Joshua thought about it, too. And he realized he’d become the resident of some twilight zone between two cultures. He’d never be fully accepted by white society. That was a given and there was no point in wasting time over it. Black society accepted him. But it didn’t understand him. Because his brother had molded him into a white man in a black man’s body. A lonesome man.
He hadn’t realized how lonesome. Until Serena. Until he watched her in the classroom, saw her hanging clothes in the sideyard, heard her laughing with the children. She reminded him so much of Chloe. They didn’t look alike at all, but they had a kinship founded in an inner core of steel.
Joshua finally broke down and told himself the truth. He was dangerously, disastrously, attracted to—no, that was a bald-faced lie—he loved Serena Wentworth. Everything about her. Her petite grace and lilting laugh. The way she moved, the way she talked. Most of all, he loved her spirit and the determination that had carried her alone and pregnant down the hard roads from Greenville, South Carolina to Macon, Georgia and Gorley House. To him.
He was in love but he wasn’t crazy. Nothing would ever come of his feelings for Serena Wentworth and neither she nor anybody else would ever know he even had them. In his world, in the world where he’d worked so hard to build what he’d built—those feelings could get him killed. And too many people depended on him for him to let that happen.
Unspoken stalemate settled between the two, a balancing act just waiting to unbalance.
* * *
Joshua woke abruptly. His eyes focused on the last person he expected to see. Something must be wrong.
“Serena! Are you sick? Is one of the children—”
She sat on the bed and placed her hand over his mouth.
“No. No one’s sick.”
The last traces of sleep cleared out of Joshua’s brain. He allowed himself to look at her for only the space of a moment.
“Then I think it’d be a real good idea if you went back to your own bed. Right now.”
“Joshua—”
“Now, Serena.” His voice sounded harsh, even to himself. She had no experience with men other than her husband. He knew that. But didn’t she have any idea what she was doing to him?
Serena didn’t really understand why she’d been compelled to come to his room. And Joshua’s tone crushed her like a fly unable to avoid the flyswatter. He’d never spoken to her like that. Like she was revolting, disgusting. David always sounded like that, especially when he had her in bed and started performing those disgusting acts men performed. Joshua’d said it didn’t have to be that way between men and women, that it wasn’t supposed to be that way. It was supposed to be a great pleasure.
She didn’t really believe that, but she believed one thing. If there was one man who could make it even bearable for her, that man was Joshua Devlin.
For the past week, she’d been so engrossed in her own turmoil, her own conflicts, she hadn’t stopped to consider the social consequences of this night’s actions. She knew her husband detested her. She’d never pleased him and he’d sure as hell never pleased her. She’d never thought she’d ever consider the act with another man. Now she had, and that man didn’t want her. It never occurred to her Joshua was scared of her. Well, not of her. Of the possible consequences arising from the contrasting color of their complexions. She didn’t even see the contrasting color of their skin anymore.
Her face crumbled. She backed away, embarrassed, humiliated, shamed.
“You lied.” Her whisper stabbed his heart.
“Serena!” He almost stood up but remembered in time. It was May. He was naked beneath the sheets. He was in enough trouble now, he couldn’t let his body touch hers, even through her nightdress. His hand shot out, attempting to catch her wrist.
He missed. His hand closed on the thin material of her nightgown as she fled. It ripped down the side seam. Her skin gleamed white through the tear, her body exposed to the gaze of a man who didn’t even want it. She sank down to the floor and cried, hands clasped to her face.
“Serena.” He leaned forward, but she was too far away for him to reach.
“Oh, hell!” He gathered the folds of the sheet around his waist and sat on the floor beside her.
“You lied to me,” she whispered again, the words muffled by her hands.
“No!” Joshua pried her hands from her face. “I’ve never lied to you, Serena.”
“You did! You told me, you said I couldn’t judge all men by David—”
“You can’t.”
