Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series)
Read Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series) Online
Authors: Cheryl Lane
WELLINGTON
CROSS
By
Cheryl R. Lane
Text
copyright © 2012 Cheryl Lane
All
Rights Reserved
To my
husband and son for their love and support. To Sherrie for her
encouragement, inspiration, advice, historical accuracy, and proofreading. This
book would not have been the same without you.
Prologue
He tucked the gun into his trousers and headed out into the cold,
dark night. The time had come to go get her and bring her back, as he had
been told to do. He had made some mistakes in the past, mistakes he would
regret for a long time, but this was his chance to make it right. He had
to, if he valued his life.
He walked through the black woods that stretched to the
plantation house where she lived, down a path he had taken many times
before. He looked at his pocket watch; it would take exactly 26 minutes
to get there. The woods were quiet, and he skulked around easily on the
moonlit night.
Once he reached the plantation grounds, he saw her in the
kitchen house by the light of lanterns. He knocked on the back door of the
kitchen house and called to her. She didn’t answer, so he kicked the door
open with his worn dusty boot. She screamed as he raised his gun and
drove its butt into her temple. She fell to the ground, and blood oozed
from her head. Even in her condition, she was beautiful. He had
tried to get her to love him once before but failed. Perhaps now she
would. If he protected her from her enemy, she would consider him a
savior.
He thrust his gun into his pocket and began to tie her hands in
front of her belly with the rope he had brought with him. He then took an
old handkerchief and forced it into her mouth, tying it tight in the back above
her hair bun. He picked her up and gathered her in his arms and snatched
her away into the dark night…
Who Am I?
June 1866
Chester,
Virginia
“Come on, child, wake up. Wake up now, you hear?” I
awoke suddenly to a voice I didn’t recognize and felt warm rough hands rubbing
my own hand. With my free hand, I rubbed my eyes and opened them,
blinking at the dappled sunlight shining on my face.
“There now, that’s the way. Good girl.” Everything
was blurry for a moment. The room slowly came into focus, and I looked at
a thin black woman who was dressed like a house slave. She smiled at me
and squeezed my hand, and then stood up and abruptly left the room before I
could say anything. I heard her voice fade away in the distance, “Come
quick, Missus Washington. The child is awake!”
I looked around the room and realized that I was in a bedroom I
didn’t recognize. I tried to remember where I was, but…nothing. I
didn’t even remember what my name was. Panic seized me. I rose up
quickly…too quickly. I felt woozy, and my head throbbed terribly,
especially on the right side. My arms and back ached like I had fallen out
of a tree. I tried to move my legs to get out of bed, but they felt too
heavy.
What was wrong with me?
I pushed the blanket aside
and looked down at myself. I was wearing a brown and white gingham dress
that was soiled with dirt and something reddish-brown. Blood? I
didn’t feel like I was wearing underwear or a corset, but I did have on a
chemise. My feet were bare, and there were scratches on my hands, nails
crusted with dirt. I noticed an old scar on my left wrist.
How
did I get that?
I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember
anything. I didn’t know who I was or what had happened to me.
I looked around to take stock of the room. I was lying in
a 4-poster bed of dark wood, and there was a crocheted white blanket spread
over me. A high-back chair of dark green cloth and padded arms was to my
right beside a small round table with an oil lamp. There was a woven
basket and a pair of brown leather lace-up boots in the corner near the
chair. The door the black lady had walked through was on the other side
of the room across from the bed. There were two windows on either side of
the bed, out of which I could see tall trees and a clear blue sky. A
collapsible crinoline was leaned against a table with a water pitcher in the
corner beside the window to my left.
A moment later, the black lady returned with a pleasant looking
older white woman. “My dear child, thank heaven you’re all right.
We were so worried about you. How are you feeling?” She walked over
to me and touched my forehead. “Oh my, you’re burning up! You poor
dear.” She took the blanket off of my legs.
“Where am I?” I asked hoarsely.
