Her time at Caherbrennan and her own family residence could not have prepared her for this. Free from most of the effects of war, their homes were still fully functional and peaceful. Now she saw what the effects of a declining economy and Union occupation could do to a home. Without any slaves to maintain the property, without the head of the household to oversee the work, everything began to fall apart, and what hadn’t already fallen into disrepair, the soldiers had helped it along its way.
Though to be fair, Victoria did not know how far into disarray Christopher had allowed the property to fall before the war. She assumed that Lydia must have provided funds to keep it in at least a respectable state, though. The once white paint was now more of a brown-grey and it peeled from the clapboard siding. Hurricane shutters hung crooked from their fastenings. No joy, no life could be seen in the home now. The dark hollow windows stood opened or cracked, seeming to wail in torment.
The carriage in which the newlyweds rode led the moving caravan of supplies through the gate and made its way up the rutted gravel driveway. Christopher took Victoria’s hand into his own as they pulled up in front of the porch. “I know this will be a lot of work, but we can make this place beautiful again, Tory. We can make it our home together.”
Victoria gave him a weak, wry smile in response. She looked at the porch. The double doors stood wide open and falling off of their hinges. She could see that the leaves that covered the porch had made their way into the foyer as well, and who knew what else had made its way into the house. Any number of creatures could be lurking inside waiting to startle her, waiting to share a bed with her, and waiting to steal the food from the pantry. She shuddered.
Despair filled her heart as she thought of what her life was about to become. It would take ages to get the house back into shape and they had only a couple of servants that Christopher had hired on at the market. Mrs. De’Muerre had offered to send some of their slaves with Victoria, but Christopher had refused. He hadn’t even allowed Victoria to bring Polly, despite Victoria’s begging, but he was too proud. He refused any and all help from the De’Muerres. He knew that Mr. De’Muerre had refused to help his father all those years earlier, and Christopher was too proud to accept their assistance now.
Christopher’s leave would end in two weeks, and then the responsibility of this monstrosity of a property would be completely left to Victoria. Samantha would be coming to stay with her then, so at least she wouldn’t be all alone, but Victoria had never worked a hard day in her life. She was scared of the daunting tasks that lay ahead of her. Not that she really was scared of the work exactly, it was just overwhelming, and she had no idea where to start.
Perhaps the work would be a blessing in disguise. She would have something to focus on, something to keep her busy, and to keep her mind off of the tragedy that was now her life. Her world was forever changed by war. People she had known since birth were dead or missing and possibly never coming back. Slaves had been set free, and nearly everyone she knew was now dirt poor. The man whom she had loved and had intended to marry was dead, and now she was married to a man that she had once loved, but the relationship seemed empty now.
She wondered at where things had gone wrong, or if this was what the Hooded Beings had meant about being burned by the fire. She had been given that passionate all-consuming love that they had promised her, but now it had been taken away. She knew that her life with Christopher could not have been what they were speaking of; this was not how her life was meant to turn out. She wanted the fire. She had chosen love, not stability. Stability she had definitely not received. Now she had neither.
Their wedding night had been a disaster, and Victoria feared that it was a preview of a disastrous marriage. Just as Victoria had cried through most of the wedding ceremony, she had cried through most of the wedding night. Christopher had been kind and considerate, but he also had expectations that Victoria was in no condition emotionally to live up to. He consummated the marriage anyway, as was expected. Victoria fulfilled her duty, laying there passionlessly, allowing him to take her. The nights that followed were much the same.
They were both broken shadows of the people that they had once been. He sought solace in the arms of his wife, hoping to see within her the girl that he had loved when they were both young and all was right in their world. He made love to her with the frenzy of a mad man trying to escape invisible demons. She had nowhere to turn for comfort. Her fiancé had been stolen from her by what had become a cruel and pointless war. A hasty wedding left her with a husband who expected her to be a good, loving, and productive wife. His hands felt foreign and repugnant upon her, nothing like the erotic sensations she had felt as Wesley’s hands roamed over her corsetless body during their secret rendezvous. Christopher expected her to create a home from wreckage, but this was not her home. This place terrified her, and she had no familiar or kind faces to offer an encouraging smile.
