She’d reached the stables. There, she leaned her forearms on the whitewashed rail of the empty breeding paddock, allowing the melancholy mood to possess her. Only the startling warmth of strong
fingers upon her jaw shook her out of it.
“Who hit you?”
Patrice stared up into Reeve’s thunderous features in alarm. Trapped by the obvious, she found herself stammering, “?-hit me?”
Reeve angled her cheek toward the pale moonlight, outlining it with a surprisingly light touch. “This looks about the size of your brother’s hand.”
His fierce tone dared her to disagree, so she didn’t. Her chin notched up in a demand to know what made it his concern.
“You’d best tell me why before I march inside and beat the hell out of him. Not that any reason will be good enough to stop me from doing it anyway.”
“Leave him alone.” The defensive anger in her voice surprised the both of them. “This has nothing to do with you.”
But of course it did. It had everything to do with him and the way her feelings for him were pulling her between lust and loyalty. How could she go against her own family, her own flesh and blood? How frivolous to let desire dictate to her.
“No man has a right to lay a hand upon a woman,” Reeve growled. “I don’t care if he is family.”
Patrice jerked her head back, freeing herself of his bewitching heat. He was the one confusing her, making her doubt tradition. She’d let her misguided infatuation in him draw her away from propriety. She’d disregarded her duties in making an appropriate match, too caught up in his brooding mystery. She’d been helpless to resist. He’d kissed her when they were little more than children and had
listened to her words of love, but never once had he returned them. Never once.
She was Patrice Sinclair of Sinclair Manor, not some fancy-free girl who could flirt and cast her affection frivolously. It was time she grew up and took her responsibilities seriously.
“My brother has every right,” she told Reeve with a touch of indignation coloring her words. “He woke me up to my true place in life. I’ve indulged myself without caring who it hurt. I’ve obligations to my family that I can’t ignore. Don’t ask me to.”
She walked back to the house, leaving him with a gnawing anxiety that somehow he’d just lost his hope of ever having her.
Patrice went directly to the library. With a wary caution, Deacon watched her approach. When her arms went around him, he went as rigid as one of the Manor’s pillars. He didn’t touch her. He was barely even breathing. It didn’t matter to Patrice if he wasn’t completely certain of her motives. What mattered was her conviction that she was doing the right thing.
Just as Deacon was sure he was doing the right thing when he found Tyler Fairfax seated on his half-completed front steps, grinning like a dog over a meaty bone.
“Heard you wanted to see me, Rev. ‘Bout time.”
Patrice’s sudden turnabout in mood and manner had everyone mystified over dinner. The abruptly meek and soft-spoken woman fell under close scrutiny as she sat beside her brother, nodding at his every word.
“We’re going to have it all back,” he announced in a broad stroke of optimism. Patrice smiled up at him, her gaze warm with belief. It made him pause, off-balance, then go on with renewed certainty. “I’ve got materials coming in tomorrow and enough workers to see us back in the Manor by the end of next week.”
Hannah smiled her bewilderment. “Did you talk to that young man at the bank?”
“No, of course not. He’s not getting his hands any tighter around our throats. Once we get crops in, we can shake him off our backs and we won’t be beholden to anyone.”
It sounded simple. Nothing was that easy. Reeve studied Deacon as he spoke, searching for clues to his sudden almost buoyant attitude. He’d never met a man harder to read. But in his gut, he knew Deacon was hiding something behind his smooth assurances and bland smile. Something bad, if not dangerous.
“So,” he drawled out. “If not from the bank, where did you find this sudden fortune?”
He looked Reeve right in the eye and said without a flicker of expression, the biggest, boldest lie Reeve had ever heard. “From overseas investments Father made before the war. I’d forgotten them until the solicitor came out to the Manor this morning.”
Reeve glanced at Patrice. He saw her mouth purse slightly, but she said nothing. She must have felt the same jangle of suspicions that rattled through him, only this time, she let them go unspoken. Her acceptance of a blatant falsehood alarmed him more than the lie itself.
Noting the focus of Reeve’s stare, Deacon turned to his sister with a pleasant and totally out-of-character smile. Like watching the sun rise in the middle of the night.
