Rebellious Heart

by Jody Hedlund

  She cried out and then cupped trembling fingers over her mouth.

  Ben shot from his chair and went to her. Ignoring the glare the servant aimed at him, he lowered himself to the edge of the bedstead. “He’s still alive.” He pried the cup of tea from her and set it on the bedside table. Then he folded her fingers into his. “He’s battered. But alive.”

  She nodded and blinked back tears.

  Ben wanted to pull her into his arms, but the old servant had turned away from the chest of drawers and was now folding a linen on the end of the bed.

  “Apparently Tom wouldn’t speak to the lieutenant.”

  Susanna nodded. “I know he’d never say anything to hurt me or Dotty.”

  Her inky eyes were wide with the horror of what had happened. He could almost see through the whirling inside her mind, to all her regrets.

  “Tom didn’t want me to disobey the law.” Her lips quivered. “He didn’t want to be involved in the deception. He didn’t think it was right.”

  Ben wanted to remind her that sometimes in the cause of justice against tyranny they would experience danger and perhaps even sacrifice their lives. But at that moment, in the face of her pain, he held back his soliloquy.

  “It’s my fault he’s hurt,” she continued. A tear spilled over and rolled down her cheek. “He warned me I would get myself in trouble. But instead I got him in trouble. If only I’d obeyed the law . . .”

  “And what? If you’d obeyed, you would have sent another young woman to her death at the hands of a crazed murderer. You did the right thing. Don’t doubt it for a single moment.”

  “I do doubt it.” Her words rang with passion, and she yanked her hand out of his grasp. “I brought destruction to my family and nearly caused the death of a man who is very dear to me. How can I not doubt it?”

  He brought up his thumb to brush the tear from her cheek. But she turned her head, moving out of his reach.

  “Susanna,” he pleaded, “don’t blame yourself—”

  “But I do.” Her voice was choked. “I can no longer have anything more to do with Dotty or breaking the law.”

  Ben knew she was reacting out of the fear of the moment and her concern for Tom. It would pass and she would once again see the right course of action.

  “The laws are established for a purpose,” she continued. “God intended for us to follow them, even if we don’t always like them.”

  “Sometimes those laws need to be changed.”

  “Then change them.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  “You may continue with your ambitions,” she said. “But I beg you not to involve me anymore.”

  He was tempted to tell her she was the one who’d initially become involved with Dotty—not him—that he was only enmeshed in the situation because she’d asked for his advice. But he swallowed his retort.

  “Bernie,” she called to the old servant. “I’m ready for a repose.”

  The servant furrowed her brow at Ben as if to blame him for wearing Susanna out.

  Indignation stirred within his chest. Susanna had been the one to ask him to share the truth about Lieutenant Wolfe’s tyranny. He hadn’t wanted to upset her.

  And now he had. . . .

  She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  He rose and stood by the bed. For a long moment he gazed down at her, at the sweet fullness of her lips, the sleekness of her cheek, the curve of her chin. She was as exquisitely beautiful as always. But suddenly she seemed hundreds of miles away.

  As much as he loathed leaving her, he knew it would be for the best. She needed time to reason out the situation and see it with more clarity.

  “I shall leave you to your repose, Susanna,” he said.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Ross.”

  He walked from the room, head down, his footsteps faltering and a tiny corner of his heart ripping. If only her good-bye hadn’t sounded so final.

  Chapter

  17

  Susanna held the cup of cold buttermilk to Tom’s lips. “You must drink all of it.”

  Tom could hardly lift his head, and when he did, he took only the tiniest of sips. One eye was still swollen shut, and bruises surrounded the other. His nose was bent where it had been broken. And several of his teeth had been cracked or knocked out.

  And that was just his face.

  From what she’d surmised, the rest of his body was worse: a broken arm, cracked ribs, and damage to his internal organs.

  Susanna grasped the old slave’s hand, the bony fingers stiff and coarse against hers. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t you cry now, child.” His breath came in a wheezing gasp. “I’m just glad it was me and not you.”

