Innocent Deceptions

by Gwyneth Atlee

  “Then why would they leave, Charlotte? Why did they go away?”

  The same question had nagged at Charlotte for the past two days. Though her mind had worried at it until the edges frayed, she had come no closer to an answer. But she could see that Alexander needed some explanation, so she spun one from the night breeze that wafted through the open windows.

  “Someone probably filled their heads with abolitionist lies, told them they’d live like royalty if they ran north. But they’ll find out fast enough that working for wages is no better bargain. Why, look at that poor freedwoman downstairs. She does the same things as Mama Ruth, even sleeps in the same bed, yet they didn’t even give her half this Sunday off.”

  Alexander pulled away so he could look at Charlotte’s face. His eyes grew wide, as they always did when an idea excited him.

  “So when Mama Ruth and the boys figure out the abo – the aboli – them Yankees lied to them, they’ll come home, won’t they? Won’t they, Charlotte?”

  As much as Charlotte wanted to reassure the little boy, she couldn’t tell him that their Negroes would come home, that they would say they hadn’t realized just how good they had it. Because increasingly, she doubted it would happen. Mama Ruth would be too ashamed of her disloyalty to admit she had been wrong, and both of her boys had always had a stubborn streak a mile wide.

  “I’m not certain,” Charlotte said before kissing Alexander’s crown. “But one thing I do know is that we need to get to sleep. It’s been a very long day, and I’m tired.”

  As always, Alexander begged her to read him a story. Picking up her Bible, Charlotte chose the tale of Daniel for its brevity, but as she read, she could not help thinking of how she and Alexander had wandered into their own lion’s den. Apparently, Alexander didn’t notice, for before she’d finished, he surrendered to exhaustion. Charlotte changed into her nightgown and claimed the room’s second bed, left over from the days when Mama Ruth had slept beside a restless or sick child.

  Gratefully, she sank back onto the pillow. When she closed her eyes, however, she saw Mama Ruth’s face. But the features swam and shifted, then became those of the general’s blue-eyed cook, Tillie, who had clearly descended from an amalgamation of the races.

  Charlotte wondered if the woman’s white blood was responsible for the unmistakable pride she carried. Or if, instead, her pride came as a consequence of freedom, or as Ben Chandler had put it, “because she chooses to be here.”

  Could that be the reason Mama Ruth and her two boys had risked capture and punishment, as well as their good places with the Randolphs? Could that choice truly mean so much?

  Some time later, a strange, metallic noise broke into Charlotte’s doze. She sat upright in bed, her heartbeat racing. After a few confused moments, she recalled General Branard saying that he meant to lock the new door that had been built at the bottom of the stairs leading to the third floor. He’d explained it was for their safety and her honor, but the sound of the door locking sent unease rippling along her spine.

  She reassured herself that she’d meant to sleep here anyway. It should make no difference at all that now she could not leave.

  Yet somehow it did matter. It mattered very much.

  We'll free your blacks and fight your whites

  And dig for traitors graves, sir,

  Until there's not in all the land

  A traitor or a slave, sir . . .

  -- from “Call ‘Em Names, Jeff,”

  by George F. Root

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Wednesday, June 11, 1862

  Within a few days, the illusion – or delusion, as Ben saw it - had re-formed. Both the old and new tenants of Randolph House behaved as if Alexander had never asked his uncomfortable questions, as if none of them had been embarrassed by the mention of the South’s “peculiar institution.” Ben watched his fellow officers take part in conversations, each one dancing around whatever issues might put Charlotte Randolph ill at ease. Ignoring Ben’s advice, the general insisted it was only civilized behavior to include their “guests” in all meals.

  An hour after lunch, Ben walked to the library to fetch General Branard’s latest orders for the waiting messenger. When his knock went unanswered, he opened the unlocked door. Immediately, he saw the paper the old man had been working on this morning. It lay unfinished on his desk while the general carved a toy boat from a wooden block. White spirals of shavings littered the floor beside the old man’s feet.

