Sycamore Hill

by Francine Rivers

  Jordan’s hand came into my peripheral vision, and instinctively I flinched away, not realizing he was reaching for the reins and not me. The stallion’s presence, my twisting motion and Jordan’s alarmed shout unnerved the gelding, and it bucked to the side, sending me flying headlong through the air. I felt the sleeves of my dress rip as dirt and rock tore into my hands and forearms. The air was knocked out of me, and I lay motionless.

  “Abby!”

  Jordan Bennett swung down from his saddle in a fluid motion and came at me. With an agility born of fear, I came to my feet, gasping for breath. Upon seeing my face, he stopped, and something flickered in his expression. I was too frightened to analyze it, and I took a step back.

  “Abby,” Jordan said more calmly. I still backed away from him, not trusting his anger and remembering the violence of his look only moments before. My arms burned, and I pressed them against me in an effort to stop the pain.

  Jordan moved slowly toward me, looking down at his hands. “We’ll have to wash—”

  “Leave me alone!” I flinched back as he extended his hand toward me.

  He dropped his arm and looked at me, his expression strained. “Reva told me about your offer.”

  Tears of fright and temper burned behind my eyes. “You’re insane, attacking me like that.”

  “Look, damn it!” he exploded in frustration. “If you’d shut up long enough to listen, you’d hear me apologize!”

  “It’s all your fault!”

  “What?” He looked blank.

  “Everything! Everything!” I cried, thinking of James Olmstead and what he had told me about Diego.

  “What in hell are you talking about?”

  “Diego!”

  Some of the anger went out of him. “I thought you’d said something to hurt him. I warned you. And I found him crying in the barn,” he said in explanation for his earlier violent outburst.

  “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. But you... you knew what would happen, didn’t you? You knew James Olmstead and his bigoted school board would find some flimsy excuse to expel him, didn’t you? And you talk about me trying to hurt him. You’re despicable! You’re the most miserable human being I’ve ever met, including the—”

  “Be quiet!” Jordan ordered tersely. A muscle jerked in his jaw.

  “No! Not before I tell you what I think of you!”

  “You’ve said enough. And you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I thought James Olmstead and Reverend Hayes were bad enough. But you’re worse,” I went on, too angry to think of caution anymore. “You knew what they would do to Diego, and you let it happen.”

  “Where Diego decides to go to school has nothing to do with me. He made the decision to try Sycamore Hill again. Where else could he go, for God’s sake?”

  “You ask me that?” I gasped. “You could have sent him anywhere. You have the money to see to his education.”

  “He’s not my responsibility. And even if I did take it on, Reva is too proud a woman to accept any charity.”

  “Charity!” I stared at him, horrified. “You’re even worse than I thought. I can’t imagine why Reva Gutierrez even remains in your employ. If it were me, I’d hate you.”

  “My God! I can’t make head nor tail out of what you’re saying!” Jordan ejaculated in furious frustration. “Just tell me this. Are you going to do what you said? Will you teach Diego here at the ranch?”

  “I’m not going to deny Diego his rights because his father is an insensitive, irresponsible brute!” I exclaimed. Jordan Bennett became very still. His face hardened into a granite mask.

  “Someone told you Diego is my son, is that it?”

  “Apparently it’s common knowledge. You might as well do him the justice of acknowledging him!” I retorted, suddenly hurting inside and wanting to cry.

  Jordan looked away from me and stared toward Sycamore Hill with an inscrutable expression. Then he turned and strode toward his stallion. Mounting, he looked down at me coldly. Something unfathomable passed across his eyes. He gave a harsh, sardonic laugh.

  “Wait until they get around to telling you how I murdered my wife.”

  I stared aghast as he whirled the stallion around and rode at a hard gallop back to the ranch.

  Chapter Eight

  “Everyone believes that Jordan killed his wife,” Ellen Greer answered my question with a disgusted snort. “People always want to believe the worst of others. Don’t believe all that hogwash about the ‘milk of human kindness.’ Most people don’t have a kind bone in their bodies, and if they did, they would be ashamed to admit it.”

