My, but she wished Mr. Phin had married Delia before he went off to fight the Yankees. Then she’d be away from here. To a place with its own set of problems, sure enough. But it couldn’t be bad as this, with a snake ready to bite her heel if she took a single misstep.
“Salina.”
Speaking of missteps . . . She sighed to a halt halfway to the rose bushes. Ought to have known Big Tom would be out here, it being his domain, but he was usually tending the flowers round the front of the house this time of day. “Tom, what you doin back here?”
The young gardener emerged from behind the trellis, his straw hat casting a shadow across his handsome face. Salina forced a swallow down her parched throat. When the master bought Big Tom last year, she’d thought him the best looking man she’d ever set eyes upon. He wasn’t so tall as his name might make you think, but he was broad with muscles, and so intense all the time that he seemed bigger than he was.
She always felt like corn mush around him, though she wasn’t about to let him know it. He had half the maids in Savannah sighing over him, and rumors abounded about the trouble he led them willingly into.
She didn’t mean to be one of them.
He slid to her side, closer than he ought to have gotten. No, he wasn’t so tall, but still he towered over her. She took a step back, folded her arms over her chest, and prayed the good Lord he wouldn’t see what his nearness did to her.
“I’s right where I s’pposed to be. Question is, where you disappear to last night, ooman?”
Salina straightened her spine to make up for the fact that her knees went plumb weak when that smooth, deep voice of his wound its way into her ears. “I had to check on Miss Delia.”
She shouldn’t have glanced up into his eyes—those warm cinnamon depths sparked with knowing. He eased a little closer. “Now, Salina, we both know Miss Delia don’t never need you that late. Not skay’d of me, are ya?”
Scared? Not in the way he meant. Her eyes slid shut. “Tom, I done told you to keep your distance. Ain’t nothing gonna come here.”
“Why?” His fingers brushed her cheek. They smelled of warm earth and green life. “You kin’t tell me you don’t like me, sweethaa’t. I see it in yo eyes—when you dare to look at me.”
“Don’t matter what I like.” She pulled away because she had to, even turned toward the roses again, and reminded herself of all the reasons to stay clear of him. “’Tain’t allowed.”
His snort followed her, his shadow keeping pace and holding her in its arms as she walked. “Massuhs don’t never mind if their slaves get married, Salina. You breed, you just give ’em more slaves.”
His voice went flintier with each word, and his shadow settled beside her, arms stopping at the elbow like they were crossed. She didn’t dare look at him again and focused instead on the roses—though she hadn’t thought to bring anything to cut them with. “Married, is it? That what you said to Abbie and Josie and—”
“Ah, that different. Yo different, Salina. Give me the word, and I settle right down. Give the massuh more slaves.”
She shook her head. Even if she wanted to believe that—and she wasn’t enough of a simpleton to—it wouldn’t have mattered. “Ain’t the way it is for me. The master—”
“Tell me he don’t touch you.” Tom grabbed her shoulder, spun her around. His eyes burned bright as the summer sun. “If he do, I . . . we kin get away, Salina. I heard them Yankees will welcome any of us that can reach their lines, welcome us wif open arms.”
“No. Tom.” She gripped his wrists and prayed her words could convey even a portion of the unease that idea sparked inside her. “You run away, the massuh don’t just wait for you to come back and laugh it off as a lark, give you a few days in a holding yard when you wander back. You run away, you get kilt. Ain’t worth the risk.”
“Ain’t it?” He pulled her closer, bent down till their noses nearly touched. “Don’t you wanna be free?”
Free. A stranger word she’d never heard. How many songs had she learned as a child that spoke secretly of an elusive freedom? How many covered the desire to escape the master, using the words of spiritual freedom that the white man couldn’t argue with, since he was the one who taught it to them?
But it wasn’t so simple. Not for her. She drew in a deep breath and met Big Tom’s probing gaze. “My murruh always told me family be the most important thing in the world. That freedom ain’t worth two cents if you can’t share it with the ones you love.”
He nodded. “’Course. But you ain’t got no family here, Salina. I asked Fanny, and she say yo aunt’s yo only family left, and she’s on a rice plantation somewheres.”
The Owenses’ rice plantation, to be exact. “I got family here.” When he frowned, she wet her lips and wondered if she dare speak the words that ought never be spoken. Seeing the determination in his eyes, she suspected it might be the only way to convince him to let his fool ideas go. “The master don’t never touch me, Tom. It was my murruh he wanted.”
His hands fell away, and his eyes went wide. And flat. “Mass Owens be yo’ . . . but . . . they say you didn’t come here till you was ten.”
“From his plantation. I lived there with Murruh till she died, then he brought me here.”
He backed away a step. “I knew . . . ain’t no secret you a mulatto, bein so light. I jest didn’t . . . yo’ his blood.”
And there, that was the single fact that made her life less her own than any other slave in the house. They at least had the dream of freedom, of escape, of the whispers from the North, of that big long word that the whole South was willing to fight against—emancipation. But even if slavery were no more, Salina knew she wouldn’t leave. Couldn’t. Not when her best friend who might not even know they were sisters was still here, still needing her.
Not when her mother’s people kept backing away when they realized she was the master’s child, and that he acknowledged it enough to keep his promise to her murruh to see after her. To make sure she was never sold, never put in hard labor. When he gave her to the daughter she most loved and said she could stay right there beside her all her days.
Assuming he didn’t die anytime soon, or the missus would send her away in half a flicker. She knew who Salina’s father was, for sure and certain. And hated her for it.
Tom slid another step away but then halted, and his face went more determined than ever. “Still. If’n you wanted to—”
“I don’t, Tom. I can’t.”
Footsteps sounded from the direction of the house, and when the master stepped into the garden, Salina was real glad Tom had dropped his hands and stood a good space away now. Especially when Mass Owens arched his brows in that way that meant you better answer just as he wanted. “Is there a problem, Salina?”
Tom swept his hat off, bowed just a bit, and put it back on. “No suh, Mass Owens. I jest goin to get her some shears for them there roses for your Miss Delia is all.”
“Then you might as well cut them for her too and deliver them to the kitchen. Salina.” He held an arm outstretched toward the door he’d just come through. Command masked in invitation.