The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  Jemma had fallen into Alex’s arms. He’d hoisted her against his chest and straightened, ready to carry her to the kitchen, when Papa arrived from the mill. Still in the saddle, he’d ridden into their midst, demanding an explanation as the cold rain grew steady, drenching them all.

  “Sir,” Mister Reeves said, “I’d spoken to Miss Carey, told her in no uncertain terms that she must deal with the girl—punish her—else I would do so, and I asked her to bid one of the kitchen girls heat water for me to bathe, presuming that was where she was bound. I waited. When none came I went to draw the water myself. I spied her,” he said, pointing at Jemma in Alex’s arms, “skulking away from the kitchen alone, bound for who knew where. I asked after you, Miss Carey,” he said, turning on Joanna, dark hair plastered to his skull. “No one knew where you were. So I did as I’d warned you.”

  Mute with guilt, Joanna glanced at Alex, hunched over Jemma, sheltering her with his body. A few moments was all it had been, but had Elijah not found her…

  Papa took Mister Reeves’s side. “Phineas, I know in the past I’ve tempered your ideas of fitting punishments. In this case, while I regret it was needful, I judge that you weren’t in excess.”

  “Only because I stopped him!” Joanna protested. “How far would he have taken it had I not?”

  “It’s done, Joanna,” her stepfather said, then to Alex, “Take her to be looked after.”

  Joanna followed Alex out of the rain, Jemma small and stiff in his arms. He took gentle care of her, laying her on a pallet in the kitchen, clasping her hand while Phoebe and Marigold tended the wounds crisscrossing her shoulders. Seven stripes.

  Jemma had cried herself to sleep. Instead of leaving her in the kitchen, Alex scooped her up, pallet and all, and took her to the smithy once the rain ceased.

  “You’ll let Mari or Phoebe know if the wounds look to be inflamed, come morning?” Joanna had asked.

  “I will,” he’d said, and she could tell that despite his self-possession, his anger was as seething as her own. And his concern. “Dinna worry—not about that.”

  “Alex,” she whispered now, her hair still damp and straggled from the rain. Had she thanked him, for any of it? She would go to the smithy first thing tomorrow. She would—

  “Miss Joanna?” Azuba’s softened voice, the touch of hands on her shoulders, gave Joanna a start. She hadn’t heard the housemaid enter the room.

  She turned, stepping back from that almost-embrace, meeting the gaze of the woman who’d been the nearest thing to a mother she’d known for the past seven years. A brown-skinned woman in faded linen, graying hair covered in a cap. A woman her stepfather owned.

  “I’m sorry,” Joanna choked out.

  Azuba’s forehead wrinkled. “Why are you sorry? You didn’t whip that child. Or are you thinking it was too harsh?”

  “Of course it was.”

  “A slave run off like she done, it’s what happens.”

  “Azuba, you cannot possibly think it was the right thing to do?” Though she’d seen red when she snatched that whip from Mister Reeves, and much of what had followed was a blur, she recalled snatches of words spoken around her as she and Alex hurried Jemma into kitchen. Had it been Marigold who’d muttered behind her, “Fool girl thinking she gonna be a wild Indian…”?

  It was true, Jemma had set her hope on an impossible dream, thinking she could find refuge with a people who might share her blood but might as easily kill and scalp her as take her in. She wanted freedom that badly. Didn’t they all? Didn’t Azuba, born into slavery like Jemma?

  “Do it matter what I think is right?” Azuba asked, the sorrow beneath those words unimaginable.

  “To me it does. This isn’t how I want things to be.” It tumbled out of her then, the vision she’d had the night Reverend Pauling, on his sickbed, had spoken of her to Papa, and all that her heart had woven into it since.

  Azuba stared at her, no expression on her face.

  “I want that life for you, too, Azuba. I don’t want to live apart from you, or Mari, or so many others—not if you’re willing to remain with us. But I want you to be free. Legally. Only it—”

  She stopped, startled by a noise in the passage. A sniffle, poorly muffled. Azuba reached the door and pulled Marigold into the room. A crying, angry Marigold, wrapped in a bulky shawl, who didn’t look at all contrite to have been caught eavesdropping.

