Patricia Rice

by Wayward Angel

  She shook all over and the words stuttered out of her mouth as she conveyed her message. The livery man caught the gist and took her coins, promising to carry the letter across the river. He glanced at the alley where the fight had become a general ruckus and recommended she take another route.

  Dora debated, her heart in her throat. She needed to go home to Papa John. She didn't have the size or strength necessary to stop a fight. She already ached from the earlier falls. Violence begets violence. She was just as weak and helpless as her mother had been. She knew what the Bible meant when it said the sins of the fathers would fall on their sons. The same must apply to mothers and daughters. She had no defenses against their brutality.

  But Pace had come to her rescue, and Pace would go to hell for murdering those boys. It would all be her fault. Horribly confused, torn between what she had been taught and what she had learned the hard way, Dora choked back tears and stalked back down the alley.

  As usual, the odds were stacked against Pace. Because of his smaller size as a youth, he had learned to fight viciously, using hands and feet and teeth and every weapon at his disposal. He knew how to gouge eyes, throttle arteries, and kick where it hurt. He had grown considerably since then, and had muscles where the other men had fat. He had the strength of two men and the ferociousness of an army. It was pretty much concluded long ago that it took an army to fight Pace. So the idlers on the street felt justified in coming to Randolph's rescue.

  Trembling with terror, Dora approached the melee without thought. If she thought about it, she knew she could do nothing. So her mind shut down and she moved woodenly, like the doll she had broken years ago while defending Pace in another such fracas. She grabbed the water pail hanging on the pump, and brought it down with a resounding clatter on one man's crown as he pounded Pace's head into the dirt.

  She kicked another and threw dust in the eyes of a third. Pace came up swinging, flinging his closest assailant aside, slamming a fist into the stomach of the next, his dark hair falling in his eyes as he fought. Without a hitch in his movement, he grabbed Dora's arm and dragged her out of the fracas and toward the main street.

  * * *

  No matter how furious the townspeople might be, they wouldn't allow the bullies behind them to blatantly attack a little girl in full view of everyone. Pace took a gasping breath and slowed his run as they reached the safety zone of the main road. He released Dora's skinny arm and kept up a brisk march, hating to leave a fight yet knowing he couldn't let the child walk home alone. He'd go back and finish later if they were still up to it.

  "I told you to tell your father to stay in last night. What happened?" Belligerence came easier than kindness. He'd never been taught anything else.

  "The sheep got loose," Dora whispered. "It's all my fault. Papa John's going to die, and it's all my fault. I don't know why God punishes him because of me."

  "You've got sheep dip for brains, you know that?" he answered with disgust. "If your father went out in the stinking cold and got himself wet chasing a few damned sheep, it's his own fault, not yours."

  "I left the gate open," she pointed out, inexorably.

  "Sheep aren't worth human lives. Your father should have stayed indoors. Better yet, he should have sat down at the general store whittling in full view of the entire town. He knew that. He's the one who chose differently."

  Pace knew he shouldn't take his anger out on her, but he'd not worked off a full head of steam yet. He was furious at leaving the fight to take a little girl home. He was furious at finding full-grown men terrorizing a child. He was furious at himself for dancing the night away while people's lives were in jeopardy.

  He'd already got the report back from Jas. Dora's father hadn't been chasing sheep. He'd helped Joshua escape after Carlson had unexpectedly locked him up in the tool shed for fear he'd run before the trader came. Pace should have been the one wading that creek to rescue his friend, not some old man.

  But he couldn't do a thing about any of it, and his helplessness fueled his fury. The girl beside him bit her lip and offered no response to his angry words.

  Good. Maybe if he made her mad enough, she'd leave him alone and stay out of his life. Maybe she'd even get smart and learn to stay home. He didn't intend to stay around here much anymore. He couldn't come to her rescue every time she tangled with those cowards. He had better things to do.

  Pace saw her to her door and didn't linger to hear her mother give her the ringing scold she deserved.

