The Outcast

by Rosalyn West

  He’d only to look at the glass panes broken out in his mother’s cabin by vandals who’d done the damage and fled in anonymity. To see the smears of horse dung across the walls his mother had lived within, slept within, and taken such great pride in watching him grow within—to know the depth of their hatred.

  They believed he coveted what belonged to his half brother. They believed he’d mercilessly had Jonah slain in order to inherit what was his. And in taking over the Glade, in courting Patrice Sinclair, he’d be proving it as clearly as if he’d stood up from his church pew to declare he was glad Jonah Glendower was dead.

  How that tortured him. Because it wasn’t completely untrue. There were times he’d cheerfully wished Jonah out of the way, times when resentment made a vile taste in his mouth he couldn’t rinse away. Their father’s poor judgment had made him a servant and Jonah a prince. And it wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.

  Then why did he feel so guilty claiming that which should have been his all along?

  Because he loved Jonah as his brother, as his friend. Despite the fact that he had all that Reeve wanted. Jonah hadn’t asked for it, he hadn’t purposefully stolen it away. And the fact that Jonah always regretted that his good fortune was Reeve’s bad luck made Reeve admire him all the more. And it made stepping into his shoes an awkward and difficult move.

  Reeve sighed heavily. “If only you hadn’t spoke up to spare me after that fall broke your leg. I could have gone on hating you, and none of this would bother me at all. Why did you have to make me beholden to you, then go and treat me like a friend instead of a rival? Why didn’t you hate me for threatening what was yours? You should have. Why did you have to make it so damn hard to begrudge you anything? I’d have given my life for you, but I never expected you to do the same. I wanted the Glade, I wanted all of it, but I didn’t want to step over your corpse to get them. You sonuvabitch, how could you do this to me?”

  “He loved you, Reeve.”

  He didn’t know which surprised him more, the feel of her consoling hand on his shoulder or the sudden intrusion of Patrice’s voice upon his remorse. He hadn’t known she was there, kneeling beside him, or how much she’d heard. He only knew how good it felt to know someone recognized his pain. For the moment, it etched starkly into every angle of his face, into the shiny brilliance of his gaze, in the very hitch of his breathing. Patrice was its witness. No way to deny it, no way to cover it up, so he didn’t try. Instead, he let go, leaning upon her as he’d lean upon no other.

  Because he’d eased her sorrow in the church, Patrice held his tawny head to her bosom now, letting him vent his emotions in great, gulping breaths. She stroked his hair and rocked them both in a soothing repetition. And she spoke the words she’d denied him for so long.

  “He loved you, Reeve. He worshiped the ground you walked on. He was always saying, ‘If only I could be more like him.’ He thought if he could be, your father would have loved him.”

  Reeve quieted, shaking his head. “Why would he think that? He was heir to the Glade. He had everything.”

  “Everything but your father’s pride. You had that, Reeve, and for that, he would have gladly traded all he had.”

  “I didn’t want him to die, Patrice. Honest to God.” The words tore from his wounded soul, so angry and raw, it hurt her to hear them. “I’d have traded my life for his if I could have. I don’t know what got into him, some crazy fool idea that he could save others with his sacrifice. I let him do it. I couldn’t stop him. He did what I would have done. Damn him! Why did he pick such a dangerous time to prove himself?”

  Patrice knew, but she said nothing. The truth swelled to form a knot in her throat through which no words could pass. Because she couldn’t tell him what he needed to hear, she felt driven to ease his guilt in another way. Her hand slipped beneath his chin, angling his head back so she could see his tormented features. Her own eyes glistened as she brushed the wetness from his cheeks with a touch so light it was like the intimate warmth of her breath upon his skin. He’d gone totally still, waiting, probing for her reasons with the intensity of his gaze. Because she feared what he might find if he looked too long, too deep, she closed her eyes. And she kissed him.

  The first shy sweep became a lengthy savoring. She could taste the salt of both their tears. They didn’t touch except for their lips. All senses sharpened, focusing upon that kiss, upon the soft receiving textures, the sweetness, the shock of forbidden excitement. An answer to all their wondering.

