Rebel by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online

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Chapter 2
    I an heard the softest murmur and felt a whisper of breath against his nape. “The usual place!”
    The young ladies had departed upstairs to rest quite some time ago. Now the matrons were leaving the men to their brandy and cigars.
    The whisper had come from Lavinia Trehorn, the lovely and wickedly sensual thirty-year-old widow of the late, lamented, much-older-but-filthy-rich Lawrence Trehorn.
    And though Ian had definitely determined that this time home he would tell his parents he intended to enter into an engagement with Risa immediately—Risa
was
beautiful, poised, well educated, and well acquainted with the military, and the love and longing she stirred within him would surely be the kinds that lasted forever—marriage might be a long time coming.
    A very long time.
    And the prospect of love and marriage was a completely different concept from that of Lavinia. Lavinia was at a point in life where simple essential lust had become rather like breathing; she sought no commitments.
    “What was that, Ian McKenzie?”
    Ian blinked. The sensual scent of Lavinia’s musky perfume remained behind to distract him.
    “Ian McKenzie! Explain yourself, sir!”
    He realized that Alfred Ripply, the gin-blossomed shipbuilder from Tampa, was querying him on his last statement. Something he had said about the state of the Union—and couldn’t begin to remember right away.
    The whisper in his ear had thrown him.
    He cleared his throat, then paused, aware of another female stare upon him. He could feel the burning gazeof the young woman who was refilling brandy glasses in the parlor.
    Lilly.
    Lilly was his friend. She was an exotic young woman whose physical makeup combined the very best of her Indian, Negro, and white blood. She despised Lavinia and was trying—while being a competent servant all the while—to impart to Ian with the power of her stare alone the fact that he shouldn’t follow Lavinia. He arched a brow back to Lilly, reminding her that he was as yet an unmarried man, over twenty-one… and certainly able to stay out of the evil clutches of such a woman as Lavinia—except for that “evil” he was growing rather anxious to share.
    Lilly let out a barely audible sniff.
    Lilly was a free woman; there had never been slaves at Cimarron. Ian’s grandfather, who had brought his sons to Florida, had despised the notion of slavery. Cimarron was a plantation, and it worked as such, but they managed to do so, and do so well, with paid labor.
    Lilly had come to them at the end of the “Third Seminole War,” as the government called it. It had been the last cry of a devastated people, and Ian had understood the brief but bitter hostilities better than most, since his closest kin, outside his immediate family, had Indian blood running in their veins.
    Lilly had actually lived among a very small tribe of Creek Indians residing inland from Tampa Bay. Her husband had joined with the warriors who were once again seeking some semblance of justice. The last conflict had ended much as those wars waged before it; the Seminoles who had survived remained spiritually undefeated, and had retreated deeper into the Everglades. The whites had gladly washed their hands of a nasty battle.
    Ian had been incredibly grateful not to have been involved. There had been no Indian trouble in Florida when he had made his decision to accept his appointment to West Point. He had graduated as a lieutenant, but he’d have gladly resigned his commission rather than take arms against the Seminoles. Thankfully, at the time hostilities broke out, his command had been in Texas. Then he’d been assigned to the hotbed brewing out in the Kansas/Nebraska arena before being ordered downto Key West to work with the men there attempting to chart the hammocks, rivers, and streams through the Everglades. The traveling he had done throughout the country had left him certain that he could speak with an educated opinion concerning the very grave