Alana (2 page)

Alana stood at the foot of the stairs, her account book still gripped in one hand, watching until Rafe’s broad back disappeared above. Her mind was mired in a darkness she fought but could not completely defeat.
Jason is coming home
, she told herself.
Dear God, he’s crippled
.

She did not know how long she stood there, but when she heard Lorelei’s orders echoing through the hall, she forced herself to go to the study.

Entering the study, she put the ledger on the desk. As she stared at the wood-paneled walls, she summoned from within her the deep-rooted determination that had helped her to survive the war and the last two grim years.

Twenty thousand of the twenty-five thousand acres that constituted Riverbend’s lands had lain bare in the final stages of the war. They’d grown only enough food to keep Riverbend’s workers alive, and these staples had had to be cultivated far from the eyes of any passing people. They had harvested rice regularly, and hidden enough from the Federal troops to feed the people of Riverbend.

When the war had finally ended, Alana had realized that her troubles were not yet over. Riverbend was still in danger. A migration of moneyed people had flowed into Charleston at the conclusion of the war, protected by the Federal troops who remained to control the state. These unscrupulous and avaricious businessmen bought every business that was available and every acre of land they could lay their hands on at prices that were but a joke.

A half dozen times, Alana had refused to sell Riverbend to these northern businessmen. Six times, she had held fast. Still, with every passing day, Riverbend and its mistress went further into debt.

She had no choice but to sell half her jewelry, jewelry that had been in the Shockley family for over seventy years. Sadly, her gems had gone for but a fraction of their true worth in order to keep Riverbend alive for Jason’s return.

Shaking her head at the thought of Jason, Alana squared her shoulders and left the study. She paused in the main hallway and, from years of habit, glanced around.

The main hall of Riverbend was a magnificent room. A full thirty feet deep and twenty-five feet wide, it retained its air of grandeur. Twin staircases radiated upward, their mahogany banisters gleaming in the low light. The floor’s wood planking was now dull with age, and because of the war, oil was almost impossible to find. Alana missed the grand oriental carpet that had protected the floor, yet even without it the room still held an ageless splendor–a reminder of what Riverbend had been like in its prime.

That the plantation had survived the war intact was a miracle. Whether Alana would be able to keep her home after she had come so far was yet to be determined.

Suddenly the walls of the house seemed to close in on her. Turning, Alana quickly went out onto the rear veranda and stood at the top of the steps. She looked at the dark clouds that stretched toward Riverbend from Charleston, some seventeen miles east, then saw a thin black man hurrying in from the fields. The overseer, Ben, had received Lorelei’s message. As she watched him, she could not stop the lump building in her throat, for Ben had been the mainstay of Alana and Riverbend’s survival these past years.

Alana had given the slaves of Riverbend their freedom shortly after the war had begun. Ben, along with two-thirds of the others, had remained. Alana had not deceived herself that most had stayed out of loyalty; they had not–except for Ben, Lorelei, and a few others. For most of them, there had simply been no other place to go. If they had left Riverbend, they would have ended up in one of the two armies. And from the stories of those who had made it to the North, there was no good news there. Starvation often overtook those seeking to be free of slavery and the South.

Alana had accepted the workers who had stayed without question, and she had taken on the responsibility of keeping them fed and clothed, just as her family had done since 1789, when Alana’s ancestor, William Shockley, had come to South Carolina from England. She had kept meticulous records throughout the war years, detailing all the wages due the former slaves. When Riverbend was alive again, they would be paid. After their shared years of hell, the workers knew she would keep her word.

Looking down at her hands, Alana realized they were trembling uncontrollably. Clenching her fingers to stop their shaking, Alana started toward the garden. Behind her, the smoke from the outside kitchen wafted skyward, looking as if it were trying to join the coming storm clouds.

In the distance, she could hear the sounds of the fieldworkers. Their voices were tired but resolute as they went about their duties. Pausing at the entrance to the garden, Alana looked back at the once-magnificent plantation house. Her eyes swept across the facade; her heart grew heavy.
How poor a homecoming this would be for Jason.

The main house badly needed a coat of paint to prepare for the approaching change of season. Two weeks ago, she had gone to Charleston to buy the paint. She had been unable to find any. The storekeeper had assured her he would do his best to get her what she needed, but Alana knew it was futile. The northern businessmen who had bought so much of the countryside had also taken all the supplies for themselves.

When Alana entered the garden, she glanced eastward at the thunderheads. A breeze was rising, blowing with it the smell of the storm. Alana recognized the scent for what it was–a scent of danger and change.

A few moments later, Alana reached her destination, a special flowerbed that held four rosebushes. Separated from the azaleas and camellias by a double row of white stones, these rosebushes held a special meaning for Alana. Slowly she knelt down before them, her fingers automatically seeking out the weeds that were trying to choke the rosebushes’ roots.

Only here, of all the places at Riverbend, could Alana feel peaceful and secure. But, not even that solace was granted her today, for her mind was spinning.

With her head held upright, she studied the rosebushes’ gentle green leaves. For four long years, no flower had blossomed. The heady, sweet smell of buds had not come; as if the bushes themselves had felt those first horrid shots fired on Sumter. When war came, the bushes had seemed to turn to hibernation to escape the torment of the land.

Now the war was over, peace was supposed to reign. Alana had hoped that when Jason returned she would be able to find some of that peace, but now even that small hope was shattered.

Alana gazed at the first bush, set at the fore of the garden and planted by her mother on the day after her marriage to Alana’s father. The second bush had been planted at Alana’s birth; the third and fourth at the births of her two brothers. Although the rosebushes survived, only she was still alive to tend them. Her mother had died when Alana was twelve. Her two brothers had died years before, in the same month, of swamp fever. The older had been four; the younger, two.