  “Mari,” Joanna said. “You heard what I was saying?”

  “Yes ma’am. I did.”

  Joanna had hated it when Marigold began calling her Miss Joanna. She hated even more to hear ma’am out of her mouth. “Will you keep it between us?”

  Marigold’s gaze dropped to the floor. She hunched herself into her shawl. “You want it kept secret?”

  Joanna took in Marigold’s face more closely, noticing its puffy roundness. Had she been weeping over Jemma?

  “Are you all right, Mari? It was a horrible thing to see.”

  Mari snorted. “Maybe it put some sense in her…ma’am.”

  Joanna flinched.

  “Mari,” Azuba snapped. “You ain’t helping matters.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mari said with barely contained defiance. Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I want to say one thing. Can I say one thing, Miss Joanna, afore I shut my mouth about what I heard you saying?”

  Joanna felt her belly clench. “Yes, Mari. What is it?”

  Marigold’s nose ran freely with her tears. “If you was going to do like you said, set everyone free, I wish you’d done it afore Micah had to die!”

  Hand muffling a wail, Marigold fled the room.

  Joanna looked at Azuba, who quite uncharacteristically appeared at a loss for words.

  “I wish it too,” Joanna said dully. “But it isn’t going to happen.”

  Azuba said, “I know.”

  “You knew about the manumission law?”

  Azuba shook her head. “I know Master Carey. He a good man in many ways, Miss Joanna. But he ain’t ever gonna choose to do a thing like what you want, even if he could.”

  * * *

  Jemma was asleep on his cot. Since Moon had yet to return to the smithy, Alex had given up trying to sleep on the cold floor and laid himself out on Moon’s cot. It was too short—the least of what was keeping him wakeful. He couldn’t stop seeing Joanna marching up to Reeves, grabbing his wrist, snatching away the whip. The man had been too startled to stop her, standing with his mouth catching rain. Alex had been taken aback, and thrilled, by her fierceness as she stood up to the man, and to her stepfather once he arrived. After that it had all been about Jemma, poor mite. She’d be in a world of pain when she woke, likely sooner than either of them wanted, but she’d heal. In body at least.

  He wanted to tear Reeves limb from limb. He wanted to do nigh the same to Edmund Carey. He wanted to find Joanna, pull her into his arms, do what they hadn’t done there beside the forge. Was she lying awake worrying over Jemma, longing all the more for her life to be different? Had she room in her thoughts for him?

  He oughtn’t to be thinking of her. He’d managed not to do so all winter—half of the time, if he was honest, while the other half he’d merely been waiting for her to appear in the smithy doorway again. Today she had, and every touch on his face, every meeting of their eyes, had pushed him a little further past reason. And that swift, sweet kiss on his brow when he told her about the alligator…He could almost think he’d dreamt it again.

  He hadn’t, though. Not this time. And by the look in her eyes, she’d startled herself in the doing of it.

  She’d the loveliest eyes, that changeable sea color, fringed by lashes darker than her hair. He longed to know what she looked like with all that brown hair spilling down…

  He stifled a groan before it left his lips.

  If he didn’t put Joanna Carey from his mind
, he’d never sleep. He latched on to the next image it presented, the winding river that flowed past Severn—just how far past he’d a keener notion now. This land was vast enough a man might easily lose himself in it, a thought that no longer intimidated. He was longing for escape, more than he had since the day he signed that wretched indenture.

  But he’d left it too late. His heart was entangled. Not just with Joanna, but more and more she was filling his thoughts.

  Could he leave her, knowing her unhappiness?

  What would his staying help in that regard? He admired her for her kind heart and all its naïve yearnings for a life more like the one he’d known in Scotland than he’d let on. He wanted her. Maybe even loved her. But he was still what he was, a prisoner, indentured for rebellion. And in truth she barely knew him.

