Read Online A Free Heart by Amelia C. Adams - Free Book Online Page A

married woman? For shame, Mr. White! I hardly know what to think.”
    He looked down at his hands, his cheeks red again. “This may sound foolish, but for a moment, I thought I’d somehow gone back in time and she was fourteen years old again. I forgot all about her husband and children—it was just the two of us in that cornfield.”
    Harriet opened her mouth to make another retort, but found that she couldn’t. She’d thought Tom’s actions had been impetuous and improper, and true, he shouldn’t have grabbed her like he did, but now, knowing the reasons behind it . . . She saw not a man trying to take advantage, but a boy seeking after his lost love. It was more touching than any romantic novel she’d ever read.
    “I am sorry for being so hard on you, Tom,” she said after a long moment of trying to decide if she could even speak. “I didn’t understand.”
    “Don’t worry about it. In fact, I think it makes for a mighty interesting story.” Tom smiled and gave her a nod. “Now, tell me about this lady we’re about to go meet.”
    They really had nothing else to do to occupy their time, so Harriet told him all about growing up on the plantation and what it was like to own slaves. She wished she could skip over that part of the story and that she could do away with the memory altogether, but that was impossible. She couldn’t change the facts of what happened any more than a bee could change its stripes. So she tried to focus on her good memories, on the fudge Jane used to make and her wonderful dinner rolls, the way she’d come tuck Harriet in at night, even though Harriet had her own nanny, and the way Harriet knew she could always go to Jane when her mother was away or distracted, which happened far too often.
    “In many ways, Jane was like a mother to me as well as being a dear friend,” Harriet explained. “Marrying Sam and becoming an extension of his family would have felt natural because Jane and I were already close.”
    “How did Jane feel about your engagement to Sam?” Tom asked. He’d been listening attentively, which had encouraged Harriet to say even more than she normally would. He probably now knew more about her than any other person alive, and it would be a miracle if his ears still worked at the end of their journey.
    “I don’t know,” Harriet confessed. “She had moved to Kansas by that point, and I don’t know if she had even been told of our plans. Part of this trip is to speak to her about that. I hate to think that we’d made a decision that would bring her grief.”
    Tom shifted in his seat. “You might . . .”
    “What?”“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”
    “Yes, you certainly did. Now, what was it?”
    Tom shifted again, and Harriet wondered if he’d suddenly sat on a cocklebur. “Jane was a slave for a long time, probably even her whole life. You might want to be open to the possibility that she might not have been in favor of her son marrying her former owner’s daughter.”
    “Even though Sam was in love with me?” Harriet couldn’t help the sharp note that entered her voice.
    Tom held up both hands. “You know as well as I do that tension gets high between the races. I worked on a ranch with a couple of men who used to be slaves. They had plenty to say against the plantation owners, and from where I sit, they were justified. If Jane’s holding any kind of ill feelings, it’s best you prepare yourself for that now.”
    “But I never supported any of my father’s doings when it came to slavery. As soon as I was old enough to realize what was going on, I stood up to him. Wouldn’t she know that? Wouldn’t she understand?” Their perfectly nice conversation had taken a horrible turn, and Harriet couldn’t believe what Tom was saying. Hadn’t he been listening at all when she told him how she felt about the slaves?
    “I’m not saying you had anything to do with it. But sometimes, people have a hard time separating the actions of one person