Halfway Home, page 26
Or maybe a big one . . .
*
Sara was too restless to remain indoors, even though it was fixing to rain. It had been three days since she had spoken more than a word to Jericho. He’d been avoiding her, which made her self-conscious so that she avoided him. At the rate they were going, they might as well live in different counties.
Did he regret what they had done? Well, my mercy, what were husbands and wives supposed to do with each other? She wasn’t very good at it yet, but she was perfectly willing to learn.
Only evidently, he wasn’t interested in teaching her.
“Hester, I’m going out for a spell,” she called out as she reached for the threadbare old coat that hung behind the back door for quick trips out to the garden or the cool house or the chicken pen.
It was a good day for planting. Maybe she would dig up something in the yard and transplant it to Louisa’s grave. Maybe that would please the old sobersides.
“You come right back if it commences to rain, you hear?” the housekeeper called after her, and Sara promised. At least some folks cared about her. Instead of having one woman to fuss over her, she now had two. Hester was as bad as Maulsie. The one thing they both agreed on was that Sara wasn’t fit to look after herself.
“Take dat animal,” Maulsie advised her, and Sara said she would. She suspected Maulsie only wanted to get him out from underfoot. The big, shaggy creature had taken to hanging around the house lately.
In fact, he had taken to hanging around wherever Sara happened to be. She rather enjoyed it.
“Here, Brig, c’mon, boy, let’s go for a walk.” At least someone appreciated her company.
Jericho had left with Hiram Moyer right after breakfast, according to Hester. Unable to help herself, Sara scanned the vast expanse of forest and fallow fields, the rows of tenant houses that were presently being reroofed, and the cow barn that was being readied for a new milker and maybe a few head of beef cattle.
It was all coming along nicely, she told herself. Evidently, Hiram Moyer was cut from a different bolt of cloth from his useless sister.
Sighing, she stared off in the direction of the overseer’s cottage. Not even to herself would she admit she’d been hoping for a glimpse of her husband on that big ugly horse of his. He rode as well as he did everything else these days, now that his wound was almost completely healed.
That is to say, he moved with more grace and strength than a mortal man should be allowed. Especially one who’d spent far more time on a ship than he ever had on a horse.
Lord, he was beautiful. Sara had thought so the first time she had ever laid eyes on him. By the time he was hers to care for, she had been completely fascinated by everything about the man.
Not that she had taken advantage of his helplessness. She would never—
And besides, Rafe was always there to perform the most intimate tasks. But she had been the one to sponge off his back, which was broad and tanned and incredibly smooth to touch. And once she had even rubbed down his limbs when he had complained of cramping from lying in one position for too long.
She wasn’t surprised. They were knotted with muscles under a light covering of crisp, black hair. She had remarked on how powerful they looked, and then turned fiery red at her own boldness, but he hadn’t seemed to take it amiss.
“Comes from spending years standing on a moving deck,” he had told her. “A body learns to compensate.”
Now, swinging the shovel she had taken from the. gardening shed, she wondered just how a body learned to compensate for having to do without something it had only just learned to crave.
“Hard work,” she muttered, remembering .all the time she had worked off her temper by chopping weeds and clumping up and down the rows of her vegetable garden behind old Blossom. “Hard work and worthy thoughts.”
She selected a bush that was covered with small red berries now and would be covered with fragrant white blossoms in the spring. It would do for the foot of the grave. Come spring, when everything was in bloom, she would select something showier to go at the head. Or rather, she would if she was still here come spring.
*
From a distance Jericho watched the small, industrious figure stomping down the earth around the roots of the shrub she had just set out. She did it as if she were performing a dance, holding her skirts up out of the way, twisting that delectable little rump of hers with every stomp. He had never seen a woman throw herself into her tasks so wholeheartedly. Once she set a course, nothing could sheer her off. Hoisted sail and away she went, and devil take the hindmost.
