The Outcast (6 page)

And she owed it to him to make the consequences of what he’d done a constant abrasion upon what little conscience he could claim. If he couldn’t—wouldn’t—change the past, she’d see he was ever reminded of it. Of the pain he’d caused. Of the ruination he’d allowed to fall upon them. She wouldn’t let him wear his guilt so casually. God, help her, she’d see he strangled in it.

And there was only one place to sanction that promise. Not in any church, but rather in her own chapel. Her home. She’d feel better there, stronger, more certain of her choices. But getting there was a problem. The Manor was miles away, and the only transportation belonged to Reeve.

Patrice smiled tightly.

How fitting that he should provide for her travel after causing her distress.

But she knew Reeve, and she knew he wouldn’t just saddle the animal for her and let her go on her way. Not alone. Not without explanation. Not without humbling herself to make the necessary request, which she was in no mood to do. So she watched and waited. And at last, Reeve left the barn area to return to his distant cabin.

She ran quickly, lightly, with a trace of her old impulsive recklessness down to the paddock where Reeve had replaced broken slats and rails so Zeus could trot about the enclosure. The animal paused, pawing cautiously at the ground when she approached, bridle in hand. But, a well-trained beast, it came at her soft whistle and allowed her to slip the straps into place. She’d ridden all her life, both with ladylike decorum and hoydenish disregard. She chose the later, vaulting up onto the horse’s wide back in an awkward bunch of petticoats to sit astride.

The big stallion responded easily to the pressure of her knees and guiding movement of the reins, but when Reeve’s shout—at first anxious, then angry—sounded behind them, the animal hesitated, drawn to its master’s voice. A brisk thump of her heels sent them galloping down the road, leaving Reeve behind in whorls of dust.

The sight of fire-scorched brick brought back an unexpected rush of horror and helplessness. Patrice slid down off Zeus’s back, her knees buckling weakly. Gripping the animal’s mane, she pressed her face against the beast’s warm flesh until the anguish ebbed, until the panic subsided and the nightmarish
pictures stopped replaying in her head. Only then could she look up and see what could be, what once was, instead of the sad neglect that stood before her now.

Still, it hurt. It pained to see her beloved home abandoned in disrepair.

“Dat you, Miz Patrice?”

“It’s me, Jericho.”

The young black man emerged from the hedges near the house, lowering the ancient rifle in his hands when he saw for himself who it was. “You got any word on Mista Deacon yet?”

“Nothing yet. Have you had any more problems here?”

“Nothing I ain’t been able to handle, ma’am.”

She smiled at the note of pride in his voice, a possessive tone well earned over the past year with just the two of them struggling to keep the walls and their world from caving in.

Jericho’s father had served her family as driver, an elevated position in the slave community commanding respect and requiring a degree of responsibility that fostered trust. His sister, Jassy, had grown up beside Patrice, sharing her dolls and later, her dreams until, in a sudden move of uncharacteristic cruelty, Patrice’s father had sold her off to a family in Louisiana. Patrice’s heart broke, and, though she wasn’t privy to the particulars, she figured it played a major role in the change in her brother from an approachable companion to a closed-off duplicate of her father. She’d asked her mother once if Deacon and Jassy shared a love affair. The question scandalized the fragile woman into her bed for a week. Patrice never asked again and accepted the loss of Jassy’s friendship the way
she was forced to accept the other losses to come.

Jericho surprised her by becoming the one dependable presence at the Manor once things started to collapse under the weight of war. He’d stayed behind when the others slipped away in the night, oftentimes taking whatever they could carry. He’d stood beside her on the front porch to fend off marauders even as its support pillars flamed around them. They’d have starved, plain and simple, over the last winter if it hadn’t been for his cleverness at foraging for food. And when word finally came of her father’s death, and the two women were invited to stay at the Glade until Deacon’s return, Jericho stayed behind to keep the home fires burning and to discourage those who would try to strip the bedraggled plantation to the very frame boards … not that there was much left to take.

She owed Jericho Smith everything.

He took the reins from her, giving the stallion an appraising sweep.

“This here looks like Mista Reeve’s horse.”

“It is.”

“He come back then?”

