Shameless (The Contemporary Collection)

by Blake, Jennifer

  “Keith knows? And Gordon?”

  “So it appears.”

  “I don't think,” he said deliberately, “that it's just the money Keith's after.”

  She wondered briefly if he had said that because he thought she needed to hear it. “No,” she replied, “it's the power. It would give him great pleasure to control both you and his brother, even if it's only through me.”

  “I never said that I wouldn't fight Keith,” he said.

  There were rods of steel buried in the set concrete of his voice. She sent him a long glance, but the shadowed planes and hollows of his face were unreadable in the darkness.

  He spoke again, almost at random. “You haven't told Keith you know, have you?”

  She shook her head, then realizing he could barely see that movement, if at all, she said, “Not yet.”

  He was silent, while far away an owl called, a lonesome sound. He turned his head finally, as if he could feel her speculative gaze. His voice abrupt, he said, “Are you sleepy?”

  “Not — really.” She hesitated because she wasn't sure where her answer might lead.

  He turned from her, shrugging his jacket from his wide shoulders. He leaned to spread it on the ground, then touched her shoulder with a slight gesture, pressing her down toward it. When she had seated herself, he dropped to the ground beside her.

  In the quiet that descended, Cammie could hear the whisper of the night wind above them, feel its damp coolness against her face. The pine needles under them were springy, a resilient bed. The musty, yet resinous scent of them rose around them, mingling with the green freshness of spring. She and Reid sat without touching, yet she could sense his warmth, and just catch the wood fragrance of his after-shave. She thought of what he had said about her perfume, and wondered if he could smell it still.

  “Yes,” he said, and gave a low laugh as she turned her head sharply to stare at him. “It's in your hair, I think. What do you do, shampoo with it?”

  She looked away, as if he could see the color in her face. “I spray it in the air and walk under it.”

  He nodded, as if a mystery had been solved. “After you bathe, and before you dress.”

  “What?”

  He looked away, or so she thought from the faint rustle of sound. “Never mind. I wanted — I'm curious about this great affair between Justin and Lavinia. Nobody ever talked about it in my family.”

  “Too disgraceful?”

  He considered that. “It was more that Justin was a private man, I think, and his wife, my great-grandmother, did her best to pretend it never happened. She married Justin, so I gather, only a few months after the break-up of the big affair, as if Justin was caught on the rebound. I heard my mother and her friends talking about it once or twice, but they always changed the subject when they thought I was paying attention.”

  “I'm not sure I know all of it myself,” Cammie said slowly. “It came my way in bits and pieces, too. My grandmother, my father's mother, was always defensive about it; she was a good Christian woman, duty bound to be disgusted by such goings-on. My mother was more tolerant, but then it wasn't her side of the family. Anyway, the general gist of it seems to be that Lavinia wasn't happy in her marriage. She was ten or twelve years younger than Horace, and liked to dance and sing. He thought hard work was the sole measure of a man — or a woman — and that church was a sufficient social outlet for anybody. They had a baby son that Lavinia loved dearly and treated like a favorite doll. That was the situation when the logging crews came into the area.”

  As Reid nodded his understanding, she went on. “The timber companies were from the East, where they knew the value of the wood. The farmers around here were glad enough to have somebody else do the back-breaking labor of cutting down the huge trees and removing them with oxen teams — as far as they were concerned, the timber was in their way. People like Horace Greenley offered hospitality to the crews; it was the neighborly, traditional thing to do, since there were no hotels of any size and the boardinghouse filled up fast. Justin Sayers was one of the men who stayed at Evergreen.”

  “I think I begin to see what happened,” Reid said.

  “I suppose it was natural enough,” Cammie agreed. “Greenley treated the logging crews like royalty. There were square dances, box socials, candy pulls, and even brush arbor revivals; everybody got in on the fun, you see, even the preachers. The loggers were so different from the farmers all the young women knew. There were one or two unplanned pregnancies and shotgun weddings. Then the big trees were all gone, except for those in the swamplands that were hard to reach and scattered tracts that people like Horace held on to for their own reasons. The loggers moved on. When they went, Lavinia left town with Justin.”

