Alana had accepted the workers who had stayed without question, and she had taken on the responsibility of keeping them fed and clothed, just as her family had done since 1789, when Alana’s ancestor, William Shockley, had come to South Carolina from England. She had kept meticulous records throughout the war years, detailing all the wages due the former slaves. When Riverbend was alive again, they would be paid. After their shared years of hell, the workers knew she would keep her word.
Looking down at her hands, Alana realized they were trembling uncontrollably. Clenching her fingers to stop their shaking, Alana started toward the garden. Behind her, the smoke from the outside kitchen wafted skyward, looking as if it were trying to join the coming storm clouds.
In the distance, she could hear the sounds of the fieldworkers. Their voices were tired but resolute as they went about their duties. Pausing at the entrance to the garden, Alana looked back at the once-magnificent plantation house. Her eyes swept across the facade; her heart grew heavy. How poor a homecoming this would be for Jason.
The main house badly needed a coat of paint to prepare for the approaching change of season. Two weeks ago, she had gone to Charleston to buy the paint. She had been unable to find any. The storekeeper had assured her he would do his best to get her what she needed, but Alana knew it was futile. The northern businessmen who had bought so much of the countryside had also taken all the supplies for themselves.
When Alana entered the garden, she glanced eastward at the thunderheads. A breeze was rising, blowing with it the smell of the storm. Alana recognized the scent for what it was–a scent of danger and change.
A few moments later, Alana reached her destination, a special flowerbed that held four rosebushes. Separated from the azaleas and camellias by a double row of white stones, these rosebushes held a special meaning for Alana. Slowly she knelt down before them, her fingers automatically seeking out the weeds that were trying to choke the rosebushes’ roots.
Only here, of all the places at Riverbend, could Alana feel peaceful and secure. But, not even that solace was granted her today, for her mind was spinning.
With her head held upright, she studied the rosebushes’ gentle green leaves. For four long years, no flower had blossomed. The heady, sweet smell of buds had not come; as if the bushes themselves had felt those first horrid shots fired on Sumter. When war came, the bushes had seemed to turn to hibernation to escape the torment of the land.
Now the war was over, peace was supposed to reign. Alana had hoped that when Jason returned she would be able to find some of that peace, but now even that small hope was shattered.
Alana gazed at the first bush, set at the fore of the garden and planted by her mother on the day after her marriage to Alana’s father. The second bush had been planted at Alana’s birth; the third and fourth at the births of her two brothers. Although the rosebushes survived, only she was still alive to tend them. Her mother had died when Alana was twelve. Her two brothers had died years before, in the same month, of swamp fever. The older had been four; the younger, two.
“Why?” she asked the rosebush planted in her honor. Her mother had been a beautiful, gentle woman who had given to everyone unselfishly. Her brothers had hardly known life at all when it was taken from them.
How well Alana remembered the promise she had made her mother ten years before, on the day Rachel Shockley Belfores had taken her last breath. Alana had been sitting on her mother’s bed, holding her hand and trying not to think of what was happening. “So young, Alana. You are so young, and you will be asked to do so much,” her mother had said.
Alana had turned her teary eyes to her mother, but she had been unable to speak.
“You must look after your father for me. He will need you when I’m gone.”
“No, Mama, you can’t go,” Alana had pleaded.
Rachel had smiled gently through her pain. “I cannot stay, Alana. But you will. Be gentle with him. He is not a strong man, but he is a good man. And, Alana,” Rachel had said after taking a deep, rattling breath that tore through Alana’s heart, “no matter what happens, you must see to Riverbend. Riverbend must survive. Promise me!” On her last words, Rachel had tried to sit, her hand tightening desperately around Alana’s.
Through her pain, Alana had nodded. Her words had been hoarse with grief. “I promise.”
Alana, although only twelve, had grown up that day. Both she and her father had survived, yet her father’s life had really ended the day her of her mother’s buriel. That special spark that had always glinted in his eyes had dulled, and the once tall and proud man had seemed to shrink before her eyes. When the final words faded over Rachel Belfores’s grave, her father had turned and walked away. Hours later, Alana had found him in his study, passed out from drink.
She had remembered her promise to her mother and with Lorelei had taken her father to his room and put him to bed. Almost every day thereafter, her father had drowned himself in spirits, forcing Alana to grow up and face the world alone.
With the help of the household slaves, Alana tended her father and Riverbend. At first, her anger clouded every minute of the day, but as the weeks passed, Alana’s anger at the loss of her mother and at the helplessness of her father had abated. Soon she was again loving her father completely, instinctively knowing that through his weaknesses he loved her but could not show it.
From sunrise to sunset, Alana did her best to act as mistress of Riverbend. Her days of playing with friends and learning the ways of adolescence disappeared. Her education under the tutors continued, but instead of learning how to play the piano and charm a man, Alana had learned how to work with figures and run a plantation.
