Even in the grayness of dawn, he thought he detected a pink tinge creeping into her cheeks. “My husband used the shaving stand on the back porch. You’re welcome to it. I can warm some water and take it back there for you.”
“I’d appreciate it.” He hesitated a moment before confiding, “Your son tells me that he thinks he’ll be able to pick a hundred pounds of cotton a day. Is that likely?”
She smiled softly, her eyes reflecting as much pride as the lad’s had earlier. “If my Johnny says he’ll pick a hundred pounds, then he’ll pick a hundred pounds. He ain’t one to fall short of expectations.”
Something which could not be said of him. Falling short of expectations was something at which he excelled.
“How much does a man usually pick?”
“My husband could pick well over three hundred pounds a day, but he had years of experience on him.”
He felt her gaze travel from the top of his head to the bottom of his boots, and he knew beyond a doubt that he didn’t measure up.
“Are those your only clothes?” she asked.
“I have others, but they look much the same. Most of what I have is in need of a good washing.”
“I could loan you a pair of my husband’s trousers and an old flannel shirt. He was a sight bigger than you are so they’ll probably swallow you, but at least you won’t ruin your fancy clothes. You can leave your dirty laundry on the back porch and I’ll see to washing it.”
“I don’t want to impose—”
“It’s no imposition. It’s part of the deal. You work my fields and I’ll see to your needs.”
There was no mistaking the blush that suddenly flamed her cheeks.
“Within reason, of course,” she stammered before scurrying into the house.
He supposed a woman with three children knew all about a man’s needs. But Grayson had never been a man driven by needs. Wants and desires had led him astray more than once, but never needs.
By the time he returned from the barn with his personal belongings, warm water was waiting in a basin on the back porch. A small mirror dangled from a nail on the wall. Luxury took on a whole new meaning.
He’d removed the lather from half his face when he heard the horses. With razor in hand, he turned, unable to stop the smile from spreading across his face as Harry and Kit brought their horses to a halt and dismounted.
“Where did you get those?” Grayson asked as he stepped off the porch and ran his hand along one horse’s shoulder.
“The woman who drew my name has several fine horses,” Kit said. He raised a brow. “She also allowed me the luxury of shaving indoors.”
Reaching out, Harry plucked a piece of straw from Grayson’s hair. “What’s this?”
Grayson shrugged. “I slept in the barn. Didn’t you?”
“No,” Harry and Kit said at the same time.
“Had a room and a bed,” Harry added.
“The barn wasn’t so bad,” Grayson said as he stepped on the porch and stared into the mirror. He angled his head and scraped the razor along his cheek. Within the reflection, he saw Kit fold his arms over the porch railing.
“Harry and I have decided to return to Galveston,” Kit said. “Did you want to come with us?”
Wiping the remaining lather from his face, Grayson wondered why “Yes!” hadn’t exploded from his mouth. “We agreed to come here—to seek our fortunes.”
Harry chuckled. “Look, Gray, our fathers paid Winslow to bring us here. As obedient sons, we bowed to their wishes and we came. But now we’ve seen what awaits us: hard work and tired women. Neither appeals to me. Contrary to what our fathers believe of us, we have sharp minds and a good head on our shoulders. This country was divided by war. Now the war is over, and opportunity awaits any man with the foresight to take advantage of it. But not here. There’s nothing of value here.”
Except fertile land that needed to be worked.
“These women paid Winslow three hundred dollars to bring us here,” Grayson said. “To work their fields.”
“Harry is richer than Midas,” Kit said. “He can repay the money if that’s what’s bothering you.”
“Who’ll harvest their crops?”
“I have no desire to watch my hands bleed,” Harry said. “As Kit has pointed out, I have the means to set us up in any venture we choose. So we go to Galveston, explore the possibilities, and decide where we want to go and what we want to do.”
Grayson didn’t understand why he wasn’t packing up his belongings that moment. “I’m staying.”
