Tender (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Time Travel Romance Book 1)

by Anne Meredith

  Had she feared Grey finding her here, speaking with a negro?

  “I see you’ve met Emily. How are you feeling?”

  “About the same.”

  They chatted until Hattie arrived with the herb tea. Rachel helped Camisha sip the tea, glancing at Hattie. “Should we change her dressings?”

  “No, ma’am. Best leave ’em be so’s they can heal.”

  “Rachel says you’re her friend,” Emily said as Hattie left.

  “Since we were about your size.”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “My mother worked for her father.”

  “Was she a slave?”

  Camisha’s head lifted as she raised a delicate eyebrow, the corner of her mouth turning up in a wry grin for Rachel. “I think Mama sometimes thought so. But no, my mother wasn’t a slave.”

  “You don’t speak like other negroes,” Emily observed.

  “I have a good education.”

  “You know how to read?” Emily asked, awed.

  Camisha’s eyes widened in emphasis. “I even know how to write my name.”

  “Oh, pish,” Emily said in outright rejection. “No negro can do more than make a mark.”

  Camisha sent Rachel a meaningful glance. “Who’s this child been hanging out with?”

  “I think she may have inherited it.”

  “Uh-huh. Honey, we’re going to straighten you out.”

  Emily looked over her starched frock and apron. “Am I crooked?”

  “No,” Rachel said with a laugh. “But for now, Camisha and I need to talk. Can we be alone for a few minutes?”

  “But Rachel—”

  “If you’re a good girl, you can come back and visit later.”

  “Oh, may I?”

  Camisha reached out to pat Emily’s arm. “Sure enough. You’ve got pretty eyes.”

  Laughing, Emily jumped to her feet. “Thank you. So do you. They look like…”

  “Like what?”

  Emily hesitated, then laughed gleefully. “Like apple butter!”

  Camisha chuckled, and the sound cheered Rachel. It wasn’t quite her familiar, hearty laughter, but it was close. “Apple butter, huh? You’re a charmer, child. Now go on.”

  Emily scampered away, and Rachel saw Camisha’s eyes follow her.

  “She’s something. She’s his daughter, isn’t she?”

  Rachel nodded. She rose and closed the door, then sat in the chair beside the bed. “So, what happened?”

  “You remember that first night?”

  “Sure.”

  “After I went to bed, I thought I heard you yelling down in the gardens. So I ran downstairs and went out the front door. Then I didn’t hear you anymore. When I looked around … well, the house was gone. I saw a—a man in the distance so I ran to him.” She fell silent for a moment, and her gaze was unfocused.

  “Was it Manning?”

  “No. It was Ashanti. You may know him as Rufus.”

  Rachel remembered the proud, silent man she’d seen in the tobacco fields.

  “He said he was going home, and asked me if I wanted to go with him.”

  “Home … to where? Africa?”

  Camisha snorted. “No. Boston.”

  “Africa was a perfectly logical assumption. How many—”

  “Does he sound like he’s from Ghana?”

  “Okay, maybe it was a stupid question.”

  “Anyway, he isn’t supposed to be here. He’s a fourth-generation freeman.”

  “Really? How did that happen?”

  “Girl, you are so dumb sometimes. You think blacks were always second-class citizens? The first ones that were brought over came as indentured servants, just like whites. But not long after that, people figured out they could just conveniently forget to release them when their time was up. And a peculiar institution was born. Ashanti’s great-grandparents were lucky. They got their freedom after fourteen years.”

  “How did he end up as a slave, then?”

  “He isn’t a slave!” Camisha said, exasperated. “Manning took him when he found him on Rosalie one night a few weeks ago.”

  “Took him? Why didn’t he just tell him he was free?”

  Camisha laughed. “Please.”

  Blushing, Rachel said, “But I knew the first moment he opened his mouth he was no ordinary slave.”

