Just Imagine (12 page)
An involuntary shudder swept through her as she though of pale white limbs wrapping themselves around her golden brown ones. She pushed the image aside and gnawed on her resentment.
Did Magnus Owen really think she'd let him touch her? Him or any other black man? Did Magnus think she'd been studying hard, grooming herself, listening to the white ladies in Rutherford until she could sound exactly like them, just so she'd end up with a black man who couldn't protect her? Not likely. Especially a black man whose eyes seemed to pierce into the farthest reaches of her soul.
She made her way to the kitchen. Soon, now, she'd have everything she wanted—a house, silk gowns, safety—and she was going to earn it in the only way she knew how, satisfying a white man's lust. A white man who was powerful enough to protect her.
That night it turned rainy. Howling February winds swept down the chimneys and rattled the shutters as Sophronia paused outside the library. In one hand she held a silver tray bearing a bottle of brandy and a single glass. With her other hand she unfastened the top buttons of her dress to reveal the swells of her breasts. It was time to make her next move. She took a deep breath and entered the room.
Cain glanced up from the ledgers on the desk. "You must have been reading my mind."
He uncoiled his rugged, long-limbed frame from the leather chair, rose, and stretched. She didn't let herself step back as he came out from behind the desk, moving like a great golden lion. He'd been working from dawn to dusk for months, and he looked tired.
"It's a cold night," she said, setting the tray on the desk. "I thought you might need something to keep you warm." She forced her hand to the open V of her dress so he couldn't mistake her meaning.
He gazed at her, and she felt the familiar stirrings of panic. Once again she reminded herself how kind he'd been, but she also knew there was something dangerous about him that frightened her.
His eyes flicked over her, then lingered on her breasts. "Sophronia…"
She thought of silk gowns and a pastel house. A house with a sturdy lock.
"Shh…" She stepped up to him and splayed her fingers over his chest. Then she let her shawl drop on her bare arm.
For the past seven months, his life had been filled with hard work and little pleasure. Now his lids dropped and he closed his long, tapered fingers around her arm. His hand, bronzed by the Carolina sun, was darker than her own flesh.
He cupped her chin. "Are you sure about this?"
She forced herself to nod.
His head dipped, but in the instant before their lips met, there was a noise behind them. They turned together and saw Magnus Owen standing in the open doorway.
His gentle features twisted as he saw her ready to submit to Cain's embrace. She heard a rumble deep in his throat. He charged into the room and threw himself at the man he considered his closest friend, the man who had once saved his life.
The suddenness of the attack took Cain by surprise. He staggered backward and barely managed to keep his balance. Then he braced himself for Magnus's assault.
Horrified, she watched as Magnus came at him. He swung, but Cain sidestepped and lifted his arm to block the blow.
Magnus swung again. This time he found Cain's jaw and sent him sprawling. Cain got back up, but he refused to retaliate.
Gradually Magnus regained some semblance of sanity. When he saw Cain wasn't going to fight, his arms sagged to his sides.
Cain looked deep into Magnus's eyes, then gazed across the room at Sophronia. He bent down to right a chair that had been upended in the struggle and spoke gruffly. "You'd better get some sleep, Magnus. We have a big day tomorrow." He turned to Sophronia. "You can go. I won't be needing you anymore." The deliberate way he emphasized his words left no doubt about his meaning.
Sophronia rushed from the room. She was furious with Magnus for upsetting her plans. At the same time, she feared for him. This was South Carolina, and he'd struck a white man, not once but twice.
She barely slept that night as she waited for the devils in white sheets to come after him, but nothing happened. The next day, she saw him working side by side with Cain, clearing brush from one of the fields. The fear she'd felt turned into seething resentment. He had no right to interfere in her life.
That evening, Cain instructed her to leave his brandy on the table outside the library door.
6
Fresh spring flowers filled the ballroom of the Templeton Academy for Young Ladies. Pyramids of white tulips screened the empty fireplaces, while cut-glass vases stuffed with lilacs lined the mantels. Even the mirrors had been draped with swags of snowy azaleas.
Along the ballroom's perimeter, clusters of fashionably dressed guests gazed toward the charming rose-bedecked gazebo at the end of the ballroom. Soon the most recent graduates of the Templeton Academy, the Class of 1868, would pass through.
