Straight For The Heart Page 3

  “Amanda does no such thing,” Sarah protested. “Not deliberately anyway, I’m sure. She has her Mr. Brice, after all, who is a fine young man, and not at all unhandsome. Moreover, he is reliable, trustworthy, dependable—”

  “Boring,” Alisha murmured under her breath. “And poor.”

  Ryan glanced up from the fire and frowned. It was hardly a flattering thought to have about one’s own flesh and blood, but if anyone had ice water flowing through their veins it was Alisha. She had culled Karl von Helmstaad from the herd with as much emotion and affection as she would a bull at auction … with the bulk of her consideration based on the size of his estates and bank accounts.

  “There is nothing wrong with Josh Brice,” he said, rising to Amanda’s defense. “Or with Amanda waiting until she is sure of what she wants.”

  “What she wants?” Alisha set aside the deck of cards and squared them neatly on the table before she stood. “Surely it cannot be too difficult a decision to make to want more than … than this—” She waved a hand airily to indicate the large, empty room, devoid of any carpets or curtains, any furniture not of the most practical design and purpose.

  Once a richly decorated, lavishly appointed parlor used for entertaining guests of high social standing, the room, like most of the rooms in Rosalie, had been stripped and looted to the bare boards by marauding soldiers from both armies. Situated close to the banks of the Mississippi River and boasting its own jetty and deep-water bay, the Courtland home had played host to Confederate troops as well as, in the latter two years of the war, headquarters for the series of Yankee generals who passed through Natchez. Forced to relinquish their home to unwanted guests, the Courtland women had watched their possessions and priceless heirlooms disappear one by one, even to the carpets and throw rugs that had once protected the polished oak floors.

  “I am well aware of what all of you think of my upcoming marriage,” Alisha continued wanly. “And I’m telling you it doesn’t matter one wit to me. I’m tired of being poor. I’m tired of living off pride and stubbornness, tired to the bone of being scorned and looked down upon by trash to whom we would not have given the time of day before the war. This house … it isn’t a home anymore; it’s just a big, empty shell with empty rooms and no future. You want your daughters to stroll in the gardens, Mother? We would trip on the weeds if we tried, or break our legs on the rubble that has never been cleared away. You want us to sew and practice our music? What use are fancy stitches on frocks that have been patched and mended so many times it is hard to recall what they once looked like? As for music, the only sound you can hear in this house, other than the sound of empty bellies grumbling for food, is the sound of the wind howling through the broken window boards.”

  “Alisha, please,” Amanda breathed. “Father—”

  “Yes, indeed. Father. I am especially weary of playing these silly games, always having to pretend in front of him that nothing has changed. Always having to pretend we are still The Courtlands, still of the noble d’Iberville stock. Surely to gracious God, he still has the use of his eyes if not his full sensibilities. He must see Ryan riding out to the fields every morning and coming home every night bone tired, dragging his feet like a plow-horse. He must see we have no slaves left, that we are practically destitute—”

  “Alisha, by God, that’s enough!” Ryan’s voice was dangerously brittle. “You have said what you wanted to say, now leave it alone. There is no need to lower yourself further.”

  “Lower myself?” Her eyes screwed down into vindictive slits. “I’m not the one who spends fifteen hours a day crawling through muck and slime to pick cotton like a common slave.”

  “Maybe you should. Maybe it would teach you to be thankful you still have two good hands to work with; something not all of our neighbors and friends can say.”

  Blue eyes clashed with blue eyes, the sparks flying between the siblings like lancets of fire.

  “My, how we do love to play the role of noble hero,” Alisha mused. “Turn yourself into a slave, sacrifice everything, shun anything and everyone whose ideals are not as pure and unsullied as your own. In the end, though, you know you’ll have to do the same as everyone else along the river. You will have to sell this place and no one—not one single solitary soul—will blink at the news.”

