The Lady's Hand Read online

  Romantic Times praises bestselling author Bobbi Smith

  "Arizona Caress is a sensitive, fast-paced, satisfying love story. Chalk up another winner for Bobbi Smith!"

  "Sweet Silken Bondage is a double-barrel romance that captures your imagination and your heart!"

  Bayou Bride "Ms. Smith's wonderful characterization and sparkling dialogue are what make her such a fine storyteller!"

  Rafe's smile faded as he turned serious. "I have a proposition to make you."

  Brandy went cold. She sensed she knew what was coming, and wondered how she would ever hide the shame of it all from her mother. "Yes?"

  "I have been fighting off women ever since I came of marriageable age. You were witness to that the other night."

  "What does that have to do with me?" She was staring at him, confused, wondering where he was going with this.

  "I have come up with a plan that would suit me well. You owe me an outstanding amount of money, and you have no funds with which to pay me. I have an arrangement of sorts in mind...."

  "What kind of arrangement?"

  "I want you to marry me."

  Also By Bobbi Smith: LADY DECEPTION

  BOBBI SMITH

  This book is dedicated to my friend Louie Reuther, who died January 9, 1996. Louie 's talent, intelligence, kindness, generosity, and unfailing good humor marked him as a rare man, indeed. If I've learned nothing else from his early passing, I will always remember to do that act of kindness now, so there will be no regrets tomorrow. Thanks, Louie. I loved you a lot.

  I'd also like to thank the Florissant Romance Readers' Book Club from Annies Book Stop in Florissant, Missouri and, in particular, their president, Sharon Kosick, for all their support over the years. They are wonderful women who support the romance genre 110%! I treasure their friendship and their honesty. Thanks Elaine Kramer, Barb Forir, Barb Gaston, Sharon Burt, Jan Gaines, Nina Horack, Sharon Keeney, Renee Koch, Princess Moll, Merry Morrison, Donna Reeves, Ann Royer and Liz Thomas. You're terrific!

  This title was previously published by Dorchester Publishing; this version has been reproduced from the Dorchester book archive files.

  Rafe

  1845

  It was late when the carriage carrying Charles Marchand and his fourteen-year-old son, Rafe, turned into the drive at Bellerive Plantation. They were excited, for they were almost home. Tied to the back of the carriage was a handsome Arabian stallion.

  "Mother's really going to love him, isn't she?" Rafe asked his father.

  "He's the perfect gift for her."

  "Do you think she'll be surprised?"

  "Absolutely. I told her we'd be gone at least through the weekend. She has no idea that we're bringing her an early birthday present." Charles smiled at the thought of his beautiful wife. Alanna meant everything to him. He loved her more than life itself. Lately, though, he had sensed that she wasn't happy, and he hoped this extravagant gift would please her.

  When the carriage drew to a stop before the house, Rafe immediately climbed out.

  "Come on! Let's hurry!" Rafe urged. "She won't be in bed yet. We can give him to her tonight."

  Charles's smile broadened at his son's eagerness. He had to admit that he, too, was anxious to see Alanna's reaction to their present. He envisioned a wonderful night with her after Rafe went to bed. "All right, let's go. I'll send one of the servants to get our bags," he said as he descended from the vehicle.

  They untied the fine Arab and led him to the hitching post in front.

  "Let's get her!" Rafe ran ahead of his father, up the few steps to the veranda, and was reaching for the doorknob when the door swung open.

  "You're back early..." George, the butler, looked from Rafe to Charles. If he was surprised by their unexpected return, he did not show it.

  "We've got a surprise for my mother, George."

  "I'm sure she will be surprised, sir," he replied as he glanced quickly at Charles.

  "Look at the present we brought her!" Rafe told him in a conspiratorial tone, afraid she might be close by and overhear.

  The servant stepped outside and saw the magnificent Arabian. "He's beautiful."

  "Where is Alanna, George?" Charles asked as he entered his home.

  "In your room, sir."

