Mary Connealy (49 page)

She cringed and dodged his attempt to urge her toward his horse.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I won’t hurt you, I promise. And I won’t let anyone take you anywhere you don’t want to go. But I can’t leave you out here.” Flinching to prepare for her next attack, he reached for her.

Instead of fighting, she sank to the ground, screaming as if he were driving a knife into her heart.

Adam swung her up into his arms. Her hopeless tears hurt him worse than the beating he’d just taken.

Grace lay awake, numb from staring sightlessly at his back. His back. Her husband’s back. Daniel Reeves. Her husband.

She was going completely out of her mind. She was trapped. He’d used those very words. Trapped. Both of them. All of them.

She heard the wind and knew there’d be no church tomorrow. That was a blessing.

She cut off the thought.
No, forgive me, God. It’s not a blessing that there’s no church. It’s just a blessing that…

No, it was
not
a blessing that she was trapped in a house with six men, all of whom hated her. All of whom were completely out of control. Rude, sloppy, ignorant.

And here she lay married to the rudest, sloppiest, most ignorant one of the bunch.

So what did that make her? No well-mannered, tidy, brilliant choices had brought her to this place. That meant
she
got the prize as the most ignorant one of all. No contest.

Of course, if they couldn’t get out, Parrish couldn’t get in. She knew the man.
Tough
was not a word she’d use to describe him, and facing a Texas blizzard took all kinds of tough.

So she was safe and in the middle of a complete disaster at the same time. No wonder she couldn’t sleep.

She finally noticed another reason or two she couldn’t sleep. She started to cry when she thought of it. She needed to go to the outhouse. And she was starving. How could her body make such mundane demands of her at a time like this?

She didn’t even know where the outhouse was. She didn’t even have shoes. She had to wake Daniel. She had to ask him for help and take the first step to being a functioning human being in this household. She wasn’t going to be able to stay curled up in her ball forever. That was the only plan she’d come up with today.

Her body wouldn’t let her ignore its discomfort anymore. Her arm fighting every inch-by-inch movement, she stretched out her hand and—shuddering all the way to the soles of her feet—touched her husband.

Daniel rolled over. His eyes were open, fully alert.

Grace thought of the sluggish way she woke up every morning and almost jumped at Daniel’s reaction. Forcing the words past reluctant lips, she said, “I…That is, can you…Is there a…I need directions to the…the…” She was pretty sure it was too dark in the minuscule cave for him to see her cheeks go flaming red.

Daniel must’ve been used to the question. Of course he would be. The father of five would know about nature calls in the night. “I’ll get the lantern and go with you.”

“No, just directions, and…a…a coat.”

“The snow’s too deep for you to go alone.” Daniel didn’t discuss it or try to change her mind. He got up, lit the lantern with a piece of bark he touched to the fire in the stove’s belly, and pulled on his shoes.

He glanced at her. “You’re about the size of a ten-year-old boy, I’d say.” He rustled around in a pile of clothes by the door and tossed her a shirt, a pair of boots, and—

“I can’t wear a pair of pants.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed in the lantern light. He said with grim humor, “Wade through the snow barefoot in your nightgown for all I care.” He turned his back to give her privacy.

Grace wanted to start crying again. She thought of the years with Parrish, and the recollection steadied her. She’d survived that. She could survive anything.

She turned her back on Daniel and slipped on the clothes. She pulled the pants on under her nightgown. They were too short, but they buttoned comfortably on her waist. The boots fit perfectly. She
was
the size of a ten-year-old boy. She just pulled the shirt on over her nightgown, unwilling to undress further in front of Daniel. She tied the boots, and he handed her a heavy coat, which she pulled on.

“Ready?”

She nodded.

He swung the door open the smallest slit possible, and they slipped through into the biting cold and driving snow.

When they got back, Grace was shivering all the way to her bones. The snow had come in over her boots, and sharp needles of ice had cut through her clothing to her skin.

She trembled as Daniel closed the door behind them. He hadn’t asked her any questions outside, thank heavens. The weather was just too brutal for anything like that. But she was well aware that she’d just had her chance to explain things to Daniel and she’d passed it by.

She at least could have told him there was no baby. But she was still so insulted she couldn’t bring herself to deny his charge. She was tempted to let him wait nine months and figure it out himself.

If they continued living like this, it might even be possible never to tell him. When would they ever have a moment alone? The thought cheered her considerably.

Now they were back with the boys, who surely had been awakened by the noise and the blast of cold air, though none of them moved.

“I would like a biscuit, please,” she whispered. “I’m hungry.”

“Suit yourself.” Daniel lay down on the bare dirt floor.

Grace wanted to kick him, but what had she expected? That he’d serve her then stand at her elbow while she ate? She neither expected nor wanted that.

She grabbed the single remaining biscuit off the kitchen table. She had to move carefully because the boys’ sprawled bodies covered the floor. How could they live like this?

She thought of Parrish and the conditions she’d lived in with him. She thought of the litany of work Daniel had ordered his children to do. Had she stumbled onto a family that ran much like hers? The boys were little monsters, but that didn’t mean she was going to stand by and watch them be treated like slave labor.

