Halfway Home, page 3
*
It was pitch-dark outside when Sara suddenly became wide-awake. Lying in her narrow bed, her heart pounding like a woodpecker, she listened for whatever sound had aroused her.
If that blasted fox was trying to get at her hens again, she was going to nail his hide to the barn door!
And then she saw the glow on the sloping ceiling above the attic stairwell. “Maulsie?” she called softly. The old woman hadn’t been up to Sara’s bedroom since she had helped her move in.
The top of a lamp chimney came into view, followed by Titus’s pale curls. He was all ready for bed, but he hadn’t yet rolled up his hair.
“Is someone sick?” It was the one thing she could think of that would have brought him up to the cramped attic room. “It is Noreen? Wait a minute and I’ll be right down.”
Gaining the floor level, Titus lurched toward the window and stuck his head outside, breathing deeply of the cool, smoke-scented night air. “Mama’s fine. It’s me that couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, being up here certainly won’t help. What do you expect me to do, sing you a lullaby?” His nightshirt, she noticed, was of the finest quality handkerchief linen, certainly finer than any nightshirt she possessed. But then, Noreen had always said that her boy had delicate skin.
“I thought we might keep one another company for a spell.”
“In the middle of the night?” Sara scoffed.
It occurred to her that he seemed to be having trouble with his breathing. She wondered if it was the smoke, the exertion of climbing the steep attic stairs or his claustrophobic tendencies. Titus couldn’t abide close places, which was one of the reasons Sara had moved up to the tiny attic room.
She didn’t want him here, for whatever reason. It was her private place. She had made it her own with freshly painted furniture, pictures she had made herself with pressed flowers and her mother’s dresser set. She didn’t want him here for any reason.
“Titus? Go back to bed,” she said dampeningly.
Turning, he suddenly lunged toward her, causing the lamp to tilt dangerously. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she cried, grabbing the cut class bowl just as the chimney crashed to the floor. Oil sloshed over her hand, and she quickly turned down the flame and set the thing on the tiny chest beside her cot. “What in heaven’s name are you trying to do, burn down the house? Get out, you fool! Go on back where you came from before I call Big Simon to throw you out!”
Which was an empty threat, and they both knew it.
When a hand clamped onto her knee, she brushed it aside, but before she could scramble to the far side of her bed, he was at her again, both hands clawing at her night shift. All the while he was wrestling with her, he was grunting something about the different ways to skin a cat. “We’ll see how damned proud you are when your belly starts poking out under your apron. Oww, you bitch! You bit me!”
“I’ll do worse than that if you don’t get—off—me!”
He hadn’t brought his knife. If he had, she didn’t know what she would have done. Cracked him over the head with the lamp, probably.
Twisting suddenly, Sara managed to get a foot against his chest. She shoved, and he fell to the floor, knocking the lamp over on his way down. Spilled oil flared up and quickly she flung a pillow down, smothering the flames. Scrambling to her feet on the bed, she bent over under the sloping ceiling and whispered fiercely, “If you ever, ever—lay another hand on me, I’ll stuff you in a trunk and bury you under the biggest pile of manure I can find! Now get out of here before I tell your mama on you!”
*
Two weeks later, some twenty-odd miles to the south, a grim-faced man dressed all in black headed north along the corduroy road that led to the state line. Mounted on a rawboned gelding that stood a full seventeen hands high and answered to the name of Bones, Jericho Wilde stared unseeingly into the smoky distance. His eyes burned, but that was most likely due to the fact that he hadn’t slept in so long, he’d lost track of time.
He’d gone by the graveyard again and come away feeling empty and guilty and angry. The earth was still raw. He’d thought about spreading a blanket over her grave, but it wouldn’t have helped.
Her dog had been there, too. God, that had torn him apart. The mutt had howled every night since it had happened. Last night, Jericho had been tempted to use one of the dueling pistols he’d been cleaning to put the poor bastard out of his misery.
He had felt like howling, himself. Instead, he’d poured himself a single drink, put away the decanter, and got on with setting his affairs in order.
As the sky to the east began to pale, signs of traffic appeared. Two lumber barges made their way up the canal, warped by a team of oxen on the canal-side road. Alligator River lumber, Jericho noted absently, headed to Norfolk and points north most likely. He’d hauled enough lumber himself, mostly logwood from Honduras.
As daylight grew strong enough to cut through the peat smoke, the road traffic began to pick up. He passed a few horsemen, a few buggies—a freight wagon. A mile or so farther on he came upon two boys herding a gaggle of geese—God knows where or why. Bones stamped and snorted indignantly while the boys rounded up their scattered charges and cleared the road, and then he plodded on toward the border.
Jericho’s belly rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Or maybe the day before. Guilt, laced with anger, was hard on the gut. If this was the way grief felt, he prayed he would never lose anyone else. Not that he had anyone left to lose.
Hunching his shoulders against the early-morning chill, he rode on to meet his fate. To meet the bastard who had courted his sister, got her with child, and then murdered her.
