A Woman so Bold (24 page)

I finally gave up and walked to the Pines as the sun was sinking low on the horizon of our cotton field. I walked as one in a trance, crossing little wandering creeks, and climbing fences in a headlong plunge toward home. It was dark as I made my way up the avenue between the whispering sand pines. I had removed my shoes, and the white sand was cool beneath my toes. The dogs alerted Laramie to my presence, and he was standing on the porch with a lantern as I approached. I saw him take the first step to descend and cried out, “Stop! There’s been death.”

I heard his sharp intake of breath, but before he could inquire what had happened, I said, “Tell Lily to draw me a hot bath with plenty of lye, and I’ll burn these clothes. I musn’t go near her or Card in them.”

The screen door squeaked as Lily joined her husband on the porch. Her eyes were round, black hollows in the circle of light cast by the lantern. She nodded and turned to obey me in silence.

I removed my dirty calico frock and cast it into the burn pile then peeled off my underthings one by one and discarded them as well. I lit a blaze with the tinderbox from the woodshed and crouched in its warm orange glow as my clothing curled in the heat, transforming quickly into ashes. Soon the remnants were nothing but cinders to be carried off on the wind, and I arose amidst the tendrils of smoke, alone.

Chapter 21

An Ending and a Beginning

A year passed, and Cardinal grew from a clinging tyke into a bouncing little boy, always laughing and into everything. His joy helped me overcome my grief at the loss of my firstborn, but there were still nights when I lay and wept for Ezra until I thought my throat would burst. Sometimes Lily heard me and crept into bed with me as she had when we were children and she was afraid of the dark, only this time it was her comforting me.

Denied the right to grieve for him as my own child, I buried him quietly, in our family plot beside Colleen, but I often thought of the old oak and how I had longed to place him there beneath its enduring branches. Except for the parson, myself, Lily, and Laramie, Will alone came to the funeral. He stood apart from us and refused to meet my eyes, but he held Card and kissed him goodbye. He did not come to the Pines again after that, not for many months, and I accepted I might never see him again. When I had to go into town for anything, women whispered behind their hands at the sight of me alone with my son. Ida never bothered to invite me to the social events she and Eric hosted at their home for the upper crust—our final argument and my disgrace saw to that.

Lily was five months pregnant with her first child in November of 1894. It struck me how much had changed in the four years since I met Will. Our lives looked utterly different, yet many things had come full circle and were the same: I helped run the house and tend the garden and with the daily tasks of looking after Granny, not to mention milking the cow, baking biscuits, gathering eggs, making soap and candles, and the washing. Lily and I looked after the children. Some days I even found a few spare moments to read in quiet on the porch, and then I thought of Edith and how often I had envied the freedom she was given to stick her nose in a book.

On a cool afternoon at the end of the month, we were seated on the porch, thus: Lily with Effie beside her on the swing, instructing her in the art of simple stitches: knit one, purl one. I was in the rocker with
The Yellow Wallpaper
open upon my lap. Card had fallen asleep at my feet while poking leaves through the cracks of the floor.

“Landra.”

There was a hint of tension in Lily’s voice that made me look up from my reverie. She nodded toward the drive, where a lone figure was walking easily, almost hesitatingly, beneath the sand pines. I drew in my breath. It was Will.

“He’s come for Card.”

She placed her hand on my arm. “You don’t know that. Should I take the children inside?”

“No, stay, please.”

I squeezed her wrist then stood at the top of the steps to meet him, much as I had that day in 1890 when he showed up riding his beautiful mare. He removed his hat as he approached me, and I bit back the plethora of sharp remarks I might have made at this pretense of civility. He was dressed in simple clothing: homespun trousers, suspenders, and a sack shirt, with the gray slouch hat he always wore.

“A nice day,” he said, his expression open, gentle.

I nodded. “Growing cool.”

“What were you reading?”

“Something strange, and sad. You wouldn’t like it. What do you want?”

He shifted slightly on his feet, uneasy. “I’d like to see the baby, if I may.”

“He’s not a baby anymore. Are you here to take him?”

He shook his head. “You know better than that.”

I crossed my arms. “You might have seen him any time these past twelve months.”

He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, twisting his hat in his hands, and saying, “We should speak.”

I led him up the stairs and lifted the sleeping child from the porch floorboards, placed him in Will’s arms, then led the way inside.

“I see congratulations are in order,” he said to Lily as he passed, noting how her hand rested on her rounding belly. She nodded shyly, smiling.

In the sitting room, he lowered himself into an armchair and held Card until he woke up. The child seemed to remember his father in spite of their long separation, and I watched as he made a game of tangling his fingers in Will’s beard and touching his ears, nose, and mouth. Will nipped playfully at his fingers, making him laugh. At last, he squirmed away and climbed into my lap.

“You have something to tell me?” I asked, watching as he removed his pipe and began to fill it with tobacco. “Is it that you’re divorcing me?”

His eyes widened with surprise, but he did not immediately respond. He tapped the bowl with his index finger, packing in more tobacco. “As always, I admire your frankness. No. I’d have sent you the papers long ago if that were the case.”

He took out a match and lit his pipe, puffing leisurely. I tapped my fingers on the settee where I was seated, waiting.

