Runaway Love (Cherry Tree Harbor #1) by Melanie Harlow EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Melanie Harlow
- Language: English
- Genre: Romantic Comedy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Bet
The plantation sat on the edge of the state, carved in the lush green
forest. The stench of livestock blended the earthy and dusty smell of
wood and dry straw. I peeled potatoes at the back of the mansion on the hill
overlooking the fields, fences, corrals, barns, sheds, and small shacks for
the slaves and larger ones for the indigent servants.
The indigent servants and slaves labored in the tobacco and cotton
fields. We worked sunup to sundown, and if the overseer or master did not
like our work, they tied us to the whipping post.
I labored in the big house, but survival proved even more difficult than
in the fields. Those who worked hard in the sun thought I had it easy, but
life proved more problematic inside the house than outside. Far worse than
the fields or whipping post, I worked around the devil every day.
The mountain peak west of the plantation teased. Frank, the fancy-pants
indignant servant, strolled through the back door. Almost thirty, the tall man
pushed his red hair from his face.
“You view that mountain and see freedom.” He winked and grinned.
“Shut your mouth,” I said. “You’ll land me in trouble.”
“You can trust me.”
The nerve of this white man. “I trust nobody, least of all you.”
He twirled his mustache. “Trust me. You and I must stick together.
We’re smarter than these other people.”
“Why trust you?”
“With the missus dead, I’m your best bet.”
“Nobody trusts you, Frank. Let me do my work and stay out of trouble.
I don’t need your problems.”
He smiled, mounted his red stallion, and rode across the plantation,
head high like a noble person.
Despite his high-mindedness, Frank’s fate better resembled the slaves
than any of the other indigent servants. The master did not tell him, but he
often told Alvin, the evil overseer, Frank would never see freedom.
He was the one person who might help me escape, but I could never
trust him enough to risk everything. If he betrayed his king, I could not trust
him.
Frank
H the large plantation in the vast forest. Tobacco fields and
other green crops grew in rows and surrounded the mansion on the hill.
Cotton, the crop everybody raved, was also growing for the first time this
year. The plantation looked like paradise, but it was pure hell for the slaves
and indigent servants.
I rode a splendid stallion across the plantation. Several white and black
men and women worked rows of tobacco fields. I passed without comment.
A smacking sound drew my attention ahead.
A man screamed.
I nudged the animal’s sides and sped toward the commotion.
Alvin, a rugged man who always carried two sidearms and a shotgun
abused a slave tied to the whipping post. He drew back and snapped the
whip across the man’s bare back already lined and bloody.
I winced, and my neck pinched. Dale stuck out his chest and charged
forward. The stallion stepped to block his path.
“Don’t do it,” I said. “He will shoot you down.”
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