Wild Midnight by Maggie; Davis Read Free Book Online

located in a two-story former pre-Revolutionary courthouse of pink pastel stucco in the faintly West Indian style of so many of South Carolina’s low-country structures of that era.  
    Pembroke Screven met clients in a museum-perfect office that featured a rich ruby and gold Karastam Persian rug brought to southern coasts by clipper ships in the last century, a delicately handcrafted eighteenth century walnut dining table piled high with papers that served as his desk, the wrought-brass chandelier above it fitted with electric lights. The lawyer seemed a natural part of his elegant surroundings in his charcoal gray suit and vest with old-fashioned watch chain and fob, his gold-rimmed half glasses on the end of his nose. Pembroke Screven’s name announced that he belonged to two of the low-country’s oldest families. He was a slender, not very tall middle-aged man with a slightly sallow complexion. Now he repeated, “Dangerous? Is Beau Tillson to those around him, Mrs. Brinton? Is that what you mean?” Rachel bit her lip. She had thought about saying “unstable” but it sounded too drastic. Did she really mean dangerous? She’d had only one meeting with the man; whatever else she’d heard was sheer gossip, after all.  
    “I don’t mean dangerous,” she explained. “However, when I met Beaumont Tillson at the cattle gate last Saturday morning he was ... you could say he was...” She was remembering how he had spurred his black horse up in front of her, threatening to ride her down. “Unpleasant,” she said, clamping her lips together. “And he did turn away two pickup trucks full of our high school volunteers and made them go back the long way into the field. He told them the same thing, that the road was closed. This had come as a surprise because we’d had no notice from him about the road at all before he closed it.” When the lawyer didn’t comment she added, “The co-op needs Beaumont Tillson’s goodwill, we are very much aware of that, and we want to be reasonable. We know we won’t get much work done on our tomato project if we have an ongoing dispute with him.”  
    “Hmm,” the lawyer said, “so you think it’s possible to reason with this, ah, dangerous man?”  
    “Perhaps he isn’t dangerous,” Rachel conceeded. “I don’t know. But no one seems to regard him as an easy man to deal with.”  
    “Ah, now we’re talking about something very different.” The lawyer didn’t look at her. He had turned almost completely around in his chair to watch the drizzle of rain falling on the asphalt expanse of the building’s parking lot. “Beau’s been back from Vietnam a long time now,” he observed. “Long enough to build up the local store of gossip considerably. Sometimes I feel downright sorry for him. I don’t know which causes the most trouble—the fact that he was born a Beaumont, or the way people have let their imaginations run wild. Or maybe it’s a combination of both.”  
    “I only heard,” Rachel began, “that he carries a gun of some—”  
    The lawyer interrupted her. “If he wanted to roam around the swamps over there at Belle Haven at night trying to get the jungle out of his system, that was the man’s own business, Mrs. Brinton, don’t you think? Besides, he’s not the same man he was when he got back from Vietnam, it’s been over a decade now that we’ve put that war behind us. Beau’s always been something of an enigma.” He swung his chair back to face her. “There are few men, my dear,” he said softly, “who really want to be that impossibly good-looking.”  
    Rachel opened her mouth and then shut it. It was a moment before she could say, “I don’t know that this explains why he closed the road.”  
    The lawyer stared at her, eyebrows lifted. “Land means everything to the Beaumonts, young lady. They’re raised with that idea. It’s all that boy’s ever known. Clarissa Beaumont, God rest her soul, was obsessed with hanging on to