Christmas at Harmony Hill

by Ann H. Gabhart

  © 2013 by Ann H. Gabhart

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-4441-3

  Scripture used in this book, whether quoted or paraphrased by the characters, is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  In memory of my aunt,

  Lorin Bond Houchin,

  who always made Christmas special

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  Acknowledgments

  Song Credits

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  1

  Heather Worth sat propped against her washboard, listening to her husband’s light snores. Gideon could sleep anywhere. Out on the hard ground of a battlefield. In a tent with her on washer row. A man needed his rest to fight the war and push the Johnny Rebs back south. She needed the same. It was no easy task being the army company’s laundress, but she wouldn’t be washing any uniforms on the morrow. She could sit and wait for the dawn to light up the face she loved.

  She clasped her hands in her lap to keep from reaching out to brush the red hair back from his forehead. Her fingers itched to trace across his cheeks and memorize the exact position of his every freckle. She wished him awake, but he slept on. She’d known him to sleep sound as a baby with the Confederates so near they could hear them singing around their campfires.

  None of the enemy was that close now, but come daylight, the army was heading toward Tennessee to chase after them. It had to be done, the officers said. Heather had heard them talking. None of them paid any mind to the washerwoman, as if they didn’t think she could hear over the slosh of washtubs. But she heard plenty and the plenty she heard saddened her heart. They were saying they might have to root out and shoot every last one of the Rebels before they could get this war over. Her brother was one of those Rebels. Because Simon wasn’t even a whole year younger than she was, they’d grown up almost like twins. The day after Simon turned eighteen, he’d gone south to join the Confederate Army. A month later she left home to marry Gideon.

  That had been two long years ago. Two years of washing uniforms for the privilege of following the army. At least it was honorable work, and when no battle was raging, Gideon slept beside her on washer row. Now here in November 1864, the word was General Sherman had taken Atlanta and was headed to the sea, but even that wasn’t making the Confederates surrender.

  So Gideon’s division was headed to Nashville. Off to fight Hood. War was like wildfire. The army stomped it down in one place and the flames scooted out and started up in another place. Heather hated war. Everything about it. The blood on the uniforms she washed. The smell inside the surgeons’ tents after the wounds went putrid. The dying men who begged her to write one last letter to their families. She hated it all. Even the times between battles. Living in the open. No house to call her own. Nothing but guns and dirty uniforms. But she loved Gideon. So much that she’d become a camp follower against her father’s wishes.

  She put a hand up in the dark to block out the memory of his hurtful words. She didn’t want to think about her father. This night was Gideon’s. But then a dark sliver of her father’s anger sliced through her. How could Gideon keep on snoring when this might be the last night they would ever be together?

  He had told her she shouldn’t think that way. “Two years I’ve been out here fighting the Rebs without catching a bullet,” he said the night before, right after he held her tight and told her she had to go home. That she couldn’t follow the army to Tennessee.

  She had hidden the swell of the baby growing inside her for months. Even after Gideon knew, they’d delayed her leaving, although he worried about her wrestling the wash pots. She was strong. She could manage. Had managed. Her hands went to her abdomen and caressed the baby tumbling about inside her as though trying to push through her skin to know this last moment with his father.

  She almost wished he could, but by her reckoning, it was nearly two months too soon. If they hadn’t gotten orders to march south, she might have talked Gideon into letting her stay. But he’d shuddered at the thought of his son being born on a battlefield.

  To pull his mind away from the bad memories of those conflicts, she had smiled and said, “Son? What if I carry a girl with red hair like her father?”

  No smile came to his face in answer to hers. “Even more I wouldn’t want my daughter born in the midst of blood and killing.” He leaned over to kiss her rounded stomach, then looked back at her face. “Go home.”

  Home. The word struck a chord in Heather’s heart. She wanted to be home. She wanted her mother to help her bring her child into the world. Gideon was right. A battleground with death hovering over it was no place to birth an innocent babe.

  So she said yes. Always before, she had said no, she wouldn’t leave Gideon. But last night she agreed to go. She had no other answer. The tubs were getting too heavy for her with the weight of her unborn child dragging her down. So she’d retreat back to her Kentucky home. Her mother wouldn’t let her father turn her away. Not when she saw Heather heavy with child.

  Heather shifted against the washboard. Her back did ache. No matter what position she tried.

  The black of the night softened to a gentle gray. Feet passed by on the other side of the tent wall. The soldier husband of Jenna, the other washerwoman. Jenna’s washtubs clanged as she began packing up. Her two boys would be helping her. Heather thought to slip out of the tent to offer Jenna her own tubs and wooden stir paddles.

