by Rosalyn West
Delyce spoke up. “From my brothers, Miss Patrice.” And big soft eyes went round, asking if it was untrue.
Patrice struggled for a moment, forcing even breaths to stave off her outrage. Finally, in a remarkably level tone, she said, “That information is quite premature. Nothing’s been discussed with my brother yet. I do hope you’ve been discreet.”
Sadie’s florid cheeks darkened, and Patrice groaned to herself. Dear God, everyone knows. She was going to strangle Tyler until those pretty green eyes popped right out of his head. The bad feeling she already had got worse.
“What shall I tell folks to ward off the gossip?”
“Tell them that Starla Fairfax is special to me and that as he is her brother, I think of Tyler as an old and dear friend. You should tell them fie upon their ungenerous spirits. Though Jonah and I weren’t wed, I mourn him as a widow. I haven’t even begun to have thoughts of romance yet.”
That should shut up Tyler and his cronies.
She held to her dignity as they continued along the walk, leaving Sadie Dermont to stew on the news—or the lack of it. The Dermonts would see Tyler got the message. But was there more to it than reckless boasting? Would her brother barter her off without consulting her first? Was that the reason behind all their whispering? She couldn’t believe it of him.
But then a week ago, she wouldn’t have believed she’d ever cringe at the slightest upward movement of his hand.
Self-consciously, she touched her cheek, where carefully applied powder hid the rapidly fading imprint of his slap. She hadn’t backed down because she was now afraid of him. Deacon would never harm her. But he had, whispered a wary voice. Alcohol brought on that fit of violence, came an anxious excuse, not the desire to hurt and intimidate her.
But it had, hadn’t it?
One blow, intentional or not, quelled her spirit and put a quick end to her rebellion. The tender kiss to her brow was to earn her forgiveness. Or was it to placate her? No man has the right. She’d refused to heed Reeve’s words then, but now they made an unpleasant echo in her mind.
Because even if she didn’t want to admit it, Patrice was afraid of the man her brother had become.
Chapter 16
“A penny.”
Patrice turned away from the gallery rail to see Reeve’s impressive silhouette framed against the doorway. She expressed no alarm at him coming upon her in her softly draped nightclothes. False modesty wasn’t something she subscribed to. Still, he didn’t come any closer, as she asked, “What?”
“For your thoughts.”
She gave a wry laugh and looked back out into the night. “You’d be cheating yourself tonight.”
“Oh come now, it can’t be all that bad,” he cajoled with a gentle teasing.
The words just came, pushed out by a spirit full of anguish and uncertainty. “Deacon slapped me, Reeve.” Her chin notched upward. “He’s never put a hand on me before, but if he does it again, I’d like very much for you to beat the hell out of him.”
A thoughtful pause, then a firm, “It would be my pleasure.”
There was more. He could feel it. He could see it in the tense set of her shoulders as they hunched forward to keep the world at bay. He heard it in the forced calm of her voice. Alone and vulnerable, she huddled inside her silky robe, arms hugging tight to wrap the isolation in and ward the fear away. The need to add the strength of his embrace to that insulating circle almost overruled caution. He saw opening and opportunity in her unhappy stance. Their time together was growing short.
He’d heard disturbing news from Dodge. Even an outsider was privy to gossip if he eavesdropped carefully. The Sinclairs’ tax debt had been paid almost in full, and not by Deacon Sinclair. Dodge hadn’t caught the particulars. He’d added one further rumor, one Reeve found ridiculous at first, and then damned threatening.
Patrice and Tyler Fairfax.
Patrice laughed it off the night of their party. Because it wasn’t true or because she didn’t want it known? He had to know, now, before he took further risks with his heart.
“I’m a good listener. That’s what you used to tell me.
She didn’t respond right away. He could almost hear her thoughts churning, weighing the benefits, the dangers.
“We can walk, if you like. Just walk. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.” A casual offer, no pressure, no strings, no reason to stir objection or suspicion of his motives. He waited, mentally urging, Take it, Patrice. Don’t be afraid.
