[Measure of Devotion 01.0 - 03.0] Box Set

by Caethes Faron

  Anger wasn’t going to help him. If Kale hadn’t been sold, he wouldn’t have ended up as Jason’s. The horror of returning to life before Jason had freed him was unspeakable. It had all been for the best for him, and now he needed to make it the same for his family. Where had they gone? Where had his childhood disappeared to? It hadn’t been ideal, but it was the only life he had. Kale lay down in the grass and closed his eyes, allowing himself to mourn his childhood, the childhood that had ended too soon, and the childhood that had never been.

  Kale had no idea how much time passed. Eventually, he opened his eyes and stood. A part of him wanted to stay there forever, in the last place he had been with his family. That life was gone. He no longer had a place there. He never really had.

  Back at the car, he was careful not to look behind him. The roar of the engine brought him back to his life, the nearly perfect life with Jason. The farther from the house he drove, the more he grounded himself in reality and left nostalgia behind. Yes, there were good memories there filled with his mother and brother, with boisterous songs and late, star-gazing nights telling tall tales. But that was also where he had received his first beating, where he had learned that he and the family he loved so much were less human than free people. That was where he had learned that, for a slave, there was no such thing as family, that a slave could be sold away from everything he knew and loved, and no one even cared. That place was where he had learned a slave shouldn’t love. They had been hard lessons to unlearn, and they had almost prevented him from allowing Jason to save him. Kale didn’t ever want to see that place again.

  A growling in his stomach reminded him that it had been a while since his last meal. He would need to stop somewhere to eat. He passed a small restaurant and felt queasy. For some inexplicable reason, he felt shame. The thought of walking into a pub or restaurant and eating among men and women who had been free all their lives was unbearable. He could eat when he got back to the ranch.

  Once out of the city, Kale let his foot loose and accelerated. The wind whipped through his hair. He needed to find his family, and in order to do that, he needed to get home to Jason.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lunch had been a good idea. Jason’s father had taken his meal elsewhere, and Jason hadn’t even had to see him. Refreshed, he headed back to his mother’s nook to read her journal. It was either that or sit at one of the front windows, worried about Kale and watching for his return. It would have been one shade under miraculous for him to be back already, so there was no reason to worry. Jason couldn’t help it, though. He hated that Kale was where Jason couldn’t protect him or at least offer support, and Kale had been deluding himself when he’d said he didn’t need it.

  No matter. There was nothing he could do until Kale returned. Until then, it was best to keep busy. Jason sat at the delicate, feminine desk and withdrew the journal. The leather binding was the most masculine thing in the room. Logic dictated he start at the beginning, but he fanned the pages, looking for the place where her handwriting stopped. It was a little past the halfway mark.

  The last date was two days before she’d died. Was there any hint that she knew what was coming? This was the last thing she had written. It was the closest he had been to her life since he had been shooed from her bedroom when the labor pains had grown too much. At the time, he’d had no idea he would never see his mother alive again. He had seen her at the viewing, looking asleep in her coffin, surrounded by flowers. He hadn’t understood why she didn’t get up and join the family. Moms didn’t die; it just didn’t happen. None of it had made sense. All these years later, he didn’t know if it made any more sense now than it had then. He had never even seen the baby’s body. He didn’t even remember a coffin. It was as if Baby Wadsworth had never existed. Jason had never even known the gender.

  Jason’s eyes focused on the page. The handwriting was familiar, the phrases, her manner, but something was missing. Jason couldn’t quite picture her, remember her voice. The familiar sting of tears threatened his eyes, and he shoved them away. There had been too much crying already. He tried to remember the day this was written. His mother described him running about, playing with a sailboat, pleading with her to come to the pond and watch him sail it. She had been too tired but had let him sail it in the bathtub while she looked on. Jason thought he remembered it but feared it could just as easily have been an invented memory.

  Further on, the entry turned to her thoughts and feelings. She complained about the discomfort and fatigue of pregnancy, anxious for it to be over. There was nervous excitement over the coming birth, plans of what she would do with her new baby. He saw a fear that she seemed hesitant to explore, telling herself it was just the usual apprehension over childbirth. Then it just stopped. The next day, she would have been in labor and unable to write. The day after that, she was dead.

  Jason flipped to the front of the journal. The first entry was a couple of months into her pregnancy. He wanted more. He wanted his mother before the pregnancy, wanted her mundane, everyday writings. There had to be more of these little journals somewhere. As a child, he had seen her writing in them. Jason closed the book and brushed the cover with his hand, the cool leather soft beneath his skin. It was likely that the additional journals would be somewhere in this room. There was nothing anywhere else in the house that even hinted a woman had once lived there.

  Jason noticed a tall cupboard in the wall to the right of the writing desk. His heart quickened as he strode to it. When opened, it revealed knickknacks in a general storage space for items that didn’t belong anywhere else. Jason sighed. There was nowhere else in the room they could be. He had already gone through every drawer in the desk. None of them were big enough to house a lifetime of journals.

