A corner of his mouth lifted and his eyes, the deep blue of a sky retreating before a storm, reflected acceptance. “I’m what was left,” he said evenly, but his words carried a lilting cadence, the a’s spoken as though with a sigh.
Abigail felt the heat of embarrassment scald her face, and rose to her feet. She didn’t want to view her home or herself through the eyes of a man who knew nothing of what it was to do without. And she knew by his well-tailored clothes that he’d never been without. What in God’s name was he doing here? A lark? A dare? An adventure?
She gave a brusque nod. “You can set your bag by the door for now. You’ll be sleeping in the barn, but you don’t have to move out there until after supper.” She cursed the slight tremble in her voice. “I’m Abigail Westland.”
He bowed slightly from the waist and his smile increased. It was a nice smile, an easy smile. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled.
“Grayson Rhodes.”
She nodded curtly. “Johnny, Micah, and Lydia are my children.” Turning slightly, she basked in the glory of the three reasons she worked her fingers to the bone, the reasons she’d agreed to this harebrained idea of bringing men here. “Just take a seat at the table.”
The Englishman’s footsteps echoed over the planked flooring as he walked confidently to the table. He didn’t slouch from years of carrying burdens too heavy for his shoulders.
She noticed her older son glowering at the man. His jaw tightened when the man reached for the chair.
“That’s my pa’s chair,” Johnny ground out.
The man froze, the only movement the slight arching of a brow. “Where is your father?” he asked quietly.
She’d never known a man could speak in such a hushed tone, the deep timbre of his voice calm, comforting. She saw Johnny’s bottom lip quiver.
“Damn Yankees killed him!”
“Johnny!” she scolded. “No swearing.”
“You call ’em damn Yankees!” her son insisted, his chin quivering.
“Well, I shouldn’t,” she told him, hating to reprimand him in front of a stranger. She’d discuss manners and swearing with him later. She nearly jumped out of her skin when Grayson Rhodes cleared his throat.
“It seems to me then that circumstance makes you the man of the house. If your mother has no objection, perhaps you could sit in your father’s chair, and I might sit in yours,” the Englishman suggested.
Johnny snapped his head around so fast to catch her opinion on the idea that she was surprised he hadn’t grown dizzy and toppled out of his chair. Hope flared within his brown eyes. At eight, he was a strapping boy who very much resembled his father, working hard to make up for his father’s absence. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized he wanted to take his father’s place at the head of the table.
Swallowing past the knot of regret, she gave him a nod of approval before turning back to the hearth. She heard the scraping of chairs across the floor, the shuffling of feet.
“How come you talk funny?” Lydia asked. A little over six, she was curious about everything.
“Actually, it’s you who sound funny to me,” the Englishman answered.
“How come Ma called you a foreigner?” Johnny asked.
“Because I am a foreigner. I come from a land on the other side of the ocean.”
“How did you get here?” Lydia asked.
“I traveled on a big ship to Galveston and then I rode in the wagon.”
“What was it like on the ship?” Johnny asked.
“Children, stop pestering the man,” Abbie scolded as she wrapped a thick cloth around the handle of the cast-iron pot and lifted it from the hook over the fire. She wanted to know as little about the new worker as possible.
Dipping the ladle into the thick brew, she walked to the table.
Her son sat erect, shoulders back, pride etched into his young face. Tears burned the back of her eyes. Maybe she had never before suggested he sit in his father’s chair because she loathed the idea of him becoming a man.
She was grateful that the war had ended before he’d grown any older. A year ago, he and three friends had run away to join the Confederate army, hoping to become drummers. Abigail and her sister, Elizabeth, had found the boys camped beside the Brazos River. Their goal had been to reach Hempstead, a prominent Confederate supply center. Abigail shuddered to think what might have happened if they’d tried to cross the river.
She ladled the stew into the Englishman’s bowl first, noticing his hands once again. They rested easily on either side of his bowl, the nails neatly clipped. They didn’t carry the stain of dirt or the scars of hard work. Yet they looked more powerful than she’d first thought—capable even—although she wasn’t certain what they were capable of.
She strolled around the table, filling bowls, wishing she couldn’t feel the Englishman’s steady gaze. She resisted the urge to tuck a stray strand of hair back into the netting that held her hair at the nape of her neck. What did she care what he thought of her?
She dropped into her chair and gave the children permission to begin. They dove into their stew with relish. The Englishman skimmed his spoon across the top as though he wasn’t quite sure what it was.
“Are there accommodations available in town?” he asked after a time.
“What’s accommodations?” Johnny asked from his new position as head of the household.
“A place to stay,” Abigail explained before meeting the Englishman’s gaze. “The saloon has a few rooms, but it’s a two-hour ride by wagon into Fortune.”
His brow furrowed as deeply as any freshly plowed field. “Fortune?”
“It’s the nearest town.”
“Fortune awaits,” he mumbled, as though testing the words on his tongue. Then he smiled broadly, tipped his head back, and laughed heartily, the sound causing her heart to twist tightly. Years had passed since she’d last heard such carefree laughter.
