A short time later, the bride, once again dressed but now glowing with happiness, listened with pleasure to the lilting sounds of the wedding music the fiddler played outside the cabin.
Inside the storage shed, one Abernathy pointed the shotgun while another glowering brother untied the bridegroom’s hands and handed him a couple of coins and a note.
Morsey Johnston, Peddler by Profession, frowned as he unfolded the sheet of paper. Then as he read, a slow smile spread across his face. Soon he was whistling, brushing dirt from his jacket, and straightening his tie.
Suspicious, one of the Abernathys swiped the note from his hands and read: “Felicitations on your upcoming marriage. Included with this note is payment for my purchase this day from a certain trunk in your wagon. It is my gift to you and your bride. I chose the purple. I think the color suits Sarah Jane quite well. I’d have made this payment in person, but I am helping Miss Abernathy dress for the wedding. (Signed) Katie Kincaid.”
The ceremony went off without a hitch, considering that Reverend Howell accepted full credit for saving the two “wicked souls” from the “fires of hell” for “indulging in fleshly sin.” Jack Strickland stood at Katie’s side during the service, taking her hand as Morsey and Sarah Jane repeated their vows.
The newly wedded couple led off the dancing, and Katie and her escort quickly joined them. She had a marvelous time; Jack was protective and courteous and ever-the-gentleman. Katie pointedly turned her back on a disapproving trio of matrons, Martha Craig and the Racine sisters, and basked in the sheriff’s devoted attentions.
It wasn’t until she returned home and bid Jack Strickland goodbye with a sweet, tender kiss—their first—that doubts began to plague her.
She couldn’t keep this up. It wasn’t fair to either the sheriff or to herself. Until she was informed otherwise, she remained a married woman. Branch had yet to divorce her. She could not, in good faith, continue to encourage Sheriff Strickland’s attentions.
She didn’t love the man. She couldn’t. There was no room in her heart. Dusk fell, bringing with it an attack of the nausea she suffered nightly. Yes, it was time to be honest with her suitor. Having bent over a basin and lost her supper, Katie groaned, “Branch Kincaid, this is all your fault.”
RIVERRUN’S BIG House rose majestically atop a bluff above the Brazos River. With three stories plus a captain’s walk, the red-bricked house looked as though it belonged along Louisiana’s River Road. Six huge columns supported a portico, and all the wood trim gleamed a pristine white.
Ornate gardens surrounded the family home. Rose beds filled open spaces while shade-loving plants hugged the bases of live oak trees. Red amaryllis lined brick walkways. Pink crepe myrtle formed a hedge along the side fence, and bois d’arc separated the decorative landscape from the more functional vegetable and herb garden near the kitchen.
Branch took a turn in the garden after dinner, his fiancée on his arm. Damask roses ringed the gazebo, their fragrance spicing the evening, while from the slave cabins came the sound of a woman’s voice singing a churning song to charm the butter into coming.
Branch’s gaze roamed over the lady at his side. Eleanor was a stunning woman, with her big green eyes and those soft golden curls. Moonlight complimented her creamy complexion, and the blue silk dress she wore displayed her curves to perfection.
The promise of youth had been fulfilled in maturity. The children Eleanor had borne his brother had ripened her tall, willowy figure without marring its perfection. Branch wondered about her daughters, twelve and nine respectively and attending school in the east. Did they take after their mother or their father?
He regretted their absence from the plantation at his homecoming. He liked children, and he didn’t approve of sending such little women off to a distant place to live. Nor did he understand the reasoning behind such a decision. He wanted family around him here at Riverrun.
Unbidden, the image of twinkling blue eyes replaced green and the petal-soft hand on his arm became one reddened and callused from work. Dammit, he thought, leave me alone, Katie Starr.
Eleanor prattled on concerning her plans to redecorate the suite designated to be theirs upon their marriage. She bemoaned the time required to import costly, but necessary, French fabrics, and pouted prettily over Branch’s refusal to take her to Paris on a honeymoon. Eleanor Garrett was the ideal of a Southern planter’s wife, beautiful, courteous, and virtuous.
She bored him to tears.
