Mr. Wright, of course, was furious that Sukey would dare to appeal to me, or for that matter, that I would ask a slave’s recounting, rather than a white man’s. Mr. Wright called my Sukey a lying bitch and told her to keep her black mouth shut. But Sukey did not back down in fear. Instead, she glanced up at me. I sensed immediately that it was a test. She wanted to see if I am the man I profess to be.
I looked at my foreman and then the frightened girl still lying on the ground, trembling with fear. Her gunnysack dress had been torn to reveal her small, firm brown breasts. She could not have been more than fourteen. My temper flared. I wanted to strike Mr. Wright with my fists, to inflict pain on him as he had so thoughtlessly done on these helpless women. Instead, I commanded him to bring Sugar to her feet and apologize at once.
When he protested, I could no longer control myself. I grabbed his arm and yanked him so hard that he stumbled back and nearly fell. Sukey immediately went to the young girl’s side and helped her up, using her hands to shield Sugar’s bare breasts from my eyes.
I turned on Mr. Wright once again and demanded an explanation for his behavior. He began to immediately make excuses, saying that he had sent these lazy women to the fields to pick bugs off the plants and that Sugar had attempted to run off. He claimed that he laid hands on the woman to keep her from escaping, nothing more. Sukey shook her head in protest. Still holding her friend in the safety of her arms, she declared unflinchingly that Mr. Wright was lying. She said that he had, indeed, sent them to pick weevils, but then he’d called Sugar out of the field to come to him. Sukey said they heard Sugar scream and ran to her aid. They found her struggling with the foreman.
As Sukey presented the women’s side of the story, Sugar was crying, but it was a soundless cry. Tears ran down her dirty, tanned cheeks. It seemed to me that her tears were as genuine and heartfelt at that moment as those of any other woman. And with that realization, I could help but accept that she was as human and worthy of humanity as I.
I reminded the foreman of my father’s feelings about his employees forcing themselves on the female slaves. As I spoke, I could feel myself growing more outraged by the moment. All I could think was, what if this had been Sukey I had come upon, pinned to the ground? I feared I could have pulled my revolver from my holster and shot Mr. Wright dead, and that side of myself I had never seen before.
Mr. Wright proceeded to protest his innocence hotly, asking me if I could believe the word of negra girls over him. I looked into Mr. Wright’s filmy green eyes and knew that he was lying. And I knew that he was afraid. I told him to go to Mr. Melbourne, the overseer, for transfer to a men’s detail, effective immediately. I moved closer to him, poked my finger into his chest and threatened that if I ever saw him near any of our slave women again, he would be out of a job. Not just at Elmwood, but in all of the damned state. I shouted at him, telling him to get out of my sight.
The women remained huddled together and watched as Mr. Wright got on his nag and rode away. I turned back to Sukey, who had sent her friend into the arms of the other women.
I spoke quietly to my Sukey, not wanting the others to hear my tone, telling her what a brave thing she had done. She looked up at me, her face so solemn, and replied that she was not brave, she had only done what was the right thing to do. When her brown-eyed gaze met mine, I felt a flutter in my heart. I knew she was talking not about herself, but about me. She thought I was brave.
And my heart went from fluttering to singing.
19
Cameron walked to the end of the mahogany dining table, carrying her breakfast plate with her. Bright sunlight poured in through the open windows, and the rich, comforting smell of freshly turned soil from the vegetable garden filled her nostrils. She had forgotten how much she loved the rich scent of Mississippi earth, how it breathed life into her.
She hesitated at the sideboard laden with fried meats, egg pieces and sweet pastries, then glanced at Jackson who had his head bent, absorbed in a newspaper. In the sunlight, she spotted a touch of gray in his dark hair and was taken aback by it. Then she reminded herself that he was twelve years older than she. Balancing her delicate china plate, she studied him and decided that perhaps the gray made him even more attractive. Had they been strangers in a crowded ballroom, had she been unwed, she wondered if he was a man whose company she would have sought. Would he have asked her to dance?
Cameron took her place at the far end of the mahogany table and picked up her napkin. “What news is there?” she asked.
Jackson didn’t look up from his paper. “General Hoffman, Commissary General of Prisoners, has agreed to send an expedition of men to the prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, to attempt to identify and mark the graves of Union soldiers buried there.”
“Their graves are unmarked?” she asked quietly.
He glanced over the edge of his paper, giving her a look as if he thought her an idiot. “The Southerners did not put marble headstones on the prisoners’ graves when they buried them. They dropped their remains into trenches in mass burials.” He returned to his paper. “But at least there was some recording of the order the men went into the pits. The Secretary of War seems to think there will be some success in identifying the graves.”
Cameron nodded, taking a bite of corn muffin, though she was not particularly hungry. “Taye tells me that you’re leaving tomorrow for Birmingham,” she said after several minutes of silence.
“Yes.” He did not lift his gaze from the newspaper as he spoke. “Falcon has agreed to remain here and serve as escort for you and Taye.” He turned a page. “Two days ago the Coverdale farm three miles from Elmwood’s west boundaries was robbed in the middle of the night. A band of men broke into the house, took money by gunpoint and raped the wife and sixteen-year-old daughter.”