  “I only wish it had been me.” She shivered, set the cup aside, and then went to add more kindling to the bedchamber’s hearth fire.

  After a week of recovering at Mount Wollaston, she’d finally convinced Grandmother Eve she was well enough to return home. She only experienced pain when she sat, and even that had dimmed compared to what it had been.

  The first task she’d accomplished after she arrived home was to find Tom and move him out of the cold, dingy slave quarters to one of the guest rooms.

  Mother had been so distraught over the work necessary to repair and bring order back to their home that Susanna had the freedom to care for Tom without her mother’s interference.

  The horror of what had happened faced Susanna at every turn, and she couldn’t bear to see the damage whenever she walked through the house and glimpsed the mattresses that had been split and emptied of their feathers, the linens that had been slashed, the vases that had been smashed, and the portraits that had been ripped from the walls.

  It had been wanton destruction. The lieutenant had no excuse for damaging the lovely items in their home. And outside too.

  She parted the ripped window covering and peered out to the gray afternoon. The broken fence posts lay scattered near the garden, the hay strewn about the barnyard—now trampled and wet—and the grain sacks dumped and the seeds scattered in the mud.

  Fresh guilt stabbed her, and she pressed her hand against her chest to ward off the pain.

  The soldiers had slaughtered over half of their chickens, apparently for no reason other than to quench Lieutenant Wolfe’s need for violence. Phoebe had already roasted them, and they’d distributed them to the poor.

  But Father wouldn’t be able to recover the loss of the mare the lieutenant had confiscated.

  Ben’s impassioned speeches about everyone having an inherent right to liberty and his insinuations that the king was a tyrant came back to whisper in her ear.

  She couldn’t argue with Ben. The king’s soldiers had been tyrants, and Father had no recourse to take against them. How could he possibly accuse Lieutenant Wolfe of anything, not when there was no one to stop the man from returning and harming them even more?

  Maybe she was finally beginning to understand Ben’s involvement in the rebellious activities.

  If the people of Weymouth—herself included—had been loyal to the Crown before, they weren’t anymore, not after all that had happened to their beloved reverend. The incident had only served to unleash more complaints among their parish, not just about the uncensored power the lieutenant wielded, but about the way they’d been forced to quarter the king’s soldiers without compensation, about the rumors of new tax laws, and about not having more representation in the making of such laws.

  Whatever the case, even if Susanna didn’t like the king’s methods, she had to stop breaking the law. Surely there were ways to work out the problems without resorting to illegal activities and outright rebellion. She had to find a way to climb out of the murky abyss of disobedience into which she’d slipped over the past months of trying to show compassion to Dotty.

  And she had to stay away from Ben. She’d allowed him to influence her too much.

  She let the tattered linen slip back over the window, but not before she caught sight
of a horse tied under the towering oak at the front of the house.

  The horse belonged to Ben.

  Warmth seeped into her blood and sent her heart flying.

  When had he arrived?

  She started across the room toward the door, ready to run down to the parlor where he was surely waiting for her.

  But at the sight of Tom’s unmoving frame underneath the piles of coverlets, she froze.

  “What are you doing, Susanna Smith?” she whispered. What was she doing? Hadn’t she just told herself she needed to stay away from him?

  He was too dangerous for her. He’d once admitted that very fact himself. And here she was at the first opportunity, tripping over herself in her anxiousness to see him.

  She forced herself to return to Tom’s side and retrieve the cup of buttermilk. But Tom’s eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell with the steady rhythm of slumber.

  The fluttering yearning inside beckoned her to retreat downstairs and see Ben. There would be nothing wrong with glancing at him from a distance, would there?

  Perhaps he’d come to bring her news of Dotty. Even though she doubted Lieutenant Wolfe would suspect an upstanding citizen like Grandfather Quincy of harboring a runaway, she couldn’t ward off a sudden chill. She pulled her shawl closer and rubbed her stiff fingers together.

