He grinned. “My brother and I used to hide there when we were small.”
They left the path for the trees, which were as private as a wilderness. The roar of the festival came to them faintly in the cool afternoon shadows.
They stood face to face. He reached for her hand. “Caro, I am so sorry,” he said. “I’ve been miserable to think that you’re angry with me.”
“The fault was mine,” she said, her anger gone as though she had never felt it. “I was wrong to quarrel with you.”
“You’ll forgive me?”
“I’ve already forgiven you.”
She trembled to see the joy on his face. He raised his hand to her cheek and stroked it with his gentle fingers. “Caro,” he said, his voice full of tenderness.
She had forgotten the sound of her name spoken with tenderness.
He drew her close and leaned toward her. He kissed her, his lips as gentle as his touch, and joy spread through her. He moved his hands to embrace her, and the joy was followed by warmth throughout her body. He clasped her around the waist, and she twined her arms around his neck. They were the same height, and the kiss was easy for both of them.
They kissed for so long that she had to pull away. “Let me draw breath,” she said, laughing.
“I’ve made you breathless,” he said, teasing.
“You’ve made me happy,” she said. Suddenly her eyes welled with tears.
“Caro? What is it, my dearest Caro?”
Caro. Cara. The sob escaped despite her best efforts to quell it. “Is it wrong to be so happy so soon after my father’s passing?”
Danny asked, “Would he be pleased to know that you’re happy?”
The tears spilled out, and she raised her hand to her face. “My happiness was always a joy to him.”
Danny touched her skin where the tears left their trail. “Then it isn’t wrong at all.” He leaned close again. “I love you,” he whispered, and let his mouth travel from the salty, silvery glint of sorrow to her lips.
Chapter 9: Sumter County
It was too easy to get used to deception, Emily marveled as she slipped her sketchbook into her pocket. She felt a momentary twinge at deceiving her stepmother, who trusted her. It would be worse if she were making an assignation. But she was not. She had a book in her pocket, and she would trade it for a letter.
She was bound for Tradd Street.
Just before she left, Susan smiled. “You look so much prettier now that you’ve put off your mourning,” she said. Her stepmother touched her cheek. “And happier, too.”
She found Caro alone in the kitchen at her sewing. She rose, a gesture of respect, but her smile was quick and sunny. Caro said, “Miss Emily, I scarcely recognized you.”
“I’ve put off my mourning.” The dress was a gray plaid much enlivened by a purple stripe, with sweeping sleeves and a billowing skirt. She said, “I didn’t intend to wear a dress so bright. But when I saw the length, I was captivated by it.”
Caro laughed. “I think like a seamstress now,” she said. “Turn around. Let me see the back.”
Emily turned, letting Caro look at the pleats in the skirt, and then she twirled, letting the skirt bell and the hoops sway.
They laughed together, two serious young women with reason for happiness. Emily sat and Caro followed suit. Emily leaned forward. “You look so bright,” she said.
Caro leaned forward, too. “I have reason to,” she said, and blushed.
Emily laughed, a purely happy sound. She said to Caro, “So you have a beau.”
“Stop it,” Caro said, blushing harder.
Emily laid a hand on her arm. She was smiling. “Oh, it’s wicked to tease, I know, but the more you contradict and the more you blush, the surer I am.”
“You can’t tell anyone.”
Emily asked, “Who is it? Do I know him?”
“Danny Pereira. My aunt Maria’s son.”
“What does your mother say?”
“She doesn’t know.” Caro’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She can’t.”
Emily thought of all her own deceptions. It would be easy to add this to it. She said, “I brought you something.” She pulled the book from her pocket.
Caro reached for it eagerly. At the sight of the title on the spine, she smiled as happily as she had at Emily’s tease. “Macaulay! How did you know I wanted this so?”
Emily felt delighted too. “I asked Mr. Pereira what you might want to read, and he told me.”
Caro asked, “Do you see him often?”
“Only about the bank drafts. He keeps them a secret for me.”
