Natchez Flame (35 page)

“Listen to me, Priscilla—”

“No, Brendan. When I listen to you, I believe I can do the things you say. I believe we’ll be happy and everything will be all right. After what’s happened, I’m just not sure anymore.”

“You’re tired, is all. Once you’re feeling better—” Priscilla shook her head. “My parents brought me into a gentle life. Aunt Maddie taught me to be a
proper lady. I don’t know how to be a frontier woman.”

Her face looked pale, her eyes distant. He had never seen her look quite that way.

“Stuart saw the truth,” she was saying. “With his money, he could have protected me, sheltered me. What you’re asking me to do is accept this horrible violence that seems to surround you and learn to live with it. Well, I don’t know if I can.”

Brendan’s expression turned hard. Who was this woman who looked like Priscilla but sounded nothing like her? Where was the courageous woman who had followed him across the plains?

“I believe you can do whatever it is you want to. But you’re the one who has to choose.” His eyes searched her face, hoping to reach her, hoping to rouse some emotion. “You can be your long-dead parents’ little girl, your aunt’s too-proper niece, or Stuart Egan’s possession. Or you can be your own woman—live your life as you see fit. It’s up to you, Priscilla.”

She didn’t answer. Brendan watched her a moment more, trying to read her expression. He had never seen her so remote, so guarded. He wouldn’t have believed this was the same woman who had fought her way across the Texas frontier, determined to make a life for herself.

When Priscilla still said nothing, Brendan turned and walked away. She didn’t return to the house for several hours more. By the time she did, he had gone.

*  *  *

“You can’t be serious.”

“I assure you, Chris, I’m deadly serious.” Brendan sat beside Chris Bannerman at a small wooden table in a corner of the Main Street Tavern. It was a quiet little place, a well-run establishment frequented by the more successful local planters. “She doesn’t think she’s cut out for a life on the Texas frontier.”

At the dismal expression Brendan had worn back into the house, Chris had suggested they go out for a brandy. Brendan had gratefully agreed. Afterward, he would make his rounds, searching for information in the gaudy saloons of Natchez-under-the-Hill.

“But she loves you,” Chris said. “It’s written all over her face every time she looks at you.”

“Not lately. Ever since the accident, she hardly knows I’m alive. I guess she blames me…. Or maybe … ah, hell, Chris, I just don’t know.”

“Give her some time, Bren. Surely, she’ll snap out of it.”

“Maybe…. Then again, maybe she won’t. I owe her one helluva debt for helping me deal with the past, but I’m not willing to give up the rest of my life in repayment. If she doesn’t want me, I sure as hell don’t want her.”

“With a little patience, maybe you can bring her around, make her see things more clearly.”

“A dozen people tried that with me, and it didn’t do a lick of good. Only one person can put things right for Priscilla—and that’s Priscilla. There’s not a damn thing I can say or do. It has to be her choice.”

He took a sip of his brandy. “To tell you the truth, Chris, I’m beginning to think she may be right. In fact, when I met her, I did everything in my power to
convince her she wasn’t cut out for a life on the plains. Now, well …”He picked up his glass and shot the amber contents to the back of his throat. He grimaced as the burning liquid trickled down to his stomach.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider returning to Savannah? Your brother could help you make a fresh start there.”

Brendan twirled the empty glass in his hand. “If I thought it could work, I might consider it, but it isn’t where I belong. The truth is, a life on the Texas frontier is only part of the problem.” He set the glass down hard on the table.

“I’ve got to get going,” he told Chris, dropping several coins beside the glass. “I’ve been talkin’ to a fella who may be involved with McLeary. Every time I see him, he opens up a little more. Another friendly nudge and a little more free whiskey just might do the trick.”

“If you can find out when the next raid is planned, we’ll bring in the sheriff, arrest McLeary in the act, and press him to incriminate Egan.”

“That happens, I’ll be in the clear and on my way back to Texas.”
With or without Priscilla
, he thought, but didn’t say.

Priscilla tied her wide-brimmed bonnet beneath her chin, picked up her reticule, looping it over a gloved hand, descended the servants’ stairs, and went out the back door. At the rear of the house, she found Zachary, the huge black servant who handled the livery, and asked him to bring one of the smaller carriages around.

