“Fanny Crosby, she has written many hymns,” Tucker replied. “That one was for mothers who’ve lost babies, just as she had. I’m so pleased I knew it, to end this painful service with a message of Jesus’s peace.”
“Amen to that,” Sedalia said, glancing toward the house. “Do you s’pose Libby’s feelin’ any peace? Anything at all? I—I need to go look in on her.”
Sedalia hurried away, as though she couldn’t bear to be at the graveside a moment longer. Her hips were so slender that her threadbare calico dress swayed limply between her waist and the tops of her old shoes. Her stifled sob drifted back to them as she entered the house.
“She’s takin’ it real hard, ’cause she cain’t seem to make no babies,” Reuben remarked in a halting voice. “That’s why, when we knowed Liberty was in the family way, we promised we’d take care of her—would raise the child as our own. But Libby, she been so upset, she ain’t hardly said ten words,” he went on, shaking his head sadly. “Why, she be so smart, the plantation owner, he done asked her back—for pay!—to teach his family’s children! Only the Good Lord knows why she’d go and get herself in trouble—”
“Not ze girl’s choice.”
All eyes swiveled to Veronique, whose eyes were wide and shining like dark, foreign worlds.
“Who then?” Reuben demanded. “When I find out who done this to my little sister—”
“Ze overseer,” the healer spat. Her voice had dropped an octave, as though it rushed up from a Pandora’s box of secrets deep within her. She looked dazed and detached, as though she had no idea what she was saying.
“He tricked her into a corner,” Veronique went on with a feral grimace. “Told her she’s no good—overstepped her place by teaching—”
Reuben flexed his huge hands and started toward her. “You talkin’ crazy, witch! Mistah LeFourche, he’s the only white man who treated us decent after we’s freed! He wouldn’t never—”
“Reuben, no!” Billy cried, rushing to one side of the dark giant as Michael and Tucker grabbed him, too. “You go throwin’ those fists around like you did back in town, you’ve got no job here, mister! No place for your family to stay!”
The hired hand was wheezing like a crazed bull, his muscles bulging against the three pairs of hands that restrained him from grabbing Tucker’s mother.
“How’d you know that?” he bellowed at Veronique. “You can’t prove no such thing—”
“She told me that story during the birthin’,” Asa chimed in, warning the larger dark man with his pointed finger. “She saw the whole thing happenin’ inside her head, soon as she touched that man’s child. Said the overseer wanted his own daughter to be the plantation schoolmarm—pretended he liked you folks so you wouldn’t guess how he was gettin’ back at poor Libby.”
“Oui, that is how Maman knows things,” Tucker explained urgently. “She felt the violence and hatred when the baby was conceived—saw the whole scene in her mind’s eye. They come very fast, without warning, these visions. She cannot stop them. And she never makes them up.”
The Cajun went over to slip an arm around his mother then, careful not to bump her with his accordion.
“Let’s go inside, Maman,” he said softly. “This darkness and shame—you have set it out in the light so it can hurt you no more. You can let it go now, on the wings of the wind.”
He kept murmuring reassurances to the tiny woman, who ambled along meekly in his embrace.
Christine watched in silence, startled by this turn of events, as she hugged Lily closer. Mercy, too, seemed stunned by the sudden flare of emotions and the unearthly way Liberty’s situation had been revealed. When Tucker had steered his mother inside, however, the spell of the bizarre incident was broken.
Reuben shook himself as Billy and Michael let him go. “Well, I never in my born days seen anything like—she went outta her head quicker than—”
“Stop it now,” Asa commanded. “We read in our Bibles about things seen and unseen, things beyond our understandin’. Like Joseph seein’ visions—nearly gettin’ killed by his brothers for it ’fore he went on to be Pharaoh’s own prophet.”
Asa gazed at each of them in turn, trying to settle himself so he could make his point. “Tucker’s mama is more aware of other worlds than most folks. My granny had the second sight, so I b’lieve it’s real and true. I also know that even though it was a power God gave her, she suffered all her life from people accusin’ her of makin’ it all up. Sayin’ she was just plain crazy.”
