Chapter Fourteen
The carriage was small enough to be a pony cart, and very nearly was with its low sides, single entry in the back, and sideways seats that forced the driver to sit at an angle to properly handle the reins. Several miles beyond the last of the city’s homes and warehouses, it lurched off the edge of the road and came to a halt beneath an ancient hickory, one of a tight line of trees that crowded the slope leading in gentle decline to the river. The water was bright and cool, reflecting the summer sky darkly and giving it the refreshing touch of winter that Cass felt she needed after the sun’s heat had baked her for what seemed like hours. She was alone, and worried, and the stifling enclosure of the house had bothered her, making her feel as though a cage had been erected around her while she’d slept. Mrs. Hamilton had been gone three days, having crossed the river to visit an ailing sister living on the outskirts of Camden, in the pine barrens that stretched all the way across New Jersey to the sea. With the woman’s ribald laughter absent, Cass quickly grew to hate Jordan Lane; and that morning she’d ordered the carriage from Gerber’s stables, refusing a young boy’s offer to drive her, and had taken the fastest possible way out of Philadelphia. She drove north, parallel to the Delaware, until the houses had dropped away, the traffic had faded to virtually nothing, and she was able to locate a familiar narrow path that took her closer to the water.
She brought the cart to a stop, then clambered out and wrapped the reins around the nearest stout branch.
She fed a handful of sugar to the horse, slung the feedbag over its muzzle, and made her way carefully under the trees to a large flat boulder jutting like a stage over the water. Buttercup and jack-in-the-pulpit, violet and berry splashed islands of new color through the high grass; cattails and reeds marked the passage of the breeze, and she savored it all as she picked out scents and listened to the bees that droned lazily. She stretched, hiked up her blue-and-white skirts, and walked out onto the rock, kicking aside a small pile of twigs before she sat, dangling her shoes over the edge not a hand’s breadth above the river. She clasped her hands in her lap, changed her mind, and balancing herself carefully, leaned to one side and snatched a dead branch from the weeds. She used it to poke at the shallows below her, staring at the silt rising in brown clouds that swirled and were washed swiftly away.
This was a familiar place, and one she visited as often as she could, no matter what the weather. It served, for lack of anything or anyone else, as her confessor and advisor, soul-mirror and tormentor; in the deep river’s slow currents she could conjure images of her family and speak with them silently. To her distress, however, lately those images had been fading, as though memory were betraying her. And she knew, once she’d stopped crying, that it was so. Not that she would ever forget what parents and brothers looked like—but the sharpness, the dimensions, the almost tangible textures were gone, and what remained was only a poor, pale ghost.
The winter had passed all too quickly; 1864 was born almost before she knew it. So much had happened, and so much had not happened.
Neither Geoffrey nor Forrester had bothered her again; but she knew they had not forgotten; they were playing the same patient game she was, and once her nerves had settled she’d realized she was almost enjoying it.
And Kevin. What an afternoon in December it had been when he and Cavendish had come to the house, had told her that several highly speculative investments in Pennsylvania coal and oil, and in the Northwest Territory’s timber and fur trade had made her virtually a wealthy woman! In part, it was explained, the need for war goods was behind the upsurge in prices of commodities, and in part the growing number of families who were sifting from the Eastern seaboard into the continent’s interior. But whatever the reasons, Cass knew she had a lot to thank Kevin for, especially when he’d promised her invitations to the best balls in the best houses, now that her newly found wealth had made her more respectable than a mere farmer’s daughter. He had been as good as his word, taking her to several parties and dinners where the candles and lanterns, music and laughter, kept back the snow, the cold, the seemingly eternal dampness that turned the city into a cloud of gray.
A fish leapt out of the water, its splash startling her, and she watched the ripples quickly vanish as the river moved on, inexorably, increasingly swiftly. It did not seem to care that the woman sitting on its banks was trying to make sense of a suddenly new, puzzling, frightening future.
