Her face, her neck, her breasts, her stomach, the curves and shadows of her legs until she grabbed hold of his hair and yanked his lips to hers, crushed them, bit at them, and tasted the sweet salt of his blood. Her hands shifted under his arms to his back and kneaded the lean muscles, lingered over the three ragged ridges of the scars his flight had marked on him. They moved to his waist, to his buttocks, urging him now without a coherent thought in her bed.
She cried out into the hollow of his shoulder when his patience finally shredded and he rose quickly above her, plunged quickly into her, and they swirled into a whirlwind of torch and fire that incinerated the room, the house, Riverrun, the world …
She lay on her back, her hands clasped together over her head, while his lips drank her perspiration, pressed into the taut and screaming flesh of her breasts, inscribed small circles from her ribs to her hips while her skin tightened and jumped. She squirmed to guide without touching him, gasping when he laughed deep within his throat before taking her again …
She pushed him onto his back and straddled him, dropped her hair into a veil over his face, and tossed her head back and forth; her laughter filled with an effervescence that rose from her chest to her lips and made her want to scream, to shout, to leap from the bed and throw open the casement windows and call out to Riverrun that she no longer need weep for the dark clouds that seemed ready to fashion her future …
She touched her lips to his nipples, her tongue to the flesh that had been shriveled and beaten and fevered and nursed in a journey that had taken an eternity and more; she straightened when his palms reached up to her breasts, filling herself with him and slowing time, her hips gently rocking, her head back and her mouth open to the short bursts of bright whimpers as the fire that refused to be quenched surged once again, as he finally lost himself in the pleasure of her lovemaking and groaned, sighed, laughed once, and bit down on his lips to keep from roaring …
She nestled in the curve of his arm, his scent, their scent, and the startling realization that it was, now, as if he had never left her. The years, the battles, were little more than ghosts in a feeble story told by a grandfather in front of a fire. She worried for a moment that it was not right that she should feel this way, that she should instantly disbelieve all that had gone before just because Eric had returned to her and Riverrun.
His leg moved, and she trapped his knee between her thighs. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, she scolded silently. Is this any way to behave with a miracle?
In his sleep he muttered her name, and his hand came around from behind her back and cupped her breast loosely.
She sighed, and closed her eyes. It’s the relief, she told herself; you just can’t think straight.
Two days later, however, she wondered again.
Just after midday, Sheriff Garvey and two men she did not recognize rode up to the house where she was working with Amos and Simon on repairing the fire damage to the porch and its roof. Both of the men had spent most of the morning telling her what they thought of Mr. Martingale. She was annoyed with herself for being irritated at the unabashed praise that they lavished upon him for his knowledge of the fields—she had not told any of them he was the former owner—for his treatment of themselves, and the way he seemed to understand everything that linked Riverrun into a single identity.
Amos had called it “inside feelin’.”
Simon, who had been wounded in the right arm during the fight with Lambert, did not understand what Amos was talking about; he only called it magic and left it at that.
At the sound of the approaching horsemen, however, they stopped, stiffened, and Amos reached for the rifle he kept propped against the railing. Cass moved quickly to the head of the lane, recognized Garvey’s bulk immediately, and signaled with a wave that Amos could relax. Then she stood with her hands on her hips, her hair tied back, a hammer in her left hand, while she waited for the riders to see her and bring their mounts to a halt.
“Mornin’, Mrs. Roe,” Garvey said. Despite the day’s lingering moderate warmth, he still wore his vested dark suit and bowler incongruous on the thickset horse that pranced nervously beneath him.
“Sheriff,” she said. She knew what he was doing at Riverrun, but she would not give him the satisfaction of losing her temper. She stared, while his two companions strained to see what the pair of blacks were doing to the house.
Garvey cleared his throat into a fist. “Hear you had some troubles the other day.”
“Nothing I couldn’t take care of myself,” she said.
“That’s the law’s job, Mrs. Roe, and I really shouldn’t have to remind you.”
