ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories)

by Jane Prescott

  “Your mother was the head of this household until she died you mentioned,” she says, blowing softly into the hot liquid, not meeting their wary eyes.

  “Yes,” Jeb answers, eyeing her warily. “I guess we clean forgot to ask who it is you are, Miss…”

  “Jameson,” Selema says, and then quietly, without skipping a beat, “As in Jameson Plantation.”

  Ezrah shoots her a sharp look. “As in this plantation?”

  Selema fixes her green eyes on the pair of men, who are now fully and totally at attention before her. “Sugar, please?” she sweetly requests. Jeb hands it to her mutely, slamming it a little on the table in front of her. “I know this seems a bit strange to you, gentlemen, but the fact of the matter is, I’m not truly sure how to approach the matter. I came here to enlist your aid, and instead I found…well, truth be told, I expected a less sensationalized introduction.”

  Jeb has the good grace to soften his expression. “Enlist our aid how?”

  Selema hesitates. “Well, truth be told, I’m looking for answers. I only discovered who I am about two months ago, and it took that long to save up for passage here from Chicago, so I’m a bit at a loss.”

  “What exactly is your connection to this house, Miss Jameson?”

  “Please, Selema.”

  “What is your connection to the house, Selema?”

  “My mother lived on this plantation some twenty odd years ago. I knew that she came from this state, but I was never truly too sure about the extent of my history. I suffered some memory loss as a child and never recovered what I had forgotten. I think it was likely because it wasn’t too happy a happenstance.”

  “Yes, times were different back then,” says Ezrah quietly, an almost-apology in his voice.

  “Is there anything you do remember about your past?” Jeb asks, settling into one of the crude chairs across from her.

  “Big Jim, my father, used to tell me some things, long before he was killed, about how something bad happened to my mother, but he would never say what. Jim had some unscrupulous dealings with some unsavory gentlemen in town, and then this one day, our neighbor girl, Millie, comes running down our street yelling that Big Jim’s been shot. So I rush over to the hospital, and he tells me, right there on his deathbed, he tells me.”

  Selema stops, overcome by the memory. Ezrah leans forward. “What did he tell you?”

  “He tells me this address. He says he remembers it because of the man who bought him. The one who did something bad to my mother. And that’s when I knew, you understand?”

  The two men shake their heads no. Selema draws in a long breath. “Look at me, gentlemen. What do you see?”

  They take her in, the narrow slope of her shoulders, the long length of her cocoa-tinged fingers. They take in the curl of her hair, the blush on her cheeks, and finally her green eyes. Understanding dawns, bright, sharp, and painful and Selema sees it in their eyes; it is a look she recognizes, because it is so similar to the one that was plastered over her own face when she herself realized the truth.

  The Master of the house was her daddy.

  Not an unusual circumstance, of course. It was the days of hypersexualized black woman, the hips and thighs seen as those of a humanized cow, fertile and ripe for plowing into if the head of the household wanted certain needs fulfilled. Thousands upon thousands of women conceived of as cattle, as vessels for use alone, allowed never to speak out, not understanding that they did not deserve such fates, forced to live with the children of those unions, forced to love them with a mother’s love that springs, unbidden, from some eternal, hidden source.

  “I came to find out about my mother.”

  Ezrah and Jeb exchange glances, and the truth beneath the truth becomes apparent. Not only did this young woman’s mother belong to this house, but their father committed an unspeakable act, although the two men know many of their neighbors would disagree. But if what she says is true, and there is that quality about her story, voice, and the slight tremble in her tone that makes them particularly inclined to believe her, then that means she is—

  “Sister,” says Ezrah hoarsely.

  * * *

  “I grew in the yellow house down the way, just a mile down,” Jeb says to her, the words burbling from his mouth like a dam that’s been unstoppered. He is bending down at Selema’s knees, tending to the ankle she twisted. It hadn’t hurt at first, but when the blood began to trickle down to her toes, Jeb decided to pull out a medical kit.