“Patrice, I want you and Mother to come into town with me tomorrow. We need to order papering and window things. I’ll turn that over to you. And I want you both to buy yourselves new dresses, shoes, whatever you need. I don’t want to take you home looking like poor relations.”
Hannah’s concern deepened. “But Deacon, we can’t afford—”
He still smiled, but his gaze held a definite rebuke. “Hush now, Mother. I can afford anything you want. Don’t worry your head over it.”
“If you say so, dear,” came her meekly murmured reply.
But Reeve noticed that the uneasiness never truly left her. She knew something was not quite right about their sudden riches, too. However, she’d been trained since birth never to reveal her doubts, especially not in public. And not when her son wore the same forbidding mask her husband had adopted when he absolutely would not tolerate any questions.
The rest of the meal went quickly, with Deacon speaking casually of the repairs to Sinclair Manor and no one daring to challenge him on how. Reeve pointedly ignored the squire’s urgent stares, knowing this new twist in things disturbed him. Patrice back under Deacon’s thumb at the Sinclair home did not bode well for romance and the continuation of his name. And he wanted to know what Reeve meant to do about it.
Reeve didn’t know what to tell him. He didn’t know the answer himself.
The meal over, Patrice excused herself, looking weary and a bit wan. Solicitously, Deacon pulled back her chair and personally escorted her to the base of the stairs, careful not to touch her even accidentally. She’d used something to cover the mark of his heavy-handedness, but that didn’t relieve his guilt, knowing it was there and he, the cause. His sister’s malleability made him edgy. She was far from docile by nature, and he’d expected her to clash with him over his announcement at the table. Proper time and place never deterred her from loudly voicing her views, but something had.
She began to climb the stairs, halting at his hesitant call of her name. She turned slowly, her features
a lovely blank. At her elevated position, they were almost eye to eye. He longed to reach out then but, more afraid than he’d ever been of anything in his life that she would flinch away, he left his arms hanging heavily at his sides.
Finally, she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I hope you’ve forgiven my behavior last night. I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean to doubt you, Deacon. I’m so sorry if I—”
His fingertips settled on her lips to stop the rest of her quavering confession, then did a light sketch across her injured cheek. When she didn’t withdraw, he brought her to him to press a kiss upon her forehead.
“Sleep well,” he murmured, as she drew away.
And he stood, watching as she ascended the stairs, the want to confide all battling with a grim sense of justification.
“What are you up to, Deacon?”
He didn’t favor Reeve with a look, but a defensive tension quickly overtook him. “I don’t answer to you, Garrett.”
“But you best be answering to your family, ‘cause I know you don’t have a conscience. And no investment return, either.”
“I’m taking care of my family.” His gaze followed the trailing edge of his sister’s skirt as it disappeared with a graceful shimmer into the upper hall.
“Where’d the money come from?”
Deacon pivoted. Their stares collided. Neither faltered.
“We take care of our own, Garrett. You forgot that when you turned on everything you once knew.”
“I didn’t turn away from what was right. And I didn’t lie to my family or myself.” If he’d hoped for a reaction, he didn’t get one. “I won’t let you use Patrice in whatever scheme you’re tied up in.”
“You won’t
let
me? Patrice is none of your concern, and if you think I’d ever let that change as long as I’m breathing, you’re dead wrong.”
Reeve leaned in closer, involving his larger mass with the intended threat. His tone lowered, loaded with menace. “You won’t be breathing long if you ever put a mark on her again.”
That got a wince of response, so perhaps he had a conscience after all. But it wasn’t strong enough to overset his possessive male pride. Casting off his remoteness, Deacon bristled, letting the matter become very personal.
“Stay away from me and my family, Garrett. It could prove very bad for your health. You’re on borrowed time already.”
With that sinister warning laid out plainly, he stalked away, gait stiff, straight, as rigid as his ideals. But something had bent and possibly broken in Deacon Sinclair. Reeve had to find out what it was. Before Patrice or her mother got hurt.
A shiny carriage arrived in the morning to take the Sinclairs into town. Deacon’s casual acceptance of it warned the ladies to say nothing. Their provider was full of surprises and not forthcoming with any answers.
