Beloved Captive (4 page)

“Ah,” Mama Dell said. “You were always a direct child.”

“It got me in trouble more than once.” She studied the hem of her gown, then turned the miniature around and pointed it toward Mama Dell. “Am I like her?”

“Your mama?” An unreadable expression crossed her face. “In some ways, yes. In others, I’d say you’re more like your papa.”

“And Isabelle?” she asked, knowing Mama Dell had raised the woman Emilie now knew as her sister. “She’s like neither. I can’t imagine how such a sweet child came from such a woman.”

Her statement and the strength with which she said it stunned Emilie. “How so?” she dared
 
to ask.

Mama Dell once again returned to the chair nearest the door. When she’d settled her skirts around her, she leveled a direct look at Emilie. “Your mama was the sweetest thing ever drew a breath. Before I took on Isabelle, I raised her until she went off to be with your daddy.”

Since her mother was clearly from back East and Mama Dell had never left the state of Louisiana, the statement confounded logic, but Emilie let the old woman talk. There would be enough time to figure it all out later.

“When he married Miss Elizabeth, it near broke Sylvie’s heart. I believe that’s what killed her and not birthing you.”

Words formed and fell away, refusing to shape themselves into anything that made sense. Oblivious to Emilie’s state, Mama Dell kept talking.

“When he scooped you up from your mama’s bed and brought you to me, I thought, Oh no, what has he done? It wasn’t until Miss Elizabeth’s time came the same day that I knew what he was thinking. Two baby girls with the same dark hair and the same daddy.” She looked away as if reliving the moment. “I looked down in that cradle, and I asked myself who but the Lord and your papa would know what he done ’cept me.”

Emilie began to shake. A response was well beyond her ability.

“So I thought, Well, if I help him do what he’s gone do anyway, then at least I’ve got myself a nice life ahead of me.” When she lifted her gaze to meet Emilie’s incredulous stare, tears brimmed at the corners of caramel-colored eyes. “I know I’m gonna answer to this someday when I meet my
Savior, but right now I wish Isabelle was here to ask her forgiveness.”

“You’re serious,” Emilie managed.

“Serious?” She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

“My father switched the babies, and you helped him. I grew up in this house believing my mother to be Elizabeth when, in fact, she was. . .”

Emilie couldn’t say it. Couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that she had lived a life she did not, indeed, deserve.

Her mouth opened of its own volition, then closed. Words begged to be spoken but went unsaid.

“I am. . .” Emilie’s breath failed her.
 

“A slave just like me?” Mama Dell rose. “I’m afraid so, Miss Emilie,” she said as she slowly crossed the distance between them. “But if you know that’s your mama in the painting there, then I figure you already know that.”

“I…” Tears swam as her shaking fingers allowed the miniature to slide away and fall to the floor. Mama Dell quickly retrieved it and set the portrait back on the vanity.

“Hush now, girl,” Mama Dell said. “Just lets don’t talk about this no more. You've gone and got yourself worked up over things that are over and done with.”

Though Emilie heard the words, she failed to listen. “I should have. . .that is, Isabelle was meant to. . .”
 

She gave up speaking and fell into the soft pillow of Mama Dell’s chest.
 

“There, there, baby girl,” Mama Dell whispered as she wrapped ample arms around Emilie. “The Lord, He sees it all. What happened is past, and neither you nor Isabelle can change it.”

“Isabelle.” Emilie leaned away and looked up at Mama Dell, her image swimming through the veil of Emilie’s tears. “She knows.”

“I reckon she does,” Mama Dell said. “Though I thought you did, too. I told your papa he ought to write those letters to set things straight while he still could. Andre was to take them to both of you.”

“He did,” Emilie said, “but Isabelle read hers, then threw both letters into the fire.” She paused as tears fell afresh. “She said they weren’t fit for a lady to read.” Her lips trembled, and the room swam. “She knew, and she chose not to tell me. She chose to remain a slave so I could stay free.”

“No, child,” Mama Dell said. “You’re as free as she is. Your papa signed the papers, and it’s all done. Why, the Reverend Carter, he made sure it was done.”

