Words Spoken True: A Novel

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “Oh, it’s not all bad.” Grace straightened a little and squared her shoulders. “I heard Lucretia Mott speak. Not so many years ago a woman speaking out in public would have been totally ostracized, perhaps even arrested. Then there’s Elizabeth Cady Stanton in New York. I think I wrote you about her. Anyway, she’s taken up the cause and does a beautiful job of eloquently outlining our aims and purposes in words. She even dares to put forward the desire to gain women the vote, although some of the workers fear such a radical objective might very well make all of us a laughingstock.”

  “Unfortunately it’s obvious from what most newspapers print that there are plenty who already think that about those who fight for women’s rights.” Adriane ran her finger around the rim of her cup. It was only chipped in a couple of places.

  “I know. Those at the helm of the papers, at the helm of most everything, are men who seem to be of the belief that all their readers must also be men.” Grace sighed and stared down at her cup. “I sometimes despair of men ever admitting we women have minds capable of more than child rearing and needlework.”

  Adriane reached across the table to pat her hand. “Write something about your work the last few months, and the Tribune will publish it.”

  “I have something already written.” Grace looked up at her. “It concerns the battle being waged in New York to allow women in that state to maintain ownership of their property and to have the rights to their own earnings after marriage. There’s a strong petition before the legislature, and I think in spite of all the talk against the proposal, it will pass. Maybe not this year but soon.”

  “See, there is progress being made,” Adriane said.

  “You always were able to cheer me up, Adriane.” Grace visibly brightened as she nibbled on her bread and cheese. “And maybe I’ll send something to the Herald as well. I promised my abolitionist friends a reading in Louisville.”

  Adriane’s smile stiffened as Grace’s eyes sharpened on her. “I’d really prefer not to talk about Blake Garrett or the Herald, Grace. He’s causing a lot of turmoil at the Tribune.”

  “I don’t think it’s only at the Tribune that he’s causing turmoil.” Grace peered at Adriane over the rim of her cup.

  Adriane concentrated on cutting a small piece of cheese before she said, “I told you I didn’t want to talk about Mr. Garrett. He may smile and act charming, but he cannot be trusted.”

  “Are you sure about that, Adriane?”

  “Of course I am. He’s trying to steal all our readers.” A bit of fire jumped into Adriane’s eyes as she stared at Grace.

  Grace merely smiled. “Surely the Tribune doesn’t fear a little competition. I’ve always thought your father rather relished it.”

  Adriane looked down to position her cheese exactly so on her bread while carefully considering her next words. “Yes, well, sometimes things change.”

  Grace set her cup down and reached across the table to put her hand over Adriane’s. “Come, come, Adriane. You have no need to be so careful with your words to me. Out with it. What’s going on with the Tribune?”

  Adriane looked up with a sigh. “It’s just that Father’s changed so much since he became engaged to Lucilla. Or maybe it’s this Know Nothing political party he’s taken up with. He hardly writes of anything else these days.”

  “And Mr. Garrett, as I understand it, has been skipping the political speeches and entreaties and instead has been writing about events and happenings the ordinary man wants to read and not just what the poor soul thinks he ought to read.” She pulled back her hand and picked up her cup again.

  “I fear that is so.” Adriane broke off a tiny bit of the cheese, but didn’t put it in her mouth. “Our sales have dropped the last two months in a row. I’m sure Mr. Garrett is gaining each reader we lose. His coverage of those dreadful murders has people entranced as if they were reading one of Mr. Dickens’s continuing sagas.”

  “I see.” Grace set down her empty teacup and studied Adriane for a moment. “And how do you feel about him, not as an editor, but as a person?”

  “I really couldn’t say. I’ve only talked to him twice,” Adriane answered casually as she looked down at her plate. She stuck the bite of cheese in her mouth in hopes that her chewing would keep back the color threatening to rise in her cheeks.

  “And dueled with him both times if I understood him correctly.” Grace sounded amused. “You always did have a sharp tongue. Your father used to say it was due to me that you learned to use it so well.”

