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Yep, he thought bitterly to himself, surely even when Virgil was alive, Lavinia had had a man waiting to make her his.
She had probably met him on one of her shopping expeditions in the various small towns surrounding their plantation. She had no doubt just been waiting for the right opportunity to make her escape as soon as Hiram left.
“I stayed away too long,” he growled as he tossed the blanket off himself.
But he’d had no idea what she was planning!
She was a tricky one.
He wondered if Virgil had had even an inkling of what a two-timing wench he’d married.
Grumbling, he left the bed and went to a window to throw open the shutters. His bedroom reeked of unpleasant odors. As usual, there was the sweat that always covered him. Combined with it was the vile stench of alcohol spilling from his mouth with each breath he took. And though he had not smoked a cigar after coming home, his clothes still smelled terribly of smoke.
Hiram leaned out the window just enough to take a deep breath of fresh air.
But he got more than that. He realized that it was eerily quiet outside the mansion.
Usually there was a lot of activity as slaves came and went from the fields. And the women, even though they hated being enslaved, sang while working in the tobacco fields, especially now at harvesttime.
He heard no songs. He heard no laughter of the slave children. He…heard…nothing.
Only silence!
His heart began to race as he leaned farther out and looked in all directions. He saw only a few slaves working the fields. He saw no children running and playing.
Smoke was spiraling from only a few of the slaves’ cabins. He should see it coming from all of them. Each morning the slaves built their cook fires in the cabin stoves and started cooking their beans slowly over the flames before they left for work; beans were the only staple he handed out to them. They were lucky if they got any meat to add to the beans, for he thought that an unnecessary extravagance.
“They don’t deserve anything extra,” he grumbled to himself. And especially not today when they were lazing around inside their homes, probably thinking that he was still gone.
“I’ll show ’em a thing or two. I’ll teach ’em how wrong it is not to do their duties even in my absence,” he growled to himself.
He stepped away from the window, gazed down at his wrinkled shirt and breeches, and saw that he had not removed his shoes before falling into bed in his drunken stupor.
And even though he reeked of sweat and tobacco, and had not shaved for two days, nor bathed, Hiram left his room.
Still unsteady from having drunk too much these past days, he stumbled down the massive staircase. As he took each step, hanging on to the banister to keep from falling, he still heard no sounds, not even in the house, where servants should be busy doing their chores.
Nor did he smell the food that should be cooking in the kitchen.
As he continued down the stairs, he grew angrier and angrier, for still there was no one in sight, nor did he hear anything. It was as though the house were empty of servants, but how could that be?
They knew better than to desert him, for he would search them out and kill them if they did! Yet…yet…he believed that was exactly what had happened.
Had Lavinia given them permission to leave? Had she freed the slaves before she left?
Finally at the foot of the stairs, he frowned as he looked frantically around, still hoping he was wrong about having been deserted by the people he depended on for his way of life.
When he still didn’t see or hear anyone, he stamped through the house, searching and growing angrier by the minute. He stopped suddenly when he heard soft crying.
He followed the sound and pulled open the door that led into the kitchen pantr
y. He found the servants who usually worked in the house huddled there, crying. It took only a moment to realize that Twila was not among them.
The servants shrank away from him, their dark eyes wide as he yanked his belt from the waist of his breeches.
“You tell me what’s going on,” he shouted, holding the belt between his hands and snapping it threateningly as he looked from one to the other. “Why aren’t you working? Where is everyone who should be out in the fields? I saw only a few. And where is Twila?”
“Massa Hiram, please don’t hurt us,” one of the younger servants said, trembling. “Please don’t make us tell you what you will hate to hear.”
