“Your sister?”
“Garrett Weston’s daughter, just like me.”
He stroked her chin with his thumb. “You’ve lived in the South all your life. Sophronia’s skin is light.”
“You don’t understand.” She clenched her jaw and spat out the words through her tears. “My father used to give her away to his friends for the night. He knew she was his daughter, his own flesh and blood, but he gave her away just the same.”
“Oh, God . . .” Cain’s face grew ashen. He pulled her tighter and rested his cheek against the top of her head as she cried. Gradually she filled in the details of the story for him. When she was done, Cain spoke viciously. “I hope he’s burning in hell.”
Now that she’d poured out the story, Kit realized what she had to do. She leaped up from the settee. “I have to stop her. I can’t let her go through with this.”
“Sophronia’s a free woman,” he reminded her gently. “If she wants to go off with Spence, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“She’s my sister! I love her, and I won’t let her do this!”
Before Cain could stop her, she raced from the room.
Cain sighed as he uncoiled himself from the settee. Kit was hurting badly, and as he knew only too well, that could lead to trouble.
Outside, Kit hid in the trees near the front. Her teeth chattered as she huddled in the damp, wintry shadows waiting for Cain to come out. He soon appeared, as she’d known he would. She watched him descend the steps and look toward the drive. When he didn’t see her, he cursed, turned on his heel, and headed for the stable.
As soon as he was out of sight, she ran back into the house and made her way to the gun rack in the library. She didn’t expect too much trouble from James Spence, but since she had no intention of letting Sophronia go off with him, she needed the gun to add weight to her arguments.
Several miles away, James Spence’s crimson-and-black buggy swept past the buggy Magnus was driving. Spence was in an all-fired hurry to get wherever he was going, Magnus thought as he observed the vehicle disappear around the bend. Since there wasn’t much along this road except Risen Glory and the cotton mill, Spence must have business at the mill.
It was a logical conclusion, but somehow it didn’t satisfy him. He gave the horses a sharp slap with the reins. As he hurried toward Risen Glory, he considered what he knew about Spence.
Local gossip reported that he’d managed an Illinois gravel quarry, bought himself out of the draft for three hundred dollars, and headed South after the war with a carpetbag stuffed full of greenbacks. Now he had a prosperous phosphate mine and a hankering for Sophronia.
Spence’s buggy had already stopped at the bottom of the drive when Magnus got there. The businessman was dressed in a black frock coat and bowler, with a walking stick in his gloved hand. Magnus barely spared him a glance. All his attention was fixed on Sophronia.
She stood at the side of the road with her blue woolen shawl wrapped around her shoulders and a satchel at her feet.
“Sophronia!” He pulled up the buggy and jumped out.
Her head shot up, and for an instant he thought he saw a flicker of hope in her eyes, but then they clouded over, and she clutched the shawl tighter. “You leave me alone, Magnus Owen. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Spence stepped around from the side of the carriage and looked at Magnus. “Something the matter, boy?”
Magnus tucked a thumb into his belt and glared at him. “The lady’s changed her mind.”
Spence’s eyes narrowed beneath the brim of his bowler. “If you’re talking to me, boy, I suggest you call me ‘sir.’ ”
As Sophronia watched the confrontation, prickles of dread crept along her spine. Magnus turned to her, but instead of the gentle, soft-spoken man she knew, she saw a tight-lipped, hard-eyed stranger. “Get back to the house.”
Spence stepped forward. “Now see here. I don’t know who you think you are, but—”
“Go away, Magnus.” Sophronia could hear her voice tremble. “I’ve made up my mind, and you can’t stop me.”
“I can stop you, all right,” he said stonily. “And that’s exactly what I’m goin’ to do.”
Spence sauntered over to Magnus, his walking stick with its golden knob firmly in hand. “I think it might be better for everybody if you went back to wherever you came from. Now come along, Sophronia.”
But as he reached for her, she was abruptly snatched away. “You’re not touching her,” Magnus snarled, shoving her firmly behind him. Then he clenched his fists and stepped forward.
