American Dreams (22 page)

"Exactly." He seized on that. "And friendship is very important. People need to care about each other."

"That is true. And I am fond of you, Nathan."

"I am fond of you . . . very fond." Awkwardly, he reached out to take her hand. Eliza suddenly had the strangest feeling—but it was too impossible to believe. "It would make me very happy if you would consent to be my wife. I have already spoken to Mr. Gordon and informed him of my intentions—"

"I wish you hadn't, Nathan," she blurted, profoundly regretting the hurt and bewildered look that sprang into his eyes. "You are my dearest, dearest friend, but I must refuse your proposal."

"Why? I assure you there is no obstacle to our marriage. Mr. Gordon has agreed to release you from his employ."

"I don't wish to be released." Eliza could not leave Gordon Glen and abandon the family that had become as dear to her as her own. She would not desert them in this dark time as so many others were doing. "I am a teacher. This is my life."

"But you could continue to teach at the mission schools, the way other wives do."

"No. It... it wouldn't be the same." It wouldn't be Gordon Glen.

As she withdrew her hand from his, Nathan stared at her, his gaze narrowing in sharp suspicion. "Is there someone else? You should have told me—"

"No." She rushed to deny that. "I assure you there is no one in whom I am interested."

"Then ... I fail to understand." There was a touching bewilderment in his expression. "You have a fondness for me. We get along very well, and you can continue to teach. As much as you care for children, I would think you would want children of your own to love. Why wouldn't you want to be my life's companion? Surely you don't want to grow old alone."

"Of course not." Yet she knew that was precisely what would happen. She faltered, recalling the lonely tone of her mother's last letter. That would be her own lot as well. Eliza bowed her head, for a moment finding it almost too frightening to face.

"Forgive me for saying this, Eliza, but.. . you are not a young woman—"

"Nor an attractive one," she inserted in near defiance, well aware of her drawbacks and well aware she might never receive another proposal of marriage.

"That is not true, Eliza." His long fingers curved under the point of her chin and gently lifted it, forcing her to look at him, his touch amazingly tender and sure considering his previous awkwardness. "You are a very handsome woman."

She almost believed him, but she had lived with her reflection in the mirror for too long and she was much too intelligent to be swayed by his compliment, no matter how flattering it was. Yet as his gaze wandered over her face, touching her hair and her eyes, her cheeks and her lips, so adoring in its inspection, she wavered for an instant and wished that Nathan wouldn't look so sincere.

Agitated by these stirrings of foolish vanity, Eliza turned her head from him, broke the contact with his fingers, and rose to her feet all in one motion. She took two quick steps away from the sofa, then stopped and hugged her arms around her middle.

"I have gone about this wrong, haven't I?" Nathan said from the sofa. "I spoke bluntly, I suppose because there has always been a frankness between us. It was very unromantic of me, wasn't it?"

"That doesn't matter, Nathan. Truly it doesn't," she insisted.
 

"It does. Friendship is not courtship. I should have realized that."

She closed her eyes and tried to picture herself being courted by Nathan, but she couldn't summon any image. More than that, she didn't want to. To marry him—to even encourage his suit— would be a mistake she would ultimately regret.

"It wouldn't matter, Nathan. My answer would not change. I have no plans to ever marry." She heard the flatness in her voice, devoid of all feeling.

"Eliza." He appealed for her to reconsider.

She swung back to face him. "I am sorry, Nathan. You must believe that I don't wish to hurt you. But in my heart I know it would be wrong to marry you. Will you please accept that and be my friend?"

His thin face was pale and tightly drawn. "It seems I have no choice."

In that instant, Eliza knew she had lost not only a potential suitor, but perhaps a friend also. They might never regain the close companionship they had once known. She wanted to cry at the unfairness of it. She hadn't wanted his marriage proposal. She hadn't sought it, or given him any sign that she looked at him in that light. Simply because she was a spinster teacher, did he think she was so desperate for a husband that she would seize on his proposal like a lifeline?

