The Men of Pride County: The Rebel

by West, Rosalyn

  His answer to Starla’s question wasn’t simple. It was a question he’d asked himself a million times, one he’d heard from his men, one echoed in his conscience.

  Why hadn’t he just deserted and come home?

  “Because I’d given my word, Star, to the former commander, to his men, and to those children taken captive by the Apache. I couldn’t just ride away from those promises and live with myself.”

  “Even if none of them was your responsibility?” Clearly, she didn’t understand. But suddenly, he had a very clear picture of his own motivation.

  “It was my responsibility because I was in a position to make a difference, and folks were looking to me to do just that. You can’t have personal honor if you run away from those challenges just to make it easier on yourself or even on those you care for.”

  “I hear the lawyer talking.”

  He smiled at Reeve’s indulgent comment and nodded. “I’d never once thought I’d be wearing a Yank uniform proudly, but when I led that patrol that rescued those little children and another white captive from the Indians, it was one of the finest moments of my life. I was glad to be released from duty when the war ended, but I felt no shame in having served with those men and I hope they felt none serving under me.”

  It was true. He knew it then. What he’d accomplished out on the frontier had done more for molding his character than any fancy school, than any past of privilege. It had taught him humility, pride and … and love. And all of those things together would forever shape the man he’d become: a man who would finish what he started, a man who’d learned to put others ahead of himself, a man who knew the benefit of belonging to a unit. A man who, despite having all those things, was still miserably alone even back where he belonged, even surrounded by his family and friends.

  He thought he’d done a good job of concealing his sense of isolation, but amazingly, it was self-centered Starla Fairfax Dodge who picked up on his inner pain and cornered him about it as he gave her a ride back into town.

  Don’t give up on love so soon. It’ll find you when you least expect it, she’d said.

  He was terribly afraid that he had found it and it had already given up on him.

  He wanted nothing more than to devote the evening to consideration of her statement. But his father had waited up for him with a cigar and a brandy and the discussion he’d hoped to avoid.

  There was nothing but fondness and pride in his father’s regard as they relaxed in the judge’s study. Noble had no fear that either of those things would change, no matter what he said or did, but still he was reluctant to hurt the man who’d given him so much support.

  “You were out at the Glade, I understand.”

  A neutral topic with hard-to-decipher undertones playing about it.

  “I had dinner with Reeve, Patrice, Starla, and her new husband.”

  “The banker.”

  “Yes.” Trouble there, Noble could tell.

  “I’m not one to tell you whom to associate with, but you might want to heed public opinion in this instance. Garrett and his Yank friend aren’t exactly well received.”

  “They will be by me, Judge. If you’re saying I can’t invite them here—”

  “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all.” Of course it was. “This is your home and it’s always open to your—friends. Only were I you, and jus’ starting out, I’d be a bit careful with whom I ally myself.”

  “I don’t plan to ally myself with anyone. I’m a lawyer, remember. I owe my loyalty to my client of the moment.”

  The judge mulled that over for a minute, re-clipping the end of his cigar to show his displeasure over the turn of conversation. Finally, he said, “Let’s talk business.”

  Noble took a long drink and waited.

  “Now that you’re home, it’s time I set you up with your own office and staff. No need to scramble around, digging up customers who couldn’t pay enough to put new buttons on your coat. I’ve got enough work to keep you hopping for the better part of the year and I’m willing to set up a generous retainer. I wouldn’t let any fancy city lawyers handle things for me. Told ’em I was waiting for my son to come home to take care of my interests. There’s a building next to Sadie’s that would make a nice home for your lawyering shingle. Your mama had it engraved as a surprise.”

  He presented the nameplate with a grin, knowing how it would manipulate his son’s emotions.

  Noble Banning, Attorney-at-Law

  Noble ran his fingertips over the recessed gold lettering the way a blind man would read. His voice was thick when he spoke at last.

  “This is wonderful, sir. I’ll hang it with pride.”

  And just as the judge started grinning wider, Noble clipped his expectations.

  “But when I do, it’ll be on my own office, not yours. I appreciate you wanting to give my career a boost, but we’ve discussed this before. I want to do it on my own, Judge, without having to make any compromises down the road.”

  Judge Banning’s air of self-congratulation faded. “You don’t want to taint your business with mine, is that it?”

  “Judge, we don’t see eye-to-eye on the way things should be, that’s for sure. And because you matter so much to me, I can’t allow that to come between us.”

  The judge stared at him for a long, gauging minute. Then his smile returned. “Very prettily said. Are you sure you don’t want to be a politician?”

  “I couldn’t stand the constant strain on my moral conscience.”

  The judge laughed and put out his hand. “Welcome to Pride, son. You’ll do a booming business here ‘cause everybody thinks they’re above the law and conscience doesn’t enter into it. We’re gonna need somebody as incorruptible as you to dig us out of our own messes.”

  Noble took his father’s hand, relieved that for now things were resolved between them. “The voice of reason crying out in the wilderness.”

  “Jus’ try to make me listen to it once in a while.”

