by Lynn Austin
“And you said yes!” Mary’s dark eyes shone.
“Of course! Such a handsome, charming man, such a magnificent home—he swept me off my feet.”
There was more to the story than Eugenia would dare to tell her daughters. As the party had been breaking up and the neighboring plantation owners leaving, Philip had pulled her aside. “Meet me on the terrace after everyone’s asleep,” he’d whispered.
Eugenia hadn’t replied. It was a scandalous request. But she couldn’t stop thinking about him as she retired upstairs to the guest rooms with the other young ladies from out of town. Philip made her feel like no other man ever had—breathless, every muscle and limb of her body on edge as if her skin had grown too small. It had seemed like torture to be held so chastely as they had danced. What would it feel like to be held closely, to hold his hand without gloves, to touch his skin? Such wicked thoughts made her feel as though her corset was laced too tightly.
The slaves had followed Eugenia and the other girls upstairs to help them undress and shed their jewelry and ball gowns and corsets and hoop skirts, unpinning their hair and brushing it. The girls would sleep in their chemises and bloomers. Eugenia climbed into the feather bed beside her sister, but she couldn’t lie still, feeling so restless she feared she might crawl out of her skin.
“Why are you acting so strange?” Olivia asked. “First you spend all evening dancing with Philip Weatherly and hardly give anyone else a chance, and now you’re kicking the covers like you have a grudge against them. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
Everything. She couldn’t confide in Olivia. Eugenia didn’t understand what she was feeling or why, but she wanted go downstairs to be with Philip. Of course she couldn’t go, shouldn’t go. If anyone found out, her reputation would be ruined.
She was still wide awake after Olivia and the other girls had fallen asleep. And so Eugenia had climbed carefully out of bed, wrapped herself in a dressing gown, and tiptoed down the sweeping stairs to the drawing room. She didn’t need a candle to guide her, having memorized every inch of the Weatherlys’ beautiful home. She saw Philip’s silhouette in the terrace doorway, bathed in moonlight. And ran to him.
“Eugenia, you came!”
He pulled her into his arms, no longer holding her at a chaste distance but pressing her close to himself, his strong arms holding her tight. Then he bent to kiss her, and the sensation of his lips on hers was more wonderful than she ever could have imagined. It was Eugenia’s first kiss. Other suitors had stolen kisses by pressing their lips to her cheek or her hand, but this was a kiss of passion, desire. She felt the power of it and pulled away after a minute, giddy and afraid. They were both breathless.
“I have been longing to do that all evening,” Philip said, “and for weeks . . . no, months before that. Ever since I first saw you at the mayor’s home in Richmond, remember? On Christmas? Then at the ball at your father’s house, and at the Sheffields’ party, and . . . and I can’t even remember all the other places. You are so beautiful, Eugenia. I’ve been captivated by you from the very beginning, but you were always surrounded by admiring men, and I feared I never would win your notice.”
“I noticed you, Philip.” His hands were still on her back, and the warmth of them sent shivers through her.
“Desire from a distance is one thing, but after talking with you all evening, dining with you, I’ve now come to know the woman behind the exquisite face and . . . I’ve fallen in love with you. Please say you’ll marry me, that you’ll be my wife.”
His wife. The word carried many meanings to Eugenia: gaining the prestige of a good family name and performing the social obligations that went with it, leaving a father’s protection for a husband’s, and of course obliging him with marital duties to give him sons. But that night she realized that being his wife also meant being held in his arms this way, kissed this way, feeling his hands on her bare skin. She had heard her cousins and girlfriends speaking of such intimacies with fear and vague horror, but they had been wrong—such intimacy seemed wonderful, breathtaking.
Eugenia was no longer wearing gloves, and she reached up to touch Philip’s face, his beard. He had removed his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves, and she trailed her hands down his bare arms until they stood hand in hand. She looked up into his eyes, longing to marry him this very night, this instant, but it wasn’t her decision to make.
“You must ask my father,” she said.
“I know, I know.” He groaned as if in pain. “But you can convince him to give his consent, can’t you? You’ve stolen my heart. See . . .?” He pressed her hand to his chest. “Feel it hammering? It’s yours, Eugenia. I want to spend my life with you, this home with you.” He pulled her close and kissed her again before she could reply.
She knew then that this wonderful, overwhelming feeling was love. Marriage shouldn’t be simply the end of a well-played game but a commitment of love and passion. Eugenia no longer wanted to marry a man because he was the ideal social match or an economic advantage to both families, or choose the best home or most handsome man—although she truly believed that Philip was the most handsome. At that moment she would gladly forego the vast mansion in Richmond that belonged to one of her other suitors, John Sheffield, and forfeit all of his wealth.
“Yes, Philip,” she breathed when they pulled apart. “Yes! I’ll marry you!”
“Promise?” She was astounded to see that he had tears in his eyes.
“I promise.”
“Forgive me, but I must have one more kiss.” He held her chin in his hand for one more kiss, a soft, tender one this time, then he murmured, “Go to bed, Eugenia. I won’t sleep but you must. . . . Good night.”