  After Lena’s death, his father had shut up every reminder of her. It was one of the many things Jason hated him for. Jason had struggled to keep her alive while Robert tried to pretend she never existed. There was a chance his father had destroyed the journals. It would explain why Jason had never seen them. The only room in the house Jason didn’t enter was his father’s bedroom, and it wasn’t likely he kept them there when he had eschewed all other remnants of her life. The thought of all those pages of writing lost raised Jason’s heart rate. He stood before the window, trying to calm himself. He was being ridiculous. The most likely place for the journals to be stored would be the attic. It was easier to think the worst of his father than to think of having to trudge through the crates in storage. It could take days. Jason kicked the window seat in frustration and turned to leave.

  Something wasn’t right. He felt a discrepancy. The sound. When his foot hit the window seat, it didn’t sound as it should. Appraising the seat, he realized that it wasn’t built into the home; it was a separate piece of cedar furniture fitted into the bay window. He’d never really thought about it before. Sweeping the cushion to the floor, Jason saw what he was looking for: hinges. The metal squealed in protest as he lifted the lid. The smell of the cedar wafted out, and inside, in neat stacks, were dozens of little journals.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Jason?” Kale’s muffled voice floated to Jason from the sitting room on the other side of the sewing room door. He had been so absorbed in his task that he hadn’t even heard the car.

  “I’m in here, Kale.” Jason jumped up from the floor, knocking over a stack of journals from the circle around him where he’d placed them as he removed them from the chest, trying to arrange them in chronological order.

  The door swung open before Jason could reach it. He stopped short when he saw Kale was alone. If Kale had been successful, he would have his mother and brother with him. There was no way he would leave them in the care of Robert’s slaves, people he barely knew.

  “What have you been doing?” Kale eyed the books strewn across the floor.

  “Some reading.” Kale arched his eyebrows and gave him a dry stare. “They’re my mother’s journals. I was just organizing them.”

  “Qu
ite the system you have.”

  “Let me put them away, and we’ll talk.” Kale nodded, and Jason began to stack them back in the chest, this time in the order he wanted to read them. He kept the earliest journal to take to his room.

  In their bedroom, Jason set the book down on his bedside table then wrapped his arms around Kale. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  “They weren’t there.”

  “I gathered that. Did Mr. Monroe tell you where they are?”

  “No. No one’s there. The entire place was abandoned. It looked like no one had been there for years.”

  Jason pulled Kale down to sit on the bed with him. “That must have been difficult. Are you all right?”

  Kale nodded.

  “Really?” Jason could see Kale working to hold himself together. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to push Kale to the breaking point or let him be. Letting Kale keep everything to himself, the way he was wont to do, could lead to problems. After everything they had been through together, Jason had promised himself he would never let Kale get lost in his own darkness again.

  “No. I should have let you come.”

  Jason massaged Kale’s shoulder with one hand while he held Kale’s hand with the other. “I understand your reasons for not wanting me to come, and I admire them. I’m still here for you. This isn’t the end. We’ll find them.”

  “Thanks, Jason. I had hoped this would be easier. How was your day? Did you spend much time with your father?”

  Jason’s hand dropped to the bed. “No. I spent all day in my mother’s sewing room. I feel her so strongly there. It was nice to be close to her again.” Kale’s face tightened as if he was trying to keep pain from showing. “But we don’t need to talk about it. Whatever you need tonight, I’m here.”

  “I need a drink.”

  “All right. Let’s go to a bar in town. We’ll get a drink and ask around, see if anyone knows what happened to the Monroes.”

  * * *

  Jason had never stepped foot in Carson’s bar in his life. He’d made a point of avoiding it when he lived in Malar. At the time, he’d thought it below him. Now bars were all too familiar. For nearly three years between the time he’d sold Kale and the time he was reunited with him, Jason had drowned in bars. The dark lighting, stale stench, and littered floors had provided the perfect environment in which to let the whiskey do its work. Fighting off the power alcohol held over him had been one of the most difficult battles of his life. He had only taken up drinking again when he and Kale had achieved security in their lives and relationship, with nothing left to drown. Since moving to Naiara, he and Kale often spent evenings downing a pint with friends.

  The temperature inside was noticeably higher than outside. The stench of sweat and alcohol was as thick as the bodies crammed into the small building. Kale went to the bar to place their order while Jason tried to find a place to sit. A few minutes later, Kale came over with a whiskey for himself and a beer for Jason. There wasn’t an empty seat in the place, so they stood against the wall with their drinks.

  “I asked the bartender if he knew of the Monroes. Said he hadn’t heard of them.”

  “There’s plenty more people to talk to tonight. Someone must know something. It seemed when I lived here that everyone knew everyone else’s business.”

  “Yeah, but they did live on the other side of the county. I’m not sure anyone here will know them.”

  “It’s better than sitting in the house. Don’t worry, Kale. Even if we don’t find anything tonight, we can still have a decent time, get our minds off things.”

