An Inconvenient Marriage

by Christina Miller

  The front door squeaked open, and then light footsteps and the tapping of a cane sounded. Within moments, Grandmother Euphemia appeared, clutching the handle of her cane as if it would otherwise run away. Samuel stood and seated her next to Clarissa. “Was it good news or bad?”

  “The worst.” Clarissa braced herself for Grandmother’s oft-repeated lecture on how charity believeth all things.

  To her surprise, it didn’t come. “Whatever it is, tell me, so we can decide what to do next.”

  “We have to live here for a year. With Cousin Absalom.”

  Grandmother’s hand fluttered to her chest. She hesitated. “Is there no way around it?”

  “Joseph thinks not.” Clarissa leaned closer to her grandmother. “Is your heart bothering you again?”

  She dropped her hand to the table and scowled for a second. “Not so much that I can’t hold my own with that renegade grandson of mine. He gave your grandfather and me so much heartache that, when he was reported dead, I felt a measure of relief with my grief. And now here he is, resurrected, so to speak, and no doubt ready to cause more trouble than ever.”

  Reverend Montgomery opened his mouth but got no chance to speak. Instead, Grandmother shifted her gaze to him, a defiant glare in her hazel eyes. “And don’t you lecture me. You’d feel the same if you’d lived through his backstabbing and treachery as I have. I hardly know whether to call him Absalom, Lazarus or Judas.”

  “In light of that parade of biblical troublemakers—well, other than Lazarus—I won’t give you a sermon on love this time. But next time, I will.”

  Clarissa sucked in a breath of horror. If there was one thing Grandmother hated more than tardiness—or early arrivals—it was receiving a personal sermon. Or correction of any kind. Even Grandfather Hezekiah hadn’t gotten away with that.

  The smirk on Grandmother’s face took Clarissa back. Her grandmother was enjoying being threatened with a sermon? Clarissa glanced over at the reverend, who sat with brows lifted and a hint of a grin on his face—a friendly warning.

  And Grandmother let him do it.

  Before she could fully grasp this new side of her grandmother, the older woman straightened, eyes snapping. “You’re more like your late grandfather than I like to admit. However, we haven’t time to discuss it. Everyone needs to get settled in.”

  “You’re right,” Clarissa said, although her grandmother’s tone told her she simply didn’t want to keep talking about any of this. “I assume you want to keep your old rooms, but where would you like to put Absalom and his wife? And what about his stepson?”

  Grandmother was on her feet and halfway to the door before Clarissa could stop her. “Where are you going? I need you to tell me where to put these people.”

  “Figure it out yourself. Put them anywhere you like.”

  Clarissa scrambled to keep pace with her grandmother, who was now in the hall. The reverend caught up with them at the front entrance.

  “I’m not staying. I barely survived the last time he lived here.”

  Clarissa clasped her grandmother’s arm. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

  “It’s not.” Grandmother snatched her arm away and opened the door. “You were young, and we didn’t tell you everything.”

  “Then tell me now.”

  “I don’t have time. I have to make arrangements to leave town.”

  What was she thinking? “Where will you go?”

  “Back home.”

  “The Delta?”

  “No, I’m going to my home. To live with Cousin Mary Grace.” With the tip of her cane, she pushed open the already-ajar door and stepped onto the front gallery. “As soon as I can get the money together, I’m buying a steamer ticket and moving back to Memphis.”

  * * *

  “Grandmother, you can’t—”

  Missus Adams slammed the door hard enough to make the case clock chime.

  Samuel glanced over at his new wife as the surprise on her face quickly gave way to fear. Then she yanked open the door and ran onto the gallery. “Grandmother, come back inside.”

  “I’m not leaving yet. I want to think. Alone.”

  “Fine.” Clarissa strode inside and toward the back door. There she gestured for Samuel to join her at the six-over-six detached sidelights. “If she truly wants to think, she’ll sit under the pergola. But when she wants to pray, she goes to the sanctuary.”

