by Beth White
Levi knew exactly what Beaumont meant. In fact, he’d just confirmed the telegraph operator’s hints yesterday. The M&O Railroad was highly motivated to make sure the Mississippi Central was forced out of business. His low-key investigation of a $60,000 series of robberies had taken a sudden swerve toward corporate sabotage of mind-boggling proportions.
“You can depend on my discretion, Beaumont, and you’ve certainly got my interest piqued. I’ll take the next train up to Holly Springs and then down to Tupelo for a visit with the Daughtry ladies. Perhaps after I’ve greased the wheels, so to speak, you might be invited to join me there.”
Beaumont laughed in delight. “Now that’s what I had in mind! I knew you were a right fellow the minute I laid eyes on you at the hotel. We’ll deal together splendidly. Let us stop and give this nag a rest so I can show you around the physics department. There’s a professor who’s got quite an interesting take on locomotive design, and I want to show him some drawings I’ve been cooking up.”
Levi agreed to this plan, mentally making a note to follow up on the Beaumont family’s interest in the booming transportation industry. He had no doubt that Pinkerton would find the interconnections amongst the Priester family, Selah Daughtry, and Schuyler Beaumont of deep interest.
Tupelo
“I’m thinking this is a rash decision, my dear.” ThomasAnne hovered like a lemon-colored butterfly at the foot of the church’s front steps.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Selah took her cousin by the arm to keep her from fluttering off. “The Baptist church is only a block away, and Dr. Kidd will have to walk past us to get home. It’s a simple request. If he says no, we won’t have lost anything, but if he says yes, then my promise to Wyatt is fulfilled.”
“Simple!” ThomasAnne’s soprano squeaked up an octave. “Your grandmother would be scandalized! To ask a man—a bachelor man—to take in a strange fourteen-year-old boy is—is—it’s the height of presumption!”
Selah stared at ThomasAnne. During the time she and Joelle had lived with their grandparents after their mother’s death, she’d grown close to her mother’s much younger first cousin, who was also taking refuge in Memphis. Because ThomasAnne was a model of respectability at the mature age of thirty-three, her chaperonage was the only reason the Daughtry girls had been allowed to return to Ithaca. Selah couldn’t imagine what could have prompted such extravagant protest. “ThomasAnne, has Dr. Kidd said or done something to hurt your feelings?”
“No!” ThomasAnne looked as if she might dissolve into tears. “No, in fact, I hardly know the man—” Suddenly she went from brick red to white. “Oh, mercy. There he is—”
“ThomasAnne! Don’t you dare faint!” Selah lunged to grip her cousin’s wrist.
But Dr. Kidd reached ThomasAnne first. Dropping his medical bag, he caught her in long, sinewy arms just as she crumpled, eyes rolling backward. He stood there clutching her awkwardly, looking at Selah with his eyes wide behind their spectacles.
“Oh, dear,” Selah said. “It’s—it’s a good thing you are here.”
“Indeed it is,” the physician grunted. He turned and negotiated the church steps with his ungainly burden. Tall and large of bone, ThomasAnne was not a mere slip of a woman. “Follow me, and we’ll see if we can revive her,” he ordered Selah over his shoulder.
Selah gathered herself and hurried after him.
Dr. Kidd laid her cousin down on a pew. “I need my smelling salts. Fetch my medical bag from the sidewalk.”
Selah ran to obey. After handing over the doctor’s bag, she hovered close, tenderly smoothing ThomasAnne’s thick reddish-brown hair. Her cousin’s forehead, she noted, was so pale that the freckles stood out in bright orange spots.
When ThomasAnne failed to revive with the application of the salts bottle, Dr. Kidd frowned at Selah. “Has she been fainting regularly of late?”
Selah shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. But I’m so glad you were right there! She could have hurt herself badly—”
“She certainly could have. I haven’t noticed Miss McGowan being of a particularly fragile temperament. Are you sure she hasn’t been ill?” The doctor hooked his stethoscope in his ears and placed its bell against the pristine bodice of ThomasAnne’s blouse.
