Текст книги "The Black Jacks"
Автор книги: Jason Manning
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Chapter Two
"John Henry," said Ashbel Smith, "I was afraid for a moment you were going to mention this business with Jonah Singletary in the Old Chief's presence."
They had gone some distance from Sam Houston's cabin, riding in silence, following the trail that wound through the evergreens of Cedar Point, and which would eventually connect with the Lynchburg Road. Tonight they would reach the town of Houston. From there it was ninety miles to Grand Cane. McAllen was ambivalent about getting home. There was plenty of work to be done, and McAllen was committed to making his plantation one of the most successful in Texas. He was not motivated, as were so many of his peers, to create a worthy inheritance for his heirs; he had no children, and had accepted the bitter fact that he never would. No, he would make Grand Cane prosper because that was just the kind of man he was. Once he started something, he never went at it in halves.
The problem with going home was that Leah, his wife, would probably be there. These days, McAllen did not care to linger long in her presence. She daily reminded him what a fool he had been to marry her. Not in words, but in her actions. The romance writers waxed eloquent about domestic bliss; McAllen lived in a domestic hell from which there did not seem to be an acceptable avenue of escape.
Ashbel Smith's remark disrupted his grim reverie. He glanced, scowling, at the physician. The thought of Leah seldom failed to put him in a bad humor.
"And why would I do that?" he asked. "This business between Singletary and I is purely personal."
"General Houston would disapprove, were he cognizant of your intentions." Knowing that McAllen revered the Old Chief, Smith hoped to weaken his traveling companion's resolve regarding Singletary. "Rumors to the contrary aside, he has fought only one duel in his life, and I know he has regretted doing so every day since. His adversary was General William White, a lawyer and veteran of the Battle of New Orleans. White interposed himself in a quarrel between Houston and another gentlemen. Harsh words were hastily spoken. A challenge was issued and accepted. For a week Houston practiced his marksmanship at the Hermitage, under the experienced eye of Old Hickory himself. Finally the two men met at the appointed place and hour, on the Tennessee-Kentucky border, at the farm of a man named Duncan.
"Houston did not want to kill White, but the old gentleman would not recant," continued Smith. "Realizing that White was a poor shot with the pistol, Houston gallantly agreed that they would take their marks at the distance of only fifteen feet. It so happened that Duncan had a pup he had named Andy Jackson. On the morning of the duel, Houston was awakened by the barking of Andy, the pup. He later told he considered that a good omen, and knew that, even at fifteen feet, he would go unscathed. And that he did, though General White was less fortunate. He lingered for months at death's door. No one was more relieved by the old gentleman's eventual recovery than Houston. He swore he would never fight another duel, though heaven knows his enemies have slandered him mercilessly. I know his respect for you would grow if you could see your way clear to forgetting Singletary's vile insinuations regarding your wife."
"You seem keenly interested in talking me out of this, Ashbel."
"I am, my friend, I am. Singletary is a Lamar man. He uses the pages of the Austin City Gazette to tell all manner of lies about his mentor's political adversaries."
"Then he is past due a lesson in common decency."
"But you would be playing right into their hands by pursuing the course of action which you propose. Ever since the Levi Laurens affair, there has been a public clamor to outlaw affairs of honor."
McAllen nodded. Everyone in Texas was familiar with the tragic details of the Goodrich-Laurens duel. Three years ago, Dr. Chauncey Goodrich, one of Ashbel Smith's Texas Army surgeons and a hot tempered Mississippian, had been forced by circumstance to share a room in Houston's Mansion House with young journalist Levi Laurens and two other gentlemen. During the night, a $1,000 bill was stolen from Goodrich's bags. Goodrich accused Laurens, and Laurens was obliged by the code of honor to demand satisfaction.
Rifles at twenty paces were the terms agreed upon. Laurens fell mortally wounded and died two days later. Shortly thereafter, Goodrich quarreled with a San Antonio gambler, who plunged a Bowie knife through the man's heart. Ironically, it was later discovered that one of the other men who had shared the room with Goodrich and Laurens, Marcus Cicero Stanley, had stolen the $1,000 note. Stanley fled to England to escape justice, but McAllen had heard that he now languished in a London prison for robbing the famous artist George Catlin at his Indian Portrait Gallery. The death of Laurens had triggered editorials and demonstrations denouncing the code duello, a storm of sentiment that was still raging unabated across the republic to this day.
