by BJ James
Perhaps there was some explanation for the special bond that had always existed between Adams, the whipping boy, and Jefferson, the favored son. One even Eden could never fathom. It was simply a tie none but the Cades could understand.
As Lincoln and Jackson stepped away from Adams, Jefferson was there, standing before him. Not touching him, not speaking, only looking. No two men could look less like brothers. But with a single glance, any but a fool would know.
In spite of the fact that one was dark-haired and dark-eyed, while the other was blond with blue eyes, there were inexplicable similarities. Similarities caught in a look, a gesture, a tilt of the head. The flash of a smile. A rare laugh.
They were all sons of Caesar Augustus Cade, but with different mothers. Not one bore any resemblance to Gus, except in pride and determination. In looks, each was his mother’s son.
In choosing his wives, Gus had seemed determined to create a family as diverse as possible. Adams’ mother was of French descent. Lincoln’s, a Scot. Jackson’s was Irish. And Jefferson’s, a Dane. All women with nothing in common except uncommon beauty and a distinct lack of staying power. Thus, with nothing of Gus, the common denominator, in their physical makeup there was little reason for the existence of any other similarities. Yet, with their strong-willed father the only constant force in their young lives, there existed an indefinable element proving they were brothers, and men of a kind.
Eden couldn’t explain the phenomenon in the past. She couldn’t explain it now. But as Adams and Jefferson faced each other in a room gone silent, she was never more aware of it.
Beyond the windows the garden was alive with bird-song. In the freshening breeze live oaks swayed and whispered, the old house shifted and creaked. Every sound seemed magnified, and every observer frozen in place as the odd moment dragged by.
Then Adams smiled and hooked a palm around the younger man’s neck to draw him into a brother’s rough embrace. “Jeffie.”
The childhood name eased the building tension. Soon all four were laughing, talking at once. Setting down her cup, meaning to slip away, Eden circled around them to the door. She’d almost reached her goal when an arm slid around her waist. Gentle fingers splayed circumspectly over her midriff drew her back against a hard, brawny chest.
Adams. She would know his touch anywhere, anytime.
“Where do you think you’re going?” He leaned so close his breath fanned a stray tendril that curled against her throat. “You aren’t escaping us so easily.”
Laughing, with a sense of old times revisited, Eden turned, expecting he would release her. Instead, she found herself standing in the circle of his arms as he kept her close.
“I wasn’t escaping, Adams.” She was pleased she could speak naturally when he touched her with familiar intimacy.
“Then you always sidle out the door like a shadow?” Adams lips tilted in the smallest of smiles. “Strange. Of all the things I remember about you, that isn’t one of them.”
Eden cast a startled look at Adams, but saw no hint of double entendre. “I wasn’t sidling. I wasn’t escaping.” Still caught in his embrace, she drew herself up to her proudest posture. She had grown taller through the years, but Adams was still taller. “I wanted to give you privacy with your family.”
By the suddenly solemn look that gave a hard edge to his features, she knew he realized she’d caught the fleeting moment of tension with Jefferson. In the same look she saw that an explanation would be a long time coming. If ever.
Secrets. There were secrets where once there had been only open trust. Perhaps it was another manifestation of the changes prison had wrought? The wedge a hard and alien life could drive into the heart of a family? Yet why with only Jefferson and not with Lincoln and Jackson?
It made no sense. But Eden knew it had been all too real.
“Stay, Eden,” Adams insisted. “My brothers and I will have plenty of time later for private talks. Being together as we are is like old times. I know better than anyone that what’s been done can’t be undone, and I know the choices of youth have changed all of us. For now, let’s not think of choices and what can’t be changed. Instead, let’s remember the way things were.”
“Hear! Hear!” Lincoln said quietly, but with his piercing gray gaze meeting his brother’s curiously.
“Yes,” Jackson joined in. Catching the spirit of Adams’ wishes, he snatched up his half-filled coffee cup. Holding it aloft as if it were a flute of champagne, with a slanted grin, he proposed a toast. “To the way things were.”
