A Proper Marriage (2 page)
Olivia ducked her head to hide the rush of heat suffusing her face and followed Luke up a flight of creaking stairs into a room furnished with four narrow beds. A single nightstand held a basin, a ewer, and a single cake of soap. Two small, grimy windows set high on the wall framed patches of gray sky.
Two of the beds were unmade and strewn with clothing, shoes, hats, and valises. A pair of wet stockings was draped over the foot of one bed, dripping water onto the bare wooden floor. Luke set Olivia’s valise on a bed nearest the window. “Will this be all right?” ’
“Fine. I’m so tired I could sleep till next Christmas. If I weren’t so hungry.”
“I’ll leave you to wash up, and we’ll go find the Quakers. I’m hungry too.”
He turned to go.
“Luke?” Nervous flutterings filled her chest.
“Yes?”
“I . . . I’m . . . thank you. I’ll try to be a good wife.”
He nodded. “I know you will. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
T
wenty minutes later they walked down the road to the yellow house and knocked on the door. A wiry man with springy red hair and penetrating brown eyes opened it and peered out. “Yes?”
“Mr. Dumbarton?” Luke removed his hat. “We’re staying at the inn, and—”
“Come in, son. We are almost ready to eat.”
“We’re sorry to interrupt.”
“Don’t be. We’re glad for the company and blessed to share.” He ushered them into a small parlor furnished with simple pine furniture. A woman in an unadorned gray dress emerged from the next room wiping her hands on a red-checked towel. Her dark-brown hair was pulled into a neat bun, her full cheeks flushed.
“Visitors, Silas?” She smiled at Olivia. Olivia tried to smile back, but the events of the day, the long trip, the lack of food, caught up with her. Black spots danced behind her eyes. Her skin prickled.
“Luke Mackenzie,” she heard him say before the room began to spin and she sagged toward the floor.
She was vaguely aware of Luke helping her onto a chair. Then the acrid fumes of smelling salts burned her nostrils. She breathed deeply and massaged her temples.
“This is Olivia,” Luke said. “My wife. She is—” He paused and studied Olivia’s face as if making up his mind about something. “She is worn out from our long trip.”
Olivia straightened in her chair. “I’m sorry to be such a bother.”
“It’s no bother at all,” Mrs. Dumbarton said, patting Olivia’s shoulder. “Sit there and rest. Supper’s almost ready. Silas, go fetch their things from the inn.” She peered at Olivia. “We will lodge our guests here tonight.”
“We can’t!” Luke and Olivia said together. Luke said, “That is, we wouldn’t want to put you to any more trouble.”
Mrs. Dumbarton waved one hand. “No trouble. Our daughters’ room is empty just now. They are away, visiting the Friends meeting at Albermarle. The truth is we miss them. It will be our blessing to give thee shelter for the night.”
Silas nodded. “Indeed it will. Come along, Mr. Mackenzie.”
“But we’ve already paid for the rooms.”
“That may be, but the inn is no place for gentlefolk. Some of the . . . ladies who live there hardly deserve the name. And my Emma’s cooking is better than anything the inn has to offer.”
Olivia saw that the prospect of a clean bed and a decent meal had weakened Luke’s resolve. She didn’t want to share a room with him, much less a bed, but they were famished and exhausted. They’d work something out, even if it meant one of them would sleep on the floor. “Thank you. We’re grateful.”
Luke and Silas left. Emma bustled about Olivia, bringing a footstool, a glass of cool milk, and a slice of buttered bread. “Here, my dear. Have a little something to quell the hunger pangs until the chicken gets done.”
“Thank you.”
Emma nodded. “Nothing wears a body out more than travel, especially on the mountain roads. When Silas brought me here as a new bride, I was so exhausted I slept for a week.”
She gave Olivia’s arm another motherly pat. “Rest now, child, while I tend to supper. My husband invited friends to join us. Sometimes the discussions become quite spirited. I hope it won’t be too taxing after such a long journey.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Luke and Silas returned with their things. Silas showed Luke to a room off the kitchen and lit a fire in the parlor against the growing chill. Emma turned up the wick in the lamp and set the table. Two other couples arrived. They were about the same age as the Dumbartons, Olivia guessed, and dressed in the same sort of plain clothes, the men in hand-sewn trousers and long-sleeved shirts, the women in somber dresses and black, round-toed shoes. Small white caps covered their hair. But it was their stillness, the calm appraisal in their eyes as introductions were made, that Olivia found most strange and unsettling. It was as if they saw past flesh and bone to the center of her soul—and just now her soul could not bear such close scrutiny.