The hardest lesson had been learning to accept what her father had become. Alana knew he had survived the deaths of his sons only because her mother had helped him; the death of his wife had broken him. Because Alana had known how much he loved her mother, she understood, even at her young age, what had driven him to drink, and she pitied him. She could not forgive him for giving up on life and for forgetting he still had her and Riverbend. She felt abandoned, and tried not to hate the father she once had idolized.
On rare and wonderful occasions, her father would come out of his depression and look at Alana with sparkling and loving eyes, which gave her hope he would again become the man he had been.
“You are your mother,” he had told her one night when she was halfway through her thirteenth year, “beautiful, strong, and valiant. You are life itself Alana; never, never forget that.”
When she had turned fourteen, Thomas Belfores had suddenly stopped drinking. For months, he’d remained sober. While he did, he taught Alana as much as he could, but what he taught her was pitifully little in comparison to what he knew.
Then came the day she had found him standing in the cemetery, looking down at her mother’s grave. Tears stained his cheeks. Sobs rent the air. When he turned, he’d seen Alana staring at him.
“I’m sorry, child. I tried. I really did.” An hour later, he had gone to Charleston, to their townhouse. He did not return for several weeks. When he did, she saw he had resumed drinking, and she sensed that he would never come out of it again.
By fourteen, Alana’s body had fully matured. She did not have the round, soft shape that was so much in vogue; rather, her body was willowy, lean, and strong. She had a narrow waist, long, slender legs, and full breasts, which the seamstress was barely able to hide.
With the ripening of her body had also come the maturing of her mind and spirit. With her father too besotted to function, Alana ran the plantation as though she was years older.
Alana had been sixteen when her father had finally succumbed to the combination of grief and drink. As the only surviving child, and to the shock of her neighbors, she had inherited Riverbend.
For four generations, Shockleys had ruled Riverbend, growing cotton and rice and breeding the finest horses in the Carolinas. The Shockley dynasty had ended when William Shockley the fourth had pro
duced only one child, a daughter–Alana’s mother. When Rachel Shockley had married the aristocratic Thomas Belfores, a noble but penniless gentleman, Riverbend had gained a good, knowledgeable master. The Shockley dynasty lost its name, but Riverbend retained its grandeur.
By the time Alana inherited the great plantation, however, it was on the verge of bankruptcy and in disrepair. Alana acquired both Riverbend and a great, almost unpayable debt.
Yet during the time of Alana’s greatest need, fate had been kind. In four years, the debts were paid, the plantation rebuilt, and the land turned profitable because of the goodness of one person–Jason Landow, Alana’s neighbor and friend, with whom she had grown up.
Jason was eight years Alana’s senior, and it had been his steady hands and thoughtful, unselfish giving which had saved her home.
“This will be your home!” she had stated to him in a hoarse voice, willing the mists to unveil her eyes. “And I will love you.”
Love...the word echoed within her mind. Alana knew that she was different from most women her age. She believed she always had been. She’d accepted the early responsibilities forced upon her that had robbed her of her childhood, but she had no complaints.
At the occasional socials, she’d attended before and at the onset of the war, she had always felt out of place. Her mind forever dwelt on her duties at Riverbend, from which she was never free, while the other girls of her age danced and made endlessly inane conversation with their beaus.
Not once had any boy or man lit a spark of need or desire within her heart. Alana had never cared, for she saw how much wasted energy was in those senseless pursuits. She had devoted herself instead to gaining knowledge and learning how to run a plantation and make it profitable.
She was also very aware she had created a scandal along the river and in Charleston itself. Never before had a plantation been left to be run by a sixteen-year-old female child. Cries of outrage from every quarter had resounded, but Alana had won out even in that.
The Landows–Jason, his brother Robert, and their mother Esther–had come forward to claim guardianship until Alana reached her maturity. Their act helped to keep Riverbend under her control and to stifle the scandal that her father’s death had brought about.
Although Alana believed herself to be in love with Jason, she understood it was not a love of great passion but a love of loyalty, gratitude, and hope for the future. Jason had done so much for her–how could she not love him? When he had asked her to marry him, shortly before war broke out, she had accepted without qualm, knowing she would never find a kinder man, or one who better understood her needs. She was certain Jason would make a good master for Riverbend.
She had kept her hopes high throughout the war, never once surrendering to self-pity. She had kept Riverbend alive. She had salvaged much from what might have been lost and had lived every day hoping for the war’s end. But, when the end came, it had not brought Jason back to her as she had prayed.
Now, five months after the war’s end, her waiting was finally over. Her life would begin again.
Rising slowly, Alana again drew upon her deep well of determination. It was time to return to the house and ready herself to meet Jason. Come what may, she knew she would stand by her promise to Jason, and their wedding would take place as soon as possible.
When she took the first step toward the house, her legs froze and her heart lurched. Within her mind’s eye, Rafe Montgomery’s face appeared. She stared at the image for a full two seconds before realizing what she was doing. Then, forcefully, she banished the handsome face from her mind.
2
Rafe Montgomery stood bare-chested, staring out the window of the guest bedroom. Behind him, spread out on the bed, were the few items he could call his own.
