Cameron, Taye and Naomi took the train from Baltimore, heading south toward Richmond. There they would spend the night and try to locate a train that would take them closer to Jackson, Mississippi. However, no railroad employees seemed able to tell them exactly how they would accomplish that or what train they would need to take. Despite the uncertainty, Cameron was determined to keep going.
So many train tracks had been purposely destroyed by Union soldiers. It would take months, years to restore train service as it had been before the war. Until then, passengers would have to make do.
It was not until the train was south of Washington, D.C., and into Virginia that the scenery began to change and evidence of the war surrounded them. Cameron knew the battles sites by heart—Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Petersburg, Wilderness, Cedar Creek. But now those places weren’t just marks on a map or black ink in the newspaper. The battlefields in the ravaged land around them were real.
The women fell into silence in the mostly empty passenger car, staring out through the sooty train windows as the countryside passed in an almost surreal way. No one spoke; there was nothing to say that could express the aching heartbreak they were feeling.
A house and outbuildings just south of Washington had been burned to the ground. Cameron had certainly seen houses ravaged by fire before, but what she had not seen was a burned house with four white wooden crosses in the front yard. The tiny farmstead had become a cemetery.
She felt tears burn the backs of her eyelids as she wondered whose graves those were. Did they belong to the family who had lived in the house and died of hunger or been killed by renegade soldiers? Or had men died fighting on this front lawn and been buried by their comrades, their loved ones never to see their graves? Which was more tragic? she wondered.
As the train chugged south, Cameron began to realize that while the fields in Eastern Maryland were planted and thriving, the fields in Virginia that had not been burned had been left to grow fallow because there were no seeds to plant, no healthy men to work the soil. In many places, roads had grown into weedy paths. Front yards that had once been manicured by scythe or sheep were growing into tangled meadows. And evidence of fire was everywhere. Brush fires had burned fields, woods and homes. Towering shade trees and orchards had been hacked down along the roadside to serve for firewood for cold, hungry soldiers. The countryside was black and empty.
And the graves. The graves were the hardest to bear. They were everywhere. In the churchyards. On private properties. Even occasionally by the roadside with nothing to mark a man’s passing but a crudely constructed wooden cross. Who would mourn these lost men? Who would tend their graves?
When the war had come four years ago, Cameron had understood intellectually why it had to be fought. Her father, though a Southern senator and planter, had been a staunch supporter of the antislavery movement. She understood that to set men and women free, it might come to war. But never, in her wildest dreams, had she ever considered the price Americans, Northerners and Southerners, would pay for the conflict.
By the time the women reached Richmond that evening, Cameron was exhausted, mentally as well as physically. She barely remembered the carriage ride to one of the few hotels accepting guests and was thankful for the darkness that shielded her eyes from the horrors the city had experienced.
“Is this the best you can offer us?” Cameron had demanded of the driver as he stopped the sagging coach in front of a wooden two-story building with a broken front door and a rusty tin stovepipe protruding from a boarded-up front window. “Are you sure this place is respectable?”
“Richmond House has mattresses on their beds, private rooms for respectable women and a roof that don’t leak unless it’s rainin’ cats and dogs.” He pointed with the tip of his carriage whip. “Don’t look like much, but they got a covered well and a dining room. Lessin’ you and yer girls fixin’ to sleep on the tracks, you’d best take whatever beds they got. Richmond’s streets ain’t no place for decent folks after dark.”
“Let’s go back to the station,” Taye said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”
“Ain’t no other,” the driver warned. “Most places won’t take women travelin’ without their husbands.”