Fighting the urge to sleep, Olivia barely registered the names—the Spauldings and the Owenses. They all sat down, and after Silas’s blessing, bowls of potatoes and beans, a platter of roast chicken, and a tin of cherry pie were passed around the table.
While they ate, the men discussed the prospects for spring crops and their hopes for the new lumbermill going up just outside town. Mr. Spaulding stirred butter into his potatoes and reported on a recently completed trip to a Friends meeting in Georgia.
“So, Mr. Spaulding, tell us,” Emma said when after a time he paused for breath, “has there been any progress at all with the slaveholders down there?”
“Not much, I fear. As nearly as we can make out, Georgia is holding nearly three hundred thousand human beings in bondage. We spoke to several of the largest slaveholders—Mr. Dent, the Hamiltons, the Butlers—but we may as well have been speaking to the wind.” He sipped his coffee. “I fear I have failed in my sacred duty.”
“It will take more than one man,” his wife said, “more than one
group
of men, to turn the tide. But we must not shirk our responsibility.”
Silas nodded, his expression thoughtful. “I recollect when Governor McDuffie down in South Carolina made that speech defending slavery as ‘the cornerstone of the republican edifice.’ ”
Mrs. Owens shook her head. “Pompous words from a pompous man.” She cocked her head, birdlike, and looked at Olivia and Luke across the table. “You are too young to recollect it, but that speech caused quite a furor. Even some of the northern papers took note of it.”
“I remember it,” Luke said. “Or at least I remember hearing my daddy talk about it.”
“That was, what, nigh on to ten years ago?” Silas mused, stirring cream into his coffee. “And still reform languishes.”
“Well, your work must go on,” Luke said to solemn nods from the others around the table.
Olivia set down her fork. She and Luke had never discussed such weighty issues. She had no inkling of his thoughts on slavery, or anything else of import.
“I am a southerner, born and raised,” Luke continued. “I don’t like going against my kin. But the way I see it, north
or
south, to prosper by crime is a sin before God.”
“That’s just the problem, young fellow.” Mr. Spaulding set down his cup. “The Butlers and the Dents and the others like them see slaveholding not as a crime or a sin, but as a God-given right. They quote those verses in the Bible about slaves submitting to masters as proof of it.”
Emma glanced at Olivia. “Mrs. Makenzie, thee has been quiet tonight. I’m sure we would value your opinion on this matter.”
Lulled by the warmth of the fire and the food, Olivia at first could not summon a single rational thought. She studied the Quakers’ faces, so full of quiet fervor, and from somewhere deep within her, a conviction bloomed. “We have our share of slaveholders right here in North Carolina too. Our neighbors in Blue Gap, the Thomases, own a few.” She glanced at Luke. “Slaveholding is legal, of course, but it seems to me that the very essence of Christianity—temperance, moderation, and compassion—is incompatible with slavery.”
The women applauded. Olivia sat back, surprised at her own words. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized that was what she thought. Perhaps she and Luke were more alike than she imagined. She caught his eye and smiled, but he looked away and concentrated on his pie.
“Well said, Mrs. Mackenzie.” Mrs. Spaulding finished her pie and set down her fork. “Perhaps thee will stay here long enough to help with the new tract we are writing. We could use a woman with such a talent for words.”
“We’ll be off, first thing tomorrow.” Luke pushed his empty plate away. “There won’t be time for tract writing.”
Olivia frowned at him, but if Mrs. Spaulding was offended, she hid it well. “Oh, that’s too bad. Where to?”
“Tennessee. Laurel Grove.”
Silas frowned. “Not by way of the ridge road, surely.”
“It’s the shortest route,” Luke said.
“Of course, but only this morning a timber crew came off the mountain because it has started to snow. It won’t do to get caught on that road in a storm.”
“It’ll blow over by morning.”
“I hope it does, for your sake.”
The Dumbartons’ guests rose from the table, collected hats and shawls, and said their good-byes. When they had gone, Silas stoked the fire. Emma lit another lamp and showed Olivia and Luke to their room. “Sleep as long as necessary,” she said. “I will make breakfast whenever it’s required.”
