The Message in a Bottle Romance Collection

by Joanne Bischof

  Quickly, she rushed to take it from him and set it on the table beside the rocker.

  “You’ve come home to us.” He kissed June on her head and engulfed Cora Mae in a father’s embrace for a prodigal child. He was thinner than she remembered. So was Mama.

  “You’ve been looking after Mama?” She wiped her palms on her cloak then kneaded them together.

  “As much as she’d let me.” The smile he gave Matilda was tender. His scant black hair had grayed noticeably since July, and the lines about his mouth carved deeper. “There’s no work for me in Roswell, so I found a job in my widowed sister’s town, a day’s journey from here. But I come here regular to see she has enough food. It’s been a stretch, I’ll tell you, especially on account of the rogues who came by and cleaned out our stores. Been working on Matilda to come live with me and Opal, but she insisted on staying to wait for you.”

  “Have any others returned?” Cora Mae asked. Roswell mill girls marched through her mind.

  “Not one.” Mama squeezed her hand. “How did you manage it?” She beckoned June, who ran to hug her.

  “Our Yankee, Mr. Howard, brought us back,” June quipped. “Same one as took us away.”

  Mr. Ferguson frowned, deepening the seams from his mouth to his chin. “A bluebelly?”

  Mama waved the term away. “I’d like to meet him.”

  June skipped toward the door. “He’s not a bluebelly anymore, he’s just Mr. Howard. I’ll fetch him here and stay with the horses myself. Mr. Howard’s worried about horse thieves,” she added.

  Moments later, Ethan entered the room alone and doffed his cap, tapping it against his thigh. Mr. Ferguson crossed his arms, eyeing him.

  “Mama, this is Ethan Howard, the man who brought me home.” Finality weighted the statement. He had done what he set out to do. It was over. “Mr. Howard, this is my mother, Matilda Stewart, and this here is—this is Mr. Horace Ferguson. He’s been looking after her.” Tears bit Cora Mae’s eyes.

  “It’s my very great pleasure to meet you.” He bowed slightly to each of them, his face a mask of good manners.

  “Come here, son.”

  Striding toward Mama, he tucked his hat under his arm and filled her outstretched right hand with his left.

  “God bless you, young man.” Tears traced her cheeks. “Thank you for my daughter, and for June. Thank you.”

  “It was my pleasure.” Ethan cleared his throat then opened his mouth as if to say more before pressing his lips flat. Blinking in the slanting rays, he simply bowed again and replaced his hat on head. “I’ll take my leave. Miss Stewart, one last word, if you please.”

  She met him in the hall, where the sunlight couldn’t reach. “Mr. Howard, I—” Speech abandoned her.

  “I have something for you.” His voice was gravelly. From inside his jacket, he drew his old, beat-up bottle, the housing for his prayer book. He tapped the scrollwork on its neck. “Did I ever tell you this word is Latin for ‘hope’?”

  She shook her head. A floorboard creaked beneath her boots.

  “I want you to have it.”

  “Hope?” She peered at him, memorizing the sweep of his hair across his brow, the green of his eyes, the faint lines that fanned from them when he smiled. Her vision blurred.

  “Yes. Hope. The bottle. All of it.” He held it out to her, and she grasped the cold metal. “If you should feel hopeless, look inside.” At that, he tipped his hat to her and whispered, “It’s time for me to go.”

  Words froze in her chest as she watched him descend the stairs.

  The screen door banged behind Ethan. “Well, June…” Hoofbeats cut him off. Standing on the front porch, he shielded his eyes against the sun’s stark glare and watched a cloud of dust rise from the road. Dread snaked through his middle. Three houses they’d passed in north Georgia were smoldering heaps. It wasn’t Yankees who’d torched them.

  June hurried to him. “Comin’ fast,” she whispered. “Who do you think it is?”

  “Get inside,” he told her, and she immediately obeyed.

  The horse pounded over the hill, barreled up the street, and halted right in front of the Stewarts’ apartment. Long black hair streamed from beneath the rider’s hat and over the shoulders of his oiled deerskin cloak. When he dismounted, the sun glinted on the pistol at his hip and on the musket in his hands.

  “Can I help you, Mr…?”

  “Walker.” The man spit syrupy brown juice on the bottom porch step then grinned, a tobacco plug bulging inside his cheek. “And I aim to help myself.” In one leap, he topped the stairs.

