“Henry,” she says, and it’s like music.

When I dip my head she lays her cheek against mine, and I breathe in her scent, earthy and sweet like honeysuckle and thyme.

The room’s gone quiet watching us, and I step back from her. She looks exhausted but beautiful.

I take the bowl from her and notice the scabs and scars on her swollen fingers that weren’t there when I saw her on Sunday. “He’s making you pick?” I say.

“Just for a week,” she says.

A rage flashes in me. I want to burn his precious fields to the ground. But Sarah will pay the price for anything I do, which just makes my blood boil hotter. I have to get her out of here.

She settles into my vacated chair, soaking her fingers in the water. Even the backs of her hands are marked with scratches.

I touch my hand to her shoulder as light as I can and, with my heart in my throat, I ask, “Did he do anything else?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing else.”

It’s a strange kind of relief I feel as I let my hand rest heavy on her shoulder. An angry relief. This should never be something a person worries over. I rub her back in circles, my nervous energy needing release.

“It ain’t right to keep her hanging on for something that won’t never be,” Red says to me.

“Already is,” Sarah says, sharp as a slap. “We jumped a broom. We mean for it to stick.”

“What’s that?” Bessie says, reaching out to Sarah across the table.

“Good on you,” Callie May says from beside Clover on the bed. “Folks should take whatever happy they can find wherever they find it.”

“Maybe, but that broom don’t make one lick of difference,” Samson says. “It sure ain’t gonna keep the whip off her back, or stop Master selling her Mississippi way if he catches lover-man creeping around here.”

The back of my head throbs thinking about all the evil that bastard could rain down on her. “I won’t let that happen,” I say. “I’m getting her free.”

I think of the man killed in New York whose clothes I took, and of Mister Reardon bludgeoning the blacksmith to death, and I wonder if I could kill a man if it came to it. To keep Sarah safe, I believe I could.

I rest my hands on her shoulders. The feel of her quiets my insides. I lean into her like a moth searching for light.

“You leave them be,” Callie May says. “Don’t none of us know what’s coming next, so you got to grab the good thing you got and hang on as long as you can.”

August 1849

Chapter 54

Sarah

Coming back to housework after my week in the fields, I mostly try to stay out of Master’s sight. I don’t want to give him cause to send me back out there. It takes Maple three days to notice what I’m doing and then, hateful as she is, she sends me to him every chance she gets.