Silas stood facing Regina in the downstairs bedroom, which adjoined the parlor. He had waited to show her this room last—it was already furnished, if sparsely, with a wide bed and an elaborately carved dresser crafted from solid oak.
“Booker built the dresser and bed with his own hands,” he explained, running a palm over the satiny finish. “He did a wonderful job, don’t you think? He’s quite the artist.”
When Regina didn’t respond, Silas pressed on. “Celie and Lily made the mattress and quilted the comforter. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
And it was. A wedding ring quilt, with interlocking circles in soft pastel hues on a background of unbleached muslin. Each stitch tight and even. The two of them had labored for weeks, Silas knew, quilting by lamplight long into the night. Where they got the fabric, he had no idea, but here and there he recognized snippets of some of the house slaves’ better clothes, and a hand-me-down or two from Olivia Warren herself.
A labor of joy. A wedding gift from people who loved Silas and valued his presence in their midst.
Still Regina offered no response.
Silas couldn’t take the suspense a moment longer. “Well, darling, what do you think? If you could have seen it before—”
Regina managed a wan smile and sank down onto the bed. “I think—” she began, then paused. “I think you’ve done rather well, considering what you had to work with.”
The words dropped like lead pellets into Silas’s heart. He swallowed, hard, to push back the choking lump in his throat, but before he could say anything, she spoke again.
“It isn’t Rivermont, of course, but it is very nice, all things considered. I know a seamstress back in Baltimore who makes lovely cutwork duvets and draperies—” One long fingernail pulled at a knotty place in the muslin. “I’m sure she could fashion something more appropriate than a . . . a slave patchwork.” Her nostrils flared just slightly, as if she had caught a whiff of something distasteful.
Silas fought to stem the rising tide of his emotions. He knew, of course, that his fiancée was accustomed to the finer things in life, and the master’s big house would be exactly the kind of place that would appeal to her refined sensibilities. But once he had seen the magic Booker had worked in transforming the original log cabin into this large and impressive home, he had been so sure that Regina would be elated. It appeared to him now that he had grossly overestimated her response.
Make certain you choose wisely.
Grandmama’s words echoed in his memory, but Silas pushed them aside. He couldn’t let his initial disappointment rule his future. Regina was here, and that was what mattered. Olivia Warren was already in the middle of planning a large wedding for the end of April—in the formal gardens, with every plantation family within fifty miles in attendance. And besides, once Regina had the opportunity to choose the furnishings, surely she would be pleased with her new home. It was best to just let her have her head and do what she wanted with the place.
Silas took her hand and led her into the parlor, where they sat together on the single love seat. “Regina,” he said quietly, “I’m sure this isn’t quite what you expected or wanted, but I’ve left most of it unfurnished so that you could choose whatever you like, whatever will make this house feel like home to you.” He thought of his unexpected raise in salary, and the sour taste of bile filled his throat. “I’ve got some savings set aside, and—”
Regina wasn’t listening. Her eyes wandered around the room, as if already she were imagining a rug here, a settee there.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard Grandmama whisper again: Choose wisely.
Then suddenly Silas remembered: the brooch! He reached into his pocket and drew out the gray velvet box. “I asked you to marry me before I left Baltimore,” he whispered, looking into her sea-green eyes. “But I had no token to give you.” He extracted the brooch from its casing and held it out to her. The heart-shaped amethyst glowed a deep purple, as if it beat with a living pulse. “This brooch has been in my family for generations,” he said in a low voice. “My grandmother gave it to me to present to the woman I would marry.”
Regina looked down at the brooch and then up at him. “Why, isn’t that a pretty little bauble,” she said, with a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Is it quite valuable, do you think?”
Silas winced. “Grandmama said it was as priceless as the one who wears it is to the one who gives it.”
Regina gave him a blank stare. “How sweet. And you’re sweet, too.” She patted his arm and gave him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, Silas.” Then she stroked a hand across his beard. “You will shave that off before the wedding, won’t you, darling?”
