Chapter 21 #4
“Yes,” Adam began again. “His health began to suffer from breathing in coal dust, he was coughing up blood, and his wages weren’t getting any higher, so he decided to try and make us a better life by immigrating to the colonies.
He’d heard that America was a land of great plenty, and that a man could become anything he wanted there if he worked hard enough.
We didn’t have enough money for the sea passage from Liverpool, so we indentured ourselves.
The captain of our ship said he would do his best to make sure we all ended up working together at the same plantation when we got to Virginia…
and he kept his promise.” Adam sighed, not wanting to go any further. “That’s it.”
Silence followed as Susanna pondered what he’d just told her, then she murmured, “Your mother must have been a beautiful woman.”
“She was. With chestnut hair and laughing hazel eyes. But I think I favored my father, except for his sense of humor. I’ve always been a bit too serious for my own good.
” He drew her closer, entwining a honey tendril around his finger.
“I know your mother must have been a beauty to have spawned you.”
“Aye, she was pretty. My father used to curse me up and down because I looked just like her, with the same eyes and hair.”
Wondering if Susanna realized that she had lapsed back into her London accent, Adam decided not to mention it to her. Perhaps her recollections were drawing it from her, he reasoned. Anyway, he liked it.
“What did your father do…Daniel, wasn’t it?” he asked her gently, feeling her stiffen against him.
“Yes. He was a foundryman until he lost his job. He never went back to find another. My mother died when I was three. When I turned four my papa sent me out into the streets to beg for him. Sometimes I even picked pockets, but that was only when I hadn’t earned enough coins during the day to save myself from a beating.
” She slowly exhaled. “Sometimes he was so drunk that no amount of money made any difference.”
So that was the source of her vivid nightmares, Adam thought, sickened by what she must have suffered at that man’s brutal hands. Yet he was also grateful that at least one thing she had told him when she was masquerading as Camille was true.
“So you ran away from him when he wanted to sell you to Keefer Dunn,” he prodded, hoping not to upset her.
“Aye, when I was twelve. Lady Redmayne and Camille saved me. If they hadn’t come along—” She shuddered in his arms, then quickly changed the subject.
“I owe everything to Camille…Lady Redmayne, too, but especially Camille because she never treated me like her waiting-maid. I was her friend and she was mine, the kind you’re lucky to find once in your life.
” Her low-spoken words throbbed with emotion.
“I would have done anything for her. Anything. I owed her so much…”
As Susanna’s voice faded into a poignant silence, Adam realized with startling clarity how cruelly he had misjudged her.
Until now, he had never believed that she and Camille could have truly been close friends, but there was no mistaking the fervent testimony she had just given him.
He recalled how Polly Blake had described Camille weeping so bitterly at her waiting-maid’s burial.
Those had been Susanna’s tears for a lost friend…
a friend whose dying wish she had sworn to honor.
“You know, Adam,” she said, meeting his eyes, “I haven’t had a single nightmare since we were married.
Not even during the past two nights when you were gone.
” She looked abruptly away then, as if afraid he would read some emotion in her gaze.
“You said to me once that you would help chase away my nightmares. I think you already have.”
Adam froze against her, unable to believe what he had just heard from her lips.
Why had she said that to him, and so sweetly?
he wondered, painfully recalling that evening in the library when he had sworn to protect her with his life and then admitted how much he loved her.
A familiar mistrust crept like cold fingers through his mind and body, chilling him to the marrow.
Why would she refer to such a moment? Why?
To know that she hadn’t masqueraded as Camille out of her own selfish greed was one thing, but she had still purposely deceived him because she had thought he wasn’t good enough to marry. He didn’t dare hope that there was some affection behind her words, and open himself up for some new treachery.
No, there had to be some other explanation for why she was trying to make him believe her heart was softening toward him. There had to be some dark motive behind her countless attempts to please him, and this sudden, dangerously compelling flattery.
“We’ve talked enough, Camille,” he said, hearing the hard, bitter edge in his voice. “I want you to look your best tomorrow and you won’t if you have dark smudges under your eyes. Now go to sleep.”
Turning abruptly onto his other side with his back to her, he could feel that she was staring at him in startled surprise, then she sighed in resignation.
“Very well, Adam. Good night.”
He didn’t answer, closing his eyes and his heart against her once more.