Caro didn’t reply. Her cheeks were still pink. She said, “I have a letter for you.”
“I hoped so.”
She handed Emily the letter from Mr. Aiken, which Emily tore open to read. She looked up, smiling. She said, “Mr. Aiken will be visiting Sumter County in a few weeks. When I go there, I’ll see him again.”
Caro said, “You have a beau, too.”
“Mr. Aiken is my editor. And my friend.”
“I hear a contradiction,” Caro said. “I see a blush.”
Emily laughed. “Now I’ll have to tell you to stop it.”
“I will if you will, Miss Emily.”
Their shared happiness made it easier to speak freely to one another. Emily said, “My friends call me Emily.”
Surprise shadowed Caro’s face. She said softly, “Do you mean it? Do you dare it?”
“Yes,” Emily said.
As Emily left Tradd Street, she was smiling again. So Caro had a secret, too. I wonder if I will meet him, Emily thought, surprised at the idea that she would hope to make the acquaintance of a person of color.
Her mind was elsewhere at midday, when she sat down with her father and stepmother for dinner. It was too hot to stay in Charleston, but she knew why her father lingered in the heat. As a young unmarried woman, she wasn’t supposed to know, but every planter’s daughter knew the rhythm of the rice crop and could discern whether the season had been kind to rice or not. It didn’t hurt that her stepmother fretted loudly over her father’s affairs and that her distress was like a barometer that anyone—the innocent and the slave alike—could hear and make sense of.
It had been a bad year for rice, and the rice crop on her father’s place in Colleton County had been a disappointment. Her uncle’s place, which had given Susan so much hope, had been neglected and mismanaged for years. Her father had visited and had returned with pain on his face. The affairs were in a tangle. The overseer was a drunk who never raised his hand to anyone. The slaves took advantage; they were indolent. Emily had stood in the foyer, and the voices in the study were perfectly audible. Her father had said, “It will take months to set things right. Years, perhaps.”
Susan asked, “How did he manage?”
“I don’t know. It will be up to me to straighten it out.”
Buoyed by the hope of James Jarvie’s fortune, her father had arranged to expand the upland plantations that Susan had brought to their union. As a cotton planter, her father was further in debt, and unless cotton did well this year, he would stay in debt. Her stepmother had begun to plan for the refurbishment of the house on King Street, even though the Herriots were still living there. Emily lingered in the foyer on the day that Susan pressed her husband about money for new furnishings and repairs, and she heard her father groan.
Her father had renewed his effort to run for an Assembly seat, and he needed to entertain the well-to-do of Charleston all summer in the pines and throughout the round of parties that began when Charleston woke up again in the fall and stretched throughout the winter until the season ended.
Today, at the table, Susan said, “I know business keeps you in town, Lawrence, but Emily and I will go to Sumter County soon.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” her father said.
“We won’t.” She glanced at Emily, who was rosy in her new dress. “Now
that Emily is out of mourning, she’ll find herself a husband in no time.”
Her father turned pale and compressed his lips, a sure sign that he was about to lose his temper. He said, “I shudder at the expense of a wedding.”
He had beaten her to it. Emily had been ready to make a protest herself: “Mother, don’t even mention it. I’m not ready yet.”
As their coachman, Henry, handed them from the carriage, Susan said to Emily, “The house looks so small after King Street.”
Her stepmother was angling—there was no other word—for that house.
Emily breathed in the pine-scented air of Sumter County, which was so much easier on the lungs than Charleston’s. She looked fondly at the plain white house where she had spent every summer of her childhood. She said, “It’s comfortable here. Even though it’s plain.”
Susan dismissed Henry with a wave of her hand. “Can you imagine asking the Aikens to dine with us?”
“When I was a little girl coming here, the Aikens used to have a little pine cottage as their summer place. I don’t think they’d mind our house.”
Susan reached for Emily’s hand. “I’m so glad you put off your mourning,” she said.
