Annoyed by the untimely distraction, Jackson flicked a glance in the direction of the noise. At the same time the rider slowed his mount, touching the brim of his cavalier-style hat in a casual salute.
Jackson groaned inwardly. “Merciful Christ, not now.”
“Evenin’, boss, Miss Dawes,” G. D. Strickland drawled, flashing his wickedest grin. “Fine night for a little star gazing, ain’t it?”
Jackson forced a smile when he would have ground his teeth, unwilling to appear the uncharitable lout in front of Reagan. “Welcome home, G. D. Now, if you do not mind, Miss Dawes and I were in the midst of a crucial exchange.” He let the sentence hang, hoping Strickland would, for once, take the hint.
Apparently it was too much to ask. Applying a finger beneath the beaver’s brim, G. D. bumped the hat back on his head, his smile growing brittle. “What are we exchangin’, exactly?”
“Aren’t you needed at the warehouse?” Jackson asked pointedly.
“Ted Farley is in charge, and capable enough to oversee the delivery of the bales,” G. D. assured him. “I told him that I have pressing business here. I’ve brought you a surprise, Seek-Um; will you not invite me in, offer me a whiskey?”
Jackson’s face was hard and implacable. “The surprises I’ve received of late have been unwelcome ones, so you’ll understand if I decline. As far as the whiskey is concerned, you may drink your fill down at Kate Flannigan’s, and send the bill to me.”
Reagan was shocked at Jackson’s lack of charity; Strickland merely smiled. “I understand the sentiment, and the place from whence it arises, even if I cannot summon the will to sympathize. Your guest, however, may prove another matter.”
“Guest,” Jackson repeated. His head thump, thump, thumped in time with the beating of his heart, and as he watched a barouche materialize from the darkness, he wondered if his life could possibly become any more complicated.
The answer was obvious as the large mulatto man perched on the high driver’s seat reined in the sweating team just outside the gate. With a smile and nod the driver alighted, turning to hand the sole passenger of the conveyance into the street. “Miss Catherine, now don’t forget your wrap,” the man said solicitously. “The evenin’s ain’t as wahm this far noth.”
“Mother of God, Mose,” the woman said impatiently, shrugging off the blanket he held for her. “You are worse than Jason. Must I remind you that I’m not in my dotage? A breath of cool night air will not be the death of me. Indeed, I find it refreshing. Now, please stop fussing and see to our bags.”
“Yes’m.” Properly chastened, Mose moved to do as his mistress requested. Catherine St. Claire straightened her carriage, regarding Jackson with a level stare. “You are taller than I imagined,” she said. “With a broader wingspread than Emil could boast. I daresay, your stature hearkens back to your grandfather Parrish, but your eyes... you have your mother’s eyes.” Reaching out, she cupped his cheek. Her fingertips came away smudged with soot, a fact that did not please her. “Bon Dieu, Jackson, have you been rooting in the coal pile? And who is this?”
The woman’s gaze turned on Reagan, so bright, so frank, that she flinched.
“Cousin Catherine, Miss Reagan Dawes, my ward. Reagan, my mother’s cousin, Catherine Breaux St. Claire, late of New Orleans.”
Reeking of smoke and covered from head to toe in ashes and soot, Reagan squashed the urge to curtsy and, after wiping her palm on the leg of her breeches, offered her hand instead.
Catherine smiled at Reagan as she took it gingerly, but her words were directed at Jackson. “I was visiting my Aunt Thea in New Madrid when I received word of the fete you are planning in Miss Dawes’s honor, and given the path you have chosen to walk these past ten years, I thought that I might come and lend my support. Judging from what I have seen here tonight, I would say it is a good thing that I did.”
“You’re surely not staying?” Jackson questioned.
“Mais oui, Jackson. I am staying.” Catherine’s voice was soft, sweet, but there was a thread of steel running through it that was impossible to miss. “Miralee was family. As I see it, helping her son get his life back on track, and your ward safely wed, is the least I can do.”
Beside Jackson, G. D. swept off his hat, slapping it against one leg. “At the risk of offending the hell out of you and ruinin’ my chances at a night’s bed and board, ain’t you bought that little gal a proper dress yet?”