He stood up. His eyes avoided her completely. "Would you ask one of the servants to have my horse saddled?"

"You are leaving?"

"Yes. It is little more than an hour's ride to New Echota. If I leave now, I should arrive before darkness falls."

Out of politeness, she probably should have objected, but Eliza couldn't force a false protest. It was best that he leave. If he stayed, they would both be uncomfortable and the strain might destroy the last fragments of friendship. Eliza didn't want that to happen.

"I will fetch Shadrach." As she left the parlor, she knew she had never felt more wretched in her life.

Her glance strayed to the closed doors of the library. She wondered if she should inform Will Gordon of Nathan's imminent departure. No, she couldn't subject Nathan to that humiliation. Then she wondered, with a flash of raw anger, why he had told Will Gordon of his intentions in the first place. Now her rejection of him couldn't be kept private. She would have to inform her employer.

 

Will blotted the last entry in his journal, then read the crisply worded sentence again. The book contained a concise history of everything that had happened at Gordon Glen. In it, he recorded the dates various crops were planted, the number of acres, the dates of harvest, the amount of yield, how much was sold to whom and at what price, and how much was stored for use on the plantation. When he purchased a black, hired one, or sold one, when a child was born to one of them, when a black died—it was all there, along with weather data, insect damage, and repairs to or construction of buildings on the plantation. The births of his children and the deaths of those they had lost, the arrival of visitors and the purpose of their call—each was duly noted in the pages of the journal.

"The missionary Nathan Cole expressed his intention to marry the children's tutor, Eliza Hall." The stark words stared back at him in his own handwriting.

Abruptly, he rose from his desk and crossed to the fireplace. He vigorously stirred the fire with the iron poker, sending up a shower of sparks and crumbling the hot, glowing embers. He added another log from the wood box and listened to the flames roar anew, snapping and crackling loudly, consuming all other sound.

Sighing in vague dejection, Will gripped the mantel's edge in his right hand and stood staring at the greedy flames. Again he found himself wondering why the reverend's announcement had come as such a surprise to him. How many times had he observed them walking together? Her leaving was inevitable anyway. He knew that, and yet ...

A trio of rapid knocks sounded at his door. "Yes?" He frowned in ill temper at the intrusion, but at the same time welcomed it.

A click of the latch preceded the opening of the door. Will half turned to see Eliza pause just inside the room. He stared at her face, her expression tense, tinged with a vague apprehension, but that wasn't what he saw when he looked at her. It was the strong beauty in the line of her features.

When had the change taken place? Why hadn't he noticed it before? Yet he wasn't entirely surprised by the transformation. Women were like flowers. Not all bloomed early in the spring. Some waited until summer, and others until late in the autumn. A few even dared to bloom in winter.

"May I speak with you, Mr. Gordon?"

"Of course. Come in." He turned crisply and walked back to his desk, pausing in front of it, his back to her. The words she had come to say were before him in the journal.

She took his former position in front of the fireplace. Her hands were tightly clasped in front of her as she stared into the flames. "First of all, I think you should know that Reverend Cole has left. He decided to return to New Echota before nightfall." She paused. "He asked that I offer you his farewells and his gratitude for your hospitality."

Frowning, Will squared around to study her. "I thought—"

"No." She stopped him before he could say it, then added less stridently, "My answer was no."

He was vaguely conscious of a sense of relief washing through him as he slowly walked over to her. But when he halted behind her and gazed at the collection of shiny curls at her neck he realized that nothing had really changed, except the fact that she wouldn't be marrying the missionary.

"I am sorry," he murmured.

"I am not," she retorted briskly. "I have always regarded Reverend Cole as a friend. I only regret that he thought he could be more, and that he spoke to you before he learned of my feelings."

"That isn't what I meant. You see, Miss Hall..." Will paused, finding it no easier to say the words than he had thought it would be. "My finances are such that I can no longer afford to pay your salary. When Reverend Cole asked me to release you from my employ so the two of you could marry, I thought he had provided me with a solution that would be satisfactory to both of us. Now I am afraid I must inform you that I shall have to let you go. I can offer you a month's wages and the fare for your transportation home to New England."

