Lori felt the gorge rising in her throat, and she had to swallow to keep it down. “Why in God’s name would he think a thing like that? You told him, didn’t you? You told him we’re married?”
Adam nodded, and once again he looked pained. “He was a little surprised since you’d promised to wait for him.”
“What?” Lori couldn’t believe this was happening! It must be another nightmare, one she couldn’t seem to awaken from. “I never promised him anything! He attacked me! Why would I promise to wait for him?”
Adam looked so strange, as if he were in physical agony, although that couldn’t be true. He wasn’t even limping. “It’s all right, Lori,” he assured her, as if she were the one in pain. “I know you loved Eric. I know you wanted to marry him and not me, and I know you thought that if you gave yourself to him, he’d marry you.”
Lori cried in protest at the horrid lies, but he took her arms in a reassuring grasp.
“I don’t care about any of that, Lori, not anymore,” he told her urgently. “I love you, and I’ll forgive you anything.”
“Forgive?” she echoed incredulously, certain now this wasn’t really happening. It was simply too awful. This couldn’t really be Adam saying these terrible things to her. Not Adam, the man she loved. The man who claimed to love her, too!
“I don’t care if you were with another man first or how you felt about him, just as long as you’ll stay with me now. If you’ll stay with me, Lori, we’ll never speak of this again. It’ll be as if none of it ever happened.”
Lori thought she must be losing her mind. “I never loved him!” she insisted, desperate to make him believe her. “It was you! It was always you, from the time I was old enough to love anyone at all!”
Another spasm of what might have been pain twisted his face, and he said, “You don’t have to lie anymore, Lori. I told you, none of that matters.”
“But it does matter!” she cried, nearly frantic with frustration.
Before he could reply, however, they heard shouting in the hall, and Sudie’s voice rose above it.
“Massa Adam, come quick!”
Adam glanced impatiently over his shoulder in the direction of the summons, then turned back to Lori. “As soon as he’s well enough, I’ll tell him he has to leave,” he promised. “You’ll never have to see him again.”
He took her mouth in a kiss that seemed intended to stake a claim on her. Then he was gone, hurrying away to answer Sudie’s summons.
Without thinking, Lori snatched up the chair and wedged it under the knob again, although whom she was trying to keep out this time, she could not have said. Instinctively, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, trying to erase the taste of him on her lips.
How dare he forgive her when she’d done nothing wrong? Nothing at all except love Adam. That had been her first and only mistake, giving her heart to a man who, she now understood, was not the good, wise and gentle man she’d imagined him to be. In fact, she hadn’t known him at all, which meant that she hadn’t really loved him at all. She’d only loved some imaginary ideal. An ideal that the real Adam had just shattered.
She felt as if her heart had been ripped from her chest, and she actually had to double over from the pain of it. How could this have happened? How could she have been so wrong about him?
But maybe there was still hope! Maybe Sudie could explain it to him. She understood! She could tell Adam the truth and make him understand, too! If there was any part of him half as good as she had believed him to be, Sudie could tell him what Eric had done and...
Then she remembered. Sudie didn’t know it was Eric. Sudie thought Lori’s rapist had been some stranger, someone she didn’t even know. And if she’d been afraid to tell Sudie the truth before, she was even more afraid to tell her now that Eric was here. She’d seen the way Sudie’s face had lit up when she’d recognized the ragged man as her “baby.” Oh, no, Sudie would never take Lori’s side against him.
So Lori had nothing and no one to turn to. And if she’d been afraid to stay here before because Eric was here, she was even more desperate to escape now because Adam was here. Adam whose betrayal hurt far more than Eric’s violation ever had.
Knowing only that she had to get away, she began gathering her things, blindly pulling her clothes from the wardrobe and throwing them on the bed. Only when she’d made a pile of them did she stop to think and realize that she needed something in which to carry them. And she’d need to take Matthew’s things, too. And him. She could tie him in a sling across her chest the way she’d seen the slave women carrying their children. She’d need a sheet for that, and another to make a bundle of their belongings. But she wasn’t going out into the hall to the linen closet to fetch them. Instead, she ripped the comforter off the bed she had shared with Adam and stripped off those sheets.
She didn’t bother to wonder why she felt compelled to hurry. She knew that if Adam caught her, he would try to stop her, and she couldn’t take that chance.
When she had gathered everything, she was amazed to see how many possessions she had accumulated in her short stay here. How many things Adam’s wealth had supplied her. She’d felt unworthy of his generosity before, but now she simply didn’t want anything from him.
In the end, she hung her new dresses back in the wardrobe and took only the ragged things she’d owned when she’d come here. Except for the dress she was wearing, which she would send back later since she couldn’t afford the time to change just now, she took nothing of his. For Matthew, she had no choice because everything he owned was Adam’s, but she figured he owed the child that much. When she had finished packing and had the bundle tied securely, she picked up the baby from his cradle.