  The beer was refreshing and a nice distraction from the heat. Kale quietly sipped his whiskey. Jason knew Kale wouldn’t get drunk. He never did. That was Jason’s specialty, which was why he typically avoided hard liquor and stuck with beer. He’d developed quite a taste for it. Most wealthy people were wine connoisseurs, but not Jason. The complexities of beer, such a common drink, intrigued him. The beer Kale had bought him was a smooth, light wheat beer. He thought he detected some honey and maybe a dash of apple. If they were in the country much longer, perhaps he could visit some breweries. It would be a nice distraction if Kale decided to go off by himself again.

  “You fellas want a seat?” Jason turned toward the deep voice on his right. A neatly dressed man sat by himself at a table for four.

  “Thank you.” Jason stretched his hand across the table as he and Kale sat. “My name’s Jason, and this is Kale.”

  “George. Nice to meet you.” The man’s grip was firm without being crushing. “I own the leather shop down the street. You both new in town?” George shook Kale’s hand.

  “No, just visiting. Looking for someone, actually.”

  “Oh?” There was a note of suspicion in the lilt of George’s voice.

  “Nothing bad. I’m wondering where I can find Jedediah Monroe. I went out to his place today, and it was deserted. There were some slaves he had when I was younger, and I was hoping I could buy them off him.” Jason was horrible at lying to Kale, but with anyone else, he had no problem saying what was needed to get what he wanted.

  “Seems a lot of trouble to go to for some slaves.”

  Jason smiled. “You caught me. It’s not really about some slaves. It’s actually about one. There was a girl who used to serve there. Now that I have some money, I wanted to make some of my boyhood dreams come true, if you know what I mean.” Jason’s stomach roiled at the insinuation, but he didn’t let it show on his face.

  George laughed. “Ah, I see.” Disgusting that looking for a slave to buy for sex was understandable here. Of course, Jason hadn’t had qualms about it either, years ago. “Yeah, I’ve heard of the Monroes. Didn’t really know them personally, but I buy hides out in that area and hear plenty. From what I understand, they fell on some hard times. Ended up selling most of their slaves and carted the rest out to their family’s place. Last I heard, they were living in a cousin’s guest house.”

  “Why not sell the farm? Why abandon it and let it fall into disrepair?”

  “That land has been in the Monroe family for more than two hundred years. Maybe they don’t want someone else owning it. Maybe they’re hoping to return someday. Who knows?”

  “Well, thanks for the information. Any idea where this cousin lives?”

  “Not around here. I don’t think they’re in Malar County. I seem to remember hearing something about them moving northeast of here, but I’m not sure.”

  Jason raised his beer to George. “Thanks again.”

  “My pleasure. Does your friend ever talk?” George tilted his head toward Kale.

  Normally, Kale was the one who could charm anyone into anything, but he didn’t look predisposed to speak. Jason couldn’t blame him. “Bad day.”

  “Thank you for your help.” Kale looked George directly in the eye. “I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome.” George focused back on Jason. “So, you say you grew up here. Who’s your family?”

  Jason shifted in his seat. It would be rude not to answer, especially after George had been so helpful. “I’m a Wadsworth.”

  George’s face lit up. “You’re Robert’s boy? Well, damn, I’ll be. His cattle have some of the best hides in the country. You in the cattle business too?”

  “No. My business is steel.”

  George nodded. “That’s right, I had heard you married into the Arlington steel empire. Seems I remember something else about you moving to Naiara.” George looked from Kale, to Jason, and then back to Kale. “Wait a minute. Kale, you said your name was?”

  Jason could sense as much as see Kale tense beside him.

  Kale gave a curt nod, and George’s eyes went wide.

  George eyed Jason. “That’s what it was. Rumor had it you fell in with your personal slave and took him across the border to free him.”

  “Yes. Is that a problem?” Jason’s voice was cool. He dared George to take issue with them.

  George shook his head. “No
, no problem. Never heard something so bizarre in my life. I don’t like meddling in other people’s business though. As long as you mean me no harm, we got no problem.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Jason let warmth seep back into his tone.

  “I suppose you’re not really looking for a—”

  “Well, well, looky who’s here, boys: my old slave, Kale.” Jason whipped his head around to see Carter Cartwright standing behind him with a couple of his friends. Kale froze, keeping his eyes lowered to his drink. He was so still that Jason wondered if he was even breathing.

  “I don’t believe you have business with us, Carter.”

  “Oh, I believe a slave impersonating a free man is everyone’s business, seeing as it’s illegal.”

  Kale remained disturbingly still. This had been his worst fear about returning to Arine. Jason had promised himself and Kale there wouldn’t be any problems. It was time to live up to his word. “I don’t see any slaves here, Carter. You should get your facts straight before you throw around accusations.”

  “You know damn well what I’m talking about, Jason. That there is Kale, the slave your father bought from mine for you. Just ’cause you took him across the border doesn’t mean he’s free when he comes back here.” Carter took a menacing step forward. He glowered down at Jason, fists clenched, itching for a fight.

  Jason deliberately stood, not giving up a centimeter of space, even though it meant being nearly nose to nose with Carter. It took immense willpower to stand his ground when Carter’s foul breath assaulted his nostrils. Carter easily had fifty pounds on him plus a lifetime of experience in barroom brawling.