She knew his name, as did everyone else on the plantation. She recognized him from afar, his imposing size in the yard or near the blacksmith’s shop. People called him the brute when they thought he couldn’t hear them. White visitors said it lightly, half-laughing, as if naming fear made it more bearable. Children watched him from behind their skirts. Even some slaves kept their distance with respect, though Eleanor had noticed it wasn’t because they expected cruelty from him. It was because he seemed a man from the wrong century. Too tall, too powerful, too visibly strong for a world that needed him to be submissive.
He had never spoken to her more than a few words in passing.
“Can I meet him first?” she asked.
Her father hesitated, then nodded. “Tomorrow.”
That night, Eleanor didn’t sleep well. The house settled around her in darkness, the old beams breathing and growing cold. Beyond the windows, she heard the croaking of frogs in the lowlands and, farther away, the faint tapping of work in the blacksmith’s shop finally winding down. She lay awake, thinking not of the romance, which was absurd, but of dependency. Of what it would mean to be given by law and blood to the care of a man whose life was not her own. Of the degradation that such an arrangement represented for them both.
She was still thinking about it when the maid helped her dress the next morning and wheeled her into the drawing room.
Her father brought Josiah in shortly after ten.
He had to duck to get under the threshold.
That was the first thing that struck her. Not only that he was tall, which he was, almost a head taller than her father, but that the room seemed made for smaller people. He moved carefully, as if he were used to making himself small wherever he could. He wore clean work clothes and a brushed coat for the occasion. His hands were enormous, scarred and darkened from working at the blacksmith’s. His beard was neatly trimmed and his hair was perfectly styled. At first, he kept his gaze lowered, in the posture he’d been taught.
Then Eleanor looked into his face.
People found him frightening because they didn’t know what else to do with a face like his. It was broad and heavy-boned, with a straight nose, a grave mouth, and an eyebrow marked by an old, pale scar. But his eyes didn’t fit the image of a brute. They were deep brown and watchful, with the caution of someone used to being misunderstood before speaking.
Her father introduced them and then, to Eleanor’s surprise, withdrew, leaving them alone.
The silence between them stretched on.
“Would you like to sit down?” Eleanor finally asked.
Josiah looked at the delicate chair by the fireplace and then at her. “I don’t think it was made for me, miss.”
The answer was so curt, so respectful, and yet subtly amused, that she almost smiled.
“The sofa, then.”
She slumped down to the edge, as if afraid the piece of furniture would protest.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then Eleanor said, “Do you understand what my father is proposing?”
Her gaze met hers and then looked away. “Yes, miss.”
“And you’ve agreed?”
A pause.
“The colonel asked me if I would take responsibility for your care,” she said. “I said yes.”
“That’s not the same as saying you want this.”
Something changed in her face then, not exactly surprise, but a kind of alert stillness, as if she had suddenly heard a language she hadn’t expected to hear.
“What I want,” she said quietly, “doesn’t usually change the outcome.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “But I asked anyway.”
This time she looked her straight in the eye.
He was older than she had guessed from a distance, perhaps thirty, perhaps younger, with the difficulties that made it hard to say. There was intelligence in his gaze. Caution. A sadness so deep-rooted it had become part of the very architecture of his eyes.
“I don’t want to be sold south,” he said.
The honesty of his words silenced the room.
Eleanor swallowed. “And beyond that?”
She looked down at her hands. “Beyond that, I don’t know what I’m allowed to wish for.”
No one had ever answered one of her questions so frankly.
She found herself leaning forward. “They call you the brute.”
Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “Yes, miss.”
“Are you dangerous?”
She looked up again. “To anyone who intends to harm you, I suppose so. To you? No.”
