“It does seem so savage,” Lavinia said, trembling as she took one last look over her shoulder before boarding a canoe. “Those flames are destroying…my…husband’s dream, a dream that turned into a nightmare.”
She eagerly boarded the canoe, and Joshua climbed in behind her. He and Wolf Dancer manned the paddles as they turned the canoe downriver.
Lavinia was thinking about Hiram’s reaction when he saw that his world had been destroyed. Wolf Dancer had told her that he would come back and wait for Hiram’s return.
Lavinia looked over her shoulder and gazed at the mansion, which was still aflame. She was glad that Hiram’s reign of terror was over, and that he would be captured and taken to the Seminole village.
Lavinia knew that it was not the Seminole practice to murder anyone in cold blood, so she could only imagine that Hiram would be held prisoner, at least until Wolf Dancer decided what his final fate would be.
One thing was certain: She would be married to Wolf Dancer while Hiram was forced to watch.
That made Lavinia smile. Her only regret was that she wouldn’t be there when Hiram returned home and saw what had happened, and that everything he had worked for lay in gray ashes! With the destruction of the Price Plantation went Hiram’s dreams of being a man of power and wealth.
Chapter Thirty-one
A little still she strove,
And much repented.
And whispering,
“I will ne’er consent”—
—Lord Byron
The sun was tinting the sky a soft orange as morning came with the sounds of birds awakening, filling the air with their beautiful songs. A gentle breeze scattered the smoke that rose from the burned mansion and outbuildings.
As Hiram rode up the long gravel drive toward the plantation, he watched the smoke with growing anxiety. He felt a pain deep in his gut as he realized that the smoke had to be coming from his plantation, and that something large had to have burned.
“The mansion?” he whispered hoarsely. The pain felt like a hot poker in his stomach, for he knew that while he was gone, disaster of some sort must have fallen on his plantation.
Had the slaves rebelled and burned everything before making their escape to freedom? Or had natural disaster struck?
Afraid to find out, yet knowing he must, he sankhis heels into the flanks of his white mare and sent it galloping toward home.
The cool morning air stung his whiskered cheeks and burned his lone eye, causing it to run. He wiped his eye with the back of a hand.
He had not bathed or shaved for three days now. He could smell his own stench, a combination of whiskey, perspiration, and cheap perfume. When no decent women responded to his posters, he had gone to all the saloons and cribs in the two towns that he had visited.
When none of those women consented to be his wife, he knew what a horrible sight he must be. He had offered those wenches the world if they would consent to be his wife. And none of them had wanted any part of it.
“The one eye,” he growled to himself. “It has to be the one eye. Or…perhaps the perspiration?” Or was it the rumors of his cruelty and whippings that had scared them off?
All he knew was that he was totally alone in the world. He now regretted having killed his brother. His brother had been the only person who had accepted him, no matter how distasteful his appearance, or how much he sweated.
His brother had loved him so much that he had made him part of his life. Until Virgil had died, the Price Plantation had seemed the perfect place to live, even though Hiram knew that his brother’s wife had spoken against his living under the same roof with them.
It was the first time he’d overheard her object to his presence that Hiram had started plotting to make her his wife, no matter what he had to do to achieve this goal. Her dislike of him had made him want her all the more!
He now knew why. He had not wanted her out of love, but out of spite.
He smiled crookedly. He had wanted to make her uncomfortable every day she had to share a bed with him. That would pay her back for what she had said about him behind his back.
He had planned to force marriage on her, whether or not she consented. He had planned to threaten her if she declined to marry him.
“And then she up and disappeared on me,” he growled out loud.
Well, it no longer mattered to him where she was, or who she was with, or what she was doing. He had grown sorely tired of plotting to have her. He now wanted no part of her.