But the difference in their ages and experience had never seemed to loom so wide as it did now. She cast him a look at the confidence and impatience in his voice. He expected her to be more certain of herself and of him. A widow would be. She would have to learn not to be embarrassed by what was after all a natural act between a man and his betrothed.
Laura tried to quell her doubts by turning the topic to the fever and what should be done in preparation for it, and she was satisfied that she and Jonathan were closer for having this time together.
They were greeted back in town by another urgent call to the bedside of a toddler. Jonathan left Laura with the child, applying cold compresses and ordering sheets soaked in cold spring water while he traveled on to the next call at the hotel. By the end of the day it was apparent that his worst fears were confirmed, and before the epidemic could take wing, they sent a message to the farm explaining the situation and asking for a change of clothes for Laura.
Not knowing how the fever spread, fearing to contaminate innocent people, Laura didn’t dare stay with the few women acquaintances she had in town. Jonathan summoned Jettie’s mother to stay as chaperone and cook for the sake of appearances, but both knew the servant was for show only. With the epidemic uppermost in everyone’s minds, there wasn’t time for gossip. They would suffer the consequences later, when there were less important matters to consider.
Not that they had time for anything immoral, were they given to such activities. The black servant acted as message center, sending them both in different directions as the fever raged and swept through town. While Jonathan grabbed a few hours’ sleep on the sofa, Laura would be with a weeping mother and her houseful of children. While Laura collapsed in exhaustion on the wide bed that would be hers when they married, Jonathan was riding into the countryside to tend row shacks of tenant farmers and their families. If they saw each other at all, it was through bleary eyes as one or the other went out the door.
To Laura’s surprise, Cash became the intermediary between town and country. He first arrived with the change of clothing she had requested. She stared at him in weary disbelief when she discovered his black-coated form on the doorstep with her trunk in hand. “Cash?”
He took one look at the disheveled gown she had slept in, the dark circles beneath her eyes, and shoved his way into the house. “It’s worse than the reports, isn’t it? What in hell is Jonathan thinking about to let you stay here?”
He threw the trunk he was carrying to the floor and turned to face her. Laura had never been very big or outrageously beautiful, but her pale face and weary posture tugged at something hitherto unknown inside of him, and he wanted to rage at a world that would treat her so.
“It’s not Jonathan’s choice, Cash,” Laura responded quietly. “I’ve had the fever, and I know how to nurse it. I can help here, but I can only be a danger out at the farm. If you’re going to come into town like this, you’d better not go back near Ward. There’s no point in taking any chances.”
Cash was on the verge of protesting when a small boy ran up on the porch, his tear-streaked face speaking what his stuttered words could not. Laura reached for the small satchel of medicines Jonathan had left for her use.
“If you want to make yourself useful,” she told him, “there’s two dead at the Harrisons’ and the coroner has been busy at the cemetery all night. Someone needs to remove the bodies before the infection spreads.”
Grasping the boy’s grimy hand, she hurried from the house, leaving Cash to run his hand through his hair and stare after her.
Thereafter, Laura found Cash manning a wagon carrying the dead to the trench dug in an open field outside of town, waiting in Jonathan’s parlor with messages from Ward, and once, laying a brute of a fellow low in the road when he tried to steal the horse of a family trying to escape town and the fever. Each time, Cash stopped to speak and inquire after her well-being and Jonathan’s, but he never offered a hint of the intimacy between them.
Laura was grateful for the reprieve. She had no strength for the emotions Cash would engender if he so much as expressed concern. She needed his detachment in this time of overwhelming grief. Exhaustion wasn’t her worst enemy. The anguish every time she arrived too late to help or when help simply wasn’t enough threatened to rend her in two. Her emotions were too close to the surface and too volatile under these conditions.
A sudden downpour followed by a cold spell dramatically slowed the number of new cases of fever. Laura came home in the middle of the night to drop down on Jonathan’s wide bed, only to find him already there. Too exhausted to move, she lay down beside him, fully dressed, and fell into a sound slumber.
