Josiah blinked and made a heroic effort to keep the conversation in a social framework. “You look wonderful. What have you done with yourself?”
“I grew up. And I learned a trade, thanks to you. The nuns taught me a number of things, and it turned out I had a gift for sewing. They tried to convince me to join their order, primarily, I believe, simply to keep their altar cloths and vestments mended. Needless to say, I didn’t accept. Can you imagine anyone less suited to the life of a nun than I?” She gave him a look sparkled with mischief and, his memory working overtime, he could only nod. Already his trousers were beginning to feel uncomfortably constricting. He tried to ignore the way the new fashion clung to her breasts then fitted down tightly to an impossibly tiny waist. He could almost feel those breasts in his hand, filling his mouth…
“So,” she went on seamlessly, “when I felt I had learned what I needed to, I left school and apprenticed myself to a modiste in Baltimore. Within a year I had my own shop and a very exclusive society clientele. I worked hard, saved my money and when I had enough to return home, sold the business. And here I am.”
“Home? Here? Surely you aren’t planning to stay here!”
If she were pained by his words, she didn’t show it. “I haven’t solidified my plans yet. Of course, you can throw me off your property if you wish, but I’m free now, and other than throwing me off, you can’t tell me what to do. I might decide to stay in Mercerton,” she said, naming the tiny hamlet only a few miles away, “or return to live in Charleston. If I become bored I’m sure Charleston could find room for another modiste’s shop. A new Cavanaugh’s should fit in quite well.”
Josiah started and almost choked on his lemonade. “What?”
“I changed my name. I never did like Ryan, and Cavanaugh sounds more elegant, which fits my business. I really am quite good at designing and making beautiful – and expensive – clothes.”
“I’m sure you are, but…”
“It was a shock to see the Charleston house closed up. I stopped there looking for you.”
He was silent a moment. “I only stay a night or two a month there now, when I have to go in for business. Four years ago…”
“Vesey’s abortive revolt?”
“Yes. It was an uncomfortable time. Each side thought I was on the other, and no one realized I would lose no matter who won.”
“Were you arrested?”
He shook his head and drained the lemonade glass, which she instantly refilled. “No. There were some who wanted to do so, but there was no proof. I was in more danger from Vesey and his ruffians, though I didn’t know it at the time.”
“Thank God you weren’t hurt!”
“No, but scores were, many who were innocent. It was an ugly business.”
Silence, thick and unfamiliar, dropped between them. At last in near desperation Pegeen spoke.
“When I went to the Charleston house I expected to at least find William. How is he? Did he recover from… from the beating?”
“He recovered well,” Josiah said, his eyes looking over every inch of her, as a man dying of thirst might look at an unattainable lake. “But the Vesey madness was too much for him. He was taken twice as a potential co-conspirator and released both times, but still decided to leave. He went out West, to Ohio. Set up as a shopkeeper, I think, and not doing badly.”
“And Old Ellen?”
“She passed about a year ago. Went easy, too; just didn’t wake up.”
“God rest her soul” Pegeen said with true piety. “I shall miss her, and William too. They were both good to me.”
“Pegeen, what are you doing here?”
“I told you.”
“You can’t be serious about staying in South Carolina!”
“And why not? I’m free, remember? You can make me leave your land, but you can’t send me away.”
“Why?”
Why? How could she tell him that he was the first person to treat her as a human being? That he had given her worlds she didn’t even know existed? That she was more bound to him now than she ever had been when he owned her? That now, six years later, six years without even the physical contact of a handshake from him, he still made her pulses pound and the area between her legs moisten with wanting him?
“Because I love you,” she said simply, wagering all on one throw of the dice. “I think I have since that first day you bought me.”
Josiah looked stunned. After a moment he put his lemonade glass down, his movement slow and exaggerated as if it were an unfamiliar act.
“I know you sent me away to protect me,” Pegeen went on, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. “But I’m older now, and educated, thanks to you, and I don’t need to be protected any more. I want to be with you, to belong to you in the way that a woman should belong to a man.”
Josiah was silent, his gaze focused on the glass of lemonade. Almost desperately Pegeen went on.
“Everything I did all those years after I left was because of you. Every victory, every accomplishment was just one step more in coming back to you. I almost came back as soon as I left the convent, but I wanted to prove to you that I had learned well. I can support myself, and even pay you back for what you spent on me, if you’ll let me do it a little at a time.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” he snapped, but would not look at her.
“You don’t have to keep me. I can set up my own establishment and you can see me when you want me…”
“Be quiet!”
Pegeen’s voice faded at the look of black anger that filled his face. A strong-featured man in the best of moods, Josiah angry was formidable. Despite the warmth of the summer afternoon all the blood in her body congealed into an icy ball in the pit of her stomach. Had he married? Were there a wife and children somewhere? A fiancée?