“Yesterday.”

Jericho and Reeve had spent many an hour in the Glade’s stables discussing horseflesh and harnessing. They were as close to friends as men of different color could be. Patrice could tell there were more questions he wanted to ask, but trained as he was to hold his tongue, they remained unvoiced. Jericho patted the animal’s damp neck.

“I give him a ration of feed, if we gots any.”

“Thank you, Jericho.”

“Was there something you be wanting here, Miss?”

Patrice shook her head. “Just wanted to … look around. To feel at home again.”

Jericho nodded, needing no further explanation. Without another word, he led the horse toward what had once been the Manor’s barns.

The front entrance of the majestic redbrick manor was gone, so Patrice made her way around to the side, purposefully not looking at the tangle of weeds that was once her mother’s famed garden. One couldn’t eat roses, and the time for beautiful objects that served no practical function was over. Nothing reminded her more graphically than stepping inside her once opulent home.

Sinclair Manor was built for grand entertaining, for displaying family wealth, taste, and power in every dripping crystal prism, in each framed Gainsborough, in every yard of Aubusson and imported strip of hand-painted wall covering. What the war left was big empty rooms, impractical for daily use, impossible to heat or clean. A roof that leaked, a larder filled with vacant shelves. A host of guest rooms inhabited by ghosts.

She walked lightly so her boots would make no sound in passing. The endless echoing disturbed her. She traced her hand along the graceful curve of the staircase, the sounds of her and Deacon’s squeals as they slid down from the upper floor as faded as the soiled stair runner. The brass carpet rods were gone, she noted with a touch of sad dismay. Her mother had put so much pride in them.

The double parlor stood raped of its grand furnishings, but Patrice could yet see them. She could hear the sound of laughter, of music, the clink of champagne glasses carried about on large silver trays. She could picture the fine company, the best
Pride County had to offer, and feel the whisper of her best friend’s excited words against her ear.

“Aren’t they handsome?”

Patrice could see them through the parted draperies, following Starla Fairfax’s hungry gaze to the gathering of young men sipping whiskey on the lawn. A sharp poke to the corset stays knocked her from her dreamy lethargy. Her friend chuckled knowingly.

“Which one?”

Patrice cast a guilty look at her smug neighbor, then tried to look indifferent. “Which one what?”

Starla laughed at her prim manner. “Which one of them pretty boys has you all hot and bothered?”

Hiding the flush of her cheeks behind a fluttering fan, Patrice’s gaze was nonetheless drawn back to the boisterous group who pretended not to notice their fair audience. “I declare, Starla Fairfax, your talk is as bold as that neckline.”

Starla was far from shamed. “My brother would love to think he’s the one turning your head. Is he? Then we could be true sisters.”

“Tyler?” Patrice frowned as she studied the lanky green-eyed devil with his sly smile and hundred-proof temper. He was a sweet eyeful, all dark, Creole beauty, sure enough, but Patrice knew him too well to be fooled by slick charm alone. “Your brother packs a kick more dangerous than that bourbon your daddy brews. A girl would be crazy to cast her hopes his way.”

Not at all offended, Starla surveyed the others. “What about Noble?” She all but purred his name.

Patrice grinned, watching her friend’s cat-eyed gaze scald over the magnificent picture Noble Banning presented in evening wear. He was the image
of what every Southern gentleman should be; all straight, prideful bearing with the drawling manners of a natural leader and orator. She knew Starla harbored a secret fancy for him that was as unrequited as it was passionate within her girlish heart. She chuckled. “I wouldn’t dare. You’d snatch me bald-headed if I so much as smiled in his direction.”

“Oh, pooh, Trice. That’s not true.” But she seemed pleased despite her protest. She nodded then toward the impressive figure wearing his father’s Mexican War saber on his hip. It made him look every inch the hero. “Mede? I declare, he makes hearts beat faster every time he flashes those dimples of his.”

Patrice agreed. Lycomedes Wardell was built solid and square-jawed, as formidable in stature as he was shy in manner. A combination the county girls found devastating. But Patrice would never think of him as other than neighbor and friend.

And that narrowed the field of heartbreakers down to two.

