“That sounds like the black magic of a fairy tale,” Prudence blurted out before she could stop herself.
“I’ve heard it claimed that successful juju is a form of mesmerism,” Geoffrey said. “For those who believe, no claim is too outrageous. For the rest of us, skepticism is the order of the day.”
“Then you don’t believe in voodoo?” Prudence hoped her relief wasn’t too obvious.
“I believe in the power of its practitioners. But their ability to attract and control followers comes from persuasion and fear. Nothing that transcends the laws of nature.”
“You spoke of a changeling spell.”
“That was one of Mama Flore’s favorites. She used its threat to keep misbehaving children in line,” Geoffrey said. “It comes from legends of infants being replaced by the offspring of their clan’s enemies, thus guaranteeing them life in hope that the stolen child would also live. Hostages to fortune. The spell exchanges one face for another, allowing the two individuals to live one another’s lives, but only for a specified amount of time.”
“Geoffrey, have you ever seen either of these spells at work? Do you have any proof that they accomplish what they’re meant to do?”
“Stories, always told by someone else. That’s as close as I’ve ever gotten. I told you that Father sent me north to school after the war. The last time I went back, Mother had been confined and Mama Flore was gone.”
“Did you ever find out what happened to her?”
“I asked, but never got an answer.”
“Who could have paid Queen Lula to cast either of those spells? Now that we know she could have done it?”
“Aunt Jessa,” Geoffrey said. “If what I’m beginning to suspect is true, she’s the only one who would have been desperate enough to think either of them would work.” He gathered up the loose sheets of paper and the cord that had bound them together. “It’s time to call on Elijah Bennett again. He needs to identify this mourning ring and we have to find out how and why it came into Queen Lula’s possession.”
* * *
“Aurora Lee has given him tincture of foxglove to regulate his heart,” an exhausted-looking Maggie Jane told them. “He’s in his bed, and I’m on my way up there right now.”
She’d put down the tray she was carrying when Geoffrey and Prudence climbed Wildacre’s front steps and knocked at the door. She picked it up again, spilling some of the beef broth in her agitation. “I’ll tell him you called.”
“Is Teddy here?” Prudence asked.
“He’s gone to the mainland to bring back a doctor. If he can find one closer than Savannah,” Maggie Jane sobbed.
“If there’s anything we can do to help—” Geoffrey began.
Blinded by tears, Maggie Jane shook her head and stumbled toward the staircase to the second floor. By the time she’d steadied herself and begun the long climb, Lawrence had appeared on the landing. He whispered something to her as they passed, then hurried down to where Prudence and Geoffrey stood.
“I don’t mean to be discourteous,” he said, “but as my sister seems to have told you, we have serious illness in the house. I’m afraid we are not entertaining guests at the moment.”
“I’m sure I speak for Philip and Abigail Dickson as well as ourselves when I say we all wish your father a speedy recovery,” Prudence said. There didn’t seem to be anything to do but leave.
Just as she turned back to the door that no one had thought to close, they heard a horse being ridden at speed up the oyster shell drive. Seconds later Teddy had flung himself from its saddle and raced up to the veranda. “Is he—?”
“The foxglove seems to be working,” Lawrence said. His glance at Prudence and Geoffrey told them plainly that he wished them gone. “Aurora Lee thinks the crisis may have passed.”
“There isn’t a doctor anywhere closer than Savannah.” Teddy panted. “I sent a telegram, not that I expect it to do much good.”
People who lived on isolated plantations like Wildacre came into life and left it without medical help. In between they survived accident and illness by the skill of the master’s wife and their own strength. Or they didn’t.
“We’ll be on our way,” Prudence murmured.
“Please don’t leave,” Teddy said unexpectedly. “I’ll go up for a moment to let my sisters know that a doctor won’t be coming anytime soon, but there isn’t much else I can do. Except wait.” He fingered his watch fob and the ring he had given Eleanor.
