by Alyssa Cole
Praise for Alyssa Cole’s An Extraordinary Union
“Cole’s sparkling gem of a romance portrays love at its most practical and sublime; she writes with lyricism, intelligence, and historical accuracy.”
—Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW
“An exceptional story that both educates and entertains and beautifully launches a unique series.”
—Library Journal STARRED REVIEW
“A masterful tale that bodes well for future work from Cole.”
—Kirkus STARRED REVIEW
“Fans of Beverly Jenkins will be thrilled with
Cole’s fearless, steamy, and moving multicultural take on forbidden love in a time of slavery and war.”
—Booklist STARRED REVIEW
“An extraordinary romance is found within the pages of Alyssa Cole’s An Extraordinary Union.”
—Bookpage TOP PICK
“Cole spins a tale that will pull you in from the very first page.”
—RT Book Reviews FIVE STAR GOLD TOP PICK
Please turn the page for more praise for An Extraordinary Union.
“A compelling and engrossing historical civil war romance . . . that leaves you spellbound.”
—Huffington Post
“Cole’s lively novel—besides being an enjoyable romance full of adventure and extremely good lust—is therefore part of a long-overdue pushback against the way historical fiction portrays this seminal moment in American history.”
—Jezebel
“With its richly detailed setting, heart-stopping plot, and unforgettable characters, An Extraordinary Union is everything you can ask from historical fiction. Brava!”
—Deanna Raybourn, New York Times bestselling author
“Alyssa Cole’s An Extraordinary Union is as extraordinary as the title suggests—riveting, romantic, and utterly remarkable.”
—Courtney Milan, New York Times bestselling author
“An Extraordinary Union is the perfect blend of history, adventure, and heart-stopping romance, with a courageous heroine you’ll love and a hero you’ll fall in love with.”
—Susanna Kearsley, New York Times bestselling author
“Alyssa Cole’s An Extraordinary Union is the first in what promises to be a riveting series.”
—Heroes and Heartbreakers
Also by Alyssa Cole
An Extraordinary Union
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
A Hope Divided
ALYSSA COLE
KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Praise for Alyssa Cole’s An Extraordinary Union
Also by Alyssa Cole
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Discussion Questions
AN EXTRAORDINARY UNION
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2017 by Alyssa Cole
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0747-5
eISBN-10: 1-4967-0747-8
Kensington Electronic Edition: December 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4967-0746-8
ISBN-10: 1-4967-0746-X
First Kensington Trade Paperback Edition: December 2017
Dedicated to all those who hope when it seems only a fool would dare to. Be foolish.
PROLOGUE
Western North Carolina, 1853
Marlie sat too close to her mother on the bench seat of their dilapidated buggy as it jumped along the rocky dirt road. There wasn’t a chill in the spring air, but she snaked her arm through her mother’s and settled closer to her. She glanced up at her, feeling the mix of awe and envy that had always been inseparable from her love for the woman. Vivienne sat straight-backed and regal with the reins draped loosely over her palms. Her long braids were bound by a length of white fabric, and her smooth, dark skin was radiant in the late afternoon sun.
Her mother sighed and leaned into the embrace, and Marlie felt an unbidden press of tears behind her eyes. She blinked them away. She was too old for such behavior—almost thirteen—but she’d been unsettled all morning. The strange dream she’d had the previous night had draped over her like a thin caul of sorrow, slowing her down as she got the water from the well, gathered the eggs from the henhouse, and performed the rest of her morning tasks. She’d waited for her maman to ask her about her dream, as she did most every morning, but Vivienne had been tight-lipped and broody when Marlie pulled aside the curtain and walked into the portion of their cabin that served as her mother’s mixing room. Marlie hadn’t pushed for a divination but had sat silently at her mother’s side, passing her the dried plants, grinding stone, and other implements she needed to ply her craft.
Their craft.
They’d gone about their morning work as usual, but everything had felt off to Marlie, as if she were acting out a play for an audience she couldn’t see. She’d been glad when they left the house to make a call that afternoon, hoping that a change of scenery would buoy her mood.
Instead, her sense of unease had only grown; the road was familiar, but every bend in it seemed to hold the possibility of some catastrophe. She hugged her mother’s arm a bit closer and felt the deep sigh against her side before she heard her mother exhale it.
“Easy, Silas,” Vivienne said, pulling on the reins.