Eliza couldn't believe what she was hearing. She was being discharged. She had been aware, in a vague way, that the economic situation at Gordon Glen wasn't all it could be, but she had never thought it would affect her.

"Under the present circumstances, it is best that you leave anyway," he continued. "Today, tomorrow, there may be a knock at the door and you will find yourself without a place to sleep."

"So will you." She spun around.

"Yes," he acknowledged, his eyes warm and gentle on her, a trace of resignation in their depths. "But I cannot ask you to endure whatever suffering my family may know in the future. It would be wrong of me."

"This is wrong!" Eliza insisted. "I cannot leave. I
will not
leave!"

"Eliza." He shook his head, moved by her declaration.

"You need me," she argued. "You know you do. And I don't mean just to teach Xandra and Kipp. Victoria—Mrs. Gordon is not well. If she doesn't have the rest she needs, she will only get worse. And how will she do that if there is no one here to help her? The money doesn't matter. There is no need to pay me."

"I cannot do that." He was tempted to believe that she knew what she was saying.

"Then owe me the money. You cannot expect me to walk away when I know how much I am needed here," she reasoned. "Maybe you don't, but Victoria does—and Kipp, Xandra, and little Johnny, too. I have grown to care very much for this family. Don't... send me away," she said, her voice breaking on the last word.

She didn't beg. Request, argue, reason, yes. But she didn't beg. She had too much pride for that, Will realized. And pride was something Will understood as well as the strength and determination she showed him. Yet there was something in her expression that reminded him of a lost and frightened child in need of comfort and reassurance.

"I won't send you away," he promised at last, unable to admit that he needed her, much less admit to the tender feelings stirring awake inside him.

"Thank you," she said. "I promise you will not regret it."

"I hope neither of us will," he replied.

When she walked out of the library, Eliza was conscious that his gaze followed her until she was out of sight. She climbed the stairs to her third-floor room with a sedateness she didn't feel. Once inside, she sat down on the first available seat, her knees quaking too badly to support her. Everything was all ajumble inside.

She didn't want to admit to herself why she had refused Nathan and why she had been so determined to stay at Gordon Glen. Yet neither could she deny it. All the reasons she had given were true, but she had left out the main one. Unconsciously, she had compared Nathan to Will Gordon and found him wanting as a man. It wasn't merely respect and admiration she felt toward

Will Gordon; sometime, somehow, an affection for him had taken root and grown without her awareness.

To her utter mortification, Eliza Hall, the avowed spinster, had come to care for a married man. How ridiculously romantic and tragic it sounded. But it hurt too much to laugh. She vowed there and then that no one must ever learn of her feelings. No one.

 

 

 

17

 

 

Seven Oaks

 

Deu stood attentively inside the parlor door, his hands clasped behind his back as he watched his master lounging in the chair. He didn't know what had happened at the Gordon plantation today, but something had. He had sensed the anger building in Master Blade during the entire ride home. Now it was visible.

Most folks wouldn't see it, though. The way The Blade smiled all the time and acted like nothing concerned him, few would believe he ever got really mad. But that was because he never got hot angry. He got cold angry. Those blue eyes of his would turn to ice, like now, and freeze a man with one look.

It took a lot to rile The Blade. Deu hadn't seen the likes of this in a long time. That time, he'd nearly killed a man. Mostly you could prod and prod, and he'd just shrug and turn away. But Deu wouldn't want to be the one to get on the wrong side of him now.

The Blade tipped the whiskey glass to his mouth and poured the last swallow down his throat, then reached for the crystal decanter on the side table, each movement slow and deliberate.

When he poured more whiskey into his glass, his father frowned in troubled disapproval. "Is that wise, my son? Three times you have filled the glass."

Smiling coolly, The Blade held his drink so the amber brown liquor inside caught the flickering light from the fireplace. "But this, Shawano, is forgetfulness. If you drink enough of it, you won't see what is happening around you. You won't care."