Adam shook his head in silent denial, even though he knew she was right. He had thought that, but...
“Go home, Adam,” Lori said wearily. “Go back to your big house and your plantation and your slaves and your family honor.”
“I can’t leave you here!” he protested.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Ross?” Bessie scoffed. “You afraid of what your slaves’ll think if you come back without your wife?”
He felt the heat in his face, but he refused to acknowledge Bessie’s barb. “I can force you to come home,” he reminded Lori, playing his last card. “It’s my legal right.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, as if she had finally found peace. “You can take me against my will, and then you’ll be just like your brother.”
Stung, he actually recoiled from her, and when he saw the look in her eyes, the steely gleam of triumph, he knew he had lost her.
With one last longing glance at the baby who was still watching them in fascination, as if aware of how important their conversation was, Adam turned on his heel and strode out as quickly as he could, not even bothering to disguising his limp. What did it matter if she saw it now? She could not despise him any more than she did. Or any more that he despised himself.
Lori and Bessie stood there, frozen in place, until the heard the buggy pulling away. That was when it hit her: Adar was gone—really gone.
“For a minute there, I thought I was gonna have to shoot him,” Bessie observed, lowering the shotgun at last.
That was when Lori’s legs gave out.
“Lori!”
Bessie was at her side in a moment, helping her up, seating her on the bench at the table.
“I told you to eat some breakfast,” Bessie reminded her worriedly. “How long since you ate anything?”
“I don’t remember,” Lori said as she drew deep bread in an attempt to ward off the overwhelming urge to faint.
“At least you can take a little bread. I’ll put some bacon grease on it and—”
“No!” Lori gasped, trying not to gag at the thought. “No, please, I just couldn’t, not yet.”
“You best lay down then, before you fall down,” Bessie advised her, still frowning with concern. “I’ll keep an eye on little Matt,” she added when she saw Lori glance at him.
“He’ll be getting hungry soon.”
“I’ll bring him in when he starts to fuss. You don’t look like you got much sleep at all last night. You could probably use a nap.”
Lori would have argued if her head hadn’t been aching quite so much. She probably should lie down for a while. And then she might feel like eating something. She knew Bessie was right. She might not want to, but she had to think of Matthew, and if her milk dried up...
“Maybe just for a little while,” she said finally and rose unsteadily to her feet.
***
How much longer could this go on? Adam wondered as he paced around his office. Two days had passed since Lori had sent him away with his tail tucked between his legs. Two days during which he had gone over and over in his mind the things she had said to him.
Was it possible? Could he have been so very wrong about her? And if he had been, how could he ever expect her to forgive him?
Sudie had been silently triumphant when he had returned the house alone, but she’d had the good sense not to say a word to him. He’d spent the remaining time trying to keep himself too busy to think about Lori but instead thinking about her almost constantly.
All that thinking hadn’t done him much good, however, he still had no idea what to do, at least as long as Eric was still in the house. Maybe when he was gone...
But it might be weeks until he was well enough to even sit a horse. And even then, how could he get Eric to leave? In spite of his promises to Lori, Eric had as much right to live here as Adam did, and Adam had no idea how to convince him it was in his best interests to give up the only life he had ever known, a life of ease and comparative luxury and start over anew someplace else. And he would have to convince Eric it was in his own best interest, because Eric had never been interested in anyone else’s.
As he sat at his desk, staring blindly at the account book he’d opened before him and subsequently ignored, Adam heard a knock at the door and looked up to see Sudie standing in the doorway.
“Is something wrong? Is Eric...?”
“He sleepin’ just fine. The fever ain’t bothered him all day, and he doin’ a lot better now. Even sat up and took some solid food.”
Adam nodded. “That’s good.” He should feel glad that his brother was so much better, but he couldn’t help remembering that the longer he was sick, the longer Adam could delay dealing with him.
