Persuasion

by Martina Boone

  The woman was rectangular; that was about the only way to describe her. Her body was short and broad and lean, crammed into a tank top, riding breeches, and black knee-high boots. Even her hair was cut bluntly across the bangs and square beneath the chin.

  “Hello!” She pulled Pru in for a hug the moment Pru emerged from the car. “Am I ever happy to see you—and I’ll be even happier once I get you on a horse again.”

  Pru disengaged herself and rubbed absently at her ribs. “Bet you never thought you’d live to see that happen.”

  “I can be magnanimous and say I missed you, can’t I? Especially with twenty years of show ribbons hanging on my walls, thanks to your absence.” Alyssa smiled without self-consciousness, deepening the sun creases around her eyes. “Also, to be honest, nothing pushes a person to improve as much as the desire to beat out someone who’s always that little bit better.”

  Alyssa greeted Eight and his sister before turning to Barrie and giving her a slow appraisal. “You must be Lula’s girl. Pru says you’re not much of a rider?”

  “Not a rider at all,” Barrie said. “The horses should probably run when they see me coming.”

  “At least you’re not afraid. I’ve heard that about you. Come on inside, then.” She glanced down at Barrie’s pink sneakers with a frown. “You’re going to need some boots. That’s the first thing. I’ve probably got an old pair of my daughter Amanda’s around here somewhere that’ll fit you. And I’ve got a couple of sweet mares and a nice gelding for you both to look at, although half the battle is won in the stall, I always say. You need to be the one putting down the hay and raking through the shit, all the day-to-day unglamorous things, or you miss out on half the good stuff with a horse. The riding is the least of it.”

  She disappeared into the tack room on the left of the barn entrance, with Pru and Kate following close behind her. Eight stood with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, waiting to fall into step with Barrie. As usual, the tail of his shirt was loose over his shorts, and unlike Kate, who wore high boots over fawn-colored riding breeches, he wore just his usual boat shoes.

  Barrie ignored the fact that he was gorgeous, and concentrated on the fact that she was mad at him. “You’re being a complete ass. You know that, right?”

  “Me?” He stared at her blankly for a second. “I’m being an ass? The more I think about what you did last night, how stupid it was to go off with Obadiah by yourself, not to mention Cassie, the more I realize I let you off easy. You didn’t trust me enough to tell me.”

  “I told you, my throat closed up every time I even thought about saying his name.”

  “Did you try writing it down? Hell, you could have transmitted it in smoke signals. Or here’s a thought. You could have tried not working so hard to convince me that nothing was going on.” He brushed past her and stalked into the building.

  The barn wasn’t as luxurious as the one at Watson’s Landing, but blue ribbons and championship sashes covered the walls of the tack room from floor to ceiling. Pads lightly limned with dirt and sweat had been turned bottom-up to dry on top of their corresponding saddles, and the scent was alive with hay and horse.

  After removing her sneakers, Barrie tugged on the boots that Alyssa tossed her, then trailed down the aisle toward a box stall where the others were clustered around a sweet-faced chestnut with deep grooves around the eyes. Still, it was the stall before his that called to Barrie’s finding sense.

  “Oh, not that one, honey.” Alyssa moved over to where Barrie had stopped, and they both looked down at a pure black mare with an impossibly long mane and feathered legs who was lying down in the straw.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing, really. Miranda just doesn’t like people much.”

  “Sometimes I don’t, either.” Barrie threw a meaningful look in Eight’s direction.

  Alyssa laughed. “Come meet Cumberbatch, then. He, at least, is a perfect gentleman.” Tugging Barrie’s hand, she nudged her toward the chestnut gelding. “And before you laugh, his registered name is Graff Benedict. We call him Batch for short.”

  She slid open the door, pulled a halter over Batch’s ears, and walked him down the aisle so that Pru and Kate could check his conformation and the evenness of his strides. While the three experts descended into a long discussion about hocks and backs and shoulders, Barrie went to stand beside Eight, who had leaned against the front of the stall and wrapped both hands around the iron bars above his head.

  “For the record,” he said, “I’m still not convinced that you on a horse is the best idea.”

  “Can you at least pretend you aren’t mad at me while we’re here? You’re making Pru suspicious.” Barrie wandered back the few steps to Miranda’s box. “Hello, pretty girl.”

  “It takes two to have a fight,” Eight called after her. He peeled himself away from the wall and followed with his expression set into bitter lines. “If it helps you any,” he added more quietly, “I probably can’t stay angry for long—not if you don’t want me to be. But right now I don’t know how not to be furious. You didn’t trust me. You deceived me. You made choices for me without giving me a chance to choose for myself. Those aren’t things I can forget. Even if the anger fades, what you did is always going to be there between us.”

  Moisture blurred Barrie’s eyes. The mare in the stall pushed out her front legs and heaved to her feet. She stood with her withers quivering a moment, then minced forward, her head slightly lowered as she came to stand at the bars. Barrie held her hand out, wishing she’d thought to bring some sugar or a carrot for the horse. Or maybe something sweet for Eight would have been better, something to bribe him into letting things go back to the way they had been before. Into trusting her.

  “I never meant to hurt you,” she said.