The irony of his own situation did not escape John Henry McAllen. Jonah Singletary had made snide comments in the City Gazette about his wife, Leah, who had been seen in the company of more than one young Austin man-about-town, while McAllen was off with his Black Jacks chasing a Comanche raiding party that had struck several farms in Brazoria County six weeks ago. "Poor Captain McAllen," Singletary had sneered. "While the heroic fellow is on the warpath against those red savages, his wife can be found on the footpath of Lovers Lane with several of our own local bucks."
The problem, from McAllen's point of view, was that this was no baseless slander. It was the truth. Nonetheless, he was obliged to defend Leah's honor—even though she had none. Truth or not, Singletary had overstepped his bounds.
"I never said I would issue a challenge," McAllen told Ashbel Smith. "But I could hardly be blamed for taking a blacksnake whip to the man's back."
Smith sighed. Whether Sam Houston or John Henry McAllen had the quickest tempers in Texas was a close-run thing. The difference lay in the Old Chief's talent for being charming and tactful when called upon. As for tact, McAllen did not know the meaning of the word. He was a blunt, straightforward man of action, cut from the Andrew Jackson mold. He was tall, lean, rugged, strong; a fighter, and a man of iron will. The kind of man Texas desperately needed, particularly in these times of crisis. But he was no politician. And Ashbel Smith worried that the scandalous Singletary comments were a trap designed to ruin one of Sam Houston's most loyal and able supporters. The caustic, keen-witted Jonah Singletary was taking advantage of McAllen's only weakness—his pride.
Smith was well aware of the problems in McAllen's marriage. The man seldom spoke of them, but Smith had eyes and sound instincts. McAllen didn't love Leah. Perhaps he never had. Leah Pierce was a beautiful and seductive young woman, and McAllen had fallen prey to her charms. The fatal flaw in Leah's character was a need for male attention. Not just from one man, but all men. That being so, she was incapable of fidelity.
John Henry realized now that he had made a terrible mistake. A few friends who were acquainted with Leah Pierce had dared to warn him before the marriage took place, but McAllen, completely beguiled, had refused to listen to their counsel. Now he was paying for his folly.
And paying dearly, mused Ashbel Smith. There were no children involved, and Smith believed his friend ought to divorce his unfaithful wife. But he didn't dare suggest such a course to McAllen. For one thing, it wouldn't do any good. Call it stubborn pride, a refusal to admit failure, but McAllen was a man who simply could not let go. And so, even though he knew that Jonah Singletary's information concerning Leah's indiscretions was probably accurate, McAllen felt duty-bound to defend the honor of a wife who had none. What cruel irony!
Deeming it unwise to press the issue, Smith changed the subject. "I wonder if Lamar really is up to something with the Comanches."
McAllen only shrugged. He was a man of occasional massive silences, and he now forgot all about the physician who accompanied him, and brooded over what Sam Houston had said about the imminent peace talk at San Antonio's Council House.
Comanche affairs were of tremendous importance to McAllen—as they were to all settlers who lived on the fringes of civilization. Criticizing Houston's conciliatory approach to Indian affairs, Mirabeau B. Lamar had made nothing but belligerent talk when it came to the Comanches. So why now, suddenly, these peace overtures?
The Comanches were a proud and fierce people. Tested by more than a century of conflict with the Spanish as well as other Indian tribes, they were now the undisputed masters of the plains. As fighters they had no peers. Fortunately for Texas, they were divided into a number of autonomous bands—the Quohadis, the Penatekas, the Tanawas, and others. Lacking unified leadership, they had yet to combine for the purpose of waging full-scale war upon the white interlopers.
But if they ever get together, mused McAllen, there wouldn't be a white left alive west of the Sabine.
That was what Sam Houston was worried about. The Old Chief was concerned that Lamar, by some underhanded device, might give the Comanche bands motivation to join together. In which case, the fledgling Republic of Texas would be extinguished in a maelstrom of fire and blood. McAllen hoped Lamar had better sense. Surely the man could see that Texas was in no condition to battle the Comanches, not with another war with Mexico so likely.
Lamar's chief weapon in his campaign to rid the republic of what he liked to call the "red scourge" was a group of hard-bitten Indian-haters called the Texas Rangers. The organization had been created by Stephen F. Austin in 1823, when the impresario dipped into his own pockets to pay ten men to serve as "rangers." Their job was to protect the Austin colony from all enemies. Later, the colony's militia as a whole took to calling themselves Rangers.