“Not that I know of.” But then again, Selah had been gone for those few days, and she’d been distracted by worry for quite some time. Quiet ThomasAnne had been very much at the periphery of her attention.
Dr. Kidd removed the earpieces of the scope. “Her heart is beating regularly, and there isn’t any noticeable hitch in her breathing.” He picked up the smelling salts vial and plied it again.
To Selah’s relief, ThomasAnne suddenly sucked in a huge gasp, then coughed. She stared up into Dr. Kidd’s clever face for a moment in utter horror, then slammed her eyes shut again. “Oh, dear, I’d hoped I was having a nightmare.”
Laughter transformed Kidd’s acerbic expression into something resembling boyish charm. “I’m sorry the sight of my face distresses you, Miss McGowan, but relieved that you’ve returned to consciousness. No, don’t sit up just yet.” He took ThomasAnne’s hand and patted it with unexpected gentleness. “No more fainting spells for now.”
ThomasAnne moaned. “I’m so embarrassed.”
Selah met the doctor’s twinkling eyes. “Don’t be silly, it’s not your fault,” she said bracingly. “Your color’s coming back. Are you feeling better?”
“Of course! I don’t know what came over—but perhaps we should go home after all. Immediately.” ThomasAnne sat up, swaying. “Oh, mercy!” When the doctor reached for her arm to keep her upright, she snatched it away and seemed about to leap off the pew. “Oh, mercy, mercy!”
Selah put her arm around her cousin. “Don’t get up just yet. Sit quietly and rest for a moment while I talk to the doctor.” With a jerk of her head, she motioned him aside and walked with him toward the church entryway. She lowered her voice. “Dr. Kidd, I’m sorry for interrupting your afternoon. But we were waiting for you because I needed to talk to you about something important.” Selah and her sisters had known the doctor all their lives. But as he was at least ten years her senior and a bachelor, the relationship remained on a professional, neighborly level. And that made the request she was about to make of him, no matter what she had told ThomasAnne, presumptuous.
Kidd glanced back at ThomasAnne. “Are you and Miss McGowan in some difficulty—something that perhaps brought on her attack of nerves?”
“I confess, I’m mystified as to what precipitated my cousin’s sudden anxiety, though it did come on just after I mentioned speaking to you. ThomasAnne is a dear woman, but normally very private as to her emotions.” She shook her head. “At any rate, I hope you won’t mind my getting straight to the point so that we can get home for lunch.”
The doctor raised thick eyebrows. “Of course.”
“Well then. It’s this. Perhaps you are aware that our family has been in rather dire straits of late.” When he nodded, compassion clear in his eyes, she sighed, picking at the threadbare cuff of her sleeve. “I was afraid of that. But you might not know that we have also taken in a young boy, an orphan who was involved in the train wreck over in Oxford last week. As much as I would like to continue fostering him, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we cannot afford to do so for much longer. So I wondered if you’d ever thought of taking in an apprentice.” She looked up at him.
His eyes, blue and guileless, widened. “The idea has never entered my mind.”
“Well, you should consider it. He could run errands, keep your firewood chopped, fetch water . . .” Enthusiasm—she refused to call it desperation—strengthened Selah’s voice. “He even knows how to hunt for game, though, to be perfectly honest, he’s not as good a shot as—”
“Does this paragon have a name, Miss Daughtry?” the doctor asked with a trace of laughter in his voice.
“Wyatt Priester. He’s fourteen, smart as a whip, and determined to become a
doctor. I can’t think of a better way for him to—”
“Miss Daughtry. Selah. Please, slow down a moment.” Kidd held up a hand.
She peered at him. He still looked amused, but at least he hadn’t walked away in disgust. “I’m not being rash and impulsive. I’ve thought about this a lot.”
“I can see that. And I’m not entirely opposed to the idea, but surely you realize I couldn’t make such a decision here on the spot, without even meeting the boy.”
