Page 6 of Just Imagine

The Templeton Academy for Young Ladies sat on Fifth Avenue like a great gray stone whale. Hamilton Woodward, Cain’s attorney, had recommended it. Although the school didn’t normally take girls as old as Kit, Elvira Templeton had made an exception for the Hero of Missionary Ridge.

Kit stood hesitantly on the threshold of the third-floor room she’d been assigned and studied the five girls wearing identical navy blue dresses with white collars and cuffs. They were clustered around the room’s only window to gaze down at the street. It didn’t take her long to figure out what they were staring at.

“Oh, Elsbeth, isn’t he the handsomest man you ever saw?”

The girl identified as Elsbeth sighed. She had crisp, brown curls and a pretty, fresh face.

“Imagine. He was right here in the Academy, and none of us were allowed to go downstairs. It’s so unfair!”

And then, with a giggle.

“My father says he’s not really a gentleman.”

More giggles.

A beautiful, blond-haired girl who reminded Kit of Dora Van Ness spoke up.

“Madame Riccardi, the opera singer, went into a decline when he told her he was moving to South Carolina. Everybody’s heard about it. She’s his mistress, you know.”

“Lilith Shelton!”

The girls were deliciously horrified, and Lilith regarded them disdainfully.

“You’re all such innocents. A man as sophisticated as Baron Cain has dozens of mistresses.”

“Remember what we decided,”

another girl said.

“Even if she is his ward, she’s a Southerner, so we all have to hate her.”

Kit had heard enough.

“If that means I won’t ever have to talk to you silly bitches, that’s just fine with me.”

The girls spun around and gasped. Kit felt their eyes taking in her ugly dress and awful hat. One more item to add to the ledger of hatred she was keeping against Cain.

“Get out of here! All of you. And if I catch any of you in here again, I’ll kick your skinny asses straight to hell!”

The girls fled the room with horrified shrieks. All but one. The girl they’d called Elsbeth. She stood trembling and terrified, her eyes wide as teacups, her pretty lips trembling.

“Are you deaf or something? I told you to get out.”

“I . . . I c-can’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I . . . I live here.”

“Oh.”

For the first time, Kit noticed the room had two beds.

The girl was sweet-faced, one of those people with a naturally kind disposition, and Kit couldn’t find it in her heart to bully her. At the same time, she was the enemy.

“You’ll have to move.”

“Mrs. . . . Mrs. Templeton won’t let me. I—I already asked.”

Kit cursed, yanked up her skirts, and sank down on the bed.

“How come you were lucky enough to get me?”

“My—my father. He’s Mr. Cain’s attorney. I’m Elsbeth Woodward.”

“I’d say I was pleased to make your acquaintance, but both of us know it’d be a lie.”

“I’d . . . I’d better go.”

“You do that.”

Elsbeth scampered from the room. Kit lay back on the pillow and tried to figure out how she was going to survive the next three years.

The Templeton Academy used a system of demerits to maintain order. For every ten demerits a girl acquired, she was confined to her room all day Saturday. By the end of her first day, Kit had accumulated eighty-three. (Taking the Lord’s name in vain was automatically ten.) By the end of her first week, she’d lost count.

Mrs. Templeton called Kit into her office and threatened her with expulsion if she didn’t start following all the rules. Kit had to participate in her classes. She’d been given two uniforms, and she was to start wearing them at once. Her grammar must improve immediately. Ladies didn’t say “ain’t”

o.

“I reckon.”

Ladies referred to objects a.

“unimportant,”

no.

“useless as toad spit.” And most of all, ladies didn’t curse.

Kit remained stoic during the interview, but inside, she was panicky. If the old biddy expelled her, Kit would have broken her agreement with Cain and lost Risen Glory forever.

She vowed to hold onto her temper, but as the days passed, it grew more and more difficult. She was three years older than her classmates, but she knew less than any of them. They snickered at her cropped hair behind her back and giggled when she caught her skirts on a chair. One day the pages of her French book were glued together. Another day her nightgown was tied in knots. She’d gone through life with her fists swinging, and now her future depended on keeping her temper. Instead of retaliating, she collected the insults and stored them away to reexamine late at night as she lay in bed. Someday she’d make Baron Cain pay for every slur.

