A moment passed before she looked up and found his gaze still on her.
“A truce then.” He bowed, a half-smile on his mouth. “If Generals Grant and Lee can come to agreeable terms, I am certain you and I can as well.”
The humor of his words eased the uncomfortable tension. He could be quite charming when he put his mind to it.
Resuming their walk, Natalie gave him a brief tour of the quarter and the barns. As they made their way back to the house, she stopped to admire a pale pink rose in full bloom.
“My mother-in-law, Martha Ellis, brought cuttings of these bushes when they came from Virginia. Luther named the plantation in her honor.” She bent to smell the fragrant flower, inhaling deeply of its heady scent. When she straightened, she found the colonel’s attention not on the flower but on her hands. Too late she remembered to keep them hidden.
“Might I inquire about the bandages?”
Embarrassed, Natalie held out her hands, both wrapped with strips torn from an old chemise. She’d doctored the painful sores herself, not wishing for Harriet or Carolina to see them. Both women had asked after her, but she’d declared herself fine. The pain was excruciating when she’d hauled water to the garden that morning, but she wouldn’t let it keep her from doing her fair share of work. “It’s nothing. Just a few silly blisters.”
He raised his brow.
Ashamed at her ineptitude at plantation chores, she tried to wave him off. “I was helping to water the garden. A few blisters were my reward.”
“May I see them? You wouldn’t want the wounds to become infected.”
“Truly, they are fine, Colonel.” As she spoke, a line of wagons entered the yard. Corporal Banks and several other soldiers accompanied them on horseback. She turned back to the colonel, glad for the interruption. “We best see to the new arrivals.”
She started to move away, but he clasped her arm.
“Mrs. Ellis, I would very much like to see the wounds for myself. Even something as small as a blister can become a larger problem should infection take hold.”
A long moment ticked by as she considered his words. “Very well,” she said, unhappy to remove the bandages yet fearful he might be right. The cloth stuck to one of the open sores, and she grimaced when she gave a slight yank on it, tearing the tender skin. She opened her palms as much as she dared to reveal four giant blisters on one hand and three on the other. Stretching the wounds, she’d discovered, was nearly as painful as carrying a bucket.
With a touch far more gentle than she’d expected, the colonel took her hands in his and examined the sores. “You say these are the result of watering the garden?”
“Yes.” She tried to tug her hands free, but he wouldn’t release them. “Harriet and Carolina and I must carry water from the well to the garden. I never realized a bucket of water was so heavy.”
He continued to study her hands for a long moment, his thumb lightly caressing her skin. When he met her gaze again, she thought she saw a hint of compassion in the brown depths rather than the scorn she’d anticipated. “I’ll have Corporal Banks attend your hands. He served on a medical detail the first years of the war.”
Without another word, he strode toward the wagons. Natalie felt foolish for allowing him to look at her sores. After years of watching men fall in battle, a few blisters were obviously not worth fretting over. Replacing the cloths, she was surprised when he returned to her side a few moments later.
“Here.” He held something out to her.
Looking down at his offering, she gasped. Gloves!
When she met his gaze, a question surely shining in her eyes, he shrugged. “You need to protect your hands if you insist on carrying heavy buckets of water.”
After accepting the gift, she watched him stride away again, her emotions a whirl of confusion. Why had he shown such compassion toward her? Especially when he’d made his dislike of her obvious, despite their truce?
“Miz Natalie,” Carolina said, coming down the steps, a puzzled look on her face. “What them folks doing back here?”
Thankful for the distraction, Natalie glanced at the people in the yard. “These are the workers the Army hired to help us with the crops. Some of the men had families, so the colonel allowed them to bring them along.”
“That un’ over there, and them two back there … they’s all Rose Hill slaves.”
Astonished by the news, Natalie turned back to the group. Several of the men and at least one woman did look familiar. Carolina made her way over to the woman and gave her a hug, tousling the curly head of a small boy standing next to her. They talked for some time before Carolina returned to Natalie’s side, wearing a smug look.
“Ol’ Adline there says they’s had it hard since they left Rose Hill,” she said, her voice lowered so only Natalie could hear. “Says they ain’t eaten much since freedom come. When her man heard the Army hirin’ out to work Rose Hill’s cotton, they jumped, wantin’ to come back. Them others done the same.”
Colonel Maish and Corporal Banks approached with Moses on their heels. “We’ll need a place to store the supplies where no one will have access to them but you or whomever you put in charge of distributing them.”
Natalie looked to Moses for a suggestion.
“The bachelor’s quarters ain’t been used in some time,” he said, nodding toward the long one-story building behind the kitchen yard. “Figure the colonel’s men can bunk in one room, the supplies in the other.”
“Bachelor’s quarters?” Levi asked.
Natalie smiled at the bewildered look on his face. “It is a guest house now, but when my husband was a teen, he lived there. It was also used when the plantation received male visitors who were unmarried, since they were not allowed to sleep in the main house for propriety’s