  It was good between them.

  She couldn’t resist the need to explore. Her fingertips traced the contours of his face, learning its authoritative ridges and tempting hollows. She followed the strength of his rough jaw, down his throat, along his collarbone until, with hands and heart quivering, she flattened her palms against the unyielding wall of his chest to test the urgent passion pounding there. Her own pulse hammered in an uncontrollable response.

  Lifting her face, her eyes closing, she welcomed the hunger of his mouth as it charted cheek, brow, and the tender curve of her eyelids before returning to her now-trembling lips for a thorough plundering.

  “Again,” she gasped breathlessly when they separated.

  Because one more or a thousand more wouldn’t be enough, Reeve hesitated.

  “What do you want from me, Patrice?”

  Her gaze flickered open, at first displeased by the interruption, then soft with sincerity.

  “I want to feel alive again, Reeve. I don’t want to be buried here in this grave. I know it’s awful to say so, but—”

  His forefinger pressed to her lips, sealing in whatever else she’d say. “Don’t apologize. Not to me.”

  She kissed the rough pad of his finger, then rubbed her cheek into his broad palm. She looked back up at him, her eyes luminous, vulnerable. “And what is it you want, Reeve?”

  “I need you to forgive me, Patrice.”

  It would have been such a simple thing to say “I do” and let all the anguish of the past four years dissolve. She could say it, and they could go on from there. But she couldn’t speak the words, knowing they’d be insincere. Not at the risk that the lie would someday haunt them.

  She touched his cheek. Her tone quavered with emotion.

  “I—I don’t know that I can.”

  The disappointment, the crushing defeat of his expression made her wish with all her heart she could have given him the answer he wanted. Instead, she stood and left him there at her fiancé’s grave to make her way in an awkward, slightly hobbling hurry back to the safety of the house.

  Because it wasn’t Reeve she couldn’t forgive for the tragedy of Jonah’s death.

  It was herself.

  Chapter 12

  Deacon Sinclair walked out of Pride’s lumber mill and let all his pent-up frustration go in a savage breath. The name Sinclair had always been good for anything they needed. Right now, he needed lumber, badly, to continue his work at the Manor, to get his family tucked safely under their own roof. Dangerous currents stirred at the Glade, and he didn’t like it. He needed beams for reinforcement, boards for new stairs, milled pieces to refit windows and doors, too damn much to be told he couldn’t buy on name only anymore.

  The mill’s owner, Harve Barlow, was sincere in his apologies. It was business, and business can’t be run on endless promises. How much business had his family brought to Barlow Brothers over the years? Enough to deserve this one favor, this one exception. But he couldn’t get it. He had no credit when it came to trust, either. Barlow didn’t believe he could rebuild and recover from his losses. It showed clearly in his sad eyes, in the regretful shake of his head when he said he was sorry.

  Sorry. Sorry didn’t keep out the rain! He forked his hands back through his hair and tried to get on top of his anger and fear … anger at his helplessness, fear that Barlow was right. He hated not being in control, and everything was sifting through his fingers—their home, the vast acres, his sister, his future. He needed to grab on tight
before it was too late but didn’t know how.

  He needed money.

  He needed a chance to prove what he could do on his own. And one depended upon the other.

  He knuckled his eyes to rid them of the dust and weariness. When he opened them again, he faced the grinning visage of Tyler Fairfax, already well into his cups at quarter past noon.

  “Heya, Deke. You’re lookin’ a little down in the jowls. Anythin’ I can do for you?”

  “Yes. Go away.” The last thing he needed was the added annoyance of a sodden little mealy worm like Fairfax gloating over his miseries.

  Not at all discouraged by his brusque remark, Tyler fell in step beside him as he started aimlessly down the walk. “No luck at the lumber mill, eh? Heard you was riding low on pocket change. Bad luck these days.”

  Deacon shot him a venomous glare. “What business is it of yours, Fairfax, whether I have a pot to piss in or not?”

  Tyler kept grinning. “You can pee off the side of the road for all I care. It’s Patrice I’m thinking about. I’m—my sister’s right fond of her. Hate to see her living in a tent, collecting government meals, if you know what I mean.”

