Innocent Deceptions

by Gwyneth Atlee

  Tillie gave a sharp-edged bark of laughter. “Ain’t for me to do the judgin’. Time comes, it’s up to God. Till then, it’s up to you to judge your part.”

  o0o

  Ben heard the back door slam only seconds before he walked into the kitchen. Tillie was standing in a patch of dim light, gazing through the window into the backyard.

  “I supposed you’d left to go to bed,” he said. “Thought I might scare up another taste of apple pudding.”

  Tillie gave a low chuff that might have been a laugh. “You can’t fool me. You mean to get some fo’ that child.”

  He couldn’t help but grin. “Are you accusing me of doing something kind?”

  Tillie looked at him, apparently considering.

  “I s’pose even the devil has his moments,” she allowed. “More likely, you just tryin’ to butter up Miss Charlotte, but you too late.”

  “Too late?” What did Tillie know? Had one of the lieutenants managed to make some claim on her affections? Probably that damned Snyder, with his ridiculous mustache. And he’d claimed he was leaving to prepare to deliver General Branard’s latest orders.

  “You’re too late ‘cause I already take that boy a plate while that Charlotte was in the sitting room battin’ her eyelashes and playin’ you a tune.”

  “And what a tune it was,” Ben commented dryly.

  “I ‘magine.” Tillie spoke with so little enthusiasm, he could almost hear her shrug.

  “So if you weren’t leaving, who was?” he asked, recalling the slammed door. Surely, Snyder hadn’t gone yet.

  “Miss Charlotte,” Tillie answered. “She ain’t gone far, though. Maybe you oughta go on after her ‘fore the rest of the pack catches wind she’s out alone.”

  Ben started toward the door, then paused. “What did you say to her?”

  “Nothin’ didn’t need sayin’.”

  He made out what appeared to be a long cylindrical shape lying on the table. Charlotte’s recorder, he decided. She must have been upset to leave it there.

  Ben could only imagine what Tillie the Tyrant, as the lieutenants had anointed her, had seen fit to share with the daughter of a Southern slaveholder. Remembering the hurt he’d glimpsed in Charlotte’s expression earlier, he frowned.

  “She’s hardly more than a girl, Tillie.”

  The woman shook her head emphatically. “That’s the genr’l talkin’ there. You know she ain’t no child. Far as I can see, you’re the only one ain’t blind to what she’s up to.”

  “What do you think she’s about?” Ben asked. He imagined Charlotte showed a different face to a mulatto cook than to the men she charmed so nimbly.

  Tillie snorted. “I think she’s ‘bout up to her neck and sinkin’ fast. So, you goin’ after her or not?”

  Ben thought about it. It was the reason he’d come into the kitchen after all, since he’d suspected she might have gone this way. But the idea of meeting Charlotte outdoors in the evening shadows set impossible images spinning through his mind, desires he could ill afford to act on.

  Tillie stepped out of the patch of moonlight. In a few moments she returned, carrying a plate and fork, which she offered to him.

  “I figure a sour-faced fella like yourself might need a bit of sweet for ammunition.”

  He couldn’t help but smile. “Sour-faced?”

  “Yes, sir. You about the grimmest-lookin’ thing since funerals,” said Tillie.

  “And you think an offering of apple pudding’s going to get Charlotte past that?”

  “Tell her you brought it for the boy. That’s the key to her, all right. All that flutterin’ and flirtin’s nothin’ but an act, but she do love that little child.”

  That she did, Ben realized. Charlotte’s devotion to Alexander was an unwavering beacon, undeniable as it was wholesome. Tillie was right; Alexander was the key.

  o0o

  Outside, the darkness played a quiet concert. As far as Charlotte knew, the frogs and insects performed heedless of the politics of song.

  Standing beside the stump of the dead chestnut, Charlotte stared at the quarters that had once housed Mama Ruth and her small family as if she had never before seen them. In the moonlight, she noticed the peeling paint, the gaping cracks that needed caulking, and the warped droop of the shutters. She and Michael had always referred to the low building as the Cottage, but now she saw that it was really just a shanty, a bit nicer than the tumbledown shacks she’d seen in other parts of Memphis but not much.

