by Alyssa Cole
“Marlie, we don’t got much choice here,” Tobias said, rubbing a hand over his short, kinky hair. He blew out a breath and then looked at her. “He gotta go tonight. If he stays here, it’s when and not if we get found out.”
Marlie felt every ache in her body as she thought of turning Ewan out into the Carolina wilds without a guide, but he was intelligent and resourceful. He’d make it. And she could no longer endanger the household with his presence.
“We decided the same last night,” she said, rising to her feet. “Knock on the board above that pile of sassafras and you can figure things out with him. I’ll start cleaning this mess.”
She began picking the books up and putting them neatly in the shelves. She felt like a windup automaton as she moved, her thoughts far away from the room as if that were the only way from screaming her anger into the quiet morning of the house.
She wondered what Vivienne would have done, then recalled how her mother had described her entry to the boat that would carry her to America.
“My wrists were shackled but my spine was straight. I would not be broken by these people.”
Marlie pushed her shoulders back as she picked up another book. Beneath it, a dried, shriveled thing lay on the ground. The John the Conqueror root her mother had given her when she’d sent her off with Sarah; her totem of protection. She hadn’t seen it in years. She picked it up, the leathery feel of it strange on her fingertips, and then pushed it down into the bosom of her dress, close to her heart.
“You got this, Marl?” Lace asked.
Marlie nodded, tried to force a smile, and continued picking up the mess.
CHAPTER 14
Ewan had been in uncomfortable positions before, but being crammed between the joists in the attic roof for nearly twenty-four hours was nearly unbearable. He didn’t mind the cramped quarters, or even the insects that brushed past every now and then. It was knowing that Marlie’s sanctum from the world had been violated. It was thinking of how he had agreed to leave when Tobias had come to him, knowing that meant that Marlie would be left behind with Cahill.
Her situation was already precarious. Could he truly run into the night, knowing what would befall her? Cahill already had his sights set on punishing her, and it was the only thing the man excelled at. Worry for Marlie was about more than latent inappropriate feeling for her, Ewan assured himself. He wouldn’t leave any woman to experience Cahill’s idea of justice—that was solid fact, and he clung to it.
As the hours had stretched on, Ewan had reached the inevitable conclusion: He could run, but he’d have to make damned sure Cahill was dead before he did. It was what he would have done upon their first meeting if he hadn’t valued scruples such as honor and morals. What were those when you’d been taught which bones to break to get a man to speak? He valued honesty, and he needed to stop lying to himself: Honor shared no part in his philosophy at this point, which was simply survival. Marlie had helped him to survive. He wouldn’t repay her by leaving her to unknown terrors.
He would approach Cahill, make himself known, and then be done with this. If he survived, he’d move on. If not, he’d tried his best. But he couldn’t imagine failure. Not when he thought of Marlie’s innocent mouth pressing against his, at the shudder of her breath into his hair as he nipped her neck.
He could hear her moving about—she had been cleaning all day, and had come in once to sneak him food, but she hadn’t tarried. He had sought out her gaze, but she kept her head down. Was she upset with him? Did she regret kissing him?
More like her entire world has been shattered while you’re worrying like a love-struck fool.
Other people had been in and out. Tobias and another woman. Eventually, Ewan allowed himself to fall asleep. He’d have a long night ahead of him and needed to rest.
* * *
“Let me go!”
Marlie’s sudden shout startled Ewan awake; he was already lifting the board aside to jump down and run to her when he thought better of it. He needed to know what was happening—and who was causing it—before he acted. He was good at causing pain, given the opportunity, but he wasn’t strong enough to run into a room and overwhelm a group of armed men by sheer force.
“No wonder you’ve been acting like you were better than me this whole time,” a woman’s voice said. Ewan recognized it from the night before—Melody. The woman seemed to take a singular pleasure in tormenting Marlie, and now she was back to inflict more suffering.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Melody asked. “All that uppity behavior, all those disrespectful looks? You’ve been laughing at me, I bet, laughing with him and with Sarah!”
“What are you talking about?” Marlie asked. There was the sound of struggle. “Get this man off of me!”
“Do you know how long Stephen and I have been trying? For a child?” Melody asked, her voice high and thin. “Years. Year after miserable year. It never took, and Stephen always told me maybe it just wasn’t God’s will, but I knew it was his fault. His seed had to be weak, just like him.”
Oh.
Ewan remembered a bit of what he had translated in his feverish effort to distract himself the evening before. That the Lynches’ young son, Stephen, had always been so kind to Marlie’s mother, and that they sometimes met in secret....
Damn it.
“I demanded the truth from Sarah, and she finally told me. About him and your whore of a mother,” Melody bit out. “I will not allow such an abomination in my sight for another day longer.”
All the false sweetness had gone from her voice; it was pure hatred.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marlie said. Her voice lilted in that way it did when she was working something out in her mind, like she was asking a question and answering it at the same time. “Stephen isn’t—I’ve hardly ever interacted with him. It’s not as if he showers me with brotherly affection. He has nothing to do with me.”
Melody laughed.
