Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana

by Melanie Dobson

  “I don’t want to write you.” He stepped up on the running board, and the pounding in her heart stopped when his eyes met hers. Heat rushed to her face. “I want to come see you.”

  When he brushed a strand of hair out of her face, she could scarcely breathe. He was so close, and she wanted to stay right here. With him.

  But she couldn’t. They couldn’t.

  She reached for the reins. “I’ll have my father bring Joseph’s horse back to town.”

  “Anna...”

  She stared ahead, not trusting herself to look over at him. “Our entire network is built on secrecy, Daniel. Too many people depend on us.”

  The soft click from her tongue urged Samara forward, and Daniel hopped off the buggy. She didn’t turn her head. She couldn’t bear to see him standing there, alone.

  As she rode out of town, she scarcely noticed the flock of geese overhead or heard cornstalks banging against boards in the fields around her. The tension between her and Daniel was palpable. He had almost kissed her; she saw it in his eyes. Heaven help her if he had. She wouldn’t have been able to resist.

  If she weren’t careful, her weakness would ruin everything.

  “C’mon, Samara,” she pressed.

  Daniel couldn’t come visit her on Silver Creek. For the safety of the people they were trying to help, they mustn’t let their relationship get personal. What she desired was nothing compared to the needs of those who were staying in their home.

  Nothing could come between her and her station. Not even someone strong and handsome and kind.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Sitting at Joseph’s secretary, Daniel scribbled down the words to his next article, not particularly concerned about the quality of his work. The story was potent enough on its own.

  It was about Isaac’s friend Zack Haviland who had been an agent down in Jeffersonville. Haviland had helped hundreds of slaves flee across the Ohio and run up to places similar to Liberty, but last week he was found dead, drowned in the river.

  A mob had caught him helping a slave woman and her four children escape, and they’d decided that justice for this incorrigible act was to beat him and bind him and dump him into the very water from which he’d rescued so many.

  Even more appalling to Daniel was that not a single man was being penalized for Haviland’s death.

  Daniel pressed his palm into his forehead. How could people in Indiana sleep while good men like Haviland were being murdered? What more could he do to wake them up?

  His contribution was piddling compared to people like Zack and Joseph...and Anna.

  Anna would understand why he grieved for someone like Zack Haviland even though he had never met the man.

  He looked out the window of Joseph and Esther’s parlor and searched the street again for her. For the past three weeks he had watched, thinking she might come to Lyle Trumble’s mercantile or stop by the Cooleys to visit Esther and Ben. He even dared to hope that she might seek him out and explain her abrupt departure so many days ago.

  But she hadn’t appeared.

  She’d written him five short notes, responding to the instructions he’d sent her about purchasing and delivering the materials for Esther’s baby blanket. All her responses were curt. Formal. None of them hinted at anything other than a thoroughly professional relationship, nor did they hint that she might care for him as he did her.

  Footsteps padded across the floor behind him, and he turned to see Joseph holding Benjamin in his arms. “I didn’t hear you arrive.”

  “I let myself in the back door an hour ago.”

  Joseph nodded at the desk. “Are you working on an article?”

  He nodded. “It kept me up most of the night.”

  He supposed he would have told Joseph about Haviland if he asked, but he was glad when Joseph changed the subject.

  “I received a message yesterday,” Joseph said as he tucked the afghan around Ben’s shoulders. “I have three new patients with consumption that I need to visit.”

  He stepped back toward the secretary. “Will you be transporting them?”

  Joseph lowered his voice. “To Silver Creek, around ten tonight.”

  Daniel sat down on the chair and picked up his pen. His letter-writing seemed minuscule in importance to what Joseph and Anna did on the Underground, but he did what Joseph bid. “I’ll send a messenger out right now.”

  Anna took the envelope from Ruth’s hands and ran her fingers over Esther’s return address. Daniel wrote to her about once a week, his notes as short as hers. She had hoped, when she didn’t see him, that she would begin to forget about him, but as of yet, it hadn’t worked.

  “Esther Cooley sure likes to write to you,” Ruth said.

  Her new housekeeper was barely eighteen, and quite adept at cooking and cleaning, but Anna didn’t know her sentiments on slavery—nor did she dare ask. Ruth’s father worked at the mill, and her father said he trusted both him and his daughter, although he wasn’t certain what her father’s stance was on slavery or abolition, either. Ruth worked only five days a week, walking the two miles home to her husband every evening. When she needed to visit the graveyard, Anna left after Ruth went home.

  She ran her fingers over the letter again. Every time a message arrived, she wished she could see Daniel again. “That’s what friends do when they don’t see each other often,” she said.

  “I hardly ever see my best friend anymore, but neither of us particularly like to write.”

  Anna sat in a chair by the fire, not bothering to correct the notion that she and Esther were the best of friends.

  “Course you probably know my friend, Charity Penner?”

  Anna shook her head. “Not really.”

  “Here I thought that Esther would have told you all about her.” Ruth sat down beside her. “Her brother has had his eye on Charity for weeks.”

  Anna’s fingers froze on the envelope. “Daniel?”

