“Second,” Caden raised his voice, “you will sever all business and personal ties with the Caldwell family . . . and my niece.”
Bret grinned. “Sure . . . but this isn’t about Rebecca, is it, Cade? The only way to steal Gabrielle is with her father’s consent.” He jerked up like a mad dog from the bed. “You’ll never get your sick hands on Gabrielle, I promise you. And Rebecca will publicly condemn you when she knows the truth.”
Caden paused to study the problem before him in detail. The man’s awareness was returning, which could make a satisfactory resolution more difficult to obtain. He observed Bret now with the mingled understanding and mystification of the chivalrous charm this man held for naïve young women like Gabrielle and Rebecca.
Another quick, lacerating pain shot through Caden’s groin. He pressed his palm down against the spot. “And third.” He stood beside the bed, looking down on Bret McGowan’s face. “You will sell your house and possessions and leave Galveston forever.”
Bret jerked his bound legs toward him. “Call the police! I don’t care! Untie me, you bastard! When I talk to my lawyer—”
“Idiot.” Caden slapped him across the face with the back of his hand. “Headstrong as your father but twice as stupid and selfish; at least he managed to save you and your mother by declaring his treason, but you—”
He crumpled the paper in his hand and stuffed it into his coat pocket. “You don’t even have the slightest sense of self preservation, and to think you would join with Gabrielle or Rebecca to pass on your useless blood?”
Caden spat on Bret’s face. “The only lawyer to be called will be mine when I confess to shooting you in self-defense when you attacked me during your attempted escape.”
Bret tried to pull himself up with his fettered arms. “Liam, Hadlee, and Arley are my friends. They’ll explain!”
“Your friends have abandoned you.” Caden lowered his head and glared into his desperate eyes. “Do you really think they want to be involved in your crimes? Your friends still have reputations and businesses to worry about. A scandal like this would destroy them.” Thunder suddenly boomed outside followed by a loud crack of lightning.
Caden glanced up at the ceiling. Holding his head high, he raised his towering stature fully erect as though ready to deliver the final point of his lecture when all questions are answered and all doubts dismissed. “No, Bret, I was the one holding the light to lead you out of your nightmare. Gabrielle could have saved you years ago if you had let her but now it’s too late.”
A fleeting shudder passed across Bret’s face. A few moments later a stronger one convulsed his body making his arms and legs strain against the tension of the rope.
His mouth fell open, his tongue darting out to lick his dried lips. “Please, give me some time to think about what you said,” his voice almost hoarse with desperation, “I’m not well. I need some water and my medicine . . . in my coat.”
Caden walked back to the old fish barrel. He reached inside his other coat pocket and pulled out a small blue medicine vial. “Every disease has intelligence which is often superior to that of its host. In some cases, it will seek to preserve the host against harm because its own survival depends upon it.”
He placed the vial down on the barrel top near the lantern. “Seek counsel in yours, Mr. McGowan, then, perhaps, we shall talk again, but if not . . . you can curl up and die alone in the dark like the poisoned dog that you are.”
“Give me the bottle first.” Bret coughed. “When my fever passes we can—”
“Do you take me for such a fool?” Caden glared down at him. “Sign the affidavit now!”
“And leave Gabrielle vulnerable to a parasite like you? Not while I’m still alive.” He strained to look at the door on the far wall. “And where the hell are the police?”
“Justice shall visit you shortly, Mr. McGowan, just as it did your father. Of that, you can be certain.” Caden smiled and walked calmly back to the door.
He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open a few inches. “And by the way,” he said, without turning around. “From what I remember, your mother was the most sensible one in your family.”
“What? What did you say?” The rusty springs creaked and scraped. “God damn it, Hellreich, C’mere!”
Caden turned slightly, craning his long neck around as he spoke over his shoulder. “She listened to me . . . and I was the youngest, still a boy really, not much older than you and inexperienced in the ways of . . . intimacy. ‘Please ma’am, stop fighting, do what they want and we’ll go away,’ I pleaded, or something to that effect, and she did . . . several times over if memory serves.”
Bret bared his teeth. “I’ll kill you for what you did!”
Caden turned and faced him “For what? Saving your worthless skin? I never touched your mother and that’s why you lived to become a man, Mr. Bret McGowan, although my intervention and your mother’s sacrifice seem hardly worth it in retrospect.”
Bret howled, a wail sounding not of bodily pain, but of a crushed heart and spirit as though his very soul was being ripped out by the unseen hand of a vengeful god under Caden’s summons.
He struggled and strained against the ropes, throwing his head from side to side as though possessed, his contorted features almost twisting his face beyond recognition. “You’re already a dead man, Hellreich!”
Caden studied his wretched specimen once more with a slow, penetrating look. “Lorena . . . was a beautiful, haunting melody, so much that Confederate soldiers became homesick and deserted their ranks. The ‘cursed ballad’ a general called it, and offered a reward for the killing of the author.”
“I’ll kill you! I swear on my parent’s graves!”
Caden had heard enough idle threats for one night. He stooped and tied Rebecca’s red scarf as a gag around the pathetic charlatan’s face and mouth.
