“Me? You’re asking me?”
“Don’t bother with the girl,” Veyschmidt groused. “She’s nothing. Customers often complain about her poor service. She’s brazen and rude.”
“Quiet, you scoundrel!” After a simmering glare at Mr. Veyschmidt, the colonel’s gaze returned to Margaret. The hard lines around his eyes vanished. “Miss Bell?”
“I have no place to go.” Despite her best efforts, her bottom lip quivered. It wasn’t the answer she longed to give.
“My wife wishes for you and your mother to live with us in Winchester. While she asked me to relay the invitation, she was fairly certain your mother, in particular, wouldn’t accept.”
“Mama’s dead.” Surely Carrie Ann would rescind her offer with that change of circumstance. They’d quarreled a lot during their growing-up years, but that didn’t stop Margaret from missing Carrie’s bravery when she stood up to Mr. Veyschmidt, sparing Margaret a beating. And she could use one of Carrie Ann’s harebrained schemes right about now. Margaret often imagined implementing Carrie’s daring escape from the Wayfarers Inn, and dreamed of it almost as many times as she envisioned Mr. Veyschmidt’s delicious demise.
“Please accept my condolences.” The colonel sounded sincere. He reached across the scuffed wooden bar and pressed the sealed envelope into Margaret’s hand.
She inspected it, impressed by the expensive parchment. Her name had been penned across the front, and she recognized Carrie Ann’s handwriting. She closed her eyes. To her left, Mr. Veyschmidt’s pleas for mercy grated on her nerves.
“Carrie addressed this letter to you because she presumed your mother would never forgive her or want to see her again because of Sarah Jane’s death.”
Margaret conceded his point with a nod. What he said was true. “I received the telegram about Carrie Ann’s marriage and about Sarah Jane’s death, but Mama had passed by the time the news arrived.”
“You’ve lived through quite an ordeal, Miss Bell. I urge you to come to Winchester. You’ll travel with a group of contraband and dunkers—freed slaves and German Baptists who are following the army down the Valley. Because of the war, they’ve been forced to leave their homes for some reason or another. My guess is, you’ll be safer in the army’s wake than here with Veyschmidt.” The colonel walked around the bar. Standing directly in front of Margaret, he tapped the envelope in her hand. “Regardless of what’s happened in the past, I’m confident Carrie’s invitation still stands.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I know my wife and her kind, generous heart.” He smiled, emitting a dizzying dose of charm. No wonder Carrie Ann married the man, and almost instantaneously too, it would seem. “Carrie volunteers at an orphanage in Winchester. She thought you might help out there also.”
“Oh, I would. I love children.”
“Sounds like you’ll do very well in Winchester then.”
Margaret watched him, noticing his confident manner, his commanding presence. But she couldn’t help wondering if she’d seen him before.
The colonel’s troops finished their search and he conversed with them in undertones. Minutes later, they filed out of the inn, and he refocused his attention on Margaret. “I’m afraid I must have your decision now, Miss Bell.”
She only needed to glimpse Mr. Veyschmidt’s rotund, pleading form. His beefy hands were clasped as if in prayer—the same hands that shamelessly groped and beat Margaret and her sisters, each to varying degrees. And Mama too. He’d killed Mama the same as if he’d strangled the life right out of her.
Oh, how Margaret despised the man!
“I accept my sister’s invitation. Thank you.” She tasted sweet freedom in the air. “But please, I beseech you”—now it was her turn to beg—“light your Yankee torches and burn this den of iniquity down to the devil where it belongs!”
A Thousand Shall Fall Page 31