Conversation with Eleanor consisted of puppy-dog admiration and plaintive entreaties for material goods, very nearly a repetition of their discourses years ago. Branch remembered that at one time he’d thought her manner quite enchanting. Her empty-headed worship had boosted his pride and appealed to his vanity. But in the weeks he’d been home, especially since bowing to his father’s pressure for the engagement, he’d discovered that what had attracted the boy at sixteen held no allure for a man of thirty-four.
Eleanor gave him a shy smile, and sardonically Branch returned it. The woman was nice but dumb as a box of rocks. How could he have missed it before? Of course, back then he’d not been overly concerned with any woman’s intellect. Her looks today were more than enough to quicken a man’s blood, and back when they’d both been sixteen, well, she’d kept him hot enough to melt leather.
But now, as her babbling caused him to wonder if there was anything in her head, he recalled against his will another woman’s quick wit and intelligent conversation. Stimulating conversation. Oh, Lord, how in the hell could he face the rest of his life married to Eleanor? How could he face the rest of his life without Katie Starr?
Damn, I keep forgetting how much I hate the woman. “Let’s go inside, Eleanor,” he said. “I’d enjoy hearing you play the piano this evening.” A lie, he admitted, but memories of a certain deceitful innkeeper occurred more often outdoors, beneath the moon and stars, than in the ornate rooms of Riverrun.
Hoss Garrett awaited them in the salon. He and Branch took their seats as Eleanor shuffled through a stack of sheet music for the serenade the elder Garrett requested. As sound swelled in the room, Branch fought the melancholy quickly becoming a regular companion of his evenings.
Days weren’t a problem. He loved the work of being a planter, and daylight hours kept him busy. Summer was time to plant a second crop of corn and black-eyed peas, to set the women to weeding the potatoes and cleaning the debris from wells. June was the month to cut the grains: barley, oats, and wheat. Branch worked beside the field hands from dawn till dusk, relishing the labor of farming the land he’d coveted for so many years.
Evenings, however, were a different matter. The contentment he knew during the day fled with the coming of dark. As much as he enjoyed the work of being a planter, he hated the social baggage that came along with it. Social obligations bored him, the people bored him. The rules of proper behavior especially bored him. Sitting in a parlor listening to piano music wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as he had once imagined it to be.
It certainly wasn’t as gratifying as lying naked beneath the stars atop a woman.
Dammit, she’s back again. Branch did his best to concentrate on the music. It was during these hours, when his body rested and recovered from the day’s toil, while he spent time with his father’s friends and the woman soon to be his wife, that Katie Starr haunted his thoughts. Tonight, while Eleanor demonstrated her considerable talent at the keyboard in a room where summer slipcovers sheathed the furnishings, Branch battled the memory of the swishing rhythm of cotton cards accompanied by the creak of a rocker against a puncheon floor on a winter’s night.
Ah, hell, Sprite. Why did it all have to be a lie?
A knock on the open salon door interrupted his musings. “How about some hospitality for a couple of visitors?” William Bell and Branch’s cousin, Chase Garrett, stood just outside the room.
The shroud of discontent lifted from Branch’s shoulders. William, finally. “Well, William Bell, I never figured you for one
to travel with the likes of Chase Garrett.”
“I’m smarter than that. I found him on the drive and figured it best to bring him in before he started stealing chickens from the henhouse.”
Chase grinned. “Chickens! Why, I was after the horses!”
After a period of polite social discourse, Eleanor said her good nights, and the gentlemen adjourned to the library for some serious drinking.
“I have to say, Branch,” Chase commented, accepting a branch and cigar from his cousin, “you certainly look different among these surroundings than you did the last time we met.”
“His name is Britt,” Hoss Garrett interjected, his brows knitted as he poured his own drink.
Ignoring his father, Branch grinned. “That was just about a year ago, wasn’t it? Down near the Rio Grande?”
