He bent toward Hannah. “Look at me.”
As she lifted her chin, her eyes shifted right and then left, refusing to meet his gaze.
He stepped closer to her, towering over her by more than a foot. “Where did Isaac go?”
“Miss Eliza—” she whispered, her gaze falling back to the carpet.
Anger surged inside him. “What did Eliza do this time?”
The woman shook her head. “She done put that boy on the back of the carriage when Master Alden left, in the terrible cold.”
The bell flew from his hand, banging against the wall like a crack of thunder, falling to the floor. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”
“I figured it weren’t my place.”
“It’s always your place when Eliza’s lost her sense.”
“Please don’t tell her I said anything,” Hannah begged.
Victor stomped right around her, his gaze focused on Eliza’s door. His wife thwarted every attempt he made to achieve happiness, as if his pleasure gave her great pain and his pain brought her joy.
Eliza was sitting up on her throne of pillows. Her mossy-brown hair, frayed from years of ironing, was tangled at the base of her nightcap, and the entire room stunk of stale rum. Her face, pockmarked with acne scars, was covered in a white paste. “What was that dreadful noise?”
He clenched his fists together, the nails digging into his palms, in an attempt to control his anger. He’d only hit Eliza once since they’d been married. Afterward, she’d threatened him, saying if he ever hit her again, she would go straight back to Scott’s Grove and tell her father that he’d hurt her. Then she would stay at her parents’ home, and any chance of him inheriting even a portion of the Payne estate would be gone.
The only reason he’d married Eliza was her family’s plantation—and because his father, Arthur the Honorable, had threatened that if Victor didn’t marry a respectable woman before he died, he would give the Duvall house and farm to charity.
The only reason Eliza had married him was because no one else would have her, and she didn’t take well to the title of old maid. She preferred overseeing the two floors of the Duvall farmhouse to listening to her younger sister prattle at home. Rhody, he was quite certain, would have no problem finding a husband.
He crossed his arms. “Isaac didn’t go into Alexandria yesterday.”
“Of course not.” She laughed. “I gave him to my father.”
“You can’t give away my slave.”
“It was a Christmas gift.”
“A gift I never authorized.”
She reached for a jar of hand cream on her nightstand and dabbed it onto her thick palms, rubbing them together. “He’s incompetent,” she said as she leaned back against her cushions. “And we had no use for incompetency here.”
Victor stepped closer. “He was our only houseboy.”
She shrugged, his rage seeming to have no effect on her. “I suppose, but you never treated him like a servant. You treated him like he’s your son.”
“He is my son.”
Eliza glared at him. After twelve years of marriage, she hadn’t been able to give him a single child, and she despised any reference to the reality that Isaac was his only flesh and blood.
He pressed his fists together again. “I swear, if you killed him—”
“Then he can go be with his mama.”
“You don’t know that his mother is dead.”
“Seems likely,” Eliza replied, leaning back on her pillows. “To think that girl chose to run away instead of live with you.”
He raised his fist, but he didn’t strike her. Instead, he shouted for Hannah. Seconds later, the woman rushed into their room.
