“You can make it right.”
“I don’t know how. Where would we go? Run together? Would we run away together?” But now in her condition it would prove much more challenging. “He wants to marry me. I told him I was planning the ceremony, but I won’t.” He had to know. “I won’t do it.”
“What do you want, Lydia? You have to choose.”
She sat up on her knees.
“What do you want?” He was looking at her, waiting.
“I want you.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
He stared at her.
“I want you, John. It’s you.” She looked into his eyes. “It’s you I want. I need you.”
His face, his eyes, were serious like they were the first day they sat with their people.
“Do you know what you’re saying? You’ve got to lose everything to be with me. You certain about that? This place is beautiful, Lydia.”
“Yes. Yes. I’ll give it all up.”
She lay against his chest.
“Do you love me, Lydia?”
“Yes, I love you.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I love you, John. I do.”
He held her away from him and looked into her eyes. “Do you love me?”
Her heart was grieved because he asked her a third time.
“Yes. Yes, John. I love you.”
He caressed her face.
“Are we going to leave? Run away?”
“Trust me.”
“You never did tell me about the second time you ran. What happened?”
He pulled her closer. “Something drew me back.”
Through the forest Lydia walked hand-in-hand with the one she loved. Amid maple and redwood, a milky-white shimmer danced on the river before them. She slipped her fingers free from John’s and moved toward the bank, its splendor drawing her closer until she stood staring at the pearl of moonlight and the black velvet stream, her reflection against her husband’s. She shone bright in his beauty.
When she leaned forward, John snatched her back, his grip strong around her.
“Don’t worry. I’m better now.”
“I should’ve gone another way.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.” She turned to him and gazed at the image of herself in his eyes. “I’m much better.”
John nodded, grazing her brow with his lips. He fastened the top button of her cloak and lifted the hood over her head like a veil. A loose auburn strand fluttered against her cheek. Gently, he caressed it behind her ear. “Let’s walk.”
They strolled along the river, their fingers interlocked, swinging between them. This time with him was what she had been missing, what she had needed for weeks. It was what she had needed her entire life. She looked up at the man by her side, thought of his child in her womb, and smiled.
“I have something to tell you.”
“What is it?” John squeezed her hand and froze. “Did you hear something?” He swung around, his stance wide and crouched. Before she could turn to see, he pushed her forward. “Go, Lydia, go!”
“Wait just one minute there, Lydia,” a man said.
She froze, her back to the stranger, but she tilted her head slightly to see out of the corner of her eye.
A man in a large straw hat swaggered toward them. Henry. She closed her eyes and prayed. Please, God. Please!
“What you two doing out here?” He swished a wad of chewing tobacco from cheek to cheek, then spat. Brown saliva dripped down the side of his moustache. He wiped it with the back of his hand and flung it to the ground.
“Nothing,” John answered. “Nothing, sir.”
Another man with a tall, thin frame in a plaid jacket stepped out from the shadows. How many were there?
“You ain’t trying to skip on out of here, now, are you?”
“No, sir. We were just talking a stroll.”
“A stroll? Look at this, Rex. We got ourselves a clever Colored.” Henry chuckled, ribbing his buddy. “Who taught you your letters, boy?”
Rex and Henry. Jackson’s boys.
“Sir?”
“Who you belong to? Let’s see here? We close to Whitfield’s land. You Whitfield’s boy?”
John didn’t answer.
Henry stepped forward.
“You hear me, boy?”
“I hear you.”
“You answer then. Jack Whitfield your master?”
“You’re asking who I work for?”
The men howled and slapped each other on the back. Henry straightened, narrowing his eyes. “You don’t work for nobody. You a slave. You serve, boy. You got that?”
“Who’s this you with?”
Lydia tugged the hood farther over her head.
“What the—” Rex walked up closer to her, but John stepped between them. “You ain’t with no White woman, are you?” He flipped open a switchblade. “I don’t want to have to kill nobody tonight.”
“Neither do I.” In one quick motion, John kicked the knife out of the man’s hand. It landed in the leaves upright. Lydia could see Rex running and tumbling forward out of the corner of her eye.
“Run!” John grabbed Lydia’s hand and pulled her through the thicket. Terror pumped power through her lungs.
John’s muscular legs lifted with ease through the tangles of the woods. Lydia was at his heels, pushing, pressing forward, slapping tree limbs out of her path.
They sprinted through the forest, Lydia several steps behind him. Her lungs burned, and a piercing pain seared her side. She squeezed her hand around her waist, but it slowed her. Had they run a mile? Lydia looked back. They were far from the river. No one in sight.
“John…,” she breathed.
He stopped and allowed her to catch her breath.
“We got to make it back to the house. We’ve got to get you back safely. It’s not far.”
Another mile, maybe, but in the dark, how long would it take?
“We’ve got a little ways to go. Maybe halfway there.”
A little was all she had left. She leaned forward, her hands on her knees. She wanted to sit but was afraid she wouldn’t be able to rise.
John stretched his legs.
Escaping together might not be the best thing, she thought. She was slowing him down considerably.
