Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series)

by Lane, Cheryl

  “I apologize, but I don’t know you well enough yet to call you by your given name. You’re still practically a stranger to me.”

  “Of course,” he said, letting go of my hand. “I shall give you more time.”

  We ascended the carriage again and Mr. Banks took us across a bridge to City Point where the two rivers met. We got out of the carriage and walked around the busy town down by the rivers and along the railroad tracks, avoiding trains. He showed me where he spent a lot of time working in exports of things such as cotton, tobacco, corn, and wheat.

  Lionel took us back to the marketplace where we’d met Mr. Banks, and we bought some hard cheese and a loaf of bread and ate on a bench overlooking the river. I saved half of mine for Lionel. I talked more with Mr. Banks about the war. I asked him what I did during the war, but he said he didn’t know, as he didn’t know me then and that we had avoided talking too much about the war, since it was a painful subject.

  We walked back to the carriage, and I gave Lionel the food I’d saved. As we prepared to head back to Chester, Mr. Banks took my hand and kissed it once more. “Do I have your permission to call on you in Chester?” he asked me.

  “Yes, that would be fine, Mr. Banks,” I said, smiling. I told him the way to get there.

  “Mr. Banks, how nice to meet you,” Jane Washington said, as Mr. Banks picked up her hand and kissed it in greeting. He had come to see me the next week’s end, just like he’d asked. I introduced him to Mr. Washington, and they shook hands. We walked around the farm for a time, and I introduced him to the farm animals we had been raising. Later we sat around the big round kitchen table with ladder-back chairs and ate fresh vegetables from the garden made into a stew along with some blue crabs that Mr. Banks had brought with him.

  “Did you catch these crabs, Mr. Banks?” Mr. Washington asked.

  “Oh, no, sir. A neighbor of mine has the means to catch those things. No, I’m too busy down at the railroad and also fixing up my manor.” He talked more about some of the same things he’d already told me, about what he does for a living and how he’d been fixing up his plantation home. He was charming, had us all entertained, and then went on back home to City Point after supper.

  A fortnight later, Mrs. Jane accompanied Lionel and me to City Point and met Mr. Banks, following him to Western Manor. Mr. Banks showed Mrs. Jane around the manor, and also showed us the kitchen house, which was sparse but he’d apparently been working on it since the last time I’d been there.

  After the tour, I went to the river-front porch and sat on a wooden bench and looked over the water, trying to remember…something, anything. I’d been mulling it all over in my head since first meeting Mr. Banks. I tried to see him as a future husband, and yet I could not get the other man out of my memory. I re-lived that memory again and again in my head. I wanted so much to see his face.

  I heard some children nearby and looked down the river where the voices and laughter came from. There was a blonde-haired little girl and two dark-headed boys splashing about at the water’s edge a short distance away. Something about seeing them sparked a memory. I remember playing in a body of water with two other boys as a child, except one of them was blonde and the other dark-haired. The dark-haired boy had a frog, which he threw on me. I screamed, just as the little girl in the river also screamed, and it jolted me back to the present. I’d had another memory…as a child. I had indeed lived close to a river or lake. I wondered who the two boys had been. One was perhaps my brother, since Mr. Banks told me I had one. Was the blonde-haired boy Mr. Banks? And yet he told me he only met me just after the war. Could the man from my vision have been one the boys?

  “Darlin’,” Mr. Banks disturbed my thoughts. “Are you all right? I thought I heard screaming. He stood beside me on the porch, catching me unawares.

  “It was the children over there,” I told him, pointing to them.

  “Do you want to have children, Madeline? We could start that right away, if you do.”

  I was flabbergasted. I swallowed air or saliva or something and started choking. He pounded my back forcefully but not to the point of pain. I had no intention of starting a family with this man. I still had not gotten used to the idea of marrying him yet, let alone being intimate with him. I finally caught my breath again. “Thank you,” I whispered hoarsely. “Uh, someday, Mr. Banks. I can’t think about that until my memory comes back.”