For a startled instant, no one moved. Then, one by one, with Eden leading the way, Adams and Lincoln and Jefferson each took up his own cup. Over a rumble of chuckles and the clatter of converging cups, Adams recalled another tradition from their past. “One Cade for all, and all Cades for one.”
In a continuation of that single move, he turned to Eden, his gaze touching hers, keeping it, and he added as he always had in the last of those youthful years, “And for Robbie.”
“For Robbie,” the younger Cades exclaimed, turning in concert, bowing with a natural gallantry rivaling that of their fictional heroes, Alexandre Dumas’ musketeers.
Adams called her Robbie now, and it seemed only fitting for the mood and the time it recalled. Eden hadn’t forgotten the hours she’d spent lying on sandy dunes basking in the sun, while Adams read the wonderful adventures aloud. No matter how many times they heard the stories, neither she nor the Cades ever seemed to tire of them. For her, the fascination was the beauty and the pageantry, and Adams’ voice. For the brothers, she always felt it was the camaraderie, the honor and the loyalty. And, perhaps, a gentle dream that offered shelter from a stringent, demanding life and the volatile wrath of their father.
She accepted their homage with learned grace. As she accepted, a look at Jefferson had her wondering almost sadly if changes wrought by choices and by deeds that could never be undone would make recapturing that innocent loyalty impossible.
“To Eden.”
Adams’ voice drew her from thoughts bordering on morose. Thoughts she mustn’t let color his homecoming. Looking up from her mesmerized study of the dark liquid in her cup, she found herself held in the snare of his fascinating eyes.
“Once our Robbie,” he said, lifting the cup higher. “Now the beautiful and exquisite Eden Claibourne.”
“To Eden,” the Cades called out in unison, with smiles alight and cups held high.
A twinkle in Jackson’s glance made her fearful for the safety of her cups. But instead of sending the delicate china crashing into the fireplace, he returned his to the silver tray. “Enough,” he declared with a wink at Eden. “If I drink any more of the River Walk brew, I won’t sleep for a week.”
“Since you met Inga the indefatigable, you haven’t slept in a week, anyway.”
Lincoln’s droll remark drew a spate of laughter and a comment from Jefferson. “By the way, Lincoln, what happened to sleepless in Belle Terre? With Alice, was it?”
With that bit of nonsense, the familiar wrangling began. For Eden it was truly like stepping into the past. A glance at Adams made her realize that even though he knew too little of his brothers’ lives now, he was nevertheless enjoying the banter.
For this short time memories of his exile and his father’s threatened health could be put aside. But all too soon, as she knew it must, the teasing lost its verve, and one by one the younger Cades fell as silent as their brother.
Leaving her place on the sofa, Eden wandered away, intent on setting herself apart as she sensed a time of serious discussion. Discussions in which even Robbie would be an intruder. She’d taken a seat at the window when the quiet ended.
It was Adams who brought to a close the thoughtful pause that threatened to stretch into an uncomfortable silence. “I called the hospital this morning.”
“Then you know.” Jefferson looked up from his intent study of the intricate patterns of the aged Persian carpet.
“That Gus will be released
tomorrow with a team of nurses to care for him?” Adams nodded and raked a hand across the back of his neck as if he would rub away the tension. “Yes, I know.” Bleakly, he met his brother’s waiting gaze. “It was disturbing to be required to prove I have the right to ask.
“My first thought was that Gus knew I was coming, and it was by his decree that I would be denied information. Then I realized that none of the names of the staff were familiar. Doc Wilson has retired?”
“Three years ago,” Jackson supplied with regret in his tone. “One of us should have remembered to tell you.”
“In the scope of all that’s happened, it doesn’t matter.” Adams shrugged aside the oversight. He knew that in the thirteen years he’d been away, there would have been many changes he couldn’t know about. “From what the doctor told me, Gus really isn’t much improved, and there’s nothing more the hospital can do for him that the nurses can’t do at…at Belle Reve.”