Horrified, Cameron pressed her napkin to her mouth. If her husband’s intent had been to shock her, he’d succeeded. But if he’d wanted to discourage her from rebuilding Elmwood, he would hope in vain. She was made of sterner stuff and no longer a stranger to senseless violence. The war years had fired her will and tempered it until it burned as hard as steel. She may have been a girl when her father fell to his death from that balcony, but no more. She was an intelligent woman who knew when to pick her battles. She really didn’t want Falcon following her every time she stepped foot from this house; she truly needed her independence right now. But she was no fool, and the reality of the home she had returned to was hitting her hard. The news in the local paper worried her, as well.
Only four years ago, Jackson had been a city where any woman, black or white, could walk down the street safely. Now Cameron even sent an escort with Naomi when she went to town.
“I thought I would take the carriage out to Elmwood this morning.” She pushed a piece of sausage around her plate with a silver fork much like the one that had come from her mother’s own silverware. Physically, she was recovering well from the miscarriage, but she didn’t yet feel up to riding. “I would be interested in knowing what you think of mine and the architect’s plans.”
He lifted his head from the paper, meeting her gaze for the first time since she lost the baby. She couldn’t read his face, hadn’t been able to decipher it since she’d come from her sickbed. But at least he was willing to look at her.
“If you have the time, of course,” she said, feeling silly that her heart fluttered when she spoke to him. It was if they were strangers again and she was tentatively testing the waters around him.
“I’m meeting with a banker at one.”
“We could go now,” she said quickly, searching his face for any sign of forgiveness. “Or later. Of course, it’s not necessary that you come at all,” she finished, feeling the need to protect herself.
He picked up his cup of black coffee. Naomi had managed to find the chicory coffee Cameron had told her he liked and the aroma was heavenly. “If you feel up to it, I could go this morning.”
No smile. No enthusiasm in his voice.
The carriage ride from Atkins’ Way to Elmwood was uneventful. They passed several wagons and carriages and encountered neighbors, many of whom were just returning to the area. Cameron spoke gaily as if life with her husband was perfect, as if she were the mistress of Elmwood again, as in the days before the war. She promised each and every woman she knew that she would call on them soon, or told them that they “must come by Atkins’ Way for afternoon refreshment in the near future.”
They also passed several groups of freed slaves, carrying what they owned on their backs. Like the men and women Cameron had seen from the train, they seemed lost, forlorn. In every face, she looked for recognition of someone who had lived at Elmwood, but to no avail.
On the ride to Elmwood, Cameron and Jackson didn’t speak much, and when they did it was of inconsequential matters. But at least he was speaking to her again.
Jackson approved of allowing Noah to oversee the workmen she was hiring to begin restoration of her family home. He asked for any instructions she might have for the household staff in Baltimore, requested what she would like him to bring back for her, which gowns, which jewels. He wanted her to make a list for him, and Addy would see that all the items were packed in Saratoga trunks for shipment to Mississippi.
When they reached the elm-lined drive, Jackson was able to take the carriage all the way to the house. He had hired men to clear not just the driveway, but the entire grounds surrounding the house and the outbuildings still standing. Her beautiful barn where she had stabled her Arabians was gone, of course. It was that structure she and Jackson had seen burning the night they fled from the soldiers. But the architect had listened well to her description and seemed confident he could design the barn as it had been before.
Jackson set the brake on the carriage and Cameron waited for him to help her down. Physically, she no longer felt weak. As Naomi said, a woman’s body was like a patch of green briers. Give it a little peace, a little sunshine, and it will spring back tough as ever. The bleeding had nearly subsided and her strength was almost what it had been before. But emotionally, she felt fragile, as if she might shatter into tears at any moment. Just the touch of Jackson’s fingertips as he helped her down was somehow comforting.
His gray-eyed gaze accidentally met hers as she stepped onto the grass, and she stared up at him, wanting desperately to say something, anything, to narrow the gulf that yawned between them. But in the end, she didn’t know what to say and he seemed unwilling or uninterested in meeting her halfway.
Cameron turned away and strode toward the front porch, her tone light and focused on the subject at hand. “All the pillars save this one can be repaired,” she explained, resting her hand on one corner pillar of the front porch that appeared to have been hit by stray mortar. There had been no battle on Elmwood’s grounds, but apparently there had been some sort of target practice. “And this can be replaced, once the second floor veranda is shored up.”
Jackson nodded, following Cameron as she made her way around the house, pointing out broken windows, missing shutters and a crumbling chimney that had also been damaged by practice mortar fire. As he walked, he made a few comments, but did not seem interested in engaging in conversation. Cameron reminded herself that at least he was here, and that made her hopeful.
“The kitchen is, of course, the greatest obstacle.” She made her way through the blackened rubble where the herb garden at the back door had once been. “I’m told that the easiest thing to do will be to tear what remains of the kitchen off the back of the house and rebuild the entire structure. Mr. Jasper says it is truly a miracle the fire didn’t spread to the rest of the house. He says the fact that my grandpapa had the forethought to make the wall between the kitchen and main house brick saved Elmwood.” She opened of arms. “Of course, look at this mess. It will take weeks to clean it up.”