  “Very well,” he said. He squatted down directly in front of the bench and picked up one of my hands in his. “Madeline, would you please do me the honor of calling me Jefferson? If we are betrothed, you are allowed to call me by my given name, especially in private conversation. Would you do that for me?” He kissed my hand softly.

  “All right,” I relented. “If it means that much to you,” I continued. I supposed I could get used to calling him Jefferson. He looked at me so sweetly, and he had been a complete gentleman up to this point.

  “It does,” he said. “It’s a nice start. Perhaps it will help you remember me better.” He stood, still holding my hand, and looked at the children again. He looked back at me and winked. I could tell what he had on his mind. I would call him Jefferson, but I would not be sharing his bed anytime soon.

  Chapter 3

  Dreams

  After seeing the children by the river and having the memory of myself as a child, I began to have dreams of the same children. Sometimes we’d be in the water splashing about and swimming on hot summer days. Other times, we’d just wade and fish. Sometimes I’d wake up laughing. I was envious of the happiness I’d had as a child. I wanted it back. More dreams came soon after, including one where I was climbing a huge tree, following the two boys as they climbed higher and higher. The boys’ faces started getting clearer in my dreams, though I would soon forget them after I woke up. The blonde boy taunted and teased me as I tried climbing to reach them in that tree. The other boy looked amused but slightly concerned as I continued climbing higher. I watched his expression turn to horror as I lost my footing and fell out of the tree. I hit the ground hard on my hind side. The boys quickly jumped down out of the tree, the blonde boy started crying, and the concerned one yelled “Maddie!” and then picked me up and carried me away. I could still remember his amber eyes when I woke up.

  I also thought about the boy calling me “Maddie”. That would be a nickname for Madeline.

  I had other dreams of the three of us, including playing hide-and-seek in some sort of dark tunnel. In another dream, it was snowing hard, and only two of us – me and the blonde boy – played in the snow, building a snow fort. In yet another dream, we were with the amber-eyed boy and sledded down a long steep hill towards the river. When I woke up, I could remember bits and pieces, so I started writing down what my dreams were about, what the surroundings looked like, and described what the boys looked like so I could remember. I could especially remember those amber eyes of the dark-haired boy, and began to wonder, again, who the boys were.

  Jefferson came by the farm early one morning and took me to Surry. I’d been asking him to take me to my childhood home, hoping I would see the same things I’d seen in my dreams, that I would recognize something. When we got to a two-story brick house with the roof falling off the top of it, I didn’t recognize anything. We walked around the outside, looking into windows. In the dining room, there were cupboards with missing and lop-sided hanging doors, broken dishes scattered on the floor, no chairs, and a broken table in the middle. In the parlor at the back of the house, a huge tree had fallen onto the second story directly above it. The windows were either cracked or shattered. It was in terrible condition.

  The James River was a distance away and down a hill, but it didn’t quite look the same as what I’d seen in my dreams. I was disappointed. I had hoped I would find some evidence that I’d lived here before, some memory, but got none. Jefferson chatted on and on about how the manor needed to be fixed up, would take a lot of money to do so, and that that cousin would be coming to try his hand
at repairing it soon enough.

  “Would I know this cousin?” I asked Jefferson.

  “I’ve not heard you mention him before,” he said warily. “It was something I heard from someone in town.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t recall,” he said. He began to fidget with his hat and looked down at it. A soft rain began to fall. “Perhaps I should take you back to the Washingtons.” I agreed. “I’m sorry you didn’t remember your home.”

  “So am I.”

  The weather turned cold, and soon it was Christmas. Jefferson started pressuring me into marriage. I still was not ready yet. I didn’t love him. I kept thinking about the man’s voice I’d heard in my brief memory, and so I still had hope that that man would find me. I just kept telling Jefferson that I wanted my memory back first. He bought me a beautiful deep blue dress that was as soft as velvet for a Christmas gift. I scolded him, saying it looked too expensive during these hard times, and where would I wear such a thing anyway? He assured me he’d find a reason for me to wear it, if only on my wedding day.

