Death Brings a Shadow

by Rosemary Simpson

  As she continued to read, Prudence felt herself sharing the anguish of a young man steeped in misery and nearly devoid of hope. Whoever it was who had agreed to escort Selena to freedom changed his mind; despite what Ethan was prepared to pay, the danger was too great. Weeks passed. As Selena’s time approached, Ethan’s entries grew increasingly desperate. Until, finally, when it was almost too late, another rescuer appeared on the scene.

  My prayers have been answered. I will not name him, for his own protection and that of my beloved. Selena will travel North with him; she will pretend to be his wife as they journey to safety.

  If I could take her myself, I would gladly abandon everything to do it, but Father has set a watch on me and I am too easily recognizable in this area to be anything but a danger to her.

  What we are about to do is perilous. All I can think of is that in chasing freedom, she may find death. And it will be on my head, for it is I who have insisted she and the child she carries must go. Six months ago, when a traveling photographer came to the island, he captured her image for me. I pray God that photograph is not all that remains of her when this is over.

  “He was right about the war. Georgia seceded three months after Lincoln was elected,” Teddy said. “If Selena did make it to the North, there would have been no communication between her and Uncle Ethan for the next four years.”

  “It looks as though he hid his journal in the tin box while he was fighting in the Confederate Army,” Geoffrey said. “He must have wanted to be certain that if he was killed, it wouldn’t be found on his body.”

  “The next entry is dated May 1, 1865,” Prudence announced.

  “Peachtree Creek was in July of 1864,” Teddy reminded them. “Uncle Ethan and Father spent months in a Savannah hospital, but my grandfather brought them home well before Sherman took the city at Christmas that year. He must have had Aunt Jessa dig up the journal right after the surrender.”

  “Will you read the rest of the entries, Teddy?” Prudence asked, handing him the diary. She thought he seemed strangely detached from what had happened at Wildacre all those years ago. Perhaps having to decipher his uncle’s handwriting and breathe in the musty scent of the long-buried pages would awaken him to what Prudence suspected had to be Selena’s hidden truth.

  As soon as I am able, I shall go North in search of them. If such a thing is possible in this new world where slavery no longer exists, I shall find my Selena and we will marry. I will sign over my inheritance rights in Wildacre to Elijah; he has no interest in living anywhere but here. If necessary, I shall quit these United States. Canada or Europe, perhaps France. Somewhere not exhausted from the struggle of brother against brother.

  “He doesn’t write again until months later.” Reluctantly, more slowly now, Teddy continued reading Ethan Bennett’s journal.

  All hope is lost. The cotton factor disappeared before the war ended and is probably dead, according to the detective I hired to find him.

  He was a man of means and a gentleman, loving the South but abhorring slavery. As did I. The detective will continue to look for Selena, and for our child, but he fears the trail has gone cold. I had given the factor funds to purchase a house for my beloved and establish a bank account from which she could draw whatever she needed, but there is no record of any such transactions. I refuse to believe the detective’s suggestion that he kept the money for himself and sold the two loves of my life back into slavery, though I have heard of such a thing being done.

  “He never finds out whether the child is a boy or a girl,” Prudence said. “Or whether it lived or died.”

  Teddy turned the pages of the journal, skimming his uncle’s final words. “He writes that he has decided he must remain at Wildacre because if she is alive, Selena will write to him there. The detective continues to send him reports, but every lead that appears promising comes to nothing. He is able to get about with the use of two canes, but then he says that he is determined to ride again, as he once did.”

  “That must be when he had himself tied into the saddle so he could ride his acres,” Geoffrey speculated.

  “The last entry is in a different hand,” Teddy said.

  Ethan Bennett was dragged to his death yesterday. He was buried near the graves of his father and his mother in the family burying ground at Wildacre. He had one love in his life and fathered one child. I swear to the truth of this statement because I knew them all. And loved each of them.

  “Aunt Jessa?” Prudence asked.