When she woke, he was gone, but he had removed her boots and pulled the covers over her. The thought of Jonathan taking the time to do even that much brought a smile to Laura’s weary face. It was possible this marriage could work.
That thought didn’t last much longer than Cash’s arrival upon the doorstep as she drank the coffee handed to her by the silent servant. With almost a whole night’s sleep and no new cases waiting, Laura had a better grip on her reactions. That didn’t mean she didn’t have to physically fight the urge to throw herself into his arms and weep at the sight of his lean masculine frame in the doorway.
For the first time, she saw the compassion in Cash’s eyes, the dark shadows beneath his skin, and knew he was as near to breaking as herself, although not necessarily for the same reasons. Seeing him like this, not as the coolly arrogant rebel who defied society, she knew she had wronged him in some terrible way, but it was too late to correct it now.
Stiffly she gestured him toward the parlor, but he merely shook his head.
“I just came from the farm. Ward’s ill. Where’s Jonathan?”
It didn’t take more than those few words to shatter the future. Laura sent Cash on the way with directions to Jonathan and collapsed into the nearest chair. Ward with his damaged body and weakened strength couldn’t possibly stand up to the fever that had cut a wide swath through young and old. Please, Lord, don’t let it be the fever.
Chapter 11
Ward Breckinridge was the last victim of the yellow fever that swept through Stone Creek that September. As they laid him to rest in the family cemetery of the farm that gave the town its name, a crowd that cut across society’s lines appeared to pay their respects, despite the steady gray drizzle.
He had been a soldier in the war that had devastated the town. He was the son of one of the wealthiest families in the county. He was the husband of one of the most beautiful women in a society known for its beautiful women. He had lived here all his life, had crossed the path of everyone in the area, and everyone came to acknowledge his passing. If they mourned the passing of more than the man in the coffin, no one had the words to express it.
Sallie wept dramatically behind her veil of black as the rain beat down around her. Ward’s family stood cold and stiff at her side, huddling under umbrellas. Laura stood aloof, with only Jonathan by her side. When the first clods of dirt fell hollowly against the wooden coffin and the crowd turned toward the house, the layers of society seemed to split apart around these two islands of grief as they paid their respects. The planters and their wives and families naturally gravitated toward Sallie and the Breckinridges. The servants and the townspeople and the merchants stopped to offer their condolences to Laura, as if Sallie were too far from their reach.
Only Cash deliberately managed to bridge both. Offering Laura the protection of his umbrella, he steered her toward the dwindling crowd around Sallie, leaving Jonathan to bring up her other side. Guarded on both flanks by respectability, Cash offered his hand in sorrow to Ward’s family, saying the proper words to express his grief and theirs.
If any of the Breckinridges were startled, they were too polite or overcome with emotion to show it, and the guests that remained were treated to the sight of Cash Wickliffe walking side by side with Sallie Kincaid Breckinridge as the family turned toward the house.
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br /> Masses of food had been imported to serve the overflowing crowd, but Laura didn’t have the heart to touch it. She escaped to the study where Ward had slept and stayed these long months, but the room echoed hollow, and she couldn’t find the security of his presence there as she had hoped. The ledgers sitting on the desk were just pieces of paper, and the writing inside them bore no part of the gallant gentleman who had scribbled it. The silk hat hanging on the stand was just another object to collect dust and not the rakish chapeau that once sat like a crown upon a golden-haired king.
As she turned to leave, a rustle from the corner startled her, and Laura swung around to find Jettie Mae clinging to an abandoned frock coat, tears streaming down her cheeks. It didn’t take any thought for the two women to find sympathy in each other’s arms, their grief shaking them with previously unshed tears.
