Persuasion

by Martina Boone

  Which made Cassie’s breakdown even less believable.

  It simply wasn’t real. It was some angle that Cassie was playing. The performance might have been directed at Barrie, or it could have been for Berg’s benefit. Either way, Cassie wanted something.

  “I think you’re exactly right,” Barrie said to Berg. “Cassie needs someone to talk to. Why don’t I give it a try?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Berg’s expression was protective as he measured Barrie, as if Cassie were the one in danger. Which was the biggest joke of all. Not that Barrie could laugh about it.

  He turned back to Cassie before he straightened. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  Cassie’s hand tightened on the stone folds of the angel’s gown. Her voice sounded tired. “Yeah. I’m just fine.”

  Berg turned and walked away. His footfalls were silent on the grass and weeds that had already grown too tall in the week since Wyatt’s death. Everything about Berg was eerily quiet and controlled.

  Barrie waited until he was out of earshot. “Cassie, I don’t know what you’re cooking up to cheat the archaeologists. That’s your own business, and it’s going to backfire soon enough. What I came to tell you is that I’ve found someone who can remove the curse.”

  Cassie’s head shot up. “What do you mean ‘remove the curse’?”

  “I met a m-m-ma . . .” Barrie began, intending to tell Cassie about Obadiah, but the words to explain him wouldn’t come. Her mouth felt as dry as sand, and her tongue felt too thick to form the word “man” or “magician” or even “guy.” How was she supposed to convince Cassie if she couldn’t explain? With a growl of frustration, she lowered herself to sit beside Cassie on the base of the angel statue.

  Cassie scooted over. “Are you planning to say something anytime soon or do you expect me to wait all day?”

  “Who’s buried here?” Barrie asked while she furiously tried to think.

  “Are you trying to stall? What are you up to?”

  “I’m curious.”

  Cassie touched the same fold of the angel’s gown that she’d been holding earlier. “Her name was Charlotte,” Cassie said. “But she isn’t actually buried here. She disappeared when the house burned down, and no one knows what happened. It’s a romantic story, really. She was the most beautiful girl in three counties, and she promised to wait here for her fiancé to come back from serving with the cavalry. I guess she did, because the family never went away, even when they knew the Yankees were coming. They say she was the inspiration for Gone with the Wind.”

  “They say, or you say?” Barrie dropped her gaze to the ground, where the rocks had faint flecks of red from the painted soles of Cassie’s shoes. “See, this is the problem. You make it impossible to believe anything.”

  “You’re the one who asked. And you’re wasting time. You’re supposed to be telling me about the curse, so talk fast, or I’m going to decide you don’t have a thing to say that I’m interested in hearing.”

  Rising to her feet, Barrie dusted off her pants. “You know what,” she said, “forget I said anything. You go ahead and keep the Colesworth curse. Enjoy it. I don’t even know why I thought you would want to get away from here. You’re going to have such a fabulous future.”

  She walked toward the gate, but as she’d suspected, Cassie didn’t let her go five steps before jumping up to follow. “Wait,” Cassie said. “Who is this guy you say you met?”

  Barrie focused all her energy on getting the words out. “H-he says he’s descended from the slave who cast the curse.”

  “It wasn’t the slave who did that. John Colesworth got a slave from the West Indies to trap the Fire Carrier, and it was the Fire Carrier who cursed us.”

  “Or maybe the slave never told John he was the one who did it. Or, gee, here’s a stretch—maybe one of your ancestors lied about how it happened.”

  “Or your guy is the one who’s lying. My family has been trying to get rid of the curse for three hundred years.”

  “Maybe you’ve asked the wrong people all along. I’ve also heard that asking nicely works wonders.”

  Cassie peered at Barrie as if Barrie were the one who went around locking people in tunnels and stealing from them. “Why would I believe you even want to help me? You could be after the gold for yourself.”

