Kentucky Bride Read online

  Kentucky Bride

  By

  Norah Hess

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Kentucky, 1781

  The girl, almost gaunt in her thinness, moved across the hard-packed dirt floor to the rudely constructed fireplace. Her mass of curly black hair fell almost to her waist as she titled her head back to reach a hand to the mantelpiece and start the clock that had been stopped two days ago—that terrible day when her aunt could no longer endure the abuse she received from her brutish husband and had thrown herself off a tall bluff, crushing the life from her tired and worn body.

  D'lise Alexander shivered, remembering the sound of hard clay clods rattling onto the rough, hurriedly thrown-together coffin. Her aunt's husband had made the coffin from scraps of warped, knotted-pine planks that had been tossed into the barn years ago, unfit to be used around the farm. They had, however, been good enough to bury his wife in.

  She carefully moved the hands of the old clock to what she figured the time was, at least near enough. After giving the pendulum a swing, she stepped back, her deep blue eyes staring blindly at the fire that was almost out. Aunt Anna had escaped her husband's cruelty, but what about the rest of them? The two bound-boys and herself?

  She laughed bitterly. She might as well be a bond slave herself. She was treated no better than fifteen-year-old David and ten-year-old Johnny. Actually she was treated worse than they were. Rufus Enger had never wanted his wife's eight-year-old niece to come and live with them. "Another blasted mouth to feed," he'd raged when she arrived at the flat-roof shack, frightened and still grieving for her parents, who had died of influenza within two weeks of each other.

  But Auntie's husband had known that his neighbors would frown on him if he refused to take the orphan in, and he craved their good opinion. D'lise shook her head, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. The very first day of her arrival in the Kentucky hills, the man had shown what a cruel and amoral person he was.

  She and Aunt Anna had been taking her clothes from her bag and placing them on a narrow shelf—there was no dresser or chest of drawers in the two-room shack—when Rufus slammed open the door and stamped inside. She and Auntie had looked up with startled eyes; then her tiny relative had begun to whimper.

  Her husband was coming toward them, his fat fingers undoing the belt that circled his large belly. Her aunt had backed away from him, shaking her head, her eyes dread-filled. "No!" she cried out as he freed the broad strip of leather from its loops.

  "Why ain't supper on the table, bitch?" he rasped and swung the buckle and of the belt toward her cowering aunt.

  D'lise had screamed and jumped aside as the first swipe of the belt across her narrow back brought her aunt to her knees. She stared with horrified eyes, crying hysterically as the belt continued to rise and fall on the thin, bent back. She learned later that Rufus was always careful to ply the belt where the welts and broken skin wouldn't be visible to his neighbors.

  Finally, when it looked as if her aunt was ready to faint, her husband tossed the belt to the floor. When D'lise rushed to her aunt and knelt beside her, his beefy hand lashed out, striking her on the side of the head, knocking her onto the floor. She lay there, stunned, until Anna whispered, "Go into the other room, child."

  D'lise pulled herself up, shaking her head to clear it. Her eyes widened in confusion. The uncle she hated already, would hate for the rest of her life, had dropped his homespuns down around his ankles, and as she watched, grabbed her aunt by the shoulder, shoved her onto the bed, and climbed in beside her. Again her aunt called out for her to leave the room, and the horrified eight-year-old, who didn't understand what was happening but knew somehow that it was wrong, left the room.

  Crouched under the kitchen table, tears running down her cheeks, she listened and wondered at the thumping noises coming from the bedroom. In her young mind she knew that her aunt was still being punished in some way, and she wondered fearfully if her terrible uncle would punish her in the same way should she anger him.

  It finally grew quiet in the other room and, wiping her eyes, D'lise crawled from under the table and with held breath, opened the bedroom door a crack and peered inside.

  Rufus had pulled on his homespuns and was strapping his belt back on. As her aunt struggled her worn dress down over her hips, he drew back a foot and kicked her in the leg. "Get supper on the table, bitch," he growled and left the cabin.

  D'lise continued to stare blindly into the now dead ashes of the fire, hatred for Rufus Enger turning the blue of her eyes almost black with the force of it.

  The despicable man had gotten his wife in a family way numerous times, but none of the pregnancies had gone full-term. The beatings and lust visited on her already weak body had always brought on miscarriages. Each time Anna lost a baby, the more dear her niece had become to her.

  Only one time had the aunt gathered the courage to stand up to her husband.

  D'lise had been around thirteen years old the day he grabbed one of her budding breasts and squeezed. She had let out a pained and surprised cry. Aunt Anna had slammed a cook pot on the table and, her eyes fierce, hissed in a deadly voice, "If you ever again lay a hand on that girl with lust in your mind, I'll kill you if I have to wait until you're asleep."

  Rufus had known his wife meant every word of her threat and he had never touched D'lise again—not in that manner. She still got her share of beatings. In fact, after Auntie's standing up to him, she seemed to get the belt more often.

