Patricia Potter (12 page)

“It could be the blow to the head,” the doctor said. “It could have affected her mind….” His voice trailed off.

“You mean she might never be…” Her father’s voice trailed off. There was disgust that he made no attempt to hide, and Meredith’s stomach contracted. He had always valued perfection.

“I don’t know,” the doctor said. “We just don’t know much about head injuries. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Meredith adapted quickly in the next few days. Her father visited less and less, and when he did she looked at him blankly. She had found an exquisite punishment for him—and for herself, for she couldn’t help blaming herself for the catastrophe that had befallen.

If only she hadn’t given Lissa the doll.

Four weeks later, she was sent to Saint Mary’s, a Catholic school in New Orleans. There was no hug or kiss goodbye.

The tears that had frozen in the back of her head solidified. She had not cried since.

Meredith shook her head to rid herself of the memories and knocked at the study door. The voices stopped. She heard her brother clear his throat, then bid her enter.

He was at his desk and Evelyn was standing at his side.

“You asked for me?” Meredith said tentatively.

Robert cleared his throat again. He was a handsome man, or would have been, Meredith often thought, if his face had been stronger. But there was a weakness about it, a dissatisfaction that tugged his lips downward and dulled his brown eyes. His hair was light like hers, but more a chestnut than blond, and he wore it long. A mustache added distinction to a weak mouth, and he wore sideburns that he believed gave him a rakish air. For a moment she compared him with the riverboat captain, who wore his hair shorter than fashion and kept his face clean-shaven. The strong harshly sculptured face fixed itself in her mind. Strange that such a reprobate could have such determined features. Devereux had needed no facial hair to mask weakness. He had needed no sideburns or mustache. Arrogance and roguishness were a natural part of him.

She swore mildly to herself. Devereux was like a frustrating fly that constantly buzzed around her ears. She couldn’t escape him, she thought, thoroughly annoyed with herself.

But she kept her face blank as she looked up innocently at her brother. “You wanted to see me?” she repeated.

“Gilbert MacIntosh is coming for dinner tonight. I want you to look your best…Evelyn’s maid will tend to your hair.”

Meredith stared at him blankly, although her mind was rapidly turning over possibilities. Of all her suitors, Gil was by far the most persistent and, she had to admit, the least objectionable. She had never understood why he continued to pay court to her, when she was purposely obtuse and giggly when he came around. Gil owned the neighboring plantation and was financially self-sufficient, so money should not be much of a factor to him, she thought. But perhaps he had unknown debts.

“I like the way Daphne does my hair,” she said stubbornly. Then she pursed her lips. “I could show him my paintings,” she said slowly.

Her brother and sister-in-law exchanged looks, and Evelyn hurried off. Meredith smiled to herself. Many of her pictures, she thought, would become mysteriously misplaced in the next several hours. But she would make sure her bowl of fruit was quite evident.

“Gil has asked my permission to marry you, Meredith. You couldn’t do any better than he…and you know you’re getting, well…older…”

Meredith’s lips pouted. “It’s unkind of you to remind me…you know I have lots of beaux…I just can’t seem to decide. And I do so like to travel. And then, I would just hate to leave you and Evelyn. She’s just like a sister.” She gave him a bright smile.

Robert flinched visibly. “Gil—”

“Mr. MacIntosh is most admirable,” she said prissily, “but he’s so dull. He never talks about anything but that old plantation of his.”

“It’s the biggest plantation in the parish,” Robert broke in impatiently. “And the union would benefit us both.”

Which was, Meredith suspected, why Gil wanted her. Together the Seaton and MacIntosh plantations dominated the parish. She thought about Gil MacIntosh. He was tall and thin, serious in demeanor, and almost painfully shy with women. He was also, she knew, a good horseman, and a natural farmer. But she would never marry a plantation owner, never wed a man who owned slaves. Never. She would, in fact, never wed any man.

Meredith had her own dream. When this was over, when she had found Lissa, they would go to Canada together, and she would paint. Openly, gloriously paint. She would not hide behind another name. Painting would be all she needed. Painting and Lissa. A true friend. She would never place her life or destiny in the hands of another, especially a man.

