“That Goss fellow’s looks have improved with age.”
True, but what had Clarissa ever seen in him? Hadn’t she recognized his greed, his arrogance? And why had she thought him handsome? Sure, he was, in a worldly sort of way. But she now knew what handsome was, that a good-looking man looks even better when his character aligns with his outward appearance. Why, even if Samuel worked all day in a cotton field, he’d still come home looking better than—
Oh, no. She wasn’t about to finish the thought. Especially with her grandmother propped up in her bed, not six inches away.
“Grandmother,” she asked on a whim, “what do you think of Samuel?”
“He’s the image of his late grandfather.”
“I already know that. What do you think of him as a man?”
“Compared to Harold Goss?”
“Just as a man.”
Her sharp eyes probed Clarissa’s, looking for something there... “He’s just about right for you.”
Just about right...
Clarissa bounded from Grandmother’s bed, her bare feet hitting the cold floor.
“Where are you going?”
She stopped and kissed the older woman’s cheek. “I have things to do.”
It was true. She needed to go to her own sanctuary, her refuge, her secret place of prayer. And discover what God had in mind for her, for Samuel, for their entire family.
Driven by an urgency she could neither understand nor deny, she hastened to her room for slippers and a warm shawl. Then she silently slipped out the second-story gallery door and down the steps to the courtyard and beyond.
She raced along the path toward the little arched bridge over the duck pond, its paint worn and its boards weathered. Here she’d met with God since she was twelve, the way Grandfather met with Him in the sanctuary he’d built. Clarissa picked up a handful of smooth stones from the ground near the water’s edge.
On the bridge, she tossed them into the water. The ripples were hidden to her on this moonless night, but she could hear the stones hit the pond’s surface. She turned her heart to prayer, listened for God’s still, small voice, waited for the peace that came with His presence. Sometimes, at this spot, she seemed to remember her every encounter with the Almighty. But today, only one thing assaulted her mind: her growing feelings for Samuel. Well, two things, if she counted their kiss.
He’d told her to forget it. It had meant nothing to him. To her, it had meant more than she wanted to admit, even to herself. How had she gotten into this mess?
And Harold. Why had he chosen this day, of all days, to come back into her life? What had he been doing at the little sanctuary with Absalom? Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen much of her reprobate cousin yesterday. Where had he and his family been, and what had they been doing?
She turned and gazed back at the big house, its rooms now nearly full. It felt good, felt right, to use the house this way. Even Grandmother seemed to agree.
However, in the morning, she would need to find out what new plot her cousin was cooking up in an attempt to take Clarissa’s property.
When she did, her newfound sense of purpose could vanish like the pebbles in the pond.
* * *
As soon as the sun had burned off the fog the next morning, Samuel crept outside, Grandfather’s sword sheathed at his side and another in his hand. If he was quiet enough, perhaps he wouldn’t awaken Clarissa or Miss Phemie.
He hadn’t heard Willie come down the attic steps from his room this morning, hadn’t heard puppy toenails on the wood floors, but the boy was canny enough to have sneaked out silently. Not that he practiced stealth in his daily activities, however. With all the noise he made in the house, it was a wonder Miss Phemie didn’t make him sleep in the stable.
Samuel glanced around the grounds. If Willie wasn’t already at the croquet lawn—battlefield—they wouldn’t have time for a lesson before Samuel had to get to church.
As he stepped onto the battlefield, he heard the pup growl, then Willie sprang out at him from behind a towering bush and aimed a pointed stick at his chest like a saber. “En garde!”
“Use this instead.” With Honey nipping at his heels, Samuel handed Willie the sword he’d bought from a former soldier yesterday.
“My own sword?”
Samuel drew his weapon and assumed his fighting stance, right leg forward and left hand on his hip. “Attack in the one line!”
Willie tossed his stick to the ground and aimed the sword at Samuel’s head, slow and deliberate, as he’d been taught. Samuel deflected the thrust with his sword’s edge. “Attack in the seven line!”
