Innocent Deceptions

by Gwyneth Atlee

  Captain Chandler stood before her, his pleasant expression wholly unconvincing. He was carrying her clothing and Alexander’s toy soldiers, which she’d left upon the bed.

  Charlotte stopped breathing at the sight of the lace-trimmed edge of a chemise, impossibly white against the tanned skin of his hands. How could she have been so careless as to leave her unmentionables in view?

  “I thought you might want these,” he said so politely that she wondered if General Branard hovered nearby, monitoring his conduct like a stern schoolmaster.

  A flush of heat beaded her with perspiration, yet Charlotte managed to accept the toys and clothing as if nothing were amiss.

  “Thank you.” She spoke quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping boy.

  “I apologize for my rude words a few minutes ago,” the captain continued, “and I was wondering if you’d let me make it up to you. Are you and your little brother hungry, thirsty? Is there anything you need?”

  She felt fury rising at the thought of this man, who’d so recently made accusations, playing the gracious host in her own home. With an effort, she forced herself to decline the offer, even managing to say, “No, thank you,” as if she were nothing but a guest.

  He glanced around the nursery, his gaze lingering on one of Alexander’s readers on the bed. “Perhaps some of your books? Judging from what I’ve seen, your tastes run to a different form of entertainment.”

  He’d undoubtedly come across the volumes she kept in a box beneath the bed: Plato’s Republic, Beowulf, her much-loved Fitzgerald translation of The Rubaiyat, and half a dozen others. When her father discontinued her education, she had taken it upon herself.

  But instead of admitting such a thing, she laughed. “Please don’t send those books upstairs. My father is forever trying to reform my reading habits with the strategic placement of his boring classics. But I’m afraid I’d rather while away the hours with virtuous orphan girls, plenty of danger, and a handsome fellow who rescues her before the last of it.”

  She actually did enjoy the popular books upon occasion, and it was better for her purposes that he thought her no different than most other young women. She noted with satisfaction the way his expression relaxed slightly, as if anyone who enjoyed a good tale by Mrs. Southworth must be less a danger to the Union.

  “One last thing, and then I’ll leave you,” said the Judas Officer. “General Branard asked me to convey his invitation. He would like you and Alexander to join us for the evening meal at seven.”

  She’d misjudged him a moment earlier, she realized, for beneath the untroubled surface layer of his voice the currents of tone and countenance ran swift, a warning that he disapproved of the idea. It would take more than a taste for melodrama to convince such a distrustful man that she was not the devil in petticoats. While she sat among his comrades at dinner and charmed them for all she was worth, he’d have a hard time persuading them to share in his opinion.

  Charlotte smiled and tried out a flutter of eyelashes, a trick that she remembered from her mother’s arsenal. “How kind of you to ask,” she replied in a voice peach cobbler sweet. “We’d be delighted to accept.”

  She’d been aiming for peach cobbler, but the captain looked as if he’d bitten into a half-ripe persimmon instead. After she said goodbye and closed the door, she allowed a quiet ripple of laughter to ease her past the anxiety that had gnawed at her all day.

  But when the fear caught up with her again, she found it hungrier than ever.

  o0o

  Alexander didn’t like this new game a single bit. He was ready to get back to playing ringer, jackstraws, and his very favorite, soldiers. Charlotte told him he could still play all those games, but every time he tried, he got this tight feeling in his stomach, thinking how the Yankees were buzzing all over their house like a whole hive full of wasps, touching their things with buggy feelers, waiting for some excuse to sting.

  Charlotte looked up from the sock she had been knitting. “Why don’t you play outside for a spell? After all that rain, there might be frogs’ eggs or even tadpoles in the ditch behind the stable. I’ll watch from the window to be sure you’re all right.”

  He shook his head, thinking how if he passed through the kitchen, Mama Ruth wouldn’t be there, pulling rolls out of the oven. She wouldn’t tear one apart and slap a lump of butter into the steaming center, then lord over him while he washed his hands, his stomach wriggling like a puppy’s wagging tail. Ross and Moor wouldn’t be out back mending harness or hammering on something in the carriage house. They wouldn’t stop to share a joke that he’d laugh at even if he didn’t understand. Instead, Alexander figured he’d bump into bluebellies poking through his papa’s things or shining up their guns.