“For God’s sake why?” Kit asked.
“A man can pick three hundred pounds of cotton a day. If the three of us leave, that’s almost a thousand pounds a day that won’t get picked.”
“But it’s not our worry,” Harry pointed out.
“Why?” Grayson asked, his voice laced with anger and frustration. “Because we don’t need the money despite what our fathers think? Because we didn’t pay Winslow? Because we don’t want to be here?” He plowed his fingers through his hair, dislodging more bits of straw. “I’ll catch up with you once the fields are harvested.”
“Fine,” Harry said with a wave of his hand. “We’ll send word if we leave Galveston and head elsewhere.”
“Do that because I will catch up with you,” he promised.
He watched as Harry mounted and urged the horse into a slow lope. Kit hadn’t moved from his position at the railing. “What’s your true reason for staying?” he asked quietly.
Grayson’s gaze fell on the clothes Abbie had laid out for him. He rubbed the homespun cloth between his fingers. Coarse fabric, like the people of Fortune. Yet the material contained a strength that he could not help but admire.
“Have you ever set a goal?” Grayson asked, then grimaced. “I mean other than luring a particular woman into your bed.”
Kit grinned. “Does aggravating my father count?”
Grayson gave his head a small shake. “The eldest lad here…He can’t be much older than eight…He was up before the sun, milking a cow.”
Kit shrugged. “Because they don’t have servants—”
“It’s more than that. He did it because it needed to be done. He plans to pick a hundred pounds of cotton a day and he’ll take joy in it. I looked in his eyes and saw something I’ve never before seen. Pride. Not the kind of satisfaction I see in Harry’s eyes when he wins a game of chance or what I see on your face when you’ve seduced a woman. It was a pure kind of self-respect.” He shook his head in frustration. “I can’t explain it. I only know that I want to experience it.”
“And if you don’t experience it?”
Grayson snorted. “What will I have lost? A couple of months of my life when I sometimes feel as though I’ve lost twenty-eight years?”
Kit rubbed the puckered flesh that lay just below the right side of his jaw and gave a slow nod. “All right. We’ll give it a go, but once the crops are in, we leave for Galveston.”
“You don’t have to stay. Besides, I don’t think Harry would approve of your decision.”
“I just have to convince Harry that there is something to be gained in staying.”
Grayson had always thought it was a shame that Kit had emerged into the world two minutes after his brother. The Earl of Ravenleigh had applied the tip of a red-hot poker to his second son’s jaw moments after he was born in order to permanently mark him so he could never be mistaken for the heir apparent.
“You’ll no doubt do it. They say you could talk an angel into sinning,” Grayson said.
Kit laughed heartily. “We both know Harry is no angel.”
Clothes made the man—or so Abigail had always heard. But the Englishman looked just as regal in her husband’s clothes as he had in his own. Even her husband’s tattered straw hat didn’t make him look any less worldly.
Strolling along the furrows, Johnny stepping on his heels more often than not, he examined the crops and asked questions as though he cared. Two other Englishme
n flanked him on either side. The one with hair the burnished shade of amber seemed equally interested in the fields. The one whose hair shone as black as midnight appeared bored, every so often bestowing upon his friends an indulgent smile. Abigail had little doubt the third man’s skin would darken under the sun while his friends’ would blister.
Seven Englishmen had arrived. While these three wandered, four were already using hoes to chop at the weeds.
“What do you make of those three?” Elizabeth asked.
Abigail shook her head. “I’m not sure, but Mr. Rhodes isn’t going to get any supper if he doesn’t lift a hoe before sunset.” She cast a glance at her older sister. “Who did you end up boarding?”
“That youngest fella hacking at the weeds there.” Elizabeth pointed toward a slender young man whose face was bathed in sweat and scrunched from his efforts. “Jerome Black. He’s actually very excited that his father sent him here. But then he’s all of nineteen and everyone is excited at nineteen. How were things with Mr. Rhodes last night?”
