The Outcast (7 page)

He gave an incredulous laugh. “Not mind you running off with a purebred animal in a county crawling with thieves, cutthroats, and worse?”

Her delicate nostrils flared at his implication that the horse’s and not her own safety had him so worried.
Big blue eyes narrowed to ominous slits.

“I would have protected it with my life.”

He snorted. “Then I’d have that on my conscience and no horse, either. No sensible female would parade herself around the countryside alone in times like these.”

Her hands fisted at her sides. If she’d had a gun, Reeve figured he’d be sucking air through a new orifice. But better her angry than the other things he’d imagined while racing on foot to the Manor.

The horse never once crossed his mind.

“Jus’ ask from now on, and I’ll take you.”

“You’ll take me?”

He could see the clouds of her displeasure massing, piling darker and darker one atop the other, forming a magnificent thunderhead of rage. He waited stoically for the downpour.

“Ask you?”

Lightning strobed in her stare.

A smart man would take cover.

She drew a deep draft of air and let it blow.

“Who do you think you are, sir, to dictate when and where I go?
Ask you?
I’ll do no such thing. Let you take me? I’d as soon walk as ‘borrow’ your horse or depend upon your charity. I want nothing from you, Reeve Garrett.”

Though not the wisest thing to do, he crooked a cynical smile. “But my horse came in mighty handy, didn’t it?”

Her teeth clenched tight. Her cheeks flamed as fiery as her hair. She started walking.

It was more stomp than stride.

Reeve watched with some appreciation, reminded of the impulsive girl who’d give way to tremendous—and foolhardy—tempers that made
her act before thinking things through.

And foolhardy it was if she meant to march all the way back to the Glade wrapped only in her indignation.

Especially when it began to rain.

At first, the misty spray felt good upon her face, cooling her temper, restoring her reason. And it felt equally good to vent her temper for the first time since her pampered life was wrested from her. Then, the rain grew in intensity from gentle sprinkle to pummeling downpour.

Pride made a miserable umbrella.

Strands of wet hair plastered themselves to her face and clung coldly to the back of her stiffly held neck. She blinked rapidly to keep persistent drops from skewing her vision. Practical calico proved a poor shield against a steady rainfall. Her skin chilled. Her skirt sucked up more water than a thirsty sponge. Fabric dragged in the muddying drive, hampering bold steps, tangling about her legs like cold plasters.

By the time she reached the road, she seriously rethought her situation. Maybe she should turn around and seek shelter at the Manor rather than court pneumonia in the brutal weather. If the storm didn’t settle in for the day, she’d have plenty of time to make it back to the Glade after the worst of it was over.

She squinted heavenward. A solid black mat hugged close to the shoulders of midday, offering no relief. She paused, feeling the ground seep up over the tops of her half boots. Time either to sink or surrender.

And then she heard the jingle of bridle tracings.
A quick glance confirmed the worst. Right behind her, Reeve slouched indolently in his saddle, looking not at all uncomfortable in the deluge.

“Like a ride, Miz Sinclair?”

Suddenly, she decided she’d surrendered quite enough to Reeve Garrett and those like him.

That determination kept her going for close to half a mile. By then, she was tripping on her sodden hem, blinded by the sluicing, endless stream of water runneling down her face. Lifting bags of bricks would be easier than wresting her feet, first one, then the other, out of the quicksand the road had become. Her muscles ached. Her knees wobbled. Breath clawed up her throat in ever more desperate struggles for escape. How she hated Reeve’s mocking smugness, his patient stalking, as he waited for her to relent and beg his aid. How she despised him for forcing her to continue the ungainly floundering in muck nearly up to her knees. Let him watch, let him wait, let him laugh. She’d give him no satisfaction.

Then she spotted salvation at the bend of the road up ahead. A huge oak boasting a mammoth spread of branches waited, offering dry patches of ground between gnarled tunnels of overgrown roots. Focused upon those arid patches of grass, she started when Zeus suddenly moved up beside her. Stopping in the wallow of mud, she grimaced up into the flood of rain to see a broad, callused palm stretched down to her.

“Enough of this. Give me your hand.”

