Harriet looked at her as if she were crazed when Dora expressed Pace's desire for a family dinner. "He wants me to go downstairs for the pleasure of listening to him and his father tear each other apart? No, thank you. I'll decline the invitation." She settled resolutely into the overstuffed chair beside her bed. "I'll go hungry first."
Dora had expected that response, but for Pace's sake, and to avoid conflict, she tried again. "Pace will be on his best behavior. And I'll remind him if he forgets. This means a lot to him. He will go back to war shortly. It would make things easier on the help if we all ate in one place. Perhaps thou couldst persuade some of the kitchen staff to work again. I am not good with servants."
Harriet tapped her toe and stared out the window. She'd not asked for her bottle of laudanum recently. She was awake more during the day. Dora thought sitting here doing nothing all day must bore her horribly. Perhaps Pace had offered the excuse she needed to break her self imposed exile.
"Annie could fix thy hair," Dora suggested shyly. "Wouldn't thou like wearing one of those pretty dresses again?"
Harriet turned and gave her a shrewd look. "You're the one who ought to have her hair fixed and wear pretty dresses. You look like an old maid. You'll not catch my son's interest looking like that." Without a clearer reply, she gestured for Annie to fetch the silver-backed brush from the dresser.
Not daring to leave for fear Harriet would change her mind, Dora stayed to help choose a dress and locate undergarments. The styles were terribly outdated. Nothing fit. She had little talent for making adjustments in this kind of finery. Still, she found enough garments to dress Harriet fully. The older woman could no longer he called beautiful, and she could scarcely be called dignified with her sagging chins and overtight bodice waists, but she looked more human than she had in many years. Dora breathed a sigh of relief as Harriet swayed in unbuttoned shoes toward the door.
"Annie, go fetch my son. Dora, go get yourself fixed up. Servants don't eat in the dining room. You must look like a guest." She waved imperiously, dismissing her subjects as she shuffled toward the hall for the first time in years.
Nervously, Dora escaped to her own room. Untying her apron, she reached for her best Meeting gown. Perhaps if she left the collar and apron off, she would look less like a servant. Mother Elizabeth would disapprove, as would the Elders, but making peace in this household seemed more important than maintaining modest attire. Plain Dress had been intended to create equality, avert vanity, and avoid notice. By keeping to the styles of hundreds of years ago, they had forfeited that intent in Dora's mind.
Dora heard Pace talking to his mother as he helped her down the hall. Considering what she had done with him this afternoon, her attire was the least of her sins. Her heart thumped in her throat and her stomach clenched as she listened to the low vibrations of his voice. He was a man of the world, a well-respected lawyer in Frankfort, an experienced soldier. She was nothing, less than nothing. How could he see anything in her?
He didn't. She had to remind herself of that. She was nothing to him but a convenient vessel for his needs. She didn't consider what she had done a sacrifice because she had wanted it, but she had done it knowing it could have only one outcome. She would keep Pace from joining that battle, keep him alive to fight the legal battles that would follow this war, and watch his fight from the distance of hundreds of miles.
Armed with that knowledge, Dora combed her hair, straightened her cap, and hurried to join the unusual party downstairs.
Pace frowned at the cap when she entered, but in keeping with his unspoken promise, he said nothing argumentative. When Dora started for the door leading to the kitchen, he just grabbed her arm and shoved a chair under her.
Carlson had sat in the first chair he reached, which wasn't the head of the table. He glared at his empty soup bowl and ignored the gray-haired woman taking the chair farthest from his. Dora watched uneasily as he sipped at a mug of ale, but he didn't seem much inclined to talk.
Pace had taken a seat halfway between his parents and directly across from Dora. He frowned but kept quiet as Annie set a platter of chicken on the table without passing it. Wordlessly, he helped himself from the platter when his father passed it down to him. Dora had sat at this table before with him, but never after spending intimate hours in his company. She didn't know what to do or how to act.