But she looked guilelessly up at her brother. “I’ll ask Daphne to do her very best, and I’ll wear the…lilac dress.”

Robert blinked rapidly. “Why don’t you wear the wine-colored dress Evelyn had made for you?”

“Oh, it’s too plain. Yes, I think the lilac dress.” She gave him a broad smile and bounced out the door, knowing he was tapping his desk with frustrated fingers. Poor Gil. Poor, poor Robert.

Meredith returned to her room, dismissing Daphne. She wanted to be alone. She sat in the window seat, the same one where she had watched Lissa being taken away, and looked over Briarwood. Home. A home in which she was a stranger.

Meredith felt racked with the old pains of loneliness, with the yearning for a gentle touch, a loving glance. She felt her lips tremble. These…spells came occasionally and unexpectedly, yet they were fierce in their devastating impact. Only one thing ever helped. Painting. The creation of a world not as lonely, not as alien. She left the window and fetched her satchel of paints. She had sketched from the window before, painted the great oak tree that was her sentinel, the fields with their harvest. They were white now, full of small cotton balls, looking like the rare snow she had once seen in New Orleans. She could see the figures bending over, and she knew their hands were darting quickly from plant to plant. The workers—men, women, and children as young as seven—would return at sunset, backs bowed by the constant bending.

Her hands now captured the movements but not the faces, which were shielded by bonnets or worn brimmed hats: protection from the unmerciful late afternoon sun. When all the cotton was in, there would be a celebration with extra rations for the slaves, liquor supplied by Robert, and dancing and laughter, perhaps even a marriage or two. At the plantation, Robert would hold his annual ball, which attracted growers from miles around, and the other owners would compare yields. And then work would start again, preparing the fields for the next crop. The cycles never changed, the work never lessened.

Meredith glanced down at the canvas. It was good. She knew it was good. There was a weary strength in the figures, an indomitable pride in one woman who, unlike the others, stood straight up, her face toward the sun. Although her features were indecipherable, there was an unmistakable challenge in her stance.

You can chain the body, but never the soul.

Levi Coffin had said that at a lecture she had attended in Cincinnati, and she had never forgotten it. The words were indelible in her mind, because they applied to her as much as to those she helped.

She heard Daphne’s knock at the door. Two hours already! She quickly placed the painting in the ornate trunk at the foot of her bed. It would be quite safe there. She turned the key, then slipped the small piece of metal under the armoire. She seldom risked painting here, but that sudden wave of melancholy had prompted it, nay demanded it. She already felt better. Elias would be pleased to have another painting, and the fee it would bring. She would finish it tonight after everyone went to sleep. The anticipation would make the evening bearable.

The table glittered and gleamed with the best china and crystal, lit by the chandelier with its hundreds of pieces of glass that danced with the light of the candles. Ever hopeful, Evelyn had dressed as if she herself were the bait and not her unwelcome sister-in-law.

Gil looked uncomfortable in his conservative blue waistcoat and trousers, his kind hazel eyes regarding her inquisitively as she demonstrated her abysmal knowledge of politics.

“Mr. Frémont is so handsome and bold,” Meredith rattled on aimlessly.

“He’s a Republican.” There was horror in her brother’s voice. He turned to Gil and shrugged. “Women…it’s a damned good thing they don’t have a vote.”

Meredith bit her lip to keep from making a sharp retort.

“I agree with one thing,” Gil said mildly. “He is bold. He helped win California for us.”

“As a free state,” Robert said bitterly. “Mark my words, we will go to war over slavery. Kansas and Missouri are already running with blood. The damned North won’t be satisfied until they ruin us all.”

“Oh war,” Meredith said. “Sounds excitin’. Uniforms and balls, and trumpets, and men marchin’ off to fight the Yankees.”

“There’s nothing exciting about war,” Gil said quietly.

“Oh la,” she said carelessly. “I think war would be mighty romantic. I believe y’all would look so handsome and heroic.” She looked at them both dreamily. “Don’t you, Robert?”

