The Fall Of Shane Mackade tmb-4 Read online

  Jared turned to Rafe. "She kick him out?"

  "He says not."

  "It's my damn house," Shane reminded them all. "My house, my land. I'm the one who says what goes on around there. If I don't like that stupid, idiotic, ridiculous equipment of hers, then that's it. I don't like that she's wrapped herself up in all this bull, and she's wearing herself down. I'm not coming in and finding her in a heap on the floor again."

  "What?" Amusement fled as Devin straightened in his chair. "What happened?"

  "She fainted—far as I can tell. She says she had an encounter with our great-grandmother." He downed beer to wash both worry and unease out of his system. "Yeah, right. They're both frying chicken the night before the battle. I'm not getting involved in that."

  "Is she all right?" Rafe asked.

  "Would I be here if she wasn't?" He raked his fingers through his hair and fought to block out the image of her pale, small, still form on the kitchen floor. But he couldn't. "She scared the hell out of me, damn it. Damn it." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, rubbed the heel of his hand over his aching heart. "I can't take her being hurt. I can't stand it. The woman's ripping at me."

  With an effort, he pulled himself back, took another gulp from the bottle. "She bounces back," he muttered. "I've never seen anybody bounce back like she does. She's fine now, dandy, back in control. She's not pushing me into getting hooked up with that business. She's not going to hook me into anything."

  "Brother." With some sympathy, Jared opened another beer and passed it to Shane. "You're already hooked."

  "Like hell."

  "At a guess, how many times do you think about her in a given day?"

  "I don't know." Annoyed, Shane decided getting drunk wasn't such a bad idea after all. "I don't count."

  In lawyer mode now, Jared briskly cross-examined the witness. "Anyone else you've thought about that much, that often?"

  "So what? She's living with me. You think about somebody who's in the same house day and night."

  Rafe studied his nails. "It's just sex."

  "The hell it is." Like a bullet, Shane was out of his chair, fists ready. "She's not just a warm body." He caught himself, and his brother's sly grin. "I'm not an animal."

  "That's a switch." Unconcerned, Rafe sampled his own beer. "How many other women have you wanted since Rebecca came along?"

  Zip. Zero. Zilch. Terror. "That's not the point. The point is..." He sat again, brooded into his beer. "I forgot."

  "The point is," Devin said, picking up the threads, "you've lost your balance and you're falling fast."

  "He's already hit," Jared put in. "He just doesn't have the sense to know it. But, being a sensible woman, Rebecca might not fall so easy, especially for you."

  "What the hell's wrong with me?"

  "As I was saying," Jared continued. "She's got a life in New York, a career, interests. You might have a problem keeping her from wriggling away. You'll have to be pretty slick to convince her to marry you."

  Shane choked, coughed, and gulped more beer. "You're crazy. I'm not marrying anybody."

  Rafe only smiled. "Wanna bet?"

  Because Shane was terribly pale, Devin took pity on him. "Have another beer, pal. You can bunk in the back room and sleep it off."

  It seemed like an excellent suggestion.

  She didn't sleep. It wasn't only because Shane wasn't there and the house seemed to come alive around her. It was the wait for morning, through the longest night of her life.

  She worked. It had always helped her through crises, small and large. She packed. The systematic removal of her clothing, the neat folding of it into suitcases, was a sign that she was ready to go on with the rest of her life.

  If she had a worry, it was that she and Shane would part on uneasy terms. That she didn't want. When he came back, she told herself, she would try to put things back into perspective and achieve some kind of balance.

  But he didn't come back, and the hours passed slowly to dawn.

  When the sun had just begun to rise, and the gray mist hung over the land, swallowing the barn, she stepped outside.

  It was impossible for her to believe, at that moment, that anyone wouldn't feel what she felt. The fear, the anticipation, the rage and the sorrow.

  It took so little imagination for her to see the infantry marching through that soft curtain of fog, bodies and bayonets tearing it so that it swirled back and reformed. The muffled sound of boots on earth, the dull glint of brass and steel.