  Outside this room, everything had changed, but Charlotte hadn’t said one word about why. Alexander thought back to yesterday, how he’d hid up in the tower when she wanted him to come for supper. Later on, he’d crawled into Papa’s wardrobe when she called him for his bath. He didn’t have to think hard to come up with a lot of other bad things he’d done lately. Probably Papa and Mama Ruth and all the others just got tired of the way he acted. Maybe that was why they went away, why all these scary things were happening.

  Alexander wondered if he practiced adding up his figures without complaining and tried to go the whole day without saying “ain’t” and read some stories with good lessons and didn’t fuss too much, mightn’t that fix things up? Maybe then those Yankees would go back to their own houses, and everybody that belonged here would come home. Maybe then he could get that puppy he was fixed on, too.

  Alexander walked to the rocking chair beside the open window, where Charlotte was knitting socks for Southern soldiers, the way she always did. He liked how the needles flashed and made that click-click sound. He figured Charlotte liked it, too, because her face went smooth and she hummed a tune she sometimes played on her recorder.

  She paused to smile at him, and it made her look pretty. More than anything, he wanted her to keep that smile and not look all scared the way she did when she thought he wasn’t watching.

  He meant to tell her how he was going to be good and fix things, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the pair of silvery needles in her hand. They reminded him of stingers -- of all the stingers in this Yankee hive -- and made the tight knot of his belly go real cold.

  He wasn’t going to cry though, no matter what it felt like. And he didn’t, not even when Charlotte put down her knitting and drew him into her embrace. He had to bite the inside of his lip, though, when she talked to him about dinner.

  She and Michael hadn’t told him that their game would be so hard.

  I rouse up again and rub hard my eyes,

  And peep out in the darkness to see rebel spies;

  Not a sound can I hear, not a soul can I see,

  There is no one here but grim darkness and me.

  -- From “In Old Tennessee,”

  by Alfred Biddleton McCreary

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ben had never been much of a drinker. When he was younger, he’d acted the part of a damned fool a few times, and he hadn’t much liked the way it made him feel the morning after. Maybe, as his younger brother, Lucas, used to tell him, he’d quit drinking on account of his natural desire to run everything and everyone who set foot on the Chandler ranch. To pull that off, he first had to control himself.

  But every now and then, his abstinence weighed heavy. While others in his company rafted toward a whiskey-hazed horizon, he remained a rock. He could feel the current washing past him, but he could not be pulled along.

  He felt that way tonight as he watched Charlotte Randolph eating, smiling, and clearly flirting with the other three men at the table. General Branard, Lieutenant Snyder, and Lieutenant McMahon were being swept along, protesting no more than a cork flotilla.

  “I’m so glad the two of you are under our protection,” Jonathan Snyder ventured, his gaze glued to Charlotte’s bruised face. “If any man ever agai
n raises his hand to you, he’ll answer for it in a hurry.”

  He stroked his sandy brown mustache as tenderly as if it were a kitten.

  Charlotte favored Lieutenant Snyder with a smile. “I’d been given to believe that chivalry did not exist among you Yankees. How gratifying to learn that I was misinformed.”

  Ben wasn’t sure why, but it irritated the hell out of him to see her gazing at Snyder as if he were some sort of savior. And didn’t Snyder know he looked like a half-wit, petting that mustache?

  Tillie came in carrying the platter of roast chicken, but she patently ignored the general’s attempts to gain her attention. Instead, she forked a steaming slice onto McMahon’s plate.

  “You look like you more in need of feedin’,” she told the wiry red-haired lieutenant before she disappeared into the kitchen.

  Delaney McMahon flushed, apparently humiliated by the reference to his stature.

  General Branard chuckled and shook his head, appearing as amused as ever by Tillie’s behavior.

  A few moments later, he returned his attention to Charlotte. “I noticed a piano in the sitting room. Tell me, do you play or sing?”