  They had retired to one of the rooms while Ezrah went out to round up the horses. There was no tense silence here, although Selema found it hard to concentrate on what Jeb was saying. The man was so damn attractive. What a waste, she thought to herself, taking in the delicate whiteness, how his thighs spread out into broad muscle when he kneeled, and how soft his hair looked. It was all she could do not to bend her head down until the tip of her nose brushed his reddish locks, to smell the hay she knew clung to him still, to inhale the scent of sex and desire that was fresh on him.

  “Is that how you two met?” Selema asks, mostly to distract herself from the distraction of his looks.

  When he turns his head to look her in the eye, she finds that her breath catches on the sweetness of his brown eyes, like the ocean after a storm, hinges on the furrow between his dense brows, latches onto that mouth like suction, like an invisible force pulling her forward. Down, girl.

  “Look it’s not what you think,” Jeb says, and catches his bottom lip in pure white teeth. His shoulders, still bare and tantalizingly sculpted with little hollows along his acromion process, tense, and he drops his gaze to the floor before throwing down the cotton swabs he has been using in a fury that causes Selema to pull back away from his seeming anger. He crosses over to the other side of the room and runs a hand through his hair, making it stand every which way like a madman’s.

  “Ezrah was my best friend. You know how boys are when they’re young. Always playing, fighting. Well, one day, it felt better to fight than it did to do anything else. I had him pinned down to the ground in the stables, and suddenly, we were…”

  “Kissing?” Selema queries slyly.

  Jeb looks back at her, a flash of amusement passing over his face. “Among other things. Doesn’t mean we don’t like ladies, by the way.”

  “You’re sure of that?” Selema asks, and rises gracefully from the seat, her dress swaying around her. She crosses the room until she is standing just under Jeb’s chin, the rough stubble on it almost close enough to run a hand over. Would her fingertips be as sensitive to it as she is to the look in his eyes right now? She looks up at him through her eyelashes. “Am I to your taste, then?”

  Jeb looks down at her, taken aback, but unable to deny his instant and powerful attraction to this strong woman. “Yes,” he says, swallowing hard, unable to meet her eye.

  Selema wraps her arms around his powerful neck and presses her breasts against his bare chest, crushing her green gown against him. “Then show me,” she whispers, tilting her face up, presenting her mouth as a gift.

  For just a moment, she feels Jeb’s arms close around her, feels herself become soft and small in his arms, but the touch of his lips never comes.

  “Ezrah’d kill me, you’re his sister,” Jeb finally croaks out, but Selema notices that he has not released his grasp on her waist.

  “Well,” she drawls out slowly, tilting her pelvis oh- so- slightly against his, as if by accident, “I’d look at a newfound relationship as a celebration rather than a new fence, wouldn’t you? So celebrate with me, Jeb.” And with that, she stands on the tips of her toes and presses her mouth, warm and soft, against his, feels him groan against her and squeeze her so tight she can hardly breathe, all woman in his arms, imprinting herself on him like a duckling to its mother.

  The clearing of a throat startles them, breaks them apart. Ezrah is standing at the archway, looking for all the world like the master of the house that he is, bulky arms folded across a fantastically mea
ty chest. The look on his face is hungry in a way that makes Selema shiver with both repulsion and interest; she has seen that look before, stamped across dozens of male faces, but this is her brother for heaven’s sake. No matter how backwards the world may be, answering that hungry call with your siblings is sure to be frowned upon. Selema steps away from Jeb, instantly colder when she leaves his arms, and wipes a hand over her mouth; her lips feel bruised from the ferocity of their joining. Jeb looks abashed and hangs his head down lower than a schoolchild being scolded for a transgression. For a full minute, nobody says anything.

  “Mother has some papers up in the attic,” Ezrah finally says, unfolding his arms and turning his back to them. “I thought maybe we could discover what ended up happening to your parents, Miss Jameson.”

  “Selema,” Selema says.

  Ezrah looks over his shoulder. “Come, then,” he says, and walks away.

