Despite Edith’s desire to comfort Dahlia, she knew the girl was right. Life wasn’t going to be the same. Nothing had been the same since Mother’s death from cholera five months ago. And now that Father had resigned his position as president of Applegate Pork Packing Company to accept a teaching position at the Eleutherian Institute eleven miles north in Lancaster, her life would again change.
Edith gazed around the familiar parlor of the home she’d known all her life, and her heart constricted. Father’s new position at the institute came with a house.
An involuntary shudder slithered through her at the memory of her first look at the run-down structure she would soon call home. The thought of living in any strange house, let alone the decrepit building that she and Father had toured last week, felt at once saddening and frightening.
“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” The scripture from Philippians that had encouraged her since she’d first learned of the impending move buoyed her spirit. She must stay focused on the institute’s mission that she and Father had joined: the education of all regardless of race or gender, especially those freed from slavery.
Still, however noble the mission before them, it didn’t negate Edith’s sadness in leaving Madison. At least she’d managed to convince her brother, Edwin, not to sell their beloved home outright but instead to rent it to an employee of the family’s company he now headed.
Fighting back her own tears, Edith forced her lips into a stiff smile and pulled Dahlia into a warm hug. While she cared for all her students—the dozen or so free black children she’d taught in her home over the past year—nine-year-old Dahlia Taylor was her favorite. With her quick wit and engaging personality, the girl had entangled herself in Edith’s heartstrings. In truth, Dahlia had become an invaluable asset in the classroom, and Edith wasn’t sure she could have managed packing away everything for this move without Dahlia’s help. “We’ll be seeing each other often. Edwin and Sophie have agreed to let us use the music room at their home once a week for a classroom.”
She gently pushed Dahlia away and schooled her voice to her best stern teacher tone. “Right now, we need to finish packing up this room.” She managed a smile. “And tomorrow I could really use your help packing the books in the library if your mother can spare you.”
Dahlia nodded, her dark eyes brightening with enthusiasm. “I’ll ask Mama, but I’m sure she’ll let me come.”
The faint sound of a door creaking open followed by footsteps echoing in the library down the hall surprised Edith, bringing her to her feet. “Father must have returned earlier than he’d expected.” When he’d invited her to accompany him to Lancaster for a faculty meeting with the other members of the Eleutherian Institute, he’d told her it would be an all-day affair. Longing to spend as much time as possible in her childhood home, Edith had declined, opting instead to stay and, with Dahlia’s help, box up some personal items to take to Lancaster.
She took the wrapped vase from Dahlia’s hands and nestled it into the wooden crate with other wrapped glass bric-a-brac. “Would you please go to the library and ask Father to carry this crate to the wagon? It’s a little heavy, and I wouldn’t want to drop it.”
Nodding, Dahlia popped up from her crouch beside the crate and sprinted out the door. She returned a few seconds later, her dark eyes the size of dollar pieces. “Miss Edith, it ain’t Mr. Applegate! Or Mr. Edwin, either.”
“It’s not Mr. Applegate, Dahlia. Ain’t isn’t a word.” Edith started for the door, curiosity laced with growing concern eclipsing her teacher’s impulse to correct her student’s grammar. She struggled to affect an unconcerned smile and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “You stay here, Dahlia, but if you hear any commotion or trouble, head out through the kitchen and fetch Mr. Edwin.”
The heavy footfalls still echoing in the library suggested sturdy male boots. Edith’s heart thumped harder. Could a brazen thief have heard that she and Father were moving out and decided to take advantage of a supposed uninhabited house in full daylight? Perhaps she should have grabbed the iron poker from the parlor fireplace before heading out to confront the intruder.
Whatever she’d expected to find in the library in no way matched the reality of what she saw. The sight brought her up short in the doorway, her pulse slowing as bewilderment replaced her mounting fear. Unless thieves had taken to dressing in gray broadcloth coats with matching beaver hats, starched white shirts, and black string ties, she doubted that the man standing in the middle of the library’s parquet floor and looking up at her grandfather’s portrait above the fireplace posed a threat to her or her property. Still, the audacity of the man to enter her home uninvited sparked her ire.
