by Nora Roberts
He took her right hand in his left, and turned her slowly in a circle under the arch of his arm, as if in a dance. It made her laugh. When he saw how low the dress dipped in the back, he swallowed hard.
“I’ve got to tell you something, Caroline.”
“All right.”
“You’re ugly.” He shook his head before she could comment. “That’s just something I had to get out of my system.”
“It’s an interesting approach.”
“My sister’s idea. It’s supposed to keep women from falling in love with me.”
Why did he always make her want to smile? “It could work. Are you going to ask me in?”
He traded her left hand for her right. “It seems like I’ve been waiting a long time to do just that.” He led her to the door, opened it. Pausing, he studied her, wanting to see how she looked in the doorway—his doorway—with flowers and magnolia trees at her back. She looked, he realized, perfect.
“Welcome to Sweetwater.”
The moment she stepped inside, Caroline heard the shouting.
“If you’ve gone and asked somebody to come and sit at my table, the least you can do is set it.” Della stood at the base of a curving stairway, one hand braced on a mahogany newel post, the other on her sturdy hip.
“I said I would, didn’t I?” Josie’s voice tumbled down the steps. “I don’t know what you’re in such a god-awful lather about. I’m going to finish putting my face on, then I’ll get to it.”
“Way she’s messing around with those paints, it’ll get set next week.” Della turned. The righteous indignation on her face gave way to curiosity when she spotted Caroline. “Well now, you’re Edith’s grandbaby, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
“Edith and I, we used to have ourselves some nice chats out on her front porch. You favor her a bit, ’round the eyes.”
“Thank you.”
“This is Della,” Tucker announced. “She takes care of us.”
“I’ve been trying for the best part of thirty years, but it ain’t done all that much good. You take her on into the guest parlor and give her some of the good sherry. Dinner’ll be ready before long.” With a last scowl at the stairway, she lifted her voice. “If somebody would stop tarring herself up and come set the table.”
“I’d be happy to do it,” Caroline began, but Della was already pulling her along the hallway toward the living room.
“No sir, you’ll do no such thing. Tucker peeled the potatoes and that girl’s going to set out the china. Least she can do after asking that dead doctor to dinner.” She patted Caroline’s arm then scurried off toward the kitchen.
“Ah … dead doctor?”
Tucker grinned, strolling over to an antique walnut server for the sherry. “Pathologist.”
“Oh, Teddy. He’s certainly an … interesting character.” She took a slow sweep of the room with its tall windows, lace curtains, Turkey carpets. The twin settees, as she was sure they were called, were in misty pastels. Cool colors predominated in the subtle stripes of the wallpaper, the hand-worked pillows, the plump ottoman. The richness of antiques melded with it. On the mantel above the white marble fireplace was a Waterford vase filled with baby roses.
“This is a lovely house.” She took the glass he offered. “Thank you.”
“I’ll give you the grand tour sometime. Tell you the whole history.”
“I’d like to hear it.” She walked to the window where she could look out at the garden and beyond to the fields and the old cypress. “I didn’t realize you farmed.”
“We’re planters,” he corrected her as he came up behind her. “Longstreets have been planters since the eighteenth century—right after Beauregard Longstreet cheated Henry Van Haven out of six hundred acres of prime delta farmland in a two-day poker game down in Natchez in 1796. It was in a bawdy house called the Red Starr.”
Caroline turned. “You made that up.”
“No ma’am, that’s just the way my daddy told it to me, and his daddy to him, and so on since that fateful April night in ninety-six. ’Course it’s just speculation about the cheating part. The Larssons put in that bit—they’re by way of being cousins of the Van Havens.”
“Spoilsports,” Caroline said, smiling.
“Could be that, or it could be the God’s truth, but neither changes the outcome.” He was enjoying the way she looked at him, her lips tilted up just a little, her eyes laughing. “Anyhow, Henry got so irritated about losing the land, he tried to ambush old Beau when Beau finished celebrating with one of the Starr’s best girls. Her name was Millie Jones.”
