by Nan Ryan
Daniel’s breath caught in his chest.
Mary Ellen Preble Lawton was the loveliest woman he had ever seen, and even now, after nine years as her husband, the mere sight of her filled him with desire. It was as if he had never touched her, never had her. Sometimes he wondered if he ever had. And knew, deep in his heart, that he had not.
Yes, she had lain naked in his arms night after night, but he had never really had her. She had never given herself to him. Since their honeymoon night in Monaco, she had indifferently allowed him the use of her beautiful body because he was her husband. But she had never really responded.
She did her duty.
But she always remained detached and unemotional even when they were intimate. She held back her love and her fire, wouldn’t give it to him. It had been that way throughout their marriage.
He knew the reason. Had known from the beginning. The beautiful, angelic-faced girl he had married in Monaco had been desperately in love with Clayton Knight.
As he studied at her now, Daniel wondered if, after all these years, she was still in love with Knight.
“Mary Ellen…” He spoke her name at last. She looked up.
“Daniel,” she said, closing the book on the red silk marker. “I didn’t know you were home. When did you get back?”
He didn’t answer her question. He said, “I’ve something to tell you.”
“Please,” she said, indicating the settee, “come and join me.”
Daniel walked over, dropped down beside her, and without preamble told his beautiful twenty-six-year-old wife that he had fallen in love with a pretty seventeen-year-old Alabama belle he’d met while at Mobile’s Mardi Gras last February.
“I want a divorce immediately, Mary Ellen,” he said. “I’m going to marry the sweet young girl who loves me as you never did.”
Mary Ellen agreed without argument. She said, “I sincerely wish you every happiness, Daniel, and I hope she will be able to give you the son I couldn’t.”
Daniel’s fair face colored, and Mary realized that the seventeen-year-old was already pregnant with his child.
“Then, congratulations,” she said, smiling, and reached out to touch his cheek. Then she rose from the settee and started to walk away.
“Mary Ellen, wait.” He stopped her. She turned back, looked at him. “There’s…there is something I must tell you. Something you ought to…something you have a right to know…and…I…” He stopped speaking.
“Yes, Daniel?” Her well-arched eyebrows lifted questioningly. “What is it?”
Daniel started to say something, hesitated. He didn’t reply. The oath he had sworn to years ago came back to haunt him. He had promised John Thomas Preble that no matter what happened, he would never disclose to Mary Ellen, or to anyone else, the scheme they had jointly implemented to break up Mary Ellen’s romance with Clay Knight. And he feared John Thomas Preble.
Daniel shook his blond head. It didn’t matter anyhow. It was too late to undo the deed. Too late to change all that had happened.
“Nothing,” he said finally. “It was nothing.”
Mary Ellen and Daniel quickly divorced.
The day the decree was final, Daniel married his pregnant Alabama sweetheart. The newlyweds didn’t go on a honeymoon. Instead, less than an hour after the civil ceremony, they hurried to the Shelby County Hospital. The bride was in labor.
At midnight she gave birth to Daniel Lawton’s first child.
A healthy nine-pound boy.
Mary Ellen had, as soon as Daniel asked her for a divorce, returned to the Preble mansion to live with her parents. On the day the divorce became final and Daniel remarried, she took back her maiden name.
She was again a Preble, and her powerful father’s name and position in the community kept the young divorcée from being ostracized by polite society. The only daughter of John Thomas Preble would continue to be accepted by the city’s elite.
So once she was legally Mary Ellen Preble again, her parents expected her to start accompanying them to the many gala balls and elegant parties to which they were invited.
But Mary Ellen never attended the many social activities so favored by the Prebles. And she staunchly refused dinner invitations from a number of the city’s eligible bachelors and widowers. She suspected their main interest in her stemmed from the fact that she was a divorced woman and therefore more likely to be passionate and loose moraled than if she had never been married.
