Speak Through the Wind (15 page)

Imogene Farland was not known for frequenting any of the establishments in the neighborhood. In fact, few had ever seen her outside of official business, and even though the surrounding city blocks were rife with salacious vice, hers was a business that still invited a hushing of the voice.

“Miss Kassandra?” Sean said once he had navigated his way to the edge of her table, standing with his hat in one hand and Imogene in the other. “This is Miss—”

“She know who I be.” The voice was at once, high-pitched and lush, with a moist quality to it that made her seem to be constantly on the edge of an earth-shattering cough. “Now take your hand from off my person. You brought me where I go.”

With a smile bordering on gallant, Sean loosed his grip on Imogene’s elbow only to grasp her hand and bend low over it, depositing a quick kiss on the weathered brown skin. He offered a courtly bow to Kassandra, too, but she could not even look at him to acknowledge it.

He knows
, she thought to herself, blushing.
He knows what I am. What I’ve done.

Sean put his hat back on, tugged it low over his eyes, and strode out of the tavern. By the time the door had swung shut, the conversations had resumed, but with a loss of their previous volume.

Kassandra finally swallowed the bit of tart she’d had in her mouth since Sean and Imogene opened the door, but the remains of the treat had lost their appeal. She stared down into the plate, fork still clutched in her hand.

They all know.

“Of course they know.”

Imogene’s tone held no comfort or solace, but Kassandra felt obliged to look into the woman’s eyes just the same. She stood right at Kassandra’s elbow, and Kassandra’s height while sitting in the chair brought the two women to eye level.

“What you care they know? How long you think something like this can hide?”

“I feel like I’m hiding all the time,” Kassandra said, finding her voice at last.

“Well, that got to stop,” Imogene said, “because no life can hide forever. Your Mister Ben tell me what you are. What you come from.” She placed her elbows on the table and leaned in a conspiratorial posture, her feet nearly lifting off the floor as she stretched to meet Kassandra’s avoiding eyes. “Your Mister Ben paying me a lot of money to take care of you. And it. He want this baby. He want it alive. He want it healthy.”

Imogene’s words brought Kassandra an unexpected rush of relief.

“And he want it a boy. Nothing I can do for that. It is what it is. But the rest …” she shrugged her miniscule shoulders.

“So you’re going to help me?”

“Yes, child,” Imogene said, her voice full of impatience rather than reassurance. “I be here to help you. Now take me upstairs.”

“Upstairs? Why?”

“I need to meet the life I be helping.”

Kassandra felt an immense sense of pride as she ushered Imogene Farland into the home she shared with Ben. The little flat was clean and tidy, the quilt stretched taut over the bed, the windows open to the afternoon sun, the table cleared of dishes. Imogene was her first chance to play hostess.

“Can I get you something?” Kassandra asked with the grand air she had heard Clara use with some of the reverend’s visitors. “Maybe some tea?”

Imogene turned in a slow circle—seemingly taking in every nook and cranny of the tiny flat with her deep-set brown eyes—and came to a stop, her back to Kassandra. She turned her head to send Kassandra a measured stare over her shoulder.

“You think you quite the mistress of the place, don’t you?”

Kassandra smiled self-consciously and simply stood, barely inside her doorway, and wiped her hands on the front of her skirt.

“Come in here, child,” Imogene said, fully facing Kassandra and beckoning her in with the slightest movement of her little hand.

Kassandra took a few steps away from the door, feeling like an invited guest into Imogene’s court. Solemnly, and a bit uncomfortable in her own home, she followed the older woman’s silent instructions and sat down in the chair Imogene pulled out for her.

“Now I already tell you how Mr. Ben feel about this baby,” Imogene said, standing directly in front of Kassandra, the volume of her tattered skirts keeping her quite a distance from Kassandra’s own. “But now I got to ask you.”

Kassandra had a sudden feeling of being back in school, straight and proper in her desk, prepared to answer any question the unforgiving mistress might toss her way

“So, you tell me, child. You want this baby? You want it alive?”

“Of course I do! Don’t be silly.”

“Phah, no silly there. I see women every day don’t care if their baby live. For that, I don’t care if they live, neither.”

“Well, I do,” Kassandra said, offended at being lumped in with the tragic creatures she saw prowling the neighborhood streets every day.

A slow, thin grin spread across Imogene’s face, causing one eye to close nearly completely while the brow of the other lifted like a thin brown cat arching its back. “You know, this baby tie you to Mr. Ben. This baby make you his forever. Makes this your home. Makes this your life.”

“Of course it does,” Kassandra said, wishing she could back away as the twisted brown face leaned ever closer.

“Mean no matter what happen, you can’t ever just pick up and go back to that life you left behind.”

“What do you know—”

“I know all about what you come from, child. How you got here. And I look in Mr. Ben’s eyes and see there’s times he’s not such a good man.”

“He is good to me.”

“Always?”

“No man is good always.”

“Nor is any woman, neither,” Imogene said. “Now Mr. Ben, he want this child alive, and I got the skills to bring this child to this world alive. But I got the skills to make it happen other way, too.”

“Don’t even say that,” Kassandra whispered.

“I can take this child from you today. Now. Free you up.”

“No!”

“Why? Because you love Mr. Ben so much?”

“I—I think he would kill me if anything happened to this baby.”

Imogene laughed. “You right about that,” she said before sobering. “But that not enough to keep this baby strong. You got to want this baby alive because it a part of you.” The last word was punctuated by the tap of a tiny finger right above Kassandra’s heart.