Lily’s blue eyes lit up with a need to play after so much seriousness. “Kwazy!” she mimicked, waggling her tongue. “Kwazy like me, Kwis-teen!”
Christine chuckled at the little girl. “You’re far too smart to be kwazy, little girl,” she teased quietly, rumpling the child’s flyaway blond curls. “You’re just silly, Lily! Silly, willy-nilly Lily!”
“Lily Stinkerpants!” Joel chimed in, coming over to join the fun.
“No, you,” the girl in pink gingham replied.
“No, you!”
Lily pointed a queenly finger at him. “You, you, y—”
“Praise be, she’s alive!” came Sedalia’s cry from the house. “Libby’s done opened her eyes and called me by name.”
Joy tingled up Christine’s spine, and Reuben loped toward the house. Leaving the children with Billy, she quickly followed Mercy and Miss Vanderbilt, excited by this wonderful news.
And yet, while she was relieved that Liberty Gates now had a new lease on life, Christine could already hear the heavy clop-clopping of huge black hooves and the clatter of a bright red wagon rolling down the road.
She had to pack and be ready. No one could keep her from leaving with Tucker Trudeau!
Chapter Eleven
“Maman has taken out the herbs and packing,” Tucker explained quietly. He stood at the bedroom door, a sable-haired sentinel, keeping them in the hallway while his mother and Sedalia tended the girl. “Her body is clean of infection now, and healing. Liberty, she is asking for food and water. A very good sign, oui?”
Christine stood beside Reuben, peering between Mercy and Miss Vanderbilt’s heads. Liberty was sitting up against the headboard; Sedalia had wiped her with a washcloth and was slipping one of Mercy’s nightgowns over the girl’s head.
Veronique Trudeau was packing her medical bag—a sure sign she and her son wouldn’t be staying much longer. The healer then shooed Sedalia away so she could look more closely at her patient. She checked Liberty’s eyes and pulse, talking quietly.
The girl nodded. She looked very earnest; weak, but alert.
Mrs. Trudeau took Liberty’s head between her hands and began to speak in a mystical sing-song, gazing upward as though invoking those angels again. Still chanting quietly, she then followed the curves of the girl’s head and body with her hands, a few inches away from her skin, like she was caressing someone a size larger than Liberty . . . or soothing her soul. Finally, crossing herself, Veronique stepped away.
Was it Christine’s imagination, or was Liberty sitting taller and prouder now? When the girl turned to look at them, her eyes were large and doelike. Focused. Sparkling.
And when Liberty smiled, Christine could understand why a man would be attracted to this girl—why her fragile femininity, both a boon and a bane, acted like a magnet. It was downright humbling, to think an unsophisticated darkie from the deep South possessed the same powers of persuasion she’d been honing for most of her life.
“I want to thank you all for your help and your prayers,” she said. Her voice was clear, ringing like a school bell in the little room, for she spoke in a more elevated way than the rest of her family.
“While I slept last night, I saw myself in Heaven . . . with my baby,” she said in a faraway voice. “And I knew my infant was innocent—blameless—and the evil that spawned it had been cleansed from my body and soul.”
Her face lit up as she continued. “St. Michael and Raphael watched over me in the night—they were in t
his room!—and an archangel named Ariel gave me the courage to come back. To start my life again as a new person. Free from the guilt and shame that had been my prison.”
Liberty glanced up, smiling as though she still saw those heavenly beings in the corners, up by the ceiling.
“What did Asa put in that tea?” Miss Vanderbilt whispered.
“Must’ve been one powerful poultice, too,” Mercy replied.
“Before I awoke this morning, I had a vivid dream,” Liberty went on, excitement animating her face and hands. “It was like in the Bible, where Jesus was driving the money changers from the Temple in Jerusalem. While I slept, I could feel Him purging me, too! Telling me my faith had sustained me, and that I was to dedicate my new life to His service.”
