The driver was standing patiently at the head of the team, soothing the two skittish horses and acting as if it were perfectly normal to be waiting there in the middle of a storm-tossed night. He said nothing as she approached, but hurried ahead to hold the door of the coach open. He wore a greatcoat with wide multi-caped shoulders and a low-brimmed hat that sent a small channel of rainwater funneling over the lip as he bowed slightly and held a hand out to assist her up the low step.
“Mrs. Jackson, I presume,” he murmured.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Was it her imagination or did his gloved hand squeeze hers reassuringly before he let go?
Amanda groped for the edge of the seat and slid into it with a small jolt as the door shut behind her. The blinds were drawn and the darkness inside the coach was absolute. The sudden lack of wind and rain was disquieting, and she puffed her breath into the sudden stillness, feeling the cold trickles of rainwater run down her cheeks and under the collar of her cloak.
“Mr. Wainright?”
A grunt came out of the darkness opposite her. “You’re late.”
She heard him knock twice on the roof of the buggy, and almost instantly the horses leaped forward and the wheels turned, skidding in the mud for the first few moments until the steel rims found a grip on the road.
“You are twenty minutes late,” he said shortly, his voice distorted by the sound of rainfall on the roof of the coach. “I was beginning to think you had reconsidered.”
“The storm delayed me. I had to be sure Verity was settled.”
He grunted again but offered no further comment, and Amanda spent the next five minutes striving to settle her own nerves and keep her stomach where it belonged. Somewhere in that time it occurred to her that the buggy had been facing north and, as far as she could determine, had not turned around.
“You are not returning to Natchez?”
“No. Not Natchez. I thought Jamestown would be more appropriate for our needs.”
“Jamestown?” she repeated softly.
“You have an objection?”
“No. No, I …” She frowned and pushed the hood of her cape off her head.
“You were having second thoughts?”
“No. I gave you my word.”
He laughed brusquely. “And your word is, of course, paramount to any other considerations?”
Amanda’s frown deepened. It wasn’t the wet wool against her ears and it wasn’t the rain or the rumble of the carriage wheels. Something was odd about his voice, odd about the way he asked and answered questions, odd about the way her skin was prickling with alarm.
“Can you light the lantern, please?” she asked on a stilted breath. “I seem to have misplaced a glove.”
The sound of a match striking on wood and the subsequent bright flare of the sulfur made her flinch and shrink back into the seat. For as long as it took her eyes to adjust to the glare, all she could see was his hand and the long, tapered fingers. As the darkness melted back, she was able to follow the black sleeve to the massive shoulders, from there to the squared jaw and full moustache, up to the calmly expectant steel gray eyes.
Her breath was expelled sharply on a cry. “You!”
Michael Tarrington smiled and touched the flame to the wick of the small coach lamp that hung beside the door. The glare became muted at once as he dropped the sides of the horn panes, casting a soft bloom of light over the rich burgundy upholstery of the buggy’s interior.
“Good Lord, you look like a kitten someone rescued from drowning,” he mused, for her hair clung in straggling yellow ribbons to her cheeks and throat, her skin gleamed like wet, pink marble. Her cloak was sodden, her hem and shoes coated in mud. “But charming, nonetheless.”
“Wh-what are you doing here? Where is Wainright?”
“I can only hazard a guess, you understand, but I should imagine he is somewhere on the road between Natchez and Rosalie nursing a broken axle and an extremely foul temper.”
“How …?”
“You can thank Foley—the rather inventive gentleman topside—for arranging it. He seemed to know just which bolts to loosen to delay your fiancé for an hour or so.”
“But … this is terrible!” she cried. “You had no right!”
“Not the right, perhaps, but certainly the sense to prevent you from doing something you would regret for the rest of your life.”
“Precisely my point,” she retorted, starting to regain some of her composure. “My life. How dare you presume to interfere?”
“Yes, well, after your parting gesture the other evening, you are damned lucky I did presume. You were even luckier I didn’t exhibit my fine, barbaric manners and upend you on your fanny then and there.”
Amanda leaned forward, her hands clutching the edge of the leather seat. “Why? Why are you here?”
“To save your virtue, of course. Is that not what one of your red-blooded Southern gentlemen would have aspired to do?”
“Save my virtue?” She gasped. “You cannot be serious.”
“I assure you, I am very serious. You have blighted my character and I am come to redeem myself.”
Amanda collapsed back against the seat. “Do you know what you have done?” Her whisper was raw with shock. “Do you have any idea of the damage you have done?”
“I have a good idea of the damage I have prevented,” he countered smoothly. “Probably better than you had when you agreed to this madness in the first place—or at least, I am hoping you had no inkling as to the kind of man you were preparing to marry.”
Amanda offered only a sullen silence by way of a response, but Tarrington would not let it lie.
“Besides his being a Yankee and a scoundrel and about as immoral a bastard as they come, do you know anything about E. Forrest Wainright?”
“Would you please instruct your driver to stop the coach this instant and let me out?”
He ignored the request. “Did you know Wainright was incarcerated in a Federal prison when the war broke out?”
