Ella Wood Novellas: Boxed Set

by Michelle Isenhoff

  Jovie stood and began wandering around the room again. This time no one paid him any mind. Within half a minute, he stood in front of the door, effectively blocking the glass as he gawked up at a Revolutionary War–era musket mounted on the wall. He gave Johanna a discreet wave. She scooted past holding a strange-looking animal that might have been a dog.

  Jovie took up residence by the door, examining several works of art hanging nearby and waiting for Johanna to pass back through the hall. As her absence lengthened, his pulse accelerated. What was she doing? Where were the other women?

  After milking out his interest in the wall hangings as long as possible, he began paging through his book. He’d now been standing in the corner for a full twenty minutes. He decided to go after her.

  Returning to the bookcase, he slipped the volume back in place and lifted his finger to catch Mr. Wilcox’s eye.

  His host paused in the middle of a sentence. “Yes, Mr. Avery. Do you need something?”

  Jovie tipped back an imaginary glass of wine and flicked up three fingers one at a time, representing all the drinks he’d had and doing his best to communicate a need for an outhouse.

  “Would you like some more port?” Mr. Wilcox asked, lifting the decanter.

  Jovie waved it away and tried again, this time crossing his hands over the front of his trousers and making a desperate pleading expression. He couldn’t get any more obvious.

  The navy officer covered a guffaw with a polite cough. “I think he’s asking the location of your necessary.”

  Understanding dawned on Mr. Wilcox’s face. He stood with a chuckle. “I suppose one doesn’t think about all the challenges deafness might pose. Right this way, my boy.” He preceded Jovie out into the hall and pointed him toward the back door.

  Jovie nodded his appreciation and began swinging toward the exit, but as soon as Mr. Wilcox went back into the drawing room, he hissed, “Johanna?”

  There was no answer.

  He was in a side wing of the house. The hall was narrow, containing two closed doors on either side, and ended at a door to the backyard. She couldn’t have gone anywhere but in one of the rooms. He began to silently open the doors one by one, peering nervously over his shoulder, his ears alert for any footfall.

  The first room on the left was a closet. The second, directly across the hall, was a vacant sitting room. It adjoined a guest bedroom—the last door on the right. As he turned the knob to the final room on the left, he heard Mrs. Wilcox’s voice from the front wing of the house. “I can’t imagine what’s keeping her so long, Margery. Check around back for her.”

  He dodged into the room, startling Johanna, who let out a tiny squeak. “George, you frightened me to death!” she whisper-yelled. “What are you doing in here?”

  He closed the door in hasty silence. He was in an office. Johanna stood behind the desk, rifling through the drawers.

  “George?”

  He shook his head, raising his finger for silence.

  Her face grew pale as the heavy tread of the servant passed by outside the door. “They’re looking for me,” she said in the barest whisper.

  He nodded.

  The maid came into view, standing just outside the window where she surveyed the yard. “Mrs. Avery?” she called.

  Jovie froze. So did Johanna. If the maid turned even a little bit, she’d be able to look right in at them.

  Jovie’s hands shook. He hated to think what would happen if the two of them were caught in this room.

  Just then, the animal Johanna carried let out a sharp yip. Johanna clamped her free hand over its muzzle. At the same time, the maid called out, “Miss Snickety?”

  “Miss Snickety?” Jovie mouthed. He didn’t remember any guest by that name.

  Johanna jerked her head at the dog.

  They hardly dared breathe as the maid stood indecisively in full view. Finally, she moved off into the yard, apparently having misjudged the direction of the dog’s noise.

  Jovie cracked open the door and peeked into the hall. “All clear,” he whispered. He maneuvered into the hallway as quickly as possible, with Johanna right behind him.

  “Quickly, in here!” Johanna slipped into the corner bedroom. “Watch for her. Let me know when she comes back and I’ll cover for us.” She stood beside the bed where she waited, the dog still in her hands.

  The seconds ticked past. Jovie could hear the sound of his accelerated breathing.

  “What were you doing down here?” Johanna whispered.

