To Win Her Favor

by Tamera Alexander

  “We won’t be gone long, Papa. Onnie will check on you. And she’s bringing more horehound and boneset tea. That will help your cough.”

  Margaret kissed her father’s forehead, lingering, Cullen noticed, a little longer than usual. She was worried about him, he knew. So was he.

  The man’s color was more ashen than pale these days. And from what Margaret told him, the doctor’s visits were growing more frequent.

  Yet even with Mr. Linden’s weakened state, the man insisted on reading Scripture at the breakfast table every Sunday morning. Cullen had to admit, he didn’t dread the readings as much as he’d thought he would. Maybe it was Mr. Linden’s choice of passages, or maybe his fine reading voice. But Cullen actually found himself looking forward to it each week.

  He opened the front door, then paused and glanced back at Bucket, seeing if the dog wanted to go. But the collie, lying at Mr. Linden’s feet, settled its head down on its paws. Cullen took that as a no.

  Margaret accepted Cullen’s assistance as they descended the porch steps, and although he enjoyed the feel of her hand tucked in the crook of his arm, he wished he knew the reason for her reticence.

  They crossed the yard in front of the house and headed down the road in the direction of the cabins.

  The morning dew had long since evaporated beneath the sun’s warmth, but clouds building to the north promised relief from the heat. And, from the looks of them, they would bring welcome rain.

  He hoped Margaret didn’t regret what happened between them last night, because he certainly didn’t. No authority on the gentler sex, he did remember days when Moira would be unusually quiet. When he would inquire as to what was wrong, she’d smile and say it was nothing, simply a melancholy day.

  Maybe that’s what this was for Margaret.

  Having risen early, he’d ridden to the top of the bluff and watched the sun come up, wishing she’d been with him. As he’d looked out over the four hundred acres of Linden Downs, he still couldn’t quite believe this land was his. Just as she was his.

  Well, if not his in the most intimate sense, at least she was his wife, with the promise that the other might come in time. Only not too much time, he hoped, after last night.

  “Thank you for agreeing to my father’s request about Sundays.”

  “My pleasure. We can all use the rest, I assure you.”

  No fieldwork on Sundays was Mr. Linden’s solitary request regarding the farm’s operation, and Cullen hadn’t argued. There was plenty to do without venturing into the fields on the first day of the week.

  Moving freight on the docks in Brooklyn had strengthened his back and shoulder muscles, but the heat and humidity here in the South, coupled with the backbreaking work of clearing fields, then tilling and planting, made a man welcome a day with less strenuous tasks.

  “It’s good to see the land coming alive again,” Margaret said. “The apple trees blooming amongst the white clover. To smell the freshly turned soil after a rain. I’d forgotten how beautiful the fields are when they’re plowed and planted.”

  He trailed her gaze, sensing her relaxing. “They are that. We’ll clear the last of the lower fields in the next week and get them planted, weather permittin’. And it’s about time, too, with summer upon us.”

  “All of the lower fields?” She turned to look at him, the sun revealing the deeper red in her hair.

  “Aye. The more we plant, the more we gather. Why?”

  She lifted a shoulder, then let it fall. “That’s where I like to ride Bourbon Belle. You know the field that runs along the river?”

  He nodded.

  “There’s a path through the woods that leads all the way to town. Most people don’t even know it’s there. But it’s one of the prettiest rides in all of Nashville.”

  He smiled, remembering the first day he’d seen her riding the mare. He almost brought it up, then decided it best not to. He didn’t want to encourage another conversation he was doing his best to avoid. “I might be persuaded to leave you a little path around the side, if you’d like. It won’t be the same, I know. But at least you could still get to the woods without tramplin’ my corn.”

  She nodded, smiling.

  They rounded a bend, and the cabins came into view. And Cullen felt her tense again.

  He paused on the path. “They’re good folks, Margaret. And not all that different from me and you, I give you my word.”

  “It’s not that. It’s more that now I—”

  He waited as she looked anywhere but at him.