  Ben picked up the letter, which was meant to coordinate the army and the navy’s efforts along the Mississippi. The general’s handwriting, distinct in the top lines, degenerated into illegibility two-thirds of the way down the page. Branard gave no sign that he realized anyone had come into the room.

  “General Branard? Sir?” Ben asked, though he really wanted to swear a blue streak in frustration. He liked Branard and, even more importantly, he respected the man’s common-sense approach to his command. But lapses such as these were becoming harder to ignore.

  Branard was so intent on his carving that Ben had to call his name twice more before the man looked up in response.

  “For Emma’s little boy,” Branard began, his expression almost imperceptibly looser than it had been two hours before, when he and Ben had discussed his plans.

  “Do you mean Charlotte Randolph’s brother?” Ben prompted carefully.

  “You didn’t hear me?” asked the general. “That’s what I just said.”

  When Ben reminded him about the waiting messenger, Branard put aside the boat and verbally outlined the changes he had been considering, all of which seemed perfectly rational. He then asked Ben to write the revised copy. Within an hour, Ben presented it to General Grant’s messenger. As he did so, both men were careful not to betray the fact of their acquaintance.

  At least Branard had old age to blame for his behavior, Ben thought irritably. Unfortunately, where Charlotte Randolph was concerned, the two lieutenants on the staff were acting almost as strangely. Every time Ben wanted Lieutenant McMahon, he found the man picking out melodies on the piano in the sitting room, obviously preoccupied with the coming night’s duet. Lieutenant Snyder behaved as if Charlotte’s happiness were his sole responsibility. If the fool wasn’t threatening to box the ears of any man who grieved her, he was bringing in bunches of handpicked flowers to “brighten up the dinner table.”

  Irritated, Ben stalked outside to the wide back steps, where he could sit in peace. Every officer housed here seemed to have overlooked the fact that they were at war, and Charlotte and Alexander’s family members were among the enemy. How could Branard, McMahon, and Snyder have forgotten about the Union’s losses, and about the victories so hard won they tasted bitter as defeat? How could anyone have forgotten places like Fort Donelson back in February, where a minié ball had laid waste to Ben’s lower left leg?

  At the thought of his last battle, Ben fought to dam the torrent of memories surging toward him. Still, confused images washed over him, ending, as they always did, in a swirl of windblown snowflakes settling with obscene delicacy over noise and agony. And in an ice-crusted slough edged with muck turned bloody by dying men who crawled there for a final, soothing drink.

  Despite the late afternoon’s heat, he felt as if his skin clothed a core as cold as stone. The lowering sun bathed him in amber light, but it was powerless to melt the icy crystals that lay lodged within his heart.

  o0o

  “It’s time to come inside to wash for supper, Alexander. Though from the looks of you, we’ll be fortunate to have you presentable by breakfast in the morning.” Charlotte tried to keep exasperation from her tone, but the child’s penchant for lying on his belly in the mud was enough to test the patience of a saint.

  Alexander grinned up at her, allowing her a better view of the dirt smudge on his cheek. One of his thin arms wrapped around a huge bowl filled with ditch water while the other beckoned. “Come look, Charlotte! I got the finest mess of polliwogs you ever saw!”


  Even though the boy had taken one of the good bowls from the kitchen, Charlotte relished his enthusiasm. It was worth any amount of dirt and inconvenience to see Alexander out here smiling instead of huddled upstairs in the nursery, where he’d sat staring at his soldiers for the better part of the past few days. Her stomach tightened at the thought of his long stillness, the way he’d been too wrapped up in worry to bother playing with the toys.

  In light of the memory, she managed to “ooh” appreciatively at squirming tadpoles. “Five more minutes,” she allowed. “And then we’ll have to get that bowl back before Mama Ruth skins you alive.”

