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I stopped at the door, my back to her. “I do love you, Elizabeth. But you’re making it very difficult to continue.”
“I could say the same of you.”
As I opened the door to leave, Elizabeth went to her vanity and produced a crumbled letter and came to me, holding it in my face.
“You talk of respect. Is this what you mean?”
I looked at the crumbled paper in her hand and immediately knew it was Jeyne’s letter.
“She may no longer be here, but I feel her everywhere,” Elizabeth said to me, tears started to form in her eyes. “She’s in everything you do. If she’s not in our bedroom when we do make love, then she’s in the face of Lizzie who I’m forced to look at every day. And if that isn’t enough, there are her letters...oh, so beautifully written...where she confesses her undying love for you. How utterly blatant and torturous is that?”
I gave her a blank expression. “Is that what you do when I’m away? You look through my private things?”
“I was looking through the ledger,” she said in defense. “I saw it there between the pages and—”
“What were you doing in my study at all?”
Her eyes drifted as she tried to find an answer. “I—
I held out my hand. “Never mind,” I said, knowing that whatever she said would be a lie. “Just give me the letter.”
“Why?” she said defiantly. “So, you can read it again for the hundredth time?”
“It doesn’t belong to you. Let it be.”
“How can I when you’re still in love with her?”
Tears were streaming heavily down her face. I came towards her to take the letter but she backed away again and began ripping it into tiny shreds. I closed my eyes, hoping to slow my heart. It felt like it would leap out of my chest. As I heard the tearing of the delicate paper, all I could do was just stand there and watch as the small shreds cascaded to the floor. As if regretting what she had done, Elizabeth threw herself upon the bed and sobbed into a pillow in what seemed an endless sea of emotion.
“Why? Why, Thomas? Why...?” she said through sobs, grabbing at the folds of the bed covers.
I had nothing to say, no words to explain all that was in my heart. A part of me wanted to feel something, anything for her but I could not. I was empty. In that moment, it was clear Elizabeth and I had reached a major tipping point in our relationship. She was draining everything from me with her outbursts and repeated dramas. Although she was my wife, I knew I could never be completely in love with Elizabeth, now or in the future.
The tension from that night had almost pushed Marie Levereaux’s startling revelation to the side. I had thought about it all night as I lay alone in the guestroom, going back and forth in my mind about the possibility of my mother’s true origins and background. Questions lingered and I knew they would have to be addressed full on. However, my mind was too adrift to dive too deep into the waters of Marie Levereaux.
I could only handle issue at a time, and the pressing one of the moment was to tell Lizzie what I knew of Jeyne.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The escape of the slaves last night had, no doubt, been a close call, one that set off a chain of unexpected, but inevitable events. The incident between Elizabeth and Lizzie continued to hang heavy in the air the next morning and clung to my memory like wet dew. We were quiet and subdued at breakfast barely touching our meals. Even my mother said very little. Lizzie, for her part, continued on with business as usual, serving breakfast and standing in the background with nothing less than stoic detachment.
When I first came to the table, the butter knife was turned slightly outward, Lizzie’s signal that there were no runaway slaves looking for shelter. If the knife had been turned inward, it would have meant that there were slaves hiding in the wine cellar, and that extra caution and diligence was required over the course of days to keep them hidden from view.
Lizzie had proven she was a natural for the work in what those in the movement were now calling the “underground railroad.”Her knack for creating secret codes and messages made communication between us easier and less stressful. The language we had created was our own and it bonded us in unpredictable ways. We were a team working together for a common good – to help runaway slaves to freedom. The work drew us closer and brought healing to our otherwise broken hearts.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was later that afternoon when I saw Lizzie. She was leaning over a chair, carefully polishing its wooden arms in the family sitting room, alongside Millie and Betty, two young house girls who were on their knees surrounded by brushes and buckets. The two girls immediately stood up when they saw me and mumbled greetings, their heads bowed. Lizzie looked up but her face remained composed and emotionless. She turned to the girls and whispered something in their ear and they quickly left the room.
Lizzie was a woman with incredible discipline, and a master at hiding her true feelings. And after Jeyne was sold, Lizzie had become distant and withdrawn, especially towards me. Unlike when I was a child and she had acted like a second mother, Lizzie had turned cold and formal. Underneath it all, I knew she didn’t hate me but there was also no love lost. Her only child had been snatched from her arms and all she could do was loon on helplessly. Over the course of months, however, my relationship with Lizzie had changed dramatically due to the nature of the work we had agreed to do in secret together. There was trust and a new familiarity between us.
“I want to apologize for what happened the other night,” I said to Lizzie as she returned to her cleaning. “Elizabeth’s actions were uncalled for, and it won’t ever happen again.”
“No, it won’t,” she said, her tone direct and resolute. “Although an apology from the one who did it would mean more. Is there anything else you want to tell me? I have plenty to do here.”
“That can always wait,” I assured her. “It’s important you know certain things. I also want to thank you. You’ve been beyond brave these last few months...and I admire you for everything you’ve done. You’re taking extreme risks by helping me and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. I appreciate you more than you know.”
“I’m not just doing this for you or myself,” she said frankly. “I listen to my ancestors more than anything. When they show me a path, I walk it.”