He cut to hack Samuel’s sword at his flank.
“Eight!”
After some impressive footwork for a boy his age, he lunged at Samuel’s hip.
A quick parry. “Well done. You’ve been practicing.”
“Every day, like you told me.”
“We need to fashion a practice target for you.” Samuel glanced about the area until his gaze landed on a pink-flowered bush, about as tall as the boy, growing near the pergola. He laid his sword on the wall and beckoned Willie to follow him. “For now, let’s use that bush. Imagine where the head, chest and flank would be if it were a man.”
“I’ll imagine where they would be if it was Absalom.”
Choosing to let the comment pass, Samuel called the parry numbers to him again, and Willie responded by thrusting, cutting and lunging at the poor bush.
A full-throated soprano laugh behind Samuel caught his attention. Clarissa. However, he dared not turn to look or Willie might cut down the whole bush. Instead, Samuel waved his sword. “Attack from the rear. Prepare to surrender!”
Willie stopped, sword in midair, and looked beyond Samuel. “I ain’t surrendering to no girls.” Left hand still on his hip, he spun around again and assaulted the bush with fresh vigor, tossing aside all rules of swordplay in favor of a barbaric attack. Branches and flowers fell to the lawn as he pruned the lower half of the bush.
“If you cut down all the camellia bushes, we’ll have to change the name of our home.” Clarissa, Emma and little Prudy drew near, Clarissa pushing a battered wheelbarrow.
“What you got in there? Where you going with it?” Willie’s attention diverted, he used both hands to set the sword on the terrace wall and headed toward the wheelbarrow.
“Bricks. We plan to replace all the broken ones in this section of sidewalk before breakfast. Absalom has a lot of his repair work done already, and I want to beat him.”
Willie peered inside the wheelbarrow. “You going to let them, Papa Samuel? This is men’s work.”
Samuel took in Clarissa’s determined stance, her faded brown work dress. How was he supposed to answer? For all Clarissa’s femininity, she could probably succeed in anything she tried, even bricklaying. But should he allow her to do such hard work? He should have addressed this sooner, somehow made arrangements to do the repairs himself. His first days in his new pastorate were crucial to the health of the church, but his new family’s needs were important as well...
“Generally speaking, you’re right.” Clarissa mercifully answered for him. “But Samuel has his church responsibilities, and you have school. That leaves the work for me.”
The torturous expression on Willie’s face made Samuel grin. “You can work until breakfast. Go get Peter so he can help too.”
“Pete? He’s just a little kid. He’ll mess it up.”
“He’s a private in boot camp. You’re the ranking officer. It’s your job to make a good soldier of him.”
Willie gave him a halfhearted salute. “Yes, sir.”
“Keep an eye on Honey too.”
As Willie trudged off toward the house, Emma eyed Samuel’s sword, still on the wall where he’d left it. “Great-grandfather Jonah’s sword... Mama said he used it in
the War of 1812.”
“He did.” Samuel peered at the sun, estimating the time he’d been outside. “I’ll help you get some bricks replaced, since we have a half hour or so before breakfast.”
He maneuvered the wheelbarrow to the terrace steps near the courtyard, where the walk began. As he started to unload bricks to the grass, Clarissa joined him. Emma, however, held back, still standing at the wall and gazing at the sword. He shook his head. There was no understanding her. He hefted out another armful of bricks, soiling the sleeve of his black morning coat.
“She has a great interest in your sword,” Clarissa whispered as she brushed the dirt from his arm. His wife looked so sweet, giving her attention to his dishevelment and whispering as if they had some great secret. As she leaned closer, he wondered if they did. “And in your grandfather.”
“She’s heard the tales of his bravery in battle. But she thinks war is romantic, all knights and kings and gallantry. She has no idea what it’s like.”
“Yes,” Clarissa said, her gaze darting between him and his daughter, “and you could capitalize on that. Use it to your advantage.”
“How?”
