Box Set: The ArringtonTrilogy (66 page)

“Sleep in your bed, Mr. Stone. I can sleep on
the floor.”

“Thank you, Lillian, but I will be fine on
the porch. I have to stay awake, just in case they decide to ambush
us at night.”

“I’m not tired. I can stay up on watch.”

He chuckled at my suggestion. I was
immediately insulted, and he recognized it. “Thank you very much
for your offer. Yes, I am tired, but not tired enough to allow you
to sit outside and get eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

He didn’t want me outside, but not because he
thought I was a little girl, as I had speculated. I laughed at my
own insecurities, and that made him laugh. The two of us sat
laughing together, and it felt good. I moved next to him; the
moment seemed right for me to place a kiss on his scruffy cheek to
thank him.

He was surprised, and faintly asked, “What,
may I ask, did I do to deserve a kiss from such a beautiful
girl?”

I lowered my head and felt my whole body
become warm and flushed. “For making me laugh. I haven’t laughed in
a long, long time.”

He put his arm around me, sighed, and said,
“Me, either.”

Neither of us were ready for sleep and it
wasn’t only because I was rested and he felt the need to protect
me. As we sat beside one another and the relief from the night air
came and cooled the cabin, I felt our connection intensify. Warren
had proved that he would lay down his life for me, instantly
causing me to love him. I once knew Daddy would do that for me, and
even Heath or Ayden without doubt; they all loved me because we
were family. But Warren had just met me, and he did it because he
desired to, and not just because it was the right thing to do. It
was something more; I saw it in the way he looked into my eyes, and
as his body tensed when I touched him.

These were all things I had witnessed before;
I was aware of how a man desired a woman. I saw it in Daddy’s eyes;
I saw it in Heath’s when he was in love with Clara, and it was
there when Warren looked at me. Although I was petrified of what
might come of our new and unexpected relationship, I was thrilled
at the same time and wanted, for the first time, to be kissed by a
man. I waited nervously beside him, twisting my long hair around my
finger, for him to act on his yearning, and after a long, still
silence he finally turned and faced me. I was ready for his lips to
lower to mine, and I closed my eyes in anticipation.

_______________

Warren didn’t lean in and kiss me; instead,
he stood and cleared his throat, then excused himself. “I need some
fresh air.”

I was stunned, then embarrassed. I wanted to
cry in humiliation. He was outside pacing the porch while I
wondered how I could have misread him. I was so confused by my
feelings towards Warren and the mixed signals he gave me. I had
been immature once again, stupid, and had embarrassed myself to the
point that I feared he wouldn’t even want to be in a room with me.
He was probably angry at me the way Heath was on the last day we
were together. I must have teased him in some way; I had made some
advance that disgusted him. It wasn’t lady-like; I was everything
Grandmother said Momma was.

I needed to forget what had happened, so I
curled up in a ball and tried to go back to sleep. Warren’s face
kept flashing before me then his face would turn into Heath’s. I
took the pillow and covered my face, then silently cried myself to
sleep.

Warren was not in the cabin when I woke,
heavy-hearted, in the morning. I got out of bed with a nagging
reminder of the night before. I hoped he would still want me to
stay, and I prayed he wasn’t angry. There was a good chance Warren
could forgive my un-lady-like advances; after all, he had refrained
from kissing me. I could only hope.

He was neither in the cabin nor on the porch.
I waited for a short while to see if he would return from the
outhouse, when I noticed Grandmother and Hamilton coming up on
horseback. I ran inside, locked the door, and backed into the
corner.

Where was Warren? What was I going to do?
Maybe the constable had already taken him away and they were here
to get me. I stood motionless, praying they would go away. I
listened closely as the horses stopped; my heart was beating so
hard I swore it would lead them right to me. I bit my lip and
trembled until Grandmother called out, “Your daddy has come for
you, Lillian. You need to come to Sutton Hall. He is waiting there
to take you home.”

Daddy had come for me, finally! Without
thinking, purely elated, wanting to get to him as fast as possible,
I ran outside, and to my horror, realized I had acted too soon. I
stopped in my tracks, but it was too late. A man, the constable,
grabbed me, covered my mouth, and took me to his horse.

