Marietta pushed away from the table, never so happy to hear the chime of noon. Her gaze flew to the tall case clock in the corner, the one she recognized from her childhood. It had been Granddad and Grandmama’s before they found a new one and passed this one along, apparently, to Walker and Cora.
Cora stood up just as fast, wincing. No doubt her servant liked Marietta’s presence in her home about as well as Marietta did. The word strained hardly covered it.
But the lessons couldn’t be done in the big house, where Mother Hughes or Dev himself could come upon them. Nor did weather permit an outdoor meeting this time of year. So here they were. Above the carriage house, in one of two rooms that Marietta had never even glimpsed before today.
Cora and Walker had managed to make the close space a cozy home, but Marietta clearly didn’t belong in it.
She dug up a smile, though, waved to the wee one, and made the sign for her name. “Bye-bye, Elsie.”
Her grin made every nerve inside Marietta go taut. Because she knew it too well, when she scarcely knew the child at all. Elsie waved back, backwards, and then earned a gasp from her mother by making the sign for thank you, even adding the one they had made for Marietta’s name.
“See.” Walker, beaming, tousled his daughter’s hair and pulled his wife in for a sideways hug. “She’ll pick it up fast.”
“She might.” At least Cora smiled as she said it. Marietta knew well that Walker had had a battle on his hands, getting his wife to agree to this at all. Hence why it was the fourth of February, and they were only now having their initial lesson. “Come on, baby. Let’s you and me take our nap.”
That too had been a battle hard won, one fought with Mother Hughes as well as Cora herself. And oh, the glint in Mother Hughes’s eyes. A glint Marietta knew well, though she usually chose to ignore it. The one that said that the woman might have a sugarcoating, but that’s all it was. A coating. Still, she was Lucien and Dev’s mother. She deserved respect. But sometimes Marietta had to put her foot down, as she had done with this.
“I’ll walk you down, Yetta.”
She merely nodded and swung her cape over her shoulders, careful to keep her back to the little family as Walker bade them a temporary farewell. Just as she was careful to keep her gaze locked on the rickety stairs as she descended.
Once their feet were on solid ground, Walker halted her with a hand on her elbow. “Thank you, Yetta. I can’t say it enough. Thank you.”
She opened her mouth, but words wouldn’t come. Or rather, appropriate words wouldn’t. The ones that vied for a place on her tongue were impolite, risky, and…and so very important that they would not remain unsaid another day. She strode away, into the stable where the whinny of horses would give them some semblance of privacy. And then she turned.
He was only a step behind her, the muscle ticking in his strong jaw. The gratitude was gone from his smoke-blue eyes. “Go ahead. Ask.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t, Walk. But I have to know.” She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the images away. Elsie, with her familiar hair, familiar smile, familiar face. And Marietta’s husband, the one who made them familiar. “Is she Lucien’s?”
Walker’s breath eased out as one of his beloved horses craned over the stall door and gave him a welcoming nudge. He stroked the brown nose, but his gaze stayed glued to Marietta’s face. He swallowed. “No.”
“No?” Relief should have welled. She should have been happy to think that her husband had not been unfaithful, had not been dallying with his slaves.
Instead, her knees gave out, and she sank down against the half-door behind her. “Dev.” Of course it was Dev. The memories came in rapid succession now, a quick calculation thrusting her back to the right time. Three years ago. One too-long look, one too-wrong wish. His sizzling gaze, and the anger that pulsed through it when Lucien had happily declared it time to retire and had pulled her from the room.
The scream that had echoed through the halls a half hour later. She had sat up in bed, had been ready to go investigate. But her husband had pulled her back down and held her close, muttering something about a clumsy servant bumping into something.
Cora’s cry. She’d known it even then. But when she did indeed see a bruise on the girl’s arm the next day, she assumed Lucien’s suggestion had been right.
But no. She had been attacked. And it was all Marietta’s fault.
Her breath coming in heaving gasps, she lowered her forehead to her raised knees. “No. No. I’m sorry. I should have…I never even…you came two days later. You married so soon. I never thought to question.”
“No one expected you to. You weren’t raised to ask those kinds of questions.” Why, then, did his tone sound so incredulous? Probably for the same reason he spat out her grandfather’s favorite exclamation of “Thunder and turf!” and did a quick pivot away and then back. “How couldn’t you know, Yetta? How could you not know what they were like? How could you even marry a family that owned slaves, knowing well how so many of them are treated?”
Her hands shook. Maybe it was the cold. Or maybe she couldn’t stop trying to lie to herself even now. Fingers fisting in her gray skirt, she looked up into the accusation. He had aged in the last six years, of course. But as he towered over her now, he looked like he had then, as he flung the world’s problems at her like they were her fault.
And in this particular case, maybe he was right. She swallowed back the bile that rose up on the heels of truth. “I didn’t care. You’d left me, and I just didn’t care.”
