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“No?” she responded with a dubious-sounding chuckle. “Are you ill?”
He smiled. “No.”
“Have you found someone new?”
“No.” He had, but Valinda wasn’t his, no matter how much he wished otherwise.
“I think you’re lying to me, Drake LeVeq,” she said playfully. “But it doesn’t matter. I hope she makes you happy.”
He walked to her and planted a soft kiss on her brow. “Godspeed, Josie. Enjoy your new life in Mexico.”
“Thank you, Drake. Thank you for all the good times, the gowns, and the rest. I will miss you.”
“I’ll miss our times together as well.” He bowed and made his exit.
As he mounted his stallion, he was caught between amusement and humiliation. He knew having a mistress while being attracted to Valinda wasn’t honorable, but it never occurred to him that Josephine would remove herself from the equation and settle the matter so uniquely. He wondered if any of his brothers had ever had the rug pulled out from beneath them this way. Not that he planned to ask. They’d never let him live it down if he did. So, having been dismissed by his mistress while pining for a woman who belonged to another, he rode out of the city to the abandoned plantation his good friend Hugh had purchased, and hoped he had some cognac on hand.
“So, Josie’s replaced you.”
Drake and Hugh were sitting on the front porch of his ramshackle mansion. It had been torched by the former owners to make it uninhabitable when they lost it to the bank during the war. Hugh’s plan was to rebuild it and put it up for sale.
“Yes. To say I’m surprised is an understatement.”
“You always said she was a businesswoman.”
“True, but I never thought I’d be tossed aside like an old bill of sale.”
Hugh sipped his cognac. “The price we pay for underestimating the so-called weaker sex.”
“I suppose.”
Hugh was big and burly like Drake. He was White though, and his hair and beard were red. “You have a replacement in mind?”
“No. Need to lick my wounds first. Although...”
Hugh looked over. “Although what?”
Drake told him about Valinda and her intended, to which Hugh responded, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s woman.”
“Good thing he’s not my neighbor then.”
Hugh snorted.
Drake smiled. The two met in ’62, right after the Union invaded New Orleans and closed the ports on the Mississippi River. Hugh came to the city to fight on the side of the Union. He was from an area in East Tennessee staunchly opposed to the Confederacy, where people called themselves Unionists and Heroes of America. Like Drake and his kin, Hugh was a Radical Republican.
Hugh asked, “What is this I hear about Liam Atwater murdering someone?”
“He did. His name was Daniel Downs. The son of my housekeeper.”
“He was Miss Erma’s son?”
Drake nodded. “Killed him in front of his wife and seven-year-old boy, and dumped his body in the swamp.”
“My lord.”
“I’ll be talking to the Council about it. We can’t let him get away with this.”
“No help from the locals or the Army?”