Emily wondered what Mr. Aiken would say, and the color rose in her cheeks. Her stepmother misunderstood her, seeing a belle’s eagerness. “Jane Aiken did very well last year,” Susan said. “Perhaps we can be hopeful for you, too.”
The next day, Emily surprised her stepmother by asking if she could take the carriage to call on the Aikens. “Camilla and I got on just fine the last time I visited,” she said.
Susan said, “Camilla Aiken hasn’t read a book since she left school. What do you two talk about?”
“She makes me laugh.”
Susan regarded Emily, who had a lively expression and a dress brightened with purple, and said, “Then it’s all right. Go to see her and give my regards to her mother and sister.”
Emily found Camilla sitting alone in the front parlor of the house that had been built to replace the pine cabin. Like the grand houses of Charleston—like the house on King Street, where they would live sooner rather than later, if her stepmother had her way—it was austere and elegant, furnished with the Sheraton pieces that the family had preserved and still cherished. Camilla sat on a pretty sofa that framed her white dress. Despite her fashionable muslin and her fashionable curls, Camilla looked tired and cross. When Emily asked after the family, Camilla said, “Jane’s still in a tizzy and Mama’s still in a tizzy and for all they know, I’m at the bottom of the backyard well.”
Emily laughed. “It can’t be as bad as that!”
Camilla pouted. “Jane got someone grand and handsome, and all I get is Mr. Ellison. And my poky old cousin Joshua, who won’t even live in South Carolina.”
Slowly, as though she didn’t know and didn’t much care, Emily asked, “Is Mr. Aiken in Sumter County?”
“He’s come for a few weeks.” Camilla looked sly. “You seemed to like him when you were here last fall.”
“He’s a pleasant man,” Emily said. She was worse than a deceiver. She had come to delight in deception. “But I can’t imagine that my papa would want me to marry a man who lives in Ohio.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised what can happen when a Carolina man falls in love with a girl whose family has property in Colleton County. And enough hands to work all of it. Wouldn’t your father make you a good settlement?”
She recalled her father’s worries about his estate and her uncle’s. About his campaign and her wedding, even though it was only a figment of her stepmother’s imagination. “I never thought of it,” Emily said.
“What a goose you are. How do penniless men get on in the world? Ask your papa what he’s planned for you.”
Emily felt cold and uneasy. She asked, “Do you expect to see Mr. Aiken?”
“We’ll see everyone. We’re having a barbecue in a few days, with music and dancing, and the whole county’s invited. Now that you’re out of mourning, you can dance again.”
Emily considered this.
Camilla began to laugh. “Penniless men. I’ve been warned against them, and now I’m warning you.”
The day of the barbecue dawned sunny and pleasant. Susan said, “The Aikens are lucky in everything. Even in the weather.”
Lawrence looked up from his newspaper, frowning.
Emily asked, “What is it, Papa? Does the news trouble you?”
“Emily, the news is none of your concern. Don’t bother your father.”
Emily, who read the Sumter Watchman in secret, after her father finished with it, had an inkling of the reason for her father’s disquiet. The Watchman was on guard against the enemies of slavery, and as the price of cotton rose ever higher, the planters of Sumter County grew more and more outspoken in defense of the institution that made their fortunes. But she was not supposed to know, any more than their slaves were, about the anger that roiled through the South.
Susan rose. “Emily, let your father read the news in peace. Come upstairs. It’s time to dress.” She smiled fondly. “In one of your pretty new dresses.”
Emily thought, I’ll see Mr. Aiken today. It was like the fizz of the champagne she had drunk at Jane Aiken’s engagement party. “Yes, Mother,” she said obediently, as she prepared to meet a penniless man she knew her parents would disapprove of and that she hoped they would overlook.
Lydia helped her into her dress, which was a cream-colored cotton with an ornate lozenge-shaped border in light purple—reminiscent of light mourning—and pagoda sleeves that extended only to the elbow. The undersleeves were a voile so delicate that it was translucent and exposed the shape of her forearm. Lydia said, “You look pretty, Miss Emily.” Emily looked at the cheval mirror, where she could see herself from bonnet to boots. Lydia was a flatterer, but today she was right. The anticipation of seeing Mr. Aiken brought the color to her cheeks.