  * * *

  Damn the woman, damn it! Not in the house two hours, and she’s already throwing herself on Jeb like some shameless hussy. The sight of his neighbor and newfound sister kissing threw Ezrah for a loop; he did not want to admit to anyone, least of all himself, how much the sight of all of Selema’s creamy chocolate skin pressed against Jeb’s roughness had stirred something inside of him. Best to tamp it down, as he had with his attraction to Jeb for years. Why did she have to be his sister, anyway?

  The attic is alive with dust swirling on the rays of sunlight filtering through the windows. The shutters, painted blue, provide the long shadows that are being cast on the stark furniture that remains in the room. Previously, the room was provided to the favored house slaves, but in the final years of his mother’s life, before the long illness she lived with robbed her of the last remaining breaths she had in her body, she spent much of her time up here. Ezrah knows that she spent long hours writing, far away from the bustle of the household, knew it was because his father was not an easy man to love. Did she love him? He had come into her life like a conquistador, he knew, claimed the belle of the town while she was a tender young thing of seventeen, but there are faint memories of childhood escaping through the cracks of the mental wall Ezrah has put up.

  Whips. Their overseer, Mr. Langley, a man who was quick to anger and slow to forgive. He could hold a grudge against perceived slights from the slaves for years, punishing their children if he felt so inclined. But worst of all was what Ezrah saw lurking around the corners of his subconscious, the screams that drew him to the shadowed recesses of his mind, where he knew he would find the unwanted memory of Mr. Langley behind a slave shack, trousers down around his ankles, furiously working his manhood into the slave women he was in charge of, many of who were too terrified or to dead inside to speak.

  He remembers the first time he came across such a scene; he was no older than six at the time. He and Jeb were tossing a pigskin ball around and it hand landed all the way in the vicinity of the plantation’s oldest chestnut tree, a great flowering monster of a creation, with enough sturdy branches to climb on and a trunk as wide as the world. Soft grunting attracted his attention from the ground where the ball had rolled and when he came closer, his vision was blinded by the naked skin of one of the field hands, stripped to the waist and bent over a low-hanging branch on the tree. As Mr. Langley thrust into her from behind, he wrapped his thick fingers around her neck; the slave was unable to speak, but when her eyes met the young boy’s, Ezrah saw that they were blank, devoid of any of the horror he himself was feeling. It was as if she had sailed up out of her body into a place far away from what was happening.

  Ezrah fled, vomiting his lunch into the bushes. He told Jeb, of course, and the two of them committed to a childhood of making Mr. Langley’s life a living hell with whatever schoolboy pranks they could think of. They were mild, ineffectual tricks of the trade, but Ezrah thanked his lucky stars that his father, at the very least, was not like that.

  With such goings on, it was no wonder his mother locked herself up in this room so often. He knows where she kept her papers, in the little green desk locked with a key that she had kept around her neck until the day she died. When he kissed her hand goodbye at the last, she had made him promise that he would never open that desk.

  “Some things are meant to remain a secret,” she told him, her rheumy eyes desperate as she clutched his fingers in a bony-solid grip.

  Were they meant to be a secret if someone like Selema had traveled all this way to look for answers? Ezrah unlocks the desk and removes the papers, many of them yellowed with age, but all dated; his mother always was a very meticulous woman. He turns to Selema and Jeb, who have been watching him quietly, still aflush with being caught in flagrante delicto.

  “I’ve never read these before,” he says, his voice grave. “But I think we need answers, don’t you? Just…Mother was a very private person…” he trails off, unable to continue.

  Selema walks up to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Brother, I know. It is difficult to disrespect last wishes. But think if you were me. Would you want to know?”

  He looks up at her, at the tenderness in her large green eyes, with their perfectly spaced black lashes, devoid of any rouge or falseness. Dropping to a chair beside him and inviting the others to crowd on the floor, Ezrah reads.

