Southern Gentlemen

by Jennifer Blake

  The diplomacy was wasted. Matilda Montrose went into hysterics, crying and screaming until she made herself sick. Anna helped her to the bathroom and held her head, then wet a cloth for her face. With her arm around her plump, shaking shoulders, she said, “Don’t cry, Mother, please don’t cry. It’s going to be all right.”

  “How can you say that? Nothing will ever be the same. Blest has stood there so many years while other big houses rotted or were dynamited out of existence. It’s not even my family home and I can’t bear it. For you to act as if it doesn’t matter—I just don’t understand!”

  That was true enough, Anna knew. Her mother never could understand or believe in grief that was held inside. She never realized it hurt just as much, maybe more. “Blest doesn’t have to be destroyed.”

  “No, but the alternative is unthinkable! Days, even weeks, spent with that convict? Being seen with him, having people believe—No, no, no!”

  “Ex-convict, and long ago at that. He only served three years. Anyway, it wouldn’t be so bad, not really.”

  The older woman held her washcloth to her mouth, giving Anna a look of reproach. “You and Tom always had a blind spot where that boy was concerned. I tried to tell you, but I think you positively enjoyed defying me. You had a stupid schoolgirl crush on that Red Bone trash. I know you did.”

  “I felt…sorry for him,” she answered. Catching sight of herself in the bathroom mirror, she noticed that her eyes were dark with the memories.

  “Wasted effort! I remember his mother, a slut if ever there was one. No wonder she got herself pregnant. No surprise his father never married her, either.”

  “What does that have to do with Rip?”

  “Blood will tell. I’m sure that boy deserved every whipping he got.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “And don’t want to!”

  Anna held on to her temper with a supreme effort. “Rip was a real friend to Tom and to me, not that it makes any difference. The important thing now is saving Blest.”

  “I don’t know about that,” her mother said, lowering the washcloth and folding it over and over in her hands. “It will be terrible to see it torn down, but it’s not the first old house to go, after all, and won’t be the last. I can’t stand the thought of you and that man together, can’t bear my friends to see it. No, it would be too humiliating.”

  Anna studied the mottled red in her mother’s face while determination rose inside her. “Suppose,” she said in tentative tones, “just suppose I could learn something about Tom, about what happened that night to cause him to leave?”

  Her mother stiffened. Lifting her head, she stared hard at Anna’s reflection. “I thought you were sure Rip had nothing to do with it.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just prefer to think there’s some explanation, something that doesn’t mean Tom is…”

  “Dead is the word you’re looking for” came the acid rejoinder. “Do you really suppose Rip will tell you anything?”

  “I don’t know,” Anna answered. “There may be nothing to tell. But isn’t it worth a try?”

  The other woman looked away, her eyes unfocused. “You’d have to pretend you like him, pretend to believe any fantastic lie he decides to tell you about that awful evening.”

  “Yes.” Anna paused a moment before she added, “Did you ever let yourself think, even for a minute, that he might not be guilty?”

  “Never!” The single word was spoken with loathing.

  “Has it ever occurred to you how very odd it was for him to smash a window and break into the service station where he worked, when the owner had trusted him with a key so he could come and go as he pleased?”

  “He just wanted to make it look like somebody else did it, that’s all.”

  “Really? When the money was taken from a safe only someone familiar with the place should have known about? You’ve accused Rip of a lot of things, Mother, but I’ve never heard you call him stupid.”

  “Too smart for his own good is more like it. It’s unnatural.”

  “Considering where he came from? Shanty trash—isn’t that the label you gave him?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Anna said with a twist of her lips.

  To exonerate Rip would mean her mother must find other reasons for the money showing up in his possession later, perhaps even rethink his involvement in her son’s disappearance. She might have to look closer to home for motives that would make Tom leave, and that was something she could never do. Tom had been her flawless, darling son who loved his family above all. Nothing must interfere with that vision she held in her mind.

