Hearth Stone

by Lois Greiman

  Their gazes met, ice on amber.

  “I wanted to tell you, too,” Hunter said.

  And the world ended.

  “You knew.” Sydney’s voice was nothing more than an echo in an endless tunnel. “You knew all the time?”

  “No. Just for a while. A few weeks, maybe. There wasn’t much on the Internet. But the evidence seemed pretty—”

  “Weeks! You’ve known I had a s …” She shook her head, forced a laugh. “You knew for weeks that I had an employee who was mentally deranged and you didn’t think it worth mentioning?”

  The house was silent but for the beat of the rain. It thrummed out a rhythm of betrayal.

  “It’s true, Syd,” Hunter said.

  She huffed a noise, something indescribable. “You’re as crazy as she is.”

  “Dad adored her.” Vura’s voice was very small. “Worshiped her. She had already left your father when they began seeing each other.”

  “She would never have done that!” Adrenaline was pumping like toxins through Sydney’s system. “She loved us.”

  “She did! I know she did,” Vura agreed and took a quick step toward her as if to ward off the pain, the uncertainty. “She wanted you with her. Tried to take you along, but Leonard Wellesley … he’s a powerful man and she …” She shrugged. “She couldn’t bear having her entire life dictated.”

  Dictated. Sydney winced at the word, remembering the endless constraints, the unbending rules, but she shook her head, pushed away the doubts. “You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I know Dad loved her,” Vura said. “I know they were happy together.” Her eyes were bright with tears. “And I know she was my mother.”

  Sydney backed away.

  “I was named after her.”

  The breath caught hard in Sydney’s throat.

  “Bravura. It’s a dance movement. A—”

  “This is crazy,” Sydney hissed. “You’re crazy. You’re all crazy.” She glanced at the trio around her. “You didn’t know my mother. She was a paragon. The epitome of style and class. The Washington Post said so.”

  “Syd …” Hunter took a step toward her, but she snarled a warning.

  “No—” She slashed out with the edge of her hand. “I don’t have time for this. For your outrageous lies. For your—” Everything seemed different suddenly. Empty. She’d spent her entire life trying to live up to the memory of her mother. To be the person Winona Begay Wellesley would want her to be. Thinking she wasn’t good enough. Thinking … She straightened her back, inhaled through her nose. “I have important people coming.”

  “Important people.” Vura let her shoulders drop an inch. “Not like us, then.”

  “No. Not like you at all,” Sydney said, and turning, stepped into the rain.

  Chapter 30

  “Hello, Father.” Even here, standing beneath the cottonwood tree in the farseeing hills of South Dakota, Leonard Wellesley wore a custom-made suit and Italian oxfords.

  “Sydney …” His voice was cool. She had almost forgotten the precise cadence of it.

  “I was hoping you’d be able to come earlier.” It was a lie. Or at least a partial lie. Maybe some portion of her had wanted him to come, to see, to ordain before her prospective students arrived. But the rest of her, the cowardly part of her, perhaps, had dreaded this moment with heart-pounding trepidation.

  It was October fourth. The first equestrian would step onto Gray Horse Hill within a few hours’ time.

  “It took fifty-five minutes to get here from that airport.” His tone rang with censure, but whether he disapproved of Rapid City Regional or distance in general was difficult to say. He glanced at his watch. “I’ll have to leave here within the hour to make my meeting in D.C. So …” He lifted his attention to their surroundings. “Let’s get started. This is it?”

  “Yes.” She followed his gaze. Beside the homey brick silo, the barn once again stood proud and true. Stained a rich mahogany, the double doors were open and welcoming. The ancient cupolas, resurrected from a creek bed near a neighboring farm, gleamed atop the roof’s wooden shingles. “This is Gray Horse Hill.”

  “How many stalls?”

  “Ten so far.” She resisted the urge to fidget. “But I … I wanted to talk to you about something else.” She had, in fact, tried to call him a number of times. Or, perhaps more correctly, she had tried to try to call him.

