Strands of Bronze and Gold (23 page)

“They’re saying in town that when his agent spent an evening at the tavern, he claimed you were to marry de Cressac.”

“Well, that’s the first I’ve heard of it. No, I would never marry him.” I tossed my head and made myself laugh as though the idea were ridiculous, although my stomach plummeted. Mr. Bass could only have gotten such an idea straight from his master.

Gideon’s eyes were searching, studying my face. I met his gaze evenly—he must never know that once I had actually been attracted to M. Bernard.

I fired my rolled-up fern at his head. “As a pastor you shouldn’t listen to idle gossip.”

He caught the frond and smiled, although his smile seemed a little forced. “You’re right. I was foolish. The man was drunk, after all. I’ll attach no importance to such rumors in the future.”

A gray squirrel on a branch above us began to scold and sent bits of bark showering down upon our heads.

I laughed and brushed away the fragments. “Evidently he doesn’t like our looks.”

“He’s an absurd beast, then. No one with eyes could dislike your looks.”

I felt a silly smile spread across my face. We strolled through the trees, with me gathering an armful of scarlet-berried sumac. Gideon still seemed preoccupied.

The longer we walked, the quieter he became. Something was on his mind. I thought I knew what it was.

At last he stopped and faced me. “Sophie—I mean—forgive me—I mean Miss Petheram—”

“Yes?” I asked, breathless, certain he was about to ask permission to kiss me or confess he loved me, one or the other. Or hopefully both.

“Is there no way I can court you honorably? If I could speak to Mr. de Cressac—”

I shook my head vehemently. “Impossible. He even banished a servant because he was kind to me. He desires me isolated from everyone.”

“Then perhaps to your brothers when they come. If only we could keep company in the proper way.”

“That’s what I want too, but we cannot. I promise I wish we were both in Boston and you could call at my house and sit at dinner with my family and everything would be as correct as correct could be, but as things stand, it cannot be so.” I twisted my ring. “I’m hoping—when my family leaves, I’ll leave with them. After that we could correspond. But until then …”

He struck his fist savagely against a tree trunk. This uncharacteristic action frightened me. His stubborn goodness … I dropped my load and grabbed his arm.

“Gideon, can’t you see we’re doing nothing wrong meeting here? Our situation is different because there’s no way—no way—”

He drew his hand down his face. “I’ve tried to convince myself of what you say, but being with you like this, I’m putting you in a
compromising position, not to mention betraying the deference I owe my calling.” He looked down at me, his eyes earnest, pleading for my understanding. I turned my head away. “You’re young and innocent and can’t realize how wrong it is. I’m years older and should know better. Can’t you see that it’s best for you if we don’t meet again until our situations are different, and then we can—”

I snatched away my hand from his arm. “
Best
for me?” I said in a low, shaking voice. “Why does everyone in this world think they know what’s best for me? What’s best for me is to continue to get to know a man who is good through and through and who makes me want to be a better person.
That
is what’s best for me.”

“I wish I were the man you think me.” He smiled faintly, and I wondered if he knew how very sad it made him appear. “If I were king of the world, I would make everything different.”

I couldn’t even attempt a smile.

He gathered up my forest treasure and put it in my arms. “I shall—bid you goodbye now.” His shoulders sagged as he walked away.

With burning eyes, I watched him. Jealousy that he could leave and I could not tangled inside me with a yearning to run after him and cling to his side.

When I emerged from the woods, Odette sniffed upon seeing the bundle in my arms, but she picked up a branch I dropped.

I placed my bounty in a vase on my mantel. The room looked warmer with the fall colors lighting it.

Somehow I got through the week, even though I worried when I found no more notes from Gideon. Surely he hadn’t really meant what he said about ceasing meeting me? It couldn’t be so—not with
the intensity of what was growing between us. And why should I expect frequent messages? He had a great many duties. I would see him on Monday. I always saw him on Mondays. I anticipated our next time together all the more. In fact, on Sunday night I awaited the following day with such eagerness M. Bernard accused me of “glowing” during supper. I must be careful not to appear too joyous without a reason I could share.

