by Jenny Lykins
“Callen, what the—” Ty shouted as she stumbled from her descent.
She lifted her skirts and ran straight for the carriage. She couldn’t let him reach Evan. She couldn’t let them all come together.
The horse pulling the carriage shied at the sight of her running toward it. By God, he would have to run her down to get past her.
Ty caught up with her just as she grabbed the horse’s bridle.
“Mama!”
Dear God, his sweet voice cut right through her heart. Tears choked her, nearly blinded her.
“Go to him!” Ty took the bridle and Callen raced to catch Connor as he clumsily tried to scramble out of the carriage. The couple didn’t try to stop her. For all they knew, she had ridden out early to meet them, anxious to see her son.
“Come here, baby,” she cried as she pulled him into her arms. “Let Mama hold you.” She wrapped her arms around his warm little body, kissed his plump cheeks, nuzzled his baby fine curls. “Oh, thank You! Thank You,” she offered up to Heaven. The tears came then, bursting forth as if through a broken dam, when he slid his tiny arms around her neck and held on tight.
She sank to the ground when her shaking knees threatened to buckle, right there in the middle of the road. Rocking him back and forth, she finally let out all the tears of pain, all the tears she’d held back since learning of Tylar’s death. All the tears since Stephen had sent Connor away so she could find a husband. All the tears when she thought Ty had walked out on her and she would never see him again. She had Ty, and now she had Connor, and the overwhelming relief seemed to turn into water and pour from her eyes.
Strong, rock solid arms wrapped around her just as hers wrapped around her son.
“Welcome home, big fella,” Ty whispered to Connor, which doubled Callen’s tears.
Connor peeped over her shoulder at Ty.
“Will you swing me?” he asked in a timid voice.
She laughed and sobbed at the same time. Her heart came close to bursting with joy.
“I demand satisfaction, McCall.”
A pair of worn, scuffed boots stopped just short of stepping on Callen’s skirts. A buff, leather glove hit the dirt road beside them in an explosion of dust.
Callen jerked her head up and she scrambled to her feet when Ty picked up the glove and rose.
“Evan, no! It was my fault!”
Ty gently pulled her behind him as he faced Evan, whose attention now focused on the gown he’d last seen her wearing…at the altar. A muted red suffused his face, and a flicker of hurt flashed in his eyes when he looked at her before dragging his glare back to Ty.
“Did you have her wear that to mock me, McCall?” he asked in a level, dangerous voice.
“I don’t dictate what my wife wears,” Ty said.
Evan’s jerk was almost imperceptible. He looked at Callen, the pain now raw in his eyes.
“Name the time and place, Hennessey, so we can be on our way.” Ty tossed the glove at Evan’s chest. “I hear the Trace has an undesirable element after dark.”
Evan’s fist clenched around the glove. The men who had alerted him to their presence remained mounted on restless horses. Dan sat atop Sugar, holding Jake’s reins.
“Dawn. At Windsor.”
Ty shrugged. “Fine with me.” He looked up at Evan’s friends. “Bring your buddies with you for moral support if you want. Personally” – he looked back at Evan – “I don’t need an entourage.”
Ty turned to escort Callen and Connor to the horses.
“The boy stays with me.”
Ty stopped, his head turning slowly, his body following. Callen stiffened and clutched Connor even more tightly to her breast.
“What?”
“I said the boy stays with me.” Evan lifted his chin. “He was on his way to Cedar Point.”
Ty inclined his head.
“You expect me to give our son – and he is our son – to you, because Callen’s demented brother stole him away from her so she could catch herself a husband?” He looked up at the men on horseback, two of which had the decency to look uncomfortable, then he swung his gaze back to Evan, smiling. “Over my dead body.”
“With pleasure,” Evan growled.
Before he could land a punch, Ty knocked it away and had Evan by the throat with his thumb and middle finger digging deep beneath Evan’s jaw.
“Tomorrow. At dawn,” Ty said conversationally. “And I choose the weapon.” He shoved Evan away, then handed Connor to Daniel before helping Callen up onto Sugar’s back.