Jettie’s sobs didn’t lessen, but increased as Laura gradually regained control and tried to console her. Laura knew very little about the saucy “nurse” who had been closer to Ward than anyone else these last months. From her actions the night of the Raiders, Laura knew Jettie to be brave and loyal and not a little reckless. From what she had seen of the woman with her children, she knew her to be a good mother. But the fact that Jettie had obviously borne more than one child by men not her husband and had easily agreed to be Ward’s mistress stood between them like a fence without a gate. They came from two different worlds, but their grief served as a bond of communication.
“Hush, Jettie, it doesn’t do any good to cry. He’s gone, and tears can’t bring him back. He wouldn’t want you to grieve like this, would he?” Laura tried to reassure herself with these phrases. She didn’t know what Ward would have wanted. She had never tried to understand him, any more than she had anyone else. It was a failing she had, she knew. She had filed him in her mind under words like “brave” and “gallant” and “handsome” when he had dated Sallie, “weak” and “hurt” but still “gallant” when he allowed Sallie to trample over him. But Ward had been much more than that, and she had never tried to find that out.
“No, no, he was a gentleman, he was,” Jettie sobbed into Laura’s shoulder, still holding the coat as if it would bring him back. Sniffing and trying to control her sobs, she offered her memory of him: “You know what he said when he found out about the baby? He said he was tickled pink. Tickled pink. Can you fancy that? Here he was, the most handsome man I ever did see, and he was tickled pink that I got his bun in the oven. He was just as proud as if I was that fluffed-up wife of his.”
The words choked on sobs, but Laura heard them well enough to understand and feel a jolt she wasn’t certain was horror or joy. Ward had actually fathered a child. She glanced down at the bent head on her shoulder and realized Jettie Mae wasn’t any bigger than she. And she was going to have Ward’s baby. The shock rippling through her was followed by something else, something stronger and more fierce.
Laura gripped Jettie’s shoulders. “You’re having Ward’s baby?” Even as she asked, her gaze swept downward to look for the evidence in the swelling beneath Jettie’s starched apron, but it was too early yet. She took a deep breath and looked up in time to catch the maid’s defensive expression.
“I thought he’d told you, he’s that proud. But don’t think I ’spect nothing, ’cause I don’t. He took care of me, he did, and treated me like a real lady. He wanted to see the baby so bad . . .” Tears spilled over, and Jettie turned away, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
Laura touched her arm, trying to find some way to say the words Jettie needed to hear, not knowing what they were. “Don’t you think maybe he’s watching from up above? Surely God wouldn’t be so cruel as to keep him from seeing his only child. I know Ward would want that more than anything. And I know what else he would have wanted.” Laura said that firmly, with resolution as the idea formed in her mind.
She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jettie was telling the truth about Ward’s pride. Everyone had thought him half a man since he had returned from the war. The child in Jettie’s womb proved them all wrong. If Sallie wouldn’t give him what he wanted, this woman had. That child would have been every bit as precious to Ward as Sallie’s would have. There was only one thing that could be done under those circumstances. She owed Ward’s memory that much.
Jettie brought her tears under control once more, and wiped her eyes on the coat. “You think he really will know when this baby’s born? Maybe he’ll go to that other place for planting this here seedling.”
Laura’s mouth twisted wryly at that thought. “Well, then, we’ll all go to join him when it comes time. There aren’t many saints on this earth. But I prefer to think a man like Ward Breckinridge has done enough good in his life to cover a few sins. And I think he would want his child to have everything he would have offered had he stayed here. The farm doesn’t belong to me, and it isn’t worth much anymore in any case, but this is where Ward’s child ought to grow up. Sallie won’t understand that, but I can make her see that you ought to stay. I don’t think she’ll have a lot of choice. She’ll treat you like a servant and won’t pay you, but I’ve survived like that for all these years. It’s not a bad life if you learn to get around her. It’s better than looking for another man to pay your way, isn’t it?”