The lady walked to one of the windows and raised it up
high. “You were picked up three days ago by one of our field workers out
near the wheat field,” she said. “You were lying beside the road with no
horse or carriage. He said you looked like you were hurt and felt cold,
so he brought you up to the house. We cleaned a wound on your head,
warmed you up, and you have slept in this bed ever since.”
I touched my head instinctively and felt the wound she had
referred to. That must’ve been where the blood on my dress came
from.
She picked up a cloth, poured some water from the pitcher into a
bowl and dipped the cloth in it, and then wrung out the excess water.
“And you would be?” I asked.
“Oh, I do apologize. Where are my manners?” She sat
down on the edge of the bed next to me. “I’m Jane Washington. My
husband is Thomas. You are at our farm, called Oakworth, near the town of
Chester, Virginia.” She fanned the wet cloth in the air and then folded
it and placed it on my forehead.
“Thank you. Did you say Chester? Where is that?”
“It’s southwest of City Point, north of Petersburg, and south of
Richmond.” She hesitated. “Our little farm is not much now – after
the war. Union soldiers came and burned down every outbuilding we
owned. Thomas was wounded in the war, nearby at the Battle of Petersburg,
but he came hopping home to this shambles of a house. They took all of
our silver, china, even burned my piano for no reason. Oh, it nearly tore
me to pieces! But we learned that as long as we did what they wanted –
which was mostly just to give them food, cloth for bandages, shelter, and
firewood – they left us alone. Mr. Washington came hopping on home, like
I said. He was heartbroken. This home has been in his family for
nearly 100 years. Since the soldiers ate bread from the wheat out in the
field, we were able to keep that, although they did burn 20 acres of it before
they left.” She paused for a moment to compose herself. “We lost
both our boys in the war. Our youngest was only 14.
“Oh, this is our Miss Cora – don’t know what we’d do without
her,” she said, motioning towards the dark-skinned woman. “She and her
children drifted here after leaving a plantation in Edenton, North Carolina
when the slaves were freed by Lincoln. They weren’t treated too well even
after emancipation, and so when her husband was killed, they headed north and
ended up here. They live here as servants, and have been helping us build
this place back up, but it will be a long, long time, I’m afraid. We lost
our own slaves when the Yankees came. They took the men for soldiers, and
our house slave died of some disease.”
“So there was a war.” I tried to process this. I
couldn’t remember a war, though it did seem vaguely familiar. “Who fought
in the war? You mentioned Union soldiers?”
“You don’t remember the war? It was a war between the
Southern states and the Northern states, right here in America. Went on
for 4 long years. The South lost,” she said sadly. “It’s been over
a year now. We even had to sign a document after the war ended that we
pledged allegiance with the union again and that we had freed all our slaves.”
“I see. And do you know who I am? I seem to have
trouble remembering anything.”
“You mean you don’t know who you are? Oh, my! You
must have really been hit hard on your head when you had your accident.
No, my dear, I do not know who you are. There wasn’t a carriage, like I
said, but there was something close by.”
Mrs. Washington looked around the room and picked up the basket.
“This was the only thing we found along with some dirty, bruised strawberries
lying around. I figured this basket had been full of strawberries when
you had your accident. See the red stains? Oh, and this fell out of
your dress pocket.” She reached over on the table where the water pitcher
was and picked up a white handkerchief with purple violets and green ivy
embroidered on it along with the initials, “MW”. “You don’t remember
anything at all?”
I took the handkerchief from her and inspected it but could not
remember what “MW” stood for or where it had come from. I looked at the
basket and tried to imagine strawberries in them. Suddenly I remembered
being hit in the head with a blunt object, falling out of a carriage down to
the ground, pain, and hearing horses whinnying. “I do remember
something…getting hit in the head, falling from a carriage, and then everything
went black.” I closed my eyes. My head was still throbbing. I
panicked again, feeling like I was supposed to do something important. “I
have to...” but couldn’t remember what. “I have to…do something. I
have to be somewhere.” I tried to get out of bed, but Mrs. Washington
laid her hand on my arm.