Lily’s cousin Jute set a steaming tureen of soup on the table in front of Silas and smiled at him. “Chicken an’ rice,” she said, then dipped a curtsy in Regina’s direction. “Hope you likes it, ma’am.” She backed out of the dining room and paused in the doorway. “I be in the kitchen if ya’ll needs anything.”
Silas ladled the soup into a bowl and passed it to Regina, then served up a second one for himself. He slid the tureen aside, picked up his soup spoon, and dug in. It was wonderful—a thick, hearty chicken stock laced with big chunks of meat and the wild mushrooms that grew down by the river.
Regina pushed hers around for a moment and finally sipped daintily at the broth. “Hasn’t anyone taught that nigra girl how to wait a proper table?” she complained. “A slave is supposed to serve the food, not just slap it down in front of the master.”
Silas felt himself grimace. Regina had been here more than a fortnight, and in all that time he had barely had a moment alone with her. She was spending every day up at the big house with Olivia Warren, planning the wedding, ordering furniture and draperies and rugs, and every evening Silas had been forced to endure the Warrens’ company at elaborate dinners. At last, thanks to Lily and Jute, he had managed to get her alone for a quiet meal in their own house. Couldn’t they just have a few minutes of pleasant conversation?
“I’m not a master,” Silas countered. “And Jute is not a house servant. She’s a field hand who’s already worked ten hours today chopping cotton. She prepared this nice dinner for us as a gift.”
Regina ignored the part about Jute’s hard work and generous offering. “You’re the master of your own home,” she retorted. “And why couldn’t you be a master—a real one, I mean? Olivia says Colonel Warren would sell you a hundred acres of good cotton land adjacent to the oak grove, and even help you build slave quarters—”
His self-control failed him, and Silas watched as his hand formed into a fist and slammed down on the table, rattling the silverware. “I am not now, nor will I ever, be a master! I am a doctor, a physician, whose lifework is to heal people, not enslave them!”
Regina gazed at him in surprise, but she didn’t appear a bit disconcerted. “Now, Silas,” she soothed, “you know perfectly well that when we’re married—it’s only a week away now, can you imagine?—we will have to have a few slaves, whether you want to continue this obsession with medicine or not. We’ll need a cook, and a driver, and someone to clean the house—” Her dainty brow furrowed into an expression of disdain. “Surely you don’t expect me to do all that?”
Silas hadn’t really thought about it, but now that she had brought up the subject, he knew that deep in his heart he did not have any expectation that his beautiful Regina would give herself to household drudgery. “We’ll get you the help you need,” he conceded. “But they will be employees, not slaves, and they will be paid a fair wage.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“I’m perfectly serious. Why not?”
“Because it will ruin everything, that’s why not! Think about it, Silas. What’s going to happen if you begin to pay Negroes for doing what they’ve already been purchased to do? It can only result in chaos, and in dissatisfaction for everyone. And how, pray tell, do you intend going about acquiring such ’employees,’ as you call them?”
Silas scratched his beard and waited, and at last the answer came to him. “I suppose I’ll buy their freedom.”
“You’ll buy their freedom? And then pay them wages?”
“Yes.” Silas smiled at the brilliance of the plan. “That’s exactly what I’ll do.”
“It’s insane.”
“No,” he countered, “it’s humane. Negroes are not animals, Regina. They’re human beings with hearts and souls, with minds and gifts and dreams.”
She stared at him. “Silas Noble, you’re a—a—an abolitionist!”
Silas was about to respond when he heard a noise behind him. He turned to see Jute, standing in the doorway with a platter of roast pork and sweet potatoes in her hands. “Beg pardon, Massah Doctor,” she said as she set the food on the table. “I come to take the soup away and bring the entry.”
“Entrée,” Regina corrected icily.
“Yes’m.” Jute tested the word: “Ahn-tray.” She gathered up the soup bowls and tureen, and then stood in front of Silas with her head down.
“Is there something else, Jute?”
