Return to Me

by Rosemary Rogers

  At the end of the hall, Cameron stepped into a small bedchamber used for storing furniture. She looked from two carpenters in leather aprons to a hole that had been cut in the wall to the next bedchamber.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  One of the men yanked an old hat off his head and plucked at his bristly, orange beard. “Well, putting in the doorway ’tween the two rooms, ma’am.”

  She looked through the hole that had been cut in the wall. She could see the small four-poster bed, the gauzy summer draperies pulled shut over the windows on the far wall. There was also a French chest of drawers that had been covered to prevent damage from the dust.

  “Why are you cutting a doorway?”

  “’Cause I was tole to, that’s why, ma’am.”

  “Told by whom?” she demanded.

  “The captain, ma’am. We’re ship builders, me and Bernie, but he sent us to his house to put this doorway in.”

  Cameron turned and stormed out of the room, back downstairs and into the kitchen where she knew she would find Jackson’s personal servant. Alfred served as butler, secretary and whatever else Jackson needed when he was here at home. When Jackson was gone, which was most of the time, Alfred parked in the massive kitchen and helped himself to many a slice of pie from the looks of his expanding waistline.

  “Alfred?” Cameron called as she walked into the kitchen.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Alfred leaped off the stool on the far side of the work counter, struggling to swallow a mouthful of apple tart.

  “Where is the captain this afternoon?”

  Alfred swallowed hard and his Adam’s apple bobbed beneath his starched white cravat. In Jackson’s household all servants, black or white, butler to lowly stable boy, dressed well. He provided their clothing and demanded they always look clean and neat.

  Cameron dropped her riding bonnet on her head and thrust her hands into her gloves.

  “He’s at the docks, I believe, ma’am. At the warehouse. Is there something I can do for you?”

  She wasn’t dressed properly to ride astride, but she was too angry to take the time to go upstairs and redress. “Please let Taye know, when she returns, that I will be home shortly for tea.” She cut through the kitchen, headed for the back door. “I don’t think this will take long.”

  In the rear yard, she called to a young stable boy and ordered Roxy to be saddled. In ten minutes time, she was astride.

  “Don’t ya want me to go with you, Mrs. Jackson?” the stable manager asked. “The captain will be hoppin’ mad with me if I let you go out of here on that horse, unescorted.”

  “I told you, Joe, I ride alone. I’ll make it clear to the captain that I ordered you to stay here.”

  Joe stepped back, passing her reins up to her. “Well, you be careful, ma’am. Them docks can be dangerous.”

  “Not as dangerous as I am right now.” She smiled, softening her tone, knowing she couldn’t be angry with the workmen upstairs, or Jackson’s servant, or the stable master. But she could be angry with Jackson. Damned angry. “Thank you, Joe. I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  Cameron was just urging Roxy out the rear drive when Taye pulled up in a carriage driven by Thomas. “Have a good time?” Cameron asked, adjusting her boots in her stirrups.

  “Lovely,” Taye said. But her tone was forced. Cameron could see in Taye’s blue eyes that something was wrong, but she could also see that this wasn’t the time to bring it up.

  “Where are you going?” Taye waited until Thomas dismounted and came around the carriage to help her down. He tipped his hat toward Cameron before lifting his hand to Taye’s.

  “Down to the docks to see Jackson. He and I have something to discuss,” she said tartly.

  “Well, come down and I’ll go with you. We can take the carriage. You shouldn’t—”

  “I’m too damned mad for the carriage.” Cameron sank her heel into Roxy’s flank, and the sensitive Arabian bolted. “I won’t be long,” she called over her shoulder.

  Cameron wove her way slowly down the crowded streets, passing wagons loaded with goods, carriages of women and a funeral procession. She saw old men, graying and hunched over, and young lads, working as if they were men, but there were so few between the ages of twenty and forty. The toll of the war, she thought grimly.

  Cameron smelled the harbor long before she reached it. The pungent scent of the salty Atlantic, mingled with the stench of fish and unwashed bodies, assaulted her nostrils.