She looked back out over the deep evening shadows, where the scent of honeysuckle perfumed the air and silvery moonlight shone blue and rich upon the far pastures.
“It’s a nice night,” she commented without committing.
“It is.”
She started for the gallery steps, not looking back to see if he followed, unconcerned that she was hardly dressed for an excursion with a man in shirtsleeves. He didn’t crowd her, but rather let her precede him down the outside stairs and out across the springy side yard. She moved like a flickering moonbeam in her pale ivory robe, drifting in and out of the latticework darkness cast down from the live oaks above. She didn’t speak, so he didn’t either, content to follow, to wait, to give her plenty of room until the right moment arose.
They’d come to one of the upper meadows, where nothing obscured the beauty of the heavens and the peaceful sense of solitude. He hadn’t expected her to walk so far, but maybe what weighed upon her mind needed more than a short stroll to sift and sort. Maybe it took that long for her mood to lose its restless edge and the inhibiting presence of family. Then she stopped, without facing him, and abruptly began talking.
“You were right … about a lot things.” She paused, expecting a reply. When it didn’t come, she continued, her own need to release her troubles goading her rather than his prompting. “I’m scared, Reeve. I’ve never been so scared of anything before.”
He couldn’t help the gruff texture in his voice. “Because of Deacon?”
“No. Yes … no.” She shook her head. To clear her thoughts or to convince herself. Then her answer. “I’m not afraid of him.” A lie. “For him. For our family.” A pause to gather her courage. “Reeve, where do you think he got the money?”
He had some pretty good ideas but wasn’t ready to push them on her yet. Instead, he asked, “Where do you think?”
“Not from the bank. I … I asked him to go there, to talk to your friend.”
“Did you?” That surprised him. She hadn’t seemed that open-minded about their guest at dinner.
“Deacon—he got very angry because I suggested it.”
That was when he struck her, the bastard. Quietly, he asked, “So if not the bank, who else has money to lend?” And at what price? That was what really had her worried.
She hugged herself again, chafing her palms over upper arms as if cold. “I think he got it from Tyler Fairfax.”
So did Reeve, yet still he asked, “Does Tyler have that kind of money to lend?”
“He’s got lots of it. His father’s distillery never shut down during the war. Apparently, alcohol was one of the fuels that powered our brave armies.” Bitterness tinged her voice as it lowered with conjecture. “I think they were engaged in illegal trade with the North, too.”
“It wasn’t illegal, Patrice. Kentucky as a whole supported the Union.”
“Immoral here in Pride County, then. They were making profit off our enemies.”
“Why would Tyler give credit to your brother?”
“For the free use of some of our best acres to grow the rye his father needs to make bourbon.” She hesitated as if there was more she wanted to say but chose not to. Or was afraid to.
For her. Was Patrice part of the price Tyler named for his generosity? She didn’t say, and he couldn’t ask. Not yet. She hadn’t lowered her guard enough to let him get close. It was time to nudge her in that direction.
She flinched beneath the weight of his hands on her shoulders, out of
surprise, not resistance. Slowly, firmly, he began massaging the corded tendons running from taut shoulders to her neck. “You look tired.”
“I am. I haven’t been able to sleep, worrying over what we’re going to do.”
She gave her head a luxurious roll. Lose tendrils of her hair caressed the backs of his hands. Reeve struggled to maintain the impersonal pressure and unhurried rhythm. He eased up closer behind her, not touching but near enough to convey the heat and strength of his presence. He felt a shudder of awareness ripple through her on a level that was sensory not cognizant as the tension began to melt away in warm rivers.
“I don’t trust Tyler,” she told him. “I know him too well to think he’s just being neighborly. He’s involved in some unsavory doings with the Dermont boys and others like them. I don’t have proof of it. It’s more like a feeling. Reeve, how could Deacon be so foolish as to entrust our property, our future to men like that?”