His eyes warmed in a smile that faded almost as quickly as it was born. What was he going to do about her? More to the point, what was he going to do about himself? it had been nearly twenty years since he had felt this unsure of himself. Twenty years during which he had armored himself against all tender feelings. His rather frivolous mother had been openly dismayed by his loud, boisterous ways as a boy. He had been a great disappointment to his father, and too young to do anything about it even if he’d known what to do. Only Louisa had accepted him as he was, and in the end he had failed her.
Now there was Sara. Would she, too, come to think of him as crude and wild, not fit to be among civilized people? He had long since outgrown the youthful high spirits that had made his mother flinch from him, but he was still stern, hard and unpolished. His father had been a man of letters. Jericho had been fifteen before he could teach himself to write a legible hand. A man in his position had no use for soft music, sweet poetry and drawing room manners—the things that impressed a lady.
And Sara was a lady. She claimed to have plowed behind a mule. Claimed to be able to trap a weasel and then skin the critter out once she’d caught him, but she was a lady, all right. Small, dainty, delicate—softhearted, innocent, and loyal to the bone.
Did he dare take the risk of leaving himself open to a wound that might well prove fatal? What if she came to know him better and decided she didn’t want him? He wasn’t a polished hand with the ladies, the way Rafe was. Rafe called her darling without even batting an eye.
Jericho’s tongue wouldn’t even wrap around the word. Darling. Sweetheart. Sweetpea, for God’s sake!
Rafe had brought her store-bought roses. For her first wedding, Jericho had gone out and picked a handful of some weeds he found blooming on a ditch bank. For her second one, he hadn’t even thought to do that much.
Sara, he thought bleakly. She deserved a gentleman, someone who could appreciate her. Someone who could give her all the things a lady should have. Jericho didn’t even know what those things were.
What was he going to do about her? How long could he go on working until he was ready to drop and then drinking until he could sleep, trying to keep from returning to her bed?
*
“Why, it’s Mr. Turbyfill,” cried Hester, swinging the door wide. “You can come in and set, but they ain’t here. Jericho’s gone out with that overseer man, and Sara, she’s gone out with Louisa’s dog.”
“Rain’ll likely chase them home before long,” Rafe said, flustering the housekeeper by kissing her on her wrinkled cheek. “Matter of fact, I’ve come to see Miss Ivadelle. Don’t tell me she’s gone, too.”
Hester sniffed. Rafe grinned. Ivadelle appeared in the parlor doorway, looking as calm as if she hadn’t seen him ride up on his great gray gelding. Frantically, she smoothed her hair and her skirts and pinched some color into her cheeks.
“You wanted to see me? Goodness, why ever for?”
Ivadelle felt herself begin to simper. She was too old to simper. She knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop. Just let an eligible gentleman come within range, and she began acting like a fifteen-year-old virgin at her first grown-up dance.
He had that laughing look in his eyes again. She wished she had the nerve to swat it right off his face, but she needed him too much. “And how are you this fine morning?” she cooed.
“Damp. Rain started before I even come halfway.”
“Oh, dear. Would you like a—that is, shall I have someone make up the fire?” Her hands fluttered uselessly for a moment, but at his knowing look, all pretense fell away. The man never failed to get under her skin. He did it deliberately. “Oh, for land’s sake, you’re not all that wet!”
Rafe decided that, with a little training, she would do very well. He liked her better when she wasn’t pretending to be something other than what she was. A woman who was still beautiful but no longer young, and who knew it. A woman whose sister-in-law had made it impossible for her to live with her only relative. A woman whose plans to snare a well-to-do husband had come to a dead end.
“I’ve come with a business proposition for you, my dear. Before you say anything, I suggest you hear me out.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Sara was muddy. She was also far more tired than she’d expected to be, but then, this was her first real outing since she’d recovered from being thrown from the shay. The day that had started out so fine had turned out rainy.
After a final look at the shrub she had set out, she trudged home through the drizzling rain, thinking of the woman she had never even met who had had such a profound influence on her own life.
