Belle (7 page)

Mr. Best took a sip of his coffee and asked Belle, “What’s my wife doing?”

“Preparing tonight’s dinner. I volunteered to do it, but she turned me down. Says if I work any harder the family may have to pay me.”

Mr. Best saluted Belle with his cup. “Cecilia’s right. Though we do appreciate your willingness to help out.”

Belle hazarded a look Daniel’s way and found him watching her. Pulse beating, she hastily turned away. “She said something about you showing me a room?”

Seeking an explanation, Belle glanced between the two men who favored each other so much.

Mr. Best spoke. “Dani’ll show you. There’s something I need to talk to Cecilia about. I’ll take this tray back up to the house.”

He departed, and for the first time since Daniel held Belle in his arms the two young people were alone.

As
the silence lengthened in the barn, Belle’s nervousness increased. All she could think about was the last time they’d been together and how embarrassed she’d been when it ended. “I—want to apologize for getting you in hot water with your intended yesterday.”

“There’s no need,” Daniel replied. “Francine understood how innocent it was.”

Belle didn’t believe that for a minute, but kept it to herself. “She’s very beautiful, your Francine.”

“Yes, she is.”

Belle needed to change the subject. She didn’t want to talk about Francine, nor did she want to remember the soft kiss Daniel had placed on her forehead while holding her, but the memory refused to stay buried. “Where’s this room your mother wanted me to see?”

“Over here.”

She followed him to the back of the barn, noting how smoothly he walked and how the muscles in his brown arms bulged above the rolled-up sleeves of his faded blue work shirt as he shoved aside a large pallet of wood that rested on the floor. Beneath the pallet lay a sawdust-covered tarp. He pulled it away to reveal a metal square set into the dirt. When he lifted the ring on the end of the square, Belle realized it was a door.

“Grab that lantern, would you?”

She handed him the lit lamp.

“Follow me,” he said.

A marveling Belle walked over to the hole and looked in. She saw a narrow flight of wooden steps leading down into blackness.

“Watch your step,” he cautioned.

Placing a hand on the cold, damp earth beside her, Belle slowly made her way down into what appeared to be a cellar. Once she stepped onto level ground and the light from the lamp cut through the underground darkness, she realized the space was more than just a cellar. There were two cots and a short, old-fashioned wood stove.

“This is where we hide fugitives,” Daniel responded in answer to her unspoken question. “Took Papa, some of his friends and me almost a year to dig it out and shore it up. I thought we’d never get done hauling dirt back up to the surface.”

Belle looked around the space and tried to imagine having to hide here until it was safe to move on to the next station. It wasn’t big and neither was it cheery, but it wasn’t slavery. “How many people have used this room?” she asked him.

“It’s been here almost ten years, so probably hundreds. Multiply our visitors by the hundreds of others who’ve used stations across the country and you’ll get thousands of runaways. The committee in Detroit boasts they’ve transported over thirty thousand folks to Canada since the mid forties alone.”

Belle found that number amazing. “There are that many people escaping?”

He nodded.

Belle could only shake her head at the sheer size of what that represented. “Yet slavery continues.”

“Yep.”

When she met his eyes this time, their gazes held for what seemed to Belle to be an eternity. The lantern gave off just enough illumination to beat back the shadows, but even in the faint light, Daniel could see the smudge of mud she had on her cheek. “You have mud on your cheek.”

Belle’s hands went to her face. “Where?”

“Here,” Daniel replied quietly, touching his finger to the spot, but he wasn’t prepared for the tingling that resulted or for how soft her brown skin would feel. Seemingly of its own accord, that same finger stroked her cheek again.

Shaking, Belle looked up at him; she’d never had anyone touch her so delicately before. Her blood felt like it was rushing through her veins.

A different sort of silence rose between them then, one filled with unspoken questions and a sense of discovery still too new to recognize.

“Belle, I—”

“Dani! Is Belle down there with you?”

Mr. Best.

Unable to draw his eyes from Belle’s, Daniel called back, “Yeah, Pa. She’s right here.”

“Your mother needs her. You two come on up.”

“Okay.”

Belle felt as if something had passed between them but she didn’t know what to name it. The moment was over, however, maybe never to be visited again. “Thanks for showing me this place.”

“You’re welcome.”

A few moments later, they were climbing to the surface and Belle was hurrying back to the house.

That same afternoon, before Mr. and Mrs. Best set off for their overnight visit with their friends, they called Belle downstairs. When she answered the summons, she saw that they were dressed and ready to go. Daniel was there at the door, too.

