Rebel Enchantress (39 page)

“If you would care to continue your discussion, I suggest we return to the drawing room.”

But the mood was broken. Even Noah Hubbard felt the need to be free of the oppressive atmosphere. A few stayed long enough to finish their ale, but Nathan ushered the last guest to the door only fifteen minutes after Delilah had rushed from the library.

“Serena, I wish to speak to you in the drawing room. Alone,” he added when Priscilla started to accompany her mother.

“I don’t see why,” Priscilla replied. She seemed prepared to argue.

“Don’t try my temper any further tonight.” Nathan bit each word off sharply. “I’ll have something to say to you in the morning. Go to your room.”

“I will not be ordered about,” Priscilla answered sullenly.

“Go or be carried.”

Priscilla took one look at the cold fury in Nathan’s blue eyes and hurried up the staircase.

“Now,” Nathan said to Serena as he dosed the doors behind him, “I have just a few words to say. Listen well, because they are the last you will ever hear from me.”

“What do you—”

Nathan ignored her interruption. “I told you once before I would not tolerate your meddling in my affairs. I also told you never to search another room in my house.”

“I never entered your room.”

Nathan did not respond to her statement. “On numerous occasions you have demonstrated your unwillingness, or inability, to abide by my wishes. And you have done everything in your power to discredit Delilah even though I ordered you to do otherwise.”

“But she’s a spy. A traitor.”

“I don’t care what she is!” Nathan exploded, his tight control unraveling like a frayed rope. “I love her. Can’t you understand what that means? Or are you so twisted inside all you can do is sit in your room swilling brandy and thinking of ways to make other people’s lives as miserable and hate-filled as your own?”

Nathan turned his back on Serena. Not to hide the tears which welled up in his eyes despite his efforts to hold them back. He was afraid he couldn’t look at his aunt without strangling her.

“I wanted to marry her. I’ve never wanted anything so much in my entire life. I would have sacrificed Maple Hill, the money, everything for her.”

He whipped around to face Serena, a look of such ferocious rage on his face she shrank back in terror.

“But you ruined all that, you and your bitch of a daughter. Who cared about that list? Everybody knew what was in it. It wouldn’t have made any difference if she had handed it to Shays herself.”

Terror prevented Serena from uttering a sound.

“You couldn’t rest until you destroyed her. But you also ruined yourself,” Nathan said savagely. “Until the moment you die, I will never let you forget, not even for one moment, what you’ve done tonight.”

His hands snaked out and grabbed Serena by the throat. She tried to scream, but his thumbs cut off the sound. “I ought to kill you, but I’m not going to. Instead I’m going to make you live in a kind of misery you’ve never imagined.”

He released Serena, and she collapsed into a chair.

“You’re going to live on a farm in Vermont. I’ll give you just enough money to survive—if you work very hard.”

“No, please. You can’t—”

“There won’t be anybody to help you except one old man. You are not to leave the farm or try to communicate with me in any manner. You will take nothing from this house but your clothing and the jewelry your husband gave you.”

Serena sobbed uncontrollably.

“If you write me, if you try to see me, I will cut off your funds.”

“Priscilla—”

“She will remain here until I decide what to do about her.”

“But Delilah stole the list.”

“I know!” Nathan cried, the anguish in his heart spilling out in those words. “But why did you have to tell me? Didn’t you know I would have given you Maple Hill and everything in it if you had burned that piece of paper rather than bring it in here tonight?” He picked up a small drop-leaf table and threw it against the wall. Serena’s scream was accompanied by the sound of splintering wood and breaking glass.

“But you had to expose her, you had to do your utmost to convince everyone she was a traitor. Well, what do you have, Aunt Serena, for all your scheming and conniving and changing orders behind my back? What do you have for all your hating and your lying and your cheating? You have exactly what I have. Nothing! Not a goddamned thing!”

Nathan cursed violently.

“Get out of my sight. If you don’t, I may kill you yet.”

Serena fled.

Nathan remained. For a long time he simply stared through the open doorway after his aunt. Finally, he closed the door, poured some ale into a mug, and took it over to the window. But he didn’t drink.

