A Dream of Daring (32 page)

He quickly whisked her
off with Bina toward the house. “Go. I’ll check on you later,” he whispered
reassuringly.

“And Bina,” Rachel called
after them, “don’t let her traipse through the house like a wounded dog. Take
her up the back stairs.”

Solo looked daggers at
her.

Rachel turned to the
coachman. “Lance, you’re to stay out here all night and guard the front
entrance. Get Rex to watch the back. If anyone comes up to the house, wake us
fast!”

Then she looked at the
man who was so difficult to manage. She brushed her gown and hands to shake off
the soot from her contact with him, as if ridding herself of his feel.

“There, now, that should
take care of everything.” She smiled.

Her feigned cheerfulness
reminded Tom of her acting roles on the Philadelphia stage at a time that had
become distorted in his mind, for it seemed like centuries ago.

* * * * *

Just before daybreak, the
second-floor hallway was dark and the Barnwell household was finally asleep.
Behind one of the doors, Tom stood before the mirrored panels of an armoire,
looking at himself. His tanned face and blond hair had been restored to their
proper coloring. He wore the bulky shirt, pants, and vest of the man who had
betrayed him, garments that ill fit his body and his sentiments. Nevertheless,
he was glad to be cleaned up and wearing fresh clothes, with his burns washed
and bandaged. Now that his physical condition was improved, his attention
turned to the room of the man who had been the distinguished leader of the
town.

Tom could almost sense
the presence of the deceased senator in the chamber. A dresser displayed
Barnwell’s comb and pocket watch. A half-open desk drawer still held a gun in a
holster with Barnwell’s initials. A suit was draped over a chair, with a top
hat on the seat and leather boots alongside, as if waiting for the senator to
step into them.

Tom glanced at the items
on the walnut secretary that was Barnwell’s desk. It provided a glimpse at the
different facets of its proprietor. Tom thought of the faces of a stone that
had the potential to be a prized gem. If the stone were cut properly, it could
produce a diamond, but if it were cut improperly, the gem’s brilliance would be
lost and mere rhinestones would result. How had Wiley Barnwell’s life been cut?
Tom tried to appraise the man’s various facets.

In its cubbyholes, the
desk held the agricultural journals and almanac of the intelligent farmer who
had raised a prodigious crop and taught Tom the business of cotton growing. On
the shelf above the desktop, Tom saw a copy of the Louisiana statutes and its
slave code, laws that Barnwell as senator had helped to pass and strengthen,
preserving the privilege of a dying age.

Wiley Barnwell was a
farmer and businessman who harnessed nature on a grand scale. As a farmer, he
took the raw offerings of climate and soil to produce a commodity of great
value, and as a businessman he traded his product on the world markets and
amassed a fortune. Few could accomplish that, Tom had to acknowledge, giving
his mentor his due. But Barnwell was also a politician of pull and a
slaveholder, a man who sought control over others. In that sense Barnwell
harnessed people, forcing them to do his bidding against their own choice and
benefit. Barnwell possessed some of the luster of the new age as well as the
flaws of the dying age.

Could he have become a
great farmer and made his fortune with free workers? Tom thought enough of his
mentor to believe he could, and he thought enough of the human spirit to
believe Barnwell would have done better with willing hands.

But Barnwell hadn’t gone
that route. Instead, the luster had been scraped off his character. It wasn’t
the mastery of farming and trade that had corrupted him, Tom thought, but the
other mastery he had sought. Tom sighed in sadness at the stone with the bad
cut that destroyed what might perhaps have been a rare gem.

The inventor was too
restless to sleep or to stay in the eerie room. The reason was that the
presence of someone else in the house was even more palpable to him. With the
threat of an attack by Markham vanishing with the coming dawn, his attention
felt free to wander. He left the chamber, closing the door behind him on the
conflicting faces of Wiley Barnwell. Then he walked down the quiet hallway to
the room at the end, the home of the legendary wardrobe of Rachel Barnwell.

Tom remembered the time
when he had seen Rachel in her wardrobe room. She had been reclining on a
daybed, relaxing for a moment in between measurements and fittings. She looked
like the subject in a painting of a princess in her toilette, with a
hoop-skirted dress form and a full-length mirror near her. The background added
to the palatial setting, with French doors opening to a gallery, and beyond it
the stunning perimeter of roses and the winding road up to the estate.