Liberty blinked, looking at those around her with an enviable serenity, considering the ordeal she’d been through. “Mama Trudeau has pronounced me whole—weak, but healing. A beautiful new dwelling place for the Spirit,” she said in a hushed voice. “It seems fitting I should have a new name, as well. So from here on out, I wish to be called Temple. Temple Gates.”
Sedalia let the washcloth drop to plant a hand on her hip. “Well, ain’t you just the Queen of Sheba, tellin’us—”
“Leave her be.” Reuben went to his little sister’s bedside. “After what she been through, too worried sick to tell us about it, she can go by any name she wants.”
In what Christine guessed was a rare display of affection, the huge man sat on the side of the bed and grasped the girl’s tiny hands. Tears rolled down his rugged, dark face.
“It mighta been a phony land deed what brung us here,” he said in a ragged voice, “but it just mighta been the Lord’s way of gettin’ this girl away from places where she ain’t safe. Worth every dollar we lost to them land office leeches.”
Tucker glanced at Christine. “This surely could not be the work of Richard Wyndham and—”
“I’m afraid it was, yes,” she replied, her cheeks burning. “I didn’t want to believe it, but the names on the deed can’t be coincidence. And Wyndham had encouraged you to invest in railway land.”
Tucker’s aquamarine eyes shone with compassion. “Si désolé—I’m so sorry—you’ve learned these things about your mama,” he murmured. “Maybe, if I hadn’t sent those clippings, you would remember her as—”
“No, thank you for keeping track of her,” Christine replied. And before she gave it more thought she blurted out, “Take me with you, Tucker! We know they’ve gone west. Probably followed the railroad—”
“You have no idea what you’re asking, chérie.”
Feeling his mother’s pointed glare, Tucker quickly steered her outside. “The wagon, it is so very small. And with Maman along—”
“It will be perfectly proper,” Christine finished. They were striding toward the cheerful red wagon—toward the wheels that might take her to Mama. “I can help with the cooking—or—I could be your assistant. Or—”
Tucker pivoted in front of her, as skillfully as any man she’d ever danced with. “Understand, ma petite, there is nothing I’d like better than to—”
“So that settles it. You’re certainly old enough to decide such a thing for yourself, Tucker.”
He grasped her hands, and she shivered under the intensity of his gaze. “It’s not a matter of age—or what I desire,” he replied earnestly. “It’s—how you say?—cramped quarters already in the wagon, with my cameras and Maman’s supplies.”
She gave him her prettiest pout. “I don’t take up that much room.”
“Go inside. See for yourself,” he said. He threw open the wagon’s side door, pulled down the steps, and with a sweeping gesture invited her to enter what looked like a carnival on four wheels.
Christine stepped inside. Her hand went to her throat.
Wire bins holding his photographic equipment covered every inch of wall space. Around the floor were large crates of food and grain. A bunk ran across the back end of the wagon. A square trunk at its head displayed an assortment of candles and religious figurines and other trinkets.
“Maman’s bed and angel altar,” Tucker said behind her. “She prays there and consults with her spirit guides.”
“And where do you sleep?”
He pointed to the ceiling. “My hammock, it hangs from those hooks. Or, when we ride the train between photographic sessions, I’ll stretch out in a passenger seat. We have passes, you see. Good for whatever train comes through when we are ready to go. We pull the wagon into a stock car, and Sol rides there, too.”
“So I can buy a pass like yours,” she reasoned in a rising voice, “and sleep in a Pullman berth, and—oh, Tucker, I love riding the train!”
The Cajun looked so boyishly handsome in the shadowy wagon, she almost threw her arms around his neck to kiss him. This was going to work! She wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor with her carpetbag for a pillow, or share these very cramped quarters with Tucker’s mother and her . . . spirits.
“Well, ain’t this somethin’!”
Billy was coming up the wagon’s stairway, peering inside with a wide grin. Of course he would have to butt in on her precious moments alone with Tucker! After he glanced at the wire bins and the wooden chests around the walls, he looked directly at Christine.
“You wouldn’t last five minutes here, Sis,” he announced. “No room for your trunks. No place for the chamber pot—’cept right here in the middle of the floor. And no mirror!”