“You don’t want me! You sounded just like him! So disgusted, so revolted! He said I wasn’t a real woman and no other man would ever put up with me! He was right!”
“That’s not it! For God’s sake, Serena! Look at us! Will you just look!” Joshua reached out and held their entwined hands up into the streaming moonlight. In the moon shadows, their hands were caught in the striking contrast of ebony and ivory.
“I’m a nigger!” The whisper, if anything, intensified the significance of the words. “Remember?”
“You’re Joshua Devlin and you’re the finest man I’ve ever known, and if you can do this to me, if you can hurt me like this, I will never, never trust another man again!”
Joshua closed his eyes and moaned. He knew what he ought to do, what was necessary for his own continued good health and well-being. He knew what he had to do if he didn’t want Serena scarred more deeply than she’d ever been scarred by David Wentworth, if she was to survive this night with any semblance of self-worth as a woman. And he knew what he wanted to do.
He stood up abruptly, releasing his hold on the sheet, and held his hand down to her. She stared, eye widened, terrified as she viewed the evidence of his obvious response. If David Wentworth hurt her, Joshua would kill her.
Having no basis for comparison, she didn’t know David Wentworth wasn’t particularly well-endowed. In fact, he wasn’t well-endowed at all, and therein lay the roots of his brutality. He carried an inferiority complex in reverse proportions to the size of his manhood.
Having no confidence in his sexual prowess, especially with a woman he hadn’t bought and paid for, he only achieved erection through overwhelming physical force. He liked to slap, he liked to pinch. He liked to bite, in especially sensitive places. She’d never told anyone any of it, especially Joshua.
Joshua pulled gently on her hand, bringing her to her feet.
“You can leave now, if you think you have to. Or you can stay. But I promise you, Serena. I promise. I will never hurt you.”
She doubted that. But she stayed anyway. Frightened and determined, trembling with each new exploration, she stayed. And she trusted. Until his lips moved down and sought her breasts.
“No!” she pushed against him in panic. “Don’t! Please don’t. I can’t stand that, not again!”
Joshua, determined to lay all her old ghosts to rest for all time, swung to the side of the bed and lit the lamp, adjusting the flame down low. What could be seen was often not as frightening. He turned back to her and tugged on the sheet she clutched in a death grip the moment she heard the flare of the match. His face hardened. If David Wentworth walked into the room at that moment, he’d kill him with his bare hands. Joshua had tended her in childbirth but he’d never seen her naked.
The ivory skin of her upper body was marred with scars. Scars rippled all over her breasts, especially around the sensitive skin of her nipples. Teeth marks. David Wentworth’s.
Serena shrank back, frightened by Joshua’s expression.
“It’s ugly, I know,” she whispered.
“The son-of-a-bitch! The bastard!”
She rolled over. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave. You can’t want me like this.”
“Serena!” He pulled her back as she made to rise. “No, don’t go. Please don’t. Trust me, Serena, just try and trust me. I won’t hurt you like he did. I won’t.”
He didn’t. And afterwards, he lay on his back with her head on his shoulder, staring into
the darkness and wondering just how in the hell he always managed to get in so damn much trouble.
Chapter Twelve
He roused her before the first streaks of dawn streamed into the room.
“Serena.”
“Hmmm,” she purred, contented and secure, for the first time in her life, in her own womanhood.
“You have to get back to your room.”
“Not yet.”
“Yes. Now. House is goin’ start waking up real soon.”
The lingering sleep fog cleared from her brain. It really had happened. It was real. And she was terrified it would never happen again.
“You’re not mad at me? You’re not sorry? You don’t want me to leave now, do you?”
He took the time to pull her close and offer reassurance. One night wasn’t going to put a dint on the emotional scars running even deeper than the physical ones.
“No,” he said. “And no and no. To all three questions. But Serena, we’ve got to talk about what we’re goin’ to do, we’ve got to think. Not now, we don’t have time. You’ve got to get back.”
