by Ken Casper
“Do you ever go back?” he asked.
“I did once—about a year after I left. It was a waste of time. They were as frigid as ever, colder because I had embarrassed them. Oh, they would have let me return—if I’d accepted their authority. I told them very politely I wouldn’t do that and left. I haven’t been back since. I never will.”
“It must have been hard giving up the life of luxury.”
Anger flared and was quickly replaced with the cold ashes of desolation. She’d hoped he’d understand, but he didn’t. Like everyone else, he saw only the wealth and privilege of the life she’d left.
“I made my choices. I don’t regret them.”
Chapter Seventeen
THE JANGLE was outrageous. Gwyn groaned, turned, shook herself awake. The phone. The telephone. Ugh. She forced her eyes to focus on the face of the clock that glowed in the moonbeam coming through the open window. The phone rang again. Who the devil would be calling at this hour?
She picked up the receiver. “Hmm.”
“I guess I caught you napping.”
Gwyn was instantly awake. “Jed? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
He laughed. “I’d like to share something special with you—if you’re interested.”
“What are you talking about? Jed, it’s—”
“Get dressed. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Make that twenty.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I’ll bring the beignets.” He hung up.
The man is raving mad, she mumbled to herself as she bounced out of bed, unable to suppress the smile that came to her lips.
LIKE FRAYED COTTON threads, the mist drifted lazily from tree to tree. Wispy tendrils swirled over the dark still waters. Despite Jed’s flannel shirt, Gwyn shivered in the cool damp air as they set out in the flat-bottomed boat from the low wooden dock. Night smells, earthy decay overlaid with the sweet scent of blossoms hovered in the damp air. Overhead, gray cobwebs of Spanish moss hung in ghostly splendor from outstretched branches.
Slipping the oar into the brown stream, Jed maneuvered among the knobby knees of cypress roots toward the main channel of the lake. Behind him, Gwyn watched his broad shoulders sway in smooth, powerful thrusts as he plied his single paddle into the murky water, its rhythmic whoosh alone breaking the hovering, hollow silence of the eerie swamp.
The ghostly white cloud over and around them diffused the predawn light, isolating the two of them in a timeless realm of peaceful quietude. Gwyn quickly lost all sense of direction and didn’t care. Jed knew the way.
“Almost there,” he said softly, the sonorous depth of his voice blending into the surreal miasma.
He continued to arch and dig, bend and stroke to a music only he heard, yet she could feel it pulsing, experience the idyllic harmony of man and nature, male and female. Thrust, flow, withdraw. Thrust, flow, withdraw. An eternal cadence. A timeless beat.
“This is beautiful,” she whispered reverentially. “It’s like the rest of the world has ceased to exist.”
“For now it has.”
She could hear the smile in his voice. Contentment. This is where he came to be alone, to think, to recharge his energies. Not the morning room, with its long-distance view of nature. Not the library, where wisdom secreted itself between the covers of books. But here, in this simple, sepia-and-gray world of primeval creation. Here, where nothing else existed, a man could rediscover himself. He’d brought her here, to his place of solitude.
In a drifting clearing of the fog, she spied an egret standing motionless on its spindly legs, aloof on its watery perch. Nearby, a turtle splashed from a flat rock into the muddy morass. Somewhere overhead, out of sight, a crow ruffled its feathers and cawed.
“Here we are.” Jed stowed the oar.
“How can you tell?” she asked on a muted laugh.
“Swamp rats know the swamp.”
She caught his eye and held it when he turned. “Is that what you are, a swamp rat?”
A smile curled the edges of his mouth. “Part-time.” He stood and stepped easily onto a jutting rock.
Rising, she asked playfully, “And the rest of the time?”
He extended his hand to her. “Sometimes I’m just a man.” Humility and pride resonated in his words. Incompatible emotions overlaying each other in all their complexity.
