Free The Outcast by Rosalyn West Page A

him, but his embrace banded more securely, his palm controlling the cant of her head as he whispered a hoarse, “Not yet.”
    She relaxed against him, hands kneading the threadbare fabric of his coat, losing herself along his long-boned lines. Still not quite believing he was there. Alive. Finally, he angled to press a nearly nonexistent kiss upon her brow.
    When he stepped back, Patrice felt instantly vulnerableonce more. Her voice trembled.
    “You look terrible.”
    “I smell worse. This is my first bath in months.”
    She touched his haggard face. It was wet. From the rain, he’d say. “I’m not sure I like the beard.”
    “It’ll be the first to go, right after these clothes.”
    Did he mean the uniform he’d ridden away in with such pride? She frowned slightly, palms stroking over the gray wool with its fortuitous lack of bullet holes.
    He glanced toward the house. “They told me in town that you and Mother were here.” Then his gaze touched upon Reeve, who watched the two of them inscrutably from a distance, his Union coat draped over his shoulders. The muscles of Deacon’s jaw flexed beneath the stubble. “That he was here, too.”
    Patrice rubbed his forearms to distract him. She wanted nothing to sully their reunion. And she wasn’t ready to have her ride with Reeve examined, either by her shrewd brother or within the uncertainty of her own heart. Better to let the issue slip away. “Come up to the house. Mama will be so thrilled to see you.”
    They walked side by side, Patrice tucked in beneath the curl of his arm, her own snug about his middle. The used-up horse trailed behind them. Deacon spared Reeve another glance when they came nearer, the kind of look one gave an invisible servant.
    “Take care of the horse.”
    Delivered with an offhand indifference, the command fell flat.
    “Didn’t you hear that Lincoln freed the slaves?”
    Deacon stopped. A deceptive stillness came overhis face. His eyes glinted, ice over slate. Reeve didn’t relent beneath that saber-sharp glare. He met it with a cool repartee of his own, and said, “Ask me. Don’t tell me.”
    “Please.”
    Another beat of challenge passed. Afraid she’d have to throw herself between them, Patrice tugged at her brother. She didn’t want his homecoming to dissolve into a fistfight in the mud. She cast an impatient look at Reeve. Only when her gaze took on an edge of entreaty, did he respond. Without a change of expression, he reached for the sorry creature’s reins, his comment low, and to Patrice, a puzzle.
    “I’d never walk away to let another suffer for my arrogance.”
    Deacon stood rigid as one of the plantation’s pillars. It obviously meant something to him. But before the confrontation could develop, Patrice hauled on his arm.
    “Deacon, I’m soaked clear through. Could we go up to the house now?”
    He backed down incrementally, movements still stiff, like a bristled dog being pulled away from a rival. Patrice jerked hard to break the steady fix of the two men’s stares. Then Deacon came obligingly to enter the dry confines of the Glade.
    There, he surrendered to his mother’s embrace, resting his head upon her shoulder like the needy boy he hadn’t been for many years.
    He ate to satisfy a long-starved need. Though clean-shaven and wearing a set of Jonah’s clothes that he couldn’t have squeezed into before the war began, though he was meticulous in manner, a differencein her brother bothered Patrice. She couldn’t name it. He’d always kept his emotions closed off from those around him, even those he cared for, but now she sensed a deeper remoteness, a void that scared her.
    He never said what part he played in the defense of the South. Through the first years of the conflict, he’d stayed in Pride County, sporting no uniform, no rank, but a secretive silence that whispered of important business. Business one didn’t ask after. Just glad to have him home when so many Southern women were left to their