She bent and kissed him quickly. She threw on her nightgown and pulled the torn seam together as she left. Joshua stared after her. Thinking and talking weren’t going to be of much use in this situation. Nothing short of a miracle was going to be of much use.
Serena didn’t see anyone on the way back to her room. But someone saw her.
Sadie didn’t sleep well anymore, hadn’t for some time. She didn’t see any reason for anybody else to suffer because of her insomnia and moved with the silence of a jungle cat during the night hours. She frequently sat at the kitchen table as early as four-thirty in the morning, drinking her first cup of coffee in quiet solitude.
Sadie was aging. She didn’t see well at a distance and her digestive system wasn’t what it used to be. Her hearing, though—that was superb. Her ears caught the almost silent sound of a closing door. She moved to the kitchen door and saw the figure moving down the hall. Her eyes weren’t so bad she didn’t catch the gleaming ivory skin or the long, thick fall of black hair. Serena Foxton. Coming from where? Sadie’s eyes shot around, gauging the possibilities.
Joshua’s room. The white woman, the one Sadie judged to be trouble, bad trouble, was coming out of her younger son’s bedroom.
Sadie closed her eyes and leaned against the door frame. Her stomach plunged to her knees. She hadn’t felt this sensation since that long ago morning when she’d discovered Cain’s poison tidbits in Joshua’s pants pockets. Her sibilant whisper split the dark.
“Oh, God, son! Whut you done got yourself into this time?”
* * *
Joshua wondered the same thing. What to do, what to do? If he had half a brain, he’d put Serena on the Nancy Hanks for Atlanta. Though if he’d used half a brain, none of this would have ever happened in the first place. But it was way too late to consider that an option. He loved Serena. Serena loved him. And in Macon, Georgia that just wasn’t going to work. It wouldn’t work anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. They wouldn’t be the most popular couple in the neighborhood anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line, either, but at least folks would leave them alone. Maybe.
But while he was working out details for relocation to more hospitable climes, he needed to take care of another problem. Immediately. Because he definitely didn’t want to bring a child into the world facing the problems that child would have to face. Possibly later, when they were settled wherever they settled. But sure as hell not now. Of course, abstinence was the surest means of insuring that—provided it wasn’t already too late—but he wasn’t stupid enough to think that was going to happen.
He went to the stables and saddled Twister, grandson of Paul’s big stallion Cyclone. Joshua detested the noisy, blatting horseless carriages now appearing on the city streets and didn’t think it’d be too smart to advertise his secret financial reserves with such an extravagant purchase even if he’d wanted one.
He rode downtown, heading for Sol Hogue’s drug store and hoping like hell Fred Wenton was at the counter. He liked Fred, who’d been a stock boy back when Joshua ran in and out picking up things for Paul.
There wasn’t much in the way of birth control in the early 1900s, but there were early forms of condoms, popularly known as ‘French Letters’. Not infallible of course, but better than nothing. Always providing he wasn’t already too late.
Fred manned the counter, thank the Lord. He grinned.
“Damn! What’s it worth to you for me not to tell your congregation?”
“Well, I tell you the truth, Fred,” he said, throwing just a trace of black slur onto his speech. Not as much as Sadie would have liked but so far, enough to keep him out of overt trouble with the white folks. “This is just ‘tween you and me, ain’t it?”
“Sure.”
“Well, see, there’s this family I know, already got five young’uns and hardly able to feed ‘em. So I sort of had a man to man with the daddy ‘bout how it might be in the best interests of all concerned were there not six young’uns anytime soon and this gentleman, he wasn’t real conversant with the topic. Didn’t know there was any way to try to avoid that without deprivin’ himself of his lovin’ and he just wasn’t real pleased with that idea.”
Fred laughed.
“I swear, Joshua, I’ll tell anybody I know. You my idea of a real preacher, you don’t just preach, you really try to help. I mean that, Josh, I ain’t just making sport.”
