Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) (38 page)

He paused, massaging the knot at his temple. “The next thing I
knew, I was waking to the sound of your voice. I suppose that in a sense I am
fortunate you decided to leave. If you had not been passing by when you did,
there would be no need for us to have this discussion, and nothing to hold you
here.”

“I wasn’t passing by, exactly,” Reagan said, unsure just how much
to tell him, how much to hold back. “I was headed for the ferry when I thought
I heard your voice, and decided to investigate.” She paused, moistening lips
suddenly gone dry with a flick of her tongue. “It was your uncle I heard. He was
standing over the dark silhouette of a man lying in the doorway of Whiskey
Joe’s cabin.”

“Uncle Navarre?” he said, his voice full of incredulity. “That’s
impossible. Had he stumbled across me, he would have stayed to help. If there
is one thing in my life that is a constant—the only thing of which I can be
certain—it is my uncle’s sense of familial loyalty. He plucked me from the rain-washed
gutter the night Papa laid me low, and thereby saved my life. He would never
harm me, of all people, Reagan. He simply is not capable.”

“That’s not all,” she informed him. “Navarre wasn’t alone. The big
ape who grabbed you was Abe McFarland. From the sounds of things, I’d say
they’re in league with one another. Abe set fire to Joe’s cabin, and your uncle
watched it bum.”

“There must be some mistake,” Jackson said, “some reasonable
explanation. Why would Uncle Navarre have dealings with Crazy Abe? And why
would he want to harm either of us? What could he possibly have to gain by your
demise?”

“Silence,” Reagan supplied. “Anonymity.” She shook her head. ‘‘He
saw me spyin’ on him from the bushes, and knew that he’d been caught. I don’t
know his motives for having truck with Abe, but I know what I saw, and what I
heard, and your uncle’s up to his eyeballs in this thing.”

He made no further comment, no argument on his uncle’s behalf, yet
she could tell from his deepening frown that he was not prepared to believe
Navarre Broussard a villain.

“I really should be going in,” Reagan said. “Annette will have
drawn my bath by now.”

She turned to go, but he called her back. “Wait, please, there is
something else I must say.”

There was something in his voice that swept the anger and the
worry and the frustration from her. Suddenly filled with a strange sense of
anticipation, she raised her gaze to his, and felt the force of their
connection.

It was electric, and physical, and oh, so much deeper than that.
The pull she felt toward Jackson was unlike anything she had ever known or
experienced, or perhaps ever would again. The silken threads that bound them
were entangled around her very essence, a bond neither time nor distance could
ever break.

He sensed it, too.

She could see it in his face, in his fathomless green gaze, and
perhaps that was the reason he fought it so hard. Men liked to keep things
simple, and what was happening between them was anything but.

“Kaintuck, I—”

“Yes?”

Lifting a smoke-darkened hand, he brushed at a smudge on her
cheek, then bent and brushed her lips with his, a promise of a kiss. “I think...
well, actually I’m certain that I.
...”
Reagan strained toward
Jackson, who sighed and, ignoring the throbbing in his skull, lowered his head
to take her lips.

This was the moment he’d been waiting for,
his
moment, the moment when he would
bare his soul to the rustic temptress who’d stolen his heart. The deciding
moment in their relationship... and after it was done, there would be no
looking back.

Despite his earlier difficulties, the words welled up inside him,
barging their way past his Adam’s apple, crowding together on the back of his
tongue... but before he broke the kiss, before he had the chance to give voice
to his thoughts, a shout rang out behind them, underscored by a clatter of
hooves and the rattle of coach wheels on the cobbles somewhere in the distance.

Annoyed by the untimely distraction, Jackson flicked a glance in
the direction of the noise. At the same time the rider slowed his mount,
touching the brim of his cavalier-style hat in a casual salute.

Jackson groaned inwardly. “Merciful Christ, not now.”

“Evenin’, boss, Miss Dawes,” G. D. Strickland drawled, flashing
his wickedest grin. “Fine night for a little star gazing, ain’t it?”

Jackson forced a smile when he would have ground his teeth,
unwilling to appear the uncharitable lout in front of Reagan. “Welcome home, G.
D. Now, if you do not mind, Miss Dawes and I were in the midst of a crucial
exchange.” He let the sentence hang, hoping Strickland would, for once, take
the hint.

Apparently it was too much to ask. Applying a finger beneath the
beaver’s brim, G. D. bumped the hat back on his head, his smile growing
brittle. “What are we exchangin’, exactly?”

“Aren’t you needed at the warehouse?” Jackson asked pointedly.

“Ted Farley is in charge, and capable enough to oversee the
delivery of the bales,” G. D. assured him. “I told him that I have pressing
business here. I’ve brought you a surprise, Seek-Um; will you not invite me in,
offer me a whiskey?”

Jackson’s face was hard and implacable. “The surprises I’ve
received of late have been unwelcome ones, so you’ll understand if I decline.
As far as the whiskey is concerned, you may drink your fill down at Kate
Flannigan’s, and send the bill to me.”

Reagan was shocked at Jackson’s lack of charity; Strickland merely
smiled. “I understand the sentiment, and the place from whence it arises, even
if I cannot summon the will to sympathize. Your guest, however, may prove
another matter.”

“Guest,” Jackson repeated. His head
thump, thump, thumped
in time
with the beating of his heart, and as he watched a barouche materialize from
the darkness, he wondered if his life could possibly become any more
complicated.

