Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution

by Adair, Suzanne

  She lifted her chin. It was time. "England is a long way from Georgia. How can I move to England when —" She made sure her voice held low. "— when every year, Betsy looks more and more like her grandmother, Madeleine le Coeuvre?"

  While incredulity swelled across his expression, she was certain frogs stopped croaking, crickets ceased chirping, and the world paused rotating. She held her breath in nervous anticipation. Surely now Mathias would comprehend why she hadn't leaped to accept Edward's offer, and the two of them could begin to talk at last. But instead, he scowled, pushed up from the blanket, and swept out into the night with his rifle.

  Anger boiled in her chest: disbelief that Mathias could still not understand. How dared he run away? She jogged after him, her peripheral vision granting her a view of David's curiosity. Oh, how her brother would tease her on the morrow.

  Moonlight broke through clouds and permitted her to spot Mathias striding southward through palmetto-strewn swamp grass. She halted and cupped hands around her mouth. "I'm not going to run the rest of the way to East Florida after you!" She wasn't sure whether she felt relief when he stopped and waited for her.

  When she reached him, he remained facing south. "I cannot believe you've never told me. In all of eighteen years, you never told me." Sadness weighed down his voice. "Did you never realize how much I wanted children?"

  "Then why didn't you remarry?"

  "Great gods, Sophie, I lost my mother and first wife to childbirth. I didn't think I could lose a second wife that way."

  "Well, you have a child."

  "No. I never had her. I wasn't there for her birth. I never rocked her to sleep, heard her first words, watched her first steps, or played with her. Now she's an adult, and I wasn't even at her wedding! I've missed having everything a father should have had."

  She glared at his profile. Damned if he was going to make her feel guilty for her choices. He had a right to feel loss, but she'd done the best she could to provide for Betsy, and Betsy had turned out to be a decent, sensible woman. "Not everything. You and I shall be grandparents in December." He faced her then, expression knotted with deepened incredulity and betrayal. "If you so desire, I shall open the door for you to talk with Betsy."

  He spread his arms in a gesture of being overwhelmed, and she heard lamentation in his voice. "Betsy won't accept me!"

  "That depends on how you approach her. She never knew Jim Neely, and Richard Barton wasn't much of a father to her."

  "You'd be honest with her about us? You act proud of it."

  She felt doubt and self-recrimination crawling around in his soul and smashed her lips into a line. Damn. At least she'd been loved by her father. "Exactly what about my daughter should shame me into silence? I will never be shamed to have given myself to a fine young man in the grotto of the Moon Eyes. Nor will I ever be shamed to have borne his daughter or to have sought protection for her with two other men.

  "Perhaps you expect me to be shamed because your stepfather drilled into your head that your heritage somehow makes you subhuman. If you really must know the truth, why in eighteen years I never told you that you're Betsy's father, well, it's because I've never forgotten those scars on your back. Jacob and his religion would only have made your life more miserable had he known you had an illegitimate child. That's why I sent Betsy to Augusta. I didn't want him seeing Madeleine in her."

  His expression grew guarded. "The opportunity for Betsy, you, and me to resolve this muddle is forever gone, Sophie. You never tried to talk with me about it."

  This muddle. She felt ill. "How could I have talked with you about Betsy? You never gave me a chance. Since Richard's death, you've scurried away from me."

  "'Scurried away?' Not so. I was rebuffed. I've never been able to pierce that phalanx of handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed men orbiting you."

  "What phalanx? Edward Hunt is the first since Richard —"

  "At the harvest festival, right after Joshua's first son was born, Andrew Barton had you perched on his elbow the entire time. You wouldn't even dance with me —"

  "My feet were sore! And Andrew Barton became a phalanx of men after that, eh?"

  "For years I watched you select suitors with whom you never shared yourself. I finally decided that all you wanted from any man was this much." He showed her his thumb and forefinger spaced but a quarter inch apart. "I gave up."

  "You don't give up at anything. This imaginary phalanx of blond men helps you to keep me out at a distance!"

  "You keep all the men who might have a sharing relationship with you out at a distance."

