Return to Me Page 5

  Cameron glanced up at Jackson. She didn’t want to allow him to manipulate her like this, but she didn’t want to constantly fight with him, either. She wanted to have a nice evening with Taye and Thomas and the few close friends they had made over the last years who had been invited tonight.

  She tipped her head back to allow Jackson to brush his sensual lips against her mouth. “I’ll bow to you this time, husband, but I’m warning you, I’m not about to take up needlepoint. And you’ve not heard the end of this. You can’t just sweet-talk me every time the conversation gets uncomfortable for you.”

  “I can try.” He gave her that boyish grin of his, nodded and then opened their bedchamber door. “Mrs. Logan.”

  She curtsied, thinking, God, I do love him, but will life with him always be this difficult?

  And then they walked down the grand staircase arm and arm to greet their guests.

  The simple eight-course evening meal, featuring roasted squab, lamb cutlets, pearled onion potatoes and fresh squash soufflé, served with three wines, was exquisite. After the small party of a dozen of Baltimore’s finest ladies and gentlemen had dined, they moved to the elegant parlor. Traditionally, the ladies and gentlemen would separate at this point, but Cameron told her guests that the war had divided her and her husband for four years and no walls would divide them now.

  In the parlor, brandy and champagne were served beneath the watchful eye of a pantheon of plaster gods and goddesses, as Taye entertained them on the grand piano with a selection of classical music.

  Cameron left her chair beside Mrs. Rhettish, where they had been discussing her mother’s gout, and moved to the darkened window where Thomas stood watching Taye as she played a charming piece from a young French composer, Jules Massenet. Last year on their trip to Paris, Cameron and Taye had heard the young man play, and Taye had become enamored of his sound and composition.

  “Have you asked her yet?” Cameron whispered.

  Thomas Burl’s face flushed. He was a tall, thin man with long gangly legs and arms that had once made Cameron think he looked like a stork. He had sandy blond hair that was thinning rapidly and he wore wire-frame glasses perched on the end of his thin nose. Her father had once actually considered Thomas a possible suitor for Cameron, but then Jackson had come into her life.

  Even though Thomas was too sedate for her taste, she loved him like a brother. Thomas had worked closely with the senator for years, often in Mississippi and Washington, D.C.

  “Mrs. Logan.” Thomas’s face was now beet red. “You embarrass me. I’ve barely been here twenty-four hours.”

  “Since when am I Mrs. Logan? It’s Cameron, remember?” she chastised. “You’ve been here twenty-four hours and you’ve still not asked Taye to marry you? You’d better make haste.” She nodded to the elderly, bearded gentleman speaking with Jackson. “Mr. Gorman is mad for her. His third wife passed recently, and I understand he is looking for number four. He would be an excellent prospect for our dear Taye, but I’m quite certain you are her first choice.”

  Thomas glowed with pleasure, glancing at Taye, then at his highly polished shoes. “You don’t think I would be forward to ask her tonight?”

  “I think you should take her walking in the garden after our guests depart. I think you should ask her to marry you, and I think you should kiss her soundly—on the lips.”

  “Oh, my,” he breathed, looking quickly to Taye. “I’m not certain I can—”

  “Kiss?” Cameron demanded under her breath. She laughed and Taye looked their way, then back at the keyboard.

  Cameron leaned in to her father’s friend. “Well, you’d best figure it out, Mr. Burl.” Realizing she had shocked him beyond words, she smiled. “Have no fear. She’ll like it.” She squeezed his arm. “And so will you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think Jackson is trying to catch my attention.” She dipped a polite curtsy.

  Thomas bowed stiffly.

  As Cameron glided past the piano toward Jackson, she winked at Taye.

  “Did you enjoy yourself this evening?” Jackson asked as he loosened the strings of Cameron’s lace-and-satin stays. Jackson refused to allow Cameron’s personal maid into the bedchamber, insisting it was his job to dress and undress the mistress of the household now that he was home.

  Cameron held on to the bedpost, exhaling with relief as he eased the constriction of the undergarment, wondering how much longer she’d be able to wear the boned stays before she would have to set them aside for her pregnancy. “It was very nice. I love Mrs. Rhettish. A woman after my own heart. Did you know that she ran her husband’s mercantile store on Broad Street while he was off in the war, and now that he’s returned, he’s working for her?”