The answer was obvious as the large mulatto man perched on the
high driver’s seat reined in the sweating team just outside the gate. With a
smile and nod the driver alighted, turning to hand the sole passenger of the
conveyance into the street. “Miss Catherine, now don’t forget your wrap,” the
man said solicitously. “The evenin’s ain’t as wahm this far noth.”

“Mother of God, Mose,” the woman said impatiently, shrugging off the
blanket he held for her. “You are worse than Jason. Must I remind you that I’m
not in my dotage? A breath of cool night air will not be the death of me.
Indeed, I find it refreshing. Now, please stop fussing and see to our bags.”

“Yes’m.” Properly chastened, Mose moved to do as his mistress
requested. Catherine St. Claire straightened her carriage, regarding Jackson
with a level stare. “You are taller than I imagined,” she said. “With a broader
wingspread than Emil could boast. I daresay, your stature hearkens back to your
grandfather Parrish, but your eyes... you have your mother’s eyes.” Reaching
out, she cupped his cheek. Her fingertips came away smudged with soot, a fact
that did not please her.
“Bon Dieu,
Jackson, have you been rooting in the coal pile? And who is
this?”

The woman’s gaze turned on Reagan, so bright, so frank, that she
flinched.

“Cousin Catherine, Miss Reagan Dawes, my ward. Reagan, my mother’s
cousin, Catherine Breaux St. Claire, late of New Orleans.”

Reeking of smoke and covered from head to toe in ashes and soot,
Reagan squashed the urge to curtsy and, after wiping her palm on the leg of her
breeches, offered her hand instead.

Catherine smiled at Reagan as she took it gingerly, but her words
were directed at Jackson. “I was visiting my Aunt Thea in New Madrid when I
received word of the fete you are planning in Miss Dawes’s honor, and given the
path you have chosen to walk these past ten years, I thought that I might come
and lend my support. Judging from what I have seen here tonight, I would say it
is a good thing that I did.”

“You’re surely not staying?” Jackson questioned.

“Mais oui,
Jackson. I
am staying.” Catherine’s voice was soft, sweet, but there was a thread of steel
running through it that was impossible to miss. “Miralee was family. As I see
it, helping her son get his life back on track, and your ward safely wed, is
the least I can do.”

Beside Jackson, G. D. swept off his hat, slapping it against one
leg. “At the risk of offending the hell out of you and ruinin’ my chances at a
night’s bed and board, ain’t you bought that little gal a proper dress yet?”

At Jackson’s jaundiced look, G. D. immediately began to backtrack.
“Hell, I was just askin’. Listen, you gonna invite me in or make me stand in
the street, droolin’ all over my shirtfront at the thought of your old man’s
whiskey?”

Reagan watched Jackson with interest. A deep-seated frustration
and mounting impatience that she alone seemed to notice rolled off him in
intense waves... along with something else, some dark and dangerous
undercurrent swirling just beneath the thin veneer of his civility.

Whether it had its roots in the fact that their privacy had been
shattered by the intrusion of his uninvited guests or the climactic events of
the evening, Reagan could only guess.

“But of course,” he said, raking a hand through his hair, wincing
as his fingertips grazed the knot near his right temple. “My house, my liquor,
the contents of my larder are at your disposal. Eat, drink, and be merry... just
keep your frigging Southern charm to yourself, and your hands the hell off my
ward.”

With a tight smile wholly lacking in warmth or conviviality, he
bowed to Catherine and Reagan, wholly ignoring G. D. “Now, if you will excuse
me, I have some pressing business that demands my immediate attention.”

He flashed a dark and brooding glance Reagan’s way, then stalked
to Euripides.

A protest on her lips, Reagan hurried after him. She wanted to ask
him where he was going and what he intended. She meant to insist that she
accompany him, and when he flatly refused her aid, remind him just how close
he’d come to disaster the last time he’d gone chasing off on his own after
Clay’s killer. More than anything she craved a moment alone with him... a
moment in which they could take up where they had left off before they’d been
interrupted. Yet before she could reach him, before she could do more than grip
the iron gate with both hands and call out his name, Jackson was gone.

Reagan stared off into the shadows, gripping the gate so hard that
the wrought iron bit into her palms.

Catherine St. Claire touched her arm. “Why, you’re as tense and
taut as a bowstring! Are you quite all right?”

“Yes, of course. I’m fine. Truly.”

Liar, she thought. She wasn’t fine. She was worried—about Jackson,
about Emil, about her future, or lack thereof. The events of the evening preyed
on her mind, while her doubts about Navarre—and the knowledge that Abe
McFarland was somewhere in the city—roosted like dark, evil birds at the edge
of her thoughts.

One thing was terribly, frighteningly clear: the danger that had
surrounded Jackson from the moment he’d returned to Saint Louis and started
asking questions about his brother’s death was far from over.

In fact, she was very much afraid that this was only the
beginning.

“Come away,
cher,”
Catherine said softly. “We have much to discuss, beginning with
how you came to be in this deplorable state.”

Reagan shoved her concerns to the back of her mind, dragging out
her rusty manners, dusting them off. Like it or not, she was back at
Belle
Riviere
, the only home she’d known in months, and it came to her that while
she was here she might as well make herself useful. Welcoming Jackson’s guests
in his absence seemed to be the first order of business.

Turning away from the gate, she offered the older woman a smile. “There
was a minor mishap earlier this evenin’,” she assured Jackson’s cousin, wishing
she felt as certain, as confident, as she sounded. “Thank the good Lord it was
nothing that a little soap and a lot of hot water won’t cure. Now if you’ll
come with me I’ll fetch Bessie, and she’ll get you and your driver settled in.
You must be tired from your trip.”