“Hmm.” Mrs. Preston bobbed her head, once again not taking offense to Westley’s mood. “I suppose your body is sucking it up too fast. I’ll cook up one of the chickens for dinner and get some more meat in you.”
His stomach rumbled again. “And until then?”
She laughed. “Men sure grow ornery when they’re hungry.”
Westley gave her a flat stare.
“Fine, fine. I’ve some bread fresh from the oven.” She straightened the coverlet over him. “You stay here, and I will fetch it with a bit of cheese.”
Westley narrowed his eyes. “And if I would rise?”
Mrs. Preston made a show of an exaggerated sigh. “Then I suppose your refreshment would have to wait while I made sure you could make it across the room.”
Beaten, Westley leaned back against the pillows. “Very well. After, then.”
Mrs. Preston crossed her arms. “You are a stubborn fellow, you know it?”
Amusement lifted his lips. “I’ve been informed of it a time or two.”
“Humph.”
She left him in peace, and as soon as her ample form no longer warmed the room, he fell back into that worrisome place of self-loathing. Try as he might to shake the feeling, it ever more pressed upon him.
What has happened to me? Is there no way to be rid of these dark thoughts?
His gaze drifted to the book on the small table next to the chair at the hearth, and he heard his mother’s voice as surely as she stood in the room with him. The word of the Lord offers both instruction and comfort, my son.
Westley turned his face aside. No. He would not entertain voices that did not emit from living people. First the misplaced memories, then names and faces he could not recall, and now this? If he allowed such, he would most surely descend into madness. Mrs. Preston had said she’d seen men who’d suffered the fever show mental slowness, but none that lingered this long.
She’d assured him this too would pass, but he’d seen the concern in her eyes. The infection had raged within him, and he had spent three weeks hardly waking enough for her to get enough broth into him for survival. Who knew what damages he had sustained from that? What’s more, they had no way of knowing if he had hit his head hard enough to cause lasting damage upon falling from his horse.
A few moments later Mrs. Preston returned with the promised plate of bread and cheese in her hands and a placating smile upon her lips. Telling himself she meant only the best, he brought his emotions to heel and offered her his best attempt at affability. “Ah, my dear nurse returns.”
Her smile widened and she handed him the food.
“Where would I be without you?”
Her smile faltered and he cringed. He’d not meant the question in earnest, but rather as a form of affectionate gratitude for her care. She patted his arm, both of them knowing the real answer, yet neither wanting to upset the other by speaking it.
Westley shoved a slice of bread into his mouth and spoke around it. “When shall the corporal arrive?”
“Tsk tsk.” She shook her head. “Have you abandoned your manners, Major?”
Westley grimaced, swallowed, and spoke again. “Forgive me. May I inquire as to when the corporal is expected?”
Mrs. Preston smirked and set about dusting the room. “They said soon. That is all I know.”
“And you are sure they knew my name and rank?” Westley popped a piece of cheese into his mouth and consciously slowed chewing that wished to reveal his ravenous hunger.
“I am.” She lifted the Bible Westley hadn’t touched since he’d tossed it to the floor and wiped it off.
“And they know I have been injured and am neither a deserter nor dead?”
She didn’t pause her cleaning. “Yes, Major. The boy there told me word was already sent to family and to the necessary officials.”
Westley snorted. “There is no family.”
Mrs. Preston didn’t respond, though she paused.
Feeling her heavy gaze upon him as he stabbed at a bit of cheese, Westley mumbled, “At best, they are sending a note to an abandoned house.”
Mrs. Preston’s brow creased. “You expect your home to be abandoned?”
Forgetting that he had not told her he hailed from the South, he shrugged. “Both my parents died this past winter, and I am their only child. It stands to reason.”
Something close to pity entered her eyes, and he looked away before the weight of it could settle on him.
“It would be best to know for sure, though.”
Westley considered it. If the army did send word to Belmont, only Sibby would be able to read it. Did she worry over him? He tossed aside the foolish thought. Once news of Jefferson Davis’s recent surrender reached them, surely the Negroes that had called Belmont home would seek a new life in the North rather than face the scorn of defeated Southerners. Assuming they hadn’t all left already since no one remained to care for them.
If he did return to his home, it would be only to see that any stragglers left. There might yet be a few, Sibby among them, who would hesitate to leave the only home they had ever known and attempt to eke out a living from the land.
That was something they would not be able to do for long, and an attempt that could prove dangerous. Freed or not, Westley wasn’t fool enough to think that they would be able to live at Belmont alone. If fortune seekers didn’t run them out, then soon enough the Federal Army would commandeer the home to settle debts his father most surely owed. He’d been meaning to settle his father’s accounts, but he’d been a mite too busy trying not to get shot.
“Some heavy thoughts pucker that handsome brow of yours.”
Westley blinked and looked up at Mrs. Preston, whom he had forgotten stood in the room with him. “Just thinking about what I will need to do once I am strong enough to leave, and deciding which responsibilities will require my immediate attention.”
Sadness tightened her features for just an instant, then she brightened them with a smile. “That’s good, then. Making plans for the future will help you work toward healing.” She crossed to the bed and plopped down beside him. “Tell me.”
