Patricia Rice (37 page)

He had stayed home every night since the baby's birth, but she had the feeling that meant the violence built inside him without outlet. She didn't want to provide the excuse for him to vent his rage.

A knocking at the front door followed by a familiar voice calling up the stairs shook Dora from her reverie. She lay Frances down in her basket so she could go to the hall and welcome their visitor.

"Sally! Come on up. What are you doing out here?" As the other woman approached, Dora saw the expression on her face, and her heart froze in horror. "What is it? Has something happened?"

"The telegram just came in. Lincoln's dead! He's been shot! What in heaven's name will become of us?"

Appalled, Dora didn't want to believe her. It seemed too ludicrous to comprehend. The war was over. The president had just been reelected and inaugurated weeks ago. Sally's news had no rhyme or reason. The immensity of such a disaster went beyond what she could contemplate. Only Lincoln's strength and vision had led the country through this disastrous war. They would need his maturity and intelligence to repair the chasm that had ripped the country apart. Leaderless, the country would fall into anarchy. There would be no peace.

That thought reverberated through her mind as Harriet and Sally exclaimed and worried themselves over the news. The frantic pounding of Pace's boots as he hit the veranda and raced through the open front door hammered the first nail into the coffin of her doubt. The high-pitched funereal wail of the black servants in the back nailed it tighter.

Frances woke and cried in outrage as Pace slammed open the bedroom door. Seeing Sally, he immediately yelled over the cacophony, "It's true? I just saw one of Howard's blacks..."

Sally nodded. "I saw the telegram from Washington. They shot him last night. He died early this morning."

Dora watched in mounting apprehension as the rage built behind Pace's eyes. His hands curled into fists, and his jaw tightened until she could see the muscle jump. She was afraid to pick Frances up. All eyes in the room turned to him.

And then something within Pace deflated. The rage died, his shoulders slumped, and he turned around and walked out without saying another word.

Tears stung Dora's eyes. This was worse than watching him pound walls. Torn between her daughter and her husband, Dora picked up the former, rocked her until she quieted, then handed her to Sally, who stood closest.

With some murmur of excuse, she left the room and went in search of Pace. She found him nailing a funeral wreath on the front door.

"I couldn't do this for Charlie," he explained when she appeared beside him. "And Charlie wasn't here to do it for our father."

They hadn't had time for true mourning for either death. They had only been capable of surviving at the time. But now, seeing that black silk swaying in the breeze, watching Pace's lined face contort with grief, Dora opened the door on the vast emptiness and let the tears fall.

They mourned the death of a great man. In so doing, they mourned the deaths of all those who had died before him, because of him, and in spite of him. All those deaths and nothing left to show for it, no triumph, no celebration, no introspection on the injustice of it all, just tears and this dull, aching grief that matched the gray, drizzly day. Dora didn't dare turn to Pace for comfort, and that was the source of even further grief. His expression had hardened at the first sight of her tears. He turned away to drape bunting over the railing in his own private act of mourning.

The servants trailed through the house, begging scraps of cloth for their own miserable doors. Through the years of war, Lincoln had become a God to them, a beacon of hope. His death left them both confused and fearful. Dora knew she would have to explain the meaning of it to them sometime, but for now, she didn't understand it herself.

She was too exhausted by day's end to dress and go downstairs to eat, but she kept seeing that hollow look of pain in Pace's eyes. She didn't want him going out tonight. Perhaps if she went downstairs, he would stay home. It seemed a weak possibility, but she didn't know what else to do.

Pace sat at the table alone, still dressed in his dirty work clothes. He looked up in surprise when Dora entered, then hurriedly stood and offered her a chair.

"What in hell are you doing up?" he asked in irritation.

"Keeping thee company?" she asked with a wry intonation that said she already knew his answer to that.

"Don't do it for my sake. I'm used to eating alone." He sat back down and returned to his meal while Ernestine's eldest child brought out another plate.

"Thou shouldst not have to eat alone. Thou couldst have come upstairs to eat with me."

"Don't preach, Dora. I'm not in the mood for listening."

"Thou art never in the mood for listening, so I shall listen for thee. Doth thou think the corn crop will be successful this year?"

"If I can keep the weeds out, we can keep the animals fed," he answered gloomily.

Dora made an inelegant noise vaguely resembling Harriet's impolite snorts. "Two horses, a mule, and three hogs are not hard to feed. Hast thou found that sow that escaped me last fall? Papa John always made money on his pigs."

"She's breeding. I've got her out in the pen. I always thought I'd make a great pig farmer." Pace speared a piece of meat with a vicious jab.

"If thou couldst sell one hog and hire a good worker, I can hold my own in a few weeks. Thou couldst go thy own way, then. I would not keep thee against thy will."

Her voice was stiff and unnatural, and Pace gave her a sharp look. "Obviously, your opinion of me is as high as everyone else's. I don't thank you for the offer."

Dora stared down at her plate. She didn't feel like eating. Her insides roiled in misery. She hadn't meant for dinner to go this way. But everything she said, he turned against her. She knotted her fingers in her lap and whispered, "Then what can I offer thee?"

"Nothing, Dora," he answered tiredly. "I don't want anything from you or anyone else. I just want to be left alone."

"I see." But she didn't. Scraping her chair back from the table, Dora wished she could understand what went through his head, but that gentle connection that had always existed between them had long since disappeared. She felt as if she floated helplessly in space, desperately grabbing for someone or something for support, and only finding air. She was drowning all over again, and this time, no one could save her.

As she started to leave, Pace shoved his chair back and stood up. "Dora, wait!"

