Winds of Destiny by Victoria Thompson

Author:Victoria Thompson [Thompson, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-08T08:21:19+00:00

“Beau, I —”

“That’s not my name anymore,” Clint snarled, slapping away the hand Wakefield had reached out to him. “How did you know? How did you figure it out?”

“I didn’t,” Wakefield said, sadness in his voice now. “Nellie did. She said you’d called her by name, like you knew her, and she wouldn’t stop worrying it until she’d figured out why. I suppose you could have expected her to recognize you.”

But Clint didn’t want to think about Nellie now, not when he was trying so hard to hate Wakefield. “I never thought I’d find her with you.”

“Why?” he asked as if he really didn’t know. “She was my woman from the time I was sixteen. It seemed only natural that we stay together after… when everything else was gone. She was all I had left.”

“But I thought you loved Lally,” Clint taunted.

“She belonged to someone else.”

“To your father,” Clint said.

“To your father,” Wakefield corrected him.

Clint felt the familiar rage, but suddenly he realized he couldn’t take it out on Wakefield the son. He couldn’t take it out on anyone now. It was much too late. And if he couldn’t kill Wakefield, he had to fear him. “So now you’re going to tell people about me, that I’m the bastard son of a —”

“No!” Wakefield cried. “I’m not going to tell anyone anything about you. You’re my brother, for God’s sake! Why do you think I agreed to spy for you?”

But Clint had hated Wakefield for too long to be won so easily. “I don’t know. I figured maybe you thought you owed the Tates something.”

“I don’t owe them my children’s lives! That’s what’s at stake here, you know. If I get killed, Nellie and the children will starve, if they’re not murdered outright.”

Clint wanted to deny it, but he knew it was true. He’d given Wakefield a test, and the man had more than passed it, but at a terrible cost. How could he ever have doubted his brother’s courage? “I never wanted them to be hurt.”

“No, you just wanted to get even with me,” Wakefield guessed.

“No, I wanted to get even with… with the old man, but he was dead. You were all I had left.”

Wakefield absorbed this, then said, “Why did she leave? Lally, I mean. I would’ve taken care of her, of both of you. She must have known that.”

“Maybe she was tired of being taken care of,” Clint suggested.

“That’s what Nellie always said,” Wakefield admitted. “I guess I couldn’t understand. I still can’t.”

“Or maybe she wanted you to carry her on your conscience. My mother could be a vengeful woman.”

“Yes. Yes, she could. Where did you go after you left Twelve Oaks? What happened to you?”

“We went to Atlanta. She got a job cleaning house for a Yankee who was afraid to have a nigger woman in her house. Then she married a farmer. I took his name.” So few words to describe all those years, years when he’d learned to forget who he was and where he’d come from.

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