“I’m not going to hurt you, girl.” His gaze traveled from her eyes, wide with fright now, down to the gleam of the cafe au lait skin of her shoulders, dewed with perspiration. He took his linen handkerchief and wiped her neck and throat. She stepped back when he brushed the exposed tops of her breasts.
“My Kingdom don’t allow…” she began.
“Your Kingdom is my slave,” he shot at her, feeling power in his full mastery of the situation. “He is not allowed to disallow!”
Rhea had pulled the wedding dress from the bed unconsciously, and now held it to her as if to bar Jeremy’s approach.
“That’s a lovely gown, isn’t it?” Jeremy asked in an amused tone.
Rhea looked down at the satin and lace clutched in her long fingers, and nodded.
“I’ll bet you’d just look pretty as a picture wearing it, Rhea.”
The beautiful slave shook her head vigorously. “Naw suh, Mister Jeremy. I couldn’t!” Terror flamed the golden lights in her eyes. The thought of putting on the dead woman’s dress was even more frightening to her than being alone with Jeremy Patrick. Everyone knew that any evil spirits left behind by the departed could be transmitted by wearing their clothing.
“Oh, you could, and you will, Rhea.” He pointed first to himself and then to her with a mocking smile, and said, “Master. Slave. I order. You obey.”
“Mister Jeremy, please… I’m scairt to!”
Jeremy went to where the gown had dropped to the floor at Rhea’s feet. He knelt in front of her to pick it up. While one hand grasped the dress, his other slid beneath her skirt and up her thigh. She tensed, but said nothing.
“Well, Rhea?” he asked, his hand exploring her intimately. “Which shall it be? The dress or this?” He plunged two fingers into her.
“The dress!” she cried out.
Jeremy released her and stood up. He smiled into her eyes. “I’m not sure you’ve chosen properly, but I’ll abide by your decision, since I did offer you achoice.” His voice turned harsh, and he ordered, “Now, shuck that old feed sack you’re wearing and let’s have a look-see.”
Slowly, her eyes focused on some point beyond Jeremy Patrick’s leering countenance, Rhea pulled off her coarse dress and the simple drawers she wore. She stood before him, feeling his eyes crawl over her like two filthy dung beetles, devouring her flesh.
“Hum-m-m, you’ve got small tits, but then, more than a mouthful’s a waste. I like those big nipples, all pointy and dark.” He continued to comment on every part of her anatomy while she held herself erect, but shivered inside with shame and rage.
“I’m surprised old Kingdom ain’t give us a sucker out of you by now. He’d grow up prime flesh for sure. All right. You can put the dress on now,” he said at last with an impatient wave of his hand, bored with the game he’d been playing.
Rhea had finished hooking the last pearl button when Jeremy suddenly sprang to the door. He opened it only a crack to peer out.
“They’re coming,” he hissed. “You turn your back and stand right there by the bed. I want my brother to see how pretty you look in his wife’s gown.” He smiled at Rhea, but the look only panicked her more. “Maybe he’ll give it to you for a present.”
Then Jeremy opened the door and fled toward his own room. Rhea worked frantically, trying to undo the buttons and get out of the dress, but her fingers trembled until they were useless.
Lilah hadn’t accompanied Brandon upstairs. Instead, she stopped in the parlor to explain to Ames and Elizabeth Patrick what she had done, to assure them that Brandon would recover, she felt, from his severe case of melancholia.
As Brandon climbed the stairs, he repeated to himself over and over, softly, “Saralyn is dead, but I have Scottie to live for and love.”
He might have convinced himself had he not entered his bedroom to find Saralyn’s image standing beside their bed. For several seconds, he had to force himself to breathe, to convince himself that this wasn’t a dream, but the real woman in live flesh. When he could coerce his feet to move, his lips to speak, he rushed forward, calling out Saralyn’s name.
Rhea tried to pull away when his arms closed around her, but he clung to her and cut off any explanations she might have given him with his hungry kisses. Tears blurred his vision, making Saralyn’s face take the place of Rhea’s in his mind.
“Saralyn, darling, it’s all been a nightmare! They lied to me. You’re not dead! We’re here, together again. Never leave me. Never!” he sobbed, making fast work of the buttons Rhea had been unable to manage herself.