  “I have no interest in helping you,” Barrie said, taking the last couple steps to the gate, “but I want you to go away. Unless the curse is broken, I can either make sure you stay in jail suffering, or I can spend the rest of my life never knowing when I’m going to run into you at Bobby Joe’s or the Resurrection.”

  Cassie recoiled, and then she laughed, a cackle that had nothing to do with her usual silvery peal of amusement. “Bless your heart, Cos. You’ve finally found the guts to be honest about what you want.”

  “You know what? You being stuck in jail is starting to sound not so bad to me right now.” Barrie reached for the gate.

  Cassie grabbed her arm, seeming to sense that Barrie’s patience had run out. “All right, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s hard for me to apologize when I mean it. And I do mean it. Locking you in the tunnel was wrong. I snapped, seeing you and Eight happy together—you both have so much already, and I don’t have anything. The curse used to make me want to leave here, when leaving here—going anywhere else—was what Eight wanted most. I was all right with that because I wanted to go to Hollywood anyway. But then you came, and the thing you want most is to stay—and to be with Eight.

  “Now suddenly I want to stay, and I want Eight, and I know that neither of those is what I really want, but knowing that in my head doesn’t change what I feel. Do you understand how awful that is? It’s like being possessed by someone else’s emotions. On top of that, I’m stuck here on this stupid property because I get these headaches that make me want to die, and I might not be able to stay because we have to sell the place. And then today . . .” Cassie bit her lip and bowed her head.

  Back at the house, the archaeologists were now clustered around the Prius in which they’d arrived, having what looked like a heated conversation among themselves. Cassie’s mother and grandmother had Pru cornered just inside the front door, and Pru, looking like thunder, was staring fixedly in Barrie’s direction.

  “I’m going to have to go soon,” Barrie said.

  “Please.” Cassie put her hands together to reinforce the word. “I can’t leave Colesworth Place. If you know how to break the curse, then tell me. Help me. What did the guy say?”

  Pleas had always poured out of Cassie’s mouth too easily. In the past, Barrie had given in too easily.

  “He says the curse is anchored in some kind of a lodestone that’s buried here,” Barrie said, relieved that she didn’t have to try to say Obadiah’s name. “If I find it, he says he can remove it—but it has to be done at night.”

  “Buried . . .” Cassie’s expression hardened. “Are you stupid? He’s after the gold.”

  Barrie’s lips parted, but she couldn’t deny it. It was a possibility. A probability.

  Still, even if Obadiah was after the gold, it changed neither the carrot he had dangled in front of her nor his threat. She’d had a taste of his power, and a taste had been enough to convince her he could do as he’d warned.

  “I’ve told you from the beginning that what’s buried here doesn’t feel like money,” she said. “The loss I feel is darker and more personal than that, so it doesn’t matter what he wants. Even if he is after the gold—”

  “Hang on.” Cassie snapped her fingers. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. We don’t even need this guy. The archaeologists are already here. You find the lodestone, and I’ll tell the archaeologists that’s where the gold is buried. Once they’ve dug up the lodestone, you can point them to the place where the gold is really buried. . . .”

  Barrie’s jaw hung slack. “Aren’t you listening to me at all? I don’t know where the gold is, and I’m not interested in finding it for you. As far
as the lodestone goes, do you even know what it is? What it looks like? Because I don’t. What if it’s just some ordinary-looking rock and the archaeologists cart it off, or bury it again? Even if we could get it out, you would still need someone to remove the curse. Problem is, I’m not sure removing it would begin to cure what’s wrong with you.”

  Thrusting the gate open with a creak and letting it bang shut behind her, Barrie left the cemetery and walked toward the house.

  “All right! All right, you win,” Cassie called after her. “We’ll try it. Bring your guy over.”

  Barrie stopped walking, but instead of feeling victorious, she felt as if a noose had tightened around her neck and was cutting off all her air. And the thought of getting in a car or a boat with Obadiah by herself didn’t help.

  “He wants to do it soon,” she said. “You’ll have to come bring your boat over to get us.”