  Jackson laughed. “I have news for you, Cam. Knowing Violet Rhettish, she ran Carl’s business, and Carl, well before the war.” He handed her the stays. “It’s no wonder the man was disappointed when the war was over. He was actually forced to come home to her.”

  She hit him across the stomach with the stays and he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her onto the bed. She fell back on the soft feather tick and he buried his face between her breasts.

  “Jackson, I’m trying to undress.”

  “And I’m merely trying to assist, madame.” He grinned, standing up to release her.

  Cameron slid off the bed and padded barefoot to the window. She drew back the heavy velvet drape slightly and peered into the lantern-lit garden. “Do you think Thomas will get up the nerve to ask Taye to marry him?” Below, she could just make out the pair, sitting on a small stone bench beneath a rose arbor.

  “I’m certain he will. He told me he’s already making plans to reopen his law office. He has only to decide in which city.”

  Cameron watched Taye and Thomas, almost wishing she could hear what they were saying. “He should open his office in the North, of course, where Taye will be safe and accepted.”

  Jackson removed his silk cravat and then his starched white shirt to bare his muscular chest. “Perhaps. But Mississippi is in desperate need of educated men like Thomas, and he does have his father’s offices in Jackson. There’s the family plantation, too, or what’s left of it.”

  Still holding back the drape, Cameron lifted an eyebrow, turning to her husband. “Oh, so Taye should go home to Mississippi, and I shouldn’t?”

  Jackson walked stark naked, and glorious in his manhood, across the wood floor and grabbed her by the hand. “Will you come away from that window, woman, and come to bed?”

  She let the drapes fall.

  “Give them a little privacy,” he said, wrapping her in one arm. “And us as well.”

  He slid his hand beneath her chemise to cup her breast, and she let her eyes drift shut. The man infuriated her, and yet, when he touched her like this, she was all but melted sugar in his mouth.

  “Again you change the subject,” she accused. “And you forget, I’m still angry with you from earlier.”

  “Give me a moment and then tell me if you’re still angry.” He covered her mouth with his, thrusting his tongue, and when he drew away, she was limp in his arms.

  “Cheater,” she managed to say finally.

  “No.” He gazed into her face, capturing her as he always did with the breadth and depth of his gray eyes. “But this is cheating.”

  Jackson rested his hands on her hips and slowly slid to his knees. Cameron gasped as he lifted the hem of her chemise and kissed the inside of her knee. It was just a tiny, fleeting kiss, little more than a brush of a butterfly’s wings, yet it set her flesh on fire.

  Cameron swayed on her feet as his fingertips brushed the tender flesh of her inner thigh.

  “Jackson…”

  Lifting the linen skirt higher, he thrust his head beneath the fabric and pressed his warm mouth between her legs, finding her already hot and wet for him.

  She couldn’t fight him. She couldn’t win.

  “The bed…” she groaned as his tongue flicked out, delved. Cameron ran her fingers thr
ough his silky, dark hair as a ripple, a wave, of wicked pleasure washed over her. Then another and another as he stroked her with his tongue, plied her with his probing fingers.

  “Jackson, please…” Cameron gripped Jackson’s shoulders to steady herself as she struggled to find her voice. To stop him. But the waves of pleasure were already building and she pressed her hands to his shoulders, gripping them to keep from tumbling to the floor. His fingers found the soft, moist folds of her flesh and she surrendered to him yet again.

  “Are you certain this is what you want?” Taye asked softly, gazing into Thomas’s brown eyes.

  He could barely hold her gaze. He kept looking away from her, his gaze flickering from her to objects in the dark garden. “Of course I’m certain. It’s what I’ve lived for all these years,” he said, his voice earnest.

  Taye reached out and stroked Thomas’s shaven cheek. “You understand it would be difficult. My skin is pale, but we could not hide my heritage if anyone chose to condemn you for who I am, for who I was born.”

  “Y-you were born a Campbell,” he stammered. “The daughter of David Campbell, one of the greatest senators of our time.”