  “May 1st. I saw her again today, all hips and thighs and flaunting that ungodly womanhood in my face again. She thinks I do not know, but I know. I know it as well as her mate knows it, that she has been with my husband again. I could kill him, I would, and I could kill her, too, but I know that he is but a man, and men are often lead in misdirection when there is a woman, many women, around. It is like the cocks in their pen; once they are done with a hen, they act as if nothing in the world could arouse them again, but introduce a new hen to the henhouse and suddenly, it is as if they can go again all night. I hate her; she takes him away from me and I am lonely.”

  Ezrah feels queasy, but leafs through a few more pages before something interesting catches his eye. He did not expect his mother to be so frank, but when all her neighbors were prim and proper women, who else could she turn to

  “June 3rd. I was taking the evening air on our verandah today when Richard Lee came by. He said he was looking for my husband, but when I informed him that he was off examining new stock a fortnight ago and would be back at any moment. Mr. Lee said he would be glad to partake of some of the lemonade I had in a pitcher on the table in the meantime. I’m well-known for my lemonade, and could not resist showing off a little bit, especially when the person in question was so handsome.

  I must forgive myself, I write this in a state of shock, and every detail is hyper-realized, extremely sharp in my memory and of seeming complete importance.

  I enjoy Richard Lee’s company a great deal. We always have the liveliest conversations; he is such a knowledgeable man, and one of the most upstanding members of the parish group, as well. His little boy Jeb is always so happy; I cannot imagine that anything untoward happens in that house. Of course, our evening together might be seen as improper, especially given how close we are sitting, but I do not care. I will never care again. Nobody has the right to tell me what is proper ever again.

  I say this because of the loud crash that I heard coming from upstairs. Mr. Lee jumped to action almost immediately, that brave man, but I assured him it was a shutter that often came loose in our house slave’s attic quarters and that I would manage by myself. When I went upstairs, however, oh, what I saw!

  I will never forget the crescent-moon birthmark on her shoulder. I will never forget the way he had bound her arms behind her and pressed her face into the bed; I felt the bile rise in my throat as I saw his hairy backside clench and unclench furiously as he pumped inside of Big Jim’s slave woman. I saw him finish, heard the tell-tale groan of him leaving his hot, sticky mess inside of her, and that is when I realized that this was not Mr. Langley taking liberties in my household with my property.

  No, it was my husband. I swear, I could kill h
im…”

  Ezrah trails off, noticing that Selema has gone white as a sheet. “What is it, Selema? What is it?”

  “That mark she describes…” Selema manages to choke out.

  “What mark?”

  “The crescent moon…”

  “What about it?”

  Selema looks up at him, her features suddenly haggard. He feels a rush of emotion to his chest and knows that whatever she is about to say, he does not want to hear. He is sick himself, knowing that his father followed in the footsteps of the overseer, although who knows which came first, but from the expression on his sister’s face, he knows that whatever she has just realized is far worse.

  “My father used to talk about it all the time. It is all that I remember of my mother.”

  The sucked-in breath is collective amongst the trio in the room. Awash with pain, they close their eyes and try not to hear the screams that now echo large in the attic, already a place of wrongdoing, now contaminated forever in a way that fire or water can never wash away.

  Ezrah kneels and gathers his sister in his arms. She cries quietly, unwilling to unleash the torrent of emotion within her as she imagines her mother’s hell. There is a warmth inside his arms, a safe haven, but she finally pushes him away and wipes her tears with her hands. “Do you think,” she begins, but her voice goes hoarse and she pauses to clear her throat. “Do you think that is why my father ran away?”

  Jeb kneels beside the duo and places a gentle hand on either shoulder, for they are his people, his little humans. “He risked getting caught; I don’t think a case of injured male pride would be enough to risk that.”

  Selema fixes Ezrah with a hard stare. “Keep reading.”

  “Are you certain?” Ezrah asks, heart beating fast and furious. He is not sure he can read on, learn more about the secret life of the household he grew up in, all its sordid details on display in his mother’s delicate hand. At Selema’s nod, however, he picks up the pages and continues on.