So it had happened again. A different time, a different place, a different woman, but he had fallen victim just as easily as before. And just as publicly. He would once more be the butt of tavern jokes and polite tittle-tattle. Once a fool, always a fool.

Damn, damn, damn! Was there no woman who really was what she seemed? Were they all Delilah’s? Would he ever learn to stop handing them the means to destroy him before they even asked?

He wasn’t sure what hurt more, the loss of Delilah or the loss of an ideal. Maybe it was impossible to decide because this time the two were inseparable. The agony had been intense with Lady Sarah Mendlow because she was his first love, and because the destruction of his trust had been intertwined with the destruction of his father’s business. But after the hurt had gone away, he had realized he’d been in love with an image, an ideal which had very little to do with the woman herself. He would always despise Sarah for the motive behind and the manner of her rejection, but he knew the mistake of thinking her worthy of his love was his own.

But Delilah was different. He had started by being wary of her, wanting to stay as far away from her as possible. It was Delilah who had convinced him she was genuine. From her words, her deeds, the way other people reacted to her, he had come to believe he had found a woman who would always be honest with the man she loved even if it cost her dearly.

God knows he had given her plenty of opportunity to take advantage of him, and she had always refused. She had even sacrificed her reputation to save his. And no matter how badly Serena had treated her, she had shown compassion for that hate-filled woman. Her loyalty and love for her family had been unswerving. Fool that he’d been, he had believed she might someday come to feel the same way about him.

And all the while she’d been waiting for the chance to steal a list nobody cared about. All her smiles were lies. All her promises were lies. Everything he’d thought of her had been only a fabrication. It was all false, base, a portrayal to be cast aside as soon as her real object was achieved. Never mind that he had come to love this deceptive portrayal, that he had embraced it with little hesitation. It had nearly destroyed him and his hopes for building a new life in America.

Because nothing was as important as that little piece of paper.

Nobody would ever have paid any attention to the damned thing if it hadn’t been for Noah Hubbard. When he’d waved that slip of paper about, his face wreathed in triumph, Nathan had felt an almost mad compulsion to strangle the man. Only the presence of the others had prevented him from beating Hubbard until he begged for mercy. But it wasn’t just Noah. He hated them all, them and their greed and stupidity and their cowardly fear of a few farmers armed with little more than their own courage.

But hate requires continuous fuel for its fires, and as the night dragged by, Nathan exhausted his fodder. He was left with the skeleton of his hopes and the ashes of despair.

For hours he stood, a motionless figure, staring out into the black night. The ale turned warm and still he didn’t move. First one candle guttered. Then another. He didn’t stir. The last candle flickered and went out. Still he didn’t move. When dawn came, Nathan remained standing before the window.

The first sounds of movement in the house caused him to tense, but when no one attempted to interrupt his solitude, the muscles in his shoulders relaxed. Then a buggy rounded the corner of the house, and he tensed all over again.

Delilah. She was going home.

Nathan watched her until the buggy disappeared into the woods. Then, with a vicious curse, he flung the still full glass of ale through the window and rushed from the house out to the stables. Minutes later he was riding at a gallop in the direction of Hector Clayhart’s farm.

Chapter Twenty-one

“He hasn’t eaten enough to keep a bird alive, not since she left,” Mrs. Stebbens said to Lester, “and Priscilla doesn’t eat at all as far as I can tell. I don’t know why I bother to cook.”

“She avoids him,” Lester said. “Ever since he sent her mamma away, Mrs. Noyes screaming like a madwoman, she’s been scared to death of him.”

“I can’t say I blame her. The way he goes about looking like he’d like to cut your liver out is enough to give a body a nasty turn.”

“I don’t see you acting any different,” Lester said. It rankled that Mrs. Stebbens should feel comfortable around a man he feared.

“It doesn’t do to go about quaking in your boots,” Mrs. Stebbens explained. “Encourages people to act like tyrants. You ought to know. That Mrs. Noyes was the worst I’ve seen”

“I wonder how the poor lady is doing.” Lester had a soft spot for Serena. She had given him importance.

