Romancing the Rogue (215 page)

I stepped forward hesitantly, lifting my arms as I did so. I looked over my shoulder at Grayson, hoping to find some sort of help. He smiled and nodded. I looked back toward my father as his arms enfolded me. Then I thought of nothing but the familiar scent of the man holding me
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that of tobacco and cherry wood blend he always favored. “Oh, Papa.”

He held me close and I lost track of time as I sobbed in his arms. It wasn’t until I felt him passing me to someone else that I looked up. Grayson stared down at me, his eyes full of a sympathy and understanding I wasn’t sure I deserved.

I didn’t care. I buried my face in the soft fabric of his shirt, tears soaking the material. He held me tight, those strong arms of his assuring me that all would eventually be well.

After I managed to contain my emotions I looked over my shoulder at my sire. He stood watching me as I rested in Grayson’s embrace, a look of sadness on his craggy face, a look of regret.

I wanted to tell him I had regrets, too. Regret that we were ripped from our home four years ago; regret that my sisters spent those intervening years in the home of a monster who was our uncle.

Was he thinking to say something of the closeness between Grayson and me? Yes, he was my father, but I had long since been on my own.

He must have sensed how I felt on the issue for he refrained from saying much as Rachel helped him to a chair, filled him a plate of potatoes and biscuits. He dug in like it had been months since he’d eaten and I was once again reminded of how Grayson had consumed the biscuits I had fed him that first time.

“Are you well, Papa?” Rachel asked as she sat beside him, her hand lightly touching the wooden cane.

“Yes, I will be. Took an injury to my leg back in December, but it’s healing nicely. Have you girls finished eating?”

“Yes, sir,” Amelia said as she came to stand beside me and Grayson. I touched her shoulder, directing her to take her seat at the table once again. I settled into a chair opposite my father, and Grayson sat next to me
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still silent, still supportive. We sat for several moments as he ate.

“Did you talk to Uncle?” Rachel asked him as he ate the last of his biscuit.

“Yes.” He nodded at Amelia to take his plate and she did so, as Rachel and I began clearing the others spread around the big table. Mr. Lofton was fast becoming dear to me for his surprising sensitivity
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him clearing the room so we could speak privately with my father being a kind thing for him to do
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even if it cut his and his sons’ meal short.

We soon had the table cleared and Grayson suggested we move to the next parlor to discuss some things. My stomach tightened at the word, knowing what things the soldier referred to.

My father settled into the largest chair, with Rachel and Amelia taking smaller chairs off to the left of him. Grayson and I sat on the green divan across the room. He wrapped his long fingers around mine, staying the horrible trembling I could not control. I let my shoulder rest against his arm, needing his warmth once again. What would my papa say? Would Grayson still wish me to accompany him now? Did I still want that?

“Papa?” Rachel’s voice was quiet, though it lacked much of its earlier sadness. “What will you do now that the war is over?”

“The farm still stands, child. But I don’t know if that is what I want.”

I remember my father being much more loquacious, more free with his words, his explanations. Had that changed in the four years since I last heard him speak?

“Why not?” Amelia asked, in a child’s guileless way.

“Things won’t be the same back there. There’s a lot of rebuilding that will need to be done.”

“We could help you, Papa.” Rachel told him, hope tingeing her voice.

“Is that what you girls want? Or do you want to stay here with your aunt and uncle? I know you’ve made friends here. This has been your home for a while now.”

“This place was never home.” I told him bluntly, as memories of our times at our uncle’s hand came rushing back. The countless hours I’d spent locked in the cellar, the countless times he had struck me
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that was no home.

“I know it wasn’t Maryland, child. But it was the best place for you.” My father frowned at me, his surprise at my apparent bitterness written upon his face.

“I don’t know what you refer to as best for us
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but this place was not
it.”

“Excuse me, young lady?” My father’s voice held puzzlement and a warning. I had never spoken to him like this, but surely he knew what sort of monster his brother was?

“Oh, we had shelter, Papa. But barely any food, hardly any clothing. We were worked to exhaustion every single day.” Tears were blocking my throat and I had to struggle to continue. “And if we objected? Do you know what your brother would do?”

I couldn’t finish. My father stared at me a moment before turning to my sisters. “Girls, do you have something to add to what Olivia has said? Is there something I should know?”

They were silent for several moments and my father tried prompting them again.

Grayson shifted beside me, drawing my father’s attention. He looked to me, and I nodded, before he began speaking. “I saw their uncle hit Olivia. He knocked her a good eight feet if not more. And before that I saw bruises. I don’t think it was the first time.”

“This true?” My father looked at me then, and I lowered my head again. How was I to explain how my uncle treated his unwanted houseguests?

“Yes, sir.” Amelia answered, a firmness in her tone that had my head rising. “If any of us didn’t do what he told us he’d hit us, or, or lock us in the cellar. Especially Olivia.”

“And the money I sent? The letters? You’re mother’s jewelry?” My father’s tone was low and I looked at him to judge his manner.

“We were never given any letters, or any money. Just what we could bring in on our own.” I told him. “If Uncle ever had Mother’s jewelry
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I knew nothing about it.”

“I wrote as regular as I could.”

“We never heard anything.” Amelia told him, earnestly, as if fearing he would doubt her.

“Hmm. That’s something else I’ll have to discuss with your uncle when next I see him.”

That was it? He’ll
discuss
it? We’d just told him of years of cruelty and neglect and he’d reduced it to a few tepid words of response? “You’ll discuss it? What good will that do?”

“Watch your tone, young lady. You may be full grown but I am still your father.”