In addition to the parents of the debutantes, guests included members of New York's most fashionable families: Schermerhorns and Livingstons, several Jays, and at least one Van Rensselaer. No socially prominent mother would permit a marriageable son to miss any of the events surrounding the graduation of the latest crop of Templeton girls, and certainly not the Academy's final ball, the best place in New York to find a suitable daughter-in-law.
The bachelors had gathered in groups around the room. Their ranks had been thinned by the war, but there were still enough present to please the mothers of the debutantes.
The younger men were carelessly confident in their immaculate white linen and black tailcoats, despite the fact that some of their sleeves hung empty, and more than one who hadn't yet celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday walked with a cane. The older bachelors' coffers overflowed from the profits of the booming postwar economy, and they signaled their success with diamond shirt studs and heavy gold watch chains.
Tonight was the first time the gentlemen from Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore would have the privilege of viewing the newest crop of Manhattan's most desirable debutantes. Unlike their New York counterparts, these gentlemen hadn't been able to attend the teas and sedate Sunday afternoon receptions that had led up to this evening's ball. They listened attentively as the local bachelors speculated on the winners in this year's bridal sweepstakes.
The beautiful Lilith Shelton would grace any man's table. And her father was to settle ten thousand on her.
Margaret Stockton had crooked teeth, but she'd bring eight thousand to her marriage bed, and she sang well, a pretty quality in a wife.
Elsbeth Woodward was only worth five thousand at the outside, but she was sweet-natured and most pleasant to look at, the sort of wife who wouldn't give a man a moment's trouble. Definitely a favorite.
Fanny Jennings was out of the running. The youngest Vandervelt boy had already spoken with her father. A pity, since she was worth eighteen thousand.
On and on it went, one girl after another. As the conversation began to drift to the latest boxing match, a Bostonian visitor interrupted. "Isn't there another I've heard talk about? A Southern girl? Older than the rest?" Twenty-one, he'd heard.
The men of New York avoided each other's eyes. Finally one of them cleared his throat. "Ah, yes. That would be Miss Weston."
Just then the orchestra began to play a selection from the newly popular
Tales from the Vienna Woods
, a signal that the members of the graduating class were about to be announced. The men fell silent as the debutantes appeared.
Dressed in white ball gowns, they came through the gazebo one by one, paused, and sank into a graceful curtsy. Following the appropriate applause, they glided down steps strewn with rose petals onto the ballroom floor and took the arm of their father or brother.
Elsbeth smiled so prettily that her brother's best friend, who until that moment had thought of her only as a nuisance, began to think again. Lilith Shelton tripped ever so slightly on the hem of her skirt and wanted to die, but she was a Templeton Girl, so she didn't let her mortification show. Margaret Stockton, even with her crooked teeth, looked fetching enough to garner the attention of a member of the less prosperous branch of the Jay family.
"Katharine Louise Weston."
There was an almost imperceptible movement among the gentlemen of New York City, a slight tilting of heads, a vague shifting of positions. The gentlemen of Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore sensed that something special was about to happen and fixed their attention more closely.
She came toward them from the shadows of the gazebo, then stopped at the top of the steps. They saw at once that she wasn't like the others. This was no tame tabby cat to curl up by a man's hearth and keep his slippers warm. This was a woman to make a man's blood surge, a wildcat with lustrous black hair caught back from her face with silver combs, then falling in a riotous tangle of thick dark curls down her neck. This was an exotic cat with widely spaced violet eyes so heavily fringed, the very weight of her lashes should have held them closed. This was a jungle cat with a mouth too bold for fashion but so ripe and moist that a man could only think of drinking from it.
Her gown was fashioned of white satin with a billowing overskirt caught up by bows the same shade of violet as her eyes. The neckline was heart-shaped, softly outlining the contours of her breasts, and the bell-shaped sleeves ended in a wide cuff of Alençon lace. The gown was beautiful and expensive, but she wore it almost carelessly. One of the lavender bows had come undone at the side, and the sleeves must have gotten in her way, because she'd pushed them a bit too high on her delicate wrists.
Hamilton Woodward's youngest son stepped forward as her escort for the promenade. The more critical guests observed that her stride was a shade too long—not long enough to reflect badly on the Academy, just long enough to be noted. Woodward's son whispered something to her. She tilted her head and laughed, showing small, white teeth. Each man who watched wanted that laugh to be his alone, even as he told himself that a more delicate young lady would perhaps not laugh quite so boldly. Only Elsbeth's father, Hamilton Woodward, refused to look at her.