Winona was bustling in the kitchen, and the smell of cooking bacon made me pause in the doorway. Long ago, my mother had fried bacon for my father’s breakfast, and for mine. A wave of sadness hit me with a force I hadn’t expected. My gentle schoolteacher father, whom I’d never heard raise his voice in anger, and my mother, more of a firebrand and fiercely protective of Father and me, had died in a boating accident when I was eighteen. Even though I was an independent woman already studying to become a teacher, the loss had left me stranded and very much alone. And then I’d met Alex. And I’d slowly rebuilt a life with the same rhythms that made me feel safe and secure.
I, too, cooked bacon for breakfast for my husband. And while I taught during the day, which meant I didn’t prepare lunch, I had a hot supper ready when he came home in the evenings from his fledgling law practice. And those evenings had been so wonderful. We’d read, side by side, in the plush club chairs that were a wedding present from Uncle Brett. When we grew tired of our books, we’d shift to the floor in front of the fireplace and kiss away the cool evenings and the sad memories.
We’d laughed and dissected the books we loved. Alex teased me about my interest in the supernatural and sensational stories, but he’d listened like a schoolchild when I told him stories of the dead, risen from their moldy sepulchers, and premature burials.
“Miss Raissa, can I get you something?” Winona had come to stand in front of me, and in my memory-trance, I hadn’t noticed.
“Another cup of coffee, please.” I held out the cup and saucer. “I’ll get dressed and come down to help.”
“Everything is in hand.” She filled the cup and returned it to me. “Mr. Brett and Ms. Isabelle are walking the grounds now. With Mr. Carlton. I believe they’re planting clues for the game Mr. Carlton has concocted.”
“Drat. I’d hoped to join them.”
“They were headed to the family cemetery.”
“Thank you, Winona. The first step is getting dressed.” I hurried upstairs and went through my trunk for something cool and comfortable to wear. After the freedom of the shorts yesterday, everything would feel confining and hot. But it was Sunday, and a little decorum wouldn’t hurt.
The trousers I chose were lightweight, but still not as cool as the shorts. I selected a sleeveless white-linen shirt and hurried back downstairs. Robert was in the kitchen, munching bacon and a biscuit at the kitchen table while he talked with Winona. Whatever he said made her laugh. It struck me that Winona was still young, maybe in her late forties. And she was pretty. Thick lashes framed her beautiful eyes. Servants were so often overlooked and treated as nonhuman. They were part of the furnishings, like running water and electricity. My uncle never took other humans for granted, and that attitude was one I’d also adopted. I wondered what Winona’s dreams might be. Did she want to marry and set up her own household?
“Raissa!” Robert saw me in the doorway at last and stood. “These biscuits were made by angels last night while we slept. Winona is trying to take credit for them, but no mortal could create such light, melt-in-your-mouth delicacies.”
Winona knew he was flattering her, but her smile was like a burst of sunshine. “He is a devil,” she said. It was one of the most unguarded moments I’d ever shared with her.
“I’m well aware.” I snatched a slice of bacon from his plate.
“The brunch will be served outside on the grounds in half an hour,” Winona said.
“Can I help take out food or do anything?”
Consternation touched her features. “No, ma’am. That wouldn’t be proper. You’re the party honoree.”
“Pox on proper. If I can help, I’d like to.”
“Enjoy yourself and this gentleman. That’s how you can help.”
Robert took my elbow. “We should leave Winona to her cooking.”
I wasn’t quite ready to go. “Winona, have you ever heard of any ghosts on the grounds of Caoin House?”
She’d been lifting the lid on a pot, but it slipped from her hand and clattered loudly to the top of the stove. “Why would you want to know about ghosts?” Her response was almost as if I’d jumped out from behind a bush and frightened her.
“I’ve heard Caoin House is haunted. Even Uncle Brett said caoin is a Gaelic word that means ‘lament’ or ‘grieve.’” I tried to pronounce it as he had: qu-aine.
“No ghosts around here. Your uncle keeps things too lively for ghosts. Talking of such things can bring on trouble.”