“Yessuh.” She nodded. “I jus’ want you to know that I’d be right proud to serve you and your missus in this fine house.”
“She was eavesdropping!” Regina hissed.
Jute’s eyes went wide. “No ma’am! I mean, I didn’t plan to hear ya’ll talking. It jus’ happened, accidental-like.”
“It’s all right, Jute. And thanks for the offer. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“My freedom wouldn’t cost much, Massah Doctor. I ain’t much good as a field hand. And I be real loyal to you and your lady. Yessuh. Real loyal.”
When Jute had disappeared into the kitchen, Regina turned on Silas with an expression of triumph. “You see? What did I tell you? You’ll have nigras lining up from here to Memphis trying to get you to buy their freedom. What does that tell you?”
Silas bit his lower lip. “It tells me,” he said quietly, “that no human being is content being a slave.”
Regina pulled on Silas’s arm. “Stop this immediately!” she demanded. “I have no intention of going in there!”
Silas looked at her. The door to the cabin stood open, and inside he could see the slave midwife and Pearl Avery preparing Lily for delivery.
“Come on.” He jerked Regina inside and shut the door behind her. “You’ll be amazed. The experience of birth is nothing short of a miracle.”
Silas believed his own words. Every time a new life came into the world, every time a helpless infant slid into his hands squalling and squirming and so vitally alive, he felt as if he had been born again himself. Delivering babies had made him a believer—in God, in hope, in the future.
“I’m going to need your help, Regina,” he said. “I can’t do this without you.”
The truth was, he didn’t need her assistance. If she hadn’t been there, someone else would have volunteered to hold the lamp, to hand him equipment from his medical bag. But he had other reasons for wanting his fiancée present at the birth of Lily’s baby. She needed to see, firsthand, why his “obsession with medicine,” as she called it, was so important to him. It was time for her to experience what it meant to be a doctor’s wife. And he hoped, deep in the recesses of his soul, that participating in this birth might change her mind about the humanity of Negroes.
“I—I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Stand here beside me and hold the light.”
With obvious reluctance, she obeyed, and waited silently, her eyes averted, while Silas examined Lily.
“How far apart are her contractions?”
Pearl came and stood behind him, placing one hand on his shoulder. “About five minutes, Silas. It won’t be long.”
“Who is this woman?”
Silas turned to see Regina frowning. “Sorry—guess I wasn’t thinking about introductions. This is Pearl Avery, Regina. She’s trained as a nurse. I don’t know what I’d do without her.” He looked up at Pearl. “This is my fiancée, Regina Masterson, from Baltimore.”
“Delighted to meet you,” Pearl said pleasantly, offering a hand that Regina did not take. “I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
“And I, on the other hand, have heard nothing about you,” Regina responded coolly.
“I wrote you about Pearl,” Silas protested. “Didn’t I?”
“Not a word.”
“Oh. Well, I thought I did.” He turned back to Lily. “I’ll explain it later. Lily, you doing all right?”
“Yessuh, Massah Doctor. I jus’ be glad when he comes.”
“I’ll bet. My best guess is that you’re a couple of weeks overdue.”
“He a big one, ain’t he? Like his daddy.”
Silas nodded. “I think you’re right, Lily. You sure it’s a boy?”
“Don’t rightly know. Don’t matter to me, long as it’s healthy.”
Lily was a big woman herself, muscular and strong from working the fields, with wide hips and powerful thighs—the kind of figure people often identified as “plainly built for childbearing.” Under other circumstances, Silas wouldn’t be worried about a successful delivery. But the baby was large—and late. Besides this, the child was Lily’s only living connection to Marcus, the man she loved, and Silas had vowed to her that, no matter what, he would help her through this.
Regina stood rigid and stoic, saying nothing, while Lily labored for two hours. Then, just as the final contractions were coming, Celie rushed into the cabin.
“Doctah Silas!” she gasped. “Massah Warren sent a boy down to get you.”
“I can’t come now,” Silas muttered, his attention focused on the child about to be born.
