Return to Me

by Rosemary Rogers

  “Miss Cameron needs me” was all she said. “I have to go.”

  “The captain know Missus Logan was takin’ off the minute he left?” Noah demanded.

  “No. And if you send word to him—” Naomi brought her finger beneath her husband’s nose, not caring that he was a full head taller than she and outweighed her by more than two stone. “I’ll put a curse on that big ole stick of yours so that it won’t rise for a month!”

  He took a step back. “You sure Miss Cameron and Miss Taye gonna be safe? I hear it ain’t safe for decent women there, white or black.” He paused. “I could go with ya.”

  She shook her head. “Yer a good man to offer, but this is somethin’ I got to do alone. Don’t worry yer head. Between my bones and Miss Cameron’s pistol I know she got in her pocket, I think we’ll be safe enough.” She lifted up on her toes and puckered her lips. “Now give Naomi a kiss and hand me that bundle of boy. My ladies are waitin’ for me. I think we got a train to catch.”

  Noah lifted the sleeping child and lowered him into the muslin sling Naomi had tied across her chest. As Ngosi settled against her breast and snuggled into the warm fabric, Naomi reached up and stroked her husband’s beard-stubbled chin, not wanting to see the tears forming in his eyes. “I won’t be gone long, lover. You keep that bed of ours warm for me.”

  11

  Cameron, Taye and Naomi took the train from Baltimore, heading south toward Richmond. There they would spend the night and try to locate a train that would take them closer to Jackson, Mississippi. However, no railroad employees seemed able to tell them exactly how they would accomplish that or what train they would need to take. Despite the uncertainty, Cameron was determined to keep going.

  So many train tracks had been purposely destroyed by Union soldiers. It would take months, years to restore train service as it had been before the war. Until then, passengers would have to make do.

  It was not until the train was south of Washington, D.C., and into Virginia that the scenery began to change and evidence of the war surrounded them. Cameron knew the battles sites by heart—Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Petersburg, Wilderness, Cedar Creek. But now those places weren’t just marks on a map or black ink in the newspaper. The battlefields in the ravaged land around them were real.

  The women fell into silence in the mostly empty passenger car, staring out through the sooty train windows as the countryside passed in an almost surreal way. No one spoke; there was nothing to say that could express the aching heartbreak they were feeling.

  A house and outbuildings just south of Washington had been burned to the ground. Cameron had certainly seen houses ravaged by fire before, but what she had not seen was a burned house with four white wooden crosses in the front yard. The tiny farmstead had become a cemetery.

  She felt tears burn the backs of her eyelids as she wondered whose graves those were. Did they belong to the family who had lived in the house and died of hunger or been killed by renegade soldiers? Or had men died fighting on this front lawn and been buried by their comrades, their loved ones never to see their graves? Which was more tragic? she wondered.

  As the train chugged south, Cameron began to realize that while the fields in Eastern Maryland were planted and thriving, the fields in Virginia that had not been burned had been left to grow fallow because there were no seeds to plant, no healthy men to work the soil. In many places, roads had grown into weedy paths. Front yards that had once been manicured by scythe or sheep were growing into tangled meadows. And evidence of fire was everywhere. Brush fires had burned fields, woods and homes. Towering shade trees and orchards had been hacked down along the roadside to serve for firewood for cold, hungry soldiers. The countryside was black and empty.

  And the graves. The graves were the hardest to bear. They were everywhere. In the churchyards. On private properties. Even occasionally by the roadside with nothing to mark a man’s passing but a crudely constructed wooden cross. Who would mourn these lost men? Who would tend their graves?

  When the war had come four years ago, Cameron had understood intellectually why it had to be fought. Her father, though a Southern senator and planter, had been a staunch supporter of the antislavery movement. She understood that to set men and women free, it might come to war. But never, in her wildest dreams, had she ever considered the price Americans, Northerners and Southerners, would pay for the conflict.

  By the time the women reached Richmond that evening, Cameron was exhausted, mentally as well as physically. She barely remembered the carriage ride to one of the few hotels accepting guests and was thankful for the darkness that shielded her eyes from the horrors the city had experienced.