It had been a miracle, that December afternoon, the answer to a prayer that was etched in acid on her heart. She had the money now to find the men who had ruined her; all she needed was the means.
If only, she thought, this damned war would end!
If one listened to the press from New York and Baltimore, General Grant—a drunkard, they all said, but the only true leader the North had to match Lee—was performing mercilessly in his drive to the South’s heartland; or he had been, until that diabolical Lee had stopped him at Cold Harbor and Petersburg. Yet the rumors persisted that it was only a matter of time before Virginia and the Confederacy fell. There were, however, those in and out of power who wondered aloud when Lincoln (who had just been renominated two weeks before) would make better use of his new commander-in-chief.
It confused and frightened her to think that while she was growing richer by the hour, thousands of men and boys were dropping like flies in places she’d never heard of. Stories of disease sickened her, the sight of maimed soldiers hobbling through the streets made her turn away sharply and head in another direction. At a charity ball to which she’d been a heavy contributor, an aged major had regaled the guests with tales of heroics (not a few his own) and of Grant’s determination to make the Confederate capital at Richmond fall before winter. “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer,” the squat and bearded leader was reported to have said; but Cass had refused to listen, had made Kevin take her home; the guilty thought that some of her money came from the dead was too much to bear.
Kevin thought he understood. He knew how her family had been torn from her. But though he tried, it was nothing more than an exercise in futility.
And now, he had asked her to marry him.
A flock of crows soared over the water from New Jersey, screaming, raising from the branches over her head a pair of jays who scolded the crows intensely for disturbing their serenity. There was cacophony for several moments until the crows retreated, and she grinned as she watched them vanish into the foliage across the water. Yelling like politicians, she thought, and like politicians, accomplishing nothing; everything was the same as it had been before they had started.
“Well,” she muttered to the water beneath her feet, “not quite everything.”
They had been traveling for several long hours, arriving at the Junnifers’ mansion in Brandywine just before the dinner hour. A coachman wrestled their luggage to the ground where several black footmen in livery hoisted them to their backs and carted them inside. Cassandra tried to remain as calm as she could, but the sight of such grandeur in the midst of a devastating war had quite literally taken the breath from her lungs. The house was Georgian, two stories high, of dark brick and brilliant white marble. A roofed veranda swept around its walls, the roof supported by Doric columns too wide for a man to spread his arms around. The lawn that flowed up to and around the house was of a green so bright it easily rivaled the stands of trees that had been left when the land had first been cleared.
The ball was intended to raise money for the army, and since Cass had made herself known throughout the city as a prime contributor to medicine funds, the invitation had come to her quite naturally, and to Kevin’s muttering chagrin. This time, then, it was she who asked him, and after she had battled with his bruised ego for several days, he had accepted—as she’d known he would.
After a sumptuous dinner that had probably cost more than her father made in farming over two decades, after the dancing in the ballroom had begun, Kevin had taken her out onto the veranda where, by a l
ow marble wall inset with planters brimming green, he had taken her hands lightly.
“Cass,” he said, “you certainly move in the right circles.”
She laughed, putting a hand on his chest when he frowned at her. “Excuse me, Mr. Roe, but I believe this was all your idea at one time. The Thurmonds of Philadelphia, wasn’t it?”
“Oh my God,” he said in mock horror. “When do I have to stop apologizing for that fiasco? I mean, how was I to know we would be the only ones there under ninety?”
It had been a perfectly dreadful evening, that initial excursion into the city’s upper reaches, and only Kevin’s good humor and carefully muffled acidic comments had prevented her from fleeing at the first sight of the orchestra tuning up for, of all things in this day and age, a minuet.
“You’ve come a long way, Miss Bowsmith,” he said quietly, dropping her hands and leaning against the wall. The faint call of a loon from the lake at the grounds far side dropped for a moment a veil of melancholy over the evening. It passed, however, and she stood close beside him, facing the white-curtained French doors and the ghostly figures of the dancers beyond.