“Reverend Carter knew?” She struggled to make sense of it all.
 

“Yes, he knew. Your papa, he knew he’d likely not see old age, what with the life he lived. So, he asked Reverend Carter to see to the freeing of his daughter with Sylvie on her twentieth birthday. I believe that’s how it was to go.”

“But Isabelle is the one who escaped.”

“That’s right,” Mama Dell said. “And I let it happen. I knew I couldn’t leave with you ladies. Someone had to take care of your papa. So, I did my best to look like I’d changed sides. I hated it, but I had to do what was best for Jean Gayarre. He would’ve died sooner if both of us had left him at the same time.”

Emilie looked at the woman and realized she’d never really known her. “You care for my papa, don’t you?”

Mama Dell looked surprised. “I suppose I do, in my own way. He’s been good to me, though I’ll never know if it’s to keep me happy or keep me quiet.” She stepped back and lifted the corner of her apron to dab the tears streaming down Emilie’s cheeks. “You’ve got every right to be mad at all of us,” she said, “but just you know that what we did, we did out of love for your mama. Sylvie, she was special, and so are you.”

She cupped Emilie’s face in her callused hands, then gently tilted her chin until their gazes met. “The Lord, He don’t see color, and He don’t see slave nor free. That’s the evil in this world speaking. His Word says He looks beyond those things to what’s inside.”

“But I lived the life I did not deserve.”

“Baby girl, none of us get what we deserve,” she said softly. “But I know for a fact, it all got paid at Calvary, and now I don’t have to fret about it. It don’t sound like our Isabelle’s fretting either, so just think on that and not on what’s over and done with.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she managed.

“Then you just gone have to try ‘cause ain’t nothing going to change who any of us is. Nothing and nobody. Just settle yourself to that.”

Chapter 4

Benning Plantation, Santa Lucida

His homecoming was a jubilant affair that lasted for far longer than Caleb had the tolerance to stand. While his mother greeted him with the exuberance he expected, she also seemed to relish the ability to care for the ailing Fletcher. In turn, he could stand in Caleb’s stead and help Mother with any decisions. The pair certainly got along famously.

Caleb slapped at another mosquito and tried to ignore the tug of his conscience as the rebellious thoughts continued. Indeed, a man with his training would, given the time, likely do more harm than good managing such a venture.
 

That’s not it, Spencer. Admit it. You’re less fearful of becoming a failure at planting than you are of becoming a success at privateering
.

At the thought, Caleb rose and began to pace. True, nothing back in Washington had managed to stir his blood like the sight of the vessel
Hawk’s Remedy
limping away defeated after battle. Truer still, only Fletcher’s continued improvement and his mother’s entreaties kept Caleb tied to dry land poring over the accounting books rather than aboard the
Cormorant
adding his own entries to the ship’s log.

It appeared that salt water indeed ran through his veins—a curse of the Bennings, according to his mother. “Well, no one but me shall know,” he said as he returned to the desk, “and I shall not speak of it once I am given leave of this place.”

A letter to the Attorney General lay before him, and he turned his musings toward his mother. How would he explain his hasty departure? The truth stung, yet a lie was impossible. Caleb sighed as he wadded the paper and tossed it into the dying embers of the fire.
 

Leaning back in his chair, Caleb looked past the billowing curtains to the sea beyond. He’d been back in Santa Lucida less than three weeks. True to his mother’s claims, the plantation had suffered under her watch, although the fault did not lay entirely with her.
 

Where once indigo and cane fields flourished, now fields lay fallow. The fierce storm of September last had dealt a death knell to many other plantations on the island. Those who were able had booked passage and left, practically giving away their lands in the process.

Others, such as the trusted fellow who’d acted as manager since Father died, lost their lives. Though the land suffered, at least Caleb’s mother had thrived.

Still, without Ian Benning or John Spencer to guide her, Mary-Margaret Benning Spencer had no one to aid her in making decisions. To her credit, his mother had chosen to purchase several prime properties and now ruled over much of Santa Lucida as its largest landowner.
 

