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Within moments, Ellie came outside and chose the rocker farthest from him.
“Sit over here by me. I don’t want to have to yell so the whole neighborhood can hear.”
She took her time in complying, which was no surprise, but she eventually sat next to him.
“We need to talk about this party,” he said, using his colonel voice.
“We already did. You’re going. I’m not.”
He should have known it wouldn’t be easy. “Oh, yes, you are. You cooked up this courtship idea, and you’re not leaving me to explain why you’re not with me on my first night home. You owe it to me after causing this fiasco.”
She huffed out a big sigh. “It’s not that bad.”
“It’s not?” He leaned forward in his chair. “What happens when time goes by and there isn’t a wedding? Did you think of that?”
Her wide eyes and surprisingly silent mouth told him she hadn’t.
“You’re the big plan-maker. I hope you have a solution for this.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them.
“Now that you mention it, I have thought of something—”
“No!” The word came out like the howl of a man falling off a cliff. He sprang from his chair and headed for the door. “No more plans! I’ll call at your house at eight. Just don’t think between now and then. Please do not think!”
But he could see from her dreamy-looking eyes and the angle of her cocked head that she was, indeed, thinking.
* * *
Another orphan.
After dark that evening, Ellie leaned against one of the massive white columns on Miss Ophelia’s back gallery and waited for Graham to return with her cold drink. Since he’d left her at this secluded corner, she’d discouraged eight hopeful suitors, from around age seventeen to over sixty. Now she finally had a moment alone to think, with the gentle strains of orchestra music wafting out all six of the floor-to-ceiling jib windows. If only a cool breeze would come and blow away the fog in her mind. In wartime, one heard of orphans all the time, but to have held one in her arms this afternoon—it made her want to cry.
As Graham had.
He’d tried to hide it, didn’t want to admit how that baby had affected him, but she’d seen him wipe the tears. And that might be a good thing, after four years at war. Perhaps he was starting to heal from its horrors already.
If only Ellie—and Magnolia Grove—could also recover from the war. Her visit to the plantation this afternoon hadn’t eased her mind. The cotton was squaring nicely, but the fields were full of weeds, and the workers were few.
And what of that cryptic note from Leonard Fitzwald? What could he possibly have to say to her that she didn’t already know? It was no secret that Uncle Amos owed Leonard’s father fifteen thousand dollars, due after this year’s harvest. She didn’t like the fact that they’d borrowed money from their broker. But they’d had little choice, and nearly every planter in the Natchez area, plus across the river in Louisiana, had to do the same.
Magnolia Grove had to do well this year. They couldn’t sustain another year like the past three. And with Uncle Amos laid up, Ellie had to make the ground profitable. If only she could be sure she could do it...
You can do anything you set your mind to.
Her mother’s voice drifted back to her from the past.
I married an Anderson, but remember that I am a Stanton, and therefore, so are you. Stanton women have pulled their families through Indian raids, fires, death and destruction. God may call you to hard things too, but you’ll come through, because you can do anything you set your mind to.
She twisted Mother’s pearl ring, the one Ellie had worn on her right hand ever since Mother placed it there on her last day on earth. Yes, her mother and grandmother had been strong, but it would take more than the Stanton backbone and the Anderson name to keep Magnolia Grove in the family this year.
The tall case clock chimed the quarter hour in Miss Ophelia’s center hall. Ellie glanced at her timepiece—a dainty little brooch from Uncle Amos last Christmas—and realized Graham had been gone nearly half an hour. Had Susanna or one of her friends cornered him? Did he need help escaping?
Just as she was about to go in and look for him, he strode out the jib window, open tonight to extend the dancing to the back gallery, and handed her a silver cup. “Just as I thought, everyone in Natchez has heard about us.”
Ellie turned from the view of the formal gardens and gazed into the crowded ballroom as the quartet transitioned to a sweet rendition of “Aura Lea.”
“Who are they gossiping about? You and me? Or you, Miss Noreen and Betsy?”
“All of us. We’re the talk of Natchez tonight.”
Susanna and a man Ellie didn’t know, dressed in a Confederate officer’s uniform, whirled across the brightly lit room, her emerald hoopskirts sweeping the expanse. The woman seemed to think it was her responsibility to dance with every former Confederate soldier at the party. Ellie had to admit it was nice to see a few gray uniforms again after two years of occupation by the Union army.
Susanna’s cloying smile turned to a frown as she caught Ellie’s gaze.
“She’s going to cause trouble.” Ellie kept her own smile intact until Susanna and her partner danced across the room and out of sight.
Graham’s grimace might have meant he thought any trouble Susanna could cause would be minor compared to Ellie’s plan.
