Tender Betrayal

by Rosanne Bittner

  “Your father!”

  Lee sighed, walking back to the liquor cabinet to pour one more shot of whiskey. “Oh, he loves me, all right. He’s just damn stubborn. He never wanted me to go to West Point, and when I finally went on to Yale, he figured I’d walk right into the family businesses like my brothers did. He’s tried all kinds of things in an effort to make me do what he thinks I should be doing. I think he asked Jordan to do what he could to keep me from getting business, so I’d give all this up and become a part of Jeffreys Manufacturing. I’ve never really been able to prove it; I just know it in my gut. My father can be a real bastard.” He slugged down another shot of whiskey. “But so can I.”

  Ben sighed, shaking his head. “If you were my son, I’d be proud as hell.”

  Lee smiled in appreciation. “Thanks. Too bad my father isn’t more like you.”

  Ben puffed on the cigar for a moment. “You shouldn’t hate your father, Lee. I’ve raised six kids of my own. I know there are times when a father just thinks he knows what’s best for his child. He loves the kid so much that he can’t see the forest for the trees; can’t see that by trying to force the kid to do what he thinks is best for him, he’s just making him unhappy and alienating him.”

  “Well, there comes a point when a father has to let go. You’ve probably learned that.”

  Ben nodded.

  “My father hasn’t,” Lee added. He sat back down behind his desk.

  “Don’t hate him, Lee. It will only hurt more when something happens to him.”

  Lee picked up an ink pen and twirled it in his fingers, staring at it but not really seeing it. He was remembering the little boy Edmund Jeffreys had led through all the offices of Jeffreys Manufacturing once, proudly showing his son what he would inherit one day. Lee could barely remember the actual manufacturing side of it. All he remembered was the looks on the faces of the workers, men and women alike, even some children. “I don’t hate him. I just don’t agree with how he makes his money. Trouble is, it’s that money that helped me open my own law firm, so I’m caught between when it comes to principles.”

  “Maybe you worry too much about principles.”

  Lee thought about Audra. “Yeah, maybe I do.” He met Ben’s eyes. “We’re pretty close now, Ben. Can I ask you something personal?”

  The man shrugged. “You’re the brilliant one as far as handling the law goes. But I suppose I do have an edge on you when it comes to life in general. After all, I’ve raised a family, gone through two wives, and have been around twenty years longer.”

  Lee grinned, and Ben caught the hint of sadness behind the smile. He knew Lee’s mother’s death had been very hard on the man, but he had always suspected there was something more eating at him that didn’t have anything to do with death or politics or his problem with Cy Jordan and his father.

  “Last summer, when I visited my mother in Connecticut, I met a young woman,” Lee told him.

  Ben’s eyebrows arched, and his round face lit up in a knowing smile. “Lord knows a woman can be a bigger problem than anything else a man faces,” he said with a low chuckle.

  Lee leaned back in his chair, a somewhat embarrassed smile on his face. “I suppose.” He folded his hands across his lap. “I fell in love with her, Ben, and I mean really deeply in love. She’s young, beautiful, talented, capable of loving with great passion. She’s also a stubborn, spoiled brat, yet she can be very giving and caring. She’s everything, all rolled into one small, perfectly shaped package with auburn hair and green eyes that cause a grown man to behave like a sixteen-year-old.”

  Ben chuckled again. “So? Why don’t you marry her and get her into your bed and out of your system?”

  Lee looked down at the desk. I’ve already had her in my bed. There was no sense in telling him. He didn’t want to risk anyone thinking less of Audra, and it was his own damn fault he’d let it go so far. “On the one hand, for very logical, practical reasons,” he answered. “Then again, I wonder if I’m an absolute fool.” He leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his desk. “She’s a first-class, spoiled, pampered, thoroughbred southern belle, Ben; the daughter of one of the biggest plantation owners in Louisiana.”

  Ben let out a light whistle. “Slaves and all?”

  “Slaves and all.”

  Ben reached out to tamp some ashes from his cigar into a large ashtray on the desk. “Everyone knows how you feel about slavery,” he said. “That’s one issue on which you do agree with your father. You’re even helping him in his race for Senator, aren’t you?”

  Lee rose. “That’s one area where I have set aside my hard feelings.” He walked back to the window. Several policemen were now involved in the row taking place in the street below. “Her name is Audra Brennan,” he continued. “She’s all I can think about, but we could never last. She’s promised to a wealthy southern gentleman who understands her way of life, and she’s where she belongs. She’d never be happy living here, and I’d never be happy living there. Brennan Manor is as much a part of her as the blood that runs in her veins. She won’t leave her precious father, whom she practically worships. Her mother died when she was seven, and her father raised her to believe that nothing was more important than preserving the plantation and their way of life. She’s actually been trained by a tutor on how to properly run a plantation household. She also has a brother who needs her. I met him when he came to Maple Shadows with her. Joey has a speech problem, and his father doesn’t treat him too kindly—disappointed in him, I guess. He’s a good kid, but a real innocent, good-hearted, the kind who could never properly take over something that big. Audra feels she has to live there so she can always care for Joey. She’s been like a mother to him.”