  He turned his scowl on her. She clasped her hands together.

  “Were you and Mother planning to divorce?” The words escaped like wild mustangs, squeezing between her lips and galloping into the distance.

  His brows dropped low over midwinter eyes. “Where would you get such an outlandish notion?”

  Explanations and apologies raced through her mind, but she quieted them. “Were you?”

  He drew a long breath through his nose and straightened to steel-rod rigidity. “I did not come here to discuss my personal life with you, Sydney.”

  “I understand that, but I need to know what—”

  “No. I need to know,” he countered. “I need to know whether you have wasted my money completely or if there is some way to salvage the situation. Now …” He scowled at the split-rail fences that separated the house from the endless pastures. A granite-paved pathway wound to the wide, sprawling porch. Beside the flagstones, goldenrod bloomed in the meandering rain garden. Monarchs fluttered about milkweed’s pink blossoms. But he seemed to notice neither the butterflies nor the soothing stillness. “Where is the arena?”

  “The arena?” She blinked and pulled her gaze from the bench Hunter had placed beneath a gnarled pine. He’d crafted the back from a single plank of asymmetrical oak that had been felled by a recent storm. The knotty wood had been sanded to satin smoothness. The brass plate affixed to one arm said PEACE TO ALL WHO REST HERE. But that peace had been stolen.

  Sydney motioned toward the wooden fence located just south of the barn. A full two acres had been devoted to the jump course. Brightly colored standards dotted the carefully groomed sand. “We just completed it. Maybe later—”

  “I meant the indoor arena.”

  Sydney clasped her hands together. They trembled slightly. “Funds were insufficient for an indoor.”

  “And I suppose you expect me to pay for that, too?”

  “That’s her father?” Vura asked, and just barely managed to contain her wince.

  She and Hunter stood in the lea of the barn.

  “I believe so,” he said.

  The pair beneath the cottonwood looked as stiff as T-posts as they faced each other across the gravel drive. Hunter fisted his hands and wished like hell that he had never asked her to call her father. Something had changed the day she’d spoken to him. Something, though he wasn’t quite sure what.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” Vura said, but didn’t turn away from Wellesley’s neatly tailored suit, his rigid form, his disapproving expression.

  Hunter watched as well. Sydney had barely deigned to glance his way since the rainstorm. He had tried to talk to her a dozen times, but she had held him off with a hundred necessary details and cool disdain.

  “She needs us.” He said the words quietly, reverently, but Vura huffed a laugh.

  “Are you kidding me? She’s been treating us like …” She shook her head, ran out of words and drew a shaky breath.

  “Mama …” Lily pattered up from behind her. “Where’s Courage?”

  “I don’t know, baby.” She sniffled and pressed her knuckles to her nose as if discouraging tears. “Maybe she’s—”

  “She’s not in her stall.”

  “I can’t do it,” Vura said and wiped her hand beneath her nose. “I came today because you asked me to, Hunt. I came for you, but I won’t—”

  “Mama!” Lily tugged at her hand. “She’s gone.”

  “I won’t bend over backward for a woman who doesn’t even want family.” Vura curled her fingers around her daughter’s. “Who doesn’t even try to—”<
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  “Courage is gone,” Lily wailed. “She’s gone! She’s gone! She’s gone!”

  Vura glanced at her daughter, then at the empty stall.

  Hunter knelt beside the child, heart chilled, stomach twisted. He’d had nothing to do with the mare’s release, had been absent when Sydney had turned her loose in the predawn stillness, but that didn’t absolve him of guilt. Hardly that. It clung to him like toxic waste.

  “Courage is free again, Hollyhock,” he said. “Free and happy. Like she should be.”

  “No.” Her eyes were as round as coneflowers in her bright-pixie face. “You said she wouldn’t leave until I was here to bless her.”

  “I’m sorry, Lily. I didn’t plan to—”

  “You promised!”

  “She did it on purpose, didn’t she?” Vura ground out the words. “She turned her loose just to spite me. To hurt Lily.”

