Kane

10

It was Betsy who first mentioned the welcome-home reception for Mr. Lewis two days later. To call Luke on the pretext of discovering the progress of the patient, then work the reception into the conversation, required more nerve than it did guile. She hated deceiving Kane’s cousin, but the resulting invitation to go with him was important. It represented the first step in her plan of attack.

Not that the gathering was a formal occasion in any way. It was just a few friends and neighbors showing up when Mr. Lewis was brought home from the hospital. According to Luke, no one wanted to tire Kane’s grandfather or make him feel he had to entertain them when he might not feel up to it. They would stick around long enough to show how glad they were that he was okay and have a little cake and coffee, then they would go.

The gathering would be out at Kane’s house, The Haven. Mr. Lewis was to stay there a few days under his grandson’s eye and Vivian Benedict’s care. They were afraid he would try to get out of bed too soon or do too much otherwise.

Regina and Luke reached The Haven before Kane arrived from the hospital with Mr. Lewis. They joined the others clustered in the shade of the long, column-lined front gallery. The rumble of voices was steady, punctuated now and then by a ripple of laughter, but spirits were subdued. The general feeling seemed to be that they had come close to losing Mr. Lewis, and that was not something to be taken lightly.

A great deal of attention was paid to Miss Elise, who sat pale and composed in a rattan peacock chair someone had brought out from the sunroom. She seemed to be enjoying herself in a quiet way, though she tried more than once to get up to help with the refreshments. All such efforts were kindly but firmly refused by Kane’s aunt, who seemed in her element as hostess. Bustling here and there, talking ninety-to-nothing, Aunt Vivian supervised the arrangement of the cakes and pies brought in by different women to be added to the bounty she had baked herself. The only person she allowed to do anything was Dora from Hallowed Ground, and then only because the housekeeper came armed with a silver cake knife and pie server and ignored all efforts to prevent her from wielding them.

April Halstead was also on hand, looking graceful and put-together in a simple dress of sunny yellow cotton knit worn with citrine earrings. Betsy arrived a few minutes after Regina and was fairly muted, for her, both in the shirt and pants she wore and the volume of her comments.

Regina recognized one or two others from the open house at Chemin-a-Haut, though she couldn’t recall their names. She did know Roan Benedict, however, and would have even if he hadn’t been wearing his badge. Thankfully, there was no time to do more than smile and nod a nervous greeting before someone announced that Kane was arriving with Mr. Lewis.

Everyone crowded toward the wide front steps, congregating there and on the brick walkway below. Regina hung back. She had no real place among the group and was reluctant to claim any. Added to that was her uncertainty over how Kane might feel about seeing her there.

He homed in on her presence with laser-beam accuracy, singling her out among the other well-wishers. Even while helping his grandfather negotiate the brick steps up to the gallery, his dark blue gaze meshed with her hazel one. For long seconds, there was nothing except trenchant speculation in his expression. Then his firm mouth relaxed into a smile.

That lack of hostility felt like a benediction. She caught her breath in soundless pleasure. As she felt the glow of it, she realized how tense she had been, how fearful that she had lost all chance of gaining his attention. Her heart lifted with hope that she knew was reflected in the tentative curving of her lips in return.

Mr. Lewis was hugged and had his uninjured left hand clasped a dozen times over on his way up the steps. He nodded, smiled, exchanged quips and jokes about his driving, the hospital nurses, and how anxious he was to get to Miss Elise. She met him with a kiss at the wide front door, and they made their way into the house together.

Wine and coffee were served along with the various desserts. When the glasses and cups and plates had been passed around, Luke proposed a toast, and all drank to the honoree’s health and good fortune in avoiding more serious injury.

Mr. Lewis raised both his cast-encased right arm and his glass to indicate that he wanted to reply. “To my good friends, my great neighbors, and all my favorite relatives by blood and by marriage, I thank you. This is certainly something worth living for, I promise you.” His eyes crinkled at the corners in whimsical amusement. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, particularly a longer rest in that wooden box I keep in my parlor.”

There was a general laugh, for which he waited before he went on. “Since you’re all here, this seems as good a time as any to make a little announcement, one some of you have been expecting for quite a while. Miss Elise was more shook-up than she let on by what happened the other night because she’s not letting me drive her home anymore. She’s put her foot down, decided she’s going to live at my house.”

“Now, Lewis…” the white-haired lady protested, blushing.

