Regret Not a Moment (50 page)

Devon looked down sheepishly. “I seemed to take everything so seriously. I’m sure it wouldn’t have damaged her psyche to have been left with Penny a few more times. Or to spend more time in New York. She was a happy child, wasn’t she?” Devon looked up at John, not exactly needing reassurance but desiring it nonetheless.

“She was,” John said warmly, “and so is Frankie—” He saw Devon wince at the use of the nickname. “Francesca, I mean. Sorry, but she insists on it.”

Devon smiled and shook her head. “I know.”

John felt her smile resonate through him. Guiltily, he looked up to find Mason staring intently at them. As though embarrassed at being caught, the white-haired man immediately averted his eyes. He’s a good man, John told himself. I wonder why Devon and he haven’t married.

“Maybe the amount of responsibility I have toward Francesca is just the perfect amount for me. I haven’t had to go through the terrible twos or any of the other monstrous phases of infancy,” John said with a wry smile, “but I enjoy a paternal relationship with a girl who, if things had turned out differently, might have been my daughter.”

“Yes, that’s what she always says.”

“She’s very fond of Mason, too,” John said, with an involuntary nod in the other man’s direction.

“Yes.” Devon smiled.

John hesitated a moment before going on. He had no right to intrude, but his curiosity about Devon was overwhelming. Finally, he asked, “Have you never considered remarrying?”

Devon blushed. It was obvious John was trying to understand the nature of her relationship with Mason. “I have considered it,” Devon said.

An answer that told him nothing, John thought to himself. “Mason seems very much in love with you.”

“Oh, and I’m so fond of him, too!”

An answer that told him everything.

Suddenly John wondered what it would be like to kiss Devon again—or more. He remembered their first kiss, by a brook in the woods of Evergreen. He remembered the sweetness of the moment, the sheer romance of it. And then there had been the fire in her, that wonderful passion. For years now, he had firmly shunted from his mind the picture of Devon in bed with another man. First Roland, now Mason. He had to admit that it made him jealous.

As if on cue, Mason, with a deliberately casual step, ambled over to John and Devon.

“Grand party, isn’t it?” he said heartily. “Nice to see you again, Alexander,” he added, clapping John on his back in a friendly gesture.

“Good to see you, too. How’s the publishing business?”

“Fine. Fine. Thinking of getting into television.”

“It’s the wave of the future.” John nodded his approval.

Soon the two men were engrossed in conversation, and Devon slipped away from them. Half an hour later, she glanced over to see that they were still talking. It was the first chance they’d really had to get to know each other. Devon was not sure that she liked the idea of them becoming good friends, though she couldn’t quite say why.

A few moments later, Devon noticed that some of the guests were beginning to drift away. A glance at the mantel clock told her that it was past midnight. She wanted to be up early in the morning to work with her new colt, so she joined Mason and John, signaling to the former that she wished to leave.

Devon realized that she must have dozed on the way home when the crunch of gravel on her drive awakened her.

“Would you like to stay the night?” she asked Mason. He often spent the night, sleeping with Devon until she awakened at five o’clock, then tiptoeing down the hall to one of the guest rooms. He sometimes wondered if they were fooling anyone with their subterfuge.

Mason wanted to stay, but something about her earlier attitude toward John disturbed him. He sensed electricity between Devon and John. He suspected that the two were still—or once again—attracted to each other. The idea that she had spent a good part of the evening in conversation with John—the first extended conversation Mason had ever witnessed between the two—made him uncomfortably aware of the other man's former claim to Devon. He wondered if he would always feel this way when John and Devon met. I shouldn’t give in to such feelings, he reasoned. But he couldn’t help himself, and he decided to make the sixty-minute drive back to his Georgetown home.

“Not tonight, I think,” he told Devon.

Devon accepted his decision with a polite murmur of regret but no real disappointment. An answer that told him everything.

After Mason left, Devon mounted her stairs, looking forward to drifting off in her big soft bed. The house was peaceful and quiet—she had told the servants not to wait up for her. In order to avoid awakening anyone, Devon bent down and removed her sandals.

