The Amethyst Heart Page 11

  Silas felt a gentle hand touch his shoulder, and he turned to look at Pearl. Her eyes were shining, and a wide smile graced her lips. She leaned close and whispered into his ear, “I’m proud of you, Silas.”

  A thrill ran through him, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He couldn’t speak for a moment; then his hand closed over hers. “Thank you.”

  There was no time for more conversation. Booker reined the horses to a halt, and Celie motioned to them from the door of the cabin. Silas got down, helped Pearl clamber out of the wagon bed, and headed inside.

  Little Enoch lay sprawled on the sleeping mat, one hand swathed in a bandage. Carefully Silas unwrapped the bandage and examined the burn. With a puzzled frown, he turned toward Pearl.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He pulled a pot of coffee over on him, Doctah Silas,” Celie explained.

  “Yes, I know. That’s what Pearl told me when she came to get me. But—” He rose to his feet. “This is just a minor scald. It won’t even leave a scar.” He turned to face Pearl. “You doctored and bandaged this hand?”

  “Yes,” Pearl admitted, her eyes downcast.

  “Then you knew I wasn’t really needed.”

  “I suppose I did.” She looked up and grinned at him, lifting her hands in an attitude of surrender.

  Booker came forward and slapped Silas on the back. “We all talked ’bout it, and we thought maybe you’d need rescuin’ from the Massah’s—what’s that word, Miss Pearl?”

  “Inquisition,” Pearl supplied.

  The truth sank into Silas’s heart, and he began to laugh. “Do you mean to tell me that the three of you cooked up this scheme to get me out of Robert Warren’s house? That you called me, knowing Enoch was not seriously hurt, so that I wouldn’t have to face down the dragon in his den?”

  Pearl nodded sheepishly. “But Silas, we had no idea you’d get fired, or that Regina would break off the engagement. We never planned for that to happen. I’m sorry if we got you in deeper trouble.”

  “Jus’ a second,” Booker interrupted. “What’s this about gettin’ fired?”

  “Colonel Warren gave Silas an ultimatum—” Pearl began.

  “What’s that?”

  “He said that if Silas didn’t agree to do things his way, he was to get off the plantation by nightfall,” she explained. “Silas told him that the house belonged to him, and that he intended to stay, even if he didn’t get paid.”

  A troubled expression passed over Booker’s broad face. “An’ what about Miss Regina?”

  “Regina broke off the engagement and said she was returning to Baltimore.”

  Silas was relieved that Pearl left out the part about Regina accusing the two of them of being in love. It was something they would need to talk about eventually, but he preferred to do it in private.

  A look passed between Booker and Celie, and Silas saw Booker wink at his wife and suppress a smile.

  “So you ain’t got no money comin’ in now?” Booker asked.

  “Not a cent.”

  “But you’s gonna stay?”

  Silas grinned and shrugged. “I’ve got a nice house, thanks to you, Booker, and a deed that says it’s mine. Somehow I have the feeling that I’m not finished with what I’m supposed to do here. It won’t be easy, but I’ll manage.”

  Once more, Silas felt a sense of liberation rise up in his soul. A taste, just a tiny sliver, of what it meant for a slave to finally be free.

  “So you’re not upset with us at what we did?” Pearl asked for the third time that evening. Even with that miserable expression on her face, Silas thought, she looked lovely by lamplight.

  He pushed his dinner around on his plate. “It was a sneaky thing to do,” he answered candidly. “But I honestly think the outcome is all for the best.”

  “For the best? When you no longer have any income, and the woman you were engaged to marry has left you?”

  “How many times do I have to explain it?” he countered. “I would never have been free as long as I was under Robert Warren’s thumb. I don’t understand it all myself, but I do know that I feel better than I have in months. I feel like I can breathe again.”

  “And what about Regina?”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, I was thinking. I might be able to stir up some work for you in town. My father’s friends—”

  Silas lifted an eyebrow. “Do you really want to do that?”

  “I—I feel responsible for . . . well, you know,” Pearl muttered. “If you had some paying patients, Regina might consider coming back, and—”

  “And what? Grace me with her presence? See to it that I was reinstated into social acceptability?” He leaned his elbows on the table and gazed at her. “Regina never wanted me to be a doctor. She thought I should be a master,” he said. “Wanted me to buy land from Warren and plant my own crops, purchase my own slaves, build my own plantation.”

  “She said that?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Silas let out a sigh. “Even if I had agreed to live by Warren’s terms, she would never have been satisfied.”

  “Then she’s a fool!” Pearl blurted out. “Any woman would be fortunate to have a man like you for a husband.”

  Silas chuckled. “Regina would no doubt say that any woman who would have me for a husband is the fool.” He looked into her eyes. “I feel bad about it, of course. A gentleman does not break his promises to a lady. But neither does a gentleman marry one woman when he might be in love with someone else.”

  Pearl started to say something, then clamped her mouth shut. Her eyes went wide. “What did you say?”

  “I said, it’s possible that Regina’s accusation might be true. I might be in love with another woman.”

