by Michael Rigg
Thorne's jaw silently stammered as he slowly stood and stepped down from his throne. He watched as Hearse eyed Wolfe's body while peeling off his gloves and removing his cape and jacket. "No!"
Hearse looked at him.
"I-I'll leave."
The ghoul smiled at him. "I will meet you back here this evening, just after sunset."
Thorne headed toward the doors. He stopped just before Grubbs' cane-impaled corpse.
"Don't fear the authorities, Bradford. They are aware of our... merger, and will not be a bother."
Bradford Thorne nodded spasmodically before moving to the door and rushing out before his new partner started dining on his old partner.
CHAPTER 21, “Homecoming Secrets”
The scene in the greenhouse, the two pairs of eyes drilling at me, no less terrorizing than the whispering silver-haired strangers of my nightmares, kept playing over and over in my mind.
I mulled over everything from my arrival in this strange time and place yesterday afternoon to the discovery that the handsome soldier who has been my guide here was engaged to another woman—a woman I just caught cheating with his older brother. I lost track of my footsteps as I roamed around the grounds as far away from the gardens and greenhouse as I could, my brow furrowing and vision clouding as I tried to regain my focus. Something deep inside me dug for my center and pushed as I attempted to refocus on myself.
It may have been hours. Once, I thought I'd heard Addy calling for me. Or it may have been Lydia McFerran. Either way, I wasn't ready.
I made my way to the fountain and circular drive in front of the estate and sat on the far end of the fountain wall looking out at the long drive and arch in the distance, the letters "Landry's 7 Orchards ~ est. 1809" backwards from my angle. The space was shaded by the tall oaks closest to the house, and the cool hissing spray of the fountain brought down the temperature of the air around me. It was a comfortable place bathed in the silence of the fountain's spray, and it was perfect for contemplation.
"There you are!"
I jumped and pressed my hand to my chest. "Oh, shit!" Then my hand went to my mouth.
Addy laughed as she approached, tugging up her dress and perching next to me on the fountain wall. "Oh, Miss Alice, you really should watch your tongue. A gentle lady of the South don't speak like that." Her voice was playful, more accented with sarcasm than anything else.
I nodded and smirked. "I would think gentle ladies of the South wouldn't sneak up on people."
Her eyes wandered up the long drive to parallel my view. She reached back and sighed, pulling a pin out of her hair and shaking it so it cascaded over her shoulders. Then she removed a pair of barrettes that matched her dress from the inside of her bodice and went about re-dressing her dark brown hair, clipping it above each ear. I watched her as she worked one side and then the other. "I declare, this weather is murder on my locks. The humidity is dreadful."
I cocked a crooked smile her way before turning back to the drive. "Your hair is beautiful, Addy." I touched my ponytail which had started to frizz a bit. “At least yours remains straight.”
"I thank ya kindly, Miss Alice," she said with her teeth clamped on a barrette before removing it and setting the other side. "But I'm a far sight worse than a bear's bottom after runnin' all over this place lookin' for you."
I nodded, my chin puckering with worry. "Sorry. I wanted to kinda be alone."
"I know what that's like," she sighed a smirk of her own and let her hands fall into her lap. "I took a likin' to this guy at the university. Boy, I tell you I pined for him somethin' awful. Sat right here on this here fountain pinin' away just like you."
"Pining?" I leaned away from her, my brow furrowing at the direction she was teasing.
She narrowed her eyes at me, her freckles flexing as she scrunched up her nose. "Oh, come now, Miss Alice, it's as plain as a speckled hen that you're on the make for Bry."
"What?"
She nudged my arm playfully. "Oh, come now. I seen your eyes."
"Addy, he's engaged. I—" If she hadn't stopped me, I would have stopped myself. I didn't have feelings for Bryce Landry and the fact that he was engaged to Lydia McFerran had nothing to do with it. I just plain didn't belong in this reality. I couldn't have any feelings for Bryce. Could I? Though actually having to give life to the thought in answer to Addy's jibes made my face blush despite the cool shade.
