She burst through the cabin door to discover Bessie bent aver a pot that hung on the fire, stirring.
“Lord have mercy!” Bessie cried when she had looked up n surprise and identified her visitor. “What’s the matter? Oh, dear God, it ain’t the Yankees, is it? Have they come? Did they burn Elmhurst to the ground?”
But Lori couldn’t answer because she was still crying too lard and because she couldn’t catch her breath and because her legs would no longer hold her upright and the room was spinning.
“Sit, sit!” Bessie commanded, grabbing Lori just before he fell and easing her down onto one of the benches that he’d pulled from under the kitchen table. “Are you hurt? Is the baby all right?”
Lori didn’t know whether to shake or nod her head, so she managed to gasp, “Fine,” while Bessie proceeded to unwrap tie sling that held the baby against her so she could see for herself.
Matthew awoke instantly, and he wasn’t at all happy about being disturbed. She wondered if he could be hungry again, but decided that it was too soon. He was just angry.
“There, now, what’s all the fuss about?” Bessie wanted to know, cradling the baby in her arms and rocking him instinctively.
He gave another plaintive wail and then settled down, allowing himself to be placated by the rocking and the attention.
Lori managed to reach up with trembling hands and wipe the tears from her face as her breathing slowly returned to normal. She was aware of Bessie’s troubled gaze and the questions she would be asking again in a moment. She drew a deep breath and answered them before Bessie could press her.
“I left him.”
“Who? Adam?” Bessie asked in amazement.
“Eric came home,” she said. “He deserted from the army. He’s sick with a fever.”
“So you left Adam?” Bessie asked incredulously. Of course she wouldn’t understand. She never understood anything.
“Adam said...” she began, and her voice cracked as the pain of his betrayal washed over her again. She drew a breath and tried once more. “He said he forgave me! Like he thought I did something wrong!”
“Adam forgave you?” Bessie clarified, clearly confused.
Lori nodded.
“Then what’s the matter? Good Lord, girl, if he ain’t gonna hold the past against you, what you got to be worried about?
“I shouldn’t have come here!” Lori cried in despair, jumping to her feet. “I should’ve known you’d be like this. You never believed me, either! Give me my baby!”
“Only if you’re goin’ back to Elmhurst,” Bessie warned her, holding the child away.
“Not as long as I live!”
“Where you think you gonna go then? It’s comin’ on night! You gonna sleep out with a young’un? Go to some neighbor and explain how you left your husband ’cause he took his sick brother in?”
“Give me my baby!” Lori screamed, lunging for her. Or trying to, but Bessie clamped a strong hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down again, and she was too weak to resist. And she was crying again, tears she was afraid would never stop because they could never wash away the pain of Adam’s betrayal.
“You sit right down there and rest. I’ll fix you some supper and then we can talk about what you’re gonna do.”
As if she had a choice, Lori thought miserably, and laid her head down on her arms on the table and wept.
***
“All her clothes are still here,” Adam pointed out to Sudie who, like Adam and Effie, was searching the room frantically for some clue as to what had happened to Lori and the baby.
Sudie came over and glanced in the wardrobe. Then she pulled open the top drawer of the dresser and rummaged through it. “All the clothes you give her is here,” she said. “What she brung with her is gone.”
“What does that mean?” Adam demanded.
“That mean she gone, too.”
Effie moaned in distress.
“Hush up!” Sudie snapped. “You go see if Massa Eric need anything.”
The girl seemed only too glad to escape.
“Where could she have gone?” Adam asked desperately the moment they were alone. “And why?”
“It don’t matter, do it?” Sudie asked in return, her eyes shining brightly. “You free, Massa! That girl done tricked you into marryin’ her, but now you’s free!”
Adam grabbed her by the arms, wanting to shake her but somehow managing to restrain himself. “But I don’t want to be free!”
