by Rosalyn West
She’d aged. That surprised him. His memories were so sure, so strong; that picture of her clinging with a prideful disdain to Jonah’s arm as he rode off to join the Federal army. She’d been furious with him, hadn’t even told him good-bye. There were so many pleasant slices of the past he could have held to, but that was the moment he remembered right down to the detailing on her frothy blue day dress. Maybe because he feared he would never see her again.
Or that the next time he did, she’d be another man’s wife.
He’d been wrong on both counts.
He’d seen her again at Jonah’s burial.
She’d slapped him and vowed to hate him until the day she died. He believed her. But that didn’t stop him from dreaming about her.
Patrice Sinclair was no flashy beauty. Her finest qualities didn’t dazzle or bewitch. Hers was a cool loveliness, classic lines, sleek, refined; a thoroughbred, not a show pony. He’d probably been in love with her ever since the day she’d sassed him when he told her she couldn’t ride a frisky colt. Then she’d gone ahead and proved she could. She’d ripped her pretty party dress and caused her family no end of embarrassment, but as her brother dragged her away, she’d looked back over her shoulder to give him one last superior smile. I told you I could! And his heart was gone.
But thoroughbreds didn’t mix with ordinary stock. Trust Patrice to go against that grain.
For all her sophisticated ways, Patrice had a temperament as fiery as her unmanageable hair. She was a rebel. No brush or net could control her mane of auburn curls, and no rules of etiquette or tradition could tame her independent spirit. He figured she kept company with him just to defy the tenets of society that said she shouldn’t. He’d tried not to let that matter to him. He tried not to cling so desperately to the memory of her whispering close to his ear in adolescent fervor, “I will love you until the day I die.”
She’d changed. He no longer saw the gleefully defiant child. Before him stood a symbol of the South; battle-scarred, weary, worn, and resentful. Instead of silks, she wore a gown of plain calico. Without hoops, its drape accentuated the lean line of her legs. Milk-soft skin that never felt the harsh effects of the sun was now tanned and showing creases at the corners of her eyes, one for every hardship she’d endured. Where before he’d seen spunk, now he sensed a certain toughness. It made her all the more appealing to his hungry eyes.
“Reeve …”
“Hello, Patrice.”
Spoken with the neutrality of near strangers. They were anything but.
“You came back.” Firmness conquered the tremulous disbelief of moments before.
“I told you I would.”
Reeve stood, and he swore the way her stare swept over him from uncovered head to scuffed toes burnt with the same brushfire longing that streaked through his veins.
Then the heat was gone.
Her voice held frostbite in every word. “You’re a fool if you thought you’d find a welcome here.”
He saw it then, a bitterness as hard as the diamond set in Jonah’s betrothal ring. She still wore it on one clenched hand, a symbol of all that stood between them.
He’d seen hurt in her eyes when he’d ridden away the first time, hate upon the second. Some small wounds healed and were quickly forgotten. Others filled with ugly poison. Patrice’s had festered for quite some time.
And obviously, her feelings hadn’t changed.
Without another word, she turned to stride away in a majestic indifference, not bothering to observe how it cut him to the bone.
After a long minute passed, Reeve bent to pick up the scatter of flowers she’d dropped in her dismay. They weren’t the fragile hybrid roses once nurtured in the Sinclair gardens. But then, neither was Patrice. Not anymore. She’d brought an armful of wildflowers, the kind that grew plentifully without rhyme or reason across the countryside. Hardy, colorful blossoms that could weather just about anything and still thrive. Like the Patrice who walked away from him without a backward glance.
Carefully, he arranged the bouquet upon the gently mounded soil of his Kentucky homeland, then reached back for the reins to his mount. It was time to face the moment he’d dreaded for four years.
Time to go up to the main house to see what kind of welcome awaited.
“Patrice Sinclair, you take those stairs like a young lady.”
The gentle reproof caught Patrice in mid-stride, her skirt hiked up nearly to her knees. Immediately, just as if she were once again a child of privilege struggling to learn social graces, Patrice paused, smoothed the calico the way she would finest sateen, then continued up the porch steps to where her mother sat in the shade.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I forgot myself.”
