Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1)

by Sara Mitchell

  Meredith hugged Garnet again. “I must meet Sloan MacAllister.”

  She was so lovely, with her thick chestnut hair and dancing eyes. No wonder everyone was drawn to Meredith. Garnet returned the fierce hug. When Sloan met Meredith—she stopped the thought instantly, ashamed of herself. Afraid. She pulled away and tried to smile. “When you meet him, you’ll fall in love with him too,” she said very quietly before she turned without another word to climb the steps.

  Hundred-foot elms shaded the two-story clapboard house. Lush green ferns were hung from rusting iron hooks all about the wraparound porch, and a profusion of greenery potted in every kind of crockery was scattered between an equal assortment of mismatched rockers, gliders, and a row of oak pressed-back chairs.

  The chairs reminded Garnet of Sloan’s porch. Of Sloan. She sank onto a white wicker settee and curled her fingers tightly around the cushion to still their tremor.

  Meredith sat across from her in a glider and set it to rocking while she studied Garnet. Rueful understanding replaced the banter. “I’m sorry. I should have realized it, from the way Leah carries on so about the man. With Leah, of course, it’s not personal. She admires him simply because he’s a proficient physician. As for me, doubtless I’ll develop a monstrous crush. Of course, that’s all it would be. I don’t think I’m capable of loving anyone like Papa and Mama loved each other.”

  For a moment the only sound was the glider’s squeaking rhythm as it swayed back and forth. “But you’re not like me. If you love Sloan MacAllister, Garnet, then it’s a love blessed by God. Of the three of us—you, Leah, me—I’ve always known your capacity to give and receive love far outshone ours. Leah and I, well, we’re too selfish. I,” she paused, blinking rapidly, “I’ve always wished I could be more like you.”

  Stunned, Garnet peeled off her second best pair of go-to-town gloves. Stalling, she wiped her hot, itching hands with her handkerchief. “I came up here,” she said at last, “because I was hoping to learn how to be more like you.”

  They both leaned forward, knees bumping as they exchanged unselfconscious hugs and tearful giggles. When they resumed their relaxed poses, Garnet felt more at peace than she had in weeks. The words flowed naturally.

  “I’d reconciled myself to a lot of things,” she said. “I would never have anyone who loved me like Papa loved Mama. And I would never leave the Valley.”

  Meredith made a rude sound. “That is, of course, absurd. Ridiculous. Muddle-brained. Which I hope you’ve realized by now, since you’ve fallen in love and you’ve been offered the opportunity to leave the Valley. So . . . what’s your dilemma?”

  Garnet spread her hands, then let them drop to her lap. “For one thing, Mrs. Ward’s motivations are more transparent than she thinks I realize. She might introduce me around, so to speak. She might even hang one of my drawings in a back corner of a room. But my primary purpose would be to function as a glorified maid and companion, a more tolerant soul than my predecessors because, after all, I, too, am an artist.” She tipped her nose at an appropriately supercilious angle. “I would understand the vicissitudes of her artistic personality.”

  Meredith stopped rocking and leaned forward, elbows planted on her knees. “Well. How . . . undiscerning of her. Do you know, sister mine, sometimes you even surprise me.” She pondered Garnet, then grinned. “I think you should tag along with Madame Ward and teach her a lesson.”

  “I’m afraid I lack yours and Leah’s more forceful personalities. As long as Felicity allowed me the free time to wander about whatever countryside we were visiting so I could sketch the local flora, I’d ignore her idiosyncrasies. I doubt I’d notice them after the first week or two.” She removed the straw hat, elated but still uneasy with the newfound freedom. “I’ve enough of my own, remember.”

  “You needn’t look so frightened. You’re quite safe here. And in the shade your hair’s not all that noticeable. Tell me about Sloan then. He’s the second solution, I take it.”

  “Yes—no! Oh, this is hopeless.”

  “Mm. Indecisiveness is a good sign. All right, let’s try this. He’s not married, is he?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “His affections aren’t spoken for?”

  Jenna, Garnet thought. His first love. “I . . . can’t answer that.”

  “Pish-posh. Has he kissed you?”

  Color scalded her cheeks. “Yes.”