She snatched his arm and pulled him closer to the gaslight to see his face better. “I know what that look meant. I’m doing only what you asked me to do—helping you get rid of the girls. They aren’t bothering you now, are they? Think what tonight would have been like if I hadn’t done as you asked.”
In the brighter light, his eyes blazed like the flame. “I shouldn’t have hung the distress flag. I should have camped out in the old hideout until the party was over.”
So much had happened that day, it seemed she had seen the signal last week rather than twelve hours ago. Just this morning, she’d had no idea Graham would come home, that she would enter a fabricated courtship with him, that a baby would enter her life—
“The baby... What did you learn about her this afternoon while I was out at Magnolia Grove?”
“For one thing, I found out why the baby is your namesake.” Graham swirled the punch in his cup as he used to when in deep thought. Then he looked up and met her gaze, the trace of an undefinable emotion in his eyes. “I didn’t know how much you did for Francine before she and Stuart got married and moved to Harrisonburg.”
Ellie sipped her punch, a little tart for her taste. “All I did was show kindness to her, a girl I liked, at a time when others in this town did not. She was a Ballard, and you know how most people in town viewed that family.”
“Outlaws, thieves, drunkards—but I think most of that was exaggerated. Your friendship apparently meant a lot to Francine. And I appreciate it too, for my stepbrother’s sake.” Graham tasted his punch, and then he swallowed another big gulp. “Want me to get rid of yours?”
After all these years, he remembered that she liked her punch as sweet as her coffee. “Don’t let Miss Ophelia find out.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve rescued you from having to eat or drink something you didn’t like.” Moving nothing but his eyes, he scanned the gallery and gardens, then turned his back to the house and drank her sour punch as fast as if it were the best raspberry cordial. “Lilah May never knew that you didn’t eat a single pea the entire time you and your uncle stayed in town.”
She laughed at that. “Yes, I owe you for eating many a helping from my plate when no one was looking.”
Graham set both punch cups on the wrought iron table in the corner. “Noreen told me what happened when Stuart announced their engagement.”
“It was shameful. She was a good girl, no matter what kind of family she came from.” Ellie unfolded her fan and waved the effects of the humidity from her neck. “I don’t understand why Francine never let Miss Noreen know about the baby.”
“Francine’s father disowned her for what he thought was shameful behavior on her part. He thought Stuart, a man far above her station, was toying with her, using her for nefarious reasons. But he was wrong. According to Noreen, Stuart loved Francine and intended to marry her from the day they met.”
“That’s how I saw their relationship too. Francine lived by her Bible.”
“She was afraid her family would try to take Betsy from her if they knew about her. So she continued to run the store Stuart’s father left him, just as she had after he went to war. Harrisonburg is far enough away that no one in Natchez, including Noreen, found out she’d had a baby. I guess she never knew her father and brother were killed in the war.”
Poor Francine. To have found love, had a child and then lost that love—it had to have been the hardest thing imaginable.
The only thing worse was never to experience love at all...
Where had that thought come from? She pushed it away. Romantic love was not for Ellie. And here at this party, with the man who knew her better than anyone else, was not a safe place to explore such a notion. Family love was enough for her, and she had that with Uncle Amos and even Lilah May and Miss Noreen, in a way. And she could love Francine’s child like a niece. In fact, since Betsy was her namesake, she owed her as much love as she could give.
“Aura Lea” drew to a close, and Graham offered his arm. “Stroll in the garden?”
As they descended the stone stairs to the lawn, Ellie had to admit that the moonlight made him even more handsome, as every unattached female in the city had surely noticed tonight.
Since he seemed to want to talk of other things, Ellie decided to ask the question that had been nagging at her since he came home that afternoon. “Graham, why are you so opposed to spending time with a woman? I know Susanna isn’t your type, but Natchez, and especially the Pearl Street neighborhood, has lots of nice, pretty girls.”
She could feel the tension build in his arm—but why? “Did something happen during the war to make you leery of women?”
“If I tell you, will you promise not to think up a solution to the problem?”
Ellie had to laugh. “I promise.”
“A promise is a sacred thing.” His voice deepened, lowered to a near whisper.
She held her breath, waiting for what she sensed was close to his heart.
“I can’t marry. I can’t support a wife.”
“Graham, just because Ashland Place and Ammadelle are gone—”
“You don’t understand. None of those girls in there do either.” He gestured toward the brightly lit house. “It’s not just our plantations. I have no livelihood. I have no money. I’m not even a citizen anymore—of any country. I’ve lost everything.”
“Why are you not a citizen? I haven’t heard of that happening to any of our neighbors.”
