The MacKade Brothers Bundle: The Return of Rafe MacKade\The Pride of Jared MacKade\The Heart of Devin MacKade\The Fall of Shane MacKade by Nora Roberts

Author:Nora Roberts [Roberts, Nora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460338247
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2014-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

Some nights, late at night, when her children were sleeping and the guests were settled down, Cassie would roam the house. She was careful not to go on the second floor, where guests were bedded down in the lovely rooms and suites Rafe and Regan had built.

They paid for privacy, and Cassie was careful to give it.

But she was free to walk through her own apartment on the third floor, to admire the rooms, the view from the windows, even the feel of the polished hardwood under her bare feet.

It was a freedom, and a security, that she knew she would never take for granted. Any more than she would take for granted the curtains framing the windows, made of fabric that she had chosen and paid for herself. Or the kitchen table, the sofa, each lamp.

Not all new, she mused, but new to her. Everything that had been in the house she shared with Joe had been sold. It had been her way of sweeping away the past. Nothing here was from her before. It had been vital to her to start this life with nothing she hadn’t brought into it on her own.

If she was restless, she could go down on the main level, move from parlor to sitting room, into the beautiful solarium, with its lovely plants and glistening glass. She could stand in the hallways, sit on the steps. Simply enjoy the quiet and solitude.

The only room she avoided was the library. It was the only room that never welcomed her, despite its deep leather chairs and walls of books.

She knew instinctively that it had been Charles Barlow’s realm. Abigail’s husband. The master of the house. A man who had shot, in cold blood, a wounded Confederate soldier hardly old enough to shave.

Sometimes she felt the horror and sadness of that when she walked up and down the staircase where it had happened. Now and again she even heard the shot, the explosion of it, and the screams of the servants who had witnessed the senseless and brutal murder.

But she understood senseless brutality, knew it existed.

Just as she knew Abigail still existed, in this house. It wasn’t just the sound of weeping, the scent of roses that would come suddenly and from nowhere. It was just the feel of the air, that connection that she’d been too embarrassed to mention to Devin.

That was how she knew Abigail had loved a man who wasn’t her husband. That she had longed for him, wept for him, as well as for the murdered boy. That she had dreamed of him, and despaired of ever knowing the joy of real love.

Cassie understood, and sympathized. That was why she felt so welcomed in this house that held so much of the past. Why she was never afraid.

No, she was grateful for every hour she spent here as caretaker to beautiful things. It had been nearly a year since she had accepted Regan’s and Rafe’s offer and moved her family in.

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