  Ethan splayed his hand against Walker’s chest. “No, you won’t.” The man was a guerilla, a vulture come to pick Roswell clean. “There’s nothing for you inside.”

  Before Walker could shoulder the musket, Ethan shoved him off balance, and he crashed down the steps. Pushing himself up from the weed-snarled ground, Walker aimed his rifle at Ethan. “If you was a deserter, I’d have every right to kill you where you stand.”

  “I’m not.” Ethan met him on the ground, planting himself between Walker and the apartment.

  “Sound like a Yankee.” The gleam in his brown eye was the devil’s own as he lit upon Ethan’s shortened right sleeve. “Even better.”

  “I’m a civilian. You have no business here.” His pulse quickened. In his mind, he rehearsed lunging, dodging, disarming Walker. Saw himself fumbling the musket with just one hand and a nub of a forearm. Could he shoulder it? Could he aim and fire it, if he had to? Sweat beaded and chilled his skin.

  The door burst open behind Ethan, and two sets of footsteps sounded on the porch.

  “We haven’t got much. Take it and leave.” Mr. Ferguson and Cora Mae descended the steps and passed Ethan as they approached the bandit. Each of them held a full sack of food.

  They’d go hungry without provisions. “Don’t give him a kernel,” Ethan advised. “He’s a thief.” Alarm licked through his veins. He could barely defend himself, let alone two more souls.

  “And you ain’t?” Walker sneered. “What do you call what Sherman’s army’s been up to all the way through Georgia? I’m through with Yankees.” He cocked the hammer.

  “No! Don’t shoot!” Cora Mae jumped in front of Ethan.

  A shot blasted the air, and then another, and one more.

  Cora Mae fell back at an angle, corn spilling from a hole in the burlap sack she held. Instinctively, Ethan lunged to catch her with his right arm, in vain. With a sickening crack, her skull hit the corner of the porch step. Horror seized him as he knelt and scooped her head into his lap. Not this, not now. Not after everything we’ve been through. Anguish swelled in his throat.

  Vaguely, he was aware of Walker dropping his gun and collapsing, of blood pouring from two holes in his chest. Mr. Ferguson bent over his betrothed, face ashen, with a smoking pistol in his shaking right hand and the sack of peanuts he’d hid it behind still in his left.

  “Cora Mae,” Ethan called, her name bittersweet on his lips.

  Her eyelids fluttered, and her hands released their grip. The corn slid off her waist, golden pebbles pooling in the gray folds of her cloak. A frayed hole next to the buttons sent a shock coursing through Ethan.

  “Give her to me.” Mr. Ferguson’s voice quaked. “You’ve done your part. I’ll take it from here.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  A throbbing headache pulled Cora Mae awake. She opened her eyes and scanned the bare white room. “Where’s Ethan?”

  Sitting in the chair by the bed, Mama smoothed the hair back from her cheek just as Mr. Ferguson and June came rushing in. “You’re awake!” June clasped her hand.

  “She’s delirious.” Mr. Ferguson peered into her eyes. “You took a nasty spill.”

  Holding her breath, she reached under the quilt to sweep her hand over her middle, and found it miraculously whole. “Wasn’t I shot?” She pushed herself up to sit on the thin bed tick.

  “Yes, darlin’.” Mama handed her Ethan’s bottle. />
  She took it, the cold metal drawing the heat from her skin. A few inches below the neck, the thick, aged bronze was deeply dented in the shape of a bullet. With a prayer of thanks and wonder for the treasure she’d tucked into her cloak, her fingertip dipped into the space.

  “I shot that rat first, and it turned his aim so it wasn’t dead on,” Mr. Ferguson explained. “He fired at an angle, and the corn slowed the bullet some before it came to rest in that tin. Then I finished him, but you fell and hit your head. Oh, what a scare you gave us.”

  “You been sleeping for hours,” June said. “You been calling out for Ethan.”

  “Delirious,” Mr. Ferguson said again, his leathery palm coming to rest on her brow. “She ain’t well just yet.”

  “I’m not delirious. Where is he?” With one hand resting on the bottle in her lap, the other nervously picked at the yellow stitching on Mama’s quilt.