She kept on going. She was tired of being everything to everybody. She was tired of reaching out and coming up empty-handed. She was just plain tired.

The gunshots and yells outside rang out just as she set foot on the stairs.

Chapter 28

It is easy to fly into a passion—anybody can do that—but to be angry with the right person to the right extent and at the right time and with the right object and in the right way—that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it.

~ Aristotle,
Nicomacbean Ethics
(4th c. bc.)

"Dora, get upstairs!" Pace knocked his chair over as he ran for the rifle in his study.

Dora looked from the man running for his weapons to the front door. Exhaustion exploded into fury. Ignoring Pace's command, she set her shoes in the direction of the front door. She was sick and tired of being bullied. She saw little difference between this nighttime terrorism and the earl's abuse. To survive, she must put a stop to it.

"Payson Nicholls, get your damned hide out here!" She didn't recognize the voice, but Dora didn't care. A few people around here needed to learn some manners.

She heard Pace's roar of warning as she threw open the front door, but she ignored that too. All her life she had been bullied—by her brother, her father, her religion, the people of town. They'd told her what to do and how to do it and punished her if she didn't do it to suit them. She was tired of it.

She knew how to survive. She knew it wasn't by fighting people larger than her. She was tired of just surviving.

The men on their horses looked surprised when Dora emerged from the lamplight shining through the front door. She could see their shock and recognized the faces of one or two. She saw Randolph and his brother Sam. She remembered them shoving her around in town when Papa John lay dying. She didn't recognize the man in front, but from his porcine appearance, she figured he was some cousin of Homer's. He looked more than half drunk. She glared at his unfastened waistcoat and gravy-stained neckcloth.

Putting her hands on her hips, she demanded, "What dost thee want? There are people sleeping here, and thy caterwauling will wake them."

The fact that Pace hadn't come from behind to shove her back inside surprised her. She had expected it, and she was prepared to fight him too. The fury boiling inside her was directed at him more than at these strangers. But he'd obviously kept the sense to stay out of her way.

"We want Pace, Dora. Call him out here, or is he such a coward he hides behind a woman's skirts?"

"Thy mother taught thee better than that, Randolph. If thou wishest to see Pace, then thou must knock at the door like a civilized human being. And thou must leave thy weapons on the outside. This is a genteel household and not a saloon."

"Randolph, go check the barn. Sam, you take the slave shacks. I'm going to rope up that bastard if it's the last thing I do."

Dora saw the shadow step from the corner of the veranda before the others did. She didn't fear these overgrown bullies, but she feared Pace and his temper. She knew he carried that deadly rifle of his. She knew every time he pulled that trigger, it took a piece of his soul.

With a shriek of aggravated impatience, she dashed down the steps and grabbed the riding crop from the porky one's drunken fingers. Then she slashed it down over his horse's rump until the sluggish animal reared and backed away despite his rider's screams and kicks.

"This is my house and my home and thou wilt not trespass! Be gone with thee before I am sorry that I did not let Pace riddle thy worthless skins."

Astonished by her attack, all three men clung to their nervous horses and stared down at her. A chuckle from the veranda swung their attention to the dark shadow behind the morning glory vines.

"Gentlemen, I have never seen my wife quite so angry and I've known her for a real long time. She's quite likely to burst a seam and do something she'll be sorry for in the morning if you don't move on out. You know how women are when they have young ones to protect. Not quite rational, you might say. So why don't you just skedaddle on out of here and sleep it off? If you've got a bone to pick with me, you can do it in the morning, when you're sober, in the company of the sheriff."

The fat one loosed a stream of invectives that brought a spurt of gunfire at his horse's hooves from Pace's weapon. The horse reared and bolted, and its rider slid to the ground with a solid thump.

Dora smacked the porch column with the riding whip and glared at Pace. "Stop that, Pace! I will not have thee shooting any more idiots. They are not worth the damage to thy soul." With the toe of her shoe, she jabbed at the groaning man on the ground. "Get thyself out of here before I have thee trussed and delivered to the sheriff." She glared up at the other two men. "And thee too. Get him out of here. I'll not hear any more of this nonsense."

The men looked from Pace's powerful figure leaning idly against a column to the tiny irate woman standing boldly on the heels of their horses. Apparently deciding this resembled a scene from Bedlam more than a terrified household, they gathered up their drunken companion, threw him over his horse, and with a few muttered warnings, they departed.

Dora was still too furious to see straight. Giving her husband's lounging form a glare, she turned and stalked into the house, slamming the door after her. He followed, slamming the door after him. The windows shook with the double blows.

"Dora, get your ass the hell back down here before I have to come up and get it!" he yelled as she climbed the stairs.

She glared over the banister at him. "You cannot bully me any longer, Pace Nicholls! And if you lay one miserable hand on me, I shall take this to you too!" She waved her purloined riding crop.

Pace halted in shock at her words. He looked at her riding crop. He looked at the rifle in his hand. Then he noted the way his fingers had clenched into fists. When he looked back at her, his face had filled with pain.

Quietly, he carried the rifle into his study and closed the door.

Dora nearly cried. The sobs welling up inside her threatened to tear her apart. All the furious energy that had kept her going dissipated as if it had never been, and she was more tired than she had ever been in her life. And empty. She felt as if every ounce of her soul had drained away, and she had no certainty it had been worth the effort. She didn't think she had accomplished anything but to make an enormous fool of herself.

She glanced at the closed study door, then wearily turned up the stairs. She couldn't help Pace now. She could barely help herself.