Christopher obviously sensed the gloomy thoughts that must have radiated around her whole body. He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to his. “I'm not giving up on you. I am willing to beg, if that would help if only you would believe in us. Give me a second chance. I know I hurt you before, but I never stopped loving you. I know at one point you loved me too. So please, don't give up on me. Try to give this a real chance. I know you are hurting right now, and that things between us feel off, but I have hope that we can be as we once were.”
Dear sweet Christopher, Victoria thought. I hate that I am hurting him like this. He has suffered just as I have suffered. Perhaps we can help each other to heal. Maybe that is a common ground, upon which we can start to rebuild our relationship. Victoria looked back into his eyes, and kissed him gently upon the lips. “Yes,” she told him. “Let us look to our future with hope and build a home together.”
There was no doubt about it; the house had to be cleaned from top to bottom. Truthfully, Victoria thought that they would be better off burning what remained of the house to the ground and just starting over from scratch. Leaves, animal droppings, dirt, and general grime covered the floors and walls of the once pristine palace-like plantation. Upon walking through the double-doors, Victoria dragged her finger along the cedar hat rack/storage bench combo. Her fingers were blackened from the buildup. She looked up and saw the mirror that flanked the back of the furniture piece was tarnished.
Victoria sighed and mentally pulled herself up by her bootstraps. First things first, she thought to herself. She sent the two female darkies off to the kitchen to begin that cleaning process, which she didn’t even want to imagine what the kitchen looked like, and for them to begin preparation of the evening meal. The male had stayed back with Christopher to handle the unloading of supplies. She, herself, headed to the bedroom to try and sort that mess out before it came time to turn in for the night.
She found the room that Christopher told her would be their room. It was his parents’ old room and probably his grandparents before that. There wasn’t much that Victoria could do for the mattress. Victoria was suddenly ever so grateful for the bedding that her parents had provided her with as part of her trousseau. She hollered out the open window for Christopher to bring the black trunk up to the room when he was done putting away the horses, so that she could prepare their bed. A few minutes of looking around and snooping in cupboards provided her with a broom to begin sweeping up the cobwebs, dust, and leaf debris. This would be the first of many hours of cleaning that would be require to make this house a proper home once more.
As they lay beside each other in bed that night, long after they both should have been asleep, Chris rolled over and gently spooned up behind her, placing an arm over her. He whispered, “I wish to lay here beside you always. I hesitate to shut my eyes and fall asleep because I fear that I would wake to find these last days to be a dream. I don’t want to miss one single thing about you, one single moment of our life together. I want to cherish each word you speak to me and each look you send my way. I want to have a lifetime of memo
ries to take back to the front with me -- warm memories to guard against the coldest hours of loneliness.”
Victoria didn’t stir one hair; she barely breathed. She didn’t want to acknowledge what he said, because she wasn’t sure how to respond. She was trying to open her heart to him, truly she was, but she was failing terribly.
The two weeks of Christopher’s leave sped by. They were tired each night from their long hours of work, but each night they made love, passionlessly. It was expected, so Victoria bore it. Perhaps once she produced an heir it would end. Perhaps if she produced an heir, perhaps when the war was over and Christopher and she really built a life together, perhaps her feelings would change and it wouldn’t be so bad. Christopher left for the front, Victoria did not accompany him to the dock to say goodbye, because it was unsafe for her to travel without any type of escort. So she stayed at Hillhead Acres where it was safe and began to assume her duties as mistress of the house.
