Pearl returned to the washtub and her task. Two months ago, they’d endured three days of this, the growl of battle from over the ridge—and then every day since had been filled with sorrow, hardship, and the never-ending work of caring for their guests. Being raised on a farm, she was used to being busy from sunup to sundown, but this—
And was this time about to come to an end?
Josh emerged from Pa’s room, but rather than return outside with the others, he crossed the house to Pearl.
“Thank you,” she said. “As always.”
He smiled a little, then considered the towel that Pearl held and the dishes still lying in the washtub. After a slight hesitation, he held out his good arm. “I’ll wash if you’d be so kind as to roll up my sleeve.”
“Of course.” She set aside the towel and made quick work of unbuttoning his blouse cuff and folding it back. Her fingers itched to linger, to twine again with his strong, warm grip, as they had that night weeks ago, but she forced herself to finish and pull away. “There you are.”
“Thank you.” He plunged the hand into the dishwater, searching about until he came up with the washcloth, and set to washing as if he’d done it this way all his life.
Pearl had to likewise force herself to turn away and not stare. How did he make even such a mundane task seem so heroic?
Above them, Lydia’s voice continued, soft but strong. Soothing even as it wrung an ache from her throat.
“What will you do if the Federals break the siege for good?” he asked suddenly. “And if the Union prevails overall?”
A chill gripped her. Had he overheard Clem’s questions the evening before?
She forced herself to lift her gaze calmly to his. “What will you do if the Confederacy prevails and y’all aren’t able to force us back into the Union?”
He laughed quietly, but there was little genuine humor in his face. One plate finished, he set it into the rinse water and started on another. “I do not know. Go west, perhaps.”
She lifted the clean plate from the water and wiped it dry. When his face remained turned away, she gave his upper arm a playful backhanded tap. “You could be fitted with a hook, and go to sea. Take up piracy.”
His dark eyes flashed to hers, and he gave in to a long laugh that shook his entire body. “You—are the most singular woman—” He swiped at his eyes with his wounded arm, and still chuckling, he peered at her.
She allowed herself a little smile in return.
“If the Confederacy wins,” he said, still grinning, “what would you do? Come live a life of piracy on the open seas, as well?”
For a moment, she entertained the most vivid and nonsensical image of the two of them dressed like the illustrations in the Dumas novel over on her shelf, with high boots and ridiculously oversized and out-of-fashion coats, Josh with a cocked and plumed hat, and herself with a kerchief round her head and a patch over one eye—
“Or would you stay and marry your cousin?”
His tone was teasing, but it completely knocked the breath from her.
She stood, gaping. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
Suddenly he did not look as though he were teasing at all. The intensity in his dark eyes continued to steal the air from the room.
Why did conversation with her always wind up going further than he expected or even planned?
And why on earth had he dared ask her about marrying Bledsoe? Especially after that fool comment about becoming a pirate?
Because the very next words that wanted to come out of his mouth were While you’re considering whether or not to be his wife, please consider becoming mine.
Sweet Lord in heaven, have mercy. Had she not already proven she’d no interest in him that way? And he’d sure not ask a woman to marry him out of pity.
Especially not Pearl MacFarlane. She deserved so much better than that.
A shout came from outside, but neither of them moved.
“Pearl!” Clem came tumbling through the door. “Pa! Lydia! You will never believe—”
Pearl turned slowly, pulling in a deep breath. Mingled disappointment and relief rushed through Josh at yet another interruption.
But her brother stood there, gasping openmouthed, his face utterly white. Distress, or excitement? The figure of a man full grown filled the doorway behind him and entered, clothed in a grimy, tattered Rebel butternut uniform. His gaunt frame bore a startling resemblance in mannerism to Clem.
The man swept off a kepi-style hat, his hair and beard long and wild but damp from a recent washing or the rain.
“Pearl!” he uttered, then as his gaze suddenly fell on the colored woman standing on the stairs, he gave a strangled cry. “Lydia! Do you not know me?”
Both women pressed hands across their mouths, but Lydia was the first to recover. “Jeremiah? Is it really you?”
The two couldn’t get to each other fast enough, falling into each other’s arms in the middle of the room, crying and laughing. Pearl stood, trembling, bent, but still unable to take her gaze off the pair.
Could it be—this was one of her older brothers?
The man turned from embracing Lydia and went to gather up Pearl. “We thought you dead!” she said. “We were told you were dead!” Her tone was almost accusatory, even as she clutched at him and buried her face in his shoulder.
He laughed brokenly. “Nearly so. I was in Alton Prison, in Illinois.”
“Prison!” She pulled back and stared at him, then promptly dissolved into tears again.
From the far bedroom, old Mr. MacFarlane emerged, leaning on his cane and shaking. “Gideon, is that you?”
Pearl’s brother turned, the blue eyes full of tears. “No, Pa. I’m Jeremiah.” He let go of Pearl only to embrace his father, glancing around the room. “But speaking of Gideon—”
Pearl had covered her face with her apron, but she pulled it away to murmur, “He … died at Chickamauga these few weeks past.”
Her brother looked stricken. “Ah, no.”