Abigail shrugged her narrow shoulders. “He didn’t put up a protest about sleeping in the barn. And told me he was disreputable.”
Elizabeth smiled broadly. “I’ll bet he is. He has that look about him.”
“What look?” Abigail asked. She had married at sixteen and hadn’t dared give even the most casual attention to another man once John had made her his wife.
“Like a man who takes nothing in life seriously.”
“Last night he was smiling and laughing like he didn’t have a care in the world. Thought Winslow had played some prank on him.”
“Winslow told me he was going back to England. Asked me if we wanted him to bring any more men. I told him no.”
Abigail cast her gaze over the land that she had kept going by sheer determination alone. “Good. I’m still not sure how John would have felt about strangers working his land.”
“You can’t keep worrying over what John would want. He’s dead,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve got to think about what you want.”
Guilt assailed Abigail with the reminder of John’s death. Always the guilt—never the grief—accompanied thoughts of her husband’s death.
Leaving his wife, his family, and his fields, he’d gone to fight in battles half a continent away. He’d boasted that he’d be away only a short time. He’d promised to return home.
Abigail had quickly learned that unkept promises left behind bitter memories.
Elizabeth placed her hand on Abigail’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard. Not a day goes by that I don’t look up the road, hoping to see Daniel again. But he’s not coming home, and I have three girls to raise. We had to either bring other men here or move elsewhere. We voted to bring men here. I don’t think our husbands would begrudge our desire to stay on the land they once farmed. Think of it as a new start, Abbie, with men who are untouched by the war.”
Untouched by the war. God, she couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be untouched by a war. How had the women survived where the war had actually raged? Here there had been nothing but deprivation, hard work, and loneliness.
“Why couldn’t they have sent their bodies home?” she asked, the question always hovering in the back of her mind. “Maybe I could believe it then.”
“That’s just not the way it was done. They buried them where they died.”
“John would have hated not being buried in Texas.”
“Don’t think about it—”
“How can I not think about it when he was my husband? I have three of his children to raise and his farm to maintain.”
“Which is the reason we brought these Englishmen here. You’re not going to marry any of them,” Elizabeth said quietly. “You’re just gonna have them toil in your fields.”
Abigail wiped her roughened hands on her threadbare apron. “It was strange having a man about the place this morning.”
“Abbie, not all men are like John.”
“I know. I saw the way Daniel treated you.”
Elizabeth gnawed on her lower lip and swiped the wisps of blonde hair from her eyes. “I could make room at my place for your Englishman—”
“No, if he’s gonna work my land then I need to provide for him.”
Elizabeth smiled. “That’s a girl. And who knows? With Mr. Rhodes helping out around here, maybe you’ll have time to take care of yourself.”
Abigail was always amazed that in spite of the hardships, Elizabeth managed to turn her sights toward the positive. With a shake of her head, she returned her sister’s smile. “Soon as the hard work begins, they’ll be hightailing it back to wherever they came from.”
“I don’t know, Abbie. Your Mr. Rhodes seems to have decided he wants supper this evening.”
Abigail snapped her head around to gaze at the fields. She saw Grayson Rhodes listening intently as Johnny gave him instructions on the proper way to cut at the weeds. She narrowed her eyes. “What in the world is he wearing on his hands?”
“Looks like gloves,” Elizabeth said.
“What kind of working gloves come in white?”
Elizabeth furrowed her brow. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s what English working gloves look like.”
“They’re a strange lot, Elizabeth, but since we’re stuck with them, reckon we’d best get the noon meal set out.”
The farmers in the area had never had the means to purchase slaves so they had rotated the fields, working as a community on a different farm each year. That put the responsibility of feeding her neighbors on Abigail’s shoulders this season. But she didn’t mind. She’d rather cook than work the fields any day.