  * * *

  The next time Pace saw Dora, it was at her father's funeral, and tears streamed, unchecked, down her cheeks.

  Chapter 4

  But, soft: behold! lo, where it comes again! I'll cross it,

  though it blast me—Stay, illusion

  If thou hast any sound, or use a voice,

  Speak to me.

  ~ Shakespeare, Hamlet

  May 1861

  "Thou must rest. The weather is overwarm." The slender young girl in Quaker black held out the water bucket and dipper to the two young men plowing the cornfield. She spoke with a voice as soft and whispery as the frail spring breeze.

  The white worker drank deeply from the dipper, shoving back the broad-brimmed hat from his sweat-soaked brow and enjoying the pleasure of cool water down his throat. The black worker waited until the other finished, then took his turn without hesitation. Despite the fact that one was slave and the other free, they had worked together long enough to know the delicate etiquette of these matters.

  "What's happening up at the big house, Miss Dora?" Jackson wiped a cotton rag across his gleaming black forehead as he cooled off. What happened at the big house was always of interest to everyone in the county.

  Since her adopted mother's death earlier in the year, Dora had been living in the Nicholls' house, ostensibly under the care of Pace's mother but more as unpaid servant. The shattering loss of both her adopted parents had left her too numb to care, but grief had a way of receding with time. She managed a tentative smile now.

  "Spring cleaning. They're turning the place upside-down." A shadow passed across Dora's face as the suspicion of the real reason for the turmoil crossed her mind, but she didn't repeat the gossip. Instead, she asked, "It's not too late to set out the corn, is it? Dost thou think we'll have a crop?"

  They both knew her concerns, for they were as involved in them as she. Since Papa John's death, David and Jackson had worked these fields on a sharecropping basis. The loss of a crop meant they wouldn't be paid for their hard labor, and Dora wouldn't have the money to pay the taxes on the land that had passed to her after her adopted mother's death. To Dora, it meant possibly losing the property. To David, it meant losing the cash he needed to buy a place of his own. To Jackson, it meant one year less before he could buy his freedom from the old man generous enough to allow him to earn his own way now that he was no longer needed at his owner's farm. The price of freedom came high.

  "Thou mustn't, worry, Dora. The tobacco is strong, and thou still hast the hogs. This is good land. It will keep you comfortable."

  A wry smile played across her face. "Would that I could say the same for Friend Harriet. I am here to carry the message, David: worldly goods do not make for comfort."

  He laughed. The three of them had shared her jests about feather beds and velvet curtains she never slept behind because Harriet Nicholls called for her a dozen times a night. Sumptuous feasts were at her disposal, but she seldom sat down to eat them for leaping up to run to the invalid's room. Every idle dream of wealth and plenty the two men might have shared was diminished by the knowledge of the cost others paid for them in health and happiness. They felt no jealousy for the relative comfort in which Dora slept while they scraped by on their hardscrabble lives.

  David gave her a warm smile. "Thou wilt come of age this fall. With the crops in, thou wilt be a wealthy woman, Dora. Thou mayest do as thou pleases then."

  She smiled back. When the crops came in, David would own a full share of them,
and he would have the money he needed for his own farm. Between the two of them, they could sell this place and buy some very nice land David had his eye on over in Indiana. With the approval of the Elders, they could marry by Christmas.

  Dora had never dreamed of marriage like other girls. In truth, she feared the idea and had not yet made the promises David desired. Still, marriage was the practical solution to her situation. She could not live in the farmhouse alone. She could not work the fields by herself. She could not live off the Nichollses forever. David was a kind and gentle man, soft-spoken and intelligent. He was built shorter and slighter than Pace, so she did not fear him as she feared other men. He was the brother she'd always wished she had. He would be the husband she would not have otherwise.

