Katherine O’Neal (41 page)

The woman looked up as they approached. At
closer range, it was obvious she was little more than thirty years
old. But her skin looked like leather and hung on her face. There
was a look in her eyes that Saranda knew only too well. She’d seen
it in the eyes of the desperately poor on the streets of London. It
was the blank, hollow look of a person who’d long ago given up
hope. Who didn’t even remember that such a thing existed.

Mace touched her hand, and they stopped as
one. No words were necessary. Looking into his eyes, she saw
sorrow, pity, and empathy. She saw, too, that he couldn’t go
through with it. That, destitute as they might be, he’d starve
before he’d bring himself to burn this family with nothing to
give.

She felt a sudden surge of joy. The look on
his face made her realize something she hadn’t before. Because of
him, she’d changed. Now she could open her heart and feel someone
else’s suffering. She knew she never wanted to hurt innocent people
again.

It was the sweetest feeling she’d ever known.
With a full and grateful heart, she put her arm about Mace’s waist
and held him close.

“You’re not that snake anymore,” she
whispered. And knew that he understood.

To make matters worse, the family dropped
what they were doing and welcomed them like old friends. It was
apparent that few visitors stopped by these remote parts. The
excitement in the children’s faces made Saranda feel even worse
about their earlier plot to take advantage of them.

The one moment of tension came when the
father, dressed in a tattered Confederate uniform, came limping
over, frowning at their English accents. “You folks talk funny,” he
said. “You ain’t Yankees, is you?”

“No,” Mace explained. “We’re British.”

The farmer nodded philosophically. “I
figgered you was from Britain or Asia, or one of them states.”

The family even saved them the trouble of
explaining their circumstances by refusing to ask. When Mace began
his ingeniously designed story, the father said, “Oh, that don’t
matter none. Looks like you could use a scrub, though. Woman, toss
that laundry water yonder. Let’s get some proper use from the water
what’s boiled.”

Clothes hung from a line stretched across the
lawn, mostly children’s pants and shirts, well-mended but
scrupulously clean. These the farmer moved aside to accommodate the
heavily patched quilt he threw across. Behind that, they set up the
washtub, and there, first Saranda, then Mace, scrubbed themselves
with harsh, homemade lye soap as the children stood before the
concealing curtain and stared.

Once they were clean, they were given clothes
to wear. Their protests went unheeded. “You cain’t wear what you’ve
got on,” the farmer insisted. “Why, it wouldn’t be neighborly if we
didn’t share what we got with folks that got less.”

Meeting Mace’s eyes, Saranda went behind the
curtain once again and slipped into the farm woman’s dress. Once it
had been calico, but it was so faded from washings and wear that it
now looked a dingy grey. It was too large for her on top—the woman
must have been pregnant and nursing for most of her marriage—and
the skirt was unfashionably wide in the style of a decade earlier.
Saranda counted five separate tears that had been carefully mended,
but the material was so thin, she knew a good tug would rip them
open. Coming from behind the curtain, feeling dumpy and
conspicuous, she caught the look of pride in the woman’s eyes, and
realized with a start that this must be her best dress.

Mace fared little better. The farmer was
shorter than he, so the pant legs came halfway up his calves and
the shirtsleeves barely past his forearms. The sleeves he rolled
up, displaying a heady glimpse of thickly muscled arms. But the
pants were so tight, he could barely move. The bulge in his groin
was so noticeable, straining against the imprisonment of the
breeches, that the woman’s eyes came to rest upon it and widened in
horror. As unobtrusively as possible, Mace pulled out the shirttail
and let it hang.

Saranda was hard-pressed not to laugh.

They had a small pot of vegetable stew for
their noon meal. It was hardly enough to feed the family of ten,
yet they insisted on giving their guests the largest share. As they
ate, choking guiltily on the food, Mace asked questions about the
surrounding territory.

“I’d guess we’re twenty miles from Memphis,”
said the farmer. “Hard goin’ on foot, an’ we only got a mule. We
take a raft if needs be. Don’t get much call to go to town, though.
Ain’t used it in a spell. You’re sure welcome to it.”

