Nicole turned away from Clay. Her body felt more alive than it had in months. “Maggie’s here, so you know there’s bound to be more than enough.”
Wes grinned, then put his arm around her shoulders, and they started toward the mill.
There was a table set up on sawhorses, and there was enough food for a hundred hungry people. There was bread, fresh from the oven, still hot and fragrant. Crocks of cool butter awaited them. There was terrapin ragout, poached sturgeon, oysters, crab, ham, turkey, beef, and duck. There were eight kinds of pie, twelve vegetables, four cakes, three wines, three kinds of beer, as well as milk and tea.
Nicole stayed away from Clay. She took her heaping plate and sat by herself in a shadow of the grinding stones. He’d called her his wife, and for a moment she felt as if she was. It seemed so long ago that she’d been his wife, yet for some reason she knew she never was his wife, really. Only those brief days at the Backes’s house had she felt she belonged.
“Tired?”
She looked up at Clay. He’d removed his wet shirt, and a towel was hanging around his neck. He looked vulnerable and lonely. Nicole ached to take him in her arms, to soothe him.
“Do you mind if I sit with you?”
She shook her head silently. They were partially hidden from the others, private.
“You aren’t eating much,” he said quietly, nodding toward her full plate. “Maybe you need some exercise to work up an appetite.” His eyes twinkled.
She tried to smile, but his nearness made her nervous.
He took a piece of ham from her plate and ate it. “Maggie and Janie outdid themselves.”
“They had your food to work with. It was kind of you to be so generous.”
His eyes darkened as he stared at her. “Are we really such strangers that we can’t talk? I don’t deserve what you’ve done for me today. No!” he said when she started to interrupt. “Let me finish. Janie said I’ve been wallowing in self-pity. I guess I have been. I think I’ve been feeling that I
didn’t deserve what had happened to me. Tonight, I’ve had a lot of time to think. I believe I’ve come to realize that life is what you make it. You said once that I couldn’t make up my mind. You were right. I wanted everything and thought it would be given to me if I asked for it. I think I was too weak to take any kind of hardship.”
She put her hand on his arm. “You aren’t a weak man.”
“I don’t think you know me, any more than I know myself. I’ve done some terrible things to you, yet this—” He couldn’t finish. His voice was weak. “You’ve given me back hope, something I haven’t seen for a long time.”
He put his hand over hers. “I promise I’m not going to let you down again. I don’t just mean the tobacco, but in my life, too.”
He looked down at her hand, caressed her fingers with his. “I didn’t think it was possible, but I love you more than I ever did.”
There was a lump in her throat, and she couldn’t speak.
He looked into her eyes. “There are no words to say what I feel for you or to thank you enough for what you’ve done.” He stopped abruptly, as if he were choking. “Goodbye,” he whispered.
He was gone before she could speak.
Clay walked quickly out of the mill, leaving his shirt behind, ignoring the people who called out to him. Once outside, he was hardly aware that the rain had slowed to a drizzle. In the early morning light, he could see how the land had changed. Where once Nicole’s fields had sloped away to the river, they now fell down drastically. The river itself was calmer, like a great animal that had fed well and was now digesting its feast.
The wharf was intact, and Clay rowed himself across the much wider river to his own wharf. He walked slowly to the house. It was as if he were awakening after a year’s sleep. He felt James beside him, appalled at what Clay’d done to the lovely, productive plantation.
He also saw the neglect of his house. He stepped across the puddle in the hardwood floor.
Bianca stood at the foot of the stairs. She wore a voluminous, high-waisted wrapper of pale blue silk. Under it was a pink satin gown. The collar, cuffs, and down the front and hem of the wrapper were covered with a very wide border of spiky, multicolored feathers.
“So! There you are! You’ve been out all night again.”
“Did you miss me?” Clay asked sarcastically.
She gave him a look that answered his question. “Where is everyone, and why isn’t breakfast on the table?”
“I thought perhaps your concern was for me, but instead it’s for Maggie’s handiwork.”
“I want an answer! Where is breakfast?”