She didn’t even dare look at Tom to send him a silent good-bye, just tucked her head down and hurried toward the house.
Mass Owens fell in behind her but stopped her a ways from the door with a gentle hand on her elbow. “Look at me, Salina.”
A deep breath was needed before she could manage it. She made a conscious effort to keep the Gullah from her speech, since he had asked her repeatedly not to speak her mother’s language in his presence. “Yes, sir?”
He glanced at the garden again. “Is Big Tom giving you trouble? If he is, I can send him elsewhere.”
She measured out her response like a coveted spice. Not too fast, not too slow. “No, sir. I’ve taken care of it. He meant no harm and won’t bother me again.” Even if some silly part of her, the part just like Abbie and Josie, wanted him to. Wanted, at least, to go squealing to a friend that the most handsome man in all Savannah had offered to run off with her.
Mass Owens seemed to hear what she didn’t say as much as what she did. “I know best, Salina. It may not seem so to you, but I do. And the best thing for you is to go with Delia.”
“Yes, sir, I know.” She did, when it came to that.
But it was the part that always came next that dimmed her every tomorrow. The part she saw even now boiling behind his eyes.
He drew in a long breath and inclined his head. “And even then, you’re not to wed a Negro, you know that. I won’t be your master once she marries, but I’ll still be your father, and you’ll honor my wishes. You hear?”
He’d said it before. The first time hearing him call himself her father had been such a thrill—he’d never put voice to it before—that she’d scarce paid any mind to what it was he commanded.
But the meaning had struck harder each of the three times he’d reiterated it. Murruh had apparently been good enough to bed, but he couldn’t bear the thought of his blood being bound to a black man—though heaven knew he’d never sanction her wedding a white man neither. No, she’d pay for his sin by being forever on the outside looking in, not suited for the people of either of her parents.
Oh, to be in one of Miss Delia’s stories, with all her happy endings, where the uglies didn’t exist or were neatly defeated by the end of the tale. Oh, to be a bird that could fly away and build its nest wherever it wanted. Oh, to be either black or white, to have a place.
“You’ll have a good life with Delia. Rich and full, she’ll see to that.” Mass Owens looked as though he might reach out and touch her cheek, or maybe chuck her under the chin. He didn’t, of course.
“I know she will, sir. And I wouldn’t want to be no—I mean, anywhere but with her.” Not to say she wouldn’t like to be with her and have a family of her own too. But it would have to be enough to be Delia’s companion. Maybe mammy to her children.
It would have to be enough . . . even if it wasn’t.
He nodded and preceded her into the house, apparently satisfied that his orders would be obeyed. As always.
Salina sighed and let her gaze move beyond the gardens, out to the sandy street with its folk bustling by. You could always spot the longtime Savannahians by their hunched shuffle, a result of plodding year after year through the foot-deep sand that served as pavement. Seemed most of the men out and about these days were soldiers or militiamen, decked out in their spiffy uniforms.
Whenever Miss Delia and Miss Lacy had other young misses over, they talked of little but the floods of handsome bucks, who in turn seemed more interested in courting the few reputable ladies left in the city than in protecting anything from the Yankees stationed off the coast.
Maybe Miss Delia would fall for one of them, one who would marry her now. Maybe . . . oh, who was she fooling? There wasn’t anyone for Miss Delia but Mr. Phin. Salina could tell that sure enough by the way her green eyes went all dreamy whenever his name came up. And all her stories lately seemed to have a certain type of hero.
Her sister was in love. It made Salina grin, at least for a moment. Until that terrible dream swept over her again. Put her in mind of the tales her aunt used to tell, though she knew now such happenings came from the Lord Almighty, not the spirits Aunt Lila used to talk about.
She closed her eyes and let the dream images wash through her mind. “Protect Miss Delia’s man, Lord God above. Lift him out of those troubled waters, fly him far away from danger and sorrow. Bring him back to her, if you please. Bring him back so he can take us away. Far, far away from danger and sorrow.”
“This is the stupidest piece of nonsense I’ve ever read, and I will not make a fool of myself by being in it.”
Cordelia’s eyes went wide with disbelief when Annaleigh Young snatched up the copy of the tableaux vivants that Cordelia had copied with painstaking care for her. Coffee-brown curls bouncing, Annaleigh sneered at the story and rent it in two. The paper seemed to weep as it ripped.
Or perhaps that was Cordelia. She covered her mouth to keep her gasp from being followed by a squeal. It was only paper and ink. Never mind that the ink formed her words, her story, and that it had taken an hour to transcribe each copy.
Annaleigh tossed the shreds to the ground and stomped to the window, her bell skirt swaying.
Hateful creature. Petulant child.
“Annaleigh!” Sassy Dunn swished her fan before her and scowled at Annaleigh’s back. “What a mean thing to say. Especially since we all know it isn’t the story you have a problem with, only the fact that you will not be in the center of the stage so much as Lacy.”
Cordelia’s sister rolled her eyes. “Fiddle-faddle. We can trade parts if that will make you stop this nonsense, Annaleigh.”
Cordelia’s chest went tight as the girl raised her chin and turned just enough to look down her nose at them. She looked the perfect villain. All cool disdain over that roiling venom that flowed where her blood ought to have been.
“You could not persuade me to take part,” the villainess said on a long drawl, “were you to offer me all the places. It’s nothing but a bunch of romantic claptrap, unsuitable for young ladies to be reading at all, much less portraying before all Savannah. Why, I shouldn’t even look at some of the artwork we’re supposed to be presenting in live form, and with that story she wrote to tie them together . . . it’s as bad as a novel.”
Try as she might, Cordelia couldn’t keep her eyes from narrowing, her lips from pressing into a thin line. And now that she thought of it, Annaleigh’s hair wasn’t coffee brown at all. It was dark as murderous midnight and would be better suited to having snakes curl through it rather than ribbons and lace. No doubt she had a vial of poison hidden in the bodice of her gown too.
Lacy’s sigh carried a note of exasperation. “Oh, Annie, don’t act this way. It’s not for our own good we’re doing it, after all—it’s to raise funds for the soldiers, for the Confederacy. Who’s to say if our contribution doesn’t pay for a weapon that turns the tide of a battle? Or even the war?”
Annaleigh sniffed. Probably mentally murmured some ancient curse to fall about poor Lacy’s head too. “I shall consider it. That is all I can promise.” No doubt those innocent words were code for something far more sinister—she was probably calling her minions down upon them even now.