by Beth White
“Oh! That makes perfect sense.” She nodded. “Have you had a chance to take out a gun yourself? My papa used to all but live in the woods whenever we girls would get too giggly.”
“Not yet, though I plan to do so, at some point, before we leave the area. I’m fond of hunting bear, and I hear there’s a big one terrorizing the livestock.” He reached for his wife’s hand. “But let us not discuss such masculine pursuits over dinner. My Mary Ann assures me the ladies prefer to keep dinner talk focused on lighter topics.”
There was something oily about the general’s tone that set Joelle’s teeth on edge. She’d watched him in church yesterday too. Though he seemed sober and attentive, he wasn’t a demonstrative man. During the war, Confederate newspapers proclaimed him to be a gifted horseman—even earning the nickname “Wizard of the Saddle”—a charismatic leader, and brilliant battle strategist. But she’d also read reports of relentless cruelty to the enemy. Could the villain of Fort Pillow, who had reportedly led the massacre of nearly two hundred defenseless Negroes, have really changed?
Then again, who was she to judge whether or not a man had repented?
She turned her attention back to her meal and let Aurora and the effervescent Delfina carry the conversation.
The maids had begun to serve the tartlets, wine, and coffee, when she heard the doorbell ring. After a few moments, Mose, in serving livery for the evening, came to the dining room doorway.
Joelle went to him. “What’s the matter, Mose?”
He handed her an envelope. “The man at the door said deliver it to Mr. Hixon immediately.”
“At dinnertime? That’s odd.” She turned the envelope over and frowned at the slashing masculine script. “It’s addressed to Schuyler.”
“He said if Mr. Beaumont wasn’t here, to give it to Hixon.”
That was even more strange. “Thank you, Mose.” She wandered back to the table and sat down.
By this time, Hixon had gulped down two glasses of wine and was looking about for more. When she handed the envelope to him, he took it with disinterest and laid it beside his plate, then leaned forward, peering past Joelle. “Somebody pass the wine, please.”
How had Schuyler tolerated this sot for so many years? What if the message was something important?
Picking up the envelope, she laid her hand on his sleeve. “Mr. Hixon.”
He flinched and blinked owlishly at her over his wineglass. “Ma’am?”
“I think you should open this, to see if it’s something that needs to be dealt with. I’m not sure when Schuyler will be back.”
Hixon looked fairly cross-eyed with the effort to exercise his brain. “Beaumont didn’t say anything about opening it. Come to think of it, he told me to watch out for you too, but you seem to be capable of taking care of yourself. You open it—you’re a lot smarter than I am.” He seemed relieved to pass responsibility to someone else.
Joelle reached for one of the dinner candles and held the envelope above it just long enough to loosen the wax seal. Sliding her thumbnail beneath it, she opened the flap, removed the paper, and read it quickly.
I want your information. Meet me tonight at midnight at the smokehouse.
Heart thumping, hands shaking, she slipped the paper back into the envelope and resealed it.
Information? What did that mean? Hixon clearly knew nothing and wanted to know nothing. Obviously Schuyler wasn’t here, so she couldn’t simply ask him. But his warning had left her jumping at shadows all day, and the arrival of the Fryes this afternoon multiplied her anxiety.
What should she do? If Levi were here, she would go to him—but he was gone too. The next smartest person in the room sat at the other end of the table, relentlessly teasing her cousin ThomasAnne.
She got to her feet, swaying dramatically. “Oh my, I’m not feeling well. I’d better go lie down.”
As she had predicted, Benjamin Kidd immediately got up and came to her. “What’s the matter, Jo?” He waved everyone else to their seats as he put an arm about Joelle’s waist and cupped her elbow. “No, I don’t need an audience. Come in the parlor, Joelle, and let me take a look at you.”