“That’s not the way it is?” he asked, his eyes twinkling as he put his arm around her, cast and all.

“You know very well it’s not,” she scolded, though her gaze was more than a little flirtatious.

“Oh, yes,” he said, pretending sudden understanding before he looked up, beaming, at the rest of the gathering. “The two of us are going to get married first.”

The round of chuckles and chorus of congratulations lightened the atmosphere. Conversation became a general buzz. The food and drink disappeared at an astonishing rate. Then, before Mr. Lewis began noticeably to flag, people started to find excuses for go ing. There were more hugs and handshakes, then a general exodus.

Miss Elise was among the last to depart. She gave her new fiancé a gentle kiss, then accepted the arm that Roan extended in support, since he had offered to see her home. Because she looked a little teary, the sheriff teased and flirted with her, exerting such outrageous charm and gallantry that he had her smiling again by the time they reached the front steps.

Soon there was no one left with Mr. Lewis, Kane and his aunt except Regina and Luke, who had been asked to help get the patient up the stairs to his bedroom. As the others eased the older man from his chair and helped him toward the upstairs bedroom, Regina busied herself picking up cups, glasses and dessert plates.

“Don’t bother with that, dear,” Aunt Vivian said over her shoulder. “I’ll do it later.”

Kane, three steps up the staircase with his grandfather, paused to glance back down at Regina. “But don’t go just yet, will you?”

“I can’t,” she said, awkwardly balancing fragile cups and saucers, “not until Luke is ready.”

“I brought her,” Luke put in from where he stood lending his arm to support the invalid.

Kane met his cousin’s dark gaze for a flicker of time far too short to guess what he was thinking beyond the fact that he was not pleased. Then to Regina, he said, “I’ll be back in a second.”

It sounded vaguely like a threat, but she refused to let it get to her. Her resolve was bolstered by Mr. Lewis, who gave her a jaunty wave and a wink before continuing slowly upward with his escort.

It was Aunt Vivian who returned first. With a warm smile that erased years from her face, she said, “I thought I’d leave Mr. Lewis to the boys. He’ll be more comfortable that way, I imagine. Would you care for more coffee?”

Regina declined the offer. “You think he’s really going to be all right?”

“Oh, yes. A few more days of bed rest and he’ll be his old self—except for the arm, of course, which will take a while to heal. It was a lucky escape.”

“Yes.” Regina was glad Kane’s aunt had no idea how lucky.

“He’s a tough old buzzard, tougher than us all, I sometimes think.” The other woman gave a low laugh as she waved Regina toward a seat on the couch, then dropped down beside her with a sigh. “He draws strength from the good he does for others and his pleasure in helping them through trying times. His greatest problem with the accident is that Miss Elise might have been harmed.”

“He seems a remarkable man.” The words were spoken with all sincerity.

“I certainly think so. You wouldn’t believe some of the things he’s done. He likes to talk about how wild Kane used to be, but I can tell you the tendency didn’t all come from the Benedict side of the family.”

Regina felt uncomfortable taking advantage of the other woman’s natural gregariousness, heightened as it seemed to be by the excitement of the homecoming. At the same time, she didn’t dare pass up the opportunity. “I find that hard to believe,” she said encouragingly. “He looks like such a perfect gentleman.”

“I’ll admit it’s hard to picture him doing anything the least bit out of line. Regardless, he was quite a ladies’ man in the days of slouch hats and hair tonic, before he married Mary Sue. There’s even a tale that he and his father helped cover up a killing back in the early thirties.”

“It’s common knowledge?” Regina asked, startled.

“No, no, I only heard about it because my husband’s family was involved.”

“The Benedicts.” Regina supplied the name to be certain she got the story straight.

“Exactly. I don’t know all the details, but it seems there was a lowlife pestering one of the Benedict women. She’d have nothing to do with the man, which drove him wild. One night, this creep caught her alone. When they found her, she was bruised and covered with blood, scarcely half-alive. The Benedict men went after the attacker—it was the kind of thing they did back then. He opened fire when he saw them coming. Shots were exchanged, and the lowlife wound up dead. Next day, so the story goes, Crompton’s Funeral Home buried two caskets in the same plot at old Granny Murphy’s funeral, one on top of the other. If the Murphys should ever exhume the dear soul, they’ll be shocked to discover who Granny has been sleeping with all these years.”