“We can’t take your only raft,” Saranda said,
surprised to find herself preferring the thought of another
moonlight swim.

The farmer waved his hand impatiently. “Heck,
take it. You can see fer yourself, I got trees enough. If I need
another, I’ll jest build it. Woman, get these folks another helping
of stew.”

They declined, even though they’d eaten
little for days and were still exhausted from swimming the river.
“I’ll take the raft, if you insist,” Mace said. “We shall leave at
dusk. As long as you tell me what we can do in return. Maybe fix
some fences, or help you—”

“Now what would I need better fences fer?
Ain’t got nothin’ to put in ’em. Naw, you’re welcome to it. But
if’n it makes you feel better, you could talk to the young’uns.
They don’t get much sport, do you, kids?”

Solemnly, their eyes large in their faces,
the children shook their heads.

“Pa, I’m ashamed of you. Cain’t you see them
folks is wore out? They need rest, is what they need. Ain’t that
so, folks?”

“Well,” admitted Saranda, who was having
trouble keeping her eyes open, “we could do with a bit of a
nap.”

“Well, use our bed!” cried the farmer.
“You’re both welcome.”

They stared at each other, aghast. “We
couldn’t possibly—”

“Don’t give it a thought. Me and Ma don’t
need it till nigh on seven o’clock. Go on in and settle
yerselves.”

They were ushered into the one bedroom with a
small bed fashioned from rough-hewn logs. The quilt was retrieved
from the clothesline, the faded curtain that served as a door was
pulled closed, and the farmer and his wife returned to their
chores.

Lying cramped together in the bed, Mace and
Saranda shifted awkwardly. “We could do with some sleep,” Mace
conceded, “if we’re going to travel all night.”

“I feel so guilty!” she whispered. “Oh, for
the days when I was heartless. At least if you have no heart, it
can’t break as it’s doing now.”

“Have no fear, love. As soon as the
Globe-Journal
is back in our hands, we shall send them some
money. We’ll say they’ve won some sort of contest. They’ll never
know the difference.”

The prospect cheered her, but even more the
fact that he’d used the word “we.” She raised her head to comment,
when a flutter of the curtain drew her gaze. There, on either side
of the material, were six tiny faces, three on either side of the
curtain, watching with unblinking eyes. She nudged Mace, and
catching sight of them, he began to laugh. She joined in, and soon
they were rolling in the strange bed, muffling their giggles in
each other’s shoulders.

When he could get a breath, Mace raised
himself up and said, “Very well, my friends, come along. It’s time
for a story.”

They flung themselves on the bed, surrounding
the two strangers as if it were the most natural thing in the
world. Mace grabbed a couple of them and held them to keep them
from falling off the narrow bed. “Have you ever seen a circus?”
They shook their heads. “Well, it’s a sight like nothing else
you’ll ever see.”

And he spent the time when he should have
been sleeping weaving tales and painting word pictures for the
children that were so full of color, magic, and inspiration that
they felt they’d truly seen it all. From the elephants to the
clowns to the flying men on the trapeze, they spent the afternoon
in a world of fantasy and fun they might never witness.

Saranda watched him with a tender smile. He
held the children spellbound. If he described a near fall from the
trapeze, they jumped and covered their ears. If he relayed the
silly antics of a clown, they flashed toothy grins. They spent an
afternoon forgetting the meagerness of their existence, all because
this dear man cared more about their happiness than he did his own
needs.

What a wonderful father he’d make.

Then, realizing what she’d just thought, she
stared at him with terrified eyes. She could see his love for
children in his face. After bearing most of the burden swimming the
Mississippi, he had to be exhausted. Yet his eyes glowed with a
gentle warmth as he spun delightful tales for the children’s
amusement. She thought she detected a wistful sigh in his voice, as
if regretting the time he’d been denied with his own child. She
understood in that moment what she’d only partially glimpsed in the
tarot reading: that Mace’s search for his own identity was tied up
in his wanting a family. Wanting a child.

