“Give your blessing to my marriage to another man?”
“Not to another man, to Jonah. Then, I would have.”
That obviously wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
She went back to staring straight ahead, her chin angled high, her hands clenched on the reins. He brooded over her snub, growing more aggravated by the minute.
“Had you expected me to do something different?” he asked at last, a demand rather than a question.
She canted a fierce glance his way. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“Doesn’t it? It must, or you wouldn’t be in such a squawk.”
“A squawk?” Her glare was double-barrel direct. “You’re a fool and a coward, Reeve Garrett, and I shouldn’t have expected so much from you.”
Her haughty manner and refusal to look at him wore hard for the next few minutes, until he could take no more of it.
“What did you expect me to do, Patrice? Protest? Offer you somethin’ better? Like what? Your daddy wouldn’t even let me walk in the front door! Were you plannin’ to give up your fancy parties and frilly clothes to sew the lace on other ladies’ dresses with my mama every night until your eyes couldn’t focus anymore? Were you willin’ to have folks in town stare through you like you didn’t exist? Were you ready to suffer your family’s scorn and never be welcomed in your home again? Were you, Patrice? ‘Cause that’s the best I could have offered you! Are you still mad ‘cause I wanted you to have somethin’ better than that? Someone better than me?”
Her ice-cold stare slashed through him. “It would have been my choice, at least. My choice. But you didn’t have the courage or the trust to ask what I wanted.” She kicked the mare into a brisk gait, permitting no further discussion.
Reeve looked after her, agitated and angry. Would she have chosen him? Unlikely.
With Pride up ahead, Reeve lagged back, letting Patrice ride in alone. He assumed she wouldn’t want to be seen with him. Was it a lack of trust in her that had him making that decision alone? Or was it the fear of hearing her ask him to hang back?
Coward.
He gritted his teeth and nudged Zeus to a quicker pace. He caught up to her on the edge of the sprawling town. She didn’t spare him a look, but every citizen they passed looked plenty. And those looks were far from pleasant. Patrice paid them no mind. Because she was embarrassed to? Or because they truly didn’t matter to her? Discovering that would solve many things.
“Will you be ready to go about noon.”
She shot him a cool glance. “That’s fine.”
Reeve reined in and watched her continue straight through town. Only one thing waited on the other end. The Fairfax home and distillery. She was going to see Tyler.
Though she considered herself Starla Fairfax’s best friend, Patrice could count the number of times on one hand that she’d been invited to her home. Though a constant visitor at the Manor, Starla was a reluctant hostess. Patrice figured it was because of her father, Cole, and his reputation for a vile temper and an overindulgence in his own product. Avery Sinclair never said a good word about him as a Southerner or a gentleman. It was said the best thing his exotically lovely Creole wife had ever done was to run far and hide well to escape him.
But Lorena left behind her two children, breaking
Starla’s heart. Patrice wondered what kind of woman would think of her own freedom over the welfare of her son and daughter.
After that, the Fairfax home, Fair Play, closed its doors to the outside world. Fearing the ridicule of his peers, Cole Fairfax was rarely seen. Tyler and Starla grew up running wild in the grimly shadowed house with only the affection of their mother’s maid, Matilda to give them any direction. Whispers of what went on at Fair Play were hushed in Patrice’s presence, but even as a girl, she’d recognized the scars of tragedy upon the hearts and souls of brother and sister. She’d opened her arms wide to both of them in friendship and sympathy.
Fair Play stood, a square of rose-colored brick buried beneath the gnarled branches of a half dozen century-old live oaks. Stark and desolate in the winter, it sat shaded in heavy secrets once foliage appeared to shut out the light. Patrice shivered when approaching its deep-pilastered porch and blank sheen of tightly curtained windows.
Matilda answered her fourth knock, peering out warily from behind the door.
“Is Mr. Fairfax at home?”
“Mista Cole or Mista Tyler?”
“Tyler.”
“He be here Missy Sinclair, but I doan know if he’s seeing visitors right yet.”
Anger at Tyler’s dealings with Deacon overruled her manners. Patrice put a palm on the door and pushed hard enough to make the elderly black woman take a few quick steps back. “He’ll see me,” she announced with a stiff confidence.
The stench inside the house knocked her back a step. Patrice grabbed for her linen square, placing it
over her mouth and nose as a defuser. Obviously, the place hadn’t been aired since Starla’s sudden departure early in the war.
