to come back, thought maybe we ought to come pry one of you off the ceiling. Pardon us if we're intruding." Ben helped himself to the pitcher and Tyler's glass while Daniel maneuvered into a chair across from him.
Daniel sent Evie a nervous glance, but she ignored it while daintily wiping her fingers on her handkerchief since there seemed a dire dearth of table linens.
"Not at all, Mr. Benjamin." Evie sent Tyler a cold glance. "Since we've never been properly introduced, 1 assume that's the appropriate address?"
"Benjamin Wilkerson the Third, spelled out and not with Roman numerals," Tyler intoned with years of practice. "If there ever was one born to be an upstart darky you found him."
Ben grinned and folded his arms across his chest. "My ma believed I was meant for better things."
Tyler shouted for another pitcher of beer and more glasses. Since they were the only patrons in the place, it shouldn't have been a difficult request, but no one answered his call. With a wry look to Ben, he shrugged and rose. "Excuse me, ladies, gentlemen. I have a bad habit that I'm about to indulge in. Go on without me."
Ben rolled his eyes and looked resigned. Understanding that smoking a cheroot wasn't the habit he had in mind, Evie watched with a degree of nervousness as Tyler headed for the rear of the cafe. She was beginning to learn a few things about Tyler Monteigne, and one of them was the error of considering his casual grace as laziness.
He disappeared into the kitchen, and a moment later there was a loud outburst having to do with "damned niggers" and "not in my place," followed by a slamming noise, the tinkle of broken glassware, and a thump.
A few minutes later Tyler emerged dusting off his frock coat. The young boy who had served them earlier came rushing after him with a tray of beer and glasses. The look on his face was more astonishment than anger, and he set the tray out without a hint of resentment. Giving the table's occupants a look of curiosity, he hurried away without a word.
Tyler settled back into his chair and helped himself to a fresh glass. "Benjamin was his mother's third boy. The other two died early, and both were named Benjamin. She was a damned persistent woman, just like some others I know."
He smiled beatifically at Evie's astounded expression.
She recovered rapidly. "Tyler Monteigne, you are not only a liar, a cheat, and a donkey, but a man of rare perception. You were telling me why you were yelling at Mr. Wilkerson."
Daniel spluttered in his first drink of beer at Evie's famous two- pronged thrust.
Tyler shrugged and held his gaze on her. "I spent three years in a Yankee prison, Miss Peyton. I was seventeen years old when I went in and twenty when I came out. They would have carried me out in a wooden box if it hadn't been for Ben. He found me, joined the Union army, and got himself stationed at the prison until the war was over. He told them he couldn't see well enough to shoot a gun, but he was real good with his fists, and they believed him and put him where he requested. Do you have any idea how difficult that was?"
"And to this day the damned fool thinks I did it for him," Ben grumped as he sipped his beer. "I told you he was real pretty but not too bright."
Tyler grinned. "I'm not so dumb that I don't know you were after my plantation. Thought you almost had it, didn't you?"
Ben shrugged. "Worked well for a while. You were the only one left to inherit and if you had to sell it for back taxes, can't rightly see why it couldn't go to me. That Yankee captain thought my offer was damned funny. Wouldn't have worked if you'd been dead."
Daniel interrupted this obviously rehearsed routine. "You're saying that Tyler had to sell his plantation because of back taxes and Ben bought it? I knew the Freedman's Bureau was saying they were going to give every slave forty acres and forty dollars or some such idiocy but they never did. How can a slave buy a plantation?"
"Ben's a bigger card cheat than I ever was," Tyler said. "He cleaned those Yankee soldiers out for nigh on to three years. The taxes weren't all that much but after being in prison, I didn't have a red cent, and they wouldn't give