Audra frowned, the effects of the wine beginning to wear off. “Why?”
She gasped when he suddenly punched her in the chest. The pain was so shocking that he managed to grab her and yank her over and press her facedown against the mattress before she realized what was happening. She felt his hard shaft probing near her bottom then.
“Learned to love me? I don’t need your love that badly, Audra, dear. You will learn a lot more things tonight, and they won’t have anything to do with love! I will teach you things your Lee Jeffreys probably never thought of showing you, and if I can’t be your first man one way, I’ll be your first in another! By morning there won’t be one inch of your naked body I haven’t known intimately or got myself into, and tomorrow we’ll do it all over again! I’ll keep you here for days, if I have to, until you entertain no more thoughts of Mr. Lee Jeffreys.”
He shoved himself into her then. The pain was excruciating, and Audra felt a darkness closing in around her.
Home. At last she was going home. Never had Audra longed for Brennan Manor and her own room more than now, so much more than when she had come home from Connecticut; yet she had been only a few miles away.
Ten days of hell, that was what she had just lived through. She had never dreamed that Richard Potter could be capable of such evil. She felt like a rag doll that had been thrown about, dragged around, kicked across the room. And like a rag doll, she felt like a limp piece of material, with no spirit, no soul, no heart. She struggled to think of a way to make Richard treat her with some little bit of respect, and she decided her only hope was to get pregnant. Maybe that would stop the abuse. He wanted a child more than anything else in the world. She would at least earn his respect as the mother of his son.
She knew now it would not be his first child. It would simply be his first white child. His first wife had never been able to give him children, but there were plenty of mulatto children running around Cypress Hollow, and Richard had made sure she knew who had fathered most of them. He had even dared to make her take another bedroom one night so that he could take a new Negro girl to his bed. She had been vaguely aware that slave owners sometimes lay with Negro women, but she had never given it much thought, for such things didn’t go on at Brennan Manor. She had supposed that on some plantations it was just part of what was expected of a female slave. All her life she had given no thought to what the woman might think of it, that she might hate it. Now that she knew the uglier side of man, knew what it was like to have to submit because of pain, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. The rumors had always been that Negro women were just naturally loose and eager. Don’t you know that mating is all the Negro women think about? Eleanor had asked her once.
Audra was beginning to doubt that. Lena and Toosie certainly were not that way, and after ten days with Richard, she could not help feeling sorry for the plight of the Negro women, even sorrier for the near-children Richard took to his bed. They couldn’t possibly be giving themselves to him willingly, and now she knew some of the ways he had of making them submit. She wondered where her own fierce pride had gone. It was as though Richard had squeezed it right out of her blood. She had never thought of what she had done with Lee as being quite so sinful and unforgivable as Richard had made it seem, and the things Richard had done to her had only added to her shame.
She never thought she would be grateful for the news that Abraham Lincoln had been chosen the Republican candidate for President. It meant she could be rid of Richard for a while. A messenger had brought the word yesterday, along with notification of a meeting of Louisiana’s most powerful to be held in New Orleans in three days. Richard was being called to the meeting. Her father would also want to go, if he was up to it physically. Wealthy southern men all over the South would be getting together, planning their strategy, deciding where to hold another Democratic convention and how to nominate a proslavery man like Jefferson Davis, rather than the party’s popular choice, Stephen Douglas.
Politics mattered little to her now, except as a means to be apart from Richard and have some peace. He was taking her home to stay at Brennan Manor while he was gone, and where they would live, as Richard had promised her father. Maybe after he had been away from her for a few days and had time to cool down, Richard would be kinder to her when he returned. And maybe at Brennan Manor, things would be different. He certainly couldn’t beat her with her father around, nor could he go dragging little Negro girls into his bedroom.
Miss Geresy had certainly never prepared her for anything like this. Should she admit to her father how Richard treated her? The man probably thought she was the happiest woman in the world by now. Because of his delicate health, she was afraid to tell him the truth, afraid he would die of a heart attack. He would probably blame himself for urging her to marry Richard, and if Joey found out, he would do the same.
