“I love you, Rounder.”
The world receded and the blood pounded in his ears. His vision tunneled to where so that Camille’s liquid golden orbs was the only constant.
“You can’t,” he said hoarsely. “You can’t.”
Why should she say something like that? In this moment?
“Who are you to tell me that I can’t love you?” Her grip tightened on his hand. “You did not ask me to love you. Nor, do you deserve it. But my love is yours, no matter what happens, do you understand?”
“I don’t,” he answered truthfully. “I don’t understand at all. I thought you—this entire week—”
Why was she saying this? Was she mistaking pity for love? Yes, he reasoned as the anger built up. She had no idea what he was and who he was. That’s why she could claim she loved him. If she knew what he was, what his sins and secrets were, then she’d never claim this falsehood.
For the first time in his life, he wanted to open himself up to another person. If he had told her the truth, there would be no way she could feel this way.
Maybe the truth would set him free. Free from her supposed love.
“I was hurt because you refuse to trust me, Rounder. Not just as a colleague but as your wife. But I heard you cry out last night. Heard you whisper a name.”
Rounder froze.
“It sounded like a woman’s name, but I couldn’t be sure. It sounded like, Vernona? Venorris?”
Had he? What else had he said in his sleep? He hadn’t said her name in years, but hearing it added the validity to Camille’s words.
“You never cried out in your sleep before, Rounder. If that’s what’s worrying you.”
Some of the tension eased from his shoulders. At least he had that.
“You’re tend to be restless, but last night was the first I’d heard you say something. Your voice was full anguish as you called out the name. I listened to you, wondering who it could be that tormented your nights?”
Unable to stand there under the scrutiny of those eyes, Rounder walked around and got into the wagon. Flicking the reins, he set the horses on the way back to Red’s home. “It’s not something I want to talk about.”
“I know,” Camille said. “And I will accept that. Obviously, you have been hurt beyond measure, unable to trust or give yourself to anyone. You called me a predator, sure that all I would do to you is hurt you. Well, I’m not going to hurt you. Keep your past to yourself if you wish. I will not ask you again.”
“Camille, you can’t love me.”
“But I already do.”
How easily and sure she said those words. Not a flicker of discomfort to accompany them. She meant it, she really meant that she loved him.
“You hardly know me.”
“Whose fault is that, Rounder?”
Heat flamed his face.
“Regardless, I love what I know of you.”
He couldn’t keep the harshness out his voice. “What is it you think know about me?”
“I know you are honorable. From the way you began this investigation, you sought to teach me all you could about being a Pinkerton. You admitted your desire but have not pressed the issue. You care about people. Not everyone would call Cyril and Perky friends. You’re trustworthy. I only have to recall my secret to know that.”
“I told you I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“But you could have been lying. It happens all the time. You’re compassionate. In your own misguided way, you’ve kept yourself from me. Only a man filled with compassion can do that.”
“That’s very little to go on.”
“It’s enough. Once we apprehend Mr. Fremont, I have no intention of annulling this marriage. If you wish to go away, know that I will not separate myself from you.”
Her golden eyes ensnared him. He was trapped like an animal by their blazing intensity. Captive.
“I am yours. Forever. Whether you like it or not.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Several hours later, from the look on Rounder’s face, he still didn’t like it.
Camille gave a mental shrug as she finished helping Red wash and dry the dinner dishes. There wasn’t anything he could or say that would alter the fact.
Through dinner, his eyes strayed to her time and again, but she ignored it as she focused on the conversation around the table. Cyril and Perky were in good spirits. At Mrs. Ashmore’s funeral, they’d somehow caught the eyes of the Hammock twins.
“The older one’s the prettier one,” Cyril smirked with an arrogant smile on his face.
“How you figure that? They look the same.”
Red shared a look with Camille, who just shook her head.
After she finished washing up, she went outside to enjoy the cool of the evening. Later on that night, she and Rounder, would go to the cemetery and attempt to catch Carl Fremont in the act of stealing Mrs. Ashmore’s body. She had no idea what to expect, but nothing would keep her from doing her job.
She sat on the step and listened to the sounds around. Lantern may be a small town, yet it had a beauty all its own. She knew one day the town would grow to rival any of the bigger cities.
Footsteps sounded behind her, and then a familiar shadow fell over her.
“May I sit with you?”
“Of course, Rounder.”
He did so, sitting awkwardly on the steps.
“Camille, I’ve thought about what you said. It’s been going around in my mind since you told me. I don’t believe you really love me like you say you do.”
“How do you know?”
“Because…” Even in the waning darkness, she saw the sheepish look on his face.
“Have you ever been in love before?”
He stared at her. “I am now.”
Camille’s heart stopped. “Rounder.”
“But just because I love you,” he rushed on, “it doesn’t mean that what you feel for me can be love. You don’t know me. You can’t understand.” There was a desperation in his voice that was almost tangible. It was as if he were trying to convince himself.