Lawrence scowled, then turned on his heel. He disappeared down the hallway leading to the library.
“He and my father are very close,” Teddy explained. He showed them into the parlor, then hurried out into the entrance hall.
They heard his rapid steps on the stairs, the sound of a door opening, quiet voices.
Geoffrey helped himself to the whiskey tray. He raised an eyebrow at Prudence, who shook her head.
“We shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Men like Elijah Bennett don’t die that easily.”
“We won’t be able to question him.”
“Teddy will know if the ring we found belongs to his father. And if for some reason he’s uncertain, there’s always Lawrence.” Geoffrey placed the silver mourning ring on the whiskey tray, positioning it so that anyone reaching for a glass would have to see it. Satisfied, he stepped away.
“It was kind of you to stay,” Teddy said as he came into the parlor. “I’ll just leave the doors open in case—”
“How is he doing?” Prudence asked.
“Better than when I left. He’s sitting up and Maggie Jane is feeding him broth. One dripping spoonful at a time.” Teddy let out a ragged sigh. “He’s going to pull through. This time.”
“Has he had anything like this before?” Prudence asked.
“Not that I know of. He’s a great one for keeping secrets, though, especially if it’s anything of a personal nature.”
Teddy moved toward the whiskey tray.
Geoffrey’s eyes followed him.
Prudence sat up straighter in her chair.
“Pour one for me, too, brother,” Lawrence said from the doorway. “I think we’ve earned it.”
Teddy stood frozen in place, staring down at the silver tray reflecting crystal and whiskey in a shaft of light. He reached out. Then he turned, and without saying a word, held up the silver ring.
Lawrence strode across the room, thunder in his eyes. He snatched the ring from Teddy’s upraised hand and read the inscription. “EJB. 1866.”
“It’s Father’s ring,” Teddy said. “The one he always wore for his brother’s memory. We have to tell him it’s been found.” He peered down at the whiskey tray as though other lost items would suddenly appear there.
“I wondered—” Prudence began.
“Did you have something to do with this?” Lawrence snarled. “Is this more of your meddling?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Prudence hedged.
Geoffrey raised his glass to his lips. He wouldn’t interfere. Not yet.
“I found it lying on the tray, Lawrence,” Teddy said. “Someone must have put it there, but it couldn’t have been Prudence. Father lost this ring at Christmastime. I remember because it was right after I wrote that I’d asked Eleanor to marry me and she’d accepted. His answer was as much about the dishonest habits of the few servants left here as it was congratulatory good wishes.”
“It didn’t disappear by itself,” Lawrence raged. “And it didn’t appear again without help.”
“Perhaps it really was lost, not stolen. And whoever found it was afraid he might be accused of taking it. So he chose this way of making sure it got back to its rightful owner.” Prudence’s simple explanation seemed to strike a chord with Teddy.
“I’d like to believe that’s what happened,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to accuse any of our people of theft.”
“Is that the only piece of jewelry that’s gone missing?” she asked.
“
Lawrence? I’ve been away too much to be able to answer that question,” Teddy said. “I don’t recall either Aurora Lee or Maggie Jane saying anything about items they can’t find.”
“Nothing else,” Lawrence said brusquely. “Father should be told we’ve found it. I’ll take it up to him.” Red-faced and still angry, he executed a stiff bow in Prudence’s direction, then left the room, ring in hand.
Teddy poured his whiskey and raised his glass.
CHAPTER 22
“Geoffrey told me Lawrence showed him a portrait of your uncle Ethan,” Prudence began, sipping delicately from the glass of minted tea a maid had brought. “He said there was a marked resemblance between the brothers.”
“They were only two years apart in age,” Teddy told her. “Rather like Lawrence and me. Did he tell you they were wounded in the same battle? Peachtree Creek, it was.”
“But they survived,” Geoffrey said. “It was the last year of the war. Sherman was advancing on Atlanta.”