Leave it to men to complicate things. Why couldn’t they see the obvious?
“As I was saying when you butted in, Billy,” she continued tersely, “I can get a Pullman berth—or a reclining seat to sleep in. And while Tucker’s taking his photographs, I can ask around town to see if anyone knows where Mama’s gone.”
Tucker’s face took on a patient forbearance. “And when we are off the train? Out on the prairie? In winter?” he asked gently. “Maman, she will tolerate such conditions rather than stay in Atchison alone.
“And what about your schooling, Christine?” he went on, grasping her hands to make his point. “You will be away from home for months if you—”
“What home is that?” she blurted. The familiar bitterness bubbled up within her. “Are we talking about the home the banker stole from us after Daddy died? The home where Mama left most of our belongings so she could run off with Richard Wyndham?”
Christine blinked rapidly and then let the tears slither down her cheeks. “Don’t you see, Tucker?” she pleaded. “Yes, I could graduate. Yes, I could accept an apprenticeship with Madame Devereaux. I could’ve been engaged to marry, but I’ve turned away those boring, straitlaced men and their money. They’ll never make me happy.
“So I have nowhere to go!” she cried, yanking her hands from his. “And if I can’t find my mother—if I can’t go with you, now that Destiny’s brought us together again—well, I have no reason to go on!”
With that, she flounced down the wagon’s stairs and trotted toward the house, blotting her eyes with her lace handkerchief.
Billy chuckled at Tucker’s flummoxed expression.
“Better get used to it,” he said. “Queen Christine needs somebody to rule and she’s picked you. Not even your mama, with all her saints and angels, is gonna change that.”
Chapter Twelve
“By hook or by crook, Christine’ll find a way to go with you,” Malloy said quietly. “And actually, that’ll make things easier on both of us.”
Tucker turned from putting his accordion in its bin and looked at the owner of the Triple M Ranch. Mike Malloy radiated a sense of calm control over this little kingdom, which revolved around energetic children and young women who needed immediate—and constant—attention. As he stood framed in the wagon’s doorway, the sun made a halo above Michael’s head.
Tucker sensed this man was by no means saintly or self-righteous, yet he seemed steeped in goodness. Malloy had taken in three young children—was responsible for Christine and her brot
her—and he’d buried Libby’s baby without hesitation or judgment. He’d built a small empire for himself, too. Impressive accomplishments for a man Tucker guessed to be his own age.
“Christine, she is not one to hear the word ‘no’—non?” he said with a shrug. “But she still wants to find her mama. I respect her for that.”
“I can see that, or I wouldn’t be making this suggestion.” Malloy glanced toward the yard, where Joel, Lily, and the dogs frolicked around Billy as he tended the horses. “I’d like you to take some photographs—”
“Oui, of course! Of you and your new bride!”
“Of all of us, as a family in our new home,” Malloy said with a big grin. “And of course I’ll pay you for them—”
“Non, non, non! The pleasure, it is mine, after the way you—”
“—and give you extra, to cover expenses Christine’ll run up,” the rancher stated. “She has no idea about the bare-bones life you’ll be living as you take your pictures. Or about the extra effort she’ll cost you by coming along.”
Tucker paused. Maman had objected strenuously to Christine’s mission because of the heartache the girl was inviting—and would cause him—if they found her mother. But if he were paid to escort Miss Bristol . . . it wouldn’t look as if he was a pretty girl’s willing pawn, would it?
And what better way to see whether his dreams of her could be turned into something solid and satisfying? A home. A family. The love and devotion shared by two hearts meant to be together. Maman had no idea of the loneliness he endured because he’d forsaken a social life to look after her.
“You trust me with her?” he challenged. “You understand that Christine, she’s become so very beautiful. And that I have ideas about—”
“You, and every other man,” Malloy replied pointedly. “She took out alone when she was thirteen, and she’ll do it again. I’d rest better knowing you and your ma were watching out for her. I had my doubts about you when she came back from Atchison with a headful of girlish notions about a photographer there—and secrets she’ll never share with anyone.
Journey to Love (Angels of Mercy) Page 10