Straight For The Heart Read online

  “It isn’t that they won’t let me play, Mother,” Ryan explained. “It’s that I can barely see the cards I’m holding, let alone read what is on them.”

  “You work yourself too hard, dear,” Sarah said, reaching up to pat his arm. “Last night you nearly fell asleep at the dinner table.”

  Ryan caught her hand in his and studied it a moment, frowning over the fingers that were shiny and painfully red from the unaccustomed hours she had spent working with needle and thread over the past few weeks. But it was her daughter’s wedding and she was insisting on doing the delicate work herself, altering the lustrous gown her grandmother, mother, and she herself had worn on her wedding day.

  “Will it be finished on time?” Ryan asked gently.

  Sarah’s sigh displaced a wisp of silver-gray hair that had escaped her cap. “I sincerely hope so. If my eyes weren’t so bad and my hands not so clumsy …”

  “And if she didn’t keep changing her mind every time she tried it on,” Ryan whispered, bending so that only his mother heard.

  “Oh. Pish.” She swatted his hand away. “She just wants everything to be perfect, that’s all. A girl should have everything perfect on her wedding day. She should look perfect and feel perfect—” Sarah sighed again and ran a trembly hand over the watered silk sateen. “Your grandmother Fayworth would have been so proud. And your sister will look just like an angel sent from heaven, don’t you agree?”

  “An angel,” he agreed dryly, and glanced at Amanda over his shoulder, noting the faint smile she cast back in reply.

  “Check or raise?” William barked. “Pay attention, girl. The evening is not long enough to squander twenty minutes each time the play comes your way. You have to be quick! Decisive! Assured! Otherwise your opponents will read you like a book.”

  Amanda felt a blush creep up her throat at the chastisement. She had two pair, aces and queens, yet she guessed it would not be nearly good enough. Her father was in rare form and Alisha seemed to be out for blood.

  “By me,” she sighed, throwing down her cards.

  “Bah! Amanda, you surprise me. There was nothing wrong with your hand.”

  Alisha arched a finely shaped eyebrow and did not trouble herself to look over at her father as she murmured, “Is that just a lucky guess, or do those nicks and scratches on the edges tell you something the rest of us don’t know?”

  William opened his mouth to refute the charges, but thought better of it and grinned instead. “Merely a test of your powers of observation, m’dear. Happily, you have passed it.”

  “Small wonder, since you practically sawed the edges with a file. Being shot for a cheat was not one of the skills I was interested in learning, Father,” Alisha added caustically. “Although at your age, I suppose your peers would be more apt to tar and feather you by way of example.”

  William feigned a look of mortification. “Are you implying I practice my hobby on anyone outside the confines of this family?”

  “She’s not only implying it, William dear,” Sarah chided from her seat by the fire, “She is warning you against doing it again any time soon. We shouldn’t want to have to go and fetch you out of jail again, regardless if the Judge is locked up with you or not.”

  William glared over at his wife. “I have never taken advantage of a man unless he knew what he was getting into— or unless he deserved it. And Judge Moore asked me—asked me, mind you—to teach that young whip of a solicitor a lesson in mocking his elders.”

  “He was a lawyer?” Ryan asked, choking back a laugh. “You didn’t tell us that.”

  “I don’t tell you a great many things”—William harrumphed— “if I don’t think they concern you. Besides.” His brow pleated and he studied his cards with grave intent, adding “—He was a Yankee,” as if that was all the explanation required. “Now, where were we?”

  Alisha toyed with a long coil of golden blonde hair. “I was in the process of calling your bluff.”

  “In that case”—her father slammed his cards down— “you owe me another twenty for a full house: Kings over tens.”

  He saw the look on Alisha’s face and crowed delightedly. “Thought you could distract me, eh? I saw that little switch you did up your sleeve. You should be careful, Missy. If this was a real game, you would be deuced uncomfortable explaining where that fifth king came from.”

  Amanda leaned forward to stare at the glaring pair of kings her father plucked out of Alisha’s hand.