Joelle stumbled along trying to look sick. When they got to the parlor and he’d shut the door, she whirled and grabbed Doc’s hands. “Ben, I’m so worried, and I don’t know who else to go to. I’m afraid Schuyler is in trouble.”
twenty-six
“GO KISS YOUR WIFE,” Schuyler told Levi as they left the barn after stabling the horses. “I imagine she’ll be glad to see you.”
Without argument, Levi grinned and headed to the main house, where lights still blazed from the lower floor. His pace was remarkably quick for a man who had been in the saddle since sunup.
Schuyler lagged behind, still emotionally and physically drained from the events of the day. He knew he wouldn’t easily fall asleep, no matter how his body ached for rest. Jefcoat’s gasping bearded face—had he nearly killed a man who had been his best friend?—kept surging to the front of his mind. What if Levi hadn’t stopped him?
Shuddering, he broke that train of thought and realized he’d gravitated toward the manager’s cottage. It seemed he needed Joelle in times of duress, in a way he’d never imagined possible. She talked sense into him, she gave him hope and encouragement. Mostly she listened.
She could still be in the main house, where it looked like a dinner party still raged. He could wait under her window until she came to her room, at least talk to her before he found his own rest in the barn or on the back porch.
Then he caught movement from the side of the cottage closest to the barn, heard a soft footfall. Weariness forgotten, senses alert, he drew his gun. Cover. He quickly and quietly slipped behind the closest oak tree. “Who’s there?” he called softly.
“Beaumont?” Doc’s quiet voice came out of the darkness.
Schuyler moved toward the cottage, still cautious. “What are you doing out here?”
“Waiting for you.”
“What? Why?”
“I have a message for you. They want to meet you at the smokehouse at midnight.”
“Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re going to explain who, right here and now. And next time you appoint an emissary, you might choose somebody with a better head for liquor than Hixon. He’s under the table, and Joelle intercepted the note from your contact—I assume someone in that den of criminals calling themselves a brotherhood.”
“I can’t explain, not until I know how much you know. I’m sworn to—”
“Levi brought me in a few days ago. He needed someone to keep an eye on the women, and I don’t work blind.”
An ally. Schuyler relaxed—marginally. “All right. I do have a contact in the ‘brotherhood’ that I believe is pretty high up the chain of command. To lure him out, I told him I’d give him Frye. I didn’t tell Hixon anything germane, simply asked him to hold any messages that came for me.”
“Well, it arrived during dinner. Being the reporter she is, Joelle couldn’t resist opening it. Scared her to death, so she came to me. Here it is.” Doc handed over a small envelope.
Schuyler muttered under his breath. Of course she would open it. “I’ll talk to her. Is she still in the main house?”
“No. And there’s something else you should know. Frye and his wife came here this morning, afraid the Klan had found them in Shake Rag.”
“Good Lord! This is right in the middle of that nest of snakes!”
“Maybe that’s the best place to hide.” Doc’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Joelle put them in her room, which is why I’m here, watching the perimeter.”
“Huh.” Smart girl. Brave girl. “Where is she?”
“She’s in the kitchen, helping with cleanup.”
“What time is it?”
“Nine thirty or ten, I would guess. How far is your meeting place?”
“Half hour’s ride away.” Schuyler sighed. “No time to rest.”
; But there might be time to speak to Joelle, just see her face and make sure she was all right, before he had to saddle up again.
Joelle stepped out of the kitchen into the yard to empty a pan of dishwater, praying and thinking and worrying all at once. When something moved in the darkness, she sloshed it all over the front of her dress, dropped the pan, and dove for the gun propped inside the door. Had General Forrest’s bear come foraging for food?
“Joelle!”
“Schuyler?” She came outside, shutting the door behind her, kicking the dishpan out of the way. “I nearly shot you!”
“The story of our courtship.”
“There is no courtship.” She paused, all but blind in the starless night. “Where are you?”
“Right here.” He was close. She could smell him.
Which made her laugh. “What have you been doing? You smell like—”
“I’ve been on a horse all day. Forgive me if I was so anxious to see you that I didn’t stop to bathe.”
