Chapter 7
Dusk was settling as Adam escorted Susanna to the mansion’s front door, but instead of accompanying her inside, he excused himself by saying he had some urgent business.
He strode off toward the coach house—where, she was later told by Ertha, he had a small office—while the stable hands led their exhausted and lathered horses away.
He never came in for supper, and she went to bed early, as puzzled as ever.
Nor did she have even the briefest chance to talk to him over the next three days.
She never saw him. Sometime during the night a furious summer storm erupted, accompanied by wicked lightning, deafening thunder, and torrential rains which didn’t let up for much of the week.
She didn’t see Adam at all the following day, occupied as she was by a disconcerting visit from William Booth, the Cary family attorney, who read her James Cary’s will: It named her as the sole heir of Briarwood.
That evening, when she queried Ertha about Adam’s possible whereabouts, the housekeeper informed her that the ripening tobacco was being threatened by the unusual rainfall.
He was in the fields, supervising the workers as they did everything they could to save the plants from flooding.
He would probably be there day and night until the downpour ended.
By Friday morning, which dawned sunny and clear, Susanna was anxious to escape outside after being cooped up in the house for so long, and to see for herself how Cary’s Finest had fared.
When Corliss declined to accompany her on her ride, saying she was afraid of horses, Susanna decided to go alone.
She only wanted to see the closest fields; if their condition was good she imagined the others would be much the same.
She had no intention of riding out as far as she and Adam had gone a few days ago, and she didn’t want to go near that pond.
Just thinking about it brought back memories of his embrace, a troubling recollection that had plagued her during the day.
Yet even more disturbing was how her memory became altered at night.
In her dreams, Adam kissed her slowly, lingeringly, his mouth warm and tender at first, but then becoming passionately demanding, his strong hands roaming at will over her body as she kissed him back
“Here she is, Miss Camille. All saddled and ready to go.”
Susanna blinked, startled. Her face felt warm as she smiled at the spry older man who was leading the same spirited mare toward her that she had ridden before.
“Thank you…uh…”
“Zachary Roe, ma’am. I’m the stable manager.” He threw his shoulders back proudly, his smile broadening. “A free man, thanks to your fine papa.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Zachary.” As he gave her a boost into the saddle, Susanna fought to control her jumbled thoughts.
“Would you like one of the hands to accompany you, Miss Camille? I’d hate for you to get lost—”
“No, I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “Adam” —she drew a quick breath, angry at herself for calling him by his first name— “Mr. Thornton was an excellent guide the other day. He showed me how to get across the fields.”
“If you say so, Miss Camille. Have a good ride.”
She drew up on the reins, expertly wheeling the animal around, then asked as an afterthought, “Have you seen Mr. Thornton this morning, Zachary?”
“No, ma’am. His horse is gone, so he must still be out checking the tobo. The rains were pretty bad these past few days.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I want to check on the plants, too.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry none, Miss Camille. With Mr. Thornton watching over ‘em, I’m sure they came out of it just fine.”
She smiled tightly, nudging the mare into a trot with her boot.
Didn’t anyone but herself have a bad word to say about Adam? she wondered, her irritation piqued. Were these people blind to what manner of man he really was?
Within a few minutes, Susanna had cleared the main grounds, and she urged the mare into a gallop.
The first fields she came to were empty, no laborers or overseers in sight, but the large-leafed plants looked healthy, each sitting upon a small hill of earth.
The ground was very muddy and in the warm sunshine steam rose up from the moist dirt.
It appeared that narrow troughs had been dug around each tobacco hill, but other than that, things seemed much as they had been the other day.
She rode on, wanting to hear some sort of assessment from an overseer if she couldn’t find Adam. She was glad when she finally spied Josiah Skinner riding toward the neat cluster of houses where the overseers lived, either alone or with their families. He changed his course and met her halfway.
“What brings you out here this morning, Miss Cary?” he asked, sweeping off his tricorn and clutching it beneath his arm. His brown coat was damp, and his long, lean face looked worn and tired. His breeches and jackboots were caked with mud.