“What? Am I not free now to speak my opinion? Haven’t I earned that in the last few years?” Even I was shocked at the bitterness in my tone. Grayson’s fingers tightened around mine, whether to check my words or to encourage them
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I didn’t know.

“Not in that manner, you’re not.” He shook his finger in my direction and I flinched, backing away instinctively, my uncle having trained me well. I settled deeper into the cushion at my back, attention momentarily diverted by the view from the large glass window.

Mathew and his brothers worked the field closest to the house, the one that directly separated the Loftons' place from my uncle’s. I wondered briefly what my uncle had told my father, what my father believed.

“What has he told you, Papa?” I asked him, turning from the bucolic sight of the outside world to look at the man who’d fathered me. “Uncle
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what did he say happened, to Rachel, to me, Amelia? What story did he feed you?”

The room got quiet then, Rachel looking at me in puzzlement. I realized that I had never told her exactly what had transpired that night in Jessup’s barn. And Papa¯did he kn
ow anything of it?

“What do you mean?” My father asked, his tone puzzled and confused.

“Did Uncle tell you why we are here, why we were with Grayson?” I realized as I spoke that I had never questioned anyone this directly
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and certainly not my own father. “Did he tell you anything at all about why we are here instead of at his place?”

“He mentioned the loss of Rachel’s husband. Is that not reason enough for your presence here?”

“Did he tell you of his hatred for Mr. Lofton? How when he found that Rachel had left with Gideon, he was so angry he vowed to kill the boy? Did he tell you that he struck me for helping Grayson? For giving him Fran and Sally to take him to his home?” My voice rose as I thought of all we had endured in the last week. “What did he tell you? Did he tell you how Amelia and Grayson and I were headed to Chicago to be with Rachel and Gideon because Amelia and I had nowhere else to go, and Grayson was
kind
enough to take us to them? Did he tell you how beholden we were to Grayson for food, for shelter, for the very clothes we
are
wearing
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after we
ran away
from him? No? I didn’t think so. So please excuse me when I say that merely
discussing
it with Uncle will not be enough
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will never be enough.”

I stood then, and left my sisters and Grayson sitting there with my father. I had to get out of the house, out of the rooms that were shrinking around me again. I stumbled down the steps, ignored the looks Matthew and his brothers sent my way as I headed down the path, down to the water’s edge where I’d first found Grayson a week ago. The path circled my uncle’s place and I was careful not to be seen. I didn’t want to have another confrontation this soon
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not after what had just occurred with my father.

Somehow I wasn’t surprised to find myself back at Jessup’s barn. I opened the door slowly, almost afraid of what I would find inside. So much had changed inside of me, why shouldn’t it have changed outside of me as well?

I walked to the last stall, the hay still flattened from Grayson’s body, undisturbed since that last night he’d spent there. I sank down onto it, lying prone on my stomach, pillowing my head on my arms, letting the tears flow. I heard a soft shuffling sound behind me and I turned my head toward it, not really caring what it was. Seeing old Cotton, that ratty old black and white dog of my uncle’s, I just cried all the more. I wrapped my arms around the collie and he lay there, suffering my attentions, until I relaxed, too exhausted to even care where I was anymore. I closed my eyes, tried to forget all that awaited me back in Mr. Lofton’s parlor.

It wasn’t long until I succeeded and I slept there on the hay, imagining I could feel the warmth of Grayson’s body beside me.

My dreams were filled with the memories of my family, my mother and brother, my father and sisters, interspersed with memories of Grayson
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of fear, concern, shame, warmth, awe¯everything I’d felt since meeting him. There was utter terror that my uncle would find us, more terror that those men would find Amelia as she hunted for mushrooms
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these remembrances had me tossing there in the hay.

Then Grayson was there. It took me a while to realize he wasn’t a part of my dreams but really was beside me, shaking my shoulder insistently. I opened my eyes, not wanting anyone to see me, hair eschew, clothes covered in straw, eyes red and raw from crying. “What is it?”

“We’ve been looking for you. You’ve been gone for well over four hours.” His voice held a chiding tone that I did not like and I frowned up at him as I pulled myself into an upright position. “Thought something might have happened to you.”

“That long? I’ve been here that long?” My mind was befuddled, exhaustion and sadness filling me.

“Yes. I was beginning to worry
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you’d not told me where you were going.” He waggled his finger near my face, his gesture a reminding echo of my father’s. I looked away then, seeing that the sun had started to sink, the color of the sky dimmed through the cracks in the wooden walls of the barn. I’d been asleep for more than four hours, lying there in Jessup Mills’ barn. It had been the longest time I had had to myself since finding the man before me. So much had changed in a week
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so much I never thought could. Most of all, I had changed.

Four years ago, even a week ago, I never would have told my father what I had earlier today. Never would have seen him for what he was
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not some great hero from a book, a man I had idolized, bu
t just a man. One with flaws and failures, and even bad decisions. It had been a poor choice to send us to his brother¯but at the time, did he think he had any other alternative?

But now the choices rested with me. Did I want to go to Maryland? Could I go back to that world of four years ago
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if it existed? Did I want to leave Grayson
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let him return to the farm I could so vividly imagine without me? Why¯just to go with my father, taking care of Amelia
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and him
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until I maybe found someone else? Someone who could erase Grayson from my heart?

No. That was not something I wanted. I wanted to be with Grayson and I wanted Amelia with us. We had formed a strange little group, our own little family on the path to Chicago. A family I would fight to preserve
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even if it meant fighting my own father. “What did he say?”