Caroline sipped and shook her head. “You ought to write short stories, Tuck.”
“I’m just telling you the way it was. Now, Millie was pleased with Beau’s performance—did I mention that the Longstreets have always been known as exceptional lovers?”
“I don’t believe you did.”
“Documented, through the ages,” Tucker assured her. He loved the way laughter brightened her eyes, softened her mouth. If he hadn’t had a story to tell, by God he would’ve made one up. “And Millie, being grateful for Beau’s stamina—and the extra five-dollar gold piece he’d left on the night stand, went on over to the window to wave him off. It was she who spotted Henry in the bushes with his flintlock loaded and ready. At just the right moment, Millie shouted a warning. The gun went off. Beau’s frock coat was singed at the arm, but his reflexes were keen. He pulled out his knife and sent it whipping into the brush where the shot had come from. Hit Henry dead in the pump, as my grandpappy used to say.”
“He was, of course, an expert at knife-throwing as well as lovemaking.”
“A man of many talents,” Tucker agreed. “And being a prudent man as well, he decided it best not to stay around Natchez and answer uncomfortable questions about a deed, a dead man, and an Arkansas Toothpick. Being a romantic, he took pretty young Millie out of that bawdy house, and they traveled to the delta.”
“And planted cotton.”
“Planted cotton, got rich, and had babies. It was their son who started building this house, in 1825.”
Caroline said nothing for a moment. It was much too easy to become caught up in the flow of his words, the easy rhythm of his voice. It’s not really the point—-how much is true and how much is made up, she decided. It’s all in the telling. She moved away from the window, acutely aware that he was about to touch her again, and less sure if she’d want to stop him. “I don’t know much of anything about my family history. And certainly nothing that goes back two hundred years.”
“We look back more than forward in the delta. History makes the best gossip. And tomorrow … well, tomorrow’s going to take care of itself anyway, isn’t it?”
He thought he heard her sigh, but the sound was so soft, it might have been silence.
“I’ve spent my whole life thinking about tomorrow—planning next month, next season. It must be the air here,” she said, and this time she did sigh. There was something wistful in the sound. “I’ve hardly thought of next week since I walked into my grandmother’s house. Haven’t wanted to, anyway,” she said, remembering the phone calls from her manager that she’d been dodging ever since she decided to come to Mississippi.
He had a strong urge to hold her—just to offer her the circle of his arms and the support of his shoulder. But he was afraid the gesture would spoil whatever was happening between them.
“Why are you unhappy, Caro?”
Surprised, she looked back at him. “I’m not.” But she knew it was only part of the truth. And part of the truth was a lie.
“I listen almost as well as I talk.” His hand was gentle as he touched her face. “Maybe you’ll try me sometime.”
“Maybe.” But she moved back, marking the distance. “Someone’s coming.”
Now he knew the time wasn’t right, and turned to the window again. “The dead doctor,” he said, and grinned. “Let’s go see if Josie set the table.”
chapter 11
In the county jail in Greenville with its scarred, ring-less toilet and graffiti-laced walls, Austin Hatinger sat on a board-hard bunk and stared at the bars of sunlight on the floor near his feet.
He knew why he was in a cell, like a common criminal, like an animal. He knew why he was forced to stare at bars, in a cage with filthy sayings painted on the sweaty walls.
It was because Beau Longstreet had been rich. He’d been a God-cursing rich planter and had tossed all his tainted money to his bastard children.
They were bastards, sure enough, Austin thought. Madeline might have worn that traitor’s ring on her finger, but in the eyes of God, she had belonged to only one man.
Beau hadn’t gone off to the stinking hole of Korea to serve his country and save good Christians from the Yellow Peril, but had stayed behind, in sin and comfort, to make more money. Austin had long suspected that Beau had tricked Madeline into marriage. Not that that excused her betrayal, but women were weak—weak of body, weak of will, weak of mind.