  “Ellen,” I sighed.

  “You got me on a sore subject, Abby. I love that boy.”

  “He’s hardly a boy,” I said dryly. “Maybe he’s changed since you had him as a student.”

  “I haven’t lost touch with him. He wrote to me regularly when he was studying in the East, and he still drops by on occasion, though not as often as I’d like it.”

  That was a side of Jordan Bennett I had never seen.

  “I’m not blind to his faults, mind you. I know he has a foul, violent temper when he’s aroused. It got him into trouble more than once in my school. But that was when he was a boy. He’s got more control now.”

  I remembered the expression on his face when he had burst into the kitchen. How much in control had he been then?

  “Even for a patient, placid man, Gwendolyn would have been a trial.”

  “That was her name... Gwendolyn?” I murmured.

  “Gwendolyn Bracklin-Reed, to be precise,” Ellen said in a stilted, mocking voice that clearly indicated her dislike for the dead woman. “One of the true-blue bloods of Boston, and she didn’t want anyone to forget it.” That, at least, explained Jordan Bennett’s prejudice against Bostonians, I thought.

  “What did she look like?” I asked, wondering what kind of woman would attract Jordan Bennett. Ellen gave me a sharp look.

  “So you’re curious about Jordan’s wife, are you? Any special reason?” Those shrewd eyes were alight with mischievous amusement and speculation. I straightened indignantly at the implication and refused to admit to the faint flush that stained my cheeks.

  “We can change the subject any time you wish,” I managed.

  Ellen waved her gnarled hand in reprimand. “Don’t be so sensitive, girl, or I might just think you’re protesting too much. Besides, it wouldn’t do you any good if you were interested in Jordan. He’s sworn off women, except for the Friday- and Saturday-night five-dollar type at the hotel. After Gwendolyn, who would blame him? She was enough to make any man wish he had been gelded. And don’t give me that wide-eyed, shocked look of yours either, Abby. My frank speaking doesn’t embarrass you in the least, and I know it. In fact, I think you thrive on it.”

  “I think you deliberately try to shock me sometimes,” I teased her. “But how do you know so much about his private life?”

  “I don’t. It’s pure speculation. But I know he goes to the hotel on occasion, and I can put two and two together without getting zero.”

  “Why does Reva Gutierrez stay with him under such circumstances?”

  “Reva?” Ellen’s eyes opened wide in genuine surprise. “My heavens! Our little town magpies have been busy filling your ears, haven’t they?” She leaned forward on her cane, one hand on top of the other. “Does Diego look like Jordan Bennett’s son to you, Abby?”

  I colored hotly. “I didn’t mean to say he was!”

  Ellen clucked impatiently. “But that’s what you were thinking. You listen to me, Abby. The next time you see Diego, you take a good hard, long look at him,” she instructed, her neck stretched out like a defensive old banty hen. “Then decide whether what the gossip mongers in this town say is true.”

  “He didn’t deny it,” I muttered unhappily, hoping Ellen was right in her deductions. I did not know why, but it hurt me to believe that Jordan Bennett had fathered Diego. My feelings over him did not bea
r mulling over. I told myself that no matter how much I disliked the man, I did not like to think him capable of such cruel indifference toward his own son.

  Ellen looked astounded and leaned back in her chair. “You mean you actually confronted him with that story? What in the world possessed you to do such a stupid thing?”

  I felt like a child caught in some malicious mischief. “I was upset about Diego, and my temper got out of control.”

  Ellen sniffed derisively. “People with tempers should fetter their tongues. Maybe you and Jordan have more in common than I thought. But I’ll tell you this about him. He wouldn’t admit or deny anything if his life depended on it. I think he takes amusement in watching people make complete jackasses out of themselves.”

  “He’s done it often enough with me,” I admitted miserably. “From the first moment we met.”

  “You never have told me about that,” Ellen reminded me, obviously hoping I would amend the oversight.