  He turned away from the window. “At any rate, by her marrying this Richard Potter, the man’s plantation will be combined with her father’s into the biggest cotton farm in the whole South, or so she tells me. She’s been too long influenced by her father to realize that those things aren’t all that’s important in the world. She has convinced herself that she can be happy marrying a man she doesn’t love and running the huge plantation that would be created by their marriage. She thinks her father’s happiness has to come first, and Joey’s. She’s very brave and giving in that respect, but I can’t stand the thought of her being unhappy in any way.”

  “Most of all you can’t stand the thought of some other man touching her,” Ben added. “Right?”

  Lee grinned sadly. “Right.”

  “And you’re both afraid that if you should marry each other, no matter where you settled, you would end up hating each other.”

  Lee shrugged. “It’s bound to happen. She won’t leave Brennan Manor, and I can’t really expect her to, not as long as Joey needs her, anyway. I sure as hell can’t live there. I have a feeling her father and I would mix together about as well as fire and oil, and the slavery issue would be the match that would cause the explosion. We both figured it was better to end it now, while we still had sweet memories, before we were left to remember only the hatred. Do you think we made the right decision?”

  Ben reached out to the ashtray again, this time to put out the cigar. He sat back in the chair and rubbed at his chin. “That’s something only you can know, Lee. Sometimes love can overcome a lot of differences, but knowing how you feel about slavery and states’ rights, seeing what is happening to this country, you’re probably right that it can’t work. Especially if she’s as thoroughly entrenched in that way of life as you say. Hell, a man like you could never live down there and go along with what you feel is flat-out treason.” He rose and walked over to the liquor cabinet. “Mind if I have one more shot?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Ben opened the whiskey bottle and poured a little more into his glass. “You know, Lee, this is all going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Look at the blood that was shed when that fanatic, John Brown, seized Harpers Ferry. Now he’s been tried and hanged, and the South is in a panic that Negroes everyw
here will start rebelling.” He swallowed the whiskey in one quick gulp and set the glass on the liquor cabinet. “Word is, southern slaveholders are clamping down even harder on their Negroes. And even though the North helped convict the man for attacking a Federal arsenal, I suspect a lot of people here secretly admired Brown’s goal of arming the Negroes and helping them form a country of their own. Don’t forget the note Brown left behind saying that ‘only through shedding blood will the country be rid of slavery.’ If this country goes to war, Lee, and you’re married to a southern woman, where in hell would that leave you?”

  Lee nodded. “I know. I told her all of that. She agreed. I just wish I could forget her.”

  Ben paced for a minute, his hands clasped behind his back as though he were preparing to give a closing statement to a jury. “Has she married this Richard Potter yet?”

  “I don’t think so. They aren’t supposed to marry until summer, after she has turned eighteen. I thought I’d hear from Joey. I’ve written him a couple of times, but got no reply. He promised to write. I don’t understand it.”

  Ben faced him. “When will Audra Brennan be eighteen?”

  “April twelfth, I think.”

  “You did pick a young thing, didn’t you?”

  Lee grinned, feeling the ache all over again. “She’s old enough.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Old enough to keep you awake at night.” Ben smiled and paced again. “Well, maybe you should go down to Louisiana, Lee, just to see for yourself if you really could never live there. After all, she’s had a taste of life here, but you’ve never given hers a try. You’re taking May and June off, aren’t you?”

  Lee leaned back and put his feet up on his desk. “I had planned on it. Figured I’d go to the Republican convention in Chicago and help get Abraham Lincoln on the ticket.”

  “Well, why don’t you go to Louisiana instead? Lincoln isn’t going to win or lose just by the fact that you’re there. Write this girl, or I should say, woman, a letter. Tell her to hold off on marrying this Richard Potter until you can come for a visit. Tell her you feel it’s only fair that you come and see Brennan Manor and have a talk with her father, that maybe something can be worked out.”

  Lee shook his head. “I don’t know. Why reopen old wounds that might just fester and get worse? It’s too much to ask of her. Apparently she has decided where she belongs and what she wants, or she would have written to me by now. Even Joey, it seems, hasn’t given me a lot of thought since he went back.”

  “And what about your side of it? Don’t you have the right to see her once more, see how she lives, make sure she’s making the right decision? After all, you do love each other. For all you know, she’s still pining away for you. Maybe her father has forbidden her to write; Joey, too. I’m sure the man isn’t happy about his children forming a friendship with a Yankee man who is a confirmed abolitionist. If they told him about you at all, he probably decided to nip it in the bud.” He stepped closer to the desk. “I’ve never known you to give up so easily, Lee Jeffreys. You won’t let your own father tell you what to do with your life, but will you let a man you don’t even know keep you from the woman you love? For God’s sake, man, love is so much more important than all this other stuff.”

  Lee leapt to his feet. “You’re no damn help at all. First you try to talk me out of this, and now you’re saying I should pursue it.”