Robert increased the pressure on my elbow. “You’re making her uncomfortable,” he whispered.
“Thanks, Winona.” Robert was right, though I couldn’t figure out why. “We’ll track down Uncle Brett.”
We left the coolness of the house and stepped into the June morning. Based on the heat that had already accumulated, the day would be much warmer than yesterday. Summer had overtaken spring. The seasons had changed in a matter of a few hours.
“I wonder why Winona was spooked by my question,” I asked.
Robert guided me into the oaks and away from all the people working to put food on the long tables. Two dozen guests were already up, drinking coffee or starting the day with another round of beverages.
“A lot of people are superstitious about the dead.” Robert grabbed my hands and spun me in a circle, as if we were children. The sun made starbursts against my closed eyelids.
“Raissa! Mr. Aultman!” Uncle Brett called out as he and Isabelle entered the oak grove. “Are you showing Mr. Aultman the grounds? Again?” He winked at me.
“We were actually looking for you,” I said.
“I see.”
“Leave them alone.” Isabelle came toward me and held out her hand. “Men can try your patience, can’t they? I don’t believe I’ve met your friend.”
“This is Robert Aultman,” I said. “Robert, this is Isabelle Brown. Where’s Carlton? Winona said he was with you. I told him I’d help him with the clues for the hunting game.”
“He refuses all help.” Uncle Brett pretended to be put out. “He told me he’d do this himself to be sure I didn’t cheat. Imagine, saying that to a man in his own home.”
“You do have a reputation for not following the rules, Uncle.”
“You make me sound like a scoundrel.” Uncle Brett was very pleased.
“If the shoe fits . . .” Isabelle laughed, and the sound was like a finely played woodwind.
Winona approached, and Uncle Brett stepped away to have a word. When he returned, he clapped his hands. “Brunch is served. Please help yourself. Don’t overeat—we’re having the championship croquet and horseshoe-tossing matches beginning at one o’clock.”
Although I wasn’t hungry, I couldn’t resist Winona’s crab omelet. Once I had my plate and was seated across from Robert at a small table, I found I couldn’t eat. Robert, too, played with his food. We kept looking at each other and grinning like fools.
“We are not very subtle.” I pushed my plate away.
“Blatant. That’s the exact word.” Robert’s lip quirked for a moment. “You’re a terrible influence on me. I’m normally all business. I should be talking with your uncle, working a deal, and all I do is sit here watching you not eat.”
A breeze lifted my curls from my neck, and I wanted to escape the party. In another few hours, Robert would leave for town and perhaps more travels up the East Coast. Time was such a precious thing.
An automobile pulled up to the house, and Pretta Paul hopped out, followed by a tall man who wore glasses. Pretta’s red swing skirt caught a breeze and puffed up, making her laugh. Her husband pretended to beat the skirt down in disapproval, but he was smiling. I waved her over and made introductions. “I’m going to spank the pants off Hubert at tennis,” she vowed, making her husband snort.
“You’re a frisky filly, but your aim needs work.” Hubert put a hand on her shoulder.
Pretta rolled her eyes. “It’s true his arms are almost long enough to put the horseshoe on the post.”
�
��Help yourself to some food and join us,” I suggested. I was dying to hear her ghost stories.
When they were seated, I asked Pretta about the tales involving Caoin House.
“I don’t want to spook you,” she said, her gaze shifting to her husband, who clearly disapproved of the turn the conversation had taken. “Let’s not ruin a beautiful day with tales of the dead.”
“I want to write ghost stories,” I said. “Like Mr. Poe or Sheridan Le Fanu.”
Hubert Paul cleared his throat. “I know you gals are modern and want to take the world by storm, but I’m not certain that’s a profession for a lady.”
I felt as if I’d been slapped, and I quickly put a hand on Robert’s knee when he started forward as if he intended to challenge Hubert. “The world is opening up for women, Hubert. We’ll have the chance to prove ourselves in professions once closed to us. But women have always been authors.”
