Chapter Thirty
MAY 10, 1836
A rat’s piss. That’s how he described how little he cared that I was naked. Was I already in the water when he appeared? I can’t express what I felt when I looked up to see Silas looming by the creek bank, so handsome in the moonlight, his face locked in a vise of fury. I felt that…way again, and for a ridiculous second I hoped he would come into the creek after me. How can I be cursed with such carnal urges for a man who could never feel them for me? Not only am I a sparrow compared to the beautifully plumaged woman he’s still in love with, but if my aloof, unfriendly attitude were red meat, it would not attract a green fly.
And how could a man ever have the least desire for a woman who declared she’d rather copulate with a mule than with him?
Slave holders still repulse me, but neither Silas or Jeremy are typical of their breed. If the white man must enslave the Negro, then pray God it be done by compassionate men such as they. They see to their slaves’ needs and comforts and are the only owners in the wagon train who provide tents at night for their property. I have recognized several black families from my father’s horde he sent along as part of his agreement with Silas. These, because Silas does not know them, he shackles after dark, but the slaves from Queenscrown he does not, and he allows the Negro children with blisters to ride in his wagon during the day. That says much about the man I’ve married, which is cause enough to excuse somewhat my change of heart toward him.
We made our trek back to camp in silence. He walked behind me, as if determined to see that I did not deviate from the path by so much as a wayward glance. He saw me to my wagon where he said stiffly, “Good night, Miss Wyndham. Try to stay out of trouble until the morning, if that’s possible.”
I replied, “It is entirely possible, Mr. Toliver, I assure you.”
Tippy, with an I-told-you-so sigh at my behavior (She’d tried to talk me out of my plan to bathe in the creek), went back to sleep, but I stayed wide awake, watching Silas adjust Joshua’s mosquito netting through a tiny opening in the flap, then leave his wagon to smoke a cheroot by the fire and drink a glass of brandy. I longed to join him, to ask him what he meant by his response, so filled with incredulity, to my sarcastic request that he forgive me for not considering his investment.
“Is that what you think—that I was considering my investment?” he almost shouted. He made it sound absurd of me to think “his investment” was all he had in mind when he came after me, but why else would he be concerned for my welfare? I can still feel the small warmth from the tiny flame that flared in my heart, but naturally, my haughty question: “Well, weren’t you?” squelched his desire to explain. “Whatever it pleases you to think, Miss Wyndham,” he’d replied.
Well, Mr. Toliver, I have an answer for that. It pleases me to think that you do not consider me so plain that you can find nothing about me desirable. It pleases me to think that you can see through my off-setting attitude as merely a shield to conceal my real, and growing feelings, for you. I am quite sure you would reject me kindly should you discover the truth, but to save my dignity, I’m of no mind to give you the opportunity. Would that you had some of Jeremy’s ability to read people’s true motives and feelings, but you are obviously as dense as a block of wood.
So there! I believe I’ve aptly expressed what it pleases me to think, Mr. Toliver. In a week’s time when you deposit me in New Orleans, no doubt it will please you to think you do not have to think of me for a long time.