Midnight Rose (46 page)

“Ryan, I’m so sorry,” she began, once they were on their way. She was feeling a bit more sure of herself, since he seemed to wither in despair rather than go into a rage. “It all happened so fast. I think it must’ve been going on all along, but you just didn’t see it. I wouldn’t have noticed myself, except I happened to be sick one night, and I walked out on the veranda for some fresh air, thinking it would make me feel better. I saw her coming out of the maze.”

It was getting easier, she realized, except for having to make sure to keep the happy lilt from her voice as she went on with her lies. “When I mentioned it to Eliza the next morning, about how strange it was Erin could even find her way in and out of that place, she remembered having seen her at your desk, copying what looked like a diagram.”

Ryan’s teeth were clamped together so tightly his jaw was aching. He felt as if every nerve in his body were raw, being pulled, stretched, torn apart, as he listened to the nightmare revealed.

Victoria shook her head as though deeply dismayed. “I just didn’t know what to do. From the day you rode off, and Eliza heard her laughing over a letter she told Annie you’d left her, she turned into a shrew. I just locked myself in my room and wouldn’t come out. Poor Annie, she even begged to be sent to the fields to get away from her, and of course I let her go. Eliza was the only one strong enough to withstand her abuse, bless her.

“But then”—she paused for effect, as though it were painful to have to continue—“when I saw her coming out of the maze the next night with a man, actually saw them embracing, I knew I couldn’t allow it to go on. No matter the consequences. I ran out there, but by that time he had left, and when I told her what I’d seen, she tried to deny it. But the next morning she was gone. She knew I’d tell you, so she ran away with him.”

His brain was roaring as the cruel words attacked—laughing over a letter…saw them embracing…

“Of course, I had to make sure she’d actually run away,” she proceeded to fabricate. “After all, anything could have happened, I suppose, but after seeing the two of them together, there was no doubt in my mind she’d taken off with her lover. Anyway, I went to see her mother, and that’s when I found out she’d apparently gone with her, and that’s when I started thinking maybe her mother had known about it all along.”

If his mother knew of Arlene’s earlier threat when she manipulated him into the marriage, she’d realize just how justified her suspicions were. Ryan felt as if a fist had been slammed right into his heart. God, how he wished he knew who the bastard was. In that moment, he knew he was capable of killing him with his bare hands.

Victoria fell silent for a few moments to allow him to absorb it all. She thought she’d done a good job, though it made her a bit nervous, the way he was acting. She’d expected him to blow sky high and rant and rave and threaten to wring Erin’s adulterous neck if he ever got his hands on her. But never had she expected him just to sit there in cold and stony silence. His hands, she noticed, were clenched so tight his knuckles showed white.

Deciding to embellish a bit, she made a tsk-tsk sound of sympathy and commented, “Her lover became rather bold, too, daring to leave a rose as a signal he was waiting in the labyrinth.”

Ryan felt as though he’d been slapped by his own hand.

Only that morning, as he rode along in the crisp, cold air, he’d been struck by an exhilarating idea sure to delight Erin. He’d wanted to present her with a perpetual symbol of his love, and he wouldn’t even wait till spring to get started. He would ask the gardeners to start working right away. They would remove all but a few of the jasmine bushes that grew so abundantly and replace them with roses. All colors. All varieties. Bushes. Trellises. Vines. Anywhere and everywhere. The predominant shade, of course, would be blood red. For it had been in a rose garden where first he’d met his beloved, and thus would he rename the plantation—Rose Hill.

Victoria jumped, startled at his sudden, growling cry. “What did you say?”

Her hand flew to her throat in fear as she looked at him, saw his eyes bulging, the cords standing out on his neck, the way he was starting to shake all over. He’d pressed his fists together, as if he were squeezing with all his might to destroy something deep inside him. “I-I said,” she stuttered, “th-there was a rose. I heard Annie tell her she’d found a rose at the grave. I think it was a signal, because she met him later, and—”

“Stop!” He leaned out the carriage window to yell up at the driver.