Black man against white. All Sophronia’s nightmares had come true. Fear shot through her. “No!” She clutched Magnus’s shirt. “Don’t hit him! You hit a white man, you’ll be hanging from a rope before morning.”
“Get out of my way, Sophronia.”
“The white man’s got all the power, Magnus. You leave this be!”
He set her aside, but the gesture of protecting her cost him. Behind his back, Spence lifted his walking stick and, as Magnus turned, slammed it into his chest.
“Stay out of things that don’t concern you, boy,” Spence growled.
In one swift movement, Magnus snatched the cane and broke it across his knee.
Sophronia gave an outcry.
Magnus tossed the cane aside and landed a hard blow to Spence’s jaw that sent the mine owner sprawling onto the road.
Kit had reached the line of trees just in time to see what was happening. She rushed out, raised her rifle, and leveled the barrel. “Get out of here, Mr. Spence. Doesn’t seem you’re wanted.”
Sophronia had never been more grateful to see anyone, but Magnus’s face grew rigid. Spence slowly rose, glaring at Kit. Just then a deep, drawling voice intruded.
“Looks like things are getting a little out of hand here.”
Four sets of eyes turned as Cain climbed down off Vandal. He walked toward Kit with the loose, easy swagger that was so much a part of him and extended his hand. “Give me the rifle, Kit.” He spoke so calmly he might have been asking her to pass bread across the dinner table.
Giving him the rifle was exactly what Kit wanted to do. As she’d discovered once before, she had no stomach for holding a gun on anyone. Cain would see to it that Magnus came to no harm, and she gave him the rifle.
To her astonishment, he didn’t turn it on Spence. Instead, he took Kit’s arm and pulled her, none too gently, toward Vandal. “Accept my apologies, Mr. Spence. My wife has an excitable temperament.” He shoved the rifle into the scabbard that hung from his saddle.
She saw Spence’s eyes grow shrewd. The cotton mill made Cain an important man in the community, and she could see his mind working as he decided it was to his advantage to have Cain as a friend. “Don’t mention it, Mr. Cain.” He reached down to dust off his trousers. “I’m sure none of us can predict the ways of our little womenfolk.”
“Truer words have never been spoken,” Cain replied, oblivious to Kit’s glare.
Spence picked up his black bowler and jerked his head toward Magnus. “Do you value this boy of yours, Major?”
“Why do you ask?”
He gave Cain a man-to-man smile. “If you was to tell me you valued him, I’d assume you wouldn’t be too happy to see him dangling from the end of a rope. And seeing as how we’re both businessmen, I’d be more than willing to forget what just happened here.”
Relief made Kit’s knees wobble. Cain’s eyes locked with Magnus’s.
They stayed that way for several long, hard seconds before Cain looked away and shrugged. “What Magnus does is his own business. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, one way or the other.”
Kit gave a hiss of outrage as he scooped her up onto Vandal, mounted himself, and spurred the horse back up the drive.
Sophronia stared after them, bile rising in her throat. The major was supposed to be Magnus’s friend, but he wasn’t a friend at all. White stood together against black. That was the way it
always had been, the way it always would be.
Despair overwhelmed her. She darted her eyes toward Magnus, but Cain’s betrayal didn’t seem to bother him. He stood with his legs slightly apart, one hand lightly balanced on his hip, and a strange light shining in his eyes.
The love she’d refused to admit burst free inside her, breaking all the invisible shackles of the past and sweeping away the rubble in a great cleansing rush. How could she have denied her feelings for so long? He was everything a man should be—strong, good, kind. He was a man of compassion and pride. But now, through her actions, she’d put him in peril.
There was only one thing she could do. She turned her back on Magnus and forced herself toward James Spence.
“Mr. Spence, it’s my fault what’s happened here today.” She couldn’t make herself touch his arm. “I been flirtin’ with Magnus. Makin’ him believe he meant somethin’ to me. You got to forget all this. I’ll go with you, but you got to promise you won’t let any harm come to him. He’s a good man, and all this is my fault.”
