by Tara Cowan
“No, he would keep a Negro whore in Milsom Street,” Mrs. Ravenel pronounced slowly and coldly. There was a bit of a standoff between them, their eyes locked, her chin in the air. He broke it finally, sighing and pacing toward the fireplace. He lifted the poker and stoked it. When he looked back at her, her gaze was not so hard.
“Forgive me,” she said, returning to her ladylike tone. She sat back down, laying her forehead in her hand briefly. She sighed. “I merely want what is best for Shannon. I think we both want a good man for her.”
“Agreed,” he said firmly.
“Why, then, what is to be done? If she loves Mr. Haley, she’ll not have another. She is too much of a Ravenel to be swayed,” she said, looking at him significantly.
“I collect the Shannons are an easy-tempered family,” he said.
“I do not deny that the men in my family are resolute. The ladies, however, are known for their gentility,” she said austerely. This was entirely unanswerable, and Mr. Ravenel did not attempt it.
“Nonetheless,” he said, regaining his footing, “I should be a very poor father if I allowed her to marry the first young man she happened to think she loved.”
At this moment, further conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. Mr. Ravenel glanced at it with a look of strong annoyance. “Return later,” he said.
A muffled voice said, “It’s me, Father.”
Mr. Ravenel released a sigh, and went forward. He opened the door and was confronted with his son. “May I come in?”
Mr. Ravenel stepped back, ensuring his displeasure was evident from the set of his mouth. “What is it, Frederick?”
“I have something to say. I know you are talking about Shannon.” He looked between them as Mr. Ravenel closed the door behind him.
“Yes,” his father said, looking him over with suspicion. “How much did you know, son?”
Frederick held up his hands. “I knew nothing! Oh, that there was some attraction between them—yes, I should think anybody could’ve seen that. But marriage—no, he said nothing to me, and he still hasn’t. I’m as shocked as can be. Well, I’ll trim his ears for it, but I must say that it ought to do him credit that he spoke to no one before you, Father.”
“How long has there been an understanding between them?” his mother asked.
Frederick glanced at her. “As I said, I wouldn’t know, for he hasn’t mentioned it, and neither has she.”
“The person we need is Marie,” his father said, eyes narrowed in calculation. “Perhaps she’ll know. If that damned Negro-lover has been courting her the whole of the autumn, he’ll answer to me.”
Frederick’s eyes kindled. “We’ll leave Marie out of it, if you please. If you think either Shannon or Haley would ever speak of what is in their hearts to anyone, you’re out, Father. And if you imagine that John Thomas Haley would act even for a moment in a way that was base, or ungentlemanly—well, you…you don’t know him,” he said, looking between them. “He is the best man who ever lived, and I’m mad enough to shove him off the dock just now, but if a man ever could be worthy of Shannon, it is he.”
His mother smiled and said softly, “This is quite a recommendation you give him.”
“It is the truth, and I could say more. Shannon won’t meet many men like him in her lifetime,” he said, looking back at his father.
His father, leaning against the wall by the window, said in a large-minded spirit, “Well, well, you are fond of your friend, and I’m sure we all are. I’ve nothing to say against the boy, but I know nothing of him, or his family, after all.”
“Oh, his family is excellent,” Frederick said. “He doesn’t puff it off, but they’re comfortably circumstanced. The name Haley goes back to the colonial days in shipping.”
This surprised Mr. Ravenel. “But from all he says–”
“Oh, don’t mistake their piety for poverty, or a sort of middle class gentility. Everyone up there is like that—well, think of the Puritans, landing on the shore, and you’ll have a pretty good notion of his ancestry.”
“But what is any of this, my dear?” his mother said. “What does Massachusetts society mean to us?”
This was too much for Frederick, whose eyes widened. “Well… But…But they built America, Mother! If you are looking for society, tell me where you may find an older one, at least in this country?”
Mrs. Ravenel summarily depressed the notion that she had ever cared for society—why would she, a Shannon, married to a Ravenel, have the need to do so?
