She turned and strode off toward the village and I sat there for a long time, wondering if she was right.
CHAPTER 30
I was sitting in the middle of the four-poster bed in the master suite when Michael finally returned near dawn. Wordlessly, he stripped off his clothes, sodden with blood and sea spray, and tossed them into a pile on the floor. Gloriously naked, he walked across the room and looked down at me, running one hand through his dark blond hair. It was a gesture of frustration he’d picked up from Devlin over the years and any hope I’d had that I might be able to seduce him into waiting until tomorrow to talk about this went right out the window. Instead, I scooted over and pulled back the covers.
“I haven’t seen you lose control of it for a long time,” Michael said carefully. “You could have killed him, you know.”
“But I didn’t,” I said, more harshly than I’d intended.
“Only because I was there to stop you, Cin. What if I’d been too late?”
“Then I’d say he deserved it.”
Michael took my chin in his hand and turned my face to his. “That isn’t your call to make,” he said softly. “We execute vampires who kill humans, Cin.”
“I know well what we do, Michael. I’ve been covered in the blood and death of it for nearly half a century.” I shook my head. “Yes, I lost control of the darkness. I don’t know why. Perhaps it has to do with the black magic that seems to permeate this island. But what do you want me to say, Michael? I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger. I’m sorry that others witnessed it. I’m sorry if that makes what we’re trying to do here harder. But if you expect me to say that had I killed him I’d be crying in my whisky right now, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“I’m not disappointed in you, Cin. I’m scared for you.”
I took a deep breath and laid back against the pillows. “I know,” I said wearily. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that I’m so tired of having to be in control all the time. It’s . . . it’s bloody exhausting, Michael.”
I told him about my conversation with Pandora and what she’d said about the black magic. The minute I saw the expression on his face I wished I’d held my tongue.
“You aren’t actually considering this, are you?” he asked in astonishment. “You aren’t seriously telling me you’re thinking of taking the advice of a woman steeped in black magic, who may or may not be in league with the man who kidnapped your cousin and tried to burn a hotel down around us?”
“I know what she is, Michael, but you can’t deny that it makes some sense.”
“Sure,” he said incredulously, “and I would tell you to give it a whirl if your magic made butterflies out of bees or turned water into whisky. But it is deadly, Cin. I’ve seen you in the throes of it. You don’t know what you’re doing and you could hurt a lot of people in the process. Remember the conversation we had at Raven-worth, and a thousand times before, about Gage and Edinburgh?”
I narrowed my eyes at the way he said a thousand times before. “I’m sorry I’m such a trial to you.”
“Don’t you ever think that,” he said hotly. “It’s just that I know you and I know the guilt you carry, despite your brave words about Robert McCready just now. You’ve killed humans, Cin, evil humans, and their deaths still weigh on you. Think about how you would feel if you hurt any of the innocent people on this island. If you try this and things go badly, how are you going to stop it before it harms, or even kills, someone you care about?”
I wanted to be angry with him for not having faith in me, but I couldn’t. He was right.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “I’m just so tired, Michael. I’m tired of fighting a war against myself.”
He gathered me in his arms and kissed my neck.
“I know,” he said softly. “I love you, Cin, and if I could take that burden from you, I would.”
It was meant to be comforting, I knew that, but his words only made me feel worse—like I had some sort of disease he wished he could cure. I closed my eyes and we lay there in silence, listening to the birds chirping as dawn broke across the island.
CHAPTER 31
Supper the following evening was a quiet affair. Michael sat silently at my side. He’d been following me around like a disapproving shadow all evening, as though he were waiting for me to snap and start massacring people. It was already getting tedious and I had at least another week and a half such nonsense to look forward to until Devlin and Justine returned. I wasn’t certain if Claire sensed the tension between us or if spreading blackberry jam on her biscuits truly required that much concentration, but finally she broke the silence.
“What are you going to do with the plantation, Cin?” she asked.
“I have some thoughts on the matter,” I said eagerly, “but I don’t know the law here well enough to know how, or even if, such things can be accomplished.”
“We were going to ask Mr. McCready’s advice on the subject,” my darling husband felt the need to add.
“Well, good riddance to bad rubbish, I say,” Claire declared. “Just out of curiosity, what are you going to tell Lizzie about—”
Claire bared her teeth and held her hands up, curling her fingers in a claw-like gesture that I assumed was meant to look like a vampire. I rolled my eyes and pressed my palms to my forehead.
“I have no idea,” I said.
As if summoned by my thoughts, Pandora entered the dining room to announce that Lizzie McCready wished an audience.
“I suppose we might as well get this over with,” I muttered. “Pandora, please make Mrs. McCready comfortable in the parlor and tell her I’ll be there shortly.” Michael and I rose, and I looked across the table at Claire. “When you’re finished, you’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”
She nodded eagerly and proceeded to spread blackberry jam across another biscuit.