Mrs. Best pulled on her gloves. “Now, Belle, you and Daniel do your best to get Jojo to bed on time. Make sure her lessons are done before she starts experimenting with new hairstyles.”

Belle smiled.

Mr. Best added, “There shouldn’t be any visitors tonight, but if you do get a shipment you know what to do, son.”

“Yes, Papa, I do.”

Belle knew he meant fugitives. If anyone did arrive, she vowed to offer them as much assistance as she’d received in her time of need.

After verbal assurances from both Belle and Daniel that everything would be all right in their absence, Mr. and Mrs. Best left with a wave.

Daniel closed the door. “Well.”

“Well,” Belle echoed.

For a moment, neither could say more. The moment they’d shared in the underground room continued to play across both their minds.

Daniel, sensing Belle’s nervousness matched his own, searched for a neutral topic. “I’ll go pick up Jojo in an hour or so.”

“That would be fine.”

Daniel was attracted to Belle. He didn’t want to admit it because of the long-standing assumption that he would marry Francine. In all the time he and Francine had been together he’d never even thought about another girl, but now…now this sixteen-year-old runaway with her sparkling dark eyes and silk-smooth skin seemed to be undermining that assumption.

“Is something wrong, Daniel?” Belle asked. He’d been gazing at her with such silent intensity she felt compelled to ask.

“No.” It was a lie, of course, but in light of the commitments he’d already made, only a cad would further explore these unsettling new feelings. “I—have some cleaning up to do out in the barn. Will you be all right in here alone?”

Belle nodded. She seemed to have missed something but had no idea what it might’ve been. When he departed, Belle went up to her room.

Standing before her vanity mirror, Belle touched the spot on her cheek where his finger had brushed it and the rush through her blood returned. Did he see the same person she saw when she looked at herself in the mirror—a too-tall, sixteen-year-old girl with a dark-skinned face and average features? There was no way she’d ever have hair as long and glossy as Jojo’s or Francine’s, but she liked her short hair. It was the hair she’d been born with and it suited her, but what did Daniel see? Probably nothing, she told herself dejectedly as she turned away and picked up Jojo’s almost-completed banner. She sat down in a chair and began putting the finishing touches on the Liberian flag. He probably saw nothing because he didn’t even know she was alive, she wailed inwardly. The only reason he’d touched her cheek was because she’d had mud on it. She’d be willing to be Francine the Queen hadn’t ever been caught with mud on her face like a dirty child. Determined to put Daniel Best out of her mind once and for all, Belle concentrated on her stitches.

Out in the barn, Daniel was putting away the tools and telling himself to quit thinking about Belle. He was supposed to be thinking about Francine. Francine was the one he planned to marry and raise a family with. He’d known her most of his life—he’d known Belle almost a month. The attraction made no sense, but he couldn’t seem to convince his brain of that, or his feelings for that matter.

When he finished sweeping up and putting all the tools away, he closed the barn doors and went back up to the house. Taking a moment to wash up at the pump, he rid his hands, forearms and face of most of the sawdust and grime, then went inside. Belle was in the kitchen checking on the chicken his mother had left roasting for their dinner.

“How’s it look?” he asked her.

She set the lid back on the roaster and slid it back into the stove. “By the time you get back with Jo it should be done.”

She placed the oven pads and turned to face him. Once again she was struck by just how handsome Daniel Best really was. “Do you want biscuits or cornbread?”

“How about both?” he asked with a straight face.

She smiled in spite of herself. “No. One or the other.”

“You’re starting to sound a lot like my mother.”

“I’ll consider that a compliment,” she said, inclining her head mockingly. “Now, which do you prefer?”

“Which one do you make the best?”

“Biscuits.”

“Then biscuits it is. I’m on my way to fetch Jojo.”

“Dinner will be waiting.”

“Good, because I’m a hungry and growing man.”

Belle smiled and watched him go. After his departure, Belle found herself fantasizing how it might be to have Daniel for her husband and to be cooking dinner for them both. Telling herself she stood a better chance of seeing pigs crochet, she went to the pantry for the flour canister.

Belle had just gotten the biscuits rolled out and in the pan when she heard the sound of the door pull. She’d never been here alone before and never had to answer the door, so she hesitated. What if it was slave catchers? Convincing herself slave catchers wouldn’t be so polite as to use the pull, she wiped her hands on her apron and hastened to the door. She did take a moment to look out of the window that gave a view of the porch. She saw two young men she didn’t recognize.