Sudie refused to understand. “She be glad to give you the baby, that’s what you want! A girl like that, she take money and be gone before you know—”
This time he did shake her, once, making her head snap back and silencing her. “Don’t you understand?” he asked her furiously. “I don’t care what she’s done or why! I just want her! I want her back here safe and sound, and I’ll do anything to get her back. Anything at all!”
“Even kill your own brother?” she asked, her face white as the truth of his words sank in. “That’s what you do,” she hurried on when he would have protested, “if’n you throw him out, sick as he is!”
“I told you he could stay until he’s well!”
But Sudie shook her head and tears filled her eyes. Adam released her at once, shocked speechless at the sight of those tears. He could never remember seeing Sudie cry, not once, not in his whole life.
“She can’t have gotten far,” he said gruffly. “I’ll send some of the men out to look for her. And when she comes back,” he added, lifting a finger in warning, “you’ll treat her with all the respect due my wife.”
Sudie lifted her chin, refusing to cower before him. “Yes, Massa,” she said, letting him hear all her fury and disgust.
Too angry to deal with her another second and too anxious to find Lori to delay, he turned and hurried out of the room.
He had just reached the bedroom door when she said. “What if she won’t come back?”
He didn’t even acknowledge the question because he didn’t know the answer.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I wish you’d eat somethin’,” Bessie fussed as she turned down her bed for Lori.
“I just can’t, not tonight.” Lori had tried, but she couldn’t even bring herself to swallow anything more solid than the cup of tea Bessie had finally forced on her when she’d been unable to eat the beans and fatback she’d fixed for supper.
“You don’t eat, your milk’ll dry up, and then you’ll have to go back to Elmhurst to get yourself a wet nurse!” Bessie, of course, felt certain that Lori would be returning to Elmhurst the instant she came to her senses, which in Bessie’s estimation should happen at any moment.
Lori glanced down at the baby in her arms and knew a moment’s regret for what he would miss if she never went back. But only a moment’s. She couldn’t trade her self-respect for material things.
“Here you go,” Bessie said when she had finished turning the covers back on the big bed she and Lori Is father had shared. “I’ll be up in the loft if you need anything.”
“I hate to put you out of your bed,” Lori said guiltily. “I should sleep up there.”
“You can’t carry that baby up the ladder to the loft, so you two’ll sleep here tonight, and we’ll worry about the rest of it later.” The implication was clear: she didn’t expect Lori to be here long enough to have to worry about it at all.
Night had fallen, and Bessie picked up the lone candle and began to carry it into the other room. “Leave the door open a crack. I’ll wait out there with the light until you’re tucked in.”
Lori nodded. Once she’d been used to getting undressed in the dark because candles were so dear. Life at Elmhurst had spoiled her.
Bessie had just stepped into the front room when they heard the sound of an approaching rider.
Lori’s heart seemed to stop beating as terror gripped her. He was coming for her! She didn’t even bother to wonder who he was. She only knew she didn’t want him to find her.
“Don’t tell him I’m here,” she begged Bessie in an urgent whisper.
The rider carried a torch, and its light cast eerie shadows through the shuttered windows. Lori instinctively shrank from them.
“You want his slaves turnin’ over every rock in the county lookin’ for you all night long?” Bessie scoffed. “ ’Course I’ll tell him you’re here. That don’t mean you got to go back if you don’t want to, though. You just stay right where you are. I’ll take care of everything.”
Lori laid the baby on the bed and took up a post by the bedroom door which Bessie had left just ajar so she could hear what was going on.
She heard a man’s voice yell, “Hello, the house!” and her terror abated somewhat. It was just Oscar. What had she expected, that one of the mighty Ross brothers would come traipsing after her himself?
The front door opened, and Bessie called back, “What you want?”
“ ’Scuse me for botherin’ you, Miz McClintock, but Miz Lori, she gone missin’, and Massa Adam, he was wonderin’ did you know—”
“She’s here,” Bessie told him sharply, taking great pains to let him hear her annoyance. “And you tell your massa that if he wants his wife back, he’ll have to come fetch her himself, not send some darkie after her like she was a runaway dog!”
