The next morning, even the happiness of Sophronia and Magnus couldn't keep Cain and Kit from snarling at each other. It had become their pattern. The more passionate the night, the worse they treated each other the next day.
Do not expect daylight to bring a change in me… I will give you my body, but do not, dare not, expect more.
As Kit watched Magnus and Sophronia move in a blissful daze through the next week while they got ready for their wedding, she found herself wishing she and Cain could have such a happy ending. But the only happy ending she could imagine for them would have Cain riding away, leaving her alone at Risen Glory. And that didn't seem right at all.
On Sunday afternoon, Sophronia and Magnus took their vows in the old slave church with Kit and Cain beside them. After hugs, tears, and slices of Miss Dolly's wedding cake, they were finally alone in Magnus's house by the orchard.
"I won't press you," he said as the December night fell deep and peaceful outside the windows. "We can take our time."
Sophronia smiled into his eyes and feasted on the sight of his beautiful brown skin. "We've had too much time already." Her fingers trailed to the top buttons of the beautiful silk dress Kit had given her. "Love me, Magnus. Just love me."
He did. Tenderly and completely. Driving away all the ugliness of the past. Sophronia had never felt so safe or so loved. She would never forget what had happened to her, but the nightmares of her past would no longer control her. Finally she understood what it meant to be free.
As December gave way to January, the lovemaking between Cain and Kit developed a primitive, ferocious edge that frightened them both. Kit left a bruise on Cain's shoulder. Cain left a mark on her breast, then cursed himself afterward.
Only once did they speak the truth.
"We can't go on like this," he said.
"I know." She turned her head into the pillow and pretended to fall asleep.
The treacherous, most female part of her longed to give up the struggle and open her heart before it burst with feelings she couldn't name. But this was a man who gave up his books and his horses before he could grow too attached to them. And the devils of her past were powerful.
Risen Glory was all she had-all she'd ever had-the only part of her life that was secure. People disappeared, but Risen Glory was everlasting, and she'd never let her tumultuous unnamed feelings for Baron Cain threaten that. Cain with his cold gray eyes and his spinning mill, Cain with his unchecked ambitions that would eat up her fields and spit them out like so many discarded cotton seeds until nothing was left but a worthless husk.
"I told you, I don't want to go." Kit slammed down her hairbrush and stared at Cain in the mirror. He threw aside his shirt. "I do." All arguments stop at the bedroom door. But this one wasn't. And what difference did it make? Their love-making had already turned this bedroom into another war zone.
"You hate parties," she reminded him.
"Not this one. I want to get away from the mill for a few days."
The mill, she noted, not Risen Glory.
"And I miss seeing Veronica," he added.
Kit's stomach knotted with jealousy and hurt. The truth was, she also missed Veronica, but she didn't want Cain to.
Veronica had left Rutherford six weeks earlier, shortly before Thanksgiving. She'd settled in a three-story mansion in Charleston that Kit had learned was already turning into a center of fashion and culture. Artists and politicians showed up at her front door. There was an unknown sculptor from Ohio, a famous actor from New York. Now Veronica intended to celebrate her new home with a winter ball.
In her letter to Kit, she'd said she was inviting everyone in Charleston who amused her, as well as several old acquaintances from Rutherford. In typically perverse Veronica fashion, that included Brandon Parsell and his new fiancée, Eleanora Baird, whose father had taken over the presidency of the Planters and Citizens Bank after the war.
Normally Kit would have loved attending such a party, but right now she didn't have the heart for it. Sophronia's new happiness had made her conscious of her own misery, and as much as Veronica fascinated her, she also made Kit feel awkward and foolish.
"Go by yourself," she said, even though she hated the idea.
"We're going together." Cain's voice sounded weary. "You have no choice in the matter."
As if she ever did. Her resentment grew, and that night, they didn't make love. Nor the next. Nor the one after that. It was just as well, she told herself. She'd been feeling ill for several weeks now. Sooner or later, she needed to stop fighting it and see the doctor.
Even so, she waited until the morning before they left for Veronica's party to make the trip.
By the time they reached Charleston, Kit was pale and exhausted. Cain left to attend to some business while Kit was shown to the room they'd share for the next few nights. It was light and airy, with a narrow balcony that looked down upon a brick courtyard, appealing even in winter with its green border of Sea Island grass and the scent of sweet olives.
Veronica sent up a maid to help her unpack and prepare a bath. Afterward, Kit lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, too drained of emotion even to cry. She awakened several hours later and numbly put on her cotton wrapper. As she knotted the sash, she walked over to the windows and pushed back the drapery. It was already dark outside. She'd have to get dressed soon. How would she get through the evening? She lay her cheek against the chilly window glass.
She was going to have a baby. It didn't seem possible, yet even now a small speck of life grew inside her. Baron Cain's baby. A child who would bind her to him for the rest of her life. A child she desperately wanted, even though everything would become so much more difficult.
She forced herself to sit down in front of the dressing table. As she fumbled for her hairbrush, she noticed the blue ceramic jar resting next to her other toiletries. Lucy had packed it as well. How ironic. The jar contained the grayish-white powders Kit had gotten from the Conjure Woman to keep her from conceiving. She'd taken it once and then never again. At first there'd been the long weeks when she and Cain had slept apart, and then, after their nighttime reconciliation, she'd found herself reluctant to use the powders. The contents of that blue jar had seemed almost malevolent, like finely ground bones. When she'd heard several women talking about how difficult it had been for them to conceive, she'd justified her carelessness by deciding the risk of pregnancy wasn't as great as she had feared. Then Sophronia had discovered the jar and told Kit the powders were worthless. The Conjure Woman didn't like white women and had been selling them useless prevention powders for years. Kit ran her finger across the lid of the jar, wondering if that was true.
The door flew open so abruptly, she jumped and knocked over the jar. She leaped up from the stool. "Couldn't you just once enter a room without tearing the door from its hinges?"
"I'm always much too eager to see my devoted wife." Cain tossed his leather gloves down on a chair, then spotted the mess on the dressing table. "What's that?"
"Nothing!" She grabbed a towel and tried to wipe it up.
He came up behind her and settled his hand over hers. With his other hand, he picked up the overturned jar and studied the powder that remained inside. "What is this?"
She tried to pull her hand from beneath his, but he held it there. He set down the jar, and his measured stare told her he wouldn't let her go until she told him the truth. She started to say it was a headache powder, but she was too tired to dissemble, and what was the point anyway?
"It's something I got from the Conjure Woman. Lucy packed it by mistake." And then, because it didn't make any difference now: "I-I didn't want to have a baby."