Tonight, I could sense the presence of another person in my home. It sounds odd, but I could almost hear Miss Cooper’s breathing. I turned on my side and fluffed my pillow under my cheek. Never mind that, I told myself. Miss Cooper was here to teach, not fall in love with me. I was too old for her. She would want a young man. One without five children. Surely, she’d want her own children—not all the work of someone else’s without the love. Even if I were younger and handsome, the burden of five children wouldn’t be appealing to a woman like Miss Cooper. The sooner I got that through my head, the better.
I’d just drifted to sleep when a tap on the door followed by Jasper’s voice brought me fully awake.
“My lord, I need you downstairs.”
Alarmed by the high-pitched, panicked tone of his voice, I leapt from bed and grabbed my robe from the end of the bed.
“What is it?” I whispered to Jasper as we sprinted down the hallway.
“It’s Mrs. Cole. Something’s happened.”
We reached the stairway. Rachel Cole, her dress covered in blood, stood inside my foyer. Her brown skin, which normally glowed from health, appeared sallow. She had her arms wrapped around her slim waist and was hunched over as if in pain. This was not the straight-backed, unflappable woman married to my neighbor and friend Samuel.
I rushed down the stairs. “Are you hurt?” I asked, fearing the worst. In the light I could now see that the entire front of her dress was covered with blood.
“It’s Samuel. He’s dead,” she said. “Someone shot him.”
A chill started from the pit of my stomach and spread throughout my body. Gunshots close to their place had startled the horses.
Rachel leaned against Jasper as if her legs wouldn’t hold her. “I tried to save him but there was just so much blood.”
“How?” I asked. “Who?”
“I don’t know. He’d gone outside to bring in more firewood. I heard two shots near the house. I thought, no, it can’t be anything to do with us.” She choked as tears streamed from her eyes. “But it was. Someone shot him dead.”
“Come sit.” I was numb and operating outside of my body, as if I were dreaming the scene instead of living it. Samuel Cole, larger than life, broad-chested and built like a lumberjack. He relied on no one but his own strength and intellect, hunting and trapping most of their food even though he was a wealthy man. I’d once seen him fell a twelve-inch trunk of a pine with three swings of his ax. It was impossible to imagine him as anything but fully, loudly alive.
Jasper helped Rachel into the library and eased her into the chair closest to the fire. I added logs to the dying embers as he poured her a tumbler of whiskey and set it in her hands. “I went out to the woodshed. He was sprawled on the snow. Covered in blood. His chest ripped open.”
Eight years ago, he’d gone to Chicago to conduct some business. His father had been one of the first men to find gold in these mountains. Gold had made him a rich man. Clever investments had made him richer. As the only heir, when his father died, everything went to Samuel. Thus, once or twice a year, he took a trip to the city to conduct business, returning months later. This time, he brought a woman with him. Rachel.
I couldn’t help but wonder if his choice of a wife had gotten him killed.
I remembered the summer day I first learned of Rachel as if it were yesterday. I’d been outside with the twins and Josephine, watching them run in our meadow of wildflowers, when I spotted Samuel traipsing across the meadow. He’d been in Chicago for a few months. I knew he’d have good stories of his antics: drunken brawls, women of the night, and various other scrapes. The fact that I’d never participate in such activities did not diminish my enjoyment of his tales of debauchery.
Thus, I was not prepared for what he said next.
“I’ve brought a wife home with me,” he said.
“What’s this? I thought you were a sworn bachelor.”
“I saw her, and I knew.” He grinned. “I’m a married man.”
“I thought a rake like you would never succumb to a domestic life. Who will I live vicariously through now?”
He laughed and tugged at his long beard. “It’s a damn shame, but love sure smacked me upside the head.”
“You’ll have to bring her by,” I said. “Ida’s not well right now, but hopefully soon she’ll feel up to visitors.”
“Sorry to hear,” he said.
He knew nothing of Ida’s real problems. No one outside of my household knew of the weeks she could not get out of bed or the cycle of mania where she would be up for night after night. Samuel thought she was merely sickly.
“There’s something you should know about Rachel.” He looked up at the sky, hesitating before he spoke. “Rachel’s the granddaughter of slaves.”
I stared at him as the significance of what he said made its way into my mind. The granddaughter of slaves. My heart thudded between my ears. He’d brought home a black woman.
“We can’t marry under the law. But I sure as hell will do what I want in my own home and on my own property. My father left me this land so I could live free, and you can bet your ass that’s what I’m going to do.”