Elsbeth continued to behave like a frightened mouse whenever she was around Kit. Although she refused to join in Kit’s persecution, she was too timid to make the other girls stop. Still, her kind heart couldn’t ignore the injustices, especially as she grew to realize that Kit wasn’t as ferocious as she seemed.

“It’s hopeless,”

Kit confessed to her one night after she’d tripped over the skirt of her uniform in dance class and sent a Chinese vase crashing from a pedestal.

“I’ll never learn to dance. I talk too loud, I hate wearing skirts, the only musical instrument I can play is a jew’s harp, and I can’t look at Lilith Shelton without cussing.”

Elsbeth’s teacup eyes rounded in worry.

“You have to be nicer to her. Lilith is the most popular girl in school.”

“And the nastiest.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t mean to be that way.”

“I’m sure she does. You’re so nice yourself, you don’t recognize ugliness in other people. You don’t even seem to be noticin’ it in me, and I’m ’bout as bad as they come.”

“You’re not bad!”

“Yes, I am. But not as bad as all the mean-minded girls who go to this school. I reckon you’re the only decent person here.”

“That’s not true,”

Elsbeth said earnestly.

“Most of them are awfully nice if you just give them a chance. You’re so ferocious that you scare them.”

Kit’s spirits lifted a little.

“Thank you. Truth is, I don’t know how I could scare anybody. I’m a failure at everything I’ve done here. I can’t imagine how I’m gonna last three years.”

“Father didn’t tell me you had to stay so long. You’ll be twenty-one. That’s too old to be in school.”

“I know, but I don’t have any choice.”

Kit fidgeted with the gray woolen coverlet. Ordinarily she didn’t believe in sharing confidences, but she was feeling lonelier than she could remember.

“Did you ever love somethin’ so much you’d do just about anything to keep it safe?”

“Oh, yes. My little sister, Agnes. She’s not like other children. Even though she’s almost ten, she can’t read or write, but she’s so sweet, and I’d never let anybody hurt her.”

“Then you understand.”

“Tell me, Kit. Tell me what’s wrong.”

And so Kit told her about Risen Glory. She described the fields and the house, talked about Sophronia and Eli, and tried to make Elsbeth see the way the trees changed color depending on the time of day.

Then she told her about Baron Cain. Not everything. Elsbeth would never understand her masquerade as a stable boy or the way she’d tried to kill him, let alone her offer to be his mistress. Still, she told her enough.

“He’s evil, and I can’t do anything about it. If I get expelled, he’ll sell Risen Glory. And if I do manage to last three years here, I’ll still have to wait till I’m twenty-three to get control of the money in my trust fund so I can buy it back. The longer I wait, the harder that’s going to be.”

“Isn’t there any way you can use your money before then?”

“Only if I get married. Which I ain’t.”

Elsbeth was an attorney’s daughter.

“If you did marry, your husband would control your money. It’s the way the law works. You couldn’t spend it without his permission.”

Kit shrugged.

“It’s all academic. There’s no man in the world I’d shackle myself to. Besides, I was raised all wrong to be a wife. Only thing I can do right is cook.”

Elsbeth was sympathetic, but she was also practical.

“That’s why we’re all here. To learn how to be proper wives. The girls from the Templeton Academy are known for making the most successful marriages in New York. That’s part of what’s so special about being a Templeton girl. Men come from all over the East to attend the graduation ball.”

“It doesn’t make any difference to me if they come from Paris, France. You’ll never see me at any ball.”

But Elsbeth had been struck with inspiration, and she wasn’t paying attention.

“All you have to do is find the right husband. Somebody who wants to make you happy. Then everything will be perfect. You won’t be Mr. Cain’s ward any longer, and you’ll have your money.”

“You’re a real sweet girl, Elsbeth, but I’ve got to tell you that’s the most ridiculous idea I ever heard. Getting married would just mean I’d be handing another man my money.”

“If you picked the right man, it’d be the same as having it yourself. Before you get married, you could make him promise to buy you Risen Glory for a wedding present.”

She clapped her hands, caught up in her vision.

“Just imagine how romantic it would be. You could go back home right after your honeymoon.”

Honeymoons and husbands . . . Elsbeth might have been speaking another language.

