Patricia Rice (33 page)

"You don' wanna know." Annie stalked across the room with her tray of food for the invalid.

Dora didn't figure she did want to know. Pace hadn't given in entirely to the bad side of him. He spent the better part of each day out in the fields with Solly, plowing, planting, and doing what he could with his injured arm and one horse. He tried very hard to be what he was not, but the pressure took its toll. He had scarcely been home for three nights in a row.

"Was anyone hurt?" Dora called after Annie's departing back.

Annie turned and glared over her shoulder. "The mayor's office done burned to the ground. At least Uncle Jas is dead and dey can't blame dat on him no more."

Josie came in then, and Annie escaped upstairs. She helped herself to some sausage and biscuits and sat across from Dora. "Billy John got himself shot last night," she said casually as she buttered her biscuit.

Why were they telling her this? Dora grimaced at her uneaten egg. It wasn't as if she could do anything about it. If Pace wanted to round up a bunch of violent vigilantes and burn and plunder and destroy, she couldn't do anything at all. She couldn't even know for certain that Pace caused the destruction.

The fact that someone systematically harassed his old enemies didn't mean a thing. A lot of people hated the Mitchells and Howards. Maybe it was one of the McCoys. She didn't know how poor Billy John got dragged into this. He never had the money for slaves. He was friends with Joe Mitchell, but then, he was friends with the McCoys too. Billy John got along with just about everybody except Pace. Nobody got along with Pace.

"I'll wager Sally is worried to death," Josie continued. "Billy John isn't real strong. She's got those three babies to look after and can barely mind the store as it is. I don't know what she'll do now."

Dora's head came up and her eyes widened as a thought grabbed her and wouldn't let go. Pace would be beyond furious. She feared his violence and didn't wish it turned on her, but she had to take a stand of some sort. She wouldn't become her mother, shivering and shaking and catering to her husband's erratic whims. Besides, Sally had always been kind to her.

With a tone of determination, Dora announced, "I'll go in and take care of the store. Sally should be with her husband."

Josie crumbled her biscuit and stared at her. "That's the silliest thing you've ever said. Even if you could get into town, it isn't proper for you to show yourself like that."

Dora didn't consider these as reasonable objections, but her plan had other flaws. "I can't stand behind the counter long," she murmured, more to herself than Josie. "I wonder if they have a chair I could use."

"Dora Nicholls, you cannot work in a store! You're likely to give birth and have that baby fall out on its head while you're waiting on customers. This is ridiculous. You can't consider it."

"I'm very good with figures," Dora reminded her. "And the baby isn't due for weeks. I'll be fine. I just can't wait on customers very well."

"I'll tell Pace," Josie warned.

Dora shrugged. Pace would find out sooner or later. She rose and started for the door. Maybe she could find someone to help her hook up the carriage.

By the time she had donned her best cap and found her cloak, the carriage was waiting for her, and so was Josie. Dora raised questioning eyebrows at Josie's heavy gray polonaise.

"I'm going with you," she said. "You can sit behind the counter and hide and do the figures while I wait on the customers."

Josie didn't possess a particular inclination for unselfish acts, but she was capable of helpfulness. Dora welcomed her suggestion, and they left together. She didn't know what Pace would think when he returned to an empty house at noon, but she didn't intend to worry about what hadn't happened yet.

They found the store closed and shuttered and had to go around to the living quarters in back. Sally greeted their plan with tears and ushered them in the back way.

"I've been worried sick," she whispered as she hurried them through the humble kitchen and downstairs parlor. "We can't afford to close the store, but I just couldn't leave Billy John lying upstairs feverish and in pain. The doctor says he'll do just fine, but you it could take a week or more. I've been out of my mind with worry."

The sounds of three young children playing in an upstairs room drifted down to them. One toddler was already wailing, and Sally turned a worried expression to the ceiling, trying to judge the seriousness of the cry.

"Go on up," Dora reassured her. "I know the price of just about everything in here, and Josie can run up and ask if we have any questions. This will work out fine."

