CHAPTER FOUR

 

A lone rider was coming slowly up the winding approach to Rosalie. Amanda strained to see through the soupy fog, having heard the hoofbeats long before the horseman came into view. It had rained all night and well into the morning, and the August heat pressed down from above while the earth steamed sulkily from below; anything trapped in the middle—people and objects alike—ran wet with moisture and fought the urge simply to wilt where they stood The silence, save for the sharp chirping of crickets and the shrill hum of cicadas, was equally oppressive. This was the time of year when the fields should have been echoing with the singing and wailing of the slaves harvesting cotton. The steady barking of dogs should have caused as much of a clamor as the children running around the open-pit barbeques where sweat-slicked, grinning slaves stoked the fires for smoking meat. The skies should have been a bright blue, the cotton a snowy contrast as it was baled and stacked in the flatbed wagons to be transported to the jetty.

This morning, like so many others, the fields were too muddy to venture into and were empty but for the shifting blanket of fog.

Amanda grudgingly left the only corner of the wide veranda where a hint of a breeze was teasing her skin. A slender hand adjusted the errant wisps of blonde hair at her temples for the twentieth time, then smoothed the folds of her skirt so that the carefully stitched patch along the hem did not show.

Her cheeks were dusted pink, not entirely due to the heat. As much as she tried to deny it, she was impatient for Josh’s arrival, and as she walked to the edge of the veranda, she visualized the long, pebbled laneway flanked on both sides by towering cypress trees, their boughs bent and trailing beards of gray moss.

If she closed her eyes, she could picture the grand avenue as it had once been, with the velvet lawns and sculpted parterres that formed a circle of elegant plantings enclosed by the crushed stone drive. Now, of course, there was only ruin. The shrubs and roses in the rotunda had long ago been trampled into the ground, and the only tree left standing close to the house was an ancient oak, its topmost branches glossy and arched like an umbrella.

The sound of hoofbeats came closer, the crunching distinct and slowing as the rider emerged from the milky wisps of fog. And as the visitor himself took shape, Amanda’s anticipatory smile was transformed slowly into a thin, compressed line of shocked disbelief.

 

E. Forrest Wainright savored both the reaction and the hard pulsing response that rippled through his own body. The one identified immediately which twin stood before him so fetchingly dishabille in the heat and humidity; the other was purely a physical reaction to something so perfect, so exquisitely beautiful, a man would have to have ice water flowing through his veins not to feel himself rise to the occasion.

“Mrs. Jackson.” He doffed his tall beaver hat as he reined his horse to a halt at the foot of the steps. “A pleasant surprise, by any measure.”

Amanda resisted the urge to turn and run into the house. The last time she had seen Wainright, he had just finished proposing marriage and had been wearing the imprint of her response on his cheek. It was not so much that he had dared to suggest marriage as an alternate way of resolving the Courtlands’ financial difficulties, but that he had done it in such a way as to make her feel as if she was just another piece of property that afforded him the possibility of a quick profit. It was time, he had arrogantly declared, for him to start thinking of putting down permanent roots, and there was no one more perfectly tailored to his needs than the great-great-great-granddaughter of Jacques Lemoyne, Seigneur d’Iberville, the French nobleman who had founded Fort Rosalie on the present site of Natchez.

The union would not only ingratiate him with the old society of Natchez—something that would be as formidable to breach as the fossiled walls of Jericho—it would impress the powerful and influential members of the new Federal Government, who were more inclined to bestow political favors on those who seemed sincere in their efforts to make reparations with the South.

The slap had come without thinking, as had her rather inelegant suggestion as to who and what she would rather marry in his stead. And now, even though her palm was stinging as if she had just struck him, he was smiling up at her with a lazy indolence that suggested the incident had only served to whet his appetite more.

He was handsome in a stark, brutish way, with a high, wide forehead and a nose that would have done a hawk proud. Hair redder than flames flowed in thick, well-oiled waves to the top of his collar, a disconcerting contrast to pale white skin and copper eyelashes. He dressed expensively and always had a look of money about him—other people’s money—wearing it unashamedly in a land where the majority had to scratch from one meal to the next to survive.

Without waiting for an invitation to do so, Wainright dismounted and casually tethered his bay to the hitching post.

“A warm day,” he remarked offhandedly. “I suspect there will be rain again before too long.”

Amanda was at a temporary loss. Was it only last night, her mind wandering in the wake of the passing riverboat, that she had actually contemplated marriage to this man?

“I’m sure you've not ridden all the way out here to discuss the weather,” she said coldly.