  He did take me to a dance on New Year’s Eve at a farm house up in Bellwood. A prominent family there still had enough money to gather friends together and have a little music and food, nothing fancy at all, mostly just to socialize and ring in the year of 1867. I wore the dress Jefferson gave me, and we danced quite a bit.

  “I told you I’d find an occasion for you to wear this dress,” he said while we were dancing an English country dance.

  “Yes, and you were true to your word. This is quite enjoyable,” I said. It was enjoyable. I felt like I could actually have a little amusement for a change. I’d been so busy worrying about who I was, about finding someone I knew, and about whether or not to marry Jefferson, that I had not been very happy.

  That’s when I saw an attractive blonde lady who was staring at me. After the dance ended, I turned and saw that she was still watching me while trying to be pleasant to her dance partner. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember who she was. Jefferson followed my eyes, and when he saw the other lady looking at me, he quickly offered to get some libations. I reluctantly agreed, and he led me in the opposite direction. He wouldn’t let me anywhere near the blonde lady for the rest of the night, right up until midnight.

  When the longcase clock struck midnight in the foyer of the old house, Jefferson asked my permission to give me a traditional New Year’s Eve kiss. I agreed, thinking he’d simply give me a quick peck on the cheek. I was wrong. He kissed me straight on the lips, and pulled me close to his body. I opened my eyes, wishing to stop him, and he reluctantly opened his own eyes and ended the kiss. He grinned at me, but I felt like slapping him. I looked around, embarrassed at his public display of affection, hoping no one saw, and was relieved to see that other couples were doing similar acts of affection around us. Nevertheless, I ordered him to take me home at once. On the way out the door, I saw the blonde lady again, who watched me curiously, but I was too upset to try and talk to her.

  I had another dream soon after New Year’s of me and the two boys. The weather was warm instead of cold, and the blonde boy and I got into a small rowboat and paddled down the river till we reached a big dock on a large piece of flat land that stretched up a hill into the trees. The dark-haired boy was on the dock waiting for us. The blonde boy tied up our rowboat, and we climbed up onto the dock. We ran around a small pond filled with geese, who responded to our intrusion by honking noisily. We played hide-and-seek among the trees and gardens of the huge piece of land. It was really a marvelous place to hide and play, with big bushes, tall trees, and beautiful flowers among formal walkways. I caught up with the dark-headed boy with the amber eyes just before waking up. The last thing I remembered was grabbing his arm and yelling in a child-like voice, “I got you, Wellsy! You’re it!”

  I immediately wrote down the dream and underlined the name, Wellsy. Who was Wellsy? What kind of name was that? A nickname perhaps? I wondered about where the land was and about getting in the rowboat. It seemed that I had lived with the blonde boy – perhaps he was my brother or a cousin – and we went down the river to where the dark-haired boy lived. We were all very close friends. And we’d been terribly happy. Where were they now, my dear friends? Were they looking for me at all? Were they even alive?

  Spring came early, and Jefferson began to get restless of waiting for me to make a decision. He proclaimed that a June wedding would be just the thing. He offered to buy me a new dress or that I could wear the blue one he’d already gotten me, if I preferred it. I still could not think about being romantically involved with Jefferson when my heart tugged me in another direction. In the direction of a man whose face I could not remember but whose voice would forever haunt my memory. I had to find out what happened to him before I could marry Jefferson.

  I had many conversations with Mrs. Washington about Jefferson and also about the man I hoped to find. I also told her about the dreams I’d had of my childhood and my two friends. She was very supportive and wise, telling me that I shouldn’t marry Jefferson if it didn’t feel right in my heart, that they loved having me with them and I was welcome to stay there as long as I wanted to.