  Not liking his face rubbed into his inability to provide, Deacon snapped, “Have you got a point? Then make it!”

  “Sometimes it’s easy to forget who your true friends are.”

  “Are you saying we have some long-lost bond of friendship between us? If there is, I certainly don’t recall it.”

  Tyler laughed. “Oh, no, Reverend. I know you got as much use for me as spit on your shoes. But we’re on the same side, of the same brotherhood. And folks like us should stick together, especially now when we all need someone to depend on. Someone to take care of our interests and our families while them Feds is lookin’ to grind us under their heels.”

  Deacon drew up, his impatience plain. “Are you talking about those cowards who ride around in the night scaring poor people to death with their torches and their threats? Where’s your hood, Tyler?”

  His smile lost none of its brilliance. “Why, I don’t wear it when I’m out socializing.”

  “Only when you’re terrorizing. I’m not interested in getting help from you or your friends.”

  “They’re more than friends, Deke. They’re family. They see to their own. If you was to ask, I’d have two dozen men with lumber and strong backs over at your place in an hour. You’d be tucked in snug by the end of the week. What do you say to that?”

  Deacon started walking again, his stride brisk and purposeful. “I’d say you’re wasting your breath and my time.”

  Tyler lagged back, slowing his pace so that Deacon outdistanced him. Then he called cheerfully, “You need help—with anything, Rev, jus’ give me a holler. I’ll be nearby.”

  “Just stay out of my sight, you little weasel,” Deacon muttered to himself as he stepped up onto his ragged mount. He kicked it into a jarring canter, eager to escape all the frustrations he’d found in town.

  But later, as he pounded in another board from his fast-dwindling pile, he mulled over the conversation. Sweat blinded his eyes, and the ache in his arm seemed to expand all the way to the roots of his hair. Finally, he leaned his forehead against the interior wall he was replacing. Water from the roof leak had rotted it from inside out, leaving an irreparable mess. He’d had to rip the whole section down, and now he hadn’t the material to finish. That black gaping hole mirrored his prospects as the hammer clunked to the floor from his slackened fingers.

  He wasn’t a carpenter. He wasn’t a mason. He was a man with a superior mind and shrewd instincts lost in a maze of drudgery. He’d been clever and quick enough to evade detection and capture by the Union’s best spy hunters. He’d lived off his cunning for four long years, and now he was totally stymied by the lack of 120 board feet. Shoulders slumping, he closed his eyes and considered the unthinkable.

  Ignorant bullies like Tyler Fairfax were a plague. Everything they stood for went against the grain of honor. Yet, when he looked back on all the things he’d done to survive, he was surprised that he’d balk at this one small point of dignity.

  He knew why Tyler approached him. His skulking Home Guard was seeking a way to earn respectability now that they no longer had the sentiments of a war-torn county behind them. If a Sinclair backed their cause, their prestige and power would grow at a frightening rate. Giving in to terrorists was one thing, siding with a mighty Sinclair was quite another. If he bent to ask assistance, he’d never break free of their association, and that crafty schemer Fairfax knew it, too.

  He hated it. The whole thing. The helplessness. The feel of strangling debt. The uncertainty in the eyes of his mother and sister when he made them vows he knew he couldn’t keep.

  With brow pressed to the hallowed wall of his father’s empire, he felt himself sinking in a quagmire of desperation.

  “Show me another way. Please, give me another way.”

  “You talkin’ to me, sir?”

  Deacon drew a labored breath and turned to meet Jericho’s questioning stare. “No. Just talking to myself.”

  “You look all in, Mista Deacon. Why doan you go on back to the Glade and lets me finish up here? Gets some sleep. All this can wait ‘til morning.”

  Deacon sighed heavily. It could wait. That was the problem. It would have to wait a damned eternity unless greenbacks started falling from the skies.

  Or until he made a deal with the devil—Tyler Fairfax.

  At first, Reeve thought he was alone in the Glade’s big library. The lamps were unlit, and shadows stretched long and solemnly along its wall to ceiling volumes. However, as he took a step in from the hall, a sharp odor reached him, the unmistakable grain scent of rye whiskey.

