Flood looked extremely uncomfortable. "I think you should know some things, Major. And the first one is that Allison is not my wife."
With Flood's confession, Rad closed the ledger and, for the first time, took a long, close look at the person sitting before him. He narrowed his eyes and then commanded, "Stand up and turn around, Flood. Slowly."
She did as she was told.
"My God! You're not even a man. You're a woman."
"Yes, sir."
Rad sat down again as if the realization were too much for him. "My brother hired women to run this place. I can't believe even he would be so stupid."
"Be that as it may, we did the best we could."
"Tell this Allison—whatever her name is—to step into my office. The sooner we finish with this mess, the sooner I can have you off the premises."
A few minutes later, Allison stood at the open door. "You sent for me, Major?"
He said nothing at first. Instead, he stared long and hard. "You're wearing my mother's dress."
It was the same gray she had worn the previous evening. Allison wondered why he hadn't recognized it then. "I have subtracted its value from the money you owe us." And then her manner became just as accusing as his. "If you remember, I told you last night that all our possessions went up in flames when the cottage burned." "Yes. Well, come in and sit down. As soon as we make some sense out of these jumbled figures, you can all be on your way."
"The records are kept in the same manner as your ledgers, Major."
"How do you know? Did you feel called upon to snoop in my office while you had the run of the house?"
"Your brother, Captain Meadors, gave them to us, when Flood—when I requested information on the harvesting and planting of tobacco. So now that that's cleared up, what else puzzles you?"
"If you bought a cow from Royal Freemont, I can only say you paid too much for her. No one gets the best of Royal."
"You're speaking of Daisy Belle, of course?"
Rad's worst fears were corroborated. "So that's the one he unloaded on you."
"Not at all. But in case you wish to see the cow, she's now in the grazing pasture."
One by one, Allison went over the items. And when Rad could find no significant fault with her accounting, he dismissed her and closed the book.
He walked to the toolshed adjacent to the corncrib, retrieved a shovel, and then began to dig in the soft earth in the herb garden a few feet to the left of the well. The ground was still soggy from the rain, and the great clumps of earth were heavy as he hoisted them to the side.
Then the shovel struck metal. Working quickly, Rad removed all dirt from around the box, drew a bucket of water from the well, splashed it onto the box to get rid of the mud, and then carried the strongbox into the house.
After drying it, he set it on his desk and opened the lid. The box, containing the family jewels and all the gold, was empty except for one thin slip of paper.
An incredulous Rad reached inside to recover the paper. And he recognized his brother's handwriting.
Brother Rad,
As you can see, I have taken my share of the family fortune.Call me the Prodigal, if you like, but I have gone to see the world and I won't be back. Bluegrass Meadors is all yours—a fair exchange, don't you think?
Glenn
Rad jammed his fist against the strongbox, and his face showed his anger. He stifled an oath and began to pace up and down. Glenn had not only done something with the money he'd sent to hire decent help, but now he'd left him almost penniless. Paying taxes on the property would take almost his last cent. So how was he going to pay what he owed to the women? There wouldn't even be any ready cash for four more months—until the tobacco crop was harvested and sold.
Allison brought down her bundle from the attic room. And then she went into the kitchen where Rebecca had been watching Morrow. As mother and daughter walked again into the long hallway, Rad Meadors stood at his door and watched them. It was his first sight of the child—small, angelic-looking, a replica of her mother, with the same blonde coloring.
Allison looked down the hall and saw him. "We're almost ready, Major. Flood is bringing her things down right now."
Rad nodded. "As soon as he…she comes downstairs, I want to see you both in my office."
Allison did not think his request was out of the ordinary. In fact, she expected it—for he had not yet paid them. "Of course." Allison picked up her bundle from beside the stairs to carry it toward the front door.
"Go walk," Morrow said, breaking loose from Allison and running ahead toward the open front door.
