by Beth White
“Yes, sir! Miss Selah told me you might be willing to help me study for college entrance exams.” Wyatt looked down, suddenly bashful. “I expect I’m a little behind, but I’ve tried to keep up as well as I can on my own.”
“We’ll discuss the matter,” Kidd said easily. “Before I commit myself, I’ll want to give you a basic test of grammar, mathematics, history, and the like. I imagine Selah and Joelle can help with that.”
“Of course.” Selah hugged Wyatt’s bony shoulders. “But why don’t we go inside for refreshments? Then you two can get to know one another better while Mr. Riggins and I confer about the hotel.” She glanced at Levi, chin up.
With no noticeable chagrin, he nodded and fell into step with Selah as she led the way back to the office, Dr. Kidd and Wyatt following at their own pace. Wyatt’s lively questions, the doctor’s deep, quiet voice in answer, helped soothe some of Selah’s unsettled emotions.
“You’re angry with me,” Levi said.
She looked up at him. “What makes you say that?”
“You’re very quiet.” He smiled when she bristled. “I know it’s been a few days since I was last here. I’ve been making arrangements with the bank, wiring back and forth with Beaumont, and trying to locate workers and supplies for the repair phase. I thought you’d want some of that settled as quickly as possible.”
“I did. I do.” She bit her lip. “I wasn’t angry, just a little anxious. I was hoping Horatia and Mose would have said yes or no by now. I can’t make many decisions until they do.”
“I met their son-in-law.”
“Nathan? You did? He’s such a kind man, and I don’t understand why—” She didn’t know how to describe Horatia’s inexplicable antipathy toward her daughter’s husband.
“Why what?”
“Did Nathan tell you Charmion’s parents haven’t spoken to her since she got married?”
Levi whistled. “I wondered why he asked me not to tell them I’d hired him as our blacksmith.”
“That’s a—I mean, I’m glad you did. I told you I like him. But you should consult me on such major decisions, Mr. Riggins.”
“He was recommended as the best in town.” He sounded perturbed.
“He is. But still—”
“All right, duly noted.” He heaved a sigh. “Forgive me, Miss Daughtry.”
They walked on, stiff and silent until they reached the office cottage. He reached to open the door for her, gave her an ironic bow, and stepped back to let her pass. Inwardly stewing, she gathered ThomasAnne, Joelle—who had to be dragged away from writing some piece of correspondence—Wyatt, and the two men around the kitchen table, providing coffee for the adults and a tall glass of milk for the boy.
ThomasAnne served a plate of tea cakes she’d just pulled from the oven, then sat down across from the doctor, who engaged her in conversation and even had her laughing at a description of the new baby’s pointed head.
Marveling at her cousin’s heightened complexion, Selah found her gaze colliding with Levi’s. The amusement in his eyes faded.
He looked away. “I really should have waited—”
“No. You were right to go ahead and engage Nathan. You know more about the construction part of this project than I do.” She hid her face behind her coffee cup. “I’m used to making the final decision on everything around here, and it’s very strange to have help.”
“I imagine so.” His voice was gentle. “It’s fine to lean, just once in a while.”
Unable to answer for a moment, she cleared her throat. “We’ve got to get rid of those bees.”
“Nathan says he knows how.”
“Really?” Her eyes flashed to his. He looked just a bit smug, and she laughed.
“He’ll be here tomorrow to take care of them.” Leaving her vacillating between chagrin and relief, he turned to Wyatt. “It looks like you’re settling in quite well here, young man. But one of the errands keeping me away all week has been following up on inquiries about your family.”
Wyatt looked alarmed. “I told Miss Selah I don’t want to go back to Tennessee!”
“As it turns out, that’s a good thing,” Levi said dryly. “I’m not saying nobody wants you, but I’ve been encouraged to leave you where you are for the present.”
