Someone Like You (18 page)

She had stripped out of the bodice of her dress and had waded out into the water, her breasts bare. He watched, transfixed, as she scooped handfuls of river sand and brought them to her chest. With tears running down her face and great heaving sobs escaping her, she scrubbed the places where he had touched her, over and over, until her flesh burned red. “Oh, Mamma…Mamma…I did love you,” she said in a low, hoarse voice he could scarcely hear. “I did.”

He started to go to her, but something held him back. Perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps this was something she needed to settle and lay to rest in order to heal the wound that still festered.

Still she scrubbed, more frantically now, and the beautiful pale skin he had kissed a moment ago was ugly red. He heard her moan, then cry out, “I can’t be like you! I can’t! I can’t!”

Her words made little sense, but her anguish tore into him. Still he did not go to her—not until he saw the tender skin of her breasts rubbed to blistering red with no sign of her stopping.

“No!” he shouted. “Don’t!”

He waded out into the water. “Susannah—don’t! There are other ways to deal with pain besides inflicting more upon yourself.” When his words had no effect on her, he took her by the arms. Energy spent, she did not resist him. He chastely washed the sand from her skin and tugged at the bodice of her dress. As he did, he talked to her in a soft, soothing voice devoid of sexual intent.

Once her dress was in place, he stood with her in the water, holding her up when she could no longer stand, allowing her to cry, neither asking her to stop nor encouraging her to go on. He wanted her to trust him above all.

Too many thoughts and a jumble of emotions overpowered him, and he felt as useless, as helpless as a fresh-hatched gosling, trying to soothe a pain he did not understand, to offer sympathy and comfort when he was not certain what she needed. And yet when he looked down at the small, wet head pressed so tightly against his chest, he felt a nurturing tenderness that seemed to flow out of him naturally, without thinking. He could feel the rise and fall of her soft breasts against him, and marveled that he had been able, after all this time, to hold someone close like this, to give solace.

When she’d cried herself out, he was still holding her against him. He whispered into her hair. “I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I know you don’t believe me, but you don’t have to worry. I won’t touch you again.”

She pulled back. Tears still rolling down her face. “You don’t understand, do you? You don’t understand that the problem isn’t you.”

“Susannah, help me to understand.”

“You can’t understand. Don’t you see that? You can’t comprehend any of this because I don’t understand.” She cried harder. “It’s me, Reed,” she said, poking herself hard in the chest. “It’s all me. Me! The blood in me is bad.”

“I told you, it doesn’t matter who your father was. I don’t care.”

“It’s not because I’m illegitimate. It goes much deeper than that.”

“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”

Her look turned cold. “It matters to me,” she said, and pulled away from him. “It matters to me.”

Chapter Sixteen

It was twilight and Reed had come to the house to see Violette. “You don’t seem surprised that I want to speak privately with you,” he said.

“I was expecting you.” She held the door open. “Come on in. Dally and Susannah are upstairs hemming Dally’s dress. We can sit in the parlor, if you like. Or would you prefer to sit on the porch?”

“Susannah’s window…”

“Is open,” Violette said.

“The parlor, then.”

He followed her into the parlor, sitting in the chair she indicated. Violette took a chair nearby and looked at him sternly, leaving little doubt that she knew precisely why he had come.

In a way he was relieved. “I suppose you have as many questions about me as I do about Susannah. Primarily, what I want to discuss—”

“I know what you want to talk about. Susannah told me what happened.”

“She did?”

“Yes, and you must understand that although I like you, my first loyalty is to Susannah. I won’t do or say anything to cause her the least discomfort.”

“Nor would I want you to.”

“Tell me why you want to involve yourself in this? What do you hope to gain from it?”

“Nothing.”

“Why become involved, then?”

“I want to help her. If I can.”

“Don’t you have enough troubles of your own?”

He did not respond right away. He realized he had to tread carefully here. He’d come to get some answers about Susannah’s past, not to give answers about his own, but Violette was a woman who would expect fairness. “Let’s just say it’s part of my nature to be caring.”

“Translate that into plain English for me.”

“I have never seen anyone with so much potential hold themselves back because of something in their past. If I could help her face her demons, she might be able to drive away whatever it is that has forced her to settle for half a life.”

“You know nothing about her past, I take it?”

“Nothing more than snatches, bits of information she’s dropped here and there, observations I’ve made. Nothing that explains her behavior, yet just enough to make me want to help.”

