The Fall of Shane MacKade (17 page)

They stayed close together as they spoke, and there was more laughter, another quick kiss, before the woman stepped away and got back into her car.

Shane ruffled both dogs, straightened, waved. Rebecca knew the moment he spotted her in the field, and began to walk toward the house again. The car darted down the lane between them, then disappeared around the curve.

“Hey.” He tucked his thumbs in his front pockets. “How's Savannah?”

“Fine. I had a chance to look at some of her paintings. They're wonderful.”

“Yeah.” With his instincts warning him to proceed with caution, Shane tried to read Rebecca's face. “Ah, that was Frannie Spader. You met Frannie.”

“I thought I recognized her.” Because they wanted attention, and because it was a good ploy, Rebecca bent to pet the dogs.

“She just dropped by.”

“So I saw. I want to transcribe this interview.”

“Rebecca.” He touched her arm to stop her. “There's nothing going on here. She's a friend. She stopped by.”

It was pure self-defense that had her arching a brow. “Why do you feel you have to clarify that?”

“Because I— Look, Fran and I used to be… We used to be,” he finished, furious with himself. “Now we're not, and haven't been since…well, since you came to town. We're friends.”

Oh, it was satisfying to watch him squirm. “Do you think I require an explanation?”

“No. Yes.” Damn it. He imagined himself strolling along and coming across Rebecca hugging another man. Someone would have to die. “I don't want you to get the wrong idea, that's all.”

“Do you think I have the wrong idea?”

“Will you cut that out?” he demanded, and paced away, then back again. “I hate when you do that. I really hate it.”

“When I do what?”

“Make everything a question. How do you feel, what do you think?” He whirled back to her, eyes shooting sparks of temper. “Damn it, if you had a question, it should have been ‘What in the hell were you doing kissing another woman?'”

“Do you feel a show of jealousy would be appropriate?” When he only scowled at her, she shrugged. “I'm sorry I can't accommodate you. Clearly, you had a life before I came here, and you'll have one after I'm gone.”

“That's it. Throw the past in my face.”

“Is that what you think I'm doing?”

He snarled. “Can't you fight like a regular person?”

“When there's something to fight about. Your friends are your business. And as I have no idea how many of those…friends I might run into every time I go into town, it would be remarkably unproductive of me to worry about it.”

His brain was screaming out for him to let it go, but his mouth just refused to obey. “Look, Rebecca, if I'd slept with as many women as some people think, I'd never have gotten out of bed. And I haven't had sex with every woman I've gone out with, either. I don't— Why the hell am I telling you this?”

“That was going to be my next question. And, in my opinion, what you're doing is projecting—your feelings, your anticipated reaction to a situation, onto me. Added to that is a sense of guilt, and annoyance resulting from that guilt. In transferring the annoyance from yourself to me, you—”

“Shut up.” His eyes as volatile as a storm at sea, he grabbed her face in his hands. “She came by to see if I wanted to go out later. I told her no. She asked if I was involved with you. I told her yes, very involved. We talked for another minute, she said she'd see me around. That's it. Satisfied?”

Her heart was tripping lightly, quickly, in her chest. But her voice was cool, and faintly curious. “Did I give you the impression that I was dissatisfied?”

His eyes narrowed, flashed. Rebecca found it very satisfying. Almost as satisfying as his frustrated oath as he turned on his heel and stalked away.

Nice job, Dr. Knight, she told herself. She didn't think Shane was going to be kissing anyone else for a while. Humming to herself, she strolled into the house.

She really did have work to do, she thought, and patted one of her video monitors as she passed. But she could take just a moment to savor the sense of smugness.

The poor guy had been so predictable. Classic reactions. Alarm at the thought that something, however innocent, could be interpreted badly. The added weight of his infamous career as a ladies' man. Not a womanizer, she mused. One day she might explain to him the differ
ence between a man who loved and appreciated woman and one who used them.

And then, she thought, snickering on her way to the kitchen, his sense of unease, then irritation at her reasonable reaction. Direct hit on the ego.

It was so much more interesting to study the games men and women played with each other when you were in the middle of the field than when you were observing from the stands.

She might just do a paper on it, she mused, going to the window. Once she'd carved out enough emotional distance. By then she would know not only what it was like to fall in love, to be in love, but what it felt like to lose at love.

One day she might find the courage to ask him what she had meant to him, what the time they had spent together had meant to him in the scheme of things. Yeah, she thought, amused at herself. She might find the courage for that in a decade or two.

Telling herself it was now that mattered, and wondering if the little incident would garner her more flowers, she decided to try her hand at cooking dinner solo.

