The Seeker

by Ann H. Gabhart

  When the girl mumbled some words of thanks for the box and almost ran out of the room, he told himself that was good. With her out of sight, he could concentrate on finishing the loathsome portrait and be gone from the senator’s house. He was no knight in shining armor ready to rescue every damsel in distress he met. Especially not when the dragon in question was only the damsel’s stepmother. It wasn’t as if her life was in danger. Merely her immediate happiness.

  9

  Selena was right. Most of the tangled pile of necklaces and brooches were old and tarnished and of little value other than to Charlotte’s heart. She remembered playing with some of them when she was a child. She fished out an emerald ring and a strand of pearls that had belonged to her Grandmother Grayson and held each of them for a long moment as if testing their weight and value.

  Then she carefully freed a locket on a fine gold chain from the other strands of jewelry in the box. Inside was a wisp of baby hair clipped from her baby brother’s head before he was laid in his tiny casket. Her mother had never taken the locket off after that day. Charlotte thought her mother had worn it to her grave, but now here it was tossed aside in a box and forgotten. Charlotte shut the locket and held it tightly in her palm.

  Be strong. Miss Mayda would want you to be strong. Aunt Tish’s words echoed in Charlotte’s mind. And that had been easy for Charlotte to do in spite of her mother’s sudden death, because everybody had helped her. Everybody knew Grayson would be hers. In time. Even if she had thought about her father remarrying, she would have never considered Grayson passing to someone who didn’t carry Grayson blood. Her whole life centered around that belief.

  But now she’d been betrayed. By her own father. They were going to ship her off to Virginia and do what they willed with Grayson and their people. No, not what they willed. What Selena willed.

  She couldn’t let it happen. But what could she do? She had sent the letter to Edwin demanding to know his intentions. Willis had carried it to Hastings manor house at noon. She had to know. She couldn’t just hide in the shadows and hope without knowledge. If Edwin stayed true to their agreement, then she could wait out Selena. The flattery of the woman’s attention had obviously blinded her father, but his eyes would clear and he would see through the woman’s pretense in time.

  Meanwhile. That was the problem. Charlotte had never been one to sit on the side and simply let things happen. Not the way her mother had. Charlotte made things happen. But now nothing was working. She closed her eyes and held the locket against her cheek. Perhaps she should pray about it. Ask the Lord to make things come out right, but that hadn’t worked for her baby brother. His life had ended on the day of his birth. It hadn’t worked for Aunt Tish. Her husband had been sold down the river.

  Charlotte had no doubt Aunt Tish prayed then. Aunt Tish believed in prayer. She had taught Mellie and Charlotte to pray over their food as soon as they could sit at the table. She had prayed over Charlotte’s mother. She probably covered Charlotte with prayers every morning now. But that didn’t mean things were going to turn out right. Aunt Tish told her once that a person couldn’t expect God to hand out favors on a silver tray.

  “Then why pray if you don’t think the Lord is going to answer?” Charlotte had asked.

  “I never said the good Lord don’t answer. He always answers. That don’t mean his answers is gonna match up with the answers you think you’re wantin’. But the one thing a child of his can count on is that, no matter the answer, the Lord is right there with you. Walkin’ through them valleys right along ’side you. Liftin’ you up when you fall. Helpin’ you bear up under the trials.” Aunt Tish had put her work-roughened hand on Charlotte’s cheek. “And we all, ever’ last one of us, has trials and tribulations.”

  “But is that any reason to collect them like charms and gather them close and moan over them without trying to do something about them?” Charlotte said.

  “No, I guess not, child. You ain’t much a one for moanin’.” Aunt Tish had smiled at her as she patted her cheek. “The good Lord done give you a fightin’ spirit and the freedom to use it.”

