Susanna Fraser

by A Dream Defiant

She had chosen well. Of that she was certain. Sam would’ve wanted her to be happy, and she meant to be. Thank you for the rubies, she added to her message for his ghost. We’re going to use them just as you wished.

  Lost in her thoughts, she was only vaguely aware that she’d passed all the wagons and caught up with the straggling end of the regiment until she heard a nasty voice call out, “There she is, the Negro-loving bitch.”

  Jerked abruptly from her happy reverie, she froze and looked around her. George Yonge, damn him, just now healed enough from his flogging to resume his duties, with a pair of his friends, Horton and Keefe—troublemakers Rose had avoided as best she could in all her years with the regiment.

  They approached to within a few feet of her, surrounding her on three sides. The road before them curved in a sharp bend, blocking her view of the marching men ahead of them. She didn’t dare show her fear by looking behind her, though surely the leading wagons were in sight. They couldn’t attack her or drag her away here, in broad daylight in the middle of the army column.

  “Afraid of us?” Keefe asked. “Your big Negro can’t save you now.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she said as coolly as she could. “Not here, not now.”

  “Oh, we’re not going to hurt you now,” Yonge said. “You’re not worth another flogging. But don’t think you’re fooling anyone, claiming those silly popish beads of your friend’s are what Lewis saw. You wouldn’t have married that Negro if you didn’t need the biggest man in the regiment to be your guard, and I know why.”

  “I don’t know,” Horton said with a leer, “maybe she wanted him for something else. You know what they say about their size and appetites.”

  Just at that moment, Elijah appeared from around the bend ahead of them. When he saw Rose, he burst into a run. “Stay away from my wife,” he snarled as he reached her side.

  Though they had him outnumbered, all three flinched away from his size and menace. Rose lifted her chin. “If you’re all so curious as to why I married him,” she said, “I’d be happy to tell you.”

  “This isn’t necessary,” Elijah murmured in her ear.

  “Oh, I think it is,” she said. “I married him because he’s the best soldier in this company—no, in this regiment. I married him because he’s clever and thoughtful and kind, and because when he eats my cooking he takes the time to taste it properly. I married him because I trust him to take care of my son like his own flesh and blood. And if I needed protection, it wouldn’t be for any imaginary jewels—” nor indeed, for the real ones still acting the part of a garter on her right thigh, “—it would be from men like you. And it’s obvious his protection is more than sufficient for that.”

  The three men gaped at her, then exchanged uneasy glances.

  “I’d catch up with the rest of the column, if I were you,” Elijah advised them. “And if any harm does fall to my wife or her son or any of her property, don’t think I won’t know where to look first.”

  Three sullen mutters of, “Yes, Corporal,” and the men fled.

  “How did you know I was here?” Rose asked.

  “I didn’t. I’d come to chivvy any stragglers along. I’m just glad I was in time.”

  “They only meant to frighten me.”

  He sighed. “This won’t be the last time someone says something unpleasant to you, because of me.”

  “I know,” she said. “But it’s words. Only words. They won’t change my mind.”

  She turned, stepped into his arms and drew his head down for a kiss, there in broad daylight to the accompaniment of cheers from the driver and passengers of a passing oxcart. “Are you ready to believe I know what I want?”

  He smiled slowly. “Yes.”

  Chapter Eight

  That night Rose arranged for Jake to sleep in the Whelans’ tent with Fernando, which both boys considered a great treat. Once Rose sent her son off with a good-night kiss and a promise that soon, possibly even the very next night, they would return the favor by having Fernando stay with them, Elijah took her hand.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been surer of anything.”

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “Nothing worth having ever is.”

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, heedless of the catcalls of a group of passing soldiers.

  She drew back for breath and held him at arm’s length. “Will you wait a few minutes, after I go into the tent?” She had a surprise in mind for him, and she needed a little privacy to arrange it.

  He blinked, but accepted this. “Of course. I’ll see to the fire.”

  She left a candle burning as she prepared. It wouldn’t do if he couldn’t see her. Then she wrapped herself in a blanket and waited.

  She sat still until he walked in and fastened the tent flap securely behind him.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Shy?”

  She shook her head and unveiled herself, and her surprise. She wore nothing but the rubies.

  His eyes grew huge and round, and he crossed the small space that separated them like a man spellbound. He raised a tentative hand and stroked her throat, framing the necklace. “I wanted to wear them, just this once,” she said. “That is, wear them properly. Keeping them around my leg all this time, always worried the wrong person will find out about them, they’ve felt more like a chain than anything else.”

  “They’re beautiful,” he said, fingering one of the heavy stones. “But you’re far more so.”

  He kissed her, pulling her against him. The rough wool of his uniform against the sensitive skin of her breasts and belly drove her wild, and she felt deliciously naughty, standing there bare while he was still fully dressed. But this was no way for them to continue. She arched against him, feeling how hard he already was, and reached up for his coat fastenings.

  He caught her hand. “Wait.” He slid his hands to the back of her neck, fumbling for the necklace’s clasp. He undid it and held the chain of rubies up, red and gold in the flickering candlelight. “No shackles for us,” he said, “no matter how rich.”

