Chapter 7
West End
December 1853
Victor Duvall rang the silver handbell by his bed for the second time. It was 7:15, but Isaac still didn’t come.
Insolent boy.
Every morning Isaac brought his morning coffee and a copy of the Alexandria Gazette, precisely at seven, but he wasn’t here today—nor had he come yesterday. Victor had to walk all the way down to the kitchen in his dressing gown to collect his coffee and paper.
No thirty-year-old self-respecting farmer and gentleman should be collecting anything. Or getting dressed on Christmas morning by himself to attend services in town.
Yesterday, he’d searched the entire house for the boy. When he finally asked Eliza about Isaac’s whereabouts, she’d said he went with another slave into Alexandria to buy gifts for Christmas. He had scolded his wife for letting Isaac go. Victor was the master of this house, and no one had asked him if the boy was allowed to leave their farmhouse. When it came to matters about Isaac, they all knew permission came directly from him.
Either way, no one would have sent a slave into town on Christmas Day.
He lifted the bell over his shoulder, and its trill shook the glass panes on his window. Still Isaac didn’t walk through the door.
The boy needed more discipline. And more duties so he would appreciate the little that was required of him here. If Isaac wasn’t careful, Victor just might send him out into the cornfield to labor with the eight other slaves his father had passed along to him a decade ago.
He flung back the covers and stepped into the hallway, clutching the leather strap of the bell in his hand. “Isaac!” he shouted from the banister, ringing his bell again.
At the other end of the corridor, the door to the servants’ staircase crept open, and he turned to reprimand Isaac for being late. He wouldn’t whip him this time for his delay, as long as he apologized properly.
But instead of Isaac emerging into the corridor, it was Hannah, the old Negro woman he’d bought at the market last year to work in the kitchen. She hobbled forward, her gaze on the floor.
“Where is Isaac?” he demanded.
Her face turned to the door behind her, the room where Eliza slept. Most mornings his wife stayed in bed until late, sometimes not emerging until the lunch hour. He always locked himself into his study before she rose, and unless he needed to go into town, he remained there until the dinner hour required that he join her for a meal.
This morning was different, though. Eliza would be up soon to dress for church.
He bent toward Hannah. “Look at me.”
As she lifted her chin, her eyes shifted right and then left, refusing to meet his gaze.
He stepped closer to her, towering over her by more than a foot. “Where did Isaac go?”
“Miss Eliza—” she whispered, her gaze falling back to the carpet.
Anger surged inside him. “What did Eliza do this time?”
The woman shook her head. “She done put that boy on the back of the carriage when Master Alden left, in the terrible cold.”
The bell flew from his hand, banging against the wall like a crack of thunder, falling to the floor. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”
“I figured it weren’t my place.”
“It’s always your place when Eliza’s lost her sense.”
“Please don’t tell her I said anything,” Hannah begged.
Victor stomped right around her, his gaze focused on Eliza’s door. His wife thwarted every attempt he made to achieve happiness, as if his pleasure gave her great pain and his pain brought her joy.
Eliza was sitting up on her throne of pillows. Her mossy-brown hair, frayed from years of ironing, was tangled at the base of her nightcap, and the entire room stunk of stale rum. Her face, pockmarked with acne scars, was covered in a white paste. “What was that dreadful noise?”
He clenched his fists together, the nails digging into his palms, in an attempt to control his anger. He’d only hit Eliza once since they’d been married. Afterward, she’d threatened him, saying if he ever hit her again, she would go straight back to Scott’s Grove and tell her father that he’d hurt her. Then she would stay at her parents’ home, and any chance of him inheriting even a portion of the Payne estate would be gone.
The only reason he’d married Eliza was her family’s plantation—and because his father, Arthur the Honorable, had threatened that if Victor didn’t marry a respectable woman before he died, he would give the Duvall house and farm to charity.
The only reason Eliza had married him was because no one else would have her, and she didn’t take well to the title of old maid. She preferred overseeing the two floors of the Duvall farmhouse to listening to her younger sister prattle at home. Rhody, he was quite certain, would have no problem finding a husband.
He crossed his arms. “Isaac didn’t go into Alexandria yesterday.”
“Of course not.” She laughed. “I gave him to my father.”
“You can’t give away my slave.”
“It was a Christmas gift.”
“A gift I never authorized.”
She reached for a jar of hand cream on her nightstand and dabbed it onto her thick palms, rubbing them together. “He’s incompetent,” she said as she leaned back against her cushions. “And we had no use for incompetency here.”
Victor stepped closer. “He was our only houseboy.”
She shrugged, his rage seeming to have no effect on her. “I suppose, but you never treated him like a servant. You treated him like he’s your son.”
“He is my son.”
Eliza glared at him. After twelve years of marriage, she hadn’t been able to give him a single child, and she despised any reference to the reality that Isaac was his only flesh and blood.
He pressed his fists together again. “I swear, if you killed him—”
“Then he can go be with his mama.”
“You don’t know that his mother is dead.”
“Seems likely,” Eliza replied, leaning back on her pillows. “To think that girl chose to run away instead of live with you.”
He raised his fist, but he didn’t strike her. Instead, he shouted for Hannah. Seconds later, the woman rushed into their room.
“Get Thomas for me,” he commanded.
Before Hannah replied, Eliza spoke. “Thomas took Alden and Isaac to Scott’s Grove.”
“How are we supposed to get to church?”
“You know how to drive the runabout just fine.”
He sat on the bed beside his wife. “I’m going to get Isaac back.”
She reached for the jar of cream again. “My father won’t be very pleased if you ask him to return your generous gift.”
His face steamed. “I’ll tell him that you deceived me.”
“And I’ll tell him that you coddle a slave boy.”
He leaned close. “Perhaps I don’t care what your father thinks.”
“Oh, Victor.” She sunk down into her pillows again, smirking. “Of course you don’t.”