Seduced (3 page)

Breathless with surprise and hope, she stepped into the fissure, and after a few feet, the crack widened into a chamber. With a spring, bubbling in its center.

She tasted the water, and it was ice cold and clear and sweet.

Relief made her sag against the cold, hard earth.

The ground surrounding the spring was wide enough for Mr. Baywood's body if they could drag him this far without killing him. They could hide him here until he got better or died and hope that Jimmy never found him.

“For these small things we are grateful,” she murmured, but wasn’t entirely sure she meant it.

She didn’t have Annie’s kind soul. What little kindness she'd been born with had been beaten right out of her, and she cared only about survival. Hers and her sister's. At some point she had to believe this nightmare would end. That they would find some amount of peace.

Annie still wanted to do what was right, what they’d been taught as girls a lifetime ago, but Melody saw little point in that if it got them killed.

And should Jimmy find this man alive, he'd kill them all.

THE TURKEY WAS off the porch, and inside Annie was mixing laudanum for Mr. Baywood. The soaking-wet dresses they’d worn yesterday were hanging over the chairs, steaming beside the crackling fire.

Annie had raked the ground, trying to spread the mud they'd made more evenly so it might dry faster in the sunlight that streamed through the open door.

“He’s unconscious,” Melody said. “What does he need the laudanum for?”

“I thought maybe we’d put him on Lilly, ride out until we found a cave or someplace to hide him. I want to have some ready in case he wakes up.”

“There’s a cave with a spring in the barn,” she said. “We can hide him there.”

Annie put the cork back in the laudanum.

The turkey was spread out on the table. “What are you doing with it?” Melody asked.

Annie pointed to a large pot. “Smoke some, make stew with the rest. This house is bigger than you’d think. There’s another room behind the fireplace.”

Melody ducked through the small doorway to see into the hidden room. At the moment it was full of burlap bags of potatoes and flour, but she imagined he built it with family in mind.

“Jimmy said Mr. Baywood was expecting his family,” Melody said, setting down the bucket. The log cabin was small but well made, almost no drafts coming through the timber of the walls. The chinking looked new. The stone fireplace was large with a wide hearth. The table and chairs were sturdy, made from the pine trees surrounding the place. There was food hanging from burlap bags and the air smelled of mud and fire and whatever plants were hung by strings from the rafters to dry.

If Mr. Baywood didn’t survive, his murderer would make this her home. The thought made her nauseous and she pressed a hand to her belly. She’d done some truly reprehensible things in her life and paid for them in blood and grief. But taking the home of a man her husband had killed...

What did I do to deserve this?
She wondered.
Or worse, what will be asked of me to pay for it?

Before the war she’d craved attention and status. Reveled in her position of prestige, enjoyed the envy of other girls and the attention of all the men. She’d been selfish and conniving to serve her own goals. But for all of that, she’d had a dream that kept her alive through the war—of a family, of a husband and children, of work that would bind them together. A fine legacy built and cared for with her own two hands. A home.

She had schemed to win Christopher, a man she'd thought would best make real that dream. Mama had told her that Christopher was too weak to match her, that he would wander or feel bullied, and part of her knew that Mama was right. But she'd thought she could control him. And that it would make her happy.

And she believed, with all that was left of her heart, that the cost of her hubris had been the destruction of her dreams. The war had taught her that every moment of happiness, no matter how slight, how meager and threadbare, would be paid for with an equal measure of sorrow. With despair.

And that the surest way to bring destruction upon the things she wanted was to want them in the first place.

Her dreams had not survived her dreaming them; they’d been broken and repaired, only to be smashed again and again. Each aspect compromised over and over. She’d wanted fine gowns, and instead had threadbare rags. She’d won Christopher, only to have him die in the first year of the war, and instead she got Jimmy, his younger, lesser brother, one of the few boys to come home at all.

Despite Annie and Melody's efforts, without the slaves the cotton fields went to seed, and then the hay pastures, until all that was left were the kitchen garden and the fruit trees, which she was barely able to keep alive, while Annie tried to hunt whatever game still lived in the forests around their land.

