Just Imagine (28 page)

"Is this your punishment for what happened yesterday at the pond?"

"This has nothing to do with yesterday," he said so tonelessly she knew he was lying.

Her rage felt as if it were strangling her. "Damn you, Baron Cain! You're not going to control my life any longer. You send word to Brandon that you've changed your mind, or I swear to God, I'll make you pay!"

She was so small and he so large that her threat should have been ludicrous. But she was deadly serious, and they both knew it.

"Maybe you already have." He headed out across the paddock.

She stumbled toward the orchard, not seeing where she was going, knowing only that she had to be alone. That day at the pond… Why had she told him the truth?

Because if she hadn't, they wouldn't have stopped.

She wanted to believe she could make him change his mind, but she knew as surely as she drew breath that he wouldn't. Her childhood hatred of being born female returnee! in a rush. How she hated being at the mercy of men. Would she now have to drag Bertrand Mayhew here from New York?

The memory of his fussy ways and soft, pudgy body was repulsive to her. Maybe one of the men who had showered attention on her since she'd returned… But Brandon had been the Holy Grail, and choosing any other made her despair.

How could Cain have done this to her?

The question haunted her for the rest of the evening. She refused dinner and sealed herself in her bedroom. Miss Dolly came to the door, and then Sophronia. She sent them both away.

Long after dark, there was a sharp knock from the adjoining sitting room. "Kit, come in here," Cain said. "I want to talk to you."

"Unless you've changed your mind, I don't have anything more to say to you."

"Either you can come in here or I'll join you in your bedroom. Which is it going to be?"

She pressed her eyes shut for a moment. Choices. He presented them to her and then took them away. Slowly she walked to the door and turned the knob.

He stood across the sitting room, a glass of brandy in his hand, his hair rumpled.

"Tell me you've changed your mind," she said.

"You know I haven't."

"Can you even imagine what it's like to have another person control your life?"

"No. That's why I fought for the Union cause. And I'm not trying to control your life, Kit. Despite what you think, I'm trying to do what's right."

"I'm sure that's what you've told yourself."

"You don't want him."

"I have nothing else to say to you."

She turned and headed back to her room, but he caught her in the doorway. "Stop being so stubborn and use your head! He's a weakling, not the kind of man who could ever make you happy. He lives in the past and whines because things aren't the way they used to be. He was born and bred for only one thing, and that's running a plantation on slave labor. He's the past, Kit. You're the future."

There was more truth in what he was saying than she would admit. But Cain didn't know the real reason she wanted to marry Brandon. "He's a fine man, and I would have been privileged to call him my husband."

He gazed down at her. "But would he have made your heart pound the way it did at the pond when I held you in my arms?"

No, Brandon would never have made her heart pound like that, and she'd have been glad of it. What she'd done with Cain made her feel weak. "It was fear that made my heart pound, nothing else."

He turned away. Took a sip of brandy. "This is no good."

"All you had to do was say yes, and you'd have been rid of me."

He lifted his glass and tossed down the rest of his drink. "I'm sending you back to New York. You're leaving on Saturday."

"What?"

Even before Cain turned and saw her stricken expression, he knew he'd driven a knife into her heart.

She was one of the most intelligent women he'd ever known, so why did she have to be so stupid about this? He knew she wouldn't listen to him, but he still tried to think of something he could say that would penetrate her stubborn will and make her see reason, but there was nothing. With a muffled curse, he left the sitting room and headed downstairs.

He sat in the library for some time, his head bowed, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Kit Weston had gotten under his skin, and it scared the hell out of him. All his life he'd watched men make fools of themselves over women, and now he was in danger of doing the same.

It was more than her wild beauty that stirred him, more than the sensuality she hadn't yet entirely claimed. There was something sweet and vulnerable about her that unearthed feelings inside him he hadn't known he possessed. Feelings that made him want to laugh with her instead of snarl, that made him want to make love with her until her face lit up with a joy meant for him alone.

He leaned his head back. He'd told her he was sending her back to New York, but he couldn't do it. Tomorrow he'd tell her. And then he was going to do his best to start over with her. For once in his life, he was going to set his cynicism aside and reach out to a woman.

The thought made him feel young and foolishly happy.

The clock chimed midnight when Kit heard Cain go to his room. On Saturday she would have to leave Risen Glory. It was a blow so devastating, so unexpected, she couldn't comprehend how to deal with it. This time there would be no schemes to sustain her as there'd been during her three years at the Academy. He'd won. He'd finally beaten her.

Rage at her powerlessness overcame her pain. She wanted vengeance. She wanted to destroy something he cared about, to ruin him as he'd just ruined her.

But there was nothing he cared about, not even Risen Glory itself. Hadn't he turned the plantation over to Magnus while he completed his cotton mill?