  “There could be truth to that.” A smile played around Adriane’s lips as she raised her eyes back to Grace’s face.

  “You would have learned without me, just not so quickly or so well.” Grace laughed a little as she fetched the teapot from the small stove to refill their cups.

  The kitchen was tiny with hardly room for the one cabinet, the stove, and the wobbly table and chairs. Yet it was in this very room that Adriane had first glimpsed the vastness of the world as she learned the most amazing things from an even more amazing teacher. Freedom had sat beside her at this small table and made her believe she could do anything she wanted. Now she yearned to recapture that exhilarating feeling, but she feared it was gone forever.

  They drank their tea in silence for a moment before Grace finally said, “You are going to have to tell me about it, Adriane. And I fear the fact that you do not want to bodes ill.”

  “Not at all.” Adriane pulled forth one of her practiced smiles. “Stanley and I are to be married on September 15th, I think it is. It’s to be quite the event. Lucilla has her woman, Nora, already at work on my dress. She guarantees I’ll look beautiful.” Adriane puffed her hair and struck a pose.

  “You’re beautiful right now in your everyday working dress.”

  “You only think that because you love me.” Adriane looked down at her plain brown dress.

  “If you don’t believe me, ask Mr. Garrett.”

  Adriane kept her eyes away from Grace’s. “I doubt he’d agree,” she said before quickly hurrying on to talk of Stan. “Anyway, as you know, Stan has been escorting me to socials and various events for some time now. It was just a natural progression of events for us to decide to marry.”

  “A convenience.” Grace studied her cup, fingering the handle a moment before asking, “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “You could say that, I suppose.” Adriane glanced at Grace and quickly away. “I have to consider my future now that Father is marrying. He and Lucilla plan to marry in October, you know, but Lucilla seems more excited about my wedding than her own. She insists I need an armoire full of new dresses, and not only does she have poor Nora working double time, but she somehow convinced Father to part with the money for all the fabric.”

  Grace ignored Adriane’s prattle about dresses. “What kind of future do you expect to have with Stanley Jimson?”

  While Grace’s voice stayed calm, almost gentle, Adriane began to feel as if she were a girl again trying to pass one of Grace’s tests of her knowledge of history or art. She wanted to ignore this question, pretend she had not heard it, but Grace would demand an answer. Finally Adriane forced herself to say, “A very secure one, I’m sure.” The word “secure” tore through her, and for a moment she thought she might cry.

  “Security is a very nice thing to have.” Grace’s eyes traveled around the small kitchen. “That’s what I always feel when I come home to this dear little house. Secure and safe. It was all my Aaron left me when he died, you know.”

  “I know.” Adriane had heard every story Grace could tell about her beloved husband, Aaron Compton, a dozen times, but she hoped now that Grace would want to tell her some of them again. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep smiling while they spoke of her upcoming marriage to Stanley.

  But Grace’s tests had never been easy, and Adriane realized this one would not be either as Grace went on. “Still, I couldn’t stay here forever making my silly hats, not doing anything meaningful, and y
ou won’t be able to either.”

  “It’s certainly true I don’t want to make hats.” Adriane forced out a laugh in an attempt to lighten the moment.

  Grace didn’t smile as she pinned Adriane with her bright eyes. “Do you love him, Adriane?”

  Adriane looked away from Grace down at her cup, as if she expected to find an answer for her friend in the tea leaves floating on the bottom. After a moment, she moistened her lips and said, “Father says romance has little to do with real marriages. That it is just the stuff of silly women’s novels.”

  “Does he indeed?” Grace didn’t bother to hide the disdain in her words. “He’s certainly one to comment on what makes a happy marriage with his fine record.”

  “Grace, please don’t start on Father. You know he only married Henrietta so that I would have a mother to care for me.”

  “And we know how wonderfully that turned out, don’t we?” Grace didn’t wait for an answer. Instead she commanded, “Look at me and stop pretending, Adriane.”