  “The entry is signed with the letter J,” Teddy answered. “She must have retrieved the diary from Ethan’s bedroom and buried it in the tin box again before anyone else could discover it. Along with the photograph of Selena. She wrote that she knew them all. Not just both of them. She knew them all. Loved each of them.”

  Teddy ran his thumb over the face of his uncle’s great love, obscuring the features, then revealing them again. “It’s Eleanor. It’s why she was killed.”

  * * *

  Prudence walked to the chapel and convinced Abigail to come back to the house with her.

  “I don’t see what could be so important that it won’t wait,” Eleanor’s mother complained.

  Prudence waited patiently but neither explained nor left Abigail’s side until they entered the library.

  Philip, just as puzzled and annoyed, had given up trying to get answers out of Geoffrey and Teddy. He’d dismissed his estate manager to write up a report of what they had seen and taken out his Atlantic charts again.

  “Is this your doing, Philip?” his wife asked petulantly. She settled herself on the sofa she had shared with Teddy the night before as the storm raged across the island.

  “I have no idea why I’m being held captive in my own house,” he retorted.

  Geoffrey and Teddy had insisted that he remain with them in the library until Abigail joined them.

  “I’m sorry for the questions we have to ask you,” Prudence began, enfolding one of Abigail’s hands in hers. “Believe me, if there was any other way to do this, we would.”

  Eleanor’s parents stared at her. The worst thing either of them could have imagined had already happened. Nothing, they thought, could compare with the death of a beloved child.

  “We know that Eleanor was not your natural daughter,” Geoffrey began, using the reassuringly firm tone of voice that never failed to coax difficult testimony out of reluctant witnesses.

  “Philip?” Abigail’s panicked protest was as good as an admission.

  “We wouldn’t need to inquire if it weren’t vital to learning how and why she died,” Prudence said.

  “Nothing you tell us will in any way change my feelings for Eleanor,” Teddy promised.

  “We lost children,” Philip said, head bowed, one hand circling aimlessly over the Atlantic chart on his desk. “Before Eleanor.”

  “They all died,” Abigail murmured, “all of my children died, some of them before they could be born. One girl lived for three months. When I found her lifeless in the bed I tried to join her. Philip wouldn’t let me go.” She peeled back the cuffs of her black mourning gown. Threads of silver scarring crisscrossed her wrists. “I couldn’t even do that well.”

  “Eleanor was older than our girl by several weeks,” Philip said. “A beautiful, healthy child whose mother had recently died. The man in whose care she had been placed was unmarried. He was a business associate who was looking to solve his own dilemma. He could not raise the infant entrusted to him, nor did he wish to place her in an orphanage. I brought her home that same day to Abigail. Our daughter’s death was not yet known outside the confines of our own house, so we decided there would be no notice placed in the newspapers, no funeral. The servants would be told that Abigail had found the child unresponsive, and, in a moment of hysteria mistakenly thought her dead. The individual who gave her to us had terms, of course, and we agreed to them.”

  “What were those terms?” Geoffrey asked.

  “That Eleanor would never be told
she was not our natural child and we would not attempt to learn her true parentage.”

  “Didn’t that seem strange to you?”

  “He told us that her mother had been an otherwise virtuous young woman of good family who had allowed herself to be taken advantage of by a man not worthy to be called a gentleman. That when he abandoned her she was sent away to bear the child in secret. I don’t know what would have happened had she not died. Perhaps a way would have been found for her and the child to return home.”

  “Not in this case,” Teddy said. He handed Philip the photograph of Selena.

  “I’ve never seen this portrait of Eleanor before,” Philip said.

  “May I?” Abigail rose from the couch and joined her husband at his desk. The hand she reached out for the photograph trembled visibly. She turned it over, then collapsed into Philip’s arms, shaking her head in denial. She had recognized, as he had not, that the clothing worn by the woman who was the image of her daughter had been fashionable thirty years ago.

  “What was the name of the man who brought you your daughter?” Geoffrey asked.

