Patricia Rice (8 page)

Dora waved at the men as they returned to work, then started back for the big house. She had less than a mile to walk. Her feet just didn't fly over it as willingly today as they ought. The family expected Pace home any day now, and she would rather be elsewhere when he heard the news. They hadn't announced it yet, but they almost certainly would at the ball next week. Josie Andrews was marrying Pace's brother, Charles.

* * *

"Why, Josie, why? I thought we had an understanding. I'm running for the legislature in the next election. I thought you would stand by my side. What happened?" The anguished words were soft and barely discernible over the chirping of the crickets and the croaking of frogs. The man in a gentleman's tailored frock coat ran his hand through his thick hair in blatant bewilderment, not looking at the slender woman in hooped skirts and sloping bare shoulders. The lights and the music from the party behind them scarcely reached this dark corner of the veranda.

"I couldn't wait any longer, Pace," she murmured, crossing and uncrossing her hands. "Today's my twentieth birthday. I expected to be married long before this. All my friends have babies already. You kept putting me off with first one promise, then another. And now there's all this talk of war and you're spending so much time arguing for the Union, you can't even write to me. I can't wait any longer. I don't think you want to be married, Pace. I think you're having too much fun up there in Frankfort trying to talk those silly men into joining the war. The worst of it is, you'll probably succeed, and then you'll go marching off to fight."

"War is inevitable, Josie," Pace said irritably, running his hand through his hair again as he glared at the lighted ballroom behind her. "I told you I meant to run for office, not go to war."

"My friends and family are here, Pace. I want to stay here," Josie answered quietly.

He turned on her with an angry scowl. "You mean you want to live in a big house with servants. State it plainly, Josie. Charlie can give you a hell of a lot more than I can."

She clasped her fingers, refusing to look at him. "Charlie isn't like you, Pace. He's not mad at the whole world. He's kind and thoughtful. He brings me flowers. He's helping my daddy now that he's down with the stroke. I put him off as long as I could, Pace. There wasn't any reason to put him off any longer."

Pace gave a wild laugh that fit a jungle more than this civilized setting. He quit running his hand through his hair and his savage grin didn't reach his eyes. "Kind and thoughtful! Charlie! Josie Ann, you’ll pay for this, and I'm not the one who'll be setting the price. When you're sitting here in this big house, looking out over all the acres you and Charlie will own together, you just remember this night and what you said. I'll not stand here and try to persuade you different when your mind's made up. I'm not that kind of fool. But I wouldn't let my worst enemy walk into what you're walking into without some kind of warning."

Pace gripped his fingers into tight fists and nodded his head toward the windows spilling light. "You go back in there and listen to Charlie and my father. Really listen. Don't just look at their pretty faces. Then you watch what they do and how they behave when they think you're not looking. Just remember this, the apple never falls far from the tree. Maybe I am mad at the world. Maybe I pick my share of fights and lose more than my share. Maybe I am just as wild as you've accused those other men who courted you of being. I never tried hiding the fact that I didn't fall far from the tree, which is more than Charlie can say. But remember this, Josie Ann: I never in my life,
never
took my anger out on those less defenseless than myself."

He strode off into the darkness before Josie could recover from her shock and reply. Indignant, she stamped her little foot and returned to the party. Who did he think he was to brag about something so silly as that? If that was all he had to say for himself, then she was well rid of him.

* * *

Biting her lip, Dora backed away from the upstairs window. She hadn't meant to eavesdrop. She had just been listening to the music. The religion of her adopted parents forbade dancing, but she couldn't help the way it stirred her soul and made her restless and eager at the same time. She loved the lilting sound of the waltz in particular. She could listen to it all night. She had no desire to go downstairs and admire the elegant gowns and broad, black-clad backs dipping and swaying gracefully through the flower-bedecked ballroom. She found contentment in the music.

But she'd heard a great deal more than music by lingering. She couldn't hear all the words. Pace's voice had been low and venomous. Josie hadn't said much. But she'd known the content anyway. And she heard the shattered emotions.