She thought of Hannah and wondered if her sister was safe. Surely Parrish had focused all his rage on Grace. But without Grace’s money, how long before Hannah and the children began to go hungry? And how long before timid, nurturing Hannah came up with one of her harebrained schemes to rescue her missing sister?

Grace knew she had to get a letter to Hannah as soon as possible so she wouldn’t go crazy worrying. As the wind whistled outside the door, Grace knew it wouldn’t be tomorrow.

Grace closed her eyes and prayed that God would tend to Hannah and the little ones. Grace knew it was a sin to ask. God cared for his children. He knew the number of hairs on Hannah’s head. She was distrusting God when she didn’t put her faith in His promises. But where was God when she and Hannah and all the others had been in Parrish’s clutches all those years?

Distrust came easily.

She found a few inches of milk in the bottom of the pail. One tin cup sat in the center of the table next to the biscuit and the milk. She poured herself the milk, finished it and the biscuit, and went back to bed. She rolled up tightly in the coarse woolen blanket. She should share it with Daniel, she knew.

Instead, she ignored him. And comfortable, fed, and warm, she found herself once again staring at Daniel’s back. Her husband’s back. Daniel Reeves. Her husband.

She fell asleep before she could start crying again.

“My name is Adam.”

The words pulled Tillie awake.

“I’m taking you home with me.”

A black man held her. She hadn’t seen a black man in years, not since the war was over. And Master Virgil had kept only Tillie as a slave long after all the other slaves had been freed by law. Of course, she hadn’t known the war was over and the slaves had been freed until just recently.

“No one will hurt you at home.”

No black man would send her back to that nightmare, would he?

“You’re too cold. You have to get warmed up. I can’t leave you here.”

She felt the world shift steadily along and realized she was on horseback, held by a man—a black man—with arms like iron bands. Those arms tightened in a way that told Tillie he knew she had roused. She looked up into the full dark. Barely able to see his face shrouded by the brim of his hat, she tested his grip and found no escape.

Black eyes gleamed in the night. He watched her. She could tell even with his face in shadows darkened by his ebony skin.

Panic soared in her stomach like a flock of frightened birds. If only the wings were real and could carry her away.

Maybe if she convinced him she was all right, he’d let her go. She stiffened her spine and forced herself to speak calmly. “Thank you for helping me. I was frightened at first. That’s why I fought you. I apologize for hurting you.”

“I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me.”

“Your nose is bleeding, and one eye is swollen shut. I’m sorry. I don’t know my own strength sometimes.”

He tilted his head so the moonlight revealed his astonished expression. “You’d have never touched me if I hadn’t been so careful not to hurt you.”

Tillie controlled her expression, though a soft sniff of disdain might have escaped. Still, he wouldn’t have noticed it. She hoped. “Well, for whatever reason you
let
me hit you, I do apologize. Now, I really need to be on my way. Please let me down, sir.”

The man—Adam—didn’t even slow his horse. “It’s Adam, not sir. And I’m not letting you walk away from me in the snow and cold. I’m taking you somewhere safe. My boss’s wife and daughters will see to your injuries. We will protect you from whoever hurt you. I promise.”

“I don’t need protection. I can take care of myself. And no one hurt me.”

“Uh…so that metal cuff on your ankle is…jewelry of some sort?”

She’d forgotten about that horrid binding. She couldn’t get it off no matter what she tried. It made her explanations sound weak. She looked up at Adam. His voice and the strength of his arms could be a sanctuary, but trust was foreign to her.

A horse snorted, and she realized she was being carried along on its back at a ground-eating pace. The animal’s feet crunched on the snow, its bridle jingling when it tossed its head, white breath whooshing out of its nose as it hurried along.

She became aware of a coarse blanket surrounding her. She wasn’t so cold anymore. She’d been cold for so long that this blanket qualified as luxury.

“The McClellen place is just ahead, miss. You’ll be safe and warm there. We’ll tend your wounds, get you a hot meal and some warm clothes, and give you a soft bed for the night.”

It sounded like heaven, back when she believed there was such a place. What choice did she have anyway? Since her escape attempt had turned to this disaster, she hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept, hadn’t been warm for days and days.

“What’s your name?”

The chain on her ankle clinked, an eternal reminder of where she’d been, what she’d left, what awaited her if she was taken back.

“I won’t tell you.”

He made a sound, soothing, maybe prayerful. One strong hand held the reins while the other supported her back and gently caressed her shoulder as if she were a fretful child. But he was a fool if he prayed to a God who had forgotten one of His children. A God she’d believed in for so long, only to be betrayed. The knowledge that all of her years and years of prayer had been whispered into nothingness—because no God could have heard her prayers and left her with that madman—was worse than finding out the war had been over for years. It had nearly destroyed her.

Adam suddenly pulled his horse to a stop. “We’re here. You’ll be fine. I’ll carry you into the house.”

Tillie had vowed when she ran from Virgil that never again would someone tell her where to go and what to do. That vow had lasted less than a week, because now Adam was taking charge of her life. But not for long.

“Clay, get over here and take my horse!” Adam swung down to the ground with her still in his arms, his gentleness in vivid contrast to the brutality of Virgil.

His last beating had come with words that cut her to the heart. Virgil had sneered at her that there’d been a war. The slaves had been freed. But not her, never her.