Innocent Deceptions

by Gwyneth Atlee

  “What?” the general roared. “What is it they’re saying?”

  In an attempt to appear reluctant, Jonathan stared down at a pen lying on General Branard’s desk.

  He had wanted to show Branard this message – this chance to rid himself of Chandler and his threats - earlier that afternoon, but the old man had shown no interest in anything but telling about some escapade involving a stolen Army mule. Jonathan had delayed his revelation for several hours, until the general appeared focused on a map he’d spread across his desk.

  “Tell me, Lieutenant. And that’s a direct order.”

  Snyder met the general’s gaze. He saw determination and intelligence behind Branard’s blue eyes, but there was something else as well. A thread of fear had stitched its way into the old man’s expression: the fear of being laughed at, or was it instead the fear of his own mind’s betrayal. Jonathan decided he would shoot himself before he grew weak-minded with age. Or did such a thing creep up on one with enough stealth to defeat such resolutions? It was all he could do not to shudder at the thought.

  “There have been signs – in your orders and, according to Williams and some others – of a certain deterioration of the --”

  Branard rose from his seat, his glare so malignant that Jonathan changed course.

  “Of course, I’ve told the colonel I’ve never seen any evidence to support such an idea, but --”

  “Damn that Gideon! I shouldn’t be surprised. But Ben.” Branard shook his head, apparently in disgust, before his voice turned deadly cold. “Tell Captain Chandler I will see him now.”

  Jonathan couldn’t have been happier. “Yes, sir, but I believe the captain’s still abed, on the surgeon’s order.”

  “Unless he’s dead, that Texan had better have his ass down here within ten minutes.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll see to it myself.”

  “You do that, lieutenant. And I want to thank you for having grit enough to bring this to my attention. Especially after the tongue-whipping I’ve given you boys on account of Miss Randolph.”

  By the time Branard dismissed him, Jonathan could no longer suppress his glee. As he took the steps two at a time, he knew he was well on his way to eliminating Chandler’s interference in his plans.

  o0o

  Josephine Martin watched, outraged, as her neighbor, Mrs. Eleanor Haddix, boldly walked up to the front door of the Randolph house. The woman was carrying one of her prized blackberry jam cakes. Ardent secessionist that Eleanor was, Mrs. Martin knew she’d brought the gift to reward Charlotte’s behavior – and express contempt for the Union officers whose reputations she had injured.

  Mrs. Martin had half a mind to go out there and give Eleanor a good, hot scolding. But Eleanor had often proved as narrow of mind as she was broad of beam. Besides, Josephine’s ears were still stinging from the upbraiding Leah Shepherd had given her last week for discussing Charlotte’s most recent abomination at a gathering to celebrate the Shepherds’ grandson’s christening.

  Mrs. Martin wasn’t fooled. She realized her neighbors’ sudden affection for a girl they’d long considered a pariah was nothing but a result of their Confederate foolishness. Once the Union won this war, they’d realize soon enough that this neighborhood would be better off – and their sons’ and husbands’ morals would be safer - without the likes of Charlotte Randolph living in it.

  Mrs. Martin donned her gardening hat, though otherwise, she wasn’t properly attired for the task, and walked out into her front yard. Once there, she feigned an interest in her roses, but she managed to glance up in time to treat Eleanor Haddix to her most disapproving scowl. Eleanor waddled past, pretending that she hadn’t seen a thing.

  On the porch, Mrs. Martin saw the lieutenant with the luxuriant mustache frowning at the jam cake in his hands. Poor man, she thought, and before she knew what she was doing, she was walking toward him. If anyone understood what it was like to have been hurt by Charlotte’s treachery, she was that person. It was only Christian that she go to him and offer her support.

  o0o

  Charlotte’s gaze jerked upward from the letter she’d been writing to her father’s attorney, Mr. Davenport, regarding the disposition of certain assets she suspected had been willed to her. She held her breath, listening to the telltale click of the unlocking of her prison, the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs.