  Baffled, angry, smarting, she scowled at him. "That afternoon in the grotto wasn't fair to you. We were both hurt by it, and I'm very sorry. I'm also sorry that I kept the truth about Betsy from you. But I won't be responsible for your fears about me today. I have my own fears about you to deal with.

  "As for my selecting suitors with whom I've never shared myself —" She showed him her thumb and forefinger spaced but a quarter inch apart. "That's how much affinity I've had for them, so why bother sharing? How sad to feel the affinity we still have for each other after eighteen years, but we're unable to nourish it because we're so busy being afraid."

  She waited for him to respond, but he stared at her as if her words had paralyzed him. Rolling back her shoulders, she headed to camp, where she cast herself on her bedroll and yanked the blanket over her head.

  Her heart thrashed about like a caged hawk. Mathias's energy, his passion, burned within him, hot as the heart of any forge, so hot it glowed dark. All her life it had spoken to her in a language her soul understood but couldn't voice. Small wonder she'd kept his confidences through all the years, rejoiced when he mediated between the worlds of the white man and the red man, and acknowledged the things of importance to him. Small wonder she'd been bored with other men. Her soul thirsted for each next contact with that passion, attuned as it had somehow become eighteen years before by one afternoon of intimacy.

  Did he not feel it? How could he not feel it? All that passion had resonated through his fingertips last Tuesday afternoon when he, despairing for her life and safety, had taken her face in his hands and told her without telling her that he cherished her.

  Cherished, yes. She had been desired by many men, and her body had been in the legal possession of two men, but in her entire life, only Mathias Hale had cherished her. Of all the men she'd known, only he had captured her abiding respect. Now that she finally recognized it, he wanted nothing to do with her. Oh, how very bitter.

  Chapter Twenty

  AT MIDNIGHT, DAVID woke Sophie to assume watch beneath an overcast sky. A muscle in her neck knotted as she trudged through mist with her musket to the edge of the pine copse. A breeze from the east drifted drizzle down her neck.

  Runs With Horses joined her. "Listen. What do you hear?"

  Wind rustled palmettos and pines. A brook dribbled over stones. An owl hooted. And men were talking near the road. "Redcoats?" she whispered. With their military discipline, would they have prattled so?

  The warrior sniffed the wind. "No. We go see."

  She followed him, her footsteps almost as quiet, and they crouched in a thicket. Dark skin on eight people in the road — one doubled over on hands and knees — offered little contrast to the night. She whispered, "Runaway slaves." The Creek nodded.

  A woman's sob broke from the person on hands and knees. "Cain't — cain't go no more!" Her voice twisted with pain.

  A stocky man knelt beside her. "Baby's coming, Moses!"

  "Massuh ain't more'n half an hour behind us. I ain't letting him catch me again. We cain't stop."

  Another man said, "Got to leave Lila behind."

  "Yeah, Ulysses. 'Mon with us."

  Lila wailed. The man at her side stood, a full head taller than the other men. "Cain't leave her! G'wan without us!"

  "You sure?"

  Lila arched her back. "I got to push! I got to push!"

  "I said git!"

  The six
backed away. "Good luck," said the one called Moses. He and the others sprinted south.

  "Ulysses, the baby killing me!"

  Sophie moved to rise. "I must help her."

  Runs With Horses grasped her arm. "Runaways are desperate. Slave catchers are worse."

  "You'd want your child born in the middle of a postal road?"

  He considered. "We first make sure the others are gone."

  They waited another half minute before rising from concealment. During that time, Lila moaned and rocked herself. Crouched at her side, Ulysses didn't spot them until they were upon him. He leaped up, knife drawn, teeth flashing a snarl. "We ain't going nowhere with you."

  Sophie stood her ground, right hand upheld in greeting, even though his size made her feel more like running in the opposite direction. "Let us help the woman. We've a fire and blankets."

  The whites of his eyes glittered. "Ain't never heard of no slave catcher being a woman. You ain't slave catchers."

  "No, we aren't."

  He sheathed the knife at his belt. "We be much obliged for yo' help, then." He bent over and put his arm about Lila's shoulders. "Folks going to help us. Got to walk to their camp."

  The woman struggled to her feet. Another contraction seized her. Sophie went around the left side of her to help Ulysses. Above the stink of the woman's sweat, she detected the almondy odor from her bag of water. Back-to-back contractions, her water broken, her pushing instinct in place — the baby was on the way. "A little farther, and you can rest." Lila panted and nodded.

