“My God!” she whispered, putting a hand to her head. Her own father! She had always had a particular aversion to the thought of white slave owners sleeping with their Negro women. Richard had made the picture even uglier for her. Had her father forced Lena in the beginning? Even if he hadn’t, could he actually love a Negro woman in that way? And with her mother still alive—that was the most hurtful part of all! How could he do that to her!
“Come, my dear,” she heard Richard’s voice then. “Now that I am here, it would look better if we were seen together more.”
Audra looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “I want you to take me to Brennan Manor right away,” she answered. “Me and Toosie.”
Richard frowned. “What did Eleanor say to you?”
“Is it true, about my father and Lena? Is it true that Toosie is my half sister?”
He snorted with amusement. “For heaven’s sake, Audra, everyone knew. I always found it amazing that you never suspected, but your father made me promise never to say anything to you. He was worried how you would react.”
“I want to see him and Lena and Toosie all together. Will you take me to Brennan Manor?”
Richard’s face was still set in a scowl. “If that is what you want.” He stepped closer. “Audra, most marriages are arranged, you know, just like ours was, and just like my marriage to my first wife. It was the same for your mother and father. They never truly loved each other, but they were happy enough, and Sophia gave Joseph two children. She knew long before Joey was born that your father was in love with Lena. She is a most beautiful and intelligent Negro woman. Surely you’re aware of that.” The man adjusted his cravat. “Sophia put up with it and was able to look the other way, as any good wife should do. There is the act of making love just to make babies, and the act of pure lustful pleasure. A man must have both. Your mother found happiness and solace in her children. Now, if you want our own marriage to look normal and happy to others, then you might as well allow me back into your bed so that you can at least have babies. I really think you could forget the past and get on with your life if you had little ones to look after.”
Audra just stared at him. “I always thought that lustful pleasure and making love in order to have babies could and should be one and the same,” she answered.
Richard shook his head. “And you are still the young dreamer. Your Yankee man took you out of pure manly desire to claim a virgin, nothing more. Lee Jeffreys can profess his love all he wants, but the fact is, he never intended to marry you, either before or after he slept with you. Maybe now you understand it all better and can let go of that ridiculous vision of Lee Jeffreys being your knight in shining armor. The man will end up marrying for the same reasons most men marry, to have the proper woman on his arm who most benefits his own future and who will give him heirs; all other women in his life are for pure pleasure. Sometimes, as in the case of your father, he can actually love the other woman, but she can never truly be a part of his life, just as you could never have been a part of Lee’s life. He’s a Yankee, Audra, and he’ll marry a Yankee woman, and that will be that. Once I feel you understand that fully and have gotten that bastard out of your mind for good, I can be reasonable and treat you with more respect.”
Audra did not want to believe any of it, but to learn this about her father shattered her vision of true love and her faith in mankind. She felt betrayed by everyone she had ever known, even her precious father. “Will you take me to Brennan Manor?”
“We would never get there before dark. I’ll take you first thing in the morning.” He glanced across the ballroom at Eleanor, who stood watching them. “If you like, we can stay in a hotel tonight. It might be a little awkward staying here at Eleanor’s house.”
Her eyes lit up with fire. “Yes, wouldn’t it?” she answered scathingly. She shivered at the thought of being in the same room with him for one night. Angry, disappointed, and disillusioned, she wiped at her tears. “If you touch me tonight, I swear I’ll scream and embarrass you to death! A lot of people in this town are already gossiping about you and Eleanor and what a miserable husband you must be.”
He only grinned, smiling in a way that irritated her. “Maybe they’re talking about what a miserable wife you must be.” His smile vanished. “I won’t touch you, Audra dear…for now. Gather your things and we’ll leave this place and get a room.” He handed her a clean handkerchief that had been tucked into the pocket of his elegant suit.
Audra took it and dabbed at her eyes. “Does Toosie know?”
Richard shrugged. “Of course she knows. She has known for years, but she had strict orders never to tell you. Why do you think your father forbade her to marry that Elijah fellow? He wants something better for her because he cares about her more than he does the others. Trouble is, in his mind no Negro man is good enough.” He shook his head. “Your father made the grave mistake of allowing himself to have feelings for some of his Negroes. That is just not done, let alone caring about mixed-blood offspring. It’s very dangerous for a man to allow emotions to come into the picture when it comes to his slaves. It’s bad for business, you know.”
Audra felt her heart harden. “Of course,” she answered. “Go ahead and call our carriage. I will pack my things, and I want to pick up Toosie in the morning. She’ll go back with us.” She left him standing there and walked through the ballroom and its crowd of drinking, dancing guests; but she heard no voices, no music.
Eleanor continued to watch her, as Audra left the party, glowing with the satisfaction of finally besting her pampered and adored cousin, of having destroyed all her illusions.
20
Audra stood before her father, Lena, and Toosie in the downstairs parlor of Brennan Manor. Lena watched her with sorrowful eyes. Toosie was looking down at the floor. Audra had been unable to say one word to Toosie on the way home. She wished she knew how to feel about the woman, but right now it seemed she had no feelings at all.