  Ryan’s handsome face went white beneath the ruddiness of his tan. The defeat of the Confederacy had brought all of the rich Southern states buckling to their knees. Emancipation had freed the slaves, but without the hundreds of strong black hands to replant the scorched earth, it would be decades before the tobacco and cotton crops would recover...if ever. The rule of the day, after the Yankee victors had swept triumphantly into power, was to see the stately plantation homes confiscated for taxes and debts. A few—a very few—had managed to hold out longer than the rest by mortgaging, borrowing, breaking their backs, and splitting the flesh on their hands to plant and harvest a crop that would haul them away from the brink of ruin. With the price of raw cotton soaring through the roof, one good crop was all that was needed.

  Ryan Courtland had gambled everything, mortgaged everything there was left to mortgage, even their good name, to put just such a crop in the field, and for the first time since the smoke and charred remains of the war had been cleared away, there was a chance blossoming to pay off some of the staggering debts and keep Rosalie afloat.

  There had been a chance, that is.

  For almost a month straight, the skies had opened and poured wrath on the banks of the Mississippi. From early dawn until late dusk, and often right through the night, the roads were churning quagmires, the fields were rivers of rainwater, the fertile lowlands were turned into a bog of rotting crops and mud washes. Some folk in the cities might have welcomed the cooling downpours as a relief from the scorching heat of August. Others, like Ryan, saw the cotton bolls ripening on stalks that were turning to mush, struggling to gain nourishment from roots that were rotting under a foot of slimy water. His family’s salvation was out there and it was drowning in front of his eyes.

  Amanda saw Ryan’s fists clench and unclench by his sides, and she spun angrily on her sister. “You have no right to say such things to Ryan. Everything he does, he does for this family. You, of all people, should be the last one to criticize him.”

  Alisha’s mouth curled with scorn. “If you are referring to my wedding plans, dear Amanda, you can stop right there.”

  “Why? Why can’t I say what I’m thinking?” she asked, using Alisha’s own capricious attitude against her. “Why shouldn’t I say that the money you are planning to squander just so you can be the talk of the county for one day would ease the burden of this family for a year?”

  “Karl gave me the money to spend on myself. He expects a grand wedding. He is a baron, for pity’s sake!”

  “His title might mean something in Europe, perhaps, but here he is just another rich speculator lording his wealth over those who gave up so much to end up with so little. How many of your guests will feel comfortable watching such a display of arrogance? No one has grand weddings anymore. And even if they could afford it, most would be too conscious of the feelings of their less fortunate friends and neighbors to rub their noses in it.”

  “I don’t care,” Alisha insisted evenly. “I don’t care if they’re all sick with envy. And anyone who does not feel comfortable—including anyone in this room—can damn well sit at home and enjoy their own sour company!”

  With that, she whirled on her heels and stormed out of the parlor. The draft of her passing caused the flame in the oil lamp to flicker and shudder, and until it steadied again, that was the only movement in the room. No one dared to breathe or make a sound. Sarah Courtland’s hands lay motionless on the crush of watered silk, her lower lip was sucked between her teeth in an attempt to keep the quivering from spreading down into her chin.

  Amanda knew she had allowed her temper to get the better of her, knew she should have let her sister run on unchallenged—but the p
ain on Ryan’s face had driven her past her usual limits of patience. The pain was still there, pulling the smooth skin across his cheeks taut, pulsing in the small vein that traced along his temple.

  She stood and crossed over to the hearth. She touched his arm, but it took several more moments of concentrated effort for his eyes to lose the glaze of outrage and for him to focus on her face and realize he was no longer confronting Alisha. It was a difficult enough task at the best of times, for aside from the few slight differences only a handful of people could discern, Amanda and Alisha were identical twins.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ryan’s fingers were visibly unsteady as he lifted his hand and brushed the soft curve of Amanda’s cheek.

  “I’m all right,” he murmured, sounding anything but. “She hasn’t said anything I haven’t heard before.”