He smiled at her in delight, flailing his little arms as if sensing her excitement, and she couldn’t help smiling back at him. Poor little angel, what would become of him now? What could she offer him? Nothing of material value, certainly, but she now understood that the luxuries of Elmhurst were worthless without trust and honor. Those were things that had no price and which even the penniless McClintocks had in abundance. For a moment, she simply cradled him to her, burying her face in the sweet curve of his neck and inhaling his delicious baby scent.
Tears pooled in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She didn’t have time for that now. Later perhaps, when she was safely away from here, but not now, not yet. Quickly awkwardly, she tied the baby to her chest with the sheet, and when she was satisfied he was secure, she picked up he bundle and went to the window.
Outside she could see that the yard was deserted. The field hands would still be busy about their tasks, and the house servants were no doubt scurrying around, answering Sudie’s every beck and call for tending Eric.
Satisfied that she would be unobserved, she raised the window and began the laborious climb over the low sill to the ground below.
***
Eric was delirious with fever. It had taken both Adam and Oscar to hold him down while Sudie tied his hands and feet to the bedposts so he wouldn’t harm himself or anyone else as he thrashed around.
“If only we had some ice,” Sudie lamented. In the old days, before the war, ships had carried ice down from the north every spring and they’d stored it in the spring house, even through the heat of summer. They could have packed Eric’s fevered body in it and lowered his temperature. But no one had seen northern ice for more than four years now.
“I’ll keep the girls coming with fresh spring water,” Oscar told her. “That’s about the coldest thing we got.”
Sudie nodded absently and sent the maid for more rags.
When she was gone, Adam and Sudie were alone in the room with Eric. He was still filthy except in the places Sudie had managed to wash before the fever took him, and he was muttering curses in the depths of a fever dream.
Adam tried to feel pity for him. He’d felt pity for his brother all his life, and it seemed the natural reaction now, considering how seriously ill he was at the mome
nt. Still, Adam could not forget that Eric had called Lori a whore or that he’d taken advantage of her innocence in the first place to satisfy his own lust. Or that he’d abandoned her when she’d needed him most. Eric may not have had the same advantages as his older brother in his life, but Adam couldn’t forgive him his deliberate cruelty toward the woman he loved.
“It’s his baby, ain’t it?” Sudie asked, startling Adam from his angry thoughts.
“What?”
“Matthew. He Massa Eric’s chile, ain’t he?”
Adam stiffened in surprise as his mind raced, searching for something to say. “Don’t be ridiculous,” was all he could manage.
Sudie snorted in derision. “I ain’t the one bein’ ridiculous.”
“Matthew is my child,” Adam insisted, as much to remind himself as to convince Sudie.
“No, he ain’t, and we both know it.” Her expression hardened. “That little liar! She tell me she was forced. She tell me it some stranger she never seen before or since!”
Of course she had, and then Adam remembered her wild claim that she had always loved him. It seemed there was no end to Lori’s deceptions.
“She had to tell me something I expect. I knowed right off it weren’t yours,” Sudie reported furiously.
“How could you have been so sure?” Adam asked.
“ ’Cause you never laid a hand on that girl until after you was married, is how. You ain’t that kind a man.”
“But Eric is,” Adam said bitterly, glancing at the figure still writhing on the bed.
“He can’t help hisself!” Sudie defended him. “He just want somebody to love him, and how he gonna say no when some trashy girl sets her cap for him and don’t care what she gots to do to catch him?”
She was right, of course. Eric would not have hesitated an instant in taking what Lori offered.
But that was in the past. “Lori is my wife now,” he reminded Sudie. “He won’t be able to stay here, not after he’s recovered.”
Sudie’s eyes grew wide with alarm. “You can’t turn him out! This is his home as much as yours!”
“He can’t live here with me and Lori,” Adam pointed out.
“Then put her out!” Sudie cried.
“Are you crazy?” he nearly shouted.
“You can keep the baby!” she insisted, nearly hysterical. “We get a wet nurse for him, he be just fine! You ain’t gonna let some poor trash girl come between you and your own brother, are you?”
She’d grabbed his arm, as if to compel him to see reason but he shook her off. “Stop it, Sudie! I don’t care what you think of Lori. She’s still my wife, and she’ll stay my wife.”
Adam never learned how Sudie might have responded because Eric began to shout, screaming at some invisible demons, and he managed to rip loose the bonds on one of his hands.
He nearly knocked Sudie over before Adam could get him restrained again, and by then Oscar and the maid had returned from their errands. Adam stood back, watching as Sudie lovingly tended the man in whom only she had ever been able to see any good.
Had he once felt gratitude to Eric for ruining Lori and thus forcing her to marry him? It was hard to remember a time when he would have considered any of this a blessing. Perhaps if he could believe that Lori truly loved him... but even that claim was suspect now in light of all her other lies.
But regardless of how she felt about him, he still loved her—more than life itself. And enough, he was afraid, so that he was willing to throw his own brother out of his home in order to make her happy.
Leaving Eric to Sudie’s care, he stepped into the hall. His gaze went to the bedroom door behind which Lori had earlier sought refuge. She’d seemed genuinely frightened of Eric, but probably she was just afraid that he would turn Adam against her.