The mill
… She stopped her pacing. The mill was important to him, more important than the plantation, because it was his alone.

Devils of rage and hurt whispered to her what she could do. So simple. So perfect. So very wrong.

But no more wrong than what he'd done to her.

She found the slippers she'd kicked off hours earlier and stole from the room on bare feet. Noiselessly, she crept down the back hallways and staircases of the great house and out through the rear.

The night was clear, with just enough moonlight for her to see where she was going. She put on her slippers and made her way through the fringe of trees that surrounded the yard toward the outbuildings beyond the house.

The storage shed was dark inside. She reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the candle stub and matches she'd gathered from the kitchen. Once the candle was lit, she saw what she wanted and picked it up.

Even half full, the kerosene can was heavy. She couldn't risk saddling a horse, so she'd have to carry it on foot for almost two miles. She wrapped a rag around the handle so it wouldn't cut into her palm and let herself out of the shed.

The deep quiet of the Carolina night amplified the sound of the kerosene sloshing in the can as she walked along the dark road that led to the cotton mill. Tears slipped down her cheeks. He knew how she felt about Risen Glory. How he must hate her to banish her from her home.

She loved only three things in her life: Sophronia, Elsbeth, and Risen Glory. Her whole life had been marked by people trying to separate her from that home. What she planned to do was evil, but maybe so was she. Why else would so many people hate her so much? Cain. Her stepmother. Even her father hadn't cared enough to defend her.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong
. The kerosene sloshing in the can told her to turn back. Instead of listening, she clung to her despair. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. A dream for a dream.

There wasn't anything inside the cotton mill to steal, so the building wasn't locked. She hauled the can to the second floor. With her petticoat, she gathered up the sawdust lying around and piled it at the base of a supporting post. The outer walls were brick, but a fire set here would destroy the roof and the interior walls.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

She wiped her tears on the sleeve of her dress and saturated the area with kerosene. With a sob of agony, she stepped back and threw in a lighted match.

It ignited in a quick, noisy explosion. She stumbled backward toward the stairs. Great tongues of flame lashed at the wooden post. Here was the vengeance that would comfort her when she left Risen Glory.

But the destruction she'd wrought appalled her. This was ugly and hateful. It only proved that she could inflict pain as well as Cain.

She grabbed an empty burlap sack and began beating at the flames, but the fire was burning too fast. A shower of deadly sparks rained on her. Her lungs burned. She stumbled down the stairs, gulping for air. At the bottom, she fell.

Billows of smoke swept down after her. The hem of her muslin dress began to smolder. She smothered out the embers with her hands and crawled to the door.

The great bell at Risen Glory began to ring just as she felt the clean air on her face. She pushed herself up from the ground and stumbled into the trees.

The men had the fire out before it could destroy the mill, but it had damaged the second floor and much of the roof. In the predawn light, Cain stood wearily off to the side, his face streaked with soot, his clothing scorched and smoke-blackened. At his feet lay what was left of a kerosene can.

Magnus came up beside him and silently surveyed the damage. "We were lucky," he finally said. "The rain we had yesterday kept it from spreading too fast."

Cain stabbed at the can with the toe of his boot.

"Another week and we'd have been installing the machinery. The fire would have gotten that, too."

Magnus looked down at the can. "Who do you think did it?"

"
I
don't know, but I intend to find out." He looked up at the gaping roof. "I'm hardly the most popular man in town, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that someone decided to get back at me. But why did they wait so long?"

"Hard to say."

"They couldn't have found a better way to hurt me. I sure as hell don't have the money to rebuild."

"Why don't you go back to the house and get some rest? Maybe things'll look better in the morning."

"In a minute. I want to take another look around first. You go ahead."

Magnus squeezed his shoulder and headed for the house.

Twenty minutes later Cain spotted it. He bent down on one knee at the bottom of the burned staircase and picked it up in his fingers.

At first he didn't recognize the piece of tarnished metal. The heat of the fire had melted the prongs together, and the delicate silverwork across the top had folded in on itself. But then, with a sudden wrenching in his gut, he knew it for what it was.

A silver filigree comb. One of a pair that he'd so often seen caught up in a wild tangle of black hair.

The twisting inside him turned to agony. The last time he'd seen her, both combs had been tucked into her hair.

He was crushed by a vise of raw emotion. He, of all men, should have known better than to let down the barriers he'd so carefully erected. As he stared at the misshapen piece of metal in his hand, something tender and fragile shattered inside him like a crystal teardrop. In its place was left cynicism, hatred, and self-loathing. What a weak, stupid fool he'd been.

He stood to pocket the comb, and as he walked out of his ruined mill, his face twisted with a vicious, deadly sense of purpose.

She'd had her revenge. Now it was his turn.

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