“You should have told me, Father,” she said then, looking at the man she had practically worshiped most of her life.
“Audra, how could I explain to my little girl that her father was in love with a Negro woman?” he pleaded. “Or that I had loved Lena even while your mother was still alive? How would you have understood such a thing? You still can’t understand it, even at nineteen years old and after all you have been through yourself.”
Audra watched his eyes. This man had been her whole world for so long. She had thought him incapable of doing one wrong thing, and she had grown up believing her parents were very much in love. It was that vision that had made her want a perfect marriage of her own. “God knows I can understand a loveless marriage,” she told him, caring little if her words might anger Richard, who stood at the fireplace smoking his pipe. “It’s just that I always thought you loved my mother. You always spoke of her with such reverence.”
“I did love her, child. Sophia was a wonderful, giving, caring woman and a good wife. But it was an arranged marriage. There was no passion there. We were good friends, and we respected each other.”
“Respect! How could she respect you! It was bad enough that you loved some other woman more, but for that woman to be a household slave, a Negro!”
Lena drew a sharp breath, and Toosie turned away. “I thought you cared about me and Toosie enough to look beyond our black skin,” Lena said. “I always loved you like my own, Audra. And Toosie loves you, too. She just could never tell you because you wouldn’t understand unless you knew the truth. Your father always protected you from the realities of life, though over the years I have told him he shouldn’t have. Now you have had to learn too many things the hard way. I know your father well enough to know how sorry he is about that. I know that he loves you with all that is in him, and that the last thing he would ever want is for you to hurt like this.”
“Then he shouldn’t have been sleeping with a Negro woman all these years! And he shouldn’t have expected such perfection out of his children when he wa
s so imperfect! Poor Joey is off fighting, killing Yankees and risking being killed or maimed himself—all to impress his father—all to try to find a way to make his father proud of him! I wonder how he would feel if he knew the truth!” She fought back tears. “I don’t ever want him to know! Do all of you understand? I never want Joey to know!”
“Audra,” Joseph spoke up, “it wasn’t as though I hurt or betrayed your mother. She knew all about it for years. She cared very much for Lena, who had been her personal servant long before we got married. She brought Lena to Brennan Manor with her, and after we were married a few years…I don’t know. Lena is a beautiful woman, easy to love. I don’t see her as a Negro. I only see her as a woman. Sophia didn’t like it at first, but she began to understand and accept it. It was just something that was understood but never really talked about. I was good to Sophia. I never denied her anything, never abused her in any way. She wanted children, and I wanted heirs, so we…we were man and wife in the fullest sense for the most part. I respected Sophia as a beautiful, gracious woman who was the mother of my children. I truly grieved for her when she died, and so did Lena. They were still close when Sophia passed away. Lena was the last person she talked to, and she asked her to take care of me always, and you and Joey, and to see that Toosie married well.”
“I cannot believe I am hearing this.” Audra stepped back. “Have there been others? Do you still take Negro women to your bed for the pure pleasure of it?”
Lena stiffened, and Joseph’s face reddened. “I don’t believe that question deserves an answer. You know me better than that, Audra.”
“Do I? I am beginning to think I don’t know you at all, Father. It seems that everything I have believed about people I love has been dashed to the ground.” She glanced at Richard. “The man I married, a man I thought was gentle and kind, turned into a monster.” She stared at Toosie. “The woman I have ordered about all my life and treated like a common slave most of the time is my own half sister.” She looked back at her father then. “I gave up a man I love for you, Father, for you and Joey and Brennan Manor. Now I don’t know what is right and what is wrong any longer. I am beginning to see that anything that was supposed to be wrong about my loving Lee Jeffreys pales in comparison to what the rest of my family and my husband have been up to! Everything I treasured and held honorable has turned to something ugly and sinful, and my dreams of what marriage should be have been destroyed.”
She took a deep breath, walking past all of them to a window, looking out at the slaves tending the lawn. “I am not sure anymore what this war is about. I thought it was about honor, to protect our way of life; but you have no honor left, and I wonder if our way of life is so right after all.” She faced her father again. “You say you love Lena just as a woman, that you do not see her as a Negro. What about the rest of the Negroes, Father? Why are they different?”
“There are a few, like Lena and Toosie, who are more intelligent than the rest,” Richard answered for him. “The rest are ignorant savages who would slit your throat and take over this home if they thought they could get away with it.”
Audra glanced at Lena, saw the hurt in her eyes. “I wonder,” she answered. She looked at Richard. “Perhaps all humans have the ability to be savages when the circumstances are right. Men like you, who enjoy using their power over others who might be weaker or less fortunate.”
“You have a power of your own, Audra,” Joseph told her. “Can you tell me, in spite of everything you have learned, that you don’t still love Brennan Manor, that this is not home to you? Can you tell me that if Yankees came here to take our home away from us, that you would not fight to keep it?”
Audra looked around the familiar room. Joey would come back some day, and Brennan Manor would be his. “Of course I would fight,” she answered.