Regina couldn’t help smiling at the droll expression on the other woman’s face. As tragic as the incident might have been, it had taken place long ago, so had the feel of some distant legend. If the story she’d just heard had been about Mr. Lewis instead of his father, it might have been useful for Gervis’s purpose. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

“I suppose,” she said carefully, “that there are…certain advantages to the funeral business. You often know, literally, where the body is buried.”

“There are responsibilities, too,” Aunt Vivian commented. “People ask for the strangest things.”

“Oh?”

“Some want to be buried with their jewelry or photographs. One widow wanted to be buried with a plaster cast of her husband’s face. Then there was the man with the pharaoh complex who asked to take his pet cat with him into the afterworld. Of course, someone would have had to destroy it, and Mr. Lewis wasn’t about to be the executioner, being fond of cats himself. That was one request he sort of let slide until it was too late.”

“I would imagine so.”

“But he did honor a last request that touched his heart. A woman from Turn-Coupe quarreled with her sweetheart, then flounced off and married the wrong man. She spent her whole life being a good wife, then discovered she had cancer. When she knew she was dying, she asked Mr. Lewis to bury her next to the man she had never stopped loving, her sweetheart who had died the year before. When the time came, Mr. Lewis swore she had requested a closed-casket ceremony, then buried an empty coffin in the designated place and laid the woman to rest for eternity beside her soul mate.”

“And the family never discovered it?” Regina asked with close interest. The story was intriguing, even if it wasn’t damaging enough to be useful to her. Or was it? Might there not be a twist Gervis could put on it to make a case for some kind of fraud?

“Not to my knowledge, and I feel sure there would have been repercussions if it had come out. But you see what kind of man we’re dealing with, don’t you?” Vivian tilted her head to give Regina a glance from the corner of her eye.

Regina did indeed. Mr. Lewis was far too kindhearted and accommodating for his own good. She hated, really hated, that she was being forced to inform against him. She hated still more that his grandson, who was too much like him, was going to be caught in the fallout. Supposing, of course, that this secret she’d just discovered would be sufficient for her cousin’s purposes. She wouldn’t bet on it.

Kane came quietly down the stairs behind them. To his aunt, he said, “Luke is going to sit with Pops until he falls asleep, which shouldn’t be long. I know you’re worn out, too. Why don’t you lie down while Regina and I take a little walk down to the lake?”

Vivian Benedict searched her nephew’s face. Apparently, she saw something there that Regina couldn’t detect, for she didn’t argue. With her easy, natural grace, she thanked Regina for coming and said she would see her on her next visit. As she left them, Kane indicated the hallway that led toward the double French doors at the back of the house, then fell into step beside Regina as she moved in that direction.

Her arm brushed against his shirtfront when he held the back door for her. She was so tense that her nerves leaped, tingling at the touch, and it was all she could do not to pull away. Under the circumstances, it was impossible for her to refuse his request to speak to her alone. She was even grateful that she needn’t find some way of arranging it herself. Still, she was distinctly edgy about discovering what he wanted.

“So you’re on the lake, too?” she said in an effort to ease the strain.

“Not like at Luke’s, if that’s what you mean. My great-granddad who built The Haven preferred to be closer to the road, saving the bottomland for sugarcane.”

“Someone, April, I think it was, told me you worked in the cane fields as a teenager.”

“I expect that’s not all she told you.”

“No,” she admitted with a quick glance. “There was something about a nickname.”

He made a sound of disgust and shoved his hands into his back pockets.

Studying his closed expression as they moved down the steps, she said, “I take it you’re none too happy about it?”

“If April would stop telling people about how she gave it to me, it might die a natural death.”

“I think it’s interesting, even cool,” Regina said.

“Cool,” he repeated in pained tones.

“Very descriptive,” she added, controlling a smile.

“How would you know?” As they reached a gravel pathway meandering past a series of outbuildings and toward the distant glimmer of water through the trees, he gestured to indicate they should turn that way.

“Just guessing.” Her glimpse of his set face was fleeting as she passed him, then went on ahead.

“You couldn’t,” he said with deliberation, “be more wrong.”

Her stomach muscles clenched in a spasm. She sought a response and found none. They walked several more yards, passing beyond outbuildings that he described as an old smokehouse, a tractor shed and a barn. As they reached a wooded area and moved on through the cooler, lengthening shadows under the trees, she said finally, “Is there a point to this?”

“Actually, there is,” he said.

“And that would be?”

“Exercise, relaxation, companionship? Take your pick.”

