Persuasion

by Martina Boone

  He bent his head and slowly kissed her.

  Barrie wanted to fall into him, her lost to his found, her need to his want. Kissing was like the physical form of magic, all potential and the sense that anything might happen. When she was kissing Eight, she felt as if she could fly.

  His hands slid to her back, and his thumbs, uneven and warm against her skin, seemed to center all sensation there, as if the slight roughness from his calluses made the contact that little bit more dangerous.

  Pulling back, she was glad he was breathing hard, too. “What was that for?” she asked.

  “I can’t be happy to see you?”

  His voice held an odd note. She tilted her head and studied him. “Are you?”

  “Of course. I’m also mad as hell that you didn’t tell me you were going to the funeral.” His eyes deepened to a darker green.

  Barrie suddenly found her shoes very interesting. “Gossip on Watson Island is very efficient.”

  “Our housekeeper is Pastor Nelson’s second cousin. Dad’s livid that Pru didn’t tell him before she went over there.” Eight walked down the steps and waved the white peacock off its usual perch on the hood of Pru’s Mercedes.

  “Seven doesn’t know everything—and Pru doesn’t have to tell him what she’s doing. She’s done just fine without him for twenty years.”

  Something cracked behind Eight’s eyes, leaving him vulnerable. He looked away, but not before Barrie saw it. “He does like to think he knows what’s good for people. But that’s how he is. No one’s going to change him.”

  “Did you two have a fight?” Barrie asked warily, and when he didn’t answer, she pressed him again, feeling guilty but, at the same time, justified. Because Seven needed to come clean. “Was it because you asked him about the gift?”

  “He’s been lecturing me nonstop about going to California. Like I’m too stupid to figure out what’s best for my future.” He started to slide his hands into his pockets, then raised them in a helpless gesture of exasperation instead. “All this time he’s been pushing me to stay, wanting me to stay, and suddenly he says I need to get away from Watson Island, and I’m supposedly the one who doesn’t know my own mind? Sometimes I really hate him.”

  Barrie laid her palm against his cheek. “I know he doesn’t think you’re stupid. No one could think that—”

  “He told me he won’t pay for school at all unless I go to California. Also, he told Pru he would help with the restaurant so you can keep it going all year round, since I won’t be here.”

  The dullness in Eight’s voice and the brokenness of his expression brought an ache to Barrie’s throat. The words all tangled together as she searched for how to explain Seven’s motives in a way that wouldn’t hurt Eight even more.

  “You know what? Do me a favor and don’t let’s talk about him,” Eight said. “I need some time or I’m going to implode—Thank God you, at least, are finally getting it. You are getting it, right? I’m not leaving, Bear. I don’t want to. I know I don’t want to.”

  Numbly, Barrie nodded. Eight kissed her palm, then went around to slide into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes.

  The car had been parked in the sun, and the air inside was scalding. It seared Barrie’s lungs, but maybe it wasn’t the heat that made it hard to breathe. It was the fact that she had missed another perfect opportunity to tell Eight why Seven had changed his mind.

  She had to find a way to make Seven tell him.

  She and Eight talked about the archaeological dig as they drove, and about Berg, and Cassie’s flashback, and the horses and the details of the restaurant plans. Eight told her about Kate arriving back from camp with less than half the clothes and things she’d started with, because somehow people had needed them, or borrowed them and never given them back to her.

  “Dad about had a conniption. She’s always giving things away,” Eight said.

  “Didn’t she know the people didn’t want to return them?”

  “Of course, but that’s Kate. She doesn’t care. She’d give the shirt off her back to anyone who asked her for it. Reminds me a lot of you. You’re both good at ignoring the fact that people are up to no good, and you both insist on giving them the benefit of the doubt.”

  Flushing, Barrie rubbed her temple and stared out the window as they drove into a part of town she hadn’t seen before. The clapboard houses were smaller and closer together, low single-story homes set on pocket bits of lawn shaded by old pine trees that overshadowed the buildings beneath them. Pine needles made the grass spotty and sparse, but lawn sculptures and window boxes of potted geraniums and big clumps of bougainvillea provided bright pools of color against the starkly painted wood and brick.