  Samuel peered out at the vine-covered, open pergola in the garden, perhaps a hundred yards from the house. “Then I’m glad I don’t see her in the pergola, because she needs to pray about leaving us. But if she wanted to pray, why didn’t she say so? And where’s the sanctuary?”

  “She thinks private prayer should be just that—a private matter, not to be spoken of. And you can’t see the sanctuary from here.” She grasped the double door’s knob, turned and pulled, but this door was stuck too.

  “Let me try.” When she’d stepped back, Samuel took the knob and applied his strength to the door. When it finally flung open, he stood back so she could exit first. “I’ll make sure Absalom has these doors fixed first thing, Miss—Missus...” He shook his head. Veronica had insisted he call her Missus Montgomery, and it would be wise to keep an emotional distance in his new marriage as well. However, she should be the one to decide. “What do you want me to call you?”

  Her tinkling laugh—guileless, melodic—took him aback. He should have expected her to have a beautiful laugh, since she had such a sweet-sounding speaking voice. Nevertheless, he was unprepared for it. Of a sudden, he couldn’t wait until the next choir rehearsal so he could hear her sing. He couldn’t keep a smile from his face. “What’s so funny?”

  “You are, with your formality, although it will help you fit into our church and our town. You haven’t been here long enough to know, but Natchez is the strictest and most conventional city on the River. Or in the entire South, for that matter, including Charleston.”

  No, but he’d been here long enough to believe it.

  “Grandfather used to tell me stories of Grandmother Euphemia calling him ‘Reverend,’ even when they were alone, until long after they sent my uncle to boarding school.”

  “And what did he call her?”

  “Ducky dearest.”

  He could just imagine the dowager’s response. He grinned at Clarissa, hoping to draw her sweet laugh again. “Hmm...it has possibilities.”

  As her laugh tinkled, the warmth in Samuel’s heart shot him a grim warning, reminding him that romantic love was not for him. Sure, the dark-haired beauty before him was his wife, but only because she needed to hold on to this home and he needed to keep his pastorate. So from now on, instead of enjoying the sound of her laugh, he would need to steel his heart against it. He couldn’t treat her as if they had a real marriage, a real relationship. She didn’t want it any more than he did.

  “I think we’ll leave Grandfather’s terms of endearment in the past.” Oblivious to the darkness of his thoughts, of his heart, she stepped outside to the weedy brick courtyard and the sprawling, equally weedy terraced gardens beyond. “Custom dictates that I call you ‘Reverend’ in public, and you refer to me as ‘Missus Montgomery.’ But at home, please call me Clarissa. As may Emma.”

  “And please call me Samuel.”

  She smiled, settling this issue, if nothing else. Although the arrangement seemed too casual, too intimate, for a wife who would never truly be his wife.

  “How long have you been a widower?” she asked with a hint of compassion in her voice, unlike the deacons.

  “Almost four years.” As painful as it was to discuss Veronica and his marital failure, he needed to get the conversation behind him. Clarissa had a right to know. In fact, she had a right to know the whole story of Samuel’s failure, although he didn’t have the courage to reveal it. “My first marriage was an arranged union. My f
ather wanted me to move up in our denomination, and Veronica’s father was assistant to our national superintendent.”

  She stopped and turned to him, her hazel eyes bright green in the sunlight. Or had her natural empathy colored them so vividly? “Did you have a happy marriage? It’s rare for marriages of convenience to lead to true love.”

  “We did not.” Something in Clarissa’s demeanor—perhaps the sad little droop of her lips—made him long to tell her all about his disastrous first marriage. But even more, he dreaded seeing pity in those most expressive eyes. However, Clarissa was his wife now, and she deserved to know as much of the truth as he could bear to tell. “Emma was born a year after we were married, and her birth was our only happy moment. Unfortunately for me, Veronica was in love with another man and had been for some time before our wedding.”