Her parents were disappointed that she refused all invitations. So were a host of would-be suitors. Mary Ellen was more beautiful now than she’d been at seventeen, and the fact that she was a divorcée certainly added to her appeal. Polish and grace had replaced childish enthusiasm and wide-eyed innocence. She was a woman now, and with her fair blond looks and her somewhat sulky poise, she was a powerfully seductive challenge to many a hopeful male.
Mary Ellen gave none of them the time of day, which only made her more attractive. She was totally unattainable, therefore incredibly alluring. She was, to the chagrin of the other eager local beauties, the most sought after female in all Memphis.
A year passed.
Then two.
And still Mary Ellen preferred to stay close to the comfortable refuge of Longwood. Her parents were concerned. It wasn’t right for a woman so young and pretty to never go anywhere or see anyone.
They planned a trip abroad. They insisted she go with them to England for the summer season. She wouldn’t. She stayed behind at Longwood.
Worried about their reclusive daughter, the Prebles acknowledged they might have made a terrible mistake by sending Clay Knight away all those years ago. And they wondered if they should, even at this late date, admit their error.
“Maybe we should tell Mary Ellen the truth, John,” Julie Preble said as they strolled on the deck of the SS Ambassador while she crossed the rough Atlantic.
“Perhaps you’re right,” John Thomas mused aloud. “I suppose she has a right to know, even if she hates us for what we did.” He recoiled at such an unacceptable possibility. “God, all I was trying to do was ensure her happiness, but—”
“I know, dear,” said his wife. “I know. Mary Ellen will understand if we tell her.”
“I don’t know,” he said, leading Julie over to the ship’s railing. Shaking his graying head worriedly, he said, “We misjudged her then. We could be misjudging her now if we assume that she’ll forgive us.” His dark eyes were somber.
Julie Preble laid a gentle hand on her husband’s arm. “Dearest, that is a chance we must take. Mary Ellen has been miserable for far too long. She never learned to love Daniel as we had hoped. Neither of them was happy. Their marriage was a terrible sham.”
“Yes, it was, and I—”
“My contacts with ties to the academy tell me Clay Knight has never married. Maybe it’s not too late for…” Her words trailed off. She fell silent.
John Thomas patted her hand. “When we get back home this fall, we’ll have a long talk with Mary Ellen. We’ll tell her the truth. Confess everything.” He drew a long, deep breath of the salt air and added, “If she wants to try to get in touch with Ensign Knight, I’ll do everything in my power to help her. To help them both.”
“Yes,” agreed Julie Preble. “We’ll tell her just as soon as we get back home.”
17
MARY PASSED THE SUMMER in lonely solitude at Longwood. In mid-October, when the leaves began to fall and the humid air began to cool ever so slightly, she assembled the many servants together. She instructed them to begin readying the mansion and the grounds for the return of her parents.
They were due back in Memphis in three weeks.
Across the ocean on that very same October day, Julie Preble was dressing for their last evening in London. Come morning, they would start the voyage home to America. John Thomas was already dressed and waiting impatiently in the parlor of their opulent Savoy hotel suite.
Dapper in black evening clothes, he whistled softly as
he poured himself a drink. He felt light-hearted and happy. Their long stay abroad had been a mixture of pleasure and business. He had met with his European cotton buyers and assuaged their fears about the talk of a possible war between the states. It would never happen, he assured them. Preble cotton would continue to flow uninterrupted to their markets or his name was not John Thomas Preble!
Now John Thomas was more than a little eager to go home. Glass in hand, he went to the foyer for his long black evening cape and silk top hat. Returning to the parlor, he finished his drink and set the glass aside, deciding against a second. He fished a gold-cased watch from the pocket of his white waistcoat, checked it, and smiled.
Julie was running late, as usual.
“Better hurry, darling,” he called through the open bedroom door. “We’re already a quarter of an hour late.”
John Thomas turned his head and listened, expecting to hear her cultured voice calmly telling him that she wasn’t quite ready; she would be out in just a moment.
Several seconds passed and Julie didn’t answer. John Thomas shook his head and called to her again. When she still didn’t answer, he grew mildly alarmed.
