The two men weathered the words of praise swirling around them but added nothing to either encourage or prolong the commentary. They assessed one another in silence, their faces impassive, carved out of stone. And though there had never been a time when they had actually faced each other as enemies in battle, they faced one another now as adversaries, wary and guarded.
Tarrington was the first to relent, his eyes losing none of their intensity, however, as they fastened once again on Amanda. “The Judge is not usually given to understatement, but I find in this instance, when he said you and your sister were twins and difficult to tell apart, he was short by a country mile. The resemblance is nothing less than extraordinary, Miss Courtland. Startling, in fact.”
“Then I can only imagine you must startle easily, Mr. Tarrington. And the name is Jackson. Mrs. Caleb Jackson.”
“Forgive me for the presumption,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist. While he was in the act of straightening and before his gaze had managed to rise above the elegantly smooth arch of her throat, he caught sight of a second small, pale face peeping out from behind the folds of Amanda’s skirt.
The change that came over his face was immediate. The lines across his brow disappeared, the deep creases at the corners of his mouth were given greater substance in a smile that expressed pure pleasure.
“Well, now … hello there. And who might you be?”
Verity burrowed back into the crush of silk like a mouse scurrying back into its hidey-hole.
“You will have to excuse my daughter,” Amanda said, lowering her hand by her side as if to offer further shielding. “Verity is not comfortable around strangers, especially tall, ominous-looking men.”
“Am I ominous-looking?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows in mild surprise. “My nieces and nephews all tend to think I look more like a large stuffed pony.”
“You have no children of your own, Mr. Tarrington?”
He smiled again. “I am not married. Nor, truth be told, do I have any burning wish to be."
"Indeed? How odd then, that you purchased one of the largest plantations in Mississippi."
"Not odd at all, Mrs. Jackson. The Glen sits on a magnificent tract of fertile land and I plan to restore it to a working farm."
"Ahh. A land speculator. The state is full of them."
Judge Moore harrumphed loudly into his hand and glared under his brows at Amanda. “A mite prickly today, are we?”
She had the grace to blush a little at the reprimand, though she offered no apology. The Yankee continued to stare at her, a thoughtful new gleam in the slate-gray eyes.
To break the awkward silence, Dianna touched Ryan's forearm again. "Emma was very happy with the sale. In fact, she came to Father a few weeks ago to ask his advice. She said the plantation was simply too much to handle on her own, and with no one left to inherit, she said she wanted to move back home to England. Michael happened to be passing through Natchez on business and … well … Father took him to look at the Glen. He met with Emma and arranged terms the same day.”
“At a fair and honest price, I can assure you,” Tarrington added. “Probably a damn sight too fair in today’s market.”
“But nowhere near its real value, I warrant,” Amanda muttered under her breath.
This time he stared at her openly and far too intimately for such a casual acquaintance. His eyes probed hers with a lazy menace that seemed to be warning her against pressing him too far. Indeed, it almost seemed as though he had given her a similar warning once before that she had ignored.
“Sir,” she demanded point blank. “Are you suffering under the impression we have met somewhere before? You keep staring at me as if you expect me to wink back and acknowledge some private joke we should be sharing.”
The bluntness of her query caught him off guard. "Forgive me, Mrs Jackson, I was unaware I was making you uncomfortable."
She dismissed his apology with a shrug. "At any rate, the only joke I sense here is the one you have perhaps played on yourself. Briar Glen is indeed one of the largest and grandest plantations in Adams County—forty thousand acres, if I am not mistaken—of good, rich land that produced nearly half the cotton in the region before the war. But the Porterfields also owned over a thousand slaves, a once-necessary evil in our part of the world, Mr. Tarrington, and one I am sure you abhor with as much zeal as the rest of your countrymen. It remains, nonetheless, the only practical way to plant, till, and harvest vast amounts of cotton without bankrupting yourself ten times over.”
