A Reluctant Belle

by Beth White

  “Then perhaps some of those opportunists, as you call them, might have decided to eliminate an impediment to the government trough. Money is a powerful motive for treachery.”

  “That is a fairly astute observation.” Schuyler rubbed his forehead. “I wish Levi were here too. He’d know how to pursue such a lead.”

  “Why don’t you hire him—if, that is, you don’t feel you can trust the investigation to local law enforcement?”

  He stared at her so hard and for so long, eyes opaque as blue steel, that she inwardly shrank. She’d only been trying to help.

  Finally he rose. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. I’ll telegram Levi, and maybe he can come over to Mobile with Camilla for the—for the funeral.” Extending a hand to pull Joelle to her feet, he drew her awkwardly into his arms. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for—” He stopped, abruptly. “Whoops.”

  “What’s the matter?” She looked over her shoulder.

  Gil stood in the doorway. He looked both disapproving and embarrassed.

  Oh dear. Trying not to appear as if she had been caught in some illicit lover’s embrace, she extricated herself with as much dignity as possible and curtseyed to her betrothed. “Good morning, Gil. We were just talking about you.” He had at least crossed her mind. That had to count for something.

  Gil’s frown deepened. “Why?”

  She prayed her burning cheeks would calm down. Drat this red hair and fair skin. “Schuyler has just had some very bad news, and I was thinking you’d be a good person to talk to him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Gil’s face relaxed. “What happened?”

  “Schuyler’s father—”

  “There’s no need to bother the preacher,” Schuyler interrupted, putting a hand on Joelle’s shoulder. “I’m fine now, and I’ve got things to attend to, related to your suggestion.”

  The look in his eyes kept her from arguing. For all his gregariousness, Schuyler could be very private about some things. “All right. Please let me know if there’s anything I or my sisters can do.”

  “I will.” Schuyler squeezed her shoulder and quit the room.

  She felt the loss of his warmth, but focused on Gil with an effort. “Schuyler’s father was killed yesterday during a campaign speech in Tuscaloosa. It was in this morning’s paper. The gunman slipped away in the crowd and hasn’t been apprehended.”

  “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yes, it is terrible. He loved his father very much, and his family is close. I just tried—” She pressed her hands together in delayed distress. “I wanted to make it less painful than reading it in the newspaper. We’ve been friends for a long time.”

  “I thought you didn’t like him.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you argue constantly. About everything.”

  “Of course we argue. He’s like a brother to me.” She could still feel Schuyler’s hair pressing into her cheek as he wept over her hands. She’d never had a brother, but that alternating aggravation and protectiveness she felt for him could be described no other way. Gil would just have to live with it. “Have you had breakfast?”

  “I don’t eat breakfast. I thought you might want to take a walk and discuss our marriage plans.”

  What kind of person didn’t eat breakfast? No wonder he was so skinny.

  “What is there to discuss? Well, other than who will perform the ceremony. Can a preacher marry himself?”

  Schuyler would have laughed at the facetious question, but Gil seemed to take it seriously. “That’s exactly the kind of thing I mean. Do you want to marry in the church or at Ithaca—I mean Daughtry House?”

  She really didn’t want to talk about it at all. “Let me think about it. Selah and Levi married at home, but I’m not sure I want that much hoopla.”

  “I thought all women wanted hoopla.” He looked confused. “In that case, let’s go ahead and get married here in Memphis. I don’t think long engagements are a good idea anyway. Your grandparents’ minister can do the service. Or we can go to the courthouse, whichever you prefer.”

  She felt unreasonably panicked. “No! Gil, I’ll have to go to Mobile for the funeral, and—don’t you see that we can’t rush into things?”

  “Rush?” He scratched his head. “We’ve known each other for ten years. But I guess if I’ve waited this long, another few months won’t kill me.”

  “Exactly. Let’s go back to Tupelo so I can make sure the hotel is in good order before I make the trip to Mobile. When I get there, I’ll talk to Selah about wedding”—she circled her hand vaguely—“things.”