At Jackson’s jaundiced look, G. D. immediately began to backtrack. “Hell, I was just askin’. Listen, you gonna invite me in or make me stand in the street, droolin’ all over my shirtfront at the thought of your old man’s whiskey?”
Reagan watched Jackson with interest. A deep-seated frustration and mounting impatience that she alone seemed to notice rolled off him in intense waves... along with something else, some dark and dangerous undercurrent swirling just beneath the thin veneer of his civility.
Whether it had its roots in the fact that their privacy had been shattered by the intrusion of his uninvited guests or the climactic events of the evening, Reagan could only guess.
“But of course,” he said, raking a hand through his hair, wincing as his fingertips grazed the knot near his right temple. “My house, my liquor, the contents of my larder are at your disposal. Eat, drink, and be merry... just keep your frigging Southern charm to yourself, and your hands the hell off my ward.”
With a tight smile wholly lacking in warmth or conviviality, he bowed to Catherine and Reagan, wholly ignoring G. D. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have some pressing business that demands my immediate attention.”
He flashed a dark and brooding glance Reagan’s way, then stalked to Euripides.
A protest on her lips, Reagan hurried after him. She wanted to ask him where he was going and what he intended. She meant to insist that she accompany him, and when he flatly refused her aid, remind him just how close he’d come to disaster the last time he’d gone chasing off on his own after Clay’s killer. More than anything she craved a moment alone with him... a moment in which they could take up where they had left off before they’d been interrupted. Yet before she could reach him, before she could do more than grip the iron gate with both hands and call out his name, Jackson was gone.
Chapter Sixteen
Reagan stared off into the shadows, gripping the gate so hard that the wrought iron bit into her palms.
Catherine St. Claire touched her arm. “Why, you’re as tense and taut as a bowstring! Are you quite all right?”
“Yes, of course. I’m fine. Truly.”
Liar, she thought. She wasn’t fine. She was worried—about Jackson, about Emil, about her future, or lack thereof. The events of the evening preyed on her mind, while her doubts about Navarre—and the knowledge that Abe McFarland was somewhere in the city—roosted like dark, evil birds at the edge of her thoughts.
One thing was terribly, frighteningly clear: the danger that had surrounded Jackson from the moment he’d returned to Saint Louis and started asking questions about his brother’s death was far from over.
In fact, she was very much afraid that this was only the beginning.
“Come away, cher,” Catherine said softly. “We have much to discuss, beginning with how you came to be in this deplorable state.”
Reagan shoved her concerns to the back of her mind, dragging out her rusty manners, dusting them off. Like it or not, she was back at Belle Riviere, the only home she’d known in months, and it came to her that while she was here she might as well make herself useful. Welcoming Jackson’s guests in his absence seemed to be the first order of business.
Turning away from the gate, she offered the older woman a smile. “There was a minor mishap earlier this evenin’,” she assured Jackson’s cousin, wishing she felt as certain, as confident, as she sounded. “Thank the good Lord it was nothing that a little soap and a lot of hot water won’t cure. Now if you’ll come with me I’ll fetch Bessie, and she’ll get you and your driver settled in. You must b
e tired from your trip.”
A half hour later, Reagan made her way up the stairs, her footsteps dragging on the carpeted treads. The house was quiet, expectantly so. The young master of Belle Riviere, sole possessor of Reagan’s heart, had yet to return from his mysterious errand, a fact that made Reagan edgy, unable to relax.
Weary beyond belief, aching in every muscle and bone, she sighed deeply, drinking in the quiet elegance of her surroundings.
If not for a single twist of fate, she would have been on the eastern shore of the Mississippi at this very moment, seeking a bed under the cold and brilliant stars instead of a warm feather nest.
It was odd, but she felt safe here, welcomed... as if the same forces she had feared the night of her arrival were aware of her and Jackson, and approved.