"That gown is very becoming, Mother," Pace said formally as he held the platter so she could choose from it.
"That's a lie, but I thank you for it," Harriet answered. "Where is your uniform? Have you been discharged?"
"I reenlisted in May. I'm having a new uniform made. I will return to my regiment shortly."
Annie returned with potatoes and carrots, handing them to Carlson first and walking out. She had been trained as a ladies' maid and not a serving girl, but she knew better. Dora felt the slave's resentment and hostility, but though she might sympathize, she had no power to correct the situation. To even mention paying Annie would throw Carlson into a rage not conducive to the proposed peace of this dinner.
Carlson shoveled out some potatoes and pushed them toward Dora. "Damned Yankees think they own us," he muttered, sotto voce.
Pace pretended he didn't hear. Taking the bowl of vegetables from Dora, he said pleasantly, "I haven't thanked you for your care while I was ill, Miss Smythe. Is there something I can do for you to show my appreciation?"
This was too much politeness for her taste, but she wouldn't say the first angry word. Pain had carved harsh lines around Pace's mouth, and she responded to the almost tender look in his eyes.
"Thou canst stay alive and come home safely," she murmured.
She heard his father grunt at this reply, but Pace's gaze warmed, and his mother intervened.
"You could stay here and work the farm like you ought. That arm should get you a discharge." She dug into her potatoes with enthusiasm. Her "illness" had never diminished her appetite.
Pace stiffened, but his father replied before he could summon a polite answer.
"I don't need the likes of him around. I've still got a strong back and two good arms. I built this place by myself. I can keep it going by myself."
Dora could see Pace struggling to control his temper. She breathed easier when he answered with patience.
"I could help you find some hired hands. Solly doesn't make much of a field laborer. I was thinking of taking him with me."
Carlson slammed his fork against the table, sending a carrot flying into the air. "You'll damned well do nothing of the sort! That boy belongs to me, and don't you forget it! Lincoln can't steal our property. It's against the Constitution! That's what this damned war is all about, upholding the Constitution. You and your blue-bellied friends won't change the way things are."
"Things have already changed," Pace pointed out. "Your slaves have gone and you won't get them back. You're going to have to hire help."
"And who in hell do you think I'll hire to do nigger work? Just tell me that, smartass. There ain't a self-respecting white man in this state that's goin' to work out in those fields. Your damned blue-bellied friends better start thinking about that before winter comes and they find their blue bellies empty."
Pace's temper began to show. "If the state of Kentucky hadn't made it unconstitutional for free black men to stay and hire themselves out, you and your friends wouldn't have to worry about getting your pristine hands dirty. Tell that to your mighty congressman next time he pats himself on the back for getting that heinous piece of stupidity locked into the Constitution for the next umpteen years."
"I'll not sit here and listen to that kind of guff from no son of mine!" Carlson roared, heaving himself upward. "Matt Mitchell is a damned good friend of mine and has a better head on his shoulders than you'll ever have. Why don't you get your Yankee hide out of here and back to those nigger-lovin' friends of yours where you belong? Lookin' at you makes me sick."
Pace leaped to his feet in fury, but his father was already on his way
out the door. The look on his face made Dora's soul weep, but she had no magic powders for healing this festering wound. She hurried to take Harriet's arm when Pace's mother staggered to her feet.
"Well, I hope everyone enjoyed this happy homecoming. I think I'll rest now, Dora. Don't ask me to repeat this experience anytime soon."
Dora didn't dare glance back at the look of despair lurking behind Pace's proud features. She led Harriet from the room and flinched as the front door slammed a few minutes later.
Chapter 16
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
~ Shakespeare, Sonnets
Dora didn't know how long it took to settle Harriet down for the night. The old woman grumbled and complained the entire time she was undressed. She demanded her laudanum for the first time in weeks, and raised a scene when told they hadn't any. She chastised Annie for bringing water too cold to wash in.