"Oh, now, Alice I know how it is." She held her hands out, thumbs touching and fingers up as though she were framing a scene in a movie she was shooting. "Big, tall handsome soldier home from the war and all finds a beautiful redheaded woman all bare-ass naked on a skyscraper."
I felt my face burn deeper with a blush, but couldn't help smile as I gave her a shove.
"Oh, it happens all the time!" She giggled.
“You're teasing me,” I shoved again.
She shoved back, “I am, but not without merit.”
“Oh, please,” I said, shaking my head and looking down at the cobblestones in front of us. I opened my mouth to change the subject, but she took the reins and kept it on track with a slightly different angle.
“I do. I think you're sweet on Bry, and I think it's for a good reason,” she blurted, “I think he's somewhere in those missin' memories of yours.”
I closed my mouth and looked at her.
Addy smiled at me, her eyes glinting with mischief but also with a serious light. “I mean think about it.” She pressed her hand to her heart and spoke emphatically. “Bryce just happens to be the one to show up in your most dire hour of need. You have no idea how long you were layin' there, but I guarantee it couldn't have been that long or they'd of rolled you over the edge for makin' a scene—and then Bryce and Lucien show up, takin' you into his arms and spiritin' you back to the Seven. He missed his meetin', he didn't sign.” She nodded emphatically, “I think he's missin' a bean or two upstairs as well. I think he knows you—or knew you—and he just don't remember where.”
I frowned slightly, “I was almost convinced that I was a planted spy by that company, that I was sent here as some kind of sleeper agent.”
Addy chuckled. “Some secret agent you are, sleepin' in my bed, takin' tea with me and mother out on the veranda, playin' hide-and-seek with Savannah.” She rolled her eyes in a wide dramatic arc. “Oh, we are all doomed for sure.”
“What makes you say Bryce knew me and now doesn't remember?”
She shrugged, her face blushing slightly, or maybe it was a wave of heat that made its way against the fountain spray from across the orchards. “The way I heard him talk about you, the way he looks at you—and it ain't the way a man would look at a woman just because his first glimpse was her in her birthday suit. Shoot fire, Alice, I know he's scratchin' his head tryin' to figure out why it was he put himself in so much danger over you.”
“Danger?” My eyes widened.
“Momma said the site in the Atlantic was of prime military importance to the Confed'racy, some kind of end-all to war, hunger and atrocities. He's not just in danger from Daddy's belt. He's in deep trouble if the Yankees take that from us and we all have to explain why—and how—we let it go.” She shrugged as if her next statement didn't mean anything more than its words. “The Landrys could be bankrupted, cast out of the circles of society. We could lose everything—might even be thrown in prison.”
I didn't think my eyes could grow wider. “Please tell me you're still kidding.”
Addy shrugged one shoulder. Her smile was thin. “Wish I was.” Then she turned to me and touched my shoulder. “I have every confidence Daddy and Bryce can fix it, but don't you think it's odd that he'd forget his duty?”
My eyes drifted back to the cobblestones. I didn't even know Bryce before yesterday. I couldn't vouch for his cha
racter one way or the other.
“There's somethin' bigger at work here, Alice. I can feel it in my bones. And I think you'd both been together before it all started and now someone—or somethin'—has separated you.”
I thought again about the pale man and woman with the silver hair, the strangers with the deep set dark eyes who taunted me and marked me with a brand. Had they done the same to Bryce?
“And it's obvious you have a thing for each other,” Addy smiled, her serious veil lifting.
I looked at her. "Addy, please, I do not have a thing for your brother."
She picked a loose piece of mortar from the fountain wall and tossed it over her shoulder between us. I heard the plunk and looked at her. I shrugged.
Her expression turned sinister. She wiggled her eyebrows. "What if—in addition to all I just revealed—I told you a secret."
"About Bryce?"
She nodded and leaned close, cupping her hand around my ear and whispering loud enough to be heard over the sputtering shush of the fountain behind us. She said, "Bryce ain't too keen on Lady McFerran."