  “A circumspect but otherwise unremarkable liberty? Or the kind of kiss that speaks of great passion?”

  “Your reading material needs to drastically improve!” Garnet covered her face with her hands, but she knew Meredith could hear the smile in her voice. “I . . . I can’t answer for Sloan,” she managed levelly enough, “but . . . I’m afraid he wasn’t left in any doubt about—about mine.” And every time she relived the memory of her abandoned response—her rapt, willing participation, she marveled at herself. She despised herself.

  If she had been secretly afraid she would be incapable of feeling any emotion besides repulsion when being held in a man’s embrace, her response to Sloan had incinerated not only the past, but her fear. Helplessly she gazed across at her slack-jawed sister.

  “Oh, dear,” Meredith said. “That means he knows you’re in love with him, doesn’t it?”

  Absently Garnet began fidgeting with her gloves. She grew more certain with each day that her transparency was the reason for Sloan’s emotional—and physical—distance. “Except for Papa, Sloan’s the most perceptive individual I’ve ever known.”

  “That’s either very good or very bad.” Meredith snatched the wadded gloves and set them aside. “From the quality of the silence, I’m thinking it’s the latter.”

  “The last time I saw him, he didn’t speak a word on the ride home. When he helped me out of the buggy, he”—she bit the inside of her cheek and swallowed hard—“he laid his palm against my face. His expression . . . Meredith, he looked as though he’d been handed a staff that had just turned into a poisonous snake. He . . . started to speak. I don’t know what he wanted to say. But instead he closed his eyes. His hand—” She stopped again. His fingers had touched her freckles, one by one as though he were memorizing them. “He dropped his hand to his side and clenched it into a fist. Then he climbed into the buggy and left. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

  “And how long has it been?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Ah, in that case, I recommend that you start packing for a lecture tour.”

  Twenty-Four

  On a damp September dawn with mist draped over the Valley like wet cotton, Jacob set off for Strasburg with the lawyer’s bookcase he’d finally finished. A week earlier, all of them pinning on brave smiles while they choked back tears, he and Garnet had accompanied Leah to Mary Baldwin College, sixty-odd miles south in Staunton. ’Twas a wrenching time in a father’s life, this season of letting go.

  Garnet will be the next. The last . . .

  Oh, the girl had fought it, to be sure, though not with words. Stoic and silent, she had written down lists of all the fripperies she’d need for a thirty-day lecture tour with Mrs. Ward. She’d compiled a collection of her work to carry along in the fancy leather portfolio Mrs. Ward had presented her as a gift. She’d even hired a girl to cook and clean for Jacob and a laundress to spend two days a week with his washing.

  “Lass, I can putter around the kitchen quite happily,” he protested. “Even Mrs. Ward agrees.”

  “Felicity’s opinion is her own. She’s welcome to it. Now . . . shall I find someone for you, or do you want to ask around yourself?”

  That was his middle daughter. Never raised her voice, never argued. But once she made up her mind, a body might as well try to whittle an oak tree with a feather.

  Part of that resolve, however, was inherited from her father. Which was why Jacob set out for Strasburg this morning despite the dour day. He’d business, right enough—but an important portion of it was to be transacted at the Tom’s B
rook Mercantile.

  The store was a combination drygoods, depot, and post office. If there was news to be had concerning Sloan MacAllister, surely this was the place to unearth it. After warming his hands at the stove and exchanging pleasantries with the storekeeper’s wife, Jacob spent another quarter-hour picking through an array of ladies’ soaps and lotions. For the sake of Garnet’s reputation, he couldn’t very well launch into an interrogation at the outset.

  “Daughter’s off to see a bit of the world outside the Valley,” he confided to Mrs. Rawls. “Thought I should give her a little present before she leaves.”

  “The Pear’s Soap you’re looking at’s a fine choice.” Her hands, quick and neat, rummaged among the bottles and jars arranged on top of the glass showcase. “There’s also these—Latour’s Violet Soap? We just received the shipment yesterday. I thought the fragrance was quite nice. We also have some toilet water in several fragrances.”

  “She’s partial to violets.” He set the soap to one side, then eyed a squat little jar that promised to remove all manner of facial blemishes. “Ah . . . my daughter’s always mindful of her freckles.”