It was really all just formulas, after all. And she had Regan's formula—no, recipe, she reminded herself—for fried chicken in her bag. Digging it out, she read it through once and committed it to memory. Since Shane's kitchen didn't run to aprons, she tucked a dishcloth in the waistband of her slacks, and got down to some serious experimenting.

It was actually soothing, she discovered as she coated chicken with herbed flour. At least on a casual level. She imagined that if anyone had to plan and cook and deal with the time and mess every day, day after day, meal after meal, it would be tedious.

But, as a hobby, it had its points. If she could just keep this particular hobby from becoming a vocation, as so many of her others had, she'd be just fine.

When she had chicken frying in hot oil in a cast-iron skillet, she stepped back and congratulated herself. It smelled good, it sounded good, it looked good. Therefore, according to basic laws, it should taste good.

Wouldn't Shane be surprised, and perhaps even more baffled, when he came in and found dinner cooking?

It was milking time, she thought, poking at the crisping chicken with a kitchen fork. And night was coming earlier, as the days shortened toward the still-distant winter….

 

Would she see the camp fires burning if she looked out the window? The soldiers were so close, close and waiting for dawn and the battle.

She wished John would come in. Once he was in and the animals were settled, they could shut up the house. They would be safe here. They had to be safe here. She couldn't lose another child. Couldn't live through it. Nor could John. She pressed a hand over the one covering her womb, as if to protect it from any threat, any harm. She desperately hoped it would be a son. Not to replace the one they'd lost. Johnnie could never be replaced, never be forgotten. But if the babe she carried was a son, it would somewhat ease the worst of John's grief.

He suffered. He suffered so, and there was no comfort for it. She could love him, tend him, share the grief, but she couldn't end it. The girls tried, and God knew they were a joy. But Johnnie was gone. Every day the war went on was another painful reminder of that loss.

Maybe it would end here. She turned the chicken in the pan, as she'd done so often in her life. Would that be some sort of justice, for this horrible war to end here, where her son had been born?

Was the man who had killed her son out there, right now, sitting, waiting, in the Union camp? Who would he
kill tomorrow? Or would it be his blood that would seep into the land she had walked over for so many years?

Why wouldn't they go away? Just go away and leave the living in peace with their sorrows…

 

Hot grease popped out of the pan and seared the side of Rebecca's hand. She barely felt it as she staggered backward. Emotions, thoughts, words, sounds, reeled in her head.

Possession, she thought, dimly. This was possession. And, for the first time in her life, she fainted.

Primed to fight, Shane burst through the door. “And another thing—” he began, before he saw Rebecca crumpled on the kitchen floor, before his heart stopped.

He streaked forward, dropped down beside her to drag her into her arms. “Rebecca.” His hands were running over her face, chafing her wrists. “Rebecca, come on now. Snap out of it.” Terrified into clumsiness, he rocked her, kissed her, begged her. Until her eyes fluttered open.

“Shane.”

“That's right.” Relief poured through him in a flood. “Just lie still, baby, till you feel better.”

“I was her,” she murmured, fighting off the fog. “I was her for a minute. I have to check my equipment.”

“The hell with your equipment.” It was pitifully easy to hold her in place. “Do as you're told and lie still. Did you hit your head? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I don't…I don't think so. What happened?”

“You tell me. I walked in and you were on the floor.”

“Good Lord.” She took a deep, steadying breath and let her head rest in the crook of his arm. “I fainted. Imagine that.”

“I don't have to imagine it. You just scared ten years off my life.” Now, naturally, there was fury to coat over the fear. “What the hell are you doing fainting? Did you eat today? Damn it, you never eat enough to keep a bird
alive. You don't get enough sleep, either. Down four or five hours, then you're up prowling around, or clacking away at that stupid computer.”

He was working himself up into a rare state, but he couldn't stop. “Well, that's going to change. You're going to start taking care of yourself. You're nothing but bones and nerve. Didn't they teach you anything about basic bodily needs in those fancy schools? Or don't you think they apply to you?”

She let him run on until her head stopped spinning. He was ranting about taking her to the doctor, checking her into the hospital, getting vitamins. Finally, she held up a hand and put it over his mouth.

“I've never fainted before in my life, and since I didn't care for it, I don't intend to make it a habit. Now, if you'll calm down a minute and let me up, the chicken's burning.”

He said something incredible and unlikely when applied to burning chicken, but he did haul her into a chair. Moving quickly, he flicked off the heat. “What the hell were you doing?”

“I was cooking. I think it was going to be fairly successful, too. Maybe it can be salvaged.”

He grunted, turned to the tap and ran a glass of water for her. “Drink.”