“It will be fine,” Cameron said. “So long as we can get a hot bath, clean sheets and something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
The interior of Richmond House was little better than the outside. The only room available was a narrow cubbyhole in the back, wedged under a slanting tin roof. The floor was bare, the blankets on the bed thin and patched and the wallpaper water stained. The hotel stank of mold, grease and cooking onions. Refusing to eat in the dining room without Taye and Naomi, who were not welcome in the “public” room, Cameron asked to have their meal brought up to the room. There, they ate a cold supper of ham, cabbage and water, and fell into an exhausted sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night, Cameron began to feel ill. She got up, drank some water from a pitcher provided by their host, and used the necessary pot. She prayed she was not getting ill, but was just tired and unfamiliar with the simple food they had consumed. By morning, she felt even worse, but she was determined to get to Elmwood as quickly as she could. There, everything would be clearer, not so dismal. She just had to get there.
“Cam? Are you all right?” Taye, who was repacking one of their carpet bags to leave for the train station, turned to her sister.
Cameron stood near the bed and pressed her hand to her abdomen. The squalid room seemed to be spinning around her. She was sick to her stomach again, but there was also cramping. Lower in her belly. Suddenly she was afraid that there was something wrong with the baby, and an overwhelming fear gripped her as tears filled her eyes. All she could think of was Jackson. She wanted Jackson.
“Cameron?” Taye repeated.
But Cameron could barely hear her. Taye’s voice seemed to come from far away.
“Naomi,” Taye said in that distant voice. “I think there’s something wrong with Cameron.”
“No. No, I’m fine,” she mumbled. She looked down to be sure her dress was not stained with blood. No blood. Just indigestion. The baby was fine. But her head was pounding and her tongue felt thick and fuzzy in her mouth. “Just…just a little tired is all,” she heard herself say. “Didn’t…didn’t sleep well last night.”
Cameron saw Taye come toward her. Then the room spun viciously and her sister seemed to whirl out of sight. Another cramp racked Cameron’s body and she doubled over. At the same time, the dirty floor seemed to come up from under her and she felt her knees buckle. Her head must have hit the bedstead as she fell because there was a sudden blossom of pain in her head.
Then blessed darkness.
Cameron stirred, unsure of where she was, who she was with. She felt as if she were floating, but there was pain in her head and an even greater pain in the pit of her stomach. She moaned and someone pressed something damp and cool to her burning head.
“It’s been nearly a week. She’s not any better.”
Was that Taye?
“She be all right,” came another familiar voice. “It was jest that bad water, I tell ya. We boil the water, she get better once it moves through her belly and out.”
“I don’t understand how it can be the water. You drank it. I drank it. I think we need to find a doctor,” Taye said.
Yes, it had to be Taye. And the other woman? Cameron knew her liquidy voice. It was Naomi.
“Ya git her a doctor and she’ll be worse off!” Naomi scoffed. “She the only one got sick ’cause her body was weak to start with! I jest thank Noah’s Lord this boy chil’ of mine was drinking my milk and not that water, else he might be sick, too. A mama’s teats got a way of filterin’ out the bad spirits.”
“I just can’t believe there’s nothing we can do but sit here and wait for her to get better,” Taye protested, adjusting the cool cloth on Cameron’s head.
Cameron wanted to speak up. She wanted to tell Taye that she didn’t want to be here. Here was Richmond. She remembered now. But she wasn’t supposed to be in Richmond. She wanted to go to Elmwood. She knew she wouldn’t be sick if she could just get to Elmwood. If she could just tell Taye and Naomi.
But Cameron couldn’t find any words. Her mouth wouldn’t obey. The women went on talking as if she were not there.
“’Sides, we ain’t doin’ nuthin’. I tole you, we boil water. Every bit that goes in her mouth. The heat kills the bad spirits. We got to keep givin’ it to her. Wash out the bad with the good.”
“I only wish I knew how to find Jackson. He’ll be so upset with us when he realizes we left Baltimore and Cameron got sick in Richmond.”
“Ain’t no way to get him. Ya said so yerself. He gone to Lez-i-ana. He’ll be back soon enough. He’ll find his wife gone and he’ll come after her. Sure as rain.”
Cameron felt Taye adjust the cloth on her forehead again. It felt so good that it made her want to sleep. Just sleep.