But Sudie was looking at him oddly, and instead of leaving now that she had given him her report, she came into the room and stopped in front of his desk, frowning down at him. “You look like you was drug through a knothole bad wards,” she declared.
Self-consciously, Adam smoothed a hand over his hair although he knew she wasn’t referring to his grooming. “I’ve had a lot on my mind,” he excused himself.
“Esther said you ain’t been eatin’, and I can see by lookin’ at you that you ain’t been sleepin’ either. If you’re worried about that girl—”
“She’s not that girl,” Adam snapped. “She’s still my wife whether you like it or not.”
“Looks like you’re the only one remembers that,” Sudie observed caustically.
“I’m sure Lori remembers it, too.”
“Then why ain’t she here where she belongs?” Sudie wanted to know. “Or is she just waitin’ for whatever you promised when you went to see her the other day?”
“I didn’t promise her anything,” Adam was happy to inform her. “And if it makes you happy, she didn’t ask me to. She only wanted...”
He caught himself just in time. Some things even Sudie didn’t have a right to know.
“So she did want somethin’,” Sudie said with satisfaction. “And you’re ashamed to tell me.”
Shame, of course, had nothing to do with it. But perhaps he had been wrong not to tell Sudie at least some of what Lori had said.
Adam leaned back in his chair and gazed at Sudie reflectively for a moment. “What did she tell you happened to her? Why she had Matthew, I mean.”
Sudie grimaced with distaste. “She say some stranger breed her. Some man she never seen before.”
“And you believed her?”
She was loathe to admit it, but she nodded once. “Why?”
She considered for a moment, as if she was trying to remember, then she frowned again. “She tricked me. She acted just like...”
“Just like what?” he prodded when she hesitated.
“Like she’d been forced,” she admitted with obvious reluctance.
“And how is that?”
Sudie didn’t want to tell him, because unspoken between them lay the knowledge of how she herself had come to this understanding. The ugly family secret that they never, ever discussed.
But finally she said, “She acted afraid and sad and she claimed she had nightmares about it—”
“She did,” Adam said. “One night she woke up screaming.” He remembered other nights, too, when he’d held her while she trembled in the aftermath of a dream she would never describe to him. “And she could hardly stand for me to touch her at first. Is that part of it, too?”
Sudie’s expression tightened, as if she were steadying herself against her own feelings. “Maybe she just don’t like you to touch her, Massa Adam,” she said cruelly.
Adam winced but he didn’t back down. “She liked it fine once I convinced her I wasn’t going to hurt her,” he said. “But she was still afraid of something. You could see that, couldn’t you? That’s why you believed her.”
“Maybe she was forced, then,” Sudie admitted grudgingly. “Maybe some stranger did it, and she blamed Massa Eric so’s she could get money from you for the baby.”
“Why d
oes it have to be a stranger?” Adam asked, watching her closely. “Why couldn’t it have been Eric, after all?”
“He never do a thing like that!” Sudie insisted too quickly “What for he waste his time with a trashy girl like that? He gots his pick of every girl in the county!”
“And every girl in the quarters, too,” Adam said blandly almost hating the way he knew the words would hurt Sudie.
“He don’t force them girls!” she cried desperately. “He not that way! He never do them things, not like—”
She caught herself just in time, but Adam knew what she was going to say.
“Not like his father,” he finished for her. “But he is like him, isn’t he? So much so that he forced himself on ever slave girl he could get his hands on. I know you tried to pretend you didn’t know, but it’s true, Sudie.”
“Only colored girls!” Sudie cried. “He never bothered no white ones, though!”
“None that we know of—except maybe Lori.”
“She lyin’! I tol’ you! She just out for what she can get!”
“Did you see how frightened she was when Eric showed up here the other day? She was screaming so loud, I thought someone was murdering her.”
“She thought he was a tramp, somebody who’d wandered in and—”
“Then why did she lock herself in her room after she knew it was him? Why did she run away?”