Louisa had been tragically young to die. From what little Sara had heard, the poor girl had barely begun to experience life.
It never occurred to Sara that she was far younger than Louisa had been, and that she had never experienced much of life, either. Nor was she apt to do so, married to a man who didn’t seem to know what to do with her.
Back at the house, she paused on the sheltered back porch, cracked the kitchen door a bit so that she could reach inside and hung up her coat. Her hair was soaked, for she’d gone out without a hat, and her shoes were finally, once and for all, quite beyond hope.
“Hester, do you need anything from town?” she called out as she unlaced the poor muddy relics and tugged them off. “I’ve a mind to go shopping.” Shoes were just the excuse she needed. She’d been itching to do something about the dark walls, the dark furniture and the dark floors in this old mausoleum ever since she’d taken her first good look around. It was a lovely home, but it could be lovelier still with a few bright touches.
Through the kitchen door she could hear the sound of Hester’s thin cackle and Maulsie’s rich, full-bodied laughter. “What’s so funny?” Padding into the warm room in her stocking feet, she inhaled the rich smell of ham-bone soup and coffee.
“She done gone,” Maulsie chortled.
Sara looked from one to the other, mystified.
“That woman,” Hester clarified. “Packed her bags, left out without even saying good-bye, now ain’t that a sure enough shame?” Her lined face was as composed as ever, but her faded old eyes sparkled like a pair of wet blue agates.
“But why? Did—did Jericho take her somewhere?” Sinking down onto a bench beside the massive iron range, Sara unpinned her hair and fluffed it around her shoulders to dry while Maulsie poured her a cup of coffee. Normally she would never have taken her hair down outside her own bedroom, and certainly not in the kitchen, but on a rainy day in mid-November, it seemed acceptable.
“Mmmm, I needed this,” she said with a sigh, clasping the hot cup in her cold hands as she savored the heat and the aroma.
Brig nudged the door open again and poked his red shaggy head inside. Hester flapped her apron at him. “Don’t you come in here, you wet, stinking dog. Shoo! G’on outside where you belong.”
Sara hid a smile when the old woman took a biscuit left over from breakfast from the basket and tossed it after him. “Now who’s going to tell me what happened to Ivadelle?”
“Told you. She’s gone. Tubby come and fetched her no more’n half hour ago.”
“Tubby?”
“Mr. Rafael, that is. He was Tubby when he used to come sneaking into my cool room, stealing ham skins and taking ‘em down to the pond to use for bait.”
Sara had trouble picturing the dapper Rafe Turbyfill stealing greasy ham skins for any reason at all. At the moment, however, she was more interested in why he had stolen Ivadelle, if steal her he had. “Where were they going? What does he plan to do with her?”
“What do any man do wif a woman like dat?” Maulsie rolled her eyes.
“As to that, I’m sure I couldn’t say,” Hester said primly, and both women burst out laughing again. Sara wondered if they’d been sampling Jericho’s brandy.
“Now, what’s all this talk about shopping? Miss Sara, are you barefooted again? Where are your shoes, child? You’re going to catch your death, sure’s the world.”
Maulsie shook her head as if to say, I did my best with her, for all the good it did.
Sara felt a warm glow begin inside her and work its way out to her cold toes and fingers. This was home. This was where she belonged. In the kitchen, drinking hot coffee, being clucked over by Hester and Maulsie. She reached for one of the leftover cold biscuits. Now if only Jericho felt the same way about her . . .
* * *
Jericho came in while Sara was on her second cup of coffee. The table wasn’t yet laid, but the soup was done. It was well after noon. Both his face and his dark hair gleaming wet, he brought with him the exciting smell of cold rain, wood smoke and horse. Hester dipped him a basin of water, adding to it from the kettle, and handed him the soap and towel. It seemed strange to Sara that anyone would wash up in the kitchen, but then, she supposed it was more sensible than tracking through the house to the washstand in his bedroom upstairs.