She felt a little guilty, not having asked permission, but Chris was out and Sue Alice was upstairs reading to Charity. Besides, if she told them where she was headed, they might not let her go.

Since the hour was late, Zachary drove the carriage himself. She figured he’d decided to act as her protector. If so, she felt grateful.

“Where we goin’, ma’am?”

“The Middleton Hotel.”

He didn’t say more, just clucked the horses into a trot. They traveled through the quieting streets and finally rounded a corner onto Washington. Near the corner of Wall sat the Middleton Hotel. Zachary pulled the animals to a halt.

“I be waitin’ right here,” he said, and his dark eyes seemed to assess her.

She knew what he was thinking—why was an unescorted female traveling in the evening to a hotel alone?

Fortunately, she didn’t have to tell him. Priscilla lifted her rust silk faille skirts, stepped down from the carriage, and crossed the boardwalk, entering the green-shuttered, solid-looking building. Inside the lobby, done in a heavy Spanish motif with thick wooden beams and red-tiled floors, she approached the front desk and spoke to a thin, sallow-skinned man in a dark gray tailcoat who leaned back in his chair, reading a book.

“Excuse me,” Priscilla said, “I’m looking for a woman named Rose Conners. Could you tell me which room she’s in?” When the clerk didn’t answer quickly enough, she added, “She’s Mr. McLeary’s … niece.”

He arched a thin gray brow. “McLeary’s suite’s on the second floor, down at the end of the hall. You want I should tell ’em you’re here?”

“Are … are both of them in this evening?”
Please, God, let McLeary be working.”

“Only Miss Rose. McLeary’s down at the tavern.”

Thank you, Lord.
“Then I’ll just go on up.” She wanted this meeting in private, not in the hotel lobby. It would be hard enough without an audience.

“Suit yourself,” the clerk said, burying his nose back in his book, Richard Henry Dana’s
Two Years Before the Mast.

Priscilla climbed the stairs with determination, and an eerie sense of fatalism. Since she’d run into Rose Conners that day on the boardwalk, this meeting seemed destined to occur.

Priscilla knocked on the heavy oak door. She could hear feminine footfalls and the sound of rustling skirts, then the lock turned, and the door swung open.

“Hello,” Priscilla said softly. “May I come in?”

Rose Conners surveyed her from head to foot. “Why not? I expected you to show up sooner or later.”

Priscilla followed her into the well-appointed parlor. “Then I gather you know who I am?”

“I know.”

“Then you must know why I’ve come.”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” Rose said, “but I figured you’d piece things together sooner or later. When you did, I assumed you’d come here to gloat.”

“Gloat?” Priscilla repeated. “Why on earth would I do that?”

Rose motioned for her to take a seat on the brown horsehair sofa and Priscilla sat down, then busied herself arranging her rust silk skirts. The room smelled pleasantly of the bayberry tapers sitting on the table. It was furnished in a heavy but comfortable Spanish motif, and looked immaculately clean.

“How ’bout a brandy? Sorry, I’m fresh outta tea.” There was an edge to every word, a bitterness that hadn’t been there at their first meeting.

“I believe I could use a drink,” Priscilla said, refusing to be intimidated, though she had certainly never tried alcohol of any sort before.

Rose poured brandy from a cut-crystal decanter into two crystal snifters, crossed the room and handed Priscilla a glass. She wore an expensive turquoise quilted silk wrapper, ruffled at the wrists, high-necked, and buttoned up the front. Long dark brown hair, the same shade as Priscilla’s own, hung nearly to her waist, and her skin looked smooth and clear.

She was more robust than Priscilla, slender, yet more amply endowed, her features a little less refined. But the resemblance was there—Priscilla could see it in the curve of her soft pink lips, the arch of her fine dark brows. For the first time she noticed the slight bruise beside the woman’s left eye.

“Admiring Caleb’s handiwork, are you?” Rose sat down on a wing-backed chair across from her and took a drink of her brandy.

More violence. Dear God, how she hated it!
“Why … why did he do it?”

“Apparently one of his cutthroats mentioned my
untimely luncheon with your friend, Jaimie Walker. Caleb doesn’t like me talking to other men.”

“Why don’t you just leave?”

She scoffed. “Where would I go? How would I support myself?”

“You’re obviously intelligent. Surely you could get a job, find some way to take care of yourself.”