Those were the questions that had haunted him for days, questions that had caused him to doubt everything he had ever believed about himself. Questions to which he desperately needed answers.
But plainly Sudie did not have those answers. “I don’t know what go through her mind,” she huffed. “I only know that my boy never laid a hand on her!”
“Do you?” Adam challenged her. “How can you be so sure?”
Once again her expression tightened, but she wasn’t about to back down either. “Well, maybe he did lay a hand on her. He said so hisself, didn’t he? But he never forced her.”
“Sudie,” he began impatiently, but she cut him off.
"He never forced her!” she insisted, and fled before he could reply.
Adam hardly slept that night. Instead he just kept thinking or trying to, trying to figure out how he could have made such a colossal mess of his life. Morning brought no relief since he hadn’t come up with any answers, or at least none that helped him any. He was sitting in his office, having once again failed to do justice to the delicious breakfast that had been laid before him, when he heard someone knocking at le back door.
It was early for visitors, too early for anyone, really, which was why Adam was sure it must be Lori. She’d come back to him! She’d realized what a terrible mistake she’d made and...
“I’ll get it,” he told the maid who came hurrying down the hall. He fairly ran to the door, ignoring the protesting pain that shot through his leg.
But when he threw open the door, he found not Lori, but Bessie, standing on his doorstep.
“Mrs. McClintock, what—?”
“It’s Lori, Mr. Ross. She’s dying.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Instinctively, Adam’s gaze swept the yard, looking for Lori. “Where is she?” he demanded.
“I left her at the house.”
Adam started outside, ready to call for Oscar to fetch his buggy, but Bessie grabbed his arm. “She ain’t gonna die this minute. Why don’t you hear me out before you go running off half-cocked?”
Adam wanted to argue—every instinct demanded that he go to Lori immediately—but Bessie hadn’t let go of his arm and didn’t seem inclined to, unless he listened to her first.
“All right,” he reluctantly agreed, prepared to give her only a minute to say her peace.
But she glanced down the hall to where the maid still stood, listening to every word.
“Let’s step into the parlor,” he said, giving the girl a speaking glance that sent her scurrying away.
Bessie proceeded him into the parlor, and he carefully closed the doors behind them. “What do you mean, Lori is dying?” he asked as he turned to face her.
“I mean she ain’t had anything to eat since she come to my place.”
Adam was outraged. “If you needed food, why didn’t you tell me? I’ll have Oscar—”
“I got plenty of food,” Bessie said impatiently. “Your people keep me supplied just fine. It’s just that Lori can’t eat none of it. She’s too upset.”
Was it possible? Could Lori be missing him as much as he was missing her? “What do you mean?”
“I mean she cries all day, or nearly so. I mean she can’t sleep most nights, and when she does sleep, she wakes up screaming from dreams of that son of a bitch brother of yours coming after her. I ain’t never seen nobody so scared in all my life, Mr. Ross. She’s took to sleeping with the shotgun beside her bed.”
“Dear God,” Adam breathed.
“You say you love her,” Bessie said, and Adam was alarmed to see her eyes growing red-rimmed and suspiciously moist, as if she were about to weep herself. “If you do, then you gotta do something, ’cause I don’t know how much longer she can stand this. If she don’t start eating soon, she’ll lose her milk, too, and the baby will get sick and—”
“What can I do?”
“I reckon you can shoot that no-good brother of yours, but I don’t reckon you will. Short of that, I just don’t know.”
“I can go see her,” he offered. Indeed, every nerve in his body was commanding him to do just that, but Bessie shook her head.
“Unless you can tell her your brother’s gone, I don’t expect she wants to see you. At least, that’s what she says.”
“Eric’s still too sick to even get out of bed,” he said, absently rubbing the bridge of his nose against the ache behind his eyes. “How about if I send a girl down to nurse the baby? At least that will keep him from getting sick, and maybe if Lori doesn’t have to worry about him—”
“I don’t know if she’ll be too happy to give up her baby,’ Bessie said with a frown, “but I’ll do what I can to convince her it’s for the best.”