  “Mr. Howard’s fine, likely thanks to you. I told him to go. Weren’t no cause for the Yankee to stay, now that you’re with kin.”

  As though in a fog, Cora Mae’s gaze drifted from Mr. Ferguson’s face to June’s and Mama’s. Wincing, she touched the ache at the base of her skull, but the searing pain in her chest could not be reached.

  “Now that you’re home, we’ll all go and live with my sister Opal. We best get moving, lest Walker’s friends come looking for him. Between his horse, mine, and Samson, we’ll have a mount for each adult, and June can ride with you.”

  His words blurred into nonsense. All she could think of was Ethan. If you’re hopeless, look inside, he’d told her. Uncorking the bottle, she tipped it, and the prayer book slid out. Around the scroll this time, was wrapped another piece of paper. A note. Throat tight, Cora Mae slowly read:

  Dear Miss Stewart,

  I pray that your new life with Mr. Ferguson and June brings you great joy and peace and that you will both be loved the way you deserve. I’m going west to cultivate the land instead of ravage it, but first I’ll rest Johnny Reb in Marietta a few days. You’ll forgive me for thinking of you when I enter that town, for I have thought of little else since we rode into it together. But know that with each thought, I’ll say a prayer for your family.

  Good-bye,

  Your Yankee

  She read it once more. Longing wrenched her. Decision resounded within her.

  “Mr. Ferguson. Mama.” She looked from one to the other, desperate that both should understand. “I’ve got somewhere else to be. With your blessing,” she added for Mama, whose gaze dropped to Ethan’s note. But her mind was made up.

  Mr. Ferguson frowned. “She ain’t well, Millie.”

  But Mama smiled, her blue eyes twinkling with recognition. “Oh, yes she is. But she’ll be powerful better just as soon as she reunites with the man she loves.”

  “What in tarnation are you talkin’ about?”

  Cora Mae grasped her mother’s hand and turned her gaze on Mr. Ferguson. “You always been good to us. Pap couldn’t have asked for a better friend. But Mama’s right. I belong with Ethan Howard.”

  Suddenly, his face darkened. “Did that bluebelly violate you? You in the family way, Cora Mae?”

  “No, no. We never—no,” she said. “I love him with all my heart. I been bottling it up, trying to do what’s honorable by my family. But he’s my family, or could be. So is June.”

  “I want to come!” June cried. “Mama, take me with you!”

  Tears lined her lashes as Cora Mae absorbed Mr. Ferguson’s bewildered stare. “I love her as my own. Since neither of us are her blood relatives, don’t you think we ought to let June choose?”

  Confusion carved his brow. “That’s a mighty big choice for a child to make.”

  “Horace.” Matilda turned a warm smile on him. “The child has been in Cora Mae’s care almost as long as she’d been in yours. Let her go with the young folks.”

  “Please.” June rested her hand on Cora Mae’s shoulder as she turned toward Horace. “I want to go with Mama.”

  A sigh heaved from Mr. Ferguson, and his shoulders slumped as he rubbed his chin. “I’m supposed to provide for you all. I promised Mavis. And I promised Asa.” He looked soulfully at Cora Mae.

  Mama laid her hand on his arm. “You have, and you’ll keep on providing for me. But the Lord has provided for Cora Mae.”

  Doubt dimmed his eyes. “It don’t suit. Asa wouldn’t have stood for her taking up with a Yankee, and I’ll be buggered if I need to spell out why.” He rubbed a blue-veined hand over his sagging jaw. “Ah, Asa.” Such weight in those two small words.

  Still in her green wool dress, Cora Mae pushed back the quilt and stood beside the bed. “He would have wanted me to be well cared for, and well loved.”

  “We love you, don’t we? Ain’t I got a plan to care for you, too?” Dismay cracked his voice.

  Compassion surged for this weary man, loyal to Pap to the end. “Mr. Ferguson, I’ve got to go.” She laid her decision gently upon him. “And if June wants to join me, you ought not stop her.”

  Mama rounded the bed and enfolded Cora Mae in her soft arms. “Go on, darlin’,” she whispered in her ear. “If there’s a way, take it. I’ll be fine, knowing you are. You give my new son my love, you hear?”

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Cora Mae dampened her mother’s shoulder with her tears. As she hugged the woman who’d raised her, she embraced, too, the memory of Pap and Wade, things familiar, and the life that had disappeared when the mills burned to the ground.