  Clarissa’s dainty hand fluttered to her chest and then he saw it—the pity he hated. If he didn’t tell her the rest of his story now, he never would, and that wasn’t fair to her. “Her beau, Reuben Conwell, was a businessman and heir to the Southern Bank of Louisiana and Mississippi. Conwell had a reputation as a swindler with an uncanny ability to spot and exploit his competitors’ weaknesses. The man was ruthless, heartless. Veronica’s father felt he was not good enough for her.”

  “So her father promised you advantages within the denomination if you would prevent her from marrying Conwell.”

  “He promised my father, not me, but yes. But in time, I loved Veronica intensely.” At least, he’d thought so at the time. He gazed out over the expanse of lawn and gardens. His late wife had never taken walks with him, had rarely had this much conversation with him. She’d seemed barely able to tolerate his presence. What a change to have a wife who wanted to be with him. “I thought I could make her love me. I did everything I could think of to make her happy, to make her like me, let alone love me.”

  He should probably tell her the rest, lay bare his heart and confess the event that had sealed their marriage’s failure. Though he couldn’t uncover the wound to share it, he relived it now—the moment he’d realized his love for Veronica. Six years ago, as they were about enter the elegant Burnett Hotel ballroom, where the district’s dignitaries and guests had gathered to witness his appointment as presbyter. His tender confession of love, the kiss he’d tried to give to seal his newfound affection...

  Her shocked response, her acerbic laugh. Reverend Montgomery, do you mean you love me?

  His stammered response, her back as she’d fled the room.

  Her shrill laugh as he’d discovered her alone with Conwell minutes later, betraying Samuel with her mocking voice, regaling his rival with her story of Samuel’s confession of love. The realization of his failure as a family man.

  The withering of his heart as his love for Veronica died.

  “Were you able to win her love?” Clarissa’s sweet voice mercifully brought him back to the present.

  He shook his head. If only he could forget those words he’d heard all those years ago. But that would never happen, and besides, it was time to change the tone of this conversation. It was his and Clarissa’s wedding day, after all. She should have some measure of happiness today. “But I have Emma. Other than the Lord, she’s the delight of my life.”

  “I’ll help you with her.” Clarissa laid her hand on his arm, her voice a whisper. “I’ll do everything I can.”

  How could he respond to that? He’d placed all his hopes on Clarissa to help him rebuild his family—on her and on the Lord. If this didn’t work, he didn’t know what would.

  They moved through the gardens, the cool evening air settling upon them as the sun lowered in the clear sky. Clarissa waved toward the west, shifting the tone as if she wanted to sweep away his disappointment in himself. “There’s my grandmother—just where I thought she’d be.”

  Samuel looked beyond the expanse of flower beds with pink and white buds popping out here and there, past the pond with its arched white bridge and nearby gazebo. The entire estate held an air of grandeur faded to a dismal shabbiness, from the chipped paint on the bridge to the unkempt herb garden. Then he spotted a crumbling brick walk leading to a small stone chapel in the Greek temple style, its front open and supported by four white columns. Clarissa’s grandmother sat on a stone bench next to a statue of a bowing angel, facing the diminutive altar.

  “My grandfather built the sanctuary,” Clarissa said, lowering her voice, “as a memorial to God’s faithfulness in healing him and Grandmother of the illness that took my mother.”

  For all its compactness, the little chapel was as dignified and classic as its occupant.

  They turned and started toward the pergola to give Missus Adams her privacy while keeping an eye out for Emma, who was likely curled up somewhere, reading her book. And Absalom. As much as the man annoyed Samuel, he’d rather have him where he could watch him.

  “I think Grandmother is serious about going to Memphis, if she can scrape together the money for a steamer ticket.”

  The concern, the pain in those big hazel eyes, could have melted Samuel’s heart once. Before Veronica, before his mistakes, before he’d known the power of guilt—and that he didn’t deserve a second chance at love. Didn’t deserve more than a marriage of convenience, a loveless union, a wedding sham.