  He could change that, let her break down the walls he’d kept intact.

  Did he want her to know him?

  Aye, he did. In every sense of the word. Even with no way he could see to make that lovely vision of hers ever come to pass, or play a part in it. Unless…

  He’d still over six years to serve out his indenture. If he could manage to abide the place for such a length of time, would she wait for him? Refuse Reeves—a likelihood after that day—and any other man who sought her hand?

  But if Carey had rejected Moon, what made Joanna think he was even remotely acceptable?

  Did she think it?

  Whatever she was thinking, he longed to run his fingers through that hair all fallen down to…Would it be her waist?

  He turned over, groaning into his borrowed bed.

  20

  With a mended bridle delivered, Alex paused to fondle the questing nose of one of Carey’s mares, taking the faint noises nearby for that of another horse—until a distinctly human sniffle drew him to the last box stall before the doors open to the yard beyond. Joanna, he was thinking, though it surprised him she’d give vent to her feelings in the stable.

  It wasn’t Joanna he found, wrapped in a shawl and crying her heart out in the empty horse box. “Mari?”

  The shawl slipped off Marigold’s shoulders as she turned, and he saw past the marks of weeping to the fullness in her face, the thickness of her waist for which her winter gown and petticoat couldn’t account. When had he last seen her? She’d come to the smithy less frequently of late, and yesterday, during the fiasco of Jemma’s whipping, he’d been distracted to say the least.

  “How far along are ye?”

  Marigold snatched up the shawl, but it was too late to hide the truth. “He tell you?” she all but wailed, bursting into fresh tears.

  Alex hurried into the stall and grasped her shoulders. “Wheest, lass. Ye dinna want to draw attention, aye?”

  She melted against him, brow pressed to his chest. He stroked her back, then held her away. “Ye’ve told Elijah?”

  “He knows.”

  Alex’s gut clenched at her leaden tone. “Will he not claim the bairn?”

  “It don’t matter. Slave mama makes a slave baby. You ain’t figured that yet?”

  His mouth tightened. “Of course it matters. D’ye want him, Mari?”

  “My baby? Of course!”

  Alex touched her cheek, stroking away a tear. “Elijah, I meant.”

  “Reckon I’d take him as he is and be glad.” She closed brimming eyes, heaving a breath. “But he think he ain’t fit for nothing. Not smithing, farming, or fathering.”

  She was about to dissolve into weeping again. As Alex folded her against his chest, hoping to head it off, there came a faint noise behind him, a rustle like a mouse in the hay. When he looked up from Marigold’s bent head, they were alone.

  “I’ll speak to Elijah, see what he has to say for himself.” And what he thought Carey would do. “Does Joanna ken about the bairn?”

  “No sir, she don’t. Azuba suspects, but she ain’t asked me outright yet. I don’t like to think what Miss Joanna going to say.”

  That surprised him. “Ye were friends once, aye?”

  “Things change.”

  Oh aye, they do. He held her away from him. “Come now. Wipe your face, and go back to whatever ye’re meant to be doing. It’ll be all right, one way or another.”

  If Marigold found the words as empty as they felt leaving his lips, she pretended otherwise.

  * * *

  Joanna was breathing hard as she settled on the stool beside Alex’s cot, where Jemma lay moaning in restless sleep. She’d come meaning to check the girl’s dressings. Catching sight of Alex on his way to the stable, she’d turned aside to follow, letting him reach the stable ahead of her, not wishing to draw attention from anyone nearby.

  She’d lain awake last night, racked with guilt over those few sweet moments in the smithy and what they’d cost Jemma, helpless to stop imagining what might have happened had Elijah not interrupted and the day unraveled with its awfulness.

  Something like what she’d just seen?

  Lying facedown on the cot, Jemma stirred, stiffened, then whimpered. “Mister Alex? I’m thirsty.”

  “It’s me, Jemma.” Joanna rose and poured water from the pitcher into Alex’s cup. “Can you sit up?”

  “Miss Joanna?” Jemma turned her face to the side, one bleary amber eye blinking up at her. “I can drink like this. Hold it close?”