CHAPTER 32
When we entered the parlor Lizzie McCready was standing next to the fireplace looking nervous and uncomfortable. Belatedly I realized that my appearance tonight probably did nothing to put her at ease. Since the debacle of the previous evening, I’d given up any pretense of being human. I’d dropped the glamour I’d been using to keep my hair copper-red, returning it to my natural scarlet. And had I known Lizzie was coming tonight I would have dressed more appropriately in one of my lovely evening gowns instead of my breeches and boots, but there was no help for it now.
“Mrs. McCready,” I said, “I’m glad you came. Please, sit down.”
“Mrs. Craven, I am eternally grateful to you for saving Cassandra last night. But I have two questions that I’ll be needing answers to,” Lizzie blurted out, as if she’d practiced her speech and now wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. “First, I need to know, for my childrens’ sake, what you intend to do about . . . what happened last night.”
“I don’t believe there’s anything to do about it, do you, Michael?” I asked, knowing that she was wondering if we were going to turn her over to the authorities in Savannah for murder.
Michael sat down, lounging negligently against one arm of the sofa. “No,” he agreed. “I don’t believe there’s anything to be done about a man who would run off in the middle of the night and abandon his wife and children.”
Lizzie stared at us for a long moment as understanding dawned on her. Then she let out a shaking breath and some of the color returned to her cheeks.
“And your other question?” Michael asked.
She swallowed hard and shifted her gaze from him to me. “I know what sort of a monster my husband was,” she said.
I nodded. “And now you’d like to know what sort of a monster I am.”
Lizzie sank down on the wing chair across from me. “I suppose so,” she said, “though I would have never put it so indelicately.”
It took quite a bit longer to explain to Lizzie what we were than it had to Evangeline. Mostly because, after what she’d seen last night, it was difficult to convince he
r that we were neither evil, nor were we going to harm her or her children. It helped that halfway through the conversation Claire joined us, sitting on the sofa between Michael and me without a care in the world. Lizzie had come to know Claire in the weeks she had been here and Claire’s trust in us helped to ease Lizzie’s fears.
That is, until Claire felt compelled to announce, “And as long as we’re confessing our sins, I’m pregnant and Ares, the Greek god of war, is the father of my child.”
Lizzie’s eyes widened and she looked at the lot of us as if we were all deranged.
I patted Claire’s hand. “Perhaps we should move the topic of conversation on to something a little less supernatural. Mrs. McCready—”
“Please,” she interrupted, “call me Lizzie. I think we know enough of each other’s secrets at this point to dispense with formality.”
“Lizzie, I have to decide rather quickly what I’m going to do with this plantation,” I said. “I’m hoping that you can give me some guidance.”
Lizzie looked startled, but pleased. “I’d be honored to offer whatever advice I can,” she said.
“The very first thing I want to do is free the slaves,” I announced.
Lizzie shook her head. “You abolitionists are all alike. You have high ideals but none of you understand the reality of what you’re doing.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Perhaps you could enlighten us, then?” Michael suggested.
“All right,” she said. “First of all, even if you wanted to, you can’t do it. It’s illegal to free a slave in the state of Georgia. You can make a black person a nominal slave, which basically means they are allowed to live and work as a freedman under your guardianship. There are many of them in Savannah. But there are bonds and monthly taxes that must be paid for this and the cost of doing such a thing for every slave on this island would be prohibitive.”
“How prohibitive?” I asked.
She gave me a figure that, even with my financial resources, I was disheartened to hear. “Well,” I said, “is it illegal for me to take my slaves to a free state and emancipate them?”
“No,” she conceded, “but say you do take them up north and free them, what are they supposed to do then?”
“Whatever they want to do, I suppose,” I replied.
“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Lizzie said. “Just on this plantation alone, that would mean taking nearly a hundred colored folks who have little education and no marketable skills except as farm laborers and dropping them in the middle of some strange Yankee state. Where are they supposed to live? What are they supposed to do for work? How are they going to feed their families? Most of these slaves have never been off this island.” She shook her head. “Life might eventually be better for them in a few generations but right now, for these people, to set them free means unimaginable hardship and possible starvation.”
“Not to mention you’re going to bankrupt my plantation!” Evangeline hissed in my ear, making me jump.
“Don’t you have someplace else to be?” I whispered fiercely.
“Pandora’s in the kitchen with Ginny,” the ghost said. “What’s happening in here is a whole lot more interesting.”
Michael glanced sharply at me and, figuring out what was going on, drew Lizzie’s attention away from me and continued the conversation.
“While it would be possible to pay the fees and taxes to make them nominal slaves,” Michael said. “I dislike the idea of giving that substantial an amount of money to a state that perpetuates slavery. I have every faith that by the time this war is over Mr. Lincoln will free them all anyway. I think we simply need to figure out how to proceed between now and then.”
“I honestly do appreciate the sentiment behind what you’re trying to do,” Lizzie said. “I just don’t want to see them worse off than they are now. These are good people. I care about what happens to them. As you’re well aware, Robert was not always . . . the kind of overseer he should have been. These men and women are hard workers and their labor feeds and clothes us all, black and white alike.”