She was surprised her legs could support her as she returned to her room. Olivia woke up when she climbed into bed. “Ooo! Your feet are ice-cold! And you’re shaking! Where were you?”
“I went downstairs.”
“Downstairs? Why? What were you doing?”
Eugenia couldn’t hold her joy inside a moment longer. “I’m going to marry Philip Weatherly. He just proposed to me and I said yes.”
“You . . . you talked to him? In your dressing gown? And with your hair loose?”
“Please don’t tell anyone. It doesn’t matter that he saw me this way because I’m going to marry him, Olivia!”
“But isn’t it up to Father? Doesn’t he want you to marry John Sheffield?”
“I’ll convince him to change his mind. I’m in love, Olivia. I love Philip Weatherly.”
“You can’t be in love. That’s for silly, common girls, not us. Mother says real love is something that grows over time out of mutual respect after you’re married. What do you know about love?”
“I know I’ve never felt this way before about any other man—and I’ve met dozens. I don’t have to pretend or talk about meaningless things with Philip. All of that seems ridiculous now, the flirting and game playing. I love him!” She remembered the tears in his eyes, remembered his passion and tenderness, and she buried her face in her pillow and wept.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“You can marry John Sheffield, Olivia, I don’t care at all about him. Philip is going to ask Father for my hand, and you have to help me convince him. I have to marry Philip!”
Two months later, Eugenia had gotten her wish when her father announced her engagement to Philip Weatherly. In the years since then, she had never doubted for a single moment that Philip loved her, only her. And her love for him had never wavered, never dimmed.
Now he was gone. The terrace where they had shared that first passionate kiss was overgrown with weeds. And Eugenia was alone.
22
Lizzie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She pulled her hands out of the washtub and wiped them on her apron as she stared up at her husband. His swollen face still bore bruises from the beating those men had given him, and she knew his bruised back and shoulders ached. But he was still going to Richmond w
ith Massa Daniel on Monday?
“Why do you have to go?” she demanded. “How can Massa expect you to ride all that way with him? He was one of the men who hurt you!”
“He was part of the group, but not the one who—”
“Why can’t we move someplace else? Our boys don’t have school anymore. Why are we even staying here? I can hardly stand to serve that man his food every day after what he done to you.”
“We’re supposed to love our enemies. Jesus said—”
“Did He say to keep on working for them so they could beat you all over again?”
“He said that if your enemy hits you on one cheek, then turn and let him hit the other one.”
“No, sir! I ain’t never doing that! And neither should you!” She plunged her hands into the laundry tub again, pulling out a shirt and rubbing it so hard against the scrubbing board that she could have worn a hole clear through it.
“That’s what Jesus said, Lizzie. I ain’t making it up. He told us we have to forgive our enemies and pray for them, too.”
“That’s asking too much. Forgive the people who hurt you? Forgive a mean man like Massa Daniel for burning down our school? Uh uh. No, sir.” She wrung the water out of the shirt with both hands, the same way she would like to wring Massa Daniel’s neck.
“Listen, I have to go with him. Not just for our own sakes or because Miz Eugenia’s letting me plant cotton, but because there’ll be work for the others if we stay here at White Oak. Old Willy got hurt that night, too, and he needs a place to live. He’s too old to be sleeping out there in the woods, and he’ll die if they beat him up that way again. But if he starts driving Miz Eugenia around all day, I’ll be free to work in the cotton fields. And Saul’s thinking of coming back, too. His wife can help you out.”
“Clara’s a field hand. She ain’t never worked in the Big House, never even been inside.” Lizzie lifted Missy Mary’s chemise from the water and scrubbed it against the board.
“You can show Clara what to do, can’t you? Then Miz Eugenia will stop running you ragged all the time.”
“I suppose so. But I ain’t praying for Miz Eugenia, and I ain’t praying for Massa Daniel, either.”
Otis rubbed the scab on his head from that awful night. He’d told Lizzie that the stitches the doctor put in made it itch. “I know it’s hard to forgive people like them,” he said, “but Jesus forgave those men who put the nails through His hands, remember?”
Lizzie thought of Roselle’s father as she squeezed the water out of the chemise. She could hardly stand to remember the day Roselle was conceived, even after all these years. How was she supposed to forgive? “I don’t know the Bible like you do, Otis. But if you expect me to be forgiving and praying and all those other hard things, then you’ll have to teach me how.”
“We all need to learn how, all of us. That’s why I want to start holding prayer meetings again like we used to have when my pappy was alive. Remember?”
“You expecting people to go out in the woods at night to pray? You trying to get us all killed?”
“It ain’t against the law anymore for us to meet and read the Bible. And if we get together in the daytime instead of at night—”
“We’re not doing it. No, sir. It’s too dangerous.”
He exhaled. He looked frustrated but not angry. Otis never got angry, even those times when he probably should get good and angry. Lizzie certainly didn’t understand this business of forgiving and turning the other cheek, even if Jesus did say to do it.
“All right, I have another idea,” Otis said. “That Freedmen’s Bureau is supposed to be a place that looks out for us, right? What if we had our prayer meeting in town, right outside that office so Mr. Chandler can watch over us? Maybe he’ll even read the Bible out loud until one of us learns how. Once the schoolroom is fixed, maybe he’ll let us meet there in the winter.” She could see his excitement growing.
