She let go of his hands, again walking away from him. She couldn’t bear his touch, for it made her want him so, and it was useless to want him. She went to stand near Anna’s grave, feeling cold again. She wrapped her shawl back around her shoulders. “But there is a Brennan Manor, and I have to go back there with Joey. There is the matter of politics. And the fact remains that you were so consumed with grief that you yearned to feel alive and needed to mock death, so you spent the night feeling as alive as you possibly could. But today we know such moments can never last.”
“Audra—”
“Go back to New York, Lee. My father will be coming any day, maybe even today or tomorrow. I will go back to Louisiana, out of your life forever. I will be where I belong, and you will be where you belong, and that will be the end of it.”
“I’ll never stop loving you or thinking about you, Audra.”
She turned to face him, love in her eyes again. I wrote a song about you, Lee. I never showed it to you. I wanted to sing it for you. “Nor I you,” she said aloud. “Even if I should take a husband, you will always be first in my heart. Will it be the same for you, Lee, if you should marry?”
“You know it will.”
She sniffled as an unwanted sob engulfed her, then took a couple of deep breaths, struggling to keep her composure. “Maybe some day…all the country’s troubles will…be over,” she said, forcing a smile through her tears. “Maybe you and I will still be unmarried…and somehow we’ll find each other again. Maybe then it could be different.”
She could tell that his own smile was forced. “Maybe,” he answered.
You don’t believe that, Lee, but we can pretend, can’t we? “I’ll go back to my room and we won’t have to see each other until you’re gone.” Oh, what pain she saw in his sky-blue eyes!
“My brothers’ wives will be staying until your father comes for you. My father and my brothers are going back in a couple of days.”
She nodded, glancing at the fresh grave. “She will be so lonely,” she said in a near whisper. She met his eyes again. “What will happen to Maple Shadows?”
He quickly wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his suit jacket. “As soon as you’re gone, one of my brothers will come back here and close it up. We’ll keep old Tom on just to keep up the grounds and tend to the stables. As far as next summer…I don’t know. I’m not sure I can come back here anymore. Not only is the place full of my mother and memories, but now when I come here, I’ll see you everywhere.”
“She would want you to come back, Lee, especially you. It would break her heart to know no one is opening the house for the summer, letting in the sea air, the smell of her lilacs.”
He closed his eyes against the pain. “I know.” He bent down to rearrange some flowers on top of the grave. “I’ll try to get my brothers to come back next summer. She’d like it if all of us were here at the same time. That was what she had wanted for so long, but we were always so busy…” He had never wanted his mother to know the truth, to discover the extent of the discord between him and his father and brothers. That’s what made it so hard to let go. Unlike his father, his mother had loved him unconditionally. She had been his rock, his peace. He could not get those things from Edmund Jeffreys. He touched the grave gently. “We take so damn much for granted, don’t we?”
“Not everything, Lee.”
He rose and faced her. No, not everything. Never had he taken for granted that he could have her for his own forever. It had been the same for her. “I could have kept all of this from happening,” he told her. “I’m the one who should have had the common sense, the strength, the wisdom never to have touched you. If you end up hating me after all, I won’t blame you, Audra.”
She shook her head. “Never.”
He smiled sadly. “It’s easy to say that now. That’s why we have to leave it at this. If we stayed together, it might not be so easy later on to vow you could never hate me.” He came closer, and she could not make herself move away. He touched her shoulders, and both of them knew they must have one more kiss to remember the other by. She closed her eyes and felt his mouth touch her own, lightly at first, in a gentle kiss of good-bye. In the next moment he was fully embracing her, and she had wrapped her arms around his neck, returning the kiss with the great passion of her youth. Oh, how she ached to make love with him again, to feel his naked body against hers, to feel him inside of her.
He groaned, crushing her against his chest, then suddenly tore away. “Go on, Audra!” he said sternly. “Go back to the house.”
She hesitated, and he turned away. “Go, dammit!”
She touched her lips, and the pain was so bad, she wondered if a woman her age could have a heart attack. “Good-bye, Lee,” she whispered. There was no sense in prolonging the pain. She turned and ran.
A moment later Lee turned back to see her gone. “Good-bye, Audra,” he answered softly. A choking sob began to engulf him, and he angrily forced it back. He walked over to a nearby tree and leaned against it for a moment, fighting the urge to go after her. In rage and frustration he formed a fist with his right hand and slammed it into the tree trunk over and over, until his knuckles were scraped and bleeding.
9
Audra had been home for only three hours, and already she knew this was where she belonged. She breathed deeply of the sweet, humid air as she moved through the gardens behind the house where she had visited her mother’s grave. Flowers bloomed everywhere, and before her stood the stately Brennan mansion, fluted pillars encircling the entire house like sentinels, supporting the second-floor and third-floor balconies. Such a grand home it was, much grander than Maple Shadows. She had never seen the Jeffreys home in New York. She was sure it was quite spectacular, considering their wealth, but nothing could compare to Brennan Manor and its heavenly surroundings.