  “You know that’s not true.” Hunter rose to his feet. “Courage was ready to go. We had done all we could for her. If we had kept her longer—”

  “And you still defend her.” Vura snorted her distain. “Even now.”

  He glanced at the pair near the cottonwood, felt the cold distance between them. “She has no one,” he rumbled.

  “I wonder why.”

  “Her father lied.” He would have liked to condemn Wellesley for that, to place the blame squarely at the older man’s well-shod feet, but his own failures loomed dark and close. “Her mother left. Think how that would feel.”

  “Mom tried to get custody. Dad said she missed Sydney like crazy. She’d hired an attorney. They were doing everything they could.”

  “Tell her that.”

  She snorted a laugh and glanced away. “I’ll stay for today,” she said. “Finish up what I started. What we started. But I’m not doing it for her. I’m doing it for you.” Her tone, Hunter realized, was steeped in the kind of pain that can only be caused by love.

  He turned away, hoping that love would be enough to heal as well as wound.

  Sydney’s stomach cramped. Too much coffee, not enough food. It had nothing to do with the fact that she had turned Courage loose without the knowledge of the others. The mustang, after all, had been her responsibility from the very beginning. And the mare had fled. Had tossed her tangled mane and galloped into the trees. Perhaps her gait had been somewhat broken, but she hadn’t faltered. Hadn’t looked back. And that was good. It wasn’t as if Sydney had expected the animal to stay. This wasn’t a Disney movie. It had been the best-case scenario. Having such a wild-eyed horse on the property would only have upset her guests … and her father. Her father who had barely said two words when they’d toured the barn, who had only grunted at the sight of the meticulously groomed arena and the far-reaching pastures. Even now, as they walked the jump course, he was ominously silent. It was not a hopeful sign. Her stomach coiled tighter, spurring up strangely rebellious thoughts; it wasn’t as if she needed his approval. She had made all this happen without him, after all. Had planned and toiled and bled for this rugged piece of land.

  Then again … Reality nipped at her pride, dragged at her confidence; she would have had no property on which to do any of those things without his money. The truth was, Leonard Wellesley could make or break her future. Could see her dreams come to fruition or crush them beneath the heel of his well-polished oxford. True, she had spent most of her life immersed in the equestrian world. She knew the trainers, the owners, the riders, had sent out a hundred invitations to her peers, competitors, and friends. But it was her father who held the purse strings. And those same strings, she knew from experience, made the puppets dance.

  Sydney glanced across the rolling hills to where Hunter and Vura were, even now, securing the top rail of a triple combination. Lily, ragged rat hugged tight to her purple-sweatered chest, was picking wildflowers nearby.

  Sydney pulled her gaze away with an effort, but every view reminded her of a dozen backbreaking tasks she had performed with friends: the Redhawks, Vura and her father, the supportive occupants of the Lazy. Her heart hiccupped in her chest. Friends, she thought … had she ever really had any until now? Or had she already alienated those who might be counted among that rare breed?

  “The clients are coming today?” Leonard asked, scowl directed at the workers on the distant hill.

  “Yes. Late afternoon. The sunsets here are spectacular. We’ll walk the course just before—”

  “They’ll be here within hours and you still don’t have the course completed?”

  “We’re just putting on the finishing touches.”

  He huffed his disapproval. “What about the winters?”

  His tone was somber, his expression pinched, but she had prepared her speech carefully. “Winters can be formidable,” she admitted. “But the seasons are part of the beauty of this region. The Black Hills receive an average of fifty inches of snow between October and April, traditionally the off-season for the equestrian world. When on pasture, the horses will benefit from the extra workout they receive while plowing through that snow. Then there are the hills themselves.” She scooped an open hand through the pristine air, motioning toward the distant vistas. Her fingers only quivered a little. “Gray Horse mounts will improve their fitness level simply by living in this environment, climbing the terrain, negotiating the streams. They’ll develop better balance in the mud and gain confidence in their ability to negotiate uncertain footing. And that’s in their leisure time.” Her oration had been prepared for prospective students. Even now she was honing it for her well-heeled father. “And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what kind of knowledge can be garnered from Guenter Klimke’s tutelage.” She allowed a moment for him to absorb the name.