A young former slave named Kitty had taken him to this room, unpacked his traveling bag and taken his one change of clothes for pressing. Five minutes later, she’d returned with a basin of hot water.
After washing the grit of the road from his hands and face, Rafe walked to the window and tried to sort out his thoughts, which were running rampant.
He had known better than to come here. He had known not to accompany Jason but to return home and avenge those who had been so treacherous to him.
For two years, he had been Jason Landow’s cellmate. In those two years, strong feelings had grown between the men. They did not have a conventional friendship, but there was a strong bond between them nonetheless. Rafe had cared for the injured Jason, nursing him after his operation and had done whatever he could to make Jason’s life comfortable. They had shared a common life–and shared, too, the same dreams.
When the war ended and freedom came, they were given clothing and enough money to return home. Jason received one other item: a wheeled chair.
Upon their release, Jason had asked Rafe to accompany him home. The comradeship they had forged had kept Jason alive, for Rafe had not let Jason die, as Jason had wanted. It would be a difficult but not impossible task for Jason to go home and face the rest of his life as a cripple. He needed help, and Rafe had been unable to refuse him this.
Besides, Rafe had realized, California was a long time away, and after two years, a few days’ delay would mean nothing.
In reality, Rafe knew he’d had another reason for agreeing to return home with Jason. The reason was raven hair, blue eyes, and the face of the angel that had allowed him to keep his sanity.
Although he thought he had prepared himself for meeting Alana, he had not in fact been ready for what he'd found. He had known of Alana for two long years, from having listened to Jason’s unending talk of her. She was the only reason Jason could find for living. Rafe knew everything about her, from the moment she had been born to the start of the war. He thought he knew her as well as any other man in the world.
But, when he’d stood before Alana, he'd realized he had been wrong. Her large, almond-shaped eyes had looked questioningly at him. Her long, dark hair had glistened wherever the sun caught its waves. Her tanned face was elegant, her beauty radiating not from her skin but from within her very person.
Above all else, the strength Alana Belfores possessed struck him the most. When he had told her his news of Jason, he’d watched her close her eyes, had seen her gather herself proudly. It had been in that instant he knew she was different from any other. He hadn’t wanted it to happen, but the moment he’d set eyes on Alana, he knew no other woman would ever satisfy him again.
Rafe knew, too, the intensity of his conviction was not simply because of his years of being deprived of the company of women; rather, it was because Alana Belfores had become a part of his life.
He recalled the stricken look on her face when he had told her of Jason’s injury. The image tore at his heart. He had wanted to take her in his arms and hold her close, but that was impossible.
torn apart by his life and his desires, Rafe knew even if there were no Jason Landow to stop him from loving Alana, there were too many miles he must yet cover and debts that must be repaid. Not debts of money, but of revenge.
What now? he asked himself. To leave seemed the only sane response, but he knew he couldn't go. He’d known from the first moment he’d seen Alana that he could not leave. Whatever thoughts had driven him during his years as a prisoner, whatever desires and dreams he’d had, all came rushing back in that instant. Until that very moment, he could have gone away, he could have been free–but once his eyes had met hers, he could not turn away.
I am in love with her, he told himself. I can’t be, he remembered.
~~~~~
An hour and a half after Rafe Montgomery had appeared, Alana was again sitting on the veranda, waiting for her first sight of the carriage and of Jason Landow. Her nerves were taut. Gone were all her hopes, her dreams, and plans she had made during the long years of war, replaced by…what?
Doing her utmost to compose herself for Jason’s homecoming, she tried to understand what was happening to her life. She refused to yield
to tears. Instead, she replayed her conversation with Rafe repeatedly, trying to imagine what her future might hold.
Can this be happening? she asked herself sadly. Alana made herself think of how fortunate she was. Jason might never have returned. Was this not better?
Alana grasped the locket on her neck. She took the necklace off and stared at the golden scrolled surface. As thunder resounded in the distance, Alana opened the locket with trembling fingers. As she had done almost daily for the past four years, she gazed at the small photograph within. Jason’s visage–his fine-spun light hair, his intelligent, querying eyes, and the firm set of his mouth–looked back at her.
Taken the day before Jason had ridden off to the war, the picture did not show Jason’s strong and muscular body, his broad, powerful shoulders, or his long, tapering legs that had lent themselves to the lines of his uniform. But Alana, whenever she had looked at the picture, had seen not just Jason’s face but all of him.
Alana shivered. Just as she would never desert Riverbend, she would never desert Jason. No matter what fate had befallen Jason, she would stand by him, just as he had done for her before the war. She would marry him and be his wife. Together, they would run Riverbend; for without Jason Landow, Riverbend would have been lost long before the war.
A memory of years ago flashed in her mind. She had been seventeen and had been obliged to attend the wedding of a neighbor.
She had been in the salon, sitting with three young women of her own age. They were talking about the men in their lives–their desires and their needs. Marietta Handly had turned to Alana.
Alana Page 2