She expected an explosion. A curse. Maybe even for him to storm off. Instead, his shoulders sagged and he leaned into the door beside her, propping his elbows on the top of it. “It was the only thing I could do. You know that. Surely by now you can understand.”
She had understood then. But that hadn’t made it hurt any less. “You crushed me. I loved you, and you walked away.”
“There was no other choice. What kind of life would we have had? Me, a quadroon who would never rise above a trade worker, and you the rich daughter of an important white family?”
It hadn’t stopped him from giving her her first kiss in her daddy’s stable when she was sixteen. Hadn’t stopped his lips against all those promises of love and dreams, each one etched in her mind forever. All of them dust. “I would have gone with you.”
“You would have been miserable.”
“You can’t know that!” She averted her face, knowing her voice had been too loud. “You never gave me the chance to prove my mettle. You ran.”
“Yeah. I ran.” And he obviously wasn’t about to apologize for it. She stared at the stall across from her, at the swishing tail of the horse that watched her warily. Walker toed the wood on which she leaned. “I wasn’t going to. Stephen said I had to.”
Stephen? No. “He didn’t even…” She halted when she felt the weight of his gaze. “You told him.”
“I couldn’t run off with my best friend’s sister and not even tell him I loved her.”
Yet he could run away from the woman he claimed to love without a word. If she hadn’t seen the light and gone to investigate, she never would have known he was leaving.
She had. They fought. He ran.
She had spun into the social world with a gusto born of wrath.
And she had proven her mettle. Proven it to be not of gold but of the cheapest alloy. Pushing herself up, she leaned beside him, still facing the opposite stall. “You saved her. Cora, I mean. By marrying her.”
“Easiest decision I ever made. She’s a good woman, Yetta. She’s made my life complete, her and Elsie. I love them both more than I thought I could love anyone.” He nudged her with his elbow, and when she glanced up, she saw his handsome, happy smile. “You’ll find that yet.”
Marietta shook her head and looked away again. “I squandered my chance, Walk. I’ve made decisions I can’t undo.”
“Don’t talk like that.” He pushed away from the stall door and stepped in front of her, his brows knit. “You’re young yet. And as bleak as things look right now, they’ll change. They always do. The war will end, the Knights will fall, the dust will settle. You’ll be able to get away from these people and start over.”
“It’s not that easy.” Saying it pierced through all those optimistic dreams about going home and breaking things off with Dev. Yet it brought relief too. Because for the first time, she was being honest with herself about how completely she had messed up. “Dev isn’t going to let me go.”
“He can’t stop you.”
“Can’t he?” Tears gathered, but she must hold them off. Just a few more minutes. “We’d been planning to marry as soon as it was acceptable.”
“Yetta.” He shifted and reached for her hand. As it had when he’d taken it that morning two weeks ago, it gave comfort, even if it shouldn’t. “I know this is a bad thing to say given the conversation just past, but promises can be broken. Sometimes they have to be.”
And comfort could evaporate like a drop of water on a summer-hot cobblestone in the face of one’s own shame. She tugged her fingers free and looked down to the hay-strewn floor. “I gave him more than a promise.”
Even the horses went silent. She didn’t want to glance up again, didn’t want to see the revulsion on his face. But the quiet was too heavy.
Though they looked nothing alike, he reminded her of Stephen in that moment. The way his expression combined sorrow with pain for her. “Tell me you don’t mean what I think you do.”
The tears pressed harder. “I’m not proud of myself. I never thought I would…but I was weak. Weak and lonely. I thought I was in love, and I had no idea he was…the monster he is.”
“Don’t cry, Yetta.” He said it now the way he’d done dozens of times as they grew up. Desperately, with an edge of panic. And it did no more to urge the tears away now than it ever had. “We all have those struggles, even Stephen with Barbara. It’s natural. And sometimes we make mistakes. But you can get away. You have to. You can’t stay with him.”
“He might as well own me, don’t you see that?” She slid past him, knowing he wouldn’t thank her for it if she let the tears come. But she couldn’t hold them back any longer. “He won’t let me go.”
“It’s not his choice. You’re not his. You’re God’s.”
By the time he spoke the last word, she had gained the door, her feet flying toward the back of the house. The world had gone blurry through the lens of her tears, but she didn’t need to see. She knew every rock, every root, every bump in the ground. Knew it was three stairs to the kitchen door, and then a quick dart around the thick slab of a table.
“Miss Mari, what in the world? You a’ight?”
Knew Tandy wouldn’t follow her if she just moved fast enough.
“You need Mr. Dev, honey? He’s up with his mama.”
No! She might have screamed it if a sob hadn’t choked her. Scurrying down the back hall, she pressed a hand to her mouth. She couldn’t go upstairs to the sanctuary of her chamber if he were up there.
You’re God’s.
The words pounded with each footfall as she ran into the main hall, battered her mind as she pushed into the library. Stephen, at least, could be found there. His books on the shelves, his wisdom hovering around them.
