Cameron stared at Captain Grey for a moment, lost in memories better left buried. Taye had shot their brother Grant. It was a plain fact that both she and Taye had simply tried to forget.
Taye had killed him on that hot August evening four years earlier, and Cameron and Jackson had buried his body in Elmwood’s graveyard, beside his father. There had been no funeral, no prayers said over the grave, no tears shed. There was only relief, relief to feel safe at last.
After Taye and Cameron fled north to safety, Jackson had quietly let it be known in town that Grant had died and been laid to rest. He had then ordered headstones for both Grant’s and Sukey’s graves and paid to have them set in place. No one in the town had liked Grant enough to even ask how he had died.
Cameron’s lower lip trembled and she bit down on it until the metallic taste of blood seeped onto her tongue. She gazed at Captain Grey. He knew nothing of Grant Campbell; he knew nothing of the evil, vile man Grant had been.
It had been Jackson’s opinion that Grant’s passing from this earth had gone too easily. Because he’d not wanted to see Elmwood’s slaves freed and his own luxurious life altered, Grant had knowingly pushed his father over a second-story veranda rail to his death. He had sold off Elmwood’s slaves, then sent slavers to hunt those who tried to escape. Sukey, Taye’s mother, the love of Senator Campbell’s life, had been shot and bled to death on the banks of the Pearl River trying to flee the men Grant had hired. Not satisfied with the evil he’d wrought, Grant had then attempted to auction Taye’s virginity in a Baton Rouge whorehouse. Who on this earth could have argued that Grant Campbell did not deserve to die for those offenses?
But Taye had not shot her half brother for the crimes he had already committed. No, she’d done it to save Cameron. And Cameron was as certain now as she had been that night, that Taye would never have killed for any other reason.
Cameron tried to push the memories aside, but she couldn’t. Suddenly she could feel the perspiration trailing down her back; she could smell the scent of the honeysuckle near her father’s balcony. In her mind, she could still see her brother leaning over the rail, their father’s pistol gripped in his hand, his eyes wild with madness.
Grant had stood on the same bedchamber balcony he had pushed his father from and shot at her. He missed the first time, but in her heart of hearts she had known he would not miss the second time. Driven by hatred, greediness, lust and jealousy, he would kill his own sister.
Taye must have known Grant would not stop until Cameron lay in a grave beside the senator and Sukey. She had stepped from the falling darkness and fired one shot, killing him instantly.
“How dare you come into my home, Captain?” Cameron flared, the reality of the situation startling her as suddenly as a slap on the cheek. “How dare you come here spreading these lies?”
“Ma’am, I’m only doing my job. This is a serious charge, and justice must be done. Especially now when we are trying to return the states to—”
“Serious charge!” she interrupted. “Instead of chasing after ghosts, why aren’t you hunting down the men who are raiding this county? How many women will have to be raped? How many will die before you get off your lazy a—”
Jackson laid his hand gently, but firmly, on Cameron’s forearm and squeezed, effectively silencing her. “May I ask how this has come up? Grant Campbell passed away in the summer of ’61. That was four years ago.”
“All I can tell you, sir, is that evidence has come to light. We would not being doing our job if we did not take this matter seriously.”
“What kind of evidence?” Cameron demanded, her mind spinning. No one could have known that Taye shot Grant. No one but Naomi, perhaps, who had been at the house. But Naomi would never have told; Cameron would bet her life on it. Grant had been holding Naomi prisoner here in Elmwood as his sex slave, chaining her to the bed at night to prevent her from escaping.
“I cannot say what evidence has been presented, ma’am.” Captain Grey looked to Jackson, perhaps for a male’s sense of reason. “If you could call Miss Campbell, she’ll have to come along with us, Captain.”
“You’re going to take her to jail?” Cameron tapped the army captain with her fan and he flinched. “You’re going to lock her up with men who steal and rape?”
Captain Grey looked to Jackson. “Arrangements will be made to be certain that she is safe and has as much privacy as can be allowed. If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, you should hire a lawyer for Miss Campbell immediately.”
“A lawyer?” Cameron’s eyes grew round with insult. “Let me tell you, sir—”
“Cameron.” Jackson met her gaze meaningfully. “Please go upstairs and bring Taye down.”
“Surely you don’t mean you’re just going to turn her over to them?” She stared at him in disbelief. He knew Taye had killed Grant, but he also knew Grant’s reputation, what kind of man Grant had been.
“Captain Grey is not accountable for the charges,” Jackson said quietly, his voice ominous. “We cannot hold him responsible. Now bring Taye down, or these gentlemen will be forced to search the house and drag her out.” His gray eyes met hers. “Is that what you want?”