  A fighting spirit. That’s what she needed now. Charlotte opened her eyes and stood up. There was a time for praying and a time for doing. This was the time for doing. Edwin had her letter. She had her mother’s jewelry. And Mellie’s path to freedom. She slipped her hand in her pocket and felt the paper. She hadn’t given up. It might have seemed that she had lost the battle in the parlor. She was sure Adam Wade thought so. She’d felt him looking at her with pity. But she didn’t need pity. Pity or prayers. There’d be a way. She just had to find it.

  She’d make her father see that Grayson was meant to be hers. The same as he had realized Mellie was hers. Of course, if he had known her plans to free Mellie, she doubted he’d have given her the paper. He claimed freed slaves did nothing but foment trouble and unrest if not made to leave the state. That was why he’d supported the Kentucky Colonization Society that up until a couple of years before had worked to buy passage back to Africa for emancipated slaves.

  Mellie wouldn’t want to go to Africa. Her home was here at Grayson the same as Charlotte’s. That shouldn’t mean she couldn’t be free to decide her own fate. Free to fall in love as she wanted. Actually Charlotte was beginning to suspect it wasn’t only a dream of falling in love for Mellie. She’d been volunteering to carry the leftover food from their dinner to the slave quarters nearly every night before Selena began to demand so much from her. And hadn’t Charlotte caught a worried look in Aunt Tish’s eyes more than once when she looked at Mellie?

  One thing at a time. She had the paper. She’d figure out the rest eventually. First there was the locket warm in her hand. Charlotte pulled the top off a nearly empty powder tin and dropped the locket down inside. It should have been buried with her mother. She would rectify that first thing in the morning.

  She slipped the emerald ring on her finger. She’d never seen her mother wear it. It would have been too large for her mother’s dainty fingers. She had favored an opal ring in a ruby setting. Charlotte searched through the jumble of jewelry. That ring wasn’t in the box. So perhaps she had worn it to the grave.

  Charlotte stuffed the box of jewelry up on the top shelf of her wardrobe. She started to hide Mellie’s paper under the box, but changed her mind. It was too important to let out of her sight.

  When Mellie came in a few minutes later to help her dress for dinner, Charlotte slipped the paper out of her pocket and down into the top of her camisole when Mellie had her back turned. She couldn’t show it to her yet. Not until she had a plan, and before Charlotte could make a plan, she had to know her future with Edwin.

  If she didn’t get an answer from him by noon tomorrow, she would ride over to Hastings Farm. She’d make him state his intentions. But tonight she would go down to the dining room and listen to Selena’s false chatter at the table. She would pretend there wasn’t a battle drawn up between them. Just as many in the North and South were pretending the same thing. It was better to keep the illusion of peace as long as possible.

  Even as they ate their dinner that night with a pretense of good humor and fine manners, the illusion of peace for the country had already been shot down at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

  A messenger brought the news the next morning. Charlotte didn’t see the messenger ride up. After breakfast she had stopped in the kitchen and hid a heavy stirring spoon in the folds of her skirt before going out the back door to the family cemetery. She didn’t want help from anyone for the job at hand.

  The ground was soft from a late afternoon shower the day before, and she had no trouble cutting out a circle of the greening grass and scooping out a hole at the base of her mother’s stone. She pushed the metal powder box down into the hole and tamped the dirt back in around it before carefully replacing the bit of grass sod. When she stood up and looked down, the disturbed ground was barely noticeable.

  Charlotte ran her hands over the carved letters in the st
one. MAYDA GRAYSON VANCE. BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. AUG 5 1816–MAY 24 1857. Her baby brother’s small tombstone was beside her mother’s. In behind were the stones for her grandparents and her mother’s sisters, Alice and Emma, taken by cholera in 1833. Another stone that towered higher even than her grandparents’ stone bore the name of their one son, Richard Grayson III, in deeply chiseled granite letters. He had gone west to seek adventure and broken his parents’ hearts by getting killed in an Indian skirmish. His body wasn’t actually under the stone but was instead in an unmarked grave somewhere on the prairie.