Evan flung himself atop his horse and glared at Ty, rubbing his neck. Callen pleaded with him with her eyes and mouthed “Please.” Finally, he wheeled around, then charged back down the road, his friends following close behind.
Once settled, Daniel handed Connor to her and Ty swung into Jake’s saddle. In a matter of moments, they left a cloud of dust around the couple, still staring, in the carriage.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Garrett studied Estella’s face as she sewed a button back onto one of his shirts. The lamplight deepened the gold of her hair and cast a warm glow across her smooth cheeks. He wondered, not for the first time, if he might have been the Yankee who killed her husband.
He’s missing, she would have reminded him, had he stated his thoughts aloud. He had mentioned the possibility to her once, and she had taken his hand in hers.
“And how many widows did my husband make,” she’d asked, “while fighting for a cause he believed in as strongly as you believed in yours?” She had run her hand down the disfiguring scars on his face. “If I hated every man who might have killed my husband” – she’d shaken her head and shrugged, smiling – “then soon my soul would be as black as your hair.”
She looked up at him now and smiled, as if she’d felt his gaze upon her, then went back to her sewing. He took a sip of coffee.
The only place he’d found peace was here. The nightmares still came, a weakness he abhorred, but he’d come to accept that they most probably would haunt him until the day he died.
But Estella’s serenity, her openness, even her two rambunctious children, gave him a sense of belonging he hadn’t felt since he’d announced that he would fight for the North.
And he owed her his life.
“You need spectacles,” he said, watching her try to position the needle, button, and a fresh shirt behind the clear jar of water that magnified the chore. She spared him only a glance, then went back to her work.
“You know I’ve no money for such a luxury, and” – she stopped him before he could interrupt – “I’ll not take yours.”
“Would you if you were my wife?” The words jumped out before he meant for them to. He’d planned to set a romantic scene, court her as a proper suitor. He had not meant to toss a proposal out there to land between them like a dead fish, while she mended his shirts in her twice-turned dress, while his mouth tasted of coffee and he needed a shave.
Her hands stilled and she looked up at him, eyes wide.
He felt the scars tighten on his face. She did not deserve this. He folded the newspaper and stood.
“I’m sorry. Will you excuse me?” he asked, then marched out the front door without waiting for an answer.
He walked around to the back, to the slave cabin that was now his home. With an economy of movements, he pulled off his work shirt, splashed some water from the crockery pitcher into a bowl, then set about lathering his shaving brush and then his face. He scraped away the dark whiskers. He’d really gotten quite adept at the exercise, considering he never looked in the mirror. With his face clean-shaven, he poured fresh water, washed as best he could, combed his hair, put on a clean shirt, then dipped the boar-bristle toothbrush into the tooth powder.
He shook his head as he brushed his teeth, thinking about how she’d refused to even allow him to buy her and the children toothbrushes. He’d gotten around her, though, by giving them all one as part of his Christmas to them.
She didn’t care th
at he had money. He’d saved all of his military pay, which wasn’t much in relation to what he’d left at Windsor, but he’d made wise investments, and though the war had impoverished his beloved South, his investments in England and on the continent had made him a rich man.
He half-smiled and glanced around. A rich man living in a slave’s cabin. Somehow that seemed Biblically poetic.
He rinsed his mouth, tucked in his shirt, then tied on a tie – again, a feat accomplished without benefit of mirror. Once he had the thing properly knotted, he pulled out his best coat, or rather his only coat.
He could have afforded better clothing, but his fellow Southerners could not. And though he was but a mere drop in the tidal wave that had caused that poverty, he chose to live as his neighbors had been forced to live.
Satisfied he’d done all he could to make himself worthy of Estella – barring somehow acquiring a new face – he set out for the house.
The moment he stepped in the front door, though, he knew what her answer would be.
*******
Ty watched Callen keep one arm around Dan’s waist while the other tightly cradled Connor.
