by Cora Seton
A huge, upright slab of stone stood at the center of the maze like a monolith stolen from Stonehenge and shipped across the ocean. Jericho and Curtis immediately went to inspect it.
“No one knows,” Sadie said with a shrug. “One of our ancestors must have put it here, but there’s no record of it, and the stone itself comes from hundreds of miles away.”
Elizabeth walked around it in a circle, disappearing behind its broad back and reappearing on the other side. “It’s remarkable.”
Jericho and Curtis were arguing. “… faster than you,” Jericho was saying.
“No way. You couldn’t find your way out of a paper bag,” Curtis said.
“Wanna bet?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you ladies do without us for a minute?” Jericho said. “We won’t go far.”
“We’re perfectly fine,” Sadie told them.
They watched the men position themselves at the opening of the nearest passage. In a sudden burst, they raced off. Sadie shook her head. “They’re in for it now,” she said. Turning back to Elizabeth, she added, “The stone will answer any question you have.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Answer it? How?”
Sadie shrugged again. “Try it and see. Just touch it and ask what you want to know.”
Elizabeth contemplated the tall stone, shrugged. “Oh, why not?” She stepped forward and put her hands on its surface. “Will I… win?”
A breeze picked up, lifted tendrils of Elizabeth’s hair and brushed Avery’s cheek.
“Well?” Elizabeth asked the stone. “Where’s my answer?”
“It takes time,” Sadie told her.
Elizabeth dropped her hands and brushed them off on her gown before she seemed to realize what she was doing. She sighed. “I don’t have time.”
The wind gusted through the clearing again, and a scrap of newspaper floated along with it, lifting and twirling until it almost hit Elizabeth in the face.
With a little cry of surprise, she snatched it out of the air and crumpled it in her hand.
“No!” Sadie jumped to rescue it. She smoothed it out again. “Look.”
Avery came close to peer at the faded newspaper. “Climate Change is Unstoppable, Experts Say,” read the headline. Elizabeth expelled a breath.
“Unstoppable? That’s my answer?” She turned back to the stone. “There’s no hope at all?”
“Wait, look at the subheading,” Sadie said, pointing.
“But with Effort We Can Mitigate Its Effect,” Avery read out loud slowly. “With effort—like what you’re doing testifying to Congress.”
“You’re testifying to Congress?” Sadie looked impressed.
“No one can know that,” Avery told her. She was doing a lousy job keeping secrets today.
“I won’t say a word.”
The men thundered into the clearing, both of them clearly confused by how they’d gotten there.
“I told you that last turn was wrong,” Jericho said.
“We’re supposed to be guarding the women,” Curtis bluffed. “I brought us back here on purpose.”
“Avery? You want to try asking a question?” Sadie asked.
Avery remembered Alice’s strange prophesy earlier and shook her head.
“Another time.”
Chapter Nine
‡
“You’re making a huge mistake,” Angus said. “You’re killing Avery, and you’re going to wish you were dead, too, if you go through with this wedding.”
One more day, Walker promised himself. In less than twenty-four hours, he’d bring Elizabeth to the airport, and he could stop evading confrontations like this. He wanted to tell Angus he was right, but he couldn’t. Renata had let it slip last night how closely Fulsom was monitoring everything that went on at Base Camp right now.
“He knows this show has to end strong,” she’d put it. “I think he wants to throw us another curve ball or two before it’s over.”
Exposing Elizabeth as a fake and booting her off the ranch would rank right up there, Walker knew. Even twenty-four hours without protection could be time enough for someone to find her and make sure she never got the chance to testify.
“Some promises have to be kept no matter what,” he said.
“I don’t buy that, and I don’t think you do, either.”
“I do. Sometimes.” Walker held his gaze. “I know what I’m doing, Angus,” he added, hoping the man would drop it.
“I sure as hell hope so.” Angus stalked off.
Walker hoped he could regain his friends’ respect when this was all over. Elizabeth and Avery were doing their part by barely speaking to each other, except for the times when Elizabeth ordered Avery to attend to a certain part of her wedding preparations.
More than once he’d heard the other women speculating on why Avery was letting her get away with it, but Avery went along with the charade, grudgingly carrying out orders he knew she was secretly loving.
“We need to stage an intervention,” he heard Savannah say once. “All this helpfulness toward the person who’s stealing her happiness. It’s sick!”
Whenever they could, he and Avery stole moments together in the barn, the stables—wherever they were away from other eyes. It was difficult when they were supposed to stay with their work groups, but they still managed it. A quick kiss here, an embrace there—
All of it adding to his continuing frustration.
One more day.
He got to his morning chores with a vengeance, scowling whenever one of the others was near, relaxing when they weren’t. It was hard to hide his optimistic mood, and he had to counsel himself to frown a little on his way to the bunkhouse at midday after the bell rang for the meal.
When he met up with Elizabeth, who’d been standing a little apart, speaking on her phone as usual, his frown turned to genuine concern. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her lips pinched together in an angry line. Her hair, usually tied back so neatly in a braid when she worked, was coming down as if she’d raked her fingers through it more than once.
