He frowned. In his later years he had come to the realization that such a legacy would be all he would leave. How had it happened? He’d struggled so hard during the disastrous Civil War to keep the Virginia estates that his father and his grandfather had left him. There were times it looked as if all would be swept away by the fortunes of war. So he had compromised. He had compromised his principles and compromised his promises, and had managed to hold on to them when others lost everything.

Such a dear price to pay.

At first, he’d wrestled with his conscience about the decisions he’d made, before consoling himself with the thought that it wasn’t just for his own use, his own pride that he had lied, cheated, even stolen. It was for his only child, his beautiful daughter Virginia. One day he would be able to tell himself that he had founded a dynasty, not ended it.

Yet it had all begun to unravel. The tapestry of deception and power he had woven during the years after the war was fraying rapidly. Virginia wasn’t his flesh and blood but the child of another man. The wife he had loved so much loved another man, and his second wife had slept with Steve Morgan. Even the grandchildren he claimed were not really his, but another man’s blood.

There were times it all seemed so futile, a pissing contest in the wind.

The analogy made him smile.

As the carriage slowed, he heard the unmistakable sound of money being made, the raw ore dug from the bowels of the earth rattling up on ore cars that would be conveyed to the smelter. Some of the purest damn ore he’d ever seen lay in the Galena mine—named after the high quality lead-silver ore.

The carriage’s well-oiled springs dipped gently as he emerged to stand in a canyon ringed by high rock and guards. If nothing else ever went right in his life, he was going to make certain that this mine made him wealthier than any man in America.

The mine foreman came to greet him, his manner polite but brusque, as if he were too busy to give the norteamericano owner his time.

“The labor force is larger than I thought,” Brandon observed with a frown when he saw the straining men hauling ore. “I prefer to keep costs down.”

“Ah, many of these men are on loan from the government, most of them rebel prisoners, Senator. They cost us next to nothing. Some food, perhaps, and blankets. When they have served their sentences, there are always more to take their place.”

“Does Lerdo’s successor have the same attitude toward these rebels?” Brandon asked dryly. “I would think he would feel some sort of obligation to men who risked lives and liberty for him.”