  She slid the letter into a drawer of the secretary. Since Mama Ruth and her two sons had taken their own route to freedom, her legal validation of the matter could afford to wait for now.

  She breathed again when Tillie walked into the room with a tray containing sandwiches and a small bowl of fresh figs.

  “I know you said you wasn’t hungry, but no sense lettin’ good food go to wa – what’s wrong?” Tillie asked.

  Charlotte felt her lips purse in frustration. It was growing more and more difficult to keep anything from the older woman. Proximity and a friendship as unlikely as Tillie’s light blue eyes were conspiring to blur the lines between the two.

  “I was afraid you might be Lieutenant Snyder,” she answered honestly. And why not? Tillie would only guess if she were lying.

  “He been troublin’ you again. General find out and he’ll fix it so --”

  Charlotte shook her head. “No. And please don’t tell the general. Captain Chandler’s already taken care of it for me.”

  “If you was certain of that, you wouldn’t be worryin’ ‘bout the lieutenant creepin’ up these stairs. You sure you don’t want --”

  “I promise you; I’m certain.”

  “Well, you don’t gotta worry ‘bout him right now. He out on the front porch fussin’ at that bitty neighbor lady, that one who run your story all over the place.”

  Charlotte could barely speak past the sudden tightness in her throat. “Mrs. Martin?”

  “We ain’t been introduced, but I think that’s the one. All prune-face, dresses in them widow things.”

  “She’s been in mourning for about a century,” Charlotte said, conscious of her own black garb. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t recall Mrs. Martin wearing any other color. Apparently, she’d given up the hope of rejoining the larger world. Perhaps she found grief and anger pleasant companions and vengeance a satisfying goal.

  Charlotte couldn’t help but wonder if, even now, she was wreaking havoc by sharing gossip with Jonathan Snyder. Gossip that the lieutenant, unlike Ben Chandler, would be all too glad to use.

  Charlotte remembered the way her own brother had wielded that knowledge against her, how her love of Alexander made her vulnerable to such a thing. She recalled, too, how Jonathan had threatened her, and she felt blood draining from her face at the thought of what he might demand.

  God help her, but she knew of only one way to blunt the weapon that had threatened her for so many years. She thought of what Ben had said to her the night that they’d made love. “But, Charlotte, secrets that big have a way of working themselves loose. Maybe you ought to tell the boy – at least some of it – before somebody else does.”

  She breathed a silent prayer for strength.

  “You all right, Miss Charlotte?” Tillie asked her.

  Charlotte shook her head. “I’m not, because today I have to do a very hard thing, a thing I’ve put off far too long. Tillie, could you please bring me my son?”

  No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

  -- Frederick Douglass

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ben stared in disbelief at Jonathan Snyder’s proffered hand. When he’d met the lieutenant at the door of his assigned room, Ben had expected trouble, not an apology.

  “It all boils down to pride, Captain,” Snyder continued. “And I don’t mind confessing that mine’s taken quite a whipping. What Charlotte did to me was bad enough, but all this uproar with the papers has only made it worse.”

  “So you went upstairs to threaten her.”

&
nbsp; Snyder gave up on the handshake and relaxed his outstretched arm. “I merely told her that if she lied about my part in court, I would see she paid for it.”

  “With what? Her life? Maybe her body?”

  “I meant only the law. Think about it, Ben. I’d have to be a fool to risk more trouble.”

  Ben marked Snyder’s use of his given name. As far as he remembered, the man had never spoken it before. “There’s more to it, and we both know it.”

  Snyder changed the subject. “I’d like to discuss this with you later, but the general wants to see you right away.”

  “Good. There’s something I need to talk to him about,” said Ben. Let the lieutenant chew on that awhile, wonder what he’d say about the incident with Charlotte.