The last thing he intended was to make apologies for Deacon Sinclair’s stubborn stupidity, but that’s exactly what he heard himself doing. Anything to ease the torment he heard in her words. “He’s scared, too, Trice. He’s seeing his whole way of life ending, and he’s trying his best to hold on to it. A desperate man makes bad decisions to protect those he loves.”
“I don’t know that he does,” she confessed in a tight little voice. “Love me, I mean. He’s so much like our father. It’s the land, the name, the status they love.”
Reeve nodded to himself. Like his father, like generations of Southern men to whom possession and pride were all and family fell into those categories right next to breeding stock and immortality. It wasn’t personal. It was business, tradition like crops and politics and slaves—something to hold and control for the power it gave them.
Patrice’s strength suddenly left her. She sank down upon the lengthy grasses, lying back with her arms stretched out above her head, her legs curved to one side in a graceful bend. Her body relaxed with the deep expression of a single sigh.
God, she was beautiful. Reeve wondered if she had any idea how stunned he was by his own desire. By the way her robe pulled taut over her untethered breasts, the way they jutted high and full against the strain of sumptuous fabric. How the slight lift of one knee caused the overlap of her robe to slide open so only her thin nightrail covered the gentle rounding of hip and thigh. The way she looked with such yearning toward the evening sky and scattering of distant stars, wistfulness softening her features, moonlight gleamed pearlescent upon the sweet curve of her cheek and sleek line of her bared throat—by the time he remembered to breathe, his chest was clogged tight and aching with want. He released it in a gust as shaky as his will.
Afraid she’d catch him gawking down at her like a lovesick pup, Reeve sat himself beside her, then lay back to pillow his head atop laced hands. Easier to keep them out of trouble that way. While Patrice lounged next to him as languorous and mellow as warmed custard, he was strung taut as a rope around the neck of a wild horse. Only one thing could fulfill him, and he was as scared of frightening her with the forceful demands of his body as he was of her rejection. It was hell to be so close and not touch. Torture to hear her soft breathing and not swallow it up with an urgent kiss. The self-control it took just to lie there shook like a fever chill to the bone. She made that airy sighing sound again, and he nearly groaned aloud with the struggle it took not to roll himself on top of her.
He could feel her studying him. He didn’t dare glance her way, certain she’d see the cauldron of need roiling red-hot all the way to his soul.
“Reeve?”
“Hmmm?”
“You are a good listener. I’d forgotten how easy it’s always been to tell you anything because you don’t push your own opinions and you never judge. I’ve missed our talks.”
He went completely still, muscles tensed. He jumped at the light touch of her fingertips beneath his chin, refusing to look at her until she caught his face in the vee of her hand and angled his head toward her. Then he opened his eyes, wary, ready to leap away at the first sign of weakening.
And then she struck his will a shattering blow by saying softly, soberly, “I’ve missed you.”
“Have you?”
He was afraid she’d take that as a challenge, but hostility never surfaced. Instead, she edged closer to rest her head upon his arm. He froze, not daring to pull away because he could guess how long it had taken her to reach this juncture, to speak with such openness, such trust.
“We parted badly when you went off to war, and I was so afraid I’d never have the chance to tell you how sorry I was about that.”
“ ‘Trice—”
She shook her head in a silent plea for him not to stop her. “I didn’t know how to treat you when you came home. I was so relieved and, at the same time, so damned mad. It was easier to stay mad than to say I was sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
She rolled onto her back, but not before he glimpsed the depth of anguish in her eyes. He knew then she was ready to speak about the subject they’d kept silent between them. It was Jonah. But she didn’t tell him more. Instead, her lips curved with a poignant smile.
“Remember how the three of us used to sneak out here to watch the stars?”
“I remember.” He shifted slightly, twisting his arm around so that she rested within its easy loop. An instinctive gesture though not the wisest. It brought him up onto his side so he looked down upon his every dream. “And the two of us.”
I’ll love you until the day I die, Reeve Garrett She’d said that to him here, on such a night as this one.
Her smile grew even more melancholy. “And my birthday when you made me cry because you wouldn’t come inside and have cake with everyone else.”