“The law,” she said, “did nothing for my man Chet, if you’ll recall, Sheriff. And besides, since you seem to know what went on here, you’ll also understand that I had no time to send for you or your men.”
The sheriff pulled himself upright in the saddle. “That’s a mighty ill attitude you have there, Mrs. Roe. If all the folks hereabouts thought that way, I’d be out of a job and there’d be more killin’ than you can shake a stick at. You should have come to see me first thing in the mornin’. That would’ve been the proper thing to do.”
Cass was about to reply, but she saw the deputies stiffen suddenly, and saw a look of amazement cross Garvey’s face when his gaze was drawn over her head to the house behind her. A faint smile drew at her lips; she knew without turning who had come to the front. She almost laughed aloud when the sheriff, trying to be nonchalant, rubbed a knuckle over his eyes and stroked thoughtfully at his jaw.
“Good afternoon, Garvey,” Eric’s clipped voice said, without a shred of feigned politeness. “What are you doing here?”
“Mr. Martingale,” Garvey said. “I didn’t know you were back, sir. It’s good to see you again. Many years, isn’t it?”
“Too many, Garvey,” he said. “None of them pleasant. Now answer my question: what are you doing here bothering Mrs. Roe?”
“I—well, I was only tryin’ to make her see that she really should have come to town after—well, she’ll have to fill out forms and things, the judge’s—”
“She’ll do no such damned thing and you know it, Garvey!” he snapped, moving to Cass’s side and slipping an arm protectively around her waist. “If you had been doing your job properly, I wouldn’t have all that damage to the house. And I wouldn’t have to keep my men armed in the fields. I suggest, Sheriff, you tend to your business and permit us to tend to ours.”
Garvey yanked angrily at the brim of his hat. “Mr. Martingale, you have no call to talk to me that way.”
Eric dropped his arm away from Cass and moved to stand by Garvey’s leg. His hand took hold of the reins. “Sheriff, Vern Lambert attempted to destroy my property. He and his men killed two of my hands and seriously wounded several others. I will wager you every ounce of gold this property can fetch that not one of them is in your cells right now. Not one.” He yanked on the reins, and Garvey involuntarily leaned over. “And you tell Hawkins for me that if this happens again, just one more time, just one wrong look, I’ll be in there to rip out his heart!”
He stepped back then, and slapped at the horse’s shoulder, making it sidle away and Garvey grab for rein and pommel to keep from tipping out of his saddle. There was a long moment of silence before Garvey nodded once, sharply, and the three men rode swiftly back toward the road. Eric glared after them, spun around on his heel, and strode back to the house.
Cass stared at him, her mouth open, her eyes squinting in a disbelieving, angry glare. Then she followed him, through the door and up the stairs to her room where he had stripped off his shirt and was replacing it with another. She hesitated on the threshold for a moment, then closed the door softly behind her.
“What is it, love?” he said, smiling. “Should I have dragged him down and thrashed out his liver?”
“Your property?” she said. “Your house?”
The shirt dropped over his head. He would not look at her.
A week later the month ended, and Cass could not understand why her nerves would not let her sleep in peace. She and Eric made wrestling, playful love virtually every night, drowsed into unconsciousness while he whispered in her ear his plans for the future. Yet the mornings were all the same: she would rise before he did, check on David—who inevitably spent a sleepless night, and still refused to allow Garner to touch his leg—then go down to the kitchen where she saw to breakfast. She spent less and less time in the fields, more working around the house to make it livable on her terms and, increasingly, Eric’s.
He did not seem to be worried about the deadline looming over them. He brushed aside her protests that they should begin to look for other ways to raise the monies needed to pay off their debts, taking light hold of her chin and kissing her into silence. Several times she caught Rachel and Melody standing at the kitchen window, watching the back for signs of his coming so they could rush around like schoolchildren preparing his expected coffee and small cake repast before supper.
