Emma and the Outlaw

by Linda Lael Miller

  As Emma had half-expected, there were two U.S. marshals waiting on the platform. The moment Steven stepped down from the train, they moved in to block his way.

  “Steven Fairfax?”

  Emma’s heart had stopped beating, and she held on tightly to her husband’s arm as he nodded.

  “You’re under arrest for the murder of Mary Davis McCall,” the elder of the two men said solemnly, pushing back his suitcoat to unhook a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

  Emma looked wildly about for help, even though she knew there would be none. Her husband was being dragged off to jail, and she was alone in a strange city where a plague was raging.

  Steven’s hands were bound behind his back. He didn’t say a word to the marshals, nor did he resist them in any way. He simply looked at Emma, his eyes begging her to understand. Then his gaze shifted to Macon.

  “Touch her,” he vowed in a low voice, “and I’ll feed you to the gators, piece by piece.”

  Macon grinned as a white-haired man with pale, bushy eyebrows approached. He was wearing a light-colored suit, like most of the men around him, and there wa black string tie at his throat. His blue eyes were gentle as they moved from Steven’s face to Emma’s, and he extended a hand to her.

  “Hello, Emma,” he said simply.

  Emma’s gaze shifted to Steven as he was led away roughly, and tears gathered on her lashes, blinding her. She wanted to scream that he was innocent, but she knew that would only make bad matters worse.

  While a smug Macon watched Steven disappear, the old man smiled at Emma and offered her his handkerchief. “Since my grandson hasn’t troubled himself to introduce us,” he said, with a sour glance at Macon, “I’ll do the honors. I’m Cyrus Fairfax, and now that you’ve joined the family I consider myself your granddaddy.”

  Emma dried her eyes and squared her shoulders. She would be no use to Steven if she crumpled into a heap of self-pity and despair. “I’m Emma,” she said, even though she realized he already knew that. “And my husband didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I tend to agree with you,” Cyrus replied, laying his hand lightly on the small of Emma’s back and steering her toward the steps of the platform. “While we’re waiting for the rest of the world to come around to our way of thinking, we’ll get to know each other.”

  Emma’s gratitude was almost as overwhelming as her despondency. If it hadn’t been for Cyrus’s appearance at the station, she would have been left alone with Macon. And that was a prospect she certainly didn’t relish.

  Linking her arm through Cyrus’s, she blinked away the last of her tears and smiled up at him. He led her to a waiting carriage and helped her inside, then joined her. Since the rig rolled into motion the instant Cyrus was seated, it was plain they weren’t going to wait for Macon.

  Emma sank back in relief.

  Fairhaven was north of the city, it turned out, and the first sight of it jarred Emma out of her difficult reveries. It was a massive, pillared white house with sloping green lawns. Lovely magnolia trees with pink and lilac and white blossoms lined the long driveway, the slight breeze stirring their lush fragrance.

  Although Emma had known that Steven was not poor, she had never once guessed the extent of his family’s wealth, and she turned questioning eyes to Cyrus.

  “Didn’t he tell you?” the old man asked, his weary eyes twinkling just a little.

  Emma shook her head. It seemed ironic to her now that she hadn’t wanted to marry Steven when she’d first fallen in love with him because she thought he couldn’t offer her the same position and respectability Fulton would have.

  The carriage stopped in front of the house and a small blonde woman came running out. She was dressed all in black, and Emma found herself wondering if someone had died. Perhaps the fever had already visited this grand place.

  “That’s Lucy,” Cyrus confided, as he waited for the driver to open the carriage door for them. “She’s Macon’s wife.”

  Watching the woman approach, an eager expression on her china-doll face, Emma felt pity for her. “Did someone pass away?”

  “Lucy is mourning her dreams,” Cyrus said sadly, and then the door swung open.

  “Did you bring her?” Lucy demanded. “Is she here?”

  Cyrus chuckled and reached up to help Emma down from the carriage. As he did so, she felt an alarming cramp shoot across her lower abdomen, and bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  Lucy’s eyes were large, their color a rich brown, and her skin was as flawless as the finest English porcelain. Eagerly, she took Emma’s hand. “It’ll be so good to have another woman around,” she said in a gentle drawl. “I don’t mind telling you that I’ve been feeling positively outnumbered ever since I came here.”

