Emily looked between them in amazement. “How long have I been asleep?”
Isaac looked at his pocket watch. “A few hours. Are you hungry?”
She shook her head.
“What do you remember?” Isaac asked. “Guiper isn’t talking. Do you have any idea what this was about?”
Emily closed her eyes, trying to sort dream from reality. The drug had given her wild hallucinations that couldn’t possibly be true. Yet one word, one name came back to her with clarity.
“Thaddeus.”
“Black? Your beau?”
“Former beau.”
“You’re sure?”
“No, but I have a very strong impression. And if he’s figured out I’m alive, he’ll be none too fond of me right now.” She told them the full story of helping Sarah, then explained how she’d blown the cover off his cotton-running business.
“Do you think he found out it was you?” Malachi asked.
“It’s possible.” If so, it meant he’d likely been put out of business. That, at least, gave her a measure of grim satisfaction.
“Unless someone discovered your secret at home,” Isaac mused. “Either way, until this fellow is apprehended, you’re not leaving this house unattended. Am I understood?”
Where would she go? For a hop through a snowstorm?
She yawned and shifted to a more comfortable position, wanting only to sit by the fire and sleep. Let Uncle Isaac and Malachi handle Thad. “Understood.”
***
January brought snow, cold, a healed ankle, and more snow. It also carried with it baskets of bad news. General Hood and the Army of Tennessee had been crushed at Nashville. Savannah had fallen shortly before Christmas. And then Sherman moved determinedly toward Columbia, spinning a deadly web around Charleston.
Late in February, Isaac sought Emily out, locating her in one of the upstairs bedrooms. His face was more grave than she’d ever seen it.
“What is it?” she asked, setting her mop aside.
“Emily, you may want to sit down.”
But she already knew. “It’s Charleston, isn’t it? It’s fallen.”
He nodded.
She sank onto the side of the bed, her bones molten lead.
“When Sherman cut off assistance, the city was abandoned. It’s fallen into Union hands.”
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t expected it, but hearing the words, knowing the long-dreaded event had finally come to pass, brought the full tragedy of war to a head. Sadness filled her—not the bleak emptiness of Jack’s loss nor the bitter ache of Jovie’s, but a gentle drift like wind-blown sand. It settled into every broken crevice and added its weight.
“Are you all right?” Isaac asked.
She nodded. “I just need a few minutes.”
He nodded his understanding. He was from Charleston, too. “I’ll leave you alone.”
When the door clicked shut, every tear she hadn’t allowed herself to shed insisted on release. There on the side of a bed in an empty room in Detroit, Emily sank her head into her hands and quietly mourned the passing of her beloved city and the folly of its people.
***
With Charleston’s fall, Emily began to feel in limbo. She had no plan for the future except to wait for the war to end. Her life felt purposeless. After her foot healed, especially when there’d been no further sign of Thad for weeks, she found herself growing mutinous over her constant supervision.
Emily made good use of her camera. She photographed every one of her family members, including Malachi and Julia. And twice she’d talked Uncle Isaac into taking her for sleigh rides behind his big gray, Barnabas, to points where she could photograph the city or the surrounding countryside. She even helped Malachi with his research by sketching detailed images of the bacteria he brought into focus beneath his microscope. But she missed her independence. She needed a job, and she intended to find one. Soon.
One afternoon in early March, when the sun offered a cheery respite from winter’s bleak monotony, she and Shannon took the children into the front yard to play in the snow. They, too, were feeling the restlessness of weeks spent indoors. “Let’s make snowmen!” Emily proposed after they’d filled the yard with snow angels. “We’ll build three—a tall one for Emily Rose, a medium one for Kaity, and a little one named Aidan.”
“Make a big one!” Aidan countered with both hands stretched over his head.
“All right,” Emily agreed, tweaking his nose. “A big one named Aidan!”
In the end, they made them all the same size. The children scrambled to push snowballs that quickly outgrew their strength. Cold pinked their cheeks and fashioned their breath into cloudy sheens of vapor. Emily had just set the last head in place, with the aid of six little hands, when she noticed a man observing them from the sidewalk only a few strides away. She flinched in alarm, shoving her nearest niece behind her.
Then she noticed the crutches. And the empty pant leg.
Both mittens rose to hide her open mouth.
“Hello, Emily.”
Shannon understood in one swift glance. “It’s time to go inside, children. We’ll decorate our snowmen later.” And she nudged them toward the door. At the trio of protests, she added, “Julia will have cookies and hot chocolate waiting for those who obey without a fuss.”
Jovie stood in uncomfortable silence, watching the noisy procession file into the house. Emily never looked away from his face. He was bareheaded, his hair cut and his beard neatly trimmed, dressed in a short overcoat with a bright red scarf. The hard edge he’d displayed was gone, replaced by a humble gentleness. Other than the crutches and the facial hair, he looked very much like the boy she remembered.
She’d best guard her heart.
“Why have you come?”
He turned regretful eyes on her. “Because I’m a poor, foolish man who’s loved you every moment since I was nine years old.”
