Simply Heaven (36 page)

"So you'll give him back to me. My baby needs a name, so she won't have to grow up marked a bastard. She needs a father to look out for her in other ways besides dropping money off once in a while. But as long as Steve thinks he's got to"—Selena paused to give the sneer she'd practiced in the cracked mirror on the cabin wall "—
service
you, she's never going to have that."

Raven felt a great roaring within and thought she was going to be sick to her stomach. Images flashed before her of Steve making love to her, whispering endearing words as he held her. So tender. So caring. Oh, she'd not been fool enough to think he loved her as she loved him, but she had never felt he was using her to keep his job. Every single second he held her, she had felt cherished and wanted for herself, not like she was merely being
serviced,
as though he were being paid like men paid the whores at the waterfront. "Dear God, no," she whispered again.

Selena pushed on. There would be time to hate and loathe herself later. Right now, she had to make her performance convincing—for her baby's sake. "Are you saying you won't give him up?" Selena made her eyes wide, and it was not hard to make tears appear. "Lord, what kind of woman are you? I know Steve is a handsome man, and well I know"—she gave a little snicker—"how good he can make a woman feel. I can see why you wouldn't want to give him up. But rich as you are, you can buy the best stud money can buy."

Another roll of nausea struck. "Please stop," Raven whimpered.

"No, I won't stop till you agree to give him up. And it's not fair to run him off after we get married, either. He's the best horse trainer in these parts. From what he says about them racking horses, they're plenty expensive and need the best care. Now, I don't have no hard feelings, and I won't fret about him being around you after we're married. I won't even care if he services you once in a while, if that's what it takes for us to stay on here, but at least give him up long enough so's he'll marry me."

Raven shook her head, not in refusal of Selena's plea but in rejection that any of it could really be happening.

But Selena saw it as rejection and begged even harder. "You got to, Miss Raven. You got to for my baby's sake. Don't tell him I came to you like this; he'd hate me, and it'd be Amanda who'd suffer. Just tell him that you don't want him that way no more, but you want him to stay on and work for you. Tell him he ought to find somebody and get married and settle down. He'll turn around and marry me then. I know he will. Do it for my baby. Please." Her voice cracked.

Finally, Raven managed to speak. "I never knew, Selena, about any of this."

"I know you didn't." Selena dabbed at her eyes with the hem of the baby's blanket. "And you seem like a good woman. Everybody speaks kind of you. That's why I made up my mind to come talk to you woman to woman, hoping you'd understand. I mean, if you were in my shoes and you had a baby and another woman was keeping the father from marrying you and giving it a name, wouldn't you do the same thing?

"I know my pa has his faults," she rushed on, "but when he's not drinking, he's a good man, and once Steve and me are married and he don't have to be ashamed of me anymore, he'll straighten up. So you see?" She faked brightness when inside she was sick to the core. "Everything will work out good for everybody. Unless"—she made her eyes narrow as though with suspicion—"you're in love with him too. Then I guess it's hopeless, because you'd never give him up to me if I had
ten
babies by him. But I warn you. I'm sleeping with him now, and I'll keep on, and I won't care how many babies I have, and you can run me off if you want to, but so help me I'll tell, and—" She could not go on and began to sob wildly to think she was capable of telling such outlandish lies.

"You're sleeping with him even now?" Raven said in wonder, then asked herself why it should matter.

Steve had abandoned Selena, but in a different way than her father had abandoned her. Her father had not known her mother was pregnant. Steve had known about his child, had even been there when she was born. He had shirked his responsibilities by choice, damn him, because he was so determined to look out for his own interests. Nothing he could do would surprise her.

"Sometimes," Selena acknowledged. "I know it's soon after the baby, but—"

"Please. I don't want to hear any more." Raven pushed back from the desk, started to get up, then realized her trembling legs would not support her and sank back down. "Go," she whispered. "Get out, please."

"Promise me you won't tell Steve." Suddenly, that meant more to Selena than anything else. "Promise me you won't tell him I was here."

"No. No, I won't."

Selena got slowly to her feet. "And you'll think about what I said?"

Raven waved her away, then folded her arms on the desk and bowed her head.

Selena hurriedly left the house and ran down the path to the sweet potato patch where one of the slaves was waiting with a buckboard wagon to take her to Mobile. She would stay there for a while with a married girlfriend whose husband was away at sea, because a lot of time was going to have to pass before she could look Steve in the face. Until then, everyone would think she was merely hiding from her father.

And when she returned, she could only hope that Lisbeth had been right, that Raven would leave without telling Steve what she had done.

Once more, Selena prayed it would turn out that way... and prayed to be forgiven for the horrendous thing she had done.

* * *

Lisbeth winced as Mariah dabbed her face with witch hazel liniment. "Ouch, that hurts."

"Not half as bad as what them men were gonna do to you. You didn't have no business ridin' off by yourself like that. You'd just best be glad Miss Raven was here to take off after you." Mariah had been terrified when Lisbeth had told her what happened.

"Believe me, I am," Lisbeth assured, then took the first step toward penitence for how she had treated Raven. "I've changed my mind about her, Mariah. And she's right. Halcyon is big enough for all of us, and I'm going to Mobile and tell Julius that tomorrow and try to get him to come home."

Mariah broke into a big grin. "Praise the Lord. I'm so glad. Now we can have some peace around here."

"She's going to teach me how to shoot a gun. And how to ride like she does. I wish I'd never acted like I did, but it was a shock, having her show up like that."

"Of course it was, but it's gonna work out just fine. And I do hope Master Julius will come on home. It'd be nice for you all to be a family."

"Yes, but he may take some convincing. He was pretty upset when he left."