He wished he had the experience to handle the foul-tempered beast, but Dan had the animal mastered. Apparently his little brother had been doing some riding at Shelby Farms and knew his way around how to tell a horse who was boss.
“Please say you won’t fight him,” Callen begged, her eyes tearing up even as she spoke. “Not even with fists. Not at all. It was bad enough with Stephen. I couldn’t bear—”
“We won’t be here,” Ty interrupted with a reassuring smile. “We’ll get a good night’s sleep, but by this time tomorrow, we’ll be at home in Memphis. I’m not afraid of Hennessey, but I won’t chance Stephen’s interference. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”
Callen slumped in relief.
“Crap!” Dan barked. A little voice behind him repeated the word. “I wanted to see you kick the sh—…snot out of that bas—…creep.” He half-glanced behind him, obviously not too happy about having to stifle his language.
“Creep!” Connor echoed with a smile as his little head bounced with the trotting horse.
Ty couldn’t contain a whoop of laughter when Dan rolled his eyes.
“A little bloodthirsty, aren’t you, Danny boy?”
“Da—darn right! I’d like to see you give that son of a—Arrgh!” He threw up his hands and glared over his shoulder.
“Arrgh!” Connor imitated Dan’s frustrated growl. Dan couldn’t hide the hint of a grin twitching at his lips.
“Another bad habit you picked up from Sam?” Ty queried. “Or am I being too naïve for words? Even I don’t curse like that.”
Dan released a huge sigh and looked at the sky, half repentant, half long-suffering.
Ty started to tell him that an intelligent man expressed himself without the use of foul language, but he’d had way too many slips lately himself to be calling the kettle black. He’d save that particular lecture for another day, with a little more privacy and after a little better example.
They rode on in silence, each of them immersed in their own thoughts, until they turned up the Windsor drive.
“What do we do about Stephen?” Callen asked, the worry back in those beautiful dark eyes. If she held Connor any tighter, she’d suffocate him, but the little guy seemed to be enjoying every minute.
“We deal with him right now and get it over with.”
Jacob met them in the stables and took the horses after giving Connor a huge smile and a welcome home hair tousling. Dan gave Sugar a pat on the withers and the beast actually turned its head and nuzzled him.
“Where’s Stephen?” Ty asked as soon as they’d all dismounted.
“He be in the li-bary, Mistah Tylar, near to knee-walkin’ with his whiskey.”
“Has he asked about us?” Callen wanted to know, her voice full of dread.
“He set to yellin’ for you once, ’til Magnolia done brought him a hot toddy.” Jacob’s brown eyes twinkled. “She done put a little somethin’ special in it, to calm him down a mite.”
Oh, great. Drunk and drugged, Ty thought. That could be more curse than blessing. He shook his head and sighed.
“Well, then, we may as well beard the lion in his den.”
Callen continued to hold her son, even when Ty offered to carry him. Connor’s eyes drooped and his head sagged onto his mother’s shoulder as his little body slowly went limp. By the time they reached the library, his tiny, squished-up mouth had left a damp patch on the shoulder of Callen’s gown.
Ty didn’t bother to knock. He preceded Callen into the room, in case Stephen had worked himself into a violent temper.
The man sat slumped over a desk, his head on his arms, one hand holding a glass, a near-empty bottle of whiskey at his elbow. When Dan closed the door with a loud click, Stephen roused, lifting his head and staring bleary-eyed at them. His gaze swept the room, then his eyes focused on the limp, dangling limbs of the sleeping Connor. As drunk as Stephen was, the look that flickered across his face at the sight shocked Ty. A look he would have to give some serious thought to.
Stephen seemed to try to work up some outrage, but either Magnolia’s special ingredient had worked its magic, or the man was too defeated to care.
“How’d you find him?” he asked, the question slurred into one long word.
“We waited on the road outside Hennessey’s home.” Ty offered nothing more.
Stephen fell back against his chair and dragged one hand through his unkempt hair. He blew out a breath so rank with whiskey, Ty could smell the stench from where he stood.