“He say you gotta come to the stables. Mister Tilson, he got throwed from Massah’s new stallion and his leg is broke.”
A surge of satisfaction rose up unbidden in Silas’s heart, and he stifled a smile at the irony of the situation. Silas could never forget, as long as he lived, the image of the slave Marcus, Lily’s man, beaten to raw meat and bleeding to death from a severed artery. The overseer had killed Marcus without a moment’s remorse, and now, on the evening when Marcus’s child was being born, he needed help. Well, Tilson had it coming to him. This was payback for his cruelty.
But that wasn’t how a doctor should react, Silas argued with himself. No matter who, no matter what the circumstances, he had a responsibility to save lives. To heal, not hurt. And what had Robert Warren told him? Whites come first. Remember who you’re working for.
Silas remembered. How could he forget, when Warren had raised his salary contingent upon his promise to comply with his employer’s orders? Without that money, Silas could never afford to provide Regina with a life of luxury and social acceptability.
“Massah Doctor,” Lily pleaded. “Don’ leave me now.”
“Do you want me to tell Massah Warren I couldn’t find you?” Celie suggested.
In that instant, Silas made his decision. Tilson wouldn’t die from a broken leg. When he had seen Lily’s baby safely delivered, he would go and set the man’s bone. He doubted that he could save his income, but maybe—just maybe—he could salvage what was left of his integrity.
Silas shook his head. “No. Don’t lie to him. Tell him Lily’s baby is on the way, and to keep Tilson’s leg immobilized. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Celie ran out, and Silas glanced up at Regina. Her lovely face had been transformed into a mask of disbelief, and her green eyes glittered with unspoken anger.
Regina held the lamp high and didn’t move. Nor did she turn away from the disgusting bloody mess Silas had called a miracle. What was so miraculous about a nigra woman dropping her bawling infant onto a mattress stuffed with straw? She had seen a foal born once, a thoroughbred. That process was neater and considerably more efficient than what she was witnessing tonight.
And besides, how could Silas decide that birthing a slave baby was more important than tending to one of his own? The man had no concept of what was proper in polite society. He was a doctor, yes, but didn’t a doctor have some choice in the matter?
With a curious detachment, she watched Silas as he worked. And gradually the truth dawned on her: he had chosen! He loved what he was doing. He would actually rather be in a slave cabin pulling a little pickaninny out of a big black mammy than in the Warrens’ Rivermont mansion setting the white overseer’s broken leg.
She had accused him, point-blank, of being an abolitionist, and he had never responded to the charge. But no matter what he said, she could see the truth for herself. It was in his eyes, the way he looked at the nigra woman who sweated and strained on the mat. It was in his hands, the way he touched her with comfort and encouragement. It was in his voice, as he urged her to push or hold back, as he spoke to her in low, compassionate tones.
“More light!” he called out. Regina held the lamp a little closer and watched as a nappy-headed infant pushed its way out into the world. It was a girl.
Regina gave an involuntary shudder as Silas lifted the baby up and cuddled it against his chest. He was getting his best shirt all messy; those stains would never come out.
And then, something totally unexpected happened. The white woman, Pearl Avery, reached out to take the infant and wrap it in a blanket. Her hands touched Silas’s, and she froze for a moment, looking up at him. In the yellow gleam of the lamplight, Regina saw the naked truth.
It wasn’t possible—she must be imagining things. After all, who was this Pearl Avery? More man than woman, to all appearances, in her dungarees and boots and chambray shirt. She wasn’t attractive, and she certainly did not possess a single ounce of breeding or gentility.
Still, Regina couldn’t deny what she had witnessed, the look she had seen in Silas’s eyes.
Her fiancé was in love with another woman.
“Do you mean to say that he stayed with that slave woman when Robert had expressly ordered him to come here?”
Regina nodded. Silas was out in the stables, setting Otis Tilson’s broken leg, and in the meantime, over tea and finger sandwiches, she had told Olivia everything—or almost everything. “Yes, just as I said. He forced me to go with him to the slave cabins. I resisted, of course, but now I’m glad I went. I saw it all, with my own eyes.”