No. She would suffer this alone, find a way to bring some respect to her marriage and to keep Richard from abusing her. She wasn’t sure how yet, and for the moment, getting pregnant was the only thing she could think of, so she submitted to Richard’s lovemaking, if that was what it could be called. She lay there without objection, doing things that made her want to be sick. She did it all quietly and submissively, to avoid pain, and hoping, at least the times when they had “normal” intercourse, that his seed would take hold in her womb. She could only pray that the other things he did to her would not cause her to lose a baby if she did indeed become pregnant.
At last they reached the house. Richard had hardly brought their horse-drawn carriage to a full stop before she jumped out of it and ran up to hug Joey, who was the first to come out and greet her. He embraced her tightly, tears in his eyes at missing her. No, she must never tell Joey. It would break his heart to think he might be the cause of her misery. Next came Father, looking a little stronger, more color to his face. Another embrace. Her marriage had made him so happy. She could not tell her father. And here were Lena and Toosie. She hardly noticed Toosie’s look of surprise when she hugged the woman like a long-lost friend. Lena would have expected a quick embrace, but not the clinging hug Audra gave her after finally letting go of Toosie.
She drew away, and Lena looked her over. “It’s good to have you home, Miss Audra.” What has happened to you? she wanted to ask. How could the girl have lost so much weight in just ten days? Why was there a weary, haunted look behind her usually bright eyes? This was not the way a blushing bride looked or behaved. She seemed ecstatic over being home, as though glad that for the next few days she would be away from her husband. And was that a faint bruise she detected beneath Audra’s unusually heavy coat of powder and rouge?
She glanced at Richard, who was approaching the house then. She did not miss the way he looked at Audra, with a hint of disgust, not the look of a loving husband. He ordered two house servants to collect Audra’s baggage, then turned to Joseph.
“We can leave yet today, if you like,” he said to the man.
Joseph looked surprised. “Well, of course, if that’s how you want it. I thought perhaps you would want another day or two with Audra first.”
Richard looked at Audra and smiled, but Lena saw through the grin, sensed a kind of evil behind it. “Your darling daughter understands the importance of these things,” he drawled. “Don’t you, dear?”
Audra put on a smile of her own. “Yes.” She looked at her father. “I think you should leave today, Father. With Abraham Lincoln running for President, we cannot gather our forces for the Democratic ticket any too soon. Everyone respects you and Richard.” She glanced at her husband, and Lena had a feeling Audra did not respect Richard Potter one tiny bit. “They will listen to you,” she continued. She kept her eyes on Richard. “I will be fine while Richard is gone, as long as I can be here at home; but I will dearly miss him.”
The pain that had eaten at Audra’s stomach for days now grew worse at the lie. How long could she put on this act and save her own honor as well as her father’s and Joey’s? Richard s
tepped closer, bending down to kiss her bruised cheek.
“And I shall miss you, my sweet,” he answered. “I look forward to coming home to my beautiful wife. When things calm down and we get a proslavery man into the White House, we will take that trip to Europe I promised you. And while I am gone, I would like you to plan a cotillion to be held right here at Brennan Manor. It will be another party to show off the newlyweds. You may even invite some of your favorite Negroes to come and watch from the veranda. Ask everyone from miles around.”
How dare you mock me so! she thought. He knew she would have to play the happy, satisfied wife and how difficult it would be for her. And Europe! She could not think of a worse nightmare than to have to spend weeks alone with him on the ocean and in strange countries, away from Joey, away from her father and Brennan Manor. Perhaps she would be pregnant by then, and they would be unable to go.
The men went inside, followed by the Negroes who carried Audra’s baggage. Joey followed them, wanting to hear the talk about politics, wishing his father would ask him to come along to New Orleans. He knew he would not be invited. Joseph Brennan would be too embarrassed to have the others hear the way his son stuttered. It felt good to have Audra back. Without her, he lived in a world of his own, and it was lonely there.