It was like the engagement party but in daylight. The second-floor piazza had been arranged like a parlor, with chairs and settees, and in the side yard, on the lawn next to the garden, long dining tables had been set up under a canopy. The smell of roasting shoat drifted from the pit behind the house. It would be country food, barbecued shoat and cornbread, fried chicken, and new vegetables. The sound of conversation and laughter drifted from the piazzas and the gardens.
“What a press!” Susan said. “Where are Mr. and Mrs. Aiken? We should pay our respects.”
As they worked their way through the crowd, Lawrence and Susan ahead, Emily demurely behind, a familiar, sturdy, vigorous figure hailed them. “Mr. Ellison!” Susan said. “Are you acquainted with Miss Emily?”
“I surely am, Mrs. Jarvie. Met her last fall when she visited her sister.”
Nancy had stayed home today. She was expecting again, and she said that the smell of food made her ill.
Emily held out her hand. She said to Susan, “Mr. Ellison was very kind to me when I stayed with Nancy.”
Susan’s eyebrows rose. “I had no idea you were so well acquainted,” she said.
John Ellison shot Emily a knowing look. He said, “I’m glad Miss Emily’s out of her mourning, but you shouldn’t press her.”
Emily laughed. Susan said, “Mr. Ellison, excuse us, we need to find Mr. and Mrs. Aiken.”
Susan took Emily aside. She said, “You didn’t tell me you flirted with Mr. Ellison last fall.”
“I didn’t. He dined with Nancy and her husband. He’s their nearest neighbor. We were courteous to each other.” The half-truths caught in her throat. She was impatient for her real purpose here today: Joshua Aiken.
Susan gave her a searching look. “You’re out of mourning,” she said, “but you need to be careful who you pay attention to and who pays attention to you.”
Mother, I’m here to see a penniless younger son, and I don’t care if he wants my dowry or not. Unmarried girls, like slaves, knew how to act obedient. She said, “I know.”
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They pressed on, but they made no progress toward their hosts, since they halted every few steps to greet the people of the county they knew. Emily’s dress was exclaimed on. “You’re out of mourning!” The women told her that her dress was lovely, and the men, bolder, told Emily that she was pretty.
They came upon Camilla, bright and rosy and impetuous, who greeted Susan and Lawrence with politesse and said to Emily, “Your dress!”
Emily nodded.
Camilla grasped the hand of the young man who stood at her shoulder. “Cousin Joshua, Miss Emily is no longer in mourning!”
He gazed at her with his keen dark eyes and smiled at her with the rosy mouth surrounded by the dark whiskers. He removed his hat, and the breeze stirred his thick dark hair. “Miss Jarvie,” he said. He looked as she remembered him. He looked as she had imagined him.
Her breath caught in her throat. “Mr. Aiken,” she said, hoping that she sounded demure rather than eager.
Susan said, “Miss Camilla, please introduce us.”
Camilla, unusually polite, introduced Mr. Aiken as her cousin, whom she had known since they were children. Mr. Aiken, smiling, added that their families were distantly connected, and it was kind of Miss Camilla to think so well of him. Camilla, still restrained, further explained that Mr. Aiken and his family had attended her sister’s engagement party and that she had made him an introduction to Emily. Demurely—Camilla was better at this than Emily herself—she said to Susan, “I hope I didn’t blunder, Mrs. Jarvie.”
“Oh no,” Susan said, taking in the northern frock coat and the ready-made hat and disapproving of both. “It’s kind of you to remember your childhood companion.”
She makes him sound like a faithful dog, Emily thought.
When they finally made their way to the piazza and mounted its steps, they paid their respects to the reigning family of Sumter County. It was like greeting the members of royalty. A quick word, a press of the hand, and an obeisance, and it was over.
Emily said, “Mother, I’m feeling a little faint with the sun. Will you excuse me? I want to sit in the shade.”
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