by Karen Ranney
It would be a race to see which one of them would make it to see St. Peter first.
When she was a younger woman, she might have asked Miss Susanna if she believed there was a heaven for white folk and one for slaves. She suspected that Miss Susanna would have brightly replied, “Why, yes, of course, Maisie. How silly of you to ask.”
So when the time came—and she had a feeling it was coming faster than she wanted it to—she was supposed to believe that she would be transported by angels to a separate place, one where the manacles she always imagined she wore would be released by a golden key.
Now she knew there was only one heaven and one hell for slave and white man alike. She wasn’t all too sure she was going to meet most of the MacIains at St. Peter’s desk, but she was certain she was going to hear the screams of some of them from below.
The air was quiet. One or two tree frogs were announcing that they were going to be loud tonight. If the temperature was cool enough, she’d shut the window against the sound. They always seemed so happy in their noise, as if they were talking with each other about the party they were having. Or planning another get-together soon enough.
If her Phibba had been around, they would have laughed about the idea of tree frogs talking to each other. Her Phibba was one of those who could see whimsy in the everyday world. When she was a little girl, Phibba had once knelt on the paving stones leading to the gravel drive, watching as a line of ants crossed and asked, “Where do you think they’re going, Mama?”
“I don’t know, child, now get up before you get yourself all messed. It’s Sunday and the Lord will not be pleased if you’re all dirty.”
“Why not, Mama? It’s the Lord’s dirt.”
She smiled now at the memory, and for a second, just a blessed second, the pain was blunted a little. Like having a toothache took your mind off a broken arm.
Losing Phibba wasn’t as simple as a broken arm. The loss of her daughter was like having every single one of your bones broken slowly. Then, when the first one healed, it was rebroken so the pain and the memory of the pain never left you.
She’d never known how deeply she could hate until Phibba died. She’d never known how strong she was, either, with the ability to push that hate so far down that no one could ever see a hint of it.
“Yes, sir, Master Bruce.”
“No, sir, Master Bruce.”
“Whatever you want, Master Bruce.”
He’d killed her Phibba as certain as he’d taken one of his guns to her head and shot her. But his weapon of choice had been lust. He’d used her daughter before she was a woman, when she was just a child. When God, the white man’s God, had laughed and gotten her with child, Bruce only smiled and said that if the child was a boy he’d just made himself some money.
It had been a boy. A perfect little boy whose birth bred a little more strength to push the hate down a little deeper. Neither he nor Phibba had lived, no matter what they’d done to try to save her.
No one ever spoke of Phibba, of how she was still a child when she died. Her death was like the rest of Glengarden. Nothing bad showed on the surface. None of the slave cabins were visible from the lane up to the house. Nor was the whipping post visible. Everything was beautiful and perfect and terribly, terribly false.
That’s why she always sat on the veranda in the afternoon, a place she was most definitely not allowed. But Bruce was away at war and the MacIain women rested and didn’t notice. She stored away that small victory to gloat over when the tree frogs partied and the doves cooed.
Glasgow, Scotland
“WHAT DO you mean, you hadn’t planned on me accompanying you?” Rose stared at him as if he’d suddenly turned green. “Surely there’s room for me on the Raven.”
“It’s not a passenger vessel, Rose,” Duncan said, the reasonableness of his tone irritating her.
“Do you know of any other ships leaving Glasgow in the next week headed for America? Or to the Bahamas?”
His silence was an answer.
She was so annoyed at him that she could barely speak. By refusing to take her, he was relegating her to another train ride back to London. Heaven knew how many days she would have to wait to find a ship going to America. Not to mention the expense of the voyage.
She folded her arms in front of her and stared at him.
“I have to return home as quickly as possible,” she said, giving him the truth. When she left, they were down to their last resources. “Please,” she added.
He walked closer, stretching out his hand to touch her arm.
“There’s no room, Rose. There’s only the captain’s cabin and I’ve appropriated that. The captain is bunking with his first mate.”
“I’ll take up a corner. A pallet. A cot. You’ll never know I’m there.”
“Would you have me ruin your reputation for the sake of expediency?”
She truly wished she hadn’t thought him attractive or fascinating, or easy to talk to. He was determined to protect her, and in doing so, was making the situation so much worse.
Very well, she’d tell him the truth.
“Your gold is going to save them,” she said. “All the people at Glengarden. There’s no food and no funds to buy it. What the blazes does my reputation matter when people are starving?”
He studied her for a long moment. Did he want her to go into the details?
Bruce had donated all of their horses to the Confederacy and converted most of Glengarden’s assets into Confederate currency. They had plenty of greybacks, but they were now only worth pennies on the dollar.
Susanna had been used to reigning over a prosperous household but didn’t know how to practice economies. Claire, even when Bruce was away at war, was so burdened by thoughts of her husband’s opinion and desires that she couldn’t do anything. Rose was left to keep the household running, to salvage what was left of their resources, slaughter their remaining livestock and keep them all fed.
“By the time I return I’ll have been gone a month. I have to get back.”