Teddy nodded. “I’ve heard my father refight that battle a hundred times. He swears that the outcome might have been different if President Davis hadn’t replaced General Johnston with General Hood at the last moment.”
“The cause was already lost,” Geoffrey said. “We just didn’t want to admit it.”
Had he noticed he’d said we? Prudence wondered.
“Would you like to see the portraits, Prudence?” Teddy asked.
“I would. Especially since Ethan’s mourning ring has shown up again.”
“It’s the only one my father had made. Lawrence and I were still boys when our uncle died, and women in the South usually wear brooches with a lock of the deceased’s hair.” He led them from the parlor to the library, opening a window overlooking the back lawn as soon as they entered. “Father and Lawrence smoke their cigars in here when they aren’t out on the veranda,” he explained. “I know ladies find the smell hard to bear.”
“My father liked a good cigar,” Prudence said. “I grew used to the aroma on his clothing.”
“Eleanor—” Teddy didn’t finish what he had been about to say. He pulled back the rest of the curtains that darkened the room. “Ethan is on the left, my father on the right.”
The gold hair and gold braid of the Bennett brothers leaped into stark relief against the dark gray background and the lighter gray of their uniforms. They were as handsome a pair as Prudence had ever seen. It took no effort at all to imagine them partnering two beautiful young women wearing the enormous hooped skirts of the period. There was a stubborn aura of romance about the war that not even the grim battle photographs of Mathew Brady had been able to stamp out entirely. Men in uniform were always irresistibly attractive. Until the uniforms were ripped and stained with blood.
“How old were they?” she asked.
“In their late twenties when the portraits were painted. Probably the summer of 1861, shortly after war was declared in April. Everything was being done quickly because nobody thought the conflict would last as long as it did.”
“Too long,” Prudence whispered. “All wars last too long.”
“Ethan never married?” Geoffrey asked, probing for a lost fiancée or deceased sweetheart.
“He may have felt it was dishonorable to ask a woman to marry a man whose legs had been shattered beyond repair,” Teddy said.
Prudence knew her presence stopped him from saying more than that. He couldn’t have any idea what she had been exposed to in the course of the investigations she and Geoffrey had undertaken. A quick glance at her partner’s face told her she had read the situation correctly. Ethan Bennett’s injuries had probably been more debilitating than splintered leg bones.
“Maggie Jane mentioned the accident that took his life,” she said. “I don’t know when I’ve heard a sadder story.”
“They were changed men after the war,” Teddy said.
“No one escaped it,” Geoffrey agreed.
“My father said he didn’t think Ethan knew a pain-free day from the time he was brought home until the morning his horse threw him.” Teddy looked at the half-empty glass in his hand. “Whiskey was the only thing that brought relief. The suffering and the alcohol aged him prematurely.”
“He and your father must have been very close,” Geoffrey said. “That’s something else war does.”
“Strangely, given the fact that my father commissioned a mourning ring when Ethan died, they weren’t. They didn’t like each other.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Prudence said, looking intently at the two young officers whose eyes gazed into a future neither could have imagined.
“Everyone in the family was aware of it. They didn’t try to hide their mutual dislike, especially after my grandfather died and Uncle Ethan inherited. If it hadn’t been for the war, my father might have taken his wife and children to one of the family’s mainland plantations, but by the time of the surrender, Wildacre was all that was left of the Bennett holdings and it took both brothers to run it.”
“How far back did the trouble between them go?” Geoffrey asked.
“Aunt Jessa said it started as they grew from boyhood into manhood.”
“Aunt Jessa?”
“She thought the sun rose and the moon set on Ethan,” Teddy said. “I never saw that woman cry until the day he came home from Peachtree Creek. I was seven years old. She knew he might keep on breathing, but his life was over. He was as dead a man as if someone had shoveled him into his grave.”
“I thought you were her favorite,” Prudence said.
“In this generation. It was Ethan in my father’s. She was mammy to all the Bennett children, but in each set, she always cherished one of us above the others.”