  “Is this the best you can offer us?” Cameron had demanded of the driver as he stopped the sagging coach in front of a wooden two-story building with a broken front door and a rusty tin stovepipe protruding from a boarded-up front window. “Are you sure this place is respectable?”

  “Richmond House has mattresses on their beds, private rooms for respectable women and a roof that don’t leak unless it’s rainin’ cats and dogs.” He pointed with the tip of his carriage whip. “Don’t look like much, but they got a covered well and a dining room. Lessin’ you and yer girls fixin’ to sleep on the tracks, you’d best take whatever beds they got. Richmond’s streets ain’t no place for decent folks after dark.”

  “Let’s go back to the station,” Taye said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”

  “Ain’t no other,” the driver warned. “Most places won’t take women travelin’ without their husbands.”

  “It will be fine,” Cameron said. “So long as we can get a hot bath, clean sheets and something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  The interior of Richmond House was little better than the outside. The only room available was a narrow cubbyhole in the back, wedged under a slanting tin roof. The floor was bare, the blankets on the bed thin and patched and the wallpaper water stained. The hotel stank of mold, grease and cooking onions. Refusing to eat in the dining room without Taye and Naomi, who were not welcome in the “public” room, Cameron asked to have their meal brought up to the room. There, they ate a cold supper of ham, cabbage and water, and fell into an exhausted sleep.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, Cameron began to feel ill. She got up, drank some water from a pitcher provided by their host, and used the necessary pot. She prayed she was not getting ill, but was just tired and unfamiliar with the simple food they had consumed. By morning, she felt even worse, but she was determined to get to Elmwood as quickly as she could. There, everything would be clearer, not so dismal. She just had to get there.

  “Cam? Are you all right?” Taye, who was repacking one of their carpet bags to leave for the train station, turned to her sister.

  Cameron stood near the bed and pressed her hand to her abdomen. The squalid room seemed to be spinning around her. She was sick to her stomach again, but there was also cramping. Lower in her belly. Suddenly she was afraid that there was something wrong with the baby, and an overwhelming fear gripped her as tears filled her eyes. All she could think of was Jackson. She wanted Jackson.

  “Cameron?” Taye repeated.

  But Cameron could barely hear her. Taye’s voice seemed to come from far away.

  “Naomi,” Taye said in that distant voice. “I think there’s something wrong with Cameron.”

  “No. No, I’m fine,” she mumbled. She looked down to be sure her dress was not stained with blood. No blood. Just indigestion. The baby was fine. But her head was pounding and her tongue felt thick and fuzzy in her mouth. “Just…just a little tired is all,” she heard herself say. “Didn’t…didn’t sleep well last night.”

  Cameron saw Taye come toward her. Then the room spun viciously and her sister seemed to whirl out of sight. Another cramp racked Cameron’s body and she doubled over. At the same time, the dirty floor seemed to come up from under her and she felt her knees buckle. Her head must ha
ve hit the bedstead as she fell because there was a sudden blossom of pain in her head.

  Then blessed darkness.

  Cameron stirred, unsure of where she was, who she was with. She felt as if she were floating, but there was pain in her head and an even greater pain in the pit of her stomach. She moaned and someone pressed something damp and cool to her burning head.

  “It’s been nearly a week. She’s not any better.”

  Was that Taye?

  “She be all right,” came another familiar voice. “It was jest that bad water, I tell ya. We boil the water, she get better once it moves through her belly and out.”

  “I don’t understand how it can be the water. You drank it. I drank it. I think we need to find a doctor,” Taye said.

  Yes, it had to be Taye. And the other woman? Cameron knew her liquidy voice. It was Naomi.

  “Ya git her a doctor and she’ll be worse off!” Naomi scoffed. “She the only one got sick ’cause her body was weak to start with! I jest thank Noah’s Lord this boy chil’ of mine was drinking my milk and not that water, else he might be sick, too. A mama’s teats got a way of filterin’ out the bad spirits.”