Without a strong guiding force—and the occasional back of the hand—they were prone to foolish behavior and to sin. God was his Witness that he’d done his best to keep Mavis on a straight path.
He’d married her in a blindness of despair, trapped by his own raging lust. “The woman thou gavest me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” Oh, yes, Mavis had tempted him, and, weak of flesh, he had succumbed.
Austin knew that from Eve down, Satan spoke first to women in his smooth, seductive voice. They being more open to sin, they fell and with a wily heart took a man down with them.
But he’d been faithful to her. Only once in thirty-five years had he turned to another woman.
If there were times when, exercising his marital rights, plunging into Mavis, he felt, tasted, smelled Madeline in the dark, it was only the Lord’s way of reminding him what had belonged to him.
Madeline had pretended to be indifferent to him. He’d known, all those years ago he’d known, that she’d gone with Beau only to tease and torment him, as women did. She’d belonged to him. Only him. Her shocked denial when he’d made his declaration before shipping out to war had only been another pretense.
If it hadn’t been for Beau, she’d have been waiting for him when he’d returned. That had been the beginning of the end for him.
Hadn’t he worked his fingers raw, broken his back, sweated out his heart trying to make a decent life for the family he’d taken? And while he’d worked, and failed, sweated and lost ground, Beau had sat up in his fine white house and laughed.
And laughed.
But Beau hadn’t known. Despite all his money and his fine clothes and fancy cars, he’d never known that once, on a dusty day in high summer, when the air was thick and still, when the sky was baked white with heat, Austin Hatinger had taken what was his.
He remembered still how she’d looked that day. And the picture in his mind was so clear, his hands trembled and his blood pumped hard and hot.
She’d come to him, carrying a basket up to his porch, a big straw basket filled with charity for him, for his squawling son, for his wife who lay inside, sweating through the birthing of another child.
She’d been wearing a blue dress and a white hat that had a filmy blue scarf trailing from the crown. Madeline had always been one for floating scarves. Her dark hair was curled under the hat so that it framed the creamy skin of her face—skin she could pamper with the lotions Beau’s godless money could buy.
She’d looked like a spring morning, strolling up the dirt path to his sagging porch, her eyes soft and smiling, as if she didn’t see the poverty, the broken cinder-block steps, the dingy clothes hanging on the line, the scrawny chickens pecking in the dust.
Her voice had been so cool as she’d offered him that basket filled with cast-off clothes Beau’s money had bought for the babies he’d planted in Austin’s woman. He couldn’t hear past it, to the weak whine of his own wife calling to him that it was time to fetch the doctor.
He remembered how Madeline had started to go in, concerned for the woman who would never have laid in his bed at all if it hadn’t been for betrayal and deceit.
“You fetch the doctor, Austin,” she had said in that cool, spring-water voice. The kindness in her golden eyes burned a hole in his gut. “Hurry and fetch him, and I’ll stay with her and your little one.”
It wasn’t madness that had gripped him. No, Austin would never accept that. It was righteousness. Right and wrath had filled him when he had dragged Madeline off the porch. Truth had pounded through him when he had pulled her down to the dirt.
Oh, she’d pretended that she didn’t want him. She’d screamed and she’d fought, but it had all been a lie. He’d had the right, the God-given right to push himself into her. No matter that she’d worn a mask that had wept and pleaded, she’d recognized that right.
He’d emptied his seed into her, and all these years later, he could still remember the power of that release. The way his body had bucked and shuddered as the part of him that was a man flowed into her.
She’d stopped her weeping. While he’d rolled over in the dirt to stare up at that white sky, she had gotten up, gone away, and left him with the sound of triumph in his ears and the taste of bitterness on his tongue.