  “Just like that.”

  Cammie frowned. “Oh, I doubt that it was easy or that she had no regrets. Well, I know she did have them, because after nearly a year of traveling with Justin to New York and Chicago and Saratoga and staying for a while with his people in Vermont, she returned to Greenley. Horace took her back, which everybody thought was extremely noble of him. Though it turns out it was a sneaking kind of revenge, since he had already divorced her in secret.”

  “And then Justin came back, too,” Reid said when Cammie stopped.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I've always wondered why he did.”

  “For Lavinia, of course. He had persuaded her to go away with him once, he must have thought he could do it again.”

  It was interesting, Reid's certainty, Cammie thought. Was that what he would do if he wanted a woman?

  “Anyway, Justin never left again,” she said, “even afterward, when he was married to someone else.”

  “Now that was a subject that did come up, why he stayed,” Reid said. “Seems he liked the mild climate and easy Southern ways. Besides, there was, all in all, quite a bit of timber still left standing, and he was a sawyer, not to mention coming from good Yankee merchant stock that had nothing against making money.”

  She stared at his shape in the dimness. “I never meant to suggest there was anything wrong with it, or with seeing an opportunity when it stares you in the face.”

  A soft sound left him. “Justin was a touchy man, or so I've always heard. So is his great-grandson.” He paused. “Where were we?”

  It was a moment before Cammie went on. “This is where everything gets murky. Lavinia was pregnant when Justin got to Greenley, and apparently people were counting on their fingers to figure out who the father was. Maybe she refused to leave her toddler again, or was trying to do what she thought was right. Anyway Justin turned to another woman, and they were married. A few weeks later, Lavinia gave birth to a little girl.”

  “And the finger counters, what did they decide?” Reid said. “I only ask because of wondering if some of your cousins might not really be my cousins.”

  “No one knows,” she said dryly. “I suppose it must have been too close to call. Anyway, what happened next put it out of most people's heads. When the baby was only a few weeks old, Horace was found dead out in the cotton field with a bullet in his head. There was a pistol in his hand, but everybody said he was too God-fearing a man to take his own life. Most thought Lavinia had shot him.”

  Reid let out a soundless whistle. After a moment he said, “She was never arrested that I heard.”

  Cammie drew up her knees, clasping her arms around them as she shook her head. “She was a grieving widow and a new mother, her family was socially prominent, and there was no proof. Women of her kind, it seems, could sometimes get away with murder back in those days. Maybe because they so seldom acted without good cause.”

  “Do you think she did that, get away with it, I mean?” Reid's voice was curious, yet reflective.

  “I'm not sure,” Cammie said slowly. “It seems so unlikely. And yet, what if she found out what Horace had done? What if she knew that when Justin came back for her she was already free, but Horace hadn't told her. I think in her place I might have been ready to commit
murder.”

  “Maybe Justin killed Horace for some of the same reasons,” he offered. “Maybe Lavinia found out he did it, but couldn't live with it, and that's why they never got back together.”

  “You think she took the heat for him, because she knew she wouldn't be prosecuted?”

  “I don't much like the sound of that, but I suppose it's possible,” he said.

  “But it doesn't explain the land deal. Why did Lavinia sign the acreage over to Justin?”

  He swung his head toward her. “You don't doubt that she did that?”

  “Not really. Justin apparently thought it belonged to him all those years ago, or he would never have put his sawmill there.”

  “Maybe the two of them were silent partners?” he suggested. “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Or if Justin did shoot Horace, maybe Lavinia felt guilty because she was afraid she had driven him to it.”

  Reid went stiff beside her. “No great-grandfather of mine ever took a payoff, if that's what you're suggesting.”

