Relieved to the point of weakness, she sat back on her heels and tried to untangle the remaining gray tendrils from her long tied-back hair. But the moss came away only in small bits, as though reluctant to give up its hold on her. Frustrated, she gave up the battle. Let it cling to her hair. What difference did it make out here? Soaked with perspiration that was as much the product of her bout of fear as it was the drenching heat, Victoria’s every breath was scented with the smoky, bitter smell of the swamp.
Defeat ate at the edges of her determination, telling her that if she had a lick of sense, she’d turn this wobbly boat around right now and go home to the comfort of her bed. Victoria stiffened her spine against such wistful thinking. She had to continue on. She’d come this far and she really had no choice but to be here. None at all. Otherwise, what in the world would she be doing out here, putting herself and her unborn child at possible risk? So there was no sense in complaining about being handed the task of righting a wrong, a wrong only she could right.
Victoria swallowed hard, wishing she didn’t care. But she did—and deeply. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t feel weighed down by the onerous burden that had been placed on her heart. She firmed her lips. Sitting here and letting worry eat a hole in her stomach was getting her nowhere. She needed to move on. Heeding her own advice, Victoria rose again to her knees in the tiny boat. Cutting her gaze left and right, she searched for that submerged gator. It wasn’t unheard of for one to come up right under an unwary poler’s craft, upset it, and earn itself an easy supper.
She cautiously prodded her long pole along the inky water’s bottom, trying to find purchase. “Now, you stay away from here, Mr. Gator, you hear me?” she said softly, nervously. “Go get a nice wild piglet for your meal. My baby and I, even both of us taken together, are too scrawny to fill your belly.”
Her speech served the same purpose as did whistling past a graveyard, and well she knew it. When the pole finally met resistance and she pushed off against its hardness, she prayed it was a submerged tree trunk or a big rock—and not the lurking gator. No sense insulting him in his own home by poking him with a sharp stick. Pushing hard despite the protesting muscles in her arms, she again launched her shallow-bottomed and rough-hewn craft forward. Almost effortlessly, it glided through the cypress swamp … as if something were pulling it.
Rationally, Victoria knew nothing was, but she couldn’t quite convince her overwrought nerves that some shroud-covered skeleton wasn’t up ahead, just out of sight, and doing the honors. “Stop that, Victoria,” she warned herself, again speaking low and soft. “You keep thinking like that, and you’re liable to let go of this pole—and your sanity, as well.”
She dipped the pole into the water and moved her lightweight boat along. Disconcertingly, and making her further doubt her own senses, the black night and inky water up ahead kept wanting to merge into one entity. Victoria had to fight the notion that she was poling through the atmosphere, a lost soul on a windless night. No matter how hard she tried to focus her eyes, and no matter how many times she blinked, or paused in her poling to swipe her sleeve across her eyes, her vision remained incapable of separating earth from sky, water from night.
Though she remained alert to the many dangers around her, any one of which could claim a victim in one mere second of inattention and leave nothing behind to be discovered, Victoria tried to calm her fears by telling herself she and her baby were in no danger because she knew these waters like the back of her hand. But even in her own mind, her boast rang hollow. The truth was, she used to know this place … but not so much now. The swamp had changed its course, as evidenced by the unfamiliar contours forced upon it by the powerful forces beneath the placid surface.
Victoria swallowed. How well she knew such forces in her own life. A sudden, cold dread born of her mounting troubles swept over her, leaving her chilled despite the night’s cloying heat. With desperation tightening her grip on the pole, and feigning a bravery she did not feel, she forced her attention back to the swamp itself. Here lay real terrors. But she courageously told herself it was a good thing she didn’t need directional signs tacked to trees to show her the way on this liquid highway … because there weren’t any. All she had to guide her was memory and instinct.
