“It’s not that you wouldn’t be welcome—” she began.
“That’d be a first. We’ll keep things between us until you decide what you want to do.”
Patrice exhaled in relief. “Thank you.”
Then his mood grew somber as he looked at his friend. “Reeve, there’s some reckless talk being bandied around town. Watch your back. I’d hate to comfort this little lady over your loss, but I’m confident that I could fill your shoes in time.”
“You can’t know how relieved that makes me feel,” Reeve drawled, with just a touch of suspicion to narrow his gaze.
That crease lingered between his brows as they started back toward the Glade. Patrice wondered if he was worrying over his friend’s insinuations of danger or about the cheeky Northerner’s wink at her. She hoped he was fretting over both. The thought of Reeve’s jealousy, no matter how unfounded, pleased her almost to the point of forgiving their earlier conversation. She was restless with the silence and eager to get him talking.
“How did you save Dodge’s life?”
Dodge. Not Mr. Dodge anymore. Reeve’s frown deepened as he muttered to himself, “Might not have been such a good idea, after all.” But to her, he said with a matter-of-fact shrug, “He was an officer who didn’t know how to keep his head down. I saw a glint in the trees. Snipers took down a lot of our best men. Anyway, ‘fore I could warn him, I saw the muzzle flash. I only had time to knock him out of the way.”
She watched his features, seeing the intensity absent in his voice. “You were hit instead.”
“Just a crease.” His indifference said it was much more. “It would have taken off Dodge’s head if I’d done nothing. Hell of an introduction.”
“You took a bullet for someone you didn’t even know?”
Again the shrug. “Didn’t have time to philosophize over it. He was a good officer, and you want to keep those kinds of men around. Dodge came to sit with me every day until I recovered. Told me about his family, their furniture business, about the bank he’d built after some crooked investor swindled most of his folk’s money. He was one of the few who never had a word to say about my accent or my allegiance. Meant a lot to me then. Still does.
He’s a man who let’s you know right where he stands, and if it’s beside you, you’re damned lucky.”
Patrice hadn’t considered how difficult it might have been for Reeve with his drawling intonations in a Union brigade. Probably the same kind of isolation she’d sensed in Dodge in the midst of Pride with his biting Northern syllables. She understood having no one to trust or talk to.
“I think he’ll be good for Pride, if they’ll let him.”
Reeve gave her a measuring look, weighing the unprejudicial tone of her words against the known sentiments of her family. “He’s a good man. He’s going to have to win them over one at a time.” The same way he was going to. Dodge had the advantage of deep-seated patience.
“So what are your plans for the Glade, Reeve?”
He could hardly say they had to do with her and marriage, but that’s what they were. The reason he’d bought the horses, why he’d agreed to the squire’s terms. For her. Each a step toward proving himself. But now wasn’t the time to be telling her that. Instead, he stuck with the safer topic of the new stock.
And as he discussed them in an animated tone, she thought of Jonah, who’d displayed the same enthusiasm for business. She couldn’t imagine the livestock flourishing under Jonah’s indifferent care. He’d have turned the farm into a gentleman’s farm, or worse, sold it off. Had the squire realized that? Is that why he’d never given Jonah the reins to let him run the Glade the way he did Reeve? Reeve and Byron were of the soil, like Deacon and her father. It would have been a tragedy to turn over the lush acres to a man who couldn’t appreciate
their worth and beauty. But Reeve would. He’d give his last ounce of sweat and drop of blood for the Glade.
She found that one of his most admirable qualities.
A time would come when Reeve Garrett would be seen only for the man he was, not by the quality of his birthright. Tolerance had to be learned, it wasn’t instinctive. It was knowing Reeve that gave her the courage to ignore convention and sit down with Hamilton Dodge. Maybe it was time to let Reeve see for himself how her mind was expanding.
And maybe then, she could find the bravery to tell him the truth about her part in Jonah’s death.
Byron Glendower’s summons to his study came the moment Reeve entered the house. There was no invitation to have a seat, no small talk, just a fierce over-the-desktop glare and a demand of, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You want to narrow that down some?” His casual drawl brought a darker flush to his father’s already-florid face. Slitted eyes watched as Reeve assumed one of the chairs and settled in with a negligent ease.