Chapter Fifteen
The day after Christopher left, Victoria set to scrubbing the house. She wanted to scrub away all the sins and wash away the past. If this was going to be her home then it needed to be fresh. She wanted to do her best to start anew, and the cleaning became her obsession. Candles burned long into the night as she cleaned and scrubbed until her hands bled. As she observed her hands one night, she no longer recognized them. They were no longer the delicate and fine hands of a lady. They were washerwoman’s hands, hands of long hours of work. Hands that were creating a new place for Victoria to call home in this ever-changing world that Victoria inhabited.
A few days after Christopher went back to the front, Victoria hung the wash along a line that hung between two of the dead trees in the yard behind the kitchen of the big house. It was a hot, humid morning already. She brushed the beaded sweat off of her forehead with the back of her hand. The hair on the back of her neck rose suddenly as if she was cold or as if someone stood behind her, watching her. She turned to look. There sitting on the back kitchen porch sat a Labrador Retriever. Victoria took a step back in surprise. How did that dog get there without Christopher’s hunting hounds sounding an alarm?
The Lab, who was neither quite chocolate brown nor black, seemed happy, well fed, and well groomed, so it appeared unlikely that he was a stray who had been out on the prowl for a long period of time. No active plantations resided nearby, but he had to have come from somewhere. Victoria shrugged it off and returned to hanging the clothes and linens she had gathered about from the chests left at Hillhead Acres. She hoped to repair anything that was salvageable. Clothing and fabrics were a sparse commodity these days and if you could find any at the market they were abjectly overpriced. When finished hanging the laundry, she headed to go back into the house. The Lab stood up with his tail wagging as she approached him on the porch. When she finally stood beside the dog, he looked up at her expectantly, tail wagging, and front paws prancing in an excitedly anxious way.
“Well there dog. Where did you come from, huh?” she bent down and scratched him behind the ears. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” She stood back up and reached to open the door. “Alright, go on home now. Go on.” Victoria flitted her hand, gently shooing the dog away. The Lab let out a pathetic whine. When Victoria opened the door fully in order to enter the house, the dog darted in past her.
“Hey! Get back here,” Victoria called in after it, but the dog had already found himself a cozy spot on a dirty rug that covered the workroom floor. He looked up at her happily from where he lay and his tail began to wag when she walked into the room. Victoria placed her hands on her hips and looked down at him sternly. The dog crawled with his belly still low on the floor, until he lay at her feet. He then rolled over on his back, exposing his belly to her and kicking his feet up at her playfully.
Victoria sighed, rolled her eyes, and gave a small giggle. She reached down and rubbed his belly, “Oh alright, you can stay a while I suppose.” As if he knew what she had just said, the dog rolled back to his feet, sat up, and licked her happily on the face. Victoria swatted at him, giggling. “Your company has to be better than no company, right? I have been going stir crazy here without anyone to talk with. I bet you’re a good listener, aren’t you? What shall we call you?” She looked down at the dog. He looked up at her with soulfully sad, puppy dog eyes. “You’re a handsome boy, aren’t you? I bet you are all the girl dogs’ favorite beau.” Victoria stopped and pondered that for a second. “That’s what we will call you. Beau. Do you like that, Beau?”
The Lab yipped and jumped up to lick her face again. Victoria laughed happily. “I guess so!” She stood and cocked her head off toward the front of the house. “Come on Beau, we need to get back to work.”
With Christopher gone now, it was just the two Negro women, one of their husbands, and Victoria left in the house. Samantha wouldn’t be arriving until later that day or the next. Victoria felt lonely in her room all alone, practically all alone in the big house. The house made peculiar noises at night that were still foreign to Victoria. She had not grown accustomed to the regular settling noises of Hillhead Acres, and some of the noises were just downright strange – noises that Victoria thought could not be normal for any house. Most nights after she finally fell asleep, she would dream of Wesley.
Just the night before, her dream was especially vivid. In her dream, she laid there in her bed and awoke in the middle of the night to find Wesley sitting on the bed, watching her sleep. It was Wesley, that was evident, but he looked slightly different, in the mouth area, there was something about the way his lips looked, a little fuller and they protruded a little more. He looked pale and kind of tired, but there he was, her soul mate. Her love sat there beside her. “Dia Dhuit, Mavorneen,” he whispered.
