Lori smiled coyly. “I’m not sure,” she replied. “I think I’ll have to try them all again before I can decide.”
For the first time since he could remember, Adam threw back his head and laughed out loud.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Adam was whistling as he made his way across the yard toward where the buggy awaited to carry him out to the fields. He had to go carefully, since the ground was still muddy and his cane tended to slip, but nothing could mar his mood this morning. After the most pleasant breakfast he had enjoyed in years, Lori had invited him to kiss her again “the third way,” and the taste of her still lingered enticingly on his lips. Maybe he’d come back at noon anyway, no matter how much work there was to do.
“Massa!”
Sudie’s urgent cry startled him, and he turned to find her picking her way gingerly around the puddles as she hurried to catch him up.
“Is something wrong?” he asked in alarm, thinking of Lori and wondering what could have possibly happened in the few minutes since he’d left her.
But Sudie grinned at him. “Not if what I saw this mornin’ mean what I think it mean,” she said.
Adam managed not to grin back. “And what do you think it means?”
“I think it mean you and Miss Lori warmin’ up to each other.”
“She is my wife,” Adam reminded her.
Sudie nodded and slowly her grin faded. “Yessir, Massa, she is, an’ you been mighty patient with her.”
He had indeed. He had practically qualified for sainthood.
“I just wanna warn you to keep goin’ slow so’s you don’t scare her,” Sudie continued. “After what happen to her an’ all, she still be mighty skittish, even if she think she over it.”
Adam stared at her in surprise. He couldn’t believe Lori had confided her deepest shame to Sudie, especially not after the way his slave had treated Lori in the beginning. He’d known the two women had made peace but... “She told you?” he asked incredulously.
Sudie nodded again. “I don’t reckon she could keep what that devil done to her a secret much longer.”
This was impossible! Sudie couldn’t be condemning Eric, not after she’d forgiven every other evil he’d ever committed in his entire life. “She told you who did this to her?” he demanded.
“Oh, no, sir,” Sudie hastily assured him. “She really don’t know who it was. If you was thinkin’ she just kept it a secret from you... Well, she didn’t know him. Said she never saw him before or since.”
Oh, of course, now it all made perfect sense. Sudie had no idea that Eric was the one responsible for all of this. And Adam wasn’t going to tell her, either. “I see,” he said.
“An’ I knows ’bout the baby,” she added, answering his other unspoken question. He’d been wondering when she would figure out why he had married Lori in such haste. “Which is why you gots to be extra careful with her. A lady in her condition, well, that make her skittish, too.”
Wonderful, just what he wanted to hear. And he didn’t want to think about the child at all, not until he absolutely had to. “Thank you for your very considered advice, Sudie,” he said, dismissing her. He planted his cane very deliberately as he began to turn away.
“Massa Adam?”
Reluctantly, he stopped and waited for whatever additional wisdom she wanted to impart.
“A baby an easy thing to love, no matter if it yours or not.”
Sudie had certainly proven that with her blind devotion to Eric all these years. For his own part, Adam would simply take her word. Not trusting himself to reply, he started toward the buggy again, his pleasant mood ruined.
***
“Thank you, Missy,” the old woman said with a weak smile as Lori finished placing the warm onion poultice on her chest. Lori and Sudie were doing their rounds of the slave quarters, tending to the sick and injured. This woman had the grippe and a terrible cough that the recent wet weather had only aggravated.
“This is what my stepmother always did for me when I had a cough,” Lori replied, returning her smile. “I hope it eases you some.”
The old woman only nodded, afraid to talk for fear of starting her cough again. Her dark face was sheened with sweat, and Lori was very much afraid she was going to fail in her duty as mistress to save this woman’s life. She glanced helplessly at the basket of remedies she and Sudie always carried with them on these calls, and longed to see some miracle there. She didn’t.
Sudie touched her arm. “We best go now so Pammy can get some rest,” she said softly.
“I’ll come back this afternoon to check on you,” Lori promised, picking up her basket and turning toward the door. Outside on the beaten path that wound through the slave quarter cabins, she could hear the happy cries of the slave children who played nearby under the watchful eye of the elderly slaves who had grown too old to work in the fields. Pammy had been one of them until illness had felled her. Reluctantly, Lori remembered what Adam had said about how some masters put their old slaves out to starve.
“She’s going to die, isn’t she?” Lori asked when they were safely away from the cabin and couldn’t be overheard.
“Everybody dies, sooner or later,” Sudie reminded her. “Look there.” She pointed at where two small children were playing in the wet grass. A little while ago, Lori had dosed them with tonic for summer complaint and now they were frolicking as if nothing was ever wrong with them. “You done some good today. And don’t forget Henry’s foot. You saw how much better it looked this mornin’.”
Henry had stepped on a thorn and the cut had festered. Fortunately, a tobacco poultice had drawn off the poison, and he would probably be back at work in a few days, as good as new.
Still, she saw the way they looked at her, suspicion in their eyes. She might be Adam’s wife, but she had not yet taken her place in their eyes as their mistress. She was beginning to wonder if she ever would.