“Brotherly? He has nothing to do with you because he’s ashamed,” Melody spat. “You are a living reminder that he rutted with an animal, that he lowered himself enough to be ensnared by a vile darkie. And then he had the gall to ask for my hand afterward, to pollute me with his impurity.”
There was a long silence, and Ewan wished he could see Marlie. Let her know that she wasn’t alone although she must have felt cleft from everything she’d known.
“That cannot be true . . . Sarah is my sister. She would have told me otherwise. She would have told me if—” Marlie’s voice had atrophied, was barely recognizable as her own.
“Well, he won’t be reminded any longer, and neither will I,” Melody said briskly. “You simply can’t stay here now—I won’t have it. Commander Cahill knows exactly where to put you. There’s money to be made with all these soldier boys about, you see. I bet they can even charge extra for those devil eyes of yours.”
Nausea roiled through Ewan’s belly at Melody’s horrific solution.
“You can do no such thing. I’m free—born free—you cannot sell me.”
“My, Sarah really has filled your head with nonsense, hasn’t she? Whatever free papers you have only hold water with someone who cares. I don’t, and whoever buys you certainly won’t either.”
“No!” The sounds of struggle renewed, and Ewan’s heart lurched at the despair in the single word.
“Oh, but I thought you were eager to bring in income to the family?” Melody’s voice began to fade, as if she moved away. “You had to know this couldn’t last. Sarah will have to marry eventually, old as she is, and do you think she’ll keep you around then, knowing what your mama was like? All girls must give up their pets, and it’s time for you to be put to pasture. Throw her in that room.”
There was the sound of struggle and a man’s grunts. Then Marlie landed on the floor beneath the board Ewan had pushed aside. She was bound and gagged, and tears spilled from her eyes as she looked wildly about. She screamed, but the gag muffled the sound.
That didn’t stop her from trying. She writhed as she fought against the restraints at her wrists. It was only when she flopped back against the floorboards, momentarily defeated, that her gaze caught his.
Ewan felt everything inside of him go still, and not because he was calm. Seeing Marlie like that—because of him, because he’d stupidly left those papers on her desk—made him want to lash out, to kick. Instead he raised a finger to his lips, and she nodded and stopped struggling. Her tears still flowed, though, and her shoulders heaved from sobs. Her anguish wrenched something inside of him; he didn’t know how she felt, but he knew he would do anything to ease her pain.
The light spilling in from the workroom abruptly went dark, and the sound of the desk being pushed against the wall signaled Melody’s departure.
He waited a few moments, and when there was nothing but the noise of the crickets outside, he slipped down from the cubbyhole.
He sucked in a breath as the muscles in his thighs and calves resisted their new range of motion and tightened with sharp bursts of pain. Ewan gritted his teeth against it—pain could be overlooked. It was just a temporary reaction of his body, and his body was one thing Ewan could control.
He limped the few steps that got him to Marlie and undid the band around her mouth and then the knots at her wrists. She took in great heaving breaths, but he could see they did her no good because she started to take them more quickly, hiccupping gulps as her eyes went wide.
He placed his hand flat over her chest, feeling her heart race against his palm like a trapped rabbit’s. “Breathe in, Marlie. Breathe in, and breathe out. Slowly.” He modeled it for her, taking several exaggerated breaths. “I know you’re frightened right now. But I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“How’s that, Socrates?” Her hands clasped over his on her chest, but didn’t pull it away. “Melody has decided my fate. She’s already taken everything: Maman’s writing, my life as I knew it. She decided I shouldn’t have anything, and she’s made it happen.”
Ewan tilted his head, then stood and reached up into the cubbyhole. “I can’t return your life to you as it was, but I can give you this.” He handed her the sheaf of papers, tucked into the leather portfolio she’d kept them in, and she looked up at him in disbelief.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked.
Ewan ran a hand through his hair, hesitating. “I left this room yesterday when I was . . . upset about your predicament. While I was at your desk, I thought that, if something had happened to you, perhaps you wouldn’t want anyone to have your mother’s words. So I brought the original in here with me.”
He didn’t tell her how in that moment of panic he’d thought the papers might be all he would have left of her. She didn’t need to know that, and he didn’t need to feel it.
“I was going to tell you last night but—”
I was too busy kissing you.
“So what did she take?”
“I believe that was just the portion I translated yesterday, and perhaps some of your notes. Unfortunately, it contained something that I gather came as quite a shock to you.”
Her frown deepened, and she nodded.
“Stephen . . . is he truly what she said he is?” It seemed she couldn’t bring herself to say the word father, something Ewan understood all too well.
“In the portion I translated, your mother stated that he seemed to be captivated by her, had shown her kindness, and they’d begun to meet in secret. She didn’t discuss it in detail but in the last section I translated, she’d dreamed she was pregnant with a beautiful baby girl.”
Marlie stared down at the portfolio.
“Thank you. I don’t want to discuss this any further,” she said. It felt like a slap, and he realized it was the first time she’d closed part of herself off from him. It was ridiculous for him to feel that way; he kept his emotions and impulses in check at all times. He thought he hadn’t succeeded in doing that very well with Marlie, then realized that wasn’t true. If it was, he would have kissed her days ago. At the prison, perhaps.