During the revolution, the Committee of Correspondence resolved to create a corps of Texas Rangers "whose business shall be to range and guard the frontiers between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers." The Rangers were irregulars; they furnished their own horses and weapons; they had no flag. There were three companies of fifty-six men each. They did little to distinguish themselves during the revolution, and while he was president, Sam Houston had made no use of them.
Then Mirabeau B. Lamar succeeded Houston. In his opinion, the white man and the red could never live in harmony. "Nature forbids it," he declared. He approved a law for the protection of the frontier by creating eight companies of mounted volunteers. Since the men who volunteered came from the frontier counties and had in all likelihood already tangled with the Comanches and, in some cases, had lost loved ones during a Comanche raid, there was no love lost between the Rangers and the Indians. The only good Indian was a dead one. That was their creed, and they tried to live by it. Their mission was to exterminate the Comanches. Only then, they believed, would Texas be safe. You couldn't make peace with a savage, because a savage had no concept of honor, and would not keep his word. This was their thinking. And President Lamar's, too. So McAllen kept coming back to the same old question.
Why the peace overtures?
Two months ago, three Penateka Comanche chiefs had ridden boldly into San Antonio and, in a conference with Ranger Henry Karnes, stated that a tribal council had agreed to ask the Texans for a treaty. Colonel Karnes had replied that no treaty was possible until the Indians gave up all their white captives. The Comanches agreed to this condition, and the talks were scheduled for March 19.
There would be trouble. McAllen could feel it in his bones. The Comanches were not gentle with their captives. If they did bring in their white prisoners, Texas would be able to see all the suffering those poor souls had endured, and bad feeling would run at high tide.
But what could he do?
Scowling, John Henry McAllen shook his head. It didn't really matter what he thought he could or couldn't do. Sam Houston had entrusted him with this task, and by God he would get it done or die trying.
Chapter Three
Saying farewell to Ashbel Smith in the bar room of Floyd's Hotel, McAllen took three days to travel the distance between the booming town of Houston and the Brazos River. The rains had swollen the creeks and rivers, and the crossings slowed him down. He arrived at the Grand Cane plantation late in the afternoon of the third day.
In spite of his problems with Leah, McAllen was glad to see his home. He was proud of Grand Cane, and anyone acquainted with the plantation would have said he had a right to be.
Five years ago, John Henry McAllen had come to Texas, like so many other adventurous Americans eager to strike a blow for liberty. He came from Mississippi, a lawyer by trade and a militia officer who had seen action in the Second Seminole War with Zach "Old Rough and Ready" Taylor. With McAllen came twenty-eight stalwart men, all of whom had served with McAllen in the Florida campaigns. The women of Warren County had presented them with black roundabouts adorned with red piping and brass buttons, and thanks to these distinctive shell jackets McAllen and his men rode boldly into Texas legend as the Black Jacks.
They were not the only such group to risk all for Texas independence. There were John Shackleford's Red Rovers from down Alabama way, and the New Orleans Grays, too. But as far as Sam Houston was concerned, Captain McAllen and his Black Jacks were the best and bravest of the lot. He had seen them in action—their gallant assault on Santa Anna's left flank at San Jacinto was a scene Houston would never forget. The Black Jacks had met and vanquished a much larger force of veteran lancers. And then, while the rest of Houston's little army became a wild mob embarked on a killing frenzy as the Mexican troops broke and ran, McAllen and his boys had kept good order and protected their suddenly vulnerable commander, who lay wounded in his camp on Buffalo Bayou.
That he had lost control of his army at San Jacinto, and that they had shot, clubbed, and stabbed hundreds of Mexican soldiers who had thrown down their weapons and tried to surrender, shamed Sam Houston to this day, even while he understood that the massacre of brave Texans at Goliad and the Alamo had spawned this irresistible thirst for vengeance. At least the actions of the Black Jacks gave him leave to claim that he had not lost complete control of affairs on that fateful spring day in 1836.
After San Jacinto, a grateful Republic of Texas had awarded John Henry McAllen with six leagues of land—about twenty-five thousand acres. It was prime land along the Brazos River, a few miles south of San Felipe de Austin. As president, Sam Houston had been delighted to put his name to the grant. Texas needed to keep men like McAllen, and all she had to entice them with was land.
