Nan Ryan (13 page)

She understood what he meant. She did know. His inflated male pride was wounded by the notion that he had no effect on her. She had little doubt that the vain Yankee army captain was accustomed to having women throw themselves at his handsome head. So he had arrogantly supposed that she would behave as foolishly as the others.

Well, he was wrong. Dead wrong.

She said, “Yes, Captain. I do know.” Her blue eyes flashed the message that she was secure in the knowledge she was the one in charge here. “Go saddle your sorrel thoroughbred while I get some coins from the house. I don’t want to look at that shaggy head of hair one more minute.”

She turned and marched away. Kurt stayed where he was, admiring her queenly carriage, the seductive sway of her skirts, the flash of golden hair as she moved into and out of patches of bright sunlight.

His unblinking gaze followed her every step, and he stood there tom by two conflicting impulses. One was to inflict pain by going after her, grabbing her, and showing her the rude reality of his being a man, she a woman. The other was to protect and shield her from him and from herself.

Kurt slowly raised both hands, swept back his lengthy black hair, turned, and headed for the corral to saddle Raider.

He expected to see Helen back at the wash pot when he led the saddled stallion outside, but she was nowhere in sight. He dropped Raider’s reins, told the stallion not to wander off, and started for the house. When he reached the back porch, he spotted the shiny coins lying on the top step.

Kurt bent from the waist, scooped up the coins, and dropped them deep down inside his trousers pocket. His eyes fixed on the back door, he turned his head, listened, heard nothing. He shrugged, went back to Raider, mounted, and left.

From inside the dim, cool interior of the silent sitting room, Helen watched him ride away. She watched as he cantered the big sorrel up the path alongside the house and turned him onto the narrow dirt rode. She watched as he rounded the corner and rode southward, disappearing into patches of fog. Then reappearing in shafts of radiant sunshine, his too-long midnight hair shimmering like shiny black silk in the dazzling light.

Helen unconsciously held her breath and watched until he finally turned the stallion into the shady lane and disappeared.

Only then did she release the heavy curtains, allowing them to fall back into place. Exhaling with relief, Helen walked through the house, rushed out the back door, and hurried anxiously down to check on her laundry.

At the big black wash pot, she picked up the poking pole, stuck it into the bubbling water, and brought up a shirt. A small, little boy’s shirt which had been badly soiled and now, miraculously, was snowy white once more. The sight of the spanking-clean shirt immediately gave Helen that sense of satisfaction which comes from a task well done.

The unsettling effects of last night’s dream were beginning to leave her along with the worrisome man she’d just watched ride away. Like all dreams—the good ones and the bad ones—it no longer seemed so real, was already becoming harder to recall. Thank heavens.

Helen finally began to hum just as she always did on wash day.

Chapter Fourteen

K
urt anticipated a chilly reception in Spanish Fort. He knew how unwelcome he was in the still smoldering, Yankee-hating town. It didn’t bother him a great deal. War-hardened and a natural loner, he had never sought nor needed any man’s approval save his own.

In peacetime and in war he lived by his individual code of ethics. He had been on his own since age fourteen, had done the work of a man when he was no more than a boy. He’d kept his own counsel, settled his own scores, nursed his own secret hurts and heartaches.

He had served his country with pride and with honor. He’d killed men in battle with cool detachment and no scarring remorse. As a soldier serving his country, he had been given a job to do and he had done it to the best of his ability. That was all any man could do.

Raider tossed his big head and made snorting noises as the pair approached the scattered outskirts of Spanish Fort. Kurt laid a comforting hand on the stallion’s sleek neck, patted the sorrel affectionately, and said, “It’s all right, old friend. Settle down, boy. Easy, now. We made it through some mighty tough spots in the war. We can survive one afternoon in Spanish Fort.”

Raider pricked his ears, whinnied, and immediately picked up the pace. As resigned as his self-controlled master, he pranced majestically up the road toward their final destination.

The first thing Kurt saw above the dense towering pines and ancient oaks was a Confederate flag, its edges trimmed with gold fringe. Topping a tall flagstaff pine pole, the Rebel flag fluttered proudly in the breeze blowing in off the bay.

His eyes on the rippling Stars and Bars, Kurt took a slow, deep breath, put a tight, cynical smile on his face, and rode into the sleepy Southern town.