“You have to understand one thing, Reed. Susannah is a cold, passionless woman, and it’s a well-known fact that a woman of that ilk is better off without a man in her life. Sad as it may be, some women are born to be spinsters.”

Why did Violette say those things? If it was her purpose to anger him, she got the response she wanted. He, who prided himself on being an easygoing man, got not merely angry but quite angry. “I don’t think you know your niece as well as you believe you do. In fact, I don’t think you know her at all. It isn’t her natural bent to be cold and passionless. I kissed her and she kissed me back—and with a great deal of feeling. For someone who was born to be a cold, passionless woman, she sure changed. Something or someone made her the way she is. She was trained, like my horse was trained. It isn’t her nature and she is fighting against it. My concern is, if she doesn’t conquer her fear, it might destroy her.”

“Calm down, boy. We aren’t enemies. I’m on your side. Susannah is as dear to me as any human could be. I had to be certain about you, you understand. I had to know what your motives were before I could trust you.”

Reed settled back in the chair, feeling himself relax. “And do you trust me now?”

“I do. I suppose I’ve trusted you since the day I first saw you. That day in town, when they were fixing to string you up for a pie-stealing cow thief, I had a feeling you were the one.”

She stood up and he started to rise. “Keep your seat. I’ll get us a glass of port—just one glass,” she said with a wink.

“You are quite a woman. Why did you never have children of your own?”

“I lost two children in infancy to the croup. I was never able to have another.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”

“It was a long time ago. The pain has healed, and I’m not sensitive to it. I’m glad you did ask. It gives me the right to ask you a few things,” she said, laughing when he groaned.

She went into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with two glasses of port. She set one down by her chair and handed him the other, then took a sip and settled back. “Susannah said you were asking questions.”

“Yes.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That her mother sent word to you when she was ill, but died before you arrived. That she came to live with you when she was almost ten.”

“She didn’t tell you anything else about Rachel?”

“Rachel? Was that her mother’s name?”

“Yes. She was the daughter of our brother Matthew. When she was a young woman, she was the toast of the county, so beautiful that she could have married anyone.”

“So why didn’t she marry?”

“She did marry. Her husband was killed in the war.”

“He wasn’t Susannah’s father?”

“No, he wasn’t.”

He thought about Susannah’s illegitimacy. “There’s no way to find out who her father was?”

“None that we know of. Dally and I asked that same question a million times over. We tried to find out when we went to New Orleans, but ended up on dead-end streets. To be honest, I doubt that Rachel knew.”

“Why would you think that?”

Violette took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I don’t know rightly how to put this, other than to be blunt. Susannah’s mother was a whore—a prostitute on Basin Street in New Orleans.”

Reed felt a stab of pain for Susannah. It was all coming together now. “What a horrible thing for a child to know.”

“It gets worse.”

“I can’t imagine how.”

“Susannah was born in a bordello. She lived there until she was almost ten, when Dally and I went to New Orleans to see about Rachel, only she was dead and buried by the time we arrived, so we whisked that poor baby out of there as fast as we could.”

“Good God! Raised in a bordello? What kind of a mother would subject her child to such—why didn’t she contact you sooner? If not for herself, at least for her child.”

“I have asked myself the same question a hundred times. I never came up with an answer. What makes it so difficult to understand is that we knew Rachel quite well. She was like a daughter to us. This whole thing seemed so contrary to her nature. She was such a loving, caring person. Dally and I couldn’t figure out how someone could change so drastically in a few short years. We were convinced that something must have happened, something quite dreadful, to change her, but we could never find out what it was.”

A dozen emotions churned in Reed. He wished Rachel weren’t dead. He would personally like to choke her. He was angry, overwhelmed. He couldn’t fathom what Susannah must have endured. He thought of his own two sisters and the childhood they had, the love, the nurturing, the privilege of being children. He no longer wondered where Susannah had learned to talk the way she did. God only knew it was a miracle that she didn’t grow up to be a prostitute herself. Now he understood why she was so reserved around men, why she had no interest in them, why she was afraid to let herself feel. She was obviously terrified of turning out like her mother.

“What was Rachel’s husband’s name?”

“J. D. Carpenter.”

“Carpenter?” He pondered that. “If his name was Carpenter, then why did she give Susannah the name Dowell?”

“Rachel went by the name Rachel Dowell in New Orleans. Of course, she had one of those fancy names for her gentlemen friends. I don’t remember what it was. I think it had Savannah in it…Lady Savannah or something of that ilk.”

“Why would she change her name?”