That thought jelled in Reagan’s mind as she took the last tread, emerging into the upstairs hallway; at the same time the door to Emil’s suite creaked open, and Emil appeared in the slit, beckoning to her with his good left hand. “So,” he said, “it eez trrrue. Jackson ffounnnd you owwt—brought yoou back.”
“I found him was more the like,” Reagan muttered, reluctant to divulge the details of their harrowing escape.
Emil, however, would have none of it. “Tell me, Reaagggan Dawes,” he ordered imperiously.
Reagan sighed, giving him a brief account of what had happened at Whiskey Joe’s cabin, but stopping short of Navarre’s involvement. By the time she’d finished, the old man was trembling so violently that she had to help him back to his chair. “I’ll find Mr. Garrett,” Reagan said, concerned.
But Emil waved the suggestion aside. “A mooo-men,” he said. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply. When he looked at her again, he seemed calmer, and his speech was more succinct. “First Clayton... and now J-Jackssson.” He shook his head, and his dark eyes glittered. “Why? Why b-b-both mmmy s- sons?”
Reagan bit her lip, hesitating.
“You know. Tell me.”
“There was someone standing over Jackson when I arrived—someone I recognized. It was his voice that lured me to the cabin. At first I thought that it was Jackson, but when I drew closer, I saw that it was not.”
His silver brows gathered in an ominous scowl. “Navarre!”
Reagan gave the barest of nods. The fury in his voice was like a chill wave washing over her, underscoring her apprehension, fortifying her fears. “I saw him clearly—heard the venom in his voice. Is there some reason he would wish to harm Jackson?’ ’
“A-avarice,” he said. “Greed, jealousy, revenge. Heee would wrest from me, every-thing I p-possess, and d-ds- troy w-what he c-cannnot.”
Avarice, greed, jealousy, revenge... The words rang in Reagan’s weary brain long after she’d returned the old man’s pistol and exited the room. And not even a leisurely soak in a steaming tub could erase the tension that gripped her as she lay curled in the big bed and called them up again.
Avarice, greed, jealousy, revenge... Avarice and greed she could comprehend. It hardly mattered that Broussard Furs had filled Navarre’s coffers as well as his elder brother’s. There were individuals in this world who could never get enough. If Emil was to be believed, then Navarre was one of them. But jealousy? Jealous of what? What did Emil have that Navarre would covet? A home, a breathtakingly beautiful wife, two very different sons? And why revenge? Revenge for what?
Some imagined slight? Family strife, or the ingrained rivalry inherent in most siblings?
Somehow Reagan did not think so. It had to go deeper than that. Much, much deeper. And whatever it was, she was becoming more certain by the moment that the incident tonight at Whiskey Joe’s had its roots firmly planted in the distant past.
This grand old house was harboring a secret... a truth that had proven to be the wedge that had driven Jackson and his father so far apart....
Reagan did not hold with keeping secrets.
No matter how deeply one buried them, secrets and lies had a way of finding their way into the open, and she could not help but ponder as she drifted off to sleep if this particular truth, once exposed, would heal Jackson’s emotional scars and mend the rift between him and Emil, or forever tear them apart.
The townhouse was dark when Navarre returned home, except for the single taper burning on the commode in the foyer, thoughtfully provided by his valet. Unsettled by the evening’s events, he took up the taper and made straightaway for the grande salle, where a bottle of Napoleon waited. The candle cast a small circle of golden light sufficient for the task at hand and nothing more. The outer perimeters of the room were cloaked in shadow, as black as pitch and every bit as impenetrable.
Ignoring the lack of light, Navarre splashed brandy into a tumbler, tossed it back in a single swallow, then refilled his glass more slowly as he felt the warmth, the strength, the false sense of security seep through his veins. Calm, Navarre, calm, he thought. There was nothing to be gained by giving in to panic, despite the fact that he had inadvertently claimed two more lives and still did not have the ring.
Yet true calm seemed wont to elude him. Shaken by the knowledge that Whiskey Joe was still out there, still a tangible threat, that Abe McFarland had seemingly made it his life’s work to watch his every move, he touched the taper’s flame to the standing candelabrum, watching as the wicks caught and the tiny flames leaped, one by one, to glowing, vibrant life.