  That first burst from the cannons, those first cries.

  Then there would be hell.

  "What are you doing out here?"

  Rebecca jolted, stared. It was Shane, stepping through that river of mist. He looked pale, gritty-eyed, and angry enough that she resisted the need to rush forward and hold him.

  "I didn't hear you come home."

  "Just got here." She hadn't slept. He could see the fatigue in her eyes, the shadows under them, and detested the stab of guilt. "You're shivering. You're barefoot, for God's sake. Go back inside. Go to bed."

  “You look tired," she said, knowing her voice was more brittle than cool.

  "I'm hung over," he said flatly. "Some of us humans get that way when we drink too much. Aren't you going to ask me where I've been, who I've been with?"

  She lifted a hand, rubbed it gently over her heart. It still beat, she thought vaguely, even when it was shattered. "Are you trying to hurt me?"

  "Maybe I am. Maybe I'm trying to see if I can."

  She nodded and turned back toward the house. "You can."

  "Rebecca—" But she was already closing the door behind her, leaving him feeling like something slimy that had crawled from under a rock. Cursing her, he headed toward the milking parlor.

  They stayed out of each other's way through the morning. Rather than work in the kitchen, she closed herself in the guest room and focused fiercely on the job at hand. So they would part at odds, she thought. Perhaps that was best. It might be easier, in the long run, to hide behind resentment and anger.

  From the window in her room, she saw him. He didn't seem to be working. Marking time, she decided, until she cleared out. Well, he would have to wait a little longer. She wasn't leaving until the day was over.

  "Where are you, Sarah?" she murmured, pacing the room, which was beginning to feel like a cell. "You wanted me here. I know you wanted me here. For what?"

  As she passed the window, she looked out again. He was walking across the yard now, past the kitchen garden, where he had late tomatoes, greens, squash. He stopped, checked something. For ripeness, she supposed.

  It was painful to look at him. Yet too painful to contemplate looking away. Had she really believed she could take the experience of love and loss as some sort of adventure—or, worse, as an experiment on the human condition? That she could examine it, analyze, perhaps write about it?

  No, she would never, never get over him.

  When he straightened from the little garden and walked toward one of the stone outbuildings, she turned away. No, she wouldn't wait until the end of the day after all. That was too cruel. She would speak to him again, one last time, and then she would go.

  She'd send for the equipment, she told herself as she went downstairs. She would make her exit with dignity, albeit with dispatch. To Regan's, she told herself, breathing carefully. To run back to New York just now would look cowardly. It was pointless to make him feel bad, to let him know he'd had her heart and broken it.

  Let him think that it had simply been an experience, one that was over now, one they could both remember fondly.

  She was never coming back. At the base of the stairs, she stopped to press her hand to her mouth. Never coming back to this town, this battleground, this house. Though she would be in full retreat, she would not run.

  She never glanced at the monitors, the gauges. Down the hall, she trailed her fingers over wood and paint, as if to absorb the texture into memory.

  At the kitchen doorway
, the power punched like a fist....

  Stew cooking. The distant pop of gunfire...

  Weak, she leaned against the wall as the door opened.

  She knew it was Shane. The rational part of her mind recognized the shape of him, the stance, even the smell. But with some inner eye she saw a man carrying a bleeding boy….

  My God, my God, John. Is he dead?

  Not yet.

  Put him on the table. I need towels. Oh, so much blood. Hurry. He's so young. He's just a boy.

  Like Johnnie.

  So like Johnnie. Young, bleeding, dying. The uniform was filthy and wet with blood. The new stripe of his rank was still bright on the shoulder of the tattered jacket. There was a rustle of worn paper from a letter in the inside pocket as she peeled the uniform away to see the horror of his wounds.

  Just a boy. Too many dying boys...

  Rebecca saw it, could see the scene in the kitchen perfectly. The blood, the boy, those who tried to help him. There, the letter in Sarah's hands, the paper worn where it had been creased and recreased, read and reread. The words seemed to leap out at her….