Her children stared at the Englishman as though he’d gone mad. Perhaps he had.
“Mr. Rhodes?” she began, wondering at the wisdom of letting a man she did not know into her house.
With seemingly great difficulty, he stifled his laughter. “Old Winslow kept telling us that fortune awaited. All the while, he was talking about a bloody town.”
“I suppose that’s why you all looked like a good wind would knock you over.”
“Yes, we were expecting a bit more—”
“Our home is humble—”
“I wasn’t referring to your home. I was referring to our expectations.”
Beneath the table, she fisted her hand around her apron. She didn’t know why she had to take offense at every word he said. “The lodgings in town aren’t any better than you’ll get here. Besides, the time you’d use traveling could be better spent working the fields. That’s why we agreed to give you a place to hang your hat.”
“I appreciate the consideration.”
She watched as he ate his stew in silence. He removed a handkerchief from a pocket inside his jacket and periodically wiped at the corners of his mouth. She felt poor and pitiful next to his refinement.
“I know it’s not fancy, but the barn is clean. We put fresh hay up in the loft—”
“I spent much of my youth sleeping in the stable so I have no objection to sleeping in the barn. But I am left with the distinct impression that you don’t want me here—”
“What I want and what I need are usually two different things, Mr. Rhodes. The needs of my children come first. I need the cotton picked and I need willing hands to do that.”
“Even if the hands are soft?”
She clutched her own hands in her lap. She would be a fool to insult the man further or give him cause to leave. A child could pick a hundred pounds of cotton in a day. An Englishman—even one who had never before worked the fields—should be able to match the efforts of a child.
She remembered how often her own hands had bled when she first began working the fields. Now, th
ey were tougher than cowhide.
“If you work my fields, your hands will bleed and ache and grow callused. I can promise you that. At the end of the season, you’ll receive your share of the profits. But only you’ll know if what you gain will be worth what you lose.”
Abigail gazed down at her bowl. The stew had grown cold. She could tell without tasting it, and just as the warmth had left, so had her appetite. She didn’t like the thought of being responsible for his care or having a man about the place, but it was necessary. Her entire life consisted of doing what was necessary. Sometimes, alone at night, she found herself longing for the unnecessary—
“I appreciate the meal.”
The words, spoken with a musical lilt, jarred her from her reverie.
“I’ll show you to the barn, then,” she said as she brought herself to her feet.
He did the same with a causal grace that she imagined had accompanied him into the finest dining rooms in England.
She snatched a lantern off the mantel and used the dying embers in the hearth to light it.
“Johnny, get your brother and sister ready for bed,” she instructed as she walked to the door where the Englishman waited, bag in hand.
“This way,” she said, stepping onto the porch, into the darkness.
The moon was little more than a whimsical smile in the night sky. The stars glittered like diamonds. As a child she’d once longed to have one of the sparkling gems. Funny how a child could wish for such useless things.
“I put pillows and blankets in the loft,” she said to the silent man treading along beside her.
She stopped inside the spacious doorway and held the lantern out to him. “You should be able to find your way from here.”
“How is it that Winslow brought us here?”
“My sister Elizabeth told us about him. He said he knew some fathers in England who were looking for a place where their second-born sons could make a go of it, but he needed financing, so we gathered what we had and gave it to him.”
“How much?”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “Three hundred dollars, but we’ll make more than that if we get the crops in.”
“Did he mention that the sons were disreputable?”
She felt her heart tighten as though someone had just thrown a noose around it. The last thing she needed was a man she couldn’t trust. “No. He simply said it was unlikely they would inherit so they needed a means to support themselves. Are you disreputable?”
“Very much so.”
He smiled warmly, his eyes glinting with amusement. She cursed her fluttering stomach. She wasn’t an innocent woman easily swayed by the attentions of an attractive man. She was a widow who understood that a man’s needs seldom matched a woman’s wants.
Still she had expected him to deny the allegation. She angled her head, trying to determine why a man of questionable reputation would have bothered to give her son his rightful place at the head of her table. “I want to thank you for letting my son sit in his father’s chair.”
His careless shrug was almost lost in the shadows. “In England, all privileges are bestowed upon the firstborn son. I assumed the same held true here. I’m glad you didn’t feel I was overstepping my bounds by suggesting he sit in his father’s place.”
“No, I’m glad you did. I didn’t realize it would mean so much to him. We’ve just kept the chair empty for so long—waiting for John to come back.”
“I’m sorry he didn’t.”
She nodded briskly, not wishing to discuss her husband. “Since you’re here, I assume you’re a second son.”
Within the lantern’s pale golden glow, she saw a profound sadness touch his eyes.
“No, Mrs. Westland. I’m the Duke of Harrington’s eldest son.” He took the lantern from her and turned away as though he feared bringing the light closer to himself would reveal more than he wished her to know. He stepped into the barn and held the lantern higher, illuminating the cavernous wooden building. “You’re quite right. I’ll be able to find my way. Good night.”
With only the moonlight to guide her, she ambled back toward the house, wondering why a man of privilege would be willing to work in her fields…and why he was here if he was the firstborn son.