  “You know, I don’t get it. He’s a smart man; he could walk right off this place if he wanted. The night I met him, I was terrified. I didn’t know how it had happened, but I knew I’d gone back in time. I didn’t know you were here, so I agreed to go with him. We were almost off the land when we heard a scream in the woods.” Her face bore faint disgust. “Manning was raping one of the girls. It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. When Ashanti tried to stop him, Manning overpowered him. We were both chained and flogged. Thirty-eight lashes between the two of us.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Camisha.”

  “You and your damned theme park!”

  “You know that if I’d ever imagined—”

  “Oh, I know. I was the fool who thought it’d be cool to get a good look at history.”

  “Remember when we were kids?” Rachel asked. “You used to wake up saying you dreamed you went back in time.”

  “Uh huh. And we’d play make-believe all day, pretending we were ladies-in-waiting.”

  A soft tap came at the door. “Miss Sheppard?”

  “Yes?”

  Hastings appeared in the doorway. “You’ve a visitor.”

  “Who?”

  He raised his eyebrows, then stepped aside.

  Malcolm.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Well, it’s about time.” Rachel folded her arms across her chest.

  “I beg your pardon?” Malcolm wasn’t any happier at being summoned than she was at his tardiness.

  “We’d like to go home. Now.”

  “Home,” he repeated, as if she spoke an unknown language.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Why?”

  “Will you look at her?” Rachel shrieked. “Look what’s happened—she nearly died!”

  He gazed at Camisha with compassion in his eyes. He quietly closed the door behind him, then knelt beside her. He gently touched her hand. “Isn’t quite the picture postcard you imagined, is it?”

  She only gazed back at him evenly.

  “You said this would be a haven,” Rachel reminded him.

  “From your father. A man who knows you have the power to destroy him—and his family.”

  “And we all know I don’t! I don’t remember …”

  He watched her shrewdly, his gaze rich with otherworldly wisdom. “Don’t you?”

  Her lips compressed into an angry line. “All right. I am remembering things, I’ll admit that much. But to tell you the truth, I really don’t care, if it means Camisha being treated like … an animal, or—or worse.”

  “As I understand, that’s been remedied.”

  “You’ve been wrong before.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “So you would go back to face your father, without the means to defend yourself—or Camisha—against him.”

  “Take us back, right now, and put us inside a police station in Dallas. Camisha knows people in the legal system there, and—”

  “And what’s to be done to warrant an arrest in Dallas? Idle threats he can easily deny? What proof do you have? Do the police in Dallas have jurisdiction over a 20-year-old murder in Richmond, Virginia? And assuming he were arrested for anything—which is a wild assumption at this point—he would be out on bail within hours.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “No.” Camisha’s voice was soft but resolute.

  Rachel’s mouth fell open. “What are you doing?”

  Her gaze on the old man was reflective and troubled. “Why am I here, Malcolm?”

  “That’s a question you have to answer yourself.”

  She gave him an empty smile. “Sent along to k
eep the boss’s daughter company?”

  “Camisha!” Rachel was stung at her retort.

  “Oh, hell, Rae. You ever see a woman raped?”

  The question sent a harrowing awareness through Rachel. The sensation reminded her of those eerie glimpses of her forgotten past—but no memory came. Only an answer, from deep within: Yes.

  “I’m not going anywhere, long as that Manning’s around.”

  “Camisha, listen to me. This is the eighteenth century. It isn’t famous for its fair and equitable treatment of blacks.”

  “No, but even these folks have laws to protect the slaves.”

  “And you think you’re going to come in and fix it all? Play some sort of Moses, freeing your people? You can’t change history.”

  “I suspect she knows that, Rachel,” Malcolm put in.

  “No, I can’t,” Camisha agreed. “But I sure as hell can’t walk away, leaving that bastard here to persecute those women. That blue-eyed slave trader of yours might put up with it, but I’m not going to.”

