Ebb Tide (Ella Wood Book 3)

by Michelle Isenhoff

  “Abigail!” She waved a white handkerchief to catch her friend’s attention despite being the only person waiting on the soggy platform.

  Abigail’s face broke into a joyous grin as they embraced. “I haven’t seen you since you left for your honeymoon!” Emily exclaimed.

  “Well, you can see what that’s done to me.” Abigail laid a hand on her swollen abdomen.

  “You look beautiful.” Abigail still had the same soul-happy look she’d worn before her wedding, the look that made even homely women attractive. Of course, with her flawless skin and long dark tresses, Abigail was far from homely.

  They walked arm-in-arm into the depot where Marie waited.

  “Thank you so much for letting me spend my confinement at Ella Wood,” Abigail told her. “I appreciate my in-laws, but if I’m to stay out of public until the baby’s arrival, I’d much rather spend these last three months with the two of you.”

  Marie wrapped an arm around the young woman’s shoulders. “You’re more than welcome. Dr. Wainwright knows you’re coming. And Deena is the most capable midwife I know. She delivered every one of my babies.”

  “And if Darius should secure leave after the baby’s arrival, Ella Wood is only a short train ride away,” Emily added.

  The porter led a small procession of heavily laden railroad workers straight to Abigail. “Where would you like your luggage, Mrs. Johnson?”

  Marie took the lead. “The carriage is just outside.”

  Conversation flowed lightly on the short drive home, centering on Abigail’s pregnancy, her marriage, and the Johnson plantation. But once Abigail was settled into her room, she rounded on Emily. “What’s this about Jovie’s memorial service? Is he dead? You included only the vaguest of details. I’ve been fretting over it for a week!”

  “I’m sorry, Abigail. I was too angry to think straight.”

  “You’re still angry,” she said, noting Emily’s heavy scowl. “Then he’s still missing?”

  That was all it took to unleash the frustration and anguish Emily had been bottling up since the service three weeks before. She paced the length of the bedroom. “How can a father give up on his son like that? They’ve received no confirmation of his death. No proof. They’ve simply let him go. I absolutely refused to attend.”

  Abigail tugged at her bottom lip. “Consider it from their perspective, Emily. This couldn’t have been an easy choice. Perhaps they were unable to handle the stress of not knowing. Maybe they had to lay him aside instead of fretting themselves into their own graves.”

  Emily displayed her disapproval with another turn around the room. “I hope if I’m ever in desperate straits my family will demonstrate more strength than that.”

  “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” Abigail asked.

  Emily halted at the window, her rage spent. Pressing both hands on the sill, she slumped forward, resting her forehead against the glass. “Yes.”

  “Oh, Emily.” Abigail slipped a hand through her elbow and walked her to the edge of the bed. “You should have told me.”

  Emily sank down with a moan. “He doesn’t know, Abigail.” She covered her eyes with both hands and aimed the words into her lap. “He didn’t open any of my letters.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Jovie.”

  “It’s true. I saw him in Charleston the night of your wedding. He threw them all back at me then just walked away.” Her breathing fractured as she relived the moment her heart went dark. “That’s when I knew. I am completely, irrevocably in love with him, and I never got a chance to tell him.”

  Her composure broke. She wept as Abigail drew her head against her shoulder. The fabric was soon sodden. There seemed no bottom to her misery.

  Abigail held her as she cried, rocking her like a mother comforting a child. When Emily’s tears were finally spent, she asked, “Have you been shouldering this all alone?”

  Emily sniffed, wiping at her face with the hem of her dress. “Aunt Margaret knew.”

  “I was so sorry to hear about her passing.”

  Emily nodded her acknowledgment.

  “The question now,” Abigail said when Emily resumed an upright posture, “is what are you going to do about it.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Emily, that memorial service hasn’t changed anything. If Jovie was alive before the service, he’s still alive. Don’t let the Cutlers rob your hope. Look for him yourself.”

  “What could I do that Mr. Cutler hasn’t already tried? I have no connections.”

  “Walter Cutler is not the most skillful portraitist in all of Charleston County,” Abigail said with a pointed lift of her eyebrows. “You are.”

  Emily shook her head. “He has canvassed every high-ranking Southern official he could corner with Jovie’s photograph. Queries have been issued to every commander in the entire First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. He’s checked every hospital that serviced Gettysburg wounded.”

  “They haven’t all seen his picture.”

  “His name has been spread far and wide.”

  “Maybe Jovie doesn’t remember his name.”

  Emily’s gaze shot out the window again in the pause that followed. “That thought has occurred to me, as well.”

  Abigail edged closer. “Emily, what if the only way Jovie could reclaim his life was if someone happened to recognize him?”

  One more tear lagged behind all the others and rolled down her cheek. “You’re right. If there’s something—anything—I can do to bring him home, I will, even if it means sending sketches to every hospital in the Confederacy.”

  Abigail’s grin broadened. “And in the North? You just spent a year in one of their most central cities. Can you make it happen?”

  Emily’s eyes grew distant. “I’ll think on that.” She shimmied off the bed. “In the meantime, it’s going to take me an age to produce so many likenesses.”

