She’d pulled that from him. Or he’d offered it, open palmed. Like a fool. She had proof now he’d been in the country the year Hennessy was killed. And proof he’d lied about the three years he’d told McNamee and Vanderbilt the day he’d been hired. Maybe this had been her purpose: to catch him in a lie. To ferret out who he was. What he knew.
After snatching up a currycomb and sliding the door of the nearest stall open, Sal entered. Each stall was surrounded by oak walls up to the horses’ shoulders, then topped with wrought iron bars painted a glossy black. Directing all the energy that would have him move closer to Lilli Barthélemy and press her to him, he ran the currycomb in hard circles on the mare’s neck.
“And your house?” she asked. “What was it like?”
Who could say what she was trying to draw from him now.
“It had the walls of stucco.” Flaking, he could have added. “And the roof of red tile.” As many tiles missing as were still on it—some blown off in storms and some pried off by thieves. But this he did not say out loud.
She glided to the edge of the stall, grabbing two of the wrought iron bars as she peered in. “Sounds enchanting.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
Because that was what she wanted to hear. But enchanting it was not.
He worked in silence for several moments, the only sounds the munch, munch, munch of the horses grinding grain between their teeth and the shush, shush, shush of the currycomb on the mare’s neck. And sometimes a louder percussion, the stomp of the occasional hoof on the wood shavings that covered the brick.
Maurice Barthélemy’s daughter ran the forefinger of a riding glove down the length of one of the bars. A kind of caress.
“I’ve been wondering, Marco.”
His whole body gone tight, his circular swipes became stiff. The mare turned her head to ask what he was doing, and why with so much force. Stroking her nose in apology, he moved to her barrel and flank.
“I’ve been wondering about the murder.”
He stopped brushing a moment. Frozen.
The one in New Orleans or the one here? he nearly asked.
“You know, Marco, there are people who think you did it.”
His heart pounded in his throat. His palms gone so sweaty he could hardly hang on to the hard wooden oval. Both arms dropped to his sides as he faced her. He knew by the look on her face that his expression must’ve gone dark.
Her voice dropped to a whisper, sultry and slow. “Though not me.”
Slowly, she let go of the iron bars. Stepped so close he could feel the warmth emanating from her body here in the chill of the stables. She tilted her face up to his. For a moment, she stood there, lips parting.
And him, looking down. Arms by his sides. Wanting to pull her to him.
He could not let himself move.
“Maybe I should tell you, Marco Bergamini, what I know for sure about you.”
He waited. Throbbing.
“I know”—she leaned in so close now that her cheek pressed into his, then her lips brushed his ear—“that for all your strength, you could never hurt anyone. Ever.”
Her right hand skimmed over his curls to the back of his neck. For an instant, she pulled his face closer to hers.
But now she leaned slowly back, eyes still on his. And swept out of the stables. In her wake, she left the scent of magnolias, here in the midst of leather and hay and the sweat that streamed down Sal’s back.
Chapter 22
Uneasy about Dearg ever since their talk at Biltmore, Kerry had kept an eye out for his lurking: in the shadows of the smokehouse, in the chestnut grove near the falls, in the town’s dark alleyways. Because something had changed him—the stabs at his pride from the millionaire outsiders, maybe, or her coming back from New York, but not returning the same.
Like a wild boar with a bowie knife lodged in his chest, Dearg Tate had been wounded by something deep in his core. And that hurt would likely come out less like a curling-up moan and more like a roar.
She knew this, too, about him: for all his size and strength, there was something childlike about him, something easily made afraid. And that’s what made him most vulnerable: being used as someone else’s bullhorn. Someone else’s pawn.
He’d avoided Kerry so far. Had brawled all over town in taverns and on street corners. The stories found their way back to her.
Dearg Tate’s gone to picking fights.
Says you and him is still likely to set up housekeeping one of these days.
But he’d given her a wide berth.
He’d not been in town when the attack occurred at the station. There was proof of that. But he’d been infected by some sort of fear and an anger that hadn’t been there before.
On this particular morning of her day off, she’d gathered the eggs and changed her father’s bedclothes. She fed him oatmeal with dried honeysuckle for sweetness—there was no more syrup from the ground cane. Despite his eyes looking unfocused today, his mind seeming to float in some other realm, she’d pressed a hot tea with dogwood bark down his throat for the pain. Halfway through changing his shirt to his one other, which Tully had brought in from the line, Kerry decided she had to confront Dearg. In person, she might be able to see in his face a shard of the truth.
“How come,” Jursey wanted to know when she announced she’d be making the trek to the Tate farm, “you ain’t marrying him? He used to be awful fixed on you ’fore you took off for New York.”
Tully gave him a superior look. “You don’t got to marry every man that goes fixed on you.”
Kerry smiled. “My little sister is wise beyond her years.”
She left the twins back at the farm stretching the squirrel skins they’d tanned over the banjo hollows they’d made from gourds. The neck of the older banjo their father had made had cracked after years of hard use.
“Mr. Bratchett said it’s got to be tighter’n that,” Tully insisted.
“Tighter’n this, it’ll split clean open.”
“Not if you do it right. Like mine is.”
They’d keep each other distracted, at least.
Kerry forced herself up the last climb of the path. Exhaustion from her work at Biltmore and caring for her father had been knocking her flat for the few hours of sleep she could steal. Today, her need for answers outweighed her need for rest.
A raccoon scuttled, then froze in place at the branch of the stream.
“What are you doing awake in the middle of the day?” Kerry asked him. The creature lifted both paws, then dropped to all fours and began following her. “Better go your own way, little guy. Where I’m headed, you don’t want to be.”
Out of old habit, she moved through the woods soundlessly, careful to step on the soft, spongy soil rather than dry leaves.
The Tate cabin sat just ahead in a clearing encircled by maples and a handful of small outbuildings: the smokehouse, the barn, the chicken house, and a privy. On all four posts of the cabin’s porch, raccoon pelts were nailed to the logs, heads and tails and all, as if the creatures were climbing up to the roof: eight in all.
Like the stone lions, she thought, on either side of Biltmore’s front entrance: a decoration with no function. A kind of welcome. And also the human urge to signal abundance and wealth. Whether or not it was true.