Now that she was again in her own realm, she hoped it would be easier to mend her broken heart. Her father had arrived the day after Lee left, and she had struggled to hide her feelings from him on the trip home. When their carriage pulled away from Maple Shadows, she had been unable to look back at the home where she had found and lost the love of her life, the place where Lee Jeffreys had changed her from child to woman.
She realized more clearly now that she and Lee had made the right decision. Brennan Manor was her center, her life’s blood. There was a gentleness about life here that would never change, she was sure, no matter what happened in the world beyond her father’s plantation. Here she could heal. She walked behind the house, and in the distance she could see some of the Negroes scurrying about, tending to the house and grounds. Past the flower gardens and beyond a thick grove of trees she could hear the squeals of Negro children playing near their quarters. To her surprise, she realized she had missed even those familiar sights and sounds.
She breathed deeply of the sweet smell that was Louisiana and Brennan Manor and southern warmth. If only Lee would come here and see how good life was, he would surely not be so quick to condemn it. She approached their gardener, an old Negro man named George, who had walked from behind a bush he was trimming. He nodded to her.
“Well, Miss Audra, it’s good to have you back!”
“Hello, George.”
“This place wasn’t the same without you an’ Master Joey,” the man told her. “Your father, he be ornery as all git out when you is away. He frets that he never should have let you go. He be in better spirits, now you’re back.”
Audra smiled. “I hope so. It’s a long trip, so we’re all still very tired. We came by ship to east Florida, then took a coach across to the Gulf, then back on a ship to New Orleans. The North is like living in a whole different world, George. I don’t care ever to go back.” I fell in love with a Yankee man, George. What do you think of that?
“Yes, ah suppose it would be different,” the man was saying. “Ah never thought your father would send you away like that, into that nest of Yankees. Mebbe he thinks it be good for you to know what them people is like
. We hear stories about how they want to free us, but me, ah’m happy right where ah am. Ah don’ need no freein’. Where would I go?”
Audra smiled. “Father won’t let anything happen to you, George.”
Someone rang the bell signaling supper, and Audra bade George good-bye and headed toward the house. It warmed her heart to see him, one of the few Negroes with whom she conversed like an old friend. Even the sound of the dinner bell was comforting. She remembered times when she was little and would be playing far out on the lawn or in the woods with Joey, when she would hear the bell calling her home…home. Lee had said she should come home and find herself before she could know where she really belonged, and already she knew where that was, but she still missed Lee, ached for him.
She walked around the shady veranda to the front of the house, greeting more servants, who all welcomed her back. Lena was at the front door when she reached it, and the woman gave her a gentle smile. “I was about to come lookin’ for you, girl. Your supper is ready, and your father and brother are at the table.”
“Thank you, Lena. I’ll bet you’re glad to have Toosie back.”
The woman nodded, and Audra thought how beautiful Lena was. She had a special grace and pride about her. “As glad as your father is to have you back.” Lena let her inside with a smile. She loved Audra and Joey as if they were her own. She had been the closest thing to a mother they’d had since their own mother died, and often she had had to remind herself of her place in the household. She was still just a servant, bought and paid for, except for the nights that Joseph Brennan came to her room. Then she was someone very special.
Audra joined her father and Joey for supper, and Joseph Brennan carried on about how wonderful it was to have his children home with him again. “There are a few things I haven’t told you yet,” he said. “Oh, and we’re going to a horse race that was going to be held in Baton Rouge soon. I’ll take you both along. Richard Potter is coming, too. I told you on the trip home that his father passed away this summer. The man is even more alone now, and I have a feeling he will be presenting you with a ring soon, Audra, now that you’re back. We’ll have a grand engagement party for you, maybe around Christmas!”
Audra felt her appetite leaving her. What was she to do about Richard? She hated the thought of disappointing her father, but she was no longer sure she could marry the man. Before she could say a word, her father had already changed the subject, talking about things that had happened over the summer while they had been gone, what a good cotton harvest he’d had. “Tons of cotton means tons of profits,” he commented as he finished his meal. “It’s probably a good thing you were in Connecticut, though, at least you, Audra. It was a hotter than normal summer, and the cotton came in a higher tonnage than ever before. The heat caused some trouble with the Negroes, and I was glad you were gone. It might have been good for Joey to be here, though, to see how it was all handled.”
The man leaned back in his chair and patted his full stomach. “Old Hannah is the best cook we’ve had in years,” he said then, as though not quite ready to finish his story about the Negroes. “I bought her from that agent in Baton Rouge, Stu Bailey. She comes from a farmer down in Mississippi who went bankrupt and had to get rid of his Negroes.”
“This certainly is fine pork, Father,” Audra answered, finishing her last piece. “The Jeffreyses almost never ate pork. I missed it.”
Joey sat eating quietly, always choosing to speak as little as possible around his father. He had missed the man more than he thought he might. It felt good to be hugged when Joseph first came for them to take them home. It was a rare moment when his father embraced him.
“There are probably a lot of things that seemed very different up North,” the man was telling Audra. “I’m terribly sorry about what happened with Mrs. Jeffreys, especially your being right there beside the woman when she died. It must still haunt you, having it happen the way it did. I had hoped you would never get that close to death again, after losing your own mother.”