“Those white men tried to burn that office down, remember? And Mr. Chandler couldn’t even stop them.”
“They won’t burn a church, Lizzie.”
“Ha! You sure about that?”
“I think my idea is a real good one. We’ll hold our meetings on Sunday afternoons . . . maybe find us a preacher . . .”
“Not you! No, sir! It’s too dangerous.”
Otis grinned. “I know how to grow cotton, Lizzie-girl, but I don’t know anything about preaching. But we can all pray, can’t we? That’s what we need the most right now, more than anything else. With all that’s going on around here, we need to ask the good Lord to watch over us and help us figure out where to go and what to do until we get used to being free. We need Him to watch over our children, too.”
Lizzie could only shake her head. She wished she had his faith, wished she could keep on believing like he did that everything would turn out all right. She reached into the soapy water to pull out a sock and slipped it over her hand to scrub it. “So your mind’s made up that you’re going to Richmond on Monday?”
He nodded slowly. “Massa Daniel wants to leave early in the morning.”
Lizzie remembered the awful feeling she got in the bottom of her stomach, like she’d swallowed a pile of rocks, the last time she’d watched Otis drive away to Richmond. She remembered how long the days had seemed while she waited, how worried she got. At least this time Massa Daniel couldn’t sell Otis for money. She knew she shouldn’t worry. But she did.
She turned back to her laundry after Otis left, sighing when she saw it all piled up in the basket, waiting to be rinsed and hung up to dry. By the time the cotton fields would be ready to be picked next fall, she would be too heavy with a baby in her belly to help him out. How was she going to get all this work done with diapers to wash and a new baby to feed, too? Maybe Otis was right. If they stayed here and Saul and the others came back, they would both get the help they needed.
When the laundry was finally finished and hung out to dry, Lizzie walked over to the kitchen garden to see how Rufus and Jack were getting on with their chores. She had set them to work hauling water to pour over the vegetable plants, seeing as there hadn’t been a good rain in a while. The boys had worked hard and the droopy bean plants had perked up with a little water. But both boys were soaking wet and she could see they’d been playing in the water and splashing each other while watering the plants.
“What you boys doing to get yourselves all wet like that?” she teased. “There a hole in your buckets?”
“No . . . Jack and me were just . . .” He shrugged.
Playing, Lizzie thought. They didn’t hardly know the word. “That’s fine. You could both use a good bath. You about finished?”
“Just two more rows, Mama, and—” He stopped. His smile faded and his little body went stiff as he looked past Lizzie to something behind her. She turned around and saw that Missy Josephine had come out the back door and was walking straight toward them, holding something in her arms. Lizzie felt her body go all stiff, too, like she’d been dipped in starch. Missy couldn’t blame Lizzie for not trusting any of the Weatherlys, could she? Did Missy Jo know what her brother and his friends had done? If so, she should be ashamed to be his sister. Miz Eugenia knew the truth. She’d been in that room and heard the men planning to burn down the school. Oh yes, she’d heard them. Miz Eugenia knew.
“Afternoon, Missy Josephine.”
“Good afternoon, Lizzie.” She unlatched the garden gate and came inside. “I see your boys are here, too. Good. I have a proposal for all of you.”
“A what?”
“I want to ask you a question. My mother is planning to hold a dance here in July, and I thought it would be nice to clean up the stone terrace off the drawing room so people could stroll outside. The weeds have taken it over, I’m afraid. I wondered if I could hire Rufus and Jack to help me restore it?”
“Your mother ain’t letting you do that kind of work, Missy Jo, especially if it means working alongside us all day.”
“I know. She already
forbade me to do any of the work, but she said I could show Rufus and Jack what to do.” She squatted down to talk to them, right to their faces, and they backed up a step. “I don’t have any money to pay you for the extra work, but if you’re willing, I thought I could teach you reading and arithmetic in return. I know you’re sad about missing school. And I can pay you with these.” She unfolded her arms and showed them two books.
Lizzie saw her boys’ eager looks as Missy Jo held the books out to them. They knew better than to reach out or touch them, but they quickly wiped their hands on the sides of their pants, just in case.
“Go ahead, you may each take one,” Missy Jo said. “They’re yours if you’re willing to do the work. And you can earn more books, too. What do you say?”
“Don’t matter what they say. What will Miz Eugenia say?”
Missy Jo rose to her feet again. “She already agreed.”
“She’ll let you give away them books? And be their teacher?”
“It’s all arranged.”
“Can we, Mama? Please?”
“Please?”
They were looking from Lizzie to Missy Jo and back again as if Missy was offering them a pot of gold. “I guess so . . .” Lizzie finally said. The look on their faces as they each reached for a book brought tears to her eyes. She was afraid to hope that this would be something good, afraid to let them hope, too. “Now, you have to earn them books before you can keep them, you hear?”
“No, they may take them now, Lizzie. I insist. That way you’ll know that I’ll keep my promise.” She looked right at Lizzie, as if she was trying to tell her something. Maybe she did know what her brother had done. Maybe she was trying to make up for it. Lizzie looked down at her feet.