The floor dropped from under Pegeen’s world as for the first time she accepted that he might not feel the same, that when he sent her away he might have meant it, that he might have been relieved to be rid of her. That meant that not only the last six years of her life – six years of waiting and learning and wanting and working – were a waste, but that the rest of her life stretched before as barren and purposeless as a desert. All the color of the summer afternoon faded to a nightmare landscape of greys and browns as if the very life were being sapped from the world itself.
“You really don’t want me,” she said in a tiny voice that to her ears sounded like doom. “I wasn’t your Marianne…”
“How can you say that?” he growled, standing so abruptly his chair fell backwards with a crash. He turned his back to her, stalking to a porch pillar where he leaned, his gaze fastened firmly on the horizon. “I haven’t thought of Marianne since you left. How could I, when all I could think of was you? I thought of you learning things, and becoming the proper lady you should be, and my missing you didn’t seem so bad because I thought you were building a new life, a proper life.”
Josiah whirled. If he had been angry before, now he was furious. The expression on his face would have daunted many a strong man, but it didn’t faze Pegeen. Color was beginning to seep back into her world.
He had been thinking of her! All was not yet lost.
“And now,” Josiah snapped in a soft, dangerous voice, “you come back and proposition me like a whore, cheapening yourself until you are worse than the slave you used to be! At least a slave has no choice! No man who loved a woman could ever accept a Devil’s bargain like you have offered.”
Smiling, Pegeen rose and walked close to him, so close that her petticoats billowed around his legs, so close that she could smell him – an aroma of sweat and sun and horse and green growing things that smelled like heaven to her.
“So you don’t want me?” she asked, staring him directly in the eyes.
“Like my hope of heaven, but…” Bereft of words, he clasped her to him in a swift, violent gesture, his lips descending on hers with the hunger of years. Her entire being aflame with love and desire, Pegeen me
lted against him, only to be shocked as he just as suddenly pushed her away. Only the firm grip of his hands on her shoulders kept her upright.
“You must see that it can’t be, Pegeen. You’re a lady now. You have to make your own life. A decent life.”
Pegeen looked up into his face, her own aglow. “But you love me.”
“Of course I love you. I have since… since I don’t know when. But we never should have seen each other again.”
“I couldn’t bear that. You’ll just have to marry me.”
For one moment his eyes glowed with possibilities, then hardened. “That would be wonderful, but there are laws against that. Harsh laws.”
“So we won’t marry legally. We’ll just say our vows before God, and that will be just as binding.”
“Pegeen…” his face softened. “Do you realize what you’re saying? You’d be an outcast from the world. There’d be no friends, no social life, nothing outside Highgate.”
“I’ve seen the world,” Pegeen said softly. “And I want nothing of it outside of you. You are all I want, now and forever.”
“I’m a strong man, girl, but I can only stand so much. What would you have me do?”
Pegeen laughed, a little in joy, a little in relief, and leaned her head against his chest in surrender. Even through the barrier of her many petticoats she was gratified to feel him hard and erect against her thigh. “You might,” she said, a smile in her voice, “let me start by giving you a bath.”
Chapter Eleven
As unusual as it was for the master to request a bath be drawn in the late afternoon, the big tin tub was immediately put down on the kitchen floor and water put to heat. The unaccustomed joy radiating from the master soon infected the servants, and everyone smiled as they rushed to do his bidding. Gone was the air of solemnity that had permeated the house and happiness crept in on little cat feet, invading every corner.
“Stand still,” Pegeen said, tugging at his shirt and playfully slapping his hands away. “Let me undress you.”
“No one has undressed me since the last time you did it,” Josiah said, his eyes full of her. The late afternoon sunlight penetrated the kitchen windows, turning her hair to a nimbus of flame and gilding his skin with glowing gold. “I’ve become accustomed to doing it myself.”
“Then you will just have to become accustomed to this again,” she replied, undoing the buttons of his trousers and, after he stepped out of them, casting them aside to join his shirt.
She had forgotten how magnificently he was made. Muscled chest, flat stomach, legs strong and hard from hours in the saddle, and in the center… She had dreamed of this moment for years, of seeing his magnificent manhood full and hard and seeking her, of the magic sac and their twin orbs crushed close to his body in desire. It took all of her willpower to keep from flinging herself on him there and then. She allowed herself only the slightest brush against his penis, and was gratified at how he gasped and it danced at her touch.
“Now,” she said, “into the tub with you.”
As Josiah obediently eased himself into the steaming water, Pegeen pulled off her dress, from long habit carefully folding it before putting it on a chair.
“What are you doing?”
“If I am to bathe you, I don’t want it getting wet.”
“Bathe me!”
She untied her voluminous petticoats one by one, draping them over the chair’s back.
Leaning against the tub’s high back, Josiah watched the scene appreciatively. “I don’t suppose you want them getting wet, either?” There was the hint of a smile in his voice.