  “You were taking so long, I left to use the outhouse and came looking for you.”

  “Sorry. I had to spend a few minutes playing outside with the dog, long enough for one of the servants to see me.”

  It was an ugly little animal, with a pointed nose and long tufts of hair at its oversized ears. The rest of it was covered in a gaudy pink sweater. “Why?”

  “It’s Mrs. Wilcox’s pride and joy,” she said with a look of disgust. “I pretended infatuation. When she mentioned that it likes to play fetch in the garden, I said I just had to try it. It was the only excuse I could come—”

  He cut her off. “The maid’s coming back.”

  Jovie was dumbfounded by the way Johanna sprang into motion, fully animated in a split second. “It’s just beautiful!” she gushed, running a hand over the pattern of the quilt draped over the bed. “The choice of colors is just exquisite. I must ask Mrs. Wilcox if—”

  The maid heard her and pushed in through the door. “There you are, Mrs. Avery. Mrs. Wilcox has been looking for you.”

  “Oh dear,” Johanna said in dismay. “Miss Snickety and I were having such a glorious romp in the garden, I simply lost track of the time. Then I was coming back inside with Mr. Avery when I spotted this gorgeous quilt through the window and just had to get a closer look. Tell me, did Mrs. Wilcox sew this?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Come, George,” she said, sweeping toward the door and gesturing Jovie to follow. “I really must tell her how exquisite it is…”

  5

  Jovie chuckled all the way back to the hotel, tipsy with wine and the wild release of tension, and thoroughly amused by Johanna’s antics of the evening. She had smoothed over her disappearance with liberal praise of the dog and their hostess’s sewing skills. Mrs. Wilcox adored her.

  “So, did you learn anything new tonight?” Johanna asked.

  “You mean beside the fact that you are the shrewdest flatterer I’ve ever met?”

  “Yes, besides that.”

  “I’ve got a list of names and regiments a mile long, as well as vague references to troop movements and a new policy of attrition. Lincoln wants to grind us into the dust, to use up the last of our manpower and resources until we’ve nothing left to fight with. It sounds like he’s willing to bleed us to death no matter the cost to the North.”

  Her eyes narrowed, weighing the importance of his words.

  “What about you?”

  She shook her head. “Receipts, old communications. Nothing of value except the promise of another invitation. Your news should reach someone’s ears, though.”

  They had reached the hotel. He paused outside the door. The sun had slipped behind the edge of the horizon as they walked, leaving a purple tinge to the shadows falling across Johanna’s face. “Will you ride out tonight?” he asked.

  “I’ll pack a few things and slip away as soon as it’s full dark. I keep a horse here in the city.”

  She opened the door and held it for him as he maneuvered inside, then followed him up the stairs. He paused outside her door. The alcohol still left the corners of his brain fuzzy, but he was clearheaded enough to imagine her galloping through enemy territory.

  “Don’t go.”

  “I have to, George. It’s my duty.”

  His heart screamed to go with her, to do something brave and useful instead of sitting in some hotel room alone while she risked her life for their Cause. He wanted to share the danger. To count himself a man. But t
hat’s not all he wanted as he reached a hand up to touch her cheek and slid his fingers beneath her hair. The gaslight set the color on fire. “Please, don’t go.”

  She started to say something kind, something sympathetic, but he stopped her words with the pressure of one finger. Then he bent his head and covered her mouth with his.

  Hunger burned within him, a desperate need to connect his soul with another. How long had it been since he felt wanted? Needed? Loved? He couldn’t remember. He was a dried-out, shrunken husk. Empty as a newly dug grave. The taste of Johanna’s lips and the soft touch of her body stirred something within him that had long lain dead. He kissed her urgently, starved for warmth, and opened himself up to the sensation of living.

  The kiss reached its conclusion. He pulled back and dropped his hands. “Johanna, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” She opened the door to her room, kicked it wide with one foot, and arced her eyebrows up at him.

  His gaze flicked from her eyes, to her lips, to the bare skin of her neck.