  “All right. Whatever you want, Joelle. I just want to make you happy.” He bent as if to kiss her, but she dodged him so that his lips landed on her eyebrow.

  “Thank you, Gil. That’s very sweet.” If he wanted to make her happy, he would go away and leave her alone. Since that wasn’t likely to happen, she took him by the arm and tugged him toward the stairs. “Come on, Grandmama has cookies. You really need to eat something, or you’re going to blow away in the next high wind.”

  Schuyler stood aimlessly outside the Memphis train station with his hands in his pockets.

  The one thing he wanted at this moment—and the one thing he couldn’t do—was to tell Pa he was in love with Joelle Daughtry, and wasn’t that a staggering development after some twenty years of acquaintance, during which they’d rarely if ever participated in a civil conversation?

  If he were already at home, he would dive off a pier into the bay and swim until he was exhausted, or row a canoe for hours, or go stomping around in the woods with Jamie. Instead, he must wait here for two hours for the next train headed south. This enforced introspection, after such a shock, was dangerous.

  How could those two things—finding out his father was dead and that he was in love—have happened all but simultaneously? On second thought, perhaps the one had triggered the other. Lying under Joelle’s silken cheek, unmanly tears wetting her dress, the realization that he’d never see his father again had caused something like Pauline scales to fall from his eyes. She cared about him, no matter what crazy backward arguments she slung at him on a regular basis.

  And he’d lost her, to a man who deserved her infinitely more than an undisciplined, hubristic younger son like Schuyler Beaumont. He’d never own the right to hold her for more than a few seconds in a brotherly hug or pat on the shoulder. No more sharing private jokes or making up words or playing billiards after midnight.

  No more praying together.

  Probably it was that last thought that grieved him most. There was not another human being in his life who had the temerity or the insight to insist that he needed to bring his sorrow to God. And she was right. Those few minutes had broken him and seared him and set him on a path to healing.

  He felt raw. What in the world was he going to do without Pa and without Joelle?

  He could go home, draw on the strength of the rest of his family. Or he could take the next train to Tuscaloosa, claim his father’s body, and find out who had committed the murder.

  Of those two choices, the first seemed cowardly. He was tired of taking easy roads.

  He straightened his vest and headed for the telegraph office. As Joelle suggested, he was going to need Levi’s help.

  six

  “NOW THAT I AM FREE, I will make the most of every opportunity to help my fellow man.”

  Joelle stared at the sentence Shug Pogue had just written on the blackboard fixed to the back wall of the cookhouse pantry. It made her heart pound with both pride and anxiety. She had taught him to write, but she had not designed his thoughts.

  Selah had always told Joelle she would be a good teacher, but she hadn’t believed it. Or perhaps it was just that she hadn’t wanted to be a teacher. She slid her hand into her pocket and fingered the red ribbon binding five letters she’d composed first thing this morning, in answer to questions regarding summer book
ings at Daughtry House Hotel and Resort. She had no particular passion for the hotel business either. If anything, she resented the intrusion it made on the things she really wanted to do.

  What she dreamed of doing was writing a book like Mrs. Stowe, or perhaps Mrs. Alcott, whose work she had devoured under the influence of Miss Lindquist at the Holly Springs Academy. But she’d resigned herself to the fact that her life was to be mainly composed of the boring and trivial. At least she was safe. She was engaged to marry a good man. The hotel was set to take in its first guests in June, just a few weeks away. Besides, look what had happened to Miss Lindquist: dismissed without a reference, for teaching her students to embrace rebellious female libertarianism.

  Still . . . something about Shug’s words on the blackboard challenged her complacency.

  She clasped her hands at her waist in her best imitation of Miss Lindquist—calm, encouraging, attentive. “That is beautiful work, Shug.”

  Shug, six feet tall and skinny as one of the slats of the table at which he sat with the other students, gave Joelle his big grin. “Thank you, Miss Joelle. I know how much you like good writing. Is everything spelled right?”

