Chloe

by Lyn Cote

  He stood up in one angry, fluid move. “I don’t know what you mean.” Why couldn’t she get it?

  “I was a coward, too.” She clenched her hands, two fists in her lap. “But I’ve come back to face . . . everything. My mother, Bette, our people. And so have you.”

  “That’s not the same. You’re not a man. You don’t understand.” He’d waited all these years and now she had no idea what his cowardice had cost him.

  She looked into Roarke’s dark, anguished eyes. “There are all kinds of courage. I don’t think you were ever meant to be a soldier. And you never got a second chance to face the enemy, did you? I mean, you were wounded in your first battle?”

  “It wasn’t even a real battle, just skirmishes at Seicheprey in Lorraine, just German raids. I deserved worse than this.” He glanced down at his stiff arm. But he’d often wondered if he would have been able to conquer his cowardice if he’d had another chance.

  “Roarke, I’ve known you all my life. You are a good person. Does one day, one action, define a man? I’m sorry you didn’t do what you feel you ought to have.” She stood on shifting sand. One false step and she would take them both down to disaster. “The Great War’s been over for a decade. Isn’t ten years of banishment enough?”

  He paced, unable to stay still. “Every time someone thanked me for serving my country, I wanted to blurt out the truth.” Even as he fought her, hope forced itself into his heart. “But I couldn’t.”

  “Don’t you think people ever asked about my daughter?” she asked him. “I was a coward, too. I deserted my post as mother. Don’t you think that guilt’s as real and as harsh as yours? What could I have done that was worse than leaving my child with my mother?”

  Halting, he stared at her. “It’s not the same.” But he recognized the torment in her eyes and the suffering in her tone. It touched a deep chord in his own guilt.

  “Every day I want to run away again,” Chloe said, daring him to belittle her woman’s cowardice. “I look at Bette and the guilt nearly strangles me. Then I ask myself—what’s best for her now? I wasn’t here for the first ten years of her life, but I can be here for the rest of her life.”

  Strength deserted him. He sat back down, his head in his hand.” I can’t . . . there isn’t any way I can make up for what . . .”

  Chloe rose and went to him, the thick carpeting cushioning her steps. She knelt before him and rested her head in his lap. “Let it go, Roarke. It’s history. You can’t change it. You should ask yourself, what’s best for your father. He’s such a good man. And what about Jamie and Kitty? And me? Be rid of it now.”

  “How can I?” His voice came out muffled, agonized.

  Chloe combed her mind. It was now or never. “Didn’t you hear your mother? The county needs the bank and your father can’t do it alone. You’re here now to fight the battle of this depression.”

  “And you think that will redeem me?” he jeered. Her words were persuading him, but it couldn’t be this easy.

  The song that had finally come clear this morning at church sang in her mind, compelling, irresistible. “God takes us just as we are.” Over the past decade, she’d forgotten the most important thing Granny Raney had ever taught her. Truth flooded her, emboldened her. “Ask Him for forgiveness and let it go. Don’t make yourself and the rest of us suffer on and on.”

  “It’s not that easy.” But the photograph, frozen in his mind, was crinkling more. Chloe’s presence was realer than a faded memory of the Western Front.

  “It’s not easy for me to stand up for Bette against my mother and do it with respect.” Chloe took his good wrist in her hand. The contact after so many years apart shivered through her. This is Roarke, my dearest . . . friend. “I have to do it for my daughter. Drake told me, ‘We thought the party would never end.’ But the party’s over. We’ve got to face this new decade together or we’ll let . . . make others suffer. That’s not right.”

  He was fighting a losing battle. Chloe knelt on the floor in front of him, holding him, and it was as though a storm were flooding his soul. He ached with emotions long held in check, and he moved to push them away. But in the act of removing her hand, he looked down, and he finally noticed something he’d overlooked. In a heartbeat, his long-denied need for this woman stirred. “You took off his engagement ring,” he whispered. He gripped the last shred of his resistance to her.

