* * *
Teddy stood by one of Wildacre’s front windows, staring out in the direction of the family graveyard where it was now all but certain that Eleanor would not be buried. He’d slipped the ruby and diamond ring onto his watch chain, where it hung beside the fob containing a miniature of the woman who would never be his wife.
“I was against this marriage from the beginning,” Lawrence said.
“You welcomed the fortune she’d be bringing,” Teddy answered bitterly, swinging around angrily to face his brother.
“That was before I met her. She wasn’t right for you,” Lawrence insisted. “Father agreed with me.”
“None of us would have wished her harm,” Elijah said placatingly. “But perhaps it is for the best.”
“How can you say that?” Teddy was close to losing control. “You didn’t know her the way I did. You didn’t want to know her.”
“You forget yourself,” Elijah reprimanded. “We have guests.”
Geoffrey and Prudence, who should have been embarrassed and appalled at what they were hearing, made no attempt to interrupt or excuse themselves. The Bennett men had suddenly begun to reveal what they had previously been at pains to conceal.
“I think Teddy must be forgiven for his outburst,” Geoffrey said. “To lose a beloved fiancée and a valued old family retainer in the same week would be a strain on anyone. He has my utmost sympathy and understanding.”
Elijah stared at him. “What family retainer?” He turned to Lawrence, who shrugged his shoulders. “Teddy?”
“Aunt Jessa. Someone beat her senseless. They buried her yesterday. I paid my respects.”
“Lawrence, did you know about this?”
“She left Wildacre years ago. I’d forgotten all about her.”
“She raised you,” Teddy said. “She helped birth all the Bennett babies, and then she took care of us until we got too big for the nursery. And even afterwards. How could you forget her?”
“She was an old woman,” Lawrence said. “She’d lived longer than most.”
“Can you hear yourself?” Teddy raged.
“This is not a fit topic for an argument among gentlemen,” Elijah interrupted, bowing apologetically in Prudence’s direction. His sons stared at one another in venomous silence. “I regret you had to be subjected to it, Miss MacKenzie.”
“I find everything about Bradford Island to be endlessly interesting, Mr. Bennett,” she replied, remembering to widen her eyes admiringly.
“It’s a shame your first visit had to be marked by tragedy. I’m certain Mr. Hunter has told you that we Southerners pride ourselves on our hospitality.”
“He has indeed.”
“I suppose you’ll all be leaving soon to return to New York City. Under the circumstances.”
“Not immediately.” Prudence smoothed her skirts, then folded her hands in demure determination. “Not until we’ve discovered the cause of Eleanor’s accident.” She paused. “If that’s what it was.”
“I’d forgotten that Lawrence told me Mr. Hunter was a Pinkerton at one time,” Elijah said, glancing at his son.
Geoffrey smiled noncommittedly.
“We’ve questioned two of the islanders already,” Prudence continued.
“Questioned?” Elijah asked.
“I don’t like the idea of our people being interfered with by outsiders,” Lawrence said.
“Your people?” Prudence queried so softly it was almost a whisper.
“Free or not, they’ll always be our people.” Lawrence looked to his father and brother for corroboration. “That’s something you Yankees will never understand.”
“Perhaps you could explain it to me, Mr. Bennett.”
“I doubt it, Miss MacKenzie. We had to fight a war over the way we chose to live.”
“We lost,” Geoffrey stated.
“So we did,” Elijah said.
Lawrence finally broke the uncomfortable silence that followed his father’s reluctant admission. “It may be time to make a sweep through the woods again.”
“It’s been awhile,” Elijah agreed.
“I don’t understand,” Prudence said.
“We get some hardcases hiding out in our live oaks from time to time,” Lawrence explained. “They come over from the mainland to get away from the sheriff or whoever’s chasing them, and mostly they’re not followed. It’s too hard to track anyone into the swamp. So they stay back in there and hide out. Live on fish and whatever they can steal. Wait for the stink to die down so they can get away. When we get a real bad one, we have to go in and flush him out.”