“May I be of assistance?” Edith didn’t try to blunt the sharpness in her voice.
The man jerked around to face her, his comely features reddening. He hurried to remove his beaver hat, revealing a thick shock of sand-colored hair. “I beg your pardon, miss. I was of the understanding that the house was unoccupied.”
“Yes, I expect you were.” Edith drenched her words in sarcasm. She met his blue-eyed gaze with an unblinking glare. “You have exactly thirty seconds to either explain your presence or leave the premises before I go fetch Sheriff Wharton.” She kept one foot on the hall side of the threshold in the event that she needed to make a hasty retreat.
To his credit the intruder stood his ground, his complexion returning to a normal hue. He gave a deep bow, sweeping his hat in front of him. “Wade Beaumont at your service, ma’am. I was invited by my employer, Edwin Applegate, to peruse the place in advance of taking up residence here.” His thick Southern accent, while pleasant to Edith’s ears, at the same time alarmed her. The new Fugitive Slave Act had put every abolitionist as well as the free blacks north of the Ohio River on keen alert. Edith sent up a silent prayer that Dahlia had already left the house through the kitchen. Though her brother tended to be a bit gullible, she couldn’t imagine that Edwin would hire someone who might jeopardize the freedom of those they’d worked so hard to help bring out of bondage.
Mr. Beaumont’s well-shaped lips, beneath a neatly clipped mustache, quirked up. “So if you are the cook here, as well as the cleaning lady”—his gaze settled on her dust-covered apron—“I like my coffee black and my johnnycakes with plenty of butter and maple syrup. And assuming there is still a bedstead somewhere in this domicile”—his gaze panned the room void of furniture—“I’ll want a bed-warmer run over my sheets as the October nights here are turning uncomfortably chilly.”
“Oh no, I am not…”
A mischievous twinkle glinted in his eyes.
Indignation roiled in Edith’s chest. The insufferable man was teasing her! How could Edwin have hired such an oaf?
Stiffening her spine, she stood at her full five feet three inches. “I, sir, am Edith Applegate, Edwin Applegate’s sister. This is…was my home.” To her horror, a distinct tone of sadness crept into her voice, evoking a look of sympathy from Mr. Beaumont.
“Please accept my humble apologies, Miss Applegate.” He closed the distance between them in three long strides. “I fear your attire led me to a false assumption.”
Before Edith had a chance to decide the sincerity of his expressed regret, Edwin walked into the room with Dahlia in tow.
“Ah, Wade. I see you’ve met my twin sister, Edith.” Edwin’s wide smile and bright voice rankled like fingernails down a chalkboard. Later Edith would scold him for not informing her of Mr. Beaumont’s planned visit. Edwin’s face swung to Edith, his naturally ruddy complexion deepening. “Sorry, Sis. I understood you’d be accompanying Father to Lancaster for the day. Mr. Beaumont is Applegate Pork Packing’s new accountant. Wade and I met four years ago when I traveled south on that business trip for Father.” He gave Wade a smiling nod. “We spent some time together in Natchez, and he impressed me greatly as a man of fine character and with a keen mind for business and mathematics. So when I ran into him outside the Madison Hotel two we
eks ago and learned he was looking for an accounting job, I knew he was heaven-sent to us. He’ll be moving into the house later this week as a resident caretaker of the place.”
Wade Beaumont cleared his throat. The sparkle in his eyes infuriated Edith while at the same time, sent her heart into a somersault. “I’m afraid that Miss Applegate and I have gotten off on bad footing, which was my fault entirely.” One sandy brown brow quirked up. “I’m assuming it is Miss, though my earlier assumptions have proved quite flawed.”
“Miss Edith ain’t, isn’t married,” Dahlia piped up, correcting her grammar.
Wade smiled at Dahlia. “I’m assuming you are unmarried as well.”
Dahlia giggled and nodded, but then her smile faded and her expression turned serious. “I’m not gonna get married. I’m gonna be a teacher like Miss Edith.”
Wade’s grin vanished, causing new alarm to flare in Edith’s chest. If he were an incognito slave hunter, the notion of blacks, especially a black girl learning to read let alone teach, would likely repulse him.