“She’ll make out. So will her daughter. It’s Mister Nathan I’m worried about.”

“Him!” Lester exclaimed. “He’s as strong as a bull and twice as mean.”

“It’s the strong ones that suffer the worst when things go to pieces;” Mrs. Stebbens stated. “They’re not used to it, you see. They don’t know how to depend on anybody. Your Mrs. Noyes, now, she knows how to squeeze a body for every last drop. She even twisted that dried-up piece of rind Noah Hubbard around her finger.”

“I wonder what he’s going to do about Miss Priscilla.”

“I don’t know, but if I was her, I’d be looking about me for a husband.”

Nathan pushed his account books away. It was ironic. If things continued on their present course, he would collect most of his debts in cash without having to confiscate any more property.

And all because of Delilah.

He couldn’t even allow her name to enter his thoughts without feeling the pain which tortured him day in and day out. There was no place he could go in the house and not be reminded of her—the way she’d looked in that blue gown, the way she’d smiled at him when Serena wasn’t looking, the way she’d blushed when he’d caught her looking at his body. His desk had been repaired, but he had only to look at the drawer that had been forced to hear her denial.

That denial hurt him the most. Why had she lied to him? He didn’t care about the note. Neither did he care that she would steal to help Reuben. He had always been jealous of her loyalty to her brother, but now he realized her love for her family would always be a part of her.

That same fierce loyalty would have encompassed him if she had become his wife. But would she have marred him?

She had wanted to tell him something that evening. From the way she’d gotten embarrassed and then angry when he’d teased her, from the way she’d kept looking at him all during dinner, he was certain she had decided to marry him. Why else would she have been so happy? And she had been happy, even though she had gotten angry with him in the kitchen.

But how could this have been true if she had had the note upstairs at that very minute? How could she possibly have expected to get away with it when evidence of forced entry to his desk was there for the first person who entered the library to see?

The only answer that made any sense was that she was innocent. Nathan longed to believe that, but he couldn’t find any evidence to support it.

The morning after Delilah left, he had traveled the river road to Hector’s place. The cabin was bare. If anyone had ever used it, every sign of occupancy had been removed. Only the vague smell of something burned hinted that a vagrant might have spent the night there. Someone had trampled the brush under the window, but the circle went around the house as if it had been made by someone looking for a way to break in.

If Delilah was telling the truth, someone had covered his tracks well.

Delilah had been gone from the house long enough for Priscilla to break open the desk, but that didn’t make any sense unless Priscilla and Hector were selling information. But why would they? What reason could Hector and Priscilla have to turn against their own people?

Nathan had gone over the same ground at least once every day since Delilah had left, and he always came to the same conclusion. The Delilah he knew—the woman he loved, the enchantress he wanted to marry—would never lie to him. She would have told him she’d taken the information. She would have told him with pride, defying him to do anything about it.

But everything else pointed the other way. How could he believe her when no one else did, when his common sense told him she had to be guilty? And could he chance opening himself up to betrayal again?

Nathan shoved the account books into his desk and hurried out of the house. He couldn’t keep these thoughts from driving him crazy unless he was in the saddle, visiting the people who worked for him, overseeing their work, trying to come up with new ways to make money. He had to be away from Maple Hill.

That was why he had decided to sell the place and move to Boston.

Delilah would never have thought she could be so miserable at home. She loved Reuben, liked Jane, and adored David and Daniel. She had been feeling guilty for months because Jane had had no one to help her with the heavy work around the farm, anxious to get back to a place where she belonged and was needed, so it was a cruel shock to find her place had been filled.

Reuben had gone off to look for Shays the minute Delilah had told him Hector was spying for both sides.

“I told Daniel he couldn’t trust him,” Reuben raged as he gathered up musket and powder horn and prepared to go out into the bitter cold. “I told Daniel, ‘He’s one of them for all he’s nearly lost his farm. You can’t trust nobody who’s willing to sell out his own kind.’ Daniel would have it he wasn’t putting too much faith in anything Hector said, but others did.’