Chapter Three
Sara waited as long as she dared for a reply before setting out. As she had explained in her letter—hastily scribbled the morning after Titus had come to her bedroom in the middle of the night, attempted to rape her, and ended up nearly burning down the house—if Archibald was still of a mind to take on a wife, why then she would come to him willingly and well dowered. In exchange for a home, she could offer companionship, a considerable inheritance as well as two dear and trustworthy servants who had been with her family since before she was born.
Not to mention the fact that, as he well knew, she was a hard worker, she could read and write, she was healthy as a horse, and she had always been known for her sensibility.
It hurt like everything to leave Maulsie behind, but it would only be for a little while. Big Simon would return after leaving her at the hotel where she had arranged to meet Mr. Ricketts. The Lake Drummond Hotel—also called the Halfway Hotel, as it was situated directly across the state line—was known as the Gretna Green of the South. It was popular with some Virginians because of North Carolina’s lower marrying age.
It also served, unfortunately, as a rendezvous for duelers, gamblers, cockfighters, and travelers on both the Dismal Swamp Canal and the Canal Road, as well as a hiding place for criminals who might find it convenient to step from one state to the other at a moment’s notice.
Regardless of its dubious reputation, it was not only the most convenient place Sara could think of at short notice, it also happened to be the most logical. There they should be able to get on with the business of marrying with scant delay, and once she became Mrs. Archibald Ricketts, she would be safe.
That is, if Archibald was still willing to marry her. To be perfectly truthful, he hadn’t precisely mentioned marriage, but she was sure he’d been leading up to it. He had certainly hinted more than once about his lonely cottage.
Or was it his lovely cottage?
Well. She would find out soon enough. Meanwhile, there was the added benefit of being able to step into the next state should Titus come after her. Surely, there were laws in one state or another about dragging a woman off against her will.
“I wish it were all over and done with,” she repeated for the third time since they had slipped away from the house at an early hour, before anyone else was awake.
“Yes’m.”
Unlike Maulsie, Simon was not resigned to the arrangements, but none of the three had been able to come up with a better idea. Sara had wanted to take Maulsie with her, but someone had to stay behind, else Titus would have known she was up to something. She was almost certain Noreen had put him up to that wicked business the other night. And having failed the first time, they would only try again.
“You best git out’n dis house, chile,” Maulsie had warned when Sara had told her what had happened the next morning. She’d had to explain her ruined pillow and the burn on her left hand. “I didn’t raise you up for no yaller-haired devil to ruin.”
She sighed now and fingered the bandage that held the lard and sugar poultice in place. It was only a small burn, nearly healed now, but Maulsie had insisted on dressing it one last time. There’d been tears in the old woman’s eyes.
“Mr. Ricketts will likely be waiting for me at the hotel by the time we get there,” she said now to Simon. Archibald probably knew not to send a reply in case it should fall into the wrong hands.
“Yes’m.”
“He should have had my letter three days ago, which is surely time enough to arrange for the preacher and . . . well, whatever else is needed.” A ring would be nice, but it was hardly necessary. It wasn’t as though this were a love match. A like match, perhaps . . .
Which would suit her very well, Sara told herself. Of a practical nature, she’d never had a romantic bone in her body.
Big Simon cleared his throat, the sound reflecting an astonishing amount of skepticism, which she forced herself to disregard. It would all work out for the best. It simply had to.
“Now remember, you and Maulsie are to go with Mr. Ricketts when he comes for you in his wagon, whether or not I’m with him.” She had already given both him and Maulsie traveling money. Neither of them had wanted to accept it. “Have your bundles all packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice.”
“Yes’m.”
Sara sighed. With every mile they traveled, more doubts set in, but by the time they arrived, she had managed to convince herself that even an uncertain plan was better than no plan at all.
The hotel, an imposing structure some hundred and thirty feet long, rose up from the eastward shore of the canal bank, looking new and busy and prosperous with the bustle of activity all around. Sara sat up straight on the hard wooden seat, suddenly glad she had worn one of her two new gowns.
The best one she had saved to be married in.
Glancing uneasily over his shoulder, Simon helped Sara down from the cart. The area was notorious for the slave catchers who worked both sides of the state line. Nevertheless, he refused to leave until he saw his charge safely established, following her inside the lobby and standing, hat-in-hand, several respectable paces behind as she marched up to the desk.
Sara requested a room in the Carolina wing, signed the register with a flourish that was sheer bravado, and then listened with poorly concealed impatience as the clerk pointed out the many advantages of his fine new establishment. “Right over there’s the dining room, ma’am, and a finer spread you’ll not find between Charleston and Boston.”
Sara took him at his word, having had little experience with any dining outside the occasional church social and her own table.
“That there’s the barroom.” He looked rather apologetic, as well he should, for a rougher-looking clientele than that hanging around the bat-wing doors would be hard to find. It occurred to her that the entire lobby seemed filled with men, with scarcely another female in sight, but before she could mention that fact the clerk said, “If you’ll allow me, miss, I’ll make you acquainted with a Mrs. Best, who stops off regular-like on her way to visit her children up Hampton way.”
Relieved to learn that there was at least one other respectable woman in residence, Sara murmured an appropriate response.