“I didn’t mean any disrespect. It’s just that ghost stories are . . . frightening. I wouldn’t think a gentlewoman would want to frighten people.”
I was relieved that his concern was for the content of my writing, not the writing itself. “Oh, but I do. I want to frighten people out of their socks and shoes!”
The moment passed, and our conversation turned to the coming Mardi Gras season. I decided to wait until I had Pretta alone to ask again about the tales. Sensing my desire, Robert led Hubert to the horseshoe stakes and engaged him in a game.
“So what ghosts lurk about Caoin House?” I asked Pretta.
She frowned. “Maybe I misspoke. All of the old houses have tales involving the departed. It’s just foolishness. I should keep it to myself.”
“Don’t be silly. This might help me in my research for my own writing.” When she still looked uncertain, I added, “I’ve already seen one spirit on the property.” I leaned closer. “And a handsome one at that!”
“You have? Who was it?”
“I wish I knew,” I said. “He was a Confederate officer. Cavalry, I think. I’ll have to ask Uncle Brett about the uniform and insignia.”
She bit her top lip with small, perfect teeth. “Hubert will be angry if I upset you.” It was clear she wanted to talk.
“And I’ll be angry if you don’t.” I hoped to jolly her into talking.
“It’s so interesting you saw a Confederate soldier.” Her eyes snapped with excitement.
“And why is that?” My uncle had cranked up the phonograph again, a war tune.
“Because Eli Whitehead, who built Caoin House, was a colonel in the Confederate cavalry. He brought in Vernon Lovett, the famous British architect, to draw up the house plans. It took Eli and a number of slaves over two years to finish the house.”
“So you think I saw Eli lurking around, spying on who lives in his house and what we’re up to?”
She shook her head. “It’s a sad story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Absolutely.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Around us the sounds of the party seemed to diminish as Pretta leaned forward and said, “Eli built Caoin House for his bride, Eva. It was said she was the most beautiful woman in the Confederacy, and that every man fell at her feet.”
I loved stories where the woman’s beauty had the power to slay. It was one of the elements of a terrific ghost story. Edgar Allan Poe’s masterpiece was about “Ligeia,” who was able to transcend death. And if the woman in the tale died tragically, all the better. “He must have loved her to build this house.” I glanced over at Caoin House and gasped. A man stood on my balcony. A glint of sunlight reflected from the sword at his side.
“What?” Pretta turned, but after a moment gave me a blank look. “What did you see?”
“I thought someone was on the balcony. It must have been a shadow.” If I spooked her, she’d never tell me the story of Eli and Eva. “Robert and Carlton are playing tennis. Let’s go watch while you tell me about the most beautiful woman in the Confederacy.”
She checked to be sure Hubert was fully engaged with his game of horseshoes, and we strolled beside the tents on the way to the tennis court. “Her portrait hangs in your uncle’s morning room. I’m sure he’ll show it to you if you ask. I’ve tried to convince him to hang it in the main parlor, but he won’t. He says he doesn’t want to taint the house with her sadness.”
The hair on my neck tingled, as if a chill wind had blown against me, but there was no wind. “What happened to her?”
“During the last months of the Civil War, Mobile was occupied by Union troops. The residents were starving, and a group of women, led by Eva, marched on Union headquarters and demanded food. During the war, it was common for the womenfolk to manage the plantations. As the war dragged on, times became hard for Southern women. The men were on the front lines, and the slaves had fled.”
I flagged down a waiter and picked up two glasses filled with planter’s punch. The drink made good use of more orange juice, and I loved the exotic pineapple. Rum was one of the most accessible alcohols since it could be shipped straight into the Port of Mobile from Cuba, so we had an abundance of it.
“These are delicious,” Pretta said. “Don’t let me get drunk. I don’t want to embarrass myself.”
“No worries.” I pointed to the court, where Robert rushed the net and returned a hard, fast shot. “So what about Eva and the hard times here in Mobile?”
“Mobile was embargoed by Union warships, and the supply of goods had been shut off. In the outlying areas, homes were raided by deserters of both armies, taking the food from the mouths of those who couldn’t defend themselves. Those merely traveling through the region and headed for a new life took what they needed, because there was no work.”