Thinking of that dry nook only yards away, she glared at his hand. “I do not need your assistance, Mister Garrett.”

“Patrice.” Warning growled from him.

Then the air around them concussed with a sound so huge and light so blindingly bright, Patrice thought for a moment that they’d been hit by cannon fire. Zeus reared away in panic. Reeve fought to bring the animal under control as Patrice crouched with palms pressed over her ears. In a frantic daze, she looked about, stunned to see that giant oak had split asunder. Twin halves peeled back from a center core, smoking from the bolt that cleaved it in two. Sparks crackled through the air in a maddened dance, then all was still except the rain and the pounding of her heart.

She stared at the spot where she might have been crushed had Reeve not stopped her.

She didn’t protest when Reeve leaned down from the saddle to draw her up in front of him. Numbed by her close brush with death and chilled to the bone, she lacked the strength to muster a rebellion. She wanted to get to the Glade, where warmth and welcome waited. And if that meant sharing the saddle with her enemy, it was now a necessary sacrifice.

Until he slipped off his Union jacket.

The instant it settled about her shoulders, a sensation of security seeped in along with the lingering heat from his body. Wool abraded her chafed skin the way its Federal blue color rubbed her pride raw. It occurred to her to shrug it off in a gesture of contempt, but he must have guessed her train of thought, for he pulled it tight, buttoning it to trap her inside its protective folds.

Patrice sat rigidly balanced atop his thighs, caught between the brace of powerful forearms. Awareness of him beat through her veins the way
the rain peppered her unprotected face, icy hot and impossible to ignore.

Without the covering of his jacket, Reeve’s shirt fit against him with an almost transparent wetness, delineating each muscular swell and intriguing hollow. The usual tousle of his untamed hair was slicked back with satin luster. A dappling of moisture highlighted the angles of his face and caught in the stubble at his chin. As close as she was, she could see whorls of desire darkening his irises despite his ruthlessly held control. Evidence of it squared along his jawline and thinned his lips into a narrow, negating slash. He didn’t like the pull of intensity any more than she did.

His large hand opened at the back of her head, cupping it, compelling it to bow and seek shelter against his shoulder.

She should have turned away, denying what snapped between them in that unguarded moment to prove he had no power over her emotions.

Instead, she bent.

Her cheek nestled into the lea between shoulder and throat, finding a comfortable valley in which to rest. Immediately, she felt the bunch of his thighs as he nudged Zeus into a cautious lope as the steadying curl of his arms kept her close. But though safe in that coddled embrace, Patrice found no relaxation.

She’d always felt the basic attraction between them, something hot and animal and impossible to explain. It had nothing to do with the warmth and respect she felt for Jonah. It was somehow beyond the respectable and perhaps that was why, in her reckless youth, it was so alluring. No matter how earnestly she flirted with the rest of her Pride
County beaux, Reeve Garrett claimed her undivided notice. Escorted into the dazzling affairs the Glade hosted before the war, she was oblivious to the music, the finery, and the witty conversation of her current partner. She homed in like a bird dog on the scent to the scruffily handsome outcast as he stood outside with the drivers and grooms, sharing liquor out of cornhusk-bound jugs instead of champagne from crystal at Byron Glendower’s side. By his choice. Always by his choice.

She’d catch him watching her as she swayed up the wide stone steps in her hoops and frills, bare shoulders gleaming in the candlelight, her gloved hands curled upon some gentleman’s forearm. And he’d nod, that infuriatingly bland smile a mockery of everything she’d hoped to inspire in him after hours of tedious preparation. She always dressed for him, determined just once to wake the blind devotion she stirred with little effort in every other eligible male in the county. Only Reeve seemed impervious. And how that galled her. How that made her want him all the more.

She felt his heartbeats, hard and strong, where the weight of his arm pressed her to him, and she wondered now, as she’d wondered then, what it would take to make that heart pound like a racehorse’s hooves in the final stretch. He was always so calm, so controlled it made her feel all the more foolish for her giddy lusting. For being unable to forget the thrill of being in his arms after she’d goaded him into teaching her about kissing. But that was before she made her official debut in society

There were times when she believed she’d imagined it all, that he’d never been the least bit interested in her. And then, she’d catch him staring at
the oddest times with a look so hungry, so fierce, it scared as much as it excited. Again, by choice, he hadn’t acted upon what she’d seen in his eyes.

