Her stepmother gave her that searching look again. That warning look.
She wasn’t faint. She was giddy. She moved with a swift step, looking for the northern frock coat and hat that Susan disapproved of.
She found him near the dining table, just as a manservant approached with glasses of iced and sweetened tea. The servant was an Aiken slave, and Emily had never seen him before. He didn’t speak, but he offered the tray.
Mr. Aiken took a glass and waited as the servant held the tray for Emily. The slave slipped away, as silent and as insubstantial as a shadow.
Mr. Aiken said, “We take our ease today, and they work so hard.”
She was too startled to raise her glass to her lips. She curled her hand around the cold, sweating surface, and before she spoke, she remembered Caro, whom she had always found at work, either with her hands plunged into the washtub or with her head bent over her sewing. She said, “Do you consider the servants, Mr. Aiken?”
He met her eyes, and the brown gaze was as warm as a caress. “I try to consider everyone, Miss Jarvie,” he said.
She wished that she could invite him to sit beneath the great live oak, but today it was probably occupied by a couple who could court in plain sight. She would conduct her business in plain sight, too. “It’s good to see you again, Mr. Aiken,” she said.
He smiled like a man given a gift. “It’s been a great pleasure to get your letters, Miss Jarvie. Not only for the sketches. But to hear from you and know that you’re flourishing.”
“I am,” she said. “I have an occupation now, and it suits me. I look at Charleston as my readers would, to see it as they might. I see everything from two sides now: theirs as well as my own.”
“You’re truly becoming a writer, Miss Jarvie.”
“That’s high praise, coming from you.”
“It’s meant to be.” He smiled and gestured toward the dress. “You look very different. More than the dress. Your face is livelier. Your step is quicker. Is your heart lighter, too?”
She met his eyes without a trace of coquetry. “Yes, it is.”
He didn’t flinch, but he retreated to a safer subject. “What have you been reading, Miss Jarvie?”
“I’ve taken your recommendation. I’m reading Mr. Henry David Thoreau.”
“Did you have any trouble finding it in Charleston?”
“The bookseller gave me a very odd look when I asked for it. But he ordered it for me.”
“What did you think of it?”
She said, “Such a strange way to live—all in solitude, bound only by one’s own conscience, in defiance of the things that society believes in, which he thinks are wrong.”
The sound of fiddle music drifted from the back garden along with the smell of roasting shoat. The conversation buzzed and hummed, as the bees and flies did, and the occasional shout of laughter was like the cry of a jay.
The man who had left South Carolina said fiercely, “But there is such freedom in it!”
She, who lived in South Carolina in its heart in Charleston, said softly, “And such disorder. And such terror!”
He put a gentle hand on her arm. “I’ve overstepped, as I’m so likely to do,” he said. “I’ve disturbed you.”
She looked into his eyes, not flinching. She said, “When you look keenly and feel deeply, many things are disturbing. Should we shy from them? Or should we face them?”
“You’re brave to say so,” he said. “Braver than I am, since you remain here.”
She had never considered leaving, but she had a sudden vision of herself warmly dressed in wool, striding briskly down the streets of Cincinnati, Ohio, free to write about anything that she saw and felt. She said, “I must never forget that I’m in South Carolina.”
“Write to me,” he said, his tone soft and urgent. “Tell me.”
Confide in me, he meant, as she once confided in her diary. Her girl’s secrets seemed small and tame. He would encourage her to tell secrets that were full of danger. “I will,” she said, her voice trembling a little. “Mr. Aiken, I promise I will.”
His voice dropped very low. “When you write to me, will you address me as Joshua?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “And you must call me Emily, as my friends do.”
As she had asked Caro to do.
The music floated through the air, the cry of the fiddles and the sadder, slower call of the banjo. He said, “I shouldn’t keep you any longer.” His smile was wistful. “Now that you’re a belle again, you should dance with the men of Sumter County.”
