Counterfeit Courtship

by Christina Miller

  She turned her gaze to the sky, seeming to seek her answer in the clouds. “I may have to try to sell the cotton myself. But you know how those New Orleans and Texas buyers are. They’d just as soon deal with a rattlesnake than a female planter.”

  Ellie was probably right. With her gentle nature, she wouldn’t stand a chance with the buyers.

  If only he could fix her problems as he had when they were children. Only these problems were bigger and much more frightening. She shouldn’t have to deal with them alone. “On Monday, we’ll meet with Joseph again. Between the three of us, we’ll think of a solution.”

  Ellie lowered her gaze, a smile forming on her lips. “A plan?”

  He gave her a mock frown. “I intend to be in on all your plan-making from now on.”

  Her laugh tinkled much like the bells on Buttercup’s harness. “Enough of my problems for today. Did you receive your invitation to Joseph’s picnic Sunday evening? He’s holding it in your honor. I hope your father will be well enough to attend too.”

  The complete change of subject surprised him, but it shouldn’t have. Ellie had never been one to sadden others with her problems. Most women would take to their beds, doing nothing but cry about a dilemma as serious as the one Ellie faced. Instead, she loaned him her carriage and horses and came along to help him find his father. Graham breathed a prayer that locating him would also solve Ellie’s problems.

  He felt her gaze on him and shifted his focus to the picnic—and courting. A courting man would invite his girl to a party. His stomach churned as he formed the words in his mind. This was no easier than it had been back when he’d first realized he was in love with her. Best just to get it said. “Assuming Father won’t need me at home, will you go with me?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Her big blue eyes twinkled at him just as they used to when he’d suggest an outing. Except in those days, they went on outings because they were children having fun. Now they were adults and, as she’d so eloquently said, he was not fun.

  Nonetheless, it was time for him to commit to the pretend courtship. And he dreaded finalizing that. It seemed crass somehow, a cheapening of the genuine.

  And if he went along with it, the genuine might never happen...

  Where had that thought come from? He sat up straighter on the carriage seat. The genuine wasn’t going to happen. Not for a long time, if it ever did, and not with Ellie. She’d turned him down once. That was enough.

  Although she stole his breath when she looked at him, the bright sky and her bonnet intensifying those blue eyes.

  He pulled his gaze from her and studied the road instead. They had serious business to attend today. Finding his father was crucial for everyone’s sake. He couldn’t spare the time or energy to concern himself with dreams that would never come to pass. Better to handle this courtship fallacy in a businesslike manner.

  Out in the country now, and out of earshot of everyone in town, he might as well get it over with. Putting it off wouldn’t make it easier. “I’ve made a decision.”

  “About what?”

  As much as the courtship had absorbed his thoughts, it seemed almost unnatural that she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Courting.”

  “Good. What do you want to do?” Her tone sounded light, as if she didn’t care what he had decided, but the catch in her voice gave her away. And he couldn’t blame her, considering the fact that Leonard Fitzwald pursued her as hard as Graham refrained from it.

  “I think it’s best for everyone involved if we continue the courtship and even intensify it a bit.”

  “Intensify?”

  The anxiety settling in her eyes tore at his heart. “Don’t worry. I don’t mean in a personal way. I mean only that we should be seen together in public a lot, doing family things together. Act more like a courting couple.”

  “You would have to frown less.”

  He could feel her relief. He’d be a fool to expect anything else. “You’ll have to annoy me less.”

  “I can’t make any promises.”

  Her smile heated the summer morning to a sweltering level. He shifted an inch away from her. The woman still had more power over him than General Lee ever had, and she never knew it.

  “Fitzwald is not going to sit passively by and let you sell Magnolia Grove without opposing you. He needs to know that you’re with me most of the time and that I’m watching out for you.”

  Ellie’s smile turned downright wicked. “And I’ll let Susanna Martin know I’m watching out for you.”

  He laughed, a full, rich belly laugh—the first time he’d laughed that hard in years. Then he felt guilty for doing so. “Ellie, I’m sorry. You’re in danger of losing everything you own, I’m looking for my father, whose condition is anybody’s guess, and I’m laughing like an idiot.”

  “Stop apologizing. Laughing helps us feel better. Being gloomy would make it worse.”

  That was easy to say. “Laughing doesn’t come naturally to me anymore.”

  At least, it hadn’t until now.

  When they’d traveled a good two hours, a cold drizzle began to pepper the carriage top. Moments after the thunder started, something large bumped against his foot. He looked down to see a white tail sticking out from under their seat.

  “Ellie, your dog is right underneath me.”

  “She’s afraid of thunder.”

  She had to be joking. “Sugar is a hunting dog. How can she be afraid of thunder?”

  “Don’t you remember how gun-shy she is? To her, thunder sounds like gunfire. During a storm, she always crawls under my bed, right under me, as she’s doing to you now.”

  Fine—Ellie’s dog liked him better than Ellie did.

  “Thunder’s getting closer. If we had much farther to go, we’d need to pull over, but if I remember right, River Bluff Hall is a mile past the next bend. My cousin’s lane is over there, off to the right.”