Main street, leading into Spanish Fort, ran north and south. Residences lined both sides of the street south of the business section. Homes small and large faced each other across the wide thoroughfare. Kurt never turned his head to the left or the right, but he knew he was being watched.

On he rode, soon leaving the dwellings behind, reaching the commercial district. He passed a public bathhouse next door to a livery stable. The newspaper office was across the street, as well as the hardware store, the lumber yard, and the dentist’s office. On his right a couple of well-dressed ladies, exiting a millinery shop, saw him and acted as if Lucifer himself had just ridden into their hometown. They shrank back, clutching each other’s hands, as they stared open-mouthed at him.

Kurt nodded his dark head in their direction, then smiled when they gasped in stunned horror and rushed back inside the safety of the millinery shop. Men, lining the town’s wooden sidewalks, didn’t flee from him in fear. Instead they shouted insults and threats to which Kurt paid no attention.

At the freighting depot and stage line, a handsomely dressed lady alighted from the just-arrived Fairhope stage. As Kurt rode past, she looked directly at him. But unlike the pair of ladies at the millinery, she didn’t gasp or recoil or hurry to get away. From underneath her expensive bonnet worn atop a mass of dark, upswept curls, she looked at him with bold interest. Then flirtatiously lowered her heavily lashed lids over a pair of dark, flashing eyes.

Knowing she had captured his attention, the woman glanced at him again, smiled almost imperceptibly, turned, and slowly made her way around the parked stage to the sidewalk. She was a glamorous, voluptuous woman. The stylish lavender-hued summer frock she wore enhanced her pale coloring; the gown’s tight bodice was molded provocatively to her lush feminine curves.

Kurt watched the woman step up onto the sidewalk, managing as she did so to flash a pair of slender, well-turned ankles encased in shimmering sheer silk stockings. She never turned back to look at him, but Kurt knew she’d purposely exposed her lovely ankles solely for him to admire.

She dropped her billowing lavender skirts and moved grandly down the wooden sidewalk. The men loitering on the street tipped their hats and smiled and acted as if a queen were in their midst.

The woman paused directly before a many-windowed office half a block away. She put her gloved hand on the knob of a glass-paned door on which
LOVELESS ENTERPRISES
was written in fancy gold lettering. Kurt’s eyes narrowed as she swept inside and closed the door behind her.

Loveless Enterprises.

It had to be the office of Niles Loveless, the wealthy aristocratic landowner Jolly had told him about. The same Niles Loveless who was determined to own Helen’s farm and timberlands. The lovely lady who’d gone inside? Probably the pampered Mrs. Niles Loveless.

Kurt passed Jake’s General Store. He pulled up on Raider when he saw the colorful barber pole outside Skeeter’s Barbershop. Kurt swung down out of the saddle, looped Raider’s long reins over the hitching post, patted the big stallion, and said into his pricked ear, “I won’t be long.”

Hearing spirited muttering and feeling hostile eyes watching his every move from up and down the street, Kurt didn’t so much as blink an eye. In no particular hurry, he mounted the sidewalk, headed directly for the open front door of the barbershop, and went inside.

The shop boasted two barber chairs. Both were filled. One customer was being shaved by a tall, skinny fellow in a white barber’s coat. In the other chair a middle-aged man with only a horseshoe ring of fine wispy hair was having it painstakingly clipped by a short, pudgy fellow Kurt took to be Skeeter.

Skeeter looked at Kurt, gave him the once-over, and frowned. He said, “We’re pretty busy this morning.”

“So I see,” said Kurt, smiling, and took a seat on the long wooden bench against the wall. “No hurry. I’ll wait.”

There he sat throughout the morning as men came in for haircuts and shaves and were promptly accommodated. It was nearing noon before both barber chairs were finally empty, both barbers idle.

Kurt rose from the hard bench, stretched, crossed the small shop. From a shelf on the wall he took a clean white covering cloth, whipped it around his neck, and tied it behind his head. He then took a seat in Skeeter’s chair.

“Dinnertime,” Skeeter said to his tall, skinny fellow barber, then looked pointedly at Kurt.

Kurt stayed where he was as the pudgy Skeeter hurried to the front door, looked back at Kurt, and indicated with a shake of his head that Kurt was to leave. “We both take an hour to eat dinner. You might as well—”

“I’ll wait,” said Kurt, and didn’t move.