“What’s wrong?”
“They moved it again.” Her words were barely audible. “The Senate. They pushed back the hearing. Now it’s the same day as the vote—the last day before one of their state work sessions. In other words, they’re going to cram it all into one day with no extensions, because all the senators will have plans to travel home that night. What are they up to, Walker? They’re going to sabotage this somehow! They’re not even going to give me a chance to be heard!”
He’d never heard her so distraught before, and it unnerved him. “The day of the vote? What day is that?”
She shook her head and covered her face with her hands. “That’s the worst of it. May thirtieth.” Her voice was muffled, but he heard her loud and clear.
The air whistled out of his lungs. “May thirtieth?” His wedding day?
She dropped her hands. “We can still do this,” she urged him. “I know it’s awful, but we can still pull it off. I’ll leave early that morning, and you can still have your wedding day.”
“And keep the truth secret until then? That’ll kill Avery.”
“We have to! Walker, where else can I go?”
“Why does it have to be you?” he demanded, losing his cool. “Other people must be able to present the same information you can.”
“I’m… better suited to presenting the information. I’ve seen what’s happening, not just on our continent but in Siberia, too.”
He stared at her a long moment before shaking his head slowly. That didn’t add up. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Something you haven’t told me.”
She closed her eyes.
“Elizabeth.”
“There’s more,” she confirmed. “It’s an open secret that if this bill passes, Lawrence Energy will win the contract to extract the oil there. I’ve got footage from Lawrence’s other operations. Whistleblower stuff. No one knows. No one can know.”
“Someone knows if they’re trying to kill you.”
She swallowed. Nodded. “They already killed the whistleblower. That’s why I haven’t been home before this—I was in the thick of it. Securing the information, the proof they’ve never operated within the rules and won’t this time, either.”
“Jesus, Elizabeth. That’s the mess you brought to my door?”
“That’s the mess they’re taking to the world! Don’t you get it? They don’t care what they’re doing. They don’t care what will happen in thirty years. They’re willing to kill people to keep on polluting and sending more and more carbon into the air, as long as they get their money.”
Walker ran both hands through his hair. “Avery deserves a real wedding!”
“She’ll get a real wedding,” Elizabeth promised. “It will all be set to go. I’ll disappear the morning of the thirtieth. Once I’m on that plane, I’m not your concern anymore. You and Avery will have your day.”
A commotion near the bunkhouse caught his attention. “Now what?”
Elizabeth hurried after him as he went to investigate and found Montague and several of his men clustered around Boone.
“No way. Absolutely not. What are you thinking?” Boone looked up as Walker approached. “They say Fulsom told them they can disassemble the wind turbines.”
Walker turned on Montague. Got right in his face. “Get. The. Hell. Out. Of. Here.” He pronounced each word in turn, slowly and distinctly.
Montague took a step back, his smug smirk slipping away fast. “I’ll have Fulsom call you,” he said. “He’ll sort this out. We need to get cracking—the building season’s slipping away.” He turned and strode off, his men trailing him. “Be back tomorrow,” he called over his shoulder.
Walker found Boone considering him, an eyebrow raised. “What’s eating you?”
“Everything,” Walker said.
“Honey, your dad and I are worried about you,” Avery’s mother said when Avery accepted her call after lunch. “Why are you planning someone else’s wedding to Walker instead of your own?”
Now that the show was down to the wire, the crew was posting daily updates to the website, and today’s featured footage was of Elizabeth surveying the manor’s ballroom to see where her reception would take place. Avery had been present, offering suggestions for how to arrange it all. It had been like a game pretending to help Elizabeth decide things about her wedding when really she was planning her own.
Now everything had changed. Walker and Elizabeth had sat her down and explained the delay to the Senate hearing. Avery had listened with growing horror as she realized she was barely going to get a wedding day at all. No one could know that she was marrying Walker until Elizabeth boarded her flight.
Which meant no planning sessions with her friends. No rehearsal dinner. None of the little traditions that made a wedding special. She had to arrange everything in secret. No one else could know until hours before she walked down the aisle.
She kept her voice even. “Because we all pitch in to help.”
There was an uncharacteristic silence on the other end of the line.
“But you’re supposed to marry Walker, honey.”
“I know.” She hated everything about the situation. Was holding back tears even now. She’d always thought she’d savor every aspect of planning her wedding.
“I… don’t understand.”
Welcome to the club, Avery thought. “Elizabeth and Walker have known each other a long time. He can’t let her down.”
“But he loves you.”
“Yes.” She wasn’t going to lie about that.
“Are you marrying him or not?”
Avery couldn’t answer that. If she said yes, her mother would tell everyone she knew. If she said no, she’d be lying to her mother.
“Avery Lightfoot, stop playing games!”
Avery pulled the phone away from her face. Her mother hadn’t yelled at her in years.
“We don’t play around with love in this family,” her mother went on. “We don’t lie to each other, either.”
“I don’t want to lie to you.” She really didn’t. “So I can’t answer that question. You’ll have to be patient—and ready for anything. Can you understand that?”