He remembered the scald of those eight-year-old’s tears and how pride prevented him from telling her that her father had forbidden him to follow the other children into the Manor. He’d understood even at that young age even though she hadn’t; one’s servants were allowed to romp in the yard, but were not guests to be invited within the home. He hadn’t told her the truth then because he wanted to protect himself. He didn’t tell her now because he wanted to protect her.
“How could you have missed me with all those other boys trying to steal kisses?” He tried to lightened her mood with teasing but her features remained solemn.
“You were the only one I let kiss me, Reeve. Why didn’t you come inside?” The emotion behind that question went far deeper than an eight-year-old’s disappointment. Her eyes darkened. “I was afraid it was because you didn’t like me.”
Finally, he was able to say, “I was afraid I’d like you too much.”
She gazed up at him, stars shining in her eyes. “What about our kisses?”
“What about them?”
“Were you afraid you’d like them too much, too?” she clarified in a whisper.
How could he taunt her when such naked vulnerability glistened in her eyes?
“Too much not to want more of them.”
Her lips parted as his callused fingers skimmed her cheek. He breathed in her soft gasp of anticipation as his mouth lowered, closing over hers. Ah, the sweetness he found there. He was drunk with her taste, her nearness. Intoxicated by the willing way she invited him inside with the timid touch of her tongue to his. Her fingernails rasped against his stubbled jaw as she reached for the back of his head. Drawing him closer, half over her in her eagerness, drawing on his mouth as if his each breath provided the sustenance of life.
Patrice closed her mind to thought and concentrated just on feeling. Too much thinking, too much rationalizing, kept her from reaching for this particular paradise the moment he’d come home. Worrying that he’d reject her. Fear over what people would say. Wondering if her motives were ones of true passion or a rebellious response to her father’s restricting rule. She matched Reeve kiss for kiss, swept away by glorious expectations fully met, giving herself over to t
he desperate arousal always rumbling between them. The raspy sound of his rough palms snagging over the silk of her gown was enough to incite an anxious trembling, a fear that if he stopped now, she would go out of her mind with want. He didn’t stop, and she moaned against his mouth as he captured her breast beneath the spread of his hand.
He wasn’t gentle, but that was all right. Patrice didn’t want gentle, she wanted the thrill of his impatience, his urgency, the raw, unfettered proof of his desire for her. He kissed her hard, bruising her lips beneath the slanting pressure of his own, his tongue plunging deep to conquer. Harsh stubble abraded her skin with a wildly erotic prickling as his mouth scrubbed down the taut arch of her throat toward the tender mound he’d been shaping with the strong rhythmic flex of his fingers. First, she felt the moist heat of his ragged breaths scorching through the bodice of her gown. Her nipples beaded with unbearable sensation. Then his mouth fastened upon one turgid peak, sending hot tremors streaking through her. It was too much, too intense. Her head rolled wildly side to side, the clean scent of crushed grasses filling her nose. Her legs shifted restlessly, encouraging him to settle hard and heavy between them. He rocked into her, prodding her thigh with the exciting and alarmingly large evidence of his need.
He took her mouth again, groaning her name in a hoarse, thick voice she would never have recognized. The sound provoked an even greater urgency. Her palms pushed over his tense shoulders, rubbing hard, pressing him into her so that her breasts flattened beneath the solid wall of his chest, pinning her, dominating her with his weight. As she yanked at the back of his shirt to free it from his trouser band, his hand slid down between them, his caress insistent, seeking, tunneling within the wrap of her silk gown between the juncture of her thighs until he discovered the heat and startling dampness the thin fabric couldn’t hide, pressing into it until she gasped and strained against him. Helplessly, she cried out his name.
The sound of her voice was the shock it took to awake her to the reality of what he was doing. Abruptly, she pushed away from him, dropping him over onto his back. Stunned by her own willingness to surrender up more than kisses, Patrice closed her eyes, her breath laboring against the tide of runaway passions.