“If you’d come a little closer, I’d have pitched that pan of soapy water at you.”
Then his laughter rolled out, warm and so familiar that her toes curled. “I missed you,” he said.
“It’s only been twelve hours.”
“Ah, Jo.”
She didn’t know who moved first, because some centrifugal force had their mouths crashing together, representative of the violence in the nature of their relationship from the beginning—one part resentment, one part longing, all of it inevitable as the tide. She reached for his shirt, yanked him closer, groaned in frustration when there was no closer to get to. He laughed, held the sides of her head, gentled his kisses until she submitted to being wooed in soft sips and brushes of the lips. And then he took her into that beautiful dark place once more, where she didn’t know where he ended and she began.
“Sky,” she gasped as he kissed her throat. “I didn’t know . . .”
“Yes, you did. You always knew. That’s why you’ve fought it so hard.”
“I still can’t—”
“You’re mine.” He said it with no possessiveness, just absolute certainty. “You. Are. Mine.”
“No.”
“Yes. Always.”
She pushed him away, pushed herself away. “This is . . . Schuyler, there are bad things happening. A message came to me tonight—”
“I know. I’m going to deal with it, but I had to see you first. If I don’t come back—”
“What are you talking about? Don’t talk crazy!”
“I want you to know I love you. Probably always have, I just had to grow up and admit it. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you now, but you seem to . . . I mean, I can’t be feeling this way if there’s no—” She heard him swallow. “You did kiss me back.”
“Of course I did. Only a blind, stupid boy would overlook the insane way I’ve behaved over the last ten years.”
“Then say it.”
“No. Not until there’s a ring. And a party. And maybe fireworks. Not in the dark, with dirty dishwater all over my dress, and you smelling like a stable.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then, quietly, “I love you, Joelle. I’ll tell you again, when it’s not so dark and dangerous. But if I don’t come back, if something happens, at least you’ll know.” He picked up her hand, brought it to his lips, and bowed. Before she could say a word, he was gone.
She picked up the dishpan and hugged it to her chest. What in the world?
Schuyler was halfway to Saltillo before he realized there was something off about that message.
He’d lit a lamp in the barn and read it over several times. He didn’t recognize the handwriting, but the vague wording, the mention of the smokehouse, seemed targeted to him. Frye’s name not being mentioned could mean either the author of the note didn’t know it, or he was trying to hide it. No signature, no initial, no identification of the writer at all.
Though he’d been pushing to accomplish his mission and get back home, he slowed the tired bay to a walk. He’d been trying to lure Maney out into the open, but suppose Maney was equally determined to draw Schuyler away from Daughtry House. What if he’d played right into the enemy’s hands? What if it was another trap, similar to the one he’d walked into at Beene’s Ferry? He should have at least brought someone with him this time, but it was too late for that.
Now he had a decision. Go on, and risk capture or worse—or return to Daughtry House and lose the opportunity to confront the Grand Titan or whatever rank Maney claimed in the Klan brotherhood. Cursing the characteristic impulsiveness that seemed to consistently get him in trouble, he stopped and looked up.
The moon floated out from behind a dense cloud, appearing in a full golden orb laced by silvery rococo designs.
God was not in the moon, but the creator of the moon saw him, right where he was. That same moon shone over a Saltillo plantation, where he’d once been beaten and rescued. It shone over Joelle, her family, and a courageous schoolteacher and his wife, all sleeping at Daughtry House.
Where lies the battle, Lord? Which way do I go?
Joelle lay rigid, flat on her back, on the pallet she’d fashioned out of quilts in front of the fireplace.
Horatia and Mose, Charmion and Nathan, and the two kitchen maids employed for dinner had all gone home half an hour earlier, leaving the kitchen sparkling clean and ready to start breakfast preparations at dawn. After locking the door behind them, Joelle had washed her face and scrubbed her teeth at the sink, then opened the carpetbag she’d packed earlier in the day. Finding her brush, she took the pins out of her hair and returned it to its usual simple braid. With a groan of relief, she skimmed down to her chemise and replaced the tight dress and corset with her loosest day dress.