“Of course I can, but I’ll point out that you lied once already. You were married, and you never said a word. We had to find out about that Brody fellow by watching the show. I can’t believe you never told us about him. We could have helped you get it annulled, sweetheart. Why would you keep that from us?’
So they’d seen the latest episode. She supposed it was a miracle her mother hadn’t confronted her sooner.
“How on earth could I tell you how badly I’d screwed up? You and Dad are the king and queen of romance. You never got dumped. You never screwed up everything and had to limp home in disgrace. I didn’t even allow myself to think about Brody after it was over. I hoped none of it was real. I wanted to forget the whole thing even happened.”
“Life doesn’t work that way.”
“I know.”
“This is all our fault,” her mother said. “We thought we could create a world for you where love reigned supreme. We wanted to give you the best example of marriage we could.”
“You did.”
“But we went overboard, didn’t we, if you think we’ve never made any mistakes. Sweetheart, your father and I have made tons of them. Everyone does. Nothing you can do would disappoint us. It’s okay if you don’t get married. You know that, right?”
Avery opened her mouth to say she was getting married.
Realized she couldn’t.
“You’re a strong, wonderful, amazing woman, and if Walker marries someone else, it’s his loss. You’ll be okay. Call us up, and we’ll come get you.”
“Mom!”
“Honey, if he’d proposed, you would have told me, so we know things aren’t going well. Do what you have to, but we’re always here for you. You know that, right?”
“Of course.” She wanted to explain everything, but she couldn’t, and she knew if she said anything else, she’d start stumbling over her words. One thing her mother said kept playing over in her mind.
If Walker had proposed, she would have called her.
But Walker hadn’t ever proposed, had he?
Not really.
Not in all this time.
Her mother sighed. “Keep us posted, honey. We’ll be ready for anything.”
“Thank you.” Avery hung up, her head spinning.
Why hadn’t Walker proposed?
Why didn’t she have a ring—if not to wear yet, then at least to look at when she was all alone?
She tried to shake off her doubts. She was going to marry Walker on May thirtieth, and that was all that mattered. Which meant she had to get Kai and Addison on board for preparing the food for the reception.
She ducked into the kitchen to find them cleaning up after the noon meal.
“Let Elizabeth plan her own wedding,” Addison said when Avery explained her errand. “Let her grab something at the grocery store. Cold cuts and cheese platters or whatever. It’s not like we’re going to celebrate her and Walker getting married. I can’t believe she asked you to handle this.”
“Elizabeth would like a full sit-down dinner.” Avery named the number of guests. Everyone at Base Camp plus her parents. She would have liked to invite other people, but there was no way to do that now that she couldn’t tell anyone about the wedding until the day itself.
“Elizabeth can go screw herself,” Kai said. “I’m not cooking for those two.”
“But—” She closed her mouth. She wasn’t allowed to tell them the truth. Walker had reiterated the need for secrecy this morning.
“Avery, let me give you a little advice,” Addison told her kindly. “You can’t let people push you around. You care about Walker, and you want him to have a nice wedding, even if it’s not to you. I get it, even though I could never carry off that kind of altruism myself,
but martyring yourself like that isn’t going to do anyone any good. Least of all you. Sue will take care of Walker and Elizabeth’s wedding. They can have it on the reservation, which I’m sure is where Sue would prefer to hold it anyhow. It’s not your place to be involved in this travesty.”
Avery left the bunkhouse kitchen before she spilled the beans or worse, cried with frustration, and returned to the main room, where everyone else was finishing their meals and milling about talking. She understood the need to protect Elizabeth and keep Fulsom from kicking her off the show, but her own happiness kept getting snatched out from under her, just when she thought it was secure.
A group of women had gathered in one corner of the room, chatting. Through the large front window, Avery spotted Maud Russell coming their way. A shriek made her jump, and she turned to find Leslie had just spilled a cup of tea down her gown and was fussing and fretting over it, trying to blot the liquid with napkins the other women were handing her. Avery took advantage of the distraction to slip outside the bunkhouse and head off Maud.
“Where’s James?” she asked.
“With the carriage. We just stopped by to say hello.” She frowned. “Just in time by the looks of things. Is there something I can do to help, my dear? You look distraught.”
“I… I’d love a ride in your carriage right away,” Avery confessed, needing to get away from Base Camp and all the secrets and frustrations, even for a short time.
“That will make James very happy!” Maud exclaimed. “Come on.”
Avery hurried along with her, hoping no gunmen were lurking about in the broad daylight, happy to escape the ranch before anyone noticed her. “I’m with the Russells,” she texted to Riley so no one would worry. “Perfectly safe.”
She figured it was only a matter of time before some of the men hopped in a truck and came after them to guard her, so as soon as the carriage was underway, she wasted no time in telling her problems to Maud. She’d learned over the time she’d known Maud that the woman might seem like a flighty Regency-era matron, but the reality was she was smart as a whip. She was playing a part, and as an actress herself, Avery understood that. It was a part Maud had chosen to act out 24/7, but a part all the same.