  Adriane obeyed the teacher’s voice. Her practiced smile slid off her face. “I may not be happy now about it all, Grace, but I will learn to be happy.”

  “Oh, Adriane, think.” Grace poked her own temple with a finger before she stood up and began circling the tiny kitchen as she lectured Adriane. “You cannot marry this man. I don’t know why you think you should. I’m sure security has little to do with it, and in any case you’d have precious little mental security in that family. Money is not important, has never been important. You may not want to make hats. I don’t want to make hats, but making hats is how I survive.”

  Adriane smiled. “You know I can’t sew and that the few times I’ve tried my fingers were all thumbs. Even if I did attempt to make hats, no one would buy them. And I can’t teach music. You never even tried to teach me to play because you said my aptitudes lay elsewhere.”

  “And they did. They do.” Grace paused in front of Adriane to look down at her. “You cannot marry Stanley Jimson.” She spoke the words one at a time and very distinctly.

  Adriane stared up at her old teacher and friend and steeled herself to her arguments. Grace wasn’t telling her anything Adriane had not already told herself time after time late at night when sleep eluded her, but morning had always brought the truth. “I must,” Adriane said.

  “You must not.” Grace stressed her words by banging her hands down in the air. “It would be better for you to become an honest prostitute than to prostitute yourself for social position.”

  Adriane had long ago stopped being shocked by the things Grace said. Now she only smiled a little as she said, “You know I cannot become a prostitute.”

  “Of course you can’t.” Grace waved her hand dismissing the idea. “I only said that to make you think.”

  “I have thought, Grace. And I am going to marry Stanley Jimson in September. I have no choice.”

  “No choice?” The words seemed to almost choke Grace. She took a deep breath before she went on in a softer voice. “There’s always a choice, Adriane. One only has to search for it.”

  “Not this time, Grace.”

  Grace sat back down and looked at Adriane for a long moment before she spoke again. “Your father has made this choice for you, hasn’t he?”

  “He approves of the match.” Adriane picked her words carefully. “He and Stanley’s father have become very close.”

  “Coleman Jimson is a scoundrel,” Grace said flatly.

  “You think all rich people are scoundrels,” Adriane said with another smile. “Especially slaveholding rich people.”

  “As they are. Scoundrels, miscreants, immoral men with no consideration for anything but their own comfort and wealth.”

  “Few in this town would agree with you. The Jimsons are very respected, as you know, and Mr. Jimson is running for the state senate in August.”

  “God help us all.” Grace rolled her eyes as she threw her hands up in the air. Then she reached across the table to grasp Adriane’s hands. “I’m just going to be here a few weeks to make as many hats as I can and then once they’re sold, I’ll be going back north.” Her eyes burned into Adriane’s. “Come with me. There’s always a need for people who can write well in the cause. You won’t have much, but you won’t starve.”

  Tears pushed into Adriane’s eyes as she squeezed Grace’s hands. “Please try to understand, Grace. Father did not desert me when I was born and my mother died. He protected me from Henrietta as much as he could. He’s taken care of me all these years. I must do what he wishes now.”

  “He should not wish this upon you.” Grace’s grip on Adrianne’s hand tightened.

  “He thinks I can be happy with Stan.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “Stan has promised to allow me to continue to write. As long as I can do that, I can endure anything.”

  “Marriage should not be something to endure but a reason for joy.”

  “Don’t you think I know that, Grace?” She pulled her hands free from Grace and sat back. “Don’t you think I’d choose joy and love if I could?”

  “I’m not yet convinced that you cannot.”

  When Adriane started to say something, Grace waved aside her words and went on. “But I am unfortunately convinced that you believe you cannot. I will pray for you every day, my dear girl. You must pray too. That there will be another way. Promise me that.”

  “I am praying. But the only answer I know is to marry Stan.”

