by Laura Frantz
Elinor Louise. Ellie knew it well enough. Still, she felt a whisper of warning. “Perhaps your going to York would be wrong. What if they only want Mama and don’t welcome you—”
“A hearty welcome is not what I’m looking for. I simply want names. Dates. Answers.”
“But Grandmother Lee may be dying. ’Tis not the time—”
“Well, you’re the one who broached the idea!” Andra stood, looking like a general contemplating battle. “I’ve decided to go. For Mama’s sake.”
“When will you leave?” Ellie asked, warming to the idea despite her worries.
“Day after tomorrow.”
“Shouldn’t you have an escort?”
“Don’t be silly. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
Ellie studied her sister with quiet wonder. Once Andra made up her mind, there was no turning back.
The Ballantyne steel, their father called it.
12
Those who forgive most shall be most forgiven.
JOSIAH BAILEY
Standing in the polished foyer clutching the small leather basket holding all of New Hope’s keys, Ellie felt decidedly skittish. If she rose each morning by five and supervised all the household needs, then tended Adam and schooled Ulie, her afternoons would still be free for lessons.
If all went well.
An arm’s length away from her stood Mari and Gwyn, looking decidedly more cheery now that the door had shut in Andra’s wake. On the mahogany sideboard to her right were pages and pages of instructions, some in Mama’s hand penned for Andra and some in Andra’s hand penned for Ellie. She gathered them up, feeling armed for battle and somewhat prepared, except for the matter of Adam and Ulie.
She was ever mindful that from his cupola perch, Ansel had seen shadows—movement—along the riverbank and woods. Slave hunters or slaves? The giant lantern hadn’t been lit for a fortnight or better. But as soon as the crossing was less treacherous, the light would shine again.
“Adam’s spirits are improving despite his injuries,” Ansel had told her at daybreak. Sadly, the damage to his mouth was far less encouraging despite their frequent ministrations. “When he’s better, Dr. Brunot will come and transport them to the next station.”
Station. Yet another hiding place, she guessed. She dared not ask more questions because she feared the answers.
Lord, protect them, bless them, cover them as they go north to freedom. Cover us.
Her relief at the thought of their leaving was short-lived. Soon others would come and take their place. An endless string of them, Ansel said, empathy shining in his eyes. Even now Da might have a Ballantyne boat steaming north, more fugitives hidden among the cargo.
“Pardon me, miss. Are you all right?” Mari’s Welsh accent reached out to her, ushering her back to the foyer and the unsullied summer morning.
“Yes, thank you. Where were we?” Glancing at the papers, Ellie tried to recall the thread of conversation. “If you both could see to the parlor, clean Feathers’s cage, and dust the study, that should be a fine start. I’ll be planning menus with Mamie in the kitchen should you need me.”
They nodded in tandem and disappeared, each bearing a feather duster and rags smelling of lemon oil. Leaving out the back door, Ellie let the warm morning air wrap round her. Her favorite task was walking the grounds at dawn and unlocking every dependency, the day new and untouched.
She became reacquainted with everything while making the rounds in Andra’s stead, rediscovering all the little details she’d forgotten. The tang of the smokehouse. The potent henhouse. The chill of the larder, where meats were packed in Portuguese salt. The busy washhouse, brimming with color and lye, manned by three of the tenants’ wives. Only the spinning house, where Saxony wheels and carders had once hummed industriously, now sat idle.
Ellie stayed clear of the stables, the staff quarters, and storehouse. This was Ansel’s domain, as was the gristmill on Rogue Creek half a mile away.
Her final stop was her favorite. As she traversed the colonnade to the summer kitchen, passing myriad posts smothered in climbing roses, her worries of the night passed. On such a summer morning, it was hard to believe evil could exist.
“You hungry, child?”
Child. Is that all she’d ever be to Mamie? Ellie smiled and accepted a biscuit layered with ham from Mamie’s outstretched hand. She took a bite, gratitude filling her as the woman poured a cup of hyson tea. “It’s a fine mornin’. You goin’ to your lessons?” In the bright light flooding the tidy kitchen, Ellie detected another question in Mamie’s eyes.