  She must have read the look of bafflement in Emma’s eyes, for she laughed and added, “You’re wondering how we knew you were coming, aren’t you? Well, it was easy—Steven sent us a wire. He didn’t want you left to Macon’s mercy, you know.”

  Emma was awed that Lucy could speak so blithely of her husband’s skulduggery, then saddened: Lucy was used to Macon’s cruelty—so used to it that she seemed to assign it the same importance as his boot size or the date of his baptism. “I’m glad to meet you,” Emma said, realizing she hadn’t acknowledged the woman’s greeting.

  “Look at her, the poor dear,” Lucy clucked, putting an arm around Emma and shuffling her toward the gaping door. “Here she’s been on that awful train for nearly a week, with hardly any rest and probably nothing decent to eat, and I’m keeping her out on the step like a peddler.”

  The cramps in Emma’s middle intensified, and she thought she felt a warm moistness between her legs. She knew long before she reached the sunny room allotted to her that the baby she’d hoped and prayed for didn’t exist. All the signs of her monthly period were here.

  “You probably want a bath and some tea,” Lucy said, smiling at Emma.

  Emma nodded glumly.

  “There’s a tub right in there,” she said, pointing to an arched doorway on the far side of the room. “Jesse—that’s our manservant—will bring up your baggage as soon as it arrives from the station. In the meantime I can lend you a wrapper if you’d like.”

  “You’re very kind,” Emma said sincerely.

  When Lucy was gone, Emma ventured through the doorway her sister-in-law had indicated and found, as promised, a tub. It was long and deep, with claw feet painted gold.

  Emma put the plug in place and turned on the spigots. As soon as she was sure the sound of running water would drown out the sound, she lowered her face to her hands and sobbed.

  By the time her bath was over and a maid had brought in Lucy’s wrapper, Emma was feeling a little better. She assured herself that she and Steven would have the opportunity not only to make babies, but to raise them together. He needed her to be strong now, and she was determined not to let him down.

  She asked a shy young maid for clean rags and when the tea arrived, brought by a sucy, she was relatively composed.

  Macon’s delicate wife set the tray on a table near the window and Emma sat down across from her in the fading afternoon light. Lucy’s black dress looked hot and uncomfortable. Once again Emma heard Cyrus’s words echo in her mind: Lucy is mourning her dreams.

  “It’s kind of you to make me so welcome,” Emma ventured.

  “I don’t suppose Steven told you much about us,” Lucy said, waving away Emma’s remark with a flick of one pale and slender hand. “Macon despises him, as you probably know, but Cyrus and Nathaniel and I consider him part of the family.”

  “Nathaniel?” Emma inquired as Lucy poured tea into a bone china cup decorated with tiny pink flowers and held it out to her. Steven had never mentioned the name.

  “This family is so complicated,” Lucy sighed, filling her own cup. “Nathaniel is really a cousin to Macon and Steven. We took him in after his daddy died in the War of Northern Aggression, you know.” Her brown eyes lit up at some pleasant memory. “He was hard
ly more than a baby then. I looked after him as if he were my very own.”

  Thinking of her own disappointment, Emma asked, “Do you and Macon have children?”

  The words seemed to go through Lucy like a lance. She stiffened in her chair and her face contorted, just for the briefest moment, in a spasm of pain. “The dear Lord never blessed us with a child,” she said in a soft voice edged with confusion and a sense of betrayal. “It was remiss of Him, don’t you think?”

  Emma nodded, sorry she’d brought the subject up. She certainly hadn’t meant to hurt the only female friend she had in the whole of Louisiana. “Forgive me,” she said gently.

  Lucy patted her hand, beaming again. For the first time Emma noticed that there was something frenetic about that smile. “Never you mind. We’re going to get on famously, you and I. Steven will be exonerated, and the two of you will fill Fairhaven with babies.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Emma said distractedly, gazing sightlessly out on a garden brimming with flowers. It was as though the blossoms had become transparent; through them she saw Steven, his hands bound behind his back, being led up the steps to a gallows.