  When Alexander glanced up sharply, Charlotte realized her mistake. “I – I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  Alexander offered a tight smile. “It’s all right, Charlotte. Sometimes I forget, too, how everything is different. And sometimes I remember, but I go on and pretend.”

  Her mouth felt dust dry, and her words evaporated into painful longing. Why couldn’t things go back to what they’d been before this war? Why couldn’t she awaken to find all of it had been a nightmare?

  But unlike Alexander, she was too old for pretending that Mama Ruth yet worked in the kitchen, that Papa remained in Memphis directing the firm’s craftsmen as he fitted out some of the river’s finest steamboats, or that Michael – rebelling against Papa’s determination that his only son would follow in his footsteps – still taught school. She had no choice but to accept that everything had changed.

  Because it was all that she could manage, she repeated, “Five more minutes.”

  As Charlotte turned away, her eye happened to catch a subtle movement from the back steps and then a tiny flare of light. Ben Chandler was sitting on the wooden stairs, lighting a cigar. Offering her a perfect opportunity to speak with him alone.

  Not that he appeared to notice her. On the contrary, he was staring straight ahead with the fixed gaze of the blind. Off Visiting, her mother used to call that empty look. For a fleeting moment, Charlotte wondered if his mind had rambled to the Texas he’d betrayed.

  Pushing aside the odd thought, she urged herself to go and talk to him. She might never have a better chance.

  Speaking to the others had been easy. Already, Lieutenant Snyder was professing “an affection” for her, and Lieutenant McMahon had hinted that his interest was “more than musical.” She noticed how carefully each watched the other, until she’d told both she believed it unwise to “flaunt the special friendship” she was forming with each man. Yet she far preferred the thought of juggling the two lieutenants to the prospect of risking discourse with the captain.

  Still, she must speak with him, she told herself, for Ben Chandler might be the key to ending this subterfuge more quickly. Though in conversation each lieutenant tended to exaggerate his true importance, from what Charlotte could surmise, Captain Chandler was the general’s primary assistant – and the man who would be closest to his plans.

  She wandered between the cottage that had once held the family’s servants and the tablelike base of a huge chestnut tree that lightning had destroyed last summer. As she reached the steps, she paused to pick up the wheeled horse Alexander had left there. “That child and his toys,” she complained. “Any one of you could fall and break a leg.”

  Ben looked up at her and smiled, his expression conveying dark amusement, and her face heated with embarrassment at her poor choice of words.

  “I’m certain you’d be devastated if that happened,” he commented before she could think of what to say.

  Annoyed with both herself and his response, she decided to forgo the apology.

  “When I saw you sitting out here, I thought you looked sad, not sarcastic. Besides, I’d be especially upset if you were the one who fell.”

  “It didn’t seem to bother you the last time you ‘knocked me off my pins,’ as Lieutenant McMahon put it.” Using the cane to steady himself, he began to stand.

  “Please don’t get up,” she told him. “And I’m sure you know I didn’t mean to make you fall. First of all, I was frightened half out of my wits. And I had no way of knowing you were -- ”

  He rose to his full height before he interrupted. “Crippled?”

  Charlotte felt her face heat, for that had been what she was thinking. Hastily, she amended the statement. “I was about to say, ‘knowing you weren’t here to hurt us.’”

  He came toward her, down the steps, and this time there was nothing awkward in his movement. “But we were, weren’t we? After all, we took away your home and left you at the mercy of your uncle.”

  He gestured toward her injured cheek, which Charlotte earlier noticed had turned more colorful than ever. Mindful of her lies, she took care not to stray a hair’s breadth from her story.

  “Yes, you did,” she answered. “But it’s all the war, isn’t it? It’s not as if any of you meant to harm my brother or me. And after we were forced to come back, well, all of you have been so kind.”

  She looked into his eyes then, fully intending to capture his gaze and hold it, as she had done with each of the lieutenants in his turn. But unlike the younger men, Ben Chandler neither gushed nor stammered. Instead he stared at her as if he meant to read each secret written on her heart.