His words chilled her to her core. Her first reaction was one of anger—at the soldiers, at Jackson—but she knew they were right and fought her anger. Once charged, Taye had to face her accuser, whomever that might be.
Jackson laid his hand on the small of her back and gave her the tiniest push toward the grand staircase. Cameron wanted to be angry with Jackson, but she couldn’t be. He had helped them hide Grant’s unnatural death. He had taken care of the gravestones. And more importantly, he had never again spoken of the incident.
“I’ll bring her down,” Cameron said softly, fighting a sense of defeat as she took the stairs slowly. They would have to hire a lawyer quickly. Taye could not languish in jail.
Would Thomas defend Taye? More importantly, would Thomas defend her once she admitted to him that she was guilty?
At the top landing, Cameron turned right down the hall toward the multiple guest bedchambers. She halted at Taye’s closed door, breathed deeply and then tapped on the paneled wood. “Taye?” she called softly.
“Aunt Cameron?” Lacy called from behind the door.
“Lacy? Where’s Aunt Taye?” Cameron pushed open the door to find Lacy dressed in one of Taye’s favorite gowns, the blue silk with scalloped skirting trailing along the floor.
“Aunt Taye said I could put on any of her gowns, long as my hands was clean.” She swished the skirt of the blue silk and spun in a circle. Minus a petticoat and crinoline, the dress yawned like a flower opening its petals.
“As long as your hands were clean,” Cameron corrected, distracted by Taye’s absence. “Lacy, where is Taye?”
Lacy danced her way across the polished floor, taking no heed of the gown as she trampled over the hem. “Aunt Taye is teaching me to waltz.” She lifted her hands to an invisible partner and practiced her smile, her hazel eyes bright with excitement. “You want to dance with me, Aunt Cam? My mama was a good dancer.”
“Lacy, listen to me.” Cameron tossed her fan to Taye’s bed and walked to her charge, grasping both of Lacy’s hands in her own. “I need you to tell me where Taye has gone.”
Lacy pressed her lips together as if they had been glued with sap from a tropical gum tree.
“Lacy Campbell!”
The girl somehow pressed her lips tighter. “You can torture me and hang me by my thumbs, I ain’t telling,” she mumbled, her words garbled by her sealed lips.
“I am not telling.” Cameron reached out and grabbed her arm. “Listen to me. I am not playing, Lacy. I need to know where she is this minute.”
Lacy thrust out her jaw. “I promised I wouldn’t.”
Cameron exhaled, realizing that this was not the way to deal with Lacy. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, throwing her arm around her niece’s thin shoulders. “It’s just that some men are here to talk to her and—”
“Soldiers, they come to arrest her. She was smart to run ’cause they ain’t gonna—are not going to,” Lacy corrected, “listen to anything she says. Not a negra girl like her.”
“Lacy! Taye is not—” Cameron caught herself. Taye was half African, and Cameron knew in her heart that while that should make no difference in a court of law, it might. Only last night she had read her father’s words in his diary.
Sukey’s skin is as dark as polished ebony, and I have been brought up to believe that that alone somehow makes her of less worth than myself, a white man. But when I look into her dark eyes, I know it is I who am not worthy of her.
Cameron bit down on the lip that she had already bloodied. She needed Lacy to grow up believing that the color of one’s skin, the circumstances of one’s birth, should not matter. It was what her father had taught her and what he would have taught his granddaughter had he been here today.
“It’s not true, Lacy. Taye has a right to a trial. A trial of her peers. There she will be innocent unless she can be proven guilty.”
“Well, I don’t know if she was the one who killed my papa or not, but I can tell you, Aunt Cameron, there won’t be no negra girls on that jury you’re talking about. And no women, neither. I lived on them streets. I know who your justice is for and who it ain—isn’t. And it shore ain’t for negra wenches what shot a white man to death.”
Cameron threw her arms around Lacy and hugged her tightly, knowing the child, wise beyond her years, hit closer to the truth than she realized. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Your father did die the night they are talking about, but they don’t know the circumstances.”
Lacy didn’t return the embrace, but she didn’t try to escape, either. “I’m not upset ’bout him, Aunt Cam. Mama said he was a futterin’ bastard who deserved to die by havin’ his pizzle rot off.”
Had it been any other time or place, Cameron would have laughed. “I’m sorry, anyway.” She pulled back to gaze into Lacy’s eyes, trying not to see Grant in them. “Now can’t you tell me where Taye went?” she whispered.
Lacy shook her head. “And not who she went with, neither.”
And with that, Cameron knew her sister had run and who she had run with.
She spun on her heels and hurried from the room. “I have to go back downstairs. You stay here.”
“You think I could put a little of that red stuff on my cheeks?” Lacy called after her.