  Jemma shifted to the cot’s edge and hung her mouth over the side. Joanna held the cup rim to her waiting lips and tipped it. Jemma sucked in the water noisily, a little at a time, then laid her head down. “Thank you…ma’am.”

  “Oh, Jemma.” Joanna stroked her curls, in need of washing though the rest of her had been bathed. Where did she begin to ask this child what was wrong? “I never meant this. I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too.” Jemma’s body shuddered. “Never been so scared.”

  “When Demas found you? Or yesterday?”

  “Both. I just wanted to find my people.”

  Joanna wanted to tell her that they—everyone at Severn—were more her people than some Indians she’d never seen, but was that true? Was she wrong to want it to be true?

  Jemma was quiet, her back rising and falling. “Jemma?”

  She didn’t reply. Joanna decided to let her sleep and check the dressings later. Or tell Alex to do it.

  “Joanna?”

  As if her thoughts had summoned him, she turned to see him standing there, looking at her with eyes and mouth and posture proclaiming welcome. Relief. Warmth.

  Yearning filled her. Uncertainty rooted her, until he beckoned her into the shop.

  She couldn’t meet his gaze. Looking past him, she spied a length of metal on the forge’s counter. A marlinspike, she thought, like the ones he’d made for Captain Kelly.

  “Does the Charlotte-Ann require marlinspikes?” She hated the tinny sound of her voice.

  Alex half-turned toward the spike. “A piece of scrap. It’s nothing.” He took a step nearer, studying her face. “Something’s amiss with ye, lass. Is it Jemma?”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “What, then?” Two strides closed the distance between them. Long fingers grasped her arm, anchoring her where she stood. “Ye’re clearly upset. Is it yesterday? Or maybe…what happened between us before?”

  She blinked, blurring her vision. “And what was that?”

  “Ye ken the answer, lass.”

  She pulled free. “Perhaps you shouldn’t address me so informally.”

  “Yesterday it pleased ye fine,” he said, dropping his voice to a husky lilt that nearly undid her. “Is it that ye’re blaming yourself—or us both—for what happened to the lassie?”

  “I saw you in the stable. With Mari.”

  Understanding dawned on his face. “Did ye, then?”

  That was all he had to say?

  “And now I’m
asking myself…what sort of man are you, that you would make me think you’d welcome me into your arms and yet I find Mari there the very next day.”

  She’d blurted it, the only way she could have gotten the words out without tears interfering. They came anyway. She wiped at them angrily.

  More than one reply flashed across his eyes before he turned and strode toward the bench. He retraced his steps like a stalking panther, radiating the vitality that had so rattled her at their first meeting. If anything, it was more intense now, well fed and worked as he’d been the past months.

  He stopped before her, forcing her to cant her head to meet his gaze.

  “The sort of man to comfort a lass when he finds her crying in a box stall. There’s nothing between Mari and me of the sort ye’re thinking ye saw. The lass was in need of a friend. That’s all I am, or ever will be, to her.”

  She held his gaze, saw nothing there but sincerity and felt ridiculous for entertaining such suspicion—and beset by that older ache. If only that friend Marigold needed could be her.

  “Is Mari upset with me still? She was, yesterday.”

  Alex shook his head. “She didna say so.”

  “What, then?”

  “That’s for her to tell, if she wishes.” He said no more of the matter. What he did say was, “Joanna, if I was to touch ye now, would ye allow it?”

  The question was a yanked rug, tumbling her thoughts. She looked down, saw he already grasped her arm. She wrapped her fingers around his forearm, feeling the hard muscle beneath his shirt, all he wore though the day was chill. “You are touching me.”

  “Not the sort of touch I mean.” His other hand cupped her face, big and warm. She leaned her cheek into it, resistance melting. “Mari’s a comely lass. No man could think otherwise. But I dinna want to watch her eyes change with the light. I dinna want to touch her, or feel her touching me. I dinna want to ken the secrets of her soul.”