Peach Orchard Farm, 1864
THE AFTERNOON IN the woods with Will lingered in Charlotte’s mind as she sorted and cleaned herbs, washed roots and put the greens on to boil. She felt Lizzy’s watchful gaze upon her, certain her guilt showed though she’d done nothing wrong.
Finally, the work complete, Charlotte stole upstairs to the blue room. She wrote to her mother, read Proverbs 31 three times as penance for her troubled heart, and she prayed.
Edgar came home that night, and Charlotte took his return as an answer to her prayers.
“You’re tired,” she said, following his limping gait into the study where only this morning she’d met with the captain. She was careful not to look at the chair where Will had sat that very morning talking to her as if she was more than the conquered foe, more than a farm wife who barely knew how to speak to her husband. And wasn’t that what drew her to the handsome captain and loosed her tongue and, God forbid, her heart?
Edgar grunted, expression sour. Since the coming of the Yankees, his jowls sagged more and bags pillowed beneath his eyes. The Federal occupation was taking a toll on this proud Confederate, and Charlotte was thankful for the pity that welled in her breast. Regardless of her prayers for love, pity and duty were all she could give her husband. But give him that, she would.
“Jacobs, that fool of a foreman, quit the mill,” he grumbled. “I’m left to do all the work myself.” Her husband lowered his bulk into the desk chair with a heavy sigh. He looked as worn as old Hub and his foot was every bit as twisted as the arthritic old slave.
“What of Silas and Percy? Aren’t they helping you?” She folded her hands in the fabric of her skirt, the smooth, cool softness of cotton a familiar comfort, a means to appear serene when her mind was anything but.
“Bah. Worthless. You and Lincoln have ruined them all. They’re getting ideas in their heads.”
Though Charlotte refused to apologize for teaching the slaves to read the Bible, Edgar’s words raised the hairs on her neck. “They won’t leave us, will they?”
“Who can say what slaves will do in these trying times? I should sell the lot of them while I can make a dollar. Worthless fools.” He bent to his boots, rubbing at his right calf. “My leg aches all the way up my back. My laces, Charlotte.”
Skirt forming a puddle of blue cotton, Charlotte knelt at her husband’s feet and began to loosen his boot strings. She’d done the task many times before, but tonight the kindness was more than a wife caring for her husband’s deformed and swollen foot. Tonight, the act was penance and a promise to be the wife she’d once vowed to be.
She tugged the slick black boots away, letting them fall to the wooden floor with a clatter that reminded her of the marching feet of soldiers. Soldiers. Captain Will.
Taking Edgar’s hot, doughy flesh between her palms, she massaged along the crooked bone, rotated the bent ankle, and dug her thumbs into the ball and sides of his foot until his head tilted back in a pleasured moan.
In childhood, Edgar had suffered the agony of having his bones broken and reset in plaster. Charlotte could not see that the treatment had done a bit of good, though Edgar claimed the foot had once been turned ninety degrees inward. Now, it was only a misshapen lump of bone and flesh. She could imagine how much it pained him to stand and walk. She imagined and let compassion well.
After a bit, she rose and gently touched his shoulder. “Rest, dear. I’ll heat water for a soak.”
His head snapped up. “My foot pains fiercely. Bring the whiskey.”
Her fingers tightened on the door edge as dread tightened around her middle with more grip than a corset. She stared at her husband, not daring to speak against his wishes but admonishing him with a pleading look.
His return stare was belligerent. “Do as I say, Charlotte.”
With a dip of her chin, Charlotte exited the room, leaving her husband slumped in the chair, one arm on the writing desk, his bare and damaged foot jutting out across the polished boards. Defeat wreathed him like a laurel. Defeat and anger and disappointment. The latter was because of her, she was certain. She, his British wife with the strange ideas who had never quite been embraced by the Southern women of Honey Ridge, was a disappointment.
Her pulse clattered against her collarbone with the knowledge of how badly she’d failed and how much she desired to please her husband. Especially now when her heart threatened to betray them both.