Lori winced. The last thing she wanted was for Adam to come after her, but she couldn’t help appreciating Bessie’s grit. What had ever made her think her stepmother would turn her over to the Rosses if she didn’t want to go?
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Oscar said quickly. “I tell him that directly. He be mighty relieved to know she all right. He was nearly distracted, what with worrying ’bout her and all.”
Bessie sniffed in derision. “Maybe if he’d worried about her before now, she’d still be up there and not down here with me. You tell him that while you’re at it. And you tell him not to bother comin’ down here tonight, either. Miz Lori’s just retired for the night, and she’s too wore out to have any visitors.”
“I don’t know, Miz McClintock,” Oscar said. “He mighty anxious to see her—”
“Then you tell him I’m mighty nervous, what with all those Yankees tryin’ to invade Texas, and if I hear somethin’ outside in the middle of the night, I might just shoot first and ask questions later. He don’t mind a butt fall of buckshot, you tell him to come on down. Otherwise, mornin’ll be soon enough.”
With that Bessie slammed the cabin door. They both waited another minute, Lori literally holding her breath to see what Oscar would do. But all he did was turn his horse and ride away.
Releasing her breath on a relieved sigh, she sagged against the doorframe. Bessie was beside her in an instant, pushing the door back open again.
“You all right?”
“You shouldn’t have said Adam could come down here,” she scolded. “I don’t want to see him!”
Bessie was unrepentant. “You might change your mind in the mornin’, and you don’t want to be the one goes crawlin’ back, now do you? Better if he comes and begs you. And if you still don’t want to see him tomorrow,” she added when Lori would have protested, “then I’ll send him packin’, just like I did his slave. Now get some rest. Everything always looks worse when you’re tired. You might feel completely different in the light of day.”
Bessie pulled the door nearly closed again, leaving only enough space for the candlelight to illuminate the room so Lori could see to get undressed and into bed.
Bessie meant well, she knew, but a night’s sleep wasn’t going to change anything. And she wasn’t going back with Adam until he finally believed her and begged her forgiveness. Which, she reluctantly admitted, wasn’t likely to happen, not tomorrow and not any other day, either. The awful knowledge was like a lead weight on her heart.
When she’d stripped off her dress—the one she was going to send back to Elmhurst, she slid into bed in her chemise, tucking Matthew in beside her. She offered him her breast, and he began to suckle greedily, even though he wasn’t really hungry. It was as if he needed the comfort as much as she needed him close to her. Her body ached both from weariness and grief, and when she closed her eyes, she was instantly asleep.
***
“Hitch up my buggy, Oscar,” Adam said the instant he’d heard the news that Lori had—as Sudie had guessed—taken refuge with her stepmother.
“That ain’t all she told me, Massa,” Oscar said, holding up his beefy hands as if to stop Adam from rushing out the door.
“Is something wrong with her?” he asked in sudden alarm. “Is she hurt? Is she—?”
“No, sir, she fine, or at least I expect she is. Miz McClintock didn’t rightly say. What she did say is that they don’t want you goin’ down there tonight. Miz McClintock say she shoot you if you come.”
“What?”
“I don’t think she was teasin’, either, Massa.” Oscar’s broad face was grim, and Adam was certain that he, at least, wasn’t teasing.
“What am I supposed to do then?” Adam demanded in outrage. “Just leave her there?”
“ ’Til mornin’, at least,” Oscar confirmed.
“She just playin’ with you,” Sudie said from where she’d been listening in the doorway of Adam’s office. “She run away so’s you’ll go chasin’ after her. Then she pretend she don’t wanna come back, and you promise her whatever she wants to get her to come. I reckon we both know what she wants, too, don’t we?”
Adam was so furious that he wanted to smash something. “This isn’t a game, Sudie. I already told her I’d send Eric away.”