  “It’s perfect.” Shug’s work was always perfect. He’d supervised the crew who put the new roof on the big house, as well as the main outbuildings, like this kitchen and the manager’s cottage where the family lived. Part of his pay included lessons in reading and writing, which he took full advantage of, and which Joelle considered a fair trade for services rendered.

  “My turn, Miss Jo!” Ten-year-old Tee-Toc Weber jumped to his feet and swaggered to the board. “I got a sentence better than that.”

  Amused, Joelle sat down at her little desk by the window to watch the boy carefully scrape words onto the board, tongue firmly between his teeth. She’d be astonished if he didn’t one day become president of the United States. He was dark of skin and ragged of clothing, his wiry hair sawn off with a butcher knife in uneven clumps, but his mother saw that he was always clean and well fed when he appeared at the hotel every morning for work.

  With a grand flourish of the last letter, he turned to read his words aloud. “A man who can read and write caint never be cheated.”

  Joelle bit her lip. He was so proud and so confident, she hated to correct him. But shoring up weakness would help none of the students looking to her for instruction. “The thought is beautiful and true. Can I help you a bit with the spelling and grammar?”

  “Yes, ma’am, ’course you can. I want you to.” Tee-Toc plopped back down on his bench, looking only slightly crestfallen.

  “All right.” She stood and went to the board. Pointing at the word “caint,” she said, “This word is actually two words smushed together—can and not. So you’ve actually made up a word here, Tee-Toc.” She grinned at him. “That’s creative, but in formal writing you need to stick to the dictionary.” When the boy laughed, she picked up a piece of chalk to write can, not, and never on the board. She circled not and never. “All right, now that we’ve separated your word into its proper pieces, you see that you have two negatives next to each other. You’re good at math. What do you know about two negatives?”

  Tee-Toc snapped his fingers. “They cancels each other out!”

  “They cancel,” Joelle corrected him. “But yes. So you need to leave out one of those negatives to make your sentence make sense. Write either ‘cannot ever’ or ‘can never.’”

  Tee-Toc nodded slowly. “I see. I think. There sure is a lot of rules for writing, ain’t there?”

  Joelle sighed. “There sure are. It’s enough to give one a headache.” On the bright side, however, Tee-Toc had just given her the lead line for an article she had been working on for the Journal. She had made notes all the way home from Memphis yesterday, ignoring Gil’s persistent attempts to engage her in conversation. He’d finally given up and gone to sleep with his hat over his face to muffle his snores.

  She shouldn’t be so critical, she thought as she erased the chalkboard. A man with a nose that size was bound to snore. And wasn’t that going to be lovely after they got married? He’d be snoring in her ear for the rest of her life.

  “So, Miss Jo, you think I write good enough now to help Pastor Boykin run for state senate?”

  Joelle turned to find Shug regarding her seriously, as were the three other men at the table. She put down the eraser and dusted her hands on her skirt. “Of course you do. But why don’t you run yourself? You’d make a fine senator. You’re honest and organized and good with details. The whole community respects you and your family.”

  Shug lifted his shoulders. “That’s mighty kind of you, and I thank you for the good word. I might start with something a little smaller, here on the local level. Maybe tax collector. But the Reverend is head and shoulders above me, and we need men with his reputation and education to represent freedmen in Congress.”

  “Not just freedmen,” she reminded him. “He’d be representing all of us.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s why I think he’s a good choice. His father was white, had him educated in that fancy military academy up north.” Shug glanced at his brother-in-law, Clancy Crumpton, seated next to him. Clancy and his wife, Shug’s sister Neesy, had taken on management of the hotel dairy. “Ain’t that right, Clancy?”

  “Yup. He got family all up and down the river here in Lee and Union Counties. Ain’t nobody got a sour word to say about him nor his wife and chirren.” Clancy hesitated. “Me and Shug had a idea—you always saying you wants to help.”

  “Of course I do,” Joelle said. “But you know women can’t vote. I’m not sure how—”

  “We heard you gon’ marry the Methodist preacher,” Shug said.

