Prologue: 1821

Elaine poked her head out of her bedchamber and glanced up and down the hallway of her family’s home, Blackwood Plantation. She saw nothing and smiled to herself. The young girl (she was all of eighteen years old) pushed a stray lock of blonde hair off her face and lifted her skirt, carefully and quietly closing the door behind her. She trotted down the hall, careful that her heels didn’t click on the hardwood and passed the chamber of her sister Margareet.

She made her way down the wide stairs of her home to the front doors. Before crossing the foyer her blue eyes rapidly scanned the area. All was quiet. She scooted to the main doors and slowly opened the one on the far right; the one she knew didn’t squeak. Elaine was out the door and into the darkness of the Mississippi night a moment later.

This was arguably the most perilous part of her trip she thought, pulling a black shawl up over her blonde hair. One of the overseers always wandered the grounds of the plantation, keeping near the big house, the creamery, and the slave quarters. Elaine was the youngest daughter of the owner of this place but simply claiming she was out for an evening stroll could raise suspicions and she didn’t need that.

The overseer was right on cue thought Elaine as she saw the man on horseback meander along the path in front of the big house. She crouched behind one of the white pillars of the porch as he went past. She forced herself to wait and felt a rising expectation inside of her, a twinge of desire in her mind and butterflies in her mid-section as the short time passed. Elaine took a deep breath and tamped the feeling down.

Elaine pulled up her skirt and trotted across the gardens of her family home, aiming for the main gate. Damn this dress! The intricacies of female fashion reduced her to a slow pace; her boots and skirt were simply not conductive to stealth or speed in this situation. Thankfully there was little moonlight tonight – darkness was her friend.

Things got easier once she made it to the main road. Elaine’s movement followed a fence line that continued to a smaller trail down to the marshy area they called ‘the Pond’. It wasn’t really a pond, it was the sluggish tributary of a river known for it’s excellent catfish. There were several small dilapidated buildings by the Pond and a boat landing.

She crept up to one of the old buildings as the comparative dark and quiet of the night was filled with the buzz of mosquitoes and the flash of lightning bugs. Here, far from the big house, she left her heels click on the old floorboards. The roof of the small construction was partly collapsed and there were ancient bales of hay and cotton in one corner but the floorboards were solid.