“Then she want somethin’ else. More clothes maybe or—”
“Then why did she leave the ones she already has behind?” Adam challenged.
“I don’t know!” Sudie cried, as frustrated as Adam. “All I know is she want somethin’, and she ain’t comin’ back ’til she gets it!”
Adam distractedly ran his hand through his hair.
“You still want me to hitch up the buggy, Massa?” Oscar asked after a moment.
Adam weighed his desire to see Lori with Bessie’s desire to shoot him and decided that discretion really was the better part of valor. Besides, what would he accomplish if they were both exhausted and upset? “No, I’ll... wait until morning. That’s all, Oscar. You can go on to bed. You, too, Sudie.”
“I’s sittin’ up with Massa Eric,” Sudie reminded him. Adam didn’t like the righteous tone in her voice.
“How is he?” he asked guiltily. He should only have wondered because the sooner Eric was well, the sooner he could leave. But Eric was still his brother, and his old habit of needing to take care of him was hard to break.
“He was sleepin’ fine when I left him just now, but the fever comes and goes. I reckon it’ll be back right soon.”
He wanted to ask her when Eric would be well again, but he figured she wouldn’t tell him, or at least that she wouldn’t tell him the truth, even if she knew it. His concern was too suspect.
“Call me if you need me,” he told her and bid them both good night.
But when they were gone, he didn’t even consider retiring to his bedroom. Since the baby’s birth, he’d been sleeping in his old room, but tonight he was to have returned to the master bedroom where he would have again shared Lori’s bed. He wasn’t ready to face either of those places when he knew Lori was no longer even in the house, so he probably wouldn’t sleep at all tonight.
How could he, in any case, when all he could think about was how in the hell he was going to get Lori back?
He could force her, of course. That was his right as he husband. He could carry her back bodily if necessary and lock her up to keep her here. Except that hardly seemed the way to win her heart, and her heart was what Adam wanted even more than her physical presence.
But perhaps Sudie was right. Maybe all she wanted was some new clothes or some other finery. It didn’t seem likely though, since Lori had never really expressed a desire for more of anything, but Adam couldn’t help
hoping it would be that simple. Money was tight, but he’d spend whatever he had to if that would make her happy.
If. The problem was, of course, that he had no idea what would make her happy, because he had no idea why she had left in the first place. Good God, he’d already promised he that he’d send Eric away, and he’d told her that he’d forgiven her for everything she’d done. And he hadn’t even mentioned the lies she’d told. What else could he do? What else could she want him to do?
Damnit, he wanted to wring her neck for causing him so much trouble!
Except that if he really did wring her neck, he’d no longer be able to make love to her, which was what he really wanted to do. He wanted to hold her and kiss her and stroke her until she was desperate for him, as desperate for him as he was for her. He wanted to sink into her velvet depths until they were both lost, until she clung to him with arms and legs and threw back her head and cried out her release. And until she told him again, true or not, that she loved him.
Yes, that was what he wanted, and that was what he would have. No matter what price he had to pay. No matter what price his brother had to pay. Had he once prided himself on the Ross family honor? Had he once believed that marrying Lori was nothing more than a fulfillment of his obligation to the family name? Well, now he knew that he had no more honor than the McClintocks and the rest of their breed. He would do whatever he had to in order to get Lori back.
It was dark, so dark, and Lori was running. She was trying desperately to get away, but the night was so dark and she couldn’t see where she was. Couldn’t see who was after her, either, but she knew he was there. She could hear him in the blackness, his pounding footsteps and his labored breath, wheezing in his throat as he ran and ran, closer and closer. And Lori ran and ran, but she couldn’t run fast enough because her legs were so heavy. Heavy, so heavy she could hardly lift them, but he was getting closer, and she had to get away. She couldn’t let him catch her. She couldn’t let him put his hands on her and hold her down and spread her legs and force himself inside of her. She wasn’t going to endure that, not ever, ever again, not if she had to die to prevent it.
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