  Rafe took the steps two at a time in his hurry to find her. Charles followed at a more dignified pace, but his excitement was equal to his son's.

  From the foyer below, George watched them go, shaking his head sadly.

  Charles saw that the master bedroom door was closed, but he thought nothing of it. Without knocking, he and Rafe opened it and walked in.

  "Mother!"

  "Alanna, we're..." Charles stopped, frozen in place. "What the hell?" He stared in disbelief at the sight of Alanna lying naked in the arms of another man.

  "Charles!" Alanna's expression was haughty, her voice icy as she casually drew a sheet over herself.

  Rafe said nothing. He stood a little behind his father staring at his mother and her lover. As he watched, the man bolted from the bed and grabbed his pants. Rafe was young, but not so young that he didn't know what was going on. He glanced up at his father and saw the fury etched in his face.

  "Get out of my house, Lawson!" Charles thundered, recognizing the man.

  Without a word, Lawson snatched up the rest of his clothes and fled.

  "Rafe, go to your room," Charles ordered without looking at his son. His condemning gaze was focused only on his unfaithful wife. "I have to speak to your mother privately."

  "But..."

  "Go!" he roared.

  Rafe all but ran from the bedroom, closing the door behind him as he went out. He made his way to his room and locked himself in, but the sounds of his parents' furious voices reached him even through that closed portal. He listened in horror as everything he'd ever loved and believed in was destroyed.

  "Aren't you going to say anything, Charles?" his mother taunted. "Or are you just going to stand there staring at me?"

  "What is there to say, Alanna?"

  "Perhaps actions would speak louder than words. Why don't you come here and finish what John started?" She gave a tempting, husky laugh.

  "I wouldn't touch you if you were the last woman on the face of the earth."

  "Oh, come now, Charles. You know I can make you forget all about this."

  "How long, Alanna?" His father's voice sounded strangled.

  "How long, what?"

  "How long have you been unfaithful? How many men have there been?"

  "Oh, Charles, you're such a fool." She laughed mockingly this time.

  "I'm a fool because I loved you, Alanna."

  "Loved me? You're hardly man enough for me. Why do you think I've taken so many lovers all these years? I married you for your money, Charles. That was all I ever cared about or wanted from you. I never loved you."

  "I want you out of this house. Be gone by morning. Do you understand me?"

  "I've always understood you. Far too well, in fact." She laughed again. "Don't worry, I'll be gone long before morning, and I won't look back ever."

  "What about our son?"

  "What about Rafe?"

  "Be careful what you say to him." There was a very real threat in his father's voice.

  "I won't even talk to him. Why should I? You do it. You know I never wanted any children."

  Rafe stood unmoving in the middle of his room, his hands clenched into fists. He had adored his mother, yet now he understood why she had always kept him at a distance and rarely showed him any real affection. She had never wanted him.... She had never loved him or his father....

  The sound of the master bedroom door opening and closing jarred him, as did the sound of his father's heavy tread passing his room on his way downsta
irs. Rafe wanted to go to him, to see if he could help in some way, but he knew this was not the time. He could only imagine his father's pain. Rafe stood in the middle of his room, his heart breaking. He refused to acknowledge the tears that burned in his eyes.

  Rafe did not speak to his father the rest of the night. He heard his mother leave the house and drive off in the carriage in the early morning hours. He didn't sleep at all that night.

  The following day his father sent a servant to a neighboring plantation with the Arabian as a gift. Then Charles had all of Alanna's things taken from the house and burned. He spoke only briefly to Rafe, telling him tersely that she had gone and wouldn't be back. Charles retreated into the study and locked the door. Rafe didn't begin to worry seriously about him until a week passed. Desperate to find a way to reach his father, Rafe sought out George for help.

  "What can I do, George? He can't stay in there forever," Rafe said worriedly.

  "He'd like to." George put a kindly, supporting hand on his shoulder. "You're gonna have to be strong for him, Master Rafe."

  He looked up at him, frowning. "I don't understand."