Most of the animals were taken by soldiers on both sides, until she and Annie learned how to hide them better when the armies marched past. Jacks, Lilly, and Rue were the only horses left from Father's fine stable.

The home she craved sold off to a man who would not ever love it as she had. Not ever.

Before the war, when she'd been vying for Christopher's attention, she'd wanted romance. Passion. Stolen kisses. Rushed, panting caresses.

But all of that had been beaten and raped out of her.

Her dream was utterly unrecognizable to her now. She looked at those broken pieces and didn't know what she wanted.

To eat until she was full? To have enough food so her sister’s stomach didn’t growl at night?

To wake up in the morning without fear?

She'd married the wrong man for all of that.

But worse, perhaps she was the wrong woman for all of that. A soul not meant for dreaming and unable to hold onto happiness.

“How do we get him to the barn?” Annie asked, pulling Melody from her grim thoughts.

“We could put him on the blanket,” Melody said, grateful that there was always work to keep them moving. “Remember how we got that dead Yankee out of the stream at home?”

Annie nodded, but looked down at her foot as if doubting its ability to do the work. It was odd to see her sister so hesitant. Ever since the war had required them to shed their ball gowns and get their hands dirty, Annie had thrived. The shy wallflower with a stammer had been trampled by a woman who seemed unaware of her limits.

“Are you well?” Melody asked.

“The ride has made me sore.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

Annie laughed. “We've had our hands full.”

“We can do this.”

“There isn’t any other choice, is there?”

“No.”

They rolled Mr. Baywood onto a blanket and then began the torturous effort of

dragging him to the cave. His wound opened. Annie fell, her bent leg twisting underneath her. Melody felt muscles along her back straining and pulling.

“A little bit further,” she groaned, helping her sister to her feet.

Inside the barn, Annie wiped sweaty hair off her forehead and cried with utterly out-of-place delight, “Chickens!”

Out of breath, Melody smiled and sagged against the wall.

At the spring they checked his wound, which was seeping but not bleeding too heavily, and wrapped him with blankets to keep away the chill. Faint sunlight would come in through the entrance if they kept the barn door open; otherwise the room was dark as a tomb.

“He’s probably still going to die,” Annie whispered, saying aloud what she probably didn't want to think.

“But we’ve done our best,” Melody said, stroking her sister's back. “Father would be proud.”

“Mama would be mortified.”

“And my husband will be murderous.” The words spilled from her lips without thought.

Melody felt her sister’s eyes upon her cheek.

“If I could take the pain—” her sister whispered.

Melody squeezed her sister’s hand because there was no point in regrets. Her sister had done a kind and noble thing; Melody would pay the bloody price of it. “Come, there’s still much work to be done.”

ON THE NINTH day of Jimmy’s absence Melody milked the goat and Annie boiled the milk with some of the precious vinegar they had left, and they ate the delicious curds with their fingers, sitting on the porch, watching the bobbing flowers in the cool, sweet breeze.

But Melody was blind to it, her body sick with dread.

“Perhaps Jacks threw Jimmy off the mountain?” Annie asked, but Melody could not joke. Her stomach was acid and bile. Her head hurt, her body felt heavier than she could carry. Every minute of every day that passed she thought of Jimmy. Every rustle in the forest sounded like his return and the end of her reprieve. The endless work required of them barely distracted her, but as the days wore on she wanted him to return just to end the agony of waiting. She felt like a prisoner awaiting her trip to the noose.

“I cannot allow myself to pretend he won’t be back,” she whispered. She could not enjoy these days without him, free from the threat of violence or the soul-crushing work of managing his temper.

Look at what he has made me
, she thought, near tears.

Annie gave her the last curd.

The next morning Melody woke up alone in the cabin.

Today
, she thought, half prayer, half curse,
today he will come
.

She pulled on a shawl and slipped her feet into her boots before grabbing the last of their dried fruit and a piece of turkey breast to take out to her sister.

