Against Her Will

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

Temperance was terrified.

Trevor was beyond enraged.

She quickly got to her feet and held out her hands to him in earnest. "I'm sorry!" she gasped. "He was trying to force me." She pointed down to Emerson, "He chased me up here and I tried to fight him off but he wouldn't listen. I'm sorry, Mas...Trevor." Temperance's gaze flitted to Tanner and then back to Trevor. "I'm so sorry..."

Tanner scooped the knife from the floor and stood again. "Why are you apologizing?" he demanded gently.

That tenderness was like a rock through the glass defenses Temperance had spent the last year building up. Tears built behind her eyes and she chewed her lip furiously in an attempt to fight them back.

Keeping her focus on Trevor who was standing there with clenched fists and trembling with rage, Temperance stepped toward him. "He came in the kitchen while I was getting Tanner his breakfast, Trevor, and he tried to force me." Temperance knew she was lying but thankfully Emerson was dead and could not tell his side, "I ran away and made it up here. I tried to fight back but he was too strong and so Tanner took care of him. I'm sorry."

Tanner's hand closed around Temperance's wrist and it was as if she'd been struck by a bolt of lightning. She looked up at him. He was six feet tall compared to her just over five foot frame and while he was thin and frail it was clear that there had once been strength in his body and with a little time and food that strength would return.

Tanner frowned down at her. "You don't have to apologize for what happened, miss. No woman should ever be forced and any man that dares force a woman deserves just what Emerson got."

Even your brother? Temperance thought ruefully.

Trevor's jaw popped when he opened his mouth to speak. "Temperance, get to your room now. I know you must be tired, dear wife, and you need rest. I'll tend to Tanner."

Temperance quickly pulled her arm from Tanner's grasp and rushed from the room, shivering when she passed by Trevor and felt the rage rolling off him in waves.

She went to her room, crawled into the bed and pulled her knees into her chest. Her body was trembling. She wanted to be brave and fight back against these men but Trevor was going to be so angry..... It was hard to be brave when a man capable of the things that Trevor was capable of doing wanted to see you punished.

And Tanner was a problem. He seemed so different from his brother--or was it all an act. How could someone who shared blood with a monster be anything but a monster as well? And he had fought for the Confederacy! He, or men like him, had killed her father and brothers and led to all of this.

But mostly, Tanner gave her hope and Temperance had learned in the last year that hope was a dangerous and fleeting thing that did nothing but set you up for more pain, heart ache and loss.

Slowly, Temperance breathed in and out, forcing her mind to shut down as she stared at the closed door. It didn't take long before her eyes saw nothing and her ears heard nothing. All that was left to do was wait for punishment.

***

Tanner's legs wanted to give out beneath him but sheer stubborn grit and nothing else kept him on his feet. "What the hell is going on, Trevor? Why did your wife feel as if she needed to apologize so profusely to you when it was this man that tried to take her by force?"

Tanner gauged his brother's reaction. He could see the wall that went up and the quick shift of emotions as Trevor prepared to put on an act. Clearly his younger brother still thought that would work.

Five years ago it had been easy for Trevor to control Tanner. It had been easy for him to put on an act and get Tanner to do anything he wanted--times had changed.

Spending three years fighting tooth and nail in a prison camp after serving two years in a war had a way of changing a person. Tanner wasn't the same man that had left here. He no longer feared anything--least of all his bully of a brother.

"Temperance is a handful, Tanner. Had I known the lack of morals the woman possessed I never would have married her."

Tanner nodded as he sat back down but kept that knife in his hand. He didn't trust Trevor. He knew that his younger brother had sent him away in hopes he'd be killed. He knew that he had only wanted one thing and that was this plantation. He had no doubts in his mind that Trevor was an evil husband because Trevor had always been evil in everything he did.

"What happened in here today was not a lack of morals on her part, brother. What happened in here today was a lack of common sense on the part of this man here. Just who is this man, anyhow?" Tanner could tell the man was a gunslinger based on that gun belt he'd been wearing. It was low slung and just right for grabbing his irons quickly.

Trevor walked to the arm chair and sat down, looking relaxed as could be as if there was a dead body in a pool of blood on the floor between them. "I have a staff of able bodied men here...."

"Hired guns?" Tanner frowned. "Why do you need hired guns?"

"Because the war took a large toll on the south," Trevor snapped. "There are those who are struggling to keep food in their mouths now and they are eager to take what they can from the richer man."

Tanner nodded. "So instead of helping them you shoot them." He rubbed at his neck. "That seems reasonable."

Trevor's eyes narrowed, "If you had won the war it wouldn't be necessary."

"I wasn't exactly the only man out there fighting it," Tanner countered. "Maybe if you'd have gotten off your lazy ass and come fought beside me we'd have been able to make a difference."

The surprise in Trevor's eyes was easy enough to spot. Tanner knew the man was shocked because it was the first time that Trevor had ever had his brother stand up to him.

Trevor carefully schooled his expression and Tanner found himself able to pick up on all the nuance's and acting that he had once been blind to. "Where have you been, Tanner? The war has been over for a year and I haven't heard from you. I assumed you were dead."

Wished I was is more like it. "I was captured by Union forces three years ago and tossed in a prison camp. It took me a while to get out."

"That's terrible," Trevor pushed himself to his feet. "Come on and I'll take you to a clean room so you can rest."

Tanner stood slowly, cursing the weakness in his body. He grabbed the breakfast that Temperance had entered his room with and followed Trevor into the hall and to the room that had once been Tanner's when he'd lived here so long ago.

Once Tanner was settled into the room and Trevor had left, Tanner attacked the plate of food with a vengeance. It was his first true meal in a long long time and Tanner knew he needed to eat and build his strength. Something told him he was going to be fighting a whole new war soon--this one against his brother.

Tanner had been dead inside for a long long time... the war had killed a big part of him and the prison camp had done away with the rest but seeing the mistreatment of those people outside when he'd arrived, seeing that beautifully haunted woman this morning, seeing the evilness with which Trevor had looked at his wife and the fear in her eyes as she had looked upon his brother had something inside of Tanner sparking back to life.

Tanner was going to focus on building back his strength and then he was going to figure out what the hell was going on on this plantation and fix and right whatever wrongs his good for nothing brother had committed in his absence.