But the end, and the shock of recognition came shortly after the last meal of the day had been cleared from the table, and Amos returned from Meridine with a letter from Hiram Cavendish. Eric said nothing as Cass read it, only lounged in his chair at the far end of the table with a cigar in one hand and a glass of River-run’s wine in the other.
Cass read it once, read it again, closed her eyes and waited for her breath to return. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Amos was fond of reciting; it seemed to prepare him for just about everything a day could lay in his path. But this was too much, she thought. On top of everything else, this was too damned much.
Thunder startled her and she jerked around to the windows in time to see the glitter of lightning illuminate the gardens just beyond.
Amos backed out of the room when Eric waved him away.
A small gesture, an unthinking one, but it broke through the cloud that had been hovering over Cass’s mind and she saw, for the first time, everything free of her love for him. And for the first time, she was going to do something about it.
“We’re dead,” she said tightly, and tossed the letter down the length of the table. It slid to the edge, hovered and fell. Eric looked at her for several moments before leaning over to pick it up. “It’s all gone. Every dime I had, is gone. Every share, every piece of land, even the house on Jordan Lane. It’s gone, Eric! God damn it, everything is gone!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cass fled the table, raced up the stairs, and barged into David’s room. He was sitting up with a lantern at his right hand, a book on his lap as his lips moved silently to form the words. It was several seconds before he realized he was not alone, and when he did he scowled.
“Well,” he said, “it’s about time someone cared for me around here. That damned Rachel seems to forget who I am these days.”
“David—”
“And why hasn’t that Martingale person come to see me more often? We had some nice talks when he first came, but he hasn’t been back since.” He groaned, then, and reached for his leg, gritting his teeth and hissing until the agony passed and he was able to relax again. The swelling, under Rachel’s ministrations, had diminished considerably, but Garner still would not let him walk around. He was quietly amazed that the black girl’s herbs were as effective as his own medicine, but he refused to acknowledge the debt he owed her; instead, he insisted that Vessler not attempt another fool stunt like the night of the raid, which had set back the healing for nearly two weeks. Yet, paradoxically, he had cut back his own visits to the house to once a week, and whenever Rachel greeted him her smile was knowing, and proud.
“Well?” he demanded angrily.
Cass blurted out the contents of the letter before he could cut her off again with another outburst. She paced the room wildly, her hands cutting through the air, with part of her mind praying that David’s grasp of the law had not slipped. When she had finished and was leaning wearily against his bedpost, David passed a steady hand through his hair and knocked aside the book he’d been reading.
“It’s no good, Cass,” he said, only barely glancing up when Eric entered the room and stood against the wall. “The letters presented to Cavendish were apparently good enough imitations of your hand to fool even him. The man who brought them, Devlin Peters, is obviously one of Hawkins’s men. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were Forrester, though there’s no way now we can prove it. Hiram was ready, you see, to believe that you were dead. Your letter to him came after the scheme had been completed.”
“I know all that,” she said, too tired to be angry anymore, “but what can I do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
David coughed suddenly, a long and painful fit that passed only when it seemed he could no longer take in another breath. Cass waited patiently; Eric began to pace.
“What I mean is this: if there had only been a transfer of title, we could easily prove the forgery and recover the properties. But that wasn’t all, Cass. Everything you had was converted into gold and silver, and what must have been a rather large bundle of greenbacks. Lord, it must have turned Hiram’s soul to do that. He never trusted greenbacks, used them to light his cigars, he hated them so much. I remember—”
“David,” she said gently, to bring him back to the present.
He blinked, looked at Eric, and nodded. “Yes. Right. Well, there’s no help for us, Cass. With everything turned into money, there’s not a thing you can do about it even if you do go back there and file with the authorities. It’s gone. All of it. And since you can’t prove it was Hawkins who did it …” He shrugged helplessly.
“And it wouldn’t surprise me a bit, Cass, to find out that he used all the money to buy up all those debts and make them his. Your money to pay your debts.”
She nodded bitterly. “It would suit him,” she said.
