A Light to My Path (Refiner’s Fire, Book 3) by Lynn Austin

Author:Lynn Austin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2010-07-27T20:00:00+00:00

* * *

Grady felt as though he’d swallowed a stone as he faced Walter Browning. He knew very little about the overseer except that he was the son of the man who had raped Delia, years ago, and fathered her child. This Browning was middle-aged with thinning black hair, but he was as strongly built as his slave laborers. Grady doubted that he could beat him in a fight, even though Browning was at least twenty years older. Besides, the overseer carried a pistol strapped to his belt, and was rumored to be lightning quick with it. Grady saw no way to avoid a second scourging with the lash.

“Missus Fuller wants Grady whipped,” Lewis told Browning. Grady heard the sorrow in the butler’s voice. “Forty lashes. She says he’s supposed to work in the fields from now on.”

“Did he steal something?”

“No, not that I know of, sir.”

“Okay. There are some slave shackles hanging up in that second shed over there,” Browning told Lewis. “Go get a pair for me.” He studied Grady while they waited. “What did you do?” he finally asked.

Grady was much too angry to explain to this white man that he’d refused to father a child for Missus Fuller’s convenience. His rage was certain to boil over, making his punishment even worse. “You better ask her,” he mumbled.

“You can bet I’ll do just that,” Browning said. “But right now I’m asking you.”

“I … um … I ain’t exactly sure, sir.” If he knew nothing else, Grady knew it was always better to play dumb than to lose his temper or show disrespect for white people.

Lewis returned with the chains, and Browning led Grady to an iron hitching post used to tether animals. Grady had fastened countless pairs of manacles to other slaves’ wrists and ankles when he’d worked for Coop, but he’d been too small to wear them himself when he’d been taken from his family in Richmond. The heavy irons fit him now. For the first time in his life, he felt what it was like to have the cold metal clamped tightly around his own wrists, securing him to the post. Browning left him standing alone in the icy mist while he walked up to the Big House to talk with Missus Fuller.

Waiting, knowing the pain that was to come, added to Grady’s torture. In a few minutes he was going to be whipped. Again. For no reason. Grady wanted to roar in outrage, but no one in heaven or on earth would even hear or care.

He was more certain than ever that there was no God. Or if there was, that He had no love or mercy to spare on him. In less than one hour, Grady had lost his job, his horses, and his home with Delia and Kitty. Being born a slave was certainly a curse, but at least his favored position as a driver and his home with the two women had made his life tolerable for the past few years.

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