  No matter that after a score of years failing to rid herself of them, she’d declared it hopeless and refused any further suggestions. But he discussed sundry remedies with a diffident Mrs. Rawls, all the while waiting for an appropriate opportunity to quietly mention Sloan’s name.

  He was about to risk a frontal approach when the bell over the door jangled and a stoop-shouldered stick of a man stepped inside. “Foul day out,” he announced with a congenial nod in their direction. “Say, Miz Rawls, Sloan asked if I’d check on that paint he ordered a couple weeks back, next time I stopped in. He said if it was in, and I went ahead and toted it to his place so it’d be waitin’ when he got back, he promised he’d see what he could do for my . . . my mi-algae, I believe he calls it. No charge.”

  “No charge? My, yes. Lately he is a changed man. Why, when he stopped by before he—” Her cheeks went pink. “I’ll be with you in a moment, Homer.” Mrs. Rawls glanced at Jacob, embarrassment as well as a question in her eyes.

  “You go right ahead and check on the paint,” Jacob said, curiosity raging like the onset of a fever. “I’ll study on which of these would please my daughter the most. Ah . . . this Sloan feller? Would he be Dr. Sloan MacAllister?”

  Mrs. Rawls had started down the aisle, but at the question partially turned. “Why, yes. Do you know him then?”

  “I’ve made his acquaintance,” Jacob admitted. “But I haven’t seen much of him lately.”

  “Headed off somewhere up north, week before last,” Homer said. He shuffled past a barrel of autumn fruit and helped himself to an apple. “But I reckon he’ll be back most any day now—told me no later than the second Sunday in September. I’m his nearest neighbor, don’t you know.” He took a huge bite out of the apple, chewing noisily while he studied Jacob.

  “He’s gone?” Jacob struggled to hide his disappointment. “Well . . . sorry I missed him.” But he did thank the Lord that Sloan planned to return.

  Mrs. Rawls joined them, her lips pursed as she watched Homer crunch into the pilfered fruit. “The paint’s in the back. I’ll have Vernon fetch it for you. And you owe me a penny for that apple, Homer Davies.”

  “Aw, don’t go gettin’ in a lather.” Homer winked at Jacob. He rummaged in a side pocket of his faded overalls, then slapped the coin onto the counter. “There you go. Say, you want me to tell the doc you were in the neighborhood? What’s your name, mister?”

  “You might tell him that Jacob asked after him.” He grabbed a jar at random and thrust it toward Mrs. Rawls. “I’ll take this one. Best be headed out. Got to make Strasburg before noon.” The curiosity rode him hard, and while Mrs. Rawls wrapped the jar of something called Hind’s Honey Almond and Cream, Jacob gave in to temptation. “You mentioned Dr. MacAllister changed. What kind of change would that be, if you’ll forgive my asking?”

  Mrs. Rawls’s somber expression deepened to worry, and she darted a quick glance around as though afraid to be caught gossiping. Homer, on the other hand, whapped Jacob’s back and laughed.

  “Some folks hereabouts are calling it a revelation from the Lord. Myself, I’m more inclined to think it was fairies casting a spell. Whatever it was, I’m grateful. Before, those eyes of his could freeze a blue flame. Took my life in my hands every time we met on the road and I ventured a hello.”

  “Homer, you watch that wicked tongue of yours.”

  “Sorry, Miz Rawls.” He winked at Jacob again. “These days, now, he’s as likely to talk my blamed ear off. Wants my opinion of the land, soaks up local agriculture like a sand hill drinks rain after a two-month drought. Sure do hope this trip north and being surrounded by all them Yankees don’t afflict his brain.”

  Jacob finally managed to escape. But for the rest of that long day to Strasburg and back, he pondered what he had heard at the Tom’s Brook Mercantile.

  Berta Schumacher’s square frame house sat at the end of a row of ramshackle “company houses.” Built by the owner of the Central Pennsylvania Railroad as a token feudal gesture toward his employees, Adlerville regrettably bore scant resemblance to George Pullman’s Hyde Park community outside Chicago. The workers’ dwellings here had been hastily erected, with shabby materials and sloppy workmanship. Worse, the Central line had gone into receivership the previous year. It was a surprise to Sloan that any of the Adlerville houses still stood. But the remaining workers knew better than to complain.