Audra remained outside on the veranda, glorying in just being here. She asked Toosie to draw her a bath. It would be wonderful to soak in a tub alone, without Richard being there to watch her every move, to insist on bathing her himself. She had not had a moment alone, her only privacy coming when she had to use the chamber pot. He had degraded her in every way possible, and she realized that she would have to be sure Toosie stayed away when she bathed so that the woman did not see the bruises on her body, bruises well placed by a man who knew how to hurt a woman without it showing. She had no doubt he had learned his tactics when raping the Negro girls he dragged to his bed. She wondered if he had one ounce of feeling for all the little mulatto babies he had fathered. The horror of the things he did was magnified by the worry that he might give her some kind of terrible disease. Eleanor had told her once that sometimes men who slept with lots of women got hideous diseases that killed both the man and woman, and usually they went crazy before their death.
Maybe Richard was already going mad. Maybe that was why he behaved the way he did. Would she be next? She shivered and looked at Lena. “It’s good to be home, Lena. How has Father been?”
Lena’s eyes drilled into her knowingly. “You’ve never been a good liar, Audra Brennan Potter,” the woman told her. “Something is wrong. What has that man done to you?”
Audra looked away, wishing Lena didn’t know her so well. “He is my husband. What’s done is done.”
“And your father is powerful enough to undo it, if necessary. He puts you above all things, Audra. If that man is mistreating you, he should know.”
Audra shook her head. “Not in this case. It would mean he would have to know the whole truth, and that would kill him.”
Lena frowned. “And what is the whole truth, child?”
Audra turned to meet her eyes. “I am far from a child, Lena. Richard has seen to that.” Her eyes teared. “Lena, it isn’t your business to go prying into the private lives of those who own you.” Help me, Lena! How could she tell the woman the atrocious things Richard had done, and how could she explain the reasons why? She had slept with a Yankee man in Connecticut. She had not thought it so wrong, until now. Richard had shown her what a whore she truly was. Her father must never know. Joey must never know. Not even the Negro help should know that she had been so shameless with Lee Jeffreys, or know the hideous, filthy things Richard had done to her.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a common nigger,” Lena told her, holding her chin proudly. “You know better, Miss Audra. You know that I love you like my own, and when I show concern for you, it is only because I care and want to help.”
Audra closed her eyes. “If you care, then don’t ask any more questions. And please don’t say anything to Father.” She met Lena’s dark, knowing gaze. “I mean it, Lena. If you do love me, leave it be. If you tell Father and he raises a fuss, it will only make things worse for me. I am Richard’s wife, and in the eyes of the law and the Church, that cannot be changed. Just help me make my situation as bearable as possible and don’t do something to stir up Richard’s anger and cause him to take me away from Brennan Manor. This is the only place where I am safe, Lena. Do you understand?”
Lena frowned with concern and sympathy. “I understand.” She reached out and touched Audra’s hair. “Come upstairs, child. Toosie will have your bath ready.”
Audra followed her inside, not bothering to go into the parlor to say good-bye to Richard. She hurried up the wide staircase to her room, thinking how she even looked forward to seeing her dolls again. Tonight she would sleep with them instead of Richard Potter, and it would be the most blessed, peaceful sleep she had had since her wedding night. She would hold her dolls close and pretend she was a little girl again, blissfully ignorant of what it meant to be a woman. How strange that with one man it could be so beautiful and gloriously satisfying, while with another it could be a nightmare.
13
Lee halted the buckskin gelding he had rented from a livery in Baton Rouge. He had paid twice the normal rate for the animal, and he suspected the livery owner had deliberately overcharged him just because he didn’t have a Louisiana accent. “What’s a damn Yankee like you doin’ down here?” the man had asked. He had carried on about how Lee was probably a “Lincoln man,” and how “that goddamn Abraham Lincoln is going to destroy this whole country.”
Lee could see there was no sense arguing with the man, either about politics or the cost of his horse. He had simply paid the still-grumbling livery owner and left, but he could understand better how Audra must have felt when she was in Connecticut. He almost felt as though he had left the United States and was in a foreign country.