A child she could never give him
.

Because as cozy as this afternoon had been,
the reality was that she’d spent precious little such time with her
own son. There’d never been the opportunity or the inclination to
sit with him in her lap and tell stories about a world he didn’t
yet know. The reality of motherhood had been a nightmare for her.
It had incinerated her heart and left behind nothing but ashes. And
she knew in that freshly healed but still raw heart that she
couldn’t bear to go through it again.

So if Mace wanted a family as much as his
eyes told her he did... what was her purpose in his life? She
couldn’t give him the one thing that would make him happy. And she
couldn’t rob him of a child a second time. After all the
unhappiness and uncertainty in his life, he deserved the comfort of
his own family.

He glanced over then and caught the torment
in her eyes. Midsentence, he paused and pulled her head to rest on
his chest. “Hush, darling,” he murmured. “Whatever you’re thinking,
it doesn’t matter.”

She lay with her ear against him, trying to
convince herself it was true. But she heard his voice rumble
through his chest as he turned back to the children. She felt the
accelerated beat of his heart. He was in his element. What better
audience for a flimflam man with the gift of gab than an armful of
innocent babes?

Presently, though, his heart began to slow.
She could hear the weariness in his voice. Likely, his strength
would be needed that night more than hers. She had to see to it
that he slept.

She raised herself up and took the reins. “Do
you know how to sing?” she asked the children.

They shook their heads.

“Let’s see what you think of this.”

Softly, she began to sing an old English
lullaby. Her voice caught in her throat at first, for it hurt to
think of all the times she should have sung to her own son and
didn’t. But soon she was singing clearly, with a voice as sweet as
birdsong. Mace snuggled down under the quilt and closed his eyes.
Still she sang. When one song was finished, she started another. It
didn’t matter what. Anything to rest his mind so he could
sleep.

She could feel him relaxing beside her. With
a sigh, he turned to his side and brought his head to rest upon her
breast. At any other time, she might have suspected his motives.
But he looked so peaceful, so trusting, that her heart spilled over
with love for him.

“You sing like an angel,” he muttered in a
voice thick with fatigue.

She put her hand to his dark curls and
stroked tenderly as he sighed more deeply.

Looking at him, so peacefully drifting off to
sleep, she felt a moment of panic. This was too easy. What if the
farmer had lied to them? What if he’d sent his children in as a
distraction so he could run for the police? He could be lulling
them to sleep, just as he was lulling them into trusting him. She’d
never trusted a stranger in her life. Should she allow herself to
sleep, only to wake and find they’d been set up?

She opened her mouth to voice her fears, but
Mace was already fast asleep.

Something was creaking. It had a swaying
rhythm, like the swinging of a gallows rope. She could feel it
tighten around her neck, feel the rope scratch and burn. Then, with
a lurch, she was dangling high in the air, the noose choking off
her last breath—

She awoke with a start to an empty bed.
Springing up, she expected to find herself surrounded by guns, with
Mace pinned to the wall. Instead, her lover watched her from a
rocking chair, his eyes hooded. She fell back in the sheets with a
strangled cry of relief. It was the rocking chair, and not the
hangman’s rope, that she’d heard in her sleep.

“I thought they’d called the constable.”

“Did you?” he asked quietly.

“It occurred to me they might be waiting for
us to fall asleep so they could run for help. For all we know,
there could be a police station a mile away. I’d hate to be nicked
at this late date.”

The creaking stopped. He was silent for so
long that she rolled over and looked at him questioningly. He was
gazing at her steadily, seriously. But when he finally spoke, she
detected an injured tone in his voice.

“If I’d thought there was any danger, do you
think I’d have fallen asleep?”

Her breath felt trapped in her lungs.
“Wouldn’t you?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his
knees. “Know this, Saranda. Nothing and no one are going to harm
you so long as I have one breath left. I would willingly die to
keep you from being hurt.”

A wayward curl had fallen over his brow. She
reached up and brushed it back with shaking fingers. “What in God’s
name would make you presume your death wouldn’t hurt me?”