Tender (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Time Travel Romance Book 1) Page 13

  She angrily lifted her chin, and his hands fell away. “Let me go. I’ve had quite enough of your quaint theories about what defines a human being, what defines a life, and who deserves freedom. Your grandchildren will know the lesson. All men are conceived in liberty. As for me, I’ve had enough of this place.”

  A grim line formed between his eyes. “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  He hesitated. “And …what of Emily?”

  The memory of the winsome child jarred her with its intensity. “I love her, and I’ll never forget her.”

  “And—what of me?” His voice was soft, but his frown gave nothing away. “Will you forget me?”

  She steeled herself against his vulnerable persuasiveness, against the place in her heart that whispered, It’s just one part of a man you care deeply about.

  “I doubt it. And each time I’m reminded of you, I’ll see the faces of those you force into service against their will.”

  He looked at her impassively. He raised his hand, hesitated, and the tip of one finger traced her face from her cheekbone to her lips. His jaw tightened, and he turned away.

  She stared after him as he strode down the path past the carriage house and blacksmith and across the lawn toward the smokehouse. Reluctant pity rose within her for the man who silently bore her contempt, who stoically absorbed her abrupt farewell. Yet when he’d touched her, it was with all the uncertainty of a boy. His gaze had flickered with misgiving.

  It’s your imagination, she told herself. The proud, stiff thrust of his shoulders as he disappeared between the trees belied his indecision.

  He’s a human being, she argued. Human beings can change.

  Sudden decision swept her; could she ever live with herself, returning to her old life without the knowledge that she’d tried to change his heart?

  She left the stables. “Grey!”

  He was gone, however, disappeared into the woods that flanked the front lawn of Rosalie. She gathered her skirts in her hands and raced after him, but by the time she emerged into a clearing, she saw only the smokehouse, and a row of cabins alongside it.

  As she studied the cabins, she saw him disappear inside one. A black woman followed him, and Rachel hesitated only a moment before following.

  The door of the pathetic cabin stood open. A single layer of logs comprised the walls of the meager dwelling. Those logs were sealed with plaster, rather than mud—or, worse, nothing, as she’d heard most slave cabins were—yet the best of them offered little protection against Virginia’s cold winters. Now, however, muggy warmth made the cabin stuffy and pungent.

  She heard the voice of a woman as she approached. “She’s sick, m’ lord.”

  She peered into the dark, cheerless room. The cabin—no larger than ten feet by twelve feet—had a dirt floor, a wooden fireplace, and a single pot over the cold hearth. A woman lay on a straw pallet in the corner on her stomach. A sheet was draped over her back. Her feet were chained together.

  Grey knelt beside the woman, gently glancing underneath the sheet. His face contorted in dismay. “Her wounds haven’t been treated, Hattie. Why?”

  The woman who’d brought him here stood nervously behind him. A brown bandana was tied around her head, and Rachel saw streaks of gray in the strands that escaped. “Mr. Manning wouldn’t let nobody.”

  “And I assume Manning had her chained?”

  Hattie’s slender hands were folded as if in supplication, and she nodded. “But it don’t look to me like she be going nowhere. She don’t have none of the spirit she had when she came. I think she done give up.”

  “Hattie, get hot water and mix your herbs.”

  “I got ’em all ready, sir.”

  He leaned forward on one knee, his large hand resting lightly on the ill woman’s shoulder. “Sassy?” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Dear God,” he said, as he saw the woman’s face. He gingerly touched the bandana at her temple then removed it. The woman’s hair was short and filthy, and he hesitated, his eyes scanning her face.

  Confusion rose within Rachel as she saw the revulsion in his face. How could the beating of one slave move him so profoundly, while he dismissed the deaths of forty-seven?

  “I don’t remember the face of this woman,” he said.

  “Mr. Manning, he beat her bad,” said Hattie. “Came right close to killing her.”

  “But—I don’t recall her on the Swallow at all,” he insisted.