“I hope she lives long enough for Jackson to find us” was the last thing Cameron heard before she fell asleep.
“Place your bets, gentlemen,” a man in a crisp white shirt and red silk vest called.
Jackson carelessly threw down several bills for his next wager, then scooped up the ivory dice and tossed them.
The crowd that had gathered around the gaming table on the riverboat Saint Louis clapped and exclaimed with excitement as Jackson won again. Men and women he didn’t know called him by name. Some offered to buy him drinks. A woman offered herself to him in a husky whisper in his ear.
The swinging oil lamps that hung from the ceiling cast bright light over the room. Whiskey flowed freely and there were ladies of the evening roaming the gaming tables to keep patrons happy. The light, the women and the noise were all meant to keep a man on his feet, spending money, but they only made Jackson wish he were anywhere but here.
Jackson sighed with boredom. In the years before the war he’d enjoyed gambling immensely and had been considered a high-stakes patron of great acclaim in most of the gambling houses throughout the South. He’d gone days without sleeping or eating to play endless games of poker or craps and never felt so alive. But the pastime no longer interested him.
They were a week into their trip, and Jackson was growing impatient. He had still not obtained any information on Thompson and his raiders. Tonight, he had hoped to be contacted on the gambling floor, but it was well after midnight. For whatever reason, his anonymous contact would not be showing his face tonight. Jackson even wondered now if there was an anonymous contact. He wouldn’t put it past Marie to make up the whole story to get him here alone with her.
Jackson sighed irritably. His father had always told him that a woman was nothing but a thorn in a man’s side, and he was beginning to think the old man had been right. Couldn’t live with them, couldn’t live without them.
Jackson glanced up from the gaming table to survey the crowd of well-dressed, wealthy gamblers. If his contact had been among them, wouldn’t he have made himself known by now? He just wanted to turn in for the night, go to sleep and escape into blessed oblivion where he didn’t have to pretend. And where he didn’t have to think about the spirited, copper-haired beauty who was his life.
Jackson rolled the dice. He’d been mistaken in thinking that putting hundreds of miles between them would somehow ease his anger…or the pain of her rejection.
A part of him wanted to turn around and head for Baltimore, to make what had gone wrong in his marriage right again. But a bigger part of him was stubborn. Cameron had caused all the discontent between them. She wasn’t satisfied with her role as wife; he had been perfectly content. She deserved to sit and stew at home.
“Bets again, gentlemen,” the man in the red vest announced.
Jackson took a portion of his last winnings and tossed them out without counting the bills, glancing up to see Marie approach the gaming table holding shots of whiskey in each hand. Tonight she was dressed in a pink silk gown that complemented her olive skin and ebony hair, making her even lovelier than she appeared by daylight. And those ruby lips—a man just couldn’t take his eyes off those lips and the promises they seemed to whisper, even when she was silent.
“There you are, Jackson,” Marie purred, sidling up beside him as she pressed a glass into his hand. She tipped her chin for a kiss and he leaned over her, gaining full view of her tantalizing breasts, a whiff of her intoxicating perfume. His mouth brushed her red lips and she sighed coquettishly.
“Are you winning?” Marie looked up at him through a veil of black lashes as she sipped her whiskey.
“I always win.” He reached for the dice, but she scooped them up.
“Give them here, sweet,” he said, trying not to sound impatient. Eyes were watching. Ears were listening. He had to be careful to be who he wished to appear.
Marie tossed back her head of glossy black curls piled high in an elaborate coiffure and kissed each ink-dyed ivory die. “For luck.”
He accepted the dice she dropped into his hand and threw them. He won again.
Marie set down her glass and clapped her hands together before scooping up the money in handfuls. “I told you my kiss was good luck.”
Jackson looked down at her. “I think I’ve had my fill. I’m going to turn in.”
“Excellent idea,” she purred.
“Add Captain Logan’s winnings to his account,” Marie ordered as she glided away on Jackson’s arm. “He’s grown bored with your little games.”