She turned back, inspecting the sleeping woman in the bed. Harriet Nicholls had taken a sleeping draft before the ball started, saying the noise would disturb her otherwise. No one had offered to help her from her bed to dress and go downstairs to inspect the ballroom and greet the guests. No one had expected her to leave her room. And she'd made no attempt to do so. Dora wondered how long Pace's mother had been this way, but she had been taught the vulgarity of asking personal questions.

As far as she could see, there was nothing wrong with the woman but too much laudanum, too much medicinal whiskey, and inertia. Harriet couldn't sleep at night because she slept all day with the shades drawn. She couldn't leave her bed because she couldn't face the day without a strong dose of "medicine." By the time she was sufficiently anesthetized to get out of bed, she was too unstable on her feet to walk down the stairs. So she called herself an invalid and stayed in bed.

Dora supposed Harriet might be inflicted with some pain the eye couldn't see. She knew it happened. Joints became stiff and painful and degenerated for no known reason. Perhaps that was the case. She would give her the benefit of the doubt. But she couldn't think so charitably of the family who totally ignored her.

Only Pace bothered visiting his mother, and he came home so infrequently that he might as well not come at all. Carlson Nicholls acted as if his wife didn't exist. He kept his black mistress in a room near the kitchen so he didn't have to go out in the weather on a bad night.

Charles didn't go so far as to bring his women into the house, but he came in drunk and staggering at all hours, and didn't seem to care that he might disturb the invalid's sleep. He never entered her room. He visited the grave of his late sister more often than he visited his still living mother. It was an extremely odd household.

But only Pace mattered to Dora. She had never questioned why this was so. She'd felt that way ever since the day she had found him battered and hurting beneath the maples. She felt his hurts as if they were her own, and he was hurting badly right now. She could feel his anguish all the way through her middle.

Checking once again on the sleeping woman, Dora reached for her bonnet and tied it beneath her chin. She recognized the senselessness of her actions. She couldn't ease Pace's anguish. He scarcely knew she existed. He was a lawyer now, with a partnership in Frankfort. With all of Kentucky at war with itself. Pace had found his element. He would probably head for the saloons in town now. It didn't matter. She just knew she couldn't let him grieve alone.

Of course, knowing Pace's penchant for taking his rage out on others, he would no doubt instigate a brawl before the night ended. She'd heard he'd been shot in a fight over in Lexington. Rumors blamed a duel, but she didn't think Pace would have participated in one.

She'd heard it said the new constitution forbade state representatives from taking office if they'd participated in a duel. Pace was too determined to get elected to risk his career. But she knew he carried a gun and wouldn't hesitate at shooting a man who aimed at him. His violence terrified her. Had he been anyone else, she would steer a wide path around him. But Pace had called her an angel and bought her candy sticks and surprisingly replaced her doll one day when she was really too old for dolls. It hadn't mattered. She'd kept the doll beside her every night since.

The warm, clear spring night stirred her blood as Dora raced down the lane toward the river. She didn't even think about where she went. Her instincts for finding Pace were unerring. She followed his invisible trail. Her heart pattered erratically, but she didn't let that worry her. Spring was like that. She could see it in the way the lambs gamboled in the field and the colts threw back their heads and whinnied for no reason at all. Life grew thicker and more rampant in the spring.

Her body felt strange, but she was grateful that she had a physical body at all. For a long while, she'd had the fanciful notion that she really had died all those years ago, and only this cloud that looked like her walked on earth. That would explain why people never noticed her. They couldn't see her. Only Pace could see her. She didn't want to be a ghost.

But she felt like one now, a coalescence of gray air floating on the breeze. If not for the pain she felt, she would doubt her physical reality. And the pain wasn't even hers, but Pace's. Strange, how God worked. He'd let her die with her mother and brought her back as this odd half-person and put her down in this strange country where nobody saw her. Surely He had some purpose that she would recognize someday.