  *

  Emma slept, albeit fitfully, until Lucy came and gently awakened her.

  “It’s time for dinner,” her sister-in-law said.

  Emma sat up, confused for a moment, wondering where she was. Expecting to find Steven lying beside her.

  “You’re at Fairhaven,” Lucy told her quietly.

  Calling upon all her strength of character, Emma refused to cry. “Have my clothes arrived?” She noticed Lucy had not changed from her grim black dress.

  Lucy nodded. “Jubal has put them all away for you,” she said. “You’ll need new things, you know. Yours just aren’t fitting for New Orleans.”

  “Jubal?” The last thing Emma cared about was the state of her wardrobe. She got up and found a simple blue cotton dress in the armoire, then took fresh underthings from the drawers in one of the two bureaus.

  “She’s your maid, darlin’,” Lucy said in a good-natured, scolding tone. “Her mama was a slave, you understand. But of course, Jubal is a free person.”

  Emma thought freedom must be a little baffling, when a people had been enslaved so long. Without commenting on Jubal’s status in the scheme of things, Emma went behind the ornamentally carved folding screen in the far corner of the room and dressed.

  Dinner was served in a massive dining room downstairs, boasting no less than three chandeliers and a long, shiny wooden table lined with chairs.

  Emma thought it was a miracle that such gracious items had survived an occupation by the enemy, and Cyrus must have read the reaction in her eyes, because he smiled as he stood up in honor of her and Lucy’s appearance and said, “We were fortunate that our conquerors were gentlemen.”

  Macon, who had not bothered to rise, flipped open his table napkin and made a barely audible sound of contempt. “Gentlemen,” he spat.

  As Cyrus drew back her chair, Emma deliberately pretended Macon wasn’t there and shifted her gaze to the thin, gawky boy seated across the table from her. He had a shock of rich brown hair and large gray eyes, and he seemed about as glad to see her as Macon would have been to see a battalion of Yankees.

  “You must be Nathaniel,” she said pleasantly.

  For a moment, he glared at her. Then after tossing a defiant look at Cyrus, he announced, “They’ll hang Steven, and he deserves it.”

  “Leave the table,” Cyrus said flatly, without even looking in the boy’s direction.

  Nathaniel shoved back his chair and stormed out of the room.

  “Are you going to send me away from the table, as well?” Macon inquired of his grandfather, his voice cool.

  “If I have to,” Cyrus responded.

  Macon fell silent, and Lucy tried to distract everyone with chatter. Even for Emma, who liked the woman wholeheartedly, it was draining to listen to her.

  She was grateful when Cyrus turned the conversation to the family business. “We’re in cotton, primarily,” he told her, “though we have timber interests, too. As well as gold.”

  “Federal gold,” Macon elaborated bitterly.

  Cyrus ignored him. “Fortunately, we transferred most of our investments to Europe at the first rumblings of war. All we suffered was a little inconvenience.”

  Lucy broke into the conversation again. “Emma will need new clothes,” she announced, embarrassing her sister-in-law, who was made to feel like a shabby foundling. “None of her things are at all suitable.”

  “I suppose yours are?” Macon remarked, giving his wife’s somber attire a contemptuous once-over.

  m.Lucy paled slightly and patted the glistening blonde chignon at the back of her head. Her eyes never quite linked with Macon’s. “Her requirements are quite different from mine,” she said tightly.

  “Emma shall have whatever she needs,” Cyrus broke in, and his tone effectively put an end to the exchange between Macon and Lucy. They went back to ignoring each other.

  Dinner was a lengthy affair, but it finally ended, to Emma’s enormous relief. She wanted to be alone to think about Steven and the trying times ahead, and perhaps to write a letter to Kathleen in Chicago.

  She was seated at the desk in the room she and Steven would, she hoped, share soon, trying to compose the letter, and at the same time, endure the painful menstrual cramps that had dashed one of her most cherished dreams, when the doorknob jiggled. Knowing that Cyrus, Jubal, or Lucy would have knocked, Emma sat up very straight in her chair and held her breath.