Wyatt swiped at the milk on his upper lip. “That’s no surprise. My aunt and uncle only took me because they felt sorry for me, and they really don’t need any more mouths to feed.” He looked guiltily at Selah. “Not that you do, either—”
She put a hand on his arm. “Wyatt, we’ve been over this. You’re more than welcome to stay here. We’ve got plenty for you to do, helping out, and now that Dr. Kidd has—” She glanced at the doctor. “That is, you are going to tutor him, aren’t you?”
Dr. Kidd laughed. “I’ll be glad to offer whatever assistance I can. It will be interesting to have another scientific brain with whom to confer on occasion.”
Wyatt’s chest puffed noticeably, and Selah silently blessed the doctor for his kindness.
“In fact,” Kidd added, “why don’t you come to me tomorrow morning—early, if you please, before I begin my rounds—and I’ll get you started on algebraic equations and Latin. We might look into theories of electromagnetism that I’ve been reading about as well.”
“Yes, sir!” Wyatt’s eyes glowed. “I’ll get up with the chickens and get my chores done first, though, Miss Selah.”
She resisted the urge to assure him that chores weren’t necessary. Boys thrived on responsibility. “That will be just fine,” she said.
Levi gave her an approving look, then leaned back in his chair. “Wyatt, before we leave the subject, I wondered what else you can tell me about your father. Perhaps he left you provided for—”
“I don’t want anything of his.” Wyatt’s freckled face had suddenly gone hard. “He left me and my ma alone for years without a word. I don’t think he’d’ve come for me at all if she hadn’t passed. And—except for landing with you folks—I’d have been better off without him.”
“That may be true,” Levi said matter-of-factly, “but you’ve nothing to lose in tracking your heritage. And you don’t want to turn down anything that might help these ladies here, now do you?”
Wyatt looked down. “No, sir, I reckon not.”
“Do you have any idea where in New Orleans your pa might have been taking you?”
“He wrote down the address and stuck it in my bag, but that got busted up and scattered in the wreck. I’m sorry, I didn’t memorize it.” Wyatt paused, thinking. “Maybe in the Garden District somewhere?”
Levi nodded. “I’ll send someone to make inquiries there. And you say he met you in Humboldt? How long had he been there before you got on the train for New Orleans?”
Wyatt scrunched his face. “About two weeks, I guess. I know it was the middle of February, and we’d just had a big ice storm that tore up a bunch of trees and bridges.”
“Huh.” Levi looked interested. “That’s about when a train robbery in the area that I heard about happened. Your pa involved in that?”
Wyatt shrugged. “If he was, he didn’t say anything about it. Like I told Miss Selah, my pa was always sure somebody was out to get him.”
Levi glanced at Selah, eyebrows up. She couldn’t remember if she’d mentioned that to him when they first discussed Wyatt’s situation at the Spencers’ home. And she didn’t know why he would care. There was something oddly pointed about Levi’s questions.
Maybe he realized that, for he chuckled, relaxing farther in his chair. “Oh well,” he said, “all kinds of intense emotions left over from the war. I admit to looking over my shoulder now and again myself.”
Selah had been watching Wyatt closely, alarmed at the shadows deepening in his eyes. She was about to intervene when she felt Levi’s hand close over her wrist. Her gaze flashed to his, and he shook his head.
Indignantly she pulled free.
But Wyatt had already leaned forward. “Pa made me watch out for this one parti
cular man,” he told Levi, his voice thready. “A big man with a scar through one eye. He said this man could hide anywhere, and if I saw him I was to run for the closest law officer.”
“Did you see him on the train?” Levi asked quietly. Not careless, but matter-of-fact. “Or since then?”
“No, sir.” Wyatt swallowed. “But I dream about him. Because I think I saw him once before, a long time ago during the war.”
Levi’s father had always told him that when you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. He repeated that to himself several times as he rode alongside Nathan Vincent’s blacksmith wagon toward Ithaca.
The problem was, he could not tell the complete truth to anyone connected to this case. The whole investigation had turned into a Gordian snarl of complications from which he saw no way of extricating himself anytime soon. Objectively, a run-down Mississippi plantation seemed the least likely of connections to a string of train robberies in middle Tennessee. But the more he pulled at the strands of the knot, the more clearly he saw a path leading to Ithaca as the center of the maze.