Sally sent Josie an uncertain look, but nodded agreement to Dora's assurances. "All right. I don't know how I'll ever repay you, but I'll find a way." Her pale face grew a little tenser as she added, "Don't tell anyone that he's been shot. Just say he's down with a fever."

Josie wouldn't have heard of it if word hadn't already traveled all the way out to the country. But they nodded their understanding. They would maintain appearances one way or another.

Their first customer was one of the Howard sisters, Emma. She was married now and mother of two, but she still found time to keep up with everything that happened in town. She glanced at Dora doing some mending behind the counter, then turned in puzzlement to Josie dusting a shelf.

"What are you all doin' in here?"

"Helping Sally. Can we get you something?" Josie set aside her feather duster and tried for a prim and proper store-clerk look. The fact that her gray alpaca walking dress probably cost more than Sally's entire wardrobe didn't deter her.

"I need a card of silver buttons and some black thread." Emma turned to Dora who had picked up the sales slip pad. "I heard you and Pace got married, but I hadn't thought it's been that long." She looked pointedly at the rounded slope of Dora's belly beneath her skirts.

Dora calmly wrote up the sales ticket as Josie gathered the requested items. "It isn't as if Pace has been around much for anyone to tell." Lying didn't come easy for her. She hadn't exactly lied, but she hadn't spoke the direct truth either. Papa John would be upset with her.

Emma grunted. "He was obviously around long enough." She didn't even look at the card of buttons Josie handed her for inspection; she merely slipped it into her handbag. "I heard Billy John got shot last night. How's he doing?"

Josie smiled pleasantly. "Billy John just has a fever. He'll be fine shortly. Can we get you anything else?"

"I swear, Josephine Nicholls, I don't know what you think you're doing, but this isn't any place for you. And protecting Billy John is really the outside of enough. I suppose you'll tell me next that Pace Nicholls doesn't know anything about how that poor boy got hurt or how the mayor's office got burned either."

"That will be thirty-five cents, Emma. If thou hast questions for Pace, he's out plowing the cornfield today. Thou couldst stop and ask. His arm gives him some trouble still, so thou might find him a little surly, but I'm sure he'll gladly set the record straight." There were no lies in this. Dora really had no clue as to Pace's nocturnal activities or if he had anything to do with the mayor's house. She gave God's honest truth.

Emma shot her a sour look. "Well, it doesn't look like Pace Nicholls will run for any offices around here for a long time. He might as well learn farming. My husband says if the Yankees don't leave soon, we'll run them out on a rail. Pace best mind his back."

Dora could argue until she turned blue in the face, but it wouldn't do any good. Logic and emotion had little to do with each other, and Emma obviously wasn't strong on logic. Dora handed her the sales slip in exchange for the coins. "Thank thee, Emma."

The remainder of the day went little better. Word spread quickly, and every woman in town found reason to drop into the store to see the wealthy Josephine Nicholls working behind the counter and to hear about Dora's marriage to Pace. Everyone had an opinion on both subjects, and few were favorable. By the end of the day, Dora was exhausted and Josie looked as if she'd been beaten by a stick.

"I don't know how Sally puts up with it," Josie muttered as they climbed into the carriage. "She was always the prettiest girl in town. She could have done better than Billy John. Men! Honestly, I don't think they're worth it. Even Pace ought to be taken out and whipped. I don't think I'll ever marry again."

"Thou wouldst not have Amy?" Dora asked with curiosity.

"I wouldn't go through that agony again, I know that," Josie answered ominously. She gave Dora a quick look. "And we'd best find a midwife for you. I can tell you of a certainty that I'll be perfectly useless when your time comes."

Dora had spent many nights worrying about that, but she hadn't come up with the name of a suitable midwife yet. She didn't think she could send someone to the Union army doctor who had treated Pace, even if he were still there. She didn't know that with any certainty, either. It worried at her, but she had no solutions. The colored midwives she knew had all left the county. Other women relied on female relatives. Josie and Harriet were the closest female relatives she had, and both were utterly useless.

Pace slammed through the house as soon as he heard the carriage returning. At the sight of the two weary women straggling in the front door, he exploded.