The pull sounded again and Belle opened the door.

The two appeared to be about Daniel’s age. Both were light skinned, tall and quite handsome. They favored each other enough to be twins.

One of the young men asked, “Are the Bests at home?”

Belle hesitated to give an answer without knowing if they were friend or foe. “May I ask why you’re enquiring?”

“We have a box to deliver. We’re the Morgans. Friends of Dani’s.”

Belle looked past them out to a wagon parked down by the road. True enough a large, rectangular-shaped crate rested in the bed. “Well, they’re not here at the moment. Why don’t you just leave it here on the porch?”

“Okay. My name’s Jeremiah; this is my brother Adam.”

“Pleased to meet you both. I’m Belle.”

“You sure are,” Jeremiah agreed, looking her over with an admiring smile and a playful light in his brown eyes.

The confusion on her face must’ve been plain, because Adam, the taller of the brothers, stated, “You must not speak French.”

Belle admitted, “No, I don’t.”

“Well, in French, Belle means beautiful, and that you are. How long has Daniel been keeping you under wraps?”

Jeremiah added, “Better yet, does Francine the Queen know that a fairer beauty has entered the land?”

Belle couldn’t help herself, she laughed. “Are you two always this incorrigible?”

“Only when faced with such a dazzling display of African loveliness.”

Belle couldn’t take it anymore. She held the door wide. “Come in before lightning strikes the house.”

Laughing, both of the Morgans complied.

As it turned out, the two were longtime friends of the family. Both brothers had attended Oberlin with Daniel.

“Our parents are from Canada,” Adam explained. “We moved here about ten years ago.”

Jeremiah asked, “Where’re you from, Belle?”

Before answering, Belle looked between the two. She didn’t know if she could tell them the truth or if she was supposed to introduce herself as Mrs. Best’s niece.

The sound of Jojo’s happy voice emanating from the kitchen signaled Belle’s deliverance. Jo and Daniel were back.

When Jojo entered the room, a smiling Jeremiah cracked, “Hello, pest.”

Jojo grinned. “Hello, woodenhead. I see woodenhead two is with you, too.”

Adam replied, “Don’t you have some hair to curl somewhere? Where’s your brother?”

“Right here,” Daniel replied coming in behind his sister. He then turned to Belle and said, “We don’t usually allow this kind of riffraff in the house.”

“Hey!” Adam warned in mock protest. “How dare you defame me in front of this lovely ebony queen.”

“Oh, Lord,” Jojo said, rolling her eyes. “I’m going upstairs. Belle, you may wish to come, too.”

Belle grinned. “I don’t know, Jo. I kind of like being given a title.” And she did. She was ebony, yes, but a lovely queen? Belle knew better, but enjoyed their good-natured teasing anyway. She then glanced Daniel’s way to see if he was enjoying his friends’ antics as much as she, but his jaw was tight, and the brown eyes viewing the brothers didn’t look very friendly at all.
Whatever is the matter with him?
she wondered.

Jeremiah took one look at his face and asked, “What rocker rolled over your tail?”

His brother, gazing into Belle’s eyes, chuckled. “Planned to keep this little jewel all to yourself, I’ll bet, but you’ve already got Francine. This isn’t the Bible; you don’t get two.”

Belle dropped her head to hide her grin. She liked the Morgan brothers very much.

Daniel asked them, “Did you come over here for a reason?”

“We’ve a crate outside for you.”

“What kind of crate?” Daniel asked.

Adam used his hands to intimate his words. “A very big crate.”

“Where’s it from?”

“Philadelphia, I think. We were at the train station today to send off a parcel for Mama when one of the porters asked if we knew a William Best. We said yes, so he asked that we deliver it. Says it’s from William Still.”

“William Still?!” Daniel exclaimed. “Oh, Jesus! Come on!”

To everyone’s surprise, Daniel ran out the front door.

Daniel was already up on the wagon bed when the others came out to join him. He was silently praying, too, but no one knew that. Daniel saw that small holes had been drilled in the side of the crate and that gave him hope. He placed his ear against the wood and listened. Silence. Knowing his parents would want him to remain calm, he told Adam, “Quick, get in and drive this thing behind the house. Jere, there are tools right inside the barn door. I need a claw hammer and a crowbar. Run. I want to get this opened as soon as we get there. Jo, help him.”