He had shucked off his muddy boots on the back porch. There was a bootjack there for just that purpose. He hung his slicker on the peg behind the door to drip on the floor and not a one of the three women present uttered a word of protest.
“Is she gone?” he asked, and Hester nodded.
“Did you help her pack?”
Again she nodded. “Didn’t find nothing but a lace-edged handkerchief with a Y and some blue flowers embroidered on it.”
Sara bit her lip. She had had a handkerchief like that. It had belonged to her mother. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen it lately.
She started to ask about it and decided against it. If the thing was gone, it was gone. No sense in stirring up unnecessary trouble. A handkerchief was small enough price to pay for peace.
Maulsie dipped two big bowls of soup and set them on the table. Sara sipped her cooling coffee and tried to pretend she wasn’t aware of every inch of Jericho’s shockingly vital body as he unbuttoned his collar, turned back his cuffs and splashed off his face and arms.
Strictly speaking, she mused, he was not terribly handsome—at least, not in the way Titus had been handsome. His nose was just a tad large, his brows thick and straight, giving him a stern look, and his mouth . . .
Well. Enough about his mouth.
She took a deep breath. “Jericho, I was wondering if I might, um . . . make some new curtains for the front parlor windows? And maybe a few cushions? Hester says there’s feathers enough for a whole slew of pillows, and I could pick out some fabric when I go to get my shoes.”
He looked at her as if she’d addressed him in a foreign tongue. “Shoes?”
“And curtains and cushions. And maybe some bright paint for the woodwork and a rug or two, something small that would brighten up all the dark old rooms.” There were rugs aplenty, but they were mostly brown, with dull, dark designs.
Her heart sank. He was probably one of those people who didn’t like change. Some men were like that, or so she’d heard. Never changed so much as an antimacassar after a loved one had died.
Pinning up her hair, which had dried by now, she openly studied the man she had married in such haste. The stranger who could freeze her with a look and then thaw her again with a single touch. Did he still consider her an outsider? Theirs was no longer a marriage of convenience. Whether or not Jericho was willing to admit it, she belonged to him now. This was her home, too.
Only she did wish he would give her some sign that he recognized her right to be here. All he had done lately was avoid her. He watched her when he didn’t think she noticed, the same way she watched him. Right now, he looked as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to keep her or throw her back.
“Mistuh Cap’n, dis chile want to go to town. You want I should ask Simon to drive her?” Maulsie had adapted her own version of Jericho’s name.
“What for?” Jericho asked, looking at Maulsie and Hester, never once at Sara.
“She tol’ you what fo’. She done wore her mama’s shoes plum out.”
Sara wriggled in her chair and leaned forward. She didn’t need a spokesman, she was more than capable of speaking for herself. “It’s just that I never had time to finish buying all the things I planned to buy, and I clean forgot about a new pair of good, everyday boots. I did get those yellow slippers to go with my yellow dress, but they’re the wrong size, and before I had time to look for something else, Titus—that is, I had to—”
“What she mean is, dat snake done come after her an’ run her off,” Maulsie finished for her. “Didn’t hab no time t’ink ‘bout no clothes or no shoes. Now she do.”
Jericho leaned over, reached around the corner of the table and lifted Sara’s skirt.
She slapped his hand. “Stop that!”
“Barefooted again, hmm?” He grinned, and it occurred to her that he was a different man when he smiled. “Reckon I can spare the time to drive you to town. Moyer’s coming along with the hiring, patching and clearing.”
“You got me a girl coming?” Hester asked eagerly.
Jericho nodded. “Two for you, two for the kitchen. They’ll be living in the cabins out back.”
Which meant that their menfolk would be working in the fields. Sara knew that Jericho had no intention of buying workers. What she didn’t know was whether it was out of consideration for Maulsie and Simon, because free blacks and slaves never worked well together, or because he truly didn’t hold with slavery. There was still so much she didn’t know about the man she had married.