Jettie’s suspicious expression faded under Laura’s blunt honesty. The hint of mischief that had once lit her eyes flickered, and she offered Laura her callused hand. “You got a wicked tongue, Miss Laura. Watch out someone don’ snatch it from yoah head. I’ll take the notion into consideration”—her grin widened at this mimicry of one of Ward’s favorite phrases—“and let you know what I think. This is a mighty fancy place for the likes of me, but you’re right in one thing: it’s better than what else I got to offer. There ain’t never gonna be ’nother man like Mr. Ward in this world.”
They both knew it was decided then, although Jettie’s pride wouldn’t allow her to admit it immediately. Combating the sadness and bewilderment that was replacing her first despair, Laura shook the maid’s hand and left Jettie to the privacy of Ward’s study.
She wasn’t certain what was wrong with her, but the tranquility she had been feeling since her return to Stone Creek was evaporating, replaced by a rage of emotions without logic or solution. Why on earth should she feel fiercely protective toward a black servant who was no better than a paid prostitute? And why should she be so furious with the cousin who had offered her house and home after all these years? And why did she despair over the passing of a man who had scarcely acknowledged her existence other than to use it to his own advantage?
Hurting, but not quite knowing why, Laura sought out Jonathan. He was her security, her shelter in the storm. If she could only talk to him, he would make her understand what was happening. It would be good to have a man like Jonathan, who could listen when she needed him.
In searching for Jonathan, Laura stumbled across Cash, but he didn’t notice her. In a room full of grieving relatives and whiskey-swilling, garrulous men, he stood like a beacon of peace, his head bent respectfully to hear the words tumbling from the woman at his side. That the woman who held his attention was her cousin Sallie should come as no shock, but Laura felt it like a blow to the stomach.
Not questioning why she felt this way, she turned from the parlor and sought the stairs. Cash had never made any secret of his admiration for the golden-haired Kincaid princess. All men coveted Sallie. That Laura had somehow thought that she and Cash were partners in the world outside Sallie’s circle should have no bearing on anything. Cash had always been a private part of her life, a part no one but themselves knew or understood. But that didn’t mean she had any claim on him. This feeling of gross betrayal was just another example of her confusion.
Laura found Jonathan in the foyer, saying his farewells to Ward’s mother. At Laura’s arrival, Mrs. Breckinridge nodded and swayed from the room, her heavy black skirts tilting over the wire-rimmed crinoline as she maneuvered through the doorway. Alone with t
he man she sought, Laura grasped Jonathan’s outstretched hand with relief.
“Take me with you, Jonathan. I can’t stay here. I just can’t. Please.”
To his credit, Jonathan didn’t raise his eyebrows in shock. He merely searched her tear-streaked face and nodded. “If you’re certain, Laura. We can’t shock the town any more than we already have. It would be best if we married discreetly as soon as possible, in any case. I hope you didn’t have your heart set on a large wedding.”
He coughed over his last words, taking out a large handkerchief to hold it to his lips, diverting Laura’s attention. “You’re ill! You shouldn’t have been out in that rain. You haven’t had any sleep in days. If there were any room left in the house at all, I’d put you to bed right now.”
Her gentle scolding brought a smile to Jonathan’s lips. “Come home and pamper me there. I’ll keep well enough until then.”
The warmth behind his words held a promise Laura wasn’t certain she was ready to accept, but knowing the hollowness that would be left when the crowd departed, she clung to the security of Jonathan’s presence and took the cloak he offered.
Unaware of the man who stood in the shadows of the parlor doorway, Laura swept out of the house in the protection of Jonathan’s hold, braving the rain and the cold rather than stay within the brightly lit rooms of Stone Creek. It was a farewell of sorts, although none of them knew it.
The man in the shadows gave a wry salute to the couple hastening into the weather and turned back to the welcoming glitter of the Kincaid salon. He’d had enough of shadows and cold and damp. The promise of a new day beckoned, and he would be there when the sun rose.
Jonathan laughed when Laura insisted that he drink a hot posset and take a hot bath and go directly to bed. He took the steaming mug from her hands, admired the flush on her cheeks caused by the kitchen fire, and bent a kiss to the moist curls on her forehead.
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