  But even though this marriage was based on necessity rather than love, he now had the responsibility of Clarissa’s family. He mentally reviewed his financial state, including the modest inheritance from his parents. “I’ll be glad to cover the cost of her ticket.”

  Clarissa’s eyes turned cloudy, like a thunderstorm on the river. She hesitated, glancing toward the sanctuary and the feisty woman sitting there, holding her cane like a spear at her side.

  She faced Samuel again, fear in her countenance. “Must we help her leave me? She’s all I have.”

  He might have thought he understood, since Emma was his only living relative. But Clarissa’s pained silence told him her story may have been more complex than his. Perhaps he understood less than he thought. “What happened to the rest of your family?”

  Clarissa gazed into the sky, the waning sun setting fire to the gold flecks in her eyes. “When I was twelve, yellow fever hit the town just after we arrived in the spring. My father came down with it first, then Mother.”

  Her voice dropped, and he leaned toward her to catch every nuance. “Then she went away to heaven.”

  Her sigh came from someplace deep within, a slight duskiness now shadowing the tender, fair skin under her eyes. Samuel shifted a fraction closer to hear her low voice. “And then what?”

  “By then, my grandparents were also sick. Cousin Absalom left us to seek his fortune somewhere or other. And my father—” She turned suddenly and gazed behind them, toward the house, as if expecting him to stride up the brick walk toward her. Her shoulders stooped for just an instant, as if she’d been disappointed he was not there. “I haven’t seen him since.”

  Samuel had been right. Her childhood had been much worse than his.

  As they passed another stunning marble statue of an angel, Clarissa reached out and brushed her fingers over the tip of one wing, as if greeting an old friend. She stopped and lowered herself to the stone bench near the statue, her eyes turning misty. “We came to Natchez thinking we’d be safe. The yellow fever hadn’t hit yet, and we’d be in the country most of the time, leaving Camellia Pointe only to attend church and interview the new music teacher. He was Mister John Charles Oglethorpe, of the Savannah Oglethorpes.”

  “One of the most noted vocal instructors in the South.”

  “That’s why I wanted to study under him. Mother didn’t want me to move here to study because she was afraid of the fever. But I insisted, and Papa gave in to me as usual. As you know, the fever took my mother.” She hesitated so long, Samuel feared she couldn’t continue. Then she cleared her throat. “She was barely gone when
I looked down the stairs and saw my father dashing for the door. Since he didn’t have his hat, I thought he was walking around the grounds. Later Grandmother sent me to Joseph’s house on the bluff to see if he knew where Papa was, since I was the only one who wasn’t sick.”

  “And he knew?”

  “I never got to ask him. The steamer whistle blew while I was standing on his front gallery, and I somehow knew my father would be on it. I looked down the bluff in time to see him walking up the gangplank, wearing the sky-blue velvet coat Mother had given him.”

  In Samuel’s twelfth summer, he’d spent nearly every waking hour with his father, learning the work of the ministry. Translating Bible passages into Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. Calling on the sick. Watching Father labor over sermons. Meeting with the deacon board. All the while wishing instead to be outside with his friends, fishing or frog gigging. “I’m suddenly sorry I took my father for granted.”

  She reached inside her sleeve, pulled out a lacy handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. Her gaze turned soft as she surveyed the gardens, the woods beyond. “The last time we were all together—the last time we were happy—was at this place.”

  And she believed she could be happy here again. She didn’t have to say the words. Samuel knew it instinctively. She might have been right, had she not married him.

  The thought invaded his mind and embedded itself there. What was done was done, but today Clarissa had forfeited her chance of a happy union. In years to come, would she still think this place was worth the price she’d paid for it?

  Would Samuel regret letting her pay it?

  And what of her father? Could he not somehow have made her life easier, happier? “Why does your father stay away?”

  “He and I have always been opposites. What brings me comfort brings him pain.” Clarissa slipped her hanky back into her sleeve. “Although I posted a letter to him this afternoon, inviting him home for the Spring Festival and telling him of our marriage.”