  Hattie asked slowly, “You remember their faces?”

  The question held no contempt, only mild curiosity.

  “Yes. I always remember.” His palm rested over her forehead. “She has a fever, Hattie.”

  “I tell you, she be sick.”

  “Send a boy for Hastings,” he ordered tersely. “And for the blacksmith, to remove these chains.”

  Hattie turned, surprised to find her standing there. Rachel moved aside, and the older woman hurried past her.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw Rachel. A charged glance passed between them.

  “What can I do?” she asked softly, kneeling beside him.

  “I don’t know. She’s very ill. If her fever doesn’t break—”

  She leaned forward to see the woman’s face, and she gasped. Her face bore the evidence of a harsh beating. A fine, coffee-and-cream complexion was mottled with bruises; her cheeks and jaws bloated with swelling; her lip split in several places. Her slim throat held long, purple bruises, as if the man had attempted to choke her. With grim purpose, Rachel pulled the sheet away, and nausea churned in her stomach. Long, thin wounds crossed her back, and the pale brown skin puckered around the lacerations. A stench rose from the woman’s flesh; the open wounds, clearly infected, oozed green and brown liquid.

  Rachel swallowed down her nausea, bending low over the woman. “Can you hear me?” she asked, refusing to call the woman by the slave name given her. “What’s your name?”

  The woman seemed to rouse. Delicately arched eyebrows drew together over eyes that tilted faintly at the corners. This woman’s fine, exotic features had been battered until they were unrecognizable. She groaned softly, with desperate urgency, and with supreme effort she raised her head weakly. Her eyelids flickered as she turned toward Rachel’s voice.

  She opened her eyes faintly for the most fleeting of seconds and looked into Rachel’s soul. The eyes gazing at her in imploring hopelessness reminded her of autumn—a color somewhere between caramel apples and November pecans. A stunned cry rose up and was trapped in Rachel’s throat.

  Camisha.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The comfortable laughter of the men and women fell silent with their master’s arrival. They nervously watched the man who stood between the rows of cabins.

  Grey’s eyes roved over the men around the campfire. He’d come upon such a scene only once before, on his last trip home. They’d been unaware of his presence, as he watched them in silent bewilderment. He’d left the house that night seeking contentment. Walking along the James River, he’d arrived just behind their cabins and had to pass by to get home.

  Laughter and mournful song had enlivened the peaceful summer evening, and the depth of passion these people found in their existence had astounded him. On that night, he’d witnessed one of their weddings, and the desperate joy of it would never leave him.

  Now, his eyes met the eldest man. “Samuel, can you tell me where Rufus is?”

  “He sleeps in the woods, sir.” Samuel gestured toward the thicket. “Don’ likes the cabins.”

  He moved behind the cabins, grim with purpose. Was it true, what he’d heard on his arrival in Norfolk? A free black from Boston had been traveling through the tidewater on his way to meet his brother in Norfolk. He’d never arrived, and his brother feared he was being held on one of the plantations against his will. The authorities feared a more dire reason for his detention. This Adams family of Boston was well known for their rumored ti
es to risings in the South. They moved throughout the land by darkness and spread discontent where they went.

  Could the man he’d met in the tobacco fields this afternoon be called Ashanti Adams? No African bondsman could have answered him with the speech of the man they called Rufus.

  “Best be watching out for him, Trelawney,” an acquaintance had told Grey in Norfolk. “He’ll have your negroes in a lathered frenzy and leave Rosalie in ruins.”

  He stepped into a clearing and saw the man, staring out at the river. “Good evening, massa,” the man said without looking at him.

  Grey let a long moment pass between them. “Who are you?”

  “I’s jes a lowly niggah, restin’ for the moanin’s work.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Grey walked forward until he stood between the river and the man, who gave him a level stare with glittering hazel eyes. “I’ve no record of your purchase.”

  “You nigger mongers best clean up your bookkeeping.”

  “Are you Ashanti Adams?”