  “That’s true,” Joelle said cautiously.

  “Well then.” Shug grinned. “He gon’ do whatever you tell him—least, if things works for white folks like they does in my house.”

  Joelle laughed. “I’m going on that assumption myself. So what am I to convince Reverend Reese it’s in his best interests to do?”

  Clancy slapped one of his big fists into the other palm. “That pulpit of his, it be a powerful source of influence. If he use it the right way, we can bring the voting community together and elect good men who can help us right some of the wrongs been done, without making enemies in the process.”

  Shug nodded. “We seen you and your sisters work with the Lawrences and the Vincents to break down walls on both sides. I know it ain’t easy, and I know it gon’ take time to bleed out in the community and the county and the state. They’s a whole lot of fear and resentment out there. But we got to start somewhere. We figure if anybody know how to make it happen, you would.”

  I’m just a woman, she wanted to say. Hadn’t she already done enough, writing anonymous articles in the paper and volunteering to teach? Besides, she was about to be occupied in planning her wedding—not to mention running a hotel in her sister’s absence—and she despised confrontations.

  But . . . what if she’d been placed in such a time as this, as had Queen Esther of the Bible? All she had to do was blink at Gil, and he would melt like butter in a Mississippi heat wave. Couldn’t she at least ask him to see what he could do for Reverend Boykin and Shug?

  She slowly nodded. “I can’t promise anything, of course, but I suppose I could speak to him. Gentlemen, I promised my sister I’d accompany her to town for some kitchen supplies, so I’m afraid we must conclude our lesson for the day. I would like for all of you to develop these sentences into a full paragraph supporting your thesis, and have it ready for me tomorrow. And don’t forget the mathematics assignment as well. You’ve done good work today.”

  Benches scraped under the rumble of male voices. Within a few moments the pantry was empty except for Joelle, left to tidy her desk. She hesitated, then sat down. Aurora could wait another half hour while she finished her article. She could turn it in while she was in town.

  She worked on it for half an hour, then once it was done, scanned t
hrough to make sure there were no words left out or inadvertent grammar mistakes. Fortunately she’d been blessed with good penmanship and spelling skills. Satisfied that she could turn in her composition without embarrassment, she folded the pages and slid them in beside the letters in her pocket, then exited through the interior kitchen door.

  Horatia Lawrence, the hotel’s head cook and housekeeper, turned from the stove, where she’d been busy canning a giant kettle of blackberry preserves. “Lessons all done?” Horatia used a neat handkerchief to dab a trickle of sweat from her caramel-colored brow. “Maybe you’d like to taste a spoonful of this on a leftover biscuit.”

  Joelle’s mouth watered. “Yes, ma’am, I surely would.” She poked under the cloth covering a basket of bread on the big butcher-block table in the middle of the room. Opening the flaky biscuit with her thumbs, she cupped it in her palms near the kettle.

  Smiling, Horatia spooned a sweet-smelling black blob onto the biscuit. “I could always count on you to be my taster since you was a little thing.”

  “It’s a miracle I’m not round as a barrel of flour since you came back to cook for us.” Joelle licked a drop off her thumb. “Mmm. That’s heavenly. Can I take one to Aurora? She and I are about to drive to town to take care of the list you gave me this morning. Do you need anything else?”

  “No, but check with Mose before you leave. He was in the chicken yard a little bit ago.”

  “I will. Let’s fix a biscuit for him too.”

  Juggling the three biscuits in a napkin, Joelle left the kitchen and crossed the lawn toward the farm side of the property. She found Mose repairing the wire near the chicken yard gate.

  He looked up, smiling around the pipe in his teeth. “Hope you got something edible in that napkin, little lady. My stomach’s setting up a howl, and I got a ways to go before this fence is coyote-proof again.”

  “Horatia’s cat-head biscuits and warm blackberry preserves. I’ll share, if you’ll promise to play your harmonica for me after supper tonight.”