"And pretty upset when Miss Raven went to see him, from what I hear."

"When was that?" She noticed Mariah smiling as though she knew a secret.

Mariah thought a minute. "Well, I suppose it's all right to tell it now, but don't you let Miss Raven know I did, 'cause she made Joshua swear he wouldn't say a word, but the truth is, he was so excited after it was all over he just had to tell somebody. 'Course, at the time, he said he was so scared that if he didn't already have gray hair, it would've turned gray for sure.

"He was supposed to stay in the carriage like Miss Raven told him to," she continued, excited now to tell the story, "but he got down and went to peek in the saloon window, so's he could see what was going on, and he said when the bullets started flyin' he nearly passed out."

"Bullets? Saloon? Whatever are you talking about?"

"You promise not to tell I told?" Mariah wanted reassurance.

"Yes, yes, go on."

She listened as Mariah detailed everything and finally burst into giggles to imagine it. Before, she might have been as upset as Julius, but now, understanding Raven as she did and knowing she meant well, and also aware she had probably risked her life to help Julius, Lisbeth found herself admiring her all the more. And she would tell Julius that as soon as she saw him, too.

"She sure is somethin'," Mariah said. "I'm just glad nothing bad happened before you decided to make peace with her."

Lisbeth winced again, but not from the liniment. Something bad had not happened—
yet.
But it very well could if she was not able to find Selena and stop her from carrying out the plan. But she had not been in the fields, and one of the workers told her she had not reported back to work after lunch. Lisbeth had gone all the way to her cabin, but there was no sign of her there either. So she had come back to the house to have her wounds cleansed before going in search of her again.

Mariah finished. "Now all you got to do is change your dress before supper, and you'll be good as new."

"I'm going to do that now." She was already on her way. "But there's something I have to do before supper, so let's eat an hour later than usual. You'll need to tell Raven."

"I can't tell her nothing." Mariah fussed as she began to repack her medicine bucket. "She's done locked herself in the study and must be workin' real hard on something, 'cause I knocked to see if she wanted some lemonade and she told me to go away. Sounded funny. Like she was tired. Guess she was, having to put up with that white trash Selena Leroux."

But Lisbeth did not hear her, because she was all the way down the hall and skipping up the steps. In her room, she yanked off the torn dress and quickly put on a fresh one. She wasted no time. In minutes she was back outside to mount Belle and ride for the slave cabins.

The Negroes looked at her curiously as she passed by. They were outside, gathered around communal cooking pots, preparing their own suppers. Lisbeth could smell catfish frying in the cauldrons of bubbling lard and hear the sizzle of hush puppies. An old man sat on a porch picking a banjo while children skipped barefooted and sang to his tune.

Lisbeth looked around and thought about Selena describing Raven's plans for making the cabins nicer and decided she was right. And she would help her. It was time for a change in so many ways, time to turn her whole life around. And as soon as she took care of Selena, she was going to send a courier to the Tremayne plantation with a message of apology for Barley. She would invite him to call and tell him how sorry she was for everything. Mariah was right. Everything was going to work out just fine.

She felt a stab of apprehension as she drew close to Selena's cabin. There was no sign of her, and she should have been outside, like the others, preparing her evening meal. But perhaps since she was alone, she ate with her neighbors, who were busy in front of their own cabin.

"Have you seen Selena Leroux?" she asked them as she reined Belle in.

"She's gone," a plump woman said, without looking up from the batch of cornbread she was stirring in a big wooden bowl.

Lisbeth tensed. "Gone where?"

"Don't rightly know. She told my man she was going away for a while. Wouldn't tell him where. We reckon she's hidin' from her pappy."

Lisbeth felt a rush of relief. Selena wasn't hiding out from her father, she was hiding out from
her,
because she had decided not to go through with the plan after all and was afraid to tell her so. But that was fine, and Lisbeth could not wait to tell her so. "Well, if you hear from her, tell her I said she doesn't have to hide anymore, all right? She'll understand."

The woman stared after her, wondering why she was happy, but kept on stirring the cornbread.

When Lisbeth got back to the house and passed the dining room, she saw that Mariah had only set one place. "What's this?" she asked Nolie, another kitchen worker. "Why is there only one setting? What about Miss Raven?"

"Mariah said Miss Raven don't want no supper," Nolie told her. "Somethin' about havin' a lot of work to do and not feelin' real good. I think Mariah said she's already gone to bed."

"Well, that's too bad," Lisbeth said. Then she realized that she was free for the evening. In the back of her mind she had wished she didn't have to wait before trying to make things right with Barley but felt she should be with Raven so they could sort of celebrate their new relationship.

Now she didn't have to.

As she hurried from the dining room, Nolie called, bewildered, "Where are you going, Miss Lisbeth? It's almost suppertime."

Lisbeth did not take time to answer. It was still early, and she had plenty of time to have Joshua drive her carriage over to see Barley.

She wasn't going to wait any longer to tell him how wonderful everything was going to be—for all of them.

* * *

Raven stood at the window of her room watching as Lisbeth skipped happily across the lawn. She did not know where Lisbeth was going, nor did she care about her, about anything, Not anymore. Not since her heart had been ripped from her chest and torn into a thousand pieces.

She was wearing her army scout uniform and was ready to leave. All she was waiting for was darkness, so she could slip into the stable without anybody seeing her and get Diablo. She was not taking anything with her except a little bit of money from the wall safe in the study, and only because she needed that to sustain her till she got where she was going and found work.

Where was she going? she asked herself with a deep shudder. Where was there to go that she might find peace?

Then she told herself that for the time being she could not care about that either. She had only one burning thought: to get as far away from Halcyon as possible... to get away from Steve.