“Don’t you want to know who killed her?” Prudence whispered, aware that anything could break Teddy’s fragile mood of disclosure.
He never took his eyes from the two men in Confederate gray. “I agree with what my father believes. We’ve always known that fugitives from the law take refuge in our live oaks. As long as they stay hidden, we don’t try to roust them out. Either the swamp will claim them or they’ll move on.”
“But this was different,” Prudence persisted. “This was Aunt Jessa.”
“And Jonah,” Teddy reminded her. “I know what you’re implying, Prudence. Justice is different down here. We don’t expect it to be the same for people like Aunt Jessa and Jonah as it is for us. Things work themselves out without the interference of sheriffs and police. It’s always been like that. It always will be.” He paused for a moment, reordering his thoughts, searching for words she would understand. “Nevertheless, we’ll get a posse together and clear out the vermin responsible for what was done. Our people look to us for protection.”
“Queen Lula was hanged in front of her cabin,” Geoffrey said harshly. “This morning. Prudence and I found her. I know you’ve been told about it. That makes three unexplained deaths, Teddy. Four, if you count Eleanor’s drowning. The coral snake in Prudence’s room would have brought the number to five. Whatever is happening on your island won’t work itself out. Or don’t you care how many more of your people have to die to safeguard the Bennett name?”
“How dare you say that to me?” Teddy whirled on Geoffrey, his face blanched, voice choking with emotion. “You of all people!”
“Say what you mean.” Geoffrey slammed down his whiskey glass and unbuttoned his coat.
Prudence caught a glimpse of the butt of his Colt revolver. Of course he was armed. She should have known he would be.
“We have a name for people who betray their own. I’m sure you’ve heard it used over the years. Scalawag.” Teddy spat out the word with all the force and venom of a coiled snake.
“When I left the South for good, I took nothing with me that wasn’t mine,” Geoffrey said. “I didn’t return to prey on her misery or profit from her defeat.” It was clear he was expecting an apology, equally obvious he was close to demanding satisfaction.
“So you say.”<
br />
“Please, Teddy,” Prudence pleaded. “You don’t mean that. You know Geoffrey’s history. He no more fought in the war than you did. Neither of you was old enough. It destroyed hundreds of thousands of men of your father’s era. Don’t let that be your legacy as well.”
Neither man answered her.
“You’re grieving for Eleanor,” Prudence continued, desperate to strike some chord of reconciliation. “Loss does terrible things to a person’s heart. It can make you bitter and so angry that you lash out at everyone, even those who care most deeply for you. I understand it because I lost two people who meant the world to me, and I nearly drowned in my own despair.”
She reached out to clutch Teddy’s arm, digging her fingers into muscles knotted with rage. He wanted to hurt someone, wanted to attack the forces that had stolen his future from him. Geoffrey was the closest target.
“Please, Teddy.” She felt the arm she clung to soften, the muscles loosen. Saw the fingers that had squeezed themselves into a fist open and flex.
Teddy couldn’t find the words or perhaps couldn’t bring himself to voice them, but he reached out his right hand. And Geoffrey shook it.
The confrontation, sudden, unexpected, and potentially deadly, had been safely navigated.
For now.
* * *
The cabin in which Minda’s mother lived was deep in the live oak forest, an isolated spot where the humid air hung heavily over thick stands of palmetto and billows of deep white sand. Following the directions given by the stable boy who’d brought around their horses, Prudence and Geoffrey rode along a narrow trail for as long as they could, then led their mounts the last few hundred yards.
Minda stood on the porch, her body tense, fear in her eyes. She held the arm of a painfully thin woman whose pallor was an unhealthy jaundiced yellow. Suffering and endurance had engraved themselves into her features, but there was a hauntingly familiar beauty about her drawn face. The resemblance between mother and daughter was pronounced and unmistakable.
Death Brings a Shadow Page 20