  As he lay back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling upon which he’d painted the constellations as a child, Noble began to put his life in order. Firstly, he’d check on the building rents. Then he needed a place to live. He knew he’d always be welcomed within his parents’ home, but he feared conflict of interest would arise sooner rather than later if he were to stay. Better he should claim his business and his personal independence at the same time.

  Then he’d need clients. The money he’d set aside to begin his career wouldn’t last forever, especially at the inflated postwar prices.

  Staying neutral wouldn’t be as easy as he’d made it sound to his father. He knew there were distinct factions in Pride. He could go with his father, which was where the money would be, or he could invest his time and energy for much less financial reward in the people of the county. It didn’t take him a long while to decide which way he would go.

  The wealthy men like his father didn’t need his representation. They were the ones the town needed to be protected against. And once he started down that path, he knew there’d be no turning back. While he’d hope he could retain a relationship with his family, he had to realize that might not be possible. It was a matter of loyalty over conscience. Nothing new there. He wasn’t the only one being forced into that dilemma in this tumultuous world they’d created. But he wouldn’t back away from it, either.

  With his business intentions settled, there remained only one unfinished matter. What was he going to do about his personal affairs?

  There was one thing his friends were good for. Their worth was measured in the value of their advice.

  The next day he sat on the Glade’s wide stone steps feeling the cool Kentucky breeze against his skin. Beside him sat the philosophical Reeve Garrett. Noble broached his subject cautiously.

  “You and Patrice look happily settled in together.”

  “It’s a fine institution, marriage. One I can highly recommend even to my most gun-shy friends.” He laughed at the look Noble gave h
im, then asked, “What’s her name?”

  “Who’s name?”

  “The woman Patrice is sure even now is wearing your heart on her sleeve.”

  “Guess there’s no keeping any secrets from a female, is there?”

  “Darn few, my friend. Darn few.”

  “Her name is Juliet Crowley. She was my commander’s daughter.”

  For the next hour, he tried to explain Juliet, to describe the essence of a woman who without being a great beauty was the most desirable creature he’d ever known. A woman who was the antithesis of the kind of wife he’d wanted for himself, who’d undoubtably be more of a hindrance to his career than a help because of her Northern background and outspoken ways. He didn’t think he could survive another few weeks without having her at his side.

  “So how did you manage to let her get away?”

  “My mind was on the wrong things and she knew it. It wasn’t so much a case of me letting her go as not knowing how to get her to stay.”

  “And you know that now.”

  Noble smiled wryly. “Haven’t a clue.”

  “Well, to my thinking, there’s not much you can do with her up there and you down here.”

  “That’s my thinking, too.”

  “Have you told her that you love her?”

  Noble blinked at him.

  “Well, you might just want to start there.”

  He loved her. He loved her so dearly that he couldn’t recall a time when she wasn’t foremost in his heart, if not his mind. But he’d never said as much, not once even hinted at it, because it was easier to believe her claim of nothing serious than to express his thoughts and scare her away, perhaps for good.

  He was a man given to decisive but not impulsive action. He liked to consider all the angles, weigh each possibility. But where Juliet was concerned, his motives were strictly linear. He wanted her as his wife, his mate, his companion, his friend. He couldn’t begin to imagine that another female walked this earth that could come close to filling that position the way she would.

  But to have her, he’d have to travel north and get her. If she was still free. No simple task. He knew well what she had thought of him during those last days. She’d thought him motivated solely by his code of justice to the sacrifice of all else.

  Had she been wrong?

  If he’d had his priorities in the proper order, would he have ever let her ride away without making some claim for a shared future? Would he have been so derailed by the knowledge that all his efforts for revenge had gone down a dead end that he wouldn’t notice she was leaving—perhaps forever?

  His decision to head straight to Boston to iron out their misunderstandings was postponed by his first legal case on behalf of Starla and her husband. All the while he was in his professional element, he couldn’t shut off that part of himself that urged him to take care of the emotional, too. Only with them in tandem could he reach a balance in either.

  Once Starla’s woes were settled and he had a lease on both a building and its small but airy upstairs living quarters, it was time to buy a ticket for the first eastbound train.

  A plan once again delayed by the unexpected.

  The last person he thought to see on his front steps was George Allen. He figured the country chaplain would be busy building up his church with all his new, hard-won wisdom and cementing his relationship with the Irish girl, Colleen. But here he was, hat in hand, looking younger and more uncertain in his civilian clothes and blatantly miserable.

  “George, how the hell are you?”

  “Can we talk someplace private.”

  Curious as to what had the youth so anxious, he led him to his new office, where the only furnishings were a big chair and some packing crates. He took a crate while George paced the cavernous room.

  “What’s on your mind, George?”

  “It’s not what’s on my mind, Noble, it’s what’s weighing on my soul.”

  “The war is over, George. It’s time to put it aside and move on.”

  “And you’ve done that? You’ve just put away all the things that made you travel halfway across the country, risking life and damnation to learn?”