  Charlotte thought how different her life might have been if her uncle Richard had lived to come home and marry. His family would be living in the Grayson manor house. His son the descendant to carry on the Grayson name and tradition. But there were no Grayson sons. No sons at all. Up until now.

  She raised her head to look out between the tall oaks that shaded the graveyard. Grayson land stretched as far as she could see in every direction. Good land. Her land. She could almost feel the roots attaching her feet to the ground as strongly as the roots holding the towering oaks around her. It would take a mighty storm to break her free.

  She was so immersed in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the artist walking up behind her until he spoke.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

  She whirled to face him.

  “I must beg your forgiveness once again, my lady,” he said with a smile as he stopped a couple of paces away from her. “I really didn’t intend to startle you. This time. I should have whistled a tune or something to warn you I was coming.”

  “Can you whistle a tune?” Charlotte asked to give herself time to recover her poise. She hid her hands in her skirt so he wouldn’t see the dirt under her fingernails.

  “Of course,” he said and began whistling “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

  She couldn’t keep from laughing even as she wondered if such joviality was proper in a graveyard. “You are a man of many talents, Mr. Wade.”

  “So I’ve been told.” His eyes settled on her face. “But don’t you think we’ve shared enough familiar moments for you to call me Adam?”

  Her cheeks warmed and her lips tingled at the memory of some of those moments with him. She fixed her eyes on the blades of grass at her feet and tried to ignore her heart thumping in her chest as she said, “I daresay some familiar moments are best not remembered.”

  He stepped closer to her and put his fingers under her chin to tip her face up to look at him. It was a replay of the moments in the garden, except this time the sun was shining brightly and there was no chill in the air to necessitate him offering her his jacket. But he seemed to be offering something more. Understanding, or perhaps compassion. Why, she didn’t know. He couldn’t read her thoughts.

  “Don’t say that, Charlotte. I quite enjoyed the moments of which you speak.”

  She told herself to step away from him. To look away from the blue gray eyes that were probing her soul. But she stayed still as she said, “And how many times have you enjoyed like moments in other gardens?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “I won’t deny there have been other gardens, but no girl so lovely. Or lips so enticing.” He moved his fingers from under her chin to trace her lips.

  She pulled herself together and stepped back from his touch. It was colder there but safer. Much safer. “We’re not in a garden now, Mr. Wade.”

  “Adam, please.” He kept his hand in the air reaching toward her face for a moment before he dropped it to his side and looked around. “And you’re right. I do have to admit I’ve never enjoyed such a moment in a graveyard.” He nodded toward the stone behind her. “The beautiful first Mrs. Vance, I assume.” “She was very pretty,” Charlotte said as she glanced back at the stone. “I don’t look anything like her.”

  “Did you want to?”

  His unexpected question brought her eyes back to him. “What?”

  “Look like her. Be like her.” His eyes were probing her again.

  “No. I always thought her too fragile.” Her words sounded disloyal in her ears, but she didn’t stop talking. “At times she seemed almost afraid to leave her couch. As if she feared the day would be too difficult to face.”

  “Are you afraid of your tomorrows?”

  She looked at him, not sure how she should answer, but his eyes demanded honesty. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “Last week I would have said not, but now if not afraid, then I do admit to being unsure of my future.” She stared straight at him with wanton disregard of proper behavior, but a graveyard seemed a place to pitch aside social conventions and reach for the truth. “What about you?” She hesitated before she added, “Adam.”

  The corners of his lips lifted in a brief smile at the sound of his name. Then he grew solemn again as his eyes shifted color to more gray than blue. “I don’t entertain fear. Instead I seek opportune possibilities.”

  “But there are oftentimes reasons for fear.”

  “Unfortunately you’re speaking truth even not knowing the news that’s come to us this morning.”

  “What news?” Dread woke inside her. The news couldn’t be good.

  “The Confederates fired on and forced the surrender of Federal forces at Fort Sumter. War is now inevitable.”

  “War,” she echoed. She looked away from him out toward the horizon once more and now she couldn’t keep from picturing cannons lining up against cannons. Perhaps even eventually on this very ground.