  “I think some of them may think about me as you did.” She glanced briefly at the cabins ahead. “That I consider myself . . . better than they are. It stands to reason that if you think it, then perhaps—”

  “I never said I thought that about you, Margaret. I merely asked you a question last night.”

  Her look said she begged to differ.

  “I was tryin’ to get you to see things differently from the way most people in your world see them, because—”

  “My world?” She turned to face him, removing her arm from his. “And just what, exactly, is wrong with my world?”

  The tone with which she parroted back the phrase said she’d taken offense, and Cullen chose his words carefully. “I simply think it’s important, Margaret, for a person to realize, myself included, that we often make decisions based on a limited amount of knowledge when really there’s—”

  “So now I have a limited amount of knowledge?”

  He exhaled. “Sakes alive, woman, would you let me get out a complete sentence before jumpin’ down my throat? I’m on your side here. Can’t you see that?”

  Her lips formed a line as she stared up at him, her brown eyes flashing. And for all the world, he wanted to kiss her again as he had last night. Only longer, and with greater freedom to know her better than he did. And she him.

  Seeing her next thought swiftly forming, he rushed to beat it. “You’ve been here all your life, Margaret. That’s all I’m sayin’. And when the world you’re born in is all the world you’ve ever seen, it’s hard to see it for what it really is. Believe me, I know. It took goin’ to England for me to see my people for who they really were, and are. Aye, we’re a brash bunch at times. We like speakin’ our minds. We like celebratin’ life when life gives us somethin’ to celebrate. And aye, we’ll down a frothy pint every now and then. But that’s only because we know, as a people, what it’s like to have life kick you in the teeth, then shove ’em down your throat.”

  Unexpected emotion tightened his chest. “A million Irish, Margaret. A million. All of them, starved to death. I was only six when the famine began, but I remember it as well as last week.” He swallowed. “My three sisters, all younger, went first. Ethan, my older brother, and I were stronger. Always were, so we managed better.

  “But we ate things not fit for beast, much less a man. I watched my ma waste away to nothin’, even as my da spent what little we had on the bottle, tryin’ to drown his grief and guilt.” He shook his head, looking at the fields around them, wondering how they’d wandered into a part of his life he’d sworn he’d put behind him.

  “All I’m sayin’ to you is that people are rarely what they seem.” He looked at her, seeing the fight leave her expression only for it to fill with something else he couldn’t define. “Not from the outside. There’s always somethin’ more. But even after you know that, even after people have shown you who they really are, both for the better and the worse, we still somehow seem bent on decidin’ who everyone is at a glance. I’m as guilty of it as any man.

  “The British”—the very word left a bitter taste—“all high and mighty with their stuffed white shirts and their lofty rules for livin’. The way they looked down on us all. Treated us like trash, or worse. Laid the blame on us for things we never did. So we decided to come here, Moira and me, to make a better life for us and our daughter.” His voice thinned as grief freshened within him. “Do you know what some Southerners call the Irish, Ma
rgaret?”

  Her eyes watered, and she shook her head. “Don’t,” she whispered, her voice surprisingly fierce. “Don’t you dare say that hateful word.”

  The conviction in her eyes, in her voice, tied a knot at the base of his throat, making it nearly impossible for him to continue. “Those people down there,” he whispered, glancing at the cabins. “They hear it every day. Not from us. But from people who look just like we do. And you’re right.” He wiped a tear from her cheek and cradled the side of her face. “Some of them, certainly not all, look at you, and me, just as you said. But we all stand back and look at each other that way sometimes, don’t you think?”

  She held his gaze, her answer clearly written in her eyes.

  “For me,” he continued, “it was only once I admitted I was guilty of doin’ that, that I could begin to change. And that’s what I want this to be . . .” He looked back at the house, then to the fields, and all around them. “I want Linden Downs to be the place I wish the world was.” He laughed softly. “Foolish as that may sound.”