  She moved to get up, but Gideon woke to pull her down beside him for one last embrace before the war ripped them apart. Gideon was right. She shouldn’t complain. She’d had more of him than most wives whose husbands marched off to war. He ran his hand over the baby bulge under her skirt. She hadn’t put on nightclothes the evening before. She slept in her dress more times than not. Not much privacy on washer row.

  She lay silent in Gideon’s arms as he whispered love words in her ear. That was what had made her fall in love with him. The way he talked. The way he laughed. How could she bear not seeing that smile for weeks, perhaps months? Maybe never again.

  “I won’t smile again until we’re together once more,” she whispered.

  A frown crossed his face. “No, no, my Heather Lou. Don’t let your smile get rusty. Keep it all practiced up so
that it will come easy when you see me coming home to you and our sweet little babe.” His eyes softened on her. “You are so beautiful. So very beautiful.” His voice was husky.

  She almost laughed then, thinking how far from beautiful she must look after living in an army camp for so long. Her hands were red and raw from the soap and scrubbing. Her face windburned. Her dark hair, twisted in a bun to keep it out of the way, was streaked by too many hours in the sun. Bonnets were a luxury in an army camp. A kerchief was all one could expect. Her dress was sturdy but plain and lacking the first hint of feminine frill.

  “Only in your eyes,” she said.

  “My eyes are the ones that matter.” He put his hand on her cheek and studied her face. “I’ll carry this vision with me until the war is over.”

  “Will that ever happen?” It seemed to Heather as if the war had been going on forever.

  “They’re beat. They just don’t know it yet. But they will soon, and when that happens, I’ll be running home to you.” He tapped her nose with his finger. “We’ll have a little house and every night, every livelong night, we’ll lie like this and talk about whether the hens are laying or if the corn’s ready to pick.”

  “Will we be happy?”

  “We’ll be happy as two birds in a ripe blackberry patch, my Heather Lou.”

  One more embrace and then he was pulling on his boots, buttoning his shirt, slipping the braces up over his shoulders to hold up his trousers. Turning from her Gideon into a soldier. Tents had to be taken down. Everything carried on to the next fighting spot. Heather had done it all over and over. Fold this. Roll that. Make it fit on the wagon or leave it behind. Now she was what didn’t fit. What was going to be left behind.

  She watched the company form and march away. Gideon risked the ire of his captain by breaking rank for one last goodbye kiss. The other soldiers whistled and made catcalls, but Gideon wasn’t bothered. That was the thing about Gideon. He was ready to dance to whatever tune the day might be playing. But he promised to always give her the first and last dance.

  The baby twisted and kicked inside her as he turned to run back in line. The captain was yelling at him, but with no anger in his voice as he looked over toward Heather and winked. A good number of the men lifted a hand and waved as they passed. For months, she’d been scrubbing their clothes and paying mind to their talk of families back home.

  Good men. She didn’t want to think about any of them charging the enemy’s artillery. She wished rock fences for them to hide behind. She’d seen too many wounded men. Too many bodies waiting burial. What if this time that fate befell Gideon? Fear squeezed her heart and a prayer rose unbidden within her.

  Dear Father in heaven, protect my Gideon. Don’t let him be too brave. Protect them all.

  He was still looking back at her, so she kept her lips turned up in what would pass for a smile with the distance separating them. A distance that grew farther every second. She wanted to run along the road after him in order to see him one minute longer, but then he was turning with his face forward. Facing his future. She had no choice but to do the same.

  When she could no longer even imagine seeing a glimpse of his hat, she picked up her valise and headed toward the town. It wasn’t far, only a mile or two. She could get a train ticket to Kentucky, to home. She’d go as far as the train would take her and walk the rest of the way. Hadn’t she walked miles and miles across Kentucky and Virginia as the two armies searched out each other to see who could do the most dying?

  She put a hand on the swell of her stomach and a bit of Scripture came to her. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.

  She did hope in the Lord. She did. Pray God, so did Gideon.

  2

  Looking back to catch a last glimpse of Heather, Gideon stumbled over his own feet and almost fell. The big man beside him grabbed hold of his arm to keep him upright and moving forward.

  Gideon turned his face resolutely south as he got back into step. “You can turn loose of me now.”

  Jake White laughed and grasped Gideon’s arm all the tighter. “I’m feared to turn you loose, lad. Afraid you’ll be deserting the likes of us for your pretty washerwoman.”

  Jake had come over from Ireland a few years before. He’d joined up with the Union Army saying he’d seen Ireland fall apart with the hunger parting families and he wasn’t wanting to see his new country rent asunder as well. Already into his thirties, he was years older than most of the soldiers, but he lacked family to tie him to home. He’d had a wife, but she’d been carried off by a fever.

  “I feel like I’m deserting her.” Gideon glanced over his shoulder, but there was nothing but more men marching along behind him. No girl in a dark blue dress chasing after him.