The mule pulled up to a stop in front of Lavonia Burgess’s small, neat house, one that made their simple shack look like so much plywood. Lavonia was a free Negro, like Marlie and her mother, but she made her living as a domestic, earning a better wage. She also didn’t give away her services, like Vivienne always did.
“Should I let people suffer, if they have no money?”
It chafed Marlie that her mother was so kind to people who only visited when they needed her specific services, but Vivienne was right. Many of her customers were slaves visiting from nearby plantations to have their aches and pains tended to, and often their spirits, too; helping them was a small price to pay when you were already free.
“Cal
stopped by my place earlier,” Vivienne said as she walked into the front door and set her bag on the floor. “Boy said you was feeling your years today and needed my help. Is it your joints again?” The faint accent of the French she’d spoken on the island of her birth gave her words an enigmatic air, although she was mystery enough even when she was silent.
“Feeling my years? I bet you older than me, Miss Viv,” Lavonia said with a cackle. The woman was aged, but not ancient. She was wrapped up in blankets, and a smile broke through the pained expression on her face. “I jus’ don’t got those witchy woman powers like you to keep me lookin’ young and lovely. They say you two-facers don’t age like reglar folk.”
Vivienne simply smiled, the kind of smile that reminded Marlie of a cat stretching lazily in a bit of sunlight—just before it snatched your last bit of tripe and was out the door like a shot.
Lavonia cleared her throat. “It’s not the rheumatics today. My stomach been botherin’ me something awful.” She paused. “I thought maybe it was something I ate, but it’s mighty strange that ever since Jane Woods accused me of cozying up to her husband after Sunday worship, I been feeling sick as a dog.”
“Mighty strange,” Vivienne echoed. “Marlie, put on some water and make up a tisane for stomach troubles.”
“She got the gift, too?” Lavonia looked over at Marlie and couldn’t hide her slight shudder. “I shoulda figured with them eyes of hers.”
Marlie grabbed the satchel and hurried to the kitchen. The glass bottles of ingredients she pulled out reflected the sight she usually avoided: one normal brown eye, and one strange hazel green one that made people do the sign of the cross when she walked by them. Some people said it meant she could divine the future; after the dream she’d had, Marlie hoped they were wrong.
She set a pot of water to boiling, then pulled out a gnarled bit of pokeroot and whittled some pieces into the water. She uncorked another bottle and carefully poured out a dram of pine sap, and pinched up some Epsom salt from another. She stirred carefully, pretending to ignore the murmur of voices in the other room.
“You don’t carry John the Conqueror?” Vivienne asked in a censuring tone.
“I’m a Christian woman,” Lavonia said haughtily, then sighed. “I lost mine a few weeks back.”
Marlie crept back into the room and searched for one of the dried roots in the satchel before her mother could ask. She handed the wrinkly oblong that was known to be a source of protection over to her mother and then sat behind her, already knowing what would be said.
“Sprinkle mustard seeds at your door every night. If the one who throwed at you come here, don’t let her inside. If you think she gonna try to hurt you again, toss salt after her every time she leaves her gate. After nine times, she’ll leave you be because she’ll be moving on to another town.”
Marlie watched the way Lavonia’s expression hardened as she listened and she knew what question was coming. “Can you—”
“I don’t throw,” Vivienne said, her voice low but firm. “I’ll help protect you, break whatever roots she laid on you, but throwing ain’t what I’m offering. Now take this and don’t lose it this time.”
Lavonia nodded, chastened, and as Vivienne dropped the root into the woman’s palm, Marlie gasped. The world seemed to slow and blur, and then come back into clarity as reality overlaid a memory that she shouldn’t have already had.
That happened in my dream.
It had. Every detail, down to the way the brown lines in Lavonia’s palm crinkled as she closed her hand around the John the Conqueror. The unsettling caul of the dreamworld tightened over Marlie, sending her mind whirling. If that had been in her dream, and that part had come true, then . . .
“Take that tisane off the flame, chérie,” her mother said, turning to her. “We must get home.”
* * *
The ride back was silent, but not comfortable. There was a space between them on the bench now, as though Marlie’s fears had taken a seat beside her. Marlie wished her mother would say something, anything.
“Yah, Silas,” Vivienne murmured, leaning forward to shake the reins as she urged their mule onward. Darkness came swift on the mountain road, but Marlie could see that her mother’s teeth were clenched tight when Vivienne leaned back and continued silently staring ahead of her.
“Maman, I—” The words died in her throat as they turned the bend in the road that led to the home she had always known.