  “Tell him tomorrow night, then—eleven thirty. We’ll have to wait until my mother’s asleep, and you’ll have to find your own way here.” Cassie twitched up the hem of her wide red slacks to reveal a gray rubberized ankle monitor attached to a bulky three-inch box. “I get to wear this stylish new piece of jewelry until the final hearing, so all hell would break loose if I tried to get across the river.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Have you completely lost your mind?” Pru stalked toward the car, her handbag clutched tightly to her side. “I asked you to promise me you weren’t going to have anything to do with Cassie, but here you are right back to trying to be her friend again.”

  “Going after her had nothing to do with friendship.” Barrie had to hurry to keep pace as Pru skirted the cemetery back toward the parking lot. “I’m sorry I left you, Aunt Pru. I am, but I felt claustrophobic in the house with all those people arguing and all that furniture pressing in on me. Plus, didn’t you see Cassie at the funeral? She was completely freaked out and no one noticed. They didn’t even realize she wasn’t in the house.”

  “She told Sydney to leave her alone,” Pru said, more sharply than she had ever spoken to Barrie before. “I defy anyone to argue with Cassie, much less her poor sister who seems to want to do nothing except keep the peace in her family.”

  “Fine, but Cassie was having some kind of a breakdown when I got to the cemetery.” Barrie was still convinced Cassie had been putting on an act, but the statement was true enough. Then she found herself adding another truth she hadn’t realized she’d accepted. “I don’t know what happened in jail, but it was something bad,” she said. “Cassie also mentioned that the drug cartel had kidnapped her to force Wyatt to keep working for them. They locked her in a basement, and being locked up in jail, I guess it brought it all back up.”

  “That’s awful if it’s true. But I don’t believe it for a second. You see?” Pru stopped and spun to look at Barrie. “This is exactly what I told you. You’re falling right back into Cassie’s web. What’s she going to convince you to do for her next, hmm? I’m sure there’s something.” She peered at Barrie with spots of angry color high on both cheeks.

  “What if it is true?” Barrie began, then held her palms up as Pru stepped forward. “No, hear me out. What if it really is the curse making the Colesworths do all these things? How do we know where something like that starts and where it ends? What’s magic and what’s the poison in the soul or the blood that warps the person and makes them change?”

  “I don’t know where it begins,” Pru said. “What I do know is that plenty of other people are tempted to want what other people have, without locking their relatives in tunnels or holding them at gunpoint with plans to kill them.” Not waiting for an answer, Pru marched to the car and threw herself inside.

  Barrie got in more slowly. The heat from the scalding leather seats seeped into her skin, even through her somber clothes, and sweat ran in a rivulet down her temple as Pru turned the ignition over. Barrie rolled down the window and fanned herself with her hand while Pru backed out of the parking space.

  “God, it’s sweltering in here,” Barrie said.

  “Maybe we’ll finally get some rain tonight.” Pru rammed the gearshift forward and turned the wheel. “Now, don’t try to change the subject. Trying to distract me with weather, not to mention kidnappings and curses. I have every right to be upset about you running right back to Cassie.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Do you? I’m not so sure, or you’d have stayed away.” Pru lapsed into silence again. At the end of the drive, she turned the old Mercedes west onto the oak-shaded road that led along the river and back up toward the highway.

  Barrie tried to catch a glimpse of Beaufort Hall as they passed the entrance a few minutes later, but there was only the wide white-iron double gate that rose in a graceful arch. Beyond it, another lane of stately oaks disappeared into the shimmer created by the heat and distance.

  “Sugar, are you even thinking about what I said?” Pru’s tone was a little calmer, but not much, and she was still flushed an angry red as Barrie’s eyes met hers. “I honestly thought this was all over when Cassie went to jail, and here we are again. Today was a classic example of what that girl is like. She’s barely even out of the detention center, and she’s calling archaeologists to come and do what her father refused to let them do. Without telling her own mother. On the day of her father’s funeral.”

  “I get that that was bad, but—”

  “But nothing! She didn’t even bother to tell the archaeologists why she was calling them. Imagine how they felt when they read in the paper it wasn’t only a collapsed old tunnel but millions of dollars in missing Union gold.”