“Not till this afternoon.” Ellie reached for the cream and sugar and eyed a shelf clock. “It only takes half an hour to get there.”
Mamie nodded, hands busy paring potatoes. “Where’s ‘there’?”
Ellie almost choked on her tea. There was simply no evading Mamie. Shifting on the stool, she weighed her answer. “River Hill.”
Mamie’s eyes flared. “What you doin’ at River Hill?”
“Schooling Chloe Turlock.”
Her gaze grew wider. “Who’s the master there? Gentleman Jack? I s’pect he’s in need of some tutorin’ too.”
A chuckle rose in Ellie’s throat. “Perhaps.”
Shaking her head, Mamie moved to a corner where a chicken hung. “How long is it goin’ to take with Miss Chloe? Reckon you can finish before your daddy comes home?”
“Sometimes I don’t think Chloe will ever be finished.” The confession slipped out, truthful and a touch unkind. Chloe was rough as a gravelly riverbank, like all the Turlocks, and had some stubborn habits. “Once I correct her spitting—”
“Spittin’? I bet those brothers of hers taught her that.” Mamie’s hazel eyes held a warning. “I remember them boys throwin’ rocks and ugly words around when you was small.”
“’Twas long ago, Mamie.”
“Now their deeds go darker. Deeper.”
Did they? Despite the day’s warmth, the words brought goose bumps. What all did Mamie know? But Mamie had turned away, scalding the chicken, the smell of feathers heavy in the air. Ellie finished her biscuit, sipped her tea, and watched sunlight spackle the blue Spode dishes in a far cupboard. She fought her heaviness of heart, wondering if her prayers for Jack and Chloe reached no further than the ceiling.
Mamie’s shoulders sagged as she began to pluck the scalded fowl. “I’d be ashamed to give voice to such deeds. And I shudder ’bout what your folks will think when they find you rubbin’ shoulders with Turlocks.”
“I couldn’t turn Chloe away,” Ellie said quietly. “She came here wanting something more, something better. Who am I to refuse her?”
“Doesn’t Scripture say the good Lord visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those that hate Him?”
“But doesn’t it also say the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father if he turns from his sins?” She looked at Mamie entreatingly, clinging to the Scripture she’d taken to heart. “‘Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the LORD GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?’ It’s not too late for Chloe or any of her kin in God’s eyes, is it?”
A softening soothed Mamie’s features. “You have your mama’s heart, that’s for sure. I just wish you had a measure of your daddy’s good sense.”
Ellie tried to smile. She’d always been a bit impetuous, led by her feelings.
Heaving a sigh, Mamie wrestled the plump chicken into a pot. “The Turlocks were always bad to the bone, right from the start. I remember them comin’ to Fort Pitt when I was young as you and cookin’ for the soldiers there. They’d been makin’ their whiskey in Ireland and set up a still outside fort walls, dousin’ the Indians with it when they came for treaties and to trade.” She hesitated, lip atremble. “My own pa—he took to the whiskey and never did right himself.”
A dozen images lit Ellie’s mind concerning the little she knew about Mamie’s past. Dru
nkenness. Beatings. Coin squandered for liquor over food. She wanted to shut the hurt of it away, but Mamie’s pain was grafted on her wrinkled face. “When your daddy came to Pittsburgh as a blacksmith, Judge O’Hara owned River Hill, and I was cookin’ for Jean Marie’s tavern atop Grant’s Hill. The whiskey tax soon caused an uproar in the county, and the Turlocks and their ilk began makin’ more mischief for those who supported the tax. Word was one of the Turlocks tried to kill your daddy. No one suspected the judge’s own daughter would run off with the worst of ’em.”
Ellie knew the worst of them was Jack’s father, Henry. As for the threat against her father . . . Shaken, she rose from her stool, mindful of the tick of the mantel clock as it pulsed past noon, toward the forbidden. Why did she always feel the need to defend Chloe? Jack?