“That’s plain foolishness. What man’s goin’ to marry me?”

“Stand up!”

Elsbeth’s voice held the same note of command as Elvira Templeton’s, and Kit rose reluctantly.

Elsbeth tapped her finger on her cheek.

“You’re awfully thin, and your hair is horrible. Of course it’ll grow,”

she added politely.

“and it is a beautiful color, all soft and inky. Even now it’d look quite nice if it were cut a little straighter. Your eyes are too big for your face, but I think that’s because you’re so thin.”

Slowly she circled Kit.

“You’re going to be quite pretty someday, so I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.”

Kit scowled.

“Just what will we have to worry about?”

But Elsbeth was no longer intimidated by her.

“Everything else. You have to learn to talk and to walk, what to say and, even more important, what not to say. You’ll have to learn everything the Academy teaches. You’re lucky that Mr. Cain provided you with such a generous clothing allowance.”

“Which I don’t need. What I need is a horse.”

“Horses won’t help you get a husband. But the Academy will.”

“I don’t know how. I haven’t exactly made a success of it so far.”

“No, you haven’t.”

Elsbeth’s sweet smile grew impish.

“But then, you haven’t had me helping you, either.”

The idea was silly, but Kit felt her first spark of hope.

As the weeks passed, Elsbeth was as good as her word. She trimmed Kit’s hair with manicure scissors and tutored her in the subjects in which she’d fallen behind. Eventually Kit stopped knocking over vases in dancing class and discovered she had a flair for needlework—not embroidering fancy samplers, which she detested, but adding flamboyant touches to garments such as school uniforms. (Ten demerits.) She was a whiz at French, and before long, she was tutoring the girls who had once mocked her.

By Easter, Elsbeth’s plan for her to find a husband no longer seemed so ridiculous, and Kit began to fall asleep dreaming that Risen Glory was hers forever.

Just imagine.

Sophronia was no longer the cook at Risen Glory, but the plantation’s housekeeper. She tucked Kit’s letter away in the inlaid mahogany desk where she kept the household records and pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders to ward off the February chill. Kit had been at the Templeton Academy for seven months now, and she finally seemed resigned to her fate.

Sophronia missed her. Kit was blind in a lot of ways, but she also understood things other people didn’t. Besides, Kit was the only person in the world who loved her. Still, they somehow always managed to quarrel, even in letters, and this was the first correspondence Sophronia had received from her in a month.

Sophronia thought about sitting down to answer it right away, but she knew she’d put it off, especially after the last time. Her letters only seemed to make Kit mad. You’d think she’d be glad to hear how well Risen Glory was doing now that Cain was running the place, but she accused Sophronia of siding with the enemy.

Sophronia gazed around the comfortable rear sitting room. She took in the new rose damask upholstery on the settee and the way the delft tiles bordering the fireplace sparkled in the sunlight. Everything shone with beeswax, fresh paint, and care.

Sometimes she hated herself for working so hard to make this house beautiful again. Working her fingers to the bone for the man, just as if there’d never been a war and she was still a slave. But now she was getting paid. Good wages, too, better than any other housekeeper in the county. Still, Sophronia wasn’t satisfied.

She moved toward her reflection in the gilt pier glass that hung between the windows. She’d never looked better. Regular meals had softened the chiseled bones in her face and rounded out the sharp angles of her body. She wore her long hair smoothly coiled and piled high on the back of her head. The sophisticated style added to her already considerable height of nearly six feet, and that pleased her. With her exotically slanted golden eyes and her pale caramel skin, she looked like one of the Amazon women pictured in a book she’d found in the library.

She frowned as she studied her simple dress. She wanted dressmaker gowns. She wanted perfumes and silks, champagne and crystal. But most of all, she wanted her own place, one of those pretty pastel houses in Charleston where she’d have a maid and feel safe and protected. She knew exactly how to go about getting that place in Charleston, too. She had to do what terrified her the most. Instead of being a white man’s housekeeper, she had to become his mistress.

Every night when she served Cain his dinner, she let her hips sway seductively, and she forced her breasts against his arm when she set food before him. Sometimes she forgot her fear of white men long enough to notice how handsome he was, and she’d recall that he’d been kind to her. But he was too big, too powerful, too much a man for her to feel easy with him. Regardless, she made her lips moist and her eyes inviting, practicing all the tricks she’d forced herself to learn.