“Would you like me to number them?” he snapped.
Reeve shrugged and waited for the tirade to continue.
“First you bring that Yankee carpetbagger down here to strip all of us of our pride and properties? Everyone in Pride knows it was your doing.”
“Then they’ll have me to thank when Dodge gets
them square with their debts and looking forward again.”
“They’re not going to thank you. They’re looking for an excuse to tar and feather you. And you’re handing it to them, boy. No … you’re sticking it down their throats.”
“They don’t need an excuse, Squire. They pinned every one of their sorrows and grudges on me the minute I rode back into this county. I’m just doing what you suggested.”
“I told you to win them over, not stampede over them!”
“I won’t go crawling. I won’t beg forgiveness for something I didn’t do.” Though his relaxed posture didn’t change, a foundation of pure steel supported his words. “I can’t make them want to get on with their lives. I can’t force them to accept me. I didn’t ask Dodge here to win public popularity. I asked him to take over where Jonah left off to save their stubborn hides. The same reason Jonah moved the Glade’s money up north.”
“It was treason.”
“It was survival.”
Silence thick as slave brick slapped up a wall between them—Byron unable to bend, Reeve unwilling to beg, too much alike to compromise. How could they have ever thought they’d find a common ground even when both were standing on it? Finally, Byron spoke the words burdening his heart.
“I let them call you traitor. I did nothing to stop it because I could see they were right. But I wanted to believe you were still loyal to this family.”
Reeve’s jaw tensed, the muscles flexing, working on the anger, the frustration, the fear that had been so much a part of him since the day he’d ridden
north. What good would it do to pour out his soul, to cite his reasons atop tomes of logic? Byron Glendower wasn’t interested in politics or practicality. It wasn’t about North or South, pride or proper surnames. It was about why Reeve Garrett took arms against his own blood.
“What I did, I did for this family, for this community.” And to him, further explanation was inconsequential.
Byron Glendower studied him for a long somber minute, powerful emotions struggling for domination. But in the end, his belief wasn’t strong enough. “No matter what was behind it, the fact is, you stood against us instead of with us. That’s what they’ll remember. That you were their enemy”
“Their own traditions were their enemy. Ask Jonah …”
Their father’s features went cold as the stone over Jonah’s grave. “I can’t because Jonah died for what we believed in.”
“No.” Reeve stood, a pillar of furious denial. “He died for what
you
believed in. And I will never forgive him for that. Or you for insisting upon it!”
Byron surged up as well. “Why? Because he was more of a man than you were?”
“Because he failed himself by not being the man he could have been. By not doing what he knew was right.”
He turned toward the doorway, chafing in his frustration, only to confront a pale and anguished Patrice Sinclair. He strode past her without a word, the condemning ring of his words strangling her hope of finding happiness with him.
Byron dropped into his chair, the fervor of his convictions deserting him, just as his only remaining
son deserted him … again. The pain of it pressed upon his heart in a crushing fist.
“Why did I ever think it could work between us?” he mourned aloud, not fully aware of Patrice’s presence in the room. “All I ever wanted was for that boy to love me. What else could I have done? What more did he want from me?”
“A little love in return?”
He looked up through a glaze of regret and remorse to focus upon the lovely features bending near his. He shook his head, not understanding. “I did. I gave him a home. I gave him a chance to better himself.”
“But did you ever give him anything of yourself?”
He was too swamped with agony to see the wisdom in her words. Instead, he struck out blindly, in wounded anger. “Everything I did was for him. Don’t you understand? It was all for him. Not Jonah. For Reeve. It was all for Reeve. And he wouldn’t take it, damn him! Why wouldn’t he take it?
Patrice knelt down, taking one of the blue-veined hands in hers. The coldness of that suddenly fragile hand shocked her. It felt so … old! Her own heart twisted with grief, filling her words with passion.
“You wanted to give him things, Squire. But what you would never give him was respect for who he was, who he is. You made it impossible to accept your love without surrendering himself.”
Byron shook his head again, dazed by denial, confusion.