  She had absolutely no doubt that the visitor was Macon, and she couldn’t be sure he didn’t have a key. After all, he’d probably lived in this house all his life.

  The knob turned again, and there was a light, cautious knock. “Emma,” a voice called. It was male, but too young and uncertain-sounding to be Macon’s.

  She crept to the door. “Nathaniel?”

  “Yes,” came the answer.

  After only a moment’s hesitation—Nathaniel hadn’t exactly bent over backwards to make her feel welcome—she unlocked the door and opened it a crack.

  The youth was standing in the hallway, looking disarmingly like a very young version of Steven. Her own sons, should she be fortunate enough to bear any, would probably look much like Nathaniel when they reached this age.

  “I didn’t mean what I said about Steven,” he said miserably.

  Emma stepped back to admit him, even though she was wearing her wrapper and her hair was falling free. She’d brushed the fiery tresses, but hadn’t gotten around to braiding them again. “Still,” she said shrewdly, “you’re very angry with him for some reason. What is it?”

  Nathaniel swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “He shouldn’t have run off like that—after Mary turned up dead and all. Now everybody thinks he’s guilty.”

  “Not everybody,” Emma said, folding her arms. “I don’t, and neither does Cyrus. Or Lucy.”

  “Lucy!” Nathaniel huffed disrespectfully. “She’s just a crazy woman. What does it matter what she thinks?”

  “You,” Emma told him directly, “are a very rude young man. I’m not sure I like you.”

  Surprisingly, Nathaniel looked injured. “Nobody would take Lucy’s word for anything,” he said, softening his argument this time. “She’s got that room with the cradle inside and everything, and there’s no baby. Everybody knows she’s loony.”

  “What room?” Emma asked, startled.

  “Down the hall,” Nathaniel answered, gesturing. “I’d show you, but she keeps it locked most of the time. There’s a cradle in there, and she rocks it and sings and stuff like that.” He paused to shiver. “It’s peculiar.”

  Emma was filled with pity and concern. She made up her mind to be a loyal friend to Lucy, no matter what. “Life can’t be easy for her, being married to Macon Fairfax.”

  Nathaniel ran his tongue nervously over his lips. “Soon as you see Steven,” he said hastily, glanci
ng once toward the door, “you tell him I kept all his things for him. I took good care of them.”

  Emma nodded, and once Nathaniel had left the room, she closed the door and locked it again, then went back to her letter. She would send it out as soon as possible, and deposit the seven hundred and fifty dollar bank draft in an emergency account.

  If Steven was convicted, she would need the money to escape New Orleans.

  The jail was a dismal place filled with the smell of sweat and rotting souls, and Emma hung on to Cyrus’s arm as they waited to be admitted to a visiting room. If she hadn’t been so determined not to let Steven see her cry, she would have given way to a torrent of tears. She kept a handkerchief over her nose and mouth, at Lucy’s suggestion.

  Steven was still wearing yesterday’s clothes when she saw him again, although, typically, he’d shed the suitcoat and string tie. His hair was rumpled from running his hands through it, and his eyes had already taken on a hunted look.

  At the sight of Emma, though, he smiled and leaned across the table to kiss her. She didn’t tell him there was no baby growing inside her, sensing that that was something he was clinging to in order to get through those dark days.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Never mind me,” Emma scolded briskly. “What about you? Have they hurt you?”

  Steven shook his head, but Emma wasn’t comforted. He sat down on the other side of the long, scratched table that separated visitors from prisoners. Emma and Cyrus followed suit.

  “I’m doing everything I can to get you out of here, boy,” Cyrus assured his grandson. “The fact that you ran away once before doesn’t make it easy.”

  Steven’s hands were gripping Emma’s on the table top, and he was obviously reluctant to look away from her even long enough to acknowledge his grandfather. “If I’m convicted, Granddaddy,” he said, “I want Emma put on the first train north. Is that understood?”

  Emma sat up straight in her chair. “You’re not going to be convicted, Mr. Fairfax,” she said firmly. The habit of addressing Steven formally when they were in the presence of anyone else had long since taken hold. “You’re innocent.”