  Abigail bit off a laugh. “Are you going to draw them all by hand?”

  Emily frowned. “Is there another way?”

  Abigail rolled her eyes. “Emily, who in this room has studied both wood engraving and lithography?”

  Emily let her eyelids sink down against her own thickness. Her lip quirked. “Abigail, I’m so very glad you’ve come.”

  ***

  Emily wasted no time. The following week she boarded a train carrying the precious engraving, a letter from Abigail to Dr. and Mrs. Malone, and a document for her father’s lawyer. Her impatience had grown steadily for days. Now it compounded as the train stalled in Seven Mile Station, out of water and nearly out of wood. With neither available at the depot, she paced the platform for three infuriating hours while the railroad crew chopped trees and hauled buckets for the boiler. Once they had resupplied, the engine reached Charleston without further incident.

  Emily walked to the office of the Daily Courier with a sense of urgency. The city was far quieter than her last visit. The bombardment of Sumter had ended before Christmas and still the Union navy stayed away. Except for the occasional lobbing of shells onto the end of the peninsula, one would never guess that two military powers glared at one another across the tranquil waters of the harbor.

  A bell rang as she entered the newspaper office. “Can I help you?” the proprietor asked, leaving his clattering press in the hands of a young apprentice.

  Emily set the engraving on the counter. “I would like to order two hundred and fifty prints of this engraving.”

  The proprietor picked up the block in his ink-stained fingers and examined it closely. Then he considered her with grave skepticism. “This is highly unusual,” he proclaimed over the rhythmic clatter of the press. “Highly unusual. We have a staff of artists we employ for such work.”

  “I assure you, the block is ready for ink.”

  His frown deepened. “Who did you say engraved this for you?”

  “I didn’t say, sir. I did it myself.”

  His skepticism deepened.

  “I stud
ied at the Maryland Institute.” She distracted him before he could refuse her outright. “The man in the engraving is a Confederate soldier missing in battle. His family and I would like to see this image delivered to as many hospitals as possible in the hopes of returning him safely home.”

  The man had half a dozen more questions, and Emily was never quite certain he accepted her credentials, but in the end he agreed to her request. “However, I can’t get to it until tomorrow’s edition finishes printing,” he added.

  “I’ll return before you close up shop.”

  She left the office feeling just a bit lighter than when she went in. But the buoyancy faded rapidly at the sound of a familiar voice.

  “Hello, Emily. I heard you were back in the area.”

  She whirled to meet Thaddeus Black. He wore the same careless smile she once loved, but there was something different in his scrutiny. Was it loss? Desire? Retaliation? She backed up a step. “What are you doing here?”

  He shrugged. “Just business as usual.”

  “I thought your blockade business failed.”

  “You were misinformed. The base of operations moved to Mobile Bay. I decided to part company with my former associates rather than relocate.”

  “Were you terminated?” she asked caustically. He would never willingly abandon a goldmine. “Did you lie to them? Give them a false name?”

  He flinched, only a slight tightening of the skin around his eyes, but she knew her barb had struck home. “I sold out to pursue other opportunities. Land-based opportunities.”

  He didn’t name his pursuits. They were illegal, most likely. And lucrative. She didn’t care. She just wanted to leave his presence as quickly as possible. “Yes, well, good luck with that.”

  She turned to go, but he grabbed her arm. “Emily, wait.”

  It was her turn to flinch.

  “It’s been a pleasure seeing you.” His smile seemed genuine and just a little wistful. “My intention was never to hurt you. I hope—I hope someday you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  “Thad, I set all that behind me months ago. But the pleasure you claim is not reciprocated.”

  His smile faltered. “I suppose that is to be expected. Can we at least part on amicable terms? Charleston isn’t so very large. I’m certain we’ll run into each other again.”

  She mustered the semblance of a smile, but it crumbled as soon as she turned her back. “Not if I can help it,” she muttered as she walked away.

  The lawyer’s office lay on the route to the hospital, located above a boarded-up clothing shop. She climbed the stairs and entered a small reception area that contained three chairs and a single table cluttered with books and loose papers. The entire room cried out for a feather duster.

  A thickset man with a carefully tamed mane of hair emerged from a back room and offered Emily his hand. “Good afternoon, miss. I’m Henry Vitler.”

  His hand engulfed hers. She thought he’d look more natural plowing fields behind a pair of draft horses than stuffed into his gray business suit. “Emily Preston,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  He gestured around the empty room. “I apologize for the present state of disarray. Our clerk decided to fill the ranks of our infantry, and my partner happens to be out of the office this afternoon. I hope I might be able to help you?”

  “I believe you are exactly the man I came to see. My mother and I would like your advice on some matters of property management.”

  She handed him the letter she carried, and his eyebrows shot up as he read the return address. “You are the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Preston?”

  She nodded.

  “Then that would make you the niece of the late Mrs. Phineas Thornton, would it not?”

  “Yes.” She drew the word out with uncertainty. What had Aunt Margaret to do with her parents’ affairs?