The bodice slipped to her waist and Brandon found her breasts, first kneading them gently with his hands, then seeking them with his lips, his tongue.
“No, Mister Brandon,” Rhea sobbed. “I ain’t her. It’s the demons, the spirits, makin’ you crazy!”
He refused to hear her. Sliding the gown down over her hips, Brandon lifted her in his arms and placed her on the bed. He quickly disrobed. Rhea leaped off the bed and ran to the nearest window. She threw back the heavy drapes, flooding the room with sunlight.
“See, Mister Brandon, it’s me, Rhea. Your wife’s dead and in her grave!”
Brandon, stunned, stared at the naked, tawny-skinned slave whose body so resembled that of his wife. Blinding rage suddenly possessed him. He lunged at Rhea, knocking her to the bed with a single blow.
“You bitch! You evil wanton! What a diabolic trick to play !” He threw his body on top of hers and held her down, slapping her face repeatedly. “How dare you wear her wedding gown! You’re nothing but nigger filth!”
“Please, Mister,Brandon,” Rhea sobbed, “I didn’t want to do it! He made me!”
But Rhea’s words were lost on Brandon. All the pent-up emotion from Saralyn’s death, his refusal to accept it, and the proof positive that she was gone now flooded through him. Prying Rhea’s thighs apart with a vicious thrust of his knee, he sank into her with a fury. She begged, but his attack was brutal and unrelenting. Only with this punishment of Rhea could he find relief.
Jeremy, hearing the unmistakable sounds of bed ropes groaning, came to Brandon’s door and pushed it open slightly. His lips twisted in a cruel line of satisfaction.
Brandon, at that moment, gave a final, violent thrust, and Rhea, a blood-curdling scream. The sound traveled down the stairs to the library.
Lilah, hearing Rhea’s anguished cry, rushed up the stairs. The scene she walked in on chilled her more than the one earlier in the day. A wide shaft of sunlight fell across the bed, and in it lay Rhea, her eyes swollen shut, a trickle of blood coming from her mouth. She didn’t move. Lilah quickly covered her with a quilt that was lying nearby on the floor.
Jeremy reentered the room. He looked around as if seeing it all for the first time that day.
“Well, Lilah, I don’t know what you did to brother Brandon when you took him out alone, but you sure must have fired him up.” Jeremy laughed.
Lilah whirled on Jeremy. “What makes you think Brandon did this to Rhea? Why, he’s not even here. Most likely, it’s your work!”
“What do you mean?” Jeremy sounded offended. “I’ve been in my own room. And there’s your proof, anyway. The culprit himself—guilty as sin, as naked as the day he was born!” Jeremy motioned toward a dark corner of the room where Brandon sat huddled against the wall, clutching Saralyn’s wedding gown. “So, Miss Know-It-All! What do you think now?”
Lilah felt bile rise in her throat. “Oh, no,” she breathed, realizing that all her gentle persuasion of the afternoon had been undone.
She went to Brandon, but he seemed not to see her, not to know who or where he was. He crouched like a frightened animal with his face pressed into Saralyn’s gown, whimpering softly.
For Lilah the next few weeks seemed timeless. Brandon refused to have anyone near him but her. He huddled in his dark room, shuddering at the slightest noise from outside his dim world. The mere sight of a slave at his door bringing a tray of
food sent him into new paroxysms of torment.
Lilah admitted defeat at last and confronted Elizabeth Patrick with the full weight of the problem.
“Brandon isn’t improving, Mrs. Patrick. I don’t know what else I can do for him. I think you should send to Savannah for a doctor… immediately.” Lilah was gentle but firm.
Elizabeth Patrick’s hard eyes narrowed and she looked at Lilah as if she were the demented one. “What? And have my son the focal point of all the gossip on the mainland? Never! There’s nothing physically wrong with Brandon. You’ve said so yourself. Try a little harder, Lilah. He’s always responded to you.”
At that moment, Scottie cried out in Mammy Meranda’s arms. “I’ll take him,” his grandmother said.
But the baby only screamed louder at Elizabeth’s touch. Only when he was nestled close to Lilah’s breast did he cease his angry howls and settle to sucking his thumb contentedly.