I pulled back and frowned at her. She motioned my ear back to her hand.
"Sure, he's got a thing for redheaded Irishers like you, but she's more about family and politics than anything else—and I mean family like business family, not like the makin' babies kind."
I don't know why, but I felt my heartbeat at that moment. I pulled back again and said, "It's arranged?"
"Contract Marriage they call it, all set up by Daddy and Miss McFerran herself. She's rich, ya know."
I smirked and blew out a puff of air that was almost a laugh. "No."
She nodded and played like she didn't catch my sarcasm. "Daddy's hopin' to set up Landry & McFerran, the first Yankee-style corporation this side o' the Mason-Dixon. That contract deal in New Yorke with Thorne & Wolfe was to start it."
I frowned, pondering that. "Why would he need to have Bryce married to Lydia in order for that to work? Why couldn't he just pen a merger or something?"
Addy shrugged and jutted out her lower lip as she commenced to picking out another mortar rock. "There's some kind of give'n'take there. I ain't sure, really. All's I know is that a lady who marries a gentleman who part-owns a corporation who is married to a lady who is a lady who owns a corporation.... That's even better than a lady without marryin' into a family with. Get me?"
I chuckled. "Ok, so it is an arranged marriage and it's all about the corporate politics then."
She nodded and tossed a mortar chip, this time in front of us. I watched it skitter across the cobblestones before she answered. "Bryce loved her at first—or at least loved the idea; a spicy redheaded Irisher with lots o' money to give him lots o' babies, but she put up a wall right away, started callin' the shots."
"What do you mean?"
"She had demands about their relationship from the git-go." Addy shrugged and picked at the wall again. "He can only kiss her when she indicates it's okay to do so, they can't have... ya know, relations ...until after their married, that kinda stuff." She lifted her hands and let them drop to her lap, “Which I think is the curiously dumb part. I mean who would buy a horse without givin' it a ride first?”
My gaze fell to the cobblestones and traced a crazy maze line up the long drive. I wondered how long she'd been having the affair, and I wondered why—if Lydia and Clayton loved each other—they weren't the ones arranged.
I decided to test it. "Um... But why Bryce?"
Addy looked at me as if she could read the script in my mind. "Ya mean why Bryce and not that starched, uppity excuse for an officer Clayton?"
I nodded.
"Because Bryce, though only a captain, is better placed than Clay. He's already been groomed for homeland business and heir to Landry Holdings. Clayton is a career soldier, a colonel in the C.A.F. slated for general and a possible Cabinet seat.” She waved her hand dismissing it all. “It's a gentleman's club despite the power of the women behind them, but they wouldn't be anythin' if not for Miss McFerran.”
Clayton Landry a politician. Some things started to make sense.
“Besides,” Addy smirked “Clayton is engaged to the Lady Taylor from Bayou Cane."
My eyes widened and I felt my skin crawl. "Does Lydia know he's engaged?"
Addy made a face like she ate something sour and studied me for a moment. "Why on earth would that matter? Sure she does, but that don't matter none."
I resumed tracing my maze on the cobblestones. So, Lydia McFerran was knowingly having an affair with a future Presidential Cabinet General Clayton while he was engaged, and she was engaged to Bryce. "Wow," I muttered under the sound of the fountain.
Addy's face curled up in a smile framed by dimples, then her smile twisted into a smirk. "Family business. I wonder who Daddy'll try to marry me off to for money."
“Does that bother you?” I wondered aloud, staring nowhere, my thoughts still unraveling the possibility at the heart of all of this, that Bryce could have already known me somehow. I saw her shake her head in my peripheral vision. “Nah. Long as he's handsome and gives me my own stables and babies—in that order. I don't rightly care none.” I nodded absently and looked down at my hands. A distant rattle in the air caught my attention and I squinted up through the trees.
Addy hopped down from the fountain wall and smoothed out her dress as the chugging aerocar drew closer. She reached out her hands to me. "Speak of the devil of your heart."