Dora sighed when she finally escaped the room. She could endure the older woman's tantrums well enough, but the thought of Pace sitting in that empty farmhouse alone left her emotionally drained. She feared he would pack his bags and go before she could get there.
She didn't even take time to comb her hair or wash her face before rushing out of the house into the growing darkness. This late in July, daylight lingered still, but the huge old trees lining the drive had already plunged the path into darkness. Dora had no fear of the dark. Her only thoughts were of Pace. She couldn't let him leave yet.
She knew the night covered the acts of desperate men. Slaves escaping North from the chaos of the South fled along these roads. Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, Kentucky law still called them fugitives. If caught, they could be thrown in jail and sold to the highest bidder. Knowing that, the slaves fought viciously for their freedom. There were plenty of greedy white men ready to deny them that freedom, and they haunted these roads as well, looking for prey. Violence followed in their trail.
Confederate raiders seldom made it this far north any longer, but their supporters did, and the Yankees patrolled to prevent their depredations. Anyone could be suspected of anything at any given time. A lone woman caught between two such bands had little chance of escaping unscathed. But Dora didn't even consider the consequences as she ran the mile down the road from the big house to her own home.
She didn't need to heed the consequences. Pace came running down the road to greet her as if he had watched for her, uncertain if he should expect her, afraid for her safety if he didn't watch. She fell into his open arms with giddy joy, and he swung her off her feet and around in circles.
She knew he had feared she wouldn't come. She could feel it in the piercing desperation of his kiss, his bone-crushing hug. She clung to his neck and smothered him with reassurance. She knew he didn't believe what her kisses said, but it didn't matter. Nothing else mattered but that Pace Nicholls had actually waited for her, that at long last, he wanted her with him. For the first time in her life she knew the exhilaration of being needed, not just by anybody, but by this man she had adored since childhood.
The hunger she sensed in him was heady and terrifying at the same time. She didn't know if she had what it took to satisfy him. She was too young, too small, too inexperienced to be what he needed. But she allowed him to carry her into the house and into his bed without expressing any of those fears.
The fierceness of Pace's passion was equally terrifying, but Dora understood the bubbling rage inside him. It could easily spill over and burn her, but long ago she had given her trust to this man.
She cried out in surprise when he dispensed with her buttons by ripping them open, but her soul soared when he kneeled over her, and his mouth closed over her breast to suckle deeply. She fed his ravening hunger with her ardor, pulling at his shirt until she found his flesh, responding fiercely to the brutalizing passion of his kiss. Mindless now, she no longer considered right from wrong, peace versus violence. She only knew the heated brand of Pace's hands upon her, his mouth devouring her where his hands did not.
When Pace pulled up her skirt and ran his hands possessively over the curve of her buttocks, Dora knew this wouldn't be a gentle loving, but she had already given herself into his care and no longer concerned herself with how they got where they were going. She wanted him inside her again, pulsing with life, reaffirming their existence. She ached with the need for that consummation. She lifted herself eagerly from the mattress so he could remove her drawers, and she cried out with delight when he touched her there, sliding his fingers deep to prepare her.
When Pace opened her thighs wider and rammed into her with a passion bordering on violence, Dora’s body knew what she needed better than her mind. She responded to his fierceness, digging her fingers into his back, meeting his hips with hers in a furious battle for power and release. She screamed with frustration as he gripped her buttocks and held her still, then learned the exquisite pleasure of surrender as she wrapped her legs around him. His throaty cry of desire swept through her veins, and she succumbed to the waves of pleasure his possession induced, and then heady triumph when her contractions brought him to a shuddering release.
He didn't stop with just that one pleasuring. His kisses resumed more gently, and Dora accepted them with joy. She'd never truly known physical pleasure before. She had always thought of her body as a troublesome vessel prone to pain and best disguised and forgotten. But Pace taught her that this nuisance of a physical self could have its usefulness. Her arms could hold him. Her lips could kiss him. Her breasts could tingle with his caress. And her thighs could part in access to that safe haven where they could be as one.