And now, she could not allow him to.

She compromised her every angry word and vow by lingering against him, absorbing the heat, the power, the joy of his nearness. But on a private, selfish level, she didn’t care. She’d wanted to be held like this forever. She’d underestimated his effect on her will. It melted like butter with that first inhalation of wet wool mixed with his own hot, musky scent. She’d berate herself later, but for now, she couldn’t shun the opportunity to bask in pleasures long imagined.

Byron Glendower watched them come up the drive.

He’d been standing at the parlor window for some time, sipping whiskey, indulging in sorrow and uncertain sentiment. He didn’t know what to do about Reeve. He never had.

His one great wish was to create a capable heir for the Glade. A selfish want, that desire of a man to immortalize his achievements by leaving a part of himself behind to attend them. Toward that end, he’d married young, to a delicate creature with whom he’d only a nodding acquaintance. She was of a fine pedigree, bringing the wealth and prestige he needed to carve out a monument to the name Glendower. But after three miscarriages, he began to fear he’d have no one to inherit his dream.

Then he met Abigail Garrett, an attractive widow whose needlework was renowned in Pride County. While arranging for her to outfit his wife for a new season, they began a passionate affair which culminated
in the birth of a son. A fine, strapping son, the kind a man boasted of … or would if it were his legitimate issue. Foolishly, he tried to convince Abigail to relinquish the boy into his care, but the proud woman would have none of that. The best he could do was provide her a cabin upon the Glade’s many acres, a place where he could watch over the boy at a judicious distance.

And then his wife gave birth to a legal heir. A boy. A small, spindly child of continued ill health. A child much like he had been.

The irony of it. The boy every man dreamed of just out of reach. A weak child of uncertain future holding all his hopes.

His wife knew of Abigail and the boy, but women accepted such things without comment. And he kept to his vow not to resume his affair once a legitimate heir was produced.

He hadn’t meant to hurt either his wife or his son with his blatant favoritism, but Reeve, without trying to, far overshadowed his half brother. He was strong as an ox, courageous to a fault, honorable and dependable as the day was long. He understood the land, and the livestock loved him. The perfect son in all but name. And that, Reeve refused as stubbornly as his mother. Cautious, remote, and suspicious of his father’s motives, he refused to give homage or love, only labor.

He’d tried to love both sons equally, but it was difficult when all he could see were Reeve’s strengths and Jonah’s weaknesses. He watched with unconcealed delight as Reeve developed a natural gift for dealing with horses. His disappointment was apparent when, despite his best efforts, Jonah couldn’t overcome his fear of them. Then the accident
happened. And Jonah was forever handicapped with a shortened leg and obvious limp.

He couldn’t fault Jonah for not trying his hardest to please him. What the boy lacked in physical prowess, he made up for in mental acuity. He worked miracles with the Glade’s books, then went on to establish the county’s first bank. His charity and kindness earned the love of all, and Byron tried to be one of them. But he couldn’t quite forgive the frail Jonah for not being Reeve. He tried to make up for that lack of affection by showering him with admiration. He hoped he succeeded.

Then, Byron saw a way around Jonah’s shortcomings. If he couldn’t be the sturdy heir Byron desired, than perhaps he could pass that wish down to the next generation. A fit, prime grandson. And he saw Patrice Sinclair as the perfect mate to bring about that accomplishment. Of blooded stock and sturdy lineage, she had more than enough vinegar and spirit to make up for what Jonah lacked. He couldn’t have been happier to announce the engagement to friends and family. And for the first time, he embraced Jonah with genuine fondness.

Then Reeve brought Jonah home for burial.

Terrible words were exchanged at that grave site. Byron wasn’t sure which spurred his fury, the fact that Reeve had taken an active part in the death of his heir, or that Reeve, his treasured son, his pride, had failed to stand by him and his beliefs, defying him openly to join the enemy cause. That choice stunned him and embarrassed him before his neighbors, leaving him in the awkward position of how to explain when he couldn’t. It broke his heart.