  Charlotte laughed, a sound almost musical in its own right. Beside her, Alexander grinned, then went back to studying the half-eaten drumstick in front of him.

  “I’m afraid you’ve stumbled onto a family legend,” Charlotte answered. “You see, most of the Randolphs are quite musically inclined. I’m notorious for being the worst singer the family has ever produced. Believe it or not, that’s how I came to learn recorder. When I was a child and my mother played the piano, I used to – for lack of a better word – screech out songs along with her. Mama was a tenderhearted woman and never said a word about it, though I wondered why she so often had to lie down with a headache after our musical sessions.”

  Almost against his will, Ben found himself smiling, though not as broadly as his fellow officers.

  “On one of his visits,” Charlotte continued, “Grandfather gave me his recorder and began instructing me on how to play it. I puffed up like a peacock and bragged to my big brother about how Grandfather had especially chosen me for such an honor. It wasn’t until months later that I learned why everyone seemed to find this so amusing. I overheard Grandfather laughing with my papa that the main virtue of teaching me recorder lay in the fact that I could not sing while playing it. As I recall, my father offered a toast in honor of his ingenuity.”

  The men laughed appreciatively, but Ben could not help thinking how perfectly crafted Charlotte’s story seemed. The self-deprecating humor and the gleam of wit in her green eyes would make her a welcome addition to any social gathering. The image didn’t wash with her earlier self-portrayal as a desperate young woman isolated by an ill-considered love.

  “I wonder if you might honor us by playing your recorder,” the general invited when the laughter faded.

  “I’d be delighted to accompany you on the piano,” Lieutenant McMahon piped in, apparently recovered from Tillie’s comment. “I’m rather musical myself.”

  Embarrassed by his fellow officers’ ceaseless fawning, Ben stopped listening to their conversation.

  At his left, Charlotte’s little brother picked at his food, his nose as wrinkled as a bulldog’s. Alexander twirled his fork idly in an untouched mass of collard greens, tangling the leaves into an inedible knot. Gesturing toward his own, equally neglected serving, Ben offered the boy a wink. Alexander flashed a smile before he caught himself and fixed his attention on the embroidered hem of the linen tablecloth.

  “Miss Tillie won’t give you any of that cake she baked unless you eat your greens,” Ben said, his voice slipping beneath those of Charlotte’s Legion of Admirers.

  Alexander glanced at Ben, then at the cooling snarl. Little as he was, his sigh sounded like an old man’s.

  After checking for signs of Tillie, Ben picked up the boy’s plate and scraped the greens onto his own pile. Across the table, Charlotte watched Ben like a hawk.

  He leaned closer to the boy’s ear. “No reason for both of us to get in trouble.”

  Charlotte graced him with a warm smile before returning her attention to the tale General Branard was sharing, which grew taller with each outing.

  Alexander said, “Thanks, but could you tell me something, mister?”

  “What’s that?” Ben asked.

  “Why don’t the general make that Nigra woman mind him? Ain’t he the master here?” Like most young children, he made no effort to speak quietly.

  Alexander’s words sliced through the conversation, which fell deathly silent, for Tillie had just reappeared, as if invoked by the boy’s questions. She froze in her tracks, staring at the child, a tray of dessert plates held in her hands.

  Charlotte’s face went gray, and the pair of lieutenants stiffened. Even General Branard appeared at a loss for words.

  Ben answered Alexander as if no one else were listening. “Miss Tillie’s a free woman. She’s helping us because the general likes her cooking – and because she chooses to be here.”

  Charlotte rose, looked into Tillie’s impossible blue eyes, and said, “I’m sorry. I’ll make certain that he understands, and I hope you will forgive his ignorance.”

  Tillie set the tray on the sideboard and fisted one hand on her hip. “Ain’t his fault he weren’t brought up proper.”

  Alexander once more dropped his gaze to the tablecloth’s edge. His small body had gone rigid, and red splotches stained the fair skin of his face. Ben searched for a way to reassure the child, but Tillie beat him to it.

  She brought Alexander the first slice of cake.