  At the house where they pulled over, the front door opened as Eight cut the engine, and Daphne came out onto the stoop wearing shorts and a loose gray College of Charleston T-shirt. Her smile as wide and elfin as before, she put up a finger to signal them to wait and turned back toward the house, where a girl in a motorized wheelchair waved through the darkened doorway at them.

  Barrie waved back, but before she could get out of the car, Daphne was already bounding down the steps in a flash of limbs. “Sorry.” She dove into the backseat and shut the door behind her. “Jackson has ball practice, so I had to wait for someone to come and stay with Brit. Also, Eight, Jackson says if you’re sticking around, he wishes you’d come coach Little League, because the coach they had last year sucks. That’s an exact quote, by the way.” Leaning over, she grinned at Barrie. “I’ve got to tell you, this restaurant idea is brilliant. I haven’t seen Gramma Mary this excited since she first heard you were coming home.”

  Eight backed down the driveway, and after the initial burst of small talk had dwindled into a slightly awkward silence, Daphne pulled a laptop out of her backpack. “So, you have a design you want to do for the website?”

  Barrie called up a mental picture of the logo she had drawn. “I want it to look like a paper cutout. A gray background with dark branches illuminated with fairy lights, and a big, round moon across the banner. And the name ‘Magical Nights.’ ”

  Eight glanced at Daphne in the mirror. “I didn’t realize you’re a web designer.”

  “A programmer.” Daphne didn’t look up from the laptop screen. “At least, that’s what I want to be if I can figure out how to get through school. Gramma has her heart set on me being the first college graduate in the family no matter what.”

  Daphne didn’t specify, but Barrie suspected “no matter what” had to do with money. That was a legitimate reason for Mary and Pru to push so hard for the restaurant to stay open and be successful.

  “What if we opened the restaurant on Thursday nights, too? Would that help?” Barrie asked, feeling guilty for having been selfish.

  “I’m not sure anything would ‘help,’ ” Daphne said. “Every time I think we’ve got ourselves figured out, something else goes wrong.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  At nine thirty, after several hours of debating a thousand details for the restaurant and the website with Pru and Mary and Daphne and all three Beauforts, Barrie closed her sketchbook and stood up from the kitchen table.

  “I think I’m done for the night.” She beamed a what-I-really-really-want-most-is-to-go-to-my-room vibe at Eight, which was as close to what she really wanted as she could get.

  The uncertain success of trying to fool Eight was one of the worst aspects of having him know what she wanted. And she had stupidly told him to keep what he felt from her to himself when what she should have done was test him to find a way to work around the gift. As it was, all she knew for certain was that Eight couldn’t tell why she wanted something.

  “You’re not getting a migraine, are you? Or coming down with a bug?” Pru laid the back of a hand across Barrie’s forehead. “It’s no surprise. All this stress.”

  “This planning is making my brain hurt, and you look tired, too, Aunt Pru. What we both need is a good night’s sleep.” Tipping he
r head in Pru’s direction, Barrie bugged her eyes at Seven, wanting him to let Pru go up to bed.

  Pru crossed toward the sink. “I’ll get you a couple of Tylenol and some water. We should probably all get some rest. It’s going to be another long day tomorrow.”

  “I still think it’s a bad idea,” Seven said.

  “What’s a bad idea?” Barrie looked from Seven to Pru and back again.

  Pru rounded on Seven, her hands moving to her hips and her gray eyes flashing. “Are you too stubborn to ever stop arguing?”

  Seven stepped forward and put both hands on her shoulders. “I know this is important to you, but you can’t make up for twenty years in a week. Why don’t you give it some more time until things settle in? A month. Thirty days. That’s not long to wait.”

  “What isn’t she waiting for?” Barrie asked as Pru pulled away from Seven and filled a glass with water from the tap.

  “It was meant to be a surprise,” Pru said. She extracted a small bottle of medicine from the junk drawer under the kitchen counter. “You and I have a date in the morning to see Alyssa Evans about a couple of horses.”

