Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men)

by S. K. McClafferty

  He gave her a dubious look. “I am not sure I like your comparison, nor do you have anything in common with the mother of all mankind. For one thing, no one can trounce you out of this garden without my permission, and you may stay as long as you like. In fact, it is my fervent hope that you will decide to remain here indefinitely.”

  Reagan accepted a slice of beef from the girl who appeared to serve them. As soon as she had poured the champagne, Jackson dismissed her, and with a barely audible giggle, she scurried off.

  Reagan put down her fork. Her appetite had suddenly vanished. “Stay here, with you, indefinitely?” she said, hearing the slight quaver in her voice, praying that he did not. “But... the ball is just days away, and after that—”

  “Yes, well,” he replied smoothly, “I have done a great deal of thinking, and I have decided that, given the events of last evening, pursuing my plans to find you a husband is pointless. We shall, of course, proceed with the ball just as planned, yet it need not serve the purpose I had at first intended.”

  Lifting a delicate crystal flute, he pressed it into her hand, then raised his own... and all the while, Reagan held her breath. He was telling her that he had reconsidered, that he would not give her up to another man, and that could mean but one thing.

  “To last night,” he said softly, seductively, “and to all of the days and nights to come.”

  There was the musical clink of glass meeting glass; then he raised the tall flute to his lips. Reagan’s fingers tightened over the stem of her flute, but she did not drink. She had a curious sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, and she was almost afraid of what would come next. “Jackson, I—”

  “No, don’t speak. Don’t say anything until I have explained. I care about you, Reagan—too much to let you go. I want you to have the best of everything, a fine home, a man who will not only appreciate your rare beauty, but cherish your indomitable spirit. You need to be nurtured, you deserve to be indulged, shamelessly, and there is but one way I know of to ensure that you receive all of that.”

  Reagan’s traitorous heart bumped against her ribs. Foolishly, she hung on his every word.

  “Stay with me,” he said. “Make your home here, at Belle Riviere... or, if you prefer, I can purchase a place nearby, where you can entertain guests and still maintain your independence. I swear to you, I shall fulfill your every need.”

  With each word he uttered, Reagan’s heart compressed a little further, until it seemed a tiny and painful speck in her chest, no larger than a grain of sand. “And there is to be no husband, no marriage, no children,” she surmised.

  “You can have all of that, in time. I am but saying that I see no need to rush into anything. In light of our present situation, it somehow makes better sense to avoid a rash decision, which in due course the both of us would come to regret.” Leaning forward, he took her hand, and, reaching into his coat with his free appendage, he came away with a flat leather box.

  She stared at the box, then at him.

  “It’s a small token of my esteem. I hope it will convince you of my sincerity.”

  As Reagan watched, he opened the box, displaying a network of finely wrought golden chain lying on a bed of lush black velvet. Wider in the center than at the clasp, and set at random intervals with brilliant blue-white gems, it appeared a golden spider’s web into which a handful of glittering stars had been flung.

  Reagan had never seen anything quite so beautiful; nor had she ever been hurt so deeply. Somehow Arley Pratt’s betrayal failed to compare. A hot rush of tears stung her eyes. She tried, but she could not blink them back, and the brilliance of the diamonds glittered and swam. “I’m sure that you’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to procure this, but I can’t accept it.”

  “I thought you would be pleased,” he said, frowning now, seemingly perplexed. “You have told me often enough that you do not want a husband.”

  She didn’t want to marry a stranger. She couldn’t submit quietly to a loveless marriage.

  She wanted him.

  It was as simple as that.

  Yet she was coming to see that her wants, her needs, her desires didn’t count for much in the grand scheme of things. Her pride, always considerable, goaded her into saying the first thing that leaped to mind. “As it happens, you aren’t the only one who’s done some thinking. And I might as well tell you now—I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Changed?” he said incredulously. “I don’t understand.”

  “You can keep your fancy silk dresses, Jackson, your carriages, your diamonds and gold. I want a husband, a marriage, stability, all of the things you can’t provide.” Her tears came in earnest now, and Reagan didn’t even try to hold them back.