Her father came closer to her. “That is what this war is about, Audra. I agree that we need to change things, that slavery cannot go on forever, but to end it the way the Yankees expect us to end it would mean losing all of this, Audra! All of it! You and Joey and men like me and Richard would be left with nothing! It’s the principle of the matter that we are fighting for! The Yankees are out to crush us, bring us to our knees. If that happens, they will come down here and rape the whole South, impose martial law, burn our cities, abuse our women! Places like Brennan Manor and Cypress Hollow will be no more! The slaves will be freed, and what the Yankees don’t rape and burn and destroy, the Negroes will! We must be allowed to end slavery in our own way, our own time, but the Yankees want to force us with cannon and battles and blockades into coming back into the Union and destroying a way of life that has gone on for generations!”
“It surely won’t go that far—”
Joseph took her hands in his. “It could, Audra, and you have to understand that! For now you must put aside family problems and think about what the war means. We all must work together to save Brennan Manor and Cypress Hollow, to save the South we love. The Yankees can yell all they want about preserving the Union, but they are using that as an excuse to come down here and take everything we have! Once we are ruined, wealthy men like Lee Jeffreys and his father can come here and buy up all that we have, and the South as we know it now will cease to exist. Where will that leave you and Joey? Where will that leave any of us! Homeless! Probably dead, murdered by our own Negroes! You have to realize we could be fighting for our very lives!”
“There are already going to be hardships by next year,” Richard added. “If the North continues to build up its blockades, we won’t be able to ship out our cotton. While you have been staying in Baton Rouge, I have been holding secret meetings with men willing to try to run the blockades and get our cotton delivered to ports in England. England is our biggest customer. If we can’t get to them, we’re all but doomed already.”
Audra looked up at her husband, surprised that he had become involved in blockade running.
“It is time to set aside these little hurts and misunderstandings and begin working together for the bigger cause, which is to keep the North from destroying us and our way of life forever,” Richard told her. “If you don’t care for my sake or your father’s, then care for yourself and Joey and those who will come after us. If we don’t hold back the Yankees and force them to leave us alone to handle the South the way we know is best, boys like Joey will have risked their lives for nothing, because they will have nothing to come home to.”
Richard took hold of her arms, pulling her away from her father. “You are Louisiana born and bred. That was part of my anger, Audra, that you had maybe forgotten that when you went to Connecticut that summer and had your fling with that Yankee trash. Now that we are at war, we cannot think in terms of the little things, whom we do or do not love, who is sleeping with whom. We all have to come together now, forgive and forget and remember who we are!” Richard paused, then, using all his skills as an orator, tried to convince her to agree. “We are southerners! We belong to our own Confederacy, and we are sending our finest men off to preserve that Confederacy against those who would destroy us! Whether slavery is right or wrong is not the issue. The issue is what will happen to the Negroes if they are instantly freed. Life would be worse for them, not better, Audra. If they were no longer owned and protected, fed and clothed and housed by men like me and your father, they would wander and starve. They have no education, no way to take care of themselves! They would kill people like us, not because they are bad, but because they would become desperate for food and clothing and shelter. Protecting our own way of life also protects the Negroes.”
He let go of her then. “I don’t pretend to have any special love for them. If there was a way to get rid of all of them without losing everything I have worked for all my life, I would do it.” He glanced at Lena, seeing the pride and hatred in her eyes. How Joseph Brennan could actually love this black woman, he couldn’t understand, but that was beside the point. “It’s one vicious circle, Audra, and you are part of it. The South must fight to
protect its way of life. Doing that will in turn protect the Negroes from almost instant starvation. By protecting the Negroes, we are in turn protecting ourselves from what they would do if they were freed too quickly. Any way you look at it, we must not let the Yankees win this war. And much as you might have loved Lee Jeffreys, that won’t stop men like him from coming down here and destroying your home and the only life you have ever known. Get him out of your mind, and get rid of your notions of whether or not owning slaves is right or wrong. That is no longer something to be pondered. We have no choice but to continue to fight together for the southern way of life and the southern economy.”
Never had Audra been so confused over what was right and moral. Everything she had been brought up to believe was a perfectly normal way of life seemed suddenly abnormal, yet now her personal battle over slavery didn’t really matter. There was a bigger enemy at large, men who wore blue uniforms and threatened to tear apart everything that was dear to her. At the same time, her own father had sent her into emotional turmoil. In a twisted sort of way, she knew Richard was right about their reasons.
“Audra,” her father said gently, “for now you must put aside your personal feelings and remember that you are a Brennan. Not only that, but you are also Richard’s wife, and therefore you and your future children are heirs to a literal empire—but only if that empire is preserved against destruction by the Yankees. Part of the reason Richard married you was because he knew you were the kind of woman who would realize one day that, above all else, she is a southern woman with all the pride that comes with it, as well as a woman courageous and intelligent enough to handle the power that comes with being mistress of two plantations. No matter how you feel about what I or Richard have done with our personal lives, you cannot deny that you love Louisiana and Brennan Manor, or that you feel pride at also being part owner of Cypress Hollow. The only way we will be able to stand against Union forces is to be united ourselves, as a family.”
Tender Betrayal Page 28
