The Outcast Read Free Page A

nurtured in the Sinclair gardens. But then, neither was Patrice. Not anymore. She’d brought an armful of wildflowers, the kind that grew plentifully without rhyme or reason across the countryside. Hardy, colorful blossoms that could weather just aboutanything and still thrive. Like the Patrice who walked away from him without a backward glance.
    Carefully, he arranged the bouquet upon the gently mounded soil of his Kentucky homeland, then reached back for the reins to his mount. It was time to face the moment he’d dreaded for four years.
    Time to go up to the main house to see what kind of welcome awaited.
    “Patrice Sinclair, you take those stairs like a young lady.”
    The gentle reproof caught Patrice in mid-stride, her skirt hiked up nearly to her knees. Immediately, just as if she were once again a child of privilege struggling to learn social graces, Patrice paused, smoothed the calico the way she would finest sateen, then continued up the porch steps to where her mother sat in the shade.
    “I’m sorry, Mama. I forgot myself.”
    Her modulated voice didn’t fool Hannah Sinclair. She set aside her needlepoint to take a closer look at her daughter. Noting her high color and the frantic brightness of her quickly downcast gaze, panic settled within a heart attuned to personal sorrow.
    “What is it, Patrice? Is it Deacon? Have you had news?” When no answer came at once, Hannah drew a tight breath. “You wouldn’t think to keep such information from me, would you, thinking I’m too frail and foolish to accept it?”
    Her mother’s pain cut through Patrice’s private agonies and she swiftly knelt at her mother’s feet.
    “Oh, Mama, no. It isn’t Deacon. I wouldn’t hide news, good or bad, from you. I’m so sorry I frightened you.”
    Air left Hannah’s lungs in a tremulous whisper.“Not a day passes when I’m not praying to hear something, but at the same time, dreading what that word might be.”
    Tears glistened as gazes met and the two women shared an empathetic embrace. Then Hannah pushed away, ending Patrice’s hope that her mother had forgotten the cause of her concern.
    “What’s got you all upset, honey?” A gentle palm skimmed one flushed cheek, holding Patrice in place when she thought to rise up and escape the question. “Talk to me, Patrice. You used to confide in me. I know you carry more burdens than a young lady should, and I don’t want you to think you can no longer come to me with your troubles. I’m not much good for anything but advice these days.”
    “Mama, that’s not true.”
    “Of course it is.”
    Patrice wouldn’t insult her by arguing. Both knew the fragile state of Hannah Sinclair’s health. Though Patrice often longed to pour out her soul to a sympathetic ear, she couldn’t risk the strain upon her mother’s delicate nerves. What would the protected and pampered Southern flower who’d gone from the nurturing of one overbearing man as father to another as husband, know of the havoc in her heart? How could she advise on matters of disloyalty and forbidden love when she’d never made an independent suggestion on her own? Her finely bred mother would be distraught if she knew of the dark passions torturing her daughter’s soul. So Patrice hoarded the hurts and the anger to herself, heaping them upon a spirit already bowed by more miseries than it was meant to hold. Just this one more wouldn’t break her, not this atop all the others.
    News of Avery Sinclair’s death left Hannah a puppet whose strings had been cut. Without the master to manipulate her movements in the proper way, she couldn’t function on her own. She fell into a listless despair, unable to make a decision as small as what to wear without Patrice to coax it from her. While she lay upon her couch, rereading old letters from courtship days until illegible from her weeping, Patrice was forced into the roll of mistress of Sinclair Manor. She’d had to push aside her own fear, her own pain to deal