  The man smiled at Grey—a slow, bitterly ironic smile. “Is there a reward you’re wanting to claim?”

  “What is your business on Rosalie? Do you have people here?”

  “You might say that.”

  “Your brother is concerned over your welfare. I’ll accompany you to Norfolk in the morning.”

  “These people need me.”

  “We’ll leave in the morning,” Grey repeated.

  The man’s eyes glinted. “That’s mighty generous, considering I was taken captive and flogged just for crossing your land.”

  “Manning has been warned against his misdeeds.”

  “I’m staying nonetheless.”

  “I’ll not have you filling their heads with rebellion. I treat my bondsmen well and they have a modicum of freedom here as well as a life that they could never afford on their own, and certainly never have had in the place they came from. I keep families together, they learn to read and write, and they would not leave if given the choice.”

  The man laughed and pointed a sly index finger at Grey. “But that’s a theory you’re not willing to test out, isn’t it?”

  “Make no mistake. If you stay, you’ll work like the rest.”

  “If you discharge Manning, I’ll leave tonight.”

  “Manning is no threat to you. I vow on my honor.”

  Adams raked Grey with a disdainful gaze. “Forgive me, sir, if I find your honor lacking in substance.”

  Fresh on the heels of Rachel’s disgust, this man’s contempt irritated Grey. Adams met him not as an equal, but as a moral superior—a man who fought for his people, matched against the man who enslaved them.

  “If you’re planning an insurrection, mark my words—”

  “I’m not.”

  “Why do you persist in remaining?”

  “Why do you allow the savage beating of a free woman?”

  “I don’t know what you speak of.”

  Adams rose to his full height with all the righteous anger of an avenging angel. “The woman you call Sassy is no servant. She’s a free woman who’s been beaten without cause and imprisoned without proper care for her wounds.”

  “She’s in my home at this moment, being personally tended to by a friend of the family,” he said, a blank gaze concealing his confusion.

  What connection did this man have to the woman Sassy—for whom Rachel had displayed such concern?

  Adams didn’t trust him, that much he could see. Grey turned to go, then stopped. “Know this. You trespass on my land and have refused to leave when I offered to escort you to safety. If any trouble arises at Rosalie, I will find you and you’ll be punished to the law’s full contract. And if you cause discontent in the hearts of my bondsmen and women, you’ll regret it.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of upsettin’ your happy darkies, massa.” Again he adopted that affected tone. “Soon’s me an’ my woman can get off’n dis lan’, we be gone.”

  Irritated by his arrogance, Grey shot Adams a harsh glance. “The woman you speak of is beloved by a woman dear to me. Were that not the case, you would be gone this moment.”

  Adams’s gaze was shuttered once more, and Grey turned away. He returned to the house, passing Rachel’s room. Inside, she tended her friend, and he was sick at heart. Only twenty-four hours ago he’d held her, knowing she had grown dearer to him than he liked to admit. Whatever tenuous bond had been forged last night in her arms had been severed today.

  In his room, he undressed and lay sleepless, staring at the ceiling. How, he wondered, had he gotten the notion that Rachel knew of Letitia? Odd, how the topic of a wife never came up over supper with a beautiful woman.

  That only added to his miserable disgust for himself. He’d thought—he’d thought the ridiculous: that she simply didn’t care.

  He knew little of her precarious circumstances in life, but the more he learned, the deeper his concern for her grew. Her parents had been killed; she had been abused by a vicious man, as a child no older than Emily. His hands fisted in the darkness. He’d heard of those demonic men who—he couldn’t finish the thought; it sickened him.

  And it convicted him. He’d ignored Hastings’ concern for her, determined to lose himself in the excruciating ecstasy her body promised. Even now, the memory of her soft skin that first night, the rounded heaviness of her breast brushing his arm as he lifted her in his arms, fired his desire.

  From the first, he’d intended her as his mistress. Over the past few days, as he saw her affection for him shining in her eyes, as he watched her spirit begin to heal and bloom, it had gone beyond that. Now, he wanted more—and he had no right to it.