  Dear Cameron...

  "They couldn't save him," Shane said carefully. "They tried."

  "Yes." After the breath she'd been holding was expelled, Rebecca pressed her lips together. "They tried so hard."

  "At first, he only saw the uniform. The enemy. He was glad that a Yankee had died there. Then he saw the face, and he saw his son in it. So he brought him home. It was all he could do." "It was the right thing to do, the human thing." "They wanted that boy to live, Rebecca." "I know." Her breath shuddered out, shuddered in. "They fought as hard as they could. All the rest of that day, through the night, sitting with him. Praying. Listening to him, when he could speak. Shane, there was too much love in this house for them not to try, not to fight for that one young boy's life."

  "But they lost him." Eyes grim, Shane stepped forward. "And it was like losing their son again." "He didn't die alone, or forgotten." "But they buried him in an unmarked grave." "She was afraid." Tears trembled out, rolling down Rebecca's cheeks. "She was afraid for her husband, for her family. Nothing meant more to her. If anyone found out that boy had died here, and John a Rebel sympathizer who'd lost a son to the Yankees, they might have taken John from her. She couldn't have stood it. She begged him not to tell, to dig the grave at night so no one would ever know. Oh, she grieved for that boy, for the mother who would never know where or when or how he died. She read the letter."

  "Yeah, then they buried the letter from his mother with him."

  "There was no envelope, Shane. No address. Nothing to tell them where he had come from, or who was waiting for him to come home. Just the two pages, the writing close and crowded as if she'd wanted to jam every thought, every feeling into them." A breath shuddered out. "I saw it. I could read it, just as Sarah did... Dear Cameron."

  Shane's eyes went dark, his stomach muscles tightened, twisted. "That's my middle name. Cameron was my grandfather's name. Cameron James Mac-Kade, John and Sarah's second son. He was born six months after the Battle of Antietam." Shane took a steadying breath. "The name's come down through the MacKades ever since. Every generation has a Cameron."

  "They named their child after the boy they couldn't save." Helplessly Rebecca rubbed the tears from her cheeks with the flats of her hands. "They didn't forget him, Shane. They did everything they could."

  "And then they buried him in an unmarked grave."

  "Don't hate her for it. She loved her husband, and was afraid for him."

  "I don't hate her for it." Suddenly weary, Shane scrubbed his hands over his face. "But it's my life now, Rebecca, my land. I can't change what happened, and I'm sick of being haunted by it."

  She offered a hand. "Do you know where he's buried?"

  "No, I've always shut that part out." As he'd tried, most of his life, to shut it all out. All those wavering memories, those misty dreams. "I never wanted any part of this."

  "Why did you come in now, tell me now?"

  "I don't know, exactly." Resigned, he dropped his hands. "I saw him, beside the smokehouse. Bleeding, asking me to help him." He drew a long breath. "It's not the first time. I couldn't not come in, not tell you anymore. You're part of it. You knew that all along."

  "He's buried in the meadow," she murmured. "Wildflowers grow there." She reached for his hand again, tightened her fingers on his. "Come with me."

  They walked out toward the meadow, through the bright wash of sun. The mountains were alive with color, and the flowers underfoot were going to seed. There was the smell of grass and growing things. When she stopped, the tears still fell quietly.

  For a moment, she could say nothing, could only stare down at the ground where she had once dropped her first clutch of wildflowers.

  "They did their best for him. Not far from here, another man killed a boy simply because of the color of his uniform. These people tried to save one, despite it." She leaned into Shane when he circled her shoulders with his arm. "They cared."

  "Yeah, they cared. They still can't leave him here alone."

  "We make parks out of our battlefields to remember," she said quietly. "It's important to remember. He needs a marker, Shane. They would have given him one, if they could have."

  Could it be as simple as that? he wondered. And as human? "All right." He stopped questioning and nodded. "We'll give him one. And maybe we'll all have some peace."

