Ellora's Cavemen: Tales from the Temple IV (18 page)

CJ gasped, one hand going to her mouth.

Nodding her gray head slowly, Rosa said, “I imagine it’s his presence you feel in there. I do know Davenport didn’t die a happy man, and he didn’t die easily. Young Collin beat the living daylights out of him and left him for dead while he took his mama for medical attention. It turns out she was with child. Davenport wanted the plantation for his child and Alice couldn’t get him to understand that the plantation was already legally and rightfully Collin’s.

“He beat the child out of her. She almost died.”

In hushed tones, CJ related what happened the previous night, what she had convinced herself was little more than a dream.

“Davenport didn’t like the Greenes. Tried to scare little Katie out of marrying Collin, told her how cruel he was, and that he liked to run around. He wasn’t cruel, and as for the running, well, he wasn’t married at the time and he was a healthy young man.

Of course, Katie didn’t believe Davenport,” Rosa said, absently stirring her now cold tea.

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“Alice died in that house, in the ladies’ parlor, sometime in 1845 or 1846. From what I’ve been told, I’d say she was a kind, gracious lady. I’d imagine she was the other presence you felt.”

Carefully, Rosa eased her old body out of the booth. “I don’t doubt it scared you something awful, Chelsea Jane. But you have nothing to fear from that house.

Davenport can’t hurt you. Scare you, yes, if you let him. But you aren’t in any danger.”

While CJ was absorbing this, Rosa laid her money on the table and walked away, mighty fast for a woman of her advanced years. She was already to the door when CJ

jerked out of her reverie and called out, “Wait! Whatever happened to Collin Lucas?”

But the old woman pretended not to hear.

“Damn it, that is
it
!”

Slamming money down on the table, she hopped up and took off after the old woman, running down Main Street, dodging the car that was crossing the road and catching up with Mrs. Graham just before she unlocked her car. “I want to know what happened in my house. And you know. Don’t tell me you don’t.”

Mrs. Graham smiled. “Why do you want to know so bad?”

With a frustrated groan, she said, “I have to. I have dreams, when I sleep, when I’m awake. Of a man…his name is Lucas. But I’ve never met him before in my life. I don’t understand it, but I think you do. Damn it.
Tell
me.”

There was an odd gleam in her eyes. But Mrs. Graham nodded slowly and said,

“Young Katie Green loved Collin Lucas Frost with all of her heart. And he loved her.

Completely, intently. They were to wed the fall after she turned eighteen. She turned eighteen in May. The wedding was set for fall, so it wouldn’t be so dreadful hot.” Her eyes turned inward, thinking as she started to walk. “She was my great-grandmother’s baby sister. As sweet and lovable as they come. Everybody adored her, I’m told. And so many men wanted her. But she was always for Collin.”

Something sick started to grow inside CJ’s belly as they walked.

Rosa smiled softly. “I always loved that portrait of her—the one you saw in the library. I used to think she was an angel, when I was young. I had met or heard so much about my other aunts and uncles. But never about her. I badgered my mama something fierce until she finally told me the story, sometime…oh, I think I was probably twenty or so, before she thought I could hear such a terrible tale.” Tears welled in those faded blue eyes and she whispered, “Sometimes, I do wish that I had never heard it. Such a heartbreaking story.”

That sick, sour feeling in CJ’s belly grew, locking her throat, swarming in her mind.

Did she
really
have to know this?

Then she thought of the happiness she had read in Katie’s journals, and she knew.

Yes.
She had to know.

“A few weeks after turned eighteen, Katie had to go live at Frost plantation. There was a terrible outbreak of scarlet fever and her mother and father went to help care for 113

Shiloh Walker

the people in town, as a pastor will do. But he wouldn’t risk his youngest daughter. All his other children had married away and left home. And he wouldn’t risk Katie—he loved that girl so.

“So he talked it over with Alice, Collin’s mama. Collin was in and out on business all the time, and he was building his own place, adjoining on the back piece of land of your land. He wouldn’t be living in that place with Davenport, you see. He hated him with a passion. Nobody thought anything ill of Katie staying there, away from town, and the fever for a while.