The house had settled, though the voices of men playing at cards or sharing stories flickered with the lamplight. There was little she could call normal about her dwelling in these days of occupation, but at least the night was quieter than in the beginning.
At a sound from above, she glanced up at the ceiling, thinking of her sisters-in-law and son on the upper floor. Upon her return from town, Josie had been subdued, an unusual if welcome turn of events. Patience—dear and gentle Patience—had taken to her room to nurse a broken-winged bluebird found in the orchard by one of the soldiers who seemed particularly taken with the youngest sister.
Benjamin was tucked safely in the room next to hers with Tandy on a pallet at his side. Safe because of Will’s promise of protection. She’d hugged them and listened to their excited retelling of the beehive and the biscuits they’d dipped in sweet cow’s butter and honey. If Will was in every other sentence, Charlotte could do nothing to change it. The captain had given them both something they sorely lacked.
While heating water and measuring the herbs, she listened for groans or calls of distress from the wounded and, relieved to hear none this night, hurried back to the study. Back to the husband to whom she’d pledged her troth.
In the hall outside the parlor, she heard Will’s gentle, reassuring laugh. Her heart leaped toward the sound. Her memory flashed to those moments in the wood, moments of innocent conversation that felt stolen and wrong because of the pleasure they’d given her.
Why, dear Lord, did her heart not leap and dance toward her husband?
Edgar hadn’t moved from his position at the desk, but now he was writing in the ledger that housed the finances of the farm. At her entrance, he slapped the ledger shut with a vehemence that made her jump and slosh a few drops of water. Edgar gazed coolly at her from tired gray eyes.
“You have Lizzy to fetch and carry. I don’t know why you insist on playing the maid.”
He knew so little of the household these days. Did he not understand that they had all been pressed into service to the point of exhaustion?
“I am pleased to tend to my husband’s needs.” The choice of words thickened in her throat and she dared not glance at his face. For she suspected his most manly needs were met elsewhere.
Gently, she lifted his foot and placed it into the warm bath salts. With careful, intentional strokes she massaged and flexed, aching for a man embittered by a curvature of bone.
“Did you bring my liquor?” His tone was harsh and cutting. He knew she hadn’t. Knew she didn’t want to. The times when Edgar drank too much whiskey proved unpleasant for them all. Two months ago, he’d raised a horse whip to one of the slaves and his unleashed anger had frightened her more than the Yankee onslaught.
“Is the pain so terrible, Edgar?”
“Yes.” The tone was colder than snow and harder than iron.
“I thought...perhaps...” She stroked a light, caressing touch along the muscles of his calf and raised her eyes to his. Holding a steady gaze wasn’t easy with his dispassionate response, for her knowledge of seduction was sorely limited. And yet, she must try, both for duty and for honor.
“Perhaps you would join me in my room—” she intentionally lowered her lashes, feeling the fool, her heart thundering with hope and embarrassment “—for...a back rub.”
Edgar simply watched her, but he didn’t push her away and she was emboldened. Her hand moved higher to his thigh. “Remember how you enjoyed my back rubs?”
In the early days of their marriage, he’d wanted her hands on him, wanted to touch and kiss and stroke and smooth his fingers through her unfettered hair. She’d almost forgotten how good it felt to be treasured.
When he said nothing, she rose and moved to his side. This was her husband. She’d borne him a son. She reached for his hand, entwining their fingers. She turned his palm up and placed her lips there. His skin smelled of corn grist.
“Wouldn’t you like another baby, Edgar? Perhaps a little girl with your dark hair or another boy as smart and strong as Benjamin. Couldn’t we try again?”
He reached for her, settled his grip on her waist and...dug in his nails. Charlotte remained perfectly still, absorbing his cruel fingers, throbbing with the brokenness of their relationship.
“I’ll bury no more children, Charlotte,” he rasped out, his face distorted with sorrow and fury. “Get the whiskey.”