“Drying and ironing them is such a chore.” Off came her chemise and pantalettes, stockings and shoes, leaving her as naked as the day she was born. The dying sun flowed over the ivory perfection of her skin and turned the wiry red hairs of her womanhood into a thousand tiny flames. “I think I preferred the old fashion, just a simple straight dress that came off with a single pull.”
Josiah was eyeing her appreciatively. “It certainly was much more efficient, but there are the advantages of anticipation with this.”
“And just what are you anticipating?”
Pegeen dripped the washrag into the water, then rubbed it with soap and began to slowly wash him – his back first, then his arms and chest. From the expression on Josiah’s face it was more of an ordeal than a pleasure. Had not Pegeen been all too aware of his massive erection, the great dark rod seemingly bigger than it had ever been, throbbing so that the water around it was agitated, she might have worried.
When she reached the washrag toward it, he grabbed her hand and held it away.
“Oh, no, you don’t. Touch me there and I’ll explode.”
Pegeen smiled wickedly. “And if I tell you that’s what I want?”
“Oh, it’s what I want, too.” He grinned and rose out of the bath like a sea god carved of unyielding basalt magically brought to life, sending water cascading over the scrubbed pine floor. “But not like this. In you, like it’s supposed to be.”
“And if I tell you I don’t want that right now?” Pegeen’s question was coquettish, but her body betrayed her. Her nipples stood out pink and hard, begging to be sucked, and between her legs the lips of her sex puffed with desire, squeezing out little drops of pearly moisture between them.
“Then you’d be a liar.” Josiah bent and gave each nipple a quick hard suck, bringing forth delighted squeals from her, then swept her up into his arms. “And not a very good one.”
He carried her across the hall into a small room full of books and papers, but all Pegeen saw then was the large leather covered couch, where he put her down with gentle haste.
There was neither time nor need for foreplay. He stretched on top of her, dark as a shadow. Her legs were already spread, her womanhood begging to be loved. With a single thrust he buried himself in the deep softness of her all the way to the hilt, and sighed as if he had just come home from a long exile.
Pegeen gasped and arched her back. She had forgotten how large he was, how long he was, how he filled and stretched her. She rose to meet his mighty thrusts and, wrapping her legs around him, screamed in climax as he arched and exploded into her.
For a moment they ceased to exist as two separate entities, but merged into a single being of pure feeling. Then, as they returned to earth, returned to themselves, Josiah began to get up and Pegeen clasped him to her. Moving easily against the beloved bonds, he lifted himself enough to plant gentle kisses on her breasts.
“I’m crushing you.”
“And I love it.”
“You’re a strong woman, Pegeen – Margaret Ryan – Margaret Cavanaugh. Why did you take my name?”
“Didn’t your master, the man who freed you, give you his name?”
“Yes, his name was Cavanaugh. I kept it.”
“So did I.”
To his amazement Josiah felt himself growing hard again, the frustration of years refusing to be calmed by a single release. Slowly, deliberately he began slow movements, in and out, an occasional circular motion, reveling when the moist inside of her began to clasp him tightly and she met him thrust for thrust. Their passion escalated and with each thrust he went deeper into her, spearing her until she began to gasp and claw at his back.
“Ready?” he asked through gritted teeth.
She nodded and joyously committed herself forever. “Yes, Massa!”
Author’s Note
This book is a work of fiction, but the societal situation presented is factual. Today the word ‘slaveholder’ automatically brings up the unquestioned image of a white person owning blacks, but there is incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. In fact, the first slaveowner in America was a black man.
At the end of the eighteenth century and for a few years into the nineteenth, there were what were called ‘poverty clearances’ in Europe, primarily in Ireland. To prevent mass starvation, great numbers of the poorest people were swept involuntarily to the New World, where they were so
ld as slaves. Their individual value was considerably less than a black’s, for reasons unknown. One could buy a dozen Irish for approximately what two or three blacks would cost, making it more economically feasible for a plantation owner simply to buy great numbers of Irish, work them to death and then buy more. Black slaves were more valuable, and therefore treated better.
In the South in the 1830s there were approximately 3,000 Negroes (to use the contemporary term) who owned slaves. Some were born freemen while some had earned and bought their freedom, but they trafficked in human flesh just like whites did. A few apologists claim that black men were regarded as slaveholders when all they did was buy their kinfolk in order to free them. Without doubt this was true in some situations, but evidence exists that the majority of the black slaveholders were no better and no worse than their white counterparts in regarding and treating slaves of any color as nothing more than tools or livestock.
Other Erotic Stories from Venusberg Books:
TAKEN BY THE DARK MAN by Graciela Hopper
PRISONER OF THE DARK MAN by Graciela Hopper
KIDNAPPED by Graciela Hopper
CHIAROSCURO by Rebecca duBois-Guilbert
Black Master, White Slave Page 7