In his mind’s eye he saw the cabin’s roof collapse with a hail of orange-red sparks... sparks that lit up the night sky like so many dancing fireflies. With the ignition of each tiny flame, the shadows retreated a little farther, the last one casting its iridescent glow upon the man waiting silently, patiently in the gold damask wing chair.
Catching sight of his unexpected guest from the tail of one eye, Navarre spun toward the threat, the candle dripping scalding wax onto his trembling fingers. “Good evening, Uncle,” Jackson said.
“By the grace of God, nephew,” Navarre said softly. Traces of ashes and soot darkened Jackson’s face, hands and throat; a telltale thread of dried blood had trickled across his temple. Navarre blanched, and for a moment he could not seem to find his tongue. A vision of Whiskey Joe’s cabin flashed behind his eyes, the tall young man who entered, and whom Abe McFarland had laid low, who lay senseless inside that same cabin as Abe had set fire to the structure.
The irony of what he’d very nearly done settled on Navarre like a thousand-pound weight, crushing the breath from his lungs, making him groan inwardly with the sheer burden of it, and all the while Jackson watched him, unflinchingly, missing nothing.
“Are you quite well, Uncle? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
Sensing the trap, Navarre neatly sidestepped it. “Do forgive me. I was not expecting company at such an hour. You gave me quite a start. What brings you here, Jackson, and in such a disheveled state?” He sniffed the air. “Is that smoke I smell? Bon Dieu, has something untoward happened at Belle Riviere? I must confess, I would not miss the old place overmuch if it went up in flames, or your papa, for that matter, yet I do hope you had the foresight to salvage your maman’s portrait.”
Much to his dismay, the boy did not even crack a smile. He just continued to watch him with that unnerving green gaze, so like Miralee’s that it was a fresh stab to Navarre’s heart every time he looked at him. “Where have you been, Uncle?”
“I should like to ask you the same thing,” Navarre said evasively. “You come to my home and sit in the dark, looking for all the world like a chimneysweep, you do not laugh at my jokes... in short, you do not seem yourself, and I grow more concerned by the second.” He made a great show of narrowing his eyes. “Dieu, is that blood at your temple? Stay where you are. “I’ll summon Pierre, send for the physician.”
Navarre hurried from the room, yet as he passed Jackson’s chair, his nephew stopped him with a single sentence, quietly spoken. “Whiskey Joe’s cabin burned to the ground this evening.”
For a moment Navarre stood very still; then he slowly s
chooled his features into a frown, like that of dawning comprehension. “Whiskey Joe?” He made a noise of utter disgust. “Well, well. That relieves my mind considerably. Oh, please, spare me that look of consternation. Despite your curious attachment to that ancient, besotted relic, the town is better off without him. Why, he has not had a sober day in nearly thirty years. It is hellishly ironic, however, that happenstance did what the whiskey seemingly could not.”
“It was not happenstance.”
“Your pardon?”
“The fire was deliberately set.”
Navarre’s mind was spinning. “Are you certain the old man didn’t fire the place as he lay smoking, or perhaps the chimney caught? Such things happen all the time.”
“I’m certain,” Jackson said, his voice betraying nothing of what he felt: disbelief, confusion, hope that Reagan was mistaken, that it was all nothing more than a misunderstanding, and the terrible nagging certainty that his beloved uncle was hiding something, some dark truth that he did not wish him to know. “You see, there was a witness. A witness who swears that you were at Joe’s earlier this evening in the company of Abe McFarland. I was ready to discount that particular bit of information as too incredible to be believed. Yet when I entered a moment ago, I thought saw a man who looked like Abe riding away from here. That brings me back to my original question, a question you have yet to answer. Where have you been, Uncle?”
Navarre flinched as though Jackson had struck him. Stiff with indignation, he stared down at Jackson. “And you would take the word of this... this person... over that of your own flesh and blood?”
“I am but seeking the truth,” Jackson replied, coming out of his chair to loom over his uncle. “If you were at Whiskey Joe’s tonight, then I wish to hear it from you.”
Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) Page 26