  “Really?” Barrie clapped her hands before she remembered she was supposed to have a headache. Sobering, she took the glass of water and the small white tablets that Pru handed her.

  “Yes, really. So you’re going to want to feel your best. We’ve got a solid start on the restaurant, and the rest of these details will keep. As far as waiting goes”—she darted a look at Seven—“I’m through waiting. For anything. Watson’s Landing has had horses for three hundred years, and I want to pass that down to you and your future children.”

  “I thought we needed the stables for when the movers deliver Lula’s furniture,” Barrie said.

  “I’ve arranged for the auction company to be here again when the movers arrive. They’ll take away any of Lula’s things we decide not to keep right as the pieces come off the moving truck. The more I think about all this, the more I love the idea of clearing out this whole house and starting fresh without all the dents and history.”

  Barrie thought it would be both a shame and a relief to let all that history go. The past could be a burden that weighed you down. At the same time, it provided ballast. Amid the scratches and scars at Watson’s Landing, Barrie knew who she was far more than she’d ever known in the too-perfect replica of the house that Lula had recreated in San Francisco.

  Throwing out all that history was a pity, but in the end, furniture—things—didn’t matter. If letting the furniture go and bringing the horses back was what Pru needed, then Barrie would help make that work.

  “Can I come with you to Alyssa’s?” Kate splayed her elbows on the table and glanced hopefully from Pru to Barrie. “I know her horses pretty well from the local shows.”

  Pru’s faint smile was shadowed beneath the yellowed bulbs of the kitchen chandelier. “Of course. I was hoping you would help us out here until the horses settle in and everything calms down again.”

  She nodded insistently at the pills in Barrie’s palm. Cornered by her own duplicity, Barrie swallowed them and set down the glass. She looked up to find Seven Beaufort watching Pru with a mixture of pain and sadness that he wiped away when he caught Barrie’s scrutiny.

  “In theory, Kate is grounded from horses until she applies herself to her schoolwork, but since it’s summer—and you need the help—I won’t press the point.” Seven stopped beside Kate and gently tugged a strand of hair that had escaped from her barrette. “But all right. Let’s leave Pru and Barrie to get their rest.”

  Kate’s grin reminded Barrie very much of Eight as Seven managed to herd both his offspring out the door. Barrie stood at the railing waving good-bye as Seven and Kate went down the steps together.

  Eight leaned in to her for a quick stolen kiss. “Whatever you’re up to,” he said into her ear, “don’t do it.”

  “Don’t do what?” Barrie asked, thinking, I want to go to bed. I want this headache to stop. I want to go to bed. I want this headache to stop. I want to go to bed. I want this headache to stop. . . .

  “Anything crazy or stupidly courageous. I know you’re up to something.”

  “I don’t have a clue what you mean.”

  “Sure you don’t.” Eight’s eyes were bright and too intelligent. He cupped both hands at the back of her neck and pulled her closer for a softer kiss, the kind that lingered and made the backs of Barrie’s knees soften into noodles.

  She waited until he reached the bottom of the stairs, and when she turned, Pru was standing just inside the kitchen. Edging past, Barrie went to gather the remaining plates off the table.

  Pru locked the door, carefully set the chain, and punched in the code to the new alarm system that had been installed that morning. “Frustrating, isn’t it?” she asked. “I remember that feeling so well.”

  The stack of plates wobbled in Barrie hands. “What feeling is that?”

  “The ache of wanting a Beaufort, and the frustration of knowing that he knows exactly what I want. Go to bed, sugar. I’ll take care of the cleanup here.”

  Upstairs, Barrie waited in bed fully clothed, with the sheets huddled up to her chin, half-expecting the door to open and Pru to pop her head in to check on her. The previous night, it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been caught sneaking out. Tonight it would.

  There was only silence in the corridor, and the sound of doubt inside Barrie’s head. It had never occurred to her that uncertainty could sound like cymbals crashing, like hearts cracking, while certainty was as silent as a thief. She had no choice about trying to break the Colesworth curse. So why did she doubt so much?