Audra pushed her plate aside. “Mrs. Jeffreys was one of the kindest people I ever knew.”
Joseph studied her a moment, sorry she had had to witness such a thing, let alone the way those northerners apparently treated her. “That story you told me about that man insulting you and our family at that gathering of neighbors Mrs. Jeffreys held should tell you what those Yankees are like, Audra. That’s part of the reason I sent you there, to learn what we are up against.”
“Lee J-jeffreys stood up f-f-for her,” Joey put in. “He’s a g-g-good man.”
Joseph frowned, his ruddy complexion growing slightly redder at the remark. “Perhaps he is, son, for a Yankee; but the short conversation I had with his father while I was waiting for the two of you to get ready told me all I needed to know. Mr. Jeffreys is running for the New York Senate, and the whole family is friends with the governor of New York. Edmund Jeffreys made no bones about telling me how he felt about slavery, and it didn’t take him any time at all to warn me that I should urge Louisiana legislators not to allow our state to secede from the Union. We almost got into quite an argument, but I held my tongue only because it was his home and he had just lost his wife. I knew I wouldn’t be there for long, so I let it go. At any rate, his son, your Mr. Lee Jeffreys, feels just as strongly against southern politics as his father, or so Edmund Jeffreys told me. I am sure the man was defending Audra as a young woman who did not deserve such an attack, but he most certainly was not defending slavery.”
Talk of Lee brought the ache back to Audra’s heart, and she drank some water, hoping to feel better. But I love him, Father. Sometimes she wished she could shout it to the world, but what good would it do?
“Most Yankees are not as understanding and accepting as Mrs. Jeffreys,” her father was saying. “Those damned arrogant northerners are so jealous of the serene, idyllic life they think we lead down here that they will do anything they can to change it.”
“They just don’t understand the economics of slavery, Father,” Audra put in, feeling that somehow she had to defend Lee, at least.
“They understand it, all right. The way they treat their help in those stinking factories in the North is worse than how we treat our Negroes! All they have is the filth of their cities, crime and despair, disease. Orphans run the streets and commit crimes or get murdered. They have no right to tell us we are living wrong! Let them clean up their own messes before they start telling others what to do!”
Audra’s heart sank at the realization that Lee could probably not last more than five minutes in the same room with her father.
“Those arrogant fools think we get all our labor free,” the man continued. “Don’t they realize the cost of buying good Negroes? Don’t they understand we have to house them and feed them and clothe them?” He took a deep breath to calm himself. “Well, you’re both home now, where you belong. Your Aunt Janine can’t holler at me about your not having a well-rounded education or not being well traveled. One thing I will not do is send you off to Europe as she did with Eleanor. As far as I’m concerned, Eleanor is ‘well rounded’ in more ways than one. She is getting her education from those men who court her, and it isn’t the kind of education I would want my daughter to get!”
Audra felt her cheeks growing hot. What would he do if he knew about her and Lee? He would probably die of shame. How could she ever make him understand why it had happened, how right it had been?
“As far as your singing career, Audra, that’s up to Richard and what he will allow. He’s a fair man and knows how much you like to sing. I’m sure he’ll allow you to sing for weddings and such.”
Allow? The more he talked about Richard Potter, the harder it became for her to suggest she might not want to marry the man. Her father seemed totally set on it. “I…you said there was trouble with the Negroes this summer,” she told him, wanting to change the subject again.
Her father sighed in lingering anger. “Yes.” He glanced at Joey. “I wish you had been
here to see how it was handled, son. You need to know these things.” He looked back at Audra. “One of the field workers, that Henry Gathers, he got a few other Negro men together and demanded more food and fewer hours, or they wouldn’t get the crop in. Can you imagine it? Negroes, making demands on the man who owns them!”
Audra glanced at Joey, who she knew hated seeing any of the slaves disciplined. She moved her gaze back to her father. “What did you do?”
The man poured himself a little more wine, and Sonda, the new girl, came into the room to clear away some of the dishes. Lena followed her with a tray that held plates of pecan pie. She placed a piece in front of each of them, at the same time giving Sonda orders in clearing a table without disturbing Master Joseph and his family.
“What do you think I did?” Joseph was telling Audra. Audra noticed how he glanced at Lena then, looking almost guilty when she returned a look of literal chastisement. It seemed to Audra that Lena had a strange hold on her father, perhaps because she had been such a part of the family for so many years. Joseph scowled at her and raised his chin defiantly. “I did what was necessary. Henry Gathers was properly whipped and sold. The others were also punished. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to ask March Fredericks to use that bullwhip of his, and you know I don’t like to do it.” He glanced at Lena again. “Get this girl out of here!” he barked, referring to Sonda.
The trembling girl stepped back from the table, her arms full of dishes. “We will finish later,” Lena told her calmly, casting a look of defiance at Joseph Brennan. The two women left.
“That damn Lena tries to make me feel guilty for chastising my own slaves,” Joseph grumbled. “And she’s one herself! She’s been with me too long, that’s what. You keep them too long, they think they run the place.”
Tender Betrayal Page 12