Magnus’s voice came from behind her, as soft and mellow as an old hymn. “It’s no good, Sophronia. I won’t let you go with him.” He moved up beside her. “Mr. Spence, Sophronia is goin’ to be my wife. You try to take her with you, I’ll stop you. Today, tomorrow, a year from now. Doesn’t make any difference. I’ll stop you.”
Sophronia’s fingers turned icy.
Spence licked his lips and shot a nervous glance in the direction Cain had disappeared. Magnus was the bigger man, taller and more muscular, and Spence would be the loser in a physical match. But Spence didn’t need that kind of fight to win.
With a sense of dread, Sophronia watched the play of emotions on his face. No black man could get away with hitting a white man in South Carolina. If Spence didn’t get the sheriff to do something about it, he’d go to the Ku Klux Klan, those monsters who’d begun terrorizing the state two years ago. Images of whippings and lynchings filled her mind as he walked confidently over to his buggy and climbed up onto the seat.
He picked up the reins and turned back to Magnus. “You’ve made a big mistake, boy.” And then he regarded Sophronia with a hostility he didn’t try to hide. “I’ll be back for you tomorrow.”
“Just a minute, Mr. Spence.” Magnus bent over to pick up the broken halves of the walking stick. As he made his way to the buggy, he walked with a confidence he had no right to feel. “I consider myself a fair man, so I think it’s only right I tell you what kind of risk you’d be taking if you got any ideas about coming after me. Or maybe you might decide to send your acquaintances in bedsheets here. But that wouldn’t be a good idea, Mr. Spence. Matter of fact, it’d be a real bad idea.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Spence sneered.
“It means I’ve got a talent, Mr. Spence, that you should know about. And I’ve got three or four friends with the same talent. Now, they’re only black men like me, you understand, so you might not think their talent is worth your notice. But you’d be wrong, Mr. Spence. You’d be dead wrong.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I’m talking about dynamite, Mr. Spence. Nasty stuff, but real useful. I learned to use it myself when we had to blast some rock to build the mill. Most people don’t know too much about dynamite, since it’s so new, but you strike me as a man who keeps up with new inventions, so I’ll bet you know a lot about it. I’ll bet you know, for example, just how much damage dynamite could cause if somebody set it off in the wrong place in a phosphate bed.”
Spence regarded Magnus incredulously. “Are you threatening me?”
“I guess you might say I’m just trying to make a point, Mr. Spence. I’ve got good friends. Real good friends. And if anything was to happen to me, they’d be mighty unhappy about it. They’d be so unhappy they might set off a load of dynamite in the wrong place. Now, we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we, Mr. Spence?”
“Damn you!”
Magnus put his foot up on the step of the buggy and rested the broken pieces of the stick on his knee. “Every man deserves his happiness, Mr. Spence, and Sophronia’s mine. I intend to live a good, long life so we can enjoy each other, and I’m willing to do whatever’s necessary to make sure we have that. Now whenever I see you in town, I’m going to take off my hat and say, ‘Howdy, Mr. Spence,’ real polite. And as long as you hear that ‘Howdy, Mr. Spence,’ you’ll know I’m a happy man wishing you and your phosphate mine all the best.” Drilling his eyes directly into Spence’s, he extended the broken halves of the walking stick.
Taut with anger, Spence snatched them away and grabbed the reins.
Sophronia could barely take it in. What she’d just witnessed ran contrary to everything she believed, and yet it had happened. She’d just seen Magnus stand up against a white man and win. He’d fought for her. He’d kept her safe . . . even from herself.
She threw herself across the border of dry, wintry grass that separated them and tumbled into his arms, repeating his name over and over again until its rhythm became one with the beating of her heart.
“You’re a trial to me, woman,” he said softly, cupping her shoulders in his hands.