Amanda turned her head, refusing to acknowledge the question or dignify it with an answer.
“Aren’t you even moderately curious to know what he did?”
When her only reply was a forced sigh, Tarrington leaned back against the seat and folded his arms across his chest. “He was put behind bars for beating his wife to death.”
That won a reaction, albeit a small one, but enough to tell him he had her attention. “It seems he caught her with another man. The lover he merely killed—shot him straight through the heart—but his wife … They found her bound and gagged, quite helpless, I assure you, and not able to do a thing to protect herself when he took a knife and began to—”
Amanda whirled around to face him. “I don’t believe you. You’re making all of this up, and I don’t care to hear any more of it.”
“I’m not making any of this up,” he said quietly, “and you had better believe me, since this is your fiancé we’re talking about. As for hearing any more, I would think you would want to know what kind of a man you’re selling yourself to, because it wasn’t the first—or the last—time he has taken his fists to a woman. It seems he has a taste for roughing up his bed partners. There are more than a few ladies of the evening right here in Natchez who don’t think too highly of the way your Mr. Wainright expresses his affection.”
“How do you know all of this? How do you know it’s true?”
“I haven’t had time to ride to New York and back to verify all the sordid details, but I did spend a few hours yesterday and today with a friend of mine who happens to have access to some interesting army files.”
“Obviously not interesting enough to warrant putting him back in jail—if what you say is true.”
“If the war hadn’t broken out when it did, they probably would have hanged him. Unfortunately, however, there was a time shortly after the first Bull Run when the Union was shy of volunteers and thought they might be in some serious trouble.
The call went out to the prisons, and men were offered full amnesty if they agreed to put their killer instincts to good use on the battlefield. If they survived, they were free.”
“And Wainright survived.”
“Not only survived, but prospered. Enough that he can afford to indulge in his little pleasures, paying off the women he abuses or frightening them so badly they’re too terrified to come forward.”
Amanda fell silent again, her thoughts in such a turmoil she was not aware of how intently the smoldering gray eyes were watching her through the soft bloom of lamplight.
“Why should I believe you? Why should I trust you?”
“I’m not the kind of man who lies to drowned kittens,” he said with gentle mockery. “And up until now, I was the kind of man most women trusted … although I appear to have slipped up somehow where you are concerned.”
“You wonder why? You have cheated and humiliated me; you have antagonized my brother by seeming to court the woman he loves; you turn up at my sister’s wedding and nearly ruin the day for everyone. And now you have kidnapped me! Who on this sweet green earth would even think of trusting you?”
“Who indeed,” he murmured. “But in my own defense, I must say—at the risk of repeating myself—I was not the only one marking my cards with care that night on the Mississippi Queen. And if your brother cannot see that Dianna loves him as much as he loves her, then he deserves to lose her to an opportunistic rascal like myself. As for the last charge”—he reached over and cradled her cold hands in his —“I wouldn’t call it kidnapping to elope in the middle of the night. I would call it quite romantic.”
“Elope!”
“Certainly. You don’t actually think I’ve gone to all this trouble simply to turn you loose to ply your charms on someone else?”
“You don’t actually think I would consent to marry you!”
“Why, Mrs. Jackson … Mandy … I don’t see how you can refuse.”
Amanda jerked her hands out of his and pressed as far back in the seat as she could go. “By what madness do you arrive at that conclusion?”
“Simple logic. You still owe Wainright fifty thousand dollars. I’ll wager he is beyond furious by now, and even if you crawled to him on hands and knees, I doubt if he would take you back—not on your terms, at any rate … if, indeed, he ever intended to.”
“What do you mean, if he intended to?”
“My lovely innocent: Anyone could hire a man to say he was a justice of the peace for ten minutes. And as far as believing he would tear up the note on Rosalie … I would have to say that was just plain wishful thinking. A man like Wainright would not throw away a chance to own such a plum piece of property, not if, as you say, he has been so keen to have it for so long.”
“But if I marry you …”
“Yes?”
“Will he not be even more furious?”
“I’m sure he will. But to get to you, he will have to go through me first. And there, at least, my reputation with weapons of choice is intact and well-deserved.”
Another spray of gooseflesh rose on Amanda’s arms. A rush of giddiness swept through her, rendering her more confused than ever. Why would a man like Michael Tarrington go to all of this trouble for her? Why on earth would he ask for more?
“Why would you want to marry me?” she asked, putting her thoughts into words. “Why could you not just loan me the money as you offered to do in the first place?”
“When I first made the offer, I was not aware of the arrangements you had made with Wainright. I’ve also had two days to think about it in more general terms—I am a businessman, after all—and you were right when you said I was sticking my hand into a hornets’ nest when I bought Briar Glen. Marrying into the Courtland family would greatly lessen the sting of having a newcomer move onto such hallowed ground, so to speak.”
“You would marry me for my name? For the influence of a bankrupt Southern family?”
“From what I have heard about your brother, I have no doubt the family finances will be restored in full, once he is on his feet. In that respect, I would consider the fifty thousand to be money well invested.”
“And is that all you would expect from me? My name?”
“Is that all Wainright expected?”