McAllen had made the most of the gift. Of the numerous plantations along the Brazos, his Grand Cane was one of the finest. He was among a handful of planters—along with John Sweeney on the San Bernard, Captain John Duncan on Caney Creek, and Colonel James Morgan on Galveston Bay—who had successfully and profitably cultivated sugarcane. Most of the Black Jacks, eternally devoted to their captain and bound by a friendship with one another forged in the crucible of battle, had also settled in the vicinity, creating a settlement bearing the same name as McAllen's plantation.
He had built his home on a bluff overlooking the placid green waters of the lower Brazos. With the help of some of his Black Jacks and the four slaves he bought at the Galveston auction, he had constructed a large, rambling, two-story structure of his own design. It was build of cottonwood logs, hewn and counter-hewn. The roof sported post oak shingles, made with a drawing knife. The floor was of ash, hand sawed and planed.
Downstairs, two large rooms were placed on either side of a twelve-foot-wide hall, with two smaller ones—a pantry and McAllen's study—behind them. Six polished walnut columns marked the front gallery, which ran the full width of the house. The back gallery connected the house with a stone kitchen that had a huge fireplace for cooking. Upstairs in the main house were four more rooms. Doors, window frames, and interior woodwork was all solid walnut. Interior walls were plastered. Each room had its own old-fashioned sandstone fireplace.
At the base of the bluff he had built a landing. The Brazos was navigable here, and as early as 1830 the steamboat Ariel, owned and commanded by Stephen F. Austin's cousin, Henry, had ventured a considerable distance upriver. Later, the Ocean and the Yellowstone made the trip, although the former soon sank, breaking deep on the bar that made passage at the river's mouth a treacherous proposition. The Yellowstone had quit the Brazos for the Galveston-Houston trade shortly thereafter, but the small stern-wheeler Laura plied the river now during periods of high water.
It was by steamboat that McAllen shipped his sugar downriver and brought material comforts up from the thriving gulf port of Quintana. As a wedding gift for Leah he had promised to furnish Grand Cane in high style. He had been able to make such a promise, and keep it, because the steamboats could transport marble, furniture, carriages, and all manner of creature comforts, some of which would not have made it overland by wagon freight.
For Leah, then, McAllen had provided every fireplace in the house with a black marble mantel. In the dining room and parlor downstairs, brass chandeliers with crystal prisms depended from decorated ceilings. A square rosewood piano stood in the corner of the parlor. Damask drapes adorned the windows. Large gold-framed mirrors, eight feet tall, graced the dining room. Heavy mahogany, walnut, and rosewood furniture filled every room. Leah had ordered three hundred dollars' worth of silverware, including cream pot, teapot, coffee urn, sugar bowl, salt spoons, and dozens of other utensils. These, she had told McAllen, were essential accessories for the set of English china her parents had given them as a wedding present. How could she be expected to entertain properly with anything less?
There lay the problem, mused McAllen, as he rode up the tree-lined lane toward the main house: Leah was accustomed to living in a certain grand manner. Her father, Israel Pierce, was one of Galveston's chief merchants. His house—where McAllen had first met Leah at a ball given in honor of the "heroes" of the revolution—was a true showplace. Leah had never in her life wanted for anything, and she wasn't about to start now, even if she did live on a somewhat remote frontier plantation. As a consequence, McAllen had spent nearly every penny of profit from three years of good crops to keep her happy. That cut against the grain of the frugality inherent in him; waste and excess offended the Scot in him. And by now he was painfully aware that it was impossible to ever satisfy Leah. She could not have too many material possessions—any more than she could not have too much male attention.
Behind the main house and adjacent kitchen stood the barn, stock pen, carriage house, and blacksmith shop. Next to the kitchen stood a stout cedar-post dairy. Beyond a windbreak of pecan trees, on the slope of the bluff south of the main house, was a row of a half dozen log cabins, the slave quarters. At the base of the slope was the sugar mill, one of the few in Texas. In the bottomland to the south, along the river, grew the sugarcane.
The cane had just been planted. Plowboys opened deep furrows, and "droppers" inserted three rows of stalks, with one stalk overlapping the other two. Then the "cutters" used cane knives to cut each stalk into three sections. The plowboys came back through to cover the joints with six inches of soil to prevent freezing.