She nodded. She drank the rest of her tea, bracing herself to take up the smile of the belle. She walked away swiftly, not looking back, leaving her glass on the tray of a servant whose face she didn’t see to take her place with the unmarried girls who looked for partners among the unmarried men.
In the back garden, the dancers were assembling. The Aikens held to the old ways for their summer picnics, and the dances were the old-fashioned kind, the reels and jigs where the dancers faced each other and nothing touched save their hands.
John Ellison came up to her, his ruddy face flushed a little with drinking in the sun. His eyes were a fierce blue. He asked, “May I have this dance, Miss Emily?”
She said, “My pleasure, sir.” Her spirit hovered elsewhere, yearning for Joshua, but in the world’s sight, she smiled brightly and held out her hand to dance the reel with John Ellison.
Chapter 10: Freedom Is Sweeter
Caro let her sewing fall into her lap. Days later, she could still feel the ghost of Danny’s kiss. She raised her fingers to her lips, as though she could capture it.
Sophy stood at the table, kneading biscuit dough. “Since you come back from the festival, you act moonstruck.”
“It’s nothing, Sophy,” she fibbed, hastily picking up the shirt.
“Is it that boy Danny?”
Before she could deny it, the bell on the gate jangled. Sophy said, “For you, since you have as many callers as any lady.”
Sophy brought Danny into the kitchen. He blushed when he saw her and stammered, “I was at the post office, and it’s so close that I stopped along the way.”
Caro recalled the warmth she had felt when he held her at the festival, and the color rose in her face, too. Sophy said to him, “Set down. I got coffee, if you want some.”
He sat so slowly and so awkwardly that Sophy said, “You moonstruck, too. Hah!” He blushed an even deeper red as she handed him the cup.
Caro wanted to reach for his hand. She wanted to put her arms around his neck and tangle her fingers in the curls that grew there. She wanted to pull him close and kiss him again. Instead she sat in silence, blushing, as he did. Dumbstruck.
He drank a few dutiful sips, and said, “Miss Sophy, I’m making some deliveries for my uncle. May Caro walk with me?”
“I don’t mind. Her mama, that a different story.”
Caro said, “I don’t want to bother her. She’s not feeling well.”
Sophy asked, “Her cough bad again?”
“She says she’s too tired to get out of bed.” Her mother had been sick like this before. When she lost her last baby, she had stayed in bed for weeks. Caro pushed the thought of her mother’s health from her mind.
Sophy said, “You leave Caro time to do her work. She walk through the city on your uncle’s business, that don’t earn her keep.”
Danny said gravely, “I won’t keep her long, Miss Sophy. I promise.” He rose and reached for her hand. Caro smiled at the feeling of his fingers curled around hers.
As they left the house and turned into the street, Danny said, “I fibbed a little.”
“Only a little?” she teased.
“I have to make a delivery in the Neck.”
The Neck was a long walk away and they took their time traveling north on King Street. Caro had never strayed so far from the narrow confines of the well-to-do parts of Charleston that hugged th
e harbor. She felt an internal heat of her own, and the fragrance of late-blooming summer flowers mingled with the scent of pomade from Danny’s hair, which sprang from his head in the heat. He didn’t touch her, but his presence was warmth enough.
“Who is your customer in the Neck? Is it one of the DeReefs?” She was surprised that her uncle did business with the people who lived in the Neck. The DeReefs lived there, but so did many people with little money. And slaves who lived out, as Sunday Desmond did.
“Hah!” Danny said. “The DeReefs patronize the Westons because they’re family.”
“I’m surprised you sell to anyone in the Neck.”
Danny asked her, “Why would you begrudge a man in the Neck a good suit?”
“Even a slave?”
He said, “We ask to see their money, not their badges or their papers. If they pay us, we’re satisfied.”
“Money is the great leveler,” she said.
He laughed. “You learned Latin and Greek and read Cicero and Macaulay, and you never realized that?”