“I ‘preciate that, Fred, I really do. But see, after I explained the option, he allowed as how he might be willing to consider it but he sho’ ‘nuff didn’t want anybody to see him buying ‘em and besides, money wasn’t exactly plentiful, so I told him I’d make a private donation.”
Fred threw up his hands and still laughing, made his way to the back room. He returned with a goodly supply.
“You something, Josh. You really are.”
“Well, thank you, Fred. I try hard.”
Joshua’s brain kept churning on the ride home. He didn’t want to just live with Serena. He wanted to marry her, but now he knew she’d never be able to go back to Greenville and even attempt to divorce David Wentworth. Realistically speaking, Wentworth had the advantage. Joshua didn’t have a trace of illusion about David Wentworth anymore. He’d probably kill her. Besides, legalities be damned. Wentworth renounced all right to claim Serena as his wife the first time he scarred her. She belonged to Joshua now, just as he belonged to her.
Boston was the logical choice. He’d made a lot of friends in Boston when he’d gone to school there. So he’d have to start over. He had the money and there were needy people everywhere. But who to leave in charge here?
And God, Sadie! He didn’t even want to think about her reaction. She might even refuse to leave. Hell, she’d probably refuse to leave. But Tamara’s little stone cottage was plenty big enough for two and they needed each other. He’d come back to visit and she could come up to visit, though he doubted she would.
And Paul. He couldn’t imagine life without his brother. But the first thing to do was discuss this with Serena. Whatever they decided, it’d take some time to put into play because he wouldn’t just abandon these people. But surely, somewhere, sometime, he was entitled to some semblance of normal happiness for himself? Just once?
He talked it over with Twister while he stabled him.
“You know, I could always get Paul to talk to Mama first. He’s her favorite, after all.” Joshua laughed. Sadie didn’t have favorites and Joshua knew it, but there’d never been a set of siblings who didn’t claim the same. “But that’d be kinda cowardly, wouldn’t it?” Joshua ran the brush down Twister’s side. “But you know what? Damn right I’m a coward when it comes to my Mama. Or maybe I’m just smart.”
“Or might be you jest too stupid for words!” came the voice behind him. It was Sadie. She’d kept watch for his return, and she was furious. “You lost yo’ mind, boy?”
“Mama, I don’t know what
—”
“Then you let me tell you whut! I seen her! Last night. Come out of yo’ room. Now, do you know whut?”
Already. Lord, my God. He set his mouth firmly. “I love her,” he said.
“Dat love goan do both of you a lot of good when you swingin’ from a rope, boy! Dat love the stuff lynchings made of, fool!”
“Hold it!” Joshua snapped. Last night’s sleeplessness, this morning’s cyclical pattern of endless consideration, and now his mother’s attack. It was too much. “I’m not a fool and I’m not a boy!”
“Den you quit actin’ like one!”
“Don’t you sit in judgment on me when you spent twenty years in a white man’s bed!”
“A white man’s bed! You ain’t noticed things kind of reversed here?”
“Hell, yes, I noticed!”
“But not enough so’s you got enough sense to stop this foolishness, dat whut you tellin’ me?”
“Mama, I didn’t want to talk to you like this. And I haven’t talked to Serena this morning at all but there are other places to go than here.”
“You willin’ to give yo’ whole life up, boy? All dat hard work, leave me and yo’ aunt and yo’ brother and all de folks you done made depend on you? For dat woman? Dat married white woman?”
“You don’t know what he did to her! No merciful God would ever hold that sham to be a marriage!”
“I know. I knows some and I can guess some more. I’m de one got her out of her wet clothes dat first night.”
“And you can’t understand—”
“I understan’ you de only man whut’s ever treated her decent and I—”
“Did my father’s color matter so much to you? That you wouldn’t have loved him if he’d been black? You don’t think it’s just a remote possibility that Serena looks at me and sees me and not my skin color? Or is it you just don’t think anything’s in me worth seeing past the black?”
Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) Page 28