Free Jed's Sweet Revenge by Deborah Smith Page A

such nonsensical thinking and followed her. They entered a big, empty ballroom, and Jed couldn’t help but feel awed. Plaster crumbled from the high walls and the ceiling, and the patterned marble floor was cracked in places, but the room had a grandeur that reminded him of the Greek ruins pictured in school books.
    “Grandfather said this room used to have a beautiful crystal chandelier almost twenty feet in diameter,” Thena commented. “It was sold along with all the other furnishings, after your grandmother was killed in the hurricane.” She pointed to the far side of the ballroom, which was open to the elements.“There used to be five sets of French doors with beveled glass across that side of the room. They were sold too. The opening was boarded over, but the salt air and wind finally destroyed the wood, just as it did the wood that covered the front doorway.”
    “What’s that outside?”
    “The pavilion. It’s magnificent. I’ve read newspaper accounts of the parties your grandparents used to give here, and the writers always mentioned that guests loved to dance outside.”
    Jed walked onto the magnificent curving porch. Its ornate marble columns were interspersed with filigreed marble benches. Overhead, in a vaulted roof, the remnants of stained-glass skylights framed jagged squares of blue sky. At the left end of the porch, where the hurricane had wreaked its damage, the roof had crumbled. Only a large pile of rubble and broken columns remained.
    “Look past the edge of the pavilion,” Thena instructed. “See where the formal garden used to be? And if you squint across the marshes farther out, you can see the beach dunes. That crumbling foundation over to your right marks where the stable was. It had forty stalls, Jedidiah. Can you imagine? And beside it, stretching for three hundred acres back into the forest, were the pastures. The oaks have taken them over now, but”—Thena swung around in a circle, her arms out—“can’t you see SalHaven the way it must have been when your mother was a little girl? I can see her playing here, right here on this pavilion. She must have had a fantastic childhood.”
    She swung around again, smiling, and met Jed’s gaze. Then she saw the sheer grief and fury in its hazel depths. He looked as if he wanted to tear SalHaven apart with his bare hands.
    “Don’t hate her father so much,” Thena begged. “Don’t take that foolish hatred out on SalHaven. Don’t ruin Sancia because of some misdirected bitterness—”
    “You don’t know anything but fairy tales and secondhand stories.” His voice was terribly strained.
    “Tell me the truth, then. I don’t know what happened to your mother. Tell me.”
    His struggle to find the right words was painfully obvious. A muscle quivered in his jaw. He put his hands on his hips and stared tensely out at the overgrown gardens.
    “You don’t have to be eloquent, Jedidiah. Say what you feel.”
    “Her family killed her.”
    “How?” Thena asked in a stunned voice.
    “She met my old man at a charity rodeo and ran off with him. She was a fancy socialite and he was livin’ hand-to-mouth on the rodeo circuit. But by God, they loved each other, even though nobody understood why. The Greggs had a fit, especially her father. Pa told me old H. Wilkens actually hired men to come get her, but they were too late. By the time they caught up with her and Pa, the two of them had been married a month.
    “So they beat the hell out of Pa and went back to tell H. Wilkens about the marriage. H. Wilkens never forgave her, even though she begged him to. When I was five years old she took me to New York, tryin’ to get in to see the old bastard. I guess she thought he’d soften up when he saw his grandson.”
    Jed walked slowly to the edge of the pavilion, turned his back so that his emotions were hidden from Thena, and leaned against a column. The rigid control in his posture brought tears to her eyes.
    “What happened?” she