Through the muffle of her handkerchief, Patrice murmured, “Would you tell Tyler that I’m—”
Her sentence fractured. The handkerchief dropped away from her mouth, the odor forgotten, as she gasped in dismay.
Tyler Fairfax lay sprawled, unconscious, on the main stairs, his face a mass of bruising and bloodstains. Dried crimson streaked the front of his untucked shirt. One arm dangled limply between the stair rails into empty space, and the other trailed down the hardwood steps, hand open, palm up as if reaching for hers. She cried out in horror at the sight of a huge dark stain on the floorboards, thinking it was more blood, but then saw the bottle one riser below his slack fingers and guessed the rest.
She turned on Matilda in a low fury. “How could you leave him there like that?”
The wrinkled features took on a weary dignity. “Dat’s the way he wants it, Missy Sinclair. He done tole us to leave him where he falls, and dat’s what we do.” Her dark eyes flashed with a momentary challenge, then she stared down at the floor again in a pose of meekness.
“Get me some water and clean cloths. Hurry!” As the old woman went to do as bid, Patrice sank down on the stairs beside the insensible man, shaking her head in tender exasperation. “Oh, Tyler, why do you do this to yourself?”
When Matilda returned, Patrice dredged the cloth through cool water and began gently to wash the gore off his face so she could see the true extent of the damage. It was bad, but not as terrible as she’d
first assumed. His nose was smashed from what must have been a terrific blow. The black-and-purple crescents smudged beneath his eyes were from bruising, not actual injury. As she sponged the chill dampness down his neck, he muttered softly and started to come around. His head lolled loosely.
“Star? Starla darlin’, don’t be fussin’.” He pushed at her hands in an uncoordinated effort.
“Shh. Lie still.”
His eyes snapped open, then immediately squinted tight against the needlelike assault of daylight. “Patrice?” He shoved at her hands again and tried to avert his face. “You shouldn’t be here. I don’t want you here.”
She stilled his head, easing it back with the gentle coaxing of her palm. Anguish and upset was plain in his reddened eyes and stark expression.
“Go home, ‘Trice. Please—don’t—”
“It’s all right,” she soothed, settling the remoistened cloth across his brow. “Rest a minute and get your bearings.”
His eyes closed and he took several increasingly deep breaths. When tension eased enough to leave him in a nearly liquid state upon the stairs, she risked a question.
“Who did this, Tyler?”
A smile crooked his lips. “Coulda been anybody, darlin’.”
“But it wasn’t. Who hit you?”
He wasn’t going to tell her. Instead, still maintaining the weak smile, he asked, “What’re you doin’ here, Patrice? That reverend brother of yours ain’t gonna like the notion of you tending this poor ole drunken sinner inside o’ his lair.”
“I’ll tell him you were no threat to my virtue.”
“Damned shame,” he muttered. “So if not to seduce me, why are you here?”
“It’s about Deacon.”
Tyler groaned and rubbed his scratchy cheek against her palm in a blatant bid for more of her affection. She didn’t begrudge it, lightly brushing aside the dark straggles of his hair and stroking his discolorations with the pad of her thumb. When it looked as though he was content to remain in her care indefinitely, she prompted, “About Deacon?”
He sighed. “Now?” With a glance up for confirmation, he groaned and called, “Tilly, darlin’, would you show Miz Sinclair out onto the terrace and serve her up some of your fortifying lemonade whiles I get myself more presentable?”
“Yessir, Mista Tyler. Missy Sinclair, if you’d c’mon with me?”
As Patrice stood, Tyler flopped over onto his belly and levered his knees up under him. His movements were sloppy, his balance none too certain. When she placed a concerned hand on his shoulder, she felt him start with unwarranted alarm, which he quickly tried to grin away.
“I’m fine, darlin’.” But the way he was swaying on hands and knees didn’t reinforce that claim. He reached up a flailing hand to catch hold of the banister to drag himself upright.
“Mista Tyler, you should ought to check in on your daddy.”
Tyler glanced down at the old woman, his expression going flat and still. “Is he dead?”
Matilda was taken aback. “Nossir.”
“That’s all I want to know.” Then he smiled at Patrice, waving her away as if she hadn’t just witnessed
a shocking scene. “Go on with Tilly. I’ll join you direct.”