Chase nodded and then shook his head in wonderment. “I couldn’t believe it. Here I was shaking in my boots because I’d run across a Mexican patrol on the wrong side of the river, and up comes this fellow dressed in a serape and spoutin’ Spanish like a native. He throws his arm around my shoulder, a pair of golden eyes gleam from beneath a sombrero, and he says, ‘Howdy, cuz.’ ”
Branch laughed. “The patrol leader, Captain Monterro, and I are old amigos—met up during the war. We were spying on each other’s army when he snuck up behind me. Right as he was fixing to put a bullet in my skull, a rainstorm upstream flooded the arroyo we were lying in. Ended up, I saved his life and we got to be friendly.”
The spoon Hoss used to stir his drink clanked against his glass. “You fought in the War for Independence?”
Although the smile remained fixed on Branch’s face, the amusement faded from his eyes. “I was twenty-five when war broke out. What do you think I did, Hoss, run for the Louisiana border?”
“No,” the elder Garrett said gruffly, “I knew you were in the army. I didn’t realize you were so far south.”
Branch turned a mirthless smirk toward William. “Probably hoped I’d manned a cannon at the Alamo.”
“Dammit!” Hoss shouted, “Listen, boy…”
Chase held up his hand. “Hold on a minute, folks. I may be family, but I’m not in the mood to hear old family squabbles tonight. I’m glad to see you”—he slid a look at Hoss and added—“Britt. Surprised, but pure-dee pleased. Tell me, how’d you happen to come home?”
Well, Branch thought, if he wanted to avoid family squabbles, he chose the wrong subject to pick. He sipped his drink and said, “I’ll let William and Hoss clue you in, cuz.”
William stretched out in his chair, crossing his boots at his ankles. “I can’t say I know the whole of it. I made a trip to New Orleans after delivering the money that Regulator demanded. I can’t say I know how your search has progressed.”
“What search?” Chase asked.
Hoss lifted his drink as if toasting and declared, “Britt discovered the bastard who killed Robert.”
William slapped his knee. “I knew you could do it, Branch, uh, Britt. Who was it? That Regulator man, Colonel Moorman? He’s a slimy weasel for certain.”
“No,” Hoss said, clipping the end of his cigar with a pair of scissors. “Fella by the name of Starr, may he roast in hell.”
William Bell’s gaze locked on Branch. “Starr?” He dragged on his cigar, then exhaled a cloud of woodsy scented smoke. “Starr?” he repeated.
Branch nodded. He tipped his glass, finishing its contents in a single gulp.
“I imagine you killed him,” Chase said, noting the tension between William and Branch.
Hoss came up behind Branch, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Won’t tell me how he did it. Must’ve been pretty grisly.”
Silently, William Bell demanded an answer.
Branch said, “I destroyed the person who killed my brother. What’s it matter how I went about it?”
“Ugly business,” Will observed, his expression unreadable.
The bourbon soured in Branch’s stomach. “Damned ugly.”
SOON AFTER Hoss retired for the night, Branch turned to Chase and William and said, “How about we walk down to the river and pretend to fish while we set about getting drunk.”
Chase jumped to his feet, grabbed a bottle with each hand, and said, “I’m overdue for one. After you, cuz.”
In the years he’d been away, the course of the Brazos River had shifted, and as they made their way down the bluff to the water, Branch felt a twinge of annoyance that Chase, not he, knew the path to a fishing hole. None of the three men bothered with a pole. Chase built a small fire on the sandy shore and observed, “Why do I get the feeling like I’ve come in the middle of a nasty little story?”
Dragging a dried piece of driftwood from the edge of the bank back to the fire, Branch laughed harshly and said, “Because you have.”
“A very nasty story,” Bell added.
Chase fed a stick to the fire. “Would you two rather I leave?”
“Branch?” William asked.
“No. It’s all right. In fact, if you’ve got some free time, I might just need an extra pair of hands, depending on what William learns.”
William tipped a bottle to his mouth and shuddered as the whiskey burned down his throat. “Ah, I’ve an idea I’ll soon be making another trip. Did I understand you earlier, Branch? About Rob?”
Branch snapped the stick he held in two. “Katie did it,” he stated flatly.
“No.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“There’s more to it than that, though.”
“Hold on a minute,” Chase said, grabbing the bottle of bourbon from William’s hand. “Y’all are losin’ me. Are you saying a woman killed Rob?”