“But it put her near Davenport. And he started to want her, like all men did. And his wants were violent ones. He hid it, at first.”

CJ felt her belly start to roil and she slowed her steps a little, taking a deep breath.

Looking around, she realized they had come to a cemetery, and Rosa had led her to the older section and was guiding her even now to someplace in particular.

“But then he started talking to her, whispering to her. Then touching her. She started writing to Collin, but mail in those times was slow and unpredictable. By the time the letters found Collin, it was rather late. He was already making his way home.

Katie was afraid to say anything to her parents for fear of causing them shame. So many things, back then, it should have been the man’s shame, and it shamed the woman and the family instead.”

“Did he rape her?” CJ asked, the words coming from frozen vocal cords.

“No,” Rosa said softly. “Though he would have. Alice intervened that last night, coming into the library where Katie had gone to read, when she heard the struggling, and Katie struggled quite well for a gently reared lady, broke his nose and kicked him rather well in the balls. Alice hit him with a brandy decanter and ran to help Katie.” The old woman spoke the words so baldly that for a moment, CJ smiled. “Davenport was stunned, but only for a moment. Alice didn’t fare so well. He beat her, and badly.

“Collin arrived home to see him standing over his mother’s broken body, the blood from her miscarried child staining her nightgown, and Katie running from the house screaming for help.”

Turning around, Rosa said, “We’re here. I’d like to say that it all ended there.”

She looked down at the gently waving grass, carefully tended, and flowers that always bloomed. “I truly would like to say that. Alice had to confide in somebody, and it was Katie’s mama who came to stay with her for several days, helping her and Katie until Alice was stronger.”

Rosa reached down one hand to stroke the worn old headstone, her voice thick with tears as she said, “Somebody always cares for her grave, and his mother’s. I come once a month. To bring flowers for him. We don’t rightly know who cares for the ladies.”

CJ felt a cold chill run through her as she looked down and saw the dates on the joining graves.

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Collin Lucas Frost

July 27, 1823 – July 27, 1844

Katherine Jane Frost

May 5 1826 – July 27, 1844

Denied forever in life. Together forever in death.

Feeling cold, she asked, “What happened?”

“Davenport happened. He came back a few months later, full of fire, fury, madness.

And he found them together, making love by the fire in the library. And he told Collin that if he came out of the house, he would leave Katie alone, and not kill her. Collin didn’t believe him, but he thought that if he got Davenport away, he’d have a chance to disarm him, protect his love. It didn’t work. There was a couple of men Davenport had paid—they killed Collin the moment he stepped foot off Frost property and Davenport walked back up there, intent on getting Katie and raping her, taking her.”

CJ was stock stiff with fury, shock, sorrow, and something else…
Memory
,
standing in front of the window, seeing a man strut back up to the house, hearing a gunshot, feeling in her heart, in her gut, knowing he was gone…
noooo
…

“But Alice was there. She had been upstairs sleeping when Davenport came in. She felt it, in her heart, knew he had taken her son. And she lost all fear, all life. She took up the rifle of her husband, her true husband, Collin’s father. And she loaded it before she went downstairs, the way Collin Jacob had shown her.

“By the time Davenport had gotten back inside, she was downstairs, the rifle hidden in her nightgown. He didn’t even glance her way as he went to get Katie.”

CJ wasn’t even listening anymore. She could see it, feel it, remember it…through the open door seeing Alice, almost like a mother standing there, her face stark white with shared grief, and something else…
I will protect you…

“It does not matter,” Katie whispered. “Collin is gone.”

“Damn right,” Davenport bragged. “Dead and gone. Your excellent ass is mine now. Get up and let me see what is mine.”

“Get away from her,” Alice rasped, the words sounding cold and alien as she moved slowly into the room, one arm hanging oddly behind her. “You took my son.

You won’t have his wife.”

“They never married. She’ll be mine.”

“They were married in soul. Married in the eyes of God, if not man. In their eyes, they were wed and that is good enough for me,” Alice said, her voice shaking with grief, with fury, her eyes glittering and bright. “Get away from her. I’ll not be telling you again.”

“Shut up, you crazy bitch,” Davenport snapped, whirling on her.

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That was when she raised the rifle. And shot.