  Just as her boots hit the wooden planked dock in front of the Logan warehouse, Josiah Lonsford, Jackson’s business manager, came hurrying out to meet her.

  “Mrs. Logan, you should not be here unescorted.”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Josiah.” She smiled. In the four years that Jackson had been gone, she and Josiah Lonsford had become good friends. Not only had he kept her abreast of the financial health of her husband’s business, but they had often shared a meal in her home, and Josiah had been willing to offer advice as she had imagined her father would have, had he still been alive.

  He lowered his voice so that the others who bustled around them wouldn’t hear. “Does Jackson know you’re here?” he asked quietly. “I cannot imagine he would approve of you riding alone at the docks.”

  “Speak of the devil!” She pulled impatiently at the fingers of her gloves, one at a time. “Have you, by chance, seen my dear husband?” The ride over had calmed her, but she could feel her anger building again. She took a deep breath of the stinging salt air.

  “He’s inside. I’ll walk you in.” Josiah passed Roxy’s reins to a lad in a torn, striped sailor’s shirt. “Stay here with the horse and keep her safe.” He offered Cameron his arm, which she took.

  “He’s upstairs in the office,” Josiah said. “I’ll walk you up.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Cameron patted his arm. “But thank you, Josiah. It was good to see you. You must come for supper one night. I’ve missed our talks.” She grasped her petticoats and started up the crude wooden staircase that led to the second floor and Jackson’s office.

  Josiah stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched her go, shaking his head. He seemed to sense there was about to be an angry outburst, but he held his tongue. That was another reason she liked him.

  Cameron entered the office without a knock or announcement, not caring how busy Jackson was. His business would have to wait. She threw open the door and walked into the unpainted, utilitarian office to see Jackson and three gentlemen sitting around a table playing cards.

  “I’d like to speak with you for a moment, if I could, husband,” she said sweetly, her ire building.

  The three men—she didn’t know any of them—immediately rose in their chairs, offering awkward greetings. They left cards and drinks on the table, while scooping their money into their hands as they backed away.

  “We should go anyway, Jackson,” a bold one said.

  “Aye, we should be going. We’ll talk later.”

  Jackson remained in his chair, booted foot propped on the table, cigar protruding from his mouth, the smoke circling his head as it drifted away.

  “Nice game of cards?” she asked, not knowing if it was the stench of the cigar smoke making her sick to her stomach or her anger.

  He shrugged. He had removed his suit coat and it hung carelessly over the back of his chair. His cravat hung loosely and untied around his neck. “I was winning.”

  “I thought you were working here today.”

  He lazily inhaled on the cigar one last time and then ground it out in a dish on the edge of the table. His foot and the boyish grin remained where they were. “I was working.”

  She lifted a feathered eyebrow. “Looks to me like you were gambling. Smoking.” She glanced at the half-empty bottle of good Jamaican rum. “And drinking.”

  “You don’t understand my business.” He lowered his foot at last and came out of the chair. “These men like to mix business with pleasure. I was simpl
y being a good businessman, sweet.”

  He tried to rest his arm on her shoulder but she pushed it away. “Damn you, Jackson! Don’t you sweet me. Why are there men in our home, as we speak, cutting a hole between one bedchamber and another?”

  He looked at her as if she had asked why there was a Japanese garden in the parlor. “To build the nursery. I thought the governess should have her own room connected to the nursery. I put them in rooms at the end of the hallway so that you wouldn’t be disturbed by late-night crying.”

  “A nursery?” she seethed. She had suspected, of course, but to hear him actually say it only baited her further. “You’re building a nursery, and you never consulted me?”

  “Not building a nursery, my sweet, just adding a connecting door to rooms already there.”

  “Don’t quibble words with me! You know what I mean. I am the one having the baby.” She threw her gloves down on a folded hand of cards. “I should have been consulted.”

  He looked almost hurt. “It never occurred to me that you didn’t want a nursery.”