  Slaves might have been freed in the South, but slavery without preference to the color of a man’s skin still existed. And its borders extended miles north of the Mason-Dixon line.

  Sloan walked along a muddy path, as familiar with its route as though he’d trod upon it the previous day. He wondered half whimsically what he’d find at the other end. It was a little past five, and chimneys chugged clouds of dingy smoke into an ocher-tinted sky. The acrid stench of coal blended with that of cooking cabbage and onions. Few souls were about. The men wouldn’t return home until long after dark, and the women’s labors inside their meager households lasted even longer. Sloan had spoken to exactly three people since he’d left the depot, none of whom knew him.

  An emaciated mongrel tied to a frayed rope yapped when he passed by. Two houses farther down, where an amiable Swedish bachelor used to live, a wide-eyed waif disappeared through the door when Sloan waved at him. Before the door slammed he heard the wretched squalls of a colicky baby. Six months ago, Sloan would have knocked on the door, introduced himself, then tried to persuade the mother to let him examine her baby.

  Another life, another time . . .

  It was a curiously detached sensation, returning to a place he’d lived in for three toilsome years, the place where he’d spread himself out like an unguent until there’d been nothing left. Now he felt little beyond the vague curiosity of a casual stranger just passing through. An unwelcome one at that.

  Not precisely the prodigal son’s reception here, Lord.

  He could almost hear a gently ironic reminder that Adlerville had never truly been his “home.”

  Still and all . . . “Don’t believe I’m ready to face Baltimore.”

  Even as he murmured the words aloud he yielded to the inevitability of it. But not this trip. When he did return to Baltimore to accept his mother’s grudging olive branch, he planned to have Garnet by his side.

  As always, longing coursed through him, along with an uncertainty that threatened his newfound peace. Perhaps he should have at least written her—no. Garnet deserved neither his personal demons nor his doubts; she certainly didn’t deserve to be dragged through the sewer of his past, or rather—any more of it than the surface he’d already inflicted upon her. This way was best. He could come to her restored. Revitalized. Re . . . created.

  When he explained she would understand. She had to understand.

  But what of the gut-wrenching desolation that had filled her face the l
ast time he saw her? God help him, he had turned away from her. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think he’d even told her good-bye. Lord? How could I have been so cruel? So unbelievably insensitive? She’ll forgive me, won’t she? When he explained . . . she’d understand.

  Sloan dodged a sludge-filled pothole, his thoughts far away. He was relieved when he reached Mrs. Schumacher’s cottage and spotted the delicate lace curtains still hanging in the two front windows. Determinedly bright yellow window shutters, though peeling and faded, still defied the dreariness. Thin smoke drifted from her chimney. Sloan loped up the steps and rapped on the door, feeling more trepidation than he would have liked.

  “Mrs. Schumacher? It’s Dr. MacAllister.”

  Relief filled him when through the thin wooden panel he heard the sound of a hearty “Alleluia! Praise Jesus!”

  Moments later the door creaked inward. “I knew you’d come back someday.” One swollen-knuckled hand clutched the duckbill-shaped handle of the cane he’d given her the previous year. She beckoned with the other, and Sloan suppressed an exclamation of dismay at the pathetically twisted old fingers. Tears swam in her almost colorless eyes. “Thanks be to Jesus.”

  He took the wrinkled hand in his, careful not to apply pressure, and kissed her papery cheek. “I figured out what I was running away from.” He cupped her elbow and steered them back into her tiny sitting area, gently easing her into her rocking chair. “And then I allowed grace to bring me back.”

  After stoking the fire, he tucked a fringed woolen throw back over her waist and legs, then dragged over a stool and sat beside her.

  “I’ve been praying for you, all these months,” Berta said. A deep sigh brought a faint bloom to her waxen complexion. She smiled. “Tell me about it.”

  “That’s why I came back.” He studied her for a moment. “Hannah still looking after you? You look like you’ve lost a bit of weight. And the pain’s worse, isn’t it? Did you take the medicine I left for you?”