  Ben grinned. “I’m only being a good attorney, my friend. I’m forcing you to weigh both sides and ask yourself which is more important. You of all people know that a lot of issues can be compromised. Maybe you could marry her and live there for a while. If things get hot, you can bring her north with you until they cool down again. As long as her father is alive, he can keep running the plantation. When he dies, you’re free to sell it if you wish. I’m told some of these slave owners actually get attached to certain of their Negroes. If this is the case, once you own the plantation, you’d have the right to free the slaves, which would ease your own conscience, and they could come north with you and work for you as paid servants. The girl would have her favorite Negroes with her and could still live a grand life. You can certainly provide her with the kind of living to which she is accustomed. That gets you out of the plantation and slavery problem, but lets you keep the woman you love. You could bring her brother north with you. Maybe by then the boy will be more able to get by on his own.”

  “I don’t know.” Lee walked back to the window. Now men were working at unlocking the wagons that had crashed into each other. “I might be busting right into a hornets’ nest down there. You make it all sound simple, but you know better, Ben. And what about my practice? I’ve managed to build Jeffreys, James, and Stillwell into one of the best firms in New York. I can’t just walk away from that.”

  “You’d be a success wherever you went. Stillwell and I would keep it going, hire the best. You could remain owner and pick it up again when you move back north. Is the practice more important to you than your love for Audra Brennan?”

  Lee faced him. “That isn’t a fair question, no more fair than asking her if Brennan Manor is more important to her. Neither of those things is the issue here. It’s the rest of it, our beliefs, our very way of life, the slavery issue, her father and brother. She won’t do anything that would mean hurting her father.”

  “Well, now you’re the jury. You have to decide.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Sometimes it helps just to talk about it. I appreciate your thinking enough of me to tell me. It won’t go any further than this room, unless, of course, you go to Louisiana and come back with a wife on your arm.” Ben walked to the door. “I’ll leave you with your thoughts.”

  “And no real answers,” Lee answered with a hint of sarcasm.

  “You know your own heart, Lee. All I’m saying is, you’re probably right in the decision you already made; but before this girl marries and you lose her forever, maybe you should go down there and make damn sure you both still feel the same way. Meet this Richard Potter and make sure he’s someone who will love her and be good to her. Maybe you’ll be better able to put it all behind you if you’re convinced that she will be happiest right where she is. Maybe you’d see her in a different light if you went to visit her in her own realm. That might take some of the heat out of the fire. Back in her own little world she might see you differently, too.”

  Lee ran a hand through his hair. “I never thought of it that way, but you could be right.”

  Ben grinned. “One way to find out,” he said. “You do what you think is best. And good luck to you.” He gave Lee a pat on the shoulder and left.

  Lee walked over and poured himself another drink, then studied the glass for a moment. Yes, by God, he should see her once more!

  He set the glass down without drinking the whiskey and walked to his desk. He dipped his pen into a bottle of ink and started to write.

  My darling Audra, he began, I have been giving a lot of thought to our situation, and I am wondering if you would be opposed to my visiting Brennan Manor next June. He had to be careful how he worded the letter. He wouldn’t want her father or Richard Potter to know he had slept with her. This had to be a very formal, honorable letter. He crossed out “My darling” and inserted “Dear.” Once he had it just right, he would redo it on clean stationery and send it off. It should reach her well before any wedding took place.

  11

  April 1860

  Audra walked through the gardens, trying to sort out her feelings. It frightened her to realize how ill her father had become. The doctor who had come from Baton Rouge had said it was his heart. He’ll be fine perhaps for many years yet, he had told them. He simply has to get a lot of rest and never overexert himself or get too upset.

  Not get too upset. That was what bothered her. It upset him that he could die before she married Richard Potter. The wedding was not supposed to take place until August, but her father dearly wanted to see it, to give her away, and to have the security of knowing eve
rything was in order before his death.

  The thought of Brennan Manor without Joseph Brennan was almost incomprehensible to her. Her father was always so strong and feisty, she had supposed he would live to be a hundred years old. But the still-vivid memory of how quickly Anna Jeffreys had died frightened her. The same thing could happen with her father. She had been putting off thoughts of the marriage, but now she had to face it. She wore a splendid diamond-and-sapphire ring on her finger that was a token of her promise to marry Richard. He had accompanied her family on a trip to Baton Rouge to visit Aunt Janine and Uncle John, and there her aunt and uncle had held a magnificent party to announce the engagement.

  Richard was every bit the gentleman. In all his visits to court her, their rides together, their private talks on the veranda and in these very gardens, he had been kind to her. He had not touched her in any way, had not even tried to kiss her. Sometimes she wished that he would try, so that she could tell if she would even like him kissing her. She shivered at the realization that if she married him, he would want to make love to her as Lee had done. Why did that idea make her uncomfortable? After all, Richard most certainly did seem to love her, and he was a handsome man, for forty-three years old. He was the most eligible bachelor in southern Louisiana. Eleanor had told her that, not without a strong hint of jealousy, adding she was the luckiest woman in Louisiana. You must tell me about your wedding night, she had said then with a snicker. If you want me to tell you what to expect, just ask. I know everything there is to know.