  Runs With Horses sniffed north. "Listen."

  From Darien came the baying of hounds. Lila moaned. Ulysses tensed. "They coming for us!"

  Sophie looked at the warrior. "Wake the others. We must throw off those dogs." Runs With Horses dashed westward.

  Sophie and the Negroes followed more slowly. Halfway to camp, Standing Wolf, Runs With Horses, and Mathias met them. They sent Ulysses to the road with the Creek brothers, while the blacksmith assumed support of Lila's right side.

  David rose from where he and Jacques had fed the fire with dry wood, amazement in his expression at the sight of Lila. Sophie gestured to a blanket. "Pull that blanket near the fire."

  "I got to push! I got to push!"

  David gulped. "Right away."

  Lila dropped to the blanket on all fours, panting through another contraction. She gasped, "The baby's head. I feel it."

  Jacques whispered, "Belle Sophie, I hope you know what you are doing."

  Her brain muzzy from lack of sleep, she rolled up her sleeves and regarded him. "Does anyone really know what they're doing at a time like this?" The Frenchman shrugged and joined David in loading weapons. Sophie knelt on the blanket with the big-boned, young Negro woman. "Let me see how far along you are." She motioned Mathias to support her back and eased her into a sitting position. Beneath Lila's soiled petticoat, a two-inch-diameter circle of the baby's head crowned. "I can see the baby, Lila. I want you to push with all your might next time."

  Tears rolled down Lila's face. "It hurts so bad."

  "I know."

  "The baby tearing me up inside."

  "I know."

  Lila's belly stiffened with a contraction, and her spread legs trembled. "Now, I got to push! Oh, Mama, I got to push!"

  "Deep breath and push! Mathias, bring her forward!"

  Lila screwed up her face and bore down, exposing more of the baby's head, squeezing out clear fluid and a little blood. When the contraction passed, she collapsed against Mathias, gasping. "You got to promise me. Please don't tell Ulysses."

  "Shh. Save your strength. You're almost done."

  "The baby be the young massuh's. Promise not to tell."

  What difference did it make? A baby was a baby. "I promise." From the direction of the road, she heard the hounds. Weapons in hand, David and Jacques waited, facing the road. The wind favored their party, so the slave catchers wouldn't smell burning wood, but if those hounds followed their scent off the road, or they heard Lila cry out —

  "Young massuh come ten — maybe twelve — times when Ulysses not there. He kill Ulysses if I tell."

  Indignation smoldered within Sophie at the unknown male who had indulged himself with Lila. "Forget about it and birth this baby." She rolled up a rag and pushed it in Lila's mouth. "Bite down and scream into it so they won't hear you."

  Lila's belly knotted. The rag trapped her wail. Sophie hissed, "Push!" Her scream muted, Lila bore down again, and the baying of hounds swelled. "Harder!" The baby's head slid out face down and rotated to the side. Sophie held it in her hand. To her, the baby looked very much like Lila and not at all like the spoiled son of a plantation owner. "Another good push like that, and you'll have the shoulders out."

  The hounds sounded even closer. David and Jacques cocked their firearms. Then the predatory overtones in the baying transformed into confusion. Jacques slapped his knee and chuckled. "What?" Sophie glanced over her shoulder at him. "What did you do?"

  "What every good chef knows to do, belle Sophie. A dash of poivre enhances the flavor of food."

  Pepper. They must have seasoned the area in it. That ought to keep the hounds busy.

  Another contraction gained momentum. Lila writhed against Mathias, words muffled. "Ain't gonna have this baby. Ulysses won't want me when he see it."

  Oh, hell. Sophie scowled. "You nit, if he didn't want you, he'd have left you behind. Stop talking! Deep breath. Push!"

  Lila bit the rag and bore down once more, legs quivering, to squeeze out the baby's shoulders. Sophie guided the slippery mass of girl baby into the world trailing umbilical cord, cradled the infant lengthwise on her lower arm, and massaged her back while Lila spat out the rag, panted, and trembled. The little girl coughed, wriggled, and gave a lusty cry.