  “Rip Peterson was convicted in a court of law,” her mother insisted.

  “So he was. He was sentenced and he served his time. But why didn’t he testify in his own defense?”

  “Because it would have been too incriminating!”

  “Even a lie would have been better than refusing to say a word.”

  “That was his way, never opening his mouth for so much as hello or goodbye, always hanging around, coming and going with Tom. Reminded me of some stray dog sneaking in and out.”

  “Afraid of being run off the premises?” Anna suggested.

  “Watching for a handout or a chance to steal something, I always thought! I couldn’t stand him around me.”

  “He knew.”

  “I should think so, since I didn’t bother to hide it. The last thing I wanted was to encourage him. The way he used to follow you around, watching you, made my skin crawl.”

  “Me?” Anna couldn’t keep the startled interest from her voice.

  “From the time you were a little girl. I caught him playing with your hair one time when you were only eight or nine. You were just sitting in his lap, letting him do it.”

  “I remember,” Anna said slowly. “You made such a fuss.”

  “You were between his legs, leaning back against him with your hand on his knee. It was disgusting!”

  “I was a child,” Anna said in annoyance at the innuendo. “Rip couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve himself.”

  “Old enough to know what he was doing,” her mother insisted.

  “And that was?”

  “Touching you, taking advantage in the most nasty…” Matilda Montrose shuddered, leaving that damning word hanging.

  “I don’t remember it that way.”

  However, Anna had a disturbing flash of warmth as she recalled sleepy pleasure and a feeling of being enclosed by the safe strength of Rip’s arms while he wound her hair around his fingers as though he loved the feel of it. The two of them had been so attuned to each other that they breathed with the same deep cadence while their hearts beat to an identical steady rhythm.

  Another incident sprang to mind as she stood there. “Speaking of dogs, I don’t recall you objecting to Rip being around the day that rabid foxhound came into the backyard.”

  “He was older and bigger. It was natural for him to step between you and that beast!”

  “Tom was older, too, but he ran away,” Anna pointed out.

  “To get help! Anyway, no one knew it was a mad dog.”

  Anna gave her mother a straight look. “Rip knew. He told me when he picked me up and put me in the swing, said to stay there and I’d be safe. He didn’t run, even when the dog attacked. Afterward, he had to take all those antirabies shots in the stomach.”

  “Injections your father paid for,” her mother replied in righteous indignation.

  “You drove him to the clinic.”

  “Only because you and Tom made such a fuss about being there to hold his hand.”

  “But Rip never cried, never made a sound,” Anna said, remembering out loud.

  “Day after day I carted that boy back and forth, but did he speak a word of thanks? No, indeed!”

  Anna shook her head. “Why should Rip have been grateful? He fought that dog for me. If he hadn’t been there, I might have been killed. Did you than
k him for that?”

  “You and Tom said everything necessary at the time. You actually threw your arms around that Red Bone boy and cried. His blood was all over you, even in your hair. So sickening! Of course, I was never sure that awful mongrel didn’t follow him from across the river in the first place.”

  “Mother!”

  “Anyway, it was our duty to see after his injuries and we did it,” she continued, flushing as she avoided her daughter’s gaze. “If we hadn’t, his drunken father probably would have sued because the boy was hurt on our property.”

  Anna wondered if her mother had any idea how she sounded. It seemed doubtful. It was also unlikely that anything Anna said would bring her self-serving attitude home to her. “It’s also my duty, as I see it, to cooperate with Rip. I owe it to Tom.”

  Matilda Montrose clenched her hands together on the washcloth she still held. “Rip Peterson is dangerous! He’s come back here to settle old scores, and won’t care who he hurts while he’s doing it.”

  “He spoke of compensation, not vengeance.” At least, Anna thought, he had never admitted to the last.

  “It doesn’t matter. He hates us, hates the whole town, for what was done to him. You can’t forget that, not for a second.” Her mother stopped abruptly, putting a hand to her trembling lips.