They left the bright white lights of the gambling hall and walked outside along the deck toward the passenger cabins. The warm, pungent breeze swept off the dark waters of the Mississippi and reminded Jackson of his days sailing the ocean when he was a young man working for his father in the family shipping business. Those were simpler days.
“We wait one more night,” Jackson said under his breath. “If your contact does not come—”
“He’ll be here. I told you. He said he had to be careful. We pull into another port tomorrow morning. That must be where he is boarding.”
“One more night,” Jackson repeated, “and then we disembark.” He halted at her cabin door.
“Do you want to come in for a drink?” She ran her hand up his arm, and even through the fabric of his evening coat he could feel the heat of her desire for him. It irked him that Marie could obviously crave him, while Cameron, his own wife, didn’t want him in her bed.
But he would not go inside. It was a bad idea. Marie was too tempting and he was in too foul a mood. “Good night, Marie.”
She smiled and smoothed his cheek with her hand. He let her, telling himself it was all for appearance’s sake. Everyone knew of Jackson’s fame from the war, so it was easier to pretend to be himself than another. He had boarded the Saint Louis with Marie on the pretense of traveling to New Orleans on business. He assumed that everyone would naturally presume he was traveling with his mistress; it was the perfect deception. He had told the purser that in order to “keep up appearances,” he and Mrs. LeLaurie would require separate cabins.
“Good night,” she murmured submissively, slipping soundlessly into her room.
Jackson found Falcon waiting by his cabin door, staring out into the darkness. “Anything?” Falcon asked.
“No. I’m going to bed. If we’re not contacted by tomorrow night, I told Marie we’re calling it a bust and going home.”
Falcon nodded. There was room enough for Falcon to share the cabin with Jackson, but each night he slept on a bedroll on the deck, insisting he preferred sleeping beneath the stars. “I will see you in the morning then, friend.”
Jackson nodded and entered his cabin. It was spacious for a riverboat and decorated in heavy oak wainscoting and plush draperies and bed linens. He stripped off his clothes, letting them fall on the floor of the dark cabin and walked naked across the oriental carpet, tacked on the floor, to the bed built into the wall. Moonlight streamed through the open porthole, casting a band of light over the bed to the door.
Jackson lay down on the feather tick across the smooth linen sheets and tucked his arm beneath his head. He stared at the dark-paneled ceiling and listened to the creak and groan of the wood as the boat eased down the Mississippi. He was tired, but he knew it would be a long time before he slept. Images of Cameron and Marie danced in his head, often one superimposed over the other. He heard their voices, so different, other times hauntingly familiar. Marie was easy to be with, so pliable. And Cameron, she was so often so…difficult. But he didn’t love Marie anymore. He loved Cameron. Didn’t he?
Jackson had not been in bed ten minutes when he heard a sound outside his door. He froze, listening. Someone was standing there. Right at his door. Listening. Someone who did not belong there.
In one quick motion he drew a pistol from beneath the mattress, and by the time the door eased open, he was on his knees on the bed, weapon drawn.
“Sweet Jesus, Jackson. What a crass way to greet a woman.”
She closed the door behind her as he lowered his pistol. His entire body trembled, but his hands did not shake.
“Damn it, Marie, I could have shot you,” he grumbled as he tucked the loaded pistol back under the bed.
She stepped into the path of moonlight that streamed through the porthole, and he drew in his breath. She was stark naked.
Against his will, his body responded and there was no way to hide it. “How the hell did you get down the passageway like that?” he snapped.
She rested her hands on her rounded hips. She was shapelier than Cameron. Her breasts and hips were larger, her waist somehow smaller. She had let down her hair and it fell in black waves over her shoulders and down her back. She had the perfect mistress’s body.
“When did you get to be so dull, Jackson?” she purred. “Is that what marriage has done for you?” She glided closer. “Made you a dull boy?”