So he’d waited, day after day, night after night, for Beau to come. His second son had been born and his wife lay stony-faced in the bed, and Austin waited, his Winchester loaded and ready. And he’d ached with the need to kill.
But Beau had never come. He knew then that Madeline had kept their secret. And had doomed him.
Now Beau was dead. And Madeline. They were buried together in Blessed Peace Cemetery.
It was the son now, the son who had brought the circle twisting back. From generation to generation, he thought. The son had seduced and defiled his daughter. The girl was dead.
Retribution was his right. Retribution was his sword.
Austin blinked and focused on the bars of light again. Bars that came through bars. They had shifted with oncoming dusk. He’d been sitting in the past for more than two hours.
It was time to plan for today. In disgust he stared down at his loose blue pants. Prison clothes. He would be rid of them soon. He would get out. The Lord helped those who helped themselves, and he would find a way.
He would make his way back to Innocence and do what he should have done more than thirty years ago. He would kill the part of Beau that lived in his son.
And balance the scales.
Caroline stepped out onto the flower-decked patio and inhaled deeply of summer. The light was gentling, easing quietly toward dusk, and insects stirred in the grass. She had that smug, too-full feeling she’d forgotten could be so pleasant.
The meal had been more than platters of food served on old silver trays. It had been a slow, almost languorous pocket of time filled with scents and tastes and talk. Teddy had done magic tricks with his napkin and the flatware. Dwayne, passably sober, had displayed a remarkable talent for mimicry, moving from old standards like Jimmy Stewart to Jack Nicholson and on to locals like Junior Talbot.
Tucker and Josie had kept her laughing with rambling, often graphic stories of sex scandals, most of which were fifty or sixty years old.
So different, she thought now, from her own family dinners, where her mother would dictate the proper conversation and not a drop would spill on the starched damask cloth. Those dinners had been so stifling and lifeless—more like a corporate meeting than a family meal. The peccadilloes of ancestors would never have been discussed, nor would Georgia McNair Waverly have found it amusing to have a guest pluck a salad fork out of her bodice.
No indeed.
But Caroline had enjoyed the evening more than any she could remember, and was sorry it was nearly over.
“You look happy,” Tucker commented.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s just nice to see, that’s all.” He took her hand, and what he felt when h
is fingers linked with hers was not so much resistance as uncertainty. “Want to walk?”
It was a pretty evening, a lovely spot, and her mood was mellow. “All right.”
It wasn’t really a walk, she thought as she wound through rosebushes and the heavy scent of gardenia. It was more of a meander. No hurry, no destination, no problems. She thought meander suited Tucker perfectly.
“Is that a lake?” she asked as she saw the glint of water in the last light of the sun.
“Sweetwater.” Obligingly he shifted directions. “Beau built his house there, on the south side of it. You can still see what’s left of the foundation.”
What Caroline saw was a scattering of stones. “What a view they had. Acres and acres of their own land. How does that feel?”
“I don’t know. It just is.”
Dissatisfied, she looked out over the wide, fiat fields of cotton. She was a child of the city, where even the wealthy held only squares of property and people crowded each other for space. “But to have all this.…”
“It has you.” It surprised him to say it, but he shrugged and finished the thought. “You can’t turn away from it, not when it’s been handed down to you. You can’t see it go fallow when you’re reminded that the Longstreets have held Sweetwater for the best part of two centuries.”
“Is that what you want? To turn away?”
“Maybe there are some places I’d like to see.” His shoulders moved again with a restlessness she recognized and hadn’t expected. “Then again, traveling’s complicated. It takes a lot of effort.”
“Don’t do that.”
The impatience in her voice nearly made him smile. “I haven’t done anything yet.” He skimmed a hand up her arm. “But I’m thinking about it.”
Frustrated, she broke away. “You know what I mean. One minute you act as though there might be something inside your mind other than a thought for the easiest way out. The next thing, you shut it off.”
“I never could see the point in taking the hard way.”
“What about the right way?”