Eden saw in his brothers’ faces that each recognized Adams’ reluctance to call Belle Reve home. The sorrow she saw spoke of the memory that it was the eldest of Gus Cade’s sons who loved their father and their home the most.
Adams, Gus’ whipping boy. The devoted son who bore his father’s wrath without comment or rancor. The gentleman brawler, who laughed his way through countless battles and never held a grudge. Adams, the unexpected and tender lover who, on the night of her debut, had risen from their sandy bower to ride into Rabb Town, the isolated settlement of the Rabbs, the Cades’ most bitter rivals. The beloved brother and friend who had inexplicably beaten Junior Rabb within an inch of his life, then silently endured five years in prison, the eternal damnation of his father and exile from his family.
An act without recent provocation and far too costly. None of it made sense, and Adams had never offered any explanation, never claimed any defense. Instead, for a night of strange retribution, he had lost all he loved and all that mattered in his young life.
“I couldn’t believe it then,” Eden murmured on a low sigh. “I can’t believe it now.” Clasping her hands in her lap, she shook her head vehemently. “I won’t believe it. Ever.”
“Talking to yourself, sweet Eden?” Lincoln stood over her, a quizzical look on his handsome face. “Do we bore you that much with our reminiscing?”
Mustering a smile, Eden assured him he was mistaken. “You don’t bore me. A woman would have to be dead to be bored with the illustrious Cades. Especially with all four in the same room.”
“Illustrious, huh?” Lincoln sat down beside her and took her hand in his. “That’s what you were muttering about?”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe you were remembering the Adams who carried your heart in his hands?” At her sharp look, he smiled kindly. “You thought no one noticed? That, as young as we were, we couldn’t see? Sweetheart, all of us knew, even Jefferson at just thirteen. All except Adams, that is…until it was too late.”
“Why did he go there, Lincoln? Why to Rabb Town?” Eden asked the question she’d asked herself a thousand times. A question that never seemed to have an answer. “Why would he ride horseback all those miles through dangerous swamps and rough trails? Adams harbored no ill will for the Rabbs. They were the ones, they bore the animosity, hating everyone. Junior most of all. I don’t understand. None of it made any sense thirteen years ago. It makes no sense now.”
“I know, Eden.” Lincoln shrugged, but Eden knew it wasn’t in dismissal of her concern or for lack of caring.
“What do you think, Lincoln?” He was an intuitive man, a veterinarian of uncanny talents, as her grandfather had been. Since her return to Belle Terre, Eden had heard the locals discuss his unique diagnostic skills. Among those who raised horses, it was a favorite topic over dinner at River Walk. Eden couldn’t believe Lincoln’s insight was restricted to the animals he treated. “Tell me,” she pleaded. “Surely you must have some theory, some thoughts on what happened that night.”
Lincoln sat beside her. His hands gripping his knees, his head down, he was caught up in thoughts her questions raised. “What do I think?” he asked at last. “Or what do I know?”
Eden’s heart leaped at the idea there might be some evidence in Adams’ favor. Before the thought was completed, she knew its folly. If Lincoln knew anything to debunk the Rabbs’ claims, anything to disprove the sheriff’s case, he would have spoken up long ago. Even so, she wanted to hear what this wisest of Adams’ brothers might say. “Tell me. Please.”
“It isn’t much, sweet Eden.” Lincoln’s large, work-worn hand covered hers as it rested against her thigh. “It’s all conjecture at best and because I know my brother.”
“I don’t care about the whys or wherefores, Lincoln,” Eden exclaimed in a low, ragged voice. “I only want to know what you think and what you believe.” Her voice dropped to a whisper he could barely hear. “I don’t need to know why or how you came to believe it.”
“Shh,” Lincoln quieted her with a gentle squeeze of her hand. “Shh.” With his calm reaching out to her, he waited until the quick catch in her breath slowed and the flush faded from her cheeks. In all the time since she’d returned to Belle Terre, in the too-rare times their paths had crossed, he’d never seen the coolly sophisticated Eden Claibourne so wonderfully alive.