Frowning slightly, a doubtful Patrice allowed herself to be led outside to gulp up the revitalizing fresh air.
As promised, Tyler returned fit for company in fawn-colored trousers, tucked shirt, and a brown silk-brocaded waistcoat, managing to look both proper and negligent at the same time. His usually swarthy face was clean-shaven and pale, accentuating the dark circles beneath his still-bloodshot eyes. All the smiling charm was there, with none of the animation behind it. To Patrice, he looked worn-down and strangely somber, even though his first act was to bend close to nuzzle her cheek.
“I’m sorry to keep you waitin’ on me. Now what was it you wanted to talk about?” He sat opposite her at a small wrought-iron table and possessed himself of both her hands, placing kisses on the backs of both, then continuing to hold them.
“I want to know why you’re lending my brother money?”
He blinked at her directness but lost none of his outward amiability. “Did he tell you that?”
“No.”
“Then why would you think it’s true? I’m not a bank, darlin’, and you know the good reverend has no use for me.”
“Tyler, you’re weaving a tight web around my family, whether you’ll admit to it or not, and I don’t like it.”
His tone went deep and silkily persuasive. “I would never hurt you, Patrice.” But it still wasn’t an answer.
“I can’t think of what we might have done to
make you wish to ruin us, but I feel it. Tell me why, Tyler. Is it something I’ve done? I thought we were friends.”
“We are, darlin’, an’ I can’t tell you how much your friendship has meant to me.” His expression steeped in tense sincerity. “I have always loved you, Patrice.”
Then before she could react with surprise or dismay, he flashed his brilliant grin and went on as if he’d never made such an abrupt confession.
“Where are my manners? Is that drink cold enough for you, darlin’? Can I have Tilly bring you anything else?”
“N-no. This is fine.” His admission stunned her. She didn’t know what to say to him, if she should say anything. Tyler saved her from floundering with a squeeze of her hands and a smooth explanation.
“Deke and I made an agreement for the land, that’s all. We needed the space, and he needed to take care of his family. Nothin’ suspicious or worrisome in that, now, is there? Don’t you trust your brother to act in his family’s best interest?”
What she didn’t trust was the way Tyler was taking advantage of her brother’s desperation. She didn’t trust his assurances or his deceptive smile. He was lying about something, trying to distract her, but was it about his feelings for her or his motives for the loan? Tyler Fairfax was a complex piece of work.
There was nothing to learn from her inscrutable host. Patrice stood, bringing Tyler up with slightly unsteady gallantry.
“I’d better be going.”
“Afraid folks’ll talk?”
She scowled. “They already are, but I’m sure that’s not your doing.”
He grinned at her searing sarcasm. “Darlin’, I wouldn’t spread such a rumor, though I might wish it were true.”
“When’s Starla coming home? This place could use her.”
The light in Tyler’s eyes went out like the snuffing of a candle. Even his dazzling smile couldn’t put life into the dull misery in his tone. “I don’t rightly know. She’s havin’ such fun in Louisville, she hasn’t had time to miss us.”
He was lying.
“I thought you said she was in Chattanooga. Tyler, what’s wrong? You can tell me. Is it Starla? Is she all right?”
It wasn’t anything obvious, nothing she could see or name, but suddenly she sensed a deep, dreadful fear in him that made her want to scream and shake the truth out of him.
Then the glassiness of his expression disappeared, replaced by his natural gregariousness.
“Ah non, chère,”
he crooned, slipping into his mother’s Deep South patois, drawling the way he did when he was particularly moved by something. “Starla’s fine. She’s flirting with all them officers and steppin’ out every night to some
fais
do do.
Don’t mind me. I jus’ miss her.” He grinned. “She’s the only one who could ever make me mind my manners.”
Patrice relaxed. “Tell her I miss her, too.”
He nodded. Then came the uncharacteristic shift to sobriety once again. “Patrice, Deacon is a big boy, and he don’t need you meddling in his affairs. You listen to him, and you do what he tells you. Don’t get yourself caught up in no trouble.”
“What trouble?” Her demand shook with apprehension.
Instead of answering, he drew her up in a loose embrace. His lips moved soft and warm against her temple, then he murmured in a husky aside, “Don’t be too quick to think the worst of me. And don’t ever be afraid to come to me.”