Westley withheld his lament at being drawn into yet another personal conversation. The woman had a way of working information from him, especially since he had no means of escape. But he owed her much and would not be rude to her. At least, as much as he could help it. “I think I may volunteer to go into the western territories.”
Mrs. Preston’s mouth turned down. “Oh, I had hoped you would have tired of the army.”
“I am a career military man, ma’am.”
Her eyes darted away, but not before he caught something in them. Instinct warned she hid something. “Mrs. Preston?”
She fiddled with her cap. “Of course, but—”
“What are you not saying?”
She stared at him a moment, then he felt her will give way to his own. “Well….” She fidgeted with her skirts, trying his patience. “I’d hoped you would be inclined to return to your home and be full up of this war. And then….”
“Then what?”
She drew her lip through her teeth. An oddly feminine motion, Westley decided, for one who often acted more akin to a man. “Then perhaps you would not be so bothered by your condition.”
Westley straightened, fear he could not acknowledge stiffening his spine. “What say you?”
She fingered the frayed hem of her apron. “Well, nothing for certain, I think, but it’s just that with your leg—”
“Which will heal.”
She glanced away. “Not as well as we’d hoped.”
His jaw tightened and he had to force his teeth to unclench to push out a nervous laugh. Surely she only worried for him. “Do not fret. I will see to it that I am well on my feet once more.”
Mrs. Preston rose from the bed and twisted her hands. “I did not want to tell you just yet.”
Westley growled. “Speak!”
She flinched, and he might have felt poorly for it
if not that she withheld information from him.
She pinned him with a steady gaze. “The doctor thinks you will forever more walk with a limp.”
Westley let the matter-of-fact words settle upon him, for given without an ounce of pity, he deemed them truthful. He cleared his throat. “And when did you learn this?”
“Upon his visit two days past.”
Westley exuded an outward calm that did not match the turmoil within. “He did not speak of it to me.”
“He feared your emotional state.”
Emotional! Westley snapped his jaws tight before words best not said escaped him. When he composed himself, he tried once more. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Preston, could you perhaps be a bit more specific?”
Understanding, then compassion lit her warm eyes, and when she next spoke, her words were gentle. “What he referred to has nothing to do with your memory lapses, Major.”
A comfort of sorts in that, at least. “That is good.” He’d thought the doctor meant to declare him unfit for duty and pronounce him soft in the head.
“But the doctor and I have both seen what injuries can do not only to the body but to the soul as well.”
Not liking the turn of the conversation, Westley chose silence and stifled his impatience over the woman taking too long in coming around to the point.
“I’ve seen it time and again. Men who have lost their limbs enter into a place of sorrow they cannot easily be roused from. They become disinterested in their meals, they lose hope for the future, and soon they let themselves become hollow.” She drew a long breath. “The doctor did not wish for any such despondent thoughts to affect your healing.”
The doctor? More likely Mrs. Preston spoke her own concerns. Army doctors were nothing if not completely unconcerned with men’s feelings.
She straightened her cap. “Therefore, we thought it best to wait to say anything about your leg until you had more time to heal.”
Westley pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “There is still yet hope I shall fully recover,” he said, more for his own benefit than to convince her.
“It pains me to tell you so, but the bone does not seem to have set straight.”
Her meaning slithered to him, but he refused to let it sink its fangs just yet. “But I have both legs. I can still sit a horse.”
She shook her head, becoming nearly as exasperated as he. “You will be whole, but for the rest of your days you will require a cane to walk.” She stood firm before him, the compassion in her eyes warring with the harsh words that came clipped from her tongue. “Therefore, I don’t think it wise you try to go to the western territories.”
Westley forced strained words from his lips. “Leave me.” He closed his eyes, hoping that sleep might overtake him and deliver him a momentary reprieve from this sentence of uselessness.
Instead of doing as he instructed, Mrs. Preston whispered something he couldn’t decipher and then crossed to the hearth. A moment later a weight settled upon his lap. “Hope, dear boy.” She squeezed his shoulder. “You will find it in there.”
Westley cracked an eye only enough to peer at the heavy book in his lap. How he longed to throw it across the room. But knowing that she would persist unless he offered pretense of acquiescence, he fabricated a smile instead. “Very well, I shall try.”
Mrs. Preston patted his arm. “There now, that’s better.”
When he didn’t respond or make a move to open the book, she gave him a small squeeze and left him to his shadowed thoughts once more.
As Ella ventured farther from the house, a breeze picked up and ruffled strands of her hair that had escaped their pins. Sibby had tried to form some kind of fancy design of it, pinning some pieces and leaving others in little ringlets about her head. She’d found herself to be pleasantly presentable, if not even passing pretty. But now she wished she could let her hair down, constrained only in a long red plait that fell down her back.
She stepped over dried bits of cotton stalks, wondering why the land had not been furrowed and prepared for the planting. Already they were behind. These fields should have been put to seed. No wonder the Yanks had not believed her claims about working the land. No evidence gave validity to her words.
