by Karen Ranney
“Even after he treated your sister that way? Even with the slaves?”
A man doesn’t take advantage of those who are weaker. A decent man doesn’t own another. He had never felt this level of disgust, and what made it worse was the fact that Bruce was a MacIain. A distant relation, true, but a man who shared his name.
“My sister cares very deeply about people, Duncan. Too much. She didn’t understand that slavery is a way of life in the South. When Bruce came home to find the slaves had disappeared, he was incensed. He knew immediately that she’d helped them.” She took a sip of her tea. “How could he possibly have thought kindly of her after that?”
“Hadn’t he heard of the Emancipation Proclamation?” he asked. Even he had learned of it, living in Scotland. President Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves might not be recognized by the Confederacy, but the men, women, and children enslaved by “a way of life” had certainly understood it.
Hadn’t she ever tried to help Rose? Hadn’t she ever spoken up for her sister?
“Didn’t he realize what she’d done in his absence? She worked hard to save Glengarden, to guard your last crop.”
She looked surprised. “Not for Bruce’s sake,” she said. “But for the rest of us. Without cotton, there was no money.”
“Yet your husband refuses to sell it.”
She glanced over at him. Perhaps it was the look on his face, his inability to conceive of a man refusing to bargain out of spite that caused her to lean forward and place her hand on his arm.
“Rose believes in her cause. Bruce believes in his. That’s why they hate each other as much as they do. If one succeeds, the other must fail. By selling the cotton to you, she’d won, in a sense.”
“What about the war tax?” he asked.
Her eyebrows moved infinitesimally, evidently signaling her confusion.
He told her what he’d learned in Nassau. “I understand that the Confederacy is under some financial strain. They’re taxing agricultural products at the rate of eight percent. So whatever he brought back from Charleston will have to be reported and paid for.”
“Bruce will find a way.”
As he sat there looking at the woman, he realized that Claire believed in her husband, rightly or wrongly. She was willing to take his side in blind trust. Such loyalty was to be commended to a point. Rose’s mistreatment at Bruce’s hands was that point, and Claire had gone beyond it.
He didn’t know what to say to her. Or to Bruce, for that matter. From what he’d learned, both from Rose and now Claire, the man couldn’t bear to be bested. Yet his adversary, in this case, had been a red-haired termagant with a passion for justice.
A man who couldn’t stand to lose was a very dangerous opponent.
ROSE WAITED until Duncan left the ship before slipping down the makeshift gangplank they’d erected.
How would she get in to see Claire? Had her sister been instructed not to talk to her? Probably, but she’d have to find a way.
Before coming to Glengarden, Rose had never been in a situation where someone hated her. True, she and her brothers had occasionally argued, but at the base of everything there was familial love. She’d had acquaintances in her youth, some of whom had drifted away. But no one had ever expressed his animosity toward her in such a direct and uncensored way as Bruce. He hated her and left no doubt about his feelings.
How had Bruce been able to change Claire’s mind about her? How had he been able to sever the sisterly bonds? Granted, Claire was older than her, but they’d grown up in the same family, had the same father and mother, the same background. Even if Claire could dismiss the fact that Rose was her sister, how could she ignore everything else? Probably the same way she was so blithely able to ignore slavery itself.
Maybe it wasn’t that Claire had changed so drastically. Maybe it was that she’d never truly known her sister.
She made her way through the copse of trees, just far enough away from the back of the house that she could see the kitchen. From here she’d be able to signal Maisie, who could tell her when it would be safe to enter the house.
A voice spoke just behind her, causing her to jump.
“Child,” Maisie said. “That’s one mad man in that house and here you are running through the trees, just asking him to come out here with his whip.”
Rose turned to face the other woman.
“I know,” she said. “But I need to see Claire.”
“You know he’ll hurt you if he can.”
“I know that, too, Maisie, but I have to talk to her.”
“And what good would that do, child?”
“She has to leave here, Maisie.”
The other woman shook her head. “You know she’s not going to do that.”
“I have to try, Maisie. I can’t leave without trying.”
She hugged the older woman and kissed her cheek. Maisie had been the closest to a mother she’d ever had. Maisie had protected her and warned her, just like today. More than once she’d looked Bruce right in the face and lied with a smile. The consequences of doing that were deadly.
“Master Bruce normally takes something for the pain in his leg right about now. Whatever’s in that brown bottle puts him to sleep for a while. I expect you have two or three hours on the outside if you want to see Claire. No more than that, and for the love of the angels, don’t try to see her when he’s awake.”
Rose nodded and followed Maisie into the back of the house.
The minute she was in the kitchen, she could hear the conversation in the Lady’s Parlor, one of Claire’s favorite rooms. She exchanged a glance with Maisie and walked through the hall, hesitating outside the door.
CLAIRE BEGAN to speak again, as if she’d come to grips with her confession, because that’s exactly what it sounded like.
He wanted to counsel her that he wasn’t sinless or blameless or a man filled with virtue. Once, he could have ascribed to those traits, but no longer. This voyage had taught him, as nothing else had, that he was all too human.