  "There's more love than grief here," she murmured. "And it is yours, Shane—your home, your land, your heritage. Whatever lives on through it, through you is admirable. You should be very proud of what you have, and what you are.''

  "I always felt as though they were pushing at me. I resented it." Yet it had eased now, standing there with her in the sun, on his land. "I didn't see why I should be the one to be weighed down with their problems, their emotions." He looked over the fields, the hills, and felt most of his weariness pass. "Maybe I do now. It's always been more mine than any of my brothers'. More even than it was my father's, my mother's. We all loved it, we all worked it, but—"

  "But you stayed, because you loved it more." She rose on her toes and kissed him gently. "And you understand it more. You're a good man, Shane. And a good farmer. I won't forget you."

  Before he realized what she was doing, she'd turned away. "What are you talking about? Where are you going?"

  "I thought you might like some time alone here." She smiled, brushing at the tears drying on her cheeks. "It seems a personal moment to me, and I really have to finish getting my things together."

  "What things?"

  "My things." She backed away as she spoke. "Now that we've settled this, I'm going to stay with Regan for a few days before I go back to New York. I haven't had as much time to visit with her as I'd planned."

  She might as well have hit him over the head with a hammer. The quiet relief he'd begun to feel at facing what had haunted him was rudely, nastily swallowed up by total panic.

  "You're leaving? Just like that? Experiment's over, see you around?"

  "I'm only going to Regan's, for a few days. I've already stayed here longer than I originally intended, and I'm sure you'd like your house back. I'm very grateful for everything."

  "You're grateful," he repeated. "For everything?"

  "Yes, very." She was terrified her smile would waver. Quick, was all she could think, get away quick. "I'd like to stay in touch, if you don't mind. See how things are going with you."

  "We can exchange cards at Christmas."

  "I think we can do better." Through sheer grit, she kept that easy smile on her face. "Farm boy, it's been an experience."

  Mouth slack with shock, he watched her walk away. She was dumping him. She'd just put him through the most emotional, most wrenching, most stunning experience of his life, and she was just walking away.

  Well, fine, he thought, scowling at her retreating back. Dandy. That made it clean. He didn't want complications, or big, emotional par
ting scenes.

  The hell he didn't.

  She'd reached the kitchen door and just stepped over the threshold when he caught up with her. A tornado of temper, he snagged her shoulders, whirled her around.

  "Just sex and science, is that it, Doc? I hope to hell I gave you plenty of data for one of your stinking papers."

  "What are you—"

  "Don't you want one last experiment for the road?"

  He dragged her up hard against him, crushed his mouth down on hers. It was brutal, and it was fierce. For the first time, she was afraid of him, and what he was capable of.

  "Shane." Shuddering, she wrenched her mouth free. "You're hurting me."

  "Good." But he released her, jerking away so that she nearly stumbled. "You deserve it. You cold-blooded—" He managed to stop himself before he said something he wouldn't be able to live with later. "How can you have slept with me, have shared everything we've shared, and then just turn around and walk, like it meant nothing to you but a way to pass some time?"

  "I thought—I thought that's how it was done. I've heard people say that you stay friends with all the women you've—"

  "Don't throw my past up at me!" he shouted. "Damn it, nothing's been the same since you came here. You've tangled up my life long enough. I want you to go. I want you out."

  "I'm going," she managed, and took one careful step, then another, until she'd reached the doorway.

  "For God's sake, Rebecca, don't leave me."

  She turned back, steadied herself with one hand against the jamb. "I don't understand you."

  "You want me to beg." The humiliation was almost as vicious as the temper. "Fine, I'll beg. Please don't go. Don't walk out on me. I don't think I can live without you."

  She put a hand to her head as she stated at him. All she could see was all that emotion swirling in his eyes. Too much emotion, impossible to decipher. "You want me to stay? But—"

  "What's the big deal about New York?" he demanded. "So they've got museums and restaurants. You want to go to a restaurant, I'll take you to a damn restaurant. Now. Get your coat."