“Julie, is something wrong? Are you having trouble with some pesky hooks? I’ll be glad to be of service.” No reply. Only silence. “Julie? Julie? Answer me!”
Beginning to frown, John Thomas tossed his evening cape and silk top hat on a sofa and started for the bedroom. He reached the door and looked about anxiously. His wife wasn’t seated at the mirrored vanity table. She wasn’t behind the dressing screen.
He advanced into the room, looking about, his heart beginning to pound.
Then he saw her.
She was on the far side of the bed. Frightened, he hurried to her. Her new taffeta ball gown half on, half off, she was on her knees, one hand clutching the bed’s brocade counterpane, the other at her throat.
Her eyes were filled with fear, she was struggling to say his name. But blood came instead of sound.
“God in heaven!” her terrified husband swore, and fell to his knees beside her. “Julie, Julie!”
The hotel’s physician arrived minutes after John Thomas rang frantically for help. Still dressed in her bloodied Paris gown, an unconscious Julie Preble was taken at once to St. Mary’s Hospital a few short blocks away.
But they couldn’t save her. She hemorrhaged to death from a perforated ulcer.
John Thomas Preble was devastated.
He took his beloved wife home for burial, then went into seclusion in his Memphis mansion. He refused to leave Longwood. He wouldn’t see old friends who came to call. He spent long hours alone in the upstairs suite he had shared with his wife, clutching a piece of Julie’s jewelry or staring at a fading photograph of her.
He wouldn’t let the servants touch anything that had belonged to her. He roared like a wounded lion when Mary Ellen suggested he at least allow them to take Julie’s clothes away. For days at a time he stayed sequestered in the suite, carefully fingering strands of silky golden hair that clung to Julie’s hairbrush.
He was prostrate with grief—so lost in his own misery, he didn’t remember that he and Julie had planned to tell Mary Ellen what had really happened with Clay Knight more than a decade ago.
Mary Ellen was deeply concerned about John Thomas. She had lost her mother; she was afraid she was losing her father as well. She was fearful he would literally grieve himself to death.
Weeks passed and he got no better.
Christmas came and went, with no change in the depth of his mourning. Winter turned to spring, with John Thomas Preble still immersed in sorrow. Summer settled in with its sticky, oppressive heat, and the brooding master of Longwood stayed shut up in the stuffy upstairs shrine, his shirt soaked with perspiration, his dark eyes dead.
John Thomas had lost all interest in his vast cotton empire. Profits had declined steadily. The Preble fortune had begun to dwindle away. Slaves were sold to neighbors. Rich fertile fields went unplanted.
Mary Ellen expressed her growing concern to her father. She attempted to shock him out of his grief by telling him they were going to end up ruined financially if he didn’t take hold and intervene. She warned him about the possibility of a war between the states. If it happened, a Union blockade would likely keep all cotton from reaching the lucrative European markets. He’d better wake up! He’d better ship as much cotton abroad as possible right now so they wouldn’t be left destitute.
But John Thomas Preble was unreachable.
18
ON THE ROLLING DECKS of the southbound navy screw sloop Water Witch, a tall, solitary figure stood on the bow in the late night darkness. Dressed for the frigid temperatures of the open sea in winter, the lean officer wore dark woolen trousers, a high-necked pullover sweater, a heavy woolen seaman’s jacket, and a black watch cap.
The winds ruffled locks of the blue-black hair escaping his watch cap and pressed his dark trousers against his hard thighs and long legs. His feet were braced apart in the stance adapted by seamen who often stand on the pitching decks of a moving ship.
His balance perfect despite the rough seas, he withdrew a thin brown cigar and match from his inside breast pocket. He put the cheroot between his lips, struck the match with his thumbnail, then cupped his hands around the tiny flame while he puffed the smoke to life.
Captain Clay Knight drew deeply on his cigar. Orange sparks blew around his head and dissipated quickly in the strong north winds.