“Running the blockade into Charleston is harder than the outbound voyage, Rose. You said that yourself.”
She nodded. She knew that.
“You’ll be in danger. How can I put you in harm’s way?”
She threw her hands up in the air.
“I have to get back to Glengarden, Duncan. Don’t you understand? They’re depending on me.”
None of them had been equipped to handle the sudden deprivations in their lives, though Maisie knew where to look for mushrooms, which to leave behind and which to harvest. She gathered up wild onions by the basketful, set nets for fish. Without her skills, they would have starved.
As it was, Rose had barely been able to tolerate another serving of fish.
They had no more livestock. They’d gone through all the flour and sugar, the kitchen gardens hadn’t been tended and nothing was growing there. There were no vegetables to be had and no one would give them credit for seeds because the merchants in Charleston had to live, too.
No one had thought to lay up seeds for hard times. There’d never been hard times at Glengarden, and the idea of it had never occurred to Bruce.
She’d taken the last of her inheritance to make the voyage to Nassau and on to Scotland, reasoning that the food it could have bought would only last a few weeks, and if she were successful in Scotland, she would be able to provide for them for months, if not years.
“Do you have any doubt that I’ll get home in my own way if you refuse to take me?” she asked Duncan now. “I’ll buy passage on any ship. All you’ll be doing by refusing to take me is delay me from reaching Glengarden and force me to spend money I can’t afford to waste.”
He didn’t say anything, just turned and walked back to the chair he’d occupied.
“Please,” she said. “If you won’t take
me to Charleston, then take me to Nassau. At least as far as there.”
“I can’t leave you in Nassau to fend for yourself.”
“I won’t be alone,” she said, forcing a smile to her face. “I have friends there. I will stay with them until I obtain passage to Charleston. Of course, you could make it easier for me and take me all the way.”
He regarded her for a moment.
“To Nassau, then. And only there.”
She nodded. She’d have the duration of the voyage to convince him to take her to Glengarden.
It was enough for the moment.
Perhaps she should emulate her sister in her adoption of a southern woman’s charm, bat her eyelashes at Duncan MacIain and make herself so fascinating that he wouldn’t think of abandoning her in Nassau.
She smiled at the thought of attempting such a feat.
“What’s so amusing?”
“I was just thinking that I needed to be more like my sister,” she said, knowing that the remark wasn’t going to explain her sudden humor. She would never be, could never be, like Claire.
But she was going to do everything she could to charm Duncan MacIain.
Chapter 8
Duncan sat back in his seat, took a sip of wine and considered the group around him.
Glynis, his irrepressible sister, sat with Lennox at her side, probably in defiance of proper dinner table seating. No one cared.
His mother sat beside him, occasionally placing her hand on his arm. He glanced over at her and smiled. She was doing that a lot lately, as if to reassure herself that he was still there. Eleanor had surprised him, however, in not cautioning him about his adventure. Perhaps she recognized that it was the only chance to bring the mill back to its former success.
Tomorrow he’d be sailing away from Scotland and toward war. Ever since blurting out his agreement to Rose, he’d been recalling a conversation with his English cousin.
Dalton, the Earl of Rathsmere, had gone to America to fight, an idiotic decision he readily admitted.
“There isn’t one waking hour that you’re free of danger,” Dalton had said. “There’s not one moment you feel safe.”
Yet his own ancestors have done the same, coming down from the Highlands, making something of themselves. Strong men, they’d each gone on to found a dynasty, representatives of which had thrived.
It was his turn now to face a challenge.
This felt like a MacIain family venture. They would be sailing on the Raven. His English cousin had purchased the ship, a blockade runner Lennox had built. His American cousin had sold him a warehouse filled with cotton. It wouldn’t solve all his raw material problems, but it would certainly go a long way toward keeping the mill solvent.
All he had to do was finish the voyage.
They had a fine captain in Captain McDougal. The man had once been employed by Fraser Trenholm, the same company that originally purchased the Raven. Captain McDougal had made ten successful blockade runs to Charleston and back, which was good enough recommendation in Duncan’s eyes.
He’d felt a little guilty about pushing the captain out of his quarters, but now that Rose was accompanying him, he didn’t know what else to do.
“I didn’t expect to be there all that often, sir,” McDougal said. “Besides, you represent the owner of the Raven, and it’s fitting you should be in the stateroom.”
Thankfully, the captain’s quarters consisted of two rooms, a parlor and a stateroom. He planned on giving the larger cabin to Rose while he had a cot moved to the parlor.
Their crew of twenty-two consisted of the captain, the mate, the pilot, two engineers, eight seamen, seven firemen, a cook, and a steward. All the men were either Scotsmen or had some experience with running the American blockade.
A burst of laughter made him realize that he hadn’t been following the conversation. If his concentration was on all the details still left to be done before he set sail, that was to be expected. But this might be the last time he was around the people most important to him.
Was this voyage ill-fated? Was he being a fool? No doubt a great many people would answer in the affirmative.