  Discord jangled in Rachel’s brain with a riot of emotions. Guilt, for her own ill-begotten love for Grey Trelawney. Admiration for Camisha’s integrity. Remorse, for her failure to understand that determination. And, worst of all, unfounded resentment of Camisha for condemning Grey. She didn’t understand, Rachel thought—he had as little regard for Manning as Camisha did.

  “So, ladies, what shall it be?”

  Rachel sighed, then shot him a murderous glance. “What do you think?”

  He smiled. “I knew it. And I must remind you, while Mary and I are about our work, you have just the one purpose. To find what the past means to you.”

  There it was again—that phrase that had come to haunt her.

  “I would add one point. Do you recollect when Mary told you to make no changes to the world around you?”

  Rachel remembered—when she’d thought the old woman was warning her to be a neat houseguest. She nodded.

  “Well, forget it.”

  “Forget it?” she asked.

  “Mary tends to be a practical sort, bless her heart. She scoffs at my romanticism. If she asks, I did not tell you this. But two and a half centuries stand between now and the time where you once lived. Much will—or won’t—happen in that time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dear, you’re an intelligent girl. You’ll come to understand.”

  She sighed. Malcolm and his riddles.

  “You said you and Mary were at work. Doing what?”

  “Finding out about your father.”

  “What have you found out? What happened at the press conference? Did he—”

  “Oh, dear, you still don’t understand windows in time. Well, I’m afraid I don’t have time to explain it all. Mary’s expecting me. But this much I can tell you: he is a man whose power is far-reaching. If you go back to your time without the certain knowledge of what happened to you, you’ll be at his mercy.”

  His gaze was grave. And within another minute, he was gone and they were alone.

  Rachel sank to the floor beside the bed. “So I guess I’ve got some remembering to do.”

  Camisha scrutinized her.

  “What is it?”

  Her brown eyes were shrewd. “I’ve been thinking. What have you been doing, up here in the big house with that blue-eyed slave-trader?”

  Rachel gave her a churlish smile. “His eyes are gray.”

  “I knew it!”

  The lively expression in Camisha’s eyes was half shock, half pleasure.

  “Knew what?”

  “Girl, you are gone.”

  Rachel didn’t bother denying it. Camisha knew her too well.

  “You know he’s married, don’t you?”

  “I found out yesterday.”

  “Hm. So tell me about this slave trader of yours.”

  Camisha’s matter-of-fact support soothed her. “Why do you keep calling him that?”

  “Because you didn’t like it when I called him massa. Are you forgetting who you’re talking to? I’m the one who was there all those nights you spent studying instead of going out, because the guys you knew bored you silly. There’s something going on here. What do you see in him?”

  “He’s not what you think. He’s the most passionate, tender man I’ve ever known. And he’s gentle with Emily, and with me—”

  “Lord have mercy, it’s worse than I thought. You’re in love with that guy.”

  “I don’t know. How can I love a man who—who—” She shook her head, gesturing helplessly at Camisha’s bandages. “Camisha, he gives me something I never hoped to find. The memories of my family. I … remember things when I’m with him—things I thought I’d forgotten. I remember things about my sisters, and my mother. I remember what my father looked like—and how much he loved me. And then again, I remember other things … horrible things.”

  Camisha’s lips parted. “Then—it’s true!”

  “What?”

  “Malcolm just said it! Rachel, you’re here to—”

  “Remember my past. I know.”

  “No! Not just that. Didn’t you hear all that doublespeak? He said something about changing things, about things that had or hadn’t taken place yet. All your life, you’ve wondered about your parents. Rachel, they won’t be born for two hundred years. Maybe you can … keep them from getting killed.”

  A chill stole over Rachel, and immediately logic took over. “Camisha, two centuries? What could possibly happen now that would have to do with my parents’ deaths?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. But … maybe you do.”

  “But what if it meant … I never met Max Sheppard. Then, you and I never would have met.”

  The two women turned that over.