  Even as he uttered the words, Silas felt a grip in his gut and a trembling in his heart. It was a huge risk, making such a declaration when he didn’t know how Pearl felt about him. She could reject him, say it was all a misunderstanding. For all he knew, she might have a beau in town. She might admire him, or enjoy working with him, but there were a thousand reasons for her to distance herself from him, not the least being that he was on the verge of complete financial disaster. If he ever did get paid for any of his services, he would probably be reimbursed in chickens and cornbread and pots of beans.

  “Are you saying you’re in love with me, Silas?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying,” he admitted. “But I’d sure like to find out.”

  She leaned across the table toward him, drawing so close that he could feel her warm breath on his cheek. “It’s a subject I might be willing to explore,” she whispered.

  As their lips met, Silas felt a shock run through him, a vibrating sensation as if every nerve in his body had awakened. The kiss was long and sweet, and when it was over, Pearl sat back in her chair and gazed at him, her eyes large and soft.

  “So,” she said at last, “what do you think?”

  “I think,” he responded in a low voice, “that your wardrobe will never be the same.”

  Pearl looked down and began to laugh. In a wide stripe across the front of her blue chambray shirt, dark gravy soaked into the fabric. The roast beef from the platter had been pushed onto the table, and a brown stain puddled on the tablecloth.

  “Guess I’ll never be a society lady,” she said with a shrug.

  He grinned. “Well, as Booker would say, ain’t that a load off my mind?”

  13

  Pearl of Great Price

  Spring 1855

  Silas watched as Pearl, on her father’s arm, made her way down the walk toward the front porch of the house. She wore a long white dress, with Grandmama’s heart-shaped amethyst at her throat, and dogwood blossoms twined in her hair. In a semicircle around the yard, the slaves—along with Pearl’s Uncle Deke, who looked distinctly uncomfortable—had gathered to witness their union.

  Silas and Pearl had waited more than a year to marry, and although Silas had grown increasingly impatie
nt over the past couple of months, he was glad they had agreed to a long courtship. Both of them wanted to take their time, to get to know each other, to be sure they were making the right decision. And the delay had served them well. They had grown more and more in love during the past year, had learned to accept each other and honor each other’s gifts.

  The wait was worth it. Tonight, when they shared a bed for the first time, they would come together as a couple completely devoted to one another and to their mission in life. Two whole people, committed not to changing each other, but to changing the world in which they lived.

  For the first time in his life, Silas truly believed he could make a difference—with Pearl at his side. He was beginning to acknowledge, much to his own surprise, that God—or fate—had been leading him, that all this had been planned from the beginning. And he was glad someone else seemed to be guiding him, for this certainly was not his idea of how his medical career should take shape.

  When Robert Warren had cut off his financial support, Silas hadn’t had the faintest idea how he would make ends meet. Fortunately, he had been able to cancel all of Regina’s orders for expensive furnishings for the house. The money saved would buy him some time. But when those resources were gone, then what?

  It was Pearl, ultimately, who helped him set aside his fears and find the faith he required to listen to his heart rather than his mind. Unlike Regina, she had simple tastes and the readiness to sacrifice for the sake of a dream. “Silas,” she had told him, “I don’t need diamonds or ball gowns or fancy furniture. All I need is a husband who is willing to follow his calling. Everything will work out; trust me.”

  And it had. Pearl had set up a chicken house in the backyard, and within a year they had a good stock of frying hens and rich brown eggs. Harmon Avery had rounded up a few patients in town, folks who were willing to pay, albeit modestly, for the services of a physician. The slaves bartered goods for doctoring—cornbread and pies and big pots of turnip greens, lovely patchwork quilts and, thanks to Booker, a houseful of finely crafted furniture that cost Silas no more than the wood from which the pieces were made. And although there was never any money, he always had food and shelter and the love of good friends.

  And he had Pearl. He had never expected to find the woman of his dreams in a slave camp, dressed in boots and dungarees. But there she had been, as if waiting for him to come to her. And whatever the future held, from this day on, she would be his forever. Silas couldn’t ask for much more than that.

  Last night, after dinner, he had presented Pearl with the amethyst and pearl brooch he had been given by his grandmother. As he told her the story of how Grandmama had passed it on to him with the exhortation to choose wisely, tears pooled in her soft blue eyes.

  “I wish I had known her,” Pearl whispered.

  “And I wish she had known you,” Silas responded. He paused for a moment, remembering. “But then again, perhaps she does know. Maybe she’s looking down on us now, smiling. I have no doubt she’d approve.”

  Pearl took the heart-shaped stone and turned it over reverently in her hands. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “I’ll treasure it forever.”

  Silas squinted at the brooch. “There’s a pearl missing. It must have fallen out when Regina threw it at my head.” He grinned wryly. “I’ll have to get that fixed.”

  Pearl thought about that for a moment. “No,” she said at last, “I’d rather leave it as it is. It’s like the human condition—precious, yet flawed. And priceless, even in its incompleteness.”

  Silas gazed in wonder at the woman who was to become his wife. Sincerity. Purity. Nobility.

  “Make certain you choose wisely,” Grandmama had said.

  And despite himself, Silas had.