She reached over and grabbed his hands with her own. Studying the contrast of their skin, his pale, hers dark, she said, “I’ve asked you to trust me, Rounder. I know you can’t. But if you are so sure that I can’t love you, won’t you tell me why?”
The silence went on for a long time. Camille could feel the struggle within the man next to her. How she wished she could comfort him, but he had to be the one to allow her to do that.
Let me in, she pleaded silently. Let me in.
“Have you ever heard that little song about the snake?”
Camille jerked her head up. “Snake?” What did that have to do with anything?
“Yes.” He pulled his hands away. “It’s a little song about a snake. It’s a very simple one. There’s a species of snake called micrurus fulvius, or a coral snake for the simpler terminology. The coral snake is venomous and deadly. This snake has remarkable striped colors on it alternating in bands of red, yellow, and black.”
Rounder stood and went down the stairs. Camille frowned and then recognized what he was doing. He’s distancing himself from me.
“There’s also another snake, lampropeltis elapsoides, a scarlet kingsnake, who also has a similar striking along its skin – red, black, yellow. Our current understanding is that some prey will often mimic the predator. So, for we mere humans to tell the difference between these two snakes, there’s a little song. ‘Red on yellow, you’re a dead fellow. Red on black, you’re okay, Jack.’”
Camille knew from that moment on, she’d never forget the little song.
“That’s all very interesting, Rounder. But what does that have to do with—”
“I’m the kingsnake, Camille. The one that mimics the predator.”
“I’m sorry but I just don’t understand.”
“Look at me,” he urged. “What do you see?”
“You. Only you.”
Rounder sat next to her once more on
the steps. He took her hands into his. When he looked up, his eyes held such bleakness it made her heart ache.
“You and I are very much the same. I’m Negro, a mulatto like you are.”
Camille blinked. “Rounder.”
“For most of my life, I’ve been passing as a white man.”
Her eyes searched his. She’d have never guessed they shared common blood. Not that it would have mattered if he didn’t. She loved him for who he was, not for what he looked like or resembled.
“Are you shocked?”
She answered slowly and carefully. “I’m surprised, yes. But it’s of no consequence to me. I loved you when I thought you were a white man. I love you now that you’re a black man. I only wish I could see the color of your soul. Then I’ll love you as I see the way that God sees you.”
Rounder’s eyes widened like saucers. Then he reached over and dragged her into his arms. Without any warning, his lips met hers, kissing her brokenly and holding her so tightly she thought her ribs would break.
Drops of water fell on her face and she thought it was raining. It trailed down her cheeks and into the corner of her mouth. It tasted salty.
Tears. Rounder’s tears mingled with his kiss.
His body shook as he continued to kiss her, his lips strong and sure. They moved with a fierce passion over her mouth, drawing on her bottom lip and then her top. She moaned at the sensations, feeling a curious heat course through her.
With an agonized groan, he ripped his lips from hers and leaned his forehead against hers. Their breathing labored, he said, “I thought you would despise me.”
“Why?”
“Because I have lied about who I am for twenty years.”
She lifted her hand and stroked his cheeks. “Trust me.”
He shuddered at her touch. Kissing her palms with aching tenderness, he went on. “My father is a learned man though I wouldn’t say he has a profession. He works at a university, but the last I’d heard, he’d accepted a new position elsewhere. Not that he would have informed me of his whereabouts.”
“How did he meet your mother?”
“My mother was a slave. Her name was Venorris.”
Camille gasped. “The same one you called in your sleep?”
“Yes. She was my mother.”
“Go on.”
“My father was great friends with my mother’s owner. He’d spend the summer with him. From what my mother told me, when she turned fifteen years old, my father became aware of her. He asked my mother’s owner for her and he decided to give her to him as a birthday gift.”
“Oh, dear God.” Her stomach churned in agony. She knew things were different in America than the West Indies. But, thinking of her own country’s history, maybe they weren’t.
A grim look entered his eyes. “My mother said he gave her a choice.”
“A choice?”
“When he came to her, he told her that she could either give herself to him willingly or he would take her unwillingly. It was up to her to decide.”
Incensed, she snarled. “That’s not a choice, Rounder! It’s compulsion.”
“Perhaps. For some reason, my mother was grateful. In any case, she asked if she gave herself willingly, would he allow her to pick the time of her choosing? He told her yes and it was a year later that my mother decided to go to him.”
“Wouldn’t she have tried to escape?” Camille couldn’t see herself ever succumbing to such a thing.
“She never said. My father is a strange man. My mother said during that year he treated her like a white woman. He’d visited her, said nice things to her, and even once took her on an outing outside the plantation.”
“What a wonderful man.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
Rounder gripped her tightly. “Don’t be so quick to judge. My mother said that the memory of my birth is not an unpleasant one. She did not enjoy it, but she at least could close her eyes and think of other things.”
He went on to tell her that his father had nothing to do with her after he was conceived. She didn’t see him for five years. “Then one day, I saw my mother’s owner bringing one of his young relatives. A boy not too much older than me. The boy, who was watching us, pointed a finger at me. ‘Why is a white man out there with the darkies?’