His brow furrowed, and he leaned down toward Dahlia as if examining her.
Edith’s heart vaulted to her throat. Did Dahlia resemble a slave girl he’d been sent to find? Before Edith could step between Wade and Dahlia, he reached out and felt behind the little girl’s ear.
“What is that behind your ear?” His look turned astonished as he held up a quarterdollar piece. “Do you always carry money behind your ear?”
Dahlia’s eyes grew large. “I didn’t know it was there.”
Wade handed Dahlia the coin, his face serious. “If I were you, I’d check my ears more often.” His grin returned. “You never know what you might find there.”
While Wade’s parlor trick eased the tightness in Edith’s chest, it didn’t diminish her concern for Dahlia’s safety. “Dahlia, you’d best hurry on home and take that money to your mama.”
Dahlia’s dark brow crinkled. “But it ain’t—isn’t—mine.”
“Of course it’s yours.” The corner of Wade’s mouth twitched as if restraining a grin. “I found it behind your ear, didn’t I?”
Delighted, Dahlia clutched the coin and scampered out the library door.
“That was very nice of you,” Edwin said, putting voice to Edith’s own sentiments.
Grinning, Wade shrugged. “Just a sleight of hand trick I learned during my time on the riverboats.” He turned a bright smile to Edith. “I like to keep in practice.”
While Edwin seemed to know and trust this man, Edith didn’t. She folded her arms over her chest and glared at Wade.
“So, Mr. Beaumont, I’ve seen your skill at sleight of hand. What experience have you in accounting?”
Edwin cleared his throat with a disapproving sound. Edith chose not to look at her twin’s expression.
Wade grinned. “Before my time on the riverboats, I spent several years keeping the books for my father’s business near Natchez, Mississippi.”
“And is your father in the pork packing business as well?” If Edwin wouldn’t subject the man to a critical interview, Edith would.
Wade’s grin evaporated. “No. He owns a cotton plantation.”
Chapter 2
Wade eased himself onto the feather bed and lay back, emitting a sigh of contentment. After three years of sleeping on riverboat bunks, he’d forgotten the pure luxury of a proper feather bed.
Rays from the setting sun streamed through the bedroom’s west window, casting a redgold hue on the room’s east wall. The light, dappled by the shadow of an ancient oak tree’s branches outside the window, danced over the wall as if to a merry tune beyond Wade’s hearing. The faint rumble of some sort of conveyance rolling over the gravel-paved street filtered in.
Wade pulled the quilt up to his chin as he’d done as a child when the winter evenings grew chilly. Here, on the north side of the Ohio River, the cool weather came earlier than it did down in Mississippi. In the fading light, he noticed the fine needlework of the quilt done in a large star pattern made up of red, yellow, and orange fabrics on a snowy white background. The Star of Bethlehem pattern, Ma had called it. How had he remembered that? Memories of Ma reached back ten years, before her death. Odd how an object like this quilt could call such memories forward from the recesses of his mind. What would Ma think of him, up north, working for Yankees?
As he retreated from such speculation, thoughts of another woman blew in like a warm summer breeze. Edith Applegate. Now there was a woman he’d like to know better.
He ran his thumb over the quilt’s tiny stitches. Was it her hands that had fashioned this bed covering? He liked to think so. The image of the girl he’d surprised in the library the other day flashed before his mind’s eye. While Edith Applegate’s coloring matched her twin brother’s to a T, hers was packaged in a far more appealing form. His pulse quickened in response to the memory of her trim, petite figure marching into the library as if going to war. What spunk it must have taken for her to confront what she undoubtedly supposed was an intruder in her home.
Renewed admiration sparked in his chest. Edwin had mentioned his twin sister to Wade on more than one occasion, so he’d had little doubt of the woman’s identity the moment she’d stormed into the library. But somehow her dust-covered and somewhat disheveled state had made it impossible for him to resist teasing her.
Warmth that had nothing to do with the smoldering embers in the fireplace filled him at the remembered vision of her, a riot of coppery curls framing her alabaster angel-like face, golden freckles sprinkled over a pert nose, and agate-brown eyes flashing in anger then darkening with fear. Fear of him.