“And you think that’s what happened now?” Geoffrey asked.
“Could be. Our boys might fight a bit when they get liquored up, do a little cutting, but they don’t usually go as far as what you say was done to Aunt Jessa.” Lawrence’s tone had changed, become almost neighborly in a conspiratorial way.
“Beaten to death,” Teddy said. “You wouldn’t do that to a dog.”
“When did it happen?” Lawrence asked.
“Night before last is what we figured. Jonah brought me word yesterday morning. It was early, around sunup. Nobody else was awake. I went right out.” Teddy blinked and then closed his eyes briefly, as if to erase the mental image of what he had seen.
“It was Jonah who found her?” Lawrence persisted.
“We asked him if he’d heard anything in the night, if maybe somebody passing through the trees woke him,” Prudence said.
“What did he say?” Lawrence shifted his attention to the young woman he plainly disliked.
“Nothing. He didn’t hear or see anything,” Geoffrey said. “All he could tell us was that he’d gone over to check Aunt Jessa’s woodpile. And that’s when he found her.”
“You believe him?” Lawrence clearly had his doubts.
Geoffrey answered before Prudence could tell them she’d thought he might be lying, probably out of fear.
“He doesn’t know anything,” Geoffrey repeated with finality.
“Neither does Preacher Solomon,” Prudence added. She thought she understood that Geoffrey was protecting Jonah, though she wasn’t sure why exactly he would think it necessary. But if Jonah had to be safeguarded, then so did Preacher Solomon.
“You’ve been busy,” Lawrence sneered. “But I guess that’s what makes Pinkertons and Yankees different from the rest of us.”
Prudence didn’t like Teddy’s brother. She really didn’t like him at all.
CHAPTER 12
The beach at twilight was as close to pure serenity as Prudence thought she had ever gotten. Despite the ugly scene at Wildacre, she had been able to dismiss the Bennett men from her mind as the setting sun filled the western sky with shades of peach and amber. When it finally slipped below the horizon, the gray wash that spilled over the water onto the land was as soft as goose down.
“Look, Geoffrey,” she said, directing his attention back toward the upper-story porches of Seapoint. Abigail Dickson, wrapped in a shawl, her night-braided hair coiled over her shoulders, stood beside her husband. As they watched, Philip put one arm around his wife and drew her closer to him. She did not resist.
“Let’s not go in yet.” Prudence reached for Geoffrey’s arm as she struggled through sand that grew harder to walk on the farther they got from the water. She had so much to say to him, but the words wouldn’t come. Perhaps the conventional intimacy of walking arm in arm would open the floodgates.
“Shall we go along the sound side? The wind off the Atlantic is starting to get chilly.” He’d tried several times to explain to her how deeply the comment about believing it was all right to own other human beings had hurt him. It was something against which Geoffrey had fought for as long as he could remember. It had driven a wedge between him and his family, exiled him to the North, and tortured him in those nighttime hours when conscience-stricken dreams resurrected images he’d vowed to suppress forever. That Prudence had shown herself unaware of his struggles merely prove
d how wide was the gulf that still separated them.
They strolled in silence until Seapoint faded into the shadows. The beach came alive at dusk as crabs scuttled out of their burrows toward the water. Tiny fish, stranded in shallow pools, darted in frantic circles. Sea oats waved gently in the soft air of the sound that stretched between Bradford Island and the Georgia mainland. Every now and then a fish leaped or a bird called out one last time before settling in for the night.
“I was glad to see Eleanor’s parents together again,” Prudence began. “I was afraid her mother would shut Mr. Dickson out of her grief. Laudanum does that to people. It isolates them in their own pain and addiction. The drug becomes a secret you have to hide. You always fear someone will take it away from you.”
She was referring to her own battle with the contents of the little brown bottles women carried in their reticules and concealed in their bedrooms. Geoffrey had saved her from that hellish refuge. Perhaps speaking of such a private matter would tear down some of the barriers between them, which, she now admitted, had been her fault. She had lashed out in a moment of insensitive and cavalier anger. He was not responsible for his upbringing, any more than she could claim credit for hers.