Hampered by the bundle, Allison called out, "No, Morrow. Stay here, darling."
But the child was headstrong, recklessly running toward the porch and the high brick steps. In a lightning-quick movement, Rad was down the hall and onto the porch. He overtook the child moments before she reached the first step. He swooped her up into his arms. "You'd better obey your mother next time," he admonished.
In his arms, the child stared at Rad with wide amethyst eyes. Puzzled, she reached out and touched his face. "Da-da?"
There was something about the trusting child that caused his heart to lurch. And for the first time, he looked toward the woman and felt a deep sympathy for her and her child.
Then Allison stepped forward. "I'll take her now, Major. Thank you for reaching her in time."
But he held the baby a moment longer. "Just who is her father, Allison?"
"Captain Coin Forsyth, of the Confederate army."
"Where is he now?"
"He was killed in the Wilderness campaign in Virginia."
Rad returned the child to Allison. Somehow, it just didn't make sense, this woman with her obvious breeding winding up in prison. But he had no time to mull this over. More immediate matters were pressing upon him.
"Did you want to see me, Major?"
Flood Tompkins stood in the doorway.
"Yes. You two come into my office, please."
They followed him back down the hall and into his office. Flood and Allison, with Morrow in her arms, stood and looked at each other while Rad turned his back to them and stared out the window at the tobacco field. In silence, they waited. When he finally turned around, his face had lost its former softness. And in its place was the thunderous, black visage of the previous night.
"You might as well unpack your things. You'll have to stay until the tobacco crop is in."
"I don’t understand, Major. I thought you were just rarin' to get us off your property quick as you could."
He looked from Flood to the silent Allison. "It seems my brother has done us all a disservice. I have no money to pay you until August. You have a choice of either leaving today, without remuneration, or staying until the tobacco is sold."
"That isn't much of a choice, is it, Major?" Allison's voice was low and accusing.
"No, it isn't." He didn't apologize. He merely stared from one to the other. "Well?"
"We'll talk it over with Rebecca," Allison said. "She's in this, too."
Allison and Flood left Rad Meadors's office. There was little need, beyond mere formality, to talk it over with Rebecca. Allison knew that, in the end, the three would stay on.
Chapter 33
Bluegrass Meadors became a busy place, with Rad anxious to alleviate all signs of neglect in the least possible time.
He worked from morning to night and showed no mercy to the women, driving them with the same impatience that he showed for himself.
"Flood, I want you to start removing the lower leaves from the plants. Be in the field at sunup.
"Rebecca, the garden needs weeding. As soon as you finish that chore, you can join Flood in the field.
"Allison, take the carriage and go to Royal Freemont's house. Tell him I need to borrow Big Caesar for the day if he can spare him."
On and on the orders came, with the three women so exhausted at night that they went to bed almost as early as Morrow did.
A week after the strict regimen began, a tired Allison, sitting in the kitchen with the other two, yawned. "We might have been better off if we'd taken our chances and left when we could."
Rebecca smiled. "That man's always in a whirlwind, impatient to be gettin' things done. He and Big Caesar sure did put up that barn in record time."
"Now I'm beginnin' to understand why Captain Meadors didn't stay around," Flood added.
The three were silent again until Allison spoke up. "I was wondering about Madrigal today. You think she's all right?"
"She's a survivor. Always has been."
"But I still worry about her."
"You'd do better to worry over yourself, Allison. I got a feelin' this is goin' to be a long, hot summer for all of us."
The days passed; the tobacco grew. And the second barn was raised. One morning, just before breakfast, Rad Meadors stood before the fence and watched Standing Tall kicking up his heels and then galloping up and down the length of the white fence in record time. He had broken him of jumping the fence, but Rad knew he needed to begin more serious training of the animal, for there was racing blood in his veins.