  The curls bounced on Ruth’s head. “Charity’s playing hard to get, of course, but she says they’ll probably be married in the spring.”

  Anna turned toward the fire. Daniel, getting married? Here she had thought... They had almost...

  She shook her head. She shouldn’t be thinking about any of this. She should be happy—for Daniel and for Charity.

  But she wasn’t happy at all.

  She dismissed Ruth to finish baking bread and ripped open the envelope. His message was coded—about shipping three parcels out to Silver Creek at ten o’clock with instructions to deliver them to Newport on the morrow. Nothing about Charity Penner or weddings.

  She held the note up to her cheek and then threw it into the parlor fire. The edges curled and blackened in the flames. She would be there early, waiting for the delivery, but tonight she wouldn’t let herself wonder if Daniel would sneak to the graveyard again to see her.

  She had told him they couldn’t even be friends, and she had meant it, but she thought he might at least come visit again. Now she knew why he didn’t come. He had been busy courting another girl in town.

  Her father entered the parlor, and as she turned from the fire, she determined to force herself to stop thinking about Daniel Stanton. She was the one who had said they couldn’t be friends. It wasn’t fair for her to expect anything else.

  Her father’s face looked haggard when he smiled at her; even the lines on his forehead seemed to have grown in the last few weeks.

  “How much longer are you going to have to work like this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” He kissed her on the cheek. “It seems like everyone chasing gold to California needs an extra blanket or two to take with them.”

  She worried about him. He rarely slept at home anymore, or ate there, either. And at least once a week he was delivering valuable cargo to Newport or Connersville. The mill was the perfect front for their work on the Underground, and the perfect reason for him to stay away from the home that reminded him of his deceased wife, but if he wasn’t carefu
l, he was going to work himself into the grave.

  She whispered so Ruth wouldn’t hear her words. “We’re expecting three parcels tonight.”

  “When does he want me to deliver them?”

  “He asked that we take them to Newport tomorrow.”

  He put his hat on his head. “I’ll leave the moment the sun goes down.”

  She put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him. “Why don’t you let me deliver them?”

  He kissed her cheek. “Not while I’m here, Anna. I already worry about you too much.”

  “Surely they aren’t searching for...” She stopped herself. “For our friend anymore.”

  “Isaac told me that Noah Owens upped the reward to seven hundred dollars.”

  She groaned. As long as there was money to be had, Simon and the other hunters wouldn’t go away.

  Edwin placed his hat on his head. “I saw Isaac in town a few days ago. He asked about your next column.”

  Isaac had asked her about it after Meeting, too, but she didn’t know what to tell him. Every time she sat down to start the article, the only story she wanted to tell was Daniel’s, and she couldn’t tell that one.

  “I think I’ll have to wait until next month.”

  Edwin stopped by the front door. “Are you ill?”

  She shook her head. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  He gave her a curious look and then left for the mill.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Esther tied the white taffeta ribbons of her bonnet under her chin and then pushed the perambulator toward Liberty’s town center. The sky was clear and temperatures were unseasonably warm for the last week in October.

  Ben was awake for their walk, shaking his rattle and relishing the ride. Joseph had insisted that they both needed fresh air, before the snow came, and she finally relented. Though even more than the air, she hoped their little stroll would qualm some of the gossip that had surely been clambering across town during her confinement.

  It had been over a month since Joseph had sent her to bed, and she had refused to venture outside until Ben was a bit older. People had been talking, she was sure of it. Probably wondering what was wrong with her and her new baby.

  Today she would show them that there was nothing wrong with either of them. He was wonderfully healthy, and so was she.

  Her head high, she strolled toward Trumble’s.

  The first person she recognized was Gertrude Gunther, who was slipping out of the milliner’s shop. The woman gave an exclamation when she saw her; then she pecked her on the cheeks and bent toward the carriage. “I heard you had your baby.”

  Esther smiled, her voice light. “And I haven’t slept since.”

  Mrs. Gunther poked Ben’s arm. “Trudy had her girl almost two months ago, and she’s still not sleeping.”

  Esther had no real complaints about the sleep. She and Ben rested during the day together, and they were both content.

  Mrs. Gunther studied Ben like she was trying to find something wrong with him. “We thought he might be ill or something.”

  “Joseph has declared him perfectly fit.”

  The woman tickled his chin. “You are going to be one spoiled fella.”

  Esther’s gaze traveled to the handbill behind Mrs. Gunther’s head, and for a moment she couldn’t move. In big letters, the poster advertised a reward of seven hundred dollars for a light-skinned slave baby that had been abandoned in Indiana. His owner lived in Tennessee.

  Her fingers curled tighter over the handle of the perambulator.

  A slave baby? Surely not.

  Still, she wanted to turn the carriage and run back home to hide both herself and her baby.

  Mrs. Gunther glanced behind her at the bill. “It’s tragic, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “A slave leaving her child like that in the wilds. No white woman would ever put her baby in such danger.”

  Esther muttered something unintelligible, but Mrs. Gunther didn’t seem to notice. She was watching Ben. “How old did you say he was?”