  “No, I won’t forget. I’ll be extremely careful,” Anna said. She knew very well how dangerous Rip could be to her. No one knew it better.

  “No, really, Anna. You’re to have nothing to do with him, do you hear me?”

  Anna didn’t answer.

  3

  Rip waited for Anna at a comer table. A long-necked beer sat in front of him, and he stripped its label with his thumbnail, watching the operation with concentration. He tried to appear relaxed as he leaned back in his chair, his long legs in black jeans stretched out to one side. It was a pose, however, for the shoulders beneath his open-necked white shirt were stiff with tension, and the free hand that rested on his thigh was curled into a fist.

  No one was paying him the slightest attention. In fact, the other patrons in the steak house carefully avoided looking in his direction. He didn’t think it was deliberate ostracism, rather that no one wanted to be caught staring. The net effect was to leave him set apart, alone.

  He knew the instant Anna arrived. She stood just inside the doorway, looking as if she had half a mind to turn and run. To give her that chance, he returned his gaze to the beer label he’d been mangling.

  She didn’t leave, after all, but moved forward, threading her way through the tables. A faint smile curved her lips as he turned his head and met her gaze.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, her voice clear and only a little breathless. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  Not long at all, only a couple dozen lifetimes, Rip thought wryly as he got to his feet and pulled out a chair for her. But he was light-headed with relief that she was here at all. If a flash of triumph came with it, that was his secret. Her presence meant she would do as he asked. The first round was over and he had won.

  He made an offhand answer as he seated her, then returned to his chair. Grasping at some kind of normality, he asked if she would like a drink, then caught the attention of a waitress and ordered the iced tea requested. He sat for a moment, then, enjoying the picture Anna made in a sleeveless dress of leaf green cinched by a wide straw belt, with peridot earrings gleaming in her ears. Her makeup was minimal; her lipstick a fresh coral just bright enough to make her lips softly enticing. Her hair was drawn back from the clear lines of her face by a pair of gold barrettes.

  As he watched her, a stray impression ran through his mind. He spoke before he thought. “Your hair used to be lighter.”

  “I suppose so,” she said, lifting a self-conscious hand to the soft wave at her temple. “It was sun-bleached back then. Most blondes turn darker as they get older unless they give Mother Nature a helping hand.”

  “But you don’t bother.”

  “Too much trouble,” she agreed, meeting his gaze without evasion.

  “I like it natural, makes you look more…”

  “Mature?” The word was said in dry suggestion.

  “Ladylike,” he corrected her, and watched with a feeling of loss as the humor faded from her face.

  “That kind of lady went out with bustles and high-button shoes,” Anna said. “I’m just an ordinary woman trying to make a decent living while looking after the things that matter to me.”

  “Such as Blest and an old black man?” His gaze was watchful as he took a deep swallow of his beer.

  “You could say that.”

  “That doesn’t strike you as being out of the ordinary?”

  “Why should it?”

  “Trust me, it is. You’re the genuine article,” he said with conviction.

  “Oh, I don’t think—”

  Rip shook his head, a smile tugging one corner of his mouth. Setting his beer aside, he spread the fingers of his left hand to count off his points with his right forefinger. “You know who your great-grandfathers were, and their great-grandfathers. You can trace your ancestors back to the Rood. You can set a formal table with the right glasses, spoons and forks in the proper places. You could plan a meal for a political banquet, and have no problem deciding what to make for a church picnic. You are probably able to read a menu in French or Spanish, and you know what somebody means when they refer to an opera or book title. Your handwriting is like elegant script, and you not only have the right phrases for thank-you notes at your fingertips, but actually write the things.” He spread his hands and leaned back. “If you’re not a bona fide lady, then you’re close enough for me.”

  She stared at him, her gaze wide. Then she laughed with a short, winded sound as she sat back. “Well. I’m not sure what to say, though I don’t know that I’m half as accomplished as you seem to think.”