He recalled the two
massive armoires with dresses made of fine silks, satins, velvets, cottons, and
lace from New England and European mills. Rachel had outfits for horseback riding,
carriage jaunts, recreational hunting, serving tea, afternoon entertaining,
reading, and visiting, as well as gowns for evening wear. Accessories of every
kind—shoes, bonnets, gloves, jewelry, shawls, jackets—overflowed from the
armoires and dressers to fill etageres that other people used to display fine
china.

He had seen Rachel in her
wardrobe room just before twilight, which seemed fitting, since it was
the . . . inducement . . . that had
ended their life together in Philadelphia. Now, he wondered what the room would
look like at daybreak with another woman.

He saw lamplight shining
underneath the door and a shadow of someone moving. He knocked. The movement
inside stopped, but his knock went unanswered. The door creaked as he let
himself in and creaked again when he closed it behind him.

The bronze beauty that
was Solo turned to stare at him. She was standing before the mirror, its oval
rim of gold leaf framing her. The slave’s frock given to her had been tossed
over a chair. Instead she was wearing one of Rachel’s gowns, a stunning crimson
evening dress cascading in tiers from her tiny waist to a six-foot circle of
crinoline at the floor. The small bandages on her arms were overshadowed by the
splendor of her gown and the proud way she wore it.

Tom stopped to gaze at
the alluringly feminine side of her that he had never seen. The
off-the-shoulder gown had a plunging neckline. Her bare shoulders and the tops
of her breasts were covered with a little black cape of translucent Spanish
lace tied with a bow at the neck. The lace sparkled with red garnets to match
the dress, with the small gemstones sewn into the fabric, transforming the cape
into jewelry and the jewels into apparel. Her hair was swept off her face by an
ornament, but defiant of any further containment, the tresses made their
tumbling descent down her back like a latticework of soft tendrils behind a
rare orchid. The serene, imperial look of her gown contrasted sharply with her
unsmiling mouth, gaunt cheekbones, and piercing feline eyes. She looked at once
like a princess and a tigress. Tom was astonished at how remarkably well the
formal dress blended with the raw honesty of features that needed no
refinement.

She remained poised and
silent, making no effort to explain her astonishing behavior in flagrant
disregard of Rachel’s order not to touch anything.

Tom walked toward her. As
he crossed the room, her eyes widened in fear. He walked closer still. She
reached down under puffs of crinoline to grab an item strapped to her calf. He
recognized the object that looked incongruous in the hands of one so regally
dressed: his hunting knife. She had apparently carried it with her through the
fire, and now she aimed it at a threat perhaps more menacing to her.

As he walked directly in
front of her, she pointed the knife at his throat, but her eyes seemed to be
looking past him at a disturbing image of their own. The terror on her face, he
sensed, came from a wound burned on her memory, a wound that was still acutely
painful when disturbed. The sight of her trembling in fear brought out a
tenderness in him that he didn’t know he possessed. Gently he stroked her hair,
traced the smooth curves of her face, and wrapped his arms around her waist,
with his hands lingering on every touch of her.

She clutched the knife
tighter, gripping it with two hands, the point just inches from his throat.

He drew her against him.
The cool blade of the knife now pressed flat against his neck. All she had to
do was turn it so that the point . . . Would she kiss him
or kill him? He placed his bet. He tightened his arms around her and kissed her
softly.

She was caught between an
old fear and a new pleasure. She pushed against his chest, yet she could not
resist letting her head fall back in surrender. She abandoned her resolve,
answering his desire with her own awakening need. He pressed his mouth harder
against hers. Soon he felt her arms drop limply at her sides. Then he heard the
knife fall to the floor. He wrapped her arms around his neck, where they soon
tightened, pulling him closer.

He thought he should feel
guilty for picking the most inappropriate of places, but the setting served
only to intensify his excitement.

As they discovered the
exciting feel of each other, he lifted the ornament off her hair, and a thicket
of wild curls tumbled onto her shoulders. He untied the garnet cape, and it
fell to the floor. His hands traced the enticing landscape that was Solo—the
tiny circle of her waist, the hills and valleys of her back, the taut tracts of
her arms. He buried his face in a luscious mix of warm flesh and tousled hair.
His mouth found her neck, then her shoulders. He swept back the voluminous
tresses to chart the smooth curves of her breasts.