She reddened to the point where she felt dizzy.
“Then why would you expect me to accept anything less?” he asked, reading the answer in her eyes.
Amanda lowered her lashes and kept them lowered through several taut minutes of listening to nothing but the wheels of the coach churning and the beat of the horses’ hooves carrying them through the stormy darkness.
She was no better off than she was an hour ago. She would still be selling herself for Rosalie, same price, different buyer. A situation like hers would be laughable if it was happening to someone else, but she was, at that moment, a heartbeat away from dissolving into tears. Tarrington had given her some very good reasons why she should not have been so quick to enter into a marriage with Forrest Wainright, but who was there to give her any advice about Michael Tarrington? How did she know he was not fabricating the whole story about Wainright? How did she know he was not the kind of man to hire someone to act the part of a justice of the peace for ten minutes?
Tarrington, studying her from across the width of the coach, smiled inwardly.
“We should be approaching Jamestown soon,” he said casually. “The Reverend Jeffrey Thorne has resided there some thirty years, as I understand it. Do you know him?”
Amanda looked up. “Yes. I know him.”
“He might be a little vexed at being wakened at such an ungodly hour. We … could wait until the morning, if you prefer.”
“And if I prefer just to go back home and face the consequences, whatever they might be—what then?”
He allowed the smile to show as a shadowy crease at the corner of his mouth. “Then I suppose I will have to take you back, won’t I?”
Amanda was prepared for any answer but that. And she was prepared for any reaction from her own body but the soft, melting sensation that rendered her limbs without substance or strength.
“No, Mr. Tarrington. You won’t have to take me back. And we don’t have to wait until morning. I accept your offer.”
The ceremony was simple, hasty, and performed with only Foley the coachman and the Reverend Mr. Thorne's gray-haired wife as witnesses. The reverend was himself a gruff man and more than a little vexed at being roused from his slumber by repeated banging on the rectory door. It was hardly proper, he informed them imperiously, and initially refused to perform the marriage under such inauspicious circumstances. However, when told by the prospective groom that the lady was, er, in a delicate way, he naturally did his duty to save the Courtland family from a mortifying scandal. This did not prevent him from lecturing Amanda sternly and at great length on familial responsibilities, a lecture that left her burning with humiliation and barely able to hear, much less mouth the correct vows and responses when they were required.
The weakness she had felt in the buggy had not abated any. She stood in the reverend’s parlor, a tall, arrogant Yankee by her side, a coachman to bear witness alongside a sleepy-eyed dumpling in a frowsy robe and beribboned nightcap. With Alisha’s wedding so fresh in her mind—the flowers, the lace and frills, the music, the laughter—she could not help but bow her head and keep it bowed through most of the ceremony. Her mother would have fainted dead away to see her, salts or no salts. The painted eyes on the d’Iberville portraits would have melted shut with shame.
She got through it somehow, but had no recollection of walking back out to the carriage, or even if she would have managed it without the aid of Tarrington’s strong arm around her waist. A gust of wind had extinguished the lantern and there was no attempt made to relight it. The only match that was struck and the only time the utter blackness was disturbed was when her new husband lit himself a cigar.
He smoked it in silence as the carriage proceeded at a sma
rt pace to Tarrington’s home at Briar Glen. Amanda pushed herself as far into the corner as the leather padding and wood panels would allow, drowning in the privacy of her own thoughts for an hour or more, until the wheels spun onto the pebbled drive.
It was too dark to see much of the house as they approached, but Amanda was no stranger to Briar Glen, having attended many balls and parties thrown by the Porterfields over the years. The Glen was one of the grandest homes in Adams County, if not the entire state of Mississippi. A twelve-columned colonial, it boasted a score of formal bedrooms on the upper floor alone, with a high-ceilinged ballroom, a morning room, afternoon and evening parlors, a library, solarium, and three separate kitchens, each with its own culinary function. Before the ravages of war had altered the design of the outbuildings and landscaping, there had been whitewashed stables ringing a central courtyard, extensive gardens populated by white marble statues imported from Rome, and a reflecting pool that could have belonged to an English country manor.
Most of the stables had been destroyed along with the slave quarters. The pool was cracked and empty, the gracious statues missing heads and limbs and pockmarked with bullet holes. Amanda had no idea how much the house itself had suffered, although she had heard that a Yankee general had been billeted there from the outset of the occupation, thus saving it from the worst of the looters and scavengers.
It was well past two in the morning when the carriage drew to a halt at the front of the house. The fury of the storm had been blown into the next county, leaving only sporadic echoes of thunder and a stiff, damp wind in its wake. Despite the lateness of the hour, the windows glowed with scattered pinpricks of light. A rotund and fully dressed housekeeper was there to open the main doors and welcome them with the warm glow of a hurricane lamp before Tarrington had finished assisting his wife out of the coach.
“This is Mrs. Reeves,” he said by way of an introduction as they passed through the door. “She hasn’t been here very long herself, but I’m sure she can help you with whatever you need. Flora—will you take Mrs. Tarrington upstairs and make her comfortable? Is the big room ready?”
Straight For The Heart Page 19