When Melody walked into the cave, Annie was digging through Father’s medical

bag. Mr. Baywood lay silent, still unconscious though no longer feverish, beside her.

“Did you sleep out here again?” she asked Annie.

“No. I came out a while ago.” The two of them were working in shifts, only able to leave him alone for an hour before one of them felt compelled to check on him.

“Has he eaten anything?”

“Broth. Some water.”

Melody sighed and sat next to her sister. Mr. Baywood was getting pale and thin. Which made the yellow, purple and green bruising on his temple and face even more striking.

“Perhaps I should have bled him,” Annie said. “Perhaps the pressure there on his temple is what keeps him asleep.”

Annie had been rolling this decision over for days, first one way and then the other, constantly blaming herself for Mr. Baywood’s not fully waking up.

“Last night,” Melody said, leaning into her sister’s side. “When I was out here, he told me that I was a good soldier. That my mother would be proud.”

She thought of Mama, whose pride in her dead son did nothing to assuage her grief. But as useless as they might be, she hoped her brother had heard similar platitudes from other soldiers as he lay dying.

“I don’t know what to do for him.” Annie’s thin shoulders were bent under her defeat. “I keep looking in this bag like I’ll find something.”

Melody pressed the turkey and fruit into her sister’s hand and said what she’d been thinking for days. “It would be better if he died.”

“Melody—”

“Jimmy will be back. We can’t hide him forever.”

Annie gave her one of her disgusted looks, took the turkey and left.

Later that day, Melody came out of the barn with eggs only to find Annie digging up the clearing, through all the white and purple blooms.

“What are you doing?” Melody asked, as Annie drove sticks into the ground.

“I’m counting,” she answered, using her lurching step to measure off another parcel of land. When she stopped she drove another stick in the ground, twisting it into the soil until it stayed upright. “Planning the garden.”

“Why?”

“Mr. Baywood is dying.”

Annie pushed her hair from her forehead and Melody saw the tears on her cheeks. The sight ran through her like a knife and she wished the right decisions could just stay right. That for once pain was not their constant companion.

“This isn’t our land.”

“Jimmy means to make it so.”

The sun fell down between them in great golden sheets, from a sky so blue it seared the eyes. Truly Melody had never seen such light, such a pureness of air. She wished she could suck it all in, and through some alchemy apply it to her own black heart.

“I want to tend the living, instead of the dying. What is the harm in that, in planning for something that will grow? That we can tend and it will survive? I want to care for something and be nourished by it in return. That is what I want.” Annie wiped the tears from her face and crossed her arms over her thin cambric shirt. She wore it tucked into her durable brown skirt and looked like a defiant farmer’s wife.

Melody wore an old silk ball gown. The seed pearls had been sold off. The ribbons and lace were long gone. Now it was just a tawdry red silk that did not keep out the cold.

She’d been married in this dress, and the thought was so black, she fought it. Pushed it away as best she could. With as much force as she could muster she shoved all the black thoughts away and conceded once more to her sister’s better self.

In the ten months of hard travel, the year of her marriage and the war before that, in the times when she would give in to despair or anger, her sister always managed to find some branch of hope to cling to.

A garden. Why the hell not?

“Let’s plant,” she said.

It took the better part of the afternoon, but when it was done they had turned over the loamy black soil and gotten rid of the rocks. They'd created a plot, far smaller than the one they'd had at home, but still respectable.

Melody was dirty and worn out, but pleased in a way she hadn’t been since after Fort Sumter when she’d watched Christopher in his dress uniform, her lips still buzzing from his kiss, march off to what she’d been so convinced was sure, heroic victory.

Melody lifted the metal cup of cold water they were sharing in a toast. “To growing something,” she said.

That’s when Jimmy showed up.

“I'M BACK, WIFE,” he hollered.

Relief and horror were an awful combination, and she felt it all through her body. Under every inch of her skin. With a year’s worth of practice to draw on, Melody stilled her reaction, the shudder of fear. Of revulsion. And after one shaking breath she managed to turn to her husband, with the best smile she was capable of. Only to stumble when she saw the stranger in black ride up behind him.