  “I know.” Eight pushed his hair out of his face and swallowed. Then, so abruptly it was clear the subject was over, he said, “I’ve been thinking about Obadiah, and I’ve decided I want to meet him.”

  Barrie looked over with a frown. “Why?”

  “So we know what he’s really after. If all he wanted was to remove the curse, he could have removed that whenever he first figured out it was hurting his family.”

  “He needed a Watson to find the lodestone, but Pru barely has the gift at all. Lula wasn’t here, and Emmett was housebound for twenty years. Until I arrived, there was nothing Obadiah could do.” A suspicion about Obadiah’s true age intruded there, but she pushed it away again and went on. “Anyway, if he was after the gold, what was he going to do, raise it up through twelve feet of dirt and rubble and levitate it away while Cassie and I stood and watched?”

  “Not while you watched, no,” Eight said. “But he knows how to make you think he isn’t there, apparently. And now he knows exactly where the gold is. What’s to stop him from going back, creating more of that fog, and hauling it away whenever he wants?”

  “First, because he never asked me whether it was the gold buried down there. Second, whatever is buried down there isn’t money. Anyway, the gold is not our problem. Did you ask your dad about the Beaufort lodestone? If it isn’t lost, then Seven knows where it is—along with a lot of other things you deserve to know.”

  “Yes, I asked. And no, he still won’t talk about the Beaufort gift—and I don’t want to talk about him. You’re good at not talking, so can you please do me that little favor?”

  Eyes stinging and ears reddening, Barrie reached through the bars to stroke the black silk skin of Miranda’s nose. The mare’s lower lip went slack and soft, and a warm, lovely energy soaked into Barrie, calm energy that made her feel like she’d tipped her face toward the sun. The cold that Eight’s anger had been making her feel inside lessened marginally, and the headache that had been plaguing her since they’d left Watson’s Landing pounded through her a little less.

  “Do you remember when we first went down into the tunnel,” she said to Eight, “and you found the bag of silver that Emmett had put there
so he could pretend that Luke had run away with it? That bag felt lost, but it was lost in a completely different way from how Luke’s and Twila’s bodies felt lost. Do you understand what I’m saying? Some things feel more important than others.”

  “Of course.”

  “Doesn’t your gift feel stronger when someone needs food to feed their kids versus wanting the latest pair of jeans?”

  “Sometimes. But some people care more about their jeans than others care about their kids.” Eight moved closer. “Bear, I get that what you saw last night was awful, but that doesn’t mean it was real. It doesn’t mean it happened. It’s too convenient. Think about it. Obadiah performed his magic, and, next thing you know, you’re seeing the Union soldiers hunting for the gold. Obviously, you were meant to realize that the gold had to be what Alcee and his wife died protecting. It could all have been an elaborate hoax, some kind of hypnotism to trick you into using your gift to find the gold for him, and everything he told you about the lodestone could have been a lie. Even if what you saw was real and the events happened just that way the night the mansion burned, I can’t figure out why Obadiah would have wanted you to see it.”

  “I’m not sure he did,” Barrie said.

  “Then who?”

  That was the sixty-thousand-dollar question to which Barrie didn’t have an answer. “We need to find out more about what happened the night of the fire. If we’re assuming the man was Alcee Colesworth, what happened to the girls? Cassie said Charlotte disappeared that night and no one has ever found her.”

  “Why do you think anything happened? You didn’t see them die.”

  “Not then, but at least Charlotte must have, if not both of them. That angry angel in the Colesworth cemetery is the marker for her empty grave. No one knows what happened to her that night, so maybe the same way I was supposed to find Luke and your great-aunt Twila, I’m supposed to find Charlotte and the little slave girl. I can’t imagine how they could be buried by the ruins, but there has to be a reason I saw the echo from that night. Maybe someone other than Obadiah wanted me to see it.”

  Barrie felt the truth of that as she said it. Increasingly, her gift was growing to be less about what was lost and more about finding answers. It made perfect sense, she realized as the mare nudged her hand again and blew out a warm gust of breath. The mare was another example. Although the gelding was beautiful, there hadn’t been anything special about him. Touching the mare, though, looking into her liquid brown eyes, Barrie had a feeling of rightness, of foundness, as if the mare was an answer to a question Barrie hadn’t even known to ask. It reminded Barrie of the way she was drawn to Pru and Eight. Of the way she felt deep down that she and Eight were supposed to be together.

  Maybe that was why, out of almost everything that had happened at Colesworth Place the night before, the thing she found hardest to accept was Eight’s accusation that she wanted him only because she had lost everything else. Losing everything made a person recognize the value of what they’d found. It didn’t make them cling to things they didn’t want.

  Outside in the baking sun of the Evans paddock a little later, Barrie was still thinking about the relationships between want and need and lost and found. A chip of paint peeling from the fence dug into the skin beneath her nail, and she flinched and popped the finger into her mouth while she watched Alyssa tightening Miranda’s girth.

  Her face shining with joy, Pru eased Batch from a rolling canter to a leisurely walk. “What did you think, sugar?” She came to a halt in front of the fence where Barrie, Eight, and Kate were standing. “Did you change your mind yet? Want to try him?”