“Rose was always so strong, so certain of herself. She needed a strong hand, but my brothers spoiled her.”
He pushed back his anger. Now was not the time to speak, not until she’d finished.
“I knew Bruce would give her direction, quell her more rebellious notions.”
“She was an abolitionist,” he said, biting out the words. “Is that a rebellious notion?”
She folded her arms in front of herself as if she were cold.
Slowly, she turned to face him, surprising him with her courage. He was not calm now. His anger was building as if it were a ladder. Each confession was a rung. This damnable place, Glengarden was a rung. Bruce was a rung.
“It wasn’t just that,” she said. “She defied him at every turn.”
He would have done the same. Bruce MacIain was a tyrant. Yet the man would probably never accept that label about himself. He was simply living the life he was raised to appreciate. Scion of his own fiefdom. The Prince of Glengarden.
“Do you know why Rose came to Scotland?” he said. “Do you have any idea? To save you. To keep you from starving. Not for herself, Claire. For you and your daughter. For all the people who live here. But you’ve never done one thing to help her, have you? Not one time. When Bruce was using her as a slave, what did you do?”
“My sister has always been headstrong. I thought she needed someone to teach her a lesson.”
He was beyond astonishment, or even rage, for that matter. He didn’t understand, would never understand.
“Was it fear?”
He turned to see Rose standing in the doorway.
“Did you never say anything because you were afraid of Bruce?”
Whereas Claire had looked at him directly, she didn’t glance at her sister. Instead, the carpeting beneath her feet suddenly held great i
nterest for her.
“Fear should never be a greater force than love.” Rose walked slowly toward her sister. “It should never be, Claire.”
Claire finally looked up. He’d expected her to show some emotion, even tears, but no expression marred that beautiful face.
“Rose, don’t be silly. He’s my husband and I love him. If you’d only shown a little fear, he wouldn’t be so angry at you. You’re the one who never understood. You never listened. You never accepted being here or learning to live like us.”
“How could I?”
“You could have, if you’d wanted harmony, Rose. But you never have. You wanted to stuff your principles down our throats.”
Rose smiled, but there was no humor in the expression.
“If I’d known how you felt, I would never have come back for you.”
“For me?” Claire laughed. “You didn’t come back for me, Rose. You came back to rub it in Bruce’s face. To make him feel even less like a man. You sold his cotton and he didn’t.”
IN THAT moment, Rose understood.
Claire still wanted to be the princess, reigning at her castle with the prince in attendance. The castle might fall down around her, the prince could be grievously wounded, but she was still the princess and always would be.
As long as that dream remained in her mind, she’d never see Glengarden as it truly was, just as she’d never seen the slave cabins, didn’t want to talk about slavery, refused to discuss Bruce’s punishments. Nor had Claire ever once mentioned Phibba or what had happened to her, or Maisie’s constant unspoken grief.
In her way, Claire was as much a tyrant as Bruce, and it made her sick to realize it.
Claire had chosen to stand beside him all this time, regardless of what he’d done. Why had it taken her so long to understand that?
“May I say good-bye to Gloria?” she asked.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. I don’t want her upset.”
Gloria would be brought up in the same mold. Don’t mind the slave cabins. Don’t pay that any attention. Concentrate on the castle and growing up to be a princess.
She nodded and looked around her. What a grand and lovely place Glengarden was, designed by a famous architect, built by craftsmen. If the Union army didn’t reach it, the house might stand for centuries. She wondered if the rest of the plantation would remain intact, all those cabins waiting to be populated with slaves again or the devil’s post where slaves were whipped.
Her fellow Yankees might pull down everything, board by board. Hopefully, Bruce would be here to see it.
Having no knowledge of love until now, she’d accepted what she’d seen. But Duncan had promised more. Duncan had taught her, in these short weeks, that love meant joy.
Where had the joy been in Claire’s life the last two years? Perhaps it was with Gloria that she saw her sister truly happy, those moments she shared with her daughter without the possibility of being interrupted by her husband. This last year, as difficult as it had been, had almost been blissful compared to when Bruce strutted around Glengarden like a prince. No, a king, one who had no power above him. Not even that of God.
You can’t save people who don’t wish to be saved.
She couldn’t help but think of the men, women, and children she’d known at Glengarden, each one of whom desperately wanted their freedom. When the chance had come to escape, they hadn’t hesitated. However frightening the future had looked for them, they’d taken their meager possessions, a hand-carved pipe, a doll made of straw, a cast-off brush, wrapped them in a piece of cloth and made their way silently and joyfully away from the plantation. Disaster might have awaited them, certainly privation had, but that didn’t matter. Their lives lay before them to do as they would with them as free people.
And now was her chance to be saved.
She turned to Duncan and held out her hand, smiling brightly.
Just at that moment Maisie raced into the room.
“The barn’s on fire!”
ROSE MADE her way out of the house through the kitchen. Duncan found himself running to keep up with her. He didn’t know if Maisie or Claire followed them; he was too intent on Rose.