Jackson swallowed hard, then licked his lips, trying to think about something other than the dark patch of hair between her thighs. He ran a quick mathematics equation in his mind. Mentally counted the beams overhead. Made an inventory of his shoes in the trunk at the foot of the bed. Slowly, the tightening in his groin eased a little.
“Jackson,” Marie breathed.
And just like that, with one word from her, he sprang upright and hard again.
It would be just one night, he thought. Just one. Cameron had thrown him out of her bedchamber. She had denied him his husbandly carnal privileges. Didn’t he have the right to seek solace in another woman’s embrace? And such a willing embrace it was.
Jackson leaped off the bed and snatched up the sheet. When she stepped into his open arms, he covered her naked body, taking care not to touch her bare skin. “What the hell are you doing in here like this, Marie?”
She replied by pressing her mouth to his, warm and pliant. There was something about the familiarity of her taste and the fact that she wanted him. Marie wanted him.
Jackson’s resolve crumbled as he crushed her mouth with his. The sheet fell away and he gripped her bare, soft buttocks feverishly with both hands.
Marie moaned, pressing her hips to his, tantalizing him.
Jackson grabbed one pendulant breast and lowered his head to take her dark, thick nipple in his mouth. He sucked hungrily, not caring if he hurt her.
Marie clung to him, making little panting sounds. “Take me,” she moaned, reaching down to grasp his engorged member. “Please, Jackson, take me now before I die for want of you.”
Jackson grabbed a hank of her black hair and jerked her head backward, covering her mouth with his again. Just this one time. No one would know, he told himself. He deserved her.
Then he opened his eyes and saw amber eyes, not black. Cameron. It was her eyes looking into his.
He had loved Cameron from the moment he had met her. It was a deep, ferocious love, a different love than what he had ever felt for Marie or could ever feel for her.
This…this was just physical. This was about lust and anger and pain of rejection. He knew that.
With every ounce of strength he possessed, Jackson grasped Marie by her shoulders and pushed her back. “No, Marie.” He clenched his fists as his sides, still fighting the desire that throbbed inside like a wound that would not heal.
“I don’t understand.” She sounded genuinely hurt and he felt his chest tighten in response.
“What don’t you understand? I said I’m not interested.”
“But Jackson, you kissed me tonight at the tables.” Her red lips pouted. She sounded so forlorn. “You kissed me here. I thought—”
“Don’t confuse the game we play with reality, Marie. You know better. Out there—” he pointed “—it was all part of the game.”
“And here?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry.” He took another step back. The tightness in his groin was beginning to ease. His mind was gaining control of his body once again. Marie was as lovely as a dark angel, the scent of her skin, heavenly. But he could not allow himself to falter. Not again.
“But I miss you. I need you. Don’t you still desire me?” she questioned in a husky, sensuous voice.
He gestured stiffly, his words stiffer. “I’m a married man now.”
She drew closer. “You were a married man that night outside of Atlanta, too.”
Jackson turned away from Marie, her naked body still silhouetted lusciously in the golden moonlight. “I told you that was a mistake.”
She stepped closer, ran a hand down his bare back, over his buttocks. “But it wasn’t a mistake. It was the best—”
“Marie! Damn you!” He clasped both of her arms and pushed her away from him. “That was a mistake.” He looked away, unable to face her…to face himself. “I was lonely. I was scared. I—”
“You could never be scared of anything, Jackson. That’s why I’ll always love you,” she whispered.
“Well, you mustn’t.” He made himself look into those dark eyes that he feared might yet cast him under a spell. “You mustn’t because I love another now.” He wanted to tell her she had had her chance years ago, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to talk about their past. He just wanted her out of his cabin. “I love my wife. I love Cameron and I don’t love you.”
“You bastard,” she stormed, taking a step toward him.
There was a soft tap on the door and Jackson’s gaze flickered to the wood paneling.
“Jackson?”
“Come in,” he called gruffly.
Marie made a barely audible sound of derision under her breath as she wrapped the sheet tighter around her nakedness. She didn’t like Falcon any more than he liked her.
