The Outcast Read online

  “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.”

  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, of
fering 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.