“And you want to throw them out into the street,” Evangeline complained as she flopped down in the chair next to me. “Where, if they’re lucky, they might be able to scratch out a living as subsistence farmers. And this house is going to fall down around our ears because there’s no income to support it.”
“I’m not throwing anyone out into the street,” I said under my breath. “Now, would you be quiet and let me think?”
“Good luck with that,” Claire mumbled.
“Well, I don’t know,” Evangeline responded sarcastically. “If I do, are you going to come up with something better than this abolitionist tripe?”
“Are you all right, ma’am?” Lizzie asked.
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “Just talking to myself. It helps me think.”
Lizzie didn’t look like she believed a word of that, but she was polite enough to not say so.
“How much do you know about what your husband did on this plantation?” I asked her, an idea taking form in my head.
“What do you mean?” she asked suspiciously.
“I don’t mean any of his more nefarious activities,” I assured her. “I mean what his duties were, how many acres are under cultivation, what should be planted and when. That sort of thing.”
“My father was the overseer on one of the largest plantations in South Carolina,” Lizzie said proudly. “I daresay I know more about how one should be run than Robert did.”
“Excellent,” I said. “How would you like his job?”
Four pairs of eyes looked at me in astonishment.
“Cin, are you sure you’ve thought this through?” Michael asked.
Evangeline laughed heartily. “Yes, I can see Lizzie McCready now, out tromping through the fields in her hoops, directing the slaves!”
At that I turned to Evangeline and said out loud, “Would you give me credit for having some common sense and hear me out?”
Lizzie shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Perhaps I should come back later after the two of you have had a chance to talk this over,” she suggested.
I shook my head. “No, that wasn’t directed at Michael. I was . . .” I sighed, and couldn’t think of a single reason that, after everything else we’d confessed, I shouldn’t tell her about Evangeline too. “Lizzie, what would you say if I told you that at this very moment the ghost of Evangeline Boucher is sitting next to me, harping in my ear that I’m running her plantation into the ground?”
Lizzie blinked at me and then burst into laughter. “I’d say that sounds exactly like what Miss Evangeline would be saying right now.”
CHAPTER 33
It took at least an hour to come to an agreement about the future of Kenneway Plantation that would satisfy all of us. It turned out that I owned over sixteen hundred acres, nearly half of which was under cultivation, mostly in Sea Island cotton. While that was a good cash crop, it wouldn’t feed hungry mouths if the war and the economy went badly. Lizzie eagerly offered her suggestions on how many acres we should devote to food crops and which ones to plant. She then launched into a dissertation on the benefits of crop rotation, which bored me silly but did reassure me that I’d chosen that right person for the job. Even Claire had a few good ideas, when she wasn’t out leaning over the porch railing, vomiting on the azaleas. Evangeline wasn’t thrilled but at least what I offered was better than she had expected of me.
It was after nine o’clock by the time we’d put together a workable plan. Nevertheless, I called for Pandora and asked her to have someone hook up a wagon and drive us all to the slave village. The boy Hector took the reins and Michael boosted Claire up so that she could sit comfortably next to him. The rest of us—me, Michael, Pandora, and Lizzie—perched in the back. As we rolled past Lizzie’s cottage I noticed the lamps were well lit, Cassandra waiting with the children for Lizzie’s return. When the wagon reached the little clearing in the woods I felt
my skin tingle as it had last night. I shivered and Michael put one arm around me reassuringly. For the first time tonight I was glad of his overprotectiveness, and I leaned into him. He always seemed to be able to pull me back from the darkness.
“What is that?” I asked, nodding toward the clearing.
“The slave cemetery,” Lizzie answered.
My magic had never stirred in proximity to a cemetery before. Perhaps it had something to do with my new ability to see ghosts. Or perhaps it isn’t me the dead are responding to, I thought, with a glance at Pandora.
When we reached the village, Hector pulled all the way down the road, stopping in front of the last set of cabins. People spilled out of their houses, filling the lane in front of me. Somehow I had expected to find only young people, strong enough to work in the fields, but here were whole families—old men and women, their children, and grandchildren. I was suddenly struck with the enormity of the responsibility I now held to see that I did right by them. One man in particular caught my eye, standing at the back of the crowd. I had seen him at the bonfire last night with Pandora. He stood head and shoulders above the rest of the group, his bare ebony arms the size of tree trunks crossed over his barrel chest. There was a look of suspicion and distrust on his face that I sincerely hoped to alleviate.
I stood up in the back of the wagon and Lizzie came to stand at my right side. Michael moved up behind me and laid one had gently on my shoulder. Motioning to Pandora, I called her to stand at my left. She was the house keeper up at the plantation house, the midwife for the village, and, I was certain, the one people went to for their medicines and charms. She had influence here and I wanted her by my side while I said what I’d come to say.
“My name is Cin Craven,” I announced loudly. “My husband Michael and I have bought this plantation. As I’m sure you know by now, Mr. Boucher and Mr. McCready are no longer in residence on this island.”
Bound By Sin (A Cin Craven Novel) Page 12
