It was the second time he had shortened her name today. She considered him. Leaning back in his chair, he looked utterly relaxed. It was an illusion, she knew for a fact. Rarely did Roan Devereaux allow himself to be off guard. As if he were aware of every movement within his range of sight and hearing, he kept watch. That he could do so and still maintain a conversation puzzled her.
Another puzzle was his calling her “Kate.”
“My father used to call me that,” she said quietly.
“Kate?”
She nodded. “No one else ever has, just Charlie.”
“I didn’t mean to be too familiar. Sometimes you just look like…like you ought to be Kate.” His eyes were dark, their regard warming, and his mouth was pursed as he studied her.
“I don’t mind,” she said quickly. It was a familiarity that pleased her somehow. And she fought against the pleasure it brought her. He’ll be gone… before you know it, he’ll be gone, she told herself. And you’ll miss him.
That admission was a new one. So hurting was it, she rose and gathered up the plates and forks, carrying them to the sink and depositing them with a clatter in the tin dishpan waiting there. She couldn’t afford to miss him, she thought, blinking away the hot tears burning against her eyelids.
“Katherine?”
She heard his chair scrape against the floor and she blinked furiously, determined to hide any evidence of weakness. Not on your life, Roan Devereaux, she thought furiously. You’ve already known me for a softhearted female once today. I’ll be switched if you see me being foolish again.
“It’s time to be movin’ on,” he mused beneath his breath as he pounded the last nail into place. The stall door hung straight, the latch was in place, and for the life of him, he couldn’t find another thing to do in the barn.
On top of that, Katherine was looking better to him all the time, and he surely didn’t need a woman to complicate his life right now. At least, not on a long-term basis. And Katherine was definitely not a bed-’em-and-leave-’em woman.
He watched her from the barn door. Watched as she took the last of his clothing from the line she’d strung between the cabin and the milk house. His gaze was fixed on the heavy rope of hair that caught the sunlight and gleamed with hidden fire. Prettier than a spotted pony and twice as spunky, he thought with a subdued chuckle. She’d be a prize for the right man. One willing to look beyond her fierce pride and drab demeanor.
“Katherine,” he called, reluctantly heading in her direction. “How about if I take a look inside the house and see what needs tending before I head out of here? Thought I’d see what I can put to rights for you.”
Her head shot up and she put out one hand in an unmistakable gesture. “My house will do fine, thank you. I manage to keep it up to snuff without any trouble at all.”
He lifted one eyebrow in silent question. “If you’re sure about that…” he said, unwilling to push, aware of her fierce possessiveness when it came to her own surroundings.
“Are you heading out?” she asked bluntly.
He sauntered closer, his eyes intent on her fisted hands, clenched at her sides, betraying the tension she sought to conceal. Katherine was not nearly as unconcerned about being here alone as she let on, he decided.
“It’s about time. I’m pret’ near thirty years old and my family hasn’t seen me in ten or twelve years.” His laugh was rusty. “Fact is, they might not be too excited about my comin’ home. But I figure it’s time to let ‘em know I’m still alive and kickin’.”
“They’ll be glad to see you, Roan,” she said quietly, her eyes on his guarded expression. “I’ll bet your mother watches for you every day.”
“Well, you sure don’t have any notion of how Letitia Devereaux carries on, I can see that,” he answered dryly. “About the last thing she’s thinkin’ about is her long-lost son. Matter of fact, I’m probably the biggest disappointment in her life. I doubt she ever got over my fightin’ for the North.”
Katherine regarded him thoughtfully. “I wondered that myself,” she admitted. “Just thought it wasn’t my business to ask questions, though.”
Roan squatted in the shade of the milk house and picked up a handful of small stones from the ground between his knees, one at a time, looking each over carefully. As if he considered his words with equal care, he spoke hesitantly.
“Slavery wasn’t the issue with most Southerners, you know. But it was with me. I had a hard time with the right of one man to own another, no matter what the law said. Still do, for that matter. My father and I had a go-round more than once, after I got to be full grown. He said I had to learn my place in life and it wasn’t workin’ side by side with the slaves and bein’ familiar with them.” He looked up at her with somber eyes. “I couldn’t consider the boys I’d grown up with as less than men,” he said harshly. “And to my father, they were ‘boys,’ fit only to work in the fields.” He shrugged. “We didn’t see eye to eye. So I left.”
“And fought on the side of the North,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, that was sorta strange, I guess. When I wrote to my mother, after the war, I told her. She wrote me back while I was in the hospital in Philadelphia, where they patched my leg up for the last time.”
“I’ll warrant she was worried about you,” Katherine told him.
His laugh was harsh. “Maybe, maybe not. What she was was ashamed of me. That I would fight against my ‘own kind’ was more than she could tolerate, she said.”
“Why do you want to go back?” Katherine asked after a moment.
He stood, brushing his hands together as the stones fell once more to the ground. “Haven’t figured that out yet,” he told her with a grim smile. “Somethin’ just seems to be tuggin’ at me to go home. Maybe I think things will be different, now that the war’s over. Maybe I need to make peace with my daddy before it’s too late to put things right.”
Katherine shaded her eyes from the sun as she looked up at him. “What if they don’t want you back?” The thought that any parent would turn aside his child was abhorrent to her, but the possibility surely existed where Roan Devereaux was concerned.
His grin was crooked as he tilted his hat back with one finger. “They might not. Far as I know, they’ve still got my brother there to handle things. If there’s no place for me, guess I’ll just meander along and head west,” he said with a shrug of his wide shoulders. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for that kind of life, anyway.”
“Seems to me you did pretty well, staying here,” she ventured.
He straightened abruptly and his look was deliberately forbidding. “I was tryin’ to pay a debt and puttin’ in time to pay for that mare in the corral, Katherine. All we need to do is come up with an amount of cash to cover the difference and I’m gonna be on my way.”
She frowned at his words. “What debt are you talking about?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. The important