As much as he wanted to take Selah into his confidence—maybe even ask her to further question Wyatt Priester—there was something that she wasn’t telling him. Her reaction to Wyatt’s description of the man his father had told him to watch out for—eerily similar to that of the leader of the train robbery gang—had been no more than a widening of the eyes followed by a quick glance out the kitchen window.
If Levi had been looking away, he would have missed it. In fact, he could be mistaking a simple response to a noise outside for what resembled guilt. But he’d had enough experience interviewing guilty people that the inevitable conclusion was that he’d best continue to hold his cards close to the vest.
“Hey, boss.” Nathan was pulling the wagon to a stop on the lane just inside the plantation’s broad front gate. “Something going on up there.”
Levi reined in, following the blacksmith’s gaze to the front of the mansion. Yesterday, as he and the doctor made their adieus, he’d told Selah he wanted to bring Nathan back with him in the morning. The plan was to move the blacksmith’s tools and equipment into the old shop, which, once restored, would be vital to the rest of the renovation process. She hadn’t said anything about other work being done today.
He squinted, unable to distinguish the identities of the two white women, plus a colored man and woman who stood gesticulating at the foot of the porch. “Well, let’s go see.” He nudged the horse’s ribs, while Nathan started the wagon. As he got closer, he identified Selah and Joelle, who held an open book in her hand, but the Negroes were strangers to him. But judging by Nathan’s gradual slowing of the wagon behind him, they had to be Mose and Horatia Lawrence.
Well, this should be interesting.
As he dismounted and hitched the horse, Selah rushed toward him.
“Levi! You’re just in time.” Her hair, he noticed, was bound in its usual neat, practical coronet of braids. She wore a different dress than she’d had on yesterday, covered by the soft gray knit shawl she favored. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked very glad to see him.
“Am I?” He looked over his shoulder to find a very reluctant young blacksmith drawing the wagon to a halt. “You remember Nathan Vincent, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course.” Selah collected herself and smiled at Nathan. “I’m so glad you could come. Maybe you’ll be able to—” She broke off, clearly uneasy. “I wish I’d known—but it’s too late now. They’re here, and—” She gulped. “Nathan, Charmion’s parents have agreed to come to work here too.”
Nathan returned her smile. “That’s good.” The two words were slow, deep, measured. Levi got the feeling he’d been anticipating this meeting for quite some time. Nathan stepped around Selah and approached his father-in-law. “Mose. It’s time you quit lettin’ your wife wear the pants. I know good and well I’m too black and ugly for your daughter, but she took me on anyway. Ain’t you ready to bury the hatchet?”
Horatia stomped toward him, fists clenched. “Who do you think you—”
But Mose stilled her with an upraised hand. “Where is she?” His voice was calm, but his stance, half turned toward his wife, revealed his tension.
“At home. She’ll be moving here with me, soon’s we can build us a little house.” Nathan paused, looked hard at Horatia. “She gonna have your grandbaby.”
Horatia sucked in a breath. “When?”
“This summer. She gettin’ big already.”
“Oh, my.” Horatia’s hands went to her mouth. Her eyes went from the top of the tall young man’s raggedly cropped head, over the brawny shoulders under a homespun brown shirt, down to his big feet clad in cracked leather boots.
Levi wondered if she also noted the pride in his posture, the injury and hope mingled in his dark eyes.
Horatia wheeled without a word and marched around the side of the house.
Mose watched her go, a slight smile playing about his lips. “That woman’s neck so stiff she might as well got a broom handle down her back.” He turned to Nathan. “She’ll get over it when the baby get here. You been taking care of my little girl?”
“Yes, sir. You know I do.” Nathan turned his huge, callused hands palm up. “Long’s I got these two hands and my anvil, we gon’ eat just fine.”
“Well, it’s what’s between the ears that be the important thing,” Mose said dryly.
“I got plenty of know-how, even if I ain’t learned to read and write yet, if that’s what you mean,” Nathan said. “But I was thinking, Miss Selah, we might make something of a trade—for a while at least. Y’all teach me and Charmion our letters, and we’ll work for just food and supplies.”
