Read Online Daughter of Twin Oaks by Lauraine Snelling - Free Book Online

Poor little Thaddy had never known his mother. At least she’d had one for seventeen years.
    Lucinda’s repeated sniffing and harrumphs broke into her reverie. Jesselynn turned enough on the walnut bench that she couldn’t see in the mirror.
    “Hold still, lessen you want to look like a sheared sheep.” Lucinda sniffed again. “Good thing yo’ mama ain’t here. Dis nigh to break her heart.”
    Better a broken heart than … But Jesselynn didn’t want to think of the coming days either. How could she leave Twin Oaks, the only home she’d ever known, and head across country without her father or her brother or …? She sucked in a deep breath and let it out as a heavy sigh.
    Lucinda stepped back. “Dere.”
    Jesselynn looked up into her mammy’s tear-filled eyes. “I’m sorry, Lucinda, dear, but I just can’t see any other plan. Do I look like a boy?”
    “Maybe if you use walnut dye on yo’ face and hands and keep a hat on yo’ head.” She squinted her eyes. “Maybe dye yo’ hair too.”
    “That’s a good idea. Good thing I’m not as endowed as some of the others.” She pulled her camisole tight across her chest. “I won’t miss the corsets, that’s for sure.” She thought of the whalebone contraption hanging from a hook on her closet door. Up until yesterday for the funeral, she’d pretty much given up wearing one, as she’d had to do more of the outside work. Even though Joseph ran the stables and barns, someone as big as Meshach had needed to oversee the tobacco planting and hoeing, the haying, and the grain harvesting. Could Joseph really take care of the tobacco picking? She’d planned to start that next week.
    Could she trust the slaves left behind to keep things going? Perhaps one of the neighbors would check in once in a while.
    Oh, God, this is too much. I can’t leave Twin Oaks. And if I do, will there be anything left to come home to?
    “Missy Jess, you all right?” Lucinda bent down to stare into her mistress’s face.
    Jesselynn nodded. “I will be. God will uphold and protect us.” She wished she believed that as truly as her mother had. If God had been protecting them, why did her mother never recover from childbirth and her father and brother die in the war?
    I will never leave you nor forsake you .
    “Funny way you have of showing it.”
    “What dat you say?” Lucinda stopped on her way out the door.
    “Nothing. Just muttering.” Jesselynn got to her feet and ran her fingers through her hair. It barely covered the tops of her ears. She shook her head, and bits of hair flew free. But long tendrils did not slap her in the face, and her head felt strangely light. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
    She returned to her own room and, after donning brown britches, a belt, and a white shirt, dug in the back of the closet for her porkpie hat, the one she’d worn when working the racing stock. It fit much better now that it didn’t have all that hair to hold up. She eyed the two, broad-brimmed or porkpie. Of course she could take her father’s straw hat … but she shook her head. Young boys didn’t wear plantation owner hats.
    She stared into the mirror. Did she look enough like a boy? She switched to the broader brimmed hat and pulled it lower onto her forehead. That was better. By lowering her chin, she could hide more of her face.
    She’d have to deepen her voice too. When had her brothers’ voices changed? Fifteen, sixteen Earlier? With all that had happened in the last two years, somehow small facts like that had slipped away. She looked back in the mirror. How old did she look? She twisted her head from side to side. After I dye my hair and skin, will that help?
    Whirling, she ran to the stairs, her boots clattering as she descended. “Lucinda?” She lowered her voice and tried again. “Lucinda!”
    Lucinda came down the lower hall. “Comin’.”
    Jesselynn turned her body as if to study the empty space where her father’s portrait had