“Now, as I was saying, we’ve got eight separate chambers, four in each wing, each with its own fireplace. Through that there door”—he pointed over his shoulder—“you’ll find the necessary outhouses and our very own, never-failing juniper water spring, just a few convenient steps away from the back door.”
Wondering if he rehearsed his speech every night before he went to bed, Sara nodded. “It all sounds lovely. Now, if I may be shown to my room, please? My man is waiting to bring my luggage inside.”
A few minutes later, standing in the doorway of the busy hotel, Sara watched Big Simon rattle off down the corduroy road in the splintery, crudely patched cart. A feeling of despair swept over her, and she fought against the temptation to run out into the yard and call him back.
Well. She had burned her bridges, and that was that. Whatever lay ahead, it could hardly be worse than what she had left behind.
With that thought firmly in place, she turned back inside, steeling herself against the stares, some lascivious, some merely curious, of a number of men who seemed to have nothing better to do than lounge around the lobby making a spectacle of themselves.
*
Dinner that evening was more pleasant than Sara had anticipated. True, Archibald had not yet registered, nor had he reserved a room, but the woman whose table the clerk had arranged for her to join turned out to be a middle-aged widow from Elizabeth City who could talk cheerfully at great length about almost any topic, and did.
There were only two other women in sight, a pair of elderly sisters from New Lebanon who, according to Cordelia Best, were the biggest gossips in three counties. “Name of Jones. Brother’s a traveling preacher. Spreads their gossip along with the Lord’s gospel. By the time he comes by to collect them, they’ll likely have more tales than one of them Grimm’s storybooks, with just about as much truth to ‘em.”
Sara had dressed modestly in her new brown wool broadcloth, with a touch of ecru lace at the high neckline. It was nicer than anything she had had for years, but certainly nothing out of the ordinary. Which made her wonder why their table seemed to be attracting so much attention from the noisy male contingent.
It certainly couldn’t be her looks, she thought, because those had never been above passable. Her father used to tell her that one day she would grow up to be a real beauty, with her chestnut brown hair and her big amber eyes, but it hadn’t happened. Brown was brown, no matter what fancy name you called it, and drab was drab.
“Don’t look now, but I do believe the Jones sisters are whispering about one of us,” Mrs. Best murmured. She patted her elaborate hat. “Probably wondering where I got my new bonnet. Unless it’s you they’re talking about—wondering who you are and what you’re doing here.”
The widow was obviously dying to ask both questions, but had better manners. Just barely. With a quirk of amusement, Sara wondered what the woman would think if she knew that her dinner companion had not only proposed to a man more than twice her age—a man she hardly knew—but she had come alone to the hotel to meet him without even waiting for his acceptance.
“I’m sure it’s your hat,” she murmured. “It’s lovely, with the ruffles and ribbons and all.”
“Balderdash. More likely it’s your face,” the widow declared generously.
“My face?”
“You’re pretty enough, but they’re probably wondering if you’ve got—” Here she leaned over and whispered loudly. “Foreign blood. If I was you, I’d try a cucumber poultice. Some swears by buttermilk and honey, but I always say, don’t put nothing on your face that draws flies, or you might end up in worse shape than you started out.”
The woman was truly kind, and Sara tried not to laugh. “I suppose you mean my sunburn. I do a lot of gardening. It’s what you might call my pastime.” It was also what had kept them all from starvation. “A hat gets so bothersome with all this hair . . .”
They discussed hats and complexion aids and the best way to cure a sluggish liver, which Mrs. Best suffered from. After a rather watery rice flummery, which Sara toyed with and the widow practically inhaled, Sara excused herself and returned to her room.
Methodically, she brushed her hair with the silver-backed brush that had belonged to her mother. That and the matching mirror, a blue-glass hairpin tray, a scent bottle, and the embroidered dresser scarf, which was the last thing her mother ever finished, had been neatly set out, along with the two silhouettes and the framed dried flowers she had brought with her in a wooden box. It was a small enough inheritance, but it had the effect of making the room somewhat more homelike. And for the moment, it was the only home she had.
Tomorrow, she whispered, standing in the window that opened out onto the verandah. Tomorrow Archibald would be here, Sara told herself, because she refused to consider the discouraging possibility that he wouldn’t come at all—wouldn’t have her.
He would come, and then they could get on with the wedding and she could send for Maulsie and Big Simon and they could all settle down to a brand-new life. Perhaps not an exciting life, but a safe one. Which was just as well, because Sara was beginning to suspect she was not cut out for adventure.
Noise from the taproom made it all but impossible to sleep. Worry didn’t help much, either, for her mind was filled with doubts no matter how much she tried to convince herself that everything was going just as she had planned.
Utterly exhausted, she had almost succumbed when the sound of someone pounding on her door brought her bolt upright.
He was here! Swinging out of bed and fumbling to light a lamp, she cried, “I’m coming, I’m coming, just be patient.”
It would have been more seemly, she thought as she flung on her wrapper if he had taken a room and met her in the morning over breakfast, but perhaps they did need to talk. There were certain formalities, she supposed—it would be just as well to get them over with as quickly as possible.
Setting the lamp back on the washstand, she opened the door and then jumped back as a pair of drunken seamen practically tumbled inside her bedroom.
