The Lancaster Men (13 page)

Jerking the book out of his hand, Shari held onto it tightly and searched desperately for something suitably cutting to say. She didn’t have time to find it as the library door was opened behind her, and the elder Lancaster hobbled in with his cane. She looked back when he stopped and eyed the two of them, his aging features wearing an expression of warm satisfaction.

“The two of you are on speaking terms again,” he remarked. “It’s about time. No good comes from brothers and sisters fighting.”

“Whit isn’t my brother,” Shari stated with faint sarcasm. “Don’t take my word for it. Ask him.” She tossed the challenge over her shoulder, daring Whit to bring the issue out into the open.

“I’m not her brother,” he admitted it readily, then went a step further. “You might as well get used to the idea, Granddad, because I’m going to marry her.”

Shari went white with shock, then erupted into a full-blown anger. “Over my dead body!”

“You will be very much alive on our wedding night!” Whit snapped, answering her with equal force. “That, I promise you!”

“You’re crazy.” She was trembling. “I’ll never marry you.”

“Yes, you will.” The absolute certainty of his steady gaze was unnerving. “You’ll marry me and you’ll like it.”

Her glance swung to the elder man, leaning heavily
on his cane. He was watching their exchange with what appeared to be enjoyment. Any thought that he might come to her aid was immediately dashed.

“He’s crazy, Granddad,” Shari appealed to him anyway.

“I think he’s making a lot of sense,” he replied blandly. “I don’t know of any other man who could handle you except Whit.”

“I don’t
need
anyone to handle me!” she flared. “I can take care of myself.”

“Every woman should have a man to take care of her,” Frederick Lancaster insisted.

“That attitude went out of style with shoulder pads!” Shari declared in disgust. “It’s only you Lancaster men that are holdouts.”

“I have no intention of taking care of you,” Whit informed her. “In fact, I plan on it being the other way around. But you can’t disagree that every woman should have a man to love her.”

“No, I don’t disagree with that,” she retorted. “But I don’t want you to be the one who loves me.”

“There isn’t anything you can do about it, so you might as well accept it,” he stated.

She turned on Frederick Lancaster in a temper, her green eyes blazing. “This is all your fault!” she accused. “You’re always trying to make decisions for other people. Whit is following in your footsteps. You’re wrong—both of you!”

There wasn’t a better exit line, so Shari used that one to storm out of the library. She nearly ran over the housekeeper busy dusting the furniture in the entry hall.

“Here.” Shari stopped and shoved the book into Mrs. Youngblood’s hands. “Would you take this upstairs to my mother and tell her I’m going for a walk. I’ll see her around lunchtime.”

Taking it for granted that the housekeeper would do as she asked, Shari didn’t wait for a reply. She swept out of the house and down the front steps of the portico, not slowing down until she was well away from the house.

The slower pace was not the result of a cooling temper. It was dictated by the heat of a summer sun, beating down on the earth. Perspiration was collecting under the heavy weight of the hair on her neck. She lifted it so the drifting breeze could reach it as she strolled past the bulk barns.

They were another example of the changes at Gold Leaf. Nothing was as it had been, not Whit and not the processing of the money crop—tobacco. When Shari was a child, the old gold leaves of tobacco had been painstakingly tied to sticks, then racked on poles to be cured in the old log tobacco barns.

She missed the old, twin-eaved structures. It didn’t matter how labor-efficient the bulk barns were. Leaves, the size of a blade from a huge ceiling fan, were stacked in the barns for curing, a much simpler system.

But it somehow lacked the romance of the first—just as Whit’s announcement that they were going to be married had lacked the flourishes and frills. Shari simmered with indignation at his high-handed manner—and Granddad Lancaster’s endorsement of
Whit’s decision. Neither cared what she thought or felt. She might as well have been a child for all the notice they took of her opinion.

Somewhere along the line, Shari had begun to accept the concept that Whit was not her brother, and never had been—perhaps because of the elder Lancaster’s easy acceptance of it. She was also becoming reconciled to the physical attraction she felt toward Whit. But she would never accept someone telling her what she would do.