Briefly, Branch told them the story of the fire. When he finished, Chase was the first to speak. “Hell, Branch. I’d have done the same thing, under the circumstances. Did you really hurt her like you told Uncle Hoss?”
Branch was silent for a long minute. “Katie Starr may be a woman, but she fights meaner than any man I’ve known. Anything I do to her, she has coming her way. I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t even beat her, even though I wanted to.”
Choosing his words carefully so as not to disclose any of the more personal aspects of the situation, Branch told Chase and William why he suspected that the blackmailer responsible for the fire in which Rob Garrett was burned was named Shaddoe St. Pierre.
When he finished, Chase gave a long, slow whistle. “Hell and Texas, it makes sense, cuz. What do you want us to do?”
Branch fed dry leaves into the fire. “William, I want you to return to New Orleans. The Gallaghers said something once about Shaddoe living with a grandfather in New Orleans. Marceaux… Marcil, some French name beginning with M. Anyway, find out who this fellow is and where he’s been. If you can place him any one place at any one time since 1839, I want to know it.”
“Certainly, Branch. I’ll do my best. When do you want me to leave?”
“Well, I know you’ve been traveling, but the sooner…”
William held up his hand. “I’ll leave tomorrow.”
“Thank you, William. I owe you.”
“What about me?” Chase asked.
“If William finds proof that a Creole named Shaddoe has been doing business in New Orleans during the times he claimed to have been with the Cherokee, I’ll have a solid piece of information upon which I can build my case against him. I may need you, Chase, to return with me to Nacogdoches. I’m too well-known there now to be of much use in spying on St. Pierre, and also, I left a little unfinished business there concerning another scoundrel named Trident. I could use an unknown face assisting me.”
Chase nodded his acceptance, then he frowned and asked, “One thing, though, Branch. Why don’t you just go shoot him? Why bother with proof?”
Branch stood and looked out over the water, his back to the other men. Emotions warred within him—pride, anger, pain—and his sense of honor. The night breeze
created ripples across the top of the slow-moving water, crickets chirped, and from the opposite bank a bullfrog croaked. Branch struggled to put his thoughts into words. “I want the man who set fire to the Starr farm dead. I want the man who sliced open Steven Starr’s gut punished. Those two acts have earned retribution, and I could administer it with clear conscience.”
Bell slapped a mosquito on his arm. “And St. Pierre?”
“Dead. I want him stabbed, shot, and hanged. I want the bastard to die hard. Only it’s not because I know for certain that he’s the man responsible for my brother’s death.”
William and Chase exchanged a look at the passion in Branch’s voice. Silently, they waited.
Low and raspy, he confessed, “I want to kill him because of Kate. He took what was mine. But as much as I want to, I can’t kill the man for that.”
Chase stood and walked to stand beside his cousin, handing him the bottle. “And after we prove he’s the blackmailer who set that fire, then you can kill him?”
Branch guzzled the bottle. “Yep.”
When the bottle was empty and the fire smothered, the three men climbed the path up the bluff. As they topped the hill, they walked abreast, Branch in the middle, back toward the Big House. Carrying the empty bottle at his side, William turned to Branch and asked, “While I’m doing the footwork in New Orleans, what will you be doing?”
Kincaid smiled drunkenly and flung an arm across both men’s shoulders.
“What’ll I be doing? Well, getting married, of course.”
CHAPTER 17
THE CHICKEN SQUAWKED AND lunged toward the invader. Katie squealed as she snatched the egg from the nest and lifted her bleeding hand to her mouth to suck at the wound. Tears shimmered in her eyes as frustration boiled in her soul, and she backed away from the hen and out of the henhouse. Then, when the rooster looked at her and loosened a boisterous crow, she drew back her hand and sent the egg sailing, straight and true toward the henhouse wall, where it landed with a splat.
A second egg from her basket flew at the chopping log, a third at a fence post at the hog pen. She shot a fourth against the barn wall, where it smashed and hung for a moment before pieces of tan shell flicked to the ground and the broken yellow yoke mixed with the slimy membrane to slide slowly down the wall.
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