So far everything he had seen and heard told him to turn around and go back home before he set eyes on Audra again, but here he was, at the iron gate of Brennan Manor and wondering how he had gotten this far. The gate stood open, inviting him to enter. His horse whinnied and shook his black mane, as though to warn him not to go any farther, and Lee took a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his brow to catch a trickle of perspiration. He remembered his remark to Audra last summer about how much more pleasant the summers in Connecticut were than in the South. How right he had been. Maybe for those brought up here, this steamy heat didn’t bother them; but right now he would dearly love to be lying on the beach at Maple Shadows, diving naked into Long Island Sound, or just enjoying the feel of a cool breeze off the water.
There was no cool breeze here, no wide, blue waters, and there were no sea gulls. There was, however, an estate so beautiful that it was like looking at a dream world. The house loomed at the end of a bricked drive that appeared to be a good quarter of a mile long, and heavy, humid air made the scene look like a misty mirage. A thick border of flowers of hundreds of species graced either side of the drive, a spectacular show of colors. Throughout the grounds brilliant deep pink and red azalea bushes bloomed, as well as white dogwood, and here and there Negro men and women tended the grounds, trimming, pruning, planting. The strong scent of jasmine and lilies engulfed him, so pleasant that it actually had a soothing affect on him.
He headed the horse up the driveway toward the house, and he was shaded by the great, gnarly branches of huge oak trees that draped themselves over the blooms of thousands of flowers and protected anyone beneath them from the afternoon sun. The trees, fat and old, led the way to the house, standing like guards over all those who might enter, and Spanish moss decorated their branches like green lace. There was no sound, other than the off-and-on singing of cicadas. In the heavy afternoon heat, even the birds were quiet, and the Negroes who were working in the lawn went about their chores quietly. A few glanced at him, but they immediately returned to their work
.
Life was definitely different here. He had noticed that already, from watching people on the steamboat that had brought him from Chicago; even more apparent when he reached Baton Rouge. Compared to New York, it seemed everyone here moved more slowly, even talked more slowly. Some had such strong accents that he had to concentrate to understand what they were saying. He had yet to see someone who seemed to be in a hurry, and he supposed that people who lived in such heat learned to do everything slowly just to keep from passing out; then again, people never had to hurry or exert themselves, anyway, because they had their Negroes to do everything for them.
Negroes everywhere. He had never seen such a concentration of black people, and all of them had something to do. They were ordered around like trained dogs, and his irritation at what he had seen was giving him renewed doubts about coming here, yet his heart raced faster with a mixture of dread and hope and excitement as he drew closer to the house.
He had taken a train from New York to Chicago, reaching the Republican Convention in time to see Abraham Lincoln nominated for President. He had intended to skip the convention, but decided he could get to Louisiana just as fast by land as by sea, and the quickest way was by rail to Chicago and on to St. Louis, then take a steamboat down the Mississippi to Baton Rouge. He figured as long as he was going through Chicago, he would attend the convention, and as soon as Lincoln was nominated, he had got on the train to St. Louis. At last he was in Audra’s territory, and already he could feel her presence. He had found a hotel in Baton Rouge, and the hotel manager told him how to find Brennan Manor.
“Anybody in town can tell you how to get there,” the man had said. “That and Cypress Hollow north of it are the biggest plantations in Louisiana. You probably passed right by both of them if you came here by riverboat.”
The remark had brought back the very vivid pictures of what Lee had seen from the deck as his boat had made its way lazily down the river, past huge fields of cotton. He had seen Negroes out in those fields, hoeing in the hot, merciless sun. The hotel manager had given him a look of distrust and disapproval. “Yankee man, aren’t you?” he had asked, as though Lee had some kind of disease. After the tirade from the livery owner, Lee almost lost his temper, but he had managed to stay calm. He simply answered that he was from New York, being careful not to mention Audra. Yankees were about as welcome here as the plague, and if none of this worked out, he was sure she didn’t need the whole town of Baton Rouge talking about how a Yankee man had come calling on her.
Tender Betrayal Page 17