  Jefferson had told me stories about us before I lost my memory, none of which gave me any visions or real memories, nothing that seemed familiar. One warm day in May, while we sat in new chairs on his river-front porch looking over the river, he once again asked me for a date. “June’s coming up on us real quick, darlin’. When are you going to do me a favor and marry me? I need a woman here to help me run this plantation.”

  I sighed. “I don’t know, Jefferson. I—” Before I could say anything else, he leaned over from his chair and kissed me hard on the mouth. I tried to protest, but he took it to mean I was enjoying the kiss and began to kiss me in earnest, his arms going tightly around mine. In the middle of the kiss, I got another vision of this same man trying to kiss me in the past.

  We’d been in some sort of gazebo or porch overlooking the river, but not at this plantation. He’d snuck up on me and turned me around and kissed me solidly before I had a chance to react. I pushed him away quickly. He said, “Aw, just a little kiss? It’s been a very long time since I’ve been with a woman, especially one as pretty as you.” I continued to protest, and he ceased his advancements. Finally, a memory of Jefferson, but it wasn’t a pleasant one.

  I pushed Jefferson back forcefully with my arms and stood up to get him off of me. “This has to stop immediately!” I yelled. He looked shocked for a moment, but then stood up, regaining his composure.

  “Madeline, what’s wrong? I’ve been a perfect gentleman through this whole thing, and you’ve been encouraging me along like we had a chance for a future together. Don’t you feel anything for me at all?”

  I stood there overlooking the water, and I knew I had to break it off with him then. I just didn’t feel anything for him, didn’t feel that longing that I had felt for the man in my memory. I wouldn’t be satisfied until I found that man…if I ever did find him. It may have been a foolish decision, but I had to go with my heart on this very important decision. I didn’t want a life of misery, always wondering what could have been. Living with a man I didn’t love, looking at him with disgust and resentment years down the road. I turned to face him.

  “No, I don’t, Jefferson. I don’t at all. You’re a very nice man, but…” I was frightened to tell him about the one I longed for in my heart, but I could not think of another way to get him to finally leave me be. “I have strong feelings for another man in my heart. I don’t know what happened to him, but I do remember that I had great affection for him, before I lost my memory. I do apologize, Jefferson. I just don’t think we should see each other anymore. I think that’s only fair to you.”

  His worried face turned dark and angry. He gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw, turning to look out at the river. I’d hurt his feelings, but I didn’t know any other way. I’d rather live to be an old maid than to marry someone I didn’t
love.

  “Fine,” he said finally. “Let me have the ring back.”

  I froze. My ring? I almost fainted. I almost told him I would marry him, just to keep that ring. It was part of me, part of my past, and I hated to let it go…especially since it gave me the memory of the mystery man from my past. But I relented and gave it back to him. It had apparently been his mother’s, after all.

  And so I said goodbye to Jefferson and told him that I no longer wished to see him again. Lionel drove me back to Chester.

  Chapter 4

  Found

  In June, I had been living with the Washingtons for a year, still with no more memories of my past except for the ones from my childhood. One humid Saturday morning, the air as thick as fog, I headed out with Lionel on horse and carriage into Chester with some of the wheat to sell. I made enough to obtain three egg-laying hens. They were put in cages, and Lionel placed them on the back of the carriage for the ride back to Oakworth.

  As I started to get up on the carriage to leave, a woman I didn’t recognize came running towards us.

  “Madeline! Madeline, wait!” I stopped and stood beside the carriage until the woman reached me, realizing she had been talking to me. Since she called me “Madeline”, I knew she must have known who I was. Even Mr. and Mrs. Washington started calling me “Madeline” after Jefferson came along, so I was used to responding to that name. The lady was an attractive slightly older woman with blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She reminded me of the woman I’d seen at the New Year’s Eve party.

  “Madeline! What on earth are you doing here?” She hugged me briefly, smelling of lavender.

  “I’m sorry, do I know you?” I asked, expectantly.

  “Yes, Madeline. It’s me, Clarissa Wellington. Ethan’s mother. What’s wrong, dear? Are you all right?” She had a worried look on her face.