  Mathias tucked a blanket roll beneath Lila's back and eased her down before scooting aside and standing. Lila reached for the baby, and Sophie handed her over. "She's beautiful. Good job." Lila, already busy counting the baby's fingers and toes and cooing into her face, hardly seemed to hear Sophie.

  David grinned. "That looked mighty easy."

  Sophie glowered at him. "Men always say that." She wiped her hands on the blanket, stood, and walked about, rolling muscle kinks from her shoulders. How long had Lila pushed? Ten whole minutes? Both times Sophie had delivered, she'd pushed for an hour. Lila must be one of those women made to have babies.

  Mathias strolled past and paused. "Nice job, General."

  He'd made an excellent assistant. "Thank you, Ambassador."

  "You tried to tell me that day at the forge." She blinked at him without comprehension. He lowered his voice. "Betsy. You'd planned to tell me I was her father, but Teekin Keyta was there." Concession filled his expression. "I assumed you never tried to talk with me about it. My words were harsh. Please accept my apology."

  Awkwardness crawled over her. The last thing she wanted from him was groveling when she felt less than noble about her own erroneous assumptions. She nodded.

  "I remember your expression. You didn't know I'd married Teekin Keyta. You kept quiet about Betsy to protect me, perhaps to let me find happiness with my wife."

  She squirmed. "It seemed the honorable thing to do."

  "How hard that must have been for you. Betsy needed a father. You needed a husband, but I wasn't — Richard was available."

  For several seconds they stared at each other while years of missed opportunity thrashed about her soul. Then the wind of the present zephyred through reminiscence and regret. They must talk more later. The wilderness had quieted, and Jacques listened to it at the edge of the firelight. Sophie asked him, "Where are the dogs?"

  His eyes twinkled. "Gone. Southward."

  Relief sagged her shoulders. In her peripheral vision, Mathias moved back to the fire, but the door between them was open.

  She cut the baby's umbilical cord and tied it off with a strip of rag. While Mathias swaddled the newborn in clean rags, Sophie helped Lila deliv
er the afterbirth. Mathias handed the baby back to her mother, and Sophie studied him. He'd known how to support a newborn's head, something few men knew. Perhaps he'd celebrate the birth of his grandchild after all.

  Runs With Horses, Standing Wolf, and Ulysses soon converged on camp and confirmed that the search party had continued southward on the road. His grin silly, Ulysses played with the baby's fingers and kissed the infant's forehead. "My little girl." He also pressed a kiss to Lila's cheek. "My woman." Lila looked at Sophie, and a shy smile touched her full lips. So much for Ulysses not wanting Lila or the baby.

  With the parents enraptured over their newborn, David motioned Sophie, Jacques, Mathias, and the Creek brothers close for a conference. "What are we going to do with them now?"

  "Take them with us," whispered Sophie.

  Standing Wolf stiffened. "Slaves can be dangerous, and —"

  "Yes, your brother reminded me of that." She sighed. "We've extra horses. Those people won't get far alone with that baby. And Lila's tote bag hasn't any food. I checked."

  Mathias frowned. "I wonder where they're going. Fort Mose in East Florida? I'm not sure it's still there. They'd be taking their chances with the Lower Creek. They could be welcomed into a tribe but just as easily be enslaved or killed."

  Jacques removed his hat to wipe sweat from his forehead. "They will not wish to stay here. The man might be of help to us in our travels, especially with those redcoats not far behind."

  "I say we take them with us, if they're willing to go." Sophie looked at David. "What do you think?"

  "I think I should like to sleep in a bed for a whole day after whiskey, a pork roast, cards, and a handsome woman."

  She swatted his chest in annoyance. Mathias glanced back at the Negroes. "They're watching. Let's ask them what they want."

  "You do the talking." David winked. "Ambassador."

  When the six disbanded their huddle, Ulysses crouched and watched their expressions for clues. Not by any stretch of the imagination was the man stupid. No doubt he'd honed the art of deciphering expressions as a survival technique. His goal was freedom with his wife and baby. They mustn't forget he carried a knife. "Lila and me be much obliged to you folks for helping us. What yo' names?" Sophie and her companions remained silent. Ulysses licked his lips. "Never mind. You folks running, too."