“Come back,” he said simply. “I know very well you don’t have to, that you’re secure here with Lily and her husband, but I’ve had a year without you, and in my mind, that’s long enough. It’s longer than I’d like to be separated from you ever again.”

It was the last thing I had expected him to say. The shock of his words left me reeling, my throat tight with unshed tears. I thought of Oakhurst, that rambling old ruin I’d entered as a hopeful bride, and found I had no feeling left for it after all I’d lost there. “I can’t. I can’t go back there.”

“I didn’t mean that. I am leaving, going back to South Carolina. I want you to come with me.”

“C-come with you? How?”

“I sold the place.”

I blinked, stunned yet again. “I can’t believe you sold it after all the work you and I put into it.”

“Trying to eke a living out of that goddamn place was what drove us apart! I think it might be cursed.”

I did not contradict this, and he said, “My brother has offered me a job with his firm in Charleston again, selling insurance. His business has grown since the hurricane last summer. We’d live with my mother for a while in the great house, then we could buy, or build.”

I eyed him suspiciously. “You don’t want her to know we’ve separated, is that it?”

“Lord above, Landra. We’re married. I am going, and I want you to accompany me.”

“You could have done this all along then! All those times I
begged
you to write to Gabriel. The two of you don’t get on, you said.”

“And we don’t, but I find I can put it behind me if it means I can be with you. Gabriel and I are men, after all, not squabbling children. He seemed pleased enough to have me back. The bulk of the inheritance is his, plus the house.”

I fought the anger rising like bile at the back of my throat. This solution, painted by him so effortlessly, had been within reach all along. All of the foolish mistakes I’d made, the money I’d hoarded, had been for naught. It had taken my leaving to drive him to it, and he said
I
was stubborn.

“I need time,” I said.

“Of course, but sale is final on Friday.”

Card had fallen back asleep, and I contemplated his round cheeks and long eyelashes in silence.

“Landra, I must tell you . . .”

I raised my eyes, a feeling of sickness in the pit of my stomach.

“I should never have kept you here after we were wed. You’ve wanted to leave this place since you were a girl, and being confined to Oakhurst only trapped you further.”

I nodded, lowering my eyes again to Card’s face, and he continued, “You hurt me, terribly, by going to Henry, but I think perhaps I did you a worse wrong, putting you out of the house as I did the day Ezra died. I’ve regretted it since.”

“You can never know what it has been like for me, grieving him alone,” I said. I looked away. The loss of Ezra was a blow from which I would never fully recover, and speaking of it would always be difficult. “I wish there was a world in which neither of us had wounded one another,” I said at last.

“Perhaps there can be one where we forgive one another.” He held his hand out to me. “Begin anew with me.”

I gave him my hand. A hint of a smile played about his lips, welcome as spring following a long winter.

“Don’t go to South Carolina just because I wanted you to,” I said.

He shook his head. “I miss it. I have these many months. But as I said, you needn’t decide now. You have until Friday.”

He rose, putting on his hat, and I stood as well, placing my sleeping child on the settee. As he turned toward the door, I put my hand out and caught the edge of his sleeve with my fingers. Turning back to me, he saw in my face that my mind was made up and caught me round the waist, pulling me toward him. In his embrace, I found as I always had a feeling of refuge. I met his lips, and we kissed, clumsily at first, then in the familiar way that old lovers do, meeting and parting in slow rhythm, with pauses for breath in between.

It had grown dark, and Lily had retired indoors to the warm kitchen. I found her and Laramie there, sharing a meal of dark bread and roast beef with Effie. Lily lifted the teapot when she saw me and filled the cup at my seat.

“Will has sold his property and is going back to South Carolina,” I blurted. “He’s asked me to go with him.” I said this last with some disbelief. “He shall stay here with me tonight, if that’s all right.”

“Well, he’s your husband, ain’t he?” said Laramie.

Lily rose as quickly as her growing belly would allow and came to me, throwing her arms around me. “You must go, surely! You’ve always wanted to get away, Landra, to get out of here. Go!”

I nodded, tears filling my eyes for what seemed the hundredth time that day.

“I’ll miss you dreadfully,
and
this baby!” I gestured to her belly.

“Never mind that. Such an opportunity! I’ll help you begin to pack at once.”

That night I put Cardinal to sleep, and then Will and I made love quietly in the darkness, rejoined by our mutual understanding of one another. The taste and smell of him, the sweetness of pipe tobacco, and the clean scent of saddle leather were like coming home. He placed kisses on every inch of me: on my eyelids, the insides of my wrists, and the nape of my neck. Each kiss was the healing of a wound, until I was made entirely new.

Author Bio

L.S. Young resides in Florida with her husband and daughter. She has been writing historical romance in some form since tenth grade, when she occasionally couldn’t resist writing under pretense of taking notes. (Her History teacher still doesn’t know.) She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, and has worked as a server, nanny, telemarketer, and teacher, but has yet to encounter a task she enjoys as much as writing.

Her hobbies include: jogging on the beach, dreaming up her next tattoo, and of course creating conflicts and dialogue for her characters. She is an avid reader, averaging around 30-40 books per year. Her favorite authors are Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and Jane Austen.

Young is a member of the Historical Novel Society. A Woman So Bold is her debut novel.