  She’d told Ben she didn’t want to have anything more to do with Dotty, yet she still couldn’t bear to think of the young girl’s suffering. She cared too much already for Dotty.

  But how could she help Dotty without endangering her family even more? She gave a soft moan, the confusion reeling through her. “What shall I do?”

  Tom had made her promise she’d pray for guidance. And even though she’d assured Tom she would, she hadn’t spent much time on her knees lately.

  “I need your assistance, God,” she whispered. “I’m afraid. And I don’t know what to do next.”

  Her heart demanded she go speak to Ben. But her mind cautioned her, reminded her that since the moment Ben had walked into her life, he’d challenged everything she’d always held secure.

  “It certainly won’t hurt matters to go downstairs and make a fresh flax poultice,” she said. Or maybe she would locate more of the adder’s tongue balsam. It had seemed to suppress Tom’s swelling—even if just slightly.

  And if she happened to get a peek at Ben in passing, she wouldn’t be able to fault herself for that.

  As she left the room and descended the stairs, her pulse tapped louder than her shoes. At the sound of Ben’s voice in the parlor, she couldn’t resist the temptation to cross the hallway and draw nearer.

  “I realize I don’t have much,” Ben was saying. “But I’m a hard worker and have high aspirations.”

  “Aspirations do not put food on the table” came Mother’s clipped reply.

  Susanna crept closer to the door.

  “What my dear wife is trying to say,” Father said in his soothing tone, “is that we only want to make sure Susanna will be well situated in the manner to which she’s accustomed.”

  They were talking about her. . . .

  “Reverend Smith, I understand your wife perfectly.” Ben’s voice turned hard. “Mrs. Smith has always made it clear how much she’s disliked me.”

  For a long moment, silence hovered in the air like a heavy storm cloud. Susanna cringed. She knew Mother didn’t much like Ben, but she could at least have issued a polite word or two. After all, even if he was involved in the smuggling, Benjamin Ross was still a good man with a kind heart.

  She shuffled closer to the door, trying not to bump into the maze of crates and barrels Mother was using to sort the damaged household goods. Susanna could just imagine Father pacing in front of the fireplace, Mother sitting stiff and straight in one of the wing chairs, and Ben standing near the door—poised to escape the room.

  “Mr. Ross,” Mother finally said, “you must see the barriers are insurmountable and make it difficult for us to consider a man in your position.”

  “And what position is that exactly?” he asked.

  Susanna tensed and prayed Mother wouldn’t say anything about Ben’s lack of worldly estate.

  But Mother’s reply was as quick as if she’d rehearsed it. “Why, you’re nothing but a shoemaker’s son, a nobody, with not a possession to your name.”

  Susanna dropped her forehead against the cold hallway wall and stifled a groan. How could Mother say such things?

  Shame crept through Susanna—shame not only for Mother’s attitude, but also because she’d said those identical words once upon a time when she’d been young and foolish. Of course, Ben had begrudgingly granted her forgiveness for her girlish immaturity.

  Nevertheless, he didn’t need any reminders about her past mistake.

  “You’re likely a very fine lawyer.” Father broke the awkward silence. “And we all respect your father, Deacon John. He’s a man of great integrity and kindness. But I’m sure you’ll find another suitable young woman.”

  “I’m sorry for your wasted trip today,” Mother said, “but we cannot allow you to court our daughter.”

  Court her? Susanna’s head snapped up. Had Ben ridden to Weymouth to ask her parents for permission to come courting?

  Even if she’d been telling herself to forget about Ben and to avoid him, she couldn’t keep a thrill of excitement from twirling inside.

  He wanted to court her.

  She leaned forward. Her foot bumped against a wooden bucket and it in turn knocked against a portrait that was missing half of its mahogany frame. The frame began to topple.

  Susanna lunged for it. But it slipped away from her and landed against the wood floor with a slap. As she straightened, she found herself within view of the doorway of the parlor.