She couldn’t define the sensation she felt when his hand clasped hers. It was warm and strong, as she knew it would be. She found comfort in the way her fingers fit neatly into his. But there was more. An erotic vitality whipped through her in the way he drew her to him. His firm, reassuring touch offered a promise of fulfillment. He lent her balance as she stepped from the tiny floating craft to firmament.
“Are you cold?” Arm spanning her shoulders, he guided her along a tiny spit of land to the stand of pines beyond the cypress.
“I was,” she acknowledged, and snuggled into his embrace, “but not now.”
He touched his lips to the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her. “I’m glad.”
The pines were spindly, totems with their heads in the clouds. The green undergrowth was lush with dewy ferns and tear-dropped sumac. As the vague surreal light brightened, sounds began to creep into consciousness. A scurrying here, a fluttering there. Calls and alerts were exchanged among other species. Danger. Man.
“We’ll have a good view from this spot.” Jed led her up a short hill, into a denser layer of mist that encircled them, swallowed them up.
The warmth of his hand still holding hers contrasted with the sharp coolness of moist air entering her lungs. Suddenly, the fog lay like a frothy carpet below them, and the sun, previously unseen, glowed red above an endless sea of white. A few stars emitted final twinkles and disappeared into the glowing blue.
Jed pulled her to his side as they watched the sun rise. Another promise. Another day. No words were spoken. None were necessary.
THEY WOULD HAVE relaxed on the veranda to eat the fish they caught later that morning if the clear morning sky hadn’t turned dismally gray. It was raining now, so they sat in the morning room and watched sheets of water ribbon down the windowpanes. It cast the world outside in wavy streaks, the dull pitter-patter rumbling like a muted snare drum.
“Thank you, June.” Jed grinned at the platter of sautéed bass and crappie, neatly garnished with spiced apples and young sprigs of rosemary from Josiah’s garden. “There’s nothing like fresh-caught fish,” he told Gwyn.
They spoke little during the meal, content in each other’s company. Gwyn’s attention was not on the food in front of her, however, but the man on the other side of the table. They’d passed their solitary morning largely in silence. Strange, she thought, that it would make them feel closer.
They were finishing up small portions of blueberry cobbler when June brought the latest edition of the National Tabloid. Jed pushed his plate aside, took another sip of iced tea and picked up the paper. He was relieved to see a story different from the last issue slashed above the masthead, the outing of some celebrity. But not to be missed was the feature headline under the Simon Sezz byline.
He ripped open the paper to page three, his face hard with anger. Suddenly a growl erupted from his throat, and with one impulsive sweep of his arm, he fisted the newspaper and slammed it onto the table. China crashed to the ceramic-tiled floor.
Gwyn’s head shot up. Shocked and momentarily frightened by this unexpected violence from a man who was always in such exemplary control, she watched him fight to regain that composure.
“Jed,” she murmured unobtrusively, “what is it?”
Drawing in a deep breath, he carefully straightened the paper and handed it across the table to her.
June appeared in the doorway.
“I’m sorry, June. A little accident,” he said.
&n
bsp; June withdrew and reappeared a few seconds later with dustpan and brush.
Jed took them from her. “I’ll clean it up.”
“It’s all right, Mr. Jed.” She grabbed a cloth from the serving cart and started to bend down over a puddle of tea, but he took her elbow.
“Let me do it,” he said softly, and lifted the cloth from her hands. “I’ll take care of it.”
A baffled expression creased June’s dark face. Cleaning up was her job, and she was offended at not being allowed to do it.
“The lunch was absolutely delicious,” Gwyn noted to divert her. “There’s an art to cooking fish, and you’ve obviously mastered it.” Compliments usually worked, especially the well-deserved variety.
“Thank you, miss. It’s very simple, really. When you think they need one more minute, they’re done.” She looked over, appalled that her boss was on his hands and knees picking up broken glass. She made a move toward him, but Gwyn caught her gently by the arm.
“We’ll be fine. I promise,” she confided.