  Then Noble understood. George was talking about his search for the traitor. “That’s ancient history. Juliet told me the truth before she left with her father.”

  George stared at him. “She did? And—and you decided to do nothing?”

  “Nothing I could do. I couldn’t bring a dead man back to life to punish him for my vain notion of justice. That ideal had already cost me more than I care to sacrifice again.”

  “A dead man? She told you his name?”

  “No. And I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. That part of my life is past, so if you’re worried over the state of my soul, you needn’t be. I’ve decided to leave that particular act of justice to your superior.”

  George didn’t seem particularly happy to hear that. He stared at Noble for a long, silent moment, then said, “I want to ask Colleen to marry me.”

  “That’s grand news. No surprise, but good news just the same.”

  So why didn’t George sound happy about it?

  “She’s placed me on a pedestal like one of her home-country saints. She won’t be convinced that I’m just a man, as susceptible to sin as any other.”

  “Once you’ve been married for a time, I’m sure she’ll figure that out for herself.”

  He didn’t smile. “I can’t take her for my wife, Noble, nor can I accept the appointment to my church until I rid myself of the burden I’ve been carrying in cowardly silence for far too long.”

  Noble felt a prick of insight into an area he didn’t want to penetrate. “You’re a man of God, George. Confess to Him and start over. Why are you coming to me?”

  “Because it’s you I’ve wronged. You and the other men in our troop.”

  George went to stand at one of the grimy windows, looking out over the past and its decisions as if they were even now spread out before him, while Noble listened without a word.

  “I convinced myself that my act was one of moral conscience, that by pulling my friends out of the line of fire in an unholy war, I’d be saving their lives, their souls. I convinced myself that I had the right, no, the duty, to intercede. So many had died, Noble … my childhood best friend as he stood right beside me and others we shared meals and leaky tents and stories with. I felt I was doing God’s will. But I know now that it was my own will behind my actions. I was afraid of dying, Noble. Nothing honorable about that. Just a coward looking for an easy escape under the guise of saving us all.”

  The shock wasn’t as great as Noble thought it should be. Perhaps part of him had always suspected, but never wanted to be proven right. In all those conversations they’d had about moral issues and the state of the soul it wasn’t Noble’s fall from grace they’d been discussing, as he’d always assumed. It was George’s own.

  “Then all those men died in the camp. How could I tell you the truth then? How could I admit to doing something so horribly wrong?”

  “Why are you telling me now, George?” Noble asked quietly. “Why confess when there was no one looking to blame you for the deed?”

  “Because I want to start over, and I can’t until I stand up to what I’ve done, in front of both of you and Colleen—and in front of my mirror. I haven’t been able to meet my own eyes while shaving for better than a year.”

  To Noble’s dismay, George bowed his head and began to weep. Watching him manfully accept the responsibility for treachery, Noble should have felt something akin to rage or vindication. He’d dedicated the better part of a year of his life to one goal only, to discovering who had betrayed them. But knowing didn’t bring back the men they’d lost. It didn’t relieve the guilt he would always carry as their leader. It was a hollow victory at best. Because he understood and sympathized, he was no longer qualified to judge.

  “George, the traitor I sought died at Point Lookout.”

  Wa
tery blue eyes lifted in confusion. “But I’ve just told you—”

  “You’ve confessed a sin that we’ve all carried, one of pride and self-interest and fear. I can’t judge what sits upon a man’s heart when he makes a choice of conviction. It was my sin to think I could. I’ve served long enough to satisfy my conscience and now I’m ready to move on. George, it’s time for you to do the same. Give my best to Colleen. Serve her and your congregation as well as you served me, and be assured that I could not have had a better man standing beside me.”

  Clearly, George didn’t know what to say.

  “You don’t need my forgiveness, George, you need your own.” Noble checked his watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a train to catch to Boston. It’s time for me to make my own reparations.”

  Chapter 24

  Juliet stood staring, unable to form a word or coherent thought.

  It looked like Noble Banning standing at her front door.

  He was just as heartbreakingly handsome as she remembered, even without the extra dash and drama of a uniform, so real, she was almost convinced she could reach out and touch him. But it couldn’t be …

  “Juliet, you’re looking well.”

  The sound of his softly drawled syllables was enough to make her want to launch herself into his arms. But she held back, suppressing her joy, blinking away the wash of jubilation burning in her eyes.

  Noble obviously hadn’t come all the way to Boston to tell her how she was looking. She forced a smile.

  “Papa will be so happy to see you. Come in. He’s just come back from the doctor and could use some company that doesn’t nag him unmercifully.”

  He frowned slightly at her overly cheerful tone. “Is he all right, Juliet?”

  “If a professional soldier can ever be all right without a troop to order around. I’ll let him tell you.”

  Noble followed her through the narrow group of rooms and out the back glass doors. John Crowley sat on the small patio surrounded by what little green and sky the city afforded. He looked well, perhaps thinner from the recovery process, but the black silk patch over one eye lent a debonair appeal. His face lit up with unashamed delight when he recognized his guest.