With a sudden lurch, the horses were reined in, and Ryan bolted out the door. Victoria watched, stunned, as he ran to untie his horse. Mounting, he swiftly dug in his heels to send him into a thundering gallop.

Victoria poked her head out the window to command the driver shrilly, “Don’t just sit here, you ninny! Get after him. Fast!” She braced herself as the horses took off and the carriage began to rock from side to side. A knot of terror rose in her throat, but not over the precarious ride. She was afraid of what Ryan might do.

He rode at breakneck speed.

Eliza heard him coming up the road. So did Ebner. And both of them exchanged looks of wide-eyed wonder as they stood together just inside the front door.

Ryan rode right up to the porch, dismounting only when he reached the door. Without so much as a glance in their direction, he charged upstairs.

Then they heard it—the sounds of glass breaking and furniture smashing as Ryan commenced to destroy what was left of his dream.

Eliza began to weep. Lord, it wasn’t right, none of it.

Ebner winced with each sound from above. “Sweet Jesus,” he muttered over and over. “Oh, sweet Jesus, help that poor boy.”

By the time the carriage pulled up and Victoria leaped out to charge into the house, all was silent. She looked from Eliza to Ebner, who wouldn’t meet her terrified, questioning gaze. Rushing by, she made her way upstairs.

Ryan was standing at the window of what had been Erin’s bedroom, hands bruised and bloody. The room was in shambles.

Aghast, Victoria lashed out, “Have you gone crazy? How dare you—”

“Yes, goddamn it, how dare I?” he cut her off to rage. “How dare I think she loved me! Never,” he roared, “never mention her name again. And tomorrow, I want every rose on this property destroyed.”

Victoria stared after him as he left to cross to his room, slamming and locking the door.

What was it about the roses that upset him so?

With a sigh, she supposed it didn’t matter. And she really didn’t care about the mess. Eliza would clean it up. Maybe she’d invite Ermine over for tea in the next few days, so they could start planning how to redecorate. Ryan would get over it all eventually.

But still, she couldn’t help being curious about the rose and why it triggered such a violent reaction.

Erin was still amazed to think how Philadelphia was such an important harbor, when it lay nearly 110 miles from the sea. At the junction of the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers, one of the crewmen on the flatboat that took her on the last leg of her journey explained it was due to the shipbuilding there. He said the masts, spars, timber, and plank came from the state itself. The wood of the mulberry came from the nearby Chesapeake, and the evergreen and red cedars were imported from the Carolinas and Georgia.

“The distance from the sea doesn’t really matter,” he’d boasted, “though there is some objection due to the river freezing in the winter. But that’s just for a few weeks. Besides, the greatest port in Europe, Amsterdam, is inaccessible almost all winter long. When the water warms just a wee bit here, fleets of merchants are waiting to go out and come in. There’s fine corn and flour and pork and beef, lumber and iron. Little time is lost, and trade actually increases those months.”

Erin had a flash of memory about Ryan’s interest in Philadelphia shipping but pushed it back. She didn’t want to think about those days when she foolishly thought she might be falling in love with him.

On arrival in the city, Erin and Lucy Jane said tearful good-byes. Lucy Jane would continue north to join her family, vowing if ever she saw her husband again, she would kill him.

Erin could so easily empathize, for she had the same sentiments for Zachary. “Just try not to look back,” she echoed advice she constantly gave herself. “Thinking about it keeps it alive. It’s best to let it be dead.”

“I wish you luck finding your mother. How long do you think it will be before you can get passage?”

Erin said she honestly didn’t know. “I don’t have any money, and the American Colonization Society, I understand, doesn’t have enough funds even for the freed slaves, who’ve got the legal right to go. I can’t expect help there, but I’ll probably try.”

“What do the runaways do that want to get out of the country if the society can’t help them?”