  “Not exactly,” Cammie said in tentative tones. “But what if the two of them, together—”

  “No. I don't believe he would have killed in cold blood, either. Maybe during some blowup over the whole situation, yes, but not just to be rid of the husband. Justin was your regular Victorian patriarch, upstanding, proud, stubborn, not too flexible—”

  “Rather like Horace, except younger and better-looking,” Cammie said in wry amusement. At the questioning motion of Reid's head, she added, “I've seen pictures of Justin in the town history. You're a lot like him.”

  “I'd say thanks, but I'm not sure it's a compliment.”

  She was, but it didn't seem a good idea to admit it. As she looked away from him, she rocked off balance, her shoulder touching his. She could feel the warmth of him through her windbreaker, and also the firm ridge of muscle that ran down his arm. It seemed he was returning the pressure, supporting her without comment or effort.

  She shifted to regain her position, then released her knees to sit forward. Moistening lips that were suddenly dry, she said, “Anyway, I don't suppose we'll ever know all the details. Lavinia might have been trying to keep Justin around, or maybe she traded the land to him in exchange for cutting timber for her. Or possibly she did it for Greenley out of the goodness of her heart, because she thought the town needed the industry. She did, apparently, have an altruistic streak. She donated the first three hundred acres of land to the state for use as the beginning of the game reserve, you know, several years later.”

  “And Sayers-Hutton Bag and Paper has been adding to the reserve as it acquires land ever since. Did you know that?”

  She frowned. “I never realized.”

  “A family tradition to the tune of thirty thousand acres — less Lavinia's three and whatever was acquired from other landowners, of course.” A short laugh shook him. “The state may have no title to the land, only jurisdiction over management of the wildlife, but I'd like to see anybody try to take even an inch of it out of the program.”

  “I wouldn't, even if I could. Nobody's trying to kill woodpeckers back in the reserve.”

  “I am not,” he said with soft distinction, “trying to kill woodpeckers.”

  She barely glanced at his still form. “You could have fooled me.”

  “God, Cammie, you make me want to—” He stopped, drawing a harsh breath.

  The tension that stretched between them had been there all along. In the sudden quiet, it seemed to take on a life of its own. Cammie could feel it shivering over her skin, insinuating itself into her veins. Her stomach muscles tensed and her thighs tightened. Her mouth throbbed, as if with the rush of blood that might come with a kiss. She knew, abruptly, that if she moved, if she said a single word, Reid would reach for her. The shock was how much she wanted to break his tenuous control, how hard it was to keep from it.

  His voice, when he spoke again, seemed to come from far away and to carry a ragged edge. He said, “I would like you to do me a favor.”

  “What is it?” The words were husky, not quite steady.

  “I want you to let me talk to Keith about this business with the deed before you let him know you've found out about it. It's asking a lot, I know, but I'd like to see what kind of excuse he comes up with for not letting me know.”

  “Why should I do that?” she asked, tilting her head.

  “No good reason except my own satisfaction,” he said with a trace of wry humor. “Will you?”

  If he had argued or demanded, she would have refused. As it was, the quiet nature of his request made it seem not unreasonable after all.

  “Why not?” she said.

  Reid arrived at the mill an hour early next morning. It was becoming a habit; he had learned that he got as much work out of the way in that first hour as he did in the rest of the morning. More and more often, the mill supervisors and other personnel were coming to him with problems and suggestions as they learned he was approachable as well as being his father's son.

  He was proud of their growing confidence and trust in him. At the same time, it made him feel guilty, since he was thinking of selling them out.

  That wasn't precisely correct, of course. There would be guarantees in place, the mill would go on just as before only bigger and better. Still, he sometimes wondered, as he sat looking at the pictures of his father and grandfather and great-grandfather, Justin himself, if they would have seen things his way.

  He wasn't getting much done this morning. He had dragged the profit and loss and operating statements out of the safe again, going over them for the tenth time or more. There were still one or two sets of figures that bothered him. Bookkeeping wasn't his field, but he had traced the problem to procurement. That was Keith's area of responsibility. As soon as his secretary made it in for the day, he was going to send for copies of the checks issued for supplies, as well as the invoices for the past six months.