She felt her face break into a smile of joyful disbelief. “Then you will think about it?”
He nodded. “But your cousin’s health is the most critical issue right now. Perhaps we should return to her before her head turns right around backward with anxiety.”
“Of course.” Selah glanced over at ThomasAnne guiltily. “But would you mind reassuring her that you aren’t offended at my boldness? I’m afraid she thinks I’ve lost all sense of breeding.”
The doctor laughed. “On the contrary, I admire your charity. Do you ladies have conveyance back to the plantation?” He glanced over at ThomasAnne, who had lain down on the pew again with an arm across her face. “Your cousin won’t be up to a long walk today.”
“I’m afraid you’re right.” Selah bit her lip. “I suppose we’ll just have to wait here until she regains her strength.”
“But she needs food and something to drink. In fact, I’m wondering if hunger and dehydration caused her lightheadedness. I’ll go for my horse and buggy, and take you home.”
“But that’s too much—”
“I insist. Make sure she doesn’t move until I return.” Kidd wheeled and disappeared through the open church door.
Selah stared after him, feeling a surge of gratitude and something like hope. If her own life and that of her sisters seemed to be spiraling out of her control, at least compassionate gentlemen like Dr. Kidd and Mr. J. A. Spencer and Major Riggins existed in the world.
Eight
March 1, 1870
Ithaca Plantation
Levi tied his hired mount to an iron hitching post cast in the shape of a horse’s head and stood looking up at Ithaca, Selah’s home. He tried to see it through her eyes—not just a once-grand Greek Revival–style mansion gone to seed, and not the place of his own shame and undoing, but a beloved place of growing up.
The giant live oaks and spreading magnolia were as beautiful as he remembered, of course, but the weedy flower beds had been overrun by free-ranging chickens that had also pecked holes in the boxwoods and other shrubs. The porch floor had collapsed behind the marble steps, and drooping, scabby shutters framed faded curtains that hung behind broken windows.
Lord, the paint it would take to cover the square footage of that house. Ladders, tools, carpenters, and a blacksmith.
The project would be both expensive and time-consuming, and it was a good thing Beaumont would be funding it. Pinkerton agents often disguised their identities and immersed themselves in communities for long periods of time in order to extract information from citizens who wouldn’t divulge anything to strangers. Still, there was no guarantee his boss would approve this rather off-the-beaten-path plan.
Shaking his head, he walked up the pathway toward the sagging front porch. That would be the first thing he’d take care of, to make sure nobody fell through upon entering the house. Stepping carefully to avoid rotten planks, he lifted and dropped the front door knocker with a bang.
Nothing happened.
He stood there listening to the horse behind him chomp on weedy grass, the occasional bird whistle, the rustle of wind in the trees. There was not a sound from inside the house. In fact, he could not imagine three women living in this mausoleum alone.
Frowning, he made his way back to the yard. “Hello? Anyone here?”
Utter silence greeted him.
Of course they might be away. There had been no way to discover whether the ladies of Ithaca would be at home before he came. Well. At least he could walk around the outside of the house, make notes of structural damage that would need to be repaired—assuming, of course, that his plan came to fruition.
He turned and walked back toward the porch, this time with the eyes of an engineer. He’d been at West Point for nearly two years when the war began, and he’d not finished his course of study. But service in the army had given him invaluable experience, and he knew enough to see the cunning construction of the house’s undergirdings, the quality of the basic structure and materials. It might have fallen upon hard times—like its owners—but Ithaca had a solid foundation.
Noticing a cleverly camouflaged door in the latticework under the porch, he walked to the right of the marble steps and tried the latch. When it opened easily under his hand, he squatted to peer in. Besides the expected cobwebs and residual dirt, he found a brick floor and the wooden walls of a small storage space. It was empty, except for—
A handkerchief? He reached for it and spread the delicate square of fabric over his hand. Though yellowed and smudged with dirt, it had been hemmed with tiny, fine stitches, a pink rose in the shape of a script S intricately embroidered in one corner. How on earth would such a beautiful item have found its way under the porch?
