by BJ James
The plantation was well named. It had been a dream, beginning with restless Jean Cadieu, who found the English rule of Barbados too stifling. Seeking more and better, the Breton joined an expedition led by William Hilton and was among the first to explore this land. The intrepid adventurer found beauty to match his dream in a world so enchanting he abandoned his wandering to claim a part of paradise.
Still young, still brash, with the last of a family fortune he’d nearly squandered, Cadieu purchased every acre of land he could. When he couldn’t purchase, he bartered. When he couldn’t barter, he gambled. Amassing an estate no longer measured in acres, but in miles.
As his holdings grew, so did his wealth. As his wealth grew, so did his influence. Some called him a wise investor. Others called him scoundrel.
No matter what history recorded of his morals and deals, a dynasty was founded in the new world. And with it a new family name, as John Cade, once Jean Cadieu, begat progeny with the same verve he’d employed in acquiring his land. Through that land and his descendants, John Cade’s legacy survived for centuries.
“Belle Reve,” Adams murmured. Where he never expected to be again. At the end of the narrow, winding drive flanked by gnarled oaks, lay the manor. And Gus.
The old man had been sleeping when Adams arrived the night before. A welcome delay of the inevitable, as the brothers talked through the night. When the first of dawn flamed across the horizon, borrowing one of Jackson’s Black Arabians, he’d ridden out to see for himself what their discourse revealed.
Though he’d seen his brothers in his week at the inn, until there was no recourse, neither had warned him of what he would find at Belle Reve. Nothing could have shocked him more than the reported state of the plantation’s affairs.
A state, he could hardly believe, even though Jefferson assured him that when he spoke of the bad situation, he meant Belle Reve. Not Gus’ condition. Yet Adams knew that none of his brothers would swear that one didn’t go in hand with the other.
So, for Gus and for himself, sunrise found Adams riding the vast holdings of the Cade estate, seeing the decay, mourning the dereliction of years. But only three years, actually.
Three years since Gus had dismissed all the house staff and the crews that kept the place functioning. Many he’d let go had been born on the plantation, and the only home they’d ever known or wanted was Belle Reve. Some offered to stay, working just for the rent of their homes. Gus had been adamant.
One woman was allowed to stay to cook and clean, but only because Gus was alone. Lincoln was on the other side of the continent then, qualifying for advanced degrees in veterinary medicine. Jackson was in Ireland, specifically County Kildaire, learning the art of breeding the famed Irish horses.
That left the youngest to bear, again, the burden of being the favorite. Jefferson who, in his need for penance, coped with this madness for two years. The third year of deterioration, Gus’ sons, all but the wicked eldest, had been home.
It was Jefferson he despaired for most. As the eldest, Adams had been Gus’ verbal whipping boy. But compared to the guilt Jeffie felt for being the favored son, he knew long ago it was he who had the better of the bargain.
Drawing a long breath, Adams admitted that as harsh and demanding as Gus had been, he’d never asked less of himself. A trait that inspired loyalty and love, if not affection. The truth was, Lincoln, Jackson, Jefferson and even he would walk through fire for their father.
“But this isn’t fire, Gus.” Mentally Adams tabulated the problems. Fences rotting and falling down. Barns in dire need of new roofs and paint. Pastures once lush and green, overgrown by weeds and young saplings. Fields lying fallow. “I could put out a fire, but how do I rebuild a fallen empire when I’m not welcome until death comes knocking?”
The Arabian flicked his ears as if wondering why his rider waited at the end of a road, conversing with himself. Adams agreed he must look pretty silly, loitering at the most distant point of the drive as if space would give him courage.
Leaning forward, he stroked the neck of the handsome stallion. “You’re right, Blackhawk, this is silly. Putting off the inevitable only makes it worse. I’ve seen the destruction. Now it’s time to face the ruler of our jungle.”
He looked frail in the morning light.
Adams had always thought of his father as a big man. In thirteen years, he seemed to have shrunk and drawn into himself. His right hand, paralyzed by his stroke, lay lax and useless on the arm of his wheelchair. A cup of coffee was gripped in the left. Only Gus’ eyes hadn’t changed. They still blazed with twin fires of eternal anger.