  “Saw me mark ’em with a file, did you?” he snorted.

  Amanda leaned back and shook her head.

  “Oh … don’t look so scandalized,” Alisha snapped crossly at her sister. “I was only doing it to rile him.”

  “Rile me, eh?" William chuckled. "Judging by the diminished state of your matches and the growing health of my own, it certainly appears to be working. By Jove, I’ll have you shucked down to your bare fanny soon if you keep riling me like this.”

  “Husband!” Sarah gasped as she stabbed her finger soundly with the needle. “Must you be so crude?”

  “What is crude about a bare fanny? Nothing at all, I warrant … unless, of course, it belongs to Old Blisterpuss, Mrs. Nelly Weems. A sight like that would be downright brutish.”

  Sarah sucked at her finger. “I am simply suggesting, William, that you might show a little more decorum in your speech, especially around your daughters.”

  “Their own father, their own mother, and their own brother—who, I’ll wager, has seen a bared fanny or two along the way himself. Why should I not say what I damn well please to say in front of them?”

  “Upon my soul,” Sarah declared, her voice wavering and her bosom swelling with indignation. “If you carry on so at the wedding, I shall die. I shall simply wither away and die.”

  “Bah! You’re as healthy as you were the day I married you. Healthier for it, I’d say, and twice as fractious now that Alisha is finally marrying—and marrying into titled money to boot. All this fuss and bother. Lecture me in my sleep, you do. The right fork to use, the right spoon. Lecture me on how to chew and when to speak and what I can and cannot say. I am still the master of my own house, am I not? The last time I looked, I was only crippled, not gelded! Should I choose to drink my soup out of a cup and eat a fine roasted haunch of beef with my fingers whilst I scratch an ear or adjust a hitch in my trousers, I might jolly well do so, my dear. Jolly well do so.”

  Sarah’s mouth dropped open and her eyes rolled beseechingly in Amanda’s direction.

  “Don’t worry, Mother,” she said. “I will see to it that he behaves.”

  William’s eyebrows flew to his hairline as he considered this new affront. “Is that so? A sprout like you taking it upon yourself to act as my watchdog?”

  “If you need one, yes.”

  “Damn and blast! Has the whole household turned against me?”

  “Not so as you would notice,” Alisha said wryly. “Are you dealing, or shall I?”

  “Go right ahead,” he snorted again. “I should not want to be accused of acting out of turn.”

  “Amanda? In or out?”

  “I think I was out before the evening started.”

  Alisha dismissed her sister without a thought. She shuffled the deck, gave it to William to cut, and dealt each of them five cards apiece in a quick, efficient blur. Her hand, when she fanned it open, showed a nine of spades, a three of hearts, the four, five of diamonds, and the eight of clubs.

  “Cards, Father?”

  He straightened in his chair and puckered his lips, his gaze fixed like glue to Alisha’s hands. “Two, if you would be so kind.”

  She flicked two pasteboards across the table and turned her attention to her own cards. “Dealer takes … one. And, since it is only between the pair of us, shall we bypass the formalities and wager the lot of your matches against the lot of mine?”

  “A paltry enough wager,” he pronounced sarcastically, “without the added incentive of cash.”

  Alisha drew a dee
p breath and stared at her father through clear, cerulean blue eyes. “Ten Yankee greenbacks from me,” she agreed, “and from you … a promise that there will be no tomfoolery on the day of my wedding. Further: that you will behave yourself between now and then and do nothing whatsoever to draw any unwarranted attention to yourself or to this family.”

  Amanda glanced sidelong at her father and tried her valiant best to suppress a smile. Alisha was referring to a rather spectacular bout of drinking he had embarked upon with his closest friend and ally, Judge Frederick Arblaster Moore, whereupon he had declared to all and sundry that since his daughter was marrying a German baron, he supposed he would have to learn how to eat pickled cabbage and fart a fugue.

  “I will want your word on it,” Alisha insisted. “Your word as a gentleman.”

