«You ought to wait to be invited in, Odille,» Shelby said defensively, not certain what the housekeeper might have overheard. «Your manners are atrocious. If you worked for me, I'd fire you for insolence.»
Odille sniffed indignantly. «Me, I don' work for you. Day I work for you, day I lose my mind.»
Shelby puffed herself up like an offended pigeon. «Of all the impertinence!»
«Was there something you needed to tell us, Odille?» Mason intervened tactfully.
Odille's narrow eyes shifted from Mason to Shelby and back. «Miz 'Rena home,» she announced ominously, then turned and stalked out without waiting to be dismissed.
Serena appeared a moment later. She'd left her bags by the door and gone directly in search of her sister, intending to clear up a few things immediately.
«Shelby, Mason, I think we need to have a talk,» she said as she stepped into the library.
«Serena!» Shelby gushed with a great show of worry. She rushed forward, wringing her bejeweled hands. «Are you all right? We were just worried sick about you! Anything might have happened to you out in the swamp with that madman!» Her gaze flicked over Serena's shoulder. «Did Gifford return with you?»
«No, he didn't.»
Mason came around from behind the desk, moving with the grace of breeding, a smile of welcome beaming across his face like the sun. He was attractive in the mild, unassuming way of all the Talbot's. He wore a rumpled blue oxford shirt and an air of good-natured distraction that had an immediate calming effect on Serena. She managed a smile as he reached for her.
«Serena, darlin,' it's so good to see you,» he said, giving her a brotherly hug, then standing her back at arm's length to get a good look at her. «I'm sorry I wasn't here to greet you the other day. I'm afraid my practice is a taskmaster. And then Shelby informed me you'd gone off on your own after Gifford.» He shook his head in reproach. «I must say, you had us concerned.»
«The situation with Gifford seemed to demand immediate attention.»
«Gifford. Yes.» He nodded, arranging his features into an appropriately grave expression as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his tan chinos. «Well, Shelby tells me she didn't get a chance to explain things adequately before you rushed off.»
«As I recall,» Serena said dryly, giving her sister a pointed look, «Shelby made no attempt to explain.»
Shelby summoned up the same wounded look she'd bestowed on her husband earlier and directed it at her sister. «That's simply not true, Serena! I practically begged you to stay so we could chat!»
«You told me you didn't know why Gifford had gone into the swamp.»
Mason stepped in to arbitrate like a born diplomat. «I think what Shelby meant was that we're all a little baffled as to why Gifford left instead of staying here and dealing with the situation in his usual straightforward manner. Things are in a bit of a tangle, as you may have gathered.»
«Yes, I figured that out somewhere in between shotgun blasts,» Serena said sardonically. «Can we sit down and discuss this from the top?' she asked, moving toward one of the big leather chairs.
Mason made an apologetic face as he consulted his watch. «I'm afraid I can't at the moment, Serena. I've got a meeting with a client at two. I really must rush now or I'll be late.» He consulted his reflection in the glass doors of a bookcase, buttoning the collar of his shirt and pushing up the knot of his regimental tie. «There will be ample time to go over it all tonight at dinner. Mr. Burke is coming, as well as Gifford's attorney. We thought perhaps Lamar might have some sway over Gifford in the event you weren't able to bring him back.»
Serena heaved an impatient sigh. She had wanted to tackle the problem immediately, the sooner to finish with it, but that wasn't going to be possible now. She looked at Mason and wondered if there really was a client. Her brother-in-law gave her another earnest, apologetic smile before he kissed Shelby's cheek and left, and she chided herself for hunting for conspiracy and deceit where there probably was none. Mason had never been anything but sweet to her.
«And I just have a million things to do today!» Shelby declared suddenly. She bustled around the desk, straightening papers into stacks. «I have an open house to conduct at Harlen and Marcy Stones. Harlen is being transferred to Scotland, of all places. Imagine that! And John Mason has a soccer game and Lacey has her piano lesson. And, of course, I'll have to oversee the dinner preparations.
«I asked Odille to fix a crown roast, but there's no telling what she might do. She's a hateful old thing. John Mason hasn't slept for two nights since she told him his room is haunted by the ghost of a boy who was brutally slain by Yankees during the war.»
Serena sank down into a chair and dropped her head back, her sisters bubbling energy making her acutely aware of her own fatigue.
Shelby stopped her fussing, turning to face her twin with a motherly look of concern. «My stars, Serena, you look like death warmed over!» Her eyes narrowed a fraction. «What happened to you out there?»
«Nothing.»
«Well, you look terrible. You ought to take a nice long soak and then have a nap. I'd tell Odille to slice some cucumber for those horrid black circles under your eyes, but she'd probably take after me with a knife. She's just that way. I can't imagine why Gifford keeps her on.»
«Why didn't you tell me about Mason possibly running for office?» Serena asked abruptly.
Her sister gave her a blank look. «Why, because you never gave me a chance, that's why. You just had to run off into the swamp before I could explain a thing. And now I have to run. We'll tell you all about it over dinner.» Her face lit up beneath a layer of Elizabeth Arden's finest. «It's the most excitin' thing! I'm just tickled!» She checked the slim diamond-studded watch on her wrist and gasped delicately. «I'm late! We'll talk tonight.»
«We certainly will,» Serena muttered to herself as the staccato beat of her sister's heels faded down the hall.
As the quiet settled in around her, she thought longingly of Shelby's suggestion of a bath and a nap. She thought about lapsing into unconsciousness in the chair she was sitting in. But in the end she forced herself to her feet and went outside in search of James Arnaud, the plantation manager.
Chanson du Terre had once been a plantation of nearly ten thousand acres, but it had shrunk over the decades a parcel at a time to its current two thousand acres. Rice and indigo had been the original money crops. Indigo still grew wild in weedy patches here and there in ditches around the farm. There had been a brief experiment with rice in the 1800s, then sugarcane had taken over. For as long as Serena could remember, the fields had been planted half with cane, a fourth with soybeans, and a fourth allowed to lie fallow.
Growing cane was a gamble. The crop was temperamental about moisture, prone to disease, vulnerable to frost. The decision of when to harvest in the fall could be an all-or-nothing crap shoot, with the grower putting it off to the last possible day in order to reap the richest sucrose harvest, then working round the clock to bring it in. Once the freeze came, the came in the fields would rot if not harvested immediately.
Gifford had always said sugarcane was the perfect crop for the Sheridan's. They had won Chanson du Terre on a gamble; it seemed only fitting to go on gambling. But the gamble hadn't been paying off recently.
James Arnaud, found swearing prolifically at a tractor in the machine shed, informed Serena that the plantation was caught in a downward spiral that showed no promise of reversing itself any time soon. Arnaud was a short, stocky man in his forties who possessed the dark hair and eyes of his Cajun heritage and a volatile temper to match. He had been manager of the plantation for nearly a dozen years. In that time he had proven himself worthy of Gifford s trust time and again. Serena knew he would tell her the truth, she just hadn't realized how grim that truth would be.