  “Aye, that you are,” Jake agreed pleasantly. “But a soldier marches where the generals order.”

  “She’s carrying my child,” Gideon said.

  “Noticed as much the last time she laundered my uniform.” Jake let go of Gideon’s arm at last and looked straight ahead. His next words carried a weary sadness. “My Irene, she was in the family way when the fever took her.”

  “But you didn’t desert her.”

  “Nay, I did not, but the enemy won nevertheless.” He sighed before he shook himself like a dog after a dip in a pond. “But that has naught to do with your bonny lass. She’s a strong one in spite of her winsome looks. Else she couldn’t have followed the army these months. She’ll be glad for the rest of going home to birth your little one.”

  “Her father was against her wedding me.”

  “What did you expect, lad? A skinny excuse for a man like you showing up to steal his daughter. You don’t look like you’d last two rows hoeing corn.”

  “I never did take to hoeing,” Gideon said with a laugh. “Of course, I never thought to take to soldiering either.”

  “But here you are.”

  “Here I am.” Gideon peeked back over his shoulder in hopes she’d run along after the troops so he could feast his eyes on her yet one more time. But that wasn’t Heather’s way. That was more the sort of thing he would do. Think nothing of the consequences but follow the whim of the moment. That’s why he’d risked the ire of the captain and broken rank to give her one last kiss. A kiss she’d remember the more for it being unexpected.

  He’d think on that kiss and the look on her face and keep back the weariness of the march. Sometimes it was better to think about what had been rather than what was ahead. And what had been were many sweet nights with his Heather Lou.

  3

  The train jerked and bounced across country. Heather had been on trains before when the army, including her and her wash pots, moved by rail, but never for so many miles. She felt swallowed up by the belching iron monster with its windows blackened by smoke and people elbowing their way up the aisles on and off at every stop.

  One seat companion urged her to lean back and sleep away the journey, but he had a shady look and eyes that rested too often on her valise. She thought it best to keep her own eyes open. A woman alone needed to be vigilant no matter how wearing the journey. Gideon’s journey would be even more wearing, with the prospect of cannon fire at the end of it. At least at the end of her journey, she’d see her mother. That thought buoyed her spirits.

  She’d heard so little from home in the years she’d been gone. She’d written letters home, but she had no idea how many of them had actually found their way to her mother’s hands. At least one, for a return letter had found Heather in Virginia. The thin page of writing was now tattered from many readings. Just the sight of her mother’s handwriting had been a comfort during those summer months when even the sight of food brought on a green sickness. Once she was sure of what the nausea meant, she’d written her mother, telling her the news while still hiding it from Gideon. She liked to imagine the smile on her mother’s face when she read that she was to be a grandmother. A smile Heather was looking forward to seeing in person not
so long from now.

  When at last the train jerked to a stop in Danville, Heather stood and stretched. Her back ached as if she’d scrubbed a hundred uniforms. She clutched her valise close against her and waited for the light-headedness to fade away. She stepped off the train and looked around at the people going about their business.

  How she wished someone was there to meet her, but she’d had no time to send word of her coming. Here and there she spotted a familiar face, but none she could call a name. Nor did any call out to her. Her father had never been much for going into the town, and when he did, he sometimes took her brother Simon but never Heather or the younger children.

  They went to the church not far from their home when no need on the farm kept them away and sometimes joined the neighbors for hog killings or quilting bees. Then the near neighbors, the Fentons, made sorghum every year, an event that drew people from miles around. That’s where she’d first met Gideon. No sweeter day lived in Heather’s memory.

  Her mouth watered at the thought of that sorghum and some freshly churned butter on her mother’s biscuits. She pulled her wrap closer about her and, after stopping to buy cheese and bread, started up the road, eating as she went. With the sun sliding across the sky toward the western horizon, she began to worry night might overtake her before she reached the farm.

  While she’d slept out many the night since she’d left home, that was with Gideon beside her and an army surrounding her. Things were different with no one standing between her and whatever dangers might lurk in the darkness. There could be wolves or even a bear, though she’d never heard of one near home. More likely the wolves and bears she needed most to fear were the two-legged kind. Even so, she walked on. The thought of her mother looking up and seeing her come in the door was enough to give her energy to keep going. A prodigal daughter come home. Heather let the Bible story of the prodigal son play through her mind.

  She had left home, but not like the son in the story who had squandered his money. Heather had left with nothing but a change of clothes and a few coins her mother had tied into a handkerchief and pressed into her hands. Now she had a bit more money. The velvet bag containing her army earnings bounced against her breast as she walked down the road. She’d hidden it away in the bodice of her dress after the worry of someone grabbing her valise had kept her awake on the train.