The sensitive creature
under Rachel’s gown responded. Casting aside the grim past, she closed her eyes
and opened her mouth to the exciting present.

He tasted Rachel’s lip
rouge on Solo’s mouth. He breathed Rachel’s perfume pulsing from Solo’s skin.
He saw Rachel’s—

Suddenly, his hands
stopped; his gaze froze; his head shot up abruptly. He saw, perched above
Solo’s heart, the same image on her bronze flesh that he had seen on Rachel’s
ivory skin. He saw—reddish, beguiling, and heart-shaped—the little birthmark.

He gasped in utter
incredulity.

“Ladybug?”

Chapter
27

Solo and Tom broke away
from each other in astonishment.

“How do you know that
name?” Her voice trembled. “And what exactly do you know?”

“I know you saw my
invention at the Crossroads Plantation.”

“
Your
invention?”

“Yes!”

“You mean
you’re
the man I’ve been trying to find?”

“And
you’re
the
woman they’re trying to—” He couldn’t utter the unthinkable word. He glared at
her, stunned by the implications suddenly pounding his mind, all of them dire.
He ran his fingers over the birthmark in disbelief. “My God,
Ladybug
!”

She reached for the cape
and tied it around her shoulders to cover the telltale mark.

“It’s too late for that.”
His mind whirled, trying to fathom the new situation. “You’re Ladybug. That
birthmark identifies you!” He grabbed her arms. “Listen to me! There are people
looking for you who want to do you
harm.
” His mind flashed before him a
determined sheriff who wanted her arrested, furious planters who wanted her
hanged, and mortified women who’d stop at nothing to prevent a family scandal.

She stood before him,
incredulous. “You’re saying that
you
invented the machine I saw in a
shed on the
most . . . horrible . . . day of my
life?”

“That would be my
tractor. You took it, didn’t you? Where is it?”

“It’s safe.”

He closed his eyes,
quietly thrilled by her news.

“It’s by the old factory
just north of Polly Barnwell’s plantation.”

“I looked there. It
wasn’t in the factory, and it wasn’t along the road that served it.”

She smiled at his
bewilderment. “Where I put it isn’t accessible by any road.”

“Oh?”

“There are pulleys there
that I played with as a child. I used them to hoist your tractor where you
might not have thought of.”

He remembered the
knowledge of pulleys she had displayed in her attempts to free her horse from
under the fallen tree. He took her by the arms, smiling at an intelligence that
had outsmarted him. “You . . . 
you
saved my
tractor?”

In a fleeting rush of
pleasure splashed in a sea of grief, she whispered excitedly: “I should have
known the inventor would be you!”

He led her to the daybed.
As they sat and he held her hands, he was already putting the story together.

“So you were Polly’s
slave, from the Crossroads Plantation.”

“Yes.”

“The slave Wiley Barnwell
sold on the day of her funeral.”

She bristled. “Yes, to
Fred Fowler.”

“Then you ran away from
Fowler. That must’ve been when I found you after the storm with your horse
trapped.”

“Yes. After you freed my
horse, I got further north. But the slave patrol caught up with me. They
brought me back to town, to that despicable beast, Fowler. That was when I saw
you again, when he was about to take me away. If you hadn’t . . . intervened . . . either
Fowler or I—or
both
of us—would be dead by now.”

He nodded, believing it.
His body tensed in rage, remembering the man’s brutality as he struck her, hung
a noose around her neck, and tried to pull out her tooth.

The torture of her ordeal
softened his voice. “Then there’s the matter of
what . . . happened . . . to Barnwell.”

Her face locked into an
unreadable stare.

“Listen, Ladybug”—he felt
awkward addressing her by a name other than the one he had given her—“you’re in
grave danger
. I want to help you, but you have to trust me and tell me
everything
.”