She started to tell him he needed it more than she, then decided against it. Obediently she sipped water. “I was cooking,” she said again, “and letting my mind wander. Then the thoughts weren't mine any longer. They were very clear—very personal, you could say. But they weren't mine. They were Sarah's.”

Ice skidded up his spine. “You're just letting yourself get too wrapped up in all this stuff.”

“Shane, I'm a sensible woman. A rational one. I know what happened here. She was cooking chicken.” With a shake of her head, Rebecca set the glass on the table.
“Isn't it odd that I would have decided to try Regan's recipe tonight, September 16? Sarah was cooking chicken the night before the battle.”

“So now you know what they ate.”

“Yes,” she said, facing down his sarcasm. “Now I know. She was frying it, worried about her family, thinking of her son and the baby she carried. Wondering who would die in the morning. Soldiers were camped not far from here, waiting for dawn. She was frying chicken, and her husband was out with the animals. She wanted him to come in, to come inside so that they could close it all out and just be together. She worried about him. She'd have done anything to ease his mind.”

“I think you're working too hard,” Shane said carefully. “And I think you've let the fact that the anniversary is tomorrow influence you.”

Steady again, she rose. “You know that's not true. You know what's here and you've decided not to face it. That's your choice, and I respect that. Even though I know some nights you dream, and the dreams trouble you, I respect your decision and your privacy. I expect you to show my work and my needs the same respect.”

“My dreams are my business.”

“I've just said so. I'm not asking you to tell me anything.”

“No, you never ask, Rebecca.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “You just wait and whittle a person down with waiting. I don't want any part of this.”

“Do you want me to go?”

When he didn't answer, she braced herself, spoke calmly. “I suppose I'll have to ask. It's important to me to be here in the morning. I can't give you clear, rational data on why, only my feelings. I'd appreciate it very much if you'd let me stay, at least another day.”

“No one's asked you to go, have they?” He snapped the words out, furious with himself now. Why should he
panic at the thought of her packing up? There had never been any promises. He didn't make them, didn't want them. “You want to stay, stay—but leave me out of it. I've got some work to finish up, then I'm going out.”

“All right.”

He wanted desperately for her to ask him where, and would have snapped her head off if she questioned him. Of course, she didn't, so he couldn't. All he could do was walk out, when all he wanted to do was stay.

H
e thought about getting drunk. It wasn't a problem-solver, but it did have its points. It was a shame he wasn't in the mood for it. Arguing with someone was a better idea, and since Rebecca wasn't going to accommodate him, he headed for town, and Devin.

He'd always been able to count on Devin for a good fight.

Shane figured it was a bonus when he found not only Devin in the sheriff's office, but Rafe, too.

“Hey, we were just talking about getting together a poker game.” Rafe greeted him with a slap on the shoulder. “Got any money?”

“Got a beer around here?”

“This is a place of law and order,” Devin said solemnly, then jerked his head toward the back room. “Couple in the cooler. You up for a game?”

“Maybe.” Shane stalked into the back room. “I can do what I want when I want, can't I? I don't have to check with a woman, like you guys do.”

Devin and Rafe exchanged looks. “I'll give Jared a call,” Rafe said, picking up the phone as Shane came back in guzzling beer.

While Rafe dialed the phone and murmured into it, Devin propped his feet on his desk. “So, what's Rebecca up to?”

“She doesn't have to check with me, either.”

“Ah, had a little spat, did you?” Enjoying the idea, Devin crossed his arms behind his head. “She kick you out?”

“It's my damn house,” Shane shot back. “And Reasonable Rebecca doesn't spat. She changes,” he went on, gesturing with the beer. “Right in front of your eyes. One minute she's tough and smart and cocky. The next she's soft and lost and so sweet you'd kill anybody who'd try to hurt her. Then she's cool— Oh, she's so cool, and controlled, and—” He gulped down beer. “Analytical. How the hell are you supposed to keep up?”

“Well,” Devin mused, “you can't call her boring.”

“Anything but. She thinks she is, at least some of the time. Hell, I don't know what she thinks she is.” Shane brooded into the bottle. “Just today, she comes across Frannie kissing me. Does she get mad, does she start a fight, accuse me of anything? No. Not that it wasn't perfectly innocent, but the point is that if you're sleeping with somebody you shouldn't like the idea of them kissing somebody else. Right?”

Rafe had hung up the phone and was watching his brother carefully. “I'd agree with that. You agree with that, Dev?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Pleased with the unity of spirit, Shane lifted the bottle again. “There you go. But Dr. Knight, she's as cool as you please. Studying me like I'm a smear on a lab slide again. I hate when she does that.”