“A long way,” he repeated. “Why, when the President himself—”
“All right, Kevin,” she snapped, annoyed without really knowing why. But it was true. Just after February had blown stormily into March, she had received a short, gracious note from President Lincoln expressing his gratitude and pleasure at the work she had done in providing the Pennsylvania legions with much-needed medical supplies. She and Hiram had had a number of fierce rows over her donations, he insisting that she desist for drawing on her capital for such nonsense, and she quite loudly reminding him that she did have, after all, a personal interest in those “events”.
“I’m sorry,” Kevin said then. “Really, I’m sorry.” Impulsively, he snatched at her right hand and drew it to his lips. “Cass, you’ve done wonders for me, I want you to know that.”
She stared at him, not knowing whether to laugh or scowl. “Whatever are you talking about, Kevin Roe? You’re the one who’s made all those delicious investments. You’re the one who dug me out of my Jordan Lane cave. If it hadn’t been for you, in case you’ve forgotten, I wouldn’t even be here.”
“I refuse, as a gentleman, to take all the credit,” he said firmly. “You know about me. I’m sure Hiram whispered it to you before I even had the nerve to tell you myself. You know what a turn of the cards does to my blood. But since I met … well, for a long time now my friends have begun to wonder if perhaps I haven’t developed a fatal allergy to playing cards, or gotten myself a dose of Methodism.”
Cass shrugged, moved but not convinced. If he wanted to credit her with tempering his gambling and his penchant for things stronger than wine, that was his prerogative. She had not done it consciously, and would not have, even had she known.
“Cass,” he said then, “I—oh, damn me for a fool!” He spun around and gazed out over the lawn, toward the small islands of garden that stretched back to the forest wall between the house and the lake. The music paused, there was applause, then began again in a spritely tune. They were alone. “I’m a lawyer,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “I can get up in front of the worst judge in the city and shout him down if I have to. I’ve battled solicitors working for the most wealthy men in the country, and I’ve won without turning a hair. Yet I can’t even say a simple sentence to you without tripping over my tongue.”
Cass said nothing. But a slight chill not born of the night settled over her bare shoulders and she moved closer to him without touching. She wished she had brought a shawl.
“I have a good position,” he said, even more quietly, “and a fairly fine set of rooms near the office. I have entrance to the best houses in the city, the best families. My parents left me a modest enough stipend; I have wanted for nothing since the day I was born.” He turned and looked at her. “It all means nothing to me, Cassandra, if I can’t have you. Oh damn it, Cass, will you marry me? Will you consent to be my wife?”
“Good Lord,” she whispered. The blood drained slowly from her, face and her hand gripped his arm tightly as she leaned more heavily against the wall. “Good Lord.”
“Cass, what’s the matter? Are you all right?”
She managed a smile she did not feel. “I’m fine,” she said, trying not to stammer. “Surprised, that’s all. No, shocked. I thought, well, I thought you were going to tell me I was back to where I’d started when I first came north. How long ago was that, Kevin? A year? A century?”
“Well?”
She looked at him. “Well, what?”
“Well, damn it, woman, will you marry me or not?”
Her smile faded and she could not look at him. Instead, she covered with her own the hand he’d placed on her arm and waited until she could trust her voice not to break. “I’m flattered, Kevin, honestly I am, but—”
“Damn it.” He shook her hand away and strode a few angry paces toward the ballroom, stopped, punched at the air, and returned to her side where he gripped the edge of the wall until his knuckles flared white. “It’s that man Martingale, isn’t it?” When she did not answer, he spat his disgust. “Cass, the man is dead. Dead! You told me yourself you’re reconciled to that. But even so … good heavens, girl, he wasn’t your husband, you know.”
“He might as well have been,” she said, too softly for him to hear; and she shook her head when he asked her to repeat.
“Cass, I love you. It’s as simple as that. I love you!”