  She’d taken the precaution, earlier that day, of unlocking the doors to one of the bedrooms farther down the balcony. At eleven ten, she rolled a batch of winter sweaters inside an extra blanket into a human shape and tucked the bundle under the covers on her bed.

  Across the river at Beaufort Hall, a light was on downstairs, but Eight’s room was dark. Hoping that meant he was asleep, Barrie slipped out onto the balcony and then back inside through the unlocked door. After creeping through the house, she punched in the security code so the alarm would let her exit and then rearm itself.

  Unlike the previous night, no clouds ringed the moon or kept the stars from cutting through the darkness. Recently installed spotlights made the exterior walls of the house shine like a wedding cake trimmed in glitter dust and formed pools of gold beneath the trees.

  The yunwi milled around Barrie, clutching at her jeans and pulling the orange laces of her hot pink Kate Spade sneakers, trying to pull her back. She half-expected Obadiah to be waiting beside the fountain, but he wasn’t there. Nor was he at the dock. She sat at the edge and waited, her legs swinging above the water. Frogs sang, and the occasional splash of a fish or small creature sounded above the shush of the river, but that was all. The two boats still floated downstream—or maybe they were different boats. It was impossible to tell. There was virtually no movement until a flashlight bobbed on the bank at Colesworth Place and Cassie wound her way down the steep bank toward the river.

  Fog sprang up from nowhere, billowing from the water and eddying around the marsh. Barrie barely had time to wonder at how quickly it had risen, before a splash beside the dock made her startle.

  “The girl is late.” Obadiah appeared in a boat that Barrie would have sworn hadn’t been there a second earlier. He grasped the wooden post to pull himself the final foot to the dock.

  The yunwi ringed Barrie in a protective circle. A few darted in to kick at Obadiah’s hand, and he drew back as if he felt them, but then his lips twitched with amusement.

  “Control your pets, petite,” he said, “or I shall do it for you.”

  “Don’t,” Barrie said, not sure whether she was speaking to him or the yunwi.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised at anything Obadiah did or said, but her heart did its best impression of a jackhammer anyway. With his black dress shirt open at the throat,
he looked less formal than he had before, but not by much.

  “Is there a special school where you go to learn creepy entrances and exits?” she asked, pretending to be brave. “And why are you wearing a suit to row across a river?”

  He bared his teeth at her benignly, light flashing on the gold incisors. “You really will say anything, won’t you?” He sounded amused, and his dark skin seemed to absorb the moonlight. “There was a time when people wore suits instead of blue jeans and shorts.”

  “When was that?” Barrie watched him carefully.

  But he gave nothing away. “All these questions will make me think you don’t trust me,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t you think less of me if I did?”

  “Yet here you are anyway. Why is that, I wonder?”

  “Maybe because between the blackmail and the hocus-pocus you didn’t give me any choice.”

  “Only because you want both your Beaufort boy and your magic. You’ll have to figure out for yourself which is more important.” He grinned at her again. “I ought to dislike you, but I find that I don’t. You should learn to trust me.”

  Barrie packed as much loathing as she could convey into a single look, and wished the yunwi had something they could throw at him. “Trust is not something you can ask for. It’s like faith; you either have it or you don’t.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve done a single thing to lose yours,” Obadiah said.

  Yet.

  The word wasn’t spoken, but it rang in the darkness just the same.

  Obadiah held his hand out to Barrie, and she lowered herself into the rowboat. A soundless cry went up from the yunwi, but she couldn’t do anything to reassure them.

  Shrouded in the unnatural fog, the Santisto was surreal as Obadiah rowed them across. There was a sense of waiting, of time or motion held in abeyance, and the absence of the common sounds Barrie had come to recognize sent up its own cadence of alarm. Where had the frogs gone? The humming insects? Why was there no occasional leap of a fish or the drum of an alligator’s tail? None of those things broke the steady splash of the oars slicing into the water and emerging again dribbling liquid silver.