“Never mind that,” Mr. Ravenel said, frustration growing. “What of his family name?”
“I told you it is an old family, well-respected,” Frederick said.
“Yes, but who ever heard of a Haley?”
“Perhaps no one in South Carolina,” his son answered. “But–”
“And what of his other relations? If she married a man from the South, we would know these to the last degree–”
“His mother is an Adams!” Frederick delivered finally, conclusively. “And yes, directly descended!”
A silence fell over the room as, indeed, such a pronouncement could only be expected to produce. Mr. Ravenel’s eyes slowly met his wife’s. She opened her lips and then closed them, pressing them together as though, for once, at a loss for words. Mr. Ravenel was similarly discomposed. There was a triumphant gleam in Frederick’s eyes, but he was wise enough to keep his counsel.
A minute passed, and finally the master of Santarella cleared his throat. “I have a notion, Louisa, which, if it is agreeable to you, I will present to the boy.”
Frederick, blinking, was too much astonished at hearing his father, for the first time, say “Louisa” to listen to his mother’s reply to this. She must have been agreeable, however, for the next thing he heard his father say was, “We will invite him to stay on at Santarella, and if they are still of the same mind—say in a month or two, and I like what I see, I will give my consent.”
“It seems reasonable,” she said, inclining her head regally. “He will have to remove with us to Ravenel House, and linger much longer than he meant, but if he indeed loves Shannon that will not weigh with him.”
Santarella, November 1859
Chapter Fourteen
With what her brother informed her was a gross lack of proper feeling, Shannon shrugged her shoulder at his demand to be told why he had not been informed of the blooming romance. She informed him, in the library, with Mr. Haley present, that she could not see what business it was of his, whom she chose to have a romance with.
Her affianced, catching the dangerous spark in Frederick’s eye, and the clenching of his jaw, intervened, asking her if she wouldn’t let her brother and him have some private conversation, and reminding her that Marie was waiting to talk to her upstairs. She did not like this dismissal, but she bestowed a smile upon him as brilliant as her glare upon Frederick was scathing, and gracefully left.
He closed the door behind her, drawing a hand through his hair, and turned to face Frederick. His friend was looking a perfect stone, his fists clenched at his sides, his proud jaw jutted in the air. John Thomas swallowed.
“If you imagine, Frederick, that anything has been done in a secret manner… Shannon–”
“Shannon, is it? For how long has it been Shannon?”
“Since last night,” John Thomas said in a calm voice, undaunted. “We never spoke of this until then. I give you my word, if that still means anything to you,” he added.
Frederick met his eyes, and there was some slight loosening in his shoulders. “Of course it– John, why didn’t you say?”
“I just told you–”
“No, I mean, how could you have fallen in love with my sister and never spoken a word? I grant you that it would’ve been an awkward business, but…”
There was a brief silence during which John Thomas soug
ht about for the answer. He shook his head. “I’ve never…been in love before, Frederick,” he said, so softly, that his friend knew he had treaded in a very private spot and sought about desperately for a retreat. “Not like this,” he added, not looking at him, but walking to the bookshelves and glancing unseeingly over the old tomes. “It is difficult to talk about.” He looked back over his shoulder, his features slightly more open. “But mostly, I never thought she would have me, Frederick! I never imagined that she would possibly–”
“Oh, pooh, why shouldn’t she?” said Shannon’s fond brother. “I’m certain you’re a catch, and too good for her.”
John Thomas smiled, shaking his head. “It isn’t true, and you know it, I imagine. But we won’t talk any more of that. She did accept me–”
“Do you mean to tell me that the two of you have become engaged?” Frederick demanded, looking thunderstruck. When Mr. Haley merely held his eyes, he burst out laughing. “And to think, I’ve been trying to convince my father and mother merely to consider it.”
John Thomas was touched and met his eyes. “Have you?”
“Of course, you scoundrel. Do you imagine there’s anyone else I’d prefer for a brother-in-law?”