“A smart girl would grab up Jonah Glendower. He’s gonna be filthy rich, and he’s been hanging around your front porch all summer hoping for a sign the feeling’s mutual.”

Patrice let her thoughts linger over the younger Glendower issue and she knew Starla was right. Jonah was bright as a newly minted eagle, with all his father’s ambitions and influence. Conscientious, intellectual, well-bred and pedigreed to the envy of his farm’s best stallions, he was her family’s choice. But not hers.

“But safe don’t excite a girl like you, Patrice. Not like ole Reeve Garrett does. I don’t know what you
see in that surly boy.” She giggled. “Other than the obvious.”

The obvious held Patrice’s attention. Long legs meant to mold to saddle leather. Brawny arms and strong hands made to master the most rebellious mount. Dark tawny hair mussed by the whip of the breeze, straying into eyes as mysterious and deep as one of the Glade’s peat bogs. And just as dangerous to one as careless of her own sure footing as Patrice tended to be.

Reeve Garrett, Byron Glendower’s illegitimate son, a study of unapproachable angles—rugged, hard, without a trace of softness except when he extended one of his infrequent smiles.

The sight of him made Patrice breathless.

“What are you girls doing, peeking through the curtains like a couple of nosy housemaids?”

Starla groaned and stepped away from the window. “If it isn’t Deacon Sinclair, come to preach what’s right and proper. Is Deacon your name or your calling?”

That barbed quip faded from memory upon Patrice’s sigh. She turned from the room full of ghosts, from the figures haunting her lawn a lifetime ago.

She couldn’t quite make her self go upstairs where the memories were more personal, more difficult to manage. Instead, she crossed into her father’s darkly paneled study. There, if she closed her eyes tight and inhaled, she could catch the hint of cigar and success lingering in the old wood and dusty volumes. His clipped voice resided in the tap of tree branches against the grimy panes.

“Patrice, you are a Sinclair. Never forget that and never let anyone else, either.”

He’d made it a struggle to maintain that Sinclair
perfection. He’d almost lost Deacon, but at the end, his son had come around to be the brilliant protégé. She’d been the disappointment, always scoffing at tradition, always kicking up heels in the face of decorum. She hadn’t understood back then the weight of responsibility that came along with the name Sinclair. It meant providing for those who depended upon you for strength. It meant being an example of what was right and good to those who were striving or uncertain. It meant wedding oneself to a lifestyle of privilege that became a prison of restraint. Such tremendous changes to make over the period of a few years. She needed to talk about them with someone who would understand the significance. She needed Deacon in a way she never had before. He’d gone through the same changes, and she wanted to ask how they’d felt, inside him. If he regretted the loss of his freedom to the shackles of duty.

She and her brother hadn’t been close since childhood. She’d always sensed he was mildly disapproving of her, and, when younger, she’d enjoyed making his straitlaced sensibilities wince. Now, she yearned for the chance to feel his admiration, to hear him say he was proud of the woman she’d become.

The paint on the doorjamb scratched rough and cracked beneath her cheek. She leaned against its support the way she wished she could rely upon his presence, so stalwart, so sturdy. She wanted to weep, to wail, but in the end, constrained herself to a whisper.

“Deacon, please come home. I can’t do it alone.”

Dark clouds charcoaled the afternoon sky by the time she left the house. Approaching rain salted the air and cooled the breeze blowing against her skin, warning of a fast-brewing storm. Not wanting to get caught at the Manor in a deluge lest her absence frighten her mother, Patrice called to Jericho to bring her mount, anxious to be indoors when the heavens split in earnest.

But it wasn’t Jericho who brought Zeus up to where she was impatiently waiting.

It was Reeve.

And he was mad as hell.

Chapter 4

“I must not have heard you ask to borrow horse,” Reeve said casually enough. “Of course I’m sure it wasn’t stealing, that being a hanging offense and all.”

She had the nerve to look angry at him for demanding she make an accounting. It was, after all, his horse in her barn. He’d come all the way after them on foot, was tired, hot, and none too amused. And she stood there glaring bullets, furious with him because he dared question her right to what was his.

Her reply amazed him.

“I didn’t think you’d mind.”