“Mr. Turlock has never behaved unseemly. Granted, he’s rarely there when I come. I expect he’ll be away today.” Once again she fought down her inexplicable disappointment of late at finding him gone. “I’ll be back for supper. ’Twill just be me and Ansel tonight, unless Peyton appears.”
Mamie gave her a lingering look, as if she feared she might not return. “I feel some better, knowin’ it’s just you and Miss Chloe.”
Ellie hugged her tight. “And there’s Mrs. Malarkey, the housekeeper, who could take a few baking lessons from you. Though she’s a lovely Southern lady, her biscuits are hard as Fort Pitt bricks.”
Mamie chuckled, but the worry in her eyes remained. “I’ll be lookin’ for you ’bout suppertime, then.”
Ellie tried not to be too pleased that Andra was away, though she was finding it hard to keep up with her myriad responsibilities. Housekeeping was indeed tedious business. She lacked Andra’s knack for following after the help and making sure everything was done, dusted, and put away—and scolding if it wasn’t. Moreover, her sister’s canary was worrying her to no end, as it was suddenly refusing to sing and plucking out its feathers with an agitated beak, hardly deserving of its name.
“If he expires—or becomes bald—we’ll hear no end to the matter.” Ansel stood by the cage, arms crossed, as if he could glare the bird into submission.
“Perhaps you can coax Feathers to sing by playing your violin,” Ellie suggested.
He grinned. “Or silence him forever.”
They laughed and moved to the music room, though they did leave the parlor door open. As Ansel took out his case, Ellie felt a delicious intoxication. They’d played together but twice since her homecoming, and both times they’d grown so lost in the music time had melted away. Only Andra had halted their reverie, reminding them it was midnight. But today, just past noon, neither she nor Peyton were at home. The only audience was Adam and Ulie and the baby, who carefully kept to the attic.
Seated at her harp, Ellie felt a nick of fear. If trouble came, they wouldn’t hear the jostle of horses and barking of dogs, sequestered as they were in the music room with its thick walls. She groped for a snatch of Scripture, a favorite from Psalms, to settle herself. Praise Him with the psaltery and harp . . . praise Him with stringed instruments. This they would do, danger or no.
She waited patiently as Ansel riffled through sheets of music, some of his own composing. In profile his hair, so ruffled from his habit of raking his fingers through it, reminded her of their father. Pensive. Handsome. Intense.
“Does Da ever play?” she asked.
He glanced up from the mahogany music stand. “Only when Mother asks him to. He’s none too fond of these violins. The tone, he says, is far inferior to his own.”
“The Guarneri he sold years ago?”
He gave a nod, the set of his jaw telling her it was still a sore subject. She pressed on gently. “Have you given up trying to locate it?”
Taking up his bow, he applied rosin to the strings till a white cloud fell over the stand. “The trail stopped cold in Paris two years ago.”
“Paris?”
“I’ve written to serious collectors in Europe, and everything points to its sale somewhere along the Petit Champ after it left Da’s hands in Philadelphia. But I have no name. No contacts.”
“You’ve not looked since?”
“I’ve no time for it. Ballantyne interests are always expanding. You’ve heard about the new ironworks, I suppose.”
“Yes, Peyton talks of little else, but I’d rather hear about your music. When I left for finishing school years ago, you’d begun making a violin in the workshop above the stables.”
“Child’s play.” He struck a string and winced. “I should have apprenticed with one of the master luthiers in Europe by now.”
Sensing his frustration, she fell silent, turning back to her harp. They began a piece by Handel before moving to a Scots strathspey. Discordantly. Full of starts and stops. When Peyton came in unexpectedly, his expression a grimace, they stopped altogether, though Peyton, for all his accomplishments, couldn’t play a note.
He took the chair nearest Ellie and began loosening his cravat. “Don’t stop on account of me. From the sounds of it, you two need plenty more practice.” Ellie stuck her tongue out playfully and he smirked. “Though truthfully, I prefer the harp to the violin and always have.”
Ansel shot him a knifelike look, and the tension in the room raised a notch. Ellie moved on to a piece by Haydn, sensing a confrontation coming that had little to do with the music.