“The boy’s going to grow up wild if his father doesn’t come out of this shell soon.” Elizabeth Patrick stood, signaling an end to the interview. “Do what you can, Lilah. After all, this is your responsibility. If Saralyn hadn’t died… if you hadn’t forced Brandon to leave seclusion before he was ready, he would be a well man today.” She swished out of the room, her head high, her face unsmiling. The mistress of Fortune’s Fancy had spoken!
Lilah sat for a few minutes with her chin resting on Scottie’s silky auburn curls. Brandon had yet to lay eyes on his son. A plan formed in her mind. When Meranda tried to take the sleeping child, Lilah dismissed the servant.
“It’s all right, Meranda. I’ll look after him for a while,” Lilah offered.
“He a handful, Miss Lilah. He get to bein’ pesty, you just holler for me,” Meranda answered, pinching the boy’s rosy cheek affectionately.
When he awoke and looked up at Lilah with Saralyn’s great, golden eyes, Lilah asked, “Scottie, how would you like to meet your father?”
His solemn little face broke into a smile at the sound of her voice, showing twin dimples in his cheeks.
“Come along, then.”
She carried Scottie up the broad staircase. Ever so quietly, she opened the door to Brandon’s room. Brandon sat in a chair positioned in front of Saralyn’s wedding portrait, which now hung on the wall, draped in black bunting. A lone candle flickered below the painting.
Lilah didn’t realize until she was beside Brandon’s chair that he had nodded off. She touched his shoulder lightly and said, “Brandon, wake up. You have a visitor.”
His eyes opened and he frowned. “Whoever it is, tell them I’m ill and can’t be disturbed.”
Lilah, who had been so gentle with Brandon since that horrible afternoon two months before, answered sharply, “No, Brandon Patrick! I’m through apologizing for you…making polite excuses. You’re a grown man. Start acting like one! You aren’t the first person in the world who’s ever lost a loved one.”
Lilah moved quickly to Saralyn’s portrait and ripped down the black cloth.
“There!” she said triumphantly. “You may wish to wallow in your misery, but I prefer to remember my friend the way she was—a woman full of life and caring. If there’s a heaven, Saralyn must be looking down on you with great disappointment. She gave her life to give you the son you wanted so desperately. And now you’ve turned your back on her ultimate sacrifice. What kind of man are you, Brandon Patrick?”
Brandon stared at Lilah. He’d never seen her like this or had her speak to him so sharply. He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off.
“I’ve lost both my parents, a brother I never knew, and Granny is failing.” She started to add that the one great love of her life might be dead as well, but thought better of it. “How dare you take your hurt out on everyone around you? Scottie needs you! Do you expect to live the rest of your life married to a dead woman? I won’t have it! You are the heir to Fortune’s Fancy. I demand that you reenter life… that you accept your son … that you find another woman to love and to be his mother!”
Brandon rose, but he couldn’t meet Lilah’s violet eyes. “And what about the other child?” he asked in a pained tone. “How can I live with that… and the way it was conceived?”
A frown marred Lilah’s features, but her words came evenly, her voice betraying no emotions. “The same way your father lives with his mistakes. Rhea will have her child—Kingdom’s child, not yours.”
Brandon found he was trembling when Lilah finished. Slowly he reached down to retrieve the black crepe from the floor. He started to replace it around Saralyn’s picture, then stopped. Her golden eyes seemed to plead with him, two white dots from the artist’s brush adding the light of life to them. A familiar pang clutched his heart. With careful deliberation, he folded the mourning drape and placed it in the bottom drawer of his desk.
Lilah held her little bundle out to Brandon. “Your son, sir.” Before Brandon could object, Lilah put Scottie into his arms. The infant cooed softly and clutched at his father’s finger.
Brandon held his son close, hugging him. Lilah watched tears slip down his pale cheeks. Brandon reached out and drew Lilah to him. “He’s beautiful… and so are you.”
“He inherited all the best qualities his mother and father had to give him,” Lilah whispered, feeling her own tears near the surface.
Brandon felt a tight-wound spring suddenly let go inside him. He held his son close and kissed his baby-soft cheek.
“Scottie,” he wept, “my son, my son!”
Lilah left the two alone to get acquainted. On her way out, she informed Elizabeth Patrick that Brandon would be down for supper. Lilah expected no thanks and received none.