“Look, Priscilla—that is your name as I recall? What I do is none of your concern. It wasn’t eighteen years ago, it isn’t now.”

“I was only six years old. I didn’t even remember what happened until a few nights ago.”

“You didn’t remember?” Rose came out of her chair. “Your mother killed my parents, and for all those years you didn’t remember? Well, I sure as hell remember. Every day of my life I cursed that woman for what she did. Every day I cursed you for having a family to take you in while I went hungry and slept on a cornhusk mattress down at the whorehouse. You didn’t remember—and I could never forget!”

Priscilla just sat there. The clock on the mantel ticked loudly. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “My aunt never told me what happened. My memory … lapsed. If I hadn’t come back to Natchez, I might never have remembered. But there was an accident—a shooting—and I put the pieces together. I recalled things my aunt said, when she didn’t know I was around. I remember my mother crying, talking about you and your mother. Saying how Megan O’Conner had stolen my father’s love.”

“He was married to your mother, but he was in love with mine. We were a family.”

Priscilla felt a lump swell up in her throat. “I loved him, too.”

“You didn’t even remember him.”

What could she say? In a way it was the truth. “So much violence,” she finally said. “Why does it have to be this way?”

“That’s just life, Priscilla. You might as well get used to it.”

“I can’t. I know that now. As soon as I can get the money, I’m leaving for Cincinnati. I’ll find a job, a way to support myself.”

“What about your fancy husband? Looks to me like he’s taking care of you just fine.”

“I left Stuart several days ago. I don’t love him—I never did.” Brendan’s face rose up, but she blotted it out. “I’m getting an annulment, and I’m going back home.”
Where I belong.
“Why don’t you come with me?”

Rose laughed aloud. “I’ve spent the better part of my life working my way out of the gutter. I’m not about to return to it now.”

“You’d rather stay with a man who beats you?”

“Maybe. And maybe … someone … will come along who doesn’t beat me.” She straightened in her chair. “Until then, I’ll stay right here. If you were smart, you’d do the same.”

Priscilla almost wished she could. It would be so simple to let Stuart take care of her as he’d wanted to from the start. But she didn’t love him, and she had continued to betray him with Brendan. She could never go back to him now.

Priscilla set the brandy snifter aside and stood up. “Thank you for seeing me. After all that’s happened,
I know you have every reason to hate me, but I hope you’ll think about what I’ve told you and try to understand. Whether you like it or not, we’re sisters—”

“Half sisters,” Rose corrected.

“Like it or not, we’re the only family we’ve got.”

Rose set her own glass down and strode past Priscilla to the door. “It’s too late for family. I’ve got myself—it’s always been enough.”

Priscilla studied her sister’s pretty face and something stirred inside her. She felt a flutter of warmth, but it wasn’t enough to melt the icy shell she had built around her heart. “Maybe if we had more time….”

“Maybe….”

But they didn’t. Priscilla walked out the door.

In the morning she spoke to Sue Alice. Though Priscilla hadn’t seen him, Brendan had come home sometime during the night. The servants mentioned his appearance for breakfast, and that he’d left for the cotton fields with Chris.

Priscilla felt nothing but relief. She talked to Sue Alice, explaining her decision to go back to Cincinnati. As she had expected, Sue Alice tried to dissuade her, but when she saw the extent of Priscilla’s determination, agreed to give her the money she would need.

“I won’t accept your charity,” Priscilla said. “But if you and Chris will make me a loan, I’ll pay it back just as soon as I’m able. I don’t need much, just enough for a steamboat ticket and a place to live until I can get a job.”

“Are you sure about this? Until Charity’s accident,
you and Brendan seemed so happy. Why don’t you wait a while, let things settle down?”

Priscilla staunchly refused. “I just want to go home. I want to live where things are normal. I don’t want to face unpleasant memories or try to be something I’m not.”

“When are you plannin’ to leave?”

“Tomorrow. If that’s all right with you.”

“What about Brendan?”

“I’ll speak to him tonight. I’m sure that once he thinks things over, he’ll see that I’m right.”

Sue Alice took her hand. “Life’s never easy, Priscilla. Sometimes what seems to be the simplest path turns out to be the hardest. At times it’s better t’ face up t’ things than let them lie.”