Prudence waited for him to answer, but he did not. Just when she was beginning to experience the first twinges of real fear that he would never forgive her, she felt the warmth of his hand close over hers. She sighed in relief and deep contentment, confident now that he would speak when he judged the moment right. She could wait.
She turned toward him eagerly when he stopped, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on something or someone gliding out from the marshy reeds that grew at the mouth of a small stream emptying itself into the sound. “Look,” he whispered, moving them into the darker shadow of a dune.
It was just light enough to distinguish the silhouette of a small boat, a shallow-bottomed skiff like the ones from which she’d seen fishermen casting seine nets for bait. Geoffrey’s finger against her lips warned her not to speak above a whisper. The Bennett men had talked this afternoon of fugitives from the law hiding out on the island until it was safe to attempt an escape. Could this be one of them?
“He’s going across on the incoming tide,” Geoffrey said. His breath tickled against her neck, sending shivers to places no well-bred young lady was supposed to think about. “You can see the current out in the center of the sound. It sweeps across diagonally to a spot on the mainland. If he catches it, he won’t have to use his oars and he’ll be safe on the opposite shore much faster than he could manage without it. Less chance of being caught.”
“Do you think he’ll make it?”
“He knows what he’s doing. Whoever he is, he’s no stranger to these waters.”
They watched as the figure pushed the boat through the last of the reeds, then hauled himself aboard. He retrieved a long pole from the bottom of the skiff, his body clearly outlined against the last fading light of the sky.
“Geoffrey, does he look familiar to you?” Prudence asked. “I can’t make out any of the features of his face, but I have the feeling I’ve seen him before.”
“Do you remember where?”
“No. And I’m not even sure I’m right. It was just a momentary impression. I’m probably mistaken. What is he doing now?”
“He has to pole himself over the shoals,” Geoffrey told her. “There are sand bars all along the shore where the water is shallow.”
Mesmerized, Prudence watched the rhythmic rise and fall of the man’s shoulders as he nudged his boat toward deeper water. Geoffrey was right. He knew what he was doing. If he wasn’t an islander, if he was running from the sheriff, she hoped he’d make it to safety, to a new start somewhere else. The darkness of his skin told her that if he stayed, Lawrence or men like him would hunt him mercilessly when they swept through the live oaks. She was learning the hard, unwelcome lesson that some lives counted for less than others.
A shot rang out through the clear evening air with a crack like a tree split by lightning. The man in the skiff tottered for a moment. The pole dropped from his hands. His body toppled into the water just as the boat caught the edge of the current and whirled away on the rush of incoming tide.
Geoffrey dragged Prudence to the sand as the echo of the gunfire rolled over them. Holding her so tightly she could barely breathe, he covered her body with his, forcing her to lie still beneath him.
Not another sound broke the silence. They never heard the marksman retreat, nor was there any desperate splashing from the spot where the victim had fallen overboard.
He was dead.
* * *
“Will the body wash ashore?” Prudence asked, staring at the dark waters of the sound, moonlight catching the crests of its waves.
“I doubt it,” Geoffrey said. “The boat spun away into the tidal current, and I think it’s likely the body was swept off also. This was a carefully calculated execution. Whoever killed him didn’t want him found.”
Prudence shuddered despite the jacket Geoffrey had draped over her shoulders. “Do you think we’ll ever learn who he was?”
“Someone will know he’s missing.”
“But if he sneaked over to the island to hide out . . . ?”
“Sheriff Budridge is the kind of man who never forgets either the name or the face of anyone who manages to get away from him. He’ll have a good idea who the dead man could be. But without a body or at least a description, I doubt he’ll say anything.”
“I don’t think the sheriff approved of me,” Prudence said. “He didn’t come right out and tell me not to stick my nose in where it didn’t belong, but he didn’t hide his dislike.”