Huffing, he bent over, his hands on his waist. He looked up and swiped a trickle of sweat from her forehead with his thumb. His eyes surveyed their surroundings. “We better go. You all right?”
“I’m good,” she lied.
They ran until she collapsed. She managed only short, quick breaths. “This is as fast as I can go. I can’t catch my breath.” She was suddenly worried about the child in her womb.
“I’m sorry, baby, but we got to keep moving.”
“I can’t. I can’t move.”
“Well, I’m not leaving you.” John’s hand braced her arm and pulled her to her feet like a rag doll. “Even if I have to drag you.”
Lydia winced. The twisting of her flesh and the pressure of his pulling ended in a pop they both heard, a flash of lightning only she felt. She screamed as she fell to the ground, her arm motionless.
“Lydia!”
John knelt beside her and touched her shoulder. She cried out.
“Shh. I know, I know. I got to put it back in place, Lydia. You hear me?” He lifted her chin. She couldn’t stop shaking. The pain seared. “It’s going to be bad, but you’ve got to keep quiet. As quiet as you can, understand?”
John placed one hand across her collarbone and the other across the back of her lifeless limb. Swiftly, he shoved the joint into the socket. She screamed. He covered her mouth and curled into her.
“I’m so sorry, Lydia, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—” John’s head whipped around. “Listen.”
She rubbed the throb and held her breath. She could hear it. Faint, but certain. Barking.
“We’ve gotta run!” John swept Lydia into his arms and ran, tripping over tree branches, stumbling over rocks
.
She shut her eyes, clamped her arms around his neck tighter, and prayed, amazed at what fear could ignite. Most times it just sat yellow in the pit of her like a trembling child, but now it sizzled red hot through her veins. They were in the middle of a childhood nightmare: pitch-black darkness—where had the moon gone?—rustlings, wild animals, whistling wind, and evil men who wanted blood. A nightmare she had lived once before. She could hardly breathe.
The hounds were getting closer, but before she could determine their direction, John’s foot slid and knocked them off balance.
Dear God, help us!
The dogs were closer.
“Get on, Lydia.” John knelt over. She climbed on his back but he rose before she could steady herself. She rolled over and landed on her hurt shoulder. She bit back a scream. She’d never felt such pain.
“Lydia, get on, hurry. They’re coming!”
She pulled up and threw her leg across his back and flung her arms around his throat. She clung to him, her head bobbing forward as he sprinted toward the back of the house. Lydia kept her gaze behind them. She saw small circles of light coming through the shadows of the trees when she tumbled off his back to the ground.
“John, they’re coming!”
“Run inside, Lydia, go!”
“John!”
“Go!” He ran off into the woods as she raced up the steps.
Against the inside of her bedroom door, her heart thumped hard against her chest, her shoulder throbbed, her hands shook, but she was breathing. She was alive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Rex huffed through Jackson’s front door on Henry’s heels, drenched despite the cold weather. The warm blood at his fingertips lit him hotter.
“What is it?” Jackson frowned, dismissing the butler. The tie straps of his silk housecoat hung loose at his side, dragged against the floor as he swung the door behind them. Hanging and dragging. Exactly what he wanted to do with that boy.
“We’re looking for a Colored and we need your help.”
“ ’Course.” Jackson nodded. He’d be glad to. “What happened? What’d he do?”
“Cut me.” Rex spat out the words through a clenched jaw, lifting his shirt. “Now it’s time for me to do some cutting of my own.”
Jackson swore under his breath and ignored the men on his heels.
“So what are we going to do?” Henry asked.
“Kill him.” Rex shook his fist. “String him up, hang his body out for the world to see.”
Jackson couldn’t focus. He was desperate for a drink. Rum, whiskey, anything to kill the root. He should’ve had plenty left. Already he had scavenged the cellar but found nothing but empty kegs. He searched behind bottles of oil, among pots and pans, rummaging through the glass cabinet in the corner, flipping over wooden crates trying to find a taste, just one taste to calm him.
The constant toothache had stolen his appetite for everything he once craved. For months he enjoyed nothing, but now it was much more serious. It was robbing him of his hearing. He could barely make out words over the vibrating throb. Leaning against the counter next to Henry, he gave his ear three hard slaps and opened and closed his mouth, trying to break up the fog.
“That tooth still got you, eh?” Henry crossed his arms, brown chew stains smeared along his right cuff. “You better do something about that thing before it kills you.”
“Too late.”
“We’re talking serious now, Jackson.” Rex was anxious. And angry.
“So am I. I need one of you to shoot this sucker clear out my mouth. Get me out of this pain.”
“Now, that I can do.” Henry chuckled, pushing his index finger with raised thumb against Jackson’s jaw. He pulled the trigger hard against his cheek.
“What, are you crazy!”
“It’s a tooth! Come on, Jack. How bad can it be?”
That was exactly what he had thought the first day, the first few days, but now, weeks later, he was in more pain than he had experienced when he was grazed by a bullet hunting as a teen. His arm had hurt for some time back then, but this, this small toothache had moved up his face, gave him headaches every day, and had traveled down and become a pain in the neck, a pain in the—
“You ain’t the only one hurting, you know? Boy, I’d just go over there and slaughter him if I knew which one he was, if they didn’t all look alike. I’m thinking he’s your boy. Your place’s the closest to where we found him.”