  Ellie sat up straight, looking ahead. “When were you last here?”

  He had to think about that as they rounded the curve in the road. “Both my grandparents died around 1855. The property was sold, and I haven’t been here since.”

  Minutes later, they pulled onto the lane, and Graham reined in Lucy and Buttercup at his mother’s family home—if one could call it that. Nothing remained except piles of bricks, two dozen fluted columns with their Corinthian capitals, some balustrades and iron stairs, and a giant live oak with resurrection fern greening up in the summer rain.

  “When I was a boy and we visited here, the first thing I did was go up to the observatory on the roof. You could see the Mississippi River from there.” As he thought back, looking at the ruins, those days seemed a century ago.

  Ellie was out with her dog before Graham could secure the reins and reach her side of the carriage. They walked around the ruins, with Sugar on her leash and staying inches from Ellie’s skirts. Not a wall of the house remained, and the columns revealed some of their brick structure where plaster had fallen off.

  Burned. The home where he’d spent happy times with his grandparents was gone—eerily gone, its desolation complete.

  Clearly, his father wasn’t here. “Let’s head home. We can stop at the houses we pass and ask if anyone’s seen Father.”

  “Should we give up so soon?” Ellie turned in a circle, her hand shading her eyes. “What if he’s right here somewhere?”

  They were wasting time. “Look at the sky. This rain isn’t going to stop. We need to get closer to home before it starts to pour. Besides, there’s no place for a man to hide in these remains.”

  She started for the carriage and then stopped. “What if he’s at the family cemetery?”

  Ellie and her ideas. “No sane person would visit a cemetery in the rain.”

  “I’m going to look.
Lots of family plots are by the river, so this one might be just through those trees.”

  She was right about that, but not about his father being there. “We need to go.”

  “I’ll be five minutes.” She took off through the woods, Sugar in the lead.

  The wind shifted then. Within moments, the drizzle intensified to a downpour, and thunder crashed around them. Graham jogged toward the trees, then made his way to the cemetery, the old path barely discernible.

  A hundred yards ahead, Ellie knelt beside a dark figure who embraced a tombstone.

  It couldn’t be. Father, out here in the rain? As Graham ran closer, he realized the man sat beside the stone, his arms wrapped around it, his head resting upon it. With Sugar beside her, Ellie knelt on the ground next to him in the tall, wet grass and the mud, her eyes closed and lips moving as if in prayer.

  The rain now beat down on Graham and poured into his eyes, blurring his vision. “Father? Is it you?”

  He didn’t raise his head, didn’t answer. Catching up to him and Ellie, Graham touched the older man’s shoulder. “Father?”

  The man looked up from the stone, his eyes empty, as if his mind and heart had deserted him. “She’s gone.”

  Graham’s blood turned cold as the headstone. Those hollow eyes had his father’s shape and color, and the man had the same full mouth, strong chin and jaw. He had Father’s thick, long beard and graying, dark hair, his tall, muscular form. But although the physical resemblance to his father was unarguable, none of Father’s mind resided here.

  “Who’s gone, sir?”

  “My Daisy. I couldn’t find her, and now she’s gone.”

  Daisy—Graham’s baby sister who’d died at birth, taking their mother with her. The chill in Graham’s body turned to a cold sweat and mixed with the cold rain.

  “Father—Papa—it’s me. Graham.” He grabbed his father’s arm and turned the man to face him. “Papa, don’t you know me? It’s Graham. Your son.”

  He looked into Graham’s eyes, but the light of recognition Graham wanted to see wasn’t there. Papa hesitated. “Where is she? Have you seen my Daisy?”

  Graham swallowed hard against the fear lodged in his throat. He’d seen this before, always after battle. He’d never dreamed he’d see it in this man, the strongest man in his world, the most solid, the most stable.

  Stronger and more solid than Graham, which meant it could happen to him too.

  Papa pulled from his grasp and embraced the little granite stone. Then racking sobs shook his body as he mourned a girl he’d never seen.

  Ellie laid her hand on his arm. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

  His father joined her, his voice thick with his pain. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”

  Graham opened his mouth to recite the psalm with them, but his throat felt so dry, he couldn’t bring out a sound. The shadow of death. He’d often wondered what that was, but now he looked it in the face. His father—a shadow of his real self, looking and sounding like death itself.

  “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

  Forever. The word was both comforting and chilling. Would his father suffer this way forever? Dear God, I didn’t think anything could be worse than war. I was wrong. He knelt down and clasped his father’s shoulders. “Papa, let’s go home.”

  And never come back to this place.

  * * *

  An hour later, something nagged at the back of Ellie’s mind, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  Having stopped for dry clothing and a hot meal at Graham’s cousins’ home, she tamped down the strange feeling. She’d fought with it all day, not wanting to burden Graham. He had enough on his mind, especially now, with his father wandering about Ambrose and Maria Cooper’s house, still looking for Daisy. But the foreboding feeling seemed to have something to do with their meeting with Leonard Fitzwald and the danger of losing her property, so she couldn’t shake it off.