June stared at Gwyn for a moment, nodded solemnly and quietly left the room.
While Jed carefully gathered the shattered pieces, Gwyn read the cutline. “Wealthy East Texas landowner refuses to explain role in foster mother’s murder.”
Gwyn shared Jed’s outrage. She also recognized that it was typical tabloid hyperbole that walked the fine line between truth and liability. The words didn’t actually accuse him of being involved in the crime, but the innuendo was clear. Yet she wondered why this particular article should so enrage him. She opened the paper.
“Jed Louis, illegitimate son of Helen Louis—”
Gwyn stopped reading. Illegitimate. He hadn’t told her that. He’d said only that his father was dead.
Whether he’d been born in or out of wedlock, however, wasn’t the point. She’d promised no more secrets. She thought he had, too, even if the words had never been spoken. What other secrets was he keeping?
Without even realizing she was doing it, she looked down at the man soaking up spilled tea. Did he find it symbolic that he was on his hands and knees? With a shake of her head, she resumed her reading: “—is the only one of Frannie Granger’s three foster children to still reside in the quaint little town of Uncertain, Texas. His foster siblings, Emerald Monday and Will McClain, vanished within two days of Frannie’s sudden disappearance. We now know she was murdered. Were they? No trace of them has ever been found.”
Gwyn sank into her wicker chair and closed her eyes, wishing she could shut out this ugliness, but the technique never worked in the past, and it wasn’t working now. She found her place and read on.
“There was good reason for Jed Louis to hang around, of course—Beaumarais, a beautiful antebellum manor on Caddo Lake. He inherited it from his uncle, Walter Louis, the estate’s last legitimate heir.” The second twist of the knife. “That’s not to say the strikingly handsome bachelor has been idle. As the men of the town will tell you, he’s made big bucks buying and selling real estate and breeding Percheron horses, the enormous draft animals that are about the size of the famous Clydesdales of Budweiser beer fame. And the local ladies will remind you, Jed Louis has developed quite a name for himself spreading his largesse.”
Gwyn secretly smiled. She could agree with the scandalmonger about one thing: Jed’s looks. The size of his horses was accurate, too.
“The big house on the hill and the money that the Louis name attracts, also brings power in this quiet East Texas community. When Sheriff Logan Fielder tried recently to interview the wealthy landowner about his whereabouts at the time of Frannie Granger’s death, Louis flatly refused to answer his questions and ordered the lawman off his property.”
The last statement was untrue. Where had Hollis gotten that part of his story? She doubted Fielder would have told him about their brief meeting, if only because it showed him to be weak. More likely, the sheriff had recounted his visit to one of his deputies, who then passed it on. She didn’t imagine Fielder would be pleased by this misstatement, either. Not that there was much he could do about it. By itself, the comment was too insignificant and open to varying interpretations to warrant legal action.
Referring to Jed, Simon Sezz went on, “He then hired the famous—some would say infamous, after the notorious Trigve Helms murder case—Dexter Thorndyke to represent him. The Great Thorn, as prosecutors are inclined to refer to the high-priced attorney, has reportedly issued a gag order on his client. One wonders why an innocent man would refuse to answer perfectly legitimate questions about the woman who virtually raised him, and whom he claims to have loved deeply. But then, legitimacy isn’t Jed Louis’s strong suit.”
Gwyn dropped the paper on the table in a mood of abject disgust. Jed had finished cleaning up the mess and was wiping his hands on his cloth napkin.
“Where did he hear about the gag order?” she asked quietly.
“I imagine Thorny issues them to all his clients. Hollis has called here several times asking questions, requesting interviews. June or I have consistently said ‘No comment.”’
He settled again in his chair and leveled his eyes on hers. “You’re upset with me,” he commented contritely.
She gazed out the multipaned window at the water drops streaking down the glass like so many teardrops.
