Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) (40 page)

It was more imperative than ever that he find Whiskey Joe.

Catherine St. Claire swept through
Belle Riviere
like a
petite hurricane. From the lowliest chambermaid to the proud old man cloistered
in his room upstairs, there was hardly a member of the household who failed to
feel the force of her indomitable will, or bend before it like reeds before the
gale. And Reagan was at the center of the storm.

It began at cock’s crow next morning with Annette’s sly scratching
on the bedchamber door. “Mam’selle. Mam’selle!” Having lain awake most of the
night, her thoughts a dark, troubling vortex that threatened to drag her under,
Reagan buried her head in her pillows and pretended not to hear. “Mam’selle! Mam’selle,
please, it is time to waken!”

“For heaven’s sake, Annette,” Reagan said with a yawn, “it’s
half-past six! Leave me in peace. I’ll speak to you later.” Much to Reagan’s
consternation, the door opened and Catherine entered the room on a wave of
fresh lilac and steely determination.
“Bonjour,
” she
began, breaking off suddenly to send Reagan a sunny smile. “Might I call you
Reagan?”

Over steaming
cafe noir,
Catherine outlined her plan to repair Jackson’s reputation and
find Reagan a suitable match, a task to which the older woman directed all the
focus and energy of an advancing general.

By the time Reagan had fortified herself with her first cup of
coffee, it had become exceedingly clear that the woman was bent on conquering,
and God have mercy on all who stood in her path.

Catherine smiled at Reagan over the rim of her cup, while Annette
looked excitedly on. “The wheels are turning even as we speak. My husband Jason
is busy twisting influential arms from our plantation near New Orleans.”

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high, if I were you,” Reagan
warned her. “Jackson has something of a reputation, and folks around these
parts have long memories.”

Accustomed to having her own head, Catherine waved the comment
aside. “We’re starting at the top, with the governor. When word gets out that
some of the most powerful men in the country are attending, the rest of these
social neophytes will fall neatly into place. I daresay, when Jason and I are
through, these provincials will be clamoring to add his name to their guest
lists! And you, my dear, will be happily wed.”

With that dire pronouncement ringing in Reagan’s ears, Catherine
reviewed the state of Reagan’s wardrobe, advising her on the appropriate
choices for the morning, afternoon, and evening, every moment of which
Catherine had carefully planned. By the time the interview was ended, Reagan
felt frazzled and in desperate need of escape.

Dressed in a gown of sprigged white muslin, a peacock blue sash
banding her trim waist, and a soft woolen shawl drawn around her shoulders,
Reagan slipped through the French doors and down the gallery stairs.

The morning was advancing, and the mist that was so much a part of
September mornings everywhere was slowly being burned off by the persistent
autumn sun. Reagan strolled along the crushed shell garden path, marveling at
the tangle her life had become.

Hopelessly in love with a man who cared for her, but couldn’t seem
to commit to anything more permanent than a night in her arms, she’d tried to
save herself by fleeing, only to be caught up in a situation far more dangerous
than any she could have imagined. And then there was Emil, whom she felt
certain knew more than he was telling—about Navarre, if not about Clay’s death.

Navarre... a man with secrets of his own, untrustworthy,
murderous, and cruel. But what would he have to gain by Jackson’s death?

Reagan racked her brain, but could find no answers that made
sense, and no way to straighten out the endless morass her life had become.
Like a knotted ball of woolen yarn, the harder she tried to untangle the
threads, the more secure the knots became... Jackson, Emil, Navarre, Crazy Abe,
and, lastly, Catherine, who seemed more intent upon marrying her off than
Jackson had ever been.

Reagan sighed at the direction of her thoughts, disappointed that
the peace she’d sought seemed determined to elude her.

“A weighty, careworn sound, that, for so early in the morning.”
Gabriel Strickland was seated on the stone bench, his long legs stretched out
before him, his elbows cocked and his hands locked behind his tawny head. “Tell
me, lovely lady. Is your life here at
Belle Riviere
such a trial? Or are
you merely impatient to find that you must share your solitude?”

“Neither one,” Reagan replied, tugging the shawl a little closer
to her throat as his blue eyes traveled over her. “It has been a busy morning,
is all, and I’d hoped to have the garden to myself.”

He smiled at that, a swift and confident display of strong white
teeth that caused his eyes to crinkle at the corners. “The lady was bent upon
escaping,” he surmised quite accurately. “Was it Seek-Um’s dark and brooding
aspect that sent you scurrying, or a mere thirst for freedom?”

Reagan sniffed. “It seems to me that a man who begs his bed,
board, and whiskey can ill afford to be so cheeky toward his host.”

The smile grew, carving long dimples in his sun-browned cheeks,
daring the devil that danced in his deep blue eyes. “Why,
cheeky
is my middle name,
sweetheart, and pushing the bounds of decent behavior is something of a pastime
of mine. Since it’s quite clear that I’ve already tweaked your temper, might I
say how lovely you look this morning, minus your bonnet, and with your hair
streamin’ down around your shoulders.”

Reagan kept a stem demeanor, though his compliment was balm to a
feminine heart that had been too battered and braised of late. “Are you always
such an incorrigible rogue, Mr. Strickland? Or is it a role you’ve decided to
play simply for my benefit?’ ’

“He is incorrigible to the very marrow of his bones,” Jackson
assured her, “a true bounder, a breaker of hearts, and above all not to be
trusted.” He had materialized behind her, the perfect foil to Gabriel
Strickland, dark to light, intensity to humor.

