“No, no.” Kimball reached for the brandy. “He tried not to break up families, but I haven’t found any records to indicate Medley ever had a permanent partner.”
“Did she bear more children?” Little Marilyn finally joined in the conversation.
“Apparently not,” he said.
“That’s very odd.” Puzzlement shone over Susan’s face. “Birth control consisted of next to nothing.”
“Sheepskin. A primitive form of condom.” Kimball sipped the brandy, the best he had ever tasted. “However, the chance of a slave having access to anything that sophisticated is out of the question.”
“Who said her partner was a slave?” Harry threw down the joker.
Mim, not wanting to appear old-fashioned, picked it up. “Was she beautiful, Kimball? If she was, then her partners may indeed have had access to sheep membrane.” Mim implied that Medley therefore would have attracted the white men.
“By what few accounts I can find, yes, she was beautiful.”
Lucinda scowled. “Oh, I hope we can just slide by this. I think we’re opening a can of worms.”
“We are, but somebody’s got to open it.” Mim stood her ground. “We’ve swept this sort of thing under the rug for centuries. Not that I enjoy the process, I don’t, but miscegenation may be a motive for murder.”
“I don’t think a black woman would have killed a man merely because he was white,” Ellie Wood said. “But if she had a black lover, he might be driven to it out of jealousy if nothing else.”
“But what if it was Medley herself?” Kimball’s voice rose with suppressed excitement. “What would drive a slave to kill a rich white man? What would drive a woman of any color to kill a man? I think you all know far better than I.”
Catching his enthusiasm, Port jumped up. “Love. Love can run anyone crazy.”
“Okay, say she loved the victim. Not that I think too many slaves loved the white men who snuck into their cabins.” Harry grew bold. “Even at her most irrational, would she kill him because he walked out on her? How could she? White men walked out on black women every morning. They just turned their backs and poof, they were gone. Wouldn’t she have been used to it? Wouldn’t an older slave have prepared her and said something like, ‘This is your lot in life’?”
“Probably would have said ‘This is your cross to bear.’ ” Miranda furrowed her brow.
Unsettled as Lucinda was by Samson’s infidelity, and she was getting closer and closer to the real truth, she recognized as the afternoon continued that her unhappiness at least had a front door. She could walk out. Medley Orion couldn’t. “Perhaps he humiliated her in some secret place, some deep way, and she snapped.”
“Not humiliated, threatened.” Susan’s eyes lit up. “She was a slave. She’d learned to mask her feelings. Don’t we all, ladies?” This idea rippled across the room. “Whoever this was, he had a hold on her. He was going to do something terrible to her or to someone she loved, and she fought back. My God, where did she get the courage?”
“I don’t know if I can agree.” Miranda folded her hands together. “Does it take courage to kill? God forbids us to take another human life.”
“That’s it!” Mim spoke up. “He must have threatened to take someone else’s life—or hers. What if he threatened to kill Mr. Jefferson—not my stalker theory, mind you, but an explosive rage on the dead man’s part—something erratic?”
“I doubt she’d kill to save her master,” Little Marilyn countered her mother. “Jefferson was an extraordinary human being, but he was still the master.”
“Some slaves loved their masters.” Lucinda backed up Mim.
“Not as many as white folks want to believe.” Harry laughed. She couldn’t help but laugh. While bonds of affection surely existed, it was difficult for her to grasp that the oppressed could love the oppressor.
“Well, then what?” Ellie Wood’s patience, never her strong point, ebbed.
“She killed to protect her true lover.” Port savored her brandy.
“Or her child,” Susan quietly added.
An electric current shot around the room. Was there a mother anywhere in the world who wouldn’t kill for her child?
“The child was born in August 1803.” Kimball twirled the crystal glass. “If the victim were killed after August, he might have known the child.”
“But he might have known the child even before it was born.” Mim’s eyes narrowed.
“What?” Kimball seemed temporarily befuddled.
“What if it were his?” Mim’s voice rang out.
A silence followed this.
Harry then said, “Most men, or perhaps I should say some men, who have enjoyed the favors of a woman who becomes pregnant declare they don’t know if the baby is theirs. Of course they can’t get away with that now thanks to this DNA testing stuff. They sure could get away with it then.”
“Good point, Harry. I say the child was born before he was killed.” Susan held them spellbound. “The child was born and it looked like him.”
“Good God, Susan, I hope you’re wrong.” Lucinda blinked. “How could a man kill his own child to—to save his face?”
“People do terrible things,” Port flatly stated, for she didn’t understand it either, but then, she didn’t refute it.
“Well, he paid for his intentions, if that’s what they were.” Ellie Wood felt rough justice had been done. “If that’s true, he paid for it, and done is done.”
“‘Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly.’ Deuteronomy 32:35,” Miranda intoned.
But done was not done. The past was coming undone, and the day of calamity was at hand.
24
“I thought it would take some of the burden off you. You don’t need people at you right now.” Ansley Randolph leaned on the white fence and watched the horses breeze through their morning workout around the track—the Fibar and sand mix kept the footing good year-round. “Not that anything will make you feel better, for a time.”
Pain creased the lines around Warren’s eyes. “Honey, I’ve no doubt that you thought you were doing the right thing, but number one, I am tired of being whipped into shape by Mim Sanburne. Number two, my family’s diaries, maps, and genealogies stay right here at Eagle’s Rest. Some are so old I keep them in the safe. Number three, I don’t think anything of mine will interest Kimball Haynes, and number four, I’m exhausted. I don’t want to argue with anyone. I don’t even want to explain myself to anyone. No is no, and you’ll have to tell Mim.”
Ansley, while not in love with Warren, liked him sometimes. This was one of those times. “You’re right. I should have kept my mouth shut. I suppose I wanted to curry favor with Mim. She gives you business.”
Warren clasped his hands over the top rail of the fence. “Mim keeps a small army of lawyers busy. If I lose her business, I don’t think it will hurt either one of us, and it won’t hurt you socially either. All you have to do is tell Mim that I’m down and I can’t have anything on my mind right now. I need to rest and repair—that’s no lie.”
“Warren, don’t take this the wrong way, but I never knew you loved your father this much.”
He sighed. “I didn’t either.” He studied his boot tips for a second. “It’s not just Poppa. Now I’m the oldest living male of the line, a line that extends back to 1632. Until our sons are out of prep school and college, the burden of that falls entirely on me. Now I must manage the portfolio—”
“You have good help.”
“Yes, but Poppa always checked over the results of our investments. Truth be told, darling, my law degree benefitted Poppa, not me. I read over those transactions that needed a legal check, but I never really paid attention to the investments and the land holdings in an aggressive sense. Poppa liked to keep his cards close to his chest. Well, I’d better learn fast. We’ve been losing money on the market.”