“What’s left of the kitchen can be burned or buried,” Jackson observed. “Once it’s cleared, construction can begin.”
Cameron stepped into the charred remains of the kitchen and uprighted a portion of a table on which kitchen maids had once rolled piecrusts and cut biscuits. The scent of burned wood became strong as she disturbed the table and the acrid smell stung her nose. Beneath it, she found a dish, miraculously in one piece. She pulled a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and rubbed the plate to reveal a purple iris painted on the china. “Oh, heavens. Look at this. It’s one of my mother’s morning dishes.”
Something hit the ground just in front of her and she looked up, startled. There was nothing overhead but the blue sky. What could have fallen? Seeing nothing above or before her, she glanced at her feet. There was a small, pale stone at the toe of her boot that had not been there a moment before. She recognized the stone as being one from the bed of the Pearl River; she and her brother and Taye had collected them as children. She looked back at Jackson, but he was moving a blackened beam to reach something.
Cameron rubbed the plate in her hand again, revealing another iris. Plunk. This time a stone hit the remains of the table with a distinct sound. She looked to Jackson. He had heard it, too.
He raised his hand, warning her to stand still. He was suddenly acutely alert. He set one of the iris-patterned breakfast plates down carefully and withdrew the ivory-handled pistol from the holster he wore on his hip.
Cameron stood motionless, her mother’s plate held foolishly in front of her as if it could somehow shield her from harm. It had not occurred to her that someone might be here at Elmwood, not when everyone in the area knew she and Taye had returned to their birthright.
Jackson eased up to stand beside her. “Where did it come from?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head, staring in the direction of where the kitchen had been attached to the main house. When she had first come here, burned timbers had blocked the doorway from the kitchen to the hall, but they had been hauled away. She could now walk from the ruins of the kitchen into the main house. “I’m not sure,” she whispered. “But I think it came from there.” She nodded toward the doorway.
Jackson took a step forward and a stone struck him squarely in the middle of the chest. “Ouch. Son of a bitch!” He grabbed Cameron and pulled her behind him. “Where the hell is it coming from?” Keeping his gaze fixed on the doorway, he gave her a push. “I want you to get back to the carriage.”
“No,” she protested loudly. “I want to know who is trespassing on my property!” She darted around Jackson and rushed for the door.
“Cameron, you damned fool,” he cried out, running after her. “You want to get yourself killed?”
“With pebbles?” she demanded, more annoyed than afraid. “If whoever this is really meant to hurt us, he’d have done it by now.” She turned away from him. “Hello?” she shouted. “Hello? Who’s there? I am Cameron Campbell and this my home. I demand to know who—”
Another pebble whizzed by, dangerously skimming her cheek, and struck Jackson again. This time he cursed in French.
Cameron caught a flash of color and movement inside the house and she ran through the door and down the hall. Footsteps sounded in front of her, but the intruder had a head start. She didn’t get a look at him.
“Stop,” Cameron called, running past her father’s study door. “No one is going to hurt you.”
“Cameron, come back here!” Jackson shouted.
“Wait,” Cameron said. “I just want to talk to you!” She caught another flash of bright blue fabric as the person disappeared around the corner, into the front hallway. It was a woman’s skirt.
Jackson passed Cameron at a run as they entered the front entryway.
A woman—no, a child, her gamine face nearly hidden by a tangle of red-blond hair, bounded up the grand staircase.
“You! Stop,” Jackson shouted, taking the steps two at a time.”
>
“Be careful,” Cameron shouted, grasping her skirts in both hands to follow him. “Don’t hurt her!”
“Don’t hurt her?” Jackson growled over his shoulder. “She could have taken my eye out.”
At the first landing, he caught a handful of the intruder’s dress in one fist, but his struggling quarry screeched like a trapped wildcat and tore free, leaving him holding only a handful of tattered blue fabric.
Cameron glimpsed a flash of scabby knees and dirty bare feet as the girl darted away.
“Damn it, we just want to talk to you,” Jackson hollered, taking up the chase again.
“Jackson, don’t. You’re scaring her!” Cameron’s throat constricted as tears of compassion sprang to her eyes. She had no idea why she was no longer angry with this starving waif who had invaded her family home, but the girl seemed so pitiful in the ragged, oversize blue dress that had been hacked off at the knees.
At the top of the stairs, the girl raced down the hallway in the direction of the guest bedchambers. Cameron heard a door slam, immediately followed by the pounding of Jackson’s footsteps and then the splintering of wood.
“Jackson, don’t hurt her!”
She followed him through a storage room door he’d broken open, to another door that slammed shut as she entered the room.
“Where does this lead?” he demanded, twisting the knob violently. It wasn’t locked, but when he pulled, it wouldn’t open. The intruder had jammed something beneath the knob to keep it closed.
Cameron stared at the door. “It’s one of the attics.” She herself had tried the same door earlier in the week and it had stuck then, too. At the time, she had made a mental note to send one of the workmen upstairs to loosen the door. Had the child blocked it then? Had she been up in the attic when Cameron had been here before?
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