“First, stop scowling when you look at her.” Clarissa’s sweet tone tempered the harshness of her words—words that needed to be said.
He’d done it again. Since she’d pointed it out, he could feel the tension in his face, the pull of his brows. Samuel turned his back to his daughter and took a deep breath, exhaling with a low growl, massaging his forehead and between his eyes. God, help me...
“What do I do?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. Could he ask Clarissa for her help, admit he had no idea how to reach his daughter? “She’s my girl, and I love her, but I don’t know how to talk to her, show her love...be her father.”
“You do. Be kind and show interest in what she’s doing.”
“She’s interested in nothing but that book of hers—and Beau.”
Clarissa cocked her head toward Emma. “And the sword, and her great-grandfather. Find out why. Offer to teach her swordplay.”
What? No. “Women don’t swordfight, much less little girls. She probably couldn’t lift it off the wall.”
“She’s not a little girl. She’s nearly marrying age. And has fascinations all her own.”
The tension started in his forehead again, and he rubbed it in the hope of smoothing the frown lines so he’d look less like an ogre and more like a father.
Leaving Clarissa to mind the bricks and little Prudy, he started toward his daughter, more unsure of himself than he’d ever been, either in battle or in the ministry. When he reached her, he sat on the low brick wall.
“Would you like me to teach you to use it?”
Emma looked him in the eye for the first time since he’d left her in Kentucky. “Just me?”
She wanted to be with him, just the two of them? He’d longed for it so long, he didn’t know what to say, what would draw her nearer and what would drive her even further away. He paused. “If you like.”
Her bright smile told him he’d said just the right thing. Thank You, God.
She touched the sword’s hilt. “It would be even better if Clarissa would take lessons with me.”
“Of course. Let’s ask her. We can start tomorrow.” But he knew Clarissa would. She’d do anything to bring him and Emma closer.
Today had been a small victory, but it was the most progress he’d made with Emma in years. He glanced heavenward and gave thanks for it, and for his wife who seemed somehow to know him better than he knew himself.
* * *
After a quick swordplay lesson with Emma and Clarissa, Samuel stashed his weapon in his room and came to breakfast, finding Harold Goss in his chair, next to Absalom. Remembering how Goss had looked at Clarissa the previous night, not to mention how he’d tried and failed to force Samuel into a courtship with his cousin in Memphis, Samuel felt no inkling of hospitality toward him. “What can we do for you so early this morning, Goss?”
“Just here to sample Miss Ophelia’s good cooking and have a talk with Absalom. And enjoy the view.” The gentle smile Goss aimed at Clarissa, seated across from him, was the kind designed to bring back memories. Memories that didn’t include Samuel.
“The view is mine, not yours, and you’re in my chair.”
Goss’s laugh cut through Samuel like a saber. “Surely you can keep your eyes off her for one meal, preacher.”
The man’s irreverence reminded Samuel of his first encounter with Absalom. His initial instinct was to invite the dandy to leave this house and never return. But would such a confrontation glorify the Lord? Or should he turn the other cheek and risk looking like a coward to Harold and Clarissa?
Father, if You have a third way, I’m willing to hear it...
“A change of scenery is good from time to time.” Clarissa picked up her plate and silverware and moved to the other end of the long table, near where Emma sat with the twins. “Today I think I’ll sit here and enjoy the view from this window instead. Samuel, will you join me?”
He wanted to laugh but managed to hold it back. “Fine. I’ll sit across from you and enjoy the same view I had yesterday.”
Samuel thanked the Lord for sending His third way. And for a long dining table that put a good fifteen feet between them and Absalom and Goss. He leaned forward to murmur to Clarissa, “I’d prefer a solitary breakfast at church.”
Her pretty pink cheeks were his reward. “As would I.”
She would? “Perhaps, if we try again, we might make it through the meal without more orphans showing up.”
“Or the deacons.” Clarissa’s laugh tinkled through the room as she took three cookies from a glass cake stand to her left and set them on his plate.