“Oh”—Dianna gasped—“but Michael doesn’t plan to grow cotton, he—”
“He plans to try to live here as peacefully and harmoniously as he possibly can,” Tarrington interrupted. “Although it doesn’t look as if I am off to a good start.”
“Nonsense, m’boy,” the Judge said, slapping him on the shoulder. “No one’s drawn a gun and shot you yet. I call that downright sociable.”
“At the risk of sounding unsociable,” Amanda said sardonically, “you will have to excuse me now. I would like to take Verity out of the hot sun before she is melted permanently to my leg.”
Amanda reached down for the child’s hand and started to lead her away, aware of Dianna’s blurted excuses and her hasty footsteps following up the slope of the lawn.
“Amanda! Amanda, please … don’t be angry with me. Oh … I just knew it would turn out all wrong. I thought, I hoped if Michael came with us today and if Ryan got a chance to meet him and talk to him, he would realize what a fine, sweet man he really is. I know how you all feel about Yankees—I feel the same way too! But Michael isn’t like the rest of them. He’s my cousin, for pity’s sake; I’ve known him all my life and I can’t be rude to him. I just can’t. No matter what people think or what they say about Father and me entertaining a Yankee in our house. And don’t try to tell me they aren’t gossiping and wagging their nasty old tongues. I’ve seen the way they stare and the way they lift their hands and talk about us when we pass. I don’t care, I tell you. I don’t. Not if they’re so petty and cruel and awful that they could have known us all their lives and still treat us this way. But I do care what you think. And what Ryan thinks. Oh, God … did you see the way he was glaring at me! Do you think he hates me now? Do you think he truly hates me?”
“Dianna—” Amanda stopped walking and stopped trying to follow the breathless rush of questions and conclusions. “What on earth are you going on about? No one hates you. No one is whispering about you. We all have to deal with Yankees every single day because they aren’t simply going to go away even if we vow to ignore them the rest of our lives. As for the way Ryan was looking at you—it should have made you jump for joy. Or don’t you recognize a jealous man when you see one?”
“Jealous?” Dianna gasped. “Ryan was jealous? Of whom?”
Her bewilderment was so innocent, so completely without pretense, Amanda had to laugh. “Who do you think, goose? Who has been seen squiring you all around town for the past few weeks and who has set the gossips’ tongues wagging so furiously?”
Dianna’s mouth dropped open. “Michael? He’s jealous of Michael?”
Amanda shook her head in a gesture of hopelessness and started walking again. Dianna was delayed for the length of two pounding heartbeats before she scrambled after her, her expression suspended somewhere between wonder and disbelief.
“But … Michael is my cousin,” she said lamely.
“Ryan didn’t know that. And anyway, cousins marry cousins all the time; he probably would have thrown bigger fits if he had.”
The huge turquoise eyes grew even rounder. “Ryan has been throwing fits?”
“Great foaming ones,” Amanda nodded. “He’s been quite unpleasant to be around for the past month or so.”
“Jealous,” Dianna murmured again, obviously experiencing a resurgence of hope. Her complexion took on the hue of a dusky rose and her hand trembled where it touched Amanda’s arm. “Do you honestly, truly, sincerely think so? Oh, Amanda �
�� I love him so much it hurts. If I only knew for sure he felt the same way—”
“He does. He is simply too proud and too pig-headed to do anything about it.”
“He never comes to call,” Dianna lamented. “I’m lucky if I see him once a month by accident, and even then I feel as brazen as a hussy when I run up and corner him on the street. Short of my asking him outright if he wants to marry me or not, I don’t know what more I can do.”
“You can tell him how you feel. You can make him understand how much you love him, regardless of what he does or doesn’t have in the bank. And if you don’t do it soon, he is noble enough and pig-headed enough to offer to read the banns for you and your Mr. Tarrington.”
