Free Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule by Jennifer Chiaverini Page B

to White Haven. “I’ll buy our freedom. You can be a minister in a church and I’ll dress hair, and we’ll keep a little house all our own.”
    Gabriel kept his gaze fixed on the brown ribbon of water winding ever southward. “That’s a nice dream.”
    “Miss Julia’s dreams sometimes come true. Why not mine?”
    “Jule—” He sighed, shifted the reins to one hand, and rested his elbow on his knee. “It’ll take years to save enough to buy freedom for even one of us, and that’s if the old master agree.”
    “Then I’ll buy my own freedom first. Once I can keep all my earnings, I’ll save up faster.” Jule studied him. “You know I mean it when I say I’m not bringing any babies into slavery.”
    “Then we better make sure you don’t get any babies anytime soon.”
    Jule frowned and looked away. “Maybe Miss Julia will speak to the old master for me, make him set a fair price.”
    “Or maybe she could get him to set you free in his will.” The forced agreeability in Gabriel’s voice told her he was saying so only to please her. “She might do it. She likes you.”
    Neither of them mentioned that Julia might like her too much to let her go.
    With a rueful glance at the sun in its declination, Gabriel chirruped to the horses and turned the wagon toward White Haven.
    Julia liked her, Jule reminded herself resolutely, and her new husband’s people were abolitionists. The longer they were married, the longer Julia lived in a free state, the more likely it was that Julia would adopt their ways.
    Julia had been away so long in the North, surely she had come to see slavery for the evil it was.
    •   •   •
    Julia and Ulys spent their first winter as husband and wife at Madison Barracks in Sackets Harbor, a bleak, remote outpost on Lake Ontario in New York State. When spring came and the ice broke up, they moved on to Detroit, where Ulys assumed the post of regimental quartermaster. Julia quickly became popular among the officers of the garrison for her excellent dancing and lovely singing voice, and her generous, friendly ways made her a favorite among their wives and children. Though Ulys was not happy shifting papers, ordering supplies, and supervising commissary affairs, he was proud to serve his country.
    Less than a year after their arrival in Detroit, the couple discovered that by late spring they would become a family of three.
    As the months of waiting and preparation passed, they debated where their child should be born. Julia dreaded to leave Ulys, but she knew that when her labor began, she would want Mamma, her sisters, and Jule close by. And so in early spring she and Ulys parted at the train station in Detroit with a kiss and a promise that they would be reunited as soon as Julia and the baby were strong enough to travel.
    The joy of her long-awaited reunion with her family eased the unhappiness of her separation from Ulys. Papa and Mamma, her siblings and friends, White Haven itself—so familiar, so beloved, changed slightly with the passing of the years but still somehow exactly as she remembered.
    Jule’s welcome sounded the only discordant note to her homecoming. She had greeted Julia with a warm smile and kind inquiries about her health, but there was a new aloofness to her manner, as if her mistress’s needs commanded only a portion of her attention. She had blossomed into new beauty in Julia’s absence too. Her skin had always been a lovely ginger color, but it had become deeper and richer and seemed to glow from within. She was much prettier than her mistress, Julia privately admitted, or she would have been if not for the firm set to her jaw, the deep crease of worry between her brows, and the guarded look in her eye.
    That first night, after Jule helped Julia ease carefully into bed, she fluffed the pillows, straightened, and fixed Julia with a determined gaze. “Since you been gone, I ain’t been sleeping at the foot of your bed.”
    “I wouldn’t have expected