“Surprised he didn’t catch you.”
“Oh, he found us, thanks to some of your friends,” Ty said. “And he came out to demand satisfaction, at dawn.”
Ty could tell when Stephen gave a drunken wince that he remembered his own “satisfaction.”
“But we won’t be here.”
Stephen’s head jerked up and some of the glaze left his eyes.
“What do you—”
“We’re taking Connor to have his feet corrected, Stephen,” Callen said, her voice brooking no argument.
He snorted. “Corrected? You don’t ‘correct’ a deformity like that.”
“We have found a surgeon who—”
“Surgeon! You would allow a butcher to cut on your son? Hell and damnation! I was right to take the boy away from you! I’ll not have one of those charlatans mangling—”
“You don’t understand the situation,” Callen started to explain.
“It doesn’t matter, sweetheart.” Ty put his arm around his wife. “He has no rights here. He can’t stop us.” Ty turned to Stephen. “You can have a civil goodbye with your sister now,” he offered, “or you can pick yourself up off the floor for trying to stop us. Either way, we’ll be gone in the morning.”
Stephen glared at Ty, then turned his gaze to Callen and his sleeping nephew. That look flickered across his face again, gone almost before fully formed.
Ty narrowed his eyes. “And we’ll be spending our last night here in Callen’s home,” he challenged Stephen. There wasn’t room for all of them to sleep comfortably in the cottage, and it would give them easier access to the cellar.
Stephen flopped back into his seat, splashed the remainder of the whiskey into the glass on his desk, then waved them away with the hand holding the glass.
“Do as you damn well please,” he slurred. “And good riddance. Oh!” He slapped the glass down, exploding whiskey into that air, unnoticed, as he shuffled through a mound of papers, drawing out an envelope from the stack. “Here.” He flung the envelope toward Ty, and it sailed across the room like a Frisbee. “For my beloved sister. From Washington. News, no doubt, of our dear, departed brother.”
After transferring Connor into Ty’s arms, Callen took the letter with shaking fingers. She recognized the handwriting from the Washington office. Callen had contacted a Miss Clara Barton, whom Linc
oln had appointed as head of the Office of Correspondence with the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army, with a plea to help her find information on Garrett. Callen had been so impressed with the woman’s efforts and successes that she had followed, in a very minor way, Miss Barton’s footsteps by taking names of missing Confederate soldiers and posting the lists in newspaper and other periodicals, in general stores and other places where the men might congregate. She’d paid the expenses with what meager donations she received, sometimes using her own stipend to make ends meet, until an anonymous donor had begun supplying her with funds. Thus far, she’d helped a dozen or more men find their families. Families who had been uprooted by the war, but with no way to get word to their loved one on the battlefield. Men, hardened and bitter, who saw their names on that list and realized someone cared enough to search for them.
Had Garrett seen his name? Had he been found?
She closed her eyes and said a prayer, then opened the missive and read aloud.
Dear Mrs. McCall:
We have obtained information regarding your brother, one Colonel Garrett Windsor, of the 76th Ohio Volunteers, Army of the Tennessee. It has come to this office’s attention that Col. Windsor was captured by Confederate forces in October, 1864, near Little River, Alabama, and held prisoner at Cahaba prison, near a town of that same name, and near Selma in that state.
Oh, poor Garrett.
At war’s end, Col. Windsor was transported to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where, on April 24th, he boarded the steamboat Sultana, bound north to be mustered out.
Callen’s heart soared. He’d survived the war! He wasn’t in some unmarked grave! She looked up at Stephen, whose bleary eyes cleared a bit, then at Ty, who gave her nothing more than a very solemn look.
The vessel, Mrs. McCall, with a legal capacity of three hundred and seventy-six passengers, including crew, was woefully overcrowded by expatriated Federal prisoners of war, with well over two thousand men crowding aboard in their frenzy to return home. The boat stopped in the town of Memphis the evening of April 26th to unload cargo, but later that night, around two of the morning, according to survivors—