  “And I don’t intend to,” I said emphatically, while softening my words with a smile.

  “Well, at least I got the story of the Haversalls out of you,” she chuckled. “Maybe Jordan will tell me about the other.”

  Ellen rocked her chair back and forth a few times watching the emotions play across my face. “We were getting around to talking of Gwendolyn, weren’t we?”

  “We don’t have to,” I said a little too casually.

  “Why don’t you be honest and admit you’re dying of curiosity about her?” Ellen needled.

  “I don’t think I want to hear anything about her,” I said sincerely. The mere mention of her name caused an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach.

  “Well, I’m going to tell you all about her, whether you like it or not... and in spite of your supposed lack of interest,” Ellen scoffed.

  “Gwendolyn Bennett was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. The kind that makes a man fall head over heels in love and has the ability to make him feel he’s the great protector,” she said demeaningly. “Men can be such fools. And Jordan is no exception. He took one look at a pair of violet eyes, and the sense he was born with seeped right out his ears.” She shook her head in disappointment and disgust.

  “I never thought he could be so bamboozled by a woman— or a man, for that matter. But he was. If anything good comes out of that marriage, it will be Linda. She inherited her mother’s looks, but pray to God she didn’t inherit anything else of hers!”

  “How did Mr. Bennett meet his wife?”

  “At some big society dinner. He wanted her the first time he saw her, and when Jordan wants something, he goes after it. He didn’t have to run very hard to get Gwendolyn though. She heard that he had been offered a position with one of Boston’s finest law firms, and she saw money. Their marriage might have lasted if Jordan had stayed in Boston. But he didn’t like the people or their rigid social codes. First chance he got, he packed her up and came back to California, where he belongs. I don’t think she ever got over the shock of that, and she set out to make his life miserable.”

  Ellen looked out the back window, where she could see her niece plucking bush beans. I waited, not wanting to admit even to myself that I wanted to know all about Jordan Bennett. He was a frightful man, and I was much too aware of him already. But it didn’t seem to matter.

  “Gwendolyn had great plans for her life, and a ranch in California had no part in it,” Ellen continued. “She didn’t want to live here, and she made no bones about it. Jordan wasn’t about to let her tantrums drive him back East again. So it was an ongoing war between them. She hated California. She hated the ranch. She hated the people here, and after a while I think she even grew to hate Jordan. She didn’t care who knew it.”

  “But what about Linda?” I asked. Surely there had been something between Jordan and Gwendolyn Bennett for them to have a baby. They must have loved each other for a while after they arrived in California. What went so wrong?

  “Linda, I should think, was an unforeseen and unwelcome accident shortly after they arrived in California. Apparently, Gwendolyn got pregnant almost immediately after she and Jordan were married in Boston. She couldn’t get rid of the baby fast enough once she was born. Reva took Linda to wet nurse.”

  “How did Mr. Bennett feel about that?”

  Ellen made a grunt. “What do you think? He figured a surrogate mother was preferable to Gwendolyn’s open hostility.”

  “No wonder the little girl is so withdrawn,” I said almost to myself. How could a mother reject such a sweet child?

  “She may not come to school now that Diego has been expelled,” Ellen warned grimly.

  “But surely?...”

  “She loves Diego. She’ll more than likely refuse to come to school without him.”

  “And what about her father’s opinion on that?” I asked.

  “Jordan Bennett could teach Linda more than you and I put together. And since you’ve already so magnanimously offered to take care of Diego’s education....”

  “But it isn’t just a question of learning from books, Ellen. Linda needs to be with other children.”

  “So does Diego. And Diego is like her flesh-and-blood brother. She’ll be loyal to him. Do you see the position you’ve put yourself into, Abby? If the school board ever finds out you’re giving Diego private instruction, you are very liable to lose your position.”

  “Are you trying to suggest I not tutor Diego?” I questioned.

  “I’m just saying you should weigh your actions very carefully. You can’t change the world, my dear, and trying to do so might get you right out on your ear. Then what good would you be to anyone?”