  “He was a cotton factor on the New York Exchange who had represented many fine Southern families for years,” Philip said, evading the question. “Not revealing his name was the third condition he demanded and to which I agreed. I gave my word as a gentleman.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “No. He disappeared during the last year of the war. Those of us who knew him speculated that he was apprehended during a mission he undertook for President Lincoln. He had unusually free passage back and forth across the lines. We made inquiries, but no trace of him was ever found.”

  “Your word as a gentleman no longer binds you,” Geoffrey said. “Death breaks the contract.”

  “There are some who would disagree with that,” Philip said.

  “Please,” Prudence pleaded.

  Abigail eased herself from her husband’s embrace, her tear-stained face as set and determined as he had ever seen it. “You never told me his name, either. After all this time, and now that she’s gone, I want to know who my daughter really was. If giving up this man’s identity will help to solve the mystery, then I beg you to tell us. You owe me that, Philip.”

  Dickson removed a leather wallet from his coat pocket, undid the strap, and extracted a business card softened by time. “I’ve carried it with me ever since the day we made our agreement. Stephen Aycock was an independent agent, as you can see, working several of the exchanges. That’s probably what made him valuable to the Union cause.”

  “Did he spy for Allan Pinkerton?” Geoffrey asked.

  “There’s no way of knowing, unless he appears in the agency’s records.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Teddy said, staring fixedly at the card. “There was a Mr. Aycock who came to Wildacre twice a year. Sometimes more frequently. He brought small gifts for us children, toys he picked up in the course of his travels. Sweets, too. Not the homemade sugar treats made on the plantation, but real chocolate that melted on your fingers before you could get it into your mouth.”

  “You’re sure, Teddy?” Prudence asked.

  “We had to compose thank-you notes for the toys and the sweets,” he said. “I remember our father writing out his name for us to copy. He was very insistent that we get it right.”

  “Are there expense and income records from before the war?” asked Geoffrey, remembering the voluminous notations of every transaction that took place at Sandyhill.

  “Union troops came through all of the islands at one time or another,” Teddy said, “but Wildacre was never in danger of being burned down. So, yes, as far as I know, the plantation books still exist. Stephen Aycock’s name will be there.”

  “You’d better tell us what this is about,” Philip demanded.

  Teddy held the photograph of Selena where everyone could see it, then laid it atop the Atlantic chart.

  “This is Eleanor’s mother. She was born into slavery on Wildacre Plantation. Eleanor’s father was my Uncle Ethan, who fought for the Confederacy. He arranged for Selena to be smuggled North when she was expecting their child. Stephen Aycock was the factor who transacted business for the Bennett family. He was also the man who posed as Selena’s husband during her escape and the guardian who gave you her child when she died.”

  “No,” Abigail cried out. “That’s not possible.”

  “It is,” Philip said. He looked around him at the opulent mansion he had built for the child he had lost forever. “Stephen Aycock wrote me a letter during the war about a beautiful sea island off the coast of Georgia where land was sure to become available when the South was defeated. As he knew it would be. I never forgot his descriptions. He seemed to be envisioning a paradise. Purchasing Bradford Island when it was put up for sale and building Seapoint was no accident. He had already primed me for it.”

  He tapped Selena’s photograph lightly with the tip of one finger. “She was a beautiful woman.”

  “So was her daughter,” Teddy agreed. “So was her daughter.”

  CHAPTER 28

  “It’s best that you not go alone.” Geoffrey followed Teddy to the Seapoint stables where the head groom saddled a horse for him.

  “I appreciate the gesture, but this isn’t your quarrel.” Teddy had turned as cold and implacable as stone. “It had to have been Lawrence who wrote the note luring Eleanor into the live oaks. The only thing I don’t know is whether he did it with or without my father’s knowledge. A Bennett is responsible for Eleanor’s death, and a Bennett will pay the price.”

  “You’re not leaving me here,” Prudence called out. Panting from the short run over the lawn, she ordered that her horse, too, be saddled.

