Copyright © 2018 by Rae White
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Before you dig in, you must understand that this story deals with enslavement and all of the disgusting racialized horrors that come with it. I did my best to be thoughtful in the presentation of this so that it's not rendered in an exploitative way. Still, this is your trigger warning. It's a historical romance and those things are a part of the history that I am covering. If you don't want to read that sort of thing? I get it, please move on. ...That said, this is NOT an enslaved/owner romance. I'm rubbing my temples at the continuing fascination and false narratives surrounding that particular dynamic in pop culture. Our lead male is an abolitionist, who does the hard things because it's the right thing to do.
I serve my story first and foremost. That means truth relative to the narrative. In this case, that means the time and place in which this takes place and the characters involved. With that understanding, if you're still here? Great! I hope you get sucked in reading it as much as I do writing it.
I love period pieces and I've always wanted to write one involving the conventions I've never seen thoughtfully explored in these particular genres, western and antebellum era, especially regarding the lives of people of color.
MERCY'S HART is the culmination of that.
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New Orleans, 1833
Jewel, a free Creole woman is in her bedroom within her own home, deep in the eleventh hour of labor. Her arm is wrapped tightly around one of the ornate banisters of her large four-poster bed for support as she gathers up her white nightgown around her thighs and squats deeply with a shrill scream.
Through the pain, she prays that the babe that comes will be still-born.
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Jewel is no longer a respected mistress locked in a lover's contract - plaçage with a moneyed white man, a presumed benefactor who cast her aside once he became aware that she was with child. As such, she has no use for babies, if she is to be a placée to another gentleman.
Tippi, the deep-brown middle-aged woman enslaved to Jewel, mops her mistress's brow and urges her to push. Though a heavy storm rages, loudly pattering the terracotta roof tiles into what sounds near to pieces, she yields to that horrible irresistible pain and pressure until blessed relief, as the babe spills forth messy, slick, and screaming, from between her squatting legs.
Tippi catches it adeptly, along with the afterbirth in short succession, ties off the cord before cutting it with a sharp knife from her apron pocket, wraps it in a clean cloth, and makes certain that Jewel is set with a warm absorbant cloth between her legs and is comfortably lying down.
"It's a girl." she says, smiling.
"Take it away." Jewel orders.
"But, Miss Jewel dontcha' even want to look at her?"
"I told you to take it away." Jewel repeats. "...and clean up this mess!" she says indicating her own body's expulsions upon the floor.
"Yes'm." Tippi replies, trying her best not to reveal the contempt and disgust she's feeling for this woman, in her voice.
YOU ARE READING
MERCY'S HART
HistoryczneMercy was an injured traumatized enslaved girl on the run, who had already had a life full of trial when she met Eli Hart on what was to be her last stop on the Underground Railroad. When things take a turn after the Civil War, she is forced to fle...