He let out a noisy breath. “Andrew Johnson has decreed that all West Point graduates who served as officers of the Confederacy must apply individually for our pardons and the restoration of our citizenship. Since Father and I are both West Point men and served as colonels, we lost Ashland Place, Ammadelle—and everything else.”
The full moon revealed a fresh line between his eyes—a line that hadn’t been there before baby Betsy arrived that afternoon.
The baby. His orphaned niece. No wonder Graham’s worry showed on his face. He had a child to support now, and no way of doing so.
And Ellie’s fear of marriage—fear that a husband would fail to provide for her as her father had failed—had driven him to West Point all those years ago. That meant she was to blame for Graham’s dilemma. The thought made her weak, and she eased herself to the iron bench next to them.
But she couldn’t let him find out about that. She blurted the first thing that came to her mind. “Well, that’s what you get for going to a Yankee military school. You should have gone to Charleston—to the Citadel.”
“Here we go with that again. Do you know that, at the time, I heard those words from everybody in town except Father and Noreen?” He sat beside her, keeping a good distance between them. “But that’s why I can’t marry. I have nothing. If our town house didn’t belong to Noreen from her first marriage, I wouldn’t have a place to live.”
Graham gazed off into the distance, in the direction of Ashland Place. “I can’t buy or sell property. I can’t vote or run for public office. My military career is over, my plantation is confiscated, as is Father’s, and I have no other skills. Everything is gone. And now I have Noreen and a baby niece to care for. There’s no room in my life for a wife.”
And it was her fault. Above all else, she had to help him somehow... “Listen to my idea. I think it will work. I can keep those girls away.”
He let out a moan that must have come from his toes.
“Let’s continue the courtship arrangement. It would help me too. Dozens of discharged soldiers are coming back to town, and they’re at my door every day, wanting to court me.”
“Why don’t you let them?”
“Well, just as you can’t marry, I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“My reasons don’t matter. Let’s keep up the courtship ruse in order to discourage each other’s would-be suitors and belles. But we have to promise to remain friends—nothing more.”
He paused so long, she was sure he would say no. Then he took her hand and leaned in close. “I’ll have to think about this. Something about making up a courtship doesn’t feel quite right to me.”
“But you’ll consider it?”
“I’ll consider it. And I promise to remain just friends with you. That suits me fine.”
She should have felt relief, knowing Graham wouldn’t attempt a true courtship again. But something in his tone made her wonder, for the first time, if maybe her great ideas weren’t so great after all.
The thought startled her as much as the rustling of leaves directly behind her.
She spun in the direction of the sound and faced a uniformed man, his left eye covered with a black patch and a scar across his left cheekbone. Ellie sucked in her breath. In the flickering gaslight, his gaunt face and form looked as if he had come back from the grave.
“Ellie,” he rasped, reaching for her hand. “I’m glad I lived to see you again.”
She instinctively pulled back from him. Then recognition hit her like shrapnel. “Leonard Fitzwald...”
Chapter Four (#ulink_14a66096-f635-5f99-91f6-a15b8d6fa0e5)
Graham’s fists clenched at his sides as his memories of this man brought out every fight instinct he’d developed during four years at war. Of all the men he would have expected to die of sheer cowardice on the battlefield, Leonard Fitzwald would have topped the list.
“I trust you received my letter,” Fitzwald said, his wheezy voice sounding like an eighty-year-old man’s.
This weasel had dared to communicate with Ellie? The thought ignited a searing flame deep in Graham’s gut. Fitzwald had no right to correspond with any decent woman. “Why did you send Miss Anderson a letter?”
Fitzwald took a half step back and ran his finger over the edge of the eye patch. “Business. With the potential of a social visit afterward.”
“You’re mistaken, Fitzwald. You’re not visiting Miss Anderson, and you’re going to do your business now, in front of me.” He looked the man over. The Confederate uniform on his back did nothing to make him look like a soldier. “And no more letters.”
“Graham!”
He was aware of Ellie’s high-pitched voice, but all he could see in his mind was Leonard Fitzwald calling on Ellie in the months before Graham laid his heart at her feet. “I know things about this man that you don’t know, Ellie. You have to trust me.”
“Colonel, let it go.” The weasel turned to her. “I’ll call at your house Friday at eight, as planned.”
“Stay away from her, Fitzwald. I haven’t forgotten how to fight.”
Ellie wouldn’t know he wasn’t talking about the war. Her gaze snapped from Graham to Fitzwald and back again, her mouth open as if she didn’t know what to say or whom to say it to.
But Fitzwald remembered the incident Graham referred to. He could see it in the man’s weasel eye.
“Tell me your business now, Leonard,” Ellie said, her voice quivering a bit. “Graham is an old friend, and you can trust him with whatever you have to say.”
“Fine way to treat a veteran.”