Wade closed his eyes to expunge the sight, but it remained. Since his employment at Applegate Pork Packing, he’d learned of the Applegate family’s involvement in the abolitionist movement. Little wonder that the fair Edith had regarded him with suspicion and even fear. The memory of the horror in her eyes when he’d disclosed that his father owned a cotton plantation in Mississippi once again pricked his heart. Convincing her that he posed no threat to her, her family, or the adorable little Dahlia and others like her would not be easy.
Wade’s deep sigh filled the darkening room, blotting out the soft popping of the banked fireplace embers. He’d never backed down from a challenge, and winning Edith Applegate’s friendship, if not affection, would doubtless prove a considerable one.
A sense of resolve solidified in his chest. He would not allow his pedigree and Southern accent, which Edith Applegate obviously found abhorrent, to prevent him from becoming better acquainted with his employer’s enchanting sister.
Edith halted in sweeping four years’ worth of accumulated dirt from the front room floor. Though aware that the house had sat unoccupied for several years, she’d found its sad state of disrepair both surprising and daunting. As she gazed at the pile of soil—the contents of which, she’d rather not speculate—mounting in the middle of the floor, she fought despair. She’d worked for nearly an hour and the room still looked as grimy and dingy as it had when she’d begun. She leaned against the broom handle and blew out a deep sigh as tears filled her eyes. How on earth would she make this place habitable for her and Father, let alone decent enough for entertaining company?
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
For once the familiar words from the book of Romans, which she’d leaned on for solace since Father first announced their move, rang empty.
Lord, why?
As despondency enveloped her, the question that had screamed through her heart since her and Father’s first night in this forsaken abode slunk out again to torture her. How this change in their lives could better serve God’s will escaped her. So far Father’s classes consisted of five students, and two of them were children of other faculty members. Furthermore, she feared that the family business would suffer without Father at the helm. According to her sister-in-law, Sophie, Edwin felt overw
helmed in his new position as president of Applegate Pork Packing. All in all, Father’s abrupt change in career that had precipitated this move seemed a folly of monumental proportions.
Mother had often said that Father required a rudder to keep him on course. That thought brought with it a deluge of guilt and regret. Edith had failed to provide that rudder and, in so doing, had failed Father, Edwin, herself…everyone. She should have been more forceful in her attempts to convince Father to decline this teaching job and stay on as president of Applegate Pork Packing. If she had, everything would be as it was and they’d still be living in the home they loved instead of this squalor. They were doing God’s work right there in Madison—in their own home. Now Edith’s students from Madison’s free black district were restricted to one day a week of classroom time instead of five. The memory of Dahlia’s tearful goodbye at the close of class last Tuesday tore at Edith’s heart.
As she opened the front door, the caw, caw of crows in a nearby cornfield punctuated the bright air. A stiff gust of wind sent a shower of russet maple leaves fluttering across the porch boards. She lifted her face to a sky so blue it almost hurt her eyes. Despite the undeniable beauty of the countryside, she missed the town of Madison. She missed home.
A fresh spate of tears she couldn’t hold back flooded down her cheeks. While she and Father struggled to further the abolitionist movement in Jefferson County, a riverboat gambler and former slave owner resided in the home she adored, likely plotting ways to undermine the abolitionist cause and perhaps even put Father in jail.
A surge of anger dried her tears and shot renewed strength into her arms as she swept a broom full of dirt out the front door, sending a dark cloud of unmentionable filth into the crisp October air. Despite Edwin’s assurances that Wade Beaumont posed no threat to anyone except perhaps careless bookkeepers within the company, Edith wasn’t convinced. Even more maddening was Father’s cavalier attitude toward her concerns. While he well knew of Edwin’s tendency to be too trusting, having chided his son about the fault since Edith and Edwin were children, he’d shrugged off her worries saying, “These decisions are Edwin’s to make now. I’ll be kept abreast of the business, but I’ve handed your brother the reins and he must find his own way.”
The Underground Railroad Brides Collection: 9 Couples Navigate the Road to Freedom Before the Civil War Page 8