Ewan was adept at getting what he wanted from people. He told himself that wasn’t what prompted his new course of action.
“This changes my plans quite a bit,” he said. He stood carefully—the last thing he needed was a setback with his ankle hampering him. Them, as it were. He moved to the pile of fabric and pulled out a small knife from his pants pocket, thinking over his plans to kill Cahill. He could finally be done with the man, but it would no longer be in the service of keeping her safe. Not unless he planned to kill Melody, too. Harming women was one line Ewan had yet to cross, and though he’d do it to keep Marlie from harm, there was another way to keep her safe.
“I’ll still be departing tonight, but you’ll be leaving with me.” He began cutting the first strip of fabric from his bedding. He tried to keep his proclivity toward donnishness in check, but he didn’t see this as a topic up for rational discussion.
He expected some resistance. But when he looked at her, she clutched the portfolio to her chest and stared at him with a blank expression that made her look like someone else entirely, someone who was hurting very badly.
“However you got out there yesterday. Can you do it again?” She nodded her head in the direction of the door.
“Yes.”
“I have to get some things for the journey. Then . . . then we’ll leave Lynchwood.”
CHAPTER 15
Marlie couldn’t think of the immensity of what she was undertaking. She couldn’t, or it would freeze her in her tracks. Many people escaping enslavement had passed a night at Lynchwood, but she’d only seen the glory of what they were undertaking. Their hope for the future. It had seemed frightening in theory—like the stories about battles that she read in the paper, which upset her but seemed far removed from her everyday life. She had never truly empathized until she slipped into her own room on stocking feet and tried to figure out what the most important items were—just as she had when she was a girl. But this time, she wasn’t heading to a more comfortable life; she was heading out into the wilds of the Carolina Piedmont. This time, she was running for her life.
She took a deep breath and commenced the unpleasant task. She tried to be practical. A change of clothing wouldn’t do, but she grabbed a couple of pairs of drawers. The scented hair oil she used, because she refused to give up that one vanity. Her brush. She threw together the same materials she grabbed when passengers showed up at their station, except this time she’d likely have to use the things for herself or Ewan. Some biscuits Lace had brought up for her, wrapped up in a cloth napkin. She picked up her Illustrated American Botany, which had served her so well, but that was impractical. She’d get another copy someday, if she survived the journey.
There’s a chance I won’t. Fear froze her then, with the heavy book in her hand and her heart jumping about in her chest like a chipmunk in the underbrush. She slowly put the book down. But if I stay here, I’ll learn that surviving might be worse.
She pulled out the drawer in her desk and popped open the false bottom, from which she removed the greenbacks she’d saved from her sales at the pharmacy. Her free papers, in case they were stopped, though they might not be worth much given the current climate. She snatched up the letters Ewan had slipped beneath her door, too. She hadn’t been able to burn those along with the Loyal League correspondence, although in retrospect it was an unforgivable omission. But if they made it to Tennessee, they’d be all she had of him when they went their separate ways. A few days of companionship and one kiss hadn’t given her any illusions they could have more than that. And even if they had, his comments on her mother’s beliefs had dashed them.
She couldn’t give herself to someone who could hurt her so easily. Sarah had lied, her father had lived under the same roof and treated her like the merest acquaintance. Even her mother had denied her the truth of her lineage and a choice in her life’s path. Ewan had managed to scald her with a mere sentence—she couldn’
t let it progress any further. They would travel to Tennessee, and then she would bid him adieu.
She patted at her chest to make sure the John the Conqueror was still tucked against her bosom, and then she pushed aside the pile of stuffing from her mattress and grabbed Ewan’s haversack, which Tobias had filled earlier. They’d need all the provisions they could safely carry. She gave one last look at her laboratory. It was when she ran a hand over the stout metal body of her still that she felt sadness erupt in her like an abscess: a sudden, blinding pain that rocked her back on her feet. She sucked in a breath and swallowed against the roughness in her throat.
Must I really lose all that I have gained?
Yes.
She turned away and silently climbed through the door behind the desk, pretending it didn’t feel as if a part of her was being cleaved away. She’d always thought of Lynchwood as her second home, but really it was her only one, and she was losing that, too.
“You deserve a better life,” she remembered her mother saying. She did. She refused to be forced into sex with men who saw her as a taboo with whom they could slake their dark desires before returning home to their blushing brides. She didn’t know much, but she knew why women like her fetched a good price: White men saw them as a novelty to be tried at least once in life.
Is that what Maman was to Stephen? The thought cut deeply, and was immediately followed by something even more painful. Is that what I am to Ewan?
Marlie couldn’t think on that. She couldn’t conjecture what it meant that he wanted to kill for her, to save her, and to kiss her like he needed it to keep living. None of those things was important anymore. Only getting to Tennessee.
“Ready?” The whisper was followed by a grunt from across the drying room. Ewan’s sleeves were rolled up and the veins on his forearms flexed as he pulled at something with both his hands. He’d tied the strips of fabric together and was testing the knots. That meant . . .
“We’re leaving by the window,” she said. Her stomach lurched and wild fear galloped through her veins.