  She sighed and swayed toward him. That was right.

  He held her away long enough to set the necklace carefully aside—golden shackle it might be, but it was also the purchase of their freedom, of their dreams—before coming back to take her in his arms again. She scrambled to unfasten his uniform, even while he distracted her with his clever, busy hands. But finally she got him as naked as she was and pulled him down to the nest she’d made of all their blankets.

  “At last,” she said.

  “This has been the longest week of my life,” he agreed.

  They held still for a few moments. Rose set her palm on his smooth, strongly muscled chest. White on brown. She would’ve loved Elijah just as much if he’d been white—but, no, he wouldn’t have been himself then. They were beautiful together, she decided, her fair skin against his dark.

  “I love you.” She hadn’t fully realized it until that moment, but she was sure.

  He rested his forehead against hers. “And I love you. I have for a long time, I think, but I couldn’t let myself, before.”

  She drew in a shuddering breath and brushed her lips against his. “This is new,” she said. “Before—I liked you, and I admired you, but...”

  “You had Sam,” he finished. “As it should’ve been. I was in the wrong.”

  She shook her head and pressed her fingers to his lips. That they were lucky enough to have this, together, all unlooked for... “Not wrong. You hid it too well. But there’s nothing to hide now.”

  He grinned and nipped at her fingertips. “Nothing at all.”

  Then the time for words passed. He kissed her lips reverently, then kissed and licked a path down her neck to her breasts. When he took her nipple in
his mouth for the first time, she sighed in bliss and seized his head between her hands to keep him there. He chuckled, low in his throat, and the sound hummed through her skin.

  He stole a hand down her belly and between her legs, and she opened eagerly to him. At last, indeed. She thrust her hips up to meet him and drew his body over hers. Surely there was no more reason to wait. For all his evident desire, she sensed he was holding a part of himself back. There was a caution, a carefulness to all his touches, to the way he poised himself above her. She felt the head of his cock against her, but even in that he was gentle and hesitant.

  She took his face between her hands. “I won’t break, you know.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “You don’t have to always be careful, always holding yourself back. Not in this, not with me.”

  Understanding dawned. “I love you,” he said, and thrust into her.

  He was big in all ways, big and strong, and she loved him for it. When it was over and she lay in his arms, her inner fires banked to a quiet smolder for the moment, she pressed a kiss to his neck. “I told you I wouldn’t break,” she said.

  He stroked her hair, winding the curls around his fingers. “You never will. I’m looking forward to building a world with you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Bedfordshire, two years later

  A month into his life as owner of the Red Lion, Elijah was tolerably content with his lot. In fact, if he could just make it down from the ladder he currently stood perched upon without breaking his neck, he’d call himself perfectly happy. But a good innkeeper needed to know every inch of his property, and that included the roof.

  So he resisted the urge to kneel and kiss the ground once he jumped down from the last rung of the ladder, instead offering a courteous hand to steady Ashpole, the local thatcher, when he turned his ankle in climbing down.

  “You’ve got yourself a good roof, Cameron,” Ashpole said. “I’ll look it over every year, but I thatched it new in ’12, and I don’t think you’ll need it done again for at least five years more.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Elijah replied. Though the money he and Rose had gained from selling the rubies had been enough to buy them the inn, they hadn’t been left with much in reserve. He hoped they could avoid major repairs and maintenance expenses until they’d had a chance to turn a good profit for a few years.

  After he’d made his farewells to the thatcher, he walked into the inn through the scullery and paused in the kitchen doorway to admire Rose as she and her scullery maid prepared the afternoon’s dinner. Rose was rolling out the crust of a pie, so intent about her work that she didn’t even look up at his footsteps. The July day was warm, so her cheeks glowed ripe and ruddy, and the chestnut curls that peeped from beneath her neat white cap were faintly damp. She looked altogether lovely and kissable, but he waited until she set her rolling pin down to clear his throat.

  She smiled an invitation at him, and after brushing himself off to make sure he carried no bits of thatch or dirt that might spoil her work, he accepted it, crossing the room to kiss her. The maid, Ellen, used to their ways by now, smiled knowingly at them and continued chopping carrots.

  “What’s this to be?” Elijah asked, nodding at the crust as he twined an errant curl around his finger, then tucked it neatly into her cap.

  “Pigeon pie—one for tonight, and one to serve cold tomorrow.”

  “It sounds delicious.”

  She looked up at him with feigned demureness. “I look forward to hearing your opinion.”

  “I look forward to giving it.” He then gave her the good news about the roof and left her to her work while he went about his own, taking a tankard of cool ale with him to his office to settle the previous day’s accounts.

  He made quick work of the sums, then found himself lost in thought, staring unseeing at the orderly columns of numbers. He was happy here in Aspwell Heath, but outside of the kitchen and their treasured time alone together each night, Rose was unwontedly grave and sober. He’d expected, if not quite the opposite, something close to it—that she would be overjoyed to be united with all her old friends and to at last see her life’s dream come true, while he would be experiencing all the awkwardness of a stranger in a small place, with the added spectacle of being the only black man any of his new neighbors had ever met in more than passing.