Her throat cinched closed. She had to choke out her words. “You sent me away.”
“It was the biggest mistake of my life.”
Tears squeezed upward. “I need to know why you did it.”
He knocked the snow off one of his crutches self-consciously. “Guilt. Shame. The misguided belief that you’d be better off without me.”
She shook her head. “Never.”
Jovie blinked and looked away. It was a moment before he could speak. “Emily, your brother was a much better man than me—brilliant, charismatic, athletic. His men followed him to hell and back. He would have thrived at West Point or at Oxford, but he stayed in Charleston so we could attend school together. When he died, I lost a brother.” He swallowed hard. “A year later, I received the same injury. The exact same wound in the exact same place, but I didn’t die. I wanted to.” He looked up to heaven. “Oh, God, I wanted to. But I didn’t. Do you know how much guilt I’ve lived with?”
She came a few steps nearer, her eyes sharing his grief. “Jovie, you had no control over that.”
“I know that now. I think I knew it then, but I didn’t feel it. I was overcome with exhaustion, anger, and the certainty that the woman I adored would never want a cripple.”
She closed the rest of the gap and reached out tentatively to smooth the hair back from his forehead. After so long, she hardly dared trust the moment was real. “I searched a year for you.”
“I know. Jeremiah told me.”
“Jeremiah?”
Jovie smiled wryly. “He gave me a lecture I won’t soon forget. But in the end, it was Sarah who convinced me.”
“Sarah visited you, too?”
“No. But Jeremiah told me how you brought her to Port Royal, and how she moved heaven and earth to get to Baltimore, even when she thought he’d lost his sight. I thought about that for weeks, astonished that she could still love a blind man. It was some time before I finally realized what a fool I’d been.” The green in his eyes burned fever bright. “I came north to see if there’s a chance you could still love a cripple.”
<
br /> “Oh, Jovie,” she whispered. “You know I do.”
One of the crutches dropped as he opened his arms and she stepped inside. Hopelessness and longing merged into poignant disbelief. This was the fairy-tale ending she’d wished for, but it seemed too incredible to be true.
“Say it again, please,” Jovie pleaded. His breath fluttered against her hair and raised goosebumps on the back of her neck. “I’ve waited a lifetime to hear it.”
Her heart responded with a burst of sheer elation. Her voice rang out through the clear, cold sunshine. “Jovie Cutler, I love you!”
His arms crushed her against him, merging their bodies, their breath, their souls. Detroit faded away. The war dropped from memory. She was conscious of nothing but the solid reality of Jovie’s presence and an overwhelming, all-consuming joy. Now that she had him back, she was never letting go again.
“Marry me, Emily. Marry me tomorrow.” His hands dropped to her waist and he pulled away just enough to see her. “You’ve brought me back to life again. If you don’t agree, you’ll send one more poor soldier to his grave.”
She threw her head back and laughed at the clouds. “Yes, Jovie. I’ll marry you.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow!”
He cupped her face in both hands, the crutch wedged snug beneath his arm. “I love you, Emily Preston. With every broken piece of me.”
And then he kissed her. It wasn’t their first kiss, but it was the first time she’d left her heart open and unguarded. His passion stole her breath. Strong and unrestrained, it overwhelmed her senses and healed months of sorrow. She returned it in equal measure, drowning in the pure happiness of knowing that—at last—she belonged to Jovie and Jovie belonged to her and nothing short of death would ever separate them again.
“Tomorrow,” she murmured dreamily when they drew apart.
He tucked her tight against his chest and kissed the top of her head.
“Forever.”
28
Emily stood at the top of the stairs in a stunning ivory gown she had borrowed from Shannon. Her aunt had caught up her hair into a lovely chignon, with graceful tendrils curling at her ears. In place of flowers, she held a bouquet of pine boughs interspersed with bright red wintergreen berries.
Her mind flitted back briefly to the day six years earlier when Shannon had glided down these same stairs. But this wasn’t Shannon’s wedding. It was hers. Julia and the girls had threaded pink and blue ribbons through the stairway banister. Isaac played hymns on the old upright piano. Lizzie and Ketch, Malachi, Julia, Shannon, and a cadre of black and white children watched from rows of chairs set up in the lobby. And Jovie stood at the bottom of the stairs, handsome, bright-eyed, and eagerly waiting to receive her.
Emily could scarcely believe her turn of fortune.
Her feet didn’t touch the stairs once. She floated down, suspended by impossible waves of happiness. Her only fleeting regret was that neither set of parents could be here to share in it. Hasty letters would have to suffice.
As the preacher delivered his admonitions, Emily found she couldn’t concentrate on anything he said. Her heart was too full of the man standing across from her. Her focus remained on him alone until Jovie passed her bouquet off to Aunt Shannon and clasped both her hands.
“Do you, Jovie Cutler, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”
She felt the pressure on her fingers as he answered. “I do.”
“And do you, Emily Preston, take this man to be your husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and obey, till death do you part?”