The air was getting cloudy as she passed through the overgrown garden, veered to the left and took a path past the slave cabins and toward the smoke. At the end of one of the fields a barn was on fire. No doubt the structure was used to store farm implements, seed, or even cotton. Especially the cotton Bruce had brought back from Charleston.
If he were a painter of any talent, he would have immortalized the fire. The barnlike building with its gaping maw was now engulfed with flames like licking tongues, the roof pierced by swords of red and orange, and sprouting from all of it, billowing black clouds of smoke to announce the scene to everyone for dozens of miles.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if the Union ships in the Atlantic could see the cotton burning. If the residents of Charleston saw the smoke, no doubt they remembered their own conflagration.
Maybe some of Bruce’s neighbors would think that Glengarden was on fire. No, instead, its future was up in flames, thanks to the pride of its owner. He’d never seen a grown man cut off his nose to spite his face before in such a spectacular way.
He’d come halfway around the world for Glengarden’s cotton, and it was set ablaze in a petty act of what, revenge? Was Bruce determined that his family would suffer for the rest of the war? It wasn’t enough for him to have lost a leg, did he want them all to starve now?
Bruce stood beneath an oak not far away. His face was solemn, while the expression on the face of the man beside him was alight with joy. As he watched, the man jumped up and down and waved, then crossed the dirt field to embrace Rose.
“Miss Rose. Miss Rose. Do you see? It’s a fine fire, isn’t it? I helped. I did.”
“You’re right, Benny, it’s a fine fire,” she said, patting the man on the shoulder. “You did good.”
Duncan walked across the field, stopping when he was a few feet from Bruce.
“I would have bought your cotton,” he said. “With gold.”
“I don’t want your damn gold.”
“What do you want? Evidently to make a statement of some sort. How noble you are, how self-sacrificing. How loyal to your cause. Well, at least you don’t have to pay the war tax this way.”
“It’s my cotton, damn it, and I’ll do whatever I want with it. Throw it in the river. Give it to the army or set fire to it.”
“Self-sacrificing behavior is fine if you’re the only one doing it. But to make other people suffer along with you hardly seems rational.”
“We’ll be fine without your damn gold. Now get off my land.”
He knew how expensive it was to maintain a household because he paid the bills. Maybe living in a city was more costly than being on a plantation, but he didn’t think so. He hadn’t seen any crops growing to feed the family, hadn’t seen any animals that would provide meat or eggs. What about the rest of the taxes that would probably be levied against Glengarden?
Did Bruce think he could simply wave his crutch and some Confederate fairy godfather would provide all that he and his family needed?
“Get off my land before I get my gun and shoot you.”
“As a gesture of hospitality, that’s somewhat lacking, but I get your point.”
He turned and walked back to where Rose was standing.
“It’s only cotton, Rose,” he said gently.
She nodded, then surprised him by wrapping her arms around his neck and standing on tiptoe to kiss him.
“It’s only cotton,” he said again when he felt her tremble against him.
He never wanted her to be afraid again. Or feel that she was alone. Most of all, none of the bullies of the world would be able to touch her or make her life miserable.
Without looking in Bruce’s direction, they turned and walked away, heading back toward the Raven.
Chapter 25
Rose left Duncan sleeping in the stateroom aboard the Raven. The night had been a sleepless one for her as she’d turned over scenes of the last two years in her mind.
Claire had never stood up for her or defended her, but she’d never considered that Claire thought she deserved the treatment she received. Or believed that Bruce had been justified in everything he’d done.
What had Claire called her? Spoiled? How had she been spoiled?
She had the strangest sensation of being pulled in two. What she’d always believed was being compared to the truth, and the truth was winning. Claire hadn’t been a loving sister who was powerless to prevent her husband’s actions. Instead, she’d agreed with every one of them.
Even the times when she’d been locked in the cold house? Even when Bruce had her whipped? Even those days when she’d worked in the fields alongside the slaves?
Inside, in some deep, hidden part of her she was probably preparing to grieve. At the moment, though, she felt nothing, and the absence of emotion was disconcerting.
She hadn’t known Glynis very long, but she couldn’t imagine the woman allowing something terrible to happen to Duncan without a loud and vehement protest. She’d expect the same behavior from Lennox if someone tried to harm Mary.
Nor could she imagine Jeremy or Robert or Montgomery refusing to protect her from any danger.
Why was Claire so different?
At least now, knowing the truth, she could walk away from Glengarden without a qualm. She would miss Maisie the most, Old Betsy next. Perhaps Gloria, although she was never allowed to be around the child that much. Anyone else? No, she wouldn’t miss anyone else.
She’d not seen Susanna since returning, but because she and the older woman didn’t have much of a relationship, she hadn’t asked to see her. All the matriarch of the MacIains would do was castigate her in some fashion for her failures. How different she was from Eleanor MacIain. One was a bitter woman pretending that her world wasn’t falling apart. The other was a generous, kind soul who, despite her own financial worries, still saw beyond her personal problems to help other people.