Hell grew no cooler when night arrived. Instead, the darkness brought with it a heaviness that settled over the land.
Grayson pressed his shoulder against the side of the barn and stared at the moon, the stars. The sky had never seemed so vast or his loneliness so great.
This woman—this Abbie—had deemed him worthless. No surprise there. His father had pointed out his flaws often enough, his illegitimacy being the greatest flaw of all.
His mother had been one of the finest actresses in London. Her final melodramatic performance was to die in childbirth. It was said that the duke had truly loved his mistress, but Grayson often doubted those rumors. For if they were true, would not some of that love have filtered down to their son?
He considered himself fortunate that the Duke had acknowledged his existence. Had even, to his wife’s embarrassment, brought the by-blow home and raised him, giving him the finest of clothes and education. But he had never given Grayson the one thing he craved most: love.
Resenting the gifts his father bestowed upon him out of obligation instead of desire, Grayson had decided to become the worthless son his father had always expected him to be. He had gambled away a fortune, drunk enough whiskey to fill the Thames, and bedded every married woman who had a come-hither look. At least if he got a married woman pregnant, she could pass the child off as her husband’s—and a child of his would never know what it was to bear the label of bastard. Although to his knowledge, the precautions he’d always exercised had left no children in his wake.
And being worthless had suited him fine…until today when a woman with violet eyes had touched her palm to his, and he had felt the difference between victory and defeat.
For no matter how worn the woman had appeared, how drab the surroundings, within her eyes, he’d seen the determination to survive—at any cost.
2
The awful din started before dawn greeted the day—the irritating sound of someone pissing on a tin roof.
Grayson’s eyes flew open. The loft was still encased in darkness, but beyond it, he saw a dim halo of light. Bits of straw poked into his side as he rolled over.
He crawled across the narrow expanse and peered over the ledge. With a lantern casting a pale glow around him, the older boy sat on a short three-legged stool, his face pressed against the cow’s side, his eyes closed. Grayson would have thought the boy was asleep if his hands weren’t working to fill the pail with milk.
“Do this every morning, do you?” Grayson asked.
The boy squinted through one eye and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Always at this time?”
“No, sir. This morning I’m running late.”
“Wonderful,” Grayson muttered as he dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out his watch. He flipped back the intricately engraved gold cover that bore the Duke of Harrington’s crest and turned the face of the watch toward the pale light. Eight minutes after five.
He shoved his watch into his pocket, jerked on his boots, and made his way down the ladder. The odor of the few horses and the couple of cows that shared his dwelling grew stronger.
Leaning against the stall, he watched the boy work. “Is everyone else awake?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered, his hands not halting. “Lydia’s gatherin’ the eggs and Micah’s gatherin’ the kindling.”
“And your mother?”
“Fixin’ breakfast. Reckon she’ll be expectin’ you to sit down with us.”
He rather imagined that she would. He wondered what she would serve. Something designed to lay heavy on a man’s stomach no doubt—something that would give him the strength he needed to manage a farm. He supposed if he stayed that he, too, would receive morning chores. He could only hope that his
would begin at a decent hour—preferably after the sun came up. “Do you pick cotton?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Started pickin’ when I was six. Figure I’m big enough that I ought to be able to pick a hundred pounds a day this season.”
Grayson searched the recesses of his mind for one moment in his life when his voice and eyes might have reflected the pride he saw mirrored in the boy’s. He couldn’t find the spark of a memory. “Is picking cotton hard work?”
The boy scrunched up his face. “It ain’t hard. But it’s hot and tiring. You ache by the end of the day and you sleep like a dead man.” The lad picked up the bucket and set the stool in a corner. “See ya at breakfast.”
He ambled out of the barn whistling a melancholy tune that Grayson had heard someone singing on the wharves at Galveston. The words had something to do with wanting to be in the land of cotton. Although based on his first impressions of farm life, he honestly couldn’t understand why anyone would want that.
With a heavy sigh, Grayson acknowledged that he’d get no more sleep this morning and decided he needed to locate some warm water. He strode through the barn door and nearly stumbled over his feet at the sight that greeted him.
He wasn’t certain what he’d expected. He only knew that he hadn’t anticipated seeing the woman standing on the front porch, a cup pressed to her lips, staring into the distance. Without taking her gaze from the far horizon, she ruffled the boy’s dark hair as he passed by her on his way into the house. A corner of her mouth tilted up and carried a smile into the violet depths of her eyes. She seemed much younger than she had yesterday, so much younger.
Grayson had no recollection of anyone ruffling his hair as a child: no mother, no servant. He was not the heir apparent, not the one upon whom favors were to be bestowed. He was simply a reminder of his father’s youthful folly, a blight upon his father’s good name.
The woman shifted her gaze toward him. “Mr. Rhodes, I didn’t expect to see you up and about so early.”
He didn’t want to admit that he wouldn’t have been if it weren’t for her son milking the cow so instead he walked toward her, rubbing his bristly jaw. “I was wondering where I might find some warm water.”
Rogue in Texas Page 2