Smiling to himself, Rad pulled up a blade of grass and began to chew on it. He catapulted over the fence and walked through the meadow to the tobacco field. Everything had been going so smoothly lately. He had to hand it to the women. He had driven them hard—as hard as he had his men in battle. Each day, he'd added a little more to their workload and then stood back, waiting for them to complain. So far, they had refused to do so. It was just a matter of time. But they were a stubborn bunch.
Rad reached the tobacco field. From a distance, the plants looked healthy and green, their sturdy, long leaves branching out to drink up the sun. Then he saw a wilted plant amid one of the rows.
Frowning, he walked over to the plant and knelt to examine it. His breathing became irregular as he tried to refute what he saw. But there was no denying it. Like locusts that arrive on the wind and strip entire fields of wheat in a matter of hours, the flea beetles, tobacco's worst enemy, had invaded the field overnight. And Rad, kneeling in the dirt, realized that his entire tobacco crop was in peril.
Swiftly, he rose and headed purposefully back to the house. He took little time to wipe his boots on the boot bar. He pushed open the door and yelled, "Flood, Allison, Rebecca. Leave what you're doing and get to the tobacco field immediately."
And then he was gone.
"Oh, Lordy, did you hear that?" Rebecca said, turning from the oven. "And just when breakfast is about ready."
"Something's happened to the tobacco. I feel it," Allison said.
"Then we'd better get out there," Flood said, "since we've got a stake in this crop, too."
Breakfast was forgotten as the women went to the field. Like an invasion, the beetles came, while Rad and the three women tried to beat them off the tender, succulent plants. At times, it seemed as if the battle might be a losing one, for when one beetle had been killed, two more appeared in the same place.
"I can almost hear them chompin' away," Rebecca said, taking a particularly vicious swipe at one of the insects.
All day the women stayed in the field, leaving it only long enough to get water or, in Rebecca's case, to bring the bread she had baked that morning. Allison was faced with an added chore—that of watching Morrow, who was playing under one of the trees. Bringing a glass of milk and a piece of bread, Allison sat on a quilt underneath the tree and fed Morrow. And when she returned to work, she saw, with a sense of relief, that the child had gone to sleep again.
It was sundown by the time they reached the last row. Despite the bonnet shielding her face, the harshness of the sun had done damage to Allison's delicate, fragile skin. But Rad Meadors had eyes only for the tobacco.
As the sun finally disappeared behind the grove of trees to the west, he stood, leaning on his stick, and surveyed the field, now covered in white phosphate dust. "Well, we did it. We saved the crop. We can all go in now."
"I'll take the baby, Miss Allison."
"Thank you, Rebecca. I'm not sure I'd even have the strength to carry her."
That night, after a cold supper, they all went to bed and slept for twelve hours—all except Morrow, who awoke at her usual hour. Seeing Allison still asleep, she climbed from her own small cot and got into the larger bed with her mother. And there she waited for Allison's eyes to open.
Finally, she grew impatient. Hearing someone downstairs, she scooted down from the bed, pushed the latch of the door, and, with a sense of freedom, began the dangerous descent from the attic stairs to the kitchen.
Rad heard a noise above his bedroom, followed by a child's cry. He rushed out into the hall and hurried in the direction of the attic stairs. And there he found Morrow sprawled at the bottom and crying as she attempted to get up.
"Morrow!" Allison awoke, saw the empty cot, and then the open door. Frantically, she ran into the hallway, and with her bare feet making no noise, she flew toward the steep steps. "Morrow!"
The man, holding Morrow in his arms, looked up at Allison. She stood at the head of the stairs—a slender figure in a white lawn gown, with her long blonde hair hanging over her shoulders. She had not taken the time to put a shawl around her. But she seemed unaware of her own appearance as she traversed the distance separating her from her small child.
"Is she hurt?"
"A slight cut on her chin," Rad said, wiping the blood with the hem of the child's gown. "But I believe she's all right, otherwise."
"I was still asleep. I didn't know she could open the door by herself."