  “That is not your answer. Keep praying and watching for a better way.” Grace took hold of Adriane’s hands again and gripped them as though she’d never turn loose. “And don’t forget that you always have a place with me if you should need it.”

  11

  Blake Garrett stared at the newspaper articles about the murders spread out across the top of his desk. It had been over two months since Kathleen’s murder, but Blake had the uneasy feeling the river slasher would strike again and soon. Chief Trabue’s claim that the murderer had surely been scared off by the show of strength on the part of the police force was nothing but empty rhetoric.

  As Blake’s eyes fell on the chief’s direct quote in a story on the Tribune’s front page, he tried not to let thoughts of Adriane disturb his concentration, but he had just as well attempt to stop breathing. She tiptoed around the edge of his mind all day, every day, ready to explode out into his thoughts at the slightest invitation, and the sight of the Tribune masthead was more than invitation enough.

  It had been a week since he’d pulled her out from under the rearing horses and met her friend Grace Compton. He’d asked around and found out that while all the society ladies wanted one of Grace’s hats, Grace herself was pitied, scorned, or laughed at in turn, according to who was speaking about her.

  The older women recalled how Grace’s family had lost their fortune when Grace was young, but that Grace had had her chances and squandered them by marrying the wrong man. A few of the younger women remembered her fondly as a music teacher. Others collapsed into peals of laughter as they mocked how Miss Grace would spin in a little circle around them at the piano and briskly clap out the time of the melodies.

  Blake had planned to ask Adriane about the little woman the next opportunity he had, but Adriane had made sure they had no opportunity to talk the two times he’d seen her since. The last time at a gathering at Mrs. Wigginham’s, he’d planned to lie in wait for her and do whatever necessary to force another conversation, even if it turned into one of their duels. But Adriane, with young Jimson at her side, had quickly circled through the guests before making her exit. They had not skipped Blake. Adriane smiled and greeted him pleasantly enough while sliding her eyes quickly across his face.

  Jimson hadn’t bothered to smile at all as he tightened his hold on Adriane’s arm as though he feared she might slip away. Blake wanted to tell him he had reason to fear, for each time Blake saw Adriane with Stanley Jimson, his resolve to do anything necessary to keep their wedding from eve
r taking place became stronger. Anything.

  Still, Blake saw no reason to do something foolhardy this early in the game. There was yet time for circumstances to change. There might even be time to get Adriane to fall in love with him. At the foolish thought, Blake smiled a little and reminded himself he couldn’t even get her to talk to him unless he pulled her out from in front of runaway horses. No matter how he might follow and watch her, such opportunities to rescue her were not apt to often present themselves.

  With a sigh, he forced his attention back to the news articles in front of him as he made a list of the murder victims’ names, ages, and dates of their deaths.

  Megan Doyle, 18, January 5

  Brenda Quinlan, 19, February 15

  Kathleen O’Dell, 22, March 21

  All Irish, unmarried, and at home in the Irish taverns. All killed by the same man. No one who had seen the bodies could doubt that.

  Blake’s eyes caught on Kathleen’s name. She’d always been ready to repeat any bit of gossip or rumor about the murders.

  “You’ll remember poor Kathleen when you catch the monster, won’t you, Blake, me lad? It’d be a wonder sure seeing me own name on the front page of a newspaper, especially one as grand as the Herald,” she had told him more than once. “Almost as much a wonder as having a handsome lad like you to walk me home.” Then she would flash her eyes at him in invitation.

  Blake felt guilty when he couldn’t remember the color of those eyes. He picked up the article in the Herald detailing Kathleen’s death. Poor Kathleen. Her name had made more than his paper, but it was a wonder she hadn’t gotten to see. The black words on the papers began running together, and Blake leaned his head in his hands. He had to be missing something.

  “Hey, boss,” Joe called to him. “A lady here to see you.”

  For one crazy moment Blake’s heart bounded up inside him as he turned, half expecting to see Adriane presenting herself to him for rescue, but instead Grace Compton pushed past Joe to smile at him.