  “I just can’t believe there’s nothing we can do but sit here and wait for her to get better,” Taye protested, adjusting the cool cloth on Cameron’s head.

  Cameron wanted to speak up. She wanted to tell Taye that she didn’t want to be here. Here was Richmond. She remembered now. But she wasn’t supposed to be in Richmond. She wanted to go to Elmwood. She knew she wouldn’t be sick if she could just get to Elmwood. If she could just tell Taye and Naomi.

  But Cameron couldn’t find any words. Her mouth wouldn’t obey. The women went on talking as if she were not there.

  “’Sides, we ain’t doin’ nuthin’. I tole you, we boil water. Every bit that goes in her mouth. The heat kills the bad spirits. We got to keep givin’ it to her. Wash out the bad with the good.”

  “I only wish I knew how to find Jackson. He’ll be so upset with us when he realizes we left Baltimore and Cameron got sick in Richmond.”

  “Ain’t no way to get him. Ya said so yerself. He gone to Lez-i-ana. He’ll be back soon enough. He’ll find his wife gone and he’ll come after her. Sure as rain.”

  Cameron felt Taye adjust the cloth on her forehead again. It felt so good that it made her want to sleep. Just sleep.

  “I hope she lives long enough for Jackson to find us” was the last thing Cameron heard before she fell asleep.

  “Place your bets, gentlemen,” a man in a crisp white shirt and red silk vest called.

  Jackson carelessly threw down several bills for his next wager, then scooped up the ivory dice and tossed them.

  The crowd that had gathered around the gaming table on the riverboat Saint Louis clapped and exclaimed with excitement as Jackson won again. Men and women he didn’t know called him by name. Some offered to buy him drinks. A woman offered herself to him in a husky whisper in his ear.

  The swinging oil lamps that hung from the ceiling cast bright light over the room. Whiskey flowed freely and there were ladies of the evening roaming the gaming tables to keep patrons happy. The light, the women and the noise were all meant to keep a man on his feet, spending money, but they only made Jackson wish he were anywhere but here.

  Jackson sighed with boredom. In the years before the war he’d enjoyed gambling immensely and had been considered a high-stakes patron of great acclaim in most of the gambling houses throughout the South. He’d gone days without sleeping or eating to play endless games of poker or craps and never felt so alive. But the pastime no longer interested him.

  They were a week into their trip, and Jackson was growing impatient. He had still not obtained any information on Thompson and his raiders. Tonight, he had hoped to be contacted on the gambling floor, but it was well after midnight. For whatever reason, his anonymous contact would not be showing his face tonight. Jackson even wondered now if there was an anonymous contact. He wouldn’t put it past Marie to make up the whole story to get him here alone with her.

  Jackson sighed irritably. His father had always told him that a woman was nothing but a thorn in a man’s side, and he was beginning to think the old man had been right. Couldn’t live with them, couldn’t live without them.

  Jackson glanced up from the gaming table to survey the crowd of well-dressed, wealthy gamblers. If his contact had been among them, wouldn’t he have made himself known by now? He just wanted to turn in for the night, go to sleep and escape into blessed oblivion where he didn’t have to pretend. And where he didn’t have to think about the spirited, copper-haired beauty who was his life.

  Jackson rolled the dice. He’d been mistaken in thinking that putting hundreds of miles between them would somehow ease his anger…or the pain of her rejection.

  A part of him wanted to turn around and head for Baltimore, to make what had gone wrong in his marriage right again. But a bigger part of him was stubborn. Cameron had caused all the discontent between them. She wasn’t satisfied with her role as wife; he had been perfectly content. She deserved to sit and stew at home.

  “Bets again, gentlemen,” the man in the red vest announced.

  Jackson took a portion of his last winnings and tossed them out without counting the bills, glancing up to see Marie approach the gaming table holding shots of whiskey in each hand. Tonight she was dressed in a pink silk gown that complemented her olive skin and ebony hair, making her even lovelier than she appeared by daylight. And those ruby lips—a man just couldn’t take his eyes off those lips and the promises they seemed to whisper, even when she was silent.