  “Still, she had no right to mock you like that. Not after everything we’ve been through, everything you’ve done for us. For her.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he insisted wearily. “We should save our sympathies for von Helmstaad. In another three weeks, she’ll be his problem.”

  Amanda bit her lip and glanced over to where her father had retrieved the deck of cards and was laying them one by one on the table, studying each picture and number as if it were crucial they be placed in precisely the correct order. He kept blinking, fighting to keep the cards—and the world—in focus, and for that, Amanda would gladly have slapped Alisha to tears.

  She turned her head to hide the anger in her eyes and stared at the blackness outside the French doors.

  “It seems as if the rain has stopped,” she remarked tautly.

  Ryan followed her gaze to where the moonlight was shimmering on the wet grass, turning the wide puddles into sheets of molten pewter.

  “As usual,” he said. “It stops at night when we least need clear skies.”

  Amanda studied his face a moment, then addressed her mother. “Will you and Father manage without us for a little while? I think I might like a breath of fresh air.”

  “Of course, my dear,” Sarah replied, her hands fluttering back to her sewing. “Your father and I will just sit here and chat. Mind you take a shawl with you, the dampness could put a chill in your lungs.”

  Amanda barely paused to snatch up a knitted wrap before exiting hastily through the French doors. Ryan was a brief pace behind, his face grim and his mouth set as he watched Amanda dash a hand across the tears that splashed down her cheeks. He remained a silent and discreet step behind her until they were far enough away from the house for her to unleash an unflattering litany of adjectives applied to their sister’s sensitivity and compassion.

  Her vitriol lasted until they reached the cobblestone circle that had once formed the heart of the formal gardens. It was, as Alisha had so artlessly pointed out, one of the harsher reminders of the state of disrepair into which Rosalie had fallen. Weeds twisted treacherously through the cobbles. The paint on the summerhouse was peeling; the structure itself was missing spindles, rails, and a whole section of the roof. Leaves clogged the broken floorboards and the vines that crept along the banisters were slowly choking the ornamental carvings and open grillwork. The summerhouse had once been an elegant, cool retreat from the sun, a place for lovers to exchange whispered promises under musky, sensuous bowers of honeysuckle and magnolia. Now it stood under the moonlight, a skeletal monument to a rich and easy lifestyle that was gone forever.

  “You cannot blame Alisha for not wanting to marry here,” Ryan commented, looking around. “It would take longer than her engagement period just to weed and reshape the gardens.”

  “I would take the time,” Amanda said stubbornly. “You would too.”

  “Well … you and I are different. We don’t seem to need the same things Alisha needs.”

  Amanda stopped at the foot of the wide steps leading up to the summerhouse. She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of a match scraping over a boot heel and studied her brother’s face in the sharp, bright glare of the flame he touched to his cigar. His was a face of planes and angles, softened only by the startling blue eyes that were incredibly wise and honest for his twenty-six years. His hair was tawny blond, normally the color of chamois but now bleached almost white by the daily exposure to the sun—exposure and backbreaking work that kept him lean and fit and finely tempered, and gave him little time to fuss over the limp he had come home with.

  Amanda reached up and smoothed a stray lock of hair off his brow. He smiled at the unselfconscious gesture and covered her hand with his.

  “She isn’t all that far off the mark, you know,” he said quietly. “I suppose it was a hopeless, stupid dream to think we could save Rosalie from falling to the bloodhounds.”

  “I won’t listen to that kind of talk,” Amanda insisted, withdrawing her hand. “Not from you. It isn’t a dream. You’ve proved it can be done. There is still plenty of time before harvest, and if the weather clears—”

  “The weather isn’t going to clear in time, and there isn’t going to be any harvest. There isn’t any way to repair the damage that has already been done. The cotton is black with rot; there is hardly enough tobacco to roll a cigar. We would need a long, hot dry spell to even start to think about salvaging enough to seed next year’s crops.”

  “There,” she said brightly. “You see? You’re already talking in terms of next year’s crops.”