My smile dropped as I turned from the car's silhouette to her. I made a face. "Oh, please." As I hopped down, the bronze heart Bryce gave me jingled free of the bodice.
Addy said, "Oh, that's a pretty bauble. Where did that come from?”
I knew she asked because I dressed in her room and she didn't have a piece like this in her collection. My fingers went to the small dented heart. "Bryce gave it to me on the SkyTrain from Philadelphia."
Her grin was slick and matched the arch of her eyebrow. "Uh huh. And you say you ain't pinin'."
~~~~~~~
Moments later we rounded the east wing of the house and walked toward the wide multi-vehicle garage where the car touched down on bouncy spoked wheels and rattled into one of the bays. I caught sight of Bryce as I raised my hand to wave—then I noticed a reflection in the house's large windows: Lydia already waving as she and Clayton stepped up behind me. They must have been sitting in the shade of the side porch.
They were coming to see Bryce and Lord Landry home. Of all the nerve, after they were both probably off in the greenhouse, or the barn... Oh, I couldn't even think about it, though my eyes flitted over Lydia's blush, the slight smudge of her lipstick, the wrinkle in Clayton's trousers.
Addy ran up ahead of me to meet the car as it hissed to a halt, vents of steam escaping from flutes near its back. I gave a sidelong glance to my left and caught Clayton easing away from Lydia as she stepped closer to me. I turned my head down, pretended not to see her, and moved to close the gap between Addy and me.
The car doors opened up like gull wings, glinting on brass hinges, and Lord Landry stepped out. Addy gave him a hug around the neck and he said, "How's my little girl?"
I didn't hear her response as she kissed him on the cheek.
My face warmed as I saw Bryce in his dark brown suit, his face lined with a serious scowl until his eyes found me—and Lady McFerran—then he beamed.
I tried to smile in return, and opened my mouth to welcome him home, when Lydia brushed past me and approached Bryce, throwing her arms out to hug him, her right arm practically swinging at my face.
"Oh Bryce," She sing-songed, "I am ever so relieved to see you and your father have returned so quickly."
What an act, I thought. If I hadn't come along, they might have run o
ver you and your puppet general on the floor of the garage!
Jefferson Landry, with Addy on his arm, stepped up to join us. I felt Clayton's shadow move up to my left. I avoided glancing his way as I felt his heat in the closeness of the day.
"Well!" Lord Landry bellowed, "I sincerely hope you'll all stay for dinner?"
As he asked, his eyes fell upon me once or twice. I could see him wondering who I was. Of course my hair was much more full and my skin was clean. I didn't look like the pirate tomboy he'd met that morning. I offered him what I thought was a quaint ladylike smile.
Lydia embraced her fiancee and gave Bryce a long kiss that I was sure was meant for me. She held him to her mouth until Lord Landry broke it up.
"Now now, you two, save it for Christmas—Now who the hell is this?" He stepped toward me, waving his hands in my direction. Addy released his arm and stepped up to step between us.
I opened my mouth, but Addy said, "This here's Alice, Daddy. Remember, the one you wanted to shoot on the porch this mornin'?"
"Why ain't she gone off?" He scowled.
Bryce looked past the puffy white shoulders of Lydia's dress and tried to nudge her aside. "Daddy..."
Addy said, "Alice is my guest for supper, Daddy, and you ain't sayin' boo about it."
Landry's bushy white eyebrows came together turning his eye sockets into dark caves. "I'll have her gone by first light, Adel. That clear?"
Again, I started to open my mouth to speak for myself, but again Addy cut me off. "Daddy, leave her be. I declare! She is a guest in our home, not some mangy salesman you always have around."
He chuckled and instantly set me to ignore as he took in the crowd. To Bryce and Clayton, Lord Landry said, "We have much to discuss about the Thorne & Wolfe hostilities, gentlemen. I suggest we retire to my office and—"
Bryce stepped around the Wall of Lydia and glanced at me before saying to his father, "If you don't mind, Daddy, I've done my share at the Hall. I'd like to take Sergeant out for a ride by the river."