by Beth White
She thought it likely, and if so, the disaster could not be overstated. The steamboat had been monstrously overloaded—so much so that she had nearly capsized while she chugged into Helena, Arkansas, earlier this morning, due to the passengers ganging on one side to pose for photographers on the wharf.
Or, more properly, she supposed, that had been yesterday. Dawn could not be far away now.
“Aurora?” came ThomasAnne’s querulous voice. “What’s the matter?”
Aurora looked over her shoulder and found her older cousin sitting up in bed, nightcap askew over curly, sandy hair straggling in plaits over her shoulders. “I’m not sure,” Aurora said, turning back to the ruckus outside the window. “Sounds like a steamer up the river exploded and caught fire. Those poor people . . .”
“Oh mercy! Come back to bed before—”
“Tom, it can’t reach us here.” Aurora squelched her own anxiety to reassure her cousin. “It’s almost time to get up anyway, so I’m going to get dressed. I’m sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”
“Heavens, no, you can’t . . .”
Ignoring her cousin’s bleating protests, Aurora shucked out of her nightgown. Feeling her way in the dark, she found her undergarments, stockings, and day dress lying across the cedar chest at the foot of the bed and quickly put them on. “Go to sleep, ThomasAnne,” she said soothingly and slipped out into the hallway, carrying her shoes—and stopped in her tracks at sight of her grandmother mounting the stairs. “Grandmama! What are you doing up?”
“I might ask you the same thing, young lady.” Grandmama reached the landing with a thump of her ebony-head cane, an accessory which Aurora suspected was carried mainly for effect. “Turn right around and get back to bed.” The old lady had once been a famous Titian-haired beauty, and she had not lost the raised-eyebrow expression of one used to commanding a retinue.
“I’m not sleepy.” Aurora tipped her chin, imitating the autocratic tilt of Grandmama’s well-coifed head. “Besides, it’s very noisy outside. What is happening out on the river? I heard the explosion.”
“You heard the . . . You couldn’t possible have—” Grandmama buttoned her lips, then sputtered an exasperated breath. “Pish. I told your grandfather we might as well wake you girls up. Go on down to the breakfast room and find something to eat. We’ll need to start making bandages and send them on to the hospital. I’ll get the other girls—oh, ThomasAnne, you’re up, too? Good, then. Hurry and put some clothes on.”
As Grandmama stumped past Aurora to knock on her sisters’ bedroom door, ThomasAnne ducked back into the room from whence her white, freckled face had briefly appeared like a lace-frilled daisy.
Aurora hurried down the stairs to the breakfast room. Finding the table laid and an array of breakfast foods—bacon, biscuits, grits, fried eggs, and fig preserves—already spread on the buffet by the window, she marveled at Grandmama’s ability to pull together such a bounteous meal in the middle of the night.
Thoughts of the unfortunate souls who had undoubtedly perished in the accident, killed her appetite. But she had gone to the buffet to pour a cup of coffee when sudden thunderous banging on the front door startled her into dropping the coffee pot. Jumping up to deal with the spill spreading over the Aubusson carpet, she heard the butler, Alistair, go to the door, tut-tutting at the racket.
“Hold your horses,” Alistair muttered, and Aurora heard him jerk open the door.
“Doc McGowan sent me!” came a rough male voice that Aurora didn’t recognize. “Said tell the mistress to get ready for an emergency ’cause the hospital’s already full—”
Aurora hurried into the foyer. “Grandmama’s upstairs. I’ll take the message.”
The wiry young Negro at the door snatched his cap off. “Miss, Doc said not to—”
“Pish!” Aurora said, again in deliberate imitation of her grandmother. “How many?”
The man looked over his shoulder, then back at Aurora and apparently decided he’d better deliver his information fast and get back to the hospital. “As many beds as you can find, miss. Some going straight to the morgue, of course—excuse my bluntness—and the surgical cases will stay at the hospital, but the ones can easily be treated will need nurses and simple comfort. Blankets, bandages—”
“Yes, yes, we’ll take care of it. I’m sure you’re needed elsewhere. Thank you.”
As the man ducked away, Alistair shut the door and turned to Aurora. He looked at her with reluctant respect glimmering in his dark eyes. She’d known him all her life, and he and his wife, Vonetta, the family cook, had half raised her. “Well done, little miss. I’ll start down here rounding up blankets and laying out pallets, move some furniture around.”
“Good. I’ll go up and help Grandmama with bandages.” She headed for the stairs, then hesitated, a hand on the newel. “I’m sorry about the mess in the breakfast room. I dropped the coffee pot.”
Alistair responded with a grim smile. “I got a feeling we gon’ have more to worry about than spilt coffee ’fore this day’s over, Miss Aurora.”
Acknowledgments
I WOULD LIKE TO START by thanking my usual cadre of beta readers and editors who keep me from coloring too far outside the lines. My husband, Scott, first reader and sounding board; Kim Carpenter and Tammy Thompson, both of whom gallantly tolerate mixed metaphors, illogical motivations, and anachronistic and wandering prose (and frequently rescue me from corners into which I have painted myself); and my brilliant Revell editors Lonnie Hull Dupont and Barb Barnes. As always, I’m grateful to my longtime literary agent, Chip MacGregor. Your loyalty and encouragement is astonishing.
Also, I would like to mention that my son Ryan continues to bail me out with cool plot twists (perhaps the product of a slightly twisted imagination?). Where’s your book, boy?
On the technical side, thanks to my friend Ronnie Redding, homicide detective with the Alabama State Troopers, who listened to my description of a Reconstruction Era race riot and helped me figure out how my imaginary sheriff would handle it. However, as usual I take responsibility for any errors or misunderstandings.
Last but not least, thank you to all the brothers and sisters who have prayed me through another long teeth-gritting season of finishing a novel. I’d be a mess without you.
About the Author
Beth White’s day job is teaching music at an inner-city high school in historic Mobile, Alabama. A native Mississippian, she writes historical romance with a Southern drawl and is the author of The Pelican Bride, The Creole Princess, The Magnolia Duchess, and A Rebel Heart. Her novels have won the American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award, the RT Book Club Reviewers’ Choice Award, and the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award. Learn more at www.bethwhite.net.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for A Rebel Heart
Half Title Page
Novels by Beth White
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
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A Note to the Reader
Excerpt of Book 3 in the Series
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
List of Pages
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