Sitting on the back porch, Grayson gingerly peeled the glove from his hand, wincing as the cloth pulled at bits of his flesh. He didn’t imagine he’d be attending any formal balls while he was in the area so using the gloves to protect his hands had seemed like a good idea—even when Kit and Harry had laughed. But now the gloves were ruined—as were his hands.
He studied his ravaged palms. At least they weren’t bleeding. They had blistered and a few of the blisters had ruptured, coating his palm in a sticky substance, but they would heal. And the lad was right. Tonight he would sleep like a dead man. With any luck, perhaps he would actually die before morning.
Dangling his hands over his thighs, he shifted his gaze to the sunset. Despite the blisters, “chopping weeds,” as the boy called it, had brought Grayson a measure of satisfaction that he’d never before experienced. His actions served a purpose: to keep the area clear so the roots could breathe and workers could walk along the furrows come harvest time.
The sun was unmerciful as it constantly sent its heat to beat down on a man. Now it was quietly fading away as though content with its day’s work.
Grayson heard the squeaking of the back door and glanced over his shoulder. Carrying a large bucket, Abigail Westland slipped through the opening. Grayson slowly brought himself to his feet, his tired body protesting each inch of the journey.
“I warmed some water for you. Thought you might want to wash up.” She set the bucket near the basin and wiped her hands on her apron.
He forced himself to smile. “I appreciate it. I imagine I’m rather rank.”
Reaching down, she picked up one of the gloves he’d discarded. She wrinkled her nose at the filthy, stained object. “These aren’t working gloves,” she murmured.
“No, but they were all I had. I thought they would be better than nothing.”
She snapped her head up, a fire burning brilliantly within her violet eyes. “Let me see your hands.”
Grayson took a step back. “My hands are fine.”
“I don’t see how they could be—the way you were chopping at the ground—”
“Was I doing it improperly, then?” he asked, hating the thought that he might have expended his energies fruitlessly.
“No, I didn’t expect you to do it at all.” The smallest of smiles touched her lips, and he was suddenly seized with the irrati
onal desire to have her ruffle her slender fingers through his hair.
“It needs to be done, does it not?”
“Yep, it needs to be done.”
“Well then, I shall endeavor to see that it’s done.”
Her smile grew a little wider. “You use the fanciest words.”
“You people seem to cut everything short. Since we arrived in Galveston, I seldom hear the sound of ‘g’ on the end of a word.”
Her smile flew into hiding, leaving her mouth shaped into a hard line. “With all the work we gotta do, we ain’t got time to get all cultured.”
“I meant no offense,” he said hastily.
“I’ll get some salve for your hands and some linen strips for you to wrap around them. You want to keep them clean. You get an infection out here, you’re likely to lose a hand.”
He watched her disappear into the house. He had most definitely offended her. He wondered if she were embarrassed that she could not offer him better accommodations than the barn. If perhaps he had come across as haughty and arrogant. God knew he was both.
Self-preservation had caused him to build a wall around himself, brick by brick, until his true self was safely hidden inside, away from prying eyes.
Remembering the woman’s smile, he feared she might possess the means to destroy the mortar that held the bricks securely in place.
He was dead tired. He should have fallen asleep as soon as his head sank into the pillow. He should have been unable to feel the straw sticking up through the quilt or the heat surrounding him.
But he was acutely aware of everything, especially the constant burning in his hands. He wished he’d thought to bring the salve to the loft with him. Instead, he’d left it by the basin on the back porch.
He had tossed and turned for hours, but sleep was as elusive as his dreams. Perhaps coating more salve on his palms would lure him into slumber.
With only the moon to guide him, he made his way from the barn. Strolling along the side of the house, he removed the linen from one hand and began to unwrap it from the other. Head down, he rounded the corner and slammed his thigh into something hard. One hand grabbed a wooden edge, but before he could catch his balance, the other hand fell into steaming water and molded itself around a very nice mound of flesh, so silky and smooth that it was more comforting than any salve he could have spread across his aching palms.
Rogue in Texas Page 3