She closed the door. Luke sat on the chair by the window and toed off his boots.
Olivia perched on the edge of the bed and unpinned her hair. An ache began in her throat. That last afternoon with George, in the secluded cabin by the river—the day that changed everything—he’d gathered her hair in his hands and compared it to the finest silk. What a fool she’d been to have believed his tender words, to have placed her faith in the purity of his motives.
She blinked away the memory and looked up to find Luke scowling at her. “What’s the matter?”
“You were showing off in there.” He tossed a couple of small logs onto the fire.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Throwing around all those ten-dollar words. Correcting me when I said slaveholding is a crime. You talk much better than I do, Olivia. I didn’t have the advantage of a fine education. But I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t remind me of it in front of other people.”
She stared at him, stunned. “What was I to do, then, in response to a direct question? Pretend to be mute? Or behave like one of those simpering Mayfield girls back in Blue Gap? ‘Oh my, I’m sure I don’t have a single thought in my pretty little head, but my big, strong, smart husband surely does.’ ”
He poured water from the ewer into the basin and washed his face. “At least they appreciate their menfolk.”
“I appreciate you. I’ve already thanked you for everything you’re doing for me.”
“Just don’t make me feel like I don’t deserve you, all right?”
“I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you,” she said quietly. “And I am truly sorry if I offended you. I will try harder to please you.”
“All right, then. Let’s forget it.” He opened the clothes press and took out a quilt and a pillow. “I’ll bunk here on the floor.”
She extinguished the lamp, undressed in the darkness, and slipped gratefully beneath cool linens that smelled faintly of lavender. Despite her fatigue, sleep wouldn’t come. She listened to the sounds of the house settling for the night, to Luke’s deep, even breathing. Marrying him had seemed the best solution to her dilemma, and of the few eligible men in Blue Gap, none came closer than Luke to being her equal. It was true that his education was more rudimentary than hers, but he was well read, curious about the world, and a lover of nature, as was she. He had offered her his name and a new beginning.
She turned onto her side and punched her pillow. Guilt and regret sat like stones on her heart. The strong pull of her longing for George warred with the certainty that such feelings were wrong and fueled her desire to be free of them. But she couldn’t figure out how to let go.
Luke turned onto his back and began snoring softly. By firelight, she studied the face of the near stranger who was now her husband. She was sorry for him, for herself, for the whole big mess.
Undoubtedly he was sorry too.
I
n the morning Olivia’s eyes were gritty from a restless night, and she felt too queasy for anything more than a slice of bread and a cup of weak tea. Luke, seemingly unaware of her distress, downed a breakfast of scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, biscuits, and coffee. Silas left them to their meal and retrieved Pegasus and their wagon from the livery.
Olivia helped Mrs. Dumbarton with the dishes and readied herself for travel. Overnight the weather had turned cold and damp. Through the Dumbartons’ misted window, she watched thick clouds gathering over the distant mountains. It seemed foolish to attempt the ridge road on such a day, but after last night, she wasn’t about to offend Luke again by questioning his judgment. She pulled an oversized, knitted sweater over her dress and donned the stylish dark-blue cloak she’d bought in Raleigh the previous year.
Mrs. Dumbarton packed a basket with biscuits, jam, slices of ham, and a large container of coffee and handed it into the wagon along with a heavy quilt. “Try to stay warm, my dear.”
“I will. Thank you for everything.”
“It was our pleasure.”
Silas clapped Luke’s shoulder. “I wish thee would reconsider, Mr. Mackenzie. The ridge road can be tricky this time of year.”
“I’ll be careful. We need to get on to Tennessee.”
“What’s the hurry?”
“A cousin of my mother’s is selling off some bottom land in Laurel Grove. He’s promised me a plot of it at a good price. We need to get there in time to clear it and plant it this spring.”
Silas nodded. “Our friends in Sweetbriar Creek say there’s some good farming ground in those parts, all right. Good luck, then.”
Luke flicked the reins, and the wagon jostled over the dirt road. They headed through town to the logging road that led upward to the top of the ridge. Within minutes Olivia felt chilled to the bone and sick from the swaying and jostling of the wagon. She pressed a hand to her midsection. Despite her determination not to give her new husband a reason to be cross with her, discomfort and apprehension finally won out.