“Michael? Good heavens, he’s the last man on earth I would expect to see standing willingly in front of an altar. His parents and sisters have been throwing debutantes at him since he was eighteen, and he’s either frightened them away or left town himself, taking to the seas for months on end until he thought it was safe to return again. As much as I adore him, I could never contemplate living with him. He is very set in his opinions and his ways, and I daresay a wife would be regarded as a nuisance.”
Amanda refrained from reminding Dianna she had only just finished praising him as being sweet and fine and honest. “Whatever you do, don’t tell Ryan any of that or you’ll be an old maid before he comes to his senses.”
While Dianna absorbed this last warning, they wandered close to the guests crowding around the pavilion. Verity broke away and tumbled into the outstretched arms of her kindly, crinkly old Auntie Rose. She came running back a moment later, her fist clamped around an enormous stick of cinnamon candy that had been brought specially for her. Amanda and Dianna both had glasses of punch thrust into their hands and were cautioned by way of broad winks that there was more in the glasses than apple cider and chokeberry juice. It was strong and warming, a welcome diversion for the two women until they thought it was safe enough to steal respective glances back in the direction of the magnolia tree.
To Amanda’s consternation, it wasn’t safe at all, for the Yankee’s piercing gray eyes were waiting for her. A stray beam of sunlight caught the white, wolfish smile as it spread slowly beneath his moustache, and he had the further audacity, the insufferable arrogance, to acknowledge her interest with a small tilt of his head.
“He is by far the handsomest man here, isn’t he?” Dianna commented on a sigh.
“If you like pirates with great hairy moustaches who look at you like they’re undressing you without your permission … I suppose some might think so.”
“I was talking about Ryan.” Dianna giggled. “But yes, Michael does look like a pirate. And he most certainly does seem interested in you.”
“Me?” Amanda looked aghast at her friend. “Don’t even say such a thing as a joke. Ryan would rupture something, then murder us both for good measure.”
She changed the subject quickly after that, but she could still feel the Yankee’s gaze on the back of her neck, and while she dared not risk another glance to confirm it, she suspected his smile had turned into quiet, mocking laughter.
CHAPTER NINE
“Mrs. Jackson.”
Amanda whirled around, startled by the sound of a voice coming out of the shadows.
She had spent the better half of the afternoon and evening overseeing the one hundred and one things that should have gone smoothly but naturally didn’t. One whole table burdened under platters of sweet pastries and freshly churned ice cream had collapsed, trapping two children and a dog beneath. The children had been dug out with no ill effects. The dog, however, had spewed a mélange of strawberry preserves and canned peaches all over the hems of nearby guests.
William Courtland, fortified by hefty quantities of spirits, had accepted a wager from his red-nosed compatriots (who by then included Judge Moore among their number) and, with stop watches ticking, had raced his wheelchair along the veranda and literally scooped Miss Pauline Brickley off her feet and carried her screeching to the opposite end of the porch. Sarah had required her smelling salts. Amanda had been stern, William sheepish, and Miss Brickley amazingly forgiving. It had, after all, alerted a large portion of the male attendees to the shapeliness of her calves and ankles.
Dusk had crept over the lawns and shrouded the house in a soft haze of pink and purple shadows. The strings of paper lanterns were lit and most of the activities moved inside to the room that had been cleared for dancing. Wine and champagne flowed. And for a while, caught up in the cocoon of bright lights, laughter, flowing gowns, it was almost easy to forget a war had happened. There were no empty rooms to go home to, no scarred piles of smoke-charred rubble, no deserted slave quarters, no barren, empty cupboards.
Amanda stood in the night air, swaying slightly to the rhythm of the music that flowed out through the open French doors. The veranda wrapped around three sides of the house, and she had deliberately sought out the quietest, darkest corner. Honeysuckle and roses grew in fragrant abundance in the gardens beside her, and if she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could still detect the lingering aroma of the cooking fires, the pungent-sweet smell of cigar smoke …
Cigar smoke?
Her eyes popped open a fraction of a second before she heard her name.