Frowning, he rose, absently tucking the handkerchief into his coat pocket, and closed the door to the cubbyhole. If he hadn’t been looking directly at it, he might not have ever seen the door. It would make a perfect hiding place for children.
He continued his inspection around the east side of the house and came to a small brick one-story building situated some twenty yards from the main house. Approaching an uncurtained window, he peered in and saw that it was a kitchen, from all appearances long abandoned. With a shrug he walked on and soon reached the back of the house, where another broad porch looked out on a deep swale of lawn. A large, shabby pagoda stood some twenty yards directly ahead. He didn’t remember having seen it when he was here before—but then again, he’d been occupied with events inside the house.
He stopped to look around, listening to the birdsong coming from the woods in the distance, imagining the family living here before the war, the women sipping iced tea on the porch swing. Or menfolk cleaning guns before a hunt, while children played in the dirt below the steps as servants came and went from the kitchen behind him. It must have been a genteel, placid kind of life—at least for the white folks. As always, the thought of the Negroes’ bondage rankled. He could not conceive how Christian people could justify such cruelty—or, at the very least, indifference.
But war.
It had come, it had destroyed, burning down the rotten Southern plantation economic system. Now something new and better and stronger could rise from the ashes.
He walked down the gravel path toward the pagoda. Weeds sprang in ragged insolence from every crevice, choking the old flower beds that lined the path. The women who lived here clearly spent little time maintaining the landscape. He could see how it would take a dedicated gardener and a small army of servants to keep up with it all.
He was halfway down the path when a noise made him wheel and crouch, looking for the source. It sounded human, like someone calling out in desperate need, and reminded him of the train wreck. Had he come upon an attack of some kind?
Then he saw a peacock come strutting around the corner of the house, tail feathers fanned and head tucked in hauteur.
Levi relaxed and chuckled. “Greetings, your majesty! My sincere apologies if I disturbed your morning constitutional.”
The bird screamed and preened, magnificent opalescent colors glinting like jewels in the sun.
Shaking his head, Levi turned and walked up the pagoda steps. These people had had more money than sense, spending it on beautiful but useless yard birds. Give him a good old-fashioned chicken or turkey any day.
The raised platform of the pagoda provided a view of the lawn sweeping down toward a burbling creek to the east and woods to the west. Fallow cotton fields lay beyond, with the old slave quarters and work buildings nearby. Levi had
spent most of Sunday afternoon with Schuyler Beaumont, poring over maps of the plantation. Everything looked exactly as he’d pictured it, except more starkly abandoned.
He shivered as a bone-chilling breeze blew off the river and cut straight through his wool coat. Even so, he was glad he didn’t yet have to go inside the house, face the scars of that calamitous day spent here during the war. He dreaded it, but Pinkerton had hired him for his Welsh hardheadedness and refusal to back down from a challenge. Since he couldn’t change the past, the only option was to march forward, putting right what he could.
At a sudden movement in his peripheral vision, he turned and saw a second freestanding building on the west side of the big house, this one boasting a tiny railed porch fronted by four white columns. A slender female figure stepped off the porch and hurried toward him, the ends of her shawl fluttering behind her.
Levi straightened. He’d settled that he wouldn’t see Selah today.
As she got closer, her gait slowed as if she were apprehensive of some confrontation. Then she stopped altogether, clutching her shawl close. “Mr. Riggins?” She sounded incredulous.
“Selah! Miss Daughtry!” He bounded down the steps. “I knocked on the front door but decided you weren’t home—”
“Everyone local knows we moved into the plantation office.” She stopped short, watching him approach. “I didn’t think you would come.”
“I wasn’t sure I would.” He stopped as well, studying her guarded expression.
Her head was uncovered, the mahogany-colored hair mostly confined in a knot at the back of her head, long tendrils escaping to blow about her face. Dressed in a simple dark blue skirt with the paisley shawl drawn over a white collared blouse, she shivered in the cold. “Why did you?”