  A bizarre thought darted through his mind, and he almost smiled. What if Letitia had died recently, and the news simply hadn’t made its way to him yet?

  He recognized it as a sign of desperation, but it was a pleasant diversion, imagining himself no longer saddled with her. He’d neither seen nor corresponded with her in four years, not since those miserable few months she’d spent at Rosalie just after it was built. She’d heard of her husband’s sprawling plantation and thought she might find excitement here—a funny thought indeed.

  But her time at Rosalie wasn’t amusing, at least for the inmates of Rosalie. When she’d failed to stir her husband’s enthusiasm for her grotesque sexual games, she’d been forced to look elsewhere for her pleasure.

  Letitia’s perversions were beyond debauchery. In his youth, he’d discovered his own sprightly aptitude for depravity. The sophisticated mistresses he’d taken had been hard-pressed to keep up with his penchant for novelty.

  It was a dubious sport, drawing a line between invention and aberration. But Letitia had defined it for him on their wedding night: pain. More than once that night, he’d had the frantic thought: This isn’t fun anymore.

  When Hastings had informed Grey that his bondsmen were in a state of near-revolt over their new mistress’s abuse, he’d learned the full extent of her proclivities. He’d set her on a ship back to London.

  The memory of the near uprising brought him back to the memory of today. Fool that he was, he’d also thought Rachel knew of his trading.

  And how could he ever have guessed that the woman they called Sassy could be the same woman, Camisha, that Rachel had spoken of so fondly and so often, someone Rachel loved? And love her she did, for she’d instantly demanded that Grey carry the beaten woman to her room. Her eyes had flashed at his hesitation, imagining he resented the chore.

  Truth to tell, he’d feared she carried one of the diseases that had been aboard the Swallow. But—he cringed at his ignorance—he’d known the woman had never been aboard his ship. Who was she?

  The memory of her brutal beating still angered him. It reminded him too much of that dark place in his heart—the indistinct shadow separating mere greed from abomination. It was difficult, drawing a line between the two. And the thought troubled Grey.

  He threw off the covers and grabbed a robe. H
e was tired of pondering a wife he had never loved, and a livelihood he had never liked and could no longer tolerate.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rachel smoothed her palm over Camisha’s filthy hair. She had yet to rouse from the fog of her illness, and Rachel was worried. White linen bandages covered the grim web of suffering etched across her back; she couldn’t count the number of times the lash had fallen. Twenty? Thirty?

  This afternoon, as she’d bathed the wounds, the mystery plagued her. Why had Camisha been brought back in time with her? What had she endured during the time Rachel had spent entertaining the man responsible for this brutality?

  And, above it all, where was Malcolm Henderson? His absence frightened her; had she and Camisha been abandoned in the wrong time? Yesterday, she’d recognized the love that had grown within her for this place—for Grey. But yesterday, she’d believed a lie.

  A soft tap sounded at the door. “It’s Hastings, miss.”

  She invited him in.

  Twilight shadows played about the room, and Rachel swatted at a stray mosquito that had wafted in through the open windows and buzzed about Camisha. She hastily closed the windows.

  Hastings closed the door behind him and sat in the chair near the bed. He crossed his legs and gazed grimly at Camisha.

  “She’s very sick, Rachel.”

  Her eyes met his in silent accusation.

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s my dearest friend. And if anything happens to her…”

  Hastings exhaled wearily. “It would appear something rather dire already has.”

  “How did she arrive here?”

  “You ask me as if you believe I know.”

  “Where is Henderson?”

  “My dear, I am at a loss. He gave me instructions on how I might maintain contact with him. But he failed to arrive at the arranged place.”

  “She has no business being here, Hastings. Look at her!”

  “The responsibility, I am afraid, lies with me. I hired Mr. Manning only a month ago.”

  “And have you fired him?”

  “He’s been censured. He had no knowledge she was a free woman.”