She lifted her gaze and saw eyes that were steadfast and true, eyes that promised both goodness and strength. He lifted one hand and moved his index finger over her lips, almost as if he were a blind man staking out the boundaries of a territory he was about to claim. Then he lowered his head and kissed her.
She accepted his lips shyly, as if she were a young girl. He made her feel pure and innocent again.
He pulled her closer, and his kiss grew more demanding, but instead of feeling afraid, she thrilled to its power. This man, this one good man, was hers forever. He was more important than a house in Charleston, more important than silk dresses, more important than anything.
When they finally drew apart, Sophronia saw his eyes glistening. This strong, hard man who had been coolly threatening to blow up a phosphate mine had turned soft and gentle as a lamb.
“You’ve been giving me a lot of trouble, woman,” he said gruffly. “Once we’re married, I won’t stand for any more nonsense.”
“Are we gettin’ married, Magnus?” she inquired saucily. And then she splayed her long, elegant fingers along the sides of his head and pulled him back for another deep, lingering kiss.
“Oh, yes, honey child,” he replied when he finally caught his breath. “We’re gettin’ married for sure.”
19
“I figured you for a lot of things, Baron Cain, but I never figured you for a coward!” Kit stormed out of the stables at Cain’s heels. “Magnus is going to be a dead man, and it’ll be on your conscience. All you had to do was nod your head, just nod your head, and Spence would have made himself forget that Magnus hit him. Now give me that rifle back right now! If you’re not man enough to defend your best friend, I’ll do it myself.”
Cain turned, the carbine across his chest. “You even look like you’re going back there, and I’ll lock you up and throw away the key.”
“You’re hateful, do you know that?”
“So you keep telling me. Has it once occurred to you to ask me about what happened instead of throwing accusations around?”
“What happened was obvious.”
“Was it?”
Suddenly Kit felt unsure of herself. Cain was no coward, and he never did anything without a reason. The edges of her temper cooled, but not her anxiety. “All right, suppose you tell me what you had in mind when you left Magnus with a man who wants to see him lynched.”
“You’ve made me just mad enough, I’m going to let you figure it out for yourself.”
He began walking toward the house, but Kit jumped in front of him. “Oh, no, you’re not getting away that easily.”
He shifted the carbine to his shoulder. “Magnus hated your interference, and he’d have hated mine, too. There are some things a man has to do for himself.”
“You might as well have signed his d
eath warrant.”
“Let’s just say I have more faith in him than you seem to have.”
“This is South Carolina, not New York City.”
“Don’t tell me you’re finally admitting your native state isn’t perfect?”
“We’ve talked about the Klan,” she said. “The last time you were in Charleston, you tried to get the federal officials to take action against them. Now you act like the Klan doesn’t exist.”
“Magnus is his own man. He doesn’t need anybody to fight his battles. If you knew half as much as you think you know, you’d understand that.”
From Magnus’s viewpoint, Cain was right, but she didn’t have any patience with that kind of male pride. It only led to death. As Cain walked away, she thought of the war, which had once seemed so glorious.
She fumed and stomped around for most of an hour until Samuel appeared, a grin on his face and a note from Sophronia in his hand.
Dear Kit,
Stop worrying. Spence is gone, Magnus is fine, and we’re getting married.
Love,
Sophronia
Kit stared at it with a mixture of joy and bemusement. Cain had been right. But just because he was right about this didn’t mean he was right about anything else.
Too much had happened, and all her feelings about Sophronia, about Risen Glory, and about Cain tumbled around inside her. She headed for the stable and Temptation, then remembered that Cain had ordered her not to ride the horse. A small voice told her she had only her own recklessness to blame, but she refused to listen. She had to settle this with him.
She stalked back to the house and found Lucy in the kitchen peeling potatoes. “Where’s Mr. Cain?”
“I heard him go upstairs a few minutes ago.”
Kit shot down the hallway and up the steps. She threw open the bedroom door.
Cain stood by the table picking up some papers he’d left there the night before. He turned to her, his expression quizzical. He saw that she was seething and lifted one eyebrow. “Well?”