Applesauce cookies.
“You—made them for me?”
She nodded, her eyes sparkling emeralds in the early morning sunlight. “Last night before bed.”
Something about the curve of her lips made him think of their kiss, made him relive it for a moment. He drew a deep breath. The kiss hadn’t been far from the front of his mind since last night. “You must have stayed up until midnight.”
Her face bloomed with a smile that could have stopped his heart. “I know it sounds silly, but my father always wanted his favorite cookies on the breakfast table. He has a terrible sweet tooth, and Mother indulged him. It was one way she showed her—showed him how much she cared.”
Had Clarissa made breakfast cookies because of family tradition? Or could she possibly care for Samuel in some small way?
He picked up the largest of the three cookies and took a big bite. Delicious. Perhaps he should simply enjoy them instead of trying to discern her motive.
Then again, what was life without hope? Without risk?
Before he could stop himself, Samuel reached across the table and took her hand. Soft and strong, it captivated him for a moment—the dainty nails, the long, slender fingers of a piano player. He couldn’t say how long he held it, but when Willie came plodding in with Honey in his arms, he took one look at them and turned back around.
“Eww. Lovey stuff. I’ll eat in the kitchen.”
“Willie, come back.” Clarissa snatched away her hand, her pink face now flaming red, and swung around in her chair to peer into the hall after him. “It’s not ‘lovey stuff.’ Samuel was just...was just...”
Was just what? It seemed neither of them knew.
Miss Ophelia bustled in then, a platter of bacon in one hand and Willie’s shirt collar in the other. “Simply ignore them, Willie. Young love is beautiful.”
“Yuck. I’m just here for the bacon.” He set Honey on the floor and sat as far from them as he could, pushing his fork and napkin onto the floor in his attempt to sit at the very edge of the table. He swung down, picked up the fork and speared a waffle with it before anyone could stop him.
As Samuel was about to correct him, a rap sounded at the door. He excused himself and found Joseph on the gallery.
“Absalom sent me a message at 6:00 a.m., demanding my presence this morning,” the attorney said. “I’m not too eager to hear why.”
“You’re just in time for some of Miss Ophelia’s good cooking.” Samuel led the way to the formal dining room, taking Joseph’s hat and placing it on the piano as they passed it. He seated Joseph next to Clarissa and handed him a plate from the stack on the buffet while Clarissa retrieved steel flatware from the walnut chest that no doubt had once held silver.
“Joseph, you’re finally here,” Absalom said around a mouthful of food. “I’ve completed the house repairs. However, being a man of letters, not labor, I had to hire a man to do the work. I paid for the new windows, too. So, in addition to declaring me the winner of this round, you’ll need to have the estate reimburse me.”
Joseph took a sip of his coffee, which Samuel had managed to avoid thus far in the meal. “The will doesn’t say the first person who completes a task is necessarily the winner. Or that the late Reverend Adams intended to fund the repairs. They have to come out of your pocket.”
“But all Clarissa has to do is clear away some overgrowth around the sanctuary, pull some weeds and fix the sidewalks. There’s almost no cost involved, since she already has bricks, and there’s sand everywhere to mix with the mortar. She needs to pay for half the repairs on the house, or the reverend will need to pay it for her.” He stuck out his fat lower lip for a moment, his gaze fixed on Willie. “And she keeps bringing home strays. Two more orphans last night.”
“We provide for the orphans, and Grandmother and I will take turns caring for all the children, as she is doing upstairs this morning.” The glare Clarissa cast across the table should have scorched Absalom’s red jacket as black as his heart. “And you know we’ve barely gotten by since the war started. I’ll have expenses, all right, and a preacher’s salary doesn’t leave much room for extras.”
“Which is why I’m a businessman, not a preacher. But don’t despair.” Absalom’s jowls jiggled as he laughed and used his fingers to serve himself a couple slices of bacon. “You can borrow from me or from my business partner here.”
An Inconvenient Marriage Page 16