Marriage had never been mentioned by Whit. He hadn’t even proposed to her. And he’d never said that he loved her. He had simply informed her they were going to be married and she was going to like the idea. Just thinking about the arrogance of it all made her blood boil.

The Lancasters weren’t the only ones who had pride. Shari possessed it in abundance, too. No one had ever ruled her, although Frederick Lancaster had tried. She was determined that Whit Lancaster would fare no better.

She paused at the stables where the carriage horses and hunters had once been housed during that long ago era of Gold Leaf. Only three horses were stabled there now. The fat, white gelding called Snowdance had been Rory’s first horse.

The gentle old beast had been retired to the pasture years ago. Rory had sentimentally refused to sell the gelding, afraid it would wind up in a glue factory. Now it was living out its years in the company of two young, spirited steeds.

The black horse was a recent present to Rory from his grandfather, a coming six year old, but Rory
hadn’t taken much interest in Coaldust. Shari suspected he had outgrown his horse phase. The golden chestnut approached the paddock fence at a gliding trot, its flaxen mane and tail flaring out like a banner. Banner was the four year old’s name.

Shari admired the classy horse as it came to the fence rail where she was standing and curiously thrust its velvet nose toward her. Banner belonged to Whit. There was a boldness about the horse that seemed to match its owner, spirited without being high-strung or nervous.

As Shari stroked its sleek neck, the horse nuzzled the front of her T-shirt, trying to find the pockets that usually contained pieces of carrot or apple. With a laugh, she pushed its nose away. It faded into a smile as Shari recalled the many times she had gone horseback riding with Whit.

Her own horse had been a feisty gray gelding that she had named Rebel, but Shari had sold him when she’d entered college. She wished she had him back. Together they had wildly ridden off a lot of her anger, tearing across the fields and racing the wind until her temper had cooled.

It was nearly noon before she retraced her path to the house. Shari felt relatively calm, all things considered, as she entered the air-cooled house. From the dining room, there was the muted clatter of the table being set for lunch.

The library door was closed when she passed it. Shari glanced at it, an emerald sparkle of defiance in her eyes. She paused in the dining room to see if Mrs. Youngblood needed any help with lunch, expecting and receiving the refusal. Then, she continued
on to the ground floor washroom to clean up before lunch.

A few minutes later, she returned to the dining room. Frederick Lancaster was already seated at the head of the table. Whit and Rory were just taking their seats. Whit paused to pull out the chair beside his for Shari, but she walked around the table to sit next to Rory. The amber glint in his dark eyes seemed to accept the veiled challenge of her gesture and silently warned her it wouldn’t go unanswered.

“Boy, Sis, you are a dark one,” Rory declared with a grinning smile.

Her gaze darted across the table to Whit, a whisper of alarm in her head. But Whit didn’t appear to be paying any attention to her. A dark vitality was evident in his smoothly hewn features. Shari was positive he had something to do with Rory’s remark. The thought was reinforced by the suggestion of a complacent smile deepening the corners of his mouth.

“Why do you say that?” There was wary caution in the question she put to Rory. She had to be sure what he meant by his remark.

“Because of your engagement to Whit,” he replied as if it were obvious. “I still don’t understand why the two of you were so secretive about the way you felt toward each other. You aren’t actually related.”

For a count of ten, Shari kept her lips lying flatly against each other and looked across the table at the I-told-you-so glitter in Whit’s eyes. She was determined not to lose her temper, not this time. It had
gained her nothing during their encounter in the library.

“I’m sure glad—” Rory went on, “—that the two of you have finally made up after your lover’s quarrel. Things can get back to normal around here now.”

“I doubt if things will get back to normal, Rory,” Shari said smoothly and with smiling calm. “You have been misinformed. There wasn’t any lover’s quarrel. And there isn’t any engagement.”

Her young brother’s mouth opened and closed for a confused second as he glanced from her to Whit. “But … Whit said. …”

“Whit is a Lancaster,” she pointed out in what sounded like a reasonable tone. “He thinks he has the final word on everything. But he’s wrong.”