  Booker stood at Silas’s side as his best man. Had Robert and Olivia Warren known of this plan, they would have been horrified, but to Silas’s way of thinking, Booker was the only choice for the honor. This man had become his best friend, his supporter and encourager, and, in an odd way, he was the one who had brought Silas and his bride together.

  Silas took Pearl’s hand, and together they stood before the befuddled minister as he led them through their vows of lifetime love. His voice shook when he said, “I do,” but the tremor was derived from intensity rather than fear. Silas was not afraid to make this commitment; it was the truest thing he had ever done in his life.

  More quickly than he had anticipated, the brief service came to a close. “I now pronounce you man and wife,” the minister intoned solemnly.

  Silas leaned toward Pearl, and just as his lips met hers, she whispered, “No gravy today,” and dissolved into laughter.

  A mighty cheer arose. They were just about to step off the porch and make their way around to the back of the house, where tables full of fried chicken and cornbread and wedding cake were set up in the yard, when Booker produced a broom. With a wide grin, he laid it on the ground in front of them.

  “Now it’s o-fficial,” the big black man said.

  Silas took Pearl’s hand, and the two of them jumped the broom together. And amid hugs and handshakes and congratulatory kisses, they made their way to the backyard to celebrate with their family.

  He awoke at dawn with that blasted rooster crowing loudly enough to raise the dead. For a minute Silas looked around, dazed, then realized that a warm body lay next to him in the bed.

  Pearl. His wife.

  She was curled up on her side with the wedding ring quilt tucked around her shoulders, and Silas felt his heart melt with love for her. How beautiful she was, with her hair spread out like a fan across the pillow!

  Tenderly he reached out and brushed a tendril away from her ear. She stirred and turned toward him. “What time is it?”

  He looked at his pocket watch on the bedside table. “Almost six.”

  “Too early,” she moaned, covering her head with the quilt. “We didn’t go to bed until after midnight.”

  “Go back to sleep,” he murmured.

  Cautiously, so as not to disturb her, Silas got out of bed and went to the kitchen. He stoked the fire in the stove, put on a pot of coffee, and then, still in his nightshirt, headed outside to the chicken coop. The morning dew chilled his bare feet, but he didn’t mind. He felt exhilarated, at one with the entire world. Yes, he decided. He liked being married. Liked it a lot.

  He gathered two handfuls of fresh eggs and returned to the kitchen. While the bacon was frying, he went back outside and cut a single red rosebud from the bush next to the kitchen door. Within a few minutes he had a tray loaded with coffee, bacon and scrambled eggs, and the rose.

  “Breakfast in bed?” Pearl mumbled sleepily when he came into the bedroom. She sat up and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Is this going to be a regular habit?”

  Silas laughed. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “Then I’d better take advantage of it while I’ve got it.”

  When they finished eating, Silas laid the tray aside and put his arms around Pearl. “You are such a gift to me,” he murmured in her ear. “I only wish I could give you more.”

  Pearl sat up and glared at him. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Well, sweetheart, every man wants the woman he loves to have the very best. I know that life with me is likely to be difficult. We don’t have much money, and probably never will, and—”

  She put both hands on his chest and pushed him so hard that he fell back against the pillow. “Don’t ever let me hear you talking like that again!”

  “What did I do?”

  “I married you for yourself, you idiot, not for anything you can give me. We’re together, we have a wonderful house, good friends, a purpose in life. Have I ever given you any indication that I want more than that?”

  “No, but—”

  “No buts.” Her eyes pierced his with a steely gaze. “I am not Regina Masterson,” she said with deliberation. “I don’t care about the ’finer things’ in life. I care about what’s in her
e—” She poked a finger into his breastbone. “Understand?”

  Sheepishly, Silas nodded. “I understand.”

  “Good. Don’t forget it.”

  He moved closer to her. “Have we just had our first fight?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is it over?” He reached out a hand and gently stroked her cheek.

  “I guess so.”

  “Then we can make up?” Silas drew her into his embrace and felt her warmth seeping into him. She relaxed against him and lifted her face to his. The kiss, when it came, was gentle and sweet at first, becoming increasingly passionate as her lips lingered on his.

  No, Silas thought, Pearl was not Regina Masterson. She was a fiery, opinionated, stubborn woman with a heart big enough to hold him forever. She would always stand by him, always support him, always tell him the truth, even when he didn’t want to hear it. She was, indeed, a gift. A pearl of great price.

  “Maybe we should fight every morning,” he murmured into her hair.

  She smiled up at him with an expression that held a world of love. “Only if you bring me breakfast in bed.”

  14

  Traitor Hero

  October 1862

  They were just finishing breakfast when a knock sounded at the front door.

  Silas checked his watch. It was a little before seven. “Who on earth could that be at this hour?”

  He went to the door, with Pearl close behind him, and opened it to reveal a ragged soldier in a tattered blue uniform. The man was supported by a crutch rudely crafted from a tree branch. His face was filthy, but beneath the dirt, the skin was as pale as paper. Reddish circles ringed his blue eyes.

  “Name’s Trevor,” the man gasped. “Trevor Howard. One of the slaves told me I could find help here.”