  He smiled broadly. “Then you have saved me a stamp. Please come in. I have a matter I’d like to discuss with you, as well.”

  He ushered her into a back room covered floor to ceiling in books. “First of all, let me offer you my sincere condolences. Mrs. Thornton was a favorite client of mine. She had a certain…flair…that was unusual among the Charleston elite. I always found our time together most enjoyable.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Mr. Vitler pulled a file out of a cabinet and settled with it behind his desk. “I have handled your aunt and uncle’s account since before Mr. Thornton’s death. They were among my first clients, as a matter of fact, soon after I passed the bar. During our more recent interaction, Mrs. Thornton spoke of you quite often.”

  Emily grew impatient waiting for him to make his point. She still had several important errands to accomplish, and now she’d have to secure a room since the railroad couldn’t possibly return her before nightfall. “Mr. Vitler, I fail to see how your history with my aunt has any bearing on the decisions my mother faces concerning Ella Wood.”

  “It does not. This is an entirely separate matter that concerns only you.”

  He leaned back in his chair and considered her over the tops of his tented fingers. “Mrs. Thornton was quite fond of you. She appreciated your company and admired your determination. When you returned to Charleston this past spring, she paid me a visit.”

  He opened the folder and set a paper before her. “This is a copy of your aunt’s will, dated the first of June of the current year. In it, she names you as beneficiary.”

  “I suppose that means she left me something?”

  Mr. Vitler chuckled. “Only her house, her money, her jewels, a coach and team, investments… Miss Preston, your aunt bequeathed everything she owned to you and you alone.”

  11

  Emily gripped her seat in stunned amazement. Aunt Margaret had left her everything? “But what about her daughter, my cousin Adella?”

  “Mrs. Thornton’s daughter is well situated in England,” Mr. Vitler replied. “She had no interest in settling an American estate, especially in the midst of a war. She will receive only the few personal items specified in the will.”

  Emily’s jaw opened, then closed, then opened again. “She left me everything?”

  “There was considerably more before the war. Considerably more. But you will have enough to see to Mrs. Thornton’s last wishes. She wanted no material insufficiencies to stand in the way of your ‘artistic endeavors,’ I believe she called them.”

  “She’d been encouraging me to go back to school.”

  “Those are the sentiments she conveyed to me, as well. Now she has put the possibility well within your reach.”

  Emily sat numbly as the details of the estate were explained to her. Page after page thickened the pile before her. She even signed some of them. But when she stood to bid the lawyer good-bye, her mind was completely blank. She had retained nothing of their further conversation.

  “I’ll send the finished paperwork along shortly,” the lawyer promised, tapping the pages together and slipping them back into the file. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Preston.”

  Outside the shop, Emily paused to regain her bearings. She felt like she’d just stepped out of a dream. But with solid ground beneath her feet and briny air clearing her head, Emily refocused on her unfinished tasks. Jovie was still missing, and there was something she could do about it. Her sense of urgency restored, she turned her steps in the direction of the hospital.

  ***

  “What can dey be?”

  A wooden crate lay open on Ella Wood’s front porch, the pry bar still in Apollo’s hand, and ten pairs of eyeballs peered curiously at the lumpy contents.

  “They’re shoes,” Emily explained, lifting one out of the crate. The rounded shape invited her touch. Velvety smooth, it was as fragrant as a new-sawn board.

  The delivery couldn’t have been timed better. The crates arrived at Ladson station on the same train that carried her home from Charleston. Abel, who’d been sent that morning to watch for her arrival, had
dropped them both at Ella Wood’s front door not five minutes before.

  Deena glared at it distrustfully. “Ain’t like no shoe I ever seen.”

  “They’re carved from wood. Here, try one on.” Emily set it on the ground.

  Deena backed up a step. “No thank you, miss. I be breakin’ my neck in dose. My own feet be carryin’ me ’round jus’ fine.”

  “Zeke?” Emily asked.

  The old man declined with a dignified shake of his head.

  May stepped forward and slipped a slim brown foot into the oversized shoe. It fell off after only one step.

  Deena sniffed. “I hope you got a bargain, Miss Emily.”

  “You have to find a pair in your size. Try these, May.”

  They fit much more snugly. Grinning, the housekeeper lifted her skirts and minced across the top of the porch. Each step clomped like a Belgian draft horse. This brought a round of applause from the younger observers, who came in a rush to claim their own pair. Soon, the lot of them were shuffling up and down the steps amid peals of laughter. Even Emily unbuttoned her own shoes and tried on a pair of clogs.

  The commotion brought Marie outside. “Those are not for house slaves, Emily,” she announced, picking up one of the curiosities and inspecting it. “I don’t want my floors marked up.”

  The laughter died away. Wooden shoes slipped off bare feet and thunked into the crate as the slaves filed back into the house.

  “Absurd,” Marie declared, tossing her shoe in with the others.

  “They aren’t so bad, Mother. I think I’ll keep this pair for myself.”

  “They’re economical, at any rate.” Marie retreated into the house. “Apollo, find someone to help you deliver these to Lewis’s cabin. He can dole them out to whomever he wishes.”