Rory was confused. “Aren’t you going to marry him?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Both Shari and Whit answered simultaneously, their replies cancelling each other out. Their glances locked across the table. Shari’s was cool and challenging, although inside she was simmering. Whit’s dark eyes revealed easy confidence, and a hint of amusement at her denial.

With a bewildered shake of his head, Rory looked at his plate. “I wish I knew what was going on here.”

“Shari is simply trying to establish her independence,” Whit explained. “She’s afraid of losing it if she becomes Mrs. Whit Lancaster.”

“I have no intention of losing it—or allowing you
to run my life,” she bristled at his accusation. She was afraid, but she suspected it was another one of his tricks. She wasn’t about to play into his hand when she didn’t have the trump card.

Whit deliberately ignored her response and addressed himself to Rory. “It’ll take her some time to get used to the idea of being my wife. But she’ll come around.”

The very sound of his voice was possessive and the way his dark glance ran over her was equally so. Referring to her as his wife carried a connotation of marital intimacy that Shari suddenly couldn’t handle. The thought of lying naked in his arms filled her with a coursing heat that scorched her raw nerve ends. Too many remembered and imagined sensations went spinning through her mind.

“I’m not going to marry you, Whit.” Shari had to deny him to regain control of her nearly shattered composure, but she lacked the strength to meet his gaze. She tried to assume an air of calm indifference. “You are just making a fool of yourself by saying that I will.”

“We’ll see,” he murmured with an apparent lack of concern. “Would you pass me the salt?”

His confidence was infuriating, especially when her own was a little shaky. Shari longed to hurl the saltshaker at him and run from the room. Such an action would be an admission that her objections were being worn down. Shari was determined to remain at the table and swallow every bite of lunch even if she choked on it. Whit appeared to know that, which didn’t help the situation at all.

No further reference was made to the supposed engagement during the rest of the noon meal. When lunch was finished, Shari helped the housekeeper clear the dishes from the table while the men excused themselves.

The fine tension that claimed her didn’t go away when Whit left the house to finish his day’s work. It remained to thread through her veins, never letting the thought of him stray far.

She was struggling with it when she climbed the stairs to spend the afternoon with her mother. The middle-aged practical nurse was on her way down the steps, carrying the lunch tray Mrs. Youngblood had sent up.

“Did Mother eat well?” Shari asked, because she was often guilty of picking at her food.

“She cleaned up every bit of it,” Nurse Jeffers informed her with a wide smile. “May I offer you my congratulations on your engagement to Mr. Lancaster?”

Shari stiffened to a halt halfway up the stairs. The news had spread fast. She realized that was natural at Gold Leaf, especially when there was a Lancaster involved.

“I’m not engaged to Whit,” she flatly denied it, intending to crush the rumor before it went any further. “I’m not engaged to anyone. Whoever told you otherwise was lying.”

The nurse’s mouth dropped open, but Shari didn’t wait to hear any apology or explanation. She climbed the rest of the stairs with quick impatient steps; their sound was a rapid tattoo that told of her barely contained temper.

Outside her mother’s door, Shari paused to take a deep breath and fix a bright expression on her face. When she walked in, her mother way lying in bed, propped in a sitting position by pillows. Shari recognized the book her mother was holding as the one she had selected from the library that morning.

“Is it good?” she asked, drawing her mother’s glance.

“Shari!” Her mother said with some surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you this afternoon.”

“Why not?” She laughed shortly in confusion.

“I presumed you would go into town with Whit to pick out your engagement ring,” she explained and closed the novel to set it aside.

Shock drained the color from her face. Shari hadn’t dreamed that the news had spread all the way to her mother’s room.

“Who told you such a thing?” She wanted to know the identity of the informant, guessing it was either the nurse or the housekeeper. All the while she struggled to contain her irritation and hide it from her mother.

A slight frown creased her mother’s face as she tried to recall. “I don’t think it was actually said that you would accompany Whit, but it seemed logical that you would.”

Shari wasn’t interested in the business about the ring. She shook her head to dismiss that subject. “I mean, who told you about the engagement?”

Her mother’s smile was vaguely bewildered.