He caught Lennox’s frown and shook his head slightly, a mute repudiation of his friend’s concern. Perhaps his somber mood was due to nerves. Or maybe he felt anticipation for the journey. Sooner started, sooner over. Only hours to go now.
Rose glanced at him and for a moment their gazes clung and held. Was Glynis right? Was he fascinated with this red-haired woman? Was this why he’d decided to take her to Nassau?
She was a relative by marriage only, but the bonds of family were still there. She deserved his respect and his concern. He’d care for her as assiduously as if she were his sister.
Hardly his sister, though, was she? But she was a widow. He needed to remember that. Despite the fact she’d traveled all this way, she was no doubt fragile emotionally. Did she still love Bruce?
It wasn’t just Bruce’s bragging about the number of slaves he owned that Duncan disliked. The tone of Bruce’s letters had been autocratic, as if he’d deigned to answer Duncan’s letters only because he was otherwise bored. He’d grown tired of Bruce’s pontificating about the southern cause and he’d taken umbrage to the man’s way of demeaning anything that wasn’t rooted in South Carolinian culture and Confederate ideals.
The American Civil War had decimated the textile industry in Scotland and nearly brought the MacIain Mill to the edge of bankruptcy. Causes meant less than the lives of the hundreds of people dependent on him.
I didn’t like Bruce very much, either.
He hadn’t been able to get Rose’s story of her maid out of his mind. What had the rest of her marriage been like? Were there other instances of Bruce’s cruelty? Did she genuinely grieve for the man or was she relieved that he was dead?
He glanced over at his sister. He wished she’d tell everyone the news so the rest of the dinner could be a congratulatory one. Glynis with a child. Whether it was a boy or girl, he knew the child would take after Glynis. He or she would be a handful, a hellion with a mind of his or her own.
Lennox would be the happiest man alive.
Duncan wasn’t beset with envy often, but he found himself feeling that emotion now. Glynis and Lennox were happy, and even though their happiness had been paid for with pain and loneliness, he suspected they would have many more years of joy than the ones they’d spent alone.
What about him? Perhaps, one day, he might have a significant announcement of his own. A marriage, a birth, some life change that now seemed to elude him.
“I expect you to keep my brother in line, Rose,” Glynis said, looking at him with a smile.
He couldn’t let that comment slip by without an answer.
“That’s a little ironic coming from you. You’re the one who used to scandalize Glasgow. Lennox and I did what we could to protect your reputation.”
“Oh pish, you were just as bad. Kissing Margaret Sullivan after church.”
“That was a dare,” he said, sending Lennox a look. His friend had evidently told Glynis about that day. He’d thought himself in love and Lennox had dared him to kiss her.
“When was that?” Eleanor asked.
Glynis really did need to share her news.
“Or when you put a frog in Mr. Trumbull’s carriage.”
“Duncan, you didn’t!” His mother glared at him.
He was on the verge of leaving Scotland, and all his sister could do was bring up instances of his misdeeds? He shook his head.
“For the sake of our mother,” he said to her, “I will not recount everything you did in your childhood.”
“He’s known to tell gigantic falsehoods as well, Rose. Be prepared for outlandish tales.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rose said, smiling.
He glanced over at Lenno
x. His childhood friend had acquired a habit of smiling a great deal lately, ever since marrying Glynis, as a matter of fact. If they’d been alone, he would have congratulated him on the upcoming birth of his child. He noticed, however, that Lennox wasn’t doing anything to curb Glynis’s enthusiasm for maligning him.
“And he’s famously penurious. He isn’t charging you for the voyage, is he?”
He stared at his sister.
Rose’s smile grew. “No, he isn’t. Of course, I don’t know what my chores are to be on the voyage. Do you think he’ll make me do the washing?”
“At the very least,” Glynis said. “Or his darning. He’s notoriously tough on socks.”
“Glynis.” He was not about to talk about his socks with Glynis. Next, she’d bring up his visits to Edinburgh.
At least her conversation had lightened the mood. Nobody was talking about the dangers, and for that he was grateful, even if he was her target.
“WHY ARE you smiling?” Duncan asked, joining her in the parlor after dinner.
“Because your conversation with Glynis reminds me of me and my brothers. Especially after Claire left home. We were forever haranguing each other.”
He came and sat beside her, studying her in that way he had. So much went on behind his eyes, thoughts he never revealed. She wanted to know what he was thinking when he looked like that.
“Sisters can be a burden,” he said, “but not more so than brothers, I suppose. Which one teased you the most? Jeremy? Robert? Or Montgomery?”
She looked away, staring at the fire lit against the chill of the spring night. She’d told him about her brothers and he hadn’t forgotten. Not even their names, which was more than Bruce had ever remembered.
“Each of them at different times,” she said. “Strange, how they could make me so mad. I’d give anything to have that time back again. Instead of being irritated, I’d just hug them.”
He reached out and grabbed her gloved hand.
He seemed to know how she felt, how grief would come upon her at odd times. There were moments when the yawning emptiness almost overwhelmed her. Her heart should have been filled with memories of their years together, but they’d been shortened by war.