  Which was just as he felt right then. More than foolish. Standing here in the middle of the road, jabbering away like a—

  She took hold of his hand and grasped it between hers. “You had a daughter,” she whispered, not a question so much as a newfound truth.

  He nodded, her touch, her softness, having a greater effect on him than she likely knew. “Your father didn’t tell you that?”

  She shook her head.

  “Her name was Katie Lynn. She was three when—” He looked down at their hands entwined together, her grip strong and steadfast, just like the woman she was. “When she died. On the ship. On the voyage here. Typhoid. It took nearly a hundred people.”

  “Your wife too?” Maggie said softly.

  He nodded. “Moira went first, during the mornin’ hours. Then little Katie, the spittin’ image of her ma, all blond and blue-eyed, followed that night.”

  Fresh emotion brimmed in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Cullen.” She took a quick breath. “I’m so sorry.”

  She kissed the back of his hand and held it against her cheek, and Cullen drew her to him, cradling her head against his chest. Her arms came around his waist, and he knew that if anyone was watching, it would look as if she were holding on to him instead of the other way around.

  But he knew the truth.

  Chapter

  EIGHTEEN

  And this is Odessia, Mr. Ennis’s wife,” Cullen said. “But everybody calls her Dessie.”

  Maggie caught the look he tossed her and exchanged greetings with the woman, aware of how much Cullen thought of her husband. It occurred to her how well suited Mr. Ennis and his wife seemed for each other. Both tall and commanding, their gazes clear and direct.

  “Which do you prefer,” Maggie asked her, keeping a safe distance from the washpot, mindful of the open flame and of the other cook fires dotting the common area shared among the cabins. “Odessia? Or Dessie?”

  Keenness lit the woman’s expression as she stirred, sweat glistening on her skin. “I prefer Odessia, Missus McGrath. Thank you for askin’, ma’am.”

  Maggie caught Cullen’s subtle nod of approval and appreciated his staying with her as he’d promised. He’d introduced her to so many people thus far, she knew she’d never remember all the names. Yet as much as she was enjoying doing this with him—and she was, surprisingly—the weight of her thoughts was still with him back there on the road from a while earlier.

  He’d had a daughter . . .

  She wished she’d known that about him before now. She couldn’t pinpoint why, but it changed him in her eyes somehow. The crackle of flame devouring wood drew her attention, and she looked at the pot full of clothes, the bubbling water dark and murky.

  “Only way I get this Tennessee soil to let loose of my husband’s clothes is to boil ’em.” Odessia’s laugh was deep and rich like her voice. “You got good land here, Missus McGrath. Dirt that’s dark and full’a life. It been restin’ awhile, too, which does it good.”

  “Yes, it has.” Maggie wondered if the woman knew that Linden Downs had almost gone to auction, then remembered how swiftly news traveled from other farms to Onnie and Cletus. Of course she would know. “We’re grateful to your family, Odessia, and to the others, for coming to work at Linden Downs. My father and I were close to losing everything, so it’s wonderful to see the fields all planted and slowly turning to green again.”

  She glanced at Cullen, wondering if he’d taken offense at the comment, but he seemed unbothered by it. Likely Odessia already knew about her and Cullen too. Why she’d married him. Why he’d married her.

  Maggie looked around the common area at all the faces and felt as though they were all watching her. Imagining that everyone here knew the truth about her, she only grew more self-conscious by the minute.

  Cullen introduced each of Odessia’s children by name. “Jobah, Micah, and Kizzy, please meet my wife, Mrs. McGrath.”

  “Missus McGrath,” the children said almost in unison.

  Maggie smiled. “It’s nice to meet you all.”

  She guessed the oldest boy, Jobah, to be about eleven, and the younger within a year or two of that. Maggie found it harder to peg the girl’s age. Maybe seven or eight.

  “Jobah here—” Cullen playfully grasped the oldest boy by the shoulder. “He picked up forty-seven bags of rocks in a single day following behind the plow last week.”

  Jobah grinned, and Maggie found herself doing the same.

  “That’s quite impressive, Jobah. You should be proud of yourself.”