History revision painted the Rebel forces as all honorable men and boys fighting for the glory of a lost cause. I’d never really thought about how soldiers would steal from defenseless women, but it was a story as old as time. Rape and pillage. The Vikings, Hannibal, and Attila the Hun. My parents had given me an appreciation for the lessons of history.
“Anything of value, especially food, was stolen. Deserters, renegades, and stragglers were brutes who took whatever the war had left, and that wasn’t much. Women and children were starving on the very land that had once brought such wealth.”
Pretta was a good raconteur, but she painted a picture I didn’t want to look at. Uncle Brett had told me some of the local history on prior visits, and my imagination could easily conjure up the horrors of that time period. The land around Caoin House still bore the scars. Not two miles away, the skeleton of Hornsby Plantation rose from the weed-choked ground. Broken and ragged columns seemed to guard a long-past dream, the last remnants of what had once been a grand plantation. As Union troops took over the area, the house had been burned to the ground. Honor Hornsby was left with nothing to feed her three children and no way to get into town for help. The four starved to death and were buried at the foot of a column that had once been a part of their home. Fifty years later, the wounds from both war and Reconstruction hadn’t healed. In many ways, America was still a divided nation.
I’ll never understand why people are willing to fight.” My longing for Alex felt like a deep wound. “I want to believe that some good comes out of the loss of life, the destruction of property and history. But I don’t. I really don’t.”
Pretta put a hand on my arm. “I know you lost your husband in the war. I was so glad Hubert came home. So many of my friends are widows. Their life is over before it even began. And some young women will never marry because there are no men for them to wed.”
I swallowed my comments. “Please continue with your story.” I had to dig out of the past.
Pretta’s face, so often animated with good humor, drew into a frown. “Eli Whitehead was late joining the fight, but he did join in 1862. He said the Confederacy needed him, and he could no longer let others fight in his place. He left Eva at Caoin House with over seven hundred slaves. War had not yet touched lower Alab
ama, but that didn’t last. Mobile suffered, like every other city.”
“Did he ever get home?” The tennis match continued in my periphery, but my focus was on Pretta’s tale.
“He was furloughed home in 1863, and their daughter, Elise, was conceived. He told everyone in town he was home to stay, but he was called back and eventually fought in the Battle of Franklin, just south of Nashville.” She looked out over the lawn as if imagining the scene. “Ten thousand soldiers, mostly Confederates, died in that ill-conceived battle. As the Southern soldiers advanced across an open field, the casualties were so high the dead were held upright by the press of bodies. There wasn’t room for the dead and wounded to fall down.”
Uncle Brett had told me about many of the Civil War battles. War history was one of his hobbies. At the Battle of Franklin, General John Bell Hood ordered a frontal assault on barricaded Union forces tucked in the safety of entrenchments. The Union soldiers had repeater rifles; the Confederates had muskets. It was a slaughter.
Pretta was caught up in her story now, and though she ducked when a tennis ball swished by her head, she kept talking. “Somehow Eli managed to survive and was given permission for another brief visit to Mobile. That Tennessee battle scarred Eli for the rest of his life, but it was nothing compared to what he found when he got back to Caoin House. Eva had been brutally raped and murdered, and their little daughter, Elise, was found wandering about the house. Her baby footprints, coated in her mother’s blood, were all over the first floor of the house. She’d been walking around her dead mother for at least two days before Eli arrived.”
“How horrid.” I tried to shut out the image of a poor baby unable to rouse her dead mother.
“Eli found the plantation abandoned. The slaves, now free, had left to find food. No one could say what had really happened to Eva, except that the murder was excessively brutal. Though law officials questioned a lot of people and tried to track down some of the slaves who’d fled Caoin House, there was never a trace of the killer. Eli almost lost his mind. He couldn’t stand it, and he took Elise to Europe. They traveled for years.”
The Book of Beloved (Pluto's Snitch 1) Page 5