An image of Magnus Owen appeared in her mind. Damn that man! She hated the way he looked at her out of those dark eyes, as if he felt sorry for her. Sweet, blessed Jesus, if that wasn’t enough to make a body laugh. Magnus Owen, who wanted her so bad he couldn’t stand it, had the gall to feel sorry for her.

An involuntary shudder swept through her as she though of pale white limbs wrapping themselves around her golden brown ones. She pushed the image aside and gnawed on her resentment.

Did Magnus Owen really think she’d let him touch her? Him or any other black man? Did Magnus think she’d been studying hard, grooming herself, listening to the white ladies in Rutherford until she could sound exactly like them, just so she’d end up with a black man who couldn’t protect her? Not likely. Especially a black man whose eyes seemed to pierce into the farthest reaches of her soul.

She made her way to the kitchen. Soon, now, she’d have everything she wanted—a house, silk gowns, safety—and she was going to earn it in the only way she knew how, satisfying a white man’s lust. A white man who was powerful enough to protect her.

That night it turned rainy. Howling February winds swept down the chimneys and rattled the shutters as Sophronia paused outside the library. In one hand she held a silver tray bearing a bottle of brandy and a single glass. With her other hand she unfastened the top buttons of her dress to reveal the swells of her breasts. It was time to make her next move. She took a deep breath and entered the room.

Cain glanced up from the ledgers on the desk.

“You must have been reading my mind.”

He uncoiled his rugged, long-limbed frame from the leather chair, rose, and stretched. She didn’t let herself step back as he came out from behind the desk, moving like a great golden lion. He’d been working from dawn to dusk for months, and he looked tired.

“It’s a cold night,”

she said, setting the tray on the desk.

“I thought you might need something to keep you warm.”

She forced her hand to the open V of her dress so he couldn’t mistake her meaning.

He gazed at her, and she felt the familiar stirrings of panic. Once again she reminded herself how kind he’d been, but she also knew there was something dangerous about him that frightened her.

His eyes flicked over her, then lingered on her breasts.

“Sophronia . . .”

She thought of silk gowns and a pastel house. A house with a sturdy lock.

“Shh . . .”

She stepped up to him and splayed her fingers over his chest. Then she let her shawl drop on her bare arm.

For the past seven months, his life had been filled with hard work and little pleasure. Now his lids dropped and he closed his long, tapered fingers around her arm. His hand, bronzed by the Carolina sun, was darker than her own flesh.

He cupped her chin.

“Are you sure about this?”

She forced herself to nod.

His head dipped, but in the instant before their lips met, there was a noise behind them. They turned together and saw Magnus Owen standing in the open doorway.

His gentle features twisted as he saw her ready to submit to Cain’s embrace. She heard a rumble deep in his throat. He charged into the room and threw himself at the man he considered his closest friend, the man who had once saved his life.

The suddenness of the attack took Cain by surprise. He staggered backward and barely managed to keep his balance. Then he braced himself for Magnus’s assault.

Horrified, she watched as Magnus came at him. He swung, but Cain sidestepped and lifted his arm to block the blow.

Magnus swung again. This time he found Cain’s jaw and sent him sprawling. Cain got back up, but he refused to retaliate.

Gradually Magnus regained some semblance of sanity. When he saw Cain wasn’t going to fight, his arms sagged to his sides.

Cain looked deep into Magnus’s eyes, then gazed across the room at Sophronia. He bent down to right a chair that had been upended in the struggle and spoke gruffly.

“You’d better get some sleep, Magnus. We have a big day tomorrow.”

He turned to Sophronia.

“You can go. I won’t be needing you anymore.”

The deliberate way he emphasized his words left no doubt about his meaning.

Sophronia rushed from the room. She was furious with Magnus for upsetting her plans. At the same time, she feared for him. This was South Carolina, and he’d struck a white man, not once but twice.

She barely slept that night as she waited for the devils in white sheets to come after him, but nothing happened. The next day, she saw him working side by side with Cain, clearing brush from one of the fields. The fear she’d felt turned into seething resentment. He had no right to interfere in her life.

That evening, Cain instructed her to leave his brandy on the table outside the library door.