  If Snyder was worried, he didn’t show it. Instead, he began to whistle as Ben descended the staircase. Unwilling to show the younger man any sign of his discomfort, Ben gritted his teeth against the pain. Relief flooded through him when he reached the first floor.

  And immediately evaporated at the sight of General Branard’s crimson face.

  The old man was standing in the library’s arched doorway. Either he was having some kind of attack or he was quivering with rage. Ben glanced a silent query at the lieutenant, who stood at his right.

  Beneath Snyder’s sandy-colored mustache, a tight smile stretched his lips.

  With that smile, the knowledge burst fully formed upon Ben. Whatever was happening with Branard would be the end of Captain Chandler’s tenure with the Union army. And Jonathan Snyder had somehow arranged it. Because Ben stood in the way of the one thing the lieutenant needed more than any other in the world.

  And that one thing was Charlotte Randolph’s silence.

  o0o

  “You’re a liar!” Alexander shouted at his sister. “Everybody says so, and now I know it’s true!”

  He jumped off the bed where they’d been seated. He didn’t want to sit next to her anymore, didn’t want to be locked upstairs with her, with nowhere else to go but the empty servants’ and storage rooms. And the tower, where he was not allowed.

  Well, who was Charlotte to tell him where he could and couldn’t go? Not his sister, she said, and he was not about to believe what she’d just told him, that she was his mother. He felt his nose wrinkle as he turned to look at her.

  His stomach knotted when he saw the way she watched him, her eyes all wet, her shoulders slumped.

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner,” she said, her voice high and strange, like she was the kid instead of him.

  Lots of times, seeing Charlotte cry made Alexander’s eyes sting. But today, he wasn’t going to cry. He couldn’t stop hearing all her lies. Telling him that she was his mama. Telling him his real papa had died a long time back. Telling him his brother was his uncle and that Papa – Papa hadn’t been his father after all.

  She reached out to lay her hand on his shoulder. “I love you, Alexander. Just as Papa loved you, and Michael loves you, too.”

  “I don’t want to stay with you no more,” he said. He searched his mind for something mean to say, something that would hurt her the way her lies hurt him. “They’re prob’ly gonna hang you anyhow.”

  It should have made him feel good, the way she flinched. But somehow, it only made the hurt dig deeper.

  He heard her swallow before she asked him, “Who told you such a vile thing?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody exactly tells me anything, but I got two ears, and I heard Miz Martin talking to the --”

  “Mrs. Martin?” Charlotte surprised him with a half-smile. “In that case, all you heard was wishful thinking. And it’s certainly not true that no one has explained this to you. I have, several times. And you’ve paid me no more mind than a horse pays when a fly lights on his rump.”

  Alexander didn’t have an answer. How could he explain that it was easier to go on acting like everything was normal? Especially when his insides slithered like a nest of snakes and all he wanted was to hide himself inside a cupboard.

  “Alexander,” Charlotte said, “they won’t hang me – or any female. Do you remember Mr. Davenport, Papa’s attorney?”

  He shook his head. Papa always had had a lot of grown-ups coming round. Alexander was supposed to stay out of their way.

  “He’s been helping me,” Charlotte continued. “And he’s assured me that the worst punishment I can expect is time in jail.”

  Alexander’s throat was so tight that his voice came out a hoarse whisper. “How do I know you ain’t lying?”

  She looked him in the eye in that way she had, the one where she always guessed what mischief he’d been up to. About half the time, she figured out what he was thinking, too: whether he was sad or scared or needed hugging.

  “Because you’re my son,” she told him, “and because as of today, there are no lies between us. And I swear to you, there will never be again.”

  That was when Alexander began crying. Because at that moment, he knew that what Charlotte said had really been the truth.

  She went to him then and tried to wrap her arms around him. He wanted to be held – a part of him even wanted her to hold him – but all he could think of was how she’d ruined everything. So Alexander ducked out of her grasp.

  “Take it back!” he demanded. “Take it back so it can all be like it was!”