  So Anna thought he was guessing? That was good, because Rip knew he’d said too much. The back of his neck burned as he realized how much he’d revealed. But if he was lucky, she’d be so bowled over by his argument that she wouldn’t begin to wonder at the extent of his knowledge about her, wouldn’t recognize how closely he’d monitored her life-style over the years in order to come by it.

  “You can say we’re on,” he answered, his voice gruff. “Say you’ll take me in hand and turn me into the kind of gentleman who might match a lady like you.”

  Silvery glints appeared in the gray of her eyes. She drew a quick breath before she spoke. “I could be wrong, but I don’t think a crash course in how to write thank-you notes is going to be of much benefit to you. What is it exactly that you want to learn?”

  “Manners,” he said promptly. “Which fork to use. How to order a meal in a fancy restaurant. How to talk to people without making an idiot of myself.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your manners that I can see. As a matter of fact, not many of the men I know stand up when a woman enters a room anymore.”

  “Your dad did it,” he said simply.

  “Well, yes.”

  “I used to watch him. And Tom.”

  The light faded from her face. Quietly she said, “Then you couldn’t have chosen better examples.”

  Rip was aware of that, just as he understood he had made a mistake by mentioning the men of her family. To distract her, he nodded toward another table. “On that subject, look at the guy over there still wearing his hat. Even I recognize there’s something wrong there. What happened to the rule about taking off headgear before you eat?”

  A faint grin twitched her lips, shaded with what might have been gratitude for the change of subject. “That rule started about because everything was so dusty in the old days that dirt collected on hat brims. A man sitting down to eat with his hat on could dump dirt on the table the minute he bowed his head to say grace.”

  “The rule no longer applies now that streets are paved?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. But so few men wear hats
that places like restaurants don’t have hat racks anymore. A Stetson sitting on a table is not only in the way but likely to catch food splatters. If it’s placed in a chair, somebody may sit on it. Neither one is going to improve a hat, and Stetsons are expensive.”

  “Too expensive to leave on a hat rack if one was provided, come to think of it. Somebody could walk off with it.”

  “And police today might frown on shooting a man for stealing a hat. The point is, there are reasons for manners. Once the rule makes sense, then it’s easy to remember.”

  Rip was silent a moment, enjoying the lively interest in her face. “So do I get a history lesson with every pointer on how to be a gentleman?”

  “Probably,” she answered.

  “When do we start?”

  “We just did.”

  His frown was skeptical. “In that case, do I take off my hat or not, supposing I have one?”

  “Whatever makes you feel better about yourself.”

  “I’d rather,” he said deliberately, “do what makes a woman like you think better of me.”

  She flushed a little and opened her mouth to answer, but he was given no chance to hear what she meant to say. The waitress arrived with Anna’s iced tea, then took out a pad and pen. In the process of ordering their meal, the subject was abandoned.

  Anna sat back in her chair, watching the exchange between Rip and their server. He spoke with quiet competence and no sign of uneasiness or the rudeness some men used to cover social awkwardness. He was decisive, yet so pleasant that the young woman showed a tendency to linger, offering him every possible garnish for his steak except the key to her apartment. Her smile as she finally departed was an open invitation, though Rip didn’t seem to notice.

  “If that was an example of how you go about ordering in a restaurant,” Anna said a little dryly as she reached for her glass, “I see nothing wrong with it.”

  Rip grinned. “I was doing my best to impress you. Actually, I can handle places where they roll up the forks and knives in napkins. Where I have trouble is in restaurants where guys in tuxes hover at your elbow and the food comes sprinkled with holy water.”

  A surprised laugh caught in Anna’s throat, which was unfortunate since she had just taken a sip of iced tea. She choked. Tears sprang into her eyes as she put down her glass and snatched a napkin, spilling silverware from it. She covered her mouth just before succumbing to an urgent need to cough. Behind the paper square, she cleared her breathing passages, then emerged with a rueful smile.