“You accused me of lying to you,” she intoned flatly, “when I didn’t tell you everything—about the horses, about my identity. You’ve done the same thing, Jed.”
“I’m a bastard, Gwyn. That’s not something I’m proud of.”
“We’re not responsible for who our parents are, remember?” she reminded him.
“You know, I would have expected you to be more understanding,” he retorted, anger creeping in behind the humiliation of his confession. “You walked away from a family, from an identity, because you were ashamed of it. Why won’t you extend the same courtesy to me?”
“It’s not the same, and you did lie to me, Jed. You told me your father was dead.”
“He is. Remember I told you about my mother coming here to see my uncle when I was about four?”
Gwyn didn’t answer.
“My mother had just received word that my father had been killed in a car accident. She thought, she hoped, that with him out of the picture permanently, her brother would take her back. We waited in the sitting room for what must have been an hour. Most of the time, she was bubbling over with nostalgic stories about living there. She’d run her hands across the back of the settee and the fiddle backs or hold the delicate figurines to show me.
Jed’s jaws worked as he fought for control. “When we fled the house, she was in tears. I wanted to ask her what the word whore meant, but I was afraid to. Much later I found out.”
Closing her eyes, Gwyn muttered, “I’m sorry.” She understood now why that one room had remained unchanged. It held memories of his mother.
He ignored her. “My mother was seventeen when she had an affair with a gambler ten years her senior. She loved him, or thought she did, but he didn’t love her.” Jed lowered his eyes and stared at his hands as he laced and released his fingers.
Gwyn turned to face him. “Jed—”
“When she told him she was pregnant with his kid, the guy bolted. He never came back to see her—or me.”
Gwyn sensed it would be a mistake to interrupt him now. She didn’t know how long he’d kept this shame locked inside him. Too long. Had he ever spoken to anyone about it?
“The reason I was sent to Frannie after my mother died suddenly of an aneurysm—she was twenty-three years old, I was six—was that her brother, Walter, my dear uncle, didn’t want to have anything to do with a bastard nephew. He never came to see me, though I lived right next door. He died a few years later.”
Gwyn remembered Jed saying Walter was a sanctimonious skinflint. Th
e irony was unmistakable. “Yet he left you Beaumarais,” she reminded him.
Jed let out a low, bitter snort. “Because there was no one else. I’m the last Louis.”
Now he was about to be humiliated again by having his illegitimacy broadcast. No doubt, older members of the community knew of it, but it had certainly never been mentioned to her, and she suspected they’d all but dismissed it as irrelevant. They accepted Jed Louis because he’d earned their respect. Which was all that mattered—except to him.
Was this why he acquired land and horses? His comments about private property made sense now. She understood, too, why her helping the archaeologist Tessa Lang disturb his land had so angered him.
Chapter Eighteen
GWYN RETURNED to her house to find a message on her answering machine. The publicity director of a western-wear company was looking for animals to use in a commercial they were planning for a new line of women’s jeans. She called the man back and they talked for nearly an hour, discussing various approaches. He wanted something exotic, not the usual horse, not even her cute miniatures. Mules were out. Elephants? Their rough skin would send the wrong message. They finally settled on llamas. He needed them in three days.
That sent her scrambling. She’d have to go to West Texas to select the llamas from the herd of the rancher who owned them, then arrange for transportation. What about her animals here? The dog could go with her, but not the horses, and she didn’t want to take Cleopatra, her pregnant cat. Would Jed feed the horses? She’d check. Feed the cat, as well? He’d probably do it, but she had another idea. She picked up the phone.
“I wonder if I could ask a favor of you,” she said after the polite preliminaries were taken care of. “I have to go out of town for a few days. I’ll see if Jed can feed my horses, but I was wondering if Alanna might like to keep my cat during that time.”
“Oh, Gwyn, Alanna would love it. Actually, I’ve been wanting to get her a pet, but—”
Gwyn felt a wave of relief. “I have to warn you, though, Cleo is pregnant.”