All at once, Allison became self-conscious. She was standing in front of the major, with her nightclothes on. He, too, was in a state of undress, with only his jodhpurs on. His chest was bare, proclaiming a masculine virility with his large, muscled arms. Allison avoided his searching dark eyes as she said, "I'll take her now. Thank you for rescuing her."
Rad frowned as he stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched the woman disappear toward the attic. The stairs were steep—too steep for an exploring child. He hadn't given it any thought before. But with the accident, Rad realized that something needed to be done. Either the woman would have to maintain a closer watch on the child, or else he would be forced to find a safer place for them both.
Rad went back to his room, finished dressing, and then walked down the wide winding staircase to the main floor.
Rebecca was already in the dining room, setting his regular place with the china he remembered from his own childhood. The china had gathered dust in the beveled glass cabinet once their mother had died and there was no woman in the house to see to the formality of living. But now, with the three in residence, things had begun to change—not only on the plantation, itself, but in the house, too.
Rad was aware of the scent of fragrant blossoms wafting from the front parlor, where the fine furniture, covered for so long with white sheeting to protect it from dust and sun, now stood, polished and waiting to be enjoyed again.
Suddenly feeling a need to learn something more about these women occupying his house, Rad looked at the woman coming into the dining room and was now pouring his coffee.
"Rebecca, something puzzles me."
"What's that, Major?"
"I've been watching all three of you women and you don’t seem to be the criminal type. Tell me what you did—what crimes you're guilty of. Not that it will make any difference to me now," he quickly assured her. "You're all good workers, regardless of the past."
"We were arrested for treason, Major. By your own General Sherman's orders."
"You mean you were all spies?"
"No. There was a textile mill in the little town of Roswell where we lived. And once the men who worked there left for the army, the women took their places at the spindles and looms. When General Garrard took the town, he burned the mill and arrested the workers for making cloth for the Confederate army."
Rebecca was careful to watch the reaction on the man's
face before she continued. The frown encouraged her to wait for the question that she sensed was the real reason why he had inquired.
"And Allison Forsyth? She was a mill worker, too?"
Rebecca smiled. "For just two days, Major Meadors. Captain Forsyth was dead; we had no money left—just the baby and that large old mansion about to fall down over our ears. The only way Miss Allison knew to raise enough money to leave Rose Mallow and take us back to Cypress Manor in Savannah was to swallow her pride and ask Mr. Roche, the manager, for a job. But she hadn't counted on the mill bein' burned so soon."
She waited for any other question, but for the moment the man seemed to have lost interest. A disappointed Rebecca, wondering if she had done more damage than good on behalf of her mistress, set down the silver coffee pot and brought in the platter holding the eggs and bacon.
As soon as Rad had filled his plate, he said, "That will be all, Rebecca."
The woman began to leave the dining rom. But then the major's voice stopped her. "Rebecca, I'm going into Louisville after breakfast. I'm not sure when I'll be back. If the three of you want to do as little work as possible today, I won't complain. Yesterday was an extremely hard day for all of us."
"It sure was, Major Meadors."
Rebecca saw the carriage leave. And two days later, she saw it return. During the time between, the three women rested, with Allison, helped by Rebecca, attempting to eradicate the effects of the sun from her tender complexion.
"If you don’t take better care of yourself, Miss Allison, you're goin' to be black as me," Rebecca admonished, slathering milk clabber over Allison's face.
Allison laughed. "You used that same argument, Rebecca, over ten years ago."
"Well, looks like you haven't learned any sense in the past ten years—at least when it comes to your skin."
"Ten years ago, I was a young girl. Now I'm a widow. Beautiful skin just doesn't seem to matter to me anymore."
"You act like your life is over. Well, that ain't true. And I'll tell you another thing, too. The way Mr. Freemont looks at you, I think it won't be long before he comes over and asks you to live in his house. That is, if the major will allow it."
The Roswell Women Page 24
