Twelve marriage proposals arranged by my father. Twelve refusals, each more brutal than the last.
"She can't walk down the aisle." "My children need a mother to pursue them." "What's the point if she can't have children?" This last rumor, completely false, spread like wildfire in Virginia society. A doctor started speculating about my fertility without even examining me. Suddenly, I wasn't just disabled. I was flawed in every way that mattered to America in 1856.
When William Foster, a fat, drunken man of fifty, rejected me in spite of my father's offer of a third of the annual profits of our estate, I knew the truth. I would die alone.
But my father had other plans. Plans so radical, so shocking, so completely outside all social norms that, when he told me, I was certain I had misunderstood.
"I entrust you to Josiah," he said. "The blacksmith. He will be your husband. »
I looked at my father, Colonel Richard Whitmore, owner of 5,000 acres and 200 enslaved people, certain that he had lost his mind.
"Josiah," I whispered. "Father, Josiah is a slave."