“Who wouldn't?” Rafe said, and sat down to enjoy himself.

Soothed by brotherly understanding, Shane finished off the first beer, then popped open the second. “And another thing—how come she doesn't ask where all this is leading? Tell me that. Women are always asking where all this is leading. That's how you keep things from getting too intense, by setting down the cards, you know.”

“Is that how?” Devin smiled serenely.

“Sure. But she doesn't ask.” He chugged down beer. That was why things had gotten so intense. He needed to believe that. “And you'd think she'd get in the way, wouldn't you? You'd think she'd get in the damn way, living there, but she just sort of fits.”

“Does she?” Devin grinned and winked at Rafe.

“Sort of. I mean, there she is at breakfast in the morning, and she's always got something to talk about. She works in the kitchen most of the time, but she never gets in the way, and you start expecting her to be there.”

Rafe looked around as the door opened and Jared walked in with a large brown bag. Jared set it on Devin's desk and took out a six-pack. “We playing here?”

“Maybe later.” To keep the interruption at a minimum, Devin gestured Jared to a chair. “Shane's on a roll.”

“Yeah.” Jared looked at Shane. “What's he rolling about?”

“Rebecca. You were saying?”

“The bedroom smells like her,” Shane muttered. “She doesn't leave any of her stuff laying around, and it still smells like her. Soap, and that stuff she rubs on her skin.”

“Uh-oh,” Jared said, and helped himself to a beer.

“You know, her parents sent her to boarding school when she was six. Practically a baby. She never had a chance to be a kid. Sometimes when she laughs, she looks a little surprised by the sound of it.” He paused, thought about it. “She's got a great laugh.”

Jared turned to Rafe. “She kick him out?”

“He says not.”

“It's my damn house,” Shane reminded them all. “My house, my land. I'm the one who says what goes on around there. If I don't like that stupid, idiotic, ridiculous equipment of hers, then that's it. I don't like that she's wrapped herself up in all this bull, and she's wearing herself down. I'm not coming in and finding her in a heap on the floor again.”

“What?” Amusement fled as Devin straightened in his chair. “What happened?”

“She fainted—far as I can tell. She says she had an encounter with our great-grandmother.” He downed beer to wash both worry and unease out of his system. “Yeah, right. They're both frying chicken the night before the battle. I'm not getting involved in that.”

“Is she all right?” Rafe asked.

“Would I be here if she wasn't?” He raked his fingers through his hair and fought to block out the image of her pale, small, still form on the kitchen floor. But he couldn't. “She scared the hell out of me, damn it. Damn it.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, rubbed the heel of his hand over his aching heart. “I can't take her being hurt. I can't stand it. The woman's ripping at me.”

With an effort, he pulled himself back, took another gulp from the bottle. “She bounces back,” he muttered. “I've never seen anybody bounce back like she does. She's fine now, dandy, back in control. She's not pushing me into getting hooked up with that business. She's not going to hook me into anything.”

“Brother.” With some sympathy, Jared opened another beer and passed it to Shane. “You're already hooked.”

“Like hell.”

“At a guess, how many times do you think about her in a given day?”

“I don't know.” Annoyed, Shane decided getting drunk wasn't such a bad idea after all. “I don't count.”

In lawyer mode now, Jared briskly cross-examined the witness. “Anyone else you've thought about that much, that often?”

“So what? She's living with me. You think about somebody who's in the same house day and night.”

Rafe studied his nails. “It's just sex.”

“The hell it is.” Like a bullet, Shane was out of his chair, fists ready. “She's not just a warm body.” He caught himself, and his brother's sly grin. “I'm not an animal.”

“That's a switch.” Unconcerned, Rafe sampled his own beer. “How many other women have you wanted since Rebecca came along?”

Zip. Zero. Zilch. Terror. “That's not the point. The point is…” He sat again, brooded into his beer. “I forgot.”

“The point is,” Devin said, picking up the threads, “you've lost your balance and you're falling fast.”

“He's already hit,” Jared put in. “He just doesn't have the sense to know it. But, being a sensible woman, Rebecca might not fall so easy, especially for you.”

“What the hell's wrong with me?”

“As I was saying,” Jared continued. “She's got a life in New York, a career, interests. You might have a problem keeping her from wriggling away. You'll have to be pretty slick to convince her to marry you.”

Shane choked, coughed, and gulped more beer. “You're crazy. I'm not marrying anybody.”

Rafe only smiled. “Wanna bet?”

Because Shane was terribly pale, Devin took pity on him. “Have another beer, pal. You can bunk in the back room and sleep it off.”

It seemed like an excellent suggestion.