Skeeter’s fleshy face reddened. He slammed the front door shut and hung up the
CLOSED
sign.

The barbers exchanged glances, shrugged, and fled to the back room, leaving Kurt alone in the shop, seated in the barber chair, calmly twiddling his thumbs beneath the white covering cloth.

It was nearing noon when Helen finished the last of the laundry. She was standing at the black wash pot, squeezing the excess water from freshly rinsed bed linen, when she heard a faint shout. She looked up expecting to see the newly shorn Yankee riding toward her.

A shiny black carriage was emerging from the oak-bordered lane below the house. Helen stood for a moment, the heavy sheet in her wet hands, squinting against the now brilliant sunshine.

A white-gloved hand furiously waving a lacy handkerchief shot from a curtained side window of the fine carriage, followed straightaway by a bobbing head of dark glossy curls.

“Helen! Helen, I’m back!” shouted Em Ellicott from inside the slow-moving conveyance. “Where are you? I’m back!”

“Em,” Helen quietly murmured, then smiled, dropped the sheet back into the blue rinse water, and grabbed up her apron to dry her hands. She began running.

Em had the door open and was hopping out well before the aged, dignified Ellicott driver had a chance to climb down off the box and assist his spirited mistress. Em lifted her billowing skirts high and raced headlong to meet Helen, whooping and shouting as she flew.

When the two women met, they threw their arms around each other, embraced warmly, then broke apart. Holding hands, they jumped up and down, giggling and shrieking like a couple of schoolgirls.

Old Daniel, the Ellicott’s faithful gray-haired driver, scratched and shook his head, muttering to himself. “If you ask me, just might as well give up on Mistress Emma ever growin’ up into a fine lady like her mama. Half the time she act like she don’ have good sense and I ain’t right sure she do. Squealing like a stuck pig, jest ‘cause she see Miz Courtney.” Daniel rolled his nearsighted brown eyes heavenward. “The good Lord alone know how she behaved herself when Mistah Coop go to meet her over at the Mobile levee. Likely she shamed the whole family, behavin’ worse than some white trash woman, a huggin’ and a kissin’ on the sheriff right there in broad daylight. Why, I don’t know what gonna’ become of that—”

“Why, I’m bound straight for purgatory, Daniel,” Em called over her shoulder to the censuring old family retainer as she and Helen started for the house.

“You is right ‘bout that if you don’t be mendin’ your ways,” huffed old Daniel before climbing up into the carriage to take a much-needed nap.

Em and Helen laughed and hurried to the house, arm in arm, both talking at once.

“… and I should have known my little scheme wouldn’t work,” lamented Em.

“… am positive everyone’s talking about it,” worried Helen.

“… had hoped Coop might realize he can no longer live without me …”

“… but I simply had no choice, so I hired …”

“… gone for four years in the war, so how could I expect ten days to …”

“… and would do anything necessary to hold on to this land …”

“… almost weakened, but then he came to his senses …”

They had reached the front gallery. Em interrupted herself to ask, “Where’s your Yankee?”

“He’s not
my
Yankee!”

“Kitty Fay Pepper said she heard he’s good-looking in a dark, primitive way.” She arched her eyebrows. “Is he?”

“I guess he’s not too unattractive.” Helen shrugged. “I hadn’t given it much thought.”

“Well, where is he? I didn’t see him down in the fields plowing as we drove up.”

“He isn’t here. He rode into town to get a haircut.”

“The devil!” said Em. “I’ll have to wait to look him over then? I was hoping to meet him today.”

“Meet him?” echoed Helen, incredulous. “Good Lord, Em, you aren’t going to meet him.”

“Betcha I do,” predicted Em, and laughed gaily when Helen shook her head, exasperated.

They were inside the quiet old house now. Helen led the way to her bedroom, where they could visit and enjoy the breeze off the bay. There she quickly changed out of her dampened wash dress while Em kicked off her slippers, climbed up onto the soft feather bed, and crossed her legs beneath her. Em peeled off her white cotton gloves and tossed them on the night table, loosened the lacy collar of her dress, and flipped her dark dancing curls back off her face.

Em talked a mile a minute.