Still, she reassured herself, she knew which narrow tributary to pole down, which fork to aim for when an island suddenly appeared in the waterway. She knew because she’d made this journey before, many times, as a child. But those times, she’d been invited, and one or more of the swamp’s citizens had been sent to carry her in and out safely, all in the daylight hours. But this time was different. At twenty-two, she was no longer a child; she was alone and it was dark.
And yet, the fact remained: She had no choice but to be here and to do this alone. She could tell no one, not even her family—especially not her family—what was at stake. Not lost on Victoria was the hard irony of her predicament. To do this thing she’d essentially been forced to come here to do could ultimately destroy her, her baby, and others in her family. But not to do it could cost another child her very precious life.
Just as despair threatened to swamp her emotions, Victoria felt a pinprick of pain in her hand as a blood-sucking mosquito stabbed into her flesh. With an agitated cry, she swatted it dead and cursed softly. “Ouch, you blasted thing.” Insulted, she brushed the insect carcass off her skin. The lantern’s thin light revealed a tiny smear of blood on her hand. Victoria stared at it. “I hope to high heaven that’s all of my blood that gets shed tonight.”
Hearing the note of bravado in her voice, Victoria dared a tentative smile. Perhaps she was up to this challenge. Perhaps, she was, after all, still a child of this wild place. True, she’d been born and raised on the more civilized fringes of this swamp up at River’s End, whose many acres boasted the centerpiece that was her family’s home, a beautiful two-story plantation house of tall columns and fifteen rooms. But being a child of privilege and a wealthy Southern daughter hadn’t stopped her from running the river and the forest and learning how to avoid the snakes and the quicksand in the swamp, much to her parents’ horror. She still knew how to do all that. Once learned, it wasn’t something a body forgot.
And knowing those things, she assured herself, helped keep her and her baby safe now. If the coach trip across England and then the passage over the Atlantic hadn’t done any apparent harm, then how could poling a jonboat through familiar waters, even at night, and even if it was a swamp, be harmful? No, her baby was fine. Victoria wished she could say the same thing about herself. She wasn’t fine. Physically, she was. Healthy as a horse. Strong as an ox. But not in her heart.
Why, she couldn’t even tell her own parents she was expecting. Whose child could she say it was? And she certainly hadn’t told anyone in Savannah, where people still smiled in a sly way at her and talked to each other behind their hands. Victoria poked her bottom lip out stubbornly as she prodded her long pole into the bottom of the swamp and pushed her boat forward. She’d thought those girls were her friends. Stinging Victoria was the admission that she would have been right in the middle of the gossip sessions if what had happened to her had happened to one of them. But no more. She’d been through so much in the past couple of months that she felt now she would be a more compassionate and loyal friend.
Victoria smiled. She liked the feel of this new person she was becoming. Had moving away from all she’d known and marrying a powerful duke she respected yet feared wrought these changes in her? Against her will, Victoria found her longing thoughts centered on her husband. How could she feel such yearning for his presence? The man wanted nothing from her but her money and an heir. But Victoria could not believe that was all. Too many times, before she’d had to admit her pregnancy to him, she’d seen a glimmer of humor and respect in his eyes and his manner. He’d squired her everywhere, held her arm possessively, danced with her … made love to her.
“Oh, stop it, Victoria. These thoughts can only hurt.” And they did hur
t. Since she’d left England, she’d felt certain at times she could actually hear his voice and feel his touch. She suddenly chuckled as she pictured him again offering her that chair the last time she’d seen him. The poor man hadn’t known what to do with a crying, screaming, pregnant woman in the throes of an emotional upset.
Pregnant. Victoria blinked. Dear Lord, I have a baby on the way. She still wasn’t used to the idea. But she did think she’d made the right decision not to tell her parents. She’d tell them once the child was born, and it was determined who the father was. Shame assailed Victoria that she’d be in this predicament. But it wasn’t her fault, she wanted to shout. Yet society said it was. No matter how it happened, the woman was shamed. Victoria shook her head, fighting despair. Then, inside her head, she heard a small voice saying: You just do what you came here to do, and then you get home right away.