  "Your father loved your mother very much. She was his life."

  "And she hurt him... deliberately!" The look in Rafe's eyes hardened at the memory. "I hate her for what she did! I'm glad she's gone!"

  "But your father is never gonna hate her and he's never gonna be glad she's gone."

  "But how can he still care after what she did?" Rafe didn't understand.

  "That's what's tearing him apart inside. That's why he's locked himself in the study and is drinking himself to death."

  Rafe's expression was troubled as he struggled to understand. "Will you come with me and see if we can get him to come out?"

  George wanted to help, and they walked toward the locked study together. George knocked.

  "Mr. Charles? Master Rafe would like to speak with you." They waited for a response, but none came. He knocked again. "Mr. Charles?"

  "Go away! I don't want to see anyone," he finally answered in an irritated rasp.

  "I need to see you..." Rafe panicked at how strange his father sounded. Something was terribly wrong.

  "I don't want to see you or anyone!"

  "Father... Please..." Rafe couldn't believe that even his father didn't want to see him. He felt alone and lost.

  "Mr. Charles, we're not going to leave until you come to speak with us," George insisted, seeing the boy's desperation.

  Finally, they heard footsteps coming toward the door and the sound of the lock being turned. When the door was opened, Charles stood before them, a shadow of his former self. He was unshaven and unwashed. His eyes were red from the sleepless nights he'd endured. He reeked of liquor, and Rafe recoiled from the harsh scent.

  "Are you all right?" the boy asked.

  Charles turned his back on them without speaking and returned to his desk. He slumped in the chair, staring at them with a bleary-eyed gaze. "What do you want?"

  Rafe couldn't believe his condition or the haunted, almost dead, look in his eyes. "I need you."

  Charles's gaze sharpened for a moment as he looked at his son. "Don't." The word was harsh and cruel. "Don't need me. Don't need anyone. You can't be hurt if you don't need anyone."

  "You can't go on like this." The change in his father was so dramatic that Rafe knew he needed help.

  "Your words are more true than you know," Charles said flatly. "Your mother's never coming back."

  "So?" Rafe raged, furious at what she'd done to his father and to him. "We don't need her! You should be glad she's gone. We'll be all right, the two of us. I know we will."

  Charles stared at his son, seeing the anger in him and knowing there was nothing he could do to help. Alanna had always been his one weakness. He had worshipped her, and now that all-consuming love was destroying him.

  God knew, if she walked through that door right now and asked him to take her back, he would. A week without her had seemed an eternity. He still wanted her...desired her. Yet, his tortured mind would not stop conjuring up the devastating image of her with Lawson. He had seen the look on her face as the other man had possessed her, and he knew he would never forget it. He would take that torment to the grave with him.

  "It's good that you don't need her, Rafe, but..." His voice trailed off as he would have said, "but I do." He dropped his head into his hands in an exhausted motion. "George, get Rafe out of here. I need to be alone."

  "But Papa..."

  "Go, son." It was an order.

  Rejected by his father, Rafe looked up at George with pain-filled eyes. The servant just shook his head solemnly as he led him from the study. They hadn't gone far when they heard the key turned in the door again.

  It was much later that night, as Rafe lay awake in his bed worrying about his father, that the sound of the gunshot split the silence. Rafe raced downstairs to find George beating on the door, trying to get in. In desperation, the two of them broke it open.

  The sound of Rafe's cry when he saw his father lying on the floor would forever haunt George. The servant knew it was the death of the boy's innocence he'd heard in that cry. He tried to keep Rafe from going any nearer, but the boy pushed past him and dropped to his knees beside his father's body. Rafe picked up the note that lay on the floor near his father's hand:

  I can't go on without Alanna.

  At the funeral, Rafe watched coldly as his mother played the role of the widow to the hilt. She sat with him, weeping when it was deemed appropriate, but he could not help thinking that her thoughts were on John Lawson and how quickly she could get back to his bed. She paid scant attention to him, and that was fine with Rafe. He knew that her own pleasures were all that concerned her.