  “I could talk about growing wings and flying, but that won’t happen either.”

  “Everyone along the river is in the same position—even the damned Yankees who thought they knew so much more than we did. It isn’t just us.”

  “There isn’t a plantation within a hundred miles north or south that isn’t drowning under the floodwaters,” he agreed glumly. “As for Yankee know-how, the man who owns the most property hereabouts doesn’t seem to give a damn if the land drowns or not.”

  “Wainright,” she said on a despairing sigh.

  “Wainright. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he played a hand in this somehow—” He tipped his head up and waved his cigar at the moisture-laden clouds where they were once again drifting back to blanket the moon. “He’s just waiting, like a vulture, knowing we cannot possibly buy back our bank note unless we have something close to a decent crop this year.”

  “He can’t force you to sell.”

  “He doesn’t have to force me. He just has to wait until the bank forecloses, then steal it for five cents on the dollar. Twenty thousand prime acres for less than the price of a fence to enclose it. Makes my heart burn just to think of it.”

  “The loan isn’t due for another six months.”

  “With nothing to show in the fields, it might as well be due in six days. The fifty thousand we owe … might as well be fifty million.”

  Amanda frowned and tore a leaf off the trailing end of a vine. Fifty thousand dollars! Before the war, they had thought nothing of paying thousands dollars for a pair of prime broodmares. Now they had to deliberate carefully over spending five dollars to replace a sway-backed workhorse.

  “There is … another way to clear our debt and stop Wainright from sniffing around Rosalie.”

  Ryan drew a deep breath, pulling the harsh cigar smoke into his lungs at the same time. “No.”

  “It’s probably my fault anyway that he is so persistent. I was the one who slapped his face and called him a lowdown cowardly worm.”

  “If the shoe fits …”

  She glanced up from the shredded leaf. “It wouldn’t be so very terrible.”

  “I would burn Rosalie to the ground first,” he said succinctly. “With you in it.”

  “I could do worse.”

  “Than marry E. Forrest Wainright?” Ryan spit out a shred of tobacco and thrust the lit end of the cigar under her nose. “Anything worse would be slithering through the grass on its belly and you know it.”

  “I know it,” she sighed. “But if it’s the only way—”

  He swore and threw the cigar
aside, then grasped her roughly by the shoulders. “Now you listen to me, young lady, and listen well. I’m telling you no. Not while I am in charge of this household, and not while I have a sound breath left in my body.”

  He saw the sudden shine the harshness of his words brought to her eyes and his grip relented somewhat. “Having one addlebrained sister marry for all the wrong reasons is hard enough to swallow; having another swanning about, threatening to sacrifice herself for the good of mankind, would just about put me over the edge. I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions. Would you want that burden on your shoulders too?”

  “I think you’re almost over the edge anyway,” she said, smiling haltingly. “And if you want to talk about sacrifices, what are you playing at each day when you ride out into the fields and each night when you come back with your hands split and bleeding, the skin burned from your shoulders, your clothes so ragged and filthy a slave wouldn’t wear them? If Alisha was right about anything, it was about calling you the noble hero. Why are you so determined to do this alone? Rosalie is as much my home as it is yours; I’m entitled to swan a little, even to make sacrifices if it means keeping our home in our family.”

  “You have already helped more than you should. And for Christ’s sake, don’t start throwing Alisha’s words in my face. She wouldn’t know the meaning of the word sacrifice if it jumped up and bit her in the nose. Were you not the one who pointed out that what she is squandering on a party for one day would keep a family in bread and meat for a year? And as if it wasn’t enough to watch her sharpening her claws for von Helmstaad’s fortune, I gave you money for a new dress last month and where did it end up? On Alisha’s back.”

  “The world will not end if I am seen twice in the same frock, whereas she … she needs to look pretty. She needs to have pretty things around her.”

  “Whereas you,” he said sardonically, “are unscathed by any such heinous character flaws? You prefer wearing rags and languishing in poverty?”