She didn’t believe it, not for a second. Something in his voice snagged her attention, a shading very like regret. Uneasiness shifted inside her, and she opened her mouth to demand an explanation.

It was then that she heard a vehicle start up back at the house. She halted. “Isn’t that Luke’s Jeep?”

“Don’t panic,” he said, his gaze steady as he came even with her. “I told him I’d run you back to the motel.”

“Did you now? That was nice of you, nice and high-handed.”

“Wasn’t it?” he agreed, not at all perturbed.

“You might have asked.”

His gaze held humor as well as purpose before he moved on beneath the trees. Over his shoulder, he said, “And risk your refusing? Not a chance.”

“Of all the—” In her irritation, she couldn’t think of a phrase strong enough to satisfy her without being profane.

“Of all the chauvinistic, ill-mannered, downright redneck dumb tricks?” he supplied.

“Something like that.”

“That’s all right. Don’t spare my feelings.”

She stared after him. Her first impulse was to refuse to go another step, but what would she gain by it?

“I don’t intend to spare anything,” she declared as she closed the distance with fast, hard steps. “What is it with you? The women you know may be impressed by a take-charge attitude, but I don’t care for it. I’d just as soon go back to the motel, if you don’t mind.”

“But I do mind.”

He stopped as they came to the shore that was much the same as the water’s edge where she had watched the flight of the blue heron the first time he’d brought her to the lake. The main difference was the sturdy, covered boat dock built out over the water like a house on pilings and the fishing boats with motors, two of heavy fiberglass, two of lighter aluminum, which lay tied up in its slips. His eyes were a deep, vibrant blue in the summer sunlight as he turned to face her.

Annoyance combined with a half-formed fear that her attempt to reestablish a relationship between them might have worked too well roused her combative spirit. “I said I’m ready to go. If you won’t take me, I’ll find my own way.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Watch.” She spun on her heel, heading back toward the house.

He moved so silently she didn’t hear him, so fast her brain had no time to issue a warning. One moment, she was walking off; the next, she was caught and lifted against his chest in hard, enclosing arms. He swung her in a dizzying circle and stalked back toward the boat dock.

Disbelief held her rigid for long seconds. Then she strained against his hold, trying to shove away from him. He didn’t even slacken his pace. The warped boards of the dock rattled under his fast, hard strides. Face grim, mouth set, he marched to the slips where the boats floated above their wavering reflections and stopped at the very edge.

Regina went still, casting a quick look below her as she felt herself suspended above nothing but water. His hold loosened slightly, becoming less constricting. In quick reflex, she clutched his shirt collar.

“I’m not going to throw you in, no matter how tempting the idea may be, but we are going in the boat,” he said in grim warning. “Be careful how you fight if you don’t want to get wet.”

“What are you doing?” The question was embarrassingly husky. A strong shudder shook her, chased by one stronger still. She kept her gaze on the water, afraid to look at him.

He was silent an instant. Then he said in curt reply, “You’ll see.”

Swinging toward the nearest boat slip, he shifted his hold and released her knees to lower her feet to the dock. With one strong arm, he clamped her to his side, then stepped down into the larger fiberglass fishing boat and swung her into one of its center seats. The low craft rocked with the sudden motion, and she grabbed for the side. In that precarious moment, he cast off and shoved out of the slip, away from the dock. Reaching the driver’s seat beside her in a couple of long strides, he cranked the motor. It caught with a dull, spluttering rumble. Then they were off, skimming over the water, threading through the encroaching cypress trees into the main channel of the lake.

Regina briefly considered screaming, but that would be a waste of breath since there was no one near enough to hear. She could jump overboard and swim for shore, though the distance was widening every sec ond and she wasn’t the strongest of swimmers. More than that, the water was dangerously full of stumps and cypress knees, plus there was no guarantee that Kane wouldn’t overtake her and haul her back. A mad urge to leap up and try to shove him overboard tugged at her, but she suspected strongly that she’d also wind up in the lake. She sat still, then, and tried to tell herself that he had threatened no bodily harm beyond a dunking. For all she knew, he might be taking her for a quick ride to prove some macho point.

Of one thing, however, she was absolutely sure. Kane Benedict was not nearly so upstanding and gentlemanly as his grandfather after all.

“Where are you taking me?” She pressed her palms flat against the cushioned boat seat on either side of her to keep her hands from shaking.

“You’ll see.” His attention was on a channel ahead that gave access to the open water. He sent the boat gliding through it.