Robert studied his neighbor cautiously. Gil MacIntosh seldom said much in a group, and Robert wasn’t sure where his sympathies lay, although he did own slaves. His neighbor was, in fact, one of the largest slaveholders in this part of Mississippi. “What if it did come to war, Gil?”

Gil carefully laid down his fork. “Half of my estate is tied up in slaves,” he said. “They are collateral for loans my father and grandfather made. I don’t have much choice but to use them, or go bankrupt. Then they would simply be sold and be worse off than now. But I don’t like slavery. I never have, and if I could see a way out of it, I would take it. I wouldn’t fight to keep it.”

“The devil you say,” Robert blustered as Meredith stared at Gil with utter disbelief. The statement was akin to treason in Mississippi.

Gil shrugged. “Sometimes I think I’m more of a slave than they are. Perhaps we all are, Robert.”

Evelyn changed the subject abruptly by asking Gil to the ball she and Robert would give after the cotton was in.

“I would be delighted,” he said simply, then turned to Meredith and added, “if Meredith will honor me with some dances.”

She felt a funny twist inside, as if he saw more of her than anyone else did. Tipping her head, she kept her dark eyes curiously blank as she had trained herself. There was more, much more, to Gil MacIntosh than she had imagined. But even he would frown upon what she did. It was, in his eyes and others’, no less heinous than stealing money from them.

At Robert’s suggestion, she walked Gil to the door, wondering all the time what he saw in her that stirred his interest. It frightened her that perhaps she was not playing her role well enough.

A few moments later, she decided she had been mistaken, because he merely bowed at the door, saying it had been “delightful,” and left. She watched him swing up on his horse that was waiting outside, some of his earlier awkwardness disappearing.

Robert came and stood beside her. “Perhaps I was wrong about him,” Robert muttered. “Didn’t care for that kind of talk at all.”

“Ah posh,” Meredith said. “You men. One takes one side and the other feels he has to take the other. Just to argue. I would much rather talk of parties and who’s courtin’ whom.”

Robert looked at her strangely and swore beneath his breath. God only knew what would happen to Briarwood if Meredith inherited. It was essential that she marry.

That night Meredith finished the painting, but her mind was wandering. It was well that the major strokes were in place, that she needed only to fill in the sky, and the river in the background.

She was twenty-four years old, and until this summer had never taken particular notice of a man. Now she couldn’t sleep without thinking of Quinn Devereux, and tonight Gil MacIntosh had also stirred something in her. It wasn’t the thunder and lightning Devereux seemed to create just with his presence, but something milder, something pleasant.

She stared at the painting in her hand, at the pride of the central figure. Unconsciously her head went back in the same pose, her chin jutted at the same angle.

Meredith locked the painting in the trunk. Perhaps she would visit the Parson tomorrow. He was always a fountain of comfort. If only those blasted blue eyes of Quinn Devereux didn’t haunt her so relentlessly.

The morning dawned clear and bright. Meredith felt drugged with lack of sleep, but she summoned Daphne to prepare a hot bath, and then dressed quickly in one of her many riding costumes. Like her other clothes, the red was too bright, the ornate buttons too gaudy, the material too heavy. Everything was a little off. Tasteless, she thought with a certain perverse satisfaction.

But instead of immediately riding off to her destination with her satchel of paints and sketchbook, she found herself making a detour. She had avoided this particular section of the woods for years, for it reminded her too much of Lissa and the few happy days she had spent as a child. Meredith quickly found the tree. The swing was gone, most of the rope and the board rotted away and the small clearing overgrown. But she remembered.

Meredith heard the laughter. Her own. And his. They had mixed with the song of the wind, as she flew higher and higher into the sky. She closed her eyes, trying to capture the sound of his voice. Not yet cynical. Not yet mocking. It was rich and carefree and exuberant. As was Lissa’s when it was her turn. Lissa had been afraid to go as high as she, and Quinn Devereux had been gentle and careful, calming her fears and teasing shy Lissa into giggles.