  “The dark war clouds will no longer hang back. The storm is upon us,” he said as if he too was imagining what war would bring to them. “But I didn’t follow you out here just to deliver that unhappy news. I wanted a private moment with you to say goodbye before I left Grayson.”

  Her eyes came back to him. “Are you off to fight the South, then?”

  “No, I’m not a soldier. I see other possibilities. I will go but only to draw the scenes to break the hearts of those far from the battlefields.”

  “Surely there are no battlefields as yet.”

  “Battles rage in many places. People will be choosing sides. In the legislatures. Village streets. Drawing rooms.”

  His look sharpened on her with the last, but she pretended not to know his meaning. “So Selena’s portrait is finished?”

  “I plan to add the final strokes to it this afternoon and be on my way come morning.”

  “Then you could have said goodbye in the morning.”

  “Perhaps, but you seem to lose a bit of that honesty I find so enchanting when others are in our company.” A smile was back in his eyes.

  She let his words slide past her. She had no answer for that. Instead she shifted the subject. “I’m sure Father will be leaving too. Back to Frankfort to be in the middle of the decision making for our state.”

  “He was ordering his servant to begin packing when I left the house.”

  “I do hope Selena plans to accompany him.” Charlotte mashed her mouth together. She shouldn’t have spoken that aloud.

  Adam’s smile reached his lips. “Your father said the same, but in a much different tone of voice.” His smile faded as he peered at her with a good deal of sympathy. “Unfortunately for the happiness of you both, she feels she has too much to do here at Grayson to return to Frankfort at this time.”

  “She has many plans.” Charlotte kept her voice as free of expression as she could.

  “Many plans,” Adam agreed. “Sometimes all a person can do is get out of the way of a woman like Selena.”

  “I can hardly pick up and leave the way you can.” She looked at him with a bit of envy even as she thought of poor dead Richard who had done that and never come home. If there truly was war between the North and the South, how many more gravestones would rise in the family graveyards around them?

  “What about your gentleman friend?” Adam’s eyes were sharp on her again.

  “The one going to the Shakers?” Something about this man kept her from pr
etending even to herself.

  “I suppose that does present some difficulties.”

  “Certainly few of your opportunities.” She wanted to keep her voice strong and sure, but the way his eyes were trying to swallow her was taking her breath away. She stepped back and felt the cold edge of her mother’s gravestone against her legs. “Opportunities can pop up in the most unlikely places, but sometimes you need to know the right opportunity to pursue.” He stepped closer to her. “It’s good Edwin Gilbey is going to the Shakers. That sets you free.”

  “Free to do what?” Charlotte’s voice fell almost to a whisper again. She tried to back up and put more distance between them, but the gravestone stopped her.

  “Live your life.” Adam softly traced the curve of her cheek with his finger. “Enjoy the moment. This moment.”

  A tremble swept through Charlotte at his touch. Not of fear but of desire. She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to move. His eyes had her mesmerized.

  “Seize the opportunity.” His voice deepened and sounded husky as he bent his head down toward her, but he stopped before he touched her lips. She could feel his breath against her face as he went on. “Do you have the courage to do that, my beautiful Charlotte?”

  It took all her strength to keep from melting against him and raising her lips to meet his. He was going to be gone from Grayson in the morning. She’d likely never lay eyes on him again. What good purpose could there be in yanking her heart out of her chest to throw at his feet, even if that was what she wanted to do? And yet what could one kiss hurt? A kiss she could remember and treasure no matter what happened in the days ahead.

  Surrendering to his embrace would take no courage. The courage was in putting her hands flat against his chest and turning her head away from his lips as she pushed him back from her.

  “I don’t think you have honorable intentions, Mr. Wade,” she said as she scooted to the side to put a bit of space between them and immediately wondered if she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. Even with the sun warm on her shoulders, she felt as cold inside as the gravestone behind her.