“Hello, Gus.” Adams had stood in the archway leading to the breakfast room, watching the man he’d thought would never grow old struggle with a meal of only toast. He’d wondered how he would address his father. Now he discovered he’d thought of him as Gus too long to call him by any other name.
The chair whirred. In retreat, slender tires whispered over dusty tile. The cup was set with exaggerated care on a low table. The chair turned back. Snapping black eyes sunken in a pale face glared up at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You asked for me.” After his first steps Adams had moved no farther into the room. “Jefferson and Jackson and Lincoln came to The Inn at River Walk for me last night.”
“Last night!” The chair moved closer. Black eyes glared more brightly. “You were here last night?”
“Yes, sir. You were asleep when we arrived.”
“‘We’? I guess that means your brothers are here, too.”
“Yes, sir.” Adams held the burning gaze. “Jackson’s seeing to the horses he boards with you. Lincoln’s checking a mare that’s about to foal. Jefferson has—”
“Gone hunting or fishing, or out to draw his pretty pictures, or wherever the hell else he’s always running off to.”
“Jefferson works hard, Gus. Jackson and Lincoln both say he does. Harder than one man should.” At the moment the maligned youngest was trying to repair a rusted tractor that should have been junked twenty years before.
“You back-talking me, boy?” The chair lurched another foot closer. Then stopped so abruptly Adams feared the frail body of the man who was his father would be thrown to the floor.
He wanted to reach out, to steady the chair and the man. Instead, he said calmly, “No, sir. I’m just telling you the truth.”
“I spoiled the boy,” Gus grumbled.
If it hadn’t been so sad, Adams would have laughed at the idea of Gus Cade spoiling anyone. “Maybe you weren’t as hard on him as the rest of us, but Jeffie wasn’t spoiled.”
“No,” Gus admitted grudgingly. “Guess not.”
The chair whirred and spun. A tire squeaked and skidded. Adams called a warning he couldn’t stifle. “Careful. You have the brakes set, Gus.”
“Damn fool thing.” The old man hit the arm of the chair with the heel of his good hand. A move that dislodged his right hand and set it swinging at his side like an untethered rope. Gus was slow to realize, but when he did, an awkward struggle of another sort began.
A struggle that, in spite of all Gus had said and done, almost ripped Adams’ heart apart. Hands fisted, he stood his ground, fighting the anguish. Gus was tough. He’d survived more than he should have. He might survive anything this stroke threw at him. But never pity.
So Adams stood and waited, and prayed.
Reaching across his body with his good left hand, Gus clasped the wrist of the flaccid right arm. He’d almost lifted it to the arm of the chair when it slipped from his grasp to dangle again like a dead thing.
Once, twice more, he struggled with his arm. Twice more it slipped away. Finally he had no more strength and no more will for the struggle. Muttering a curse, he slammed back in his chair. His head dropped, his chin almost touching his heaving chest.
Gradually the panting of exertion eased. The slow rhythm of his breathing had returned when Gus lifted his head. He was pale, his eyes more sunken in their socket
s. But the fire was still there as his gaze met Adams’, and a silent message passed between father and son.
Giving no sign that Gus had asked for anything, Adams went to his father’s side. Kneeling by the chair, he lifted the dangling arm and placed it gently on the chair.
Still kneeling, he hesitated. In that small hesitation he felt the brush of an unsteady hand over his hair. But when he looked at Gus, there was no sign that he’d touched him. And the good left hand lay in his lap.
Without speaking Adams stood. And Gus caught his hand.
“I asked you to come here…” Gus wasn’t offering an apology for the years of exile. But whatever his reason for explaining, it was as difficult. Licking dry lips, he began again. “I asked you here to fix this. To fix Belle Reve.
“Lincoln knows trees and animals and their medicine. Jackson knows horses and breeding. Jefferson… You’re right—he works hard. Harder than a man should. But you, Adams, you know numbers. You understand business. If anyone can straighten this out, you can.”