  “You have it,” William scowled. “And you may also have these, Miss High and Mighty!” He spread his cards with a flourish, showing another full house, kings over queens this time. Muttering a colorful oath, he leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. “Treat your father like a buffoon, will you? Beat that, if you can, and if you can’t … be prepared to count out the cash. I will take it in gold, if you don’t mind. Yankee greenbacks lack substance and I don’t care to tolerate them.”

  Alisha narrowed her eyes and fanned her cards—four aces and the missing king. She kept her face blank and her voice cool enough to chill a pitcher of juleps. “Will this do, Father?”

  William looked. Then started forward and looked again.

  “Your word, of course, is worth its weight in gold or greenbacks,” Alisha remarked sweetly, her eyes sparkling in triumph over her father’s astonishment.

  “But just in case the temptation is too great on the day of the wedding,” her sister Amanda added, “you will have my undivided attention for the entire afternoon and evening.”

  William glowered at each of his daughters in turn.

  “Blast it anyway,” he spluttered at length. “And blast my luck that it should be only one of you moving away. Were it the pair, I should be inclined to celebrate my way into blissful oblivion.”

  “Were it the pair of us leaving,” Amanda said lightly, “who would be here to watch over you?”

  “The devil himself! He did well enough on his own before the lot of you came along to plague me.”

  “Now, William,” Sarah said solicitously. “Remember your condition. Dr. Dorset says you mustn’t become agitated.”

  “Dorset is a quack,” William declared flatly. “And my condition would be much improved if I was not so damnably henpecked. Daughters are an aggravation I could well do without in my declining years. I should have had nothing but sons; a few licks from Old Charley always set them straight.”

  “You are not suggesting you should have whipped your daughters!” Sarah cried, aghast.

  “Not until they bled,” he qualified gruffly. “Just until they stood up and took notice.”

  Sarah’s shock was downplayed by Ryan’s chuckle. “It probably wouldn’t have helped, Father. If you will recall, you tried taking a switch to them a few times when they were younger and the only one who felt worse for it was you.”

  William’s piercing blue eyes narrowed. “That was because I was younger then myself and suffered from a soft heart. I was under the mistaken impression they would acquire common sense with age. I can see now the error of such lenient thinking. Old Charley it is. First thing in the morning. You may tell your brothers they are welcome to come and watch if they have a mind; it would not hurt Stephen and Evan to learn a thing or two about handling women instead of always fussing over those horses of theirs the whole blessed day long. As for you, young lady—” He wagged a sausage-like finger under Amanda’s nose. “You may be sure I will inform that rapscallion husband of yours if he is too slack in his discipline, he will find himself condemned to the same sorry state your mother has badgered me into now.”

  It was so sudden, so completely unexpected, that for a moment no one moved. Even Alisha lost some of her high color and turned pale at the mention of the absent family members, dead now these many years. North and South alike had lost many of their sons and husbands, and in that respect, the Courtlands were not alone. Mississippi had called on her men early in the fighting between the states, and there were few of hot blood and hotter tempers who could resist the lure of gaining glory and honor in defense of their land.

  Evan Courtland’s glory had come in the form of a bullet in the stomach the first month he was at war. Stephen had found honor in an unmarked grave somewhere in the Virginia foothills barely a year later. Amanda had married Caleb Beauregard Jackson on his last leave home from the fighting; he had died of a saber wound the week he rejoined his cavalry unity.

  The surviving Courtland men, Ryan and William, had been among the lucky ones to return to Adams County at the end of the war, but neither one had come back as completely whole as when they had departed. Ryan had lost the toes of his left foot to frostbite—a condition he suffered often during the year he spent incarcerated in a Yankee prison camp. William’s spine had been severed by a minié ball, but he had had his pride shattered in more ways than the one. There were days when he was lucid and in general command of most of his faculties, but there were others when he suffered great gaps in his memory and refused to even acknowledge there had been a war at all.