  Ben stood less than a dozen steps away. His shoulders were stiff and the muscles in his jaw tight. His intense eyes landed upon her, startled at first, but then widening with pleasure.

  Beyond him, Father had stopped his pacing to stare, and Mother had risen from her chair, her hands fluttering to her chest.

  The parlor was strangely bare without all the usual decorations, wall hangings, and linen coverings. Instead the cloudiness of the cold afternoon had seeped through the large window and draped itself about the room.

  “Susanna Smith,” Mother said. “Surely you haven’t been eavesdropping in the hallway.”

  “Of course she hasn’t.” Father beckoned Susanna into the room with a wave of his hand. “She’s merely coming to join us, aren’t you, Susanna dear?”

  “Yes, won’t you come join us?” Ben took a step toward her and smiled, the warmth of it driving away the chill of the unheated hallway. His clean-shaven face, the crispness of his attire, and his freshly powdered wig—all attested to the care he’d given in presenting himself to her parents. They could find no fault with his appearance. He was indeed a handsome man.

  “Perhaps we should ask Susanna her thoughts on the matter at hand,” Ben said. “She is after all an intelligent woman and able to make decisions for herself.”

  She didn’t doubt he meant the words. He wasn’t saying them to flatter her, and she appreciated that about him. Even as a woman without a formal education, he accepted her opinions and thoughts, almost as if she were equal to a man.

  “I’ve come to discuss the possibility of courtship. What do you think, Susanna?” He held out a hand toward her. His eyes glowed with all the affection and desire she’d witnessed on previous occasions. Everything about him invited her to put aside her reservations, accept his offer, and care for him in return.

  She longed to go to him, slip her fingers into his, and be with him. She loved his passion, his intelligence, and his determination. She could speak freely to him of important matters and know he would listen. He happily indulged her love of reading. And he brimmed with compassion to those less fortunate.

  She doubted she would ever find a better man than Benjamin Ross.

  Phoebe’s footsteps echoed in t
he hallway behind her. “Miss Susie?”

  Susanna tore her gaze from Ben to Phoebe, who stood at the bottom of the stairway holding a tray. “I’ve got that bowl of hot broth for Tom you wanted. Do you want me to take it on up?”

  Suddenly all Susanna could picture was Tom lying in bed, battered and broken and possibly dying. The thought made her sick all over again.

  She couldn’t—wouldn’t—consider involving herself with Ben.

  He was too dangerous for her.

  “Yes, Susanna is an intelligent young woman,” Mother spoke again, her tone as brittle as the shattered mirror above the mantel. “And because she’s intelligent, she shall realize just how disadvantageous a match to you would be—that is, if she wishes to continue with the kind of life she appreciates.”

  Ben continued to look at her, his eyes probing deep into her soul to discover the truth of her feelings.

  She wanted to deny Mother’s advice. She wanted to declare that she didn’t care about the disadvantages of marrying Ben. But could she really marry a man who owned nothing? Could she be content to live as the wife to a husband of little means, hardly better than the women she’d always aspired to help?

  His expression silently pleaded with her to refute Mother’s claims, to take hold of his hand and join her life with his.

  She glanced to Phoebe behind her, to the tray and the bowl of steaming broth reminding her of the perils she’d brought into their lives as a result of her interactions with Ben. Then she looked at Mother, at the stiff lines in her genteel face, warning her of all she’d have to give up to be with Ben.

  Susanna took a small step back, and her heels bumped into a crate. Even though the step away from Ben’s outstretched arm was minuscule, it wrenched her heart, as if she were leaving part of it with him.

  The harsh truth was that she couldn’t be with him.

  “I really must go and attend to Tom.”

  First his eyes flashed with the realization of her intentions, then hurt. The acuteness of his pain stabbed her, leaving her breathless. She forced herself to turn away from him before she flung herself into his arms.

  With trembling fingers she took the tray from Phoebe. The slave’s brows lifted with reproof.