This brought out Mr. Haley’s smile, and soon, Frederick was proposing a toast to the marriage, and making his friend feel acutely uncomfortable by pouring out an ungodly amount of bourbon.
Meanwhile, the conversation above stairs had a very different, more feminine flavor, and had certainly begun less violently. Marie, sitting on Shannon’s bed, her checked skirts belling around her, studied her cousin, who was restively rearranging the flowers which the maid Venus had brought up. Shannon was never an open book, and this momentous day was no different.
“Certainly Frederick mentioned to me that he thought you sometimes flirted with Mr. Haley, and that he could not drag his eyes from you,” she said by way of opening conversation after an overloud silence. At least, it was overloud to her. Shannon seemed to be lost in a dream.
She looked over her shoulder, a sparkle in her eyes, and said, “Did he?”
“Yes, but he thought it nothing more than attraction,” Marie said.
Shannon would only tuck the corners of her mouth and turn back around to her arranging.
“Do you think your father will consent?”
“I mean to ride out the storm until he does. And if he doesn’t—I mean to do as I please anyway. No one shall tell me who I will marry.”
Marie stiffened a bit, and then decided that Shannon had had no thought of insulting her, lost as she was in her own affairs. She sighed. “Shannon, do you truly love him?”
Shannon slowly turned, her elegant skirts rustling, her eyes brilliant in the sunlight. She smiled, and Marie was startled with what she saw in her face. So far from not being in earnest, or seeking to throw the dust in her parents’ face, she was lovesick. “Oh, my dear cousin. He is… Oh, I cannot explain it to you. There, you’ve made me act a fool,” she said, swiping at her eyes.
“Dearest,” Marie cried, reaching for her hands. Shannon gave them, smiling lovingly, and laughed, sinking down beside Marie, the bed ropes groaning and her skirts pluming. “Oh, it is the most wonderful thing,” she said, blinking away her own tears and knowing, as she hugged Shannon tightly, the slightest pang of jealousy. “He will be a wonderful husband to you, and oh, such pretty children you shall have!”
“Yes, but it will be different,” Shannon said, pulling back, “when we are in Ravenel House.”
Marie reached up, frowning, to touch her cheek. “How could it?”
Shannon looked away, and got up. “Oh, I don’t know. Charleston’s elite… It’s such a fierce society. I was bred among them, but he was not.”
Marie levelled a look at her and said, “Shannon, I do believe you’re afraid of happiness. Or that you doubt him, or your power over him.”
There was a pause, until Shannon moved away, saying, “Nonsense. Come, help me pack, Marie.”
Shannon’s father had built Ravenel House upon coming into his inheritance as a young man. He had thereby made himself, more or less, the most eligible bachelor in Charleston. Louisa Shannon, a distant cousin, an heiress, and a beauty, had long since been chosen for him, however, and upon their marriage, she brought with her a wealth of skill and had set about putting a woman’s touch on the house, and sealing it as the Battery’s greatest entertaining gem.
Shannon remembered balls as a very little girl, escaping at midnight while Mammy slept and looking through the banister at the dancing ladies and gentlemen below. Then she had been sent away to school for so very long, when she was eight years old. She would come home for Christmas and during the summers, always to Ravenel House, because that was where her family was during those seasons. During the winters, she remembered musicales, salons with cards, dinners, and Mammy tucking her in saying, “Don’t you be slippin’ down tuh thuh party, now, Missy. You know yo’ papa be mad if you do again. Ain’t no need fo’ it. Let me kiss you. I’m suh glad you home, chile. Mammy misses you when you gone.”
In the summers there were garden teas and sailing parties. Her mother would allow her to come out on the balcony with the ladies in her pretty new dress and watch the gentlemen below racing.
The house contained three levels of balconies and commanded an incomparable view. The foyer was at once elegant and impressive, and when Shannon had been brought out here upon her eighteenth birthday, there was no question that she had dethroned the reigning beauty, and that the era of Shannon Ravenel had begun. She might have had anyone she chose, and her choice now made society think she was even further above them, that the Ravenels knew something they didn’t, that one of their circle never would’ve been considered at all.