“That’s what this is about? All this?” A stabbing gesture indicated the view from an unwashed window. “It’s about letting what you love more than anything in the world fall into ruin because of financial troubles? When I—”
“Don’t want your money,” Gus interrupted stubbornly. “I want your help.”
“How?”
“Straighten out the books. See what’s needed to set it all right financially. Then put it back in shape physically.”
Adams couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You want me to go back to being a laborer?”
The words were hardly out of his mouth before Adams understood. Pride. Gus was too proud to let anyone see and know the condition poor management had wreaked on Belle Reve. To that end he would work his sons like animals. And, Adams admitted, the old rascal knew his sons would do exactly as he wished.
“All right.” Adams backed away, a spark of hope for things he hadn’t yet admitted dying inside him. “All right,” he said again. “I’ll do it, Gus Cade. I’ll put your plantation in financial order. I’ll repair what needs repairing. No matter how long it takes or what it takes, I’ll do it—on one condition.”
“What damned condition?” The old man bristled.
“That I have a free hand. No interference, no matter if you agree with what I do or not,” Adams said in a tone only a fool would challenge. “No compromises, Gus. My way, or no way.”
“Hellfire and damnation, you drive a hard bargain.”
Adams didn’t relent. “I had a good teacher.”
He might not like the imposing of conditions, but Gus Cade was desperate and smart enough to know he had no choice. “All right. All right. I agree. No interference, no compromise.”
“My way?” Adams repeated.
Gus stared out the window at some distant point. When Adams thought he wouldn’t agree, he muttered, “Your way.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Seven sharp. I’ll begin then.” Turning on his heel, the exile of Belle Reve strode across the breakfast room.
“You can stay here,” Gus called after him.
Adams halted, his shoulders tensing in his silence.
“Lincoln keeps a place in town. Says it’s closer to his office and to the other farms if he’s needed for a barn call. Jackson goes back to River Trace, the falling-down farm he thinks he can turn into a first-class breeder’s farm.” Gus’ shrug dismissed the notion. Only one shoulder moved. “Jefferson does whatever it is Jefferson does in the evenings. But he’ll always be along sometime in early morning.”
A frown touched Gus’ face. For the first time Adams realized the paralysis affected his expression. “Jeffie never slept a lot, Gus. You know that. He used to wander the swamps, hoping to catch some of the nocturnal animals prowling.”
“Should’ve grown out of that by now.” Gus’ voice had taken on a petulant tone. He was tired. The conversation, the admission that he needed help, coupled with struggling with his arm, had taken a lot out of him.
“Jeffie told me you were released from the hospital with two nurses. Where are they? I’ve been here since last night, and I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of them.”
Gus chuckled at the familiar expression. “They’re hiding. I dared them within an inch of their lives to interrupt our little talk.”
“You were that sure I would be here?”
“Not today,” Gus admitted. “But I knew you’d be along.”
“You know me pretty well, it seems.”
“Well enough.” Adams had moved as he spoke and Gus’ chair turned with him. “Well, enough, Adams Cade.”
“Then you know I won’t sleep here, tonight or any night.”
Gus’ shaggy eyebrows lifted a notch. “Guess that means you’ll be sleeping where you’ve been the past week.”
The old man had been gravely ill, his body ravaged and weak, but his mind was still sharp. “By that remark, I assume you’ve heard I’ve been staying at The Inn at River Walk?”
Gus laughed, a caricature of his usual guffaw. “Never assume. What I heard was that you were in Belle Terre. It wasn’t any great mental stretch to figure where you were. Hell, boy, years ago a blind man could see you had a thing for the gal who turned River Walk into an inn.”
Still chuckling in a wheeze, the old man steered his chair to the table, took a sip of cold coffee and fixed his glare on Adams again. “’Pears you still do. Preferring her over blood kin.”
Blood kin. The term rankled. Especially when the man who called it up now like a weapon had announced to the world, those long and savage years ago, that Adams Cade was no longer any son of his and would never be welcome at Belle Reve again. But Adams knew he couldn’t dwell on that. He couldn’t let old wounds fester.