Lilah left Fortune’s Fancy with a lighter heart than she’d felt in months. But this seemed to be her day for running headlong into problems that needed immediate solutions.
Since Brandon’s attack on Rhea, Kingdom had stayed away from the Fitzpatrick cabin. He seemed to be avoiding Lilah in particular. But as she walked home along the edge of the swamp, Kingdom materialized out of the shadows.
“Kingdom!” she exclaimed. “You frightened me!”
His usual broad smile was absent. “I need to talk to you, Miss Lilah.”
“Of course, Kingdom. Walk along home with me. What’s your problem?”
“It’s your uncle. He drunk as a coot, and stripped the hide offen old Tee-Bo today. Master Ames must of beenstruck deaf and blind not to see what that man’s doin’ to the people. Some of them wild bucks been talkin’ out an’ out rebellion if Mister Grady don’t lighten up with that black snake of his. I been doin’ my best to keep ’em in line, but it’s hard. ‘Specially when they sees their folks whupped near to death for nothin’ You reckon you could talk to him, Miss Lilah?”
Lilah couldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry, Kingdom. He wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Then maybe you could speak to Master Ames?”
“I’ll see,” she answered weakly. “Mister Brandon’s better now, so his father will no doubt take a firmer hand with things.”
At the mention of Brandon’s name, Kingdom made an angry sound deep in his throat.
Lilah stopped and looked at him. She held her voice steady as she said, “What’s done is done, Kingdom. It’s best if you forget what happened and just look forward to the birth of your first child.”
“Ain’t my child!” Kingdom bristled.
Lilah touched his rough, brown hand in a gesture of understanding, and looked into his troubled night eyes.
“You took Rhea on as your responsibility when you jumped the broomstick with her. Don’t blame her or the child for what happened. I nursed your wife after the attack. I know what she’s been through. Make this your child, Kingdom! You’re the only father it will ever know. And Rhea needs to understand that you don’t blame her.”
Kingdom hung his head and nodded slowly. “You right, Miss Lilah. I been mean as a snakebit bull to her ever since it happened. Cou
ldn’t even bring myself to look at her for weeks … Ain’t showed her no concern or tenderness.” He straightened, and Lilah caught the determined glitter in his eyes. “I’m a slave, my wife’s a slave, and this baby gonna be a slave. Don’t matter none who done the plantin’, the harvest gonna be the same. He got to learn slave ways if he gonna survive.”
“I know it’s hard, Kingdom, but you do understand,” Lilah said softly.
Suddenly, Kingdom looked at Lilah and smiled.
“Will you birth my Rhea’s baby, Miss Lilah? We’d both be mighty proud if you would.”
“You know I’ll be there, Kingdom. Tell Rhea not to worry.”
But Lilah did worry. Oh, if only this child were Kingdom’s! The incestuous ramifications of this birth were too complicated for Lilah to puzzle out. It was said Rhea was Rainbow’s child by Ames Patrick’s seed. If so, she was fathered by her own grandfather, and now impregnated by her half brother.
She brushed aside the troubling thoughts. There would be months before she had to worry about the problem.
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union, causing tempers and war talk to run rampant throughout the South. And on Christmas Day Brandon Patrick asked Lilah Fitzpatrick to marry him.
“Looks like you lost your chance for true love when that Yankee feller run off and left you,” Granny reasoned when Lilah asked her opinion of the match. “Too bad. I had him figured for a good ‘un. But you got to trust in fate, girl. Maybe you was born to return us to the fold and regain what’s rightfully ours.” Granny smiled, then chuckled. “Up to now, I just been waitin’ out my time to join my Jonathan. But I wouldn’t miss this here weddin’ for the world! Reckon I’ll move right into one of them fancy bedrooms up to the big house soon as you’re Mrs. Brandon Patrick, honey. In-laws is allowed, you know!”
Lilah smiled back at the old woman. She hadn’t seen Granny look this happy—ever. She felt good about the marriage too. Over the past weeks she, Brandon, and Scottie had formed a unit of their own. They enjoyed being together. Scottie accepted her as the only mother he’d ever known, and she loved the boy as if he were hers. True, Saralyn had been in her grave barely three months, but Scottie needed her…. So did Brandon.
Rainbow Hammock Page 19
