The Return Of Rafe MacKade. Nora Roberts

over the broken porch. “Got to watch your step,” he told her, setting her on her feet next to a Jeep.

      “I make a habit of it.”

      “I bet you do,” he murmured as he rounded the hood.

      He maneuvered his way down the lane, circled around her car and kept going.

      “I thought I’d follow you,” she began.

      “Since I don’t think you mean to the ends of the earth, let’s just take one car. I’ll bring you back.”

      “From?”

      “Home, sweet home, darling.”

      In the snow, with the sun glazing the white fields, the MacKade farm was Currier and Ives pretty. A stone house with covered porch, an arched roof on the red barn, weathered outbuildings and a pair of golden dogs, barking and yipping and kicking up snow completed the scene—one that appealed to Regan.

      She’d driven past the MacKade place countless times—when the fields were brown and furrowed from the plow, when they were high with hay and corn. She’d even stopped once or twice when Shane was riding his tractor, and thought how completely suited he seemed to be to the land.

      She couldn’t picture Rafe MacKade in the same scene.

      “You didn’t come back to farm, I imagine.”

      “Hell, no. Shane loves it, Devin tolerates it. Jared looks on it as an ongoing enterprise.”

      She tilted her head as he parked the Jeep beside his car. “And you?”

      “Hate it.”

      “No ties to the land?”

      “I didn’t say that. I said I hated farming.” Rafe hopped out of the Jeep, clucking at the leaping golden retrievers. Before Regan could step down into the foot-deep snow, he’d plucked her up.

      “I wish you’d stop that. I’m perfectly capable of walking through a little snow.”

      “City boots. Pretty enough, though,” he commented as he carried her onto the porch. “You’ve got little feet. Stay out,” he ordered the dogs. Smoothly he opened the door, elbowed it aside and carried her in.

      “Hey, Rafe, what you got there?”

      Grinning, Rafe shifted Regan in his arms and winked at Shane. “Got me a female.”

      “Good-looking one, too.” Shane tossed the log he held onto the fire, straightened. His eyes, the color of fog over seawater, warmed in appreciation. “Hi there, Regan.”

      “Shane.”

      “Any coffee hot?” Rafe asked.

      “Sure.” Shane kicked the log into place with his boot. “Kitchen’s never closed.”

      “Fine. Now get lost.”

      “Well, that was certainly rude.” Regan blew her hair out of her eyes as Rafe carted her down the hall and into the kitchen.

      “You’re an only child, right?”

      “Yes, but—”

      “Figured.” He dropped her into one of the cane chairs at the kitchen table. “What do you take in your coffee?”

      “Nothing—black.”

      “What a woman.” He stripped off his coat, tossed it over a peg by the back door, where his brother’s heavy work jacket already hung. From a glass-fronted cupboard, he chose two glossy white mugs. “Want anything to go with it? Some hopeful woman’s always baking Shane cookies. It’s that pretty, innocent face of his.”

      “Pretty, maybe. You’re all pretty.” She shrugged out of her coat with a murmur of appreciation for the warmth of the room. “And I’ll pass on the cookies.”

      He set a steaming mug in front of her. Out of habit, he turned a chair around and straddled it. “So, are you going to pass on the house, too?”

      Biding her time, she studied her coffee, sampled it, and found it superb. “I have a number of pieces in stock that I think you’ll find more than suitable when you’re ready to furnish. I also did some research on the traditional color schemes and fabrics from that era.”

      “Is that a yes or a no, Regan?”

      “No, I’m not going to pass.” She lifted her gaze to his. “And it’s going to cost you.”

      “You’re not worried?”

      “I didn’t say that, exactly. But now I know what to expect. I can guarantee I won’t be fainting at your feet a second time.”

      “I’d just as soon you didn’t. You scared the life out of me.” He reached over to play with the fingers of the hand she’d laid on the table. He liked the delicacy of them, and the glint of stones and gold. “In your research, did you dig up anything on the two corporals?”

      “The two corporals?”

      “You should have asked old lady Metz. She loves telling the story. What kind of watch is this?” Curious, Rafe flicked a finger under the twin black elastic bands.

      “Circa 1920. Elastic and marcasite. What about the corporals?”

      “It seems these two soldiers got separated from their regiments during the battle. The cornfield east of here was thick with smoke, black powder exploding. Some of the troops were engaged in the trees, others just lost or dying there.”

      “Some of the battle took place here, on your fields?” she asked.

      “Some of it. The park service has markers up. Anyway, these two, one Union, one Confederate, got separated. They were just boys, probably terrified. Bad luck brought them together in the woods that form the boundary between MacKade land and Barlow.”

      “Oh.” Thoughtful, she dragged her hair back. “I’d forgotten the properties border each other.”

      “It’s less than a half mile from this house to the Barlow place through the trees. Anyway, they came face-to-face. If either of them had had any sense, they’d have run for cover and counted their blessings. But they didn’t.” He lifted his mug again. “They managed to put holes in each other. Nobody can say who crawled off first. The Reb made it as far as the Barlow house. Odds are he was half-dead already, but he managed to crawl onto the porch. One of the servants saw him and, being a Southern sympathizer, pulled him inside. Or maybe she just saw a kid bleeding to death and did what she thought was right.”

      “And he died in the house,” Regan murmured, wishing she couldn’t see it so clearly.

      “Yeah. The servant ran off to get her mistress. That was Abigail O’Brian Barlow, of the Carolina O’Brians. Abigail had just given orders for the boy to be taken upstairs, where she could treat his wounds. Her husband came out. He shot the kid, right there on the stairway.”

      Sadness jolted straight into horror. “Oh, my God! Why?”

      “No wife of his was going to lay her hands on a Reb. She herself died two years later, in her room. Story is that she never spoke a word to her husband again—not that they had much to say to each other before. It was supposed to be one of those arranged marriages. Rumor was he liked to knock her around.”

      “In other words,” Regan said tightly, “he was a prince among men.”

      “That’s the story. She was delicate, and she was miserable.”

      “And trapped,” Regan murmured, thinking of Cassie.

      “I don’t suppose people talked much about abuse back then. Divorce…” He shrugged. “Probably not an option in her circumstances. Anyway, shooting that boy right in front of her must have been the straw, you know. The last cruelty she could take. But that’s only half of it. The half the town knows.”

      “There’s