“I was riding Lily and getting some wonderful exercise,” I told him. “Would you like to take Aramis out with us tonight? We haven’t ridden together in ages.”

Immediately distracted, he agreed and began telling me at length of beautiful foreign places he’d ridden. My mind was able to wander toward Gideon once again.

When the morning arrived, I dressed with care and happily made my way to our meeting place.

He was not there.

For half an hour I waited, and then I tried to seek Gideon out, tramping in every direction until I was ready to drop. Nowhere did I catch a glimpse of the black frock coat and long legs. An echoing hollowness inside me confirmed that he was not coming.

There might be a note. I raced, stumbling, to the tree. Inside the hole was a sheet of paper. With trembling hands, I unfolded it. The message was short.

Dear Miss Petheram
,

In vain I have struggled over our situation, trying to convince myself that I can honorably continue to meet as we have been meeting. However, in spite of—or
because of—the very high regard I have for you, I cannot reconcile my conscience with the position in which I have been placing both of us. I know you don’t agree with this, but please understand that I truly believe it’s for the best. I hope our circumstances will change someday. I’m so sorry
.

Gideon Stone

I sank down onto a log and stared straight ahead. It was all over. It had barely begun, and now it was over. The meetings with Gideon had been my only joy, my only hope … and he was
sorry
. Heat flamed my cheeks. I crumpled up the note and stuffed it into my pocket.
If he felt for me the way I feel for him, he couldn’t stay away
. I was head over heels in love with Gideon Stone, but he must not be in love with me. He would forget propriety if he were. He would forget honor.…

No. Even as I thought that last, I knew it was false. I would not love Gideon as I did if he weren’t the man he was. I thought of the poem “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars”:
I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more
. I had always disliked that line because it seemed as if the writer must not have cared for the girl if he could leave her so, but I understood it better now. That verse would be my Gideon’s creed. He was a man of integrity.

I buried my face in my hands and wept bitterly.

Someone touched my shoulder. I gasped.

“Honey, it ain’t so bad as all that.”

An African woman stood over me, her face the color of burnished oak, obviously ancient but unwrinkled, with her skin stretched tight over jutting cheekbones. A good witch.

“You best come with me, lil Miss,” she said, gesturing with one warped, bony hand. “You best come with me, and I fix you a hot herb drink. It make you feel better right quick.”

She turned and stalked through the trees without looking behind, as if there were no question I would follow her. I followed her.

She was a tiny woman, wearing the ugliest striped calico I had ever seen, with an apron of bleached flour sacks. The kerchief she wore on her head was scarlet, and corkscrew tendrils of iron gray hair peeked from beneath. When she hitched up her skirts to step over fallen logs, it seemed a miracle she could hold herself up with such shriveled, scrawny limbs, but she walked ahead very straight-backed. She carried a switch to whip through the undergrowth before her.

“Don’t need to step in none of them traps, no sir,” she muttered.

She led me to a hovel whose walls leaned so pitifully I tilted my head to take it in. A garden patch, now fallow, surrounded it.

She turned to wait in the doorway and gestured with her switch at the short, saffron stalks poking up from the dirt. “My herbs grow there in season,” she said. “I dries them and sells them in town. I makes enough for my needs and a little extra to tuck away.” She gave a quick, birdlike shake of her head as she studied my face. “You be wore to a frazzle, lil Miss. You best come in and set.”

I stooped to enter. The tiny room was pungent from the scent of dried herbs dangling from rafters. It contained a rickety table with a couple of cane-bottom chairs, missing slats, drawn up to it; a thin bedstead covered with a patchwork quilt; and a lidded crate, which
must act as the bureau. On one wall hung an unlikely colored print of an angelic little blond girl romping with puppies. The room was warm from the fire flickering on the hearth, where an iron kettle steamed. My head brushed the herbs, releasing more scent, as I sat down where the old woman indicated.

“My name be Anarchy,” she said as she bustled about, pouring hot water from the kettle into a brown crockery mug and sprinkling it with dried leaves she pinched from one of the bundles.