“They have to find a way to get smuggled on board.”

“So what will do you?” Lucy Jane hated to leave her new friend, whom she’d learned to love as a sister in the past weeks.

“When I was here a few months ago, I left some money to be used for people in situations like mine. Maybe others have donated to the cause too, and I can find assistance there.”

“But what if you can’t?” Lucy Jane persisted.

“Don’t worry. I guess I could always get work as a fancy girl.” She winked, and they both laughed, but deep down Erin was frightened as she wondered what would happen if indeed there were no aid available from Mother Bethel.

With Lucy Jane on her way, Erin set out from the harbor, walking all the way into the city. Her feet were soon blistered and aching. Though she looked and felt dowdy in the gray muslin dress and black wool cape Jason had managed to find for her back in Jamestown, she was grateful to have even that much. She’d been cast out of her home with only her gown and robe. Ryan could have had the decency at least to send along the clothes she’d brought with her. But he had no decency, she thought with bitter rage, promptly admonishing herself for allowing his memory to invade once more.

Her stomach rumbled with hunger. Food had been scarce on the flatboat. The four-man crew got the bulk of the rations for the two-day journey from the bay. Erin knew it was only fair. After all, the men were working, and she and Lucy Jane were riding free, thanks to the owner being a secret Free Soiler and willing to provide passage for the last leg of the journey to freedom. Still, she felt weak from not eating, and the way to Mother Bethel Church was long.

It was nearly sunset when she got there, and her heart sank. The building was dark and no one appeared to be around.

Fearing she couldn’t stand up much longer, and not wanting to pass out in the street, Erin dragged herself across the lawn and into the shadows. Much better, she felt, to rest on church grounds, but could not deny being afraid. Never in her whole life could she remember feeling so alone.

There was a small porch at the rear, and she managed to make it there before she collapsed wearily to the stone floor
.

And that was where Pastor Jones found her early the next morning, shivering from the cold in her exhausted sleep. It was not unusual to find the destitute and homeless on the church’s doorstep, but he was startled to recognize Erin. Despite her dirty, shabby clothing and her mussed, stringy hair, there was no denying she was the same lovely young girl he’d met some time back.

He shook her awake, and she couldn’t tell him why she was there, not right away, for her teeth were chattering too fiercely. He helped her inside and wrapped her in a blanket from the sofa in his office while he got a fire going in the grate. At last, with a mug of steaming coffee, huddled before the warmth of the blaze, she was able to explain.

He listened sympathetically to her tragic tale of woe, wondering how any man would want to rid himself of one so lovely as well as intelligent, no matter what her heritage.

His heart went out to her, and it was with deep regret he had to deny her plea for help. “I know it doesn’t seem fair after you gave so generously when you were here before, but that money was used to help others like yourself, and we just don’t have the funds right now. I’m sorry, Mrs. Youngblood.”

“Sterling,” she corrected, more sharply than she intended. “I don’t consider myself to be Mrs. Youngblood any longer.”

“I can certainly understand that.”

“And I can understand a shortage of funds. I’m just grateful you and I together were able to help Letty. I heard she got away safely. And my mother, too. Now I’ve just got to find a way to follow after them. I’d best get started.”

“Not till you’ve had something to eat. At least I can offer you a hot meal.”

“Which I will gratefully accept.”

It was later, as she prepared to go, that Pastor Jones clasped her hands to offer up a prayer for her safe deliverance. He then worriedly asked, “What will you do, my child? Where will you go? Why not stay here, and we’ll take up a special offering, and—”

“No.” She shook her head, politely cutting him off. “There’s no time. I’ve got to leave Pennsylvania as quickly as possible and follow my mother. She’s sick, and she’ll need me to take care of her. All I know is she was sent to a place called Sierra Leone, in Africa.”

“It’s a British colony in West Africa that’s been openly receiving freed blacks for the past thirty years or so.”