“I’m sure I haven’t either.” His watery hazel eyes lingered on the crisscrossed folds of muslin, staring at her as if he could see clear through the layers of her clothing. “You’re looking lovely,” he murmured, “as always. Not that such a simple, homespun frock does you the justice you deserve, my dear. Silk, I should think, in the same stunning blue as your eyes.”

“As it happens, I prefer simple things, Mr. Wainright. Like simple answers to simple questions. Why are you here?”

He mounted the wide, flat stairs until he stood a single tier below her, a level that put his eyes even with her bosom. “I don’t suppose you would believe me if I say I have come to prostrate myself before you in the hopes you will reconsider my offer of marriage?”

Amanda arched a delicately shaped eyebrow and fought to keep her expression as civil as possible. “I don’t suppose I would.”

He expelled a short, soft chuckle. “A pity, then, for I warrant we would make a most handsome couple.”

“Marriages should be based on more than appearances alone.”

“Do you also prefer your men with shiny round heads, protruding bellies, and hair growing out of the tip of their bulbous noses?”

It was an apt description of Karl von Helmstaad, and Amanda bristled. “If they were not afraid to show affection, tolerance, and kindness, I would not be so quick to judge their outward beauty.”

“My dearest Amanda—” He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. “There is not a man alive prepared to show you more affection than I. And I assure you, I am a most tolerant man. My continued devotion in the face of such … overwhelming odds should be proof enough of that.”

Amanda withdrew her hand and resisted the urge to wipe it clean on the front of her skirt. His only devotion was to money, to the acquisition of wealth and power regardless of whom he had to destroy or humiliate to get it. “I am in no hurry to marry again,” she said curtly. “And even if I was—”

He closed his eyes and held up a thin white hand to cut off the rest of her sentence. “Spare me the details,” he laughed. “I have an excellent memory.”

“Then I’m surprised how quickly you seem to have forgotten—” said a gruff voice behind them— “that I said I would shoot you where you stood if you set foot on our land again.”

Ryan stepped out of the shadowy front entrance of the house. The door had been left open to entice what little air there was to flow through the hall, and Amanda wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there, she was just relieved to see him. He had obviously come from the fields. His boots were caked with mud, his hair was wet and slicked to his forehead. His clothes clung in damp patches to his skin, emphasizing the bulk of muscle across his chest and arms that, in turn, left Wainright sorely lacking by comparison.

“What the hell are you doing here, Wainright?” he asked.

“I have come on official business, actually, although”— the pale eyes flicked to Amanda again—“it is always a pleasure to engage Mrs. Jackson in verbal intercourse.”

He mouthed the words with such obvious relish, Ryan took an angry step toward him. “What official business can you possibly have with us? Rosalie is not for sale. Neither is my sister.”

“Ah.” Wainright lifted his eyebrows more for effect than surprise. “So she told you I offered an amiable alternative to bankruptcy and foreclosure?”

“She told me you proposed. She also told me she gave you her answer.”

“Quite eloquently, yes indeed. And I wanted to assure her I held no ill feelings toward her … impetuosity. I find it, if anything, a more refreshing trait in women that they should be passionate in their convictions rather than dull and docile.”

“I’m sure we’ll all sleep easier at night knowing you’ve forgiven her. Now, if that was all you had to say—”

Ryan took Amanda’s hand and started to lead her back into the house, but Wainright’s voice stopped him.

“Actually, I have a good deal more to say. And directly to the party responsible for the debts and mortgages incurred against this property. I presume that would still be your father?”

“Presume all you want, Wainright. I have been entrusted with the running of this plantation—all quite legally, I promise you. So when I tell you I have no intention of selling, you can take it to be the final word on the subject.”

“This legal authority extends to all matters pertaining to finance?”

Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “It does, as if it was any affair of yours to know.”

“As it happens, it is very much my affair,” Wainright said, smiling tightly. “You are indebted to the Natchez Mercantile, are you not? To the sum of nearly fifty thousand dollars?”

He said the amount with an almost respectful awe in his voice, for most plantations had collapsed long before now on amounts that were minuscule by comparison.

“You have a point to make, Wainright?”

“The point, Mr. Courtland, is that your father signed several notes with the Mercantile. Notes supported by not much more than the strength of your father’s good name … and a certain familial connection.”

He was referring, of course, to Amanda’s marriage to Caleb Jackson. But Horace Jackson, even if his only son had not married into the Courtland family, would still have extended the necessary funds to William on little more than a signature, for Sarah’s father had been one of the bank’s original clients and the family had made substantial profits for the Mercantile for over eighty years.

“You must be aware, however, that the bank has changed ownership in the last few months.”

“Meaning the Yankee vultures have moved in and taken over. It has happened to most of the banks in the South— what of it? The terms of the loan are legal and binding, no matter who is in control.”