  Chloe looked up at Roarke, her large blue eyes filled with a longing even he could read. “I can’t marry Drake. If the crash hadn’t come, I would have and it would have been a mistake. One in a long list of mistakes I’ve made.” She took a deep breath. “I want to marry you.”

  He stared down at her, so beautiful, so earnest. Where had she gotten the courage to say that? Could he do less? With a sigh he gave up the fight. “Good. Because I want to marry you.”

  He stood then, dragging her up with him. All the longing of wasted years surged through him. She’s right. A frenzy to claim her overwhelmed him. He kissed her deeply, searchingly. His heart pounded and, one-armed, he wrapped her tightly to him and felt her heart beating against him. “Forgive me for all the years I’ve wasted.”

  “Forgive me—”

  He stopped her lips with another kiss. He sucked her breath into his lungs. Pressing his good hand to the back of her head, holding her in place, he devoured her mouth. Then he broke away from her lips, gasping for air. “Chloe, my Chloe,” he murmured.

  Chloe felt his passion for her and yielded to him, not pulling away. “I’ll take you, Roarke, just as you are. Will you take me just as I am?” She pressed her face against him, reveling in the roughness of his wool suit jacket and the latent strength of his broad shoulders, shoulders that could carry heavy burdens. That’s your courage, Roarke.

  “Yes.” He tightened his hold on her, reveling in her softness. “I’ll take you just as you are.”

  “That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Chloe whispered. She lifted her face, asking for another kiss. Roarke obliged and left her shimmering with the need for him. The long, lonely, fearful time of separation was over. They would find their way together.

  She and Roarke had come home. Just as they were. Just in time.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Wars are the locomotives of history” is a truth that can’t be denied. Wars force humans to make advancements in weaponry and medical technology. And they put the fighting-age generation through a fiery furnace that forever changes them and, hence, their society. To me, the twentieth century started with WWI and not the arbitrary date of 1900. A living example, Chloe led a completely different life before WWI than she did after it.

  Also, two new amendments to the Constitution at the beginning of the twenties—women’s suffrage and prohibition—ushered in vast societal changes. Women started voting—a good thing. But the prohibition amendment actually had the opposite effect on society than it was supposed to—it closed the male domain of the old-time saloon, but the nightclub took its place and made cocktails popular for women as well as men. The generation that had been told they were fighting in the “War to End All Wars” returned from that first brutal modern conflict—with air battles, mustard gas, machine guns, and tanks—disillusioned and ready to drown their sorrows in bathtub gin. So criminals organized and reaped huge profits from speakeasies while the FBI grew stronger, trying to stop the illicit trade.

  The “Lost Generation” of the twenties took nothing seriously if it could help it and flaunted its new freedom with bobbed hair, rouged lips, short skirts, and automobiles. For the first time, the name of Freud and the word sex worked its way into modern conversation. Couples stopped courting and started dating—shocking their elders by kissing people they had no intention of marrying. They danced the wild Charleston and the Black Bottom to honky-tonk jazz. Chloe, Roarke, Kitty, and Drake all portrayed the different ways Americans coped with this new age.

  Finally, WWI was the first war in which American black men were drafted in larger numbers as citizen soldiers
. Both the South and North were rocked by racial unrest when black men donned uniforms and shed a servile manner. Of course, Minnie portrayed the hope of the disenfranchised black population. She was born into poverty and Jim Crow, but Minnie had dreams and the will to make them come true. Go, Minnie! In the new century, Chloe and Minnie found a way to break through the barriers that had separated their families for generations and Chloe found her greatest joy in seeing her friend’s success.

  In the subsequent stories in The Women of Ivy Manor series, these many themes—tyranny, injustice, freedom, equality—will repeat, since they were the great struggles of the twentieth century and continue today. Just check the evening news.