“I’ve learned many things since I came to Charleston.”
“That there is freedom in money. And what else?”
She laughed. Happiness surged through her. “How handsome the men of Charleston are.”
He blushed.
“And what flirts they can be!”
After the Neck, he had another delivery to a mansion just west of the Battery, where they were admitted to the side door to transact their business in the kitchen. In this house, they were doubly unwelcome, as people of trade and of color. The maid took the bundle from Danny with a sniff.
As they left, Danny said, “Her master hasn’t paid his bill for months.”
“For shame!”
“The richer they are, the worse they are,” Danny said. “And we can’t insist because they’ll think we’re insolent, and they might take away their custom altogether.”
“So your living is fragile,” Caro said.
He sighed. “It’s a fragile business to be a free person of color in Charleston,” he said.
His arms were now unburdened, and she reached for his hand. “Let’s talk of happier things,” she said lightly, her tone just like her mother’s.
He said, “I would dearly love an ice. May I buy you one?”
The ice seller was a market woman who had bought eggs from Sophy. She spooned the ices into paper cups, her dark face gleaming with the sweat of the summer. She said to Caro, “You keep that pretty young man close, Miss Caro. You tell him to marry you!”
Danny laughed. He asked Caro, “I like the watermelon. What flavor do you want?”
“Oh, the lemon. I like the tart and the sweet together.”
They were only a block from the Battery, and he led her there. They couldn’t stand on the Battery itself—people of color weren’t allowed so close to the water—but they found a bench set back from the shore. They sat so they could look at each other, and she let her knees touch his. He smiled at her daring.
As she ran her spoon around the little cup to get the last of her ice, he leaned close. “Is it good?”
She leaned close to meet him. “Yes,” she said, smiling.
He kissed her, a prolonged kiss, and she met him, her lips parting a little. Their first kiss had been a question: Do you care for me? Do you desire me?
This kiss was different. It was an answer. He was hers. Now she knew that he would belong to her forever, and she to him.
He let her go and said softly, “We are sworn.”
She said, “We are.”
He smiled, a boyish joy mixed with a newly adult gravity. “You taste of lemon,” he said. “Tart and sweet together.”
They grew slyer in finding places to be alone together. Charleston was full of narrow alleys behind the grand houses where Thomas Bennett’s customers lived. In the alley behind a house on Ladson Street, they discovered a sequestered spot. He touched her cheek. “I wish I could court you properly,” he said. “Sit with you in the parlor, both of us on the settee, and no one to frown or disapprove if I took your hand or even stole a kiss.”
She tried to tease. “You can come to Tradd Street and sit under Sophy’s watchful eye while she keeps all of us in order, even my mother.”
“Oh, Caro,” he said, caressing her face. “I love you.”
She kissed his palm. “I love you.”
He put his arms around her and pulled her close. She could feel his heart beating against her breast. She could feel him through her skirt, seat of love calling to the seat of love. His embrace warmed her and dizzied her, making her hungry for the other joys that a man and a woman might give each other.
And in the wet heat of Charleston’s summer, she was suddenly cold. She knew full well that love could make a baby, which wouldn’t be his and wouldn’t be hers. Their child would belong to Lawrence Jarvie.
She pulled away and he let her go.
He touched her cheek. She met his eyes. “It isn’t right,” she said. At the worried expression on his face, she said, “Not us. But this.”
He nodded.
Her voice caught in her throat. “I wish we could marry.”
He caught her by the hand. “I want to marry you.”
As though all the difficulties could be swept away. She thought, We are sworn.
“If I asked?”
“Ask,” she said fiercely.
He caressed her cheek. “Will you marry me?”
She raised her eyes to his. She let her eyes fill. “Yes,” she said.
After the next Sunday dinner, when everyone was replete and drowsy, Danny slipped into the alley behind his uncle’s house, and Caro followed him there.