She’d thought she was tired enough to fall instantly asleep, but she kept thinking of Schuyler’s last words.
I love you, Joelle. If something happens, at least you’ll know.
Why hadn’t she said it back to him? What was so hard about telling the man to whom you’d given your heart when you were a child that he wasn’t the only one to feel a consuming, life-changing, God-ordained passion?
She knew the answer to that question. It was hard because it hurt. It hurt to be pushed away and disagreed with and put in second place. If you admitted that you loved, you put yourself in danger of rejection. She’d felt the pain of being sent away to boarding school, when all she wanted was to stay home with her mama and read all the books in Papa’s library. She’d watched her mother wilt when Papa went away to war, his principles more important than his wife and family. Perhaps he thought of that as heroic, but to her it had seemed the height of selfishness.
Of course she loved Schuyler, but he was a warrior, a doer in the same vein as her father. And look how that had turned out.
She turned over, shuddering. No. She’d rather be alone than face that constant peril. This peril. He was putting himself in harm’s way this very minute, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
Normally, when she couldn’t sleep, she got up to write down what was bothering her. This time, though, the fear was so deeply personal, such a wordless groan of the spirit, that she could only lie there and quake in the dark.
She was finally beginning to drift off, when someone lit a lamp in the corner.
What?
Heart hammering, she sat up and saw the light flickering, but it wasn’t a lamp, and it wasn’t the fireplace. The schoolroom door was on fire. Now she could see smoke drifting overhead, all around, drugging her, making it hard to breathe. She crawled toward the door, under the table, knocking against chairs. Hitting her head on the table ledge, she paused to suck in an ill-advised breath full of smoke, and fell into a paroxysm of coughing.
Cover your face. Get out. Find the door.
Oh, God, please help me.
The closest wet rag was in the sink, the wrong side of the room. Crouching again, she blindly headed toward the exterior door. The schoolroom was now roaring with fla
mes, and the fire would leap to the kitchen at any moment.
What seemed like forever probably took only a minute, for the kitchen wasn’t that big a room, but she finally reached out and felt wood against her hands. Trying not to breathe, tears rolling down her face, she felt her way up to the doorknob. She grasped it and cried out in pain, her palm instantly blistering.
Stupid, stupid, of course it would be hot! She should have brought the quilt with her, but too late for that. She had to get out now.
She got to her bare feet, lifted her skirt, and used it to protect her fingers as she first turned the key, then the doorknob. Smoke poured out behind her as she fell into fresh open air. On her knees, she rocked, trying to make herself get up and run. Her head swam, coughing racking her body again. Setting one hand and knee forward, then the other, slowly she made it out into the yard, past the worst of the smoke and flames.
She looked back, horrified to see the roof of the schoolroom cave in. The kitchen would be next. She’d barely gotten out in time.
Was the main house on fire? It seemed not. People were pouring out the back door, though, off the porch, into the garden, running toward her.
The cottage. It was clear of the fire too, as was the barn. Only the kitchen and its attached schoolroom had gone up.
“Joelle!” Selah reached her first, snatched her into her arms. “Thank God! Are you all right? Was anyone else still in there with you?”
“No, I—” She doubled over, coughing. “Everyone else went home about an hour ago.” She turned toward the hill a quarter mile away, where Nathan and Charmion’s little house sat. “Oh no!” She started running. “The Vincents’ house is on fire! Everybody grab a bucket from the barn!”
But she’d barely gone a few yards when she saw that it was the blacksmith shop, not the house, in flames top to bottom. Hearing somebody running behind her, she looked over her shoulder to find Levi overtaking her.
“We’ve got to contain it so that it doesn’t catch the house!” he shouted on the way by. “Go wake up Nathan and Charmion.”