The Cherokee appeared in the doorway, cast in shadow. “I heard voices,” he said. “I wanted to be certain you did not need me.”
Jackson smiled in the darkness. Falcon was clever; he would give his friend that. “Marie was just leaving. Would you walk her back to her cabin and be certain she gets inside safely?”
Falcon held the door open, giving Marie no choice but to walk out the door as graciously as possible, given the circumstances.
“One more day,” Jackson called quietly after her. “And then I’m going the hell home.”
At Jackson’s insistence, they disembarked the riverboat in Baton Rouge two days later. Marie’s contact had never appeared and Jackson was in a foul mood, feeling that she had wasted his time.
“I don’t understand why you don’t want to stay a day or two,” Marie said from beneath the lace of her pale yellow parasol as they crossed the rotting dock where the riverboat had moored. “You always loved Baton Rouge.” She slid her hand over his shoulder. “Baton Rouge always loved you, Jackson.”
Ignoring her, he glanced over at Falcon. “As soon as the bags are unloaded, we’ll go to the station. God only knows how long we’ll have to wait to catch a train north. Tracks are still out all over the South.”
Falcon nodded his dark head, his gaze darting about as a crowd of vendors elbowed between the sweating lines of black men unloading the ships to envelop the disembarking passengers. Crowds made the Cherokee uncomfortable.
A dirty woman with a huge goiter on her neck pleaded for travelers to buy her fresh milk. A young boy in a straw hat hawked a tin of sweets. Behind them, a coffee-colored dwarf with a shaven head was doing a brisk business in steamed crawfish. The humid air hung thick with the scents of rotting fish, tar and stagnant water. The stench assaulted Jackson, battering his senses as much as the cacophony of whistle blasts, cursing, creaking cart wheels, braying mules and the off-key serenading of a band of musicians who obviously believed that volume could overcome a lack of talent and sobriety.
“Sir, a few pennies for a man in thirst?” A bearded, one-armed soldier garbed in the tattered gray rags of what had once been a Confederate uniform thrust his face into Jackson’s, startling him.
Marie gave a squeal of disgust, drawing back for fear the filthy man might touch her.
“Step aside,” Falcon grunted, trying to put himself between Jackson and the soldier.
Jackson thrust his hand inside his coat for loose coins, unable to keep himself from pulling back as the stench of the man’s body assaulted his nostrils. “You’d do better to buy yourself a meal and a bar of soap than a shot of whiskey.”
“Captain Logan,” the soldier whispered, bringing his face even closer. “I’ve got a message for you.” He spoke like an educated man.
Jackson’s gaze flitted to Falcon, silently telling him to drop back. Then he looked back at the soldier and drew out a suede coin purse from his coat, knowing anyone could be watching them. “Have you no pride in yourself, man?” he chided.
“I cannot believe you are going to give him money,” Marie protested, shaking out the hem of her yellow lawn gown. “Beggars will never learn to find honest work if we continue to give them handouts.”
“What is it?” Jackson whispered to the soldier, taking his time to remove the coins from the bag. “And why should I believe a word you say?”
“For the sake of ‘Puck’s Hill,”’ the veteran replied.
Jackson nodded, recognizing the current password, one that even Marie didn’t know. He glanced at Falcon, who moved to block her view.
“Jessop, the man you were supposed to meet…” the soldier whispered harshly. “He’s dead.”
“Dead?” Jackson met pale brown eyes that had suddenly filled with tears.
“They killed him.”
“How do you know?”
He wiped at his eyes with the back of a dirty hand. “Because I buried him. Jessop was my son. He bought into this for a while. When he realized its madness and tried to back out, it cost him his life.”
“Who killed him?”
“You know who. Thompson’s men.”
“So they’re real?” Jackson pressed coins into the soldier’s filthy hand. To anyone who saw them, it would appear that he was simply offering money and sympathy to one of the South’s bravest, now left destitute.