“Why would she become a prostitute? At first we were determined to learn the reason but we had no luck. After several years we admitted defeat and gave up. The answer died with her.”

“Her husband was dead, so it couldn’t be because she was hiding from him.”

“It’s my guess that she did it to protect her husband’s name. I never met Mr. Carpenter, you see, so I didn’t know much about him. Rachel married him when she was in the South visiting relatives with her mother. After they married, they lived on a beautiful plantation in Mississippi. The only other information I have about him is in a letter Rachel received, notifying her of her husband’s death.”

“What did the initials J.D. stand for?”

“I don’t know. In her letters, Rachel always called him J.D.”

“Do you have the letter?”

“Of course I have it. I kept everything of Rachel’s—what there was left. It was all Susannah would ever have of her mother.”

“Could I see that letter?”

“I’ll get it.”

When Violette returned, she handed the letter to Reed. According to the accounting he read, Captain J. D. Carpenter was a Confederate soldier who died in a Union encampment near Manassas. In the last paragraph, there was mention of some personal effects of Captain Carpenter’s that could be forwarded to her if Mrs. Carpenter would write back authorizing it and telling where she wished them sent. There wasn’t anything in the letter that Reed found particularly useful, but there was something that he found strange. When he reached the bottom of the page and read the signature, he felt as if someone had slammed him in the stomach.

Dr. John Joseph Ledbetter.

Difficult though it was to believe, it seemed that his family’s friend and next-door neighbor in Boston had treated Rachel’s husband.

“Is something wrong?”

Reed shook his head. “This is amazing, but I knew a Dr. John Joseph Ledbetter, a surgeon in the Union army. There couldn’t be two Dr. John Joseph Ledbetters. The name isn’t common. It has to be the same man.”

“Stranger things have happened,” she said.

Reed looked thoughtfully at Violette. “Why do you think Rachel went to New Orleans after her husband’s death if she was living on their plantation in Mississippi?”

“I have no idea, unless the plantation was destroyed during the war. Maybe Rachel was desperate because she lost everything—her husband, her home. Who knows?”

“What I don’t understand is why she didn’t come here. Surely she knew you would give her a home.”

“Of course she knew that. She had to.”

“Becoming a prostitute in New Orleans was a desperate act. No one ever wondered what happened to her? No one tried to find her? What about her father?”

“Matthew was killed in the war.”

“What about her husband? Did he have any family?”

“More than likely, but I don’t remember.” Violette paused for a moment, looking reflective. “You know, I do recollect he had a brother. Lordy, Lordy, I completely forgot about him. I don’t remember his name, but it must have been at least a year after the war was over when he just dropped by one day, right out of the blue, and asked if we had heard anything from Rachel or had any idea of her whereabouts.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth, of course. We didn’t know anything.”

“What did he say?”

“He thanked us for our time, then left. We never heard from him again.”

“You had no inkling why he was looking for her?”

“He never said. Dally and I figured he was concerned for her welfare. Maybe he promised his brother he would look out for her if anything happened to him. What do you make of it?”

Reed stared at the floor. “I don’t know. I need time to digest all this. It’s a bit overwhelming.” He stood up impatiently, thanked Violette, and left.

That night, after going to bed, he found he could not sleep. He lay awake trying to imagine the things Susannah must have seen and heard. He tried to imagine what she would have looked like as a little girl of four or five, with her chestnut hair in ringlets, pushing her baby carriage down a dark hallway as she listened to impassioned moans and vulgar language instead of nursery rhymes. He shuddered.

Suddenly he remembered the letter from Dr. Ledbetter and had an idea. It was probably more on impulse than anything else, but he climbed out of bed and began writing to his father in Boston.

Reed had intended to ride into town to mail the letter to his father the next morning, right after his chores, but as luck would have it, the hand he’d hired to run the harrow came in from the fields early. The harrow was down, so Reed had to help him get it back in working order.

It was later that afternoon when Reed went into Bluebonnet with his father’s letter and one he was mailing for Violette in his pocket. As he rode down the main street, he passed several horses from the Double T that were tied in front of the Roadrunner Saloon, but he didn’t give them much notice.

He went straight to the Buck and Smith General Store. He didn’t realize his face was stern and determined until Daisy commented on it.

“Afternoon, Mr. Garrett. You having a bad day?”

“No. Why? Do I look like I’m having a bad day?”

“Well, you appear a mite unhappy,” she said.

He laughed. “I’m just a little preoccupied.” He took the letter out of his pocket, placed it on the counter, and pushed it toward her.