“Don’t you think I have a right to know?”

He met her gaze, his own opaque. “And spoil the surprise?”

The dispassionate sound of his voice should have been a relief, but wasn’t. Instead, its deep timbre sent dread rushing along her nerves. “I don’t like surprises,” she said in tight control.

“Don’t you?” His gaze narrowed before he looked away. “I thought you did.”

What did he mean? And was there really a surprise to be seen, or did he intend something else altogether? She hovered on the edge of her seat as she tried to decide. It didn’t seem possible he meant her harm, but there was the incident with the coffin to consider. Besides, she had been wrong before, years ago.

She had not fought against being taken where she didn’t want to go that other time because she didn’t want to appear naive and foolish. Now she didn’t want to look like an alarmist. Funny, how little she had changed.

The lake was smooth except for an occasional glittering wind shiver or the arrow-shaped ripple of a swimming waterbird. Its dark color, caused by the endless drip of tannin-loaded tree sap and a mud bottom, made a perfect mirror for the evening sky so that swathes of indigo, violet and crimson lay across its surface like painted streaks of watercolor. The stately cypress trees around the edges lifted their flat branches toward the clouds in open, pleading gestures. Regina stared around her, taking deep breaths, trying to stay calm. It didn’t help.

They were totally alone on the lake. She spotted three or four fishermen in boats along the shoreline, easing slowly along under the power of trolling motors as they cast for bass. A speedboat with a rooster tail of spume zipped toward them, then past them in the wide channel, and another bass boat crossed their bow and buzzed away for parts unknown.

She lifted her hand in a halfhearted signal to the man in the bass boat, but he only gave a brief wave and looked away, as if embarrassed to be caught staring at another man’s woman. It would have been infuriating if it wasn’t so discouraging.

Kane wove the boat deeper into the lake, taking one branching channel after the other. At first, Regina tried to remember the different turns, but soon lost track since they all looked the same. The boat ride became an endless blur of trees and water, of marsh grass and floating duckweed and mats of water hyacinths tucked into swampy inlets that smelled of mud and fish. Then the trees grew thicker again. Kane never hesitated, only twisted this way and that among them as if following a well-worn path. Several times, they passed small structures on stilts, too small for human habitation, too large for use by birds or animals. She thought they must be duck blinds since she’d heard a snatch of conversation at the open house about duck hunting.

Minutes after they had seen the first blind, Kane headed toward one that was somewhat larger than the others. He pulled the boat in under its tall, stiltlike pilings and cut the engine. In a quick, expert movement, he tied up beneath a ladder leading to what appeared to be a trapdoor above their heads. He stood and pushed the door open on its hinges, then laid it back on the floor inside.

“This is it,” he said, moving aside out of the way. “Climb up while I hold the boat steady.”

Her first instinct was to refuse, but that had gotten her exactly nowhere earlier. She tightened her lips, then stood gingerly and mounted the first rung. As she moved upward, Kane swung onto the ladder close behind her, too close. She climbed more quickly. When she gained the upper floor and got to her feet, he pulled himself inside with a lithe movement. Swinging around, he dropped the trapdoor shut with a solid thud. Then he straightened and turned to face her, his features masklike in the shadowed interior of the blind.

They were shut up together.

For a suffocating instant, Regina felt her old terror return. She was alone in this boxlike contraption with a man who had the promise of danger in his voice and empty eyes. The dim reaches of this swamp area on the edge of the lake spread around them, a buffer zone of watery silence. The day was waning and evening closing in. She was caught, isolated, weaponless against a menace she had brought on herself.

A cry of panic crowded her throat, but she swallowed it down. Desperately, she concentrated on the feel of the rough texture of the walls behind her and smell of damp cypress wood, the shifting air currents that touched her face, the lap of the water against the pilings and the boat under the blind. She dragged air into her lungs and let it out in slow control.

Focusing more carefully, she noticed the space was not as small as it first appeared, but was at least eight feet square and seven in height. A metal chest sat in one corner, along with a contraption that looked as if it might be a gas heater. Three of the side walls appeared to be hinged to allow them to swing down, probably for hunters to take aim on incoming ducks from various directions. Best of all, the roof was open to the sky halfway across its width, though the other half had a flat roof to provide rain protection.

She met Kane’s gaze while searching the last depths of her soul for bravado to use in place of her vanished courage. With the huskiness of cramped vocal cords, she said, “This is the surprise?”