  She had tried to be something—someone—she wasn’t, in order to please Jackson, and she’d failed, miserably. The war to win his heart was over; she could see that very clearly now. The battle was lost, and the only thing that was left to her was to depart the field with whatever honor and dignity she could salvage.

  Watching her, Jackson had no clue as to her thoughts, or to the hurt welling up inside her. He knew only that the jewels he’d chosen for her, and which he’d been so eager to place around her slim white throat, now seemed dull and ordinary, totally lacking in luster. “Are you certain that’s what you want?” he said, barely able to force the words out past the lump in his throat.

  He felt so confused, so confounded, so furious he could barely contain it. “For the sake of your happiness, for mine, are you certain?”

  She nodded once, a jerky movement of her dark head, as though she had lost her pliability and could not manage more. “It’s what I want. Please don’t make it more difficult than it already is. You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble—a great deal of expense—and the household staff has worked very hard to prepare.” The last word sounded peculiar, strangled, almost. Slowly, with more dignity than he could ever recall seeing in any man, she rose from her chair and stood. “Now, if you will excuse me? I’m not feeling quite well of a sudden.”

  Jackson came out of his chair, catching her arm as she swept past him. “Reagan, please. Don’t go. We need to discuss this.”

  “No,” she said with an adamant shake of her head. “No more talk. It’s decided, and I do not wish to speak of it again after today.”

  “That’s not good enough!” Jackson said, his fingers tightening over her arm. He didn’t want to let her go.

  Not like this.

  God help him, not ever.

  Even worse, he could not seem to find the words to make her stay. He shook her a little, a bid for her attention, a silent, desperate plea for truth and understanding. “Don’t do this, Kaintuck. Do not walk out of my life. Not after last night, not after all that we’ve shared.” Gripping her arms, he forced her up against him, intending to kiss her into submission. Yet, as he lowered his head to capture her mouth, she turned her face away.

  If she had struck him, it would have stung less. He stiffened, and as he stood glaring down at her, she drew herself up, the thin veneer of manners and gentility that she’d striven so hard in recent days to attain crumbling and falling away. In that instant, she was once again the tough-shelled little urchin who’d stumbled into his camp that night at rendezvous a thousand lifetimes ago. “There’s one point you seem to have forgotten, you hardheaded Missoura jackass! It’s my life, too, and the sooner I get shed of this damnable place, the better it’ll be for the both of us!”

  With a will, she shook him off, heading back to the house, slamming the windows so forcefully that it brought the servants running. Nan, the cook, appeared in the doorway where she stood, wringing her hands, the others hovering in the shadows nearby. “Be everythin’ all right, sir?”

  Jackson gave a dissatisfied sigh, taking the diamond necklace from the table, returning it to his pocket as he pushed past them. He had barely touched his plate, yet suddenly he’d lost his appetite.

  He could feel the curious stares of the servants as he
pushed past them and into the study, but he made no attempt to reply. He just closed and locked the study doors behind him, and slowly, purposefully, drank away the daylight.

  A little while later, Reagan found her way back to the garden. Half expecting Jackson to appear, relieved and disappointed when he did not, she flounced to the stone bench where he’d found her last evening—before their moonlight waltz and the cataclysmic events that followed—and plunked angrily down.

  “Marauding low-bred polecat,” she said softly. “Calculatin’, manipulative parlor snake!”

  The second expletive had barely tripped off her tongue before the ornamental grasses behind the bench on which Reagan sat began to rustle. Startled, Reagan sucked in her breath, spinning quickly around. She half expected to see Jackson standing there, smiling sardonically down at her; instead she saw a flash of tawny fur, and a pair of round cat eyes blinked at her through the tall, waving fronds.