  As much as she loved Mama Ruth, as close as she’d believed they’d been, Charlotte had never gone inside, had no idea how the Negro woman had lived those brief hours she had called her own. Beyond the unpainted door and shuttered windows, what had Mama Ruth really said and thought? Did she still grieve for George, the husband who had died when both her youngest and Charlotte were little more than babes?

  If Tillie were not living there, Charlotte thought she might go in to see what traces her family’s vanished slaves had left. She knew she could, for she was a Randolph, after all. Her family owned this shanty and the land it had been built on.

  And the people who had lived and loved inside it for so many years.

  As she turned away, a shadow fell across her, and she gasped. The moon and stars’ light limned a tall and well-built man in silver. In a moment, she realized he was carrying a cane.

  The Judas Officer, Ben Chandler. Her heartbeat quickened. Had he come to accuse her over her choice in music?

  “I saw your recorder in the kitchen. You played it well tonight,” he told her. “I was sorry when it ended.”

  “Were you?” She relaxed slightly, recalling the few glimpses of kindness he’d allowed her, the way he went out of his way to help put Alexander at ease.

  Ben shrugged. “I’ve always favored ‘Dixie,’ even if I’m no admirer of Jeff Davis.”

  “Why?” she asked, suddenly overcome with curiosity. “Why did you choose to fight for union?”

  “Did you ask that of Timothy?”

  It took her a moment to remember he referred to her nonexistent lost fiancé. Recovering, she answered, “No. I didn’t think it mattered then. I didn’t think of anything but love.”

  Her mind grazed the edges of a memory, the memory of a time she’d felt exactly that, a time she’d suffered the consequences of such naïveté. Her mouth dried instantly, and she veered away from those thoughts, the way she always did.

  “I know better now,” she said. “So will you tell me, or is it private?”

  He shrugged again. “It’s no secret. I’m a rancher. I don’t own slaves and never did. It’s a foolish notion, and its time has passed. Men work harder and smarter when they’re making decisions for themselves and caring for their own.”

  She thought of explaining how well responsible owners kept their Negroes, how the Randolphs treated them like family members, but a brief glance toward the empty shanty cured her of the impulse.

  Instead, she challenged, “So you’re an abolitionist?”

  In her world these past few years, the term had become the bitterest of accusations, an insult that had led to violence, especially after the hanging of the murderous John Brown.

  “I’m a practical man,” Ben answered with none of the heat she had expected, “and slavery’s an impractical institution.”

  “Maybe on a ranch it is. But not on the plantations,” she said, mindful of the fact that her family owned neither. “The South’s economy would crumble without --”

  He shook his head. “Not the South’s economy, only the positions of a privileged few.”

  For several moments she said nothing. Her family, though successful, did not depend upon the institution, would not suffer greatly if it vanished. Yet if the abolitionists had their way, if the government took men’s property without recompense, what other ills might be done to loyal Southerners? Would they be slaughtered in their sleep, as Brown’s band had killed slaveholders in Virginia? Would they somehow be forced to trade places wi
th their Negroes?

  It rankled her to hear Ben Chandler speaking as if the issue were so simple. Finally, she appealed to the reason so many fought for the Confederacy. “But the South’s your home and Southerners your brothers.”

  “Yes, the South is home,” he admitted, “and it pains me to see it ripped apart for foolish greed. All across the Confederacy, poor fools are dying to fight a rich man’s war. I’m not a rich man and I’m not a fool. That’s all there is to my decision.”

  “I think there must be more,” said Charlotte. “What you told me only explains why you wouldn’t fight for the Confederacy. It doesn’t begin to justify taking up arms against her.”

  Silence spun out like a strand of cotton from a wheel, and she sensed their conversation had drawn toward an end. Yet neither of them made a move to leave. For Charlotte’s part, she was held captive by the way the moonlight softened the harshness she had always seen in him, and by curiosity as well. What sort of man had he been before his lower leg was taken?