“Maybe Sudie knows some remedy that will calm her down and help her eat,” Adam said. He turned and threw open the parlor doors, ready to call for Sudie, but the instant he opened the doors, he came face to face with her.
She’d been standing just outside the room, although how long she’d been there or what she’d heard, Adam had no idea. For a long second, they stared at each other in surprise, and then Adam said, “Mrs. McClintock says Miss Lori is ill. She’s not able to eat or sleep, and when she does sleep, she has terrible nightmares. The kind of nightmares she used to have when she first came here,” he added, lest there be any mistake. “Mrs. McClintock thinks she’s frightened. Of Eric.” Sudie was stricken. Her face had gone starkly pale, and she shook her head as if to deny his words.
But Adam felt no pity for her. “If she doesn’t eat soon, she’ll die. Is there something you can give her? Something that will help her eat? And sleep?”
Her eyes were enormous in her fragile face, and her gaze darted to Bessie. “She’s afraid?” she asked, as if to confirm the unthinkable.
“I ain’t never seen nobody so scared,” Bessie assured her.
“She wakes up screaming,” Adam said brutally. “She’s afraid he’ll come after her again.” He thought he saw a tremor pass through her. “She didn’t lie,” Adam whispered for Sudie’s ears alone.
Sudie’s eyes filled with tears, and she refused to look at Adam, but she said, “I’ll fix something for her. And I’ll get one of the girls to go down and nurse the baby.”
In a moment she was gone, hurrying away to do his bidding. Adam stared at her back as she fled, silently cursing tier and himself. How could he have been so blind? How could he have been such a fool?
“I’d like to see her,” he told Bessie, turning back to her it last.
Bessie drew a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Better let me ask her first. Don’t
want to upset her anymore, do we?”
Adam agreed reluctantly. “You’ll send me word? Right away?”
“Right away.”
“I’ll have Oscar hitch up a wagon to take you and the nurse back. Just, uh, have a seat. Can I get you anything?” Bessie shook her head, but Adam said, “I’ll send in some coffee. Please, sit down. I’ll be right back.”
A short time later, the wagon left, carrying Oscar and Bessie and the nurse and a bottle of tonic that Sudie had prepared for Lori.
Adam watched them go, feeling as alone as he had ever been in his life.
***
Eric leaned against the window frame and watched the wagon driving away. What in the hell was that old bat doing here? And why in the hell was Adam having one of their darkies—no, two of their darkies!—take her home?
Then he remembered that the old bat was Lori McClintock’s mother or something. And that sweet little Lori McClintock was now living here, with Adam.
Or had he imagined all that? It seemed too fantastic to be anything more than a fever dream, but Eric hadn’t been as far gone as he’d been pretending to be these past few days. He’d heard a lot more than anybody thought, and he was pretty sure Adam really had married Lori. And he was also sure that even though they were married, all was not quite well.
Eric smiled, rubbing a hand over his nearly-shaved heat and smoothly shaved cheeks. Sudie had been pretty brutal in removing most of his body hair, and Eric hadn’t really minded, since the lice had gone with it. Still, he’d have to keep his hat on for a few weeks, until he was presentable again.
Smiling at the thought, he heard the bedroom door open and turned to see Sudie coming in.
“What you doin’ outta bed?” she demanded, outraged.
“Jesus, Sudie,” Eric cried, clamping both hands over his privates and scurrying back to his bed. Only when he was safely under the covers again and saw the expression on Sudie’s face did he realize his mistake.
“You’re actin’ kinda spry for somebody knockin’ on death’s door,” she observed.
Well, how long had he expected to be able to fool her? She’d always been the only one who could see through him. He gave her one of his grins, the one that usually softened her up, no matter what he’d done. “Maybe I just like havin’ you wait on me, Sudie. Reminds me of when I was a little boy. You were always the only one who cared about me.”
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