  “You hidin’ from him, too, are you?” Reagan said. “Well, things bein’ what they are, I can’t say as I blame you. Sometimes I get the urge to hide too, or maybe just to run away somewhere—then I see his face in my mind’s eye, laughing, serious, taut with anger, and I know that I could never run far enough or long enough to ever escape him. He’s always with me, always right here.” Eyes pricking with tears, she placed both hands over her heart, sighing deeply.

  “Oh, Josephine, what am I gonna do? As far as Jackson’s concerned, I’m good enough to warm his bed, but not fit to wed, and I just can’t seem to settle for less.”

  Josephine gave up her game of hide-and-skulk, and slunk from the bushes, leaping easily onto the bench to touch her nose to Reagan’s, for all the world as if she understood and sympathized. Then, being the self-involved creature that she was, she flopped down onto the bench beside Reagan and insinuated her broad head into her mistress’s silken lap. “Would you like to see Kentucky?” Reagan said. “I have a little cabin tucked up in the piney woods where you and I could live quite handily. There’s lots of field mice for you to chase, and butterflies in summer. You could be as wild as you wanted there, so long as you shied away from the hunters’ rifles.”

  She sighed again, the melancholy sinking deep into her vitals, affecting mind and heart, so effectively erasing every trace of buoyancy from her spirit that it felt like a leaden weight.

  Home... How she longed for it, longed for the steep hills and pine-shrouded ridges, the primeval woods so deep that even in this modern age there were places where a white man had never set foot. Her kinfolk had been deeply rooted there for three score years, and it seemed twice that long since she had last seen it.

  Life in Bloodroot had been simple, devoid of the tension that was forever swirling around her and the young master of Belle Riviere, and it struck her quite suddenly that maybe if she went home she could sort things out, once again know her own mind. Perhaps the simplicity of her old life would act as a soothing balm to her troubled spirit, and perhaps if she were very lucky, in time her wounded heart would heal.

  How very odd that things should suddenly seem so clear. After weeks of nurturing the futile hope of winning Jackson’s love, the path she needed to take was suddenly plain.

  She was going home... and no one and nothing was going to stop her.

  Something strange happened then. Her mind filled with images of the simple log house in which she’d been born, she felt a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades, and the queer, unsettling notion that she was no longer alone insinuated its way into her thoughts.

  Wondering if perhaps Jackson had entered the garden unbeknownst to her, she glanced around, but saw nothing. The garden was still, silent, waiting almost. The house’s stone facade gave away nothing, not a hint of the activity within, unless one could count the lace curtain fluttering at the upstairs window.

  The sun broke through the gathering clouds just then, striking the windowpanes before disappearing again.

  Reagan frowned at the window. An open window did not reflect sunlight; yet, if the portal was closed, then what had caused the movement of the curtains?

  She stared hard, but too blinded by the wish to see, she could detect nothing out of the ordinary... and so she looked away, counted to five, then quickly looked again.

  Suddenly she saw it, the figure of a man standing by the window, half-hidden by the filmy lace of the curtain. Not tall enough to be Jackson, the shadowed shape seemed slightly bent, as if it listed to one side—from favoring a weak limb, perhaps?

  She watched for a long while, sensing the moment he turned away. By now she knew the mansion upstairs and down, and she had little doubt that the window opened onto Jackson’s father’s bedchamber.

  Had it been the manservant, Antoine Garrett, who’d stood observing her from the shadows near the window?

  Somehow she did not think so.

  In all the time she’d lived beneath the Broussards’ roof, Garrett had barely glanced in her direction. It made no sense that he would spy on her from his master’s apartments.

  Yet if not Antoine Garrett, then whom?

  The mystery seemed too great a tangle to solve, or perhaps it was just the fact that a blinding pain had blossomed in her temples, the effects of too much tension, far too much emotional duress.

  She felt drained as she picked herself up off the bench and made her way to the gallery stair, wanting only peace and solitude in which to gather her thoughts.

  As the afternoon waned and the garden shadows lengthened, Jackson sat with his long, booted legs propped on the pale blue watered silk of the divan, contemplating the dregs of his whiskey while his mother’s painted image smiled benevolently down upon him from her station above the mantel.