“You an’ Massa Adam seem a lot happier this mornin’,” Sudie observed, reminding her that at least one area of her life was improving. It was as close as Sudie would come to inquiring outright into the private business of her master and mistress.
Lori simply smiled politely, not certain exactly how much she should confide in a slave, even one of Sudie’s exalted rank.
“How you been feelin’ lately?” Sudie went on. “Any more sickness?”
“No, none at all. That seems to have passed,” Lori reported with some surprise. She hadn’t been thinking about it at all.
Sudie nodded. “Usually does, sooner or later. You feel the baby move yet?”
Lori glanced at her warily. “No,” she said and then added, “or at least I don’t think so. What does it feel like?”
“Not much at first, just a little flutter, like when you hold a butterfly in your hands.”
Instinctively, Lori’s hand went to her stomach. “I’ve felt that! I didn’t... That’s it? That’s the baby?”
Sudie nodded, and Lori felt almost faint for a moment as the reality of it swept over her. The thing inside of her was alive! She’d tried not to think about it, tried to pretend it wasn’t there, and except for a new tightness in her clothes, she’d managed to ignore the whole subject.
She’d stopped on the path back to the house, and Sudie stopped, too. “You all right, Missy?” she asked with a worried frown.
Was she? She didn’t really know, nor was she sure how she felt exactly. Certainly not as disgusted as she had expected to feel at knowing the child lived within her. And as she stood there trying to decide, she felt the tiny flutter deep in her belly again and with it came a sense of wonder so profound that her breath caught in her chest and tears came to her eyes.
“Missy?” Sudie was alarmed now. “Maybe you oughta sit down.”
“No, I’m fine, really!” Lori insisted. “I just... I felt it move again! Oh, Sudie, I didn’t expect to be excited!"
“ ’Course you is! It’s one ah God’s miracles, the way he takes even the worst thing in the
world and makes it right again.”
Things were far from right, of course, but Lori wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe that the child she carried really was innocent and that she might be able to forget someday how she had come to bear it and perhaps even love it the way a mother should. And even, if miracles did happen, that Adam would come to love it, too. But that was too much to hope for right now. For the moment she would be content to know that the hot ball of anger and hate that she had carried for so long was beginning to dissolve. And that today she had known true happiness, if only for a few fleeting moments at a time.
“Now let’s get you back to the house,” Sudie said, taking Lori’s arm to assist her. “Watch that mud there. Can’t have you fallin’, not in your condition.”
***
As he had expected, Adam didn’t return to the house until after dark that evening. Lori had been sitting in the back parlor, listening for him, and when she heard the rattle of the buggy, she jumped up and ran out onto the porch to meet him.
The buggy and horse were splattered with mud, and when Adam climbed down, she saw he was, too. His boots were caked and his pant legs and coattails were covered. His face was creased with fatigue, too, and he was limping more noticeably than usual, even with his cane, but he was smiling as he made his way across the yard toward her.
“How do the crops look?” she asked, hardly able to keep from bouncing up and down on her toes from the excitement of seeing him again after a long, lonely day without him.
“The vegetables are doing fine, and so is the corn. Some of the cotton was washed away, but we can replant. It’s still early enough.” He had a streak of mud across his face, and when he pulled off his broad-brimmed hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve, his hair was wet and matted to his head. She thought he had never looked more handsome, and she had an almost irresistible urge to throw her arms around him.
It must have shown in her face, too, because he held up his hands as if to ward her off. “If you have any orders for me, Mrs. Ross, they’d better wait until I get cleaned up a little. Wouldn’t want to mess up that pretty dress.”
Her hand went self-consciously to her throat. “Do you really think it’s pretty?” It was one of the simple wrappers that one of the slave girls had made for her. She and Sudie had chosen the style because it would adapt to her growing figure.
“Yes,” he said, letting his gaze drift lazily over her from head to feet, “but then maybe that’s just because of the lady who’s wearing it.”
Lori had never received a compliment like that before, and she felt herself flushing with pleasure. If she hadn’t already loved Adam Ross, she would have begun loving him in that moment.
“I’ll have Oscar take some hot water to your room so you can get cleaned up,” she said quickly to get the conversation back on more familiar ground. She stepped aside so he could begin to use the boot scraper to clean off his boots.
He gave the process only half of his attention though, because he kept looking back up at Lori, as if he couldn’t bear to go without seeing her for too long at a stretch. For her own part, Lori didn’t want to take her eyes off him at all, even though she knew she should be going to find Oscar.
Fortunately, Oscar found them a few minutes later.
“Better get them boots off ’fore you set foot in the house, Massa,” he warned. “Sudie have my hide if you get mud on her clean floors!”
“I’d already thought of that,” Adam said as he moved to put his heel in the boot jack.
“Don’t use that ol’ thing,” Oscar protested. “That ruin them boots for sure!”
“I don’t want you getting all dirty pulling these off,” Adam protested right back, and Lori had to admit, it would be a filthy job.
“I can wash my hands easy enough,” Oscar pointed out, “but where you gonna get another pair a boots like that with the Yankees makin’ sure we don’t get nothin’ in or out of Texas?”