  “Almost five weeks.”

  “He looks older than Trudy’s baby.”

  Esther straightened her bonnet. “All the children on Joseph’s side are big.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll be a doctor, too,” Mrs. Gunther said. “He’s quite a handsome boy.”

  The door to the tavern opened next to them, and when Esther saw who was walking outside, she took a step backward.

  “I don’t see Joseph’s features in him at all,” Mrs. Gunther said matter-of-factly.

  Esther’s heart started to sink. “I think he looks a little like Joseph.”

  “I don’t believe so,” the woman continued. “But he definitely has your eyes.”

  She held her breath as Matthew Nelson moved around Mrs. Gunther and tipped his hat toward her. Seeing Matthew didn’t bother her. It was the black man beside him she didn’t want to see, the slave hunter who’d scuffled with her brother outside Rachel’s wedding celebration about a Negro girl and her baby.

  “Who has her eyes?” Matthew asked with a smile.

  Mrs. Gunther swept her arm across the top of the perambulator. “This adorable new baby of hers.”

  Particles of food clung to Simon’s coarse whiskers, and he smelled like he hadn’t bathed in months. He didn’t look like he was in much of a congratulatory mood, although Matthew congratulated her with flair. “Motherhood seems to have agreed very well with you.”

  “I’ve never been happier.”

  “I’m sure you are a fine mother,” he said, and she hoped to God it was true.

  “I thought you would be off to California by now.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Still gathering supplies?”

  “And a little extra cash,” Matthew said, as he buttoned the top two buttons on his jacket. “Have you seen Anna Brent recently?”

  She shook her head. “Not in ages. Why?”

  “I’d like to talk to her.”

  “Why don’t you pay her a visit?”

  Matthew’s eyes traveled up to the handbill behind them and then he looked away. “I may do that.”

  Simon didn’t look at the bill or down at her son, but his hand crushed the carriage top as he stomped around both her and Ben. Esther almost slapped his hand away, but she kept her hands clutched over the handle. If he dared to question her about her child, she would show him exactly how a mama bear responds to threats on her cub.

  Simon didn’t glance back, though. Instead he called for Matthew to join him.

  “You’ll have to excuse my friend,” Matthew said as he slipped by her. “He doesn’t know what it means to be happy.”

  Esther reached down and pulled Ben out of the carriage. She knew what it was like to feel miserable, and thank God she knew happiness now.

  She wouldn’t let anyone take that away from her again.

  The moon was almost full when Anna tromped back toward the cemetery. None of them liked escorting runaways under a lit sky, but the mill was the first stop after their friends arrived from the canal. They had no choice but to keep them here for the night.

  Still, she’d sent a message back to Daniel this afternoon, asking him to try to wait until the moon faded again before forwarding the next delivery to their station. He didn’t need to know that she was concerned about her father. Only that she was worried about the light.

  There were no X’s by the gravesite when she arrived tonight, but she was a half hour early. Perhaps she had arrived before them. Kneeling at the grave, she began to hum “Amazing Grace.”

  The song had become a sign for the escaped slaves to join her, but each time she hummed it, it reminded her of her mother’s beauty and courage. And it reminded her that the grace that covered both her and her mother also covered every soul she met in the night.

  A man and a woman crept toward her, their heads down. Clothes tattered. It looked like they had walked hundreds of miles since they’d rested last.
/>   “Who sent you?” she asked quietly.

  It was the woman who spoke first, her voice surprisingly strong.

  “A friend of a friend.”

  Anna’s eyes searched the trees behind them. “Is there another?”

  The woman shook her head. “There are only two of us.”

  Anna thought of the message she’d burned in the parlor. Daniel had said there were three runaways coming tonight, hadn’t he? Or had she read it wrong?

  No, she was certain he had said three. He must have written the wrong number. She sighed inwardly, disappointed that he’d failed her again.

  She turned toward her mother’s grave.

  How could she make him understand that it was details like this that had to be precise or someone might lose their life? Occasionally someone would arrive unannounced—like Marie—but Charlotte had never once given her a wrong count on the number of expected runaways.

  Anna twisted the candle in her hand. Charlotte had been gone for a month now, but she still missed her friend. Charlotte knew how important the particulars were.

  Something shuffled in the trees behind her, and Anna listened. Were those footsteps?

  The realization dawned on her slowly. Frightfully.

  What if Daniel hadn’t been wrong? What if there really were supposed to be three?

  In the moonlight, she could see the thick arms of the man waiting for her. Even the woman appeared to be strong. The two of them could overpower her in an instant if they wanted.

  She directed them toward the side of the graveyard, her mind scrambling to determine a way to extract the truth.

  “Did Henry escort you here?” she finally asked.

  “Yes,” the colored woman said, too quickly, and the man nodded with her. “At least he said his name was Henry.”

  Instinct sparked her to turn—flee—but she held steady. She didn’t know who they were or how many others were around them.

  “Very good,” she quipped. “Did he tell you where we are going next?”

  The woman shook her head. “Just said it was someplace safe.”