  “But we’re in a timeline that can’t be changed by that. This timeline is influencing that timeline.”

  She could only hope that somewhere within her lost memories was lodged the answer.

  Later she left Camisha to rest. And because she knew she could put it off no longer, she looked for Grey and found him in his study. Aside from the library, this was one of her favorite rooms at Rosalie, although she was rarely inside it. The walls held scrollwork from a master craftsman, including a mural of a harbor filled with tall ships. The room was situated on a corner, with a large window on each adjoining wall, and plush window seats with drapes and pillows, the sort of place one could happily pass a rainy afternoon.

  Grey stood at one of those windows, grimly staring out over the tobacco fields. He wore dove-gray breeches and a white silk shirt and black boots. He glanced at her. “Good morning.”

  His stiff reserve reminded Rachel of her last words to him, and she grew remorseful. Why? She had every right to hate him. He was engaged in an immoral livelihood that had put Camisha in peril; he indulged a monster like Manning to fatten his coffers further; and worst of all …

  Had he been right yesterday? Were he the kindly widower she’d thought him to be, would she still find him to be so abhorrent?

  “Will you close the door?”

  She obeyed. He gestured at a nearby chair, then resumed staring out the window. What did he see there, in those fields?

  He turned at last, resting an impassive gaze on her. “I wish to know if you’re still leaving Rosalie.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  Folding his arms across his chest in presumed disinterest, he rested against the wall, bending one leg and propping his boot there. Something flickered through his eyes. He was a poor liar, and the knowledge stung. How much easier it would have been to think of him as utterly amoral.

  “What I want no longer matters,” he said quietly, his gaze falling to the carpet. “But I would have you know the truth about my marriage.”

  Without ever raising his eyes, he began speaking. “Whatever intimacy might once have been possible between me and the lady I wed ended on our wedding night.”

  Immediately he stopped, as if regretting his decision.
He moved to the desk, lounging on its edge as he chose his words. “By intimacy, I mean spiritual. Why I married her is beside the point, but … I did hope to love her.”

  She looked away, unable to bear the depth of his loneliness.

  “I learned that night that my hopes were in vain. There is no human love in her.” He raised his head, and their eyes met. “After that, I never sought her bed again—and I denied her mine. A year later, she gave birth to Emily.”

  Her lips parted in dismay. “A year?”

  He looked away. “I do not seek your pity, Rachel. Emily is a blessing in my life.”

  “But she isn’t your daughter?”

  “She is more my daughter than Letitia’s,” he retorted. She’d touched a nerve. “Lying with a woman may make a child, but it does not make a father. A father is made one moment after another, over a lifetime, not of blood, but of more solid stuff. Morning laughter. Bedtime prayers. Midnight soothings. Do you think I love Emily less because of something beyond her control? A deed that God used to bless me?”

  In this description, he had been judging—harshly—his own father, but now it was she who could no longer bear it. She rose awkwardly, turning away as tears stood in her eyes. He’d just spoken phrases she’d once imagined Max Sheppard speaking to her.

  What is it that makes a father? He’d asked her, that night in the palace gardens. Now she began to get an inkling of how much he had once, as a small boy, yearned for his own father.

  “Rachel.”

  She turned. He clenched the edge of the desk, as if letting go would send him into her arms. “I’m sorry. I had forgotten your own childhood.”

  “What was your mother like?”

  Her whisper bemused him, and he almost smiled. “Why?”

  “She taught you how to love.”

  Grey’s eyes moved over her with distant yearning. “Have you any tender feelings for Emily?”

  His question caught her unawares. “You know I love her.”

  “Then I ask you to reconsider and stay with us. To serve as the mother Emily will otherwise never have.” He gave up his struggle, dropping to one knee before her. “My daughter loves you. She needs you. And I …” He hesitated, then abruptly stood. Grasping a pink blush rose from a vase, he murmured, “I see the benefits of a woman’s influence in her life.”