“I wanted to see how the plants held up through the storm. As far as I can tell, they seem all right, though I don’t know much about tobacco…”
“Everything’s just fine,” the overseer said, reassurance in his gravelly voice. “I admit, it was going a bit rough for a while, but Adam came up with the notion of digging troughs around the plants so the water could run off. That’s what saved us.”
So that was Adam’s idea, she thought, relieved to hear that all was well with this year’s crop. She should have known.
“You must have just missed him, Miss Cary. He rode back to the house only a short while ago after telling everyone to get some rest now that the weather has cleared. We were up all night, and the other two nights we slept in short shifts. I was just heading home myself. “
“Of course, Mr. Skinner,” Susanna said. “I won’t keep you. I’m sure Mr. Thornton will give me his own report when I see him.”
“He said that very same thing, but that it wouldn’t be until dinnertime.”
“Dinner?”
The overseer eyed her curiously, though his weary expression didn’t change.
“I think he wanted to get himself some rest first, Miss Cary. He was up longer than any of us, digging side by side with the field hands. He probably figured you’d trust his judgment just like your father used to, and know that everything was all right unless he made it a point to tell you different. ”
And leave her wondering all day if Cary’s Finest was ruined or not? Susanna fumed, veering her horse around after thanking the overseer for his hard work and bidding him also to get some sleep.
She rode back toward the house, imagining how wonderful it would feel to storm into Adam’s bedroom and demand he give her a full accounting of the past days’ events, but she knew Camille would never have done such a thing.
Instead, as the coach house came into view, she decided to cool her temper by exploring a little, her natural curiosity spurring her on.
She wanted to see his office. She had seen practically everything else on the plantation, and she had no wish to while away the hours in the library or in the game room playing solitary rounds of cards as she had done since Tuesday.
Maybe she would be able to gain a little more insight into Adam’s character by inspecting the place where, according to Ertha, he spent a fair amount of time.
Perhaps she might even find some information she could use against him, in addition to his cocksure and improper advances toward her, when the time came to fire him.
The housekeeper had said the office had a private door near the back of the coach house…
As she approached the large two-story building, Susanna immediately spied the door. She dismounted and tethered the mare to a tree. She was surprised to discover that the door led not into a room, but to a narrow flight of stairs.
The wooden steps creaked as she ascended them, but no one would dare question her if she was discovered here. She was the mistress of Briarwood. She could do anything she wanted on this plantation.
Susanna opened another door at the top of the stairs and, holding her breath in anticipation, stepped inside a small, sunlit room that was furnished with a writing desk, bookcases, and a narrow bed pushed up against one wall that took up much of the floor space.
Other than the tall stool behind the desk and a threadbare stuffed chair with an accompanying side table placed near one of the two windows, there were no other furnishings, and the bare, whitewashed walls gave the room a spartan appearance.
The air was tinged with the smell of leather and polish, drifting up from the coach house below.
As she quickly scanned the crowded, well-dusted bookshelves—his own private collection?
she wondered—she noted books on the growing of tobacco and horticulture—no surprise there—and others which did surprise her.
She had grudgingly sensed in Adam a keen intelligence, but from the variety of subjects presented here—history, mathematics, religion, philosophy, poetry, navigation, law, architecture, and many others—it was clear his intellectual interests were diverse and admittedly more advanced than her own.
There were even well-thumbed volumes on English grammar and a copy of The Art of Fair Writing, which led her to think Adam might be a self-educated man.
She also surmised from the thick pools of dried wax beneath the pewter candleholders on the desk and side table that he spent most of his evenings here.
A half-empty glass of some liquid—spirits, no doubt, judging from the tall crystal decanter which appeared to be the only luxury in the room—had been left there, and a padded footstool was placed an outstretched-leg’s distance from the chair, giving her the impression that he was one to relax and enjoy his reading time.