“Of course they’re real. When will you damned Yankees stop underestimating us? Thompson’s Raiders are real and they’re growing in numbers by the day,” the soldier growled under his breath.
“To what avail?” Jackson began to walk again, as if attempting to rid himself of the beggar. “The war’s over.”
“This isn’t about states’ rights anymore. It’s about hatred. Vengeance.”
“Where’s Thompson?”
“I don’t know. My son wouldn’t tell me. You need to see a man named Spider Bartlett in Birmingham, but he won’t be in place until next month. He’s one of Thompson’s men. Or so Thompson thinks.” The old soldier winked.
“Bartlett in Birmingham,” Jackson repeated.
“Thank ye for the coin. It will buy a bottle of comfort. Strong drink’s all that keeps me going now. The world’s not what it was…nor ever will be again.”
The soldier disappeared into the bustling crowd. Marie slipped her arm through Jackson’s, her eyes slanting with pleasure. “It was him, wasn’t it?” she whispered in his ear. “He was just a little late.”
“No, it wasn’t him.”
“You’re lying.”
“We’ll discuss it later.”
“Jackson.” She clutched at his arm as strain and annoyance made her voice strident.
He shook off her hand. “I said, ‘later.”’
“How long?” Cameron barely whispered, her voice raspy.
Taye tipped the glass of water to her lips. “Eleven days.”
Cameron squinted at the bright light that seeped from behind the closed drapes. “Eleven days? Almost two weeks.” She took another sip and then lay back on the bed again, exhausted from just that little bit of exertion. “It seems like we arrived only a few minutes ago.”
“You were very ill.” Taye set down the glass and brought a damp cloth to her sister’s forehead.
Recalling her symptoms, Cameron suddenly lowered her hand to her flat abdomen. “The baby?” she whispered.
Taye smiled, wiping her forehead and then her cheeks. “Fine. Naomi thinks it was the water. Evil spirits.” She rolled her eyes indicating she wasn’t sure she believed such superstition. “I don’t know. We all drank the water that night at dinner. But Naomi says your soul is weaker because you’re carrying the baby.” She removed the cloth and dropped it into the washbowl beside the bed. “I think she’s full of voodoo nonsense.” She lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “But I boiled the water anyway and you did seem to get better. We’re drinking only boiled water as well.”
Cameron gazed around the shabby hotel room. It had been cleaned up in the time she had been ill, but the wallpaper was still faded and torn, the draperies still tattered. At least it no longer smelled of kerosene smoke and mold. “Where’s Naomi?”
“Gone to the market. Since you fell ill we haven’t dared eat the food here at the hotel. Naomi has been cooking for us in the fireplace.” She nodded toward the glowing coals. “It makes the room hot, but at least no one else had been poisoned.”
“Ngosi?”
Taye smiled. “He’s fine on his mama’s milk. Getting bigger by the day.”
Cameron smiled and settled back on the pillow again. She wanted to ask if Taye had heard from Jackson, but that was silly, of course. He was in New Orleans. He thought she was in Baltimore, safe and sound. “I want to go home, to Elmwood, Taye.”
“In a couple days. Naomi said you need to get your strength back before we travel again. She’s been to the train station several times and she thinks she’s figured out a way to get us to Jackson.”
Cameron reached out and took Taye’s hand in hers. “Thank you so much for taking care of me,” she whispered.
“Don’t be silly.” She squeezed Cameron’s hand and then got up, fussing with the wash bowl. “I didn’t do anything for you that you wouldn’t do for me under the same circumstances.”
Cameron sat up to study her lovely sister through new eyes. She had once thought Taye weak, but she was as strong as any Campbell. Perhaps stronger because of her mother’s heritage. “I hope that’s true.”
“Of course it is. Now hush this talk and let me get you something to eat. Naomi has made a savory lentil soup I know you’ll want to try.”
Cameron lay back on the pillow, thankful her father had loved a woman like Sukey enough to bring a sister like Taye into the world.