No, not home. But to England. Her fervent hope was her husband would never know she’d been gone. After all, he’d said he wasn’t coming back to Wetherington’s Point until she had the baby, which would be some time next year. March, maybe. At any rate, she’d left orders with Fredericks—such a dear little man—not to tattle. So, if everything worked out smoothly, she would be back in England in a matter of weeks with the duke none the wiser. But even if he did find out, it didn’t matter because here she was. How many times when she was growing up had her mother accused her of being a child who would rather beg forgiveness than ask permission?
If Spencer discovered her gone, would he forgive her for leaving after he’d told her she could not? She hadn’t left out of willfulness. She’d left because of a horrible injustice she had to right. Hopefully. Would he understand? Would he even care? Victoria thought not. After all, her husband could hardly stand to be in the same room with her. And he wanted nothing to do with her or her baby, if it wasn’t his.
Victoria firmed her lips with her effort to harden her heart against her earlier warm feelings for her husband. She hadn’t thought she’d miss him at all. But now he was all she thought about. Was it possible to betray oneself? she wondered. It seemed so. How could she long for a man who had already rejected her and meant to reject her child, if it wasn’t his? Conscience again stung Victoria, telling her she wasn’t so naïve that she hadn’t expected his reaction or his decision. What else could he do, if the child was not his? She knew all that rationally. But not in her heart. The child was innocent, no matter who its father was, and she would protect it like a mother bear did her cub.
Thus bolstered, Victoria valiantly straightened up and looked around her, getting her bearings and continuing with her careful poling of the small boat. She hoped against hope that her mission tonight would go smoothly and quickly. She had to get back long before daylight stained the sky a light gray. With any luck, she’d get some sleep before the house awakened and she had to get up right along with them. She tried to think where she could hide the clothes she was wearing—an old shirt and a worn pair of pants belonging to Jeff that she’d secretly snatched from the back of her older brother’s chest of drawers. She couldn’t just tuck them into the laundry and be done with them. She might need them again. Well, she’d think of someplace when the time came.
Knowing how she looked right now got a grin out of Victoria. Jefferson was so much taller and bigger than she was that Victoria had been forced to roll up the pants legs and the shirtsleeves three good, thick turns before she could be sure she wouldn’t trip over the one and could use her hands despite the other—
The front of her tiny craft bumped solidly against something in the water. The abrupt stop caused the pole, which Victoria held in both hands and had braced against the riverbed, to jerk crazily, pop loose, and hit her hard in the forehead. Gasping in surprise, she held her breath until the pain subsided. Her only thought was, come the morning, would she have a bruise she couldn’t explain?
Rubbing the spot softly, she turned her attention to wondering what she could have hit. Carefully, so as not to lose the all-important pole—her only means of locomotion—she raised it from the shallow but muddy water and laid it lengthwise in the boat. Once it was secure, she crept forward, holding on to the gunwales for balance, until she could peer over the front of the boat where the lantern shed its light.
“Ain’t nothin’ but some dumb old cypress knees.”
Startled by the sound of another human voice, Victoria cried out and pitched over backward into the boat. A close-by bird noisily took wing and just as loudly protested with a stark cry of its own. Blinking, lying on her back, Victoria again clutched at the gunwales and tried to look everywhere at once. But the darkness, outside the lantern’s weak circle of light, proved too much. She couldn’t see another living soul.
“Up heah. Look up heah, and you’ll see me.”
Victoria did. She looked up and all around, searching the trees overhead for whoever was hiding from her, yet not finding him. But now that she thought about it, she realized it could only be one person. With that came consternation. “Jubal, is that you?”
From somewhere up above her, a husky chuckle preceded the man saying: “It shore enuff is.”
