The Soldier's Lady (11 page)

“Nothing, only that things are getting a little too mixed up around here for me to keep track of.”

Though no one had seen them, two others had been watching Mayme and Micah coming toward the barn behind the dozen cows. They had also heard their playful
banter and had drawn a similar conclusion about its meaning as had Templeton Daniels.

From her upstairs window, Emma had been watching ever since they had run after the stray cow. For reasons she did not fully understand herself, she continued to stand at the window as they drew nearer and nearer, until at last she could hear their voices as they laughed and chided each other.

Katie was right. Micah Duff was just about as good-looking a man as she'd ever seen. If only William could have a daddy like him or Jeremiah someday.

But seeing the two having such fun together confused Emma's mind and heart. Finally she turned away from the window, wondering where Jeremiah was.

Where Jeremiah was as the herd of cows and their two herdsmen made their way toward him was, in fact, inside the barn.

He had been cleaning out the last of the previous night's straw and muck in preparation for the evening milking when the unmistakable sound of Mayme's high-pitched laughter carried over the fields toward him. A pang shot through him as he suspected its cause. He crept to the door and looked out from the shadows. There were Micah and Mayme a hundred yards away. He shrunk back a few steps and watched their approach.

Then he remembered the stalls. He needed to get them finished!

Quickly he turned back inside, grabbed the pitchfork again, and hastily completed the last of the stalls and spread them with fresh straw. He had just finished when he heard Mayme's father outside. Every word between the
three of them about Micah's competence at milking reached his ears.

With the first clopping of hooves on the hard brick floor toward the stalls, Jeremiah suddenly realized he did not want to be seen. He didn't want to embarrass Mayme—or himself. But it was too late to get out. He glanced about, then hurried to the depths of the barn and slunk down in the darkness behind several bales of hay.

The voices he heard following the cows in, though he could not see their faces, were ones he knew intimately—

“. . . not sweet on him, are you Mayme?”
came Templeton's voice through the darkness.

It was all Jeremiah needed to hear. No amount of protestation on Mayme's part could dislodge the searing words from his brain.

“. . . better tell Jeremiah . . .”

“. . . he and Emma'd probably do fine with each other too.”

The words reverberated in Jeremiah's brain and he could not stop them. But he could not get up and leave until the milking was done.

For another forty minutes Jeremiah lay crouched on the floor and listened to Mayme and Templeton as they talked about Micah Duff and what an extraordinary man he was.

When they finally left, it required some stealth for Jeremiah to get out of the barn and clean himself up without being seen so that the aroma of the stalls would not betray where he had been for the past hour.

He was late for supper and had difficulty explaining his strange disappearance for the latter part of the afternoon.

He said little throughout the rest of the evening, as did Emma. The conversation between Micah Duff, Mayme, and Katie, however, flowed well enough without them.

A T
RIP

10

E
ver since Uncle Ward had come to Rosewood with the deed to the property Katie's mama had signed over to him, he'd been a little uncomfortable knowing that he was the owner of Rosewood when he really considered that it ought to belong to Katie.

And besides that, he didn't want to run the risk of Rosewood being in jeopardy if something should happen to him. I know he and my papa talked a lot about it, and with Katie some too. Uncle Ward wanted to make some changes to the deed so that Katie and Papa—and even me—were part owners too. Uncle Ward had planned to go see the local lawyer, Mr. Sneed, about it some time back. But since none of us, especially Katie, trusted the man, Uncle Ward had put it off until now.

He announced one day that he was going into Charlotte to see a lawyer there and he wanted Katie and me and Papa to go with him. Besides changing the deed to the property so that his wasn't the only
name on it, Uncle Ward said he was going to make a will too. He wanted to make sure nothing like what happened with Katie's uncle Burchard could ever happen again. He didn't trust the local lawyer to do that either. There was a lot of bad feeling about the two Daniels brothers and their “plantation full of niggers,” as the locals called Rosewood.

Speaking for myself, I was just glad to be getting away from Micah and Jeremiah for a while!

Katie looked over at me as we left, and bounded down the road away from Rosewood behind our uncle and my papa, and smiled. She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. I think she had been feeling the awkwardness too.

What she was feeling toward Micah Duff, I didn't know. As close as Katie and I were, I wasn't ready to ask her quite yet.

As Jeremiah watched the carriage bound for Charlotte disappear from sight, he too felt a strange sense of relief. Maybe now he could get his brain clear. He had thought everything with Mayme was all settled . . . until Micah had appeared. Now he wasn't sure what was going on!

Jeremiah walked into the barn to unfasten the cows from their stalls and get them outside to pasture and on with their day's business.

As we went, Katie and I didn't talk too much at first. Maybe we were both absorbed with our own thoughts. I know I was! As much as I loved everyone we were leaving behind, I'd been too unsettled for the last couple of days from the things Papa had said to me to be able to think straight.

After Papa's words inside the barn, suddenly I felt shy and awkward around Micah Duff. We'd had such a good talk and such fun together. But all of a sudden I started walking around like a silent scarecrow. I know he saw the difference because he looked at me funny a time or two.

What if Papa was right? If he had noticed me behaving peculiar, had everyone else noticed too? What did Jeremiah think? Though he'd seemed to be happy whenever he was with Emma . . . maybe he hadn't noticed anything at all!

Oh, it was all so confusing! Life had been simpler when there hadn't been any young men around. And when we were younger and weren't thinking about them. But I was nineteen now and would turn twenty in August and I couldn't help it, I was thinking about them now!

So like I'd said, bouncing away from Rosewood in our nice traveling carriage, Papa and Uncle Ward in the front and me and Katie on the padded leather seat behind them, was a relief. It was just the four of us, without all the complications of everyone else. I feel a little bad for saying that, but it's what I was thinking.

The trip to Charlotte wasn't like the trips we took
with everybody every year to celebrate the end of the harvest. This was what I guess you'd call a business trip, though Katie and I had been looking forward to it almost more than we wanted to let on to the others. It didn't take long before we were talking excitedly about all we wanted to do and see and about getting to stay in a hotel room together—alone, just the two of us—and go shopping and eat in restaurants. We were excited anticipating what a good time we were going to have.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen in the lull following the hubbub of breakfast and the departure of the four, Micah sat at the table lingering over his last cup of coffee as Emma cleared up around him. Josepha had disappeared to the chicken coop.

“So what do you think, Emma?” said Micah, taking a sip from his cup, “—here we are—you and me, a couple of blacks, sitting like this in a white man's plantation house, another couple of blacks outside . . . and not a white person anywhere to be seen. It's just like Henry said when he first told me about Rosewood—a kind of
unusual
place! It's pretty remarkable for Ward and Templeton to trust all the rest of you like they do.”

“I neber thought 'bout it like dat, Mister Duff—you reckon dey really do, like you say,
trust
us?”

“It appears so to me, Emma. There's nobody here but us Negroes. I would say that's a pretty high level of trust!”

“Dat's good, ain't it, Mister Duff?”

“It's always good when people trust each other, Emma. At least I think so.”

“What ef people's bad, Mister Duff? Dere's bad folks dat'll take advantage ob a person's trust.”

“Well, that's true,” nodded Micah. “I suppose that's the chance you take when you trust people. But I think I'd still rather be a trusting person than a suspicious one. It takes more character to trust than it does to be suspicious.”

“
Character
—whatchu mean by dat?”

“Inner strength, or maybe maturity,” said Micah. He paused and thought for a few seconds. “Being a good person,” he added, “strong, selfless—those are qualities of character, Emma.”