  And he stepped inside.

  She leaned back against the door to close it, and he took her in his arms, losing himself in the heat of her flesh. His kisses were insistent, demanding, lacking any thought except the need to fill a void. He kissed her neck, her shoulders. She let her hair loose, and he buried his face in its fragrance. His hands traced the hollow of her back and followed the curve of her hips. She worked her fingers beneath the fabric of his shirt. Her touch was electric against his skin. He closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath, willing himself to just feel.

  Johanna drew back and unbuttoned the front of her dress. Jovie watched the glossy green fabric pool over her crinolines and caught his breath as they fell away. It was the first time he’d seen a woman revealed so, the shape of her legs plain beneath corset and drawers. He gazed at her in the semidarkness of the room. Unclothed, she looked so tiny, so vulnerable, so womanly.

  And suddenly he thought of Emily.

  Jovie put his hands up to his face and dragged them across his skin. Why had she come to mind now? She was part of his past. He’d been a different person back then, when he still held out hope. Younger, idyllic, and far more innocent. Of course he’d prefer her to be in this room instead of Johanna. And he’d choose far different circumstances. But Johanna was here and Emily was not. And he’d been lonely long enough.

  Johanna slid back into the circle of his arms and traced the crest of his neck with her lips. His body burned with desire. He tugged at the laces holding her inside the stiff corset, but he could not remove the image of Emily’s face from his mind.

  His eyes closed. His hands paused. Johanna was beautiful and vivacious. He was drawn to her fire, her energy, her carefree attitude. But he knew full well she could never be the solution to his brokenness. This was a bandage. A cheap, temporary remedy. And tomorrow he would despise himself for it.

  After a short battle, he caught Johanna’s shoulders and gently set her away from him.

  “George, what—?”

  His voice was thick with regret. “I’m sorry, Johanna. I shouldn’t have come in here.”

  He left her standing in the middle of the room, her brow knotted in confusion, and returned to his own room. There, he paced back and forth, willing his body down from its ardor, demanding that his heart keep beating but stop feeling altogether. Because the only thing registering now was a keen, unbearable sorrow.

  Twenty minutes later, he heard Johanna leave her room. Heard the door close and the soft fall of her footsteps on the stairs. He hated the thought of her flinging herself into the night. But even more, he hated himself, here, alone, with a bleeding heart that he now knew lay beyond all hope of repair. It was as broken as his body, missing the most important piece.

  He sank to the bed and clutched a pillow to his face, unleashing his misery in wretched, bitter sobs.

  ***

  Jovie didn’t see Johanna again for two months. For a while, he continued his work in the taverns, listening to the soldiers talk. But as conversations began to include the latest conflicts—Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg—and as the war ground on and the North sank its teeth deeper into the neck of the South, holding on like a bulldog fighting to the death, he began to listen less and drink more. The result was inevitable, his sacrifice in vain. Eventually, he quit going altogether and settled back into the clinging arms of depression.

  He couldn’t seem to forget that vision of Emily he’d had in Johanna’s room. He’d successfully pushed her to the back of his mind for months, but now her face insisted on sticking to the forefront. And with no other form of distraction apart from work, he dwelt on the impossibility of their union and the cruelty that was love. It was a weight that pulled him deeper and deeper into blackness. A thickening, a widening of emptiness.

  But his dismal moments had taken further turns. When he first lost his leg, the darkness of his thoughts had been mostly selfish, self-pitying. His mutilated leg. His shattered future. But the passage of a year and the course of the war had turned his thoughts outward. Instead of ruminating only on what had been done to him, he started brooding over the conflict as a whole and his own role in it. He remembered faces, crumpled forms, the rigid flesh of the man he’d brained at Gettysburg. Coupled with the certainty that Emily would never want him was now this stronger idea that he didn’t even deserve her.

  When Johanna’s summons eventually came, he met her in the stable behind the Richmond Inn. Nothing was said about the night in Washington. “I’ve got another invitation,” she told him. “I need your help.”

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “In Washington.”