Her modulated voice didn’t fool Hannah Sinclair. She set aside her needlepoint to take a closer look at her daughter. Noting her high color and the frantic brightness of her quickly downcast gaze, panic settled within a heart attuned to personal sorrow.
“What is it, Patrice? Is it Deacon? Have you had news?” When no answer came at once, Hannah drew a tight breath. “You wouldn’t think to keep such information from me, would you, thinking I’m too frail and foolish to accept it?”
Her mother’s pain cut through Patrice’s private agonies and she swiftly knelt at her mother’s feet.
“Oh, Mama, no. It isn’t Deacon. I wouldn’t hide news, good or bad, from you. I’m so sorry I frightened you.”
Air left Hannah’s lungs in a tremulous whisper. “Not a day passes when I’m not praying to hear something, but at the same time, dreading what that word might be.”
Tears glistened as gazes met and the two women shared an empathetic embrace. Then Hannah pushed away, ending Patrice’s hope that her mother had forgotten the cause of her concern.
“What’s got you all upset, honey?” A gentle palm skimmed one flushed cheek, holding Patrice in place when she thought to rise up and escape the question. “Talk to me, Patrice. You used to confide in me. I know you carry more burdens than a young lady should, and I don’t want you to think you can no longer come to me with your troubles. I’m not much good for anything but advice these days.”
“Mama, that’s not true.”
“Of course it is.”
Patrice wouldn’t insult her by arguing. Both knew the fragile state of Hannah Sinclair’s health. Though Patrice often longed to pour out her soul to a sympathetic ear, she couldn’t risk the strain upon her mother’s delicate nerves. What would the protected and pampered Southern flower who’d gone from the nurturing of one overbearing man as father to another as husband, know of the havoc in her heart? How could she advise on matters of disloyalty and forbidden love when she’d never made an independent suggestion on her own? Her finely bred mother would be distraught if she knew of the dark passions torturing her daughter’s soul. So Patrice hoarded the hurts and the anger to herself, heaping them upon a spirit already bowed by more miseries than it was meant to hold. Just this one more wouldn’t break her, not this atop all the others.
News of Avery Sinclair’s death left Hannah a puppet whose strings had been cut. Without the master to manipulate her movements in the proper way, she couldn’t function on her own. She fell into a listless despair, unable to make a decision as small as what to wear without Patrice to coax it from her. While she lay upon her couch, rereading old letters from courtship days until illegible from her weeping, Patrice was forced into the roll of mistress of Sinclair Manor. She’d had to push aside her own fear, her own pain to deal with the daily crises of finding food or selling off the silver to buy seed for vegetables. While Hannah drifted through the hazy afternoons upon daydreams of long ago, Patrice was on her knees in the dirt, using a sterling pie server as a spade to plant tiny seedlings that would feed them over the long winter months. She and Jericho Smith, their only remaining servant, sat together over the last of the coffee discussing their defense should marauders return to take what little they had left while Hannah asked again for two lumps of the sugar they�
�d run out of months ago. And as Hannah slept smiling in the thrall of her memories, Patrice wept into her pillow, afraid that every night sound bore a threat, terrified that the next day would bring the news that with her brother’s death, all was lost. As matriarchal figurehead, Hannah was a symbol of poise and refinement, but for a source of strength and courage, Patrice learned to look inward.
“Go back to your needlework, Mama. Everything’s fine.”
And she smiled to offset the damning certainty that nothing would be the same again now that Reeve Garrett had returned.
The sound of approaching hoofbeats ended the need for further talk. Both women looked around. There was no mistaking the horseman. No one else melded into an animal to form one muscled unit. And few wearing Union blue traveled alone in Pride County.
Patrice stood slowly, forming an imposing column of support and defense at her mother’s side, no less wary than she’d been of the nightriders come to burn her house around her. She held a frail hand in one of hers, mindful not to crush the slender fingers in her agitation.
The rider dismounted, a handsome figure, proud in bearing, determined in manner. He paused long enough to loop his reins through the brass tethering ring before striding to the stairs. Patrice stiffened a degree with each step he came nearer until she was as rigid as buckram stays. She pulled quick, insufficient breaths between the firm clench of her teeth. The sound whistled ominously beneath the modulated greeting her mother gave.