  “And the daughter of a house slave,” she reminded him. “Half of my family came from the Highlands of Scotland, but half came from the jungles of Africa.”

  He stared hard at the pink roses that vined beyond her shoulder and then forced himself to look at her. “I want you to be my wife, Taye Campbell. W-will you do me the honor?”

  She smiled. “As long as you understand that I would not hold you to anything we said in the heat of the moment, years ago. The war had just begun, we were all in a fret—”

  He shook his head. “I…I love you, Taye. I have always loved you. And I want to marry you. I want you to have my children, God willing.”

  Taye smiled. This was the moment she had been dreaming of since the war began. When Thomas had first declared his love for her on the back stair of Elmwood’s plantation house the night Fort Sumter was fired upon, she had been so frightened that she had denied her attraction to him. She had run from him. But Thomas had not given up on her; he had pursued her with a quiet determination that she couldn’t help but love. All through the war he had written to her and come to New York City to see her when he could. They had talked of marriage and a family, and now it would all come true.

  She gazed into Thomas’s warm, dark eyes. “Then yes. I’ll marry you, Thomas Burl.”

  “Th-thank you,” he stammered, his eyes wide.

  Taye rested her hands on his shoulders and kissed him squarely on the lips.

  “My. Oh, my,” Thomas muttered, flustered when she pulled away.

  She laughed and took his hand. “You had better get used to that,” she teased. “If you’re going to marry me, Thomas, I want to be kissed. Often.”

  “Would you care to go for a stroll in the garden before you retire?” He bobbed off the bench as if it had been set aflame.

  She laughed, her voice light and musical on the night air. “I would love to go for a walk.” She stood and slipped her arm through his and then walked down the path into the darkness, and into her future with Thomas Burl, Esquire.

  5

  “’Scuse me, Miss Cameron, Miss Taye.” Addy stepped into the doorway of Cameron’s office where the two women had been taking their afternoon tea.

  “There’s a gal to see ya, Miss Cameron.” The young servant sounded tentative. “I tole her she got to go ’round back where the other negras enters the house, but she won’t budge off the front steps. She right out there where everyone walkin’ by can see her, actin’ all uppity, like she belong.”

  Puzzled, Cameron patted her lips with her linen napkin. “Who is she? Someone we know?”

  “Someone lookin’ for work, most likely. She’s same as every Southern negra girl, I s’pose. Masta set us free and we got nowhere to go. No way to feed our little ’uns.” Addy rested a fist on her waist. “This girl, she say her name is Naomi and that—”

  “Naomi?” Cameron flew out of her chair, looking to Taye. “Could it possibly be?”

  Taye rose in a far more ladylike fashion, but was equally excited. “I don’t know. We never heard from her after we parted on the docks that day we found Jackson here in Baltimore.”

  Naomi had been a house slave at Elmwood and had been known as a voodoo priestess. When Grant had sold Elmwood’s slaves after their father died, Naomi managed to escape. She’d traveled with Cameron to rescue Taye in Baton Rouge and eventually had made the long trip north from Mississippi on the Underground Railroad with the sisters. The three women had formed an unbreakable bond during those weeks and months. When last Cameron had seen her, in September of 1861, Naomi was headed north to Philadelphia to be reunited with other family members who had journeyed safely out of the South.

  Cameron flew out of the office, clutching fistfuls of her sprigged green day gown. She threw open the massive front door to see their Naomi standing on the marble steps, dressed in bright blues and yellows with a turban around her head, beaming like a Methodist preacher with his first convert.

  “Heavenly Father,” Cameron swore, thanking Him at the same time. She opened her arms and Naomi stepped into them, smelling of cloves, sandalwood and home. “Naomi,” she breathed, fighting tears again. “Is it really you?”

  “Flesh and bone,” she answered, with a husky laugh. “No spirits here.”

  Cameron released her and stepped back to make room for Taye.

  “I was afraid I would never see you again,” Taye murmured, hugging Naomi tightly.

  “And isn’t that nothin’ but nonsense? I told you we’d meet again. That night we was all walkin’ through the field and ole Harriet Tubman was leading us north, I seen it in the stars.”