This cold dark night was, Captain Knight reflected, but one of hundreds like it that he had spent on the heaving deck of a moving ship. He had been at sea when winter storms had struck with full, dangerous fury. He remembered ropes and halyards sheathed with ice and the crew suffering from frostbite and bitter debilitating cold. He recalled winds so strong that he had to shout to be heard above the roar of the waves, and the motion of the ship was so great it seemed as if she were racing when she was only rising and lowering with the giant waves, making no forward progress.
He remembered the hauling of ropes that bit into his raw hands and the chopping of ice and fighting the elements and the heavy darkness that came far too early on those short, leaden days. He remembered so many cold, lonely nights he had spent on the deck of a ship far, far from shore.
Yet never, it seemed, far enough.
Since his graduation from Annapolis a dozen years ago, Captain Knight had been at sea for months at a stretch and had dropped anchor in many a foreign port. From the beginning he had volunteered for any campaign he heard of that would take him a great distance from America’s shores, as if the more miles he put between himself and Memphis, Tennessee, the less he would think of Mary Ellen Preble Lawton.
In September of 1852, just three months after graduation, he’d been one of a handful of stripers who’d graduated to the fleet to be sent with a hundred marines on the gunship Jamestown down to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to protect Americans living there.
In June of 1853 he’d been sent out on an expedition aboard the Brinkley to chart the Pacific islands from the Aleutians to Japan. Called back to shore duty in San Francisco after nine months, he was immediately shipped out as third mate aboard the Bryson to Shanghai in April of 1854.
He was with a landing party of ninety men under Commander John Kelly of the frigate Wichita, which joined a British naval detachment to drive out the Chinese forces threatening the foreign concessions at Shanghai.
In 1855 it was consular duty in Hong Kong, then later that same year the Fiji islands. In 1856 he led a small landing party from the sloop Decatur, who helped the settlers of Seattle, Washington, repel an attack by a thousand hostile Indians.
He spent the majority of 1857 in the States, lecturing at Annapolis, and near the end of the year was promoted to the rank of full Lieutenant.
In 1858 he was down in Paraguay as second officer aboard the gunship Freedom and at the mouth of the Congo in 1859.
Now, in early January of 1861, newly commissioned Captain Clay Kn
ight was ten days out of the Norfolk navy yard, where the Water Witch had had a complete refit. Bound for his Western Station—the port of San Francisco—the voyage would take him down around the Cape.
It was a long journey, and they would make at least four stops along the way, the first and longest at the tropical seaside city of Rio de Janeiro. The crew was already looking forward to liberty in the warm Brazilian port.
Smoking alone in the darkness on that cold January night, Captain Clay Knight continued to reflect on all the years he’d spent at sea and all the places he’d seen and all the women he’d had. He shook his dark head, and his full lips slowly turned up into a self-mocking grin.
Through all the years and all the places and all the women, he had never managed to totally forget Mary. There had been times, brief and far apart, when his vision of her had dimmed. Times when he had trouble remembering exactly what she looked like, what her voice sounded like, what it felt like to have her arms around him.
Then, like a bolt of the blue, some long forgotten memory would rise up to torture him. And there she’d be before him, her image so vivid, so real, his fingers ached to touch her. He could almost taste the sweetness of her kisses, could almost feel the warmth of her slender body moving against his own.
Captain Clay Knight finally threw back his dark head and laughed at himself as he stood alone on the bow of the Water Witch. Serious trouble was looming on America’s horizon. His nation was on the brink of a civil war. A war that would cost untold lives, maybe his own. Yet here he was thinking about Mary Ellen Preble Lawton.
Thank God no one—especially Mary—knew what a sentimental fool he was.
His laughter soon stopped and his firm jaw tightened. His gray eyes narrowed as he flicked his smoked-down cigar into the sea.
If his love had never fully died, neither had his hatred. It was the only thing that had saved him. Anytime he wistfully remembered Mary as being an honest, sweet, loving girl, he quickly reminded himself that she had proven to be none of those things.