He needed to talk to her, to touch her and hold her and remind himself of why he was doing all this. But he didn’t trust himself just yet. He was still too angry from his argument with Sudie. Later, when he was calmer, he would go back to Lori. He would let her tell him she loved him again, and he would pretend to believe her. If he pretended hard enough, perhaps he really would begin to believe her.
But even if he didn’t, he thought bitterly, it wouldn’t matter.
***
Lori ran until she couldn’t breathe anymore and a stitch in her side brought her to a staggering halt. But when she looked back, she saw no sign of pursuit. No one, it seemed had witnessed her escape and no one was coming after her.
Still, as she leaned against a tree on the bank of the river sobbing for breath, she felt the fear curling in her stomach The fear that Eric would come after her and catch her and... But of course that was ridiculous. The only one she really needed to fear right now was Adam. Because she knew he wouldn’t let her go without a fight. And because, after the things he had said to her, she couldn’t go back with him, not ever, not even if Eric Ross was dead.
The rawness of the pain brought tears to her eyes, and she didn’t bother to wipe them away when they began to fall. There was no one to see, after all. No one except Matthew and he’d fallen asleep, lulled by the warmth of her body and the motion of her running.
Setting down her bundle, she wrapped her arms around the child that slept against her breast, cherishing his small body.
“I love you, little one,” she whispered brokenly again his downy head as her tears continued to fall.
Her chest still felt empty, as if she had no heart left, and when she remembered why, what Adam had said to her at what it had meant—that he had never believed her at all!–her silent tears became wrenching sobs.
But she couldn’t stand here weeping, not when Adam might discover at any moment that she was gone and come after her. Somehow she scooped up her bundle again and staggered on, her body still so wracked with sobs that each step was an effort and she could hardly see where she was going. But somehow she kept on, following the path more by instinct than by sight as she sought the only refuge remaining to her.
***
“Massa Adam?”
Adam looked up from where he had been pretending to add the plantation accounts to find the maid Effie standing in the doorway to his office.
“Yes?”
“Supper’s ready, Massa, but...”
“But what?” he asked, suddenly noticing the way she was wringing her hands nervously. Was something wrong? Had Eric...?
“I knock on Missy’s door to tell her, but she don’t answer.”
“Maybe she’s asleep or something. Just open the door and—”
“I try, Massa, but the door don’t open. Feel like somethin’ pushing up again’ it, and—”
Adam didn’t wait to hear the rest. He brushed past her and headed down the long hallway to where his bedroom door loomed huge and impenetrable.
Lori had pushed that damn chair against the door again, that was all. And she’d fallen asleep, so she didn’t hear the maid knock. That’s all it was. Nothing to be concerned about. No reason whatsoever for apprehension to be tying his stomach into a knot.
He reached the door and tried the knob and found the door wedged tight as it had been before.
“Lori?” he called, rattling the knob.
No response.
“Lori, wake up!” he called louder and pounded on the door.
Still no response.
“Lori, can you hear me?” he shouted to the solid wood panel and briefly considered throwing his weight against it and breaking it down.
But he wasn’t yet that desperate, although the apprehension in his stomach had now become a hot ball of fear when he remembered the threats she’d once made to harm herself. But surely she wasn’t that upset now, not when he’d already promised her he’d send Eric away and do whatever she wanted.
He glanced over his shoulder to see that Effie had followed him down the hall and now stood by, still wringing her hands. He saw that his shouting had also brought Sudie to the door of Eric’s room to see what was going on.
“Go outside to the bedroom windows and see what you can see. If one of them is open...”
But she was already running to do his bidding.
“What’s the matter?” Sudie asked, coming toward him her hands locked tightly together at her waist, as if afraid o what they might do if she let them go.
“Nothing,” Adam said with a forced smile, wishing h really believed that. “Effie couldn’t rouse Lori, so I’ve sent her out to climb in a window.”
“Why don’t you just open the door?’ she asked with frown.
Somehow he held onto his smile. “Because Lori has chair wedged under the knob and it won’t open.”
“What for she do a fool thing like that?” Sudie asked in amazement.
What for indeed. “I think... she was afraid.” Only when he said the words did the truth of them really hit him. She must have been afraid to have blocked the door like that. But why?
“Afraid of what?” Sudie asked.
What had she told him? “She said... she was afraid of Eric.”
Sudie snorted in disgust. “He can’t get outta his bed. Why for she be afraid of him?”
Before Adam could think of an answer, they heard foe steps on the other side of the door. Finally! Lori had heard them and was opening the door. They heard the sound of the chair being removed, and then the wooden panel swung inward to reveal... Effie.
“The window was open, so I come on in,” she began, but Adam pushed past her, his frantic gaze scanning the room. The bed had been stripped, the bedclothes lying on the floor in a heap, but there was no sign of Lori.
“Where is she?” he demanded of the girl who cringed away from his fury.
“I don’t know!” she cried in terror. “She just gone. And the baby, he gone, too!”
By the time she reached the cabin, Lori could hardly stand. She wasn’t sobbing anymore because she was too weak for that, but the tears still streamed from her eyes, and she was still staggering as fast as she could, terrified that Eric and the other demons were after her.
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