  The smile he gave her warmed her heart. The boy was lean in build, though by no means scrawny. Still, forty-seven bags of rocks in one day.

  “Mister McGrath, sir!”

  Cullen and Maggie turned.

  A man approached. “We gots a question for you, sir, on one of the cabins.” He gestured behind him. “About bracin’ up a loft . . . If you got the time.”

  Cullen turned to her, and Maggie read his unvoiced question. She smiled and mouthed I’ll be fine.

  As the children played a game in the dirt, drawing pictures of some sort, Maggie watched Odessia stir the clothes over the flame, the sun’s heat beating down. If heeding her own body’s complaint about the heat, she would’ve retreated a few steps back. But seeing Odessia’s pleasant countenance as she stirred, the hem of the woman’s skirt singed in more places than not, Maggie didn’t dare.

  She chanced a look about the open space and met far fewer stares this time. People had gone on about their business. Women stood over cookstoves, others tended washpots like Odessia. A handful of older men, part of extended families, she suspected, perched on overturned barrels beneath the trees and whittled, while every able-bodied man she saw was working on the new cabins in some capacity. Groups of women gathered beneath porches, involved in various tasks, their laughter lyrical and strangely carefree.

  Yet not far from here, horrible, unspeakable things happened. Nearly every week a newspaper reported a death or hanging of some sort. Left unguarded, Maggie’s thoughts drifted, and the darkness from the dream she’d managed to put from her mind crept close again, the images taking brutally vivid shape.

  The origin of the dream was no mystery. Young Willie had described the scene so well. Only, in her dream—Maggie closed her eyes as though that would stop the scene from forming. She’d been standing below the tree branch, watching men without faces shove the noose over the man’s head. She’d screamed until her lungs and throat burned as the faceless men had hoisted the man’s body, higher and higher, his legs kicking, his feet trying to find purchase. But it hadn’t made any difference, and she hadn’t been able to save—

  “You like to come up to the porch and sit, Missus McGrath? It’s shady there.”

  Maggie blinked, then saw Odessia withdrawing the wooden paddle from the washpot.

  The woman wiped her brow with her sleeve. “Just ’til your husband come back. I gots to go get laundry o
ff the line.”

  Grateful for the interruption, Maggie nodded. “Yes, thank you. I would.”

  Odessia accompanied her as far as the porch then headed around back. Maggie climbed the steps, the wood giving a little beneath her boots. She found it surprising that Odessia and her husband—him being an obvious leader among the people—hadn’t taken one of the newer cabins.

  A lone chair occupied the porch, its slatted seat nearly worn through. She decided to stand.

  She searched for Cullen in the direction he’d gone, but didn’t see him. Standing in the shade, she thought again of his comment about her grandfather building the original cabins, and her curiosity got the better of her.

  Feeling more like an intruder than wife to the owner, she peered inside.

  Until last night she’d never given a thought to what was inside these cabins. But whatever she might have imagined, she would have been wrong. Because there was scarcely anything.

  An ancient wooden table crouched in one corner with three mismatched chairs—similar to their forlorn cousin on the porch—huddling beneath. A rope bed absent its mattress occupied another corner, a threadbare blanket the only covering. Daylight streamed in through the walls and ceiling, ferreting out chinks in the logs and mortar and knifing through the roof overhead. And through the wooden planks of the floor Maggie easily made out the ground below.

  Staring at the room, the stark contrast between these cabins her grandfather had built for his slaves and the house he’d built for his family and the generations of his family to come pressed down inside her, the weight of conviction coloring every moment of her life before this one and threatening to redefine the rest to follow.

  The empty perfume bottle on her dresser bullied its way to the forefront of her mind and with scalpel-like precision sliced through some of the recent struggles in her life, laying them open for examination. And she didn’t like what she saw.

  In her world, not being able to afford her scent was a hardship. As had not being able to commission a new riding habit. For a while there, a year or so back, eating meat only once or twice a week had been a sacrifice. But compared to what she was looking at now . . .