Caleb reached for the ledger he’d hauled up from his grandfather’s office on the first floor. Page after page of entries in his grandfather’s hand detailed every profit and expense, and the occasional note peppered the pages with bits of the daily goings-on at Benning Plantation. In the margins, his grandfather had jotted ideas for new ways to produce indigo and thoughts on the coming cane season.

Despite his distaste for the subject, Caleb found it fascinating. It seemed as though Ian Benning did have considerable interest in something other than emptying the treasure chests from the vessels of honest seafarers.
 

“Would that the old pirate had chosen the life of a gentleman planter over this lunacy that still dogs my heels.”

He closed the ledger and set it aside, then blew out the lamp. The room plunged into darkness. Slowly, the moon’s silver path snaked across the wood floor and silk carpet to puddle on the mosquito netting that covered the massive wooden bed.
 

Rather than give in to the exhaustion tugging at the corners of his mind, Caleb opened the shutters guarding his door and stepped out onto the balcony that ran the length of the upper floor. The sea breeze tossed the tops of the palms and whipped his shirt away from his body. Casting a glance about to be sure he was alone, Caleb slipped out of the shirt to let the wind cool his sunburned skin.

His hair, already suffering for want of the barber’s scissors, tossed about, surely adding to his unkempt appearance. Caleb rubbed his chin, now soft with the growth of the beard his mother detested. In the short while he’d been at Benning Plantation, the man in the mirror had become almost unrecognizable.

Resting his elbows on the rail, Caleb once again allowed his thoughts to wander. Were he of a disposition to allow it, he might content himself learning the intricacies of managing the plantation and forget for a time what he was missing back in Washington. What he’d seen of his grandfather’s ledgers told him it was an undertaking not lightly entered into.
 

But he was a man whose life had been dedicated to the study of the law, a man who had long ago vowed to follow in the footsteps of his father and make a career of righting wrongs.
 

He should be toiling over a law book or closing the door on his office and returning home to his flat with tomorrow’s work tucked under his arm.

“Yet summer is coming, and the capital will not be the most comfortable place for a man to spend his days.” Likely the city’s households were already in the process of being curtained and cloistered for the long summer days when their halls would be empty of their owners.

Indeed last year—and for much of the decade prior to that—he and a few others had suffered in the heat while those on higher rungs of the ladder summered elsewhere. Had he not prayed for relief more than once?
 

“Why then am I bothered that the Lord heard and answered?” He smiled. “Caught in a trap of my own devices, as it were.”

Perhaps the challenge of learning would fill his days and make the time pass more quickly until he could say good-bye to Benning Plantation and the woman who presided over it. Caleb straightened at the traitorous thought. Though her great beauty had only been slightly faded by the years, her age was apparent in the slowness of her gait.

To think of these weeks and months as exile was to belie the fact God had given Caleb a gift of time he would have otherwise missed. He’d been remiss in using that time to spend with his mother, leaving the entertaining of her to Fletcher, who seemed not to mind.
 

“I shall not take this for granted, Father,” he whispered. “Nor shall I endeavor to do anything but my best for You.”

“Talking to yourself, son? I thought you’d given up that habit long ago.”

Caleb whirled around to see his mother standing a few yards away. She wore the same clothing she’d donned for dinner, but to the ensemble she’d added a shawl of bright colors threaded with what appeared to be gold. This she wore draped over her shoulders and covering hair that was no longer the color of a raven’s wing.

“The wind is fierce,” he said as he scrambled to don his shirt once more. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

She shrugged as she made her way toward him. “You forget this is my home. The wind is nothing.”
 

At her arrival beside him, Caleb wrapped his arm around her. “Can you not sleep, Mother?”

“I’m afraid Mr. Fletcher and I have been embroiled in a battle of epic proportions that has only just concluded.”

Caleb laughed. The nightly chess matches between his mother and Fletcher had become legendary for their combination of intensity and humor. Often Caleb remained just to watch.
 

“Did you let him win again?”

Mother smiled but said nothing. “You mention lack of sleep. I would ask the same of you.” Her dark eyes searched his face. “Perhaps you are wishing for the life from which I’ve stolen you.”