  “You got Klimke?”

  She resisted wringing her hands. The renowned German instructor had not exactly signed in blood, or signed at all, come to that, but he had assured her that if she got the proper clientele, he would consider her offer.

  “Apparently, he’s been wanting a base in the United States where he can teach,” she said.

  “So he’s coming here.”

  “Yes,” she said and willed it to be true. “Yes, he will be—”

  “Where will they stay?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your students … if you get any, where would they live while they train?”

  She forced herself to breathe, in and out, in and out. “At this juncture I will have to rent a block of rooms at the Sundowner in Pringle. The accommodations won’t be—”

  “Never going to work.” His voice was clipped. “The clientele we’re looking for will expect accommodations on the premises. Excellent accommodations.”

  He had said “we’re.” As if he was already invested. Already on board. Sydney had no idea whether she should laugh or weep. So she remained silent and trembled.

  “We could connect it to the barn, so they have no need to walk outside if we tear down that brick …” He paused, scowled. “What is that thing?”

  “The silo?” She cast her gaze at the ancient structure built to store fodder. It had been the first thing that had attracted her to this property. Before Beaver Creek had wound its way into her heart, before the red-painted bluffs had seeped quietly into her soul, she had loved the silo.

  He nodded. “We’ll get rid of it.”

  “But it’s part of the whole package. Part of the charm.”

  “Charm.” He snorted and glanced at his watch again. “What else have you got?”

  “Well, I …” She moved forward, felt the muscles in her thigh pull tight, stretching tension all the way to her cranium, pushing an ache into her head. He followed her, but in a moment she stopped. “I wanted to show you this,” she said and glanced around. Goose bumps shivered over her skin, though she would never know why the sight of the high, rugged plains stirred her so.

  “What?” her father asked and scowled out over the hills.

  “I believe the students will appreciate the view.�
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  He shook his head. “We’ll bulldoze that area.” He waved vaguely. “Put in an indoor arena. The parking lot will—”

  “No.” The single word came out soft but steady.

  He pulled back his shoulders another half inch and turned toward her, eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

  She clasped her hands together. They no longer shook. “This is my place. My home.”

  “Built with my money.”

  “And my expertise. My vision.”

  “Vision! What you have is a pipe dream. You don’t know the first thing about running a business, about the sacrifices needed to be a success. It would be laughable if it weren’t so—”

  “Is this why Mother left you?”

  The world between them crashed to silence.

  “What did you say?”

  “Because you undermined her at every turn? Told her she was worthless? Made her feel …” She glanced out over the long sweep of hills before turning her gaze back to him. He looked small suddenly. Small and old and bitter. She could almost feel sorry for him. “Because you made her feel like me?”

  He gritted his teeth. His eyes looked hard and mean in his pale face. “I gave her everything I had.”

  She nodded vaguely. “But maybe you had nothing to give.”

  She never saw him strike, just felt the sting against her cheek. Perhaps it was shock that made her remain where she was, made her stand her ground. Made her lift her chin in silent defiance. He raised his hand again, but it was caught suddenly, snared in a fist as hard as granite. He tried to pull away, but the grip only tightened.

  Rage was stamped on Hunter Redhawk’s normally impassive face.

  “Who the hell are you?” Wellesley snarled.

  “I could ask you the same.”

  “I’m Leonard Wellesley the Third!” he snarled, and yanking his hand away, stumbled backward.

  Hunter lowered his head slightly, stalking him. “So you are Sydney’s father.”

  “Of course I’m her—”

  “The man who raised her.” Hunt took another step forward, shoulders slightly hunched, voice little more than a whisper. “Who carried her against his heart.” He spread his fingers across his chest, then curled them into a fist. “Who shaped her into what she is today.”