Over her soft playing, Peyton said to Ansel, “You’re needed at the boatyard. Something about copper sheathing on that schooner to protect it from shipworms in southern waters.”
Ansel’s bowing stopped. “I left the head shipwright specific directions about the hull. Why did he come to you?”
“Because you were here when you should have been there, and he had other questions.” The censure in Peyton’s tone made Ellie cringe.
“There’s more to my being home than making music.”
“That’s not what it looks like.”
“Dr. Brunot’s due any minute.”
Ellie plucked a wrong note and recovered, directing her gaze to Ansel.
He continued in an undertone. “If you’d seen all the signs along Rogue Creek . . .”
“Slave catchers, you mean,” Peyton murmured.
Her hands stilled and both brothers looked at her.
“On second thought,” Peyton said, all animosity gone, “rotting schooners can wait.”
He got up and went out, leaving the door to the music room ajar. Ellie heard the gun case beneath the stair open and close. In moments he’d returned with a pearl-handled pistol. “Our little sister is in need of some shooting practice.”
Ansel gave a nod while Ellie’s eyes widened. “Today—right now?”
“Why not? It won’t be a long lesson if you prove a fair shot. Andra certainly is.”
Ellie didn’t doubt it. Andra seemed to master anything she put her mind to—except matrimony.
The pistol felt cool and heavy in her hand despite its diminutive size. Yet rather than allay her fears, the weapon stoked them. And Peyton’s intensity only fanned them further.
“This is Mother’s gun. Andra took hers to York.” He led her outside, onto the back veranda, showing her his own pistol tucked inside his greatcoat. “We’ll use some old bottles from the glassworks as targets,” he told her, “though I’d prefer a Turlock or two.”
13
Though she be but little, she is fierce!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
“Jack, I do believe you’re avoiding me!”
The scolding in Chloe’s voice made Jack smile. In tone she sounded like their mother, but in her exasperation she was still a child. He didn’t so much as glance toward the stable door, where his sister stood in cross-armed defiance. He simply continued examining saddles and harness, muttering a Latin phrase beneath his breath: “Qui se excusat, se accusat.” He accuses himself who excuses himself.
It wasn’t Chloe he was avoiding but Ellie. And he supposed his actions betrayed him. But there was no sidestepping Chloe. Sh
e circled round till she stood in front of him, looking like she might snatch a near horsewhip and lash him. “I don’t know a lick of Latin, Jack, so stop your mumbling. Miss Ellie is teaching me French. And I’ve learned enough from her to know a gentleman doesn’t keep a lady waiting—and she’s waiting for you in your study! Dépêchez-vous!”
Hurry up?
Letting go of the leather trappings, he started after her, albeit reluctantly, following the blue swish of her skirt as she left the stable. A new dress? Recently she and Ellie had been shopping in Pittsburgh. After an afternoon at the milliner’s and dressmaker’s—and untold damage to his bank account—Chloe appeared to have left childhood far behind.
She turned back to him, blatant disapproval in her eyes. “Really, Jack, you look like you’ve been jumping in the hay mow!” As they climbed the steps to the house, she plucked some straw from his shirtsleeve. “And you reek of horses!” Nose wrinkling, she dug in her pocket and thrust a small vial toward him. He looked askance at the offering.
Caswell Massey Number Six?
“This,” she announced, “is what a gentleman should smell like.”
Disgusted, he tucked the cologne in his pocket. “I’m no gentleman.”
Fire lit her eyes, and her voice was a poorly disguised whisper. “I’ve told you that Miss Ellie isn’t for me . . .”
She’s for you.
He stopped her right there in the hall, a stone’s throw from his study door, his voice a low hiss. “I’ve gone along with your little scheme so far, but it stops now. Ellie Ballantyne is here for you and you alone. Understand?”
“That’s not true, Jack! Even God agrees with me—‘It is not good for man to be alone . . . go forth and multiply,’ and all that!”
His hand clamped her shoulder. “Listen hard, Chloe—”