“That would be true,” Wainright agreed, “if it were a business loan backed by solid assets as collateral. At the time, as I understand it, Rosalie was a ten-thousand-bale plantation, with several hundred head of prime Thoroughbreds in the stables. I have no doubt Rosalie was worth ten times the amount borrowed, but now? A flooded plantation on the brink of ruin is hardly worth the taxes being levied on the land assessment alone.”

If Ryan had any inkling of what was coming, he did not betray it through any change in his expression.

“Moreover, a personal note is little better than an I.O.U.,” Wainright explained blithely, “and comes due and payable upon the holder’s discretion.”

“There are six months left in the terms of the loan,” Ryan said evenly.

“The original terms, perhaps. But as I said, the bank has changed ownership since the notes were negotiated. The new management has found a shocking laxness in the area of outstanding debts, and has been prompted to sell some of the notes they deemed to be too high a risk to warrant keeping. In other words, they don’t believe there is a hope in hell of some of you Southerners coming up with the money you owe, so they have decided to cut their losses and salvage what they could. Your father’s notes were, needless to say, some of the largest, and although I will admit to being forced to pay a higher price than I intended, I still look upon it as money well spent.”

Ryan could not breathe. His chest felt as if there were metal bands molded around it, with screws being tightened inch by inch so that the flesh and blood and muscle was all forced upward into his throat. Beside him, Amanda felt the tension ripple through his body. If it was true, if Wainright now held the notes on Rosalie, he could and would demand repayment in cash—cash they simply did not have.

Horace Jackson had indeed done them a favor by extending credit on a mere signature, and not all because he was a father-in-law and friend to the Courtlands. He was also a loyal and fervent supporter of the Confederate cause, and if any of the big plantation owners needed cash to supplement their efforts toward supplying the war machine, he gave it freely and without question.

Horace Jackson had let sentiment interfere with sound business practices—something Wainright was obviously not going to be guilty of doing. He would take Rosalie from them if he could. Any way that he could.

Some of what she was thinking must have been swimming in her eyes, for Wainright’s smile took on a sardonic curve. “If nothing else, your husband and father-in-law both died believing they had helped your cause. Passion, however, has never made a businessman much profit.”

“Why, you bastard—” Ryan started forward, all but dragging Amanda with him since she refused to let go of his arm. It was only this added weight, along with her sharp cry, that prevented him from launching himself off the edge of the veranda and going for Wainright’s throat.

“Ryan! No!”

“Let me go! Let me at the son of a bitch!”

“What good will it do? He has the note! He has all the thieving Yankee carpetbaggers on his side!”

Ryan’s mouth was white, his eyes blazed with a murderous rage, and E. Forrest Wainright was enjoying the experience immensely.

“I have been advised,” he said calmly, “that I may give you thirty days’ notice of intent. If, within that time, you fail to repay the entire amount outstanding, the house and the land it sits on will be forfeit.”

“Thirty days!” Ryan surged against the pressure of Amanda’s hands, and she was forced to step in front of him to keep him from flying down the stairs.

“Surely,” she cried, asserting her own appeal, “it would not be too great of an imposition for you to at least honor the original terms of the loan! Six months cannot mean much to a man of your position and means, whereas six months to us could be the difference between surviving and losing everything.”

“Which is exactly what he is counting on,” Ryan spat past her ear.

“A gentleman”—she paused long enough to put the proper importance on the word—“would do nothing less than honor the agreement.”

“My dear Mrs. Jackson.” The burnt umber of Wainright’s eyes glittered maliciously. “As a gentleman, I have offered a fair price for this land in the past. The offer still stands if your brother chooses to accept it, and if he has the business acumen to walk away from this situation with enough cash in his pocket to begin again. If not, if he is too stubborn to sell outright, and if in thirty days he does not appear before me with fifty thousand dollars in hand, then it is his conscience, not mine, that will suffer from his obstinacy.”

“Is there no way to change your mind?” Amanda asked, horrified.

The glowing eyes raked down the length of her body and a smile twisted the corners of his mouth. “There are always ways,” he murmured. “A husband, for instance, would never see his wife’s family turned out into the street.”

Ryan’s voice was brittle enough to shatter. “I would burn this house down and poison every acre we own before I would see my sister married to you, Wainright. Now get off my land or by Christ I’ll see you grinning in hell.”

Wainright’s smirk flattened marginally in response to the threat, but his eyes never left Amanda’s face as he settled his hat firmly on his head and walked back down the steps. At the bottom, reins in hand, he gave the house and surrounding land a last lingering look that suggested it was only a matter of time before they were his.

“Thirty days,” he reiterated. “One way or another.”