  If you are hungry to know more about the fascinating time in history portrayed in Chloe, Only Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen is the classic guide to the twenties. Great nonfiction that reads like fiction.

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  1. What historical facts in the story surprised you? What hadn’t you known that took place in this colorful period?

  2. How did Chloe’s life differ before the war versus after the war? Was she the better for having gone through it? Why?

  3. Which character did you find most interesting? Why? Would he or she be someone you’d befriend in your own life?

  4. Which character did you think was the most pivotal to the storyline? Why?

  5. Chloe’s Granny Raney was very important in her life. Was there anyone in your past who influenced you for good? For evil? Is there anyone you are trying to influence for the better here and now?

  6. Chloe found comfort and direction for her life in an old hymn. Do you have any songs or verses that are special in your life? Which ones and why?

  7. There were four men in Chloe’s life—her father, Theran, Roarke, and Drake. How would you characterize each? How are they different? The same?

  8. Which man appealed to you most? Why? Which did you dislike the most? Why?

  9. Kitty was Chloe’s best friend, but in the end, Kitty left, stealing Jamie from Chloe. What clues point to why Kitty did this? What do you think compelled her to wound Chloe like this?

  10. Chloe’s moment of decision came in Paris in 1929. Have you experienced a similar moment in your life? Did it change things for the better or the worse?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lyn Cote (pronounced “co-tee”) is the award-winning author of a number of historical novels including Echoes of Mercy and Lost in His Love. She was born in Texas, grew up in Illinois on the shores of Lake Michigan, and raised two children in Iowa. A full-time writer, she now lives in northern Wisconsin with her husband and two cats.

  If you would like to contact the author with more questions, please e-mail her at l.cote@juno.com or write to P. O. Box 864, Woodruff, WI, 54568. Also you might want to visit her Web site at www.BooksbyLynCote.com for more information about the other titles in The Women of Ivy Manor series.

  AN EXCERPT FROM BETTE

  BOOK TWO IN THE WOMEN OF IVY MANOR

  Tidewater Maryland, April 1936

  Bette screamed herself awake. She jerked up in her bed. A feeble glow outside her window pierced the predawn gray. Her heart pounded hard and fast. She fought for air. What? What had happened?

  A second blast exploded outside.

  Gretel’s scream joined another of hers. Her friend lay in the trundle bed beside her. “Was ist los?”

  Bette heard the sound of bare feet pelting down the hardwood hallway and then down the steps. Her mother’s voice called out, “Roarke, wait! Get your gun first!”

  Bette tossed back the covers and nearly landed on Gretel. “Come on!” She grabbed her friend’s hand and dragged her from their bedroom. Mother was before them, racing down the stairs to the foyer. “Mother!” Bette screeched, afraid her mother might run outside into danger.

  “Wait!” Mother held up both hands to stop them. Bette and Gretel halted near the middle of the staircase, both winded and panting.

  Her stepfather hurried from the rear of the house, his rifle in his good hand. “All of you stay in here till I see what’s out there.” He threw open the door. Cold damp air rushed in and they all saw it at once.

  A cross burned on their wide and long front lawn.

  Bette gasped so sharply that her tongue slammed against the back of her mouth, nearly making her gag.

  “Was ist los?” Gretel repeated in a hollow voice.

  Shock and fear shimmered through Bette. She tightened her grip on Gretel’s hand. “It’s the Klan,” she whispered.

  At this, Gretel pressed herself close to Bette as if seeking refuge.

  Her stepfather stalked outside.

  “No, Roarke, they might—” Mother’s voice was overcome by a blast from stepfather’s rifle.

  “Come out, you lousy cowards!” he roared. “Show yourselves and face me like men!”

  Silent night was the only response.

  “Cowards!” he shouted. He stalked to the cross and, using the butt of his rifle, he beat it to the ground. It sizzled in the early morning dew. Bette knew she’d never forget the sound—a hissing like a poisonous snake. A snake poised to strike them.