Patrice tried to tell herself it didn’t matter as the well-sprung conveyance bounced down a road left rutted by two passing armies. It wasn’t her place to question her brother. He’d said he would take care of things and, apparently, made good on his word.
In the past, she’d never thought to demand an accounting from their father when he purchased equipment, nor did she ask where he’d gotten the money for it. Deacon said it was from investments.
Perhaps it was.
She wanted very badly to believe him.
Reeve didn’t. She tried not to put any undue weight on that fact. Reeve didn’t like her brother, so why would he trust him? There had always been a conflict and rivalry between them.
She studied Deacon from her side of the carriage, looking for … what, she wasn’t sure. Guilt, maybe. No trace of any wrongdoing tugged at his handsome features. He looked sinless as a saint even when he caught her scrutiny and returned it unblinkingly. He was no saint. She glanced away first, uneasiness roiling.
Where had he gotten the money?
Confrontation wouldn’t lend answers. He’d take it as another sign of her lack of faith, and she’d promised herself she would not undercut his confidence again. Whatever miracle had lifted him from bottled despair to this renewed air of authority, she should accept it gratefully. She
would
accept it regardless of its source. She owed him that loyalty.
A loyalty sorely shaken when she and her mother came out of the millinery shop later to find him in somber conversation with Tyler Fairfax.
Uneasiness burst into full-blown anxiety. Whatever brought the two unlikely compatriots to put their heads together boded ill for all concerned. She knew what her brother thought of Tyler. He wouldn’t nod to him in passing unless Patrice made him. In his estimation, Tyler ranked with something
to be scraped off the bottom of his boots. And she knew Tyler and what dangerous business he was involved in. Putting the two together chilled her like an early frost.
Tyler lit up with Fourth of July brilliance when he saw her. Her brother’s reaction was considerably more subdued.
“Heya, darlin’.” Tyler snatched up her hand. His mouth scorched a hot, wet trail across her knuckles, while green eyes engaged hers in a dance that was more than just friendly. An insinuating passion smoldered there. It startled her. When he kept her hand a beat too long, she pulled it away with an accompanying frown. Unaffected, he turned his charm upon her mother. “Why, Miz Sinclair, you are lookin’ lovely this mornin’.” He paid gallant homage over her hand as well. Wickedly gorgeous, he exuded the sultry invitation of still-warm rumpled sheets. His open-throated shirt looked as though he’d buttoned it up hastily on his way out of someone’s bedroom window. Deacon’s glare could have cleaved him in two.
“So,” Patrice began on a falsely cheery note, “what have you gentleman been discussing with such interest?”
Tyler sidled up next to her, his arm winding about her waist with an easy familiarity. She could almost hear her brother’s teeth gnashing. “Well, darlin’, I’m sorry to say, nothin’ as pleasant as askin’ when I can come acourtin’ you in earnest.” His wide smile and mischievous eyes turned toward Deacon. “We was just finishing up our talk about the acres your brother plans to turn over to rye production for my daddy’s distillery.”
“Really?” Patrice pinned Deacon with a look. “I
had no idea we were thinking of putting in a variety of crops.”
“Progress, Miz Patrice. Gotta move with the times.”
Knowing her brother was as deeply entrenched in past traditions as the foundations of their home, that explanation fell far short of believable. But she could hardly call him and her brother liars. Not on the middle of Pride’s boardwalk.
“Why I surely wish I had more time to chat with you ladies, but I promised Deke, here, that I’d advise him on the best kinda seed to sow.”
Too nonplussed by the idea of Deacon taking Tyler’s advice on whether it was day or night, let alone soliciting his suggestions about what mix to plant, Patrice barely protested when Tyler ducked close to fondly buss her ear. Again, fury pulsed from her brother in palpable waves. Odd behavior in a new business associate.
After the two men crossed the street, heading toward the feed and grain, Hannah remarked, “He’s quite the forward young man, isn’t he?”
“Tyler Fairfax? He hasn’t the slightest notion about propriety. Both he and Starla are that way. It must come from losing their mother when so young.”
“A handsome boy. I’d say he’s every bit as pretty-featured as his sister, except for a certain … I don’t quite know what it is.”