“Why would you help me?
After you hung Senator Barnwell’s portrait in your home? That night, when I
overheard you talking to the artist, I realized you not only knew the senator,
but you
loved
him. You swore his death would be avenged! When you
smashed your glass, in
fury
at
his . . . his . . .” She couldn’t say the
word that indicted her. “I knew I could
never
tell you about me!” She
breathed deeply, forcing herself to remain calm. “But now that it’s out, I have
to set you straight on something, and
you
can trust
me
on this:
The senator was no friend of yours.”

“I know that now. Believe
me, I have no allegiance to him over you, or
to . . . anyone . . . over you.”

She paused to absorb what
was said and unsaid.

He looked at her in
earnest. “Now that you know who
I
am, you have to tell me who
you
are. Why don’t you start with your real name? I mean, Ladybug is a nickname,
isn’t it?”

“It’s the only name I
ever had. Miss Polly said that someone gave me to her when I was an infant. I
was wrapped in a basket of flowers, she told me. I guess she wanted me to think
I started out in a special way, so I might feel better about my condition,
because after that, my life wasn’t nearly as pretty.” She spoke with a tinge of
sadness. “Miss Polly said there was a critter on the petals that was scarlet
red with black spots, a
ladybug
. So she called me that.”

“Who gave you to Polly?”

“She never said.”

He listened, filing the
information in his mind.

“As I grew up, the name seemed
to suit me. When I was a child, I’d pretend I was wearing a beautiful gown when
it was only a homespun frock, and I’d pretend I was dancing at a ball when I
was only in the barn, or I’d pretend I was getting out of a fancy carriage when
it was only a hay wagon. The other slaves laughed at me. They said, ‘Look at
Ladybug! She thinks she’s a lady, but she’s only a bug
.
’
 
” Wistfully, she
looked at herself in Rachel’s gown. “I guess I’m still pretending.”

His face showed
compassion.

“When I was a child, Miss
Polly taught me to read and write. I devoured all of her books and magazines
and any other printed material I could find. Reading was the only thing I loved
to do. It gave me a lot of material for playacting.” She smiled. “I tried to do
what the people I read about did. I made believe I was serving tea and sipped
it with all the manners of the gentry. I talked to imaginary companions about a
new book I’d read, or a city I’d say I visited, or a new play I supposedly saw
in New Orleans. I’d describe in detail how the stage looked, how the orchestra
sounded. . . . Miss Polly would lose her patience and say,
‘Dear girl, you carry on so!’ But I kept on doing it.”

“So Polly raised you?”

She nodded. “Miss Polly
was kind to all of us, but especially to me. I was her servant, although I
sensed I was also like the child she never had.”

“Do you know who your
mother and father are?”

“No. When I was little, I
sometimes asked, but Miss Polly just repeated the story of the basket and said
nothing more. Actually, I never much cared.” She spoke with a feline-like
emotional detachment from people that seemed a long-standing trait, but her
eyes lingered on him as though her indifference could encounter an exception.

“Do you have any
siblings, any . . . sister . . . that
you know about?”

“No.”

“Did you know Wiley
Barnwell?”

“Occasionally he came to
visit Miss Polly. I knew he was a senator and her brother-in-law. He always
treated me coldly, as if he were angry at me. I never knew why. I avoided him
whenever I could.”

“Did he ever bring his
family?”

“No.”

“Do you recognize the
women in this house?”

“I never saw them before.
Why do you ask?”

“We’ll talk about that
later. Right now, the sheriff is our main concern. He found out about you
yesterday afternoon at a meeting we had. Just when he ran out of suspects, your
name came up. He learned that you knew about the invention and that you were sold
to Fowler. He’s going to Baton Rouge to see Fowler and question you. When
Fowler tells him that you ran away and were unaccounted for on the night of the
murder, that’ll intensify the sheriff’s suspicions. And when Fowler tells him
that he later found you and sold you in Greenbriar, that’ll bring the sheriff
right back here—to arrest you for Barnwell’s death.”

She covered her face with
her hands and suffered quietly. He felt helpless to console her on a matter
whose gravity couldn’t be diminished.

He glanced at the French
doors, where the light of dawn was filtering in through the drapery. “The
sheriff could be leaving for Baton Rouge now and be back here before nightfall.
We don’t have much time.” He squeezed her shoulders urgently. “You have to tell
me
everything
—about you, Barnwell, and my invention.”