“Let’s go,” Grandmother said. I was
forcefully gagged and lifted onto the horse, and then we galloped
away.

I turned to look back at the cabin, to see if
Warren had witnessed what had just happened, and I caught a
fleeting glimpse of him lying face down on the ground, in a pool of
blood, behind the stack of wood. He was dead; they had killed him
to take me back. My stomach twisted into a giant knot, and I fell
limp.

It didn’t take long to reach Sutton Hall,
where I was taken to my own personal cell and stripped naked,
whipped, and beaten by my horrible grandmother.

“How dare you run off with him!” she
hollered, and with the rawhide whip, lashed my blood-streaked back
for the tenth time. “You are a vile tramp, an unholy creature!” she
repeated, over and over, as my screams of pain turned into stifled
moans.

“What did you do with him? Did you get in his
bed? Did you allow him to put a child inside you?” she raged.

When I couldn’t answer, my throat closed up
from sheer terror and pain, she knelt over me. I was face down and
tied to the bedposts, but she grabbed hold of my hair and made me
look into her dark, sinister eyes.

It was all I could do to muster the energy to
say, “No.”

“I don’t believe you,” she hissed, then from
her pocket she pulled out a pair of scissors and began to cut my
waist-length, platinum blond hair. “This will keep any man from
ever looking at you again.” Within minutes, my beautiful hair was
scattered all over the bed. She flew out of the room and locked the
door behind her. She hadn’t untied me, and I lay there, my nude
body covered in blood, filled with so much pain and humiliation
that I wished she had put the scissors through my heart and killed
me. I would have been better off.

I fell in and out of consciousness; I moaned
from the pain of the whipping, and I cried over Warren’s death. By
nightfall, my arms were burning from being stretched out and tied
up. I couldn’t stand it any longer. With what little strength I had
left, I maneuvered my wrists to loosen the ropes. It took hours,
and I sobbed the whole time, moaning and screaming into the
mattress, but finally I was able to free one arm, then hours later,
the other. The room had no light; the outside shutters were sealed
over the only window that may have let in any moonlight. I
remembered the candle and matches in the armoire, but I had no
strength to move. For the remainder of the night I lay in the
darkness, on the soiled bed, and wondered if I was, indeed, in
Hell.

Abigail was sent in to clean my wounds and
dress me sometime the next day. I didn’t open my eyes when the door
was unlocked; I believed Grandmother was there to beat me again, so
I was surprised when I felt someone gently stroke my short, ragged
hair. I slowly opened my eyes and looked up at Abigail. Her soft,
pitying brown eyes were full of tears, and she whispered in my ear
so no one could overhear, “I’m here. No more worries, Miss
Lillian.”

Abigail carefully rolled me to my side and
began to clean the dried blood from my back. She was as gentle as
she could be, but the pain was so overwhelming that I begged her to
stop. It was almost as bad as the actual whipping.

“I’m trying, Miss Lillian, not to hurt you
more than you already are,” she said.

“Just leave me, please; let me get an
infection and die,” I moaned.

She didn’t listen and continued. I gripped
the mattress; I bit into it until she was finally finished. I
turned over and breathed a sigh of relief. She went to the armoire
and took out a dress.

“Your momma was so pretty. You look just like
her,” she said, and carefully sat me up. “This was her favorite
dress.”

It was a lovely shade of green with different
shades of green on the pagoda sleeves and trim, and it had pretty
lace on the collar and cuffs.

Abigail, I could see, had once been a
beautiful woman, but years of slavery had taken its toll on her.
Her face was full of lines; her brow covered in wrinkles. Her hair
was fine and completely gray. Her hands were full of calluses from
years of hard labor.

She was fond of me, and the fact that she
knew Momma gave me the strength to sit up and be dressed. I was
stiff and sore beyond belief, but glad to be decent once again and
in the comfort of Momma’s favorite day dress. After I was clothed,
Abigail left, but before she locked the door behind her, she smiled
and said in a hushed voice, “You aren’t always going to be locked
up.”