“Oh!” She sat up and drew him to her, their lips meeting in desperation, devouring each other with a ravenous want.
When they finally broke apart, Wesley spoke. “We only have a few minutes before you wake up, Tory, and this precious stolen time will be taken from us, but I had to come to you in this dream to tell you something important. You must carry on, Mavourneen, don't mourn. It will bring me joy to look down upon you and see you smile once again the way that you used to. Know that I will never leave you. I will watch over you and protect you the way that I have since the day that we met. Know that I am safe and happy where I am now and want the same for you. I may be dead but you are alive and must keep living. I love you, and a long happy life is all that I could want for you.”
He tried to rise from the bed then, but Victoria still maintained control of her dream. She nearly shouted in desperation to keep him there beside her. “I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone, but I still feel you with me all of the time. I’ve tried not to love you anymore. I have tried to forget you for Christopher’s sake, but the trying is tearing me apart. I still need you Wesley and here you are now.
“Please don’t go, not now. Tell me. Am I crazy for believing that you are not dead? Crazy because I know that you never left me? I am not going crazy. You really are still here. I can feel you and touch you now. When they told me that you were gone it was hard for me to believe because I thought that if your soul was gone from this place I would have felt it somehow because of the connection that Polly created between us and I never felt our bond become severed. I was right all along. You are not gone.”
Tears ran down Victoria’s face as she ran her hands through Wesley’s hair, traced the features of his face with her finger, and took his hands in hers, all in an attempt to prove to herself that he was there in front of her, really there.
Wesley made no reply to her outburst. He simply kissed her softly on the lips one last time. Victoria felt incredibly sleepy and felt herself being gently lowered down upon her pillow but could do nothing to stop it.
She awoke in the morning clearly remembering the dream, but it wasn’t a dream, was it? Victoria thought that there was no way that it had been dream. It had been too vivid. She remembered it all t
oo plainly. She searched for evidence that Wesley had been in her room, but found none.
Beau barked at Victoria, breaking into her thoughts and bringing her back to the present. “Yes, yes, I know, there’s no time to dilly-dally. Back to work you say.” Beau followed Victoria about the house no more than a few steps behind her for the rest of the day. Victoria laid out a bowl of water and asked the cook for a few scraps of leftovers. Beau ate happily with his tail wagging, always wagging, especially when Victoria would speak to him while they walked about gathering laundry and linens to be washed or while putting them away.
Christopher and the male servant had fixed the windows and shutters before Christopher had left, so now Victoria went about hanging clean curtains that she had discovered in another trunk after washing the windows. Beau looked on fretfully as Victoria climbed onto a chair to reach the curtain rods. He whimpered as she stretched precariously to reach. When she was safe on the ground once more Beau rushed up to her, circling around her and licking her hands, then jumped up to stand on his back paws with his front paws planted firmly on Victoria’s chest, allowing him to lick her face.
The hunting hounds began to bay and Victoria heard the unmistakable sound of horses hooves and wagon wheels. Beau barked excitedly and ran down the steps with Victoria and out the front door to greet Samantha. Beau appeared to be almost as excited to greet Samantha as Victoria was as he bounded about while the sisters shrieked and giggled joyous greetings while they hugged.
Samantha gasped in horror multiple times on the way to her guest room. Victoria agreed as she explained the state of disarray that the house had been in when she arrived, and divulged to her the amount of work that she had already put in, which caused Samantha to tut-tut at the idea of her sister taking on all the work alone. Samantha promised that first thing in the morning she would help her sister tackle the massive projects that still needed to be done, but that evening, there would be no talk of work or cleaning or war, only sister-to-sister gossip and bonding.
The Possessive Kiss: Victoria's Story: Book Two of The Kiss Series Page 14