  With all of them now in dry clothes and full of grits cooked in cream, she’d told Graham’s cousins about her problem with Leonard—even the marriage part. If only she could discern the source of her unease...

  She glanced at Graham, sitting next to her in the parlor and paging through a month-old copy of the New Orleans Daily Crescent. Even in Mister Cooper’s too-large clothing, her pretend beau was as handsome as any man she’d ever seen. And he’d made sure Ellie had every comfort the Coopers could supply, living in their newly impoverished state in their white-columned mansion. He’d even walked Sugar in the rain so she could do her doggy duty in the yard, away from the house, and now had the dog at his feet. He’d certainly played the part of the attentive suitor.

  Perhaps her unrest was due to the underlying tension of the loan. Or was it the loneliness of having a beau who was not in love with her?

  That thought stung. After years of training herself to close off any sentiments or emotions about courting or men, had she come to that? Morose thoughts, melancholy words?

  She’d have to take those thoughts captive if this courtship ruse was to work out. Of course, that would be easier to do if Graham wasn’t so handsome. And she needed this courtship now more than ever, with Leonard determined to marry her.

  Leonard. How could she not have seen what a scalawag he was? Sitting there with that smug grin on his face, listening to Joseph tell her they’d lose their plantation, their town house, their—

  That nagging feeling pecked at her mind again. There was something else. Joseph had mentioned another property they would lose, but what?

  “Graham, didn’t Joseph list three properties at risk?”

  “Magnolia Grove, the town house and the Louisiana–Texas Railroad.”

  “That’s it—the information I’ve been trying to remember all day. I’m sure Uncle Amos doesn’t own a railroad.”

  “He said it had been your father’s.”

  Father? At the mention of him, her mouth went dry. No, her father had certainly never had a railroad. Or anything else of value, for that matter. If he had, she and her mother would not have gone hungry as much as they had. And Mother wouldn’t have been reduced to serving in the saloon beneath their rooms. “That’s simply not true.”

  Graham’s eyes widened. “Joseph seemed quite sure. He wouldn’t make a mistake about something so important.”

  “Sure or not, it can’t be true.”

  Or could it? Could Father have somehow bought the railroad shortly before he died—without telling Ellie and her mother? She closed her eyes, searching her memory. How long had he been gone on his last binge? It had seemed like months, but she’d been so young, her judgment may have been off. And how much time had passed between his death and Mother’s?

  Of course, no one knew the exact date of his death...

  At once she realized the room had grown silent during her musings. “Forgive me. I was gathering wool.”

  Maria reached across the table and laid her hand on Ellie’s. “Are you all right, dear? I know this has to be hard for you.”

  “I admit it is. But I need to discover the truth. How could I have inherited a railroad without knowing it?”

  “You were not of age when your parents passed,” Graham said in a soothing tone. “Since your uncle was your guardian, he no doubt took care of all the paperwork for you.”

  “But I’m of age now, so why wouldn’t I have inherited?”

  Ambrose leaned back in his chair as if settling in for a long discussion. “Perhaps it’s in your uncle’s name until you marry.”

  “And if I marry, who gets it?”

 
“I guess you do.” Graham hesitated. “But if you married Leonard, he would no doubt control it.”

  “And benefit from the income, if there were any. But Sherman destroyed most of the South’s rail lines. Our railroads are useless.”

  “Not the Louisiana–Texas line.” Ambrose raised his gaze from the pipe he was filling with tobacco. “It’s one of the few Sherman didn’t get.”

  “I still don’t think Leonard would care about that. He must want our plantation and the house.”

  “But his home is even grander than yours,” Graham said. “And the plantation—it’s large with a nice home, but he’s never been interested in planting. His father owned a few Pennsylvania textile mills, and he came to Natchez to become a cotton broker. Besides, Fitzwald could buy any confiscated plantation outright if he wanted to plant.”

  “Textiles need to be shipped. Could his holdings have included railroads?”

  Graham glanced toward the dining room door as if wishing his father would come back in and answer all their questions. “I’ve been away from Natchez too long to remember. Do you know, Ambrose?”

  “No, but your father would, if he could tell us. He, Ellie’s father, her uncle Amos and Robert Fitzwald were good friends in the early days.”

  Good friends? Not that Ellie had ever seen. “I can’t speak for the others, but Uncle Amos could barely tolerate being in the same room with Robert Fitzwald.”

  Graham took a sip of his coffee. “I sure wish Father could give us some answers.”

  “Uncle Amos couldn’t help either. He doesn’t remember many people from his past except Miss Ophelia.”

  Ambrose laughed. “Nobody could forget Ophelia—apoplexy or not.”

  True enough. “You might be right about Leonard wanting the railroad. And if he wants it badly enough, he could do about anything to get it.”

  Graham set down his newspaper and took her hand. “Don’t worry. I won’t let him hurt you again.”

  His eyes revealed a hint of the devotion she’d seen in them the night he proposed to her, and her breath caught. She held his gaze, the memory sharp and somehow painful. How many times had she forced herself to stop thinking about that look? But seeing it again now, in his eyes rather than in her memory, made it harder to bear as he once again silently revealed his heart.