his hands. He was stubborn, not stupid.
“That’ll keep ’em soft so the edges won’t tear.
You can put some salve on when they dry. What happened to your gloves?”
“Wore them out.” He wouldn’t share the fact that he didn’t have the funds to replace them.
“I’ll be stopping over at the Manor after I finish up the west paddock.” Reeve made it a statement, so it couldn’t be refused on the basis of pride.
“No need.”
“I already planned on it,” Reeve said, giving no weight to the remark that might imply he cared one way or the other.
“I’ve got nothing that needs doing.”
Reeve gave a contradicting snort. “Just years of work.”
Deacon leaned back, eyes closing, his voice a hollow deadpan. “But no materials to see it done. I’ve got taxes to scrape up from somewhere. That’s going to take everything.”
Reeve read between the lines of what wasn’t said, deducing that Patrice and her family were very close to being destitute as well as homeless. “The mill won’t give you credit?”
Deacon didn’t open his eyes. “The mill won’t give me sawdust without having money up front.” He didn’t bemoan the fact or display an indignant temper. And against his better judgment, Reeve allowed a growing admiration for the man, for his toughness and resolve to do right for his family.
“Have you gone to the bank?”
Deacon looked up then. His eyes took on a hard metallic gleam in the dim light. His reply was toneless. “Jonah was the bank. It died with him. I suspect as soon as some speculator snaps it up, all the loans will be called and what I’m doing now won’t matter a tinker’s damn anyway. There won’t be a
one of us who has a field, let alone a field hand to work it. We’re beaten. We just don’t know when to lie down and die.”
He pulled his hands out of the water and began to blot them on his dirty trousers. Reeve grasped one of his wrists, halting the careless movements.
“I’ll bind these up for you.” He left no room for argument. Deacon didn’t relax, nor did he resist. Then Reeve added, “Unless you plan to try an’ shoot me again.”
Not a muscle in the savagely lean features flickered. Then Deacon said, “Why should I pull the trigger when half the county is lined up to do it for me?”
Reeve wrapped layers of gauze into a snug protective cushion, then ripped the edges to tie them off. Only then did he answer.
“Thought you did your own dirty work, Deacon, then left others to take the blame.” He gathered up the supplies with brisk efficiency, then stood to regard the other man with blatant contempt. “Or aren’t you so willing to flash your true colors now that you’ve had to suffer the consequence of your own deeds?”
“Go to hell,” Deacon told him. “Soon.”
Figuring he’d done quite enough to warm Deacon up to the idea of accepting him into the family, Reeve left him to his preferred solitude, not at all surprised to hear the empty tumbler smashing against the door he’d closed behind him.
For all the rebelliousness of her growing-up years, Patrice loved fine things. While right at home astraddle a half-wild horse or fishing with her bared legs planted in the shallows, she also found a soothing satisfaction tending the household larder. Her favorite time of the year was springtime, when her mother conducted a thorough cleaning and inventory of the Manor. All the exquisite laces and rich brocades came down from the tall windows, letting in streams of vigorous sunlight. The beds were stripped and linens hung out to absorb the fresh clean breeze. The heavy, closed-in sense of the cooler winter months was cast off with the opening of casements and doors, airing out the stagnant dormancy. Silver, china, crystal, and place linens lined up for counting and polishing, gleaming down the long cherry length of their formal dining table. As a child, she’d delighted in the rainbow
prisms darting about the room as light sparked off etched glassware. As a woman, she lost herself in a dreamy languor while coaxing a mirrored shine in the sterling, imagining her own bridal treasury as she passed each lazy hour wrapped up in the sensory balm of beeswax and lemon oil.
She’d never felt a superior pride in the wealth of their possessions, but rather a serene contentment that went with handling, piece by piece, the history of her family. The sterling her great-grandmother brought from England. Delicate tatting done by an Irish second cousin three times removed, the one who’d passed along the red of her hair. Crystal purchased in Europe when her father took her mother for a leisurely tour the year Deacon was conceived. Fragile bone china, a reward for presenting a healthy daughter. Hers someday, with all the romantic memories gathered over decades and centuries past.