After a few hard breaths, she choked out, “As did Jeff at Fishing Creek, we were told.” Silence for a few moments, as her brother slowly shook his head, then she added, “We thought all three of you gone. It’s been near more than we could bear.”
At this admission of weakness on Pearl’s part, Josh snapped into motion. He dried his hand on the towel Pearl had dropped on the table, then quietly began gathering up those of his fellow Federals who had crowded back inside to see who the visitor was, herding them out the door and across to the barn.
Giving an overjoyed but still-grieving family a little privacy was the least they could do. Heaven knew it was something Josh would want were it him.
If, Lord willing, someday it was him returning home.
They clung to each other for so long, Jeremiah and Pa and Clem, then Lydia and herself again, weeping without shame, that Pearl lost all sense of time. She only knew that when she came to herself and looked around, the house was still completely devoid of their Yankee guests.
“So—you been quartering Yanks all this time?” Jeremiah said, taking in the beds along the wall and the myriad other signs of occupation around the house.
“Wounded prisoners,” Pearl said. Jeremiah looked to have no comfort in that. “What is it?” she prompted him.
He only shook his head, frowning.
Pearl drank him in. “I still can’t believe you’re here. You’re … so thin.”
His blue eyes flicked toward her. “Prison ain’t a picnic.”
Her heart chilled. The men she’d helped care for … and the ones who were still here, avoiding that fate, just yet.
Josh.
She pushed that thought to the back of her mind. A new one took hold, laced with suspicion. “How did you manage to get out?”
Jeremiah stepped back, made a show of hanging his cap on a peg by the door while the rest of them looked at him. Stayed there for a moment, dragging his hand through his shaggy hair.
“Jeremiah.” It
was Lydia’s smooth, firm voice which broke the silence.
He whirled back to face them. “I did something terrible. I … took an oath. The oath of allegiance. And just that easy, they wrote me a pass and sent me home.”
To a chorus of cries and exclamations, one of them her own, she was sure, Pearl stumbled back into a chair. Jeremiah—her own brother, who had enlisted two years and more ago with all the fire of any son of the Confederacy—had sworn allegiance to the Union.
He was trembling, teeth gritted. “Turn me out if you will, but … I couldn’t take it no more. The cold, the hunger, the sickness. The missing you, Lydia. And from what I seen getting home, it won’t matter anyway, for long.”
None of them could move, even now.
Jeremiah lifted reddened eyes, met each of their gazes in turn, then lastly looked at Lydia. “It seemed like … the best way. The only way to come back to you. And—if the Federals win, as it’s looking like they will—maybe you and me, we’ll have a chance to finally live as man and wife without hiding. For me to finally do right by you. Don’t you want that, Lydia?”
With a sob, Lydia flew into his arms.
Pa cleared his throat, thumped his cane a couple of times on the floor. “My son has come back to me. It’s enough for now.”
Pearl could only sit weeping into her apron.
Though they’d just finished lunch, she was determined to celebrate the occasion with the best supper she and Lydia could pull together, which meant going to the barn to forage.
It also gave her just a few moments to think through everything with Jeremiah.
A cold fear lodged in the pit of her belly. He still had no good plan for explaining to Travis, who was bound to show up sooner or later, or to Portius either for that matter, how he managed to be released, besides that he was on convalescent leave. Travis might shoot him on sight for desertion or treason, or both, once he found out Jeremiah had taken the oath, and at odd moments Pearl was not entirely sure she would blame him.
But then with a little thrill, she’d recall that one of the brothers they’d thought dead was very much alive and home.
Crossing the yard, she looked up to see Josh leaning in the open doorway of the barn. An entirely different sort of thrill swept through her, but whether it was comprised of anticipation or guilt—or both—she could not say.
He pushed upright as she approached, his dark eyes intent.
“I need to gather things for supper,” she murmured. “Will you … accompany me?”
It felt strange and overbold to ask him to do something she knew well that he’d do regardless of whether or not she asked, indeed would insist on even if she didn’t. And with all the other men inside the barn looking on as she entered—
She hesitated for a moment, meeting their gazes.
“Is all well, Miss MacFarlane?” Mr. Thorsson asked, his blue gaze shadowed but as earnest as ever.
“It is, thank you.” Finding her voice unsteady, she cleared her throat. “My brother, who had been reported killed after the action at Shiloh, has returned. Needless to say, we are beside ourselves with joy.”
A murmur of surprise and agreement rippled through the group. They all could appreciate the sentiment, even if—as she did—they doubtless wondered how this would change their own situation here. Or what news Jeremiah brought with him.
She dipped a little curtsy. “You will excuse me while I find provender for supper.”
By now they all knew, as well, that the entrance for their root cellar was located inside that storage room, and it was silly to pretend otherwise. They were all polite smiles and nods in the moment, however, and she ducked away and into that room.
Josh already had the floor cleared and the door open. Pearl gathered her skirts and descended the stairs, ignoring as she always did the dust, cobwebs, and increasingly musty odor from the recent rains. Her lantern illumined the space before her, and as she approached the bottom of the stairs, Pearl could see that though the floor was darker than usual, there was no standing water.
That might change with the last few days’ downpour, though.
