Greyling startled at the sound, stopped, and looked back at her.
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“Don’t mind me, Grey,” Judy said softly. “And here we are.”
Her house was as old as any in Dogtown but by no means the worst off. The pitched shake roof did not leak, nor did the windows rattle. Reaching for the latch she whispered, “God bless Cornelius Finson.” The door opened, and there he was, as though she’d summoned him.
Crouched at her hearth, he was poking at a piece of peat that had begun to banish the chill from the one-room hut.
Judy gasped. “I was just thinking of you.”
Greyling held back and stood by the door for a
moment. She had never seen the man inside the house, but his scent was not unfamiliar and the woman showed no fear, so she went to her usual place by the fire.
Cornelius was broad-shouldered, thick-necked, and pure African in his face. Nearly six feet, his height frightened most people who saw him. Too bad none of them got a good look at his eyes, Judy thought, which were dark as the new moon and ringed with a tight curling of petal-like lashes.
“I was thinking that this place would be a sorry sight without your help,” Judy said.
He nodded and got to his feet, his eyes still fixed on the fire.
“I’ve been at Easter’s all day.”
The fire hissed.
“It was good of you to fetch the Wharf boys from town,” she said, as a dark suspicion entered her mind.
“I know you didn’t like Abraham all that much.”
“The old man never had a good word for me,”
Cornelius said, his deep voice vibrating through her.
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“Abraham was all bluster. Nothing so bad as John Stanwood.”
“Stanwood would like nothing more than to make a dollar turning me over to some sheriff from A
labam’.”
“He can’t do that,” Judy objected. “Mrs. Finson gave you your freedom, didn’t she? And it’s law now, too, so no one can do any such a thing to you.”
“Don’t put it past him,” Cornelius said. “For a Spanish dollar, he’d set a bounty hunter on me in a tick. They got their own rules, those devils.”
“Abraham wouldn’t have done anything like that,”
Judy said firmly.
“Huh,” Cornelius snorted, and he sat down to poke at the fire again.