The fishermen had left their cabins along the river dark while they reeled in the fish that they sold to the passing riverboats. She had learned how to call them, how to set fire to turpentine balls and fling them over the river so they would row into shore to see who needed transporting across. She'd even done it once or twice when runaways came to her door expecting Papa John. David and Jackson took care of them now that they stayed in the farmhouse.

She wasn't looking for the fishermen tonight. She looked for Pace. She found him swigging on a bottle of bourbon, standing on the bank, staring out across the river. For once, he hadn't gone into town looking for a fight.

She'd rather not disturb him. She stood in the shadows of the willows, hands crossed in front of her. He had taken off his coat and the moonlit river silhouetted his broad shoulders. The wind plastered the fine linen of his shirt to his skin, delineating his manly form. She had never really paid much attention to how men's bodies differed from women's other than to know that they were broader and stronger and taller. Seeing Pace's as she did now, she couldn't help but notice.

She had thought the tailored frock coat created his broad-chested form, but now she realized that was the shape of him: wide at the shoulders and narrow at the hip. It felt odd to notice how long and strong his legs seemed in their tight evening clothes.

His hair ruffled in the wind, blowing off his face as he tossed his head back and drank deeply from the bottle. She ought to stop him, but it wasn't her place. She would just watch and make certain he didn't hurt himself. Watching him turn to drink saddened her. Josie could have saved the man that Pace was meant to be, the man who helped little girls and gave them dolls, the man who fought for those who couldn't fight for themselves. Josie could have brought out the good in him. Instead, she had driven him to the dissolution he'd been taught from birth. Dora wanted to cry at the waste.

Pace took another drink with almost an air of defiance. That's when Dora realized he knew she stood there. Still, she didn't step forward. People called her his shadow. Perhaps she was, substanceless as she seemed.

"Dora, get the hell home," he finally said wearily, not turning to see her. He tossed the empty whiskey bottle far out into the current. "This isn't a place for little girls."

"I'll not fall from the tree," she said lightly, repeating the warning he had given her that first day. He was always warning her. She found it amusing when he was the one who took risks.

"I know. Angels fly." His voice was devoid of all emotion as he finally turned around, searching the night for her shadow. "Why aren't you back at the party, tapping your toe to the music?"

So he knew she listened. That didn't surprise her. "Why art thou not in town, slugging some poor brute in the face?"

He laughed at that, a wry laugh, but a laugh just the same. "I'll do that later. It takes more drink now than it did when I was younger to rouse my temper."

"I'm glad to hear that," she said simply.

"Go home, Dora. I'll be fine." She could tell he had found her gray shadow blending into the trees. The white of her bonnet gave her away.

"I tried talking to Josie," she admitted, "but she doesn't listen to me very well. People seldom do. They think I'm a child."

"You are a child," he answered curtly. "Now get back to your bed where you belong."

He was a full-grown man, a lawyer on the verge of being an important person. She was seventeen, small for her age, and invisible. Dora understood his curtness, but she ignored it.

"Josie's parents told her marrying Charlie was the best thing to do. She was raised to listen to her parents, Pace."

He stood silent for a moment, hands in pockets while the wind off the river whistled around him, tumbling his hair into his face. Finally, he answered, "Maybe they're right. Maybe Charlie is the best thing for her. Maybe she's the best thing for him. I've heard it said a woman can be the making of a man. Maybe she's just what Charlie needs to settle down."

And maybe the moon was made of green cheese and angels flew from trees. Dora didn't respond. She couldn't lie.

In drunken response to her silence, Pace regarded her with a leer. "Maybe when you grow up, I'll marry you, girl. When are you going to shed those dowdy clothes and become a butterfly?"

She understood the anguish that had drawn those words from him. He didn't really mean them. But still the pain of his cruelty cut through Dora like a fine-honed blade, forcing awareness of their differences. He was a worldly man, far beyond the ken of her sheltered upbringing.

With a sad nod, she whispered, "Good night, Friend Pace."

He watched her go, a diminutive gray sprite vanishing into the mists. For one brief moment Pace had the absurd notion of capturing the sprite in his arms, easing his aching heart with her closeness. Something intuitive told him she could take the pain away, as she had already eased it.