As she began to climb the stairs to the second floor, she heard a strange noise outside. Puzzled, Devon turned. The horses? The noise was not coming from the direction of the barn, but rather from the vast lawns in front of the house. Now the noise grew louder. Someone in trouble? Devon’s heart raced with apprehension. She ran back down the stairs. Hurriedly, she slipped her shoes back on. The noise was louder. Yes, she definitely heard shouting. Rushing to the front door, she threw it open. There on her lawn was a nightmarish sight. Ghostly figures in peaked caps, some carrying torches, mobbed her front garden. In a rush of adrenaline, Devon slammed the door and ran into her study. She moved automatically, driven by fear and instinct rather than by plan. With trembling hands, she took her Remington twelve-gauge shotgun from its rack and loaded it.

She ran back into the foyer and stared at the front door, dreading what she would find on the other side but knowing there was no way to avoid it. A noise behind her made her whirl, gun raised. There she saw the shocked faces of Francesca, Laurel, and Alice. Behind them, the housekeeping staff cowered against the wall. They all stared at the gun in Devon’s hands. None of them uttered a sound. They were mute with fear. And so was she.

The shouting outside grew louder. Devon gripped the gun hard and approached the door. She put one hand on the doorknob, then looked back over her shoulder at her family. She turned back to the door and stared at her hand on the knob. Her knuckles were dead white. She took a deep, shaky breath, then threw the door open. The sight that confronted her was worse than she had imagined.

There was fire everywhere. Torches that cast hideous shadows on the ghostlike figures crowding her vision. She took a step backward, wanting to flee inside.

“There she is!” cried one of the figures below.

Now there was no escape! She stood rooted to the spot—a dark figure silhouetted against the light from the foyer inside. Her dress flew up behind her, like flames leaping toward the sky.

The men, some on horseback, some afoot, gathered in a group on the lawn directly in front of her.

Then suddenly, absurdly, Devon noticed that some of them were standing in her daylilies. The observation struck her like a slap to the face. Her emotions, already at a high pitch, were transformed from stark fear to blind fury.

She stepped forward rigidly until she was at the edge of her porch. She was panting, bursting with the intensity of her emotion. So much so that she could not even speak.

As if by some invisible signal, the group fell silent. A lone voice, harsh and common, rang out. “The Grand Wizard has a warning for you!”

A different voice now, deeper. “Women who consort with the nigger, women who let themselves be sullied by nigger hands, deserve to die!”

The voice continued, “Today you favored a nigger over a white man. Tonight you will be punished!”

A resounding roar went up from the mob.

“And, after you, we’ll just go pay a visit to the nigger!” a voice from the dark gloated. A voice she recognized as Jimmy’s. She scanned the group until she spotted its shortest member.

Devon’s guts churned with fury—raw, dangerous fury, unencumbered by any civilized emotion. She stood as immobile as a statue, head high, back perfectly erect. Then she raised her gun to her shoulder and pointed it directly at Jimmy.

Her words came out in a harsh growl. “Punishment, you say? Try it. Because if any one of you damages one piece of my property or touches anyone who works for me or any of my family, you will die! I want you to try me if you think I won’t use this gun.” Abruptly Devon pivoted ninety degrees and aimed at the only lighted area in the front garden—a boxwood alcove with a terra-cotta birdbath at its center. At the edge of the birdbath was a small sculptured sparrow. Before the men’s eyes, the clay bird exploded, sending fragments flying a hundred feet. As if in a military drill, Devon cocked the shotgun again and pivoted back so that the weapon was pointed directly at the group of hooded figures.

“All right, Grand Wizard,” Her voice was pure venom. “Now it’s your turn! And after that”—she moved her gun slightly to the left—“it’s yours, Jimmy Pritchard!”

Now several of the men raised shotguns so that they were pointing at Devon. “Don’t even think of it!” she spat. “I’m quicker than you and I’ve probably got better aim. You may kill me, but before you do, I’ll get at least two of you. How about that,
Grand Wizard?
She used the title with utter contempt, aiming the gun once again at him.

“We’re here to issue a warning!” the voice, less belligerent now, replied.

“Really?” She laughed disdainfully. “I thought you were here to punish me. Well, let me give you a little food for thought. How do you think this county would look upon the likes of you punishing me? Not too kindly, I think. I think you could just forget about jail and courtrooms and formalities like that. I
know
there’s several gentlemen who’d come after you bunch with a hanging rope—or worse. And I’d be right there to lead the way, I promise you. Because I know who you men are. I’ve lived here all my life, so don’t think I can’t recognize you under those ridiculous dunce caps you’re wearing.”