  She had no foolish notions of love. Papa John and Mother Elizabeth had never proclaimed love for each other, but they went along very well together, just as she and David would do. She still had terrifying recollections of her real mother's "love" for the earl. If that was love, she would have no part of it. The Quakers were quite right in abhorring violent animal passions. She felt safe in their company. They were good, sensible people, and she tried very hard to be one of them. With her marriage to David, she would be fully accepted.

  She still woke up in a panic at night over that incident after Mother Elizabeth's funeral. She had come back to the farmhouse to find Pace's father and a lawyer calmly going over Papa John's desk, searching for the legal documents determining her inheritance and ownership of the farm. They'd found the papers her adopted parents had kept in her mother's trunks, the ones with her real name on them. Carlson Nicholls had wanted to write to England right there and then to notify her relatives.

  Dora wasn't good at talking, but somehow she had persuaded those papers away from him that day. The memory still hung like a knife over her head every hour of the day and night. She doubted if the earl cared whether she was alive or dead, but she had no desire to find out. She never wanted to return to that house of her nightmares again.

  Dora waved at the men as they returned to work, then started back for the big house. She had less than a mile to walk. Her feet just didn't fly over it as willingly today as they ought. The family expected Pace home any day now, and she would rather be elsewhere when he heard the news. They hadn't announced it yet, but they almost certainly would at the ball next week. Josie Andrews was marrying Pace's brother, Charles.

  * * *

  "Why, Josie, why? I thought we had an understanding. I'm running for the legislature in the next election. I thought you would stand by my side. What happened?" The anguished words were soft and barely discernible over the chirping of the crickets and the croaking of frogs. The man in a gentleman's tailored frock coat ran his hand through his thick hair in blatant bewilderment, not looking at the slender woman in hooped skirts and sloping bare shoulders. The lights and the music from the party behind them scarcely reached this dark corner of the veranda.

  "I couldn't wait any longer, Pace," she murmured, crossing and uncrossing her hands. "Today's my twentieth birthday. I expected to be married long before this. All my friends have babies already. You kept putting me off with first one promise, then another. And now there's all this talk of war and you're spending so much time arguing for the Union, you can't even write to me. I can't wait any longer. I don't think you want to be married, Pace. I think you're having too much fun up there in Frankfort trying to talk those silly men into joining the war. The worst of it is, you'll probably succeed, and then you'll go marching off to fight."

  "War is inevitable, Josie," Pace said irritably, running his hand through his hair again as he glared at the lighted ballroom behind her. "I told you I meant to run for office, not go to war."

  "My friends and family are here, Pace. I want to stay here," Josie answered quietly.

  He turned on her with an angry scowl. "You mean you want to live in a big house with servants. State it plainly, Josie. Charlie can give you a hell of a lot more than I can."

  She clasped her fingers, refusing to look at him. "Charlie isn't like you, Pace. He's not mad at the whole world. He's kind and thoughtful. He brings me flowers. He's helping my daddy now that he's down with the stroke. I put him off as long as I could, Pace. There wasn't any reason to put him off any longer."

  Pace gave a wild laugh that fit a jungle more than this civilized setting. He quit running his hand through his hair and his savage grin didn't reach his eyes. "Kind and thoughtful! Charlie! Josie Ann, you’ll pay for this, and I'm not the one who'll be setting the price. When you're sitting here in this big house, looking out over all the acres you and Charlie will own together, you just remember this night and what you said. I'll not stand here and try to persuade you different when your mind's made up. I'm not that kind of fool. But I wouldn't let my worst enemy walk into what you're walking into without some kind of warning."

  Pace gripped his fingers into tight fists and nodded his head toward the windows spilling light. "You go back in there and listen to Charlie and my father. Really listen. Don't just look at their pretty faces. Then you watch what they do and how they behave when they think you're not looking. Just remember this, the apple never falls far from the tree. Maybe I am mad at the world. Maybe I pick my share of fights and lose more than my share. Maybe I am just as wild as you've accused those other men who courted you of being. I never tried hiding the fact that I didn't fall far from the tree, which is more than Charlie can say. But remember this, Josie Ann: I never in my life, never took my anger out on those less defenseless than myself."