  She stared at him. He still didn’t understand. “Jackson, it’s not about whether or not I want a nursery, it’s that you didn’t ask me. You never ask me anything before making decisions that affect me, that affect us.” She took a breath. “What if I don’t care if the baby wakes me? What if I want the baby next to us at night?”

  “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.” He raised his hands, as if in surrender. “So make a different room a nursery. Make them all nurseries. I don’t care,” he barked at her.

  She took a breath and quieted. “Just ask me before you make decisions like this, all right?”

  He glanced away from her. “I’ve never been one to consult others. It’s not how I work. Too many people depended on me for protection. To protect their secrets. No one cared if I consulted them so long as they came out alive.” He snapped his head around to look her in the eye. “Do you have any idea how that makes a man feel? How hard it is to know every step you take could get the man behind you killed?”

  Cameron took a deep breath and felt her anger wane. She wanted to cry; she could feel the burn of the tears behind her eyelids. Now it was frustration that bubbled up inside her. Jackson said so little about his role in the war, so little about what he had actually done and even less about how he felt.

  Now she wanted to say she was sorry. She just didn’t know how. He was right. This was a trivial matter. There was no need for her to become this angry, to embarrass him in front of potential business clients.

  Cameron just stood there with her hands at her sides. She was never good at apologies.

  At last he looked up from the nail he stared at on the planked floor. “Cameron, I—”

  “You don’t have to say it.” She took a step toward him; he met her halfway. “I’m the one who should be apologizing,” she whispered.

  “Ah, Cam.” He rested his chin on her head, enclosing her in his arms. “I was so worried when I realized I was finally going home. I mean, I was happy to be coming to you. But what if I’m not a good husband? You’ve had such a tragic life. What if I make you even more unhappy?”

  She closed her eyes against tears as she lifted her chin. His mouth came down on hers, firm and possessive, and when he drew back she was breathless, shaky.

  “You could never make me unhappy as long as you kiss me like that,” she breathed.

  His eyes clouded with desire, and he leaned over to take her mouth again.

  She pressed her hand to his chest, wrapping a finger around his cravat. “Jackson, we couldn’t,” she whispered, feeling naughty. “Not right here in your office. Someone might come.”

  He wrapped her in his arms and backed her slowly against the wall, never taking his gray-eyed gaze from her. “Then that would be half the fun of it, wouldn’t it?” he teased.

  “Jackson, we mustn’t,” she giggled, parting her lips. But she already knew that she would.

  6

  “We shouldn’t be doin’ this,” Noah protested gruffly.

  Naomi laughed, pushing the door of their room shut. The sleeping chamber was just a tiny loft room over the kitchen, but it would be warm in the winter and was cool today because of its very own window. The walls were whitewashed, with plenty of wooden pegs to hang clothes, and the smooth plank floor didn’t creak. But the best part of the little room was the enormous rope bed Miss Cameron had given them as a belated wedding gift. It was the biggest bed Naomi had ever slept in in her life. It had to be as big as Miss Cameron’s.

  “What do ya mean we shouldn’t be doin’ this?” Naomi purred. “You forget ya married me?”

  He laughed, but turned his face away when she tried to kiss him. “Ya know what I mean, sweet molasses. It’s the broad light of day.” He lifted his handsome chin toward the open window.

  “That’s the way I like it,” she whispered, brushing her lips over his dark beard stubble. “Daylight, so I can see my man.” She pressed another kiss to the open V of his blue tick work shirt and at the same time brought her hand up beneath the pouch of his trousers. “My big man.”

  Noah groaned and closed his eyes. “Ain’t you got work to do, miss keeper of this big ole fine and fancy city house?”

  She kissed his chest again and then flicked out her tongue to taste his salty, dark skin. “None that won’t wait.”

  “The baby.”

  Naomi glanced over her shoulder at her son sleeping contentedly in the sturdy cradle Noah had built with his own capable hands. “Sleepin’ like one,” she cooed.