“No.” Cameron shut the door loudly and hurried to the staircase. There, she took a breath and slowly descended the steps, as if making her first appearance at a ball. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I was mistaken,” she said sweetly when she reached the front hall. “My sister does not seem to be at home.”
Captain Grey looked to Jackson and frowned. “What’s the meaning of this, Logan? I came this way, after dark, so as not to cause Miss Campbell any undue anguish. But I will not be toyed with. I am here for duty’s sake, and fulfill it I shall.”
Jackson turned to Cameron. “She’s not here, dear?”
Cameron shook her head, meeting Jackson’s gaze. That was when she realized he had known something before she had, probably before she went up the stairs looking for Taye. “I don’t know where she could be, but I will ask the servants. You see, sir,” she said, smiling sweetly, “Captain Logan only returned to Mississippi on the afternoon train. He and I were inspecting Elmwood Plantation, my father’s home, and we had only just returned when you came in. I assumed my sister was here at Atkins’ Way, but I’d not yet had time to speak with her.”
“We’ll have to search the place,” Captain Grey said stonily.
“Of course.” Jackson stepped back and gestured grandly. “Two stories. The servants’ quarters are over the kitchen, and there are also men residing over the barn. If we can be of any assistance, please let us know.”
“If you don’t mind, ma’am, could you ask your servants where Miss Campbell might be?”
“Yes, Captain.” She smiled her most generous smile and hurried off to the kitchen. She knew she had to speak to Naomi, not about Taye, but about the night Grant died.
Cameron gripped Naomi’s lean hand in hers and led her out of the kitchen into the darkness of the small, paved herb garden.
“I don’t know where’s she gone,” Naomi said, wiping her hands on her white apron. “So no need to ask.”
Cameron glanced at the house that loomed behind them, on the lookout for the soldiers. “I don’t want to know where she went, at least not yet.” Cameron stared into Naomi’s dark eyes. “You know why these men are here?”
Naomi lifted her shoulder slightly. “The kitchen ain’t so far from the front hall.”
“Naomi, I need you to think carefully back to the night Grant died.”
Naomi’s face tightened and her lips drew back in a half sneer. “One of the best nights of my life, ’scuse me for sayin’ so.”
“I need you to think back. Were Dorcas and Efia anywhere near the house?” Cameron tried to recall, but her memories were sketchy as to where the others had been. “Hadn’t Taye and the twins gone down to the stables, or to the slave quarters to look for food?”
“I think that’s where they said later they was. Don’t know fer sure, ’cause I was in the house tryin’ to set myself free.” Naomi rested one hand on her hip as she thought. “But I know didn’t no one see what happened but you and Taye. Them silly girls didn’t even come up to the house after they musta heard the gunshots.”
“I didn’t think so, either.”
Naomi looked to Cameron suspiciously. “But that little negra girl Efia is here in town again.”
Cameron nodded.
“Got to be her tellin’ tales.” Naomi fingered her gris-gris bag. “I knew them wenches was nothin’ but trash. And her takin’ with Clyde Macon after what he done to them little girls.” She made a clicking sound between her teeth. “Like sleepin’ with Ghede Satan himself.”
“Well, I know that Taye is frightened, but she shouldn’t have run. It just makes her look guiltier.”
There were unfamiliar sounds in the kitchen and both women turned to gaze at the open door. The soldiers had entered the room to search it.
“What ya gonna do?” Naomi whispered.
“I don’t know, Naomi. I just don’t know. Once the soldiers are gone, Jackson and I will probably ride in to see Thomas. Then we’ve got to find Taye and convince her to turn herself in.” She shook her head, hating to think of how this might all play out. “Considering the fact that Taye was the housekeeper’s daughter and Grant was the senator’s son, a Southern jury isn’t going to like it. There’s a lot of bitterness in this town against your people. A lot of anger no one knows where to lay.”
“Might not matter why she killed him or whether or not he deserved it twice over,” Naomi whispered.
Cameron rested her hand on Naomi’s shoulder. “I should go inside. I don’t want to look suspicious.”
Naomi pulled off her apron and tossed it into a bush. “And I’ll be takin’ a little ride into J Town to pay a call on a young lady.”
Cameron grabbed her hand. “You can’t go to J Town, not alone after dark. They say no woman is safe there.”
Naomi smiled slyly. “You got a look at my man lately, girl? He four feet wide and got arms on him like tree trunks,” she said proudly. “Don’t know no one not give him a wide berth.”
“All right, find out what you can. Thank you.” Cameron squeezed her hand and released it, then headed for the back door.
“Ain’t nothin’ Naomi can’t do for her girls.”
Cameron smiled, thankful once more for the friend she had found in such an unlikely character.