 

She didn't sleep. It wasn't only because Shane wasn't there and the house seemed to come alive around her. It was the wait for morning, through the longest night of her life.

She worked. It had always helped her through crises, small and large. She packed. The systematic removal of her clothing, the neat folding of it into suitcases, was a sign that she was ready to go on with the rest of her life.

If she had a worry, it was that she and Shane would part on uneasy terms. That she didn't want. When he came back, she told herself, she would try to put things back into perspective and achieve some kind of balance.

But he didn't come back, and the hours passed slowly to dawn.

When the sun had just begun to rise, and the gray mist hung over the land, swallowing the barn, she stepped outside.

It was impossible for her to believe, at that moment, that anyone wouldn't feel what she felt. The fear, the anticipation, the rage and the sorrow.

It took so little imagination for her to see the infantry marching through that soft curtain of fog, bodies and bayonets tearing it so that it swirled back and reformed. The muffled sound of boots on earth, the dull glint of brass and steel.

That first burst from the cannons, those first cries.

Then there would be hell.

“What are you doing out here?”

Rebecca jolted, stared. It was Shane, stepping through that river of mist. He looked pale, gritty-eyed, and angry enough that she resisted the need to rush forward and hold him.

“I didn't hear you come home.”

“Just got here.” She hadn't slept. He could see the fatigue in her eyes, the shadows under them, and detested the stab of guilt. “You're shivering. You're barefoot, for God's sake. Go back inside. Go to bed.”

“You look tired,” she said, knowing her voice was more brittle than cool.

“I'm hung over,” he said flatly. “Some of us humans get that way when we drink too much. Aren't you going to ask me where I've been, who I've been with?”

She lifted a hand, rubbed it gently over her heart. It still beat, she thought vaguely, even when it was shattered. “Are you trying to hurt me?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I'm trying to see if I can.”

She nodded and turned back toward the house. “You can.”

“Rebecca—” But she was already closing the door behind her, leaving him feeling like something slimy that had crawled from under a rock. Cursing her, he headed toward the milking parlor.

They stayed out of each other's way through the morning. Rather than work in the kitchen, she closed herself in the guest room and focused fiercely on the job at hand. So they would part at odds, she thought. Perhaps that was best. It might be easier, in the long run, to hide behind resentment and anger.

From the window in her room, she saw him. He didn't seem to be working. Marking time, she decided, until she cleared out. Well, he would have to wait a little longer. She wasn't leaving until the day was over.

“Where are you, Sarah?” she murmured, pacing the room, which was beginning to feel like a cell. “You wanted me here. I know you wanted me here. For what?”

As she passed the window, she looked out again. He was walking across the yard now, past the kitchen garden, where he had late tomatoes, greens, squash. He stopped, checked something. For ripeness, she supposed.

It was painful to look at him. Yet too painful to contemplate looking away. Had she really believed she could take the experience of love and loss as some sort of adventure—or, worse, as an experiment on the human condition? That she could examine it, analyze, perhaps write about it?

No, she would never, never get over him.

When he straightened from the little garden and walked toward one of the stone outbuildings, she turned away. No, she wouldn't wait until the end of the day after all. That was too cruel. She would speak to him again, one last time, and then she would go.

She'd send for the equipment, she told herself as she went downstairs. She would make her exit with dignity, albeit with dispatch. To Regan's, she told herself, breathing carefully. To run back to New York just now would look cowardly. It was pointless to make him feel bad, to let him know he'd had her heart and broken it.

Let him think that it had simply been an experience, one that was over now, one they could both remember fondly.

She was never coming back. At the base of the stairs, she stopped to press her hand to her mouth. Never coming back to this town, this battleground, this house. Though she would be in full retreat, she would not run.

She never glanced at the monitors, the gauges. Down the hall, she trailed her fingers over wood and paint, as if to absorb the texture into memory.

At the kitchen doorway, the power punched like a fist….

Stew cooking. The distant pop of gunfire…

Weak, she leaned against the wall as the door opened.

She knew it was Shane. The rational part of her mind recognized the shape of him, the stance, even the smell. But with some inner eye she saw a man carrying a bleeding boy….

So like Johnnie. Young, bleeding, dying. The uniform was filthy and wet with blood. The new stripe of his rank was still bright on the shoulder of the tattered jacket. There was a rustle of worn paper from a letter in the inside pocket as she peeled the uniform away to see the horror of his wounds.

Just a boy. Too many dying boys…

 

Rebecca saw it, could see the scene in the kitchen perfectly. The blood, the boy, those who tried to help him. There, the letter in Sarah's hands, the paper worn where it had been creased and recreased, read and reread. The words seemed to leap out at her….