“I didn’t think too much about it at the time. Later that year, my father came to visit. From what my mother told me he was curious to see the child she had born. I remember the way he looked at me. He stood over me, a tall man with blonde hair like I had and greenish brown eyes. ‘Remarkable,’ he’d said. ‘Absolutely remarkable. He could pass as my own son.’”
“I take it that’s what he did.”
“Not at first.” He moved restlessly. “At first, I stayed with my mother. Then my father came and began to teach me how to read. It was against the law to do that, but he didn’t pay any attention to it. My father has always been a law unto himself. When he saw how well I picked up on reading, he gave me other tasks – mathematics, music lessons, and others. Once, while he tutored me in the home of my mother, who was never present when he came, he said to me, ‘Do you know how fortunate you are to have your white blood?’
“I had no idea what he meant, and I said as much. He looked at me and said, ‘Your white blood gives you the intelligence to read and to write. My blood within you. Your outward appearance mimics mine so cunningly. You’re like the kingsnake with the band of colors.”
“Oh Rounder,” she breathed, starting to understand why he viewed the world the way he did.
“As my father poured more into me, challenging me on a variety of subjects as I grew older, I think I began to believe him. It was his blood that made me intelligent. His whiteness that dominated my features.”
Rounder’s hands were squeezing her painfully, but she didn’t want him to stop.
“He said all Negros were prey to the predatorial superiority of white men. But because my blood had his, I had adapted the mimicry of the predator and therefore, gave myself a chance of survival.
“He drilled this into me at every opportunity. My white blood, my white features, my white intelligence. Until…I began to hate the Negro blood within me.”
Her fingers were starting to go numb, but Rounder was unaware. His eyes were fixed on point in the darkness. His words coming out like a recitation. “ ‘You must remember that despite your mimicry, you are not the predator. You’re the prey.’
“I once asked him why he wanted my mother if she were prey. He gave me the queerest smile. ‘Women are never prey, my son. Don’t ever forget that. Negro, white, Oriental, Indian, all women are predators, even if a man has the advantage.’
“I began to hate my mother for her Negro blood, those Negro features. I thought of myself as the fortunate one, the one who bore the skin of the predator.”
His voice broke. “Oh, dear God, how could I have thought such things? How could I have believed them?”
Camille tugged her tingling hands from his grip. She reached and brought his head down to her heart, where he sobbed tears of blood.
The story came out, then. How Rounder despised his mother, speaking cruelly to her and being belligerent. His father, slowly and surely extricating any child-like regard for his mother until all he saw was the prey who should have been grateful for the anomaly that was himself. When he turned eleven years old, his father took him from his mother. She’d begged and pleaded on her hands and knees, but his father saw no reason to acquiesce to her. By then, Rounder never wanted to see her again.
“I told her she could come with us when she rid herself of her Negro skin.”
Camille fought to keep the shock out of her voice. From Rounder’s expression, he was in enough agony as he recalled these things.
His father, a wealthy man with a bit of wanderlust, took him around the world for the next six years. A stay in India to see the mystics there. An adventure on the African continent deep within the jungles. Arabia to meet the nomads of the desert.
> “It wasn’t until we landed in England,” he continued, somewhat calmer, “that I ended up falling in love with one of the daughters of the aristocracy there.” He glanced at her, “Well, not in love with her. What I felt her is nothing to what I feel for you.”
Camille would have kissed him if she hadn’t been interested in the rest of his story. “What happened?”
“My father said nothing of romantic relations for the entirety of our travels. It wasn’t until he saw my interest was more than a passing infatuation that he sought to curtail it. While walking in the gardens there, my father said to me. ‘You aren’t surely thinking of pursing this countess, are you?’
‘Of course I am, Father.’
‘That would not be wise, son. Do you think her father would be pleased to have a Negro as a son-in-law?’
“That was all he said, Camille. If he said more, I don’t recall. I was only fixated that all this time, while I had traveled, I’d left behind my origins. I had fully become immersed in the predator skin that I’d forgotten I was prey. My father soon found reason for us to leave England and I never saw the countess again. We came back to the States, and my father took me back to the plantation.”
His voice drifted away. Camille waited for him to continue but when he said nothing, she prompted, “What happened?”
“I’m not sure if I should tell you. The love you claim you have me, may dissipate.”
“Go on, Rounder.”
He gulped. “My father sent for my mother as if she were a servant and I the visitor. My former master was dead by this time and his son had taken over. He’d no idea who I was so it was easy to fall into the role. When she saw me, her eyes filled with tears and she mouthed the words, ‘My son.’
‘I’m no son of yours, Venorris. You’re nothing more than a broodmare.’”
“Oh Rounder.” The cruelty of his words made her want to hold him even closer to her heart. How could he think any different when he’d never been given a chance?
“Her brown eyes filled with such sadness, and she whimpered as if she’d been struck. I refused to acknowledge her as my mother. From that day, I was simply my father’s son for the next ten years. I had no mother.”
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