“Don’t you see,” Patrice continued to plead. “You did the very same thing with Jonah. You made your love conditional upon his bending to what you
wanted him to be. I know … because I’m guilty of doing the same thing.” Her breath hitched in an tight sob. “We both used Jonah and his love to get what we wanted. What we wanted was Reeve, not him.” Byron angled away, refusing to acknowledge her with his gaze but unable to shut out the horrible truth of her words.
“You don’t think he knew that? We killed Jonah. Not the North, not the war, not Reeve. We did it; you and I. With our own selfishness.”
“I loved Jonah,” Byron cried in torment. “He was my son.”
“So did I. But did either of us tell him? Or did we make him believe we could only love him if he was more like Reeve? Reeve was the only one who loved him for the goodness of who he was. And he’s right to hate us now for what we’ve done.” Tears streamed down her face as shame washed over her in a bitter tide. Too late to make amends to the dead, too late to make repairs with the living. She drowned in that sorrow, head buried in her arms, weeping upon the lap of her would-be father-in-law. But even as his gnarled hand stroked her hair, Byron fought for a way to offset his share of the blame.
“He has no right to punish me. Reeve was the one who refused to be honest about what he wanted. He pretended to scorn what I had, what I built, but he wanted it.” His breathing grew labored as the hidden cache of bitter feelings worked their way out like a long-festering splinter. The price of their release ravaged him, rending heart and mind, pressure building instead of finding a safe avenue.
“He’s lied to me,” he went on in an aching mumble. “He’s going to destroy it all to spite me. Doesn’t
he understand? Doesn’t he know I did everything I could? I loved his mother. If I’d been other than who I was, I would have married her in a minute and conceived him proudly. It wasn’t because of who she was, it was me, the obligations I already had to this place, this county, to my wife. Still I would have given them up for her, for the pride of calling him my son. But then Jonah was born. What else could I do?”
Patrice had no answer to that lament. She understood their world too well and the strictures that went with it. He couldn’t have had Abigail Garrett any more than Patrice could have had Reeve. Love wasn’t enough to brave the separations between them, the vast ocean parting their social classes, the expectations of their peers, the fears and prejudices of a lifetime and the burden of future generations. They couldn’t break those unspoken tenets any more than her own brother could have surrendered his station for the love of a mulatto slave. It wasn’t done. It wasn’t condoned. More than just difficult, it was dangerous. Even if one were willing to risk the sacrifice, how could they wish such hardship on the other and still claim to love them.
That was what Reeve had tried to tell her, and she hadn’t wanted to listen.
Byron continued in a failing voice, each syllable ripped from him at great physical and mental cost. He bent forward, gripping his shirtfront, twisting it in his knotted fingers as if trying to wrench his heart free from its agonized containment.
“I offered him everything, Patrice. Everything he wanted. The Glade, my name and all that went with it. All I asked from him was that he give me what Jonah promised to give me. A son, an heir, through
you, Patrice. With the Sinclair line and the Glendower name, he could have had it all!”
Patrice’s mind went numb. She was a condition of his inheritance. A payment. Jonah hadn’t hesitated, because he loved her. But Reeve had never said those words to her.
Hurt and disappointment spread like a sickness, burning her trust, her hopes to ash in a fever-hot flash. Her head whirled as hundreds of images bombarded her anguished mind. Hungry kisses, fiery explorations, the taut, unbearable suspense and yearning afterward. Betrayal cut deeper than any truth he might have told her, severing her will to go on as surely as if he’d cut the vital flow to her heart.
Through the roar in her head, through the mists of foggy pain, a sound intruded. A wet gurgling sound coming from Byron Glendower. Stark reality jerked her out of her cocoon of injury.
The squire sprawled across his desktop. A sharp spasming of his arms knocked his papers, his prizes, to scatter upon the floor. He choked, clawing not at his throat but at his chest. Only when she saw his contorted features purpling did she recognize what was happening.
His heart.
“Oh, my God!” She surged forward, hands fluttering about his hunched body, uncertain of where to grasp, not knowing what to do. She leaned him back in his chair and tore loose his neckcloth and shirt collar, but those small things gave no relief. His rigid arm swung wildly, smashing the glass he’d been drinking from against the hardwood molding. From somewhere inside her, Patrice seized upon the necessary calm.