  He couldn't concentrate for thinking of the night before. The way he had found Cammie in the woods, waiting for him, tapped much too directly into his fevered dreams for comfort. He was tormented by his fantasies of what could have happened, might have happened. He could not stop himself from wondering what she would have done if he had pulled her down on the pine straw with him in the dark, baring her soft skin to the night, and to his touch and taste.

  He should be getting used to the aching pressure of desire she brought to him on sight, much less from sitting with her shoulder pressed against him in the dark. He wasn't. If he closed his eyes, he could conjure up the scent of her, of gardenias and clothes dried in sunshine.

  God, he wasn't even safe from wanting her in his own office.

  He sometimes felt like a starving man allowed only a single taste of a banquet before being forced to stand guard over the forbidden richness. That it was his own circumstances that caused it made it no better.

  There was a bittersweet pleasure in it, regardless. Cammie was coming to accept him as a part of her life, even if not an important part; the night before proved it. She had believed he'd known nothing of the legal problems with the mill land, he was almost sure of it. Not that it was possible to be absolutely certain of anything with her. Cammie was good at hiding her feelings. Too good.

  At least she hadn't ranted and raved, hadn't delivered one of her verbal assaults. He felt he'd come away from that hour or two of closeness with relatively few bleeding wounds. Who could tell? Unless something happened to spoil the rapport, the two of them might manage one day to have an entire conversation without insulting each other. Not that he was holding his breath.

  His early morning work time was gone; he could hear other people arriving in the offices down the hall. Somewhere there were even raised voices, somebody letting off steam. He might as well see if Keith had made it in, have his talk with him and get it out of the way so he could concentrate on other things. If the opportunity presented itself, he might even ask him a question or two about the huge amounts
of certain supplies, ink for instance, that the mill was suddenly using as if there was a direct pipeline to the distributors.

  As he left his office and started down the hall, a door opened near the far end. Two men emerged.

  Reid slowed, with every well-honed instinct tingling. The hard, compact look of the two men, the assessing stares that they turned in his direction, bordering on insolence, tightened his stomach muscles. He felt, in that instant, the absence of a weapon at his side. It was the first time he had thought about that kind of thing in weeks, the first time since he had returned to Greenley.

  The two men, strangers as far as he could tell, nodded politely in his direction, then walked quickly away down the hall in the direction of the mill entrance. Reid frowned after them as he realized the office they had been visiting belonged to Keith. His face hardened as he moved on down the hall. Knocking once on the door, he pushed inside without waiting for an answer.

  Keith sat hunched over his desk with one arm wrapped around his belly. He pressed a blood-smeared handkerchief to the red wetness that trickled from the corner of his mouth and inspected the result. As the office door clicked shut, he looked up, exposing a bloodshot eye that was rapidly turning a vivid bluish-purple.

  “What do you want?” he said thickly.

  “Nothing that can't wait. Do you need a doctor, or somebody to take you to the hospital?” The damage, Reid thought, looked more painful than life-threatening, but there was always the possibility of internal injuries.

  “I don't need anything — especially from you,” Keith muttered, the words compressed and difficult as he squeezed his ribs. “Get out, leave me alone.”

  It was plain to Reid that Keith didn't intend to discuss what had happened. The reason wasn't hard to imagine. He'd been worked over, and the men who'd done it weren't social acquaintances. Reid pegged them as professional strong-arm boys. Cammie's complaints about her husband's spending habits, and the conclusions he himself had reached, were beginning to make an interesting kind of sense.

  Keith's color was improving, probably the effect of temper. Reid stared down at the weak, self-indulgent man who had been married to Cammie, and was amazed at how little sympathy he felt for him. He wished, for reasons that he didn't much care to examine, that he could have been behind a few of the punches that had redecorated the other man's face.