  For the most part, the family had managed to steel themselves against these lapses. But references to Stephen and Evan, especially dropped out of the blue like this, were jarring reminders of an easier time, a happier time when the laughter of the two tow-headed rakehells rocked the elegant manor house of Rosalie from floor to ceiling. And although Caleb and Amanda had only lived together as man and wife for less than a week, they had known each other all their lives and the loss had left a deep, lingering void.

  “Well?” William demanded, suspicious of the lengthy silence. “What have you to say for yourselves?”

  Amanda Courtland Jackson lifted her head and smiled. “Yes, Papa. Old Charley, first thing in the morning. Will that be with bared fannies and all?”

  Sarah transferred her frozen gaze to her daughter. Ryan’s mouth curved slightly in admiration, for Amanda could usually be counted upon to draw William back from the brink.

  Their father’s stern expression held a moment longer, then collapsed with a hearty guffaw of laughter. “Naturally. What would be the point of lifting a skirt if there was nothing to admire?”

  “Well! I never!” Sarah stabbed herself again, this time hard enough to draw a bead of blood. “Mercy,” she croaked. “Fetch Mercy at once with my salts. I … I believe I have a faint coming on.”

  “Then faint and be done with it,” William commanded. “In all my years of bondage, woman, I vow we have never once finished an argument with you standing on both feet.”

  “Oh! You are a cruel man,” Sarah wailed, cradling the stabbed finger as if it were proof of her husband’s tyranny. “Mother was right all those years ago. I never should have married you. Why, I had the choice of—”

  “—any young blade east of the Great Beyond,” William concluded by rote. “And I, for one, shall be forever in awe of the reasons why you chose me over all the other possibilities.”

  “Certainly it was not because of your genteel nature or bearing,” she retorted with an indignant sniffle. “And I vow … I positively swear on everything I hold sacred or dear, that if you, William Andrew Morrissey Courtland, make one single scene or cause me one solitary second of grief on the day of our Alisha’s wedding—”

  “Have I not already given my word?” he roared. “Have I not already pledged to be a host of unimpeachable grace and good behavior?”

  “Good behavior? By whose standards do you judge good behavior? We have two fine, lovely daughters, and how do you encourage them to spend their summer evenings? Strolling in the gardens? Practicing their stitchery or their music? No! No! You teach them card tricks and sleight of hand!”

  “Both hig
hly specialized skills that develop intelligence and wit,” William protested, his hand thumping the table for emphasis.

  “Intelligence to do what? Cheat without being caught? Gamble with impunity? Alisha is getting married in three weeks’ time. What will her husband think of such goings-on?”

  “Karl enjoys a friendly game of chance now and then,” Alisha remarked blithely. “He might just appreciate a wife who can partner him with intelligence and wit.”

  “Or he might not,” Ryan interjected dryly. “He still has time to change his mind, God help him.”

  “Have no fear,” Alisha assured him. “Wild horses could not keep Karl away from the altar now. He is more afraid I might change my mind.”

  “Again?” Sarah shrilled, almost beside herself. “Surely you … you are not contemplating such a thing. You have not done anything to discourage him, have you?”

  To a woman like Sarah Courtland who had given birth to three of her five children by the time she was Alisha’s age, to be teetering on the brink of twenty and still unwed, regardless of the circumstances, was flirting with catastrophe. Men were scarce, true enough. And the ravages of war had drastically altered the rules as far as when one declared a single, unwed female consigned to spinsterhood. But Alisha had been engaged three times over the past two years and all three times had broken off the engagement when a better prospect came to light. Baron Karl von Helmstaad, while falling critically short of her requirements in some areas, was as rich as he was infatuated with the most sought-after belle in Adams County.

  “Discourage him? On the contrary, Mother dear, it will pose a genuine challenge to keep my eager groom at arm’s length for the next three weeks. Perhaps I should be asking Amanda how she does it; how she manages to keep herself so detached and cool a man would sooner stake his chances on winning the Queen of England.”

  Amanda looked up and found her sister’s smug, teasing grin waiting for her.