Without another word, Oscar turned his back and bent over to remove Adam’s first boot. He was right, of course, and for the first time in days, Lori remembered the terrible war that raged ever closer to them. How easy it was to forget, except for the inconvenience of getting goods they’d once taken for granted. But of course life at Elmhurst was easier than it had been for her and Bessie because here they had the means to make many of the things that were no longer available.
The skills to do so had almost been forgotten in recent years. Since Texas had grown more populous, ships had begun making regular stops at her ports to deliver the things that Texans had done without or made themselves during the early years. But the war had necessitated a return to self-sufficiency.
“Don’t worry about the Yankees, Oscar,” Adam was saying. “My brother’ll make short work of them, and then we’ll be able to get whatever we want, just like in the old days.”
At the mention of Eric, Lori felt the blood rushing from her head, and she knew she couldn’t stay where she was for another moment. “I’ll get some... some hot water,” she murmured and fled into the house.
She heard Adam calling her name and knew he must realize what he had done, reminding her of Eric when he was the last person on earth she ever wanted to think of again. He’d want to apologize and make it right, but she didn’t want to hear that. She didn’t want to hear any more about it at all. She found one of the maids in the hall and told her to fetch some hot water to Massa Adam’s room right away. Then she hurried off to the kitchen to make sure his supper would be kept warm while he washed.
By the time he returned, washed and wearing fresh clothes with his damp hair combed neatly, Lori had completely recovered herself.
Hearing his step in the hallway as he approached the dining room, she went to meet him. He was walking with his cane, something he rarely did in the house, and she realized his leg must be bothering him.
“Are you in pain?” she asked, but he shook his head.
“Lori, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking—”
“That’s all right,” she said with forced brightness, determined not to let any ugliness spoil their evening. “Please, let’s not talk about it anymore. Your supper is waiting.”
She took his free arm and hugged it tightly, silently telling him she bore him no ill will for his slip of the tongue. He smiled down at her, although his eyes were full of questions. “You look very lovely tonight,” he told her, obviously willing to play along with her.
“And you, sir, look much better than you did a few minutes ago,” she replied.
“Not much of a compliment,” he allowed, smiling for real this time, “but I’ll take it.”
He allowed her to lead him into the dining room, and he made short work of the simple meal that Esther served to him. For her own part, Lori only picked at her food. She was more interested in watching Adam and studying his every move and every expression. The way his long-fingered hands gripped his fork. The way his lips closed around his food. The way they curved when he smiled and flattened when he frowned. The way his golden hair curled slightly on his neck as it dried. The way the tips of his eyelashes were so light—they were almost invisible. The way his eyes crinkled at the corners and the way they shone when he looked at her. And what did he see when he did?
Not the ragged girl who had lived in the shack at the edge of his property, at least. She might not be the kind of fine lady he deserved to have as his wife, but at least she wasn’t trash anymore. She had shoes on her feet and decent clothes, and if her manners weren’t perfect yet, she was making progress. His slaves might not completely respect her, but they did obey her now. And while many of the tasks she would have to master were still a mystery, she had learned most of the important ones. Slowly but surely, she was earning her place in his life, and when she did, when she was the kind of woman he should have married in the first place, perhaps then he would love her the way she loved him.
Adam used his bread to soak up the last of the gravy or his plate and popped it into his mouth.
His hunger satisfied, at least for the moment, he settled back into his chair to sip the remainder of his coffee and to look at his wife.
God, he missed that ragged girl he’d known for so many years. How long had it been since he’d first noticed that she had made the critical transition from girl to woman? When she’d first pinned up her hair and let down her skirts to cover her slender ankles? When her dress no longer hung on her bony frame but clung to newly-rounded feminine curves?
For a second he pictured how she had looked the day he’d gone to see her in that hovel where she lived. Her hair had hung loose, her enticing body had moved freely, unencumbered by corsets or petticoats, and her tiny, perfect feet had been bare. His blood quickened at the memory, even as he stared at the more proper version of the very same woman.
Would he ever possess that girl, the one he had imagined would be the wanton fulfillment of all his fantasies? Even if he stripped away these restrictive clothes and pulled her hair down loose around her naked shoulders, would she become that girl again? Or was she lost forever along with Lori’s innocence?
Or perhaps she had never existed at all except in his heated imagination.
Shaking off the disturbing thought, he said, “Shall we retire to the parlor?”
As if she had been anticipating the invitation, she was on her feet in a moment. Adam took slightly longer to get up. His thigh felt like it was on fire, and he had to be careful not to stumble.
He followed her out of the room, distracting himself from the pain in his leg by admiring the curve of her back and the gentle sway of her hips as she walked. As usual, she matched her step to his when she fell in beside him in the hall, apparently taking no notice of how slowly he was moving tonight. It seemed to take forever to get to the other side of the house, but at last they reached the parlor door.
Hating his weakness—and the fact that he couldn’t hide it from her—he sank down into one of the wingbacked chairs with a weary sigh. Before he knew what she was doing, Lori had brought over a footstool and set it in front of him. Then, when he began to lift his foot onto it, she knelt and helped, taking the weight of his heel in her cupped hands and positioning it gently on the stool.
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