Of course, her choice was not officially known. It all seemed very secretive and high-aristocratic. And of course, there had been an almost hysteria to catch a glimpse of him, some saying they had once seen him when he had been in Charleston a few years ago, others making it their business to speak with those who had been privileged to dine at Santarella during his stay.
Naturally, Mr. and Mrs. Ravenel, aware of all this and eager to keep Shannon’s glory at its peak, sent out invitations to a ball, which was certain to be the crush of the season.
John Thomas had glanced at Shannon when they had announced the plan at the dinner table, but her eyes had remained downcast, and conversation had soon turned between Frederick and his father to the Illinois Congressman, Abraham Lincoln, who seemed to be gaining popularity for the presidency.
John Thomas went looking for Shannon the night before the ball. He found her in the library, a few candles lit here and there. She was looking out the window, hands clasped against her green gown, her eyes fixed on the great expanse of water. She was so beautiful it gave him physical pain. He hesitated, unsure, not wanting to disturb her.
She looked over her shoulder. “Oh, John Thomas,” she said softly.
He went forward a few steps, still allowing her room. “I wanted to check on you. You weren’t ill?”
“Ill? Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Why do you ask?”
“You were quiet,” he answered, hands in his pockets. He studied her, beautiful and remote.
“Are you fearing that I am cross with you?” she asked, eyes smiling a bit.
His shoulders eased, and he went forward, standing before her. “You are cross whenever you choose to be. I have no say in the matter.”
She laughed, giving her hand. He brought it to his lips and then met her eyes. He brushed his thumb over her knuckles and said almost in a whisper, “You’re sure?” There was tender concern in his eyes, and she pressed his hand, looking away. She laughed very softly. “Yes, of course I’m sure.” She looked back at him. “I was thinking that I hope you will not be angry.”
“Angry?” he said. “With you?”
She
looked back at him. The candlelight flickered off her features. “Tomorrow night. You do have a temper from time to time, you know.”
His brows lifted. “Do I? Never with you, I hope.”
“Not yet,” she said, smiling a bit. “But we are very new, after all.”
He squeezed her hand. “Shannon, if I’ve ever given you reason to suppose–”
“No, you silly man.” She laughed, touching his face briefly and then taking her hand away, as though embarrassed. “I mean that there will be several young men there.”
The tension eased from his shoulders. “If you are hinting that this is your mother and father’s last hope for you to meet someone else—that doesn’t trouble me. If you imagine that it will be easy to watch other men try to stake their claim—you are fair and far off, Miss Ravenel.”
She gave him a saucy smile. “Would you prefer I didn’t flirt with them?”
The thought vaguely dashed into his mind that his mother would be horrified at the thought of his son’s wife flirting with other men, not that he was overly concerned with that fact, except as it might wound Shannon. He knew that it sprang from a raising in a very different culture. There was more flirting than eating at a common Charleston dinner table. It was very subtle, hidden with innuendo and honey-polite words. These people even coaxed their horses out of an ill temper with a certain tone and way of moving. “Of course I would prefer you didn’t,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound stiff.
She looked like a mischievous child. “Well, I can’t promise you that.” She tipped up on her toes and kissed his cheek, sending a rush of adrenaline through him. “But I can promise you the last waltz.”
“You must, or I shall unleash my temper on you,” he said, eyes twinkling.
On the night of the ball, Miss Ravenel danced with so many men, and Mr. Haley seemed so very unconcerned with her partners, casually talking with Frederick Ravenel’s Charlestonian friends or dancing with the young belles, that they might almost have stilled tongues completely. Mrs. Templeton, for instance, remarked to Miss Davis, her sister, that the boy was mighty cool about the Gregorson boy’s blatant adoration if matters truly stood as they had been told. The slaves surely did talk, but hardly ever any truth in anything they circulated.