Amanda was shivering visibly by the time Wainright was swallowed into the fog again. Ryan had his arm around her shoulders, but it did little in the way of offering her comfort or reassurances.

“What are we going to do?” she asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know. I need time to think.”

“We don’t have time. And what is there to think about? He owns the notes. He intends to foreclose. Perhaps … maybe if we spoke to Father about it?”

“What good would that do?” Ryan blurted out angrily. “He thinks the stables are still full of horses and the fields are still ripe with cotton. He can barely keep the days of the week straight anymore, and when he sits out here in the mornings, he still nods and chats to invisible slaves as they go off to work the farm. He’s in another world, Mandy. A better world. A world he knew and loved and felt safe in.”

Amanda bit her lip and started to pull out of his embrace. She turned her face so he would not see the wetness brimming along her lashes, and found she had to cover herself again, for Sarah Courtland was bustling around the side of the house, her face flushed from hurrying, her hair flying out like soft gray wings from beneath the rim of her bonnet.

Trailing in her wake, her own oversized bonnet askew over one blue eye, Verity Jackson was struggling valiantly to maintain the balance of the huge wicker basket she was clutching in both hands. Her tongue was thrust out of the corner of her mouth in grim determination. Her cheeks were pink and puffed up with air, and her little feet were tangling over each other as she scuffled side to side on the path. In the basket were a handful of scrawny, underdeveloped carrots and onions still covered in black mud from the garden—a good deal of which was streaked down the front of the child’s pinafore.

Ryan smiled despite himself as he went down the stairs and relieved his niece of her terrible burden. “Heavens above, you didn’t carry this all the way from the garden by yourself, did you?”

Verity looked up at her uncle’s great height and shoved at the brim of the drooping bonnet. She was an exact replica of her mother at that age, with a bow-shaped mouth and enormous cornflower-blue eyes that seemed to fill her whole face. Her long blonde hair had been properly braided earlier in the morning, but with the strain of playing and gardening, and the constant worrying of the bonnet, it looked as if it hadn’t been brushed in days.

She giggled at Ryan as he pretended to groan under the weight of the basket.

“Dear me,” Sarah fretted. “I thought I heard a horse and wondered if your Mr. Brice had come early. I said to Verity, ’My word, but Mr. Brice must have come early,’ didn’t I, child? but then I said, ’No. No, it could not be Mr. Brice, for it has barely gone noon and he would have to be dreadfully eager to have come out in all this wretched fog.’ It wasn’t Mr. Brice, was it?” she asked, peering into the settling mist.

“No, Mother,” Amanda replied. “It was not Mr. Brice.”

“Well, who was it then?” Sarah demanded, her gaze having found a fresh pile of steaming horse dung. “Who on earth would visit at this time of day and why did you not invite whoever it was to sit for a cup of coffee or a cool glass of water? Surely to goodness we haven’t forsaken all of our manners!”

She glared expectantly at her son and daughter and Amanda sighed, knowing there would be no putting her off.

“It was Mr. Wainright, Mother, and he wasn’t visiting, he was just … consulting Ryan on a business matter.”

“Wainright?” Sarah frowned, trying to place the name. “Wainright? Not that dreadful man with overlapping teeth and eyes that go their own separate ways? Well, thank goodness he didn’t stay then, for I declare it exhausts me just trying to figure out which eye to talk to.”

Amanda and Ryan exchanged a glance, but neither one made any effort to correct Sarah’s identification. Ryan offered his mother his hand to help her up the last two steps, then passed her into Amanda’s care.

“If the three most beautiful ladies in Adams County will excuse me now, I have some chores to tend to down at the barn. Mandy—try to smile a little. It might help to bring out the sunshine.”

Sarah presented her upturned cheek for his kiss and nodded in agreement. “Indeed, yes. It wouldn’t do to look so glum when your Mr. Brice arrives. It wouldn’t do at all.”

Amanda attempted a half-hearted smile, but her thoughts were with Ryan as he headed along the path toward the ruins of the slave quarters, half of which now served as stables for their livestock. His shoulders were squared and his stride was firm, but his hands were shoved deep in his pockets and balled into tight fists.

Fifty thousand dollars in thirty days. No one had that kind of money. No one but Yankee speculators and the vultures appointed by the government whose job, it seemed, was to drive every honest Southern family to the brink of ruin.

She thought again of Wainright’s marriage proposal and shuddered. It would resolve all of their problems, certainly, but was it something she could actually go through with? The narrowed, glittering eyes and spidery thin white hands made her flesh shrink just to imagine waking to them each morning and submitting to them each night. She had felt weak with relief at Ryan’s adamant refusal even to consider allowing the unholy alliance, but in thirty days’ time, they might be left with no other alternative.