  And then, she let her go.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Marietta December 30

  Samson was lathered with sweat by the time Cora Mae and June galloped into Marietta’s town square. Horace Ferguson rode beside her on his thin chestnut bay, insisting on escorting them before spurring his steed back to Roswell to spirit Mama away to Opal’s home. This ride in the opposite direction would have been too much for the woman when another journey awaited. They’d seen her safely into the preacher’s care until Mr. Ferguson’s return, unwilling for her to be alone.

  The reins firm in her hands, Cora Mae trotted Samson around the square’s perimeter, barely recognizing the place. The Cobb County Courthouse was mere rubble, along with most of the other buildings skirting the square. Where a thousand white tents had stood was now an expanse of fire-charred ground.

  “Are we too late?” June cried. “Did he go west without us?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll keep looking.” Her palms grew damp on the reins. Please, God.

  “Mr. Howard!” June began shouting. “Mr. Howard!”

  Eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat, Mr. Ferguson shook his head but clucked to his mount to keep apace with Samson.

  Wind nipped Cora Mae’s nose and cheeks. Her throat squeezed as she shielded her eyes from the harsh winter sun and scanned the square. No one else was there.

  Crossing into the rail yard, they passed the once-grand Fletcher House, now soot stained and missing its fourth floor. No trains in sight, and tracks torn asunder, the yard was eerily silent. Wisps of cloud rolled by like ghosts of engine steam from days gone by. Weariness and memory pressing down on her, she dismounted and helped June down as well, while Mr. Ferguson stayed quietly in his saddle.

  June leaned on her, looking into the distance. In the next moment, she took off running down the platform at full tilt, her shawl slipping from her hair to her back.

  “June!” Cora Mae’s breath stalled in her lungs.

  At the end of the platform, Ethan knelt, and the girl threw herself against him, clinging with all her might.

  “Well, I’ll be.” Mr. Ferguson’s voice drifted from behind. “Go on, then.”

  Heart thudding as loudly as her footsteps, Cora Mae approached, and Ethan stood.

  “Thank God,” he breathed. “I stayed until after Mr. Ferguson had brought you inside. He told me the bullet didn’t penetrate, but—”

  Smiling, she pulled the bottle from the folds of her cloak and pointed to the dent. �
�It didn’t.” A moment passed before she tucked it inside her cloak once more and stepped closer to him, pulse racing. “I ended the engagement with Mr. Ferguson. It was never love for him that kept me from you. It was commitment to honor and honesty, the same commitment I know you hold dear. I’ve loved you, Ethan, more than I could bring myself to admit—until now. If you’ll still have me.”

  His eyes misting, a slow smile curved on his face. He pulled her to himself, cradling her head as she melted into him, and swayed his warm lips against hers in an answer more eloquent than any words could be.

  Remembering June, she pulled back and laughed at her wrinkled nose.

  Still on his horse, Mr. Ferguson ambled over to them, and Ethan reached up to shake his hand. “Good to see you, sir.”

  Mr. Ferguson tipped his hat and grunted. “Cora Mae here says she loves you, and you love her and can take care of her and June both. That so?”

  Ethan took off his hat. “Yes, sir.”

  “You gonna ask her to marry you?”

  Memories of Ethan’s first proposal—near this very spot—rushed at her.

  His eyebrows arched over sparkling green eyes. “All due respect, sir. I’ll take it from here.” Bending on one knee, he brought her hand to his lips. “Cora Mae Stewart, I love you. I love your integrity, your faith, your strength. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? Would you build a life with me where the air is sweet and the land is unmarred by war? I’m not saying it will be easy, but if we’re together, well—” He swallowed. “I’ll do right by you, Cora Mae. You are my perfect fit.”

  Joy shuddered deliciously through her. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

  June shouted with glee, and Ethan stood, wrapping them both into an embrace. “And you, Junebug, would you do me the honor of being my daughter?”

  “Yes, Daddy.” Her chestnut hair shimmered in the sunlight as she beamed up at him.

  With her beloved’s arm still about her shoulders, Cora Mae gazed up at Mr. Ferguson. “You’re the best friend Pap ever had. Thank you for caring for Mama.” Gratitude thickened her voice.