“It must have been horrible for you.” Olivia patted Regina’s hand and poured more tea.
“It was.” Regina closed her eyes and shuddered. “The smell! I can hardly believe I survived it without fainting. And the blood and mess—”
“There, there, dear,” Olivia cooed. “You’re here now, back where you belong.”
“But Silas doesn’t belong here.”
“Whatever do you mean, child?”
“I mean,” Regina answered fiercely, “that he likes it! He’d rather be with the slaves. He even told me at dinner tonight that he was thinking about buying freedom for some of the nigras.”
“He said what?”
“We were talking about how many servants we would need for the house. I was encouraging him to take Colonel Warren up on his offer of the land, to begin developing a plantation of his own. But he said he would never own a single slave as long as he lived, and that if we needed servants, he’d buy their freedom and then pay them a wage, as employees.”
“Good heavens, no!” Olivia put a hand to her heart and fanned herself with a linen napkin. “Does he know what he’s saying?”
Regina took a sip of her tea and set the cup down with a shaky hand. “Apparently he’s serious about it. If you could have seen the way he acted tonight, as if those nigras were—I don’t know . . . his family.”
“He can’t go around freeing slaves and then paying them—not in Mississippi! It’s preposterous. We’d have an uprising on our hands.”
“That’s what I told him.” Regina nodded. “I insisted it was a crazy idea—completely insane. But after what I witnessed tonight, I don’t think it’s just a notion he’s recently gotten into his head. I think—”
“Think what, dear?” Olivia prompted.
“I think he may be—” Regina took a deep breath. “I think he may be an abolitionist.”
“No!” Olivia Warren’s expression of horror mirrored the feelings that were churning inside Regina herself. “Oh, my poor dear! Whatever are you going to do?”
Regina hesitated. She had known the truth the moment she had set foot in that hodgepodge of a house Silas was so proud of, the second she had gotten her first glance at the pitiful old amethyst brooch she now wore at her neckline. But she had yet to say the words. Slowly she unclasped the brooch and laid it on the table. “I’m going back to Baltimore.”
“You can’t!” Olivia wailed. “The wedding is in one week. And I’ve grown so fond of you! What will I do without you at Rivermont?”
“I’m sorry,” Regina responded. “You’ve gone to so much trouble to make me feel welcome here, and I do apologize for the inconvenience. I’ll miss you, too, but—”
“But what? Isn’t there some way we can make this right? Surely your influence will help Silas see the error of his ways—”
“The error of what ways?”
Regina looked up to see Silas standing in the doorway. She didn’t know how long he had been standing there, but the expression on his face told her that he had heard enough to be angry.
“Talking about anyone I know?” Silas walked over to the table and poured himself a cup of tea. He picked up two sandwiches and settled himself in the chair across from Regina. “I’ve set Tilson’s leg. He’ll live.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“And you sound as if you’ve been unburdening yourself to the Master’s wife.” He shook his head. “What did you tell her?”
“She told me,” Olivia said, “that you disobeyed a direct order from my husband, and that you’ve been talking like an abolitionist.”
Silas heaved a deep sigh but said nothing.
“Now, Silas,” the woman went on, “I think we need to have ourselves a little chat. I have considerable influence with my husband, and I do believe I could convince him to give you another chance, if only—”
Silas held up a hand to silence her. His mind flashed back over his dinner conversation with Regina, how she wanted him to be a plantation owner in his own right, with a big mansion and hundreds of slaves. But he could never convince himself to do it—not in three lifetimes. Not for Regina Masterson. Not for anybody.
It was time for him to stand up for who he was—as a man, and as a physician. No one, not even the Master who paid his salary, was going to tell him whom he could and could not help. He stood to lose everything—his job, his income, the woman he was engaged to marry. His family back home in Baltimore would probably never speak to him again. But he would not lose himself.