  When he recognized the figure hunched down in an engulfing wing chair as that of Deacon Sinclair, he started to withdraw, unwilling to disturb his privacy or initiate a strained conversation. Then, oddly moved by the other’s crumpled state, and alarmed by the tumbler full of whiskey about to be upended on his father’s expensive woven rug, Reeve crossed the room quietly, reaching down to relieve Deacon’s dangling hand of the glass. He paused at the sight of the other man’s palm, at the ugly rawness of burst blisters searing across it. Deacon Sinclair, who’d never done any task more strenuous than jotting numbers in a ledger.

  Deacon muttered, his long fingers curling over the sores. Then, with a jerk, he came to a defensive awareness, focus sharpening at the possibility of danger. Seeing no threat in Reeve’s presence, he relaxed back into the curve of the chair.

  “Musta drifted off,” he mumbled, rubbing at his eyes, then wincing as the skin pulled at the open wounds on his hand. He squinted down at them, his expression one of wry humor.

  Without comment, Reeve left the room, returning moments later. Deacon glanced up in question when a pan of cool water was settled on his knees.

  “Stick your hands in there,” Reeve instructed with a gruff indifference. Deacon eased in, fingertips first, tensing as the medicinal soak met raw flesh. But he didn’t withdraw his hands. He was stubborn, not stupid.

  “That’ll keep ’em soft so the edges won’t tear. You can put some salve on when they dry. What happened to your gloves?”

  “Wore them out.” He wouldn’t share the fact that he didn’t have the funds to replace them.

  “I’ll be stopping over at the Manor after I finish up the west paddock.” Reeve made it a statement, so it couldn’t be refused on the basis of pride.

  “No need.”

  “I already planned on it,” Reeve said, giving no weight to the remark that might imply he cared one way or the other.

  “I’ve got nothing that needs doing.”

  Reeve gave a contradicting snort. “Just years of work.”

  Deacon leaned back, eyes closing, his voice a hollow deadpan. “But no materials to see it done. I’ve got taxes to scrape up from somewhere. That’s going to take everything.”

  Reeve read between the lines of what wasn’t said
, deducing that Patrice and her family were very close to being destitute as well as homeless. “The mill won’t give you credit?”

  Deacon didn’t open his eyes. “The mill won’t give me sawdust without having money up front.” He didn’t bemoan the fact or display an indignant temper. And against his better judgment, Reeve allowed a growing admiration for the man, for his toughness and resolve to do right for his family.

  “Have you gone to the bank?”

  Deacon looked up then. His eyes took on a hard metallic gleam in the dim light. His reply was toneless. “Jonah was the bank. It died with him. I suspect as soon as some speculator snaps it up, all the loans will be called and what I’m doing now won’t matter a tinker’s damn anyway. There won’t be a one of us who has a field, let alone a field hand to work it. We’re beaten. We just don’t know when to lie down and die.”

  He pulled his hands out of the water and began to blot them on his dirty trousers. Reeve grasped one of his wrists, halting the careless movements.

  “I’ll bind these up for you.” He left no room for argument. Deacon didn’t relax, nor did he resist. Then Reeve added, “Unless you plan to try an’ shoot me again.”

  Not a muscle in the savagely lean features flickered. Then Deacon said, “Why should I pull the trigger when half the county is lined up to do it for me?”

  Reeve wrapped layers of gauze into a snug protective cushion, then ripped the edges to tie them off. Only then did he answer.

  “Thought you did your own dirty work, Deacon, then left others to take the blame.” He gathered up the supplies with brisk efficiency, then stood to regard the other man with blatant contempt. “Or aren’t you so willing to flash your true colors now that you’ve had to suffer the consequence of your own deeds?”

  “Go to hell,” Deacon told him. “Soon.”

  Figuring he’d done quite enough to warm Deacon up to the idea of accepting him into the family, Reeve left him to his preferred solitude, not at all surprised to hear the empty tumbler smashing against the door he’d closed behind him.