  She should have turned away, should have gone back for Alexander to tell him that his five minutes had run out. But though her sense urged her to caution, some separate, unimagined quality kept her rooted to the spot.

  She recognized the challenge of Ben’s gaze, understood the depth of his distrust. But what she could not fathom was the way time stretched until she anticipated every heartbeat, the way the world fell silent as a dream. She felt the fine hairs along her arms and neck rise, felt a chill rippling over her like a stream rippling over stones. But in the chill’s wake there came the warmth that followed winter. Her sense of yearning wakened to reach like pale leaves toward his light.

  Fear jolted Charlotte to her senses as she remembered the last time she’d been fooled by such sensations. A flood of memory resurfaced, so vivid that it blinded her to all else. A wave of nausea followed, and she twisted away from the gray-eyed stare that had overwhelmed her.

  “Miss Randolph?” Ben Chandler’s voice sounded as if it floated across some vast chasm. “Charlotte? What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

  A hand grasped her arm, and strong fingers closed around it. With a small cry, she tore herself free, backing away from him as quickly as she dared.

  “General Branard was dozing, last I saw him,” Ben informed her. “So you might as well save this act for later.”

  Warily, she glanced at him again. This time she saw only the man who stood before her. The past fell away, leaving her mortified by her reaction to his touch.

  “I – I apologize,” she said. “It’s – it’s been difficult these past few days, more than you can guess.”

  “Of everything you’ve said,” he told her, “I believe that most of all.”

  Anger rushed in to fill the void left by Charlotte’s fear.

  “None of the other officers finds it necessary to insinuate I’m a liar every time we chance across each other’s paths,” she snapped.

  “I don’t know about the general, but you have those two lieutenants so tied into knots, you could sell them a three-legged horse -- or any other bill of goods you wanted.”

  Charlotte’s mind seethed with anger and frustration, with a dozen names she wished to call him, but sudden comprehension silenced her. Ben Chandler had the right of this; she was all he said – and more than that, she was all he had not yet found sufficient proof to put into words: seductress, liar, spy.

  She struggled for perspective. These Yankees took her city, then her house. Her sins paled against the ones that they committed every day. Didn’t they?

  But her brother’s words of explanation felt empty against those she had read this morning in the Psalm of David:

  He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall
not tarry in my sight.

  Could God forgive any of them for breaking His laws during wartime? Or had this situation only sharpened her ability to recognize her sin?

  After all, she’d lived a lie for six years now.

  o0o

  Ben had put aside his earliest impressions of Charlotte Randolph. Suspicion had come to overshadow the instinctive desire to protect; caution eclipsed the attraction he had felt. He saw her as the enemy, and one the general had allowed too close.

  Or so he had supposed.

  Just when Ben was dead certain he understood Charlotte Randolph, he would glimpse another unguessed facet that put all he’d seen before into a new light. This time, he saw beyond her mask of charm, straight into her pain. He realized, too, that the way she’d pulled away from him had been no act meant to call down the general’s anger, as he’d first expected, but sheer terror.

  She was afraid of him. In the face of that, his certainty faltered, and all he could see was the beautiful face of a vulnerable young woman. A woman whose obvious need compelled him – against all logic - to hold and comfort her.

  The sound of Alexander’s squeal distracted him. Ben was grateful, for the interruption saved him from saying or doing something foolish. But it took only a moment to realize that the shrieks he heard were something more serious than the child’s play he’d first imagined.

  Still, Charlotte recognized the difference first. Turning from him, she lifted her skirts and raced toward the source of the sounds. There stood a diminutive old woman, who held a squirming, struggling Alexander by one arm. The bodice of her black dress was plastered with clots of gray-brown mud, and her bonnet had tumbled to the grass.

  “Let go of him!” screamed Charlotte over Alexander’s cries, and Ben was half-convinced she would pounce like a lioness protecting a cub.