She stopped in front of a shelf of blackberry jam but suddenly could not make herself focus on what was actually there.
“Is all truly well with your brother?” Josh asked softly.
Pearl started to answer yes and brush off his question as she habitually did the strange, prickling awareness his presence always stirred. Then she sighed, her head already wagging. “He took an oath of allegiance in order to be released from prison.”
She could guess well enough what his response to that would be by his intake of breath, but he let it out again and only said, “That is a surprise.”
“You’ve no idea. Or … perhaps you have.” She angled him a glance. He stood near—too near for her comfort—watching her gravely. “But in his heart, he’s already given up on the Confederacy. I … I can scarce believe it.” She hesitated. “I suppose you will say I should do the same.”
He was silent so long, she almost peeked at him again. “At one time,” he said, his voice almost a caress, “I might have. But no longer.”
She did turn toward him then, unable to mask her startlement.
“The depth of your conviction is a beautiful thing, Pearl MacFarlane. It’s part of the strength which makes you the woman you are. And I’d—I’d not change that.”
The warmth in his brown eyes was a tangible thing, wrapping her about, filling her as it were with the very sort of strength he talked about.
“But things are changing,” she said. “We all know it. Jeremiah bears witness to it—he’ll be telling us more at supper. And we cannot help any of it.”
His gaze was unwavering. “If I could leave the Confederacy intact, somehow—change slavery, yes, but otherwise, for your sake—yes, I would.”
Her jaw had fallen open and somehow she could not close it again. He smiled, and the heat of a midsummer day swept through her.
Mercy but he was handsome. Why did he have to be so handsome?
“See how much you’ve affected me, Pearl?”
“How much I—” She shut her mouth with a snap, her eyes burning anew. Did he not see what a simpleton she became, merely standing in his presence?
The corners of his eyes crinkled farther. “Now. What sort of goodies do you have here? Is that blackberry jam I see, honest and true?”
This woman was going to be the death of him. He couldn’t seem to stay away from her—even as—yes, she’d said it—they could all feel the change in the air and knew nothing could stay the same. He could not hope to have anything lasting where she was concerned, but he could barely resist the growing impulse to pull her into his arms and kiss her insensible.
And he could, here in the cellar, away from prying eyes. Just a taste of those sweet lips, a moment of her lithe form in his embrace—
It would not be enough. It could never be enough. It could never even be. And so he forced a grin and prattled about blackberry jam. Instead let the thought of berries remind him of his own best boyhood summer memories, make his mouth water, and place far to the back of his mind that it was the tart sweetness of this Tennessee Rebel girl he wanted to be savoring.
He only wanted what he could not have, she’d maintained once.
No. It wasn’t that at all.
Even here, by lantern light, as she also turned stiffly away to the jams and other canned goods, she was so comely, so brilliant that he could not look at her, yet could hardly tear his eyes away. She was the loveliest thing he’d ever seen, he was sure. And all he wanted was to linger here at her side for hours.
For the rest of his life, if he could finagle it.
I cannot. It’s impossible. She deserves—so much better. A whole man. Not one who sacrificed a hand to a cause she hates and fears.
He would only ever represent loss and degradation to her, he knew. No matter how they chatted and smiled while gathering things for the joyful feast to come.
But the l
onging for things to be different had seized him by the throat and would not let go.
Much later, they sat around the table, Jeremiah telling his story between shoveling in bites of supper. “So, I was shot at Shiloh, then captured and sent off to Alton.” He cast nervous glances around the table, first at Portius, then Josh, then the sitting room full of convalescent Federals. “While there, we caught—oh, I don’t know, there were several rounds of sickness. I most earnestly doubted my own survival more than once.” He chewed, swallowed, looked down at his plate. “Many of my companions perished.”
Lydia leaned close to his shoulder, pressing her cheek to his arm.
“In all,” he continued, “the Yankees treated us most deplorably.”
“And yet here you are,” Portius said, his voice mild, but it made Pearl want to laugh, were she not all too aware of how carefully Jeremiah was trying to conceal his true reason for being there.
Jeremiah lifted his head and fixed Portius with a stare. “Pardon me,” he said at last, “but who are you?”
“This is Portius,” Pearl interposed. “Travis sent him to give us aid and watch over us. He’s been invaluable.”
As if realizing the contradiction inherent in any protest at the Negro’s place at their table, Jeremiah drew a slow breath and nodded. Pearl hid her smile over that as well.
“So.” Jeremiah took a spoon and smeared a dollop of blackberry jam over a slab of corn bread, took a bite, and promptly rolled his eyes in obvious delight. “Glory be, Pearl. I didn’t think coming home could be improved upon, but—it is.”
She dipped her head and avoided glancing toward Josh. But from the corner of her eye, she caught the grin he shot her way, regardless.
“I might as well tell you all I’ve seen,” Jeremiah went on, once he’d chewed enough to speak. “Grant’s trying to get pontoons built across the Tennessee. The Confederate boys up on Lookout Mountain are doing their best to see that don’t happen. But”—he swallowed, wolfed down another bite—“Sherman’s there now. Got there, they said, oh, a week ago.”
The Rebel Bride Page 19