But it was not so simple as he thought; and though she was fond of him, she did not want to ruin his young life by forcing him, through his romantic dreams, to marry a woman who could not return his affection. She tried to explain, and he tried just as hard to make her see that he did, in fact, understand—and did not care. Love, he told her, would come in time. She demurred, and he insisted, twice more that evening, and at least once a month since, until now, a handful of days shy of July, he was demanding that she make up her mind once and for all.
She heard a horse approaching and stiffened. The first thought that struck her was that Forrester had finally, after so long an absence, come again to smile at her, remind her of Geoffrey Hawkins, and warn her without words. Nothing had happened since that bleak evening when Hawkins had taunted her into paralyzing fear (and tempted her with brief glimpses of the man he used to be), but he’d done what he’d set out to do—she still checked the windows each evening for strangers, searched faces in the crowd when she ventured outside, shrank from the touch of pedestrians when she strolled. If it hadn’t been for Kevin, his parties, and his banter, she would have gone mad.
She let the branch drop from her hand and watched as it swirled away from her slowly, darting between two half-submerged rocks to vanish beneath the veil of a low-hanging willow. The horse stopped, the saddle creaking as the rider dismounted. Her hands moved to her stomach and pressed. Her eyes closed, while her lips moved in desperate prayer.
“Cass?”
She nearly fainted in relief. “Do you always sneak up on a woman that way?”
“My Lord, Cassandra, there are thieves on the roads these days. Don’t you know that?” Kevin climbed onto the boulder to sit beside her, his face pinched in concern, his red hair reflecting the glare of the sun. “I don’t know about you, I really don’t.”
“How did you find me?”
His expression turned smug. “I have my ways.”
“Mrs. Hamilton has a greased tongue.”
“When her palm is properly greased, and I’m doing the ladling, that’s true.”
She sighed, shook her head, then stared at a leaf just over his shoulder; she felt his eyes appraising her as they had on the first day they’d met, roaming carefully but not insolently over the bare sweep of her shoulders, the faintly pink lift of her breasts beneath the pale gold shawl she had thrown about them. It was scarcely the most fitting attire for an afternoon’s riding, but she hadn’t much cared for what an
yone thought of her before, and she wasn’t going to start now.
“Cass, I’ve come for my answer. Do you know how long it’s been?”
She could have told him to the day, almost to the hour, but the remark would have been needlessly offensive, and she swallowed it.
“Cass, please, you’ve done enough thinking.”
His hands took her shoulders and half-turned her toward him. She looked up at his face, saw the kindness, the love, the almost boyish lack of lines about his eyes and mouth. And the longer she stared, the closer he moved toward her until, quite without her realizing it, their lips touched; lightly at first, like the new kiss of a child, then hungrily on his part as his hands spanned her back and pulled her to him. She did not withdraw, feeling the pleasant weakness that attacked her spine as his fingers kneaded the flesh under the silk of her dress. She felt his tongue press against her teeth and, before she knew it, she had relaxed her lips and admitted its probing. A part of her cautioned that she was leading him on unfairly, and would bring to him a suffering as real as any suffered in battle.
But here, now, he was a yearning, a remembering, a balm for the months that had passed without anyone touching her, caressing, kissing her … and before she could stop herself she slid one hand to the back of his neck and crushed him to her. He was startled; she sensed it when he stiffened momentarily before banishing his amazement and abandoning his lover’s pretense.
And when they broke, she rested her cheek on his chest. “I—”
“I know,” he said softly into her hair, “you’ve said it before. But it will come, I’m sure of it, Cassandra. It will come. You’ve had more troubles than any one person, man or woman, has a right to. But I do see your eyes at the parties, Cass, when you look at the lights and listen to the music, when you’re dancing with every panting buck in the city. You love it and don’t want it at the same time. Don’t you think it’s about time you started thinking of yourself for a change?”
Riverrun Page 18