In a fortnight, hoe gangs would scrape three inches of the dirt off the joints, and as the spring sun warmed the earth, shoots would begin to sprout from the eyes of the cane joints. Throughout the spring the hoe gangs would work to keep the weeds and grass from smothering the delicate sprouts.
In autumn, the cane would be harvested before the first frost. The stalks would be stripped of leaves and placed into a cane-grinding hopper. Oxen harnessed to spokes would walk in circles to move rollers which pressed the juice from the stalks. The juice would be boiled in cast-iron kettles until it thickened and formed sugar crystals. The crystals would be skimmed and refined in the mill, while the syrup thickened into molasses. During harvest time, McAllen and his help normally put in eighteen-hour days.
In addition to over two hundred acres in sugar cane, McAllen also grew corn, the basic means of rural subsistence, the staff of life on the frontier. It came to table as roasted ears or bread or grits, mush or pudding or porridge, and even whiskey if one had a still. The pigs, cattle, and oxen ate it as fodder. In the quarters, corn shucks were used to fill mattresses and make chair bottoms. Although the sugarcane had been sowed, McAllen knew there was no time to waste in putting in the corn, and as he rode down the lane he was glad to see the hands hard at work in the cornfields as well as the vegetable gardens. Soon, when the sap was up, it would be time to cut trees and split rails—fences always needed mending, and green lumber was easier to split. The work never ceased at Grand Cane.
The yard of the main house was encompassed by a hedgerow of Cherokee rose. McAllen had planted the cuttings even before the house was completed, and now the thorny evergreens had grown into a natural fence impervious to any large animal's attempt to get through it. The lane ended at the hedgerow, and as McAllen dismounted—handing Escatawpa's reins to Joshua, who would take the horses back to the barn—and passed through the whitewashed wooden gate set into the hedge, he saw Leah on the front gallery. She rose from her rocking chair and stood at the top of the broad steps and waited for him, and the sight of her gave him pause.
She was so beautiful! Today the sky had finally cleared, and the last soft rays of sunlight touched her flaxen hair and made it resemble spun gold. The features of Aphrodite or Helen of Troy could not have been more perfect than those of Leah Pierce McAllen. Her slender form was accentuated by the tight, low-cut bodice of her pale yellow crinoline dress. Her alluring green eyes and seductive ruby lips had ignited a fire of passion in McAllen when first they had met, and though he was aware that he did not really love her—truly love her—any more than she really loved him, the passion was still there. He supposed that Leah ignited that fire in every man. Her beauty was beguiling, a siren song, a promise, a challenge that required a strong will to resist. I couldn't resist it, thought McAllen, so I should not be surprised that other men cannot resist it, either.
He'd read Jonah Singletary's snide comments in the Austin City Gazette while away in Galveston, and now, as he paused just inside the gate, he wondered if Leah knew about them. If so, how would she act toward him? And if she didn't know, what should he do? Accuse her straight out, or keep it to himself? He couldn't help being jealous. The thought of Leah in the arms of another man kindled his anger and wounded his pride. But he knew it was foolish to be angry. Leah had cravings no one man could satisfy. She would never change. Having accepted that, he had no one but himself to blame for the suffering he now endured, because it was his decision to maintain this facade of married bliss that fooled no one.
He made up his mind—it would be simpler not to take issue with her regarding her indiscretions. No good could come of doing so. Then, too, he could derive some small satisfaction from keeping her guessing about what he knew and what he planned to do.
Climbing the steps, he smiled at her. "Hello, darling."
She kissed him on the cheek and then, making a face, pushed him away as he tried to put his arms around her. "Don't you dare, John Henry. You're filthy, and this is a brand-new dress. Do you like it?" She performed a graceful pirouette.
"Very nice," he said. It was just like her to fail to ask him about his trip, or if he'd had any trouble along the way.
The fragrance of bergamot reached him. Leah kept herself attuned to current fashion, and that meant nothing but Parisian labels—Guerlain, Pivert, Micheau—on her dressing table would do. Godey's Lady's Book was her bible. Leah hired a talented—and fairly expensive—seamstress in Columbia to produce dresses using the Godey's hand-tinted fashion plates for patterns. Only the best silks and satins, brocades and velvets were used.
