Nora Roberts - The Return Of Rafe MacKade - the classic story from the queen of romance that you won’t be able to put down

“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 more.” She let out a sigh and rose. “I think I need more coffee.”

“The Yank stumbled off in the opposite direction,” Rafe continued, murmuring a thank you when she poured him a second cup. “My great-grandfather found him passed out by the smokehouse. My great-grandfather lost his oldest son at Bull Run—he’d died wearing Confederate gray.”

Regan shut her eyes. “He killed the boy.”

“No. Maybe he thought about it, maybe he thought about just leaving him there to bleed to death. But he picked him up and brought him into the kitchen. He and his wife, their daughters, doctored him on the table. Not this one,” Rafe added with a small smile.

“That’s reassuring.”

“He came around a few times, tried to tell them something. But he was too weak. He lasted the rest of that day and most of the night, but he was dead by morning.”

“They’d done everything they could.”

“Yeah, but now they had a dead Union soldier in their kitchen, his blood on their floor. Everyone who knew them knew that they were staunch Southern sympathizers who’d already lost one son to the cause and had two more still fighting for it. They were afraid, so they hid the body. When it was dark, they buried him, with his uniform, his weapon, and a letter from his mother in his pocket.”

He looked at her then, his eyes cool and steady. “That’s why this house is haunted, too. I thought you’d be interested.”

She didn’t speak for a moment, set her coffee aside. “Your house is haunted?”

“The house, the woods, the fields. You get used to it, the little noises, the little feelings. We never talked about it much; it was just there. Maybe you’d get a sense of something in the woods at night, or in the fields, when the morning was misty and too quiet.” He smiled a little at the curiosity in her eyes. “Even cynics feel something when they’re standing on a battlefield. After my mother died, even the house seemed…restless. Or maybe it was just me.”

“Is that why you left?”

“I had lots of reasons for leaving.”

“And for coming back?”

“One or two. I told you the first part of the story because I figured you should understand the Barlow place, since you’re going to be involved with it. And I told you the rest…” He reached over and loosened the duo of black buttons on her blazer. “Because I’m going to be staying at the farm for a while. Now you can decide if you want me to bring you here, or if you’d rather I come to your place.”

“My inventory’s at the shop, so—”

“I’m not talking about your inventory.” He cupped her chin in his hand, kept his eyes open and on hers when he kissed her.

Softly at first, testing. Then with a murmur of satisfaction, deeper, so that her lips parted and warmed. He watched her lashes flutter, felt her breath sigh out and into his mouth, felt the pulse just under her jaw, just under his fingers, throb. The smoky scent of her skin was a seductive contrast to her cool-water taste.