He glanced ruefully at the documents cluttering his desk—assorted contracts with planters, crop forecasts, freight bills, bids from cotton mills in Birmingham. He and his partner were approaching their busiest time of year—harvest, when a constant flood of bales of cotton and hogsheads of sugar would pass through their warehouses near the levee and on to lucrative accounts in the East and in England. Now more than ever, he needed to keep his mind on business. Instead, his thoughts were consumed with his troubled marriage. Ever since his argument with Mercy a week ago, when she’d told him so brutally that only the physical aspect of their marriage pleased her, he’d held himself apart from her. While he’d never thought of himself as particularly straitlaced, he’d discovered that even he had an aversion to being used as a stud. When his wife had come to him last night and had attempted an apology, he’d felt certain she’d only been hard-pressed to satisfy her more carnal needs.