“That means there’s no way I can save Riverrun,” Eric said suddenly. “Only if the crop brings top dollar can I—”
“Excuse me,” David said, without sounding at all apologetic, “but let me remind you, sir, that this is no longer your plantation. It belongs to Mrs. Roe, not to you.”
Eric’s face darkened.
There was the sound of distant thunder, and the first faint smell of gathering rain.
“I have an interest,” he said.
“I know you do,” David replied, “but you don’t own it.”
Cass turned around slowly to face Eric. “Yes,” she said, so slowly it sounded as though she were hissing. “Yes, that’s right.” And what had been so apparent to everyone else from Melody to David since the day Martingale returned suddenly became just as clear to her. What a fool she had been, and how ignorantly blind! The tension that had risen between them, the uneasiness, the twinge of jealousy she felt when Amos and the others spoke about Eric; all of it was because he had moved in; because he had, as she had thought that first night, acted as if he had never been away. Acted as though Riverrun were still his, despite his absence. No, not acted—believed.
The rain splattered against the panes like pellets of ice. Eric stalked from the room and she followed him down the dimly lighted corridor to his room, a place he seldom spent time in, a place he maintained for propriety’s sake, though there wasn’t anyone in the household who believed it for a minute. He tried to close the door, but she set a palm against it and shoved it open again.
“Eric—”
“Don’t talk to me, woman. I think it’s time I got some rest.”
She was stunned, felt her jaw drop. “I think,” she said, her voice low and threatening, “it’s time you understood how things stand around here.”
“I understand perfectly,” he said, a match flaring in his hand as he bent over a lamp to light it. “I understand what you’ve done to me.”
“I have done nothing,” she said. “I thought you were dead. I came back here because I made a promise to myself—about you, damn it!—and I worked myself nearly to
death because I wanted Riverrun to succeed! Not for me—for you! I have been shot at and ridden over and deceived and molested and starved and frightened and … God only knows what-all else.” She stretched out her hands. “Look at them, Eric. Look at them, damn you! Are these the hands of a woman who’s done nothing but sip her sweet drinks in the afternoons while the darkies do their labor in the fields from dawn to sunset?” She pulled at her throat, slapped herself on the cheek. “Is this the way a woman, a lady, takes care of herself when she’s spending tea and cakes in the morning with the neighbors? I do not dance all night and I do not loll all day, Eric Martingale. I work. I work, damn it, and I am not going to let anyone take it from me.”
Eric took a step toward her, but she would not back away. Frustration had taken her, would not release her, and she would not be intimidated by the darkness that settled over his eyes.
“Cassandra, I built this place from nothing—”
“And I took it from nothing and made it something! It works, Eric! It works, and I will not have you or anyone else ruin what I’ve done these past three years.”
His shoulders sagged slightly, though his expression did not soften. “Then you wish me to leave.”
“My God, no,” she said softly. “If I ever let you go again, I’ll kill myself.”
His arms opened, and after a moment’s hesitation, she fell into them and did not resist when his hands moved immediately to her breasts, her thighs. She wanted to shake her head, to tell him this wasn’t the time, not after what had been said, but the blood began once more to race in her veins and she could not stop herself from clawing at him to be sure he was still hers, that she could still have him when she wanted him.
She awoke the following morning in her own bed. Momentarily disoriented, she remembered abruptly the argument and the loving of the night before and dressed herself hurriedly. Outside, the rain continued, chilling the air with October’s promise and settling into the woodwork to make it creak like an old man’s bones. She shivered and tossed a ragged shawl about her shoulders and went down the hall to Eric’s room. He was gone, and there was a panic-filled second when she thought that he had left her, left Riverrun, had vanished into the hills as he had four years ago into the sea. But as she dashed down the steps and headed toward the kitchen, she heard faint voices from beyond the partially closed door, and one of them was his. She stopped, sniffed, squared her shoulders, and marched confidently into the delightful warmth of Rachel’s realm. But Rachel was not at the stove. Alice Jordan was.
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