  D'lise pulled herself back to the present when she heard Rufus swearing at one of the bound-boys. He had bought their papers two years ago. David was fourteen, tall and rail thin, and Johnny, at eight years old, was frail and small for his age.

  Johnny had cried a lot the first couple of weeks, as he was forced to do work that would tire a grown man. But after receiving several beatings for his tears, he had learned to swallow them and suffer in silence. She and Auntie had longed to go to the child, console him, but hadn't dared. Not only would Johnny have received more lashings, she and Auntie would have as well.

  They had hoped that with the boy's arrival their work load would lessen. How foolish the thought. D'lise grimaced. Nothing had changed. Rufus had set them all to clearing more land, planting more crops. She had thought that the hatred she bore the man could get no worse. But when night after night she could barely drag herself to bed, she knew a hatred for him that was all-consuming. Many times a day she found herself scheming ways to kill him, or at least to get away from his brutality. She would take her aunt with her, of course.

  Her plotting always came to nothing. She could think of no way to kill Rufus. He always had his Kentucky rifle with him, even slept with it. She would never be able to get her hands on it. And even if she did, she had no idea how to use a firearm.

  If she did manage to run away, now that Auntie was gone, where would she go? There was no nearby village where she could seek safety or find a job that would sup
port her. There was a fur post about five miles away, but the only women the owner hired were whores and tavern wenches. She could never bring herself to be that sort of woman. She hated men too much, would be unable to bear their touch. She'd throw herself off a bluff also before submitting to male abuse.

  The clock on the mantel, the only object in the shack worth anything, struck four times. With a heavy sigh, D'lise turned from the fireplace. There was milking to be done and supper to be made. Auntie's passing had barely made a ripple in the scheme of things on the homestead. Even as she had lain in the ugly coffin, waiting to be put into the ground, the usual work had gone on; the usual beatings were delivered.

  Yesterday D'lise and the boys had worked from dawn to dusk cutting stalks of withered corn and carrying them to the barn. During the winter months the dried husks would be fed to the livestock. She looked down at her palms, full of broken blisters and old calluses. This morning, up until an hour before the funeral, Rufus had kept her and the boys chopping wood and stacking it between the trees standing about in the weed-choked yard. It took a lot of fuel to keep the drafty old shack even halfway warm when the winter winds blew and the cold and dampness seeped through the cracks between the log walls.

  But there had been a short period of rest last evening. Their neighbors had come to view Auntie's remains, to sit with the grieving family for a while. She, D'lise, had been the only one truly grieving. The boys had never been allowed to know the gentle woman, to feel her goodness. To them she was just another body who worked for Rufus and received beatings as regularly as they did. Rufus, of course, pretended a great grief.

  There had been no viewing of Aunt Anna's body. Her husband had nailed the lid on the coffin as soon as he placed her inside the wooden box. He hadn't even bothered to straighten out her limbs or cross her hands over her chest. At the neighbors' surprised looks, he had explained that when poor Anna slipped and fell over the bluff, she had smashed her face. When he said, "I didn't want the poor children to see her all disfigured," it had been all D'lise could do not to stand up and yell out that Auntie's death had been no accident, that she had deliberately killed herself to escape the hell she lived in.

  As though Rufus could read the intent on her face, he gave her a black scowl that promised she would pay dearly if she uttered the words. She had quietly accepted her neighbors' condolences with a nod of her head.

  The men and women were leaving then, and were barely out of sight of the cabin when Rufus blew out the candle that sat on the coffin. "I'm not wastin' a candle on that stupid bitch," he muttered and went off to bed. Within seconds his loud snoring rumbled through the cabin. David and Johnny sought their hard pallets on the floor, lying close together, their faces turned to the wall as they, too, fell into an exhausted sleep.

  She had sat alone through the long night with Auntie, sometimes crying, other times thankful that at last her tiny relative was at rest. There would be no more beatings for her, no more lust visited on her tired body.

  D'lise's head ached from her sleepless night, and she was bone tired as she picked up the two milk pails from the table and made her way to the barn. She chewed nervously at her lower lip as she stepped into the dim interior of the building. There was a gnawing fear inside her that was stronger than her dread of beatings. Twice today she had caught Rufus looking at her with that same leering look he used to have just before he came at Auntie, his fingers undoing his fly. That small person was gone now, and who would protect her niece from her husband?

  D'lise had known for some time that it bothered the loathsome man that there was an eighteen-year-old female under his roof that he didn't dare touch.

  A shiver ran down her spine. He'd dare now. Even if David and Johnny had the courage to try to help her, their puny strength would be as nothing compared to his. Rufus was strong. He rode to the fur post every day and ate a hearty meal of meat while the rest of them got along on salt pork and cornmeal mush.

  The meat from the beeves and hogs that were butchered every year after the first frost never got to their table. It was taken to the post and sold. D'lise often wondered where Rufus kept his money hidden. He spent very little of it, so he must have a good amount stowed away somewhere.

  However, she and Auntie and the boys ate fairly well in the warm weather. They had the use of the garden then. Of course all the bigger and better vegetables went to the post, as did the jams and jellies she and Aunt Anna put up each summer and the bushels of apples and pears they picked in the fall.