Satisfied that Bret could only grunt and snort like a caged animal, Caden rose and walked toward the door. “I’ve always found it amusing what drives men to forget their reason; a charming song, a woman’s name.” He paused and glanced down at the blue medicine vial on the barrel.
Caden yanked open the door and stepped outside. “Save your breath and relax, my friend.” He turned to look at Bret one last time. “You will have all of eternity when you join them.”
He pulled the heavy timber door shut and pushed across the dead bolt. Caden walked back up the stairs leaving the pathetic, trapped creature below to the unforgiving, wretched howls of his cursed conscience and fate.
CHAPTER 21
Saturday, September 8, 5:00 a.m.
The knock against her bedroom door startled Gabrielle. The door creaked open on its hinges and she turned, fully dressed in her brown riding pants and shirt, to see her father standing with his walking cane staring at her with bleary, drunken eyes.
“What in the name of heaven do you think you’re doing, Gabrielle? You should be sleeping.” He jabbed his cane at her. “I know what you’re doing and I won’t allow it. The rain will pass in a few hours and we can enquire at the police station first thing in the morning.”
“I can’t wait. I won’t desert Bret like this. I have to know if he’s all right.” She finished lacing and tying her riding boots.
Her father tapped his cane on the floor. “Caden assured me the police will be there first thing this morning after the rain stops. He is safe and secure for the night.”
He stepped across the threshold, blocking the entrance with his body and cane. “Please, my dear. I must insist. We’re all shocked and appalled by what he did to poor Timothy.”
Her father’s vague self-assurance echoed his ominous insistence of remaining uninvolved. Still, it was as impossible to stay silent and do nothing. Every minute she hesitated made her feel cramped and sick of this mansion as if its expansive walls were contracting against her in breaths inhaled from the rising wind outside. Gabrielle rose, gathered her riding jacket and gloves, and stepped toward her father.
&nbs
p; “I wish that bastard had been the one killed. Tim was a good man.” He raised his cane to block her way. “After the way he left you . . . the shame and the embarrassment he caused us, why would you want to help a man like Bret McGowan?”
Gabrielle stopped to gather her strength. She wouldn’t be worn down like this, not by fear of his rigid contol, or the weight of the past that had held her powerless to escape.
Determined to do what she must, she stared at him with ever once looking away. “Neither one of them deserved what happened even if they brought it upon themselves.” Gabrielle stood in front of her father’s raised cane. “We can’t help Timothy but Bret deserves at least a sympathetic friend who will listen because I know, in my heart, he would do the same for me.”
Gabrielle tried to find courage in her own words yet above every other hope there rose the cold, suffocating fear that she would see Bret suffer—perhaps hung if he was guilty—as her father had watched Bret’s father, William McGowan, so many years before.
The cane shook in his grip. “Bret’s father, William, convinced us all; Colonel Hayes, old man Foster and Dawson. Many families owe their fortunes to William McGowan. He owned two topsail schooners in the opium trade—one from India and one from the orient—made us all quite wealthy for such young bucks and it gave us the seed capital for our businesses.”
He lowered its ivory tip to the floor and stared off as though seeing a long, lost friend suddenly appear in the distance. “Yes. We owe William and his family that much . . . if the dark truth ever be told.”
Gabrielle paused and stared at her father.
“But when I watched William hang . . . I was glad.” His arm slackened and dropped to his side. He stared at the floor. “They were all traitors and they deserved it.”
“And is that what Bret deserves? The same justice you showed your good friend, William?”
Gabrielle and her father stared at each other. The night air had become uncomfortably clammy and still. Suddenly, a light rain fell pitter-patter on the window.
“I . . . I never told your mother where I got the money . . . and after William died, she never asked.” Her father wiped the sweat of his brow and stepped aside, seeming more astonished than Gabrielle by how his guilty heart had betrayed and shamed him.
He leaned forward, grasping the cane handle with two hands and sighed as if it was the only thing preventing him from falling to the floor. “He’s . . . in the cellar at the back of the Society building, unless the police have already arrested him.”
Far off, over the Gulf, a thunderbolt cracked and lit up the sky over the water with a dull rumble. Gabrielle brushed past her father, leaving him slumped and shrunken against the door, lost in the unconscionable regret of his own troubled memories.
Gabrielle rode her favorite brown stallion, Chestnut, at a steady gallop down the crushed shell streets leading to the Society hall. His hoofs splashed through the scant inches of sea water that seemed to be everywhere, covering city streets several blocks in from the beach.
Still no reason to be alarmed but people had to be more cautious when riding or walking. This had happened before and the water would recede with tide.
The first glimmering light of dawn would not be clear on the horizon for some time now. Gabrielle shuddered, her heart chilled by her father’s dark words and her growing worry about what was happening to Bret.
Father was wrong.
Bret was capable of doing many stupid things—visiting Ichabod Weems’s, throwing his money down empty oil wells, but murder was not one of them. Killing Timothy over her? No, that was impossible. Bret was too proud, too confident, even when under the influence of his bottled demons, to let himself be so fatally provoked.
Poor Timothy. God rest his soul. Something else happened to him. Robbery, business debts . . . something, but not Bret killing him in cold blood.
