but he’d never broken a promise to Lucky. He wouldn’t now. Raking an arm over his face, wishing he could wipe the anger from his heart as easily as he could from his features, he lifted a hand to hail the house.
“Cade.”
Lincoln froze at the sound, hand uplifted, lips parted in a greeting he wouldn’t utter.
“Cade? Where are you, tiger? Better come inside before it gets dark.”
Shocked that she could know he was there in the shadows that deepened with every increment the sun sank, Lincoln didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond as her voice flowed over him filled with love, driving out the anger.
In that moment of stunned silence, he heard the bark of a dog, a peal of laughter, then the voice of a child. “I’m here, Mom. In the barn with Brownie.”
Before he could make sense of it, a small boy appeared at the barn door. A boy called Cade and his dog.
“Brownie.” Lincoln didn’t know why it was that name he muttered. He didn’t understand why barbwire streaming with brown dog hair twice in three days should flood his mind. But he was glad for a small boy’s simple name for a brown dog and for the mystery of the barbs’ trophies solved.
Mind candy, a mental dodge. A name and a mystery more easily understood and resolved than the one Lincoln confronted in gathering darkness beyond the clearing of the Stuart farm.
His mouth was dry, his head hurt, his heart pounded so hard he thought it might explode. He didn’t want to stay, but he couldn’t drag his gaze from the boy as he raced across the yard and skipped over the broken step into his mother’s arms.
He was a small boy, but too big for Linsey to pick up. Yet she did, crushing him to her as she spun him round and round, planting nibbling kisses on his neck. The boy’s laughter escalated to squeals and giggles, while the dog jumped in circles, trying to join in.
Breathless and panting, Linsey stopped spinning. When she was still again, Lincoln watched as the boy plucked the clasp from her hair, letting it fall beyond her shoulders.
Catching a strand in his grubby fist, he laughed in delight. “Pretty.”
Linsey laughed, too. “Ah, shucks, kind sir. I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Nope.” The boy giggled and squirmed, and giggled that much harder when she tickled him. “Just you.”
“That will change in a few years.” Linsey’s laugh faded as she hugged him again. “You like it here, don’t you, Cade?”
“Yep.” The boy’s head bobbed. “But I was wondering.”
“Yeah?”
“Can I have a horse?”
“Hmm.” Linsey tilted her head, considering. “I suppose one day. What kind of horse would you want?”
“A humongous black one, like the tall man.”
In the shadows Lincoln tensed, waiting for Linsey to look into the falling night. The air had grown unnaturally still; every sound carried as if it were magnified. He found himself holding his breath and keeping Diablo under a tight rein as he awaited discovery.
“A tall man with a humongous horse? I don’t know who you mean, tiger.” The porch lay in shadow now, obscuring Linsey’s features. “Is this a character from TV?”
The boy shook his head with the emphatic impatience of the young. “Nope. A real man.” A finger pointed. “He was over there.”
“He was?” Linsey’s chin lifted sharply. Frowning, she concentrated on the area her son indicated. “Do you see him now?”
“Nope. I could see him from the loft, though.” The boy, whose hair was as dark as his mother’s was fair, gestured again toward the bit of deserted trail visible from the porch.
“You climbed to the loft?” Linsey’s smile faltered. Even to a watcher, hovering and hidden, her demeanor changed, though she spoke kindly to the boy. “We discussed that we had to go carefully here. The house and barn are old, they’ve been empty and neglected for a long time. Do you remember what else I said?”
“There could be rotten boards to fall through, and spiders, and snakes,” the boy finished for her. “I remembered, Mom, and I was careful. Real careful.”
“Why did you go there?” Linsey wasn’t yet pacified.
The boy lifted both shoulders in a vague response. “I dunno, ’cept I just wanted to look. It’s pretty, Mom. I could see the river and the trees, and almost to Oregon. But I won’t go again, if you don’t want me to.”
“Promise? Just until I can get around to repairing it?”
Solemnly the boy drew a sweeping cross over his chest and stomach. “Cross my heart.”
“Promise accepted.” A loving finger tapped his nose, signaling his trespass was forgiven but not forgotten. “What do you say we finish the chocolate pudding left from supper?”
“Can I have my horse, too?”
“The humongous one?”
“Yep.”
Linsey hugged him again. “We’ll see. Good enough?”
“Yep.”
“Can you say anything but yep, tiger?”
“Yep,” the boy answered gravely, then dissolved into giggles at the repartee that was obviously a long-standing game.
In a dancing step Linsey took her son to the door. Pausing there, she turned back. For a sinking moment, though he knew she couldn’t see into the dark cave of trees, Lincoln could feel her gaze strafing over him.
For too long she stood in the doorway, looking from the treeline to the stream, then toward the end of the trail. But Linsey was new to the area—she wouldn’t know this was the passage she’d heard Lincoln call the escape route. She wouldn’t know the long-abandoned trail had led a traveler back to the farm again.
Lincoln’s tension telegraphed to Diablo, the stallion whickered and tossed his head. With a soft click of his tongue and a soothing touch, Lincoln quieted him. As quickly as the small rebellion was settled, there was still the dread of being discovered skulking among the trees like a voyeur.
But Linsey didn’t hear. She didn’t see. Satisfied there was no one about, she passed through the door into the light of a house that had been too empty and too dark for too long.
When the house was quiet and only a light in the bedroom that had been Frannie Stuart’s still burned, Lincoln steered the stallion toward Belle Reve. After bedding Diablo down for the night, enduring a short command-visit with his father, and refusing the dinner Miss Corey had prepared, he drove to his small pied-à-terre on the outskirts of Belle Terre.
The small city, deeply steeped in old Southern traditions, was the hub of this part of the South Carolina lowcountry. Lincoln’s home, situated in a sleepy cul-de-sac on a little-traveled street, was uniquely antebellum, with many of its historic treasures still intact. A single, as the narrow houses with walled and private courtyard gardens were called. In these days when he divided his time between Belle Terre and Belle Reve—with considerably more at the plantation since his father’s strokes—the tiny house was all he needed.
An hour later, as he wandered the moonlit courtyard, he realized how much he’d missed the quiet, the solitude. A place that was his alone. Yet the familiar pleasure of it escaped him. His mind was too full, too chaotic. Too filled with memories of Linsey and the boy.
“The boy.” Ice clinked against an heirloom crystal glass as he took it from a wrought-iron table. Draining it, he poured another drink from a decanter he’d brought into the garden with him.
“Linsey, the boy, and Brownie.” His voice was strained even to himself, and he wondered if one drink had