In the Land of the Long White Cloud

again she had trouble finding even a spark of sympathy for the child she had given birth to. “Grandfather is punishing Fleur because he thinks she’s fallen in love with the wrong boy. But I’m punishing you because you’re rotten, because you spy on people and tattle—and enjoy it too! No gentleman behaves that way, Paul Warden. Only a monster behaves that way.” Gwyneira knew the moment she said it that Paul would never forgive her for that word. But she had reached her breaking point. She felt only hatred for this child who had been forced on her, who had ultimately been the cause of Lucas’s death, and who was now doing his utmost to destroy Fleur’s life too and to upset the very core of Helen’s tenuous family harmony.
    Paul looked at his mother, pale as a corpse, and saw the chasms in her eyes. This was no fit of anger like Fleurette’s; Gwyneira seemed to mean what she was saying. Paul began to sob, even though he had decided more than a year before to be a man and not to cry anymore.
    “What’s taking you so long? Go!” Gwyneira hated herself for her words, but she could not hold them in. “Go to your room!”
    Paul stormed out. Fleurette looked at her mother, stunned.
    “That was harsh,” she remarked soberly.
    Gwyneira reached with trembling fingers for her wineglass, then had another idea, and went to the wall cupboard, where she poured herself a brandy. “You too, Fleurette? I think we both need something to calm our nerves. We can only wait. Gerald will come back eventually, of course, if he doesn’t fall off his horse and break his neck somewhere along the way.”
    She gulped the brandy down.
    “And as for Paul…I’m sorry.”

    Gerald Warden crossed the wilds as though possessed. His anger at young Ruben O’Keefe raged within him. Until that night, he had never seen Fleurette as a woman. She had always been a child to him, Gwyneira’s little daughter, sweet but of little interest. But the little girl had blossomed; now she threw her head back just as proudly as seventeen-year-old Gwyneira had back then, and she talked back with just as much self-confidence. And Ruben, that little shit, had dared to get close to her. A Warden! His property.
    Gerald calmed down somewhat when he arrived at the O’Keefes’ farm and compared their shabby barns, stables, and house with his own. Howard could not possibly think that his granddaughter would ever want to marry into this.
    He could see a light burning in the house’s windows. Howard’s horse and mule stood in the paddock in front of the house. So that bastard was at home. And his backsliding son too, for Gerald now saw three silhouettes at the table inside the hut. He carelessly threw his reins around a fence post and took his gun out of its case. A dog started barking as he approached the house, but no one inside reacted.
    Gerald flung the door open. As expected, he saw Howard, Helen, and their son at the table where the evening stew had just been served. All three of them stared at the door in shock, too surprised to react. Using the advantage of surprise, Gerald stormed into the house and knocked over the table as he leaped on Ruben.
    “Cards on the table, boy! What did you do to my granddaughter?”
    Ruben wrenched in his grip. “Mr. Warden…can’t we talk…with each other like reasonable people?”
    Gerald saw red. His own unfilial son would have reacted the same way to such a charge. He punched. His left knocked Ruben halfway across the room. Helen screamed. In the same moment, Howard struck Gerald—although to lesser effect. Howard had just returned from the pub in Haldon and was no longer sober either. Gerald shrugged off Howard’s blow without any trouble and turned his attention to Ruben again, who was picking himself up off the ground with a bloody nose.
    “Mr. Warden, please…”
    Howard put Gerald in a headlock before he could attack his son again.
    “All right, fine. Let’s talk like reasonable people,” Howard hissed. “What’s going on to make you barge in here, Warden, laying into my son?”
    Gerald tried to turn around to look at him. “Your damned shit of a son seduced my granddaughter.
That’s
what’s going on!”
    “You did
what
?” Howard released Gerald and turned to Ruben. “Tell me here and now that isn’t true.”
    Ruben’s face spoke volumes, just as Fleur’s had.
    “Of course I didn’t seduce her,” he said, which was true. “It’s just…”
    “Just what? You just took a bit of