“We’ll get him. Don’t you worry about that.”
“I want both of them.”
“Them? There was more than one?”
“A girl,” Henry offered. “Small thing. I couldn’t see nothing but her white hand, but I think he called her Linda.”
“Lydia,” Rex corrected. “He called her Lydia.”
“He was with a White woman?”
“It looked that way. All I know is I want this settled by evening. You in, right, Jackson?”
“Yeah,” was all he could muster. He pushed away from the cabinet and kicked the screen door open to a gray sky. His unbuttoned jacket flapped in the wind around him. Clouds hovered and a cool breeze whipped through, flowing into his gaping mouth, sweeping into his cavity. He whimpered, grateful his boys were inside.
He’d hoped Michael Kelly was wrong about the tooth. Hoped it would’ve gotten better not worse. One thing for sure, he wasn’t going to let the doctor know how right he’d been, especially after Caroline asked him to distance himself from the man. Besides, the deal was done. He had his men. No need to contact him further.
But he had to do something.
He extended his right index finger over the infection he could now smell. He howled, swore against the heavens. The pressure. The pain. He blinked back hot tears. He’d never needed a drink more in his life.
He felt foolish. Something so small, so delicate, made him want to weep like a baby. But of course. It was planted in him, rooted deep within.
Jackson dug inside the pocket of his work trousers and flipped open his switchblade. The splintered red handle trembled in his hand. He closed his eyes, inhaled, then sliced wildly through the rotting flesh, piercing and carving until he swallowed a sea of blood. He yanked on the tooth. Tears poured down his cheeks. It didn’t budge. His heart thundered. He had to go deeper. Deeper still. His knees shook at the thought.
How could he? He choked on the salty liquid gurgling in the back of his throat. Coughing, he knelt and tore into what was left of his back gums until the dead tooth lay hopeless and shattered in the palm of his hand.
Jackson stared at it and then, howling relief, hurled his agony across the patchy dirt road with incredible speed, dust rising at its landing. Now, the pain would deaden.
He spat, wiped his chin against the arm of his jacket, and walked away.
He was gone.
The moment she knew she needed him, loved him, wanted him more than anything, he was gone.
Lydia strolled through the path they had walked the night before. She tried to set her feet in the same place his had been, tried to touch the leaves from the branches that grazed his skin. She tried to relive everything.
She hadn’t slept last night, terrified that he was captured or dead or hung, thrown in a river somewhere. Rex and Henry and Jackson, her father’s murderers all over again.
So now she walked. If she got close to where he had been, she hoped she could draw near to where he was going.
She stepped out of the stable into a light mist and wrapped herself up in her shawl. It was too light for this time of year, but she didn’t dare wear the hooded cloak again. She needed to rid herself of it, take no chances.
Jackson’s land was truly magnificent. Hill upon rolling hill, the sound of horses trotting in the distance. The first time she saw it, she had been amazed, but now, she was struck with a different emotion. An emptiness.
She lingered. Though the rain had stopped, her hair was damp and strands slipped loose from the chignon, wrapping around her neck in
the thrashing wind. She would certainly catch her death if she didn’t hurry inside.
And yet she lingered near the slave cabins, drawn to a place she had once known, compelled to stay a few moments longer.
When she saw the Loom Room, she peered into the window. A window in a room for a slave. Still it intrigued her. Two brown women worked around a long wooden table. One man sat with his back against the wall, bowing over something in his lap. A bowl of—
“Caroline?”
She froze. Please, no… “Jackson.”
She forced a smile, waved at Rex and Henry a few feet away, dismounting from their horses. Her heart raced.
“What are you doing here? Can’t imagine you’d be making wedding plans out here.”
“No, actually.”
He looked behind her.
“Were you at the slave quarters?”
She shook her head. She had no idea how long he had been behind her, watching her.
“Caroline…” Jackson glanced back at his friends. “What are you doing out here?” he whispered. “Don’t lie to me, please. I mean it, don’t lie.”
“I have something private to discuss with you.”
“About what?”
She had to tell him she had decided to leave. This had been a mistake. She was sorry she had hurt him. Sorry she had hurt them all.
“About the wedding.”
Jackson stared at her.
“I wanted to talk to you about the wedding, Jackson.”
“All right?” He paused. “What is it?” He scanned her face, searching for answers, searching for a lie to indict her.
“Can we talk about it inside?” She held her eyes steady. Minutes mimicked hours as Jackson slowly gazed at her, and she tried to hide from predators a few feet away.
When he looked back in her eyes, his were bright. She breathed relief but still wrapped the shawl tighter around her shoulders.
“Sure.” He grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Caroline, where are your gloves? You’re so cold.” He rubbed his hands over hers, blew warm air into them. “I’ve got to get you out of this wind.” He brushed a wet lock from her forehead, coiling another behind her ear. As John had done. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. She had no idea how she would tell him, but she knew she needed to soon. She shuddered from the cold, from the truth. If he knew her lie…
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