  “No, I’m fine. I think he’s definitely yours. In fact, I know he is.”

  In some way, she and Pru both needed the horses. Maybe Miranda and Batch were questions, the same way that Obadiah, Charlotte and the slave girl, and even the Fire Carrier were questions. Or maybe they were answers to something that Barrie didn’t even know she needed yet. She had to learn to trust her gift. So many of the things she had found lately hadn’t been precisely lost. But she wasn’t found without them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Back at Watson’s Landing, the yunwi circled around Barrie as she and Eight approached the stables. But the brooms and the box of cleaning supplies that had been her excuse for spending some time alone with Eight turned out to be superfluous. Eight pulled open the double doors, and the building was spotless. All the dust and grime had been removed as if by magic. Yunwi magic, Barrie assumed, since the shadows were practically dancing around her looking giddy and expectant and happy. They darted in and out of the stalls, inviting her in to inspect one after another.

  A feeling of possessiveness washed over her. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Who are you talking to?” Eight asked her.

  “The yunwi cleaned the place out for us. I think they’re excited to have the horses coming.”

  “Good. Thank them for me, too. I’m so damn tired, my eyes are crossing, and the last thing I wanted to do was sweep out dust bunnies and cobwebs.” Eight yawned for the third time in as many minutes. “Maybe for a little while we could forget about the stables and the restaurant and focus on the actual problem. What do you think? Between you and Pru, I feel like I’ve been caught inside a tornado.” He nodded toward her pink tennis shoes and gave her a narrow smile. “You’re even wearing the right shoes for it, Dorothy. Slippers, sneakers. Not much difference.”

  “Tell that to the Wicked Witch. I doubt she’d agree with you,” Barrie said, but the joke made her hope he might be ready to forgive her. She hated that she was going to have to make him mad all over again.

  She wandered out of the stall and stood with her back to the sun. “So, I’ve been thinking over what you said about wanting to talk to Obadiah.”

  “Did you figure out how to find him?”

  “There are things your father hasn’t told you about the Beaufort gift. About the bargains and the binding—”

  “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to nag me about this anymore?” Eight’s shoulders were as tight as bowstrings. “Look, I can’t push Dad. Not when I’m already pushing him about school and things are ready to blow up. So why don’t you just concentrate on finding Obadiah? If he is telling the truth about anything, we can get answers faster out of him than we can anywhere else. And if he can break the Beaufort gift, then none of this will matter.”

  Eight came toward Barrie, his hands rising and then stopping awkwardly above his waist as if he’d started to reach for her and then changed his mind. “Think how much simpler everything would be if you didn’t have to worry about whether my motives were tangled up with yours.”

  There was no denying that.

  Marching around Eight, Barrie exited the building.

  “Where are you going now?” he asked, jogging to catch up as she headed down the path toward the ruined chapel and the cemetery.

  “I’ve got something else I want to try. The Watson gift has been getting stronger since Lula died, and I’m feeling things that aren’t actually lost.”

  “You think you can find Obadiah?”

  “Who knew you had such a one-track mind?” she said. “I’m not sure what I will find, but there’s something there.”

  “So tell me what you mean.”

  This new form of the gift wasn’t about finding as much as it was about intuition, which was a big word for something that came down to a leap of faith. Eight had been right about that from the beginning. Barrie hadn’t realized how little she trusted anyone, especially herself.

  The gate around the cemetery was locked, and Eight leaped over it and held his hand out to steady her so she could climb over the fence. His touch warmed her skin, and she clung to the heat and the temporary sense of rightness, but he let go too quickly and pushed both hands into his pockets, as if reminding himself not to touch her.

  Barrie suppressed a sigh. “Do you still have the keys from the library? You took them home by accident, but the
key to this lock is probably on that ring as well.”

  “I didn’t want you wandering around the house with Mark’s ashes after I left.”

  “So you did take them on purpose?” Barrie heard her voice rising at the end of the sentence, and she closed her eyes a moment, needing to refocus. It wasn’t even worth getting mad at Eight. Both of them kept trying to do things for the other, and what they needed to do was work together.

  Spotting a stone bench beside a grave, she headed toward it. The tombstone had a stone dog lying at the foot and a gray cat perched on top, and it never occurred to Barrie that the cat was real until it turned to look at her with a lazy wink of pale green eyes. Moving to pet the cat, she couldn’t help wincing at the inscription on the grave. A child. Another child.

  She shuddered as a raven launched itself out of a tree and cast a shadow over her on its way toward the river. Two more sat on a branch nearby, like vultures waiting for someone’s misfortune. Barrie sank down on the bench.

  She spoke to Eight without looking at him. “How common are ravens down here? Do you see them often?”

  “Not sure I can tell them from crows, to be honest.” Eight lowered himself to the bench beside her and watched the bird fly away. “You think that was Obadiah?”

  “Or one of his spies, maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Can’t you just call him again?”

  “I didn’t call him before. There was never any ringing, and he never hung up. I think the phone was his idea of a joke.” Barrie pulled the phone out of her pocket and scrolled to the call history. “See? His number isn’t here. Is that technology or magic?”