  Finally, Ben held something out to her.

  “Here,” he said. “I thought that Alexander ought to have a taste of this.”

  She noted the change of subject before answering. “But you saw what that rascal did today.”

  “The same thing you’d like to do, if I guess correctly. And out of loyalty to you.”

  True enough, she thought. She was pleased Ben Chandler saw beyond Alexander’s rash behavior to the goodness in his heart. Yet the responsibility for his upbringing weighed heavy, and she realized she should not excuse the child’s misbehavior.

  “He has to learn we cannot act on every impulse,” she said.

  Ben hesitated once again before setting the plate atop the tree stump. Though the light was weak, she could almost feel him staring at her. A prickling sensation traced the curve of her neck before settling beneath her stomach.

  She wished she’d never asked his reasons for fighting with the Yankees. The delicacy of the topic, along with the knowledge that he spent his nights sleeping in her room, left Charlotte with an impression of intimacy, as if he were a family friend and not an enemy.

  He sighed. “No, we cannot always act on instinct. But there are times I wish that wasn’t true.”

  Charlotte froze like a startled deer in the instant before it bounds away. As had happened earlier, the fine hairs lifted on her arms and nape.

  What was it she had heard? What was it she had spotted in his gaze? With Jonathan Snyder and Delaney McMahon, she had no doubt, just as she felt confident she could use guile to control them. But here in the darkness with Ben Chandler, she felt uncertain of everything, even of herself.

  Afterward, she never knew who it was that closed the space between them, which of them leaned toward the other first. She felt as if she had stepped outside her body, as if she watched two strangers come together, watched them delicately clasp arms, then touch lips in the most tentative of kisses.

  When Ben pressed closer, she returned to herself, to the sensations of heat and light that spiraled heavenward like glowing ash from a bonfire. Her lips parted to him eagerly, her body warming, melting to the long-forgotten flame.

  His mouth took possession of her own, and one large hand pulled her closer, then pressed against her lower back. Unresisting, she leaned against him until she felt the evidence of his arousal, hard against her hip.

  Terror plunged her into ice water and made her jerk away. Her heart pounded against her chest wall so fiercely she could neither move nor speak for fear that it would burst. What in heaven’s name had she been playing at?

  Ben looked into her face and took his own step backward, his expression a mask of disbelief that must mirror her own.

  “My God, Charlotte,” he muttered, “I’m so sorry. It was just that. . . you’re so beautiful and . . .”

  Wasn’t this what she should want? His declaration, his affection? But unlike her encounters with the two lieutenants, she felt this dangerous attraction, too, felt it pulling at her as the horizon pulled down shooting stars.

  She thought of Alexander and of the host of reasons she must not flame and fall. Instead of pushing away her most frightening memories, she summoned them to remind herself why she must keep control. Soon her mind filled with another moonlit evening, a night that spawned such ugliness and self-loathing that she had wished to die.

  She backed away from Ben, though she could barely prevent herself from running all the way to the third floor. With God’s help, she must master her body’s betrayal. She had no choice but to push back the troubling feelings and focus on the task she had been given, a task that would erase the disappointment from her father’s eyes and the disapproval from her brother’s.

  Her mind searched for the words to put Ben Chandler at a distance without driving him away. What was it she had said to the lieutenants?

  “This is dangerous,” she warned him. “The general has been very kind, but he fears my presence might set his officers at odds. We can’t – we mustn’t – give any sign of our feelings where anyone can see. Otherwise, he might send me away, and I have nowhere else to go with Alexander.”

  Ben shook his head. “It’s not only dangerous, it’s wrong. I’m a man of thirty, and you’re barely --”

  “I am twenty-two, though I’ve often been mistaken for younger.” She hesitated, wondering how forward she could be without inviting him to touch her. Finally, she added, “My mother was seventeen when she married, to my father’s thirty-one.”

  Seeing his alarmed expression, she shook her head and told him, “Please don’t worry. One kiss in the moonlight does not make a marriage. If you’d prefer, I will forget it ever happened.”