“No,” he said finally. “I don’t want another chance. I want to be given the liberty to treat those people who most need my medical services, no matter who they are.”
“And that’s your final word on the matter?”
Silas turned to see Robert Warren enter the room. Every muscle in the man’s wiry body was taut, as if for a fight. His eyes glittered with fury.
“Yes sir.” Silas stood to face him. “If I do any less, I’ll be denying my oath as a physician.”
Warren’s jaw clenched. “We have had this discussion before, have we not? And you have repeatedly disobeyed my orders. I have no choice but to—”
The master stopped abruptly as a white-coated slave entered the room, followed by a flushed and breathless Pearl Avery.
“Who is this woman, and what is she doing in my house?” Warren demanded.
“Forgive me, Colonel Warren. I didn’t mean to barge in. But Silas—ah, Dr. Noble—is needed at the slave quarters.”
“And you are—?”
Silas stepped forward and put a hand on Pearl’s elbow. “This is Pearl Avery, Colonel Warren. She—”
“Avery? Harmon Avery’s daughter, from the mill?”
“Yes sir. She’s also a nurse, and she has been assisting me—”
“From what I’ve seen, she’s been doing quite a bit more than assisting,” Regina blurted out. “Just look at her! I can see it in her eyes, and in his.” She let out a gasp and reached for Olivia’s hand. “He may be engaged to me, but he’s in love with her!”
Pearl took a step back, and Silas watched as a bright red flush crept into her cheeks. He could feel heat climbing up his own neck, and he tore his gaze from hers.
“That’s nonsense!” he protested. “We just enjoy working together, that’s all. Pearl has been invaluable to me, and—”
Suddenly words failed him, and Silas stopped mid-sentence. No matter how he tried to deny it, there was something between him and Pearl. Something special. The way she looked at him—the way she was looking at him now, with a softness in her eyes. The way he felt charged with vitality whenever her hand brushed his. Every time he left her, an empty space opened up in his heart, a space not even Regina’s presence could fill.
Then he looked at Regina, and he saw what he had refused to see before this moment: a spoiled child, whose constant selfish demands would drain him, divert him from his purpose. She hadn’t the faintest understanding of his call to medicine and his desire to heal, nor did she make any effort to understand. And life with her, for all her beauty and elegance, would be a constant battle of wills.
Choose wisely, his grandmother’s voice whispered in his heart.
“Is this true?” Warren demanded, his eyes fixed with disdain on Pearl Avery, still clad in her dungarees and boots. “Are you in love with this—this—?”
Silas sighed. “I don’t know. But I do know I don’t have time for this discussion right now.” He turned back to Pearl. “What’s the problem?”
“Celie’s boy Enoch. He turned a pot of coffee over on himself. Celie’s tending to him, but he needs a doctor.”
“All right, let’s go.” Silas grabbed his bag from the doorway.
“If you leave now, Noble, you’ll never set foot in this house again,” Warren snarled. “You’ll never collect another dime of salary. And I’ll expect you off my land by nightfall.”
Silas turned. “I believe, Colonel Warren, that I hold the deed to my house and land.”
“Maybe so, but you’ll never work in this county again.”
Silas lifted one eyebrow. “I’ll still have plenty of patients.”
“You’d throw away our whole life?” Regina howled. “You’d give up everything to tend those—those nigras?”
Silas looked at her and saw in her eyes not regret, or even pain, but pure rage. She didn’t love him; she was only upset that he had not surrendered to her will. “I’m afraid so, my dear,” he answered. “And I’m afraid it’s something you’ll never understand as long as you live.”
Regina picked up the amethyst heart from the table and hurled it at him. “Then keep your pathetic old brooch. And that house the slaves built for you. I’ll have no part of it!”
The brooch clattered against the wall, and he reached out his hand and scooped it up. “That’s probably for the best,” he sighed. “Good-bye, Regina. I’m certain the Warrens will see you to the station. Give my regards to everyone in Baltimore.”