“I haven’t spoken to my mother yet,” he said. “But I will.”
“And my mother,” she said, her heart heavy.
“Caro,” he said. She heard a ghostly voice echo: Cara. “We love each other. They can’t take that from us.”
He leaned close, and his lips had just touched hers when an angry voice startled them apart.
Uncle Thomas cried, “What is this?” He pulled Danny away by the shoulders, as though he were handling a randy dog. “What in God’s name is this?”
Separated, they stared at their feet and said nothing.
“Danny!” Thomas said, putting all his reprimand into it.
Danny raised his head. “I love Caro, Uncle Thomas,” he said.
“Love! The way a puppy loves. A pup’s foolishness.”
“No, it isn’t like that.” He gazed at Thomas, plucking the string of his uncle’s affection. “I want to honor her. I want to marry her.”
Thomas let Danny go. “Good God!” he said, in a groan of dismay. “Go inside. I’ll speak to you later. And to your mother.”
Danny turned a regretful face toward his uncle and then toward Caro. His shoulders slumped as he walked into the yard.
Thomas turned to Caro. “As for you!”
She was suddenly sick with fear.
He said, “I’m very angry with you. I promised my sister that this would be a business connection and nothing more. You’ve betrayed my trust in you.”
She couldn’t speak. She shook her head.
“You can’t come to the house anymore,” he said. “Not as a member of the family, since you haven’t behaved as one. If you want to attend the church service, that’s your business, but you won’t be welcome to join us.”
She knew the rest. She would never work for him again. The three dollars, the difference between slavery in comfort and abject slavery, would be gone.
He said, “I won’t disturb our business arrangement. That was always for Kitty, not for you. But I’ll keep a close eye on you.” He glanced in the direction of the house. “And on him, too. How far has it gone? What has he done?”
Thinking of the handclasps and the kisses, she whispered, “He’s been the gentleman with me.”
He reached for her arm an
d held it roughly, as he had mishandled Danny. “Do you swear it?”
“Yes,” she whispered again. She lifted her eyes to her uncle’s. “On my father’s memory, I swear it.”
He let go her arm. “Go,” he said. “Go home.” His voice was sharp, and it tore a wound in her. “A matter of business,” he said. “That’s all the connection you must have with us. A matter of business.”
Caro took her time returning to Tradd Street. She wanted to brace herself. Sophy was sure to pry and nag her to tell her mother what had happened. She needed to be ready for her mother’s anger. She wished that she could go to the Battery and lean against the stone wall that overlooked the water of the harbor. But not even a free person of color was free enough for that. She, even less so.
But Sophy was out and her mother was asleep. Relieved, Caro sat at the pine table, too unhappy to sew or read. Chloe twined around her ankles, and she swept the animal into her lap. She buried her face in Chloe’s coat and listened to the rumbling purr. It gave her no comfort.
She set the cat on the floor and crept into the shack. Her mother’s eyes fluttered open. “Caro?” she asked, in a drowsy voice.
“I’m going to rest for a bit, Mama,” she said. “The heat.”
Her mother didn’t reply, and Caro lay on the bed without taking off her boots.
“Caro?” Her mother’s voice was still drowsy.
“Yes, Mama?”
“Take off your dress and hang it up.”
Despite her pain, she nearly laughed. She knew how much her mother hated the sight of a girl in a wrinkled dress. “I didn’t want to bother you, but I will, Mama.”
The next morning, Caro sat in the kitchen, listless about taking up her sewing again. The shirt in her hands reminded her of Thomas. She heard his words and, worse still, his angry tone every time she touched the cloth. Sophy sat opposite her, her eyes a little bleary. She said, “Sunday bring us hock yesterday, and I drink too much.”
Ordinarily she would have sassed Sophy, saying, “Don’t you know that a lady never drinks more than three glasses at supper?” But today she couldn’t find Miss Sass’s voice.
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