  Abigail had fled to the chapel. The sound of her frenzied sobbing carried out onto the covered porch. Philip, afraid she would do herself harm, dared not leave her. But he was adamant about quitting the island as soon as the yacht returned from the mainland and could be readied for the return sail to New York. “Two days at the most,” he warned them.

  Teddy set a punishing pace to Wildacre; Prudence and Geoffrey pushed their mounts as fast as they dared down the road that ran alongside the sound. It was the same track where Teddy had been riding the day Eleanor’s horse bolted, leaving her walking the beach empty-handed until he caught the animal and returned it to her.

  The day they met for the first time. And fell in love.

  * * *

  Sunlight shining through the towering live oaks surrounding Wildacre bathed the grounds in tones of green and gold, heralding one of the spectacular sunsets for which the Georgia sea islands were famous. The Bennett family had gathered on the veranda, Elijah and Lawrence drinking whiskey over crushed mint and sugar lumps, Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane sipping cold tea sweetened with peach nectar. Both women wore hastily refitted gowns from Eleanor’s trousseau.

  When Teddy galloped up the drive, closely followed by Prudence and Geoffrey, he shattered the late afternoon calm. Lawrence rose to his feet as his brother’s horse skidded to a halt at the foot of the curved staircase, fragments of crushed shells exploding upward from beneath its hooves.

  Geoffrey caught his arm while Teddy was still only halfway up the stairs. He jerked him unceremoniously to a halt, reminding him in a low, urgent voice that questions had to be asked and answered before accusations could be made. And that there were ladies present.

  Aurora Lee paled. Maggie Jane turned crimson. There was no doubt in either of their minds that Prudence would recognize the dresses they wore.

  “You may wish to retire inside,” Teddy choked out, wondering how and when the sisters he had last seen in ancient mourning gowns had found cream and blue afternoon frocks that reminded him of the lace-trimmed gowns Eleanor had liked to wear. He had no illusions about their supposed ignorance of the way white planters had used their female slaves, but the subject was never even hinted at in polite company where ladies were present. What he had to say to Lawrence and to his father would go f
ar beyond the bounds of propriety.

  Maggie Jane nodded and gathered her skirts, but Aurora Lee pushed her back into her chair.

  “I can’t imagine what brings you charging in here like a wild man,” she said, including Geoffrey and Prudence in her scathing look, “but since we’re bound to hear about it eventually, we might as well stay.”

  Lawrence and Elijah exchanged looks, then Elijah shrugged. He poured himself more whiskey, not bothering with the dish of crushed mint and the bowl of sugar lumps. “Let’s have it out then,” he muttered, so low that Prudence wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly.

  “Do you recognize this woman?” Teddy asked, handing the photograph of Selena to his father.

  Elijah glanced at it, then set the stiff cardboard down on the table as though it burned his fingers.

  Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane craned their necks to make out the image. When Maggie Jane reached to pick it up, Elijah snarled at her to leave it lay. Lawrence glanced down as if indifferent to whatever it was Teddy had brought into their midst.

  “Do you recognize her?” Teddy repeated, his hands clenched into tight fists, his voice harsh and threatening.

  “Why should I answer such an impertinent question?” Elijah asked.

  “I’ll know if you lie to me,” Teddy said. “I’ve read Uncle Ethan’s diary. The one Lawrence was looking for when he or someone he paid tore apart Aunt Jessa’s cabin.” He fixed his brother with an accusatory stare. “How did you know about the journal? Did Father tell you? Did he turn to you when he couldn’t do his own dirty business?”

  Lawrence swirled the whiskey in his glass, looking out at the expanse of shadowy green where peacocks strutted and unfurled their iridescent tails. “I think that’s enough, Teddy. You don’t want to say things you won’t be able to take back.”

  Geoffrey’s arm across his chest was all that kept Teddy from hurling himself at his brother in an incoherent rage. Prudence clung to one arm, whispering in his ear, pleading with him to listen to her. Every lawyer knew that leaving the accused to stew in edgy quiet was one of the surest ways to obtain a confession.