  “Lordy, you gonna be the death of me, woman,” Noah grumbled good-heartedly as he wrapped his arms around her narrow waist and covered her mouth with his.

  With one good kiss, Noah lifted Naomi off her feet and carried her to their new bed. She had covered it with a quilt her mother had made her. It was a quilt the color of yellow sunshine and happiness—what her mother had said she deserved.

  Naomi threw her head back on her goose down pillow and laughed, her voice seeming to echo off the whitewashed walls. “Come to me, lover.”

  “Someone gonna hear ya,” Noah warned, yanking his shirt over his head.

  Naomi reached out to stroke the corded muscles of his chest and then lower to his ridged stomach. Far in the back of her mind, she remembered the first man she had ever loved. Not the first man she had ever stripped naked for; they were too many to count. But Manu, Manu had been her first love. He had been a slave at a neighboring plantation, and for two years they were lovers. They met in the swamp beneath an old cypress tree, and there Manu spread his mantle for her and gave her his love. He had made her feel as if someone cared about her, but the most important thing he did was give her hope.

  In the summer of ’61, the slavers killed Manu while trying to capture him on the banks of the Pearl River, not far from Elmwood. She didn’t blame him a bit for running, letting them shoot him in the back. She didn’t fault him because she knew that once a man tastes freedom, the weight of iron shackles are too heavy for a soul to bear.

  Naomi focused her gaze on the man above her as he lifted her skirts and fumbled with the tie of his breeches. She gently brushed his hand aside, and without taking her gaze from his, she loosened the fabric, letting him spring hot and stiff into her waiting hand.

  “I love ya, Noah Freeman,” she whispered.

  “Love you,” he groaned.

  Noah was a simple man of simple words, but it was all she needed to hear. Their dark-eyed gazes still locked, she parted her thighs and welcomed him in, hot and pulsing. Letting her eyes drift shut, she encircled his shoulders with her thin arms and thanked the gods she had this new life.

  “Taye, we shouldn’t.” Thomas stiffened at her touch.

  Taye rolled her eyes, refusing to step back. They were alone in the library, the pocketed panel doors closed. She had called him here under the ruse of wanting his recommendation on reading material. But she had really invited him here so that they could be alon
e for a few minutes.

  Oh, yes, they had spent the entire morning together shopping on a busy street in Baltimore. She had made several purchases for herself and Cameron, and Thomas had followed diligently behind, collecting parcels and returning them to the carriage. But he had never said anything more personal all morning than, “Yes, I believe blue is an excellent color for new napkins.”

  Taye remained in front of Thomas, blocking his escape through the closed door. She reached out and brushed the sleeve of his dark brown coat. “We’re going to wed,” she murmured. “I think you’ve a right to kiss me on occasion.”

  His eyes darted to and fro and he refused to meet her probing gaze. A dark red blotch of embarrassment rose from his starched cravat upward over his face.

  “But here,” he protested. “Such a public place. Anyone could come in. Your reputation, dear.”

  She almost laughed. At seventeen years old she had been taken by her half brother Grant to Baton Rouge to be sold into prostitution. She had come inches from having her virginity auctioned in a whorehouse parlor, saved just in the nick of time by Jackson and Cameron. If that incident had not ruined her reputation, surely a kiss from her fiancé wouldn’t, either. But she held her tongue, knowing Thomas didn’t like her to speak of those bygone days.

  Taye caught his hand in hers. It was larger, but not a great deal so. He still had small, rough calluses from his work on Jackson’s ships during the war, and she wondered what those hands would feel like on her bare skin.

  An attorney by trade, Thomas had been a jack-of-all-trades for the last four years, serving the beloved Captain Logan in any way he could.

  She squeezed his hand in hers. She knew he was shy, but they had to start somewhere, didn’t they? “Thomas, no one will see. Just a chaste kiss.” She lifted her chin to look at him provocatively through her lashes. “Or maybe a not-so-chaste kiss?”