  The last thing he saw, as he turned to leave the room, was Charlotte with her shoulders shaking and her hands over her face.

  o0o

  As Ben penned his resignation, he realized that he ought to feel relief. The letter he’d received from his brother, Lucas, had been promising, giving Ben reason to believe he still had a ranch to go home to, even if, with the arrival of his brother’s new twins, Ben wasn’t certain exactly where he’d hang his hat. And he would no longer be placed in the position of either reporting Branard’s incompetence, which butted up against his morals, or correcting it, which had been construed as an act of criminal betrayal.

  He’d been damned lucky Branard gave him the option of resigning, because otherwise, he’d end up being dishonorably cashiered out of the army, maybe even jailed. This way, Branard wouldn’t have to worry about his mental state entering into public discussion, and Ben wouldn’t face pressure to drag General Grant’s name – and his reasons for feeling such supervision was necessary – through the mud.

  Funny how all that made not a damned bit of difference. Ben still felt like hell, for leaving Memphis would mean leaving Charlotte, too.

  He could hardly bear to think about her future. If she held to silence as she’d vowed, Armsworthy would surely take Alexander from her and keep her in custody at least until the war’s end. If instead she relented and named her sources of information, Ben would be unable to protect her from reprisals. Surely, there must be some other way.

  Could he try again to convince Branard that he had revised the orders only to clarify the general’s wishes? Ben thought about the failure of his last attempt, and about the pain he’d glimpsed behind the rage in General Branard’s words.

  “You’ve betrayed me, Ben, betrayed me!” he’d said in his trembling, old man’s voice. “Abused my trust to make your own decisions.”

  Branard had refused to listen to any explanation, and experience convinced Ben that wounded pride would prevent the general from allowing him to try a second time. The man had been in a blasted hurry, too, to run Ben out of town.

  “We’ll just say you had family troubles down in Texas,” Branard had said, “and that your leg needed more tending than we’d thought.”

  And that had been the end of it. He’d flatly refused to listen to Ben’s concerns regarding Lieutenant Snyder, or anything else he had to say.

  By departing – and Branard had made it plain that he had to clear out no later than tomorrow afternoon – Ben would be leaving Charlotte unprotected. And even if she decided to testify, two more days remained before she would be called upon to do so.

  Two more
days for Lieutenant Snyder to further intimidate her – or to find a way to close her mouth. Somehow, Ben had to come up with a way to stop him.

  A knock at his door interrupted his thoughts. At his invitation, Delaney McMahon came into the bedroom.

  “I – uh – General Branard sent me up here to see if you were finished with that letter. I’m sorry, Captain Chandler – Ben. I always figured you were just trying to help the old man write what he meant to say. What he would have said if he weren’t --”

  Ben shook his head. “You’d better close the door if you mean to talk like that. And check to see that that bastard, Snyder, doesn’t have his ear pressed up against it.”

  “Snyder told him?” Lieutenant McMahon’s mouth twisted in distaste. “He knew – we both understood – that you were helping. Never seemed to trouble him before.”

  “I guess that was before he decided he wanted me out of here. We had a little run-in earlier.”

  “About what?”

  Ben considered. Delaney might have as much to lose from Charlotte’s testimony as did Snyder, but somehow Ben doubted it. And though McMahon seemed hurt, even befuddled by what she had done to him, Ben would bet his best bull that the red-haired lieutenant still had feelings for her.

  Ben decided to take a chance on him. “About Charlotte. He went upstairs today and threatened her.”

  “What the hell was he thinking?” There was no disguising the anger in McMahon’s voice. “I warned him to leave her be.”

  “You told him?”

  McMahon nodded. “We’ve both been mad at her, said some things we probably shouldn’t have. Just blowing off a little steam, I guess. But after a while, I got to wondering if Snyder wasn’t serious. I knew the general had ordered him to keep off the third floor; he told me that, too. But I reminded him again, because I was starting to get worried.”