You’re God’s. God’s. Yes. He had bought her. Redeemed her. Purchased her from the man to whom her sins had bound her.
Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold… But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.
Without blemish—not her. She was tarnished. Ruined.
Her face in her hands, she bypassed the chairs, the couch. She didn’t want to be comforted by soft cushions and velvet. She wanted to disappear. And so she headed for the far corner and the little alcove that was a mere quirk of the architecture and arrangement of shelves. One little rectangle tucked away, just big enough for her to curl up in on the floor.
Why could God not undo the past? If she could go back, if she could resist him one more day, then she never would have made such a stupid mistake. It had seemed bad enough that morning, when she realized how she had betrayed her husband’s memory.
How much worse an hour later down in that tunnel.
And now, knowing what he had done to Cora…
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
The wave hit so hard it forced her down still more, until she felt the cold floor against her cheek and could hear her strangled cry reverberate in the planking. She splayed her fingers over the honey-colored wood, wishing she could press hard enough to go through it. To sink down until she disappeared altogether, vanished from her wreck of a life.
…glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
She pressed her lips together, tried to hold back the sob, to keep it from drawing anyone in. But a whimper slipped through. How can You love me, God? When I have not glorified You in my body, when I have ignored You in my spirit? Much as she squeezed her eyes shut, she couldn’t erase the images flashing forever before her eyes. All her sins, all her failings, all the times she cared only for herself.
God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
A shudder coursed through her. Why did the words come so quickly, so easily? Yet never in her life had she felt them the way Stephen said he could. Never had it been solid, like a touch upon her heart, like an embrace from her parents. Never had it warmed her when the winter winds closed in.
If You are there, Lord God, then please be real to me. Please come. Please show me You are real.
A flutter against her hair made her breath catch and then quaver its way out. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and listened to her brother’s voice in her head, saw his earnest face. You can never be more stubborn than He is loving. You can never be so far from Him that He cannot touch you.
The flutter turned to a stroke, soft and tentative as if she were mist, and then settled, light as a snowflake.
She had fallen too far. Her world had turned dark, all because of her poor choices. With no one to blame but herself for the pieces that lay about her. Destroyed. And yet He promised to pay the price for her.
She couldn’t forget her sins. But He could forgive them. He could wash them white as snow.
When the torrent slowed, when the shudders eased, she opened her eyes again. Her ribs hurt from where her corset pressed in, her neck from the strange angle, her knuckles from pushing so hard against the floor. And her eyes ached as they traveled down wool-clad legs and fastened upon the scuffed black shoes stretched out against the wall.
A hand was still resting—or perhaps hovering—on her head. And she was too drained to even be mortified. Gathering together what tatters of strength remained, she pushed herself up.
How very strange. Never in all her lifetime would she have thought that when she prayed for the Lord’s touch, He would choose to use Slade Osborne’s hand.
He shifted as she sat up but only to accommodate her, not to move altogether. He didn’t look at her in question or as though she were made of glass and might break with one wrong move. No, he just pulled out a crisp white handkerchief and, black eyes steady on hers, dabbed at the tear tracks on her cheeks.
For the first time since she watched Walker disappear into the night, she didn’t know how to respond to a man. So she sat still, refusing to look away, and let him soothe. Her eyes felt swollen, but they were clear enough that she had to wonder where the wolf had gone from his. He looked, as he moved to her other cheek, like a…friend.
The thud of footsteps sounded in the hall. “Mari? Are you in here?”
Dev. Panic replaced the hard-won peace, and she shrank back against the wall, pulling her skirts in with her.
Slade’s eyes went sharp again. He pressed the handkerchief into her hands, sprang to his feet, and strode to the door. He must have stepped into the hall because his voice sounded distant. “I saw her go upstairs.”
She leaned her head against the wall and prayed blessings, heaping blessings, upon Slade Osborne’s head.
“I must not have heard her slip up. Well, we had better head back to the station. Are you ready?”
“Sure. Go on out. I’ll just grab my book.”
Though it took effort, she eased silently to her feet, holding her breath until she heard Dev’s familiar tread move away and then the door open and shut.
Slade strode back into the library and headed straight for her, pausing when he was a foot away.
She would have attempted a smile, but her lips wouldn’t cooperate. All she could manage was to hold out his handkerchief.
He took, not the square of white cotton, but her fingers. Her breath caught in her throat. He had ignored even that common greeting since their first introduction. Curling her fingers around the fabric, he lifted her hand to his mouth.
The touch of his lips was as featherlight as that of his hand had been upon her hair. Certainly no more than polite if one went by pressure, duration, or any other measurable quality.
But Slade Osborne was not polite. He was not measurable. And his obsidian eyes seemed to have no bottom as he held her gaze through the two-second exchange.
Then the wolf sprang again, and he turned and left, grabbing the book from the arm of his usual chair on his way out.
Marietta stared at the crumpled white cloth clutched in her hands and decided she would never again trust her judgment when it came to a man. Thus far, she had been wrong about each and every one of them.