“Anarchy?” I asked, unsure if I had heard her properly.

“Yes, indeedy,” she said. “I done used to belong to the Vassars, them that owns Bella Vista Plantation, but when Mr. Richard give me to Miss Fanny, who I nursed from the day she was borned, she give me my freedom papers. I got them still, there in that box. Anthony—my son Anthony who still belong to Mr. Richard—he tell me I supposed to pay the courthouse three dollars every three years to renew them, but I don’t pay him no mind. I ain’t giving no courthouse no dollars till I good and ready. I got to save to buy Anthony’s baby’s freedom. She my baby princess. She small and fine and don’t got no mama no more—she won’t live to grow up if they work her too hard. I gots more’n half her price saved. Mr. Richard say he give me a good deal on her.”

The horror of a system where a grandmother matter-of-factly spoke of bargaining to buy her grandchild left me speechless. Luckily Anarchy didn’t expect a response.

“I don’t worry none about me. Miss Fanny wouldn’t let no one bother me here. She give me that picture too”—here she pointed to the print on the wall—“to remind me of my little girl I loved so well. It favors her as a child. Now you sip that. Chamomile to calm
your nerves. I done put honey in too, from my own bees. Sweetest there is. You feel better right quick.”

The warmth and sweetness and scent of the place wrapped around me until I did feel better. And curious.

“Why didn’t you go up North when you received your freedom?” I asked.

She gave a cackle. “If this child ain’t asking what folks always ask …,” she said to the ceiling. “What they teach these folks make them always wonder that? I say, why should I? I got Miss Fanny and my Anthony and my grandbaby close by. I happy as a duck with a june bug. Anthony, he just made me these squirrel-skin boots I got on. Ain’t they fine?”

With a funny little flourish, she displayed her feet, and oddly the boots
were
fine. Anthony had obviously fashioned them with care, the squirrel skin soft and supple, and the fit perfect. Oddly, too, I loved this room, filled with Anarchy’s contentment. She had nothing, nothing, and yet she was happy.

“Anthony is a craftsman,” I said.

The old woman glowed with pride. “He make all the shoes on the plantation just like his daddy done before him. Miss Fanny, she used to dance for his daddy, so he’d make hers extra pointed and dainty.” She cackled again. “Too dainty. She got bunions now. Here. Miss Fanny brung me this cake last time she come, but I been saving it for an occasion. This be it. You eat it all up.”

She unwrapped a slice of very old, very dark fruitcake, bulging with hardened raisins, and laid it before me. I choked it down.

“My name is Sophie,” I said when I finished brushing crumbs from my mouth.

“Well now, lil Miss Sophie, you be wanting to tell old Anarchy what’s got you heartsore, ain’t you?” She seated herself on the other chair and waited with shrewd eyes.

I did. I did want to tell her. At first I didn’t know where to begin, but soon it came spilling out. I told her of my childhood and of my father’s death and of my life with M. Bernard and finally of my misery over Gideon. At some point Anarchy quietly began to rub my shoulders.

“Uh, uh, uh,” she said. “You been through a time, ain’t you? You been so lonesome and finally you think you got someone good and then he be snatched from you. Uh, uh, uh. All’s I can tell you is it’ll get better. You got to wade through the pain and the hurt, and when you come out the other side, you be stronger for it. I know your preacher man—he comes round here now and again to buy herbs and honey—he trying to do what he thinks right, but I got a inkling you be with him yet. And that Mr. Cressac—he a piece of work! But you is smart enough to deal with him.”

I gave a quavering smile. “Thank you for everything, Anarchy. I’d better go now.”

“Yes, you go. But first fix your hair and put your clothes to rights. You look like you been rode hard and put away wet.”

I laughed and drew my fingers through my hair. “May I come back and visit you sometimes?”

“Laws-a-mercy yes. I loves company! Have a blessed day.”

I started away briskly, but I soon slowed as the warmth seeped out of me. Once more I was absolutely alone.