“Why, Mr. Garrett, what a surprise.”
Hannah Sinclair was too well bred to reveal the nature of that surprise, whether good or bad. Instead, she smiled, showing no less welcome than she would to Breckinridge, himself, had he come to tell them the Confederacy had been saved. Her free hand extended in invitation.
Reeve took the frail hand and raised it gallantly to his lips. His gaze never strayed from the neighboring matriarch to the seething female at her side.
“Miz Sinclair, you’re lookin’ lovely, as always. After four years, a man gets hungry for such a sight to remind him that he’s come home.”
Ignoring Patrice’s indignant snort, Hannah blushed prettily. “Go on with you, Mr. Garrett. I don’t remember you as given to such excessive flattery.”
“I’m not one for speaking less than the truth, ma’am.”
That pleased Hannah as much as it annoyed her daughter.
Only then did Reeve glance at Patrice for a perfunctory nod. “Miss Patrice.”
Patrice’s glare bored holes through him.
Hannah withdrew her hand but not her hospitable manner. Encouraged, Reeve lingered on the front steps, seeing an opportunity to learn things Patrice hadn’t stayed long enough to tell him.
“Is your family visiting here at the Glade, Miz Hannah?” He glanced about, seeing no driver or carriage.
Hannah indulged him with a sad smile. “Alas, Mr. Garrett, the Glade has been our home for the past months. The squire was kind enough to offer his generosity.”
“Seeing as how close we were to becoming family.” Patrice added that like a rapier stab. Her stony expression gave nothing away but her stare was razor-stropped sharp.
Reeve remained unflinching as he turned his attention back to the elder Sinclair lady. His brows knit with apprehension.
“Has somethin’ happened to the Manor?”
“We have more than just chimneys remaining, which is far luckier than most who’ve entertained Yankee vermin.”
“Patrice,” Hannah cautioned gently. “The Manor has been fortunately spared, but the squire didn’t feel it was safe for us to stay there without our menfolk.”
“Too much dangerous riffraff roaming about,” Patrice added with a venomous purr.
“Your husband and son?”
“Mr. Sinclair fell at Chickamauga.” Hannah nodded at Reeve’s quickly expressed regret. “We haven’t received word of Deacon, yet. He was in the field on his own much of the time. No one can tell us … anything.”
“I’m sure he’s fine, Miz Hannah. Deacon’s a clever man, a survivor.” The way he said it wasn’t exactly a compliment. Remembering that he spoke to the man’s mother, Reeve took a moment before he could continue in a neutral tone. “There was a lot of confusion at the end and a lot of units broke apart and lost touch. It’s nothing to worry over.”
“We will surely rest so much better for your platitudes, sir.”
“Patrice, Mr. Garrett is trying to be kind.”
Patrice’s patience fractured. “Mr. Garrett might well have shot Deacon, himself, for all we know. He’s not above such things as he’s proved in the past.”
Reeve never twitched a muscle. His flat stare fixed with Patrice’s, absorbing its rancor without response.
Hannah paled dramatically, shocked by her daughter’s bad manners as well as by her words. “You will apologize—”
Patrice’s head shot up like a fierce wild horse’s.
“Not to him! Never to him!”
Her eyes glittering with furious tears, Patrice whirled away rather than recant before her mother’s persuasion. As the door slammed behind her, she heard her mother’s stammered apologies to a man who deserved none. Not from them!
Leaning back against the papered wall, Patrice squeezed her eyes shut, forbidding the dampness to escape while she hung on the husky timbre of his speech, feeling it thrill along her senses with maddening results, berating herself at the same time for succumbing to that frailty of heart. It shouldn’t have been Reeve Garrett out there charming her mother with his soft drawling manner and awkward charm. It should have been Deacon, Jonah, any number of loyal Southern patriots whose honor was blighted by that traitor’s very presence.
But Reeve returned, mocking their sacrifice, torturing her resolve.
And she could never forgive him for that. Never.
“Patrice? Is something wrong, child?”