  “Not that the paper is necessarily right.”

  “In this instance, it happens to be exactly right. Checking historical records is the first part of any kind of an archaeological project. They checked the shipping manifests and the military records, all of it. Which you would know if you had stuck around instead of haring off the way you did.”

  “Honestly, I am sorry, Aunt Pru. I wish I’d never heard of any of the Colesworths, all right?” Catching herself about to admit her own frustration, Barrie stared straight ahead through the windshield. “Can we please not talk about it anymore right now? I have an idea that I wanted to tell you about. Something good for a change.”

  “I’m not sure my heart can take any more of your ideas.” Pru ran her thumb along the steering wheel, then shook her head. “You know what? I don’t want to argue with you today. Clearly I’m not going to convince you, and I have an idea, too.” She sent Barrie a smile that was as close to brewing with mischief as Pru was likely to ever get. “I hate to admit this, but I’ve been thinking about this ever since we walked into the old stable yesterday, and seeing the buildings all fixed up over at Colesworth Place cemented it. What would you say if we got a couple of horses? Alyssa Evans always has a few for sale, so we could go have a look tomorrow and see what we think. Might even keep you out of trouble for a while.”

  “Horses? Really?” Barrie scarcely held back a squeal, but then she sobered. “Wait. Tomorrow? I’ve thought of a way to do the restaurant so we don’t have to wait for the fuss to die down. That’s what I was going to tell you. With that and the furniture coming, we wouldn’t have time right now—and horses would be a lot of work.”

  Pru’s smile took on the pre-Christmas-gift-giving glow that was even better than getting presents. “Life is a lot of work, if you live it right. The point is, you said something yesterday about choosing how we live our lives. So far, all I’ve done the last twenty years is wait and mark time and give up the things I loved and wanted. I’ve played it safe. I’m tired of doing that. I’d rather feel the wind in my hair. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Sure, if I thought it would be the wind and not the pile of manure I’m likely to fall into.”

  “You’re still young enough that a few falls won’t hurt you much.” Pru gave the steering wheel a delighted little tap. “Good. That’s settled then.”

  “At least wait
until you hear my idea.” Barrie pressed her palms tight against the seat. “Please? We could let Mary get back to work. And the restaurant was something you wanted, too, wasn’t it?”

  Pru turned onto the highway, guided the car onto the river bridge west of Watson Island, and then glanced over at Barrie. “All right. Tell me what you have in mind.”

  “What if we have dinners by invitation or lottery, where people sign up and we pick who gets to come? It would be more like a private dinner party, and we could bring guests in by boat and keep them from wandering around and sneaking into the woods or getting in trouble.” Barrie turned in her seat, pushing away the seat belt that cut into her shoulder. “What do you think?”

  “If they come by boat, the gate wouldn’t even have to be open. We could still have dinner in the garden, as long as we keep an eye on everyone.” Pru’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully on the road. “Mary does need to get back to work. She won’t take help, but I know she’s worried.”

  Barrie grinned and flopped against the seat, letting her head fall back. Then she sobered. “I’m sorry about the horses, Aunt Pru. I’d love to do that after the movers come and everything has settled down.”

  “Oh, doing the restaurant doesn’t change what I want to do with the horses, sugar.”

  The highway ran along the north bank of the Santisto before turning north toward Charleston. Pru slowed to let a Walmart truck go past before she merged into the right lane to turn off onto the bridge that would take them back onto Watson Island.

  “Like I said, I’ve been waiting my whole life for the things I want. Some of them I can’t control,” Pru said, “but bringing horses back to Watson’s Landing is one I can manage. Don’t you worry about how we’ll find the time. Mary was looking forward to helping with the restaurant, and between all of us, we’ll work out the details.” Tipping her head, she raised her brows at Barrie. “The thing I don’t understand is how, considering you’re so damn dumb about Cassie, you can be so smart about other things.”