“I know that.”

“What you eat, it eat. Your blood, its blood.”

“Of course—”

“You saying words like you understand.” Imogene’s voice was angry now, the tone pitched a bit higher. She stepped away from Kassandra and stomped her feet, invisible underneath the mass of skirts. “You think because you got a baby inside you, all you need do now is wait for it come out. Hand it over to Mr. Ben and say, ‘See here, mister. What I done for you?’”

“That’s not it at all—”

“You don’t know what you got inside of you.”

Kassandra opened her mouth to protest again, but snapped it shut.

“Right now, you don’t feel it. You don’t see it. But it got a soul.” Imogene dropped to a whisper, causing Kassandra to lean in to hear. “It love the God you love, and that God know it same as He know you.”

Kassandra held her breath. He knows me.

“That God watching this baby now. Even deep inside you. He watching every bit it grows. He want it safe. Mr. Ben, he want it born. Now you, I got to know. You want give this soul a life?”

“I’ve told you yes. I—I love Ben. Really,” she added quickly as Imogene raised that brow again. “And this, I am sure, will gentle him a little bit. He wants a son so badly …”

Her words trailed off as a frown furrowed ever deeper into Imogene’s face. The room was full with the sense that the fate of both Kassandra and the child within her rested completely in the miniscule hands of Imogene Farland—hands that were now resting on Imogene’s childishly narrow hips, the first finger on each tapping impatiently against the patched fabric.

“I do not know what else to tell you,” Kassandra said.

“Tell me you have joy.”

“I can’t say that.”

“Tell me you are content.”

“I have to be. I’m just”—Kassandra looked up—“scared.” Imogene broke into a smile that was almost reassuring.

“No need be scared,” she said, giving Kassandra a friendly pat on the leg. “God watch your child. I watch you.”

or the next months, going into the winter, there were few steps that Kassandra ever took alone. Ben had appointed himself quite the protector, worried that some patch of ice or snow might cause the ever-expanding Kassandra to lose her footing and fall, and any time he could not hold her arm to navigate her through the city streets, he saw to it that one of his men was on hand to ensure her safety.

There were several occasions when Kassandra found herself walking alone—out on an errand or simply taking a brisk bit of air as relief from the claustrophobic warmth of their flat—only to notice that her shadow fell not on the street, but on some man in a cap and green kerchief, walking not two steps behind her.

Once, when her preoccupation with the soon-coming baby did cause her mind to wander and her body to misstep into a slick pile of waste just off the walkway, she felt as if her impending fall had been broken by the arms of an angel. Once secure, though, she turned around to see that it was only Sean, looking down at her with a serious expression. He gave a barely perceptible nod to her effusive thanks, and with a quick jerk of his head summoned another of Ben’s watchmen to accompany her the rest of the way home.

Kassandra’s other source of constant company was Imogene Farland. True to her word, the little woman had taken Kassandra under her care, ever mindful of the watchful eyes of Ben. She came to visit several times a week, often bringing mysterious packets of herbs and teas, with instructions for brewing and sprinkling, each designed to ease a specific ailment. Chamomile tea, laced with peppermint and sweetened with honey, kept Kassandra’s stomach from lurching each morning or anytime hunger seemed a preferable alternative to eating. When she did eat, Kassandra grudgingly followed Imogene’s admonitions that she couldn’t construct an entire diet of apple tarts and cream.

“You got to know your blessings,” Imogene said when Kassandra complained about the sickening taste of almost any food. “I take you out there, show you women with nothing inside them but a baby and stale bread. You got a man who take care of you.”

And Ben did. Kassandra never allowed herself to question where the delicacies that graced their humble table came from. When Imogene suggested that Kassandra should eat more cheese, Ben brought in fresh rounds wrapped in bourbon-soakèd chestnut leaves. The day after Imogene suggested that Kassandra have a glass of red wine in the evening to help her sleep, Ben came in with a rose-tinted bottle with French writing on the label full of a substance that bore little resemblance to the swill dispensed from the casks downstairs.

“Nothin’ is too fine for my prince,” he would say and drop a kiss on the top of Kassandra’s head and give her expanding belly a patriarchal pat. Indeed, Kassandra felt like a queen, spared from the flashes of temper and sullen, seething anger. From the moment the first little bump appeared, Ben became the essence of humor and charm—every bit the man Kassandra dreamed he would be when he first lured her into this new life.

On a particularly blinding, bitter winter day, Kassandra sat on one of the wooden kitchen chairs, her swollen feet propped up on the other. The baby rolled and kicked fiercely within her, sometimes delivering a painful blow to the base of her spine. She winced and shifted her position, complaining loudly about the pain.

“You think that the pain?” Imogene said, her voice laced with a knowing condescension. “You just wait.”

The little woman stood on an overturned apple crate, idly running a wooden spoon through a mass of boiling dandelion greens on the stove.

“Where in the world did you get dandelions in February?” Kassandra asked, eager to change the subject.

“I tell Mr. Ben I need them.”

The little flat fell into companionable silence again, the only sound the scrape of the spoon against the pot. Occasionally Imogene would lift a mass of greens out of the boiling water, pluck one stem from the wilted bunch, and pop it into her mouth, chewing it carefully before leaning over to spit it back into the pot. Whether she was testing it for taste, temperature, or consistency, Kassandra had no idea. She had long ago given up on demanding an explanation for every broth, salve, and tincture Imogene Farland forced upon her.