Despite Gus’ rejection, he was here now, at Belle Reve. He’d said he would help and he would. On his terms.
“You’re mistaken about Eden,” he said into the silence. “I was too old for her.”
“At twelve and seventeen, maybe. Even fifteen and twenty.” A sly look crossed the ravaged face of Gus Cade. “Nineteen and twenty-four was a different situation, wasn’t it?”
Adams barely silenced a startled gasp. The look he shot the taunting old man was fierce. But Gus was enjoying himself too much to care.
“Thirty-two and thirty-seven evens the odds that much more. Except, maybe, she’s getting a little long in the tooth. The newfangled bio-log-ical clock women her age are moaning and groaning about,” Gus added with a shake of his head.
“Not as new as you think.” Adams was tired of sparring. His father seemed to thrive on it. “But you wouldn’t know about that, would you? All your wives, four to be exact, were barely out of their teens. Maybe that’s why none of them stuck.”
“Not all of them left me,” Gus defended himself with a satisfied look. He’d gotten a rise out of Adams, which meant the boy wasn’t as cool toward Eden Claibourne as he pretended.
“No,” Adams agreed. “My mother and Lincoln’s worked themselves to death for you. Jackson’s and Jefferson’s mothers were smart enough to skip out on the drudgery.” Realizing his hands were clenched, he opened his fists and flexed his fingers. “But you didn’t care, did you? You had what you wanted. All you ever wanted from any of them.”
“Sons.” Gus’ left hand struck the arm of his chair. “What any man wants. Sons to perpetuate his line.”
“Have you ever wondered what you would have done if we’d all been daughters? What then, Gus?”
“But you weren’t,” the old man countered. “That’s all that counts.”
“With you.” Raking a hand across the back of his taut neck, Adams realized the toll of sleepless nights. “If we’re all done here, I have things to do.”
He was almost at the door when Gus called out, “Give Miss Eden Claibourne my regards.”
“It’s Mrs. Eden Claibourne, Gus.” Then, with a shrug, he added, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Damn,” Adam
s swore harshly as he almost stumbled. He was tired. As tired as he could remember. Work detail in prison had never been like this. Even the oil rigs hadn’t been like this. Only working for Gus had been this hard. Chuckling as he negotiated the darkened path leading to the river cottage, he muttered, “Hell, this was working for Gus.”
You’ve grown soft, Cade, a voice in the back of this mind taunted. Too many years sitting at a desk becoming the newest business sensation has turned you into a marshmallow.
“Not quite.” Adams flexed a stiffening shoulder.
He hadn’t left after the confrontation with Gus. Instead, he’d rounded up his brothers for a family conference. Next he’d helped Jefferson with the tractor. By then, the foal was wobbling around the stall and his dam was on her feet. Finally, together, the four of them tackled the most critical projects.
Lincoln took an emergency call from a desperate dairy farmer and had to leave. But the three left worked past sundown.
Jackson had to leave to see to the stock he boarded with Gus. Then he had to return to River Trace to bed down the stock he kept there. Black Arabians at Belle Reve. Irish Thoroughbreds and Sport Horses, for the most part from the County Kildaire, at River Trace.
Jefferson skipped an art class to work as long as Adams.
Too long, Adams realized now. He was far too weary and ached too much to sleep, and tomorrow promised to be hell.
Tomorrow he would begin with Gus’ books. Then, if he could, he would untangle the mess the old man had made of the financial affairs of Belle Reve.
But tonight, though he knew he wouldn’t sleep for a while, he was determined not to think of Gus, or books, or Belle Reve. Adams Cade was determined not to think at all.
It was a measure of his weariness that he didn’t notice the small torches dimly lighting his way down the winding path to the river cottage. A measure of his preoccupation that the exotic fragrance drifting from the lanai didn’t warn him.
He was taken totally by surprise when he stepped into the shelter and found a candle flickering in a small hurricane lamp set in the midst of a tray of food too picturesque to eat. Yet too fragrantly delicious to resist.
