She took out the package, wrapped in white tissue paper and decorated with a red ribbon and piece of lace.
“It’s beautiful,” Aunt Emeline said.
“But you haven’t even opened it.”
“I think it’s too pretty to open.”
Isabelle peeled back the paper for her and lifted out the watercolor painting she’d found of her aunt’s beloved home of Marseille. The sails flapping in the breeze along the port. The cliffs along the coast. The basilica called Notre-Dame de la Garde with its bell tower on the hill.
Aunt Emeline clutched the picture to her chest, tears in her eyes. It was where she’d spent her childhood, where she’d met and married her William more than forty years ago.
Slowly she lowered the picture, looking over at the cypress writing desk by the door. It was the only extravagant piece in the cottage, one purchased from a Brazilian man who’d brought it on a ship when he traveled north. When he arrived in Sacramento, he realized he needed money more than furniture. Aunt Emeline, she guessed, had given him even more than the piece was worth so he’d have the funds to start over.
Her aunt pointed toward the desk. “I have a gift for you too.”
But even as she spoke, her eyes began to close.
Isabelle leaned forward. “I’ll open it next time.”
Aunt Emeline nodded. “Have you received any news from Ross?”
“Not yet.” She’d do just about anything to help her aunt recover, including shield her from the realities of what Ross had done.
“He’ll be home soon,” Aunt Emeline said, her voice growing weaker. “Then we’ll have a wedding for you too.”
She kissed Emeline’s soft cheek as her aunt drifted to sleep.
In her heart, she wanted a love like the one shared by her uncle and aunt: two people who’d longed to be together, who trusted one another even when they were apart.
There would be no marriage for her, but perhaps it was for the best. Her uncle and aunt had partnered together to rescue exploited women and children. Helping them find freedom. Ross had been a good business partner, but she suspected he wouldn’t feel the same about helping those in Sacramento City who needed a friend, especially if it threatened his business.
She glanced back out the window again, the glass a dull canvas splattered with vagrant droplets of rain. There was no clarity on it. No beauty. The water clung to it as if it feared falling, as if the clinging was much better than the unknown.
She didn’t know what would happen to her either in the months ahead, but she knew well that she couldn’t cling to the past. She would hold on to her aunt’s hand, content in the comfort of her prayers as she stepped into the unknown.
Smiling, she rose to her feet. She needn’t concern herself with Ross’s perspective any longer. Like Aunt Emeline, she could be faithful to help whomever God sent her way.
Chapter 10
Scott’s Grove
December 1853
Isaac was true to his word. He didn’t even glance over his shoulder as Thomas drove the horses swiftly away from Scott’s Grove. Instead of returning to the Duvall home, Alden had asked Thomas to transport them directly to Alexandria.
His mother would be angry that he’d left without saying good-bye—and his father would think him foolish—but as long as they didn’t suspect that he took a slave with him, they wouldn’t send someone in pursuit. Hopefully, Isaac would be in Canada before anyone realized he was gone.
Taking Isaac north was much different than trying to steal Mammy—Naomi—away. If they were stopped on the boat or train, he’d claim Isaac was his manservant. If a slave hunter insisted on seeing papers, he would claim his own ineptness, his foolish youth, as the reason for forgetting them.
He doubted anyone would stop them, though. It was a common sight in New York and Boston to see a male Southerner traveling with a manservant or a woman accompanied by her personal maid.
The brougham swept down the lane carved between his father’s prized fields. And his stomach churned again with revulsion over what his father had done to the woman Alden had loved like a mother.
He’d been so naïve. Stupid. He was twenty-three years old, and he’d never really stopped to think who had sired Benjamin. He and Benjamin had never talked about their fathers, and he’d always assumed that his nursemaid had a husband in the fields. Or at another plantation.
Last night’s argument between his father and Naomi, and the shame in his mother’s eyes as she cowered inside her room, haunted him. Now he understood Benjamin’s resolve, the righteousness in his anger. Naomi’s wounds of both body and heart, forced to have sex with a man she hated. And why his mother remained so placid in her own humiliation and fears.
No matter how much he wanted to understand, he couldn’t comprehend what his father had done. Perhaps that was why his father was so angry at Benjamin. Reflected in the eyes of a slave was his own sin.