The carriage parked in front was just as elegant as it had been in her dream, the horses just as large and muscled. In the dream, the cab had been empty, but had radiated a sensation of heartbreaking loss that had left her shattered and sobbing as she awoke. In real life, a driver jumped down and opened the door to the cab, and a young woman stepped out. A white young woman. Not many white folk came to Vivienne’s house—they didn’t understand her talent, and thought it dangerous. But this woman looked familiar even though she hadn’t been in the dream.
Her black dress was clean and beautiful, simple, but obviously made of expensive fabric. It was probably soft against her skin, unlike the rough homespun Marlie was used to wearing. Her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek bun, held in place by shiny hairpins. Her lips were pressed together into a blanched line of determination, but her eyes showed her distress.
Marlie felt her world shift under her feet as the woman stepped down from the buggy. She threw an arm over Silas for support and stared, unable to look away from their visitor’s eyes: two hazel green eyes that matched Marlie’s single one. And the woman’s ears stuck out too much, one higher than the other, a trait that had always embarrassed Marlie and that Vivienne said she’d inherited from her father. That was about the only thing Marlie knew about the man, but she had a feeling she was about to learn more.
“Been a long time, Sarah,” Vivienne said. If she was surprised by their guest, she didn’t show it. “I ain’t seen you since you was a knock-kneed little girl.”
Vivienne’s expression softened, for just a moment, and Marlie imagined what her mother would have looked like when she was younger and even more beautiful. Marlie knew her mother had been a house slave. Had she cared for this woman as a child? Laughed and played with her, as she eventually had with Marlie?
Marlie hugged Silas tighter, feeling the calm, even thud of the beast’s heart against her side. She was too scared to look at her mother. She already knew what was coming, could already feel the aching pull of her impending loss.
“Father is dead,” the young woman said. Her lip trembled a bit. “Mother has gone to our holdings in Philadelphia, to live with her sister. I would have come sooner, but I discovered your letters only recently. And I agree with you. Marlie is a Lynch, and she should receive all the advantages that name can offer to . . . someone like her. You should have been offered more, too, after the— the misunderstanding between you and—” The woman struggled for words and her face reddened. “Father was wrong to send you away as he did.”
“I got my freedom and hers. It’s more than I would have had if I stayed.” Vivienne’s voice was sharp, and Sarah ducked her head as if she’d been chastised.
“Things are different at Lynchwood now,” she said. “I’m seeing to it that the remainder of our slaves are given their freedom.”
“And Stephen?” Vivienne asked.
“My brother is in Mississippi, with his wife,” Sarah said. “I’m sure he’ll agree with this decision, as he has with the other changes I’ve put in place. It doesn’t matter what he thinks, in the end. I’ll do right by her.” She glanced at Marlie, and her expression softened. “I should have sent word ahead, but I just got the notion to come. I’m sorry.”
“No need for sorries.” Vivienne’s hand was on Marlie’s shoulder, suddenly, pulling her away from Silas and turning the girl to face her.
“Now, I know you’re gonna be mad at me,” she said. Marlie stared at the ground. She felt an anger so hot burning in her that she thought she might combust on the spot, taki
ng her mother and Silas—everything she loved most—with her. But her mother’s tears, rare as a unicorn’s horn, doused those flames. The moon was rising, bright and full, and the tears shone silver in the moonlight as they tracked down her smooth, dark cheeks.
“Full moon means a parting of ways,” Marlie said in a shaky voice when she finally met her mother’s gaze. “I don’t wanna go, Maman!” She threw her arms around Vivienne’s slight figure and hugged her tight.
Vivienne hugged her back, and Marlie felt something close to weakness in a woman who’d only ever been strong. It frightened her. “I want you to have a better life than this: being the neighborhood root woman, only good for breaking a fix or getting rid of warts.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with helping people,” Marlie said stubbornly. “You always tell me that.”
Her mother laughed low. “C’est vrai. But there are many ways to help people, and you’re meant for something more. I know it. But that can’t happen if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, digging up roots. This is what’s meant to be, chérie.”
“Why can’t you come with me?” she asked. “She’d let you, I bet. If you just asked.”
“The people here need me, Marlie. And I can’t go back to that place—it was no good for me. But it’ll be different for you.”
Marlie didn’t know how long she held her mother. Didn’t know how long she cried, or what she threw into her bag as she stumbled blindly around the house she’d spent all her life in.
