Free Passion's Fury by Patricia Hagan

up.” April squeezed her hands together to stop their trembling. “I didn’t want to mention it, but it worries me. You aren’t yourself on those days, and you think I’m my mother, and—”
    “This is nonsense.” He turned abruptly and walked briskly to his desk once more and began to shuffle his papers around. “I tell you, I’m fine. I suffered a great shock, but I’ve chosen to forget it. Now let’s have lunch. Later, we can go for a ride. Andthere will be no more of this kind of talk.”
    The sound of the heavy brass knocker banging on the front door surprised both of them. “I wonder who could be calling at this hour,” Carter murmured. “I’m not expecting anyone.”
    April took a deep breath. In the anxious moments while Buford answered the door, she looked at her father through a mist of emotions. She loved him. She respected him. Despite the way he had treated Vanessa, she still loved him. Of late, as he drifted in and out of his stupors, she had come to fear him, even to loathe him. But even so, she knew she did love him deeply, and she grieved over the anguish of their lives.
    Buford appeared in the doorway, looking bewildered and, April thought, also frightened. “It’s Mastah Alton Moseley at the door, suh,” he said with a bob of his cotton white hair. “He say he come for lunch, that Miz April invited him.”
    Before Carter could ask any questions, she told Buford to bring Alton in, then said briskly, “Poppa, I invited him here. He wants to talk to you.”
    “Talk to me? About what? I have nothing to discuss with my groomsman. If I do, I’ll go to the stables. Since when do my servants come as luncheon guests to discuss business?”
    April was relieved when Alton stepped into the room. Better to get this over with quickly, she thought frantically, before her father really had time to become angry. “Shall we go into lunch now?” she said before Alton could even step forward to shake the older man’s hand.
    “No, we will not go into lunch now.” Carter sat down behind his desk. Looking directly at Alton, who stood with his straw hat in his hands, twisting it around and around nervously, he snapped, “What’s the meaning of this, Moseley? My daughter doesn’t entertain hired help, and neither do I.”
    Alton looked beseechingly at April, silently asking what he was supposed to do next. “Go on,” she whispered. “Do it now.”
    “Do what now?” Carter stood, hands clenching the edge of his desk. “I think someone had better tell me what this is all about. My lunch is getting cold while I stand here in front of a dawdling stableboy.”
    “Poppa, will you just listen to what he has to say?” April cried, near tears. “Please?”
    “I’m waiting. And so is my lunch.” To Alton, he said, “If you’re wanting more money, boy, this is a stupid way to go about asking for it. And you aren’t worth it. You’ll never be the groomsman the Taggarts were.”
    “It isn’t money. I’m joining the Confederate Army. I’ll be going off to fight the Yankees soon.” His adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he glanced at April in misery.
    “Well, that’s commendable. I’ll have to find someone to replace you, but that shouldn’t be hard. Now we’ll just talk about this later. April and I were planning on going for a ride after lunch. We’ll talk later.” He held out his arm to April. “Now it’s time for us to eat. If you will excuse us—”
    “I want to marry your daughter, sir.”
    Carter whipped his head about to stare at him, then shook himself slightly as he whispered, “I don’t believe I heard you correctly, boy.”
    “Don’t call me ‘boy’!” Alton’s cheeks flushed. “I’m no boy. I’m a man, going off to fight for the South. I love your daughter, and I want her to be my wife. I want to marry her before I go off to war. She can live with my folks, and—”
    Alton was speaking in a rush, as though he would lose his nerve if he didn’t get the words