I lay still, staring at the door. Things had
been so different the day before; I was only hours from freedom. I
had laughed and been in the care of a man who was so genuine and
sincere it melted my heart. It amazed and frightened me that one
day could be so devastatingly different from the next. I wondered
if any day could be worse than the day Warren was murdered and I
was taken away to be brutally whipped and beaten, treated worse
than an animal. I didn’t know where I could find the faith and will
to go on to another day. It just didn’t matter. Daddy had forgotten
about me; for some reason I could never begin to understand, he no
longer wanted me. The realization of that left my heart shattered
in a hundred pieces. I would never be the same again.

As the wounds on my back slowly healed, my
heart remained crushed and void; it felt as if I no longer
possessed one. I was left in Abigail’s care, and though she had
obvious compassion for me, I was numb to her kindness. Each day was
indistinguishable from the next. Each morning, Hamilton brought me
one egg and a glass of water, and in the evening Abigail came with
my cornpone and another glass of water.

Throughout the day and nights, between their
quick deliveries of food, I lay in bed, staring up at the drab
ceiling or at the door. I could stare and not even blink my eyes
for hours at a time. I didn’t think of anything or anyone; my mind
was a blank slate. Abigail remained committed to my care, both
physically and emotionally. It seemed as though Grandmother didn’t
want to know anything about my existence and didn’t return to the
room after the beating.

One stormy summer afternoon, Abigail came in
unexpectedly. I had been awake and staring at the ceiling all
morning, listening to the rumbles of thunder that shook the
enormous mansion.

“Sure is storming out there,” she said from
beside me. “Mrs. Arrington went to Savannah. I’m here to brush your
hair. It’s starting to grow back, see?” She handed me a mirror. I
hadn’t seen myself in months, and as I gazed at myself for the
first time since my long hair was sabotaged, I burst into tears. I
was thin and feeble looking. My face was sickly pale, my eyes
hollow and my beautiful, long locks of hair were gone.

“Now, now, Miss Lillian; it’s coming back.
Sure has come in fast,” she said, trying to console me. “Let me
brush.”

I sobbed uncontrollably as she worked out the
knots in my short hair. She tugged, and it hurt, but not as much as
the pain of the sight of myself. When she was finished, she pulled
a bonnet from the pocket of her apron.

“When you don’t want to see yourself, you can
wear this.”

It wasn’t a solution, and I didn’t care.
“Just put it in the armoire,” I said, and collapsed back down on
the bed.

“Hamilton is gonna bring you a fresh pillow
later,” Abigail said before she left. “And,” she added, “Mrs.
Arrington got plans to go to Atlanta at the end of the week. She
gonna be gone for two days.”

It was obviously unusual for Grandmother to
leave Sutton Hall; Abigail made that perfectly clear to me. If it
meant anything, I didn’t care. She left, and I fixed my eyes on the
ceiling, staring up at it for the rest of the day.

Storm after storm pounded the deep South all
week with wicked thunder and torrential winds—and inside, I felt as
heavy as the rains. There was a leak in the corner of my room that
mesmerized me. I stared at the water that slowly trickled down the
corner and onto the floor; one drip after another. The sound of it
could have been enough to drive someone insane, but I enjoyed the
monotony. After all, it was my life—one day dripping into the next,
one miserable, rainy day that never seemed to end. Even when
Abigail came in to tell me that Grandmother was away and offered to
take me out of my room, I didn’t care. I didn’t even bat an eye
when she said it. What was there on the other side of the door?
Certainly not my freedom. That was gone. There was no one to greet
me, to hold me and love me and take me away. Those men were gone,
either by choice or unfortunate circumstance.

“Come, Miss Lillian. The rain has stopped.
Fresh air will do you much good.”

She tried to nudge me up, but I wouldn’t
budge. Hamilton stood in the doorway and wildly waved his hands
around, which was his way of communicating with Abigail. From what
I gathered, they were husband and wife.

“She doesn’t want to go!” she shouted at
him.

I shifted my eyes back and forth, trying to
understand how she knew what he was trying to say. It caught my
interest; it reminded me of all the years I spent learning sign
language and the wonderful days I spent with Heath teaching
Elizabeth. They were surprised when I sat up and said, “Doesn’t he
know any sign language?”