G. D. placed a hand upon his chest and groaned. “I am wounded that
you would think so ill of me. And here I thought we were friends.”

Jackson merely smiled. “Bessie usurped the cook and made cornmeal
mush in your honor,” he said suggestively. “I would not disappoint her, were I
you. Besides, I should like a word with my ward.”

Jackson let the sentence hang, watching as G. D. unfolded his long
frame from the bench and rose, taking Reagan’s hand, bowing low over it. “My
dear Miss Dawes, I shall save you a seat at table—close to mine, of course.”

Jackson saw his friend’s devilish wink, saw Reagan’s answering
blush, and frowned at Strickland’s retreating back.

“Precisely what was going on here?” Jackson demanded, then cursed
himself inwardly as he saw Reagan stiffen.

“It’s called a conversation,” she said, “an exchange of
pleasantries, the sharing of ideas. You ought to try it sometime.”

“I don’t want you sharing anything with him,” he shot back. He
knew he was being irrational—possessive, when he knew full well he had no right
to be. Worse, he could not seem to stop it, to rid himself of the taut feeling
that curled and wound and knotted in the pit of his belly at the mere sight of
her laughing with G. D., the Virginian bending over her hand, his touch
lingering a trifle too long on her skin.

“Maybe I don’t care what you want!” she flung back at him, her
gray eyes smoky with anger. “Have you ever thought of that?”

Jackson reached for her then, intending to put a stop to this
madness between them. She flung him off, taking a step back. “Don’t,” she said,
her anger softening just a bit, melting into hurt. “You’re so used to havin’
everything your way, only this time it won’t work. You’re not my father, and
you’re not my husband, and by the saints, you don’t own me!”

Jackson stared down at her, the tension gathering inside him
reaching an unbearable peak. “Damn it, Reagan!” he all but shouted. “I did not
come here to argue with you! All I wanted—”

Breaking off, he ground his teeth, tamping down his temper and the
irrational feelings of jealousy seeing her with another man had aroused. “All I
wanted was a moment alone with you, a little privacy in which to finish what we
started last night. You have yet to answer me.”

“We could have had the time you now beg,” Reagan said, “had you
not stayed away until the dawn.”

It was as close as she would come to telling him that she had lain
awake the whole night through, torn by her thoughts about Navarre, reliving the
terror they had been through at the cabin, waiting and worrying and listening
for his footsteps in the hall, hoping against hope that he would come to her.
Aloud, she said, “Maybe you should give it up, Jackson. Let Clay rest in
peace.”

He shook his head, letting go a sigh threaded through with
impatience. “I cannot. If my life is ever to regain some semblance of
normalcy, I must have the truth.”

“At what cost?’ ’ Reagan cried passionately. “Just how much are
you willing to pay for your precious truth? Will you pay with your life,
Jackson? Will you?”

Stepping close, Jackson straightened the shawl, which had slipped
low on her shoulders, cradling her chin in one broad palm. The look on his face
was one she’d never seen before, a look of quiet resolve that terrified her
more than his anger could. “Therein lies the rub, Kaintuck. It is no longer my
life alone that the truth or lack thereof, affects. I cannot walk down the
street without heads turning and tongues wagging viciously. Mine is a life I
would hesitate to share with anyone, no matter how much I wish that it were
otherwise.”

His fingers curved gently around her jaw, his thumb brushing idly
against her smooth skin. “Last night I pleaded for time. Now I renew that same
plea. A few more days is all I ask. Promise me that you will stay here at
Belle
Riviere
until the ball. I want you here when it is over.”

They were inches apart, yet Reagan could feel the strange,
magnetic current flowing unfettered between them. She would always be drawn to
him, would always love him, but she could not give him what he asked. She shook
her head slowly, sadly. “I can’t give my word. I can’t promise to stay and
watch while you throw your life away, and it isn’t fair that you should ask.”

She turned and walked away.

Jackson watched her go, certain she would break his heart in the
end. Seemingly there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He could offer her
wealth, but she disdained diamonds and gold. He could give her his love, yet it
was a simple band of gold that she most wanted, and marriage to him would only bring
her shame. Worse yet, any child that would come of their union would be branded
the son or daughter of a murderer. It was an indelible stain, a stain that all
the wealth in the world could not erase.

Memories of his own childhood pressed heavily down upon him.

A mother he barely remembered.

A father whose coldness had cut like the keenest of blades.

The constant censure and his mounting apathy, the feeling that no
matter what he did, it would never be good enough, that
he
would never be good enough.

He frowned at the gallery stairs, his gaze slowly drifting toward
the upstairs window... Emil’s window. The pain was still fresh, after all these
years. Unlike the scar on his cheek, the wounds he’d suffered as a child would
never heal.

Having stared into a fathomless well of pain for a lifetime, how
could he knowingly inflict a similar injury on an innocent child
—his
child?

Yet how could he let Reagan go?

Despite Reagan’s speech in the garden, she’d made up her mind to
stay at
Belle Riviere
, at least until after the ball. Her concern for
Jackson’s well-being would allow her no other recourse, yet she would not sit
idly by, twiddling her thumbs while he searched for his brother’s killer.
Jackson was about to discover that he was not the only one with a mission.

There was a great deal gone awry within Belle Riviere, and someone
had to set things to rights. And she intended to start with Jackson and his
father.

Annette finished fastening the myriad tiny jet buttons that closed
the back of her gown, then stood back with a joyful clap of her hands. “Oh, mam’selle!
I should love to be a little mouse in the comer when m’sieur sees you!”