  There was a little of that, of course. He’d been much stared at for the first few days, and half the people he’d met had seemed shocked that not only did he speak perfectly good English in an accent almost the same as their own, he could read and write it as well.

  As always, there were a few who hated or feared him. They’d lost a serving maid and a groom out of the staff they’d inherited from the inn’s previous owners. Both had made it abundantly clear they didn’t think it proper for a Negro to give orders to a white. Rose had seethed with anger, but Elijah had shrugged. Servants were easy to come by these days. Within two days he’d replaced the two they’d lost with a bright, eager young woman just starting out in service and a cavalry trooper who’d been invalided out of the army after the loss of a leg, but who was quick enough to groom, feed and harness horses as he stumped about on his peg.

  Yet for the most part the people of Aspwell Heath were the kind, decent sorts that Rose had promised him. Elijah had, within days of their arrival, been accepted into the society of a pair of old soldiers who were delighted to have someone to regale them with newer war stories. Each of them came to sit and drink in his taproom almost every night. And he’d received a more patronizing sort of friendship from the vicar, an avowed abolitionist who pumped Elijah for tales of his parents’ days in Virginia. Though the vicar’s courtesy could be tiresome—it always was wearing to endure the conversation of those who saw one as a means to prove their own virtue and generosity—he wasn’t so very different from Colonel Dryhurst. And as he was a good man, well-liked by his parishioners, his approval speeded Elijah’s acceptance by the rest of the villagers.

  All in all, he was happy. He’d been studying the work of an innkeeper almost from the moment he’d been invalided out of the army a year and a half ago, after a relatively minor wound received at the Battle of the Nive, followed by a dangerous, lingering fever. Once Rose had got them back to London and his family, he’d recovered his full strength in time to welcome the birth of their daughter, Mary, and to share in the delicate negotiations to sell Rose’s rubies without drawing too much attention to themselves or the necklace’s provenance.

  It had all taken rather longer than he’d expected, and the Paxtons had been unwilling to turn over the inn before midsummer 1815, the better to make their own arrangements for where they’d live out their years of retirement. Elijah had champed at the bit, but Rose, surprisingly, had been the patient one. Better that Mary be weaned by the time they settled into work, she’d said—they’d already settled it between them to take such precautions as they could to keep her next brother or sister from entering the world until they were well established as the Red Lion’s keepers.

  In the meantime, he’d learned. Much to his relief—for it would have been an awkward thing if he’d discovered he hated the life he needed to live for the sake of Rose’s dream—he’d found his new trade engaging. He used everything from his knack for arithmetic to the skill at managing a small staff he’d learned as a corporal, along with such new abilities as judging and caring for horseflesh, and catching the early warning signs of troubles ranging from a roof about to go leaky to an infestation of vermin. And now that he was a month into the business, he felt in a fair way to becoming a respected part of the world of Aspwell Heath. They’d had a grand celebration on the first night after taking the Red Lion over—half for themselves and half in honor of the great victory at Waterloo that had just been announced. Almost everyone in the village had come, and the dancing had lasted long into the night.
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  He was sure they’d made the right choice. Aspwell Heath was a good place for Jake, Mary and any other children who might make their appearance someday to grow up. It was home.

  But Rose didn’t share his contentment. Oh, she did her work in the kitchen with her usual skill, and already some of the passengers who came through on the stage and guests who stopped for the night were promising to carry word of the Red Lion’s newly delicious food to other travelers. She remained a tender, affectionate mother to the children and a devoted, passionate wife to him. But there was an air of melancholy that pervaded her as she went about in what should’ve been the happiest month of her life, and Elijah thought he knew why.

  Sam’s family, the Merrifields—his aged parents and his sister, who had been Rose’s best friend as a child—weren’t speaking to them. They’d gone to see the elder Merrifields almost the moment they arrived in the village and found Jenny visiting there as well with her own two children. Parents and sister alike had stared at Elijah in shock and dismay, and when Baby Mary, proud in her new accomplishment of learning to walk, had toddled across the room and smiled her most charming at the new people, they had only stared at her until she whimpered and ran back to her mother’s arms. The elder Merrifields had quizzed Jake on his memories of his father, and had seemed to take it as a personal affront that all he could remember was that Papa had liked to sing and that they had lived in a smaller tent then.

  “Didn’t you tell them I was black when you wrote them?” Elijah had asked as they walked back to the inn, sober and uncomfortable.

  “I know I should have, but I couldn’t think how,” Rose had replied in the thick voice of one who was fighting tears. “Sam had only just died, and it didn’t seem kind to them to say too much about my new husband. So all I said was that you were a corporal, and a good man who’d treat Jake well.”

  Elijah had acknowledged this with a nod and a shrug. He knew she’d received a reply months later from Jenny, and that she hadn’t been happy about it. But Elijah had been wounded and ill then. When he’d asked Rose about the letter, she’d only said that Jenny didn’t really understand why soldiers’ widows had to remarry so quickly, though she’d done her best to explain, and that rather than writing again she meant to wait until they were home. Surely by then the Merrifields would’ve had their time to mourn and all would be well again.