"So tell me, John Henry," she said, "did you visit my parents while you were in Galveston? Are they well? What were all the young ladies wearing this season? Did you find General Houston? Did you bring me a present?"
"Of course I did," he replied, working to keep his smile in place. He'd bought her a very pretty and expensive shawl. Or, he thought, I could give her the copy of the City Gazette. . . .
"Oh, I can't wait to see it. But first I want to talk to you about. . ."
She looked past him, and he turned, and now his smile was genuine, as an old black man, white-haired and bent, shuffled out of the house.
"Roman!" McAllen took him by the shoulders. "You're looking much better than when I left."
"We'come home, Marse John. I'm feelin' tol'able. Tol'able."
McAllen heard Leah breathe a sigh of exasperation, and Roman's eyes, still bright and alert in a deeply lined face, flickered toward her, sly and wise and filled with dislike.
"Roman!" A big black woman filled the doorway, a ferocious scowl on her full-moon face. She wore an apron around her prodigious midsection, and a red scarf on her head. "Roman, I declare! You aint s'pose to be up and about. You gwine get sick all over again, and dis time I aint gwine take care of you." She spared McAllen a glance. "You oughts to tell dis ol' fool to mind me."
McAllen chuckled. "You mind Bessie, now, you hear, Roman? Better take it easy, or you'll have a relapse."
"I'm almighty tired of doin' nothin'," replied Roman. "I been workin' all my life, Marse John, nigh on eighty years, and if I stop doin' I'm likely gwine stop livin'."
McAllen glanced at Bessie and shrugged. "He's stubborn. Always been so."
"He's a mule-headed ol' fool, dats what he is. Roman, you get yo'self in here right dis minute."
"You'd better do as Bessie says," McAllen advised him. "You know how she is."
Roman sighed. "Yessuh, I knows." He looked out at the pecan trees, bare branches silhouetted against the purpling sky. McAllen knew he was suffering from cabin fever. Pneumonia had laid him low for weeks. For a spell it had been touch and go. And while McAllen could sympathize, he didn't want to take any chances where old Roman was concerned. He was fond of the man, who had been with him for as long as he could remember. Through thick and thin Roman had always been there, and McAllen couldn't imagine what the world would be like without him.
"I knows you was comin' home today, Marse John," said Roman. Then he turned to Bessie. "I tol' you, didn't I? Well, didn't I?"
"Yes, you done tol' me. I declare, Marse John, I found dis ol' fool dressed and standin' by his window dis mornin'. He aint tooken his eyes off dat road all day."
McAllen nodded. Like Houston's fiancée, Roman believed he had the God-given gift of "second sight," and McAllen had witnessed too much evidence over the years to doubt it.
"John Henry, I wish to talk to you," said Leah. She was fuming, jealous of Roman, and of all the slaves who worked at Grand Cane, because McAllen thought highly of them all. She, on the other hand, was firmly convinced that his friendly approach was bad for discipline. Apart from that, she knew none of them liked her, with the exception of Ruth, her personal servant, with whom she had grown up. Her father had given Ruth to her when she had married. Ruth's parents, who were also her father's slaves, had been distraught when Ruth left for the Texas frontier, but what did that matter? Her husband's problem, she believed, was that he cared too much what the Negroes thought or how they felt.
McAllen gave Leah a long and ambivalent look which made her uncomfortable. He said nothing. Sensing the tension, Bessie snagged Roman's sleeve and gave it a firm tug.
"You come right back in dis house, Roman. Least you can do, if you won't go back to bed like you oughts to, is to fix Marse John a drink. Caint you see he's come a long ways and needs some refreshment?"
It was a clever ruse and got Roman off the porch, because the idea of doing something useful appealed to the old man. With Bessie and Roman gone, McAllen turned to Leah with a taut smile in place.
"What is it that you want to say to me, darling?"
"It concerns Roman. He's perfectly useless, John Henry. He can't do anything anymore, and he's just. . . well, he's just in the way, that's all. I know you can't sell him. He's a freedman, and even if he weren't, no one would give you a dollar for him, he's so old and decrepit. But at least . . . Why are you looking at me like that?"
McAllen's expression was stormy. He'd thought perhaps Leah was going to confess her indiscretions in Austin, or at the very least make the effort to manufacture excuses. Instead, she was suggesting that he do away with Roman, of all people!
"I hope you're not serious," he said. He spoke softly, barely above a whisper, and with no inflection.