  “Don’t you worry none ‘bout me, child,” she told him. “Ain’t no crime not knowin’. It’s not learnin’ that’s a sin. You eat up this butter cake now, hear? Then you’ll see why it’s the general’s favorite.”

  She stood beside him until Alexander forked a tiny bite into his mouth.

  “It’s real good,” he said, still chewing.

  She smiled and nodded, “Course it is,” before retreating to the kitchen, leaving the adults to serve themselves.

  Lieutenant Snyder attempted to restart the conversation, and Lieutenant McMahon once more mentioned playing the piano. But the fact of slavery now sat corpselike at the table; the longer they tried to ignore it, the more overpowering grew its stench.

  o0o

  There had been moments this evening around the table when Charlotte fell headlong into one of time’s mirages. Illusion overwhelmed her, and she went back to the days when the Randolphs’ halcyon years seemed destined to stretch into eternity. In those brief lapses, the evening seemed only another of her parents’ charming dinner parties, another occasion for Charlotte to follow in her beautiful mother’s footsteps: captivating with a smile, a glance, a well-turned phrase . . .

  With crystalline detail, Charlotte recalled the heady pleasure of the moments she’d first discovered her fledgling feminine power, when she’d been dazzled by the excitement and the promise that it seemed to hold. Before the promise had turned on her to bare its teeth . . . and worse.

  Unpleasant as it was, Alexander’s faux pas had served to jar her out of her reverie and back into the precarious reality they faced. The gentlemen she’d sought to charm but a minute earlier transformed into the blue-clad threats that she knew them to be. The woman who had dared criticize the way the boy was raised changed from attendant to assailant, and Charlotte knew she could no more eat Tillie’s cake than swallow sawdust.

  She noticed Alexander’s nearly untouched plate and the telltale quiver of his chin. At the sight, she fought to quell the urge to scream at all of these intruders to get the hell out of her house. But of course she could do no such thing. The injustice of the fact pounded at her temples until she pushed back her chair.

  “I’m afraid that I’m not feeling well,” she said to no one in particular. Waving off several expressions of concern, she continued. “Just a small headache. Nothing that a good night�
��s sleep won’t put to rights. Alexander and I will say our good nights to you now.”

  A few moments later, she took Alexander by the hand and gratefully retreated to the nursery.

  Once upstairs, she helped the child change into his favorite nightshirt. The two of them said prayers, a nightly ritual in which they asked both Mama and the Almighty to look after their loved ones. Afterward, Charlotte turned down the gaslight and tucked Alexander into bed.

  He draped his arms around her shoulders and leaned his head against her chest. “I’m sorry I acted bad down there. I shamed you, didn’t I?”

  She rubbed her palm across his back in the circular pattern that had eased him since he was an infant. “You certainly did not. You heard Miss Tillie. She doesn’t blame you for your mistake, and how could she? You’ve never met a free black before today.”

  He was quiet for so long, she thought he might have fallen asleep in her embrace. But he must have been thinking on the matter, for finally he said, “We called her our servant, but Mama Ruth belonged to us.”

  “She belonged with us. And according to the law, she still does.”

  He shook his head. “No, she don’t – doesn’t. She freed herself, and she don’t want to be here anymore. Why’d she go and run off? I thought we loved each other.”

  “We do love her, and Ross and Moor, too. And I believe that in their own way they love us, too,” Charlotte explained, as if she understood herself.

  She heard a soft scratching at the door and paused to let in Polly. Alexander patted a spot beside him on the bed, but the cat ignored him and began to wash a paw.

  “Those Yankees are the intruders here,” Charlotte continued. “They have no business trying to make us feel that we’ve done wrong.”

  “But that servant, that Tillie woman – she said -”

  “You listen to me, Alexander. We Randolphs have no cause for shame. We have always treated our Negroes very well. We gave them good food, decent clothing, and a clean place to live. They had a half-day off on Sundays and all of Christmas to themselves. No one ever raised a hand to any of them, and as long as their labor at the boatworks was done properly, Papa allowed the boys to hire out and keep their own earnings. They were far safer and better cared for with us than on their own.”