“Forgive me, I did not mean to frighten you.” The glow of ash at the tip of his cigar flared briefly as Michael Tarrington flicked the stub over the railing. He stood with his back against the wall, one foot propped on the lip of a stone urn, a hand tucked casually in his jacket pocket. His face was entirely in shadow, only the wink of the emerald tie pin reflected any light from the nearby open doors.
“I have been hoping for an opportunity to speak to you alone,” he added. “I dislike loose ends … or unfinished conversations. If I offended you in any way earlier today, believe me it was not intentional.”
Amanda curled her lower lip between her teeth and bit down gently. “No. It is I who should apologize. I dislike rudeness, Mr. Tarrington, and I was very rude to you this afternoon. Dianna and the Judge are good friends, and it was unfair of me to place them in such an awkward position.”
Several moments lapsed while Amanda glanced longingly at the open doors and the boisterous crowds inside. The solitude she had welcomed not long ago was suddenly uncomfortable—and growing more so by the moment.
“Your brother … I gather he lived through some bad experiences in the war.”
It was a statement, not a question, and Amanda did not feel obliged to answer, or to elaborate upon. Not to someone who had spent the war sailing up and down the river, snug behind the armored protection of an ironclad.
“Johnson’s Island, wasn’t it? In Ohio?”
Amanda bristled under his persistence. “He was taken from the Army hospital at Spotsylvania, if you must know, and spent the next fourteen months enjoying the hell of your Yankee hospitality. If you are expecting an apology from him, I would suggest you might see flowers growing on the moon first.”
“Both sides of the dispute had their hells, Mrs. Jackson. The Confederate prison in Florida was, as I understand it, known for its rate of death by starvation.”
“Our army could hardly be expected to feed prisoners beefsteak when they barely had a slice of bread themselves. And what little we had was commandeered by your own armies—or dumped in the river to teach us all a lesson in humility.”
“Yes,” he said, pushing away from the wall and emerging from the gloom. “I can see by the festivities today just how humble you have all become.”
A surge of heat flushed through her veins and Amanda started toward the doors. She had to pass close by him, and as she did, his hand came out—first to block her way, then to wrap firmly around the cool white flesh of her upper arm. She was shocked by the unexpected contact, more so by the boldness that prompted it, and she was forced to stand quiet, listening to the faint rustle of her skirt and petticoats settling around her ankles.
“I’m sorry,” he sa
id. “I didn’t mean to sound so flippant.”
“Yes, you did. And if it will amuse you any more to know, half the people here are just as mortified by my sister’s excesses, but they will undoubtedly recover enough to stuff whatever they can in their pockets and reticules when they leave. Do you like oranges, Mr. Tarrington?”
“Oranges?”
“Yes. You probably ate them every day when you were growing up; I know we did. My daughter tasted an orange for the first time not more than six months ago. She took a whole week to eat it, shred by shred, then saved the peels in a jar so she could take them out now and then and remember what it smelled like. Don’t tell me about hell, Mr. Tarrington. We have all been there.”
He was standing so close, his vision was filled with the smooth, bare expanse of her shoulders. Her hair, curled artfully tight in the morning, had relaxed into loose, soft spirals that surrounded her face in a cloud of errant wisps and trailed halfway down her back.
She drew a particularly deep breath, alerting him to the fact that she was aware of his scrutiny and had endured more than enough of it. “Please remove your hand from my arm, sir.”
He did, but not until he skimmed his fingers from her shoulder to her elbow and felt the tremors his intimacy provoked.
“Apologizing to you could become a habit,” he murmured. “One I’m not sure I’m going to like.”
“Habits require repetition to form,” she said, clipping her words. “I doubt very much you have to worry about any part of this day or evening ever repeating itself again. Now, if you will excuse me—”
She was going to bolt again, and again his hand reached out, stopping just short of touching her.
“You had something else to say, Mr. Tarrington?” she demanded impatiently.
“Actually … I thought I said it all the other night.”
She raised only her eyes to the face that loomed above her. “The other night?”
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