  He strode off into the darkness before Josie could recover from her shock and reply. Indignant, she stamped her little foot and returned to the party. Who did he think he was to brag about something so silly as that? If that was all he had to say for himself, then she was well rid of him.

  * * *

  Biting her lip, Dora backed away from the upstairs window. She hadn't meant to eavesdrop. She had just been listening to the music. The religion of her adopted parents forbade dancing, but she couldn't help the way it stirred her soul and made her restless and eager at the same time. She loved the lilting sound of the waltz in particular. She could listen to it all night. She had no desire to go downstairs and admire the elegant gowns and broad, black-clad backs dipping and swaying gracefully through the flower-bedecked ballroom. She found contentment in the music.

  But she'd heard a great deal more than music by lingering. She couldn't hear all the words. Pace's voice had been low and venomous. Josie hadn't said much. But she'd known the content anyway. And she heard the shattered emotions.

  She turned back, inspecting the sleeping woman in the bed. Harriet Nicholls had taken a sleeping draft before the ball started, saying the noise would disturb her otherwise. No one had offered to help her from her bed to dress and go downstairs to inspect the ballroom and greet the guests. No one had expected her to leave her room. And she'd made no attempt to do so. Dora wondered how long Pace's mother had been this way, but she had been taught the vulgarity of asking personal questions.

  As far as she could see, there was nothing wrong with the woman but too much laudanum, too much medicinal whiskey, and inertia. Harriet couldn't sleep at night because she slept all day with the shades drawn. She couldn't leave her bed because she couldn't face the day without a strong dose of "medicine." By the time she was sufficiently anesthetized to get out of bed, she was too unstable on her feet to walk down the stairs. So she called herself an invalid and stayed in bed.

  Dora supposed Harriet might be inflicted with some pain the eye couldn't see. She knew it happened. Joints became stiff and painful and degenerated for no known reason. Perhaps that was the case. She would give her the benefit of the doubt. But she couldn't think so charitably of the family who totally ignored her.

  Only Pace bothered visiting his mother, and he came home so infrequently that he might as well not come at all. Carlson Nicholls acted as if his wife didn't exist. He kept his black mistress in a room near
the kitchen so he didn't have to go out in the weather on a bad night.

  Charles didn't go so far as to bring his women into the house, but he came in drunk and staggering at all hours, and didn't seem to care that he might disturb the invalid's sleep. He never entered her room. He visited the grave of his late sister more often than he visited his still living mother. It was an extremely odd household.

  But only Pace mattered to Dora. She had never questioned why this was so. She'd felt that way ever since the day she had found him battered and hurting beneath the maples. She felt his hurts as if they were her own, and he was hurting badly right now. She could feel his anguish all the way through her middle.

  Checking once again on the sleeping woman, Dora reached for her bonnet and tied it beneath her chin. She recognized the senselessness of her actions. She couldn't ease Pace's anguish. He scarcely knew she existed. He was a lawyer now, with a partnership in Frankfort. With all of Kentucky at war with itself. Pace had found his element. He would probably head for the saloons in town now. It didn't matter. She just knew she couldn't let him grieve alone.

  Of course, knowing Pace's penchant for taking his rage out on others, he would no doubt instigate a brawl before the night ended. She'd heard he'd been shot in a fight over in Lexington. Rumors blamed a duel, but she didn't think Pace would have participated in one.

  She'd heard it said the new constitution forbade state representatives from taking office if they'd participated in a duel. Pace was too determined to get elected to risk his career. But she knew he carried a gun and wouldn't hesitate at shooting a man who aimed at him. His violence terrified her. Had he been anyone else, she would steer a wide path around him. But Pace had called her an angel and bought her candy sticks and surprisingly replaced her doll one day when she was really too old for dolls. It hadn't mattered. She'd kept the doll beside her every night since.