Years had passed since she and her mother conducted the springtime ritual. During the war, there hadn’t been time.
Now, there was nothing left to count.
The airy lace of the parlor curtains was sacrificed for the overskirt of her mother’s new gown to celebrate her husband’s first visit home after eight months of a war they’d thought would only last weeks. She hadn’t wanted him to take back the memory of her in faded cotton, but rather the elegant serenity of the world he loved. Crystal was sold to stave off creditors eager to claim their livestock. Most of it was stolen or eaten by the end of the year, anyway. Table linens and crisp batiste sheets were scraped, torn, and wound in balls to provide much needed dressings at battlefront hospitals.
Their sterling was looted by the first plague of Yankees to swarm their property, the ones who also made off with the contents of their smokehouse. She’d cried over the china while boxing it up to sell for basic staples of survival: salt, sugar, bacon, flour, all at outrageous prices. The fluted silver serving trays and dishes disappeared one by one into the knapsacks of fleeing slaves. All she had left of her memories were a pair of simple candlesticks and twin goblets edged in gold that she’d carefully wrapped in the handmade front table shawl to hide in an abandoned well in the woods.
A fine legacy. If she could ever find someone willing to accept her with her burden of guilt and debt.
All these things wove through her mind as she slowly repacked the Glendower glassware used for the party nights ago.
She held one of the graceful stemmed flutes to watch the light fracture through it in dazzling strobes. Beautiful. She sighed to think that it might have been hers. All the treasures at the Glade should have been hers as its intended mistress. Why hadn’t she wed Jonah in a small civil ceremony the first time he’d asked her? Then she’d be lingering over her own delicate crystal instead of storing it away for another.
She’d always loved the stately elegance of the Glade with its cool white-and-gray brick and terracotta roof tiles. It had none of the aggressive arrogance of Sinclair Manor. It needed none. Opulent, tasteful, inviting. She’d dreamed of living within its spacious rooms since the first time she’d worn her hair up. In her secret twilight imaginings, she pictured being swept up the wide curve of the staircase in her husband’s arms. Though she’d come close to
winning that Glendower mate, to her eternal shame, it was Reeve, not Jonah, who carried her toward the marriage bower during those restless fancies.
It was Reeve, not Jonah, she’d wanted to wed.
And since their kiss, she’d been able to think of nothing else. Forbidden kisses stolen between two youngsters couldn’t match the consequence of those shared between adults. She’d wanted Reeve Garrett when she was a child. And she wanted him still.
A quiet step behind her caused her to jerk around, face afire, as if her thoughts were obvious for the intruder to see. The tip of her elbow caught one of the precious goblets, sending it toppling to the floor. Her gasp of horror wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sickening sound of glass breaking.
Reeve bent to retrieve the pieces and studied the clean separation of bowl from stem before straightening. Wide-eyed with shock and dismay, it took Patrice a moment before she could lower her hands from her mouth to speak in shaky anguish.
“I’m so sorry. I was trying to be so careful.”
“It’s all right.”
“But I know how valuable these pieces are and how your family cherishes them. I can’t believe I was so clumsy.”
He examined the glass dispassionately. “Don’t mean anything to me.”
Patrice felt a hot tide of embarrassment. Of course they wouldn’t. They’d belonged to Jonah’s mother. They were tokens of a past he didn’t share.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered again, not knowing how else to extricate herself from the awkwardness of the incident.
“It’s nothing.” He fit the pieces together. “See. It can be mended. A lot of broken things can be repaired
… if the damage isn’t too severe and you don’t mind a few flaws. Sometimes, it makes the original stronger.”
His words stirred up a confusion within her breast. He was talking about the crystal, wasn’t he? Not about them. They’d had no time alone together since the memorial service—since their kiss. Had he been as restless, as sleepless as she, wondering over the possibilities? Her hands developed a sudden tremor. She hid them in the folds of her skirt. She answered her agitation with a snap of temper.