She had a vision of her and Jovie racing around the Thoroughbred pasture as children. She remembered the day he slipped the frog down her dress. The walk through the garden at her sixteenth birthday party when she’d first marked his maturity. His kiss outside her Baltimore hotel room. His relentless, dogged pursuit... Past merged with present, blooming into a brilliant, sun-soaked future. She gave herself up to it completely. “I do.”
They exchanged rings, purchased in haste that morning. And when the preacher pronounced them man and wife, Jovie threw aside his crutches and caught her in both arms.
***
Emily awoke the next morning to the joyful realization that it hadn’t all been a dream. Jovie lay on his stomach beside her, arms beneath his pillow, shoulders flexed. She traced the line of his neck with one forefinger. No more lonely, empty nights. No more wondering if he was dead somewhere on a battlefield. He would be right there beside her every morning, and he would return to her every evening. This was her amazing new reality.
He jerked at her touch, instantly tense and alert. Then he relaxed with that slow, crooked grin she had come to love so much. Rolling onto his side, he drew her close, curling her against his chest. “This is better than waking up in the barracks.”
His breath warmed the back of her neck. They weren’t in the bedroom she had shared with Emily Rose and Kaity, but in one of the upstairs rooms rented out to guests. When Jovie had tried to pay Isaac for lodging, he wouldn’t hear of it. But Emily knew they couldn’t sponge off her uncle’s goodwill for long. He had a family to provide for.
“Jovie, we can’t stay here.”
“I know.”
“Where will we go?” The whole world was open to her again. She had come here to heal, to find a fresh start. That had worked out far better than she could imagine. She was ready to find her wings again.
“Where would you like to go?”
“Anywhere with you.”
“Somebody told me once that the Maryland Institute has an excellent chemistry program. I’ve always had a penchant for science.”
She rolled to her back. “Really, Jovie? We could go back to Baltimore?”
“Would you like that?”
“Yes!” She sat up and her face grew animated. “Just wait until you meet Missouri. And we’d be near to Jeremiah and Sarah and Mr. Heatherstone and—”
Jovie laughed. “Slow down! It was just a suggestion.”
“Jovie, don’t tease me. Are you serious about going to school?”
“Well, I don’t want to drive a wagon all my life.”
He laughed at the look of reproach she shot him.
“Yes, I’m serious. I’ve already spoken with the head of the chemistry department. I believe their lecture series will give me a broad knowledge base from which to choose a more specific direction.”
Emily pounced, squeezing him in her enthusiasm. “Oh, but you’ve missed the start of term,” she said in dismay. “The next one doesn’t start until May.”
“Then I’ll find work in Detroit. If your uncle will agree to negotiate rent, we’ll stay right here until spring.”
Emily lay back down, tucking under his arm and pressing her back to his chest. It felt good to have a plan again. A highly agreeable plan. “If you’re still interested in medical science, you should speak to Malachi. He could teach you a great deal.”
Jovie chuckled.
“What’s funny?”
“Emily, I’m not going to study under a black man.”
“Why not?” She turned so she could see him. “Jovie, this isn’t Fairview. It’s Detroit.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Malachi isn’t one of your slaves.” She rolled up on one elbow. “Did you know that he finished the complete coursework of the Ann Arbor Medical School? Right now he’s isolating bacteria and determining their effect on the human body.”
Jovie stared at her with unreadable intensity. She knew exactly what was going through his mind. The same thoughts that had flown through hers the moment she learned Malachi could figure algebra problems that tied her brain cells in knots. In her haste to marry him, she’d overlooked the fact that Jovie still hel
d a very skewed view of the races.
Something even more important tugged at her. Something she shouldn’t have forgotten. “Jovie, I have a brother who’s Negro.”
“I know. And I realize you have a special fondness for him, just as Jack did.”
“He’s not a pet.” She frowned. “I’ve promised that when I inherit Ella Wood, he will receive half. I’d like you to honor that.”
Jovie was quiet for half a minute. Emily awaited his response with bated breath. “Emily, I didn’t marry you for your inheritance.”
“Then you’re okay with it?”
“As a matter of principle, no. But I promise I’ll discuss it with you further. You mean more to me than any plantation.”
She leaned over to kiss cheek, the fuzz of his beard tickling her face. She would be content with that for now. Jovie hadn’t received the same guidance as she and Jack. But he was a good man, a fair man. He just needed time and a few influential relationships.
He brushed a finger down the skin of her shoulder and stopped at her still-pink scar. “What happened here? Were you shot?”
Emily froze. If Jovie found out the truth, he’d lose his head with anger. And this, their sweet first morning together, was neither the time nor the place. “It’s a story for another time.”
He examined her shoulder more closely, turning her to view the exit wound. “That was a bullet. Emily, what happened?”
“Later.” She pulled his hands away firmly and held them in both of hers. “You were the one in front of Yankee guns, not me. But it’s over now. We’re together—safe—and that’s all that matters.”
He grew still and his frown deepened. “Emily, I need to tell you what I’ve really been doing for the past year.”
The way he said it made her pulse falter. “Oh, Jovie. You’re not still involved with the military, are you?”
Ebb Tide (Ella Wood Book 3) Page 30