"Where in hell have you been? The damned cook fixed beans again and Amy's throwing a tantrum and—" Pace took a better look at Dora and slammed his fist into the wall. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

She visibly shrank backward, away from him. She might as well have stabbed a knife through his heart. Pace had always considered Dora the one person in the world he could rely on through thick and thin, better or worse. And now he'd driven her away too. It was more than he could bear. With an expressive oath, Pace swung on his heel and disappeared out the back way.

His belly rumbled, his arm hurt like hell, and the rest of him didn't feel much better after all these days of heavy labor. But the burden of Dora's fear weighed heavier than any of these physical burdens. She shrank from his touch, looked at him through the eyes of a wounded doe, and made him feel like slime inside. He hadn't done a damned thing to deserve that.

He was doing what was right, what should have been done years ago. As he saddled his horse, Pace cataloged all the wrongs committed around here over the last decade or two. The list was longer than his good arm. He held Joe Mitchell and his cohorts single-handedly responsible for turning a quiet farming community into a hub of slave trade, a hotbed of rebellion against the Union, and a stinkhole of corruption. Not a dollar exchanged in this county didn't have Joe Mitchell's fingerprints on it. It didn't help Pace to remember his own brother had been smack in the middle of it all.

He couldn't save lost lives, but he could exact punishment. Apparently the loss of the slave trade had turned their greedy mayor to other pursuits. Pace didn't intend to let Mitchell get away with any more corruption.

The April sun set relatively early. Pace rode his horse into the shadows of the trees along the river. He didn't notice the rosy hues of sunset. He didn't smell the fresh scents of newly green grass or notice the wealth of redbud and dogwood blossoms overhead. His heart hardened against the warm rush of blood through his veins as he thought of Dora resting in their mutual bed, a bed he hadn't frequented in days. He had become what his father and the army had made of him—an unforgiving avenger.

The shadows had darkened into night by the time he rode up to the tiny farmhouse. He whistled, and a figure appeared in the briefly lit doorway. The door closed, and the figure slid into the shadows, appearing a moment later with a horse in tow.

"I don't give a damn about those darkies, Nicholls," the figure warned as he mounted the horse.

The "darkies" in question were chained to a wall in a miserable pen to keep them from escaping, but Pace didn't argue the point. He used whatever weapons came to hand, and this man was one of them.

"Homer has what's left of the mayor's records in his desk. If you want that fraudulent deed destroyed, you have to get hold of it before they take it to the courthouse. Letting those Negroes loose is the best distraction I can think of to pry Homer out of the house."

"Even if I tear up the deed, he's bound to say the fire destroyed it, and that he's still rightful owner. He'll have witnesses."

"Relax, McCoy, I'm still a lawyer. I know what I'm doing. You made sure the original deed was registered at the courthouse, like I told you, didn't you?"

"It's there all right, for what good it's done me," Robert grumbled.

"Then you're protected and he's not. Mitchell may be a lying, conniving crook, but he never learned the law. His daddy can't protect him on this one. You've got a deed and he hasn't. That's all it's gonna take. You'll have your land back. Just don't let your mama go signing any more papers she can't read."

"I'd rather see the bastard swing. What's to keep him from doing something like that to all the widows in the county?"

"He'll swing all right. I'm just waiting for him to put his head in the noose. His daddy may be too powerful for the law to touch him, but we'll get him. It's just a matter of time."

The man on the horse beside him swore. "And look what else he'll do in that time. I say hang him now. The entire county will call us heroes."

Pace snorted. "Not likely. I'm a turncoat, remember? A Yankee and a nigger lover. I'm lucky they haven't showed up on my front porch with a noose."

Robert shifted uneasily in his saddle as they rode on. "Marrying Dora didn't help. You really believe in asking for trouble, don't you? If I were you, I'd get the hell out of this place before they fry you."

"I've got a little frying of my own to do before I'll consider that. That land belongs to my family, and I intend to see it stays that way."

As it wouldn't if Pace left it unprotected with only the women there. That much had already been proven. Only Dora's quick actions had saved it last time. Robert wondered if Pace knew that whole story. He was afraid to ask. Pace was a fuel keg with a lit wick. Robert wanted to be far away when he exploded.