“And I’m an ex-Pinkerton,” Geoffrey added. “Which to some people still means Union spy.” He gently turned Prudence away from the water and tucked her arm in his. “Are you all right?”
“Strangely enough, I am. Somehow nothing of what we just witnessed seems real. That’s part of the barbarity of it. A man we don’t know anything about is ambushed by someone we never caught a glimpse of. We have no idea why, and there isn’t even a body to provide us with any clues. Do you think anyone will believe us when we tell them what happened? What we saw?”
“We’re not going to tell anyone,” he said.
“We have to report it to the sheriff,” she argued, forgetting to keep her voice low. “He may not like either of us, but a crime has been committed in his jurisdiction. He’ll have to do something about it.”
“You heard what Teddy said about Aunt Jessa’s murder. The sheriff wasn’t summoned because Teddy knew he probably wouldn’t come. Even if he did, there wouldn’t be an investigation. I know it’s unfair, Prudence. But that’s the way it’s always been down here. I don’t think it will ever change.”
“How horrible! As if the poor man isn’t any more important than a dead animal.”
“He faced hanging, or worse, if he got stopped on the mainland,” Geoffrey said. “It isn’t much consolation, but at least this was a clean death.”
“Surely someone else heard the shot?” Prudence refused to give up. “And if they did, they’ll report it.”
“I doubt anyone else heard it. But if they did, and they live in the live oaks, they won’t say a word. Not even to one another.” He halted for a moment to order his thoughts and impress on Prudence the seriousness of their situation. “If we say nothing, then the only ones who will know what happened are you and I . . . and the killer.”
“He couldn’t have seen us, Geoffrey. He was in the trees.”
Geoffrey held out one of Prudence’s arms. The white skin shone in the moonlight.
She stared at his face, at the features starkly outlined by the same silvery light that turned the sand on which they stood luminescent.
“We can’t ignore the fact that just before he fired the shooter might have sensed someone was nearby, might have heard our voices,” Geoffrey said somberly. “Might have, Prudence. And taken the shot anyway. But he co
uldn’t have been close enough to recognize us.”
“And if he didn’t know anyone was on the beach?”
“Then we were lucky. And that’s the way we need to keep it.”
* * *
She knew it wasn’t right, but Prudence agreed not to say anything. For the moment. For tonight, at least. The one thing she couldn’t deny was that Geoffrey was undoubtedly correct when he insisted that the sheriff would do nothing. If they went to him, they would only expose themselves. To no good end.
She felt curiously empty. Drained of emotion. It had been such a long, dreadful day.
The maid assigned to her had turned down her covers, opened the door to the veranda to let in the cool air, and laid out her nightclothes. Then she’d sat down to sew and wait, and promptly fallen asleep over her mending. Prudence shook her awake, accepted help with her corset, then sent the exhausted girl off to her narrow bed in the attic. Prudence didn’t want company tonight, not even the comfort of having someone brush her light brown hair.
She thought the lamplight was picking up sunstreaks of gold as she plaited the braids that prevented painful tangles in the morning. She remembered how her mother had scolded her for romping on their Staten Island lawn when the summer sun turned her skin golden and bleached out her curls. Such a long time ago. Prudence wondered what her parents would have thought of their detective daughter who was earning a reputation in society for breaking more rules than she kept.
She was so tired it was hard to think straight, hard to marshal her thoughts. Strange to be thinking of her parents tonight. She supposed it was the sight of Philip and Abigail Dickson comforting one another that had brought them to mind. The Dicksons mourning their daughter, turning to one another under the weight of an unfathomable loss.
Enough, she told herself. Enough. It’s nearly midnight. I need sleep.
She slipped off her night robe and draped it over a chair, started to lay her slippers where it would be easy to find them in the morning, then changed her mind. The bare wood floor was already cold underfoot. She walked over to the veranda door to close it, stepping outside for a final glimpse of brilliant stars in the deep black of the clear night sky.
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