More than that, he’d never seen a woman so much in love. His brother’s life had been hard and tragic. But no man had ever been as fortunate as Adams was in Eden.
“What I believe is that my brother is innocent.” As eyes a shade darker than his own held his look steadily, a wry, humorless smile rippled across his craggy face. “What I think is that he’s hiding something. Perhaps to protect someone.”
“To protect…” Eden began, then faltered. “But who? Why? What person or persons would command such loyalty and love that he would sacrifice his own life to keep them safe?”
“I’ve asked myself that question more times than I can count. The answer is always the same. I don’t know. The night of your debut was a rare night when all of us were home, except Adams. Gus and Jackson and I were up the whole night helping a mare through a difficult foaling. Jefferson was asleep in his bed. You were home before one.” Lifting a shoulder, he murmured, “All the people he loved enough to sacrifice himself for, safe and sound and accounted for. Who does that leave? I’ve racked my brains about it for years, and the answer is always no one.”
“Yet you think this is the explanation.”
“Can you think of another?”
Eden looked at Adams, deep in conversation with the youngest of his brothers. “No,” she said softly. “None at all.”
Lincoln’s theory made sense of a nonsensical situation. It explained why a man would offer no defense for a near fatal attack he was too levelheaded to have truly committed. But it was a theory that brought her back to the ever-unanswered question.
“Who?”
A tall, dark figure loomed in the doorway, massive shoulders filling the allotted space. An immaculately tailored khaki uniform matched the equally immaculate Stetson clasped in a strong hand. Yet another gray gaze of yet another degree of darkness perused the room, studying each person, absorbing every nuance and every detail, before pausing at last on Adams.
As if he had been waiting for this moment, Adams looked up, one powerful gaze clashing with another. “Hello, Jericho, I’ve been wondering when you would be along.”
“Adams.” Jericho Rivers nodded, and the star pinned on his chest gleamed dully in the light. Turning to each of the other occupants of the room, he nodded greetings. “Jackson. Jefferson. Lincoln.” The deep voice softened. “Eden. I hope you don’t mind that I insisted Cullen show me in.”
“Of course not. Come in, Jericho.” Rising, Eden went to meet him. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Thank you, no, Eden.” The hand she’d shaken returned to the Stetson, turning it again in slow, lazy circles. “I just dropped by for a chat with Adams.”
“You going to run me out of
Dodge, Sheriff?”
“Nothing so drastic.” Something almost like a smile glinted in the marvelous gray eyes of the sheriff. “Just thought you should be told Junior Rabb knows you’re here. Junior carries a grudge forever. I’d watch my back, if I were you.”
“Thanks, Jericho, I will.”
“Good,” the sheriff said softly. “And when you get a chance, if you’d stop by the office, I have some questions.”
“The case was closed long before you took office, Jericho,” Adams reminded him.
“I know,” Jericho said mildly. “But humor me in this.”
“If you insist. I don’t have any answers, Sheriff,” Adams said pleasantly. “But you can ask.”
“I will,” Jericho assured him, even more pleasantly. Then with a last gallant nod for Eden, he was gone, swallowed by the shadows in the hall. But leaving all eyes of those in the library turned curiously toward Adams.
Three
“Good morning.”
Eden looked up from the sheaf of papers scattered over her breakfast table and found herself face-to-face with a man who looked more like a grizzly than a guest who would wish anyone a good anything. More like a grizzly with festering thorns in his paws to be exact.
“Good morning, Adams,” she replied cheerfully, as if his greeting had been pleasant. “This is quite a surprise. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“No? Is there some reason I shouldn’t be here?” His normally handsome brows wrinkled and lowered over dark, silvered eyes. His stormy gaze shifted from her. Piercing and steely, his scrutiny raked over the wait staff beginning preparations for the noon rush, clashed briefly with Cullen’s stolid regard, then moved on, unconcerned by the warning he saw there.
Next to catch his attention was the eclectic mix of guests tarrying to gossip over morning coffee. All of whom, Eden noted unhappily, were more attuned to the charming sunlit luxury of the River Walk dining room than he was.