  At the reading of the will, when the lawyer asked her what her plans were for her son, she'd immediately directed the man to send him away to school. Rafe hadn't said a word in opposition, for he'd had no desire to be anywhere near her. She had not spoken to him except in passing since his father's death, and Rafe was certain that she had no intention of allowing him to interfere with her plans. She never returned to Bellerive after that day.

  A week after the funeral, Rafe left Bellerive for a private boarding school up north. His mother never came to see him during all his years there and she never wrote to him.

  Years later, when he was informed of his mother's death in a carriage accident, Rafe felt nothing.

  Brandy

  Natchez, 1848

  It was dark as the two shabbily dressed, barefoot young girls crept through the lush, flowering garden of the stately mansion.

  "We shouldn't be here," Mary Magee whispered nervously as she clutched at her adventurous companion's arm. She wanted to stop Brandy from going any farther. They were getting too close to the house, and they might get caught.

  "Hush," Brandy O'Neill returned in a low voice. "There's something goin' on tonight that I want to see.

  "How do you know there's something going on? Have you been here before?" The girl glanced at her friend in surprise, wondering what a poor girl from Natchez-Under-The-Hill was doing coming up here by the rich folks.

  Brandy nodded. "I sneak up here all the time just to look around. Someday, I'm gonna be this rich, too," she answered with a conviction unusual in someone so young. "Someday, me and my mama are gonna live in a big house just like this one. We're gonna have fancy dresses, lotsa food, and servants to wait on us, hand and foot."

  Mary shook her head at her fantasy. "You're dreamin'. You ain't never gonna be a lady."

  "Oh, yes, I am! Maybe you're happy livin' the way you're livin' right now, but I'm not. My mama deserves a better life, and I'm gonna see that she gets it. Ever since Pa died, she's been workin' herself sick trying to support us with her sewin'. One day, I'm gonna be taking care of her so good that she'll never have to sew for anybody again."

  "How're you gonna do that?"

  "I don't know, but I will. Now, come on."

  "But what if t
hey catch us?"

  "They're not going to catch us if you just stay quiet."

  Brandy led off again, heading down the path that wound through the carefully manicured grounds. As the pair moved ever closer to the house, the faint and distant sound of music came to them.

  "They havin' a party...." Mary said under her breath.

  Brandy nodded. "Look."

  She pushed aside the branches of a low-growing shrub to reveal a view of the balcony off the ballroom. The double French doors to the ballroom were open wide, and inside, beneath the light of the glowing chandelier, they could see the handsome, elegantly dressed men squiring the magnificently gowned ladies about the dance floor.

  Mary gasped at the beauty of the scene.

  Brandy only stared, watching dreamily as the couples spun around to the music. For just that little time, as she hid there watching from the darkness, she could forget that her future was bleak, that she and her mother lived from day to day, struggling just to pay the rent on the single, rat-infested room they let in the town below the bluff. She could forget that she hadn't eaten a full meal in a week. She could believe, if only for a little while, that the future was going to be just as wonderful as she dreamed.

  1857

  The mood among those gathered that evening in the gentlemen's saloon aboard The Pride of New Orleans was one of anticipation. The men had heard about the beautiful lady gambler named Brandy who was a regular on the steamboat, and they were eager to get a look at her. Rumor had it that she was one talented poker player, and they were more than ready to test their gaming skills against hers.

  "I've listened to all your talk about this Brandy for over an hour now, and you're all making her sound like some paragon of womanhood young, beautiful and smart. Is she really that special?" asked Kevin Berra, a darkly handsome young man who was making the trip north to expand his carriage trade business to points upriver, as he stood drinking straight bourbon at the bar. He didn't think there was a woman alive who could live up to what they were saying.

  Dan Lesseg, a prominent young attorney from St. Louis who considered himself a connoisseur of woman, answered easily, "Brandy is more than special. She's magnificent."