CJ’s eyes opened and she looked at Rosa. “Katie killed herself, didn’t she?”

“We can’t exactly say that,” Rosa said quietly, turning back to the grave. “When they went to get Collin’s body, nobody could find her. She was found by him, curled up around him. And gone, just gone. Not a mark on her, but she was dead. Her sisters think maybe she willed it upon herself. At least that is what my mama told me.

Perhaps…you could enlighten me. Someday.” The old woman’s eyes, so faded, sharpened briefly before she walked away.

The graves drew her back. Time after time, day after day. After the fifth visit in a week, she concluded she was obsessed. Unsure why, uncaring, CJ decided she would let it run its course as she straightened the flowers and rose, dusting her knees off.

Daisies were the flowers Lucas liked best, so that was what she brought.

And how do you know what flowers he liked? Katie never wrote that
, part of her taunted.

CJ wondered if she’d get picked up for an obscene gesture if she flipped herself the bird.

Halfway back, she decided she was in no hurry to get home, so CJ settled on a rock with one of the few journals left, sipping water from her bottle and enjoying the sunshine, the quiet, and the relative peace, for the time being.

“Hello.”

She swallowed a shriek as she shot to her feet and turned around. CJ was incredibly jumpy after the past few nights.

Meeting the soft gray eyes just a few feet away, she felt a flush staining her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“No. You looked kind of preoccupied.”

CJ was preoccupied all right. Staring into those dove gray eyes, she felt as though she were drowning. My, my, my, she thought, her palms just the slightest bit damp.

“I’m Luke,” he said, his voice soft and mellow, a soft Southern drawl that seemed to reach out and stroke her.

She held her hand out hesitantly, taking his as she said, “CJ.”

“What does the Cee Jay stand for?” he asked, still holding her hand.

“Chelsea Jane.” His hand was warm, calloused, and strong. In a blink, she was imagining lying back on the warm grass and feeling those hands stroke over her.

He was still holding her hand as a smile broke out, creases appearing in his cheeks.

“I like that. Chelsea. Do you live around here, too? I haven’t seen you before.”

“I live in the old Royal Oaks house,” she said, goose bumps forming on her flesh as he stroked her wrist with his thumb.

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“Are you the new owner?” he asked, golden brows rising. He had hair the color of summer wheat, golden blond, shot through with streaks of near white. And those eyes…

Jerking her wandering mind back, CJ said, “Sort of. My father left the house to me after he died a few years ago. I decided recently to come down here.”

“Down here?” he asked, squeezing her hand once more before releasing it. “I knew it. You’re a Yank.”

Laughing, she tucked her tingling hand into her pocket. “I’m only from across the river. Just a little bit of Yank. And actually, I grew up in Louisville.”

“Hmm. I guess that’s not too bad,” Luke said, smiling at her. His mouth, a sculpted thing of near perfection, curved up at one corner and he stated, “You are a very lovely woman, Chelsea Jane.”

Her cheeks flushed and her heart started dancing in her chest as she stuttered out a thank you.

“What is it you’re reading?” he asked, grinning mischievously at her obvious embarrassment.

“Just some old journals I found up in the attic,” she said, glancing down at the book as though she had forgotten she held it.

“Ah. Your father’s?” Luke asked, studying her closely, keeping an easy smile on his face, though nothing inside him felt easy as he studied her. He had been watching, and waiting, for a long time.

It was
her
.

So very different.

But her.

CJ laughed. When she did, it had her golden brown eyes sparkling. Her skin had a naturally dusky hue to it, and Luke wondered idly if the flesh of her torso was the same sun-kissed tone. Dragging his eyes back up, he had to smile in return as CJ said, “My father keeping journals? Not in this lifetime. You usually keep a journal to write down your innermost thoughts and feelings. And my father had no thoughts or feelings that didn’t pertain to his studies.”

“Sounds like a rather sad man,” Luke noted, wondering what such a father had been like for this girl.

“Yeah. I guess he was.” Her mouth pursed thoughtfully as she studied the journal she held. “Actually, the journals all belong to a girl who lived more than a hundred years ago. My father would probably have me beaten simply for touching them.”