If Levi could have been granted three wishes, the first would have been for the ability to sketch Selah’s face in that moment and have it to look at for the rest of his life. She blinked rapidly, cleared her throat, and said threadily, “Nathan, that’s very generous, but I don’t know how I’ll have time—”
“I’ll do it.” Joelle stepped forward in her languid way, and Levi saw she held a thick book under one arm, with a finger stuck between the pages to hold a spot. “Of course I’ll teach you both. We’ll work for an hour in the kitchen, midday, when we stop for lunch.” She fixed Selah with a look from beneath raised eyebrows. “That will be all right, won’t it?”
“Certainly. That’s a wonderful idea.” Selah gave her sister a nod of approval. “But we’ve got to move those bees out of the cupola before we can do anything else. Why don’t you show Nathan the picture of the smoker you found in the Quimby book. Maybe he could design one for us.”
Looking intrigued, Nathan stepped closer, and he and Joelle sat down side by side on the steps to pore over the book’s diagrams, with Joelle reading the description aloud to him.
Levi, Selah, and Mose stood for a pensive moment, staring at the red-gold head leaning near the rough black one. Levi had no idea what to make of it, other than satisfaction that a small hurdle in the process of reconciliation seemed to have been overcome.
Mose finally sighed, removed his pipe from his coat pocket, and began to pack the bowl with tobacco. “I was gonna suggest smoking the bees with this, but seems the old ways ain’t good enough no more. Let me go see about the old lady, or I may have to sleep in the barn tonight.” Winking at Selah, he turned to trace Horatia’s steps.
Selah smiled, glanced up at Levi. “Thank you for bringing Nathan on.”
“You’re not angry with me anymore?”
“I was never angry . . . Well, not about that anyway.” Now she grinned, giving Levi a glimpse of the mischief inside this beautiful, hardheaded rebel.
He laughed. “What were you angry about?”
“The fear that you’d launched me and my family into this monstrous, expensive, time-consuming project and then left me to deal with it alone.” She sighed. “I have trouble trusting people.”
He
managed to hold her gaze somehow. “I know. I’ll do my best not to let you down.”
The almost certain failure of that promise filled him with despair.
Sixteen
“THAT’S IT?” Selah bent to examine the contraption Nathan, Mose, and Joelle had been working on all weekend. It sat on the dining room table, magnificent in its homeliness—a series of square frames that would slide in and out of grooves notched into the sides of a wooden box.
“Doesn’t look like much, does it?” Joelle smiled at Nathan. “But it looks exactly like the diagram, and the measurements are perfect. Nathan even hinged the lid so we can open and close it when we’re moving the bees out to the woods. And look.” She picked up a flat, scythe-like implement lying next to the box. “This will cut the comb into slices so they can be inserted into the frames. We can move the whole hive without it falling apart.”
Selah shuddered and backed up a step, though there wasn’t a bee in sight. “I can’t imagine a swarm of bees letting you cut their hive apart.”
Mose, who had been silently watching the inspection, drew on his pipe, then lowered it with a puff. “That’s where the smoke come in. Keeps the bees quiet. And—” he jabbed the air with the pipe stem—“that’s why it matter who take on this operation. The minute you gets nervous or loud, bees goin’ on the attack.”
Levi broke the silence ensuing from that ominous prediction. “Then who’s going to tackle it? I confess, I’ve had little experience with bees.”
Everyone in the room looked at Mose.
He scowled. “This old hide pretty tough, but I ain’t hankerin’ to be a pin cushion for no gang of insects. Besides, my hands ain’t as steady as they used to be.”
“I don’t blame you,” Selah said with a laugh. “But I agree that it needs to be someone with a steady hand, a relaxed demeanor, someone who can work quickly—”
“It was my idea,” Joelle said resolutely. “I’ve been studying the process. If Mose will come up with me and operate the smoker, I think we can manage it.”
“Now, Miss Joelle, I don’t like that idea at all.” Nathan looked horrified.