“You’re not scaring us!” Jimmy Pritchard called defiantly.

Devon noticed that all the men with guns had lowered them. Now she was the only one in a shooting stance. She swiveled so that the shotgun was aiming straight at Pritchard. “I’m not? Then you’re even more stupid than I thought,” Devon declared. “Come up here, Jimmy Pritchard Let’s see if you’ve got the guts to face me without a mob backing you up!”

None of the men said anything, nor did Jimmy move. “Come on over here, you coward!” Devon growled.

Humiliated and angry, the little man turned to the group. “This here woman shows more respect to that nigger than she shows me!”

“Well, I guess that says something about you, doesn’t it?” Devon mocked.

“You’re fuckin’ ’im, that’s why!” Jimmy cried. A few of the men around him gasped. One stepped forward and put an arm on the jockey. “Hey, there, boy. You’re goin’ too far.”

“Jimmy Pritchard!” Devon’s voice cut through the night air. “You’ve got three seconds to get off my property. Then you’ve got three hours to get out of the county. And, unlike you, I don’t make idle threats. At dawn, I’m going to call on some of my friends. If you’re not out of here, we’ll find you!”

Jimmy started to respond. “You—”

“One!” Devon cried.

“I’ll get—”

“Two!”

“Come on, Jimmy,” said another man, putting an arm on Pritchard and drawing him away.

“Three!”

Jimmy turned to look over his shoulder at Devon. In a menacing voice Devon said, “Jimmy, you’re just too damn slow.”

A resounding
boom!
An explosion of dirt, grass, and flowers flew up in the air a few yards behind Jimmy.

Then Devon began to laugh, a full hearty laugh that chilled the blood of the men below. And she was still laughing as the last of them hurried away.

Devon was as good as her word. Soon after dawn she hurried to the local sheriff’s office. The man knew the Richmond family well, knew Devon’s stature in the community, and was quick to comply with her request.

Devon had been bluffing when she told the mob that she recognized them all, but she had recognized several of them, and these names she gave to the sheriff.

“I’ll just go pay a visit to those men. Make sure we don’t have anymore trouble, for you or Jeremiah,” said the sheriff.

“Thank you, Earl, I appreciate that,” said Devon, holding out one white-gloved hand for him to shake.

“I don’t take too kindly to men scaring helpless women,” said Earl in a grave tone.

Devon simply smiled.

JESSE couldn’t take his eyes off Francesca. It was their first swim of the summer, and now that she was sixteen it seemed that her old cutoffs and T-shirt were clinging to a brand-new set of curves. Her long legs, gawky and stick-like a year ago, were now shapely perfection. She was glorious and Jesse, at eighteen, found it very difficult to hide his feelings.

Why had he not noticed the change before now? he wondered to himself. Just yesterday they had gone riding together, laughing and joking as usual. Now, suddenly, he found himself tongue-tied.

“Jesse!” Francesca stood above him, hands on hips in an attitude of exasperation. “Didn’t you hear me? Let’s eat. I’m starved.” The girl playfully wrung her wet hair out over Jesse’s shoulders, finally rousing him from his stupor.

“Hey, quit that!” he yelled.

“Okay, but let’s eat!” Francesca dove into the picnic basket and pulled out ham and cheese sandwiches, potato salad, pickles, cold barbecued chicken, sugar cookies, and, for good measure, two apples. “Where’s the thermos?” Ignoring the paper cups packed by the cook, Francesca poured apple juice into the lid of the thermos bottle, took a sip, then offered the cup to Jesse.

He took the cup from her, careful not to put his lips where hers had been. He was almost afraid the spot would burn him if he touched it.

Francesca unwrapped one of the ham sandwiches lying on the checkerboard tablecloth and handed it to Jesse. Absentmindedly, he bit into it.

“Potato salad?” Francesca asked, chewing her own sandwich. She laid it down as she spoke, reaching for the plastic container. Taking paper plates from the basket, she piled both high with the potato salad without waiting for Jesses confirmation. After years of picnicking together, she knew what he liked and how much he would eat. “Here, have a pickle,” she said, carelessly plopping one down on his plate.