“Why?” she asked the rosebush planted in her honor. Her mother had been a beautiful, gentle woman who had given to everyone unselfishly. Her brothers had hardly known life at all when it was taken from them.

How well Alana remembered the promise she had made her mother ten years before, on the day Rachel Shockley Belfores had taken her last breath. Alana had been sitting on her mother’s bed, holding her hand and trying not to think of what was happening. “So young, Alana. You are so young, and you will be asked to do so much,” her mother had said.

Alana had turned her teary eyes to her mother, but she had been unable to speak.

“You must look after your father for me. He will need you when I’m gone.”

“No, Mama, you can’t go,” Alana had pleaded.

Rachel had smiled gently through her pain. “I cannot stay, Alana. But you will. Be gentle with him. He is not a strong man, but he is a good man. And, Alana,” Rachel had said after taking a deep, rattling breath that tore through Alana’s heart, “no matter what happens, you must see to Riverbend. Riverbend must survive. Promise me!” On her last words, Rachel had tried to sit, her hand tightening desperately around Alana’s.

Through her pain, Alana had nodded. Her words had been hoarse with grief. “I promise.”

Alana, although only twelve, had grown up that day. Both she and her father had survived, yet her father’s life had really ended the day her of her mother’s buriel. That special spark that had always glinted in his eyes had dulled, and the once tall and proud man had seemed to shrink before her eyes. When the final words faded over Rachel Belfores’s grave, her father had turned and walked away. Hours later, Alana had found him in his study, passed out from drink.

She had remembered her promise to her mother and with Lorelei had taken her father to his room and put him to bed. Almost every day thereafter, her father had drowned himself in spirits, forcing Alana to grow up and face the world alone.

With the help of the household slaves, Alana tended her father and Riverbend. At first, her anger clouded every minute of the day, but as the weeks passed, Alana’s anger at the loss of her mother and at the helplessness of her father had abated. Soon she was again loving her father completely, instinctively knowing that through his weaknesses he loved her but could not show it.

From sunrise to sunset, Alana did her best to act as mistress of Riverbend. Her days of playing with friends and learning the ways of adolescence disappeared. Her education under the tutors continued, but instead of learning how to play the piano and charm a man, Alana had learned how to work with figures and run a plantation.

The hardest lesson had been learning to accept what her father had become. Alana knew he had survived the deaths of his sons only because her mother had helped him; the death of his wife had broken him. Because Alana had known how much he loved her mother, she understood, even at her young age, what had driven him to drink, and she pitied him. She could not forgive him for giving up on life and for forgetting he still had her and Riverbend. She felt abandoned, and tried not to hate the father she once had idolized.

On rare and wonderful occasions, her father would come out of his depression and look at Alana with sparkling and loving eyes, which gave her hope he would again become the man he had been.

“You are your mother,” he had told her one night when she was halfway through her thirteenth year, “beautiful, strong, and valiant. You are life itself Alana; never, never forget that.”

When she had turned fourteen, Thomas Belfores had suddenly stopped drinking. For months, he’d remained sober. While he did, he taught Alana as much as he could, but what he taught her was pitifully little in comparison to what he knew.

Then came the day she had found him standing in the cemetery, looking down at her mother’s grave. Tears stained his cheeks. Sobs rent the air. When he turned, he’d seen Alana staring at him.

“I’m sorry, child. I tried. I really did.” An hour later, he had gone to Charleston, to their townhouse. He did not return for several weeks. When he did, she saw he had resumed drinking, and she sensed that he would never come out of it again.

By fourteen, Alana’s body had fully matured. She did not have the round, soft shape that was so much in vogue; rather, her body was willowy, lean, and strong. She had a narrow waist, long, slender legs, and full breasts, which the seamstress was barely able to hide.

With the ripening of her body had also come the maturing of her mind and spirit. With her father too besotted to function, Alana ran the plantation as though she was years older.

Alana had been sixteen when her father had finally succumbed to the combination of grief and drink. As the only surviving child, and to the shock of her neighbors, she had inherited Riverbend.

For four generations, Shockleys had ruled Riverbend, growing cotton and rice and breeding the finest horses in the Carolinas. The Shockley dynasty had ended when William Shockley the fourth had produced only one child, a daughter–Alana’s mother. When Rachel Shockley had married the aristocratic Thomas Belfores, a noble but penniless gentleman, Riverbend had gained a good, knowledgeable master. The Shockley dynasty lost its name, but Riverbend retained its grandeur.

By the time Alana inherited the great plantation, however, it was on the verge of bankruptcy and in disrepair. Alana acquired both Riverbend and a great, almost unpayable debt.

Yet during the time of Alana’s greatest need, fate had been kind. In four years, the debts were paid, the plantation rebuilt, and the land turned profitable because of the goodness of one person–Jason Landow, Alana’s neighbor and friend, with whom she had grown up.

Jason was eight years Alana’s senior, and it had been his steady hands and thoughtful, unselfish giving which had saved her home.

“This will be your home!” she had stated to him in a hoarse voice, willing the mists to unveil her eyes. “And I will love you.”

Love...the word echoed within her mind. Alana knew that she was different from most women her age. She believed she always had been. She’d accepted the early responsibilities forced upon her that had robbed her of her childhood, but she had no complaints.

At the occasional socials, she’d attended before and at the onset of the war, she had always felt out of place. Her mind forever dwelt on her duties at Riverbend, from which she was never free, while the other girls of her age danced and made endlessly inane conversation with their beaus.

Not once had any boy or man lit a spark of need or desire within her heart. Alana had never cared, for she saw how much wasted energy was in those senseless pursuits. She had devoted herself instead to gaining knowledge and learning how to run a plantation and make it profitable.