The men were wrong. They had to be.
Gabrielle rode past several buggies filled with families and small belongings, being pulled toward the western boundary of the city and Galveston Island. There, the longest wagon bridge in the country connected their city with the Texas mainland.
Some people never get used to the flooding. Come daybreak, the trains and hotels would be busy with nervous vacationers heading back north.
“Good boy, Chestnut.” Gabrielle gave the horse a slap on the flank and pulled at the bit a little more. “That’s it boy! Faster now! We’re almost there!”
She felt the muscles of the young stallion tense between her brown suede riding chaps. The horse picked up its pace, kicking up bits of white and pink shell, and sending the wind rushing by Gabrielle’s cheeks, streaking her tears against her skin.
CHAPTER 22
Saturday, September 8, 6:37 a.m.
Angry and sweating after arguing with her uncle, Rebecca had been unable to sleep. She rose and crossed the floor to the open window overlooking the garden.
After the brief rain shower, the oppressive humidity still clung to its muggy grasp and there was no relief in the dark, airless calm outside.
She knelt in her muslin nightgown, the thick braid of her hair across her shoulder, brushing her cheek, with her arms propped on the ledge.
How corruptible was a dream once it assumed a tangible shape. It was as if Bret’s troubled spirit had finally withered and dissolved, blown away by the rage of his own secret storm.
And her uncle had warned her of its coming.
It had been impossible to remain in the Society building after the incident with Bret. The long walk along the boardwalk allowed her to weep alone and accept the painful reality that he was lost to her forever.
On the beach she had encountered a small group of night revelers who invited her to finish up their vacation party with an early morning clam bake around their roaring bonfire.
Staring into the shifting flames, the wavering hues seemed to illuminate her thoughts, making them blaze forth with the intolerable glare of conscience.
Rebecca accepted a glass of wine, then another, hoping to find the strength to return home and finally do what she knew was right. “Please forgive me, Bret,” she said to herself between sips of her wine, “I never knew he wanted it to turn out like this.”
The rising wind from the north had unfurled Rebecca’s long red hair from the shoulders of her emerald green blouse, blowing the strands back, then forward in its curling gusts.
Low tide. That’s what the man said should be happening. But it wasn’t.
At first, everyone thought he was a policeman. Just after five o’clock in the morning, the merrymakers were approached by a Mr. Isaac Cline, who introduced himself as the chief of the city’s Weather Bureau Office.
The tide was over four feet above normal, he said.
He was advising homeowners to move to higher ground and vacationers to go home. Those who had experienced the many whims of the water begged the others to stay, laughing at Mr. Cline’s warnings and trying to assure all that this would pass within a few hours. Their drunken cajoling did not prevail and the fire was doused shortly after the first vacationing couple left and hurried back along the beach toward their hotel.
Rebecca hummed the refrain of ‘Lorena,’ enjoying the flushed warmth in her cheeks and the return of her faint, indefinite hopes as she hurried back to the safety of the Society’s brick walls.
Why hadn’t the police or the sheriff’s deputies arrived? Were they waiting until daylight and the flooding to subside before arresting Bret? Very well. She would wait until morning to give her statement.
Then tell Bret about the letter.
Rebecca repeated the essence of her confession to herself and was glad that she had kissed her signature and made sure her red lipstick imprint was permanent. Surely, Bret will understand when he reads it. I know he didn’t kill that man . . . and I will tell them so tomorrow.
Then she would leave Galveston forever.
For that reason, she couldn’t risk that her uncle would find the letter now,
and there was only one safe place that she could think to hide it that was close by.
Rebecca rose and dressed quickly. She paced the length of her room several times, then walked to her open window and looked out toward the darkening gulf. Her determination teetered and rocked, feeling torn from the promises she’d made to both her uncle and herself.
And what of Bret? What of the promises she made to him?
He had suffered enough and she was the one who led him into it, yet he never accused her of betrayal, or made threats.
There was only a profound sorrow in his eyes. When she could bear to meet his disturbing gaze it was as though he was bracing himself with whatever raw, unfettered masculine determination and fortitude he still had remaining all in preparation for his final battle against fate.
The mere sight of him in this state made her heart race and she had to leave his unsettling presence at once.
No. She would have no more part in this. There was a demon in that brown bottle to be sure, but it had to be the lesser evil compared to the hideous thing possessing him now. A man in his condition might die if he didn’t have the proper medicine to stop—
Rebecca covered her mouth to stifle her outburst. The lofty presence of Uncle Cade, dressed in his long, black walking coat, stood across the darkened threshold of her room, a lean smile pulled tight across his gaunt face.
Uncle Cade gestured toward her open suitcase on the bed. “Rebecca, my dear, you should be already packed.” His voice was steady, without a hint of alarm. “The train leaves at nine o’clock for the mainland. I would feel better knowing you were on dry ground until this overflow recedes. Edward will escort you.”
Rebecca lifted her chin and stared at him. The gulf had opened so wide between them now that she could no longer see the other shore. All she longed for was the clean, wind-swept deck of a ship to carry her across the water, away forever from this dank, damp building with its suffocating regimen and creed.
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