Relief washed in a wave over Victoria. Here was a friend. She let go of the gunwales and, carefully, so as not to rock the boat unduly, hauled herself up onto her elbows. Taking exception to Jubal’s continuing to laugh at her, Victoria said: “What in the world is so funny to you, you ornery devil?”
“You look just like a surprised turtle that done found hisself turned over on his back, Miss Victoria.”
“I expect I do. And I ought to tell your mother on you,” Victoria complained, struggling now to sit up properly. “What would she say upon learning you’re out scaring innocent folks on the waterway?”
This, too, tickled him. “You ain’t innocent folks. And my mama ain’t goin’ to say nothin’. She done sent me to fetch you in to her afore you git yourself killed out heah.”
Victoria was rankled by this. “I was doing just fine until you scared me. And I suppose she also told you that I’d get my boat stuck right here, too, didn’t she?”
“Now, how else I know to be here and waitin’?”
Victoria knew the truth of that. Miss Cicely always seemed to know what went on in the swamp and who was wandering about in it. Folks said she had “the sight,” and Victoria believed them. Similar experiences, just like this one, with Jubal waiting right where and when she needed him, had taught her so. Finally sitting upright in the bottom of her boat, Victoria looked all around, but she still couldn’t see that stinker anywhere. “You better show yourself, Jubal, before I get to thinking that you’re a ghost, and I take my pole to you.”
From somewhere up above her came a scoffing sound that adequately expressed Victoria’s unseen tormentor’s opinion of that. “You cain’t hit what you cain’t see. And look at you. Why, you ain’t goin’ to scare no ghost, neither. He could see you got yourself stuck good and hard there between them cypress knees. Otherwise, you’d already be driftin’ away on the current. I swan, you ought to know better, Miss Victoria, polin’ that there boat so close to this here land. I thought I taught you better than that.”
Feeling rightly chastised but not liking it one bit, Victoria responded in kind. “You mean just like my mama taught you to read? You keeping up with your reading, Jubal?” Where the devil was he? Victoria had never seen a being who could just blend in with the plants and trees like Jubal could, if he was of a mind. Most irritating it was, too.
“Cain’t,” Jubal said, jumping down off a jiggling branch to land heavily on shore and not ten feet away in the lantern’s feeble yellow light. His sudden appearance startled another whoop out of Victoria. Jubal—a big, thick-bodied, muscular black man two years older than her—said, “Listen at you. I ain’t never knowed you to be such a fraidy cat, Miss Victoria.”
“I am not now, and I never have been, a fraidy cat. And don’t you change the subject, Jubal. Why can’t you go on with your learning?” Victoria was very awa
re of the absurdity of their carrying on as though they conversed politely in a parlor in broad daylight, instead of in a swamp alive with night-hunting predators all around them. But she had a very good reason for pursuing this with him. “Well?”
“Ain’t got nothin’ new to read,” Jubal complained. “Done read all them old books you give me. Cain’t hardly stomach ’em no more ’cause they don’t never seem to end no different, no matter how many times I study ’em.”
Victoria grinned at his conclusion, but the lantern’s light showed her that Jubal’s expression was sober. Her heart went out to him. “How are you doing, Jubal? I worry about you, you know.”
“You ain’t got no cause to worry ’bout some no-account like me.”
His words tore at Victoria’s heart. She’d known and cared about Jubal since she’d been old enough to be aware of the world around her. But how their lives had changed, his and hers—and neither one of them for the better. “Don’t you call yourself a no-account, Jubal, not within my hearing.”
“Why not? That’s what I am. Didn’t yore daddy tell you what happened with me?”
“Yes, he did.” And because of what he’d done, he was now a prisoner in the swamp. If he left it, he’d be hunted and, most likely, caught and lynched. Victoria knew that if she succeeded in doing what she’d come here to do, the same fate could await her. Chilling. Absolutely chilling. Yet, what choice did she have? “I don’t blame you for what you did, Jubal. Any man, put in your place, would have done the same.”
To Make a Marriage Page 5