She lost track of time. She lost count of their couplings. She no doubt lost possession of her mind while caught in the trap of her senses. She only knew the man beside her in the bed owned her, body and soul, and she would never be the same again.
That didn't bother her too greatly. She had never expected to find true love. David had been the only man she had ever considered marrying, and she knew now that he would never have offered her what Pace gave her tonight. She didn't expect to find this happiness again. In truth, she had very little in the way of expectations. She had already died once. She knew she would die again. She would take what little comfort offered in between times.
Dora turned and drew her hand down the solid wall of Pace's chest, kissing the rounded muscle of his shoulder. His arm around her tightened, crushing her breasts against his ribs. They were entirely naked, their limbs entwined in impossible knots. His hair-roughened leg rubbed the smooth satin of her inner thigh. Dora could almost imagine she had died and gone to heaven, but she heard the early song of the mockingbird outside and knew the idyll had ended.
She was sore in a thousand places. She ached deep inside, and her muscles felt as if she had walked carrying a heavy burden all night. Knowing the source of the ache made her feel only pleasure, however. She nipped lightly at Pace's chest, then began to untangle herself.
"Don't go," he murmured, catching her arm in his fist, his fierce eyes closed now with satiation and weariness.
"I must." She escaped his hold but lingered a moment longer to run her hand daringly down his powerful chest and across his flat belly. "Thou wilt stay?"
"A few days only. I'll go get Amy for you."
He hadn't forgotten. She breathed a sigh of relief. She had tried very hard not to fall for the child, but she had missed her desperately these last months. She would enjoy hearing a child's laughter again. "Do not strain thy arm," she warned prosaically, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.
Pace laughed and watched her pad naked in the gray dawn in search of her clothes. "I have told you before that I do not want a mother."
"I doubt thou knoweth what thou wants," Dora answered scornfully, wiggling into her chemise. "But I do not think I would make thee a good mother."
She would make him a good wife were the words that arose unspoken between them. But they were
words of the moment, not of the future. Pace would have his elegantly gowned, beautiful hostess to further his political ambitions. Dora would stay to tend her meager fields. Their paths diverged too widely for them to ever meet like this again in the future.
Pace climbed from the bed and pulled her against him to kiss the nape of her neck. "I don't need a mother. I need you in my bed."
She pulled from his arms and reached for her gown. She didn't need reminding of what she already knew. All he needed from her was her body.
"I must return before someone sees me. Wilt thou stop for breakfast?"
"If thou wilt stop wearing that awful cap," Pace answered in amusement, eyes glittering in mockery as he watched her try to button a gown he'd fairly ripped from her the night before.
Dora shot him a look of disapproval. "Thou needs not mock. I may be a fallen woman now, but I needn't flaunt it."
Pace grabbed the cap from her hands and crushed it between his long fingers. "I warned you even angels can fall from trees. Now that you're down on the ground with the rest of us, you don't need wings or halo. Leave it off. Your hair is too pretty to cover up."
Dora's hand raked through her crumpled curls. "It is a mess. Mother Elizabeth would not approve. Give me the cap. Pace."
He surrendered it reluctantly, watching her through cautious green eyes. "Why do you always call her Mother Elizabeth instead of just mother? Is that part of your religion?"
She tucked her wayward curls inside the cap by sense of touch. She shook her head at his ignorance. "She and Papa John were my adopted parents. They took me in when I was eight. I could not call them mother and father, so we worked out a substitute."
He padded around the room, uncovering his own clothes. "Your accent is not the same as David's." As if just realizing what he'd said, Pace straightened and turned to her apologetically. "I heard about David. I'm sorry."
She dismissed his false sympathy for what it was and focused her attention on the less painful. "David was from North Carolina. His parents could not continue abiding in a state that allowed slavery, so they moved to Indiana when he was very young. My adopted parents brought me from England. I had hoped I'd lost most of the accent by now."
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