  A grim smile curved D'lise's lips. Rufus didn't know it, but she and the boys had always managed to hide a bushel or so of the fruit in a cave about a mile from the shack. Eating an apple and a pear each day during the winter had kept them from having scurvy at least. Of course, Auntie had shared their little hoard.

  One of the cows lowed, letting D'lise know that her full udders were becoming uncomfortable. But before starting the milking, she walked about the barn looking for something she could defend herself with should Rufus sneak up on her and try to attack her.

  She finally picked up a piece of broken board about two feet long and as thick as her wrist. She hefted the hard oak in her hand, judging its weight. One good clout to the side of his head should slow the fat man down considerably.

  D'lise took a step toward the waiting cow and almost stepped on the scraggly cat that hung around the barn, wise enough to keep out of Rufus's way. When the tom came and rubbed against her leg, she took the time to bend over and scratch his rough ears.

  "You're waiting for some milk, aren't you, Scrag?" she said gently to her pet. "But we must be careful he doesn't see you drinking his precious milk. What doesn't go to the post is fed to the hogs, you know."

  Grim humor flashed in D'lise's eyes. She and the boys had managed to outwit the fat man in another way. David had secretly sliced a long-necked gourd in half, scraped out the seeds, then dried it in the sun. It made a fine dipper. Whenever Rufus wasn't around, it was taken from its hiding place under the chicken house and dipped into the pail of fresh, warm milk. After each boy had drunk a gourdful, she would drink hers. They were always careful to add that amount of water to the pail, though. Auntie had warned them that Rufus had a habit of checking the amount of milk occasionally.

  The cat, Scrag, got his milk straight from the cow's teat. He'd sit beside D'lise, his mouth open, waiting for her to squirt the milk into it until he had his fill. "I guess the boys won't get theirs tonight, Scrag," D'lise said as she pulled up a stool and placed the pail under a full udder. Laying the stick down beside her, she added, "He's got them splitting fence rails."

  The cat mewed, and with a grin D'lise squirted a stream of milk into his mouth. When he turned away and began washing his face, she pressed her head against the cow's warm body, and using both hands made the milk hit the bottom of the pail with a rhythmic ringing sound.

  She had finished with one cow and had started on the other when she sensed that she was being watched. A trembling took hold of her body. It was him, she knew, and wondered fearfully if Rufus had seen her give Scrag the milk. If he had, he would be furious and she would be in for a beating—or worse.

  Dread-filled, she continued to coax the milk from the cow, wondering where the fat man was and what he was planning to do to her. There was no sound in the barn except that of the cows munching at the pile of hay one of the boys had tossed down from the loft earlier.

  D'lise's uneasiness increased with each passing second. She waited in dull misery, wondering when Rufus would make his move. Finally she could coax no more milk from the deflated udder and knew that she must face whatever awaited her.

  With a resigned sigh she rose to her feet, her eyes scanning the barn, peering into the dark corners. In the tension that gripped her entire body, she forgot the club she had so carefully searched out. Trying to keep her face blank of the terror she could almost taste, she picked up the two pails and walked toward the barn door.

  She saw him then, at first only the shadow
y outline of his large bulk. Her body grew tight as he stepped out of the corner where he'd hidden himself, his belt already in his hand. He stalked toward her, slapping the broad strip of leather against his leg.

  "I seen you give that flea-bitten cat that milk, missy," he growled. "What do you think I'm gonna do to you for that?"

  D'lise could only mutely shake her head.

  "You know." The fat lips leered. "You're gonna take your precious aunt's place from now on. You're gonna get what she always got when she displeased me."

  D'lise shook her head again, this time in vehement denial.

  "No use shakin' your head." Rufus's beady eyes skimmed over her slender body in its worn dress. "After I give you a taste of the belt, I'm gonna ride the hell out of you. When I'm finished takin' my pleasure, you'll stop lookin' at me like I'm some kind of slimy slug that's crawled out from under a rock. I broke that stupid wife of mine, and I'll break you."

  D'lise was suddenly calm, and as cagey as a wild animal trapped in a corner. If she could somehow get past Rufus, make it to the door, she could outrun him. She could hide in one of the many caves that dotted the area and stay there until she figured out a solution to her dilemma.

  Keeping her eyes steady on the man who was sure he had her in his power, she made as though to set the pails of milk on the floor. When he was almost upon her, grinning wolfishly, she straightened up and flung one pail of milk at his face. Even as he bellowed his rage and swiped at the milk that blinded him, she was through the door and running for the dense stand of maple and cedar dotting the gentle slope in back of the shack.

  D'lise heard Rufus's heavy footsteps pounding behind her, but she wasn't worried. She was fleet of foot and he would never catch her.

  She was only a yard or so from the small forest when one of her she stepped in a hole. She let out a sharp cry of pain as her ankle twisted and she was on her knees. She tried to stand, but could not. Her left ankle would not hold her weight. It was either badly sprained or broken.