  “There you are, Jackson,” Marie purred, sidling up beside him as she pressed a glass into his hand. She tipped her chin for a kiss and he leaned over her, gaining full view of her tantalizing breasts, a whiff of her intoxicating perfume. His mouth brushed her red lips and she sighed coquettishly.

  “Are you winning?” Marie looked up at him through a veil of black lashes as she sipped her whiskey.

  “I always win.” He reached for the dice, but she scooped them up.

  “Give them here, sweet,” he said, trying not to sound impatient. Eyes were watching. Ears were listening. He had to be careful to be who he wished to appear.

  Marie tossed back her head of glossy black curls piled high in an elaborate coiffure and kissed each ink-dyed ivory die. “For luck.”

  He accepted the dice she dropped into his hand and threw them. He won again.

  Marie set down her glass and clapped her hands together before scooping up the money in handfuls. “I told you my kiss was good luck.”

  Jackson looked down at her. “I think I’ve had my fill. I’m going to turn in.”

  “Excellent idea,” she purred.

  “Add Captain Logan’s winnings to his account,” Marie ordered as she glided away on Jackson’s arm. “He’s grown bored with your little games.”

  They left the bright white lights of the gambling hall and walked outside along the deck toward the passenger cabins. The warm, pungent breeze swept off the dark waters of the Mississippi and reminded Jackson of his days sailing the ocean when he was a young man working for his father in the family shipping business. Those were simpler days.

  “We wait one more night,” Jackson said under his breath. “If your contact does not come—”

  “He’ll be here. I told you. He said he had to be careful. We pull into another port tomorrow morning. That must be where he is boarding.”

  “One more night,” Jackson repeated, “and then we disembark.” He halted at her cabin door.

  “Do you want to come in for a drink?” She ran her hand up his arm, and even through the fabric of his evening coat he could feel the heat of her desire for him. It irked him that Marie could obviously crave him, while Cameron, his own wife, didn’t want him in her bed.

  But he would not go inside. It was a bad idea. Marie was too tempting and he was in too foul a mood. “Good night, Marie.”

  She s
miled and smoothed his cheek with her hand. He let her, telling himself it was all for appearance’s sake. Everyone knew of Jackson’s fame from the war, so it was easier to pretend to be himself than another. He had boarded the Saint Louis with Marie on the pretense of traveling to New Orleans on business. He assumed that everyone would naturally presume he was traveling with his mistress; it was the perfect deception. He had told the purser that in order to “keep up appearances,” he and Mrs. LeLaurie would require separate cabins.

  “Good night,” she murmured submissively, slipping soundlessly into her room.

  Jackson found Falcon waiting by his cabin door, staring out into the darkness. “Anything?” Falcon asked.

  “No. I’m going to bed. If we’re not contacted by tomorrow night, I told Marie we’re calling it a bust and going home.”

  Falcon nodded. There was room enough for Falcon to share the cabin with Jackson, but each night he slept on a bedroll on the deck, insisting he preferred sleeping beneath the stars. “I will see you in the morning then, friend.”

  Jackson nodded and entered his cabin. It was spacious for a riverboat and decorated in heavy oak wainscoting and plush draperies and bed linens. He stripped off his clothes, letting them fall on the floor of the dark cabin and walked naked across the oriental carpet, tacked on the floor, to the bed built into the wall. Moonlight streamed through the open porthole, casting a band of light over the bed to the door.

  Jackson lay down on the feather tick across the smooth linen sheets and tucked his arm beneath his head. He stared at the dark-paneled ceiling and listened to the creak and groan of the wood as the boat eased down the Mississippi. He was tired, but he knew it would be a long time before he slept. Images of Cameron and Marie danced in his head, often one superimposed over the other. He heard their voices, so different, other times hauntingly familiar. Marie was easy to be with, so pliable. And Cameron, she was so often so…difficult. But he didn’t love Marie anymore. He loved Cameron. Didn’t he?