Her gaze flashed up wildly, her upset and turmoil clearly displayed before she was able to mask both with a genteel smile. “I thank you for your worry, Squire. I’ve had a bit of a shock, is all.”
Byron Glendower held most of the power in Pride County in one well-manicured hand, but no one would guess it by looking at him. He wasn’t big or blustery or surrounded by an air of self-importance. With his wispy hair, rail-thin figure, and myopic eyes, he appeared more a gangly egret than an aggressive bird of prey. But that was outward appearance. Within roared a lion-strong ambition, an ambition to pull a man from his home in Virginia to stake new territory in a raw lush land where dreams were measured in horseflesh and success by the legacy a man could pass on to his heirs. A legacy not worth much in the war’s aftermath. Not with one son dead and the other unwilling to accept his place.
“Shock? Your brother—”
“No.”
How could she prepare him?
Then she didn’t have to.
The sound of Reeve’s voice brought a wash of shameless joy into the squire’s eyes. Patrice glanced away, honoring his privacy, resentful of the welcome she saw in that flash of recognition. Because it echoed her own traitorous response. But when the squire spoke, his words were rough with caution.
“What does he want here?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
Byron Glendower went out onto the porch to do just that.
Father and son exchanged long, stoic looks. Assessments were done with no flicker of warming. Glendower broke the silence with a restrained statement.
“You look well, boy.”
“Not a scratch in four years.”
His claim hung, almost a challenge in the way it was defiantly rendered. Finally, the squire nodded.
“Are you here to stay or just passing through?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“I’d like to stay on at the cabin. I’ll work off the cost … like my mama did.”
“Reeve—your mother—”
The lines of his face tightened into chiseled planes. “I know. I saw her grave. I’
ll want to know about it … later.”
The squire nodded again, sorrow seeping into his tired gaze. Then, a slight edge of hope nudged in. “The cabin is yours, of course, but you don’t need to stay down there. The house—”
“The cabin’s fine, sir.” And that put an end to his invitation, the one extended time and again but similarly discarded with a prideful contempt. As if the offer was beneath consideration.
“Come in, Reeve. You must be hungry.”
“No, thank you. I’d just as soon settle in.”
The second, more obvious rejection, took a greater toll upon the elder’s expression. It hardened to mask the pang of disappointment. “Whatever you want, Reeve. Come up to the house when you’re ready. We’ll talk then.”
With a bow to Hannah Sinclair and a quick glance toward the door through which Patrice had disappeared, Reeve turned without a sound to remount his horse.
“I see you’ve taken good care of Zeus.”
Reeve patted the stallion’s finely arched neck. “I promised I would, didn’t I? He’s glad to be home.”
Just as he, despite all his arguments, was glad to be back.
“Reeve, it’s not going to be easy, you being here. Not for any of us.”
“Nothing’s ever been easy for me, sir.”
He wheeled the animal away, leaving his father to stew on the complexities his arrival would cause as soon as word got out that a traitor was back in their midst.
Chapter 2
“Kill ’em all!”
Reeve shifted in the rocking chair as the fierce Rebel yell cut through his dream.
“No prisoners!”
His head rolled against the wooden back as wild war cries echoed in his mind, as memories caught on the sunlight glinting against the cold steel of brandished sabers. Memories not from any battlefield but from the smooth lawns of the Glade as pounding hooves churned up great clods of Kentucky bluegrass. It wasn’t an engagement between North and South he looked back upon but a skirmish of young Pride County blades trying to impress two of its loveliest belles.
He could see Patrice Sinclair and her friend, Starla Fairfax, languishing in the shade like hothouse blossoms in bright petals of aqua and jonquil-colored silk. Over the fluttering of their fans, excited eyes followed the boys on horseback as they played at war with Mexico. His friends, though he was not their equal; Noble, Mede, Tyler, and Jonah, still at the age where social standing didn’t matter when it came to roughhouse. Only Noble could sit a saddle half as well as Reeve, and all vied to have him on their side as they reenacted the stories Mede’s father told them of his forays in the frontier of Texas. It was afterward, when they’d be called up to the house, that Reeve couldn’t follow. To the illegitimate son of Byron Glendower, the county’s tolerance extended only so far.