  Somehow Jackson could not meet her painted gaze without seeing another pair of eyes, the latter of which were a smoky shade of gray and thickly lashed. An entire decanter of whiskey had failed to wipe away the hurt, the anger, the disappointment, and, lastly, the grim resolve that had flashed in rapid succession behind those sparkling orbs. The liquor had also done little to ease his own bewilderment.

  For the life of him, he could not seem to fathom how he might have done things differently.

  “Why must she be so cursed contrary?” he demanded, downing the last of the amber liquid, allowing the crystal tumbler to slip from his fingers. It landed with a soft thud on the carpet and rolled, coming to rest against the gracefully curving leg of the divan. “Why is it not enough that I am striving to please her?”

  God, how distracted, how harried he sounded, thoroughly rattled by a chit who’d been weaned on pride and abject poverty. Rising from the divan, he went to the window, where he stood staring out at the gate, at the lawn, at the street, seeing her winsome face.

  He’d been but trying to give her the things of which she’d been deprived until now, the pretty, frivolous things that women everywhere seemed to cherish, but in all truth, that had not been his only motive. Some selfish part of him he barely recognized had wanted to place the diamonds around her neck and see their sparkle outshone by the warmth and affection in her eyes.

  Warmth, affection, perhaps a modicum of love.

  Love….

  Mother of God, yes.

  Love.

  It was irrational. It was without a doubt a little more than slightly insane. But there it was, out in the open and lying bare to his own hard scrutiny.

  He wanted her to love him, freely and with wild abandon, despite his glaring imperfections, despite his many faults, despite his own misgivings, and it vastly irritated him that she did not.

  “I’ve gone out of my way for her,” he argued to his own reflection in the windowpane. “I’ve done more for her than I have for any woman, felt more, wanted more for her, at times even at the expense and sacrifice of my own desires. Yet my sacrifice is unappreciated; my efforts fall on parched and infertile ground.”

  His reflection scowled, looking quite fierce, the angry, dashing rake women could not seem to resist. “I give her the
moon and the stars, and she spurns me for it! Marriage. She wants marriage and babies, forever and always! I ask you, what kind of thanks is that?

  “It should be enough that I love her,” he said on a weary sigh. Glancing slowly up, Jackson saw that the man in the glass was every bit as startled as he. “Love her... Merciful Christ, is that what this burning misery is?”

  He groaned softly, the agony of a wounded beast, and, squeezing his eyes shut, braced a hand on the windowsill.

  The idea that he’d at last been caught, and by a snare of his own making, shook Jackson to his very core, and for the millionth time since his death he wished that Clay were here to offer a word of advice.

  Clay had always viewed love, honor, and marriage with the utmost gravity. Clay could help him make some sense of it.

  But Clay was gone. And Jackson mourned his loss.

  As it always did, his mind turned away from his own difficulties, back to the puzzle that was his brother’s death, back to the last time he’d seen Clay.

  The scene was excruciatingly clear in his head—perhaps because the whiskey had dulled his other senses, but it was lending his thoughts a vividness he’d experienced only in his nightmares... and God help him, he gave it free rein.

  Closing his eyes against the light, Jackson saw himself leave the fog-shrouded waterfront and enter the warehouse. And as always, the musk of the furs washed over him in a seductive wave. There was comfort to be found in the old place, a familiarity that was as solid and reassuring as was Clay himself. For a moment he stood drinking it in, listening to the soft, almost imperceptible sounds of a rustling movement coming from behind the cover of the bales. The sound was brief, lasting mere seconds, no more, a rustling of cloth, as if someone had shifted positions, then settled back into sleep....

  The memory was sobering indeed, and in that instant the dulling effects of the liquor shattered and fell away, leaving the sharp recollection, the unshakable certainty that someone else was there that night, all underscored by the wavering, whiskey-sodden voice of Whiskey Joe. No, no, no. Not safe, Jack Broussar’. Not safe no more. Don’t go there. Don’t go there....