  She spoke as if she could set aside the strange tangle of feelings he’d inspired, as if she could pretend that something that lay clenched inside her had not opened to his touch. She thought she saw her struggle reflected in his eyes.

  But she must have been mistaken, for he simply nodded. “Forgetting is a good idea, Charlotte. I think that would be best for both of us.”

  He stooped to retrieve the cane, which he had dropped. Leaving the plate upon the trunk, he hurried toward the back steps, his limp more pronounced than it had been earlier.

  She gazed after him until he disappeared inside the house. But he never turned to look at her, to see if she was watching.

  You see, my jolly comrades, we are ripe and prime for battle;

  We heeded not the cannon’s roar nor grapeshot’s stinging rattle.

  We were sworn to death or victory for our Union, God defend her;

  And to only take from rebels unconditional surrender.

  -- from “The Grant Pill,”

  lyrics by Harriet L. Castle

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He had to be the biggest fool in all creation, Ben decided. Yes, he’d wanted, even needed, to gain Charlotte’s confidence, but he’d never meant to succumb to the temptation he’d felt almost from the first. He’d never planned to fill his arms with her and taste the sweet warmth of her mouth.

  Liar! Even before he had gone after her, his mind brimmed over with the images he dreamed while sleeping in the bed he could not forget was hers. How could he pretend his motives had been only duty? No matter how he’d told himself he wanted nothing but the truth from her, his body’s yearning had never been far from his thoughts.

  Ben groaned, realizing it would be even worse now that he had touched her. When he recalled the way she’d leaned into his kiss, the eagerness with which she’d murmured, he knew that tonight he would ache for her, no matter how he struggled to put her from his mind.

  “Forgetting is a good idea,” he had told her. But he knew damned well that forgetting would be impossible as long as he remained in this house.

  As he limped toward the stairs, he recalled hearing Lieutenant Snyder mention some “ladies” across town who had let it be known that for the right price, they would provide lonely officers with company. Jonathan had boasted that one soiled dove had tol
d him that Yankees made far better lovers than Confederates. More than likely, Ben realized, the preference was based on the fact that Union officers paid in greenbacks, a currency whose value didn’t lessen with each passing day.

  But the thought of easing his body’s longing with a paid companion barely tempted Ben. He sensed the momentary respite would not be worth the emptiness that followed, an aching need for a relationship that he could not afford to risk.

  Especially not with Charlotte Randolph, a sly creature whose every thought and word was suspect, a woman he was duty-bound to keep at arm’s length.

  Yet even as he painted her in shades of evil, image after image rose to batter his resolve. The pain he’d glimpsed so briefly. The fierce love that shone from her eyes when she spoke of Alexander. Her mingled fear and longing after he had kissed her. The impression, when he’d first encountered her, of wounded innocence.

  He placed his cane tip on the lowest step. But before he could climb the first stair, he heard a raised voice from the sitting room.

  “There’s not a damned thing wrong with my mind. I’m alert as ever.”

  Branard, and he was clearly mad as hell. Since Ben couldn’t imagine Lieutenant McMahon confronting the old man, he must be speaking to his friend, Colonel Williams. Mindful of the reason he’d been given this assignment, Ben lingered.

  “For one thing,” Branard continued, “I’m sure as hell sharp enough to notice the way you were looking at that girl. She’s not one of your camp followers, Gideon.”

  The colonel laughed. “I’d be the one accused of slipping if I couldn’t tell the difference. She’s the genuine article, Hank. A lovely little --”

  “I’m warning you, Gideon. Keep well away from Emma.”

  “Do you mean Miss Randolph? I thought her name was Char --”

  “You heard what I said.”

  “I thought we were friends, Hank. Surely you can’t imagine – wait. I know what it is. It was Lieutenant Snyder, wasn’t it? Because before you believe a word he says, you should know that --”

  “This has nothing to do with Jonathan, though I noticed he was damned eager to leave here when you came. I did see from his records he’d served briefly with you. Tell me, what was it --”