She bowed her head in
anguish, then raised it in resolve. Too tense to sit, she propped herself up on
the cushioned arm of the daybed and faced him. He looked up at her, waiting to
hear the events of the night that had uprooted his life and hers, and that had,
oddly, brought them together. Poised and dressed as she was, she looked too
dainty and elegant to have lived through the gruesome events she began to
relate.

“On the morning of Miss
Polly’s funeral, Senator Barnwell rode up to the Crossroads. I hid in a cabin
to stay out of his sight, as I always did. From where I was hiding I watched
him hauling something very curious, which he put in the old carriage house.
When he went inside the big house, I went to take a look at what he had
brought.”

A hint of excitement
colored her voice as she described her discovery. “I learned about machines
when I was a child. I used to play in the old deserted factory.” She smiled,
reminiscing. “I often slipped away and went there to look at the remnants of
the machinery, the tools, the waterwheel.”

“Why would you want to go
there?”

“It was pretty much the
only contact I had with anything outside of Miss Polly’s plantation. I was
Ladybug, a little critter that couldn’t fly far and had to keep from getting
smashed. But when I played at the factory, I felt
somehow . . . powerful . . . when I
moved boulders and fallen trees around with the pulleys and when I saw how
things worked. Why, I could even start the waterwheel! I read all the papers,
diagrams, and books that were left behind. I understood the machines and was
amazed by them.”

“I see,” he said,
recognizing an interest that he understood well.

“So when I saw the
invention the senator brought in, I was curious. You see, nothing exciting ever
happened at the Crossroads. I served Miss Polly tea, I stoked her fire, I read
to her, I fetched her shawl, I arranged her clothes. But there was a whole
world out there that had nothing at all to do with Miss Polly. And on the day
of her funeral the senator brought something here from
outside
.”

She pronounced the last
word as if it were
heaven
.

“I slipped into the old
carriage house and studied the device. I traced the tubes and rods and chambers
to figure out what they did. I found papers in a compartment. There were
diagrams showing how to start the motor and run it, and drawings that showed it
doing farm work, and amazing calculations of how the machine could do more work
than a whole field of men. I studied everything.

“In one of Miss Polly’s
magazines, I remembered once reading an article called ‘The Horseless Age.’ It
described a search that was going on for a new kind of motor, a little engine
that could operate small vehicles. I realized I was looking at one of those new
inventions of the horseless age. I was looking at the
future.
”

He studied the face that
livened with intellectual curiosity.

“If this machine meant
that slaves wouldn’t be needed any longer for farming, if machines could do the
work faster and better, then that could . . . change
things . . . I thought. I climbed into the driver’s seat
and pretended that I, Ladybug, was plowing a field faster than a whole gang of
prime hands!” She smiled. “I even thought of slipping away during the funeral
and going back there to start the engine when nobody was around, just to hear
how it sounded, but the papers said to expect loud noises that scared horses
and people, so I figured I’d better not cause a commotion.”

“You were wise.”

“Of course, I wasn’t
around long enough to attend the funeral.”

He heard pain creeping
into her voice.

“As I sat there on the
machine, I heard two men’s voices outside. They were coming toward the shed. I
had forgotten danger, and there was no time to get away! I slid off the seat
and hid inside the old coach that was there.”

Her eyes stared ahead as
she relived the disturbing events of a life-changing day.

“Senator Barnwell walked
in with Bret Markham, Miss Polly’s overseer. They closed the door behind them,
as if they were having a secret meeting. The senator described the device to
Markham and offered him a lot of money to—I couldn’t believe my ears—to
smash
it. He said it had to be done that night because the inventor would be taking
it away the next morning. The senator never mentioned you by name. He said only
that a crazed inventor, a demon among them, had wild plans to destroy their
lives with that machine.”

Tom felt his anger rise.

“I was shocked,” she
continued. “Why would the senator do that? What was
he . . . afraid . . . of? As I hid
there in the coach and listened to him that morning, I realized that I was
right
to dislike him. And, you know, he made it sound as though he were saving the
world. He said, ‘Providence has placed the device in my hands for this one
night.’
 
” She
spoke pompously, imitating him. “
 
‘Yes,
fate has chosen
me
to save us from the Satan in our midst who created
this monster and must be stopped before he destroys himself and the rest of
us.’
 
”