Chapter 9
Nine
The next few hours, or days, or weeks go by in feverish confusion.
I fade in and out of consciousness. The doctor and sometimes the girl visit me.
She presses warm cups of beef broth to my lips and bids me drink.
I learn her name is Ruby. Ruby with the sapphire ring.
The doctor changes my dressings once a day, with quick, gentle motions, dabbing a foul-smelling paste on my sutures before wrapping fresh linen around my leg again.
I know the scent of him. Camphor. Lemon.
Something earthy and warm I can’t mark, but it’s pleasant, all the same.
Through the fog of my fever, I can see that my accommodations are lovely, if a little shabby.
The room they’ve placed me in must be on the second story of the house, with a gentle breeze that comes through the French doors in the evening, stirring the cobwebs in the corners.
The walls are papered with a motif of bluebirds and cherry trees.
Sometimes, when my fever is at its highest and the doctor covers my sweating body with cold, wet sheets, the wallpaper bluebirds flutter their wings and cock their smooth heads to study me with beady eyes.
In my delirium, I see Rebecca. She sits at my bedside and strokes my hair. Sometimes she sings to me, with a voice like spun honey. Once, she bids me follow her, beckoning me toward an open door, but I refuse. This is how I know I’m dying.
But I don’t die. By some miracle, my fever finally breaks.
With the doctor’s assistance, I can sit up in bed for short periods of time and even lower myself onto a chamber pot.
He turns his back, like a gentleman, but I feel no embarrassment.
He’s a doctor. The human body is far from a mystery to him, and prison destroyed all traces of my modesty.
Even though his caring nature is disarming, I’m wary.
A man like him would be well read. Canny.
He’ll begin asking questions. Eventually, if I stay here long enough, he’ll figure out who I am.
As soon as I’m recovered, I need to leave.
To find a new campsite. Or use the rest of my money to leave the Carolinas entirely, though the thought pains me and frightens me almost as much as staying.
One evening, he lingers in my room after bringing me dinner, and sits across from my bed, folding his long, lean body into a chair.
I’ve progressed to soup, from broth, and it’s delicious, with bits of carrot and potato.
I steal glances of him as I eat. He’s more beautiful than handsome.
With his long-lashed eyes and finely sculpted jaw, he reminds me of an angel in a fresco. The plantation is appropriately named.
After I’ve finished eating, he rises to take the tray. He places it on the floor, then presses a cool hand against my forehead. “You’ve not run a fever for two days.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
He smiles. “Yes, very. I think you’re recovering.”
“Thanks to you. You’ve saved my life.”
He shakes his head. “No. Ruby did. And Noah. By bringing you here.”
“Yes. All of you, then.” I run a hand over my untidy, cropped hair, suddenly self-conscious of my appearance. “I must look a fright.”
“May I brush your hair?”
“I’d like that,” I say.
He crosses to the vanity and retrieves a silver hairbrush and comb, then returns, sitting on the edge of the bed behind me.
He begins working the tangles free from my shorn locks.
His ministrations are as gentle as always.
“Why did you cut your hair?” he asks. “You were dressed like a young boy when you came here.”
Just as I feared, he’s curious about me. Too curious. And I’m unprepared for his questions. “I . . . I’m a vagrant. I found it safer to resemble a boy on the streets.”
“I see,” he says archly. “What is your name?”
My fever-addled mind skitters like a frightened mouse.
In all my days of being alone, in concocting this ruse, I didn’t consider my name.
I need a new one. And quickly. “Mary,” I spout.
“Mary Jones.” What a common name. My former cleverness has apparently departed along with the fever.
I pray he can’t see the flame of my face.
“Well then, Miss Jones, I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Alexander Mayhew.”
Alexander. It suits him. Dr. Alexander Mayhew.
“Likewise, Dr. Mayhew.”
He chuckles under his breath. “Oh, I’m no doctor.
My father was, though. I helped him occasionally.
Assisted with surgeries, once I was older.
I was good with suturing.” The brush stills.
He rests a hand on my shoulder, and a quiver of something delightfully unexpected runs through me at his touch.
“There we are. Would you like a mirror?”
I shake my head. I don’t relish the thought of looking at my reflection in this state.
“Very well. I’ll leave you to your rest. I can bring you some books from the library if you’d like.”
“Oh, I would like that. Thank you, Dr. . . . Mr. Mayhew.”
“Alex, please.” He smiles at me. “There’s no need for formalities here.”
“When . . . when do you think I’ll be well enough to leave?” I ask.
“Not for a while. You’ve just recovered from blood poisoning, and the effects of the infection could linger for months. The trap tore through your calf muscles, when you dragged it. It will take weeks for your leg to fully heal. You won’t be able to walk unassisted for a while.”
“That long?”
“I’m afraid so.” That arch look again. “Surely, as a vagrant, you’re grateful for a clean bed and a roof over your head, Miss Jones. I’m pleased to host you until you’re well.”
“I’m grateful, sir.” For what else can I say?
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.”