He takes the tray and leaves me. I collapse back against the soft pillows. I’ve survived my own execution, live burial, a run-in with a boar trap, and blood poisoning. And all that brought me here. Surely there is a purpose yet, for my life. I’ll just have to be patient with my recovery. And I’ll need to be cautious about how much I share with Alex, despite his disarming nature.
Within another week, I’m back on my feet, but to walk, I need to lean on Alex, his arm firm around my waist as I make slow, trudging steps across the bedroom floor to sit by my window. The exercises make my leg seize and ache, but the menthol and camphor salve Alex massages into my muscles afterward helps. I’ve never been touched in such an intimate way by a man. And even though I know he’s just using his skills to help me heal, the flutter in my belly is revealing.
A few days later, he removes my sutures, and I have my first proper bath in years, in a copper tub that Alex hauls to my room and places next to the fireplace. The clean, warm water sprinkled with fragrant medicinal herbs soothes my aching muscles. While I soak behind a screen, he brings me ladies’ clothes—a calico day dress and undergarments.
Though my leg is still healing, and Alex tells me it will always bear scars, the deep puncture wounds from the trap have scabbed over and the infection is gone. In another week, I can manage to walk on my own for short distances, and Alex gives me a cursory tour of the second floor, including the library, which is filled to the rafters with books. Angel’s Rest is a handsome house, like many built in the last century, tinged with an air of genteel decay. But although this house is beautiful, I can’t help but wonder how many enslaved people worked here, how many gave their lives for its construction and toiled in thankless labor on the land surrounding it.
“Is this your family home?” I ask, running a hand along a row of gilded leather spines.
Alex shakes his head. “No, not at all, although I inherited it. I took one of my father’s patients under my care after he died. A planter’s widow. Lucrezia Phillips. She suffered from a chronic inflammation of the joints, and I agreed to become her live-in caretaker. She had no children and no relatives here—she was born in Italy. Milan. When she died, she left Angel’s Rest to me.”
I ponder this—a young, handsome, educated man giving up his life to care for an elderly and infirm woman. Surely a rare thing. “It was kind of you, to do that.”
“Some say so,” he says. “Some say it was greed. That I took advantage of her and an unfortunate situation. The truth of the matter is, Lucrezia and I fell in love. She died before we could marry.”
“Was she young, then?”
“Only a few years older than I.”
“That’s terribly romantic. And sad.” I look down at the dress I’m wearing and wonder if it belonged to her. “I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you. The heart never heals from such a loss, but it’s been nearly a decade since her passing. Please,” Alex says, leading me through the library doors and down the hall. “You’ll want to take in the view from the upper piazza.”
He swings open the French doors leading to the wide balcony, and I go out to the railing, my breath catching in my throat. Beyond the moss-shrouded oaks, the salt marsh spreads out in all its languid beauty, its channels and inlets curving and curling through the spartina like golden ribbons in the setting sun. A falcon cries out, its chittering call echoing in the soft, briny air.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“The view from the widow’s walk on the roof is even more spectacular. You can see all the way to Sumter and beyond from up there. But it’s not safe. The railing is rusted. The weather, you know.”
I turn my head and look south, where rows of leggy, untidy indigo grow. “Is Angel’s Rest still a working plantation?” I ask lightly, with no judgment in my tone. As the daughter of an abolitionist, these sorts of questions are rife with inherent danger, but I aim to learn the measure of the man next to me ... and whether Ruby and Noah are as free as they seem to be, or enslaved.
“No. Lucrezia was just as appalled by slavery as I. After her husband died, she released her slaves and gave them their freedom papers. Indigo sales were declining at that point, and she had more than enough money to live the rest of her days in comfort. Some of them stayed on in the marsh and took up with the free Gullah. Most took advantage of their freedom and went north.”
“Are Ruby and Noah . . .”
“No,” Alex says. “They’re from another plantation. Up the Wando. They escaped and came to the marsh last year.”
“I see.”
“You’ve seen Ruby.” Alex clears his throat. “I reckon you can gather why her father is so protective.”
“Yes.” With her youthful beauty, Ruby would be considered a “fancy girl.” A house slave who would likely be subjected to her master’s unwanted attentions. “It’s good that they have you looking out for them.”
He laughs. “They don’t need me. They know these marshes better than I do. They bring me fish once a week. I pay them. It’s enough to form an accord. They’ve grown to trust me. I don’t take that lightly.”
A beat of silence passes between us, one in which I consider telling Alex about Papa and his work. But it would be too revealing. Even though this man has shown me nothing but kindness, I must remember why I fled Charleston—to escape my past. I don’t yet know Alex well enough to trust him. I’m still a fugitive—one with a healthy bounty on my head. The less he knows about me, the better. Still, my time of isolation in the marsh showed me I crave human companionship. A purpose, apart from merely surviving. Perhaps, if I can fully becomesomeone else, there might be a future here for me, at Angel’s Rest, if I prove myself useful. Even in my current state of infirmity, I might find ways to be helpful to those who have shown me kindness.
“Do you think ...” I say, considering. “Do you think Ruby has been educated? That she knows how to read?”
“It’s highly illegal for a Negro to learn to read, Miss Jones.”
“I know that. But she’s very clever. And she’s already a fugitive. Knowing how to read will hardly endanger her more. Do you think she wouldliketo learn how to read?”
Alex turns to me, his lips curling into a wide smile. “I think she would. Very much.”
With Noah’s reluctant permission, Ruby’s reading lessons begin the following week. Alex builds a fire in the hearth and arranges a comfortable set of chairs at the long table in the library. I greet Ruby there. She’s nervous, her arms clenched tightly at her waist as her eyes take in the shelves of books and come to rest on the writing slate and chalk pencil Alex procured for us.