Ahead, a line of scraggly oaks broke the flat lines of the field, and Ella made her way there. She would like to see what lay beyond and perhaps get a better feel for this land she now called home. If she were to stay, she would need to figure something out soon. Sibby had resisted her requests to discuss planting the crops, though Ella couldn’t fathom why. If the crops were planted and Sibby’s people earned a share of it, that would satisfy the army and cover their needs. What could possibly cause the woman hesitation?
She glanced back at the house. Sibby would be finished nursing Lee any time now and would start to look for her. Always keeping her close. If not for the comfortable residence and care for Lee, Ella might have resented being watched so closely.
She slipped into the line of trees. A crack in the ground allowed for the passage of a small stream, and the struggling trees not plowed under for fields clung to the narrow banks. Ella studied the gap. It wasn’t so wide that she couldn’t jump it, if she weren’t wearing two petticoats and a hoop. Besides, if she were to tear the gown…
She glanced over her shoulder. Perhaps this would have to wait for another time. She doubted anything of interest stood beyond the abandoned fields anyway.
She’d just turned to make her way back when a noise arrested her attention. She stopped, straining to hear a soulful sound that drifted on the late afternoon breeze. A song she had never heard before slipped through the trees, its melody caressing each thing it passed. Mesmerized, Ella stood still and listened.
The sound grew nearer until its source became apparent. Ella drew a sharp breath and the singing abruptly stopped, replaced by a yelp.
“What you doin’ in them woods?”
Embarrassed at having been caught in such an odd place, Ella forced a laugh. “Basil, you have such a beautiful voice. Why, you sing better than anyone I’ve ever heard.”
The little girl’s face brightened, but then she cast a worried glance over her shoulder. “You ain’t supposed to be out here, Miss Ella.”
“Why not?”
Basil glanced behind her again, confusion clouding her face. “Well, Nat said…”
“I don’t intend any trouble, Basil. I’m merely curious about the land.”
“Oh!” She smiled. “Well, I reckon that might be all right.”
Ella looked past Basil. “Why are you out here in the field by yourself?”
She giggled. “Why, I ain’t just wanderin’ around in the field, Miss Ella. What sense do that make?”
Ella shrugged. She’d wondered the same.
“We live in them cabins back there.”
Ella looked over the girl’s head, but could not see much. She squinted. “I see nothing out there other than some more fields…and then some more trees.”
“Yes ’um. We lives behind that second row of trees.” Basil bobbed her head, little braids bouncing.
“Really? Would you show me?”
Basil’s brow furrowed. “What for?”
Ella glanced around and then leaned closer, feigning a conspirator’s whisper—though she could be easily heard across the divide. “I’m afraid it is because I am incurably curious.”
Basil laughed, the sound further lightening Ella’s mood. Such a sweet girl. What must it be like to be so open and joyful?
“You sure is funny, Miss Ella.”
“You’ll show me, then?”
Basil’s smile fell. “No, ma’am. Can’t do that. Nat done made me promise.”
“But why?”
The girl drew her lips into a tight line.
Ella tried once more. “If I am going to stay here for a time, I only wanted to get to know the land and the people here. I don’t mean any harm to anyone.”
Basil shook her head. “Ain’t that. You just d
on’t belong there.”
Well, no arguing that. Ella turned back to the house.
Leaves rustled behind her. “Sibby say you could come back here?” Basil called.
Ella’s spine stiffened in defiance. “I do not need permission,” she spat, a bit more harshly than intended. She looked over her shoulder to apologize and saw the girl take a mighty leap over the creek.
Basil landed on the other side, brushed her skirt off and straightened. If she’d taken offense of Ella’s harsh words, she didn’t show any indication.
“Do you always leap over the creek?”
Basil tilted her head. “How else is I supposed to get over it?”
Ella regarded her for a moment and then turned back toward the house once more. “How many people have to jump like that, Basil?”
The rustle of grass evidenced the girl followed closely behind. “Only those of us needin’ to come on up to the big house.”
Ella rolled her eyes. No information to be gained there. Ella had often wondered if the few people Sibby had gathered to see Ella on that first day were all the people who lived on Belmont lands. Judging from Basil’s evasiveness, more probably resided here than she thought. However, there seemed nothing more she would learn from the child, and telling herself her curiosity remained pointless, Ella looked up at the porch.
Sibby stood with her arms crossed, staring.
Ella did not bother to quicken her strides. When she passed the cistern and stepped onto the porch, she eyed the other woman. “Where is Lee?”
“Sleeping.”
“And who watches him?” Ella frowned, already stepping around Sibby to reach the door.
“I left the doors open. I can hear him if he cries.”
Ella ignored her and started inside the house.
“Now, you look here. We got stuff we needs to talk about.”
Ella set her jaw. “I do not feel like it now.”
“You don’t….” Sibby let the words trail off and followed her up the stairs. “What done got into you?”
Ella didn’t know. All she knew is that she felt tired, alone, and flustered. She was frustrated with having to lie to women who looked down on her even though she wore fancy clothes and tried her best to fit in. Papa had been right. Never would she be good enough for the likes of them.
In His Eyes: A Civil War Romance Page 8