  “Playing my wife without me?” He hadn’t meant for the words to sound so caustic.

  “Yes. I told them you went home to Pennsylvania for some rest and recovery.”

  “I see. But now I’m feeling well enough to return?”

  “You must. I have an invitation to the home of Edwin Stanton himself.”

  He considered her for several long seconds. “You know we can’t win, don’t you?” It had become crystal clear to him, the brilliance of Lincoln’s plan. It was brutal, but it was brilliant. The North could afford the extravagance of attrition, the frivolous waste of lives and resources. But every single battle brought the South closer to its knees. How much longer could the Confederacy last? A year? Two? No more, surely. Its destruction was only a matter of time.

  “This is important, George. The Secretary of War himself. I’ll need you to cover for me again while I slip into his office. We’re a great team.”

  But Jovie had had several weeks to think about the ineffectiveness of their schemes. “You’ll have to go without me, Johanna. I’m done.”

  Her glance grew disdainful. “Have you lost your nerve?”

  “No, I’ve come to my senses. It’s futile, all of it. The missions. The war. Life. Love. What’s the point of any of it?”

  She narrowed her eyes and gave him a long, lingering stare. “What’s happened to you, George?”

  “I guess that sniper finally took me out of the fight.” He slapped his shortened leg. “I kept on for a year, but he finally succeeded. I just plain don’t care anymore.”

  “This seems rather abrupt.”

  He snorted. “That’s the first time I’ve heard that word applied to three years of hostilities.”

  “You know what I mean. This just doesn’t seem like you.”

  “And what do you know of me, Johanna?” he asked. “Not even my name. You don’t know what I’ve done, where I’ve been, what I’ve owned, or what I’ve lost.”

  Her eyes gazed up at him, troubled. “You’re right. I don’t.”

  “I guess it just took me a long time to put it all together, you know? To work out the meaninglessness of it all. You’re born. You die. If you’re lucky, you might connect with someone along the way. If not, you stand on the outside. Alone. Wishing it didn’t take so long to get from start to finish.”

&nbs
p; She hesitated. “You’re not going to do anything crazy, are you?”

  “You mean like kill myself?” He chuckled humorlessly. “Why, would you miss me?”

  She laid a gentle hand on his arm. “You’re a good man, George. You didn’t deserve any of this.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, none of us did. But I volunteered for it. And now I can’t escape it. I shot hundreds of bullets, Johanna. How many men did I kill? How many widows did I create? How many orphans? And for what? For what? Our slaves? To stand up to a bully?” He scoffed. “The world will always have bullies.”

  “You did it for the Confederacy.”

  He spit on the ground. “You know where you can stuff the Confederacy. We’re no better than the North. Equally proud and equally stupid.”

  She bristled. “The Confederacy didn’t start this war. We—”

  “Save your sermon, Johanna. I couldn’t care less.” He slammed one crutch against the end of a stall, causing the horse inside to toss its head. “We should have set the slaves free after Sumter and sent them all on up to Washington. That would have shut the North up quick. And a lot fewer people would be dead.”

  Her eyes grew compassionate. “George, why don’t you go home? Back to the people who love you?”

  “I told you before, there’s nothing left for me there.”

  She considered him a long time, sorrow shaping her features. She squeezed his arm. “I’m really sorry, George.”

  He turned away and considered the distant skyline outside the door of the barn. “Yeah, me too.”

  She gently touched his cheek and slipped back inside the inn.

  Jovie never saw her again.

  He returned to the routine he’d followed after leaving the Soldiers’ Home. Work. Sit alone in his room. Drink until he fell asleep or passed out. Work. Sit alone. Drink. Pass out. It marked off the weeks with a hollow, destructive rhythm that ate away at his health. His hair and beard grew long, his clothing wore ragged, and his flesh melted off until he weighed less than he had on campaign. Twice more he visited the coast, contemplating the heavy roll of the sea. Both times he returned to his boardinghouse with the image of Emily’s face so vivid in his mind that he chose to continue the rote motions of living.