  Taye stepped back, releasing Naomi.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, come in.” Cameron waved her into the exotic front hall with its marble floor and oriental painted wallpaper where long-legged storks with golden feathers looked down on them.

  “Just come right in the front door and let the neighbors talk.” Cameron laughed, seeing the shocked look on Addy’s face. “You can join us for tea and cake, Naomi.”

  “Well, Miss Cameron, I’d be pleased to come in, but there’s a little somethin’ holdin’ me back.” Naomi pointed to a crude buckboard in the circular drive.

  Cameron stepped outside to get a closer look at the buckboard and the black man who sat on the bench calmly holding the leather reins. Here was a huge, handsome, young man dressed in soft brown breeches with a pale blue workman’s shirt. His hands were clean and he was wearing brown leather boots.

  “That there’s my husband, Noah,” Naomi said proudly. “And that little bundle tucked beside him is our little babe, Ngosi. Born almost three months ago.”

  “You’re married, with a baby?” Cameron smiled, so pleased Naomi had found happiness after all the tragedy of her early days. In the Elmwood household, Naomi had been the slave woman who “serviced” white male guests, and she had been abused sexually by Grant. Cameron had been appalled by it all, but had been unable to fight years of Southern tradition in a household run by men. Slave traders had killed Naomi’s lover, with whom she had attempted to escape north. Seeing that Naomi had found a man to love again made Cameron’s heart swell.

  “Well, what is he doing in the wagon?” Cameron exclaimed. “Come in, come in.”

  “Now, Miss Cameron. I got to get some things clear here before I step foot in this big ole city house and eat that cake of yours. My Noah and me, we had a nice cabin in New Jersey. My Noah, he was a free man before the war. Got a trade. He builds with his hands, fine furniture. We was happy as crows at a pig butcherin’, but one morning I got up and I throwed my bones and the spirits tole me ya needed me.” Naomi studied Cameron with black eyes that seemed to see through to her very soul. “Ya need me, Miss Cameron?” Her voice was silky smooth, like the dark silt of the river that had flowed through Elmwood plantation.

/>   The hairs on the nape of Cameron’s neck prickled, and she gave a little laugh to cover her discomfort. She had always been a little fearful of Naomi’s voodoo practices, as were all the whites in Elmwood and in the surrounding county. Cameron didn’t even know if she believed in voodoo, but she knew the slaves she had grown up with did, and so she had been raised with a healthy respect for the religion they had brought with them on the slave ships. “I…I don’t know that I need you,” Cameron said, flustered. “But I’m certainly glad to see you and to have you and your family stay as long as you like as my guests.”

  “You feverish, Miss Cameron? I’m not talkin’ about bein’ your guest,” Naomi scoffed. “I’m talkin’ ’bout comin’ here to work for you. Run your house, whatever you be needin’. My Noah can get work anywhere in the city, good as he is with his hands and a slab of wood.”

  Cameron glanced at Taye and then back at Naomi. “Our housekeeper just announced this morning that she would be leaving us for retirement. Would you consider—”

  Naomi thrust out her hand and laid it on Cameron’s abdomen, taking her completely by surprise. “How far ya gone with this chile, Miss Cameron?”

  “Only a little more than a month…”

  Naomi didn’t smile. “Ya be needin’ me, all right.” She looked over her shoulder. “We’re stayin’. Take the wagon ’round back, Noah, and get that baby out of there. I’ll be with ya shortly, soon as I have some of that cake with my girls.”

  A few days later, Cameron returned home from the farm where she stabled her horses. Plucking off her gloves, she walked slowly up the grand staircase, surprised as she turned on the landing to hear the rhythmic sound of a saw.

  Cameron whipped off her hat and dropped her gloves into it as she reached the second story, walking down the long hallway, past her own bedchamber, toward the sound. As she walked, the gilt-framed portraits of Jackson’s ancestors that lined the walls seemed to stare disapprovingly down at her. Placing her riding bonnet on a small table, she took a deep breath and realized she felt like a stranger in this hall, in this house. It just wasn’t home, and the longer she was away from Mississippi, the more homesick she became. It wasn’t her pregnancy that was making her feel tired, it was her unhappiness.