  “There are other positions,” I said, defensive of my decision.

  “Spoken like a true idiot.” Ellen did not spare my feelings. “And if you leave here, what good would you be to Diego Gutierrez, who’s the cause of all this? Would you tell me that?” She emitted a disgusted snort. “What a little fool you can be, my dear. Who would give you a reference? James Olmstead? Reverend Jonah Hayes? And what about the other sixty-three children who need you? Diego is one boy. Will you let the others become illiterates so that you can play crusader?”

  “There’s no sense in arguing, Ellen,” I said flatly. “I told Reva Gutierrez I would teach Diego, and I will. If I don’t teach him, I will be condoning the school board’s position.”

  Ellen leaned forward again. “It was misplaced loyalty that kept you with the Haversalls while they stole you blind. Look at what they did to you.”

  “This isn’t the same thing,” I asserted, angry that she had brought up that subject again.

  Ellen sighed deeply and sat back. “No, it isn’t. But just don’t let your emotions rule you. Do what you have to do to keep your own self-respect, but be as quiet about it as a lamb in a lion’s den.”

  I stood up to leave, asking as I did so if there was anything I could get for her. I got the customary sharp reply that anything she needed she could get up and get for herself. It had almost become a ritual.

  “Ellen?” I paused at the door with one final question. “What happened to Gwendolyn Bennett?”

  “No one’s sure. She died of a broken neck. Jordan said she fell, but the story was never really very clear. Old Tom Hal-lender, our sheriff, just let the incident drop without too many questions. He was busy trying to solve a robbery at the same time, and people weren’t pushing to hang anyone suspected of killing ‘the princess,’ as they called her. Nobody except Jordan mourned her.”

  “Then he did love her,” I said quietly, feeling a pain knife through me.

  “Maybe he still did. Or maybe he just loved what he thought she was the first time he laid eyes on her. Or maybe he just mourned the fact that he ever met her in the first place. Who knows?”

  “I suppose Jordan Bennett is a hard man because he’s had a hard life,” I commented.

  “No harder than anyone else around these parts, and a lot easier than some. He has been the cynosure of malicious g
ossip since Gwendolyn’s death. You’ve heard most of it. Diego was another event for which he gained blame. They also credited him with what happened to Prudence....” Ellen cut her sentence off and looked out the window with a tight, irritated expression.

  “Prudence,” I repeated. “You mean Prudence Townsend?”

  “It’s all hogwash and not worth repeating.”

  “What happened to Prudence Townsend?” I asked, sitting back down opposite Ellen Greer, determined to get an answer this time. Ellen looked at me and shook her head.

  “Nothing you’d want to know about, and nothing that would help you in the knowing,” she said firmly. I sat waiting, but she just looked at me with her jaw jutted out. I sighed and rose again.

  “Besides you, does Jordan Bennett have any real friends in this town?” I asked dryly.

  “A few. Emily Olmstead for one, believe it or not. Maybe that’s why James is so outspoken about the rumors surrounding Jordan. He always was a jealous little runt.”

  “Jordan and Emily Olmstead were talking the day I arrived at the general store,” I remembered.

  “I’ll lay you odds that James was nowhere in sight,” Ellen snorted.

  “As a matter of fact, he wasn’t!”

  Ellen started to chuckle.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, curious.

  “You called him Jordan. I thought you disliked the man.”

  I flushed. “I suppose your calling him by his Christian name rubbed off, that’s all.” Ellen was watching me with that pensive, sharp-eyed expression that sometimes unnerved me.

  “What happened to your hands, by the way?” Ellen asked.

  “I fell,” I answered tersely.

  “How and why?”

  “My horse bolted, and I fell off,” I said, keeping to the truth without elaborating embarrassing details.

  “I don’t believe you’re telling me everything. Now out with it!” Ellen snapped like the old schoolmarm she was. “How did it happen, and what’s it got to do with Jordan? I know it has something to do with him because of the course of our conversation this afternoon.”