by Denney, Hope
“I’m not sick,” he replied, “but I am unwell. I feel hemmed in all of a sudden. I need to be alone.”
Somerset sprang to her feet.
“Let me go with you! You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”
“No, I won’t ruin your evening. No one is going to catch you down here. The only person whose character should be questioned is mine.”
He dug his heels into the horse and galloped off down the same path they used to reach Riverside. Phillip stared at the empty spot where his horse had been as if all the gossip about him was true.
“Does talk of the war affect him?” asked Phillip. “I could go after him if you like.”
“No.” Somerset shook her head. “It won’t do any good. His true love married another man. We found out when we ran into the new couple in Tuscaloosa this morning. I suspect he’s going to go drink himself into a stupor.”
“Ivy?”
“No, Fairlee Buchanan. They’ve been breaking it off and reuniting for years now. She just seized the last word on the matter. Look, Phillip, if we’re of like mind we’ll eat and head back to Orchard Rest. Joseph and I will never hear the end of it from Mother if we’re seen.”
“Now there’s a person I’ve yet to meet,” said Phillip as he filled her glass and handed it to her.
“Mother? Well, she’s been terribly ill.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. Will she be able to receive company before I leave?”
“To hear her talk today, she’ll be out of bed by the end of the week.” Somerset shrugged as she tasted a sandwich.
“The great Blanche Marshall,” mused Phillip as he swirled his glass. “Is she like you?”
“No, not at all.”
“I hear decades later she’s still the belle of the ball. Mother reckons her a great beauty.”
Somerset ran a finger along the length of Eric’s good luck charm for comfort.
“She reckons herself a great beauty and she probably hasn’t changed one iota since she first set foot out of the Marsh all those years ago. She’s a complicated woman, my mother, a little like the shadow of Venus. She’s a rare and beautiful thing, but it’s hard to see her directly, head on, for what she truly is.”
“That was as backward a compliment as I’ve ever heard.”
“I’d like to tell you that the family drama ends with Victoria’s assault and Joseph’s jilting, but I’d be lying, Mr. Russell. Most of it stems from one beautiful, strong-willed, stubborn woman.”
“When you’re as old as I am you’ll take for granted that every important old family has their share of scandal, Somerset, and if you marry into an important family it’s understood that you’re hiding something. Money can buy anything—even privacy, silence.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that. I only know life in the Grove.”
Phillip pressed her hand to his mouth with a kiss. Somerset thought she should be outraged for him to take such a step with no understanding between them and when she already felt nervous about being abandoned by Joseph, but the gesture was so natural, so tender, that the only thing Somerset felt was touched. Phillip released her hand as though he read her mind.
She saw a scar running across the outside of his hand. It was pale white, shiny, and so wide that she couldn’t believe she’d never seen it before.
“What is that?” she asked, taking his hand.
“It’s a parting gift from a street fight in Charleston. A tavern owner lashed a girl on his front porch for loitering. She lost everything in the war and was looking for a dry spot to wait out a rain shower, but he assumed from her dress that she was a prostitute. I caught the end of his bullwhip and pulled it from him. He didn’t hit her again when I finished.”
“You were right. Our souls are alike,” Somerset said. “You see how the downtrodden need and respond. You’re complex, too, Mr. Russell. There’s a world more to you than the confident, wealthy rake you’ve shown.”
“I seldom feel enough trust to show people the man beyond the drawing room.” Phillip squeezed her hand. “It looks as though you’ve finished, which means I need to make good on my end of the deal and return you to Orchard Rest,” he said and whistled for the horses, which were drinking from the river. “Oh, and stop calling me Mr. Russell.”
***
Somerset woke at five in the morning with Blanche standing over her bed, shaking her. She sat up, thinking she was having a bad dream. She’d been having the best dream possible about building a new home with no memories in it. Phillip was there, poring over blueprints with her and kissing her down the side of the neck, as she tried to determine where to place the windows to best see the sunrise.
“What is it?” she asked groggily, shielding her eyes from the flame of Blanche’s candle.
“I’m worried about Joseph.” Blanche’s narrow foot tapped a march on the hardwood floors. “He never came home last night.”
“He wouldn’t. He refuses to sleep under this roof.” Somerset turned on her side and curled up.
Blanche shook her shoulder.
“Franklin’s last duty of the day is to go to the river each night and make certain he’s safely at his tent. He never came back last night. After the stunt Fairlee pulled on us all, I’m worried about him. You don’t suppose he would—you don’t think he’d consider her worth ending his life over, do you?”
Somerset rolled out of bed.
“I don’t know. Let’s get dressed and wait at the staircase landing window to see if we see his lantern coming. It’s almost dawn. Maybe Cleo has some coffee on.”
***
No ray of light pierced the banks of darkness created by peach trees and bands of mist. Somerset felt young again. How many times had she stood at the same window and waited for the Brotherhood to appear out of the tree line? She shivered and pulled her shawl tighter around her. Joseph had been in a fragile state when he took off but she had seen him in far worse. It only troubled her that he was sober. Sawyer couldn’t be the last member of the Brotherhood—not when he’d been the one instrumental in dismantling it. He was out there, somewhere, on a train or in a stagecoach, his sleeping head lolling on his seat as the morning sun pierced the windows and lit his face. He was out there somewhere and had no inkling of the trouble here.
“There’s no light,” said Blanche. She put her hand to her throat. “I should go to Thomas’s quarters and wake him. We should drag the river and send out a pair of hounds.”
“He’s been away before,” protested Somerset. “He always turns up for the worse, but he does turn up.”
“All this over some hoity-toity social climber.” Blanche’s heavy Virginian accent sounded mournful.
“We’ll give him until noon to show up. I can’t believe you have Franklin sneak out to check on him every night.”
“He’s my only son.”
Somerset wished she had more light to see her mother’s face.
They were all congregated around the dining room table but not eating when Franklin announced Joseph was home. Everyone stood up to greet him, even placid Thomas who had heard enough of his wife’s imagined scenarios to think something had finally happened to the boy. He’d grown to fear dragging the river and had only been awake half an hour.
Joseph appeared in the doorway with Ivy just under his shoulder. He told them with his most appealing boyish grin that they were married.
***
Chapter 16
The only sound in the dining room was Blanche’s knife as it clattered against the table leg on its crash to the floor, as obnoxious and out of place as a hiccup during a wake. Bess jumped at the cacophony but never made a move to retrieve it. Somerset heard her make a querulous noise in the back of her throat as she settled against the wall by the sideboard to observe the commotion.
Thomas sped to the doorway and embraced them while uttering something profound to welcome their new family into the existing one, but Somerset didn’t hear a word of it. Victoria hopped from her chair and flew around the t
able like a dove and followed his suit.
“Go. Go to them now and welcome them or this will be the end,” she whispered behind her unused napkin at Blanche’s ear.
“An elopement! How scandalous! I feel as if I died and went to Heaven,” exclaimed Myra.
Blanche bustled out of her chair. Somerset saw Ivy’s eyes grow wide as she approached, as if she expected to be thrown out of the house. Blanche pecked at her cheek in welcome and Ivy trembled and turned pink as she kept her eyes trained on the baseboards.
“Ivy, Ivy, how I wish you could have settled our resident wildcat sooner! Won’t you sit and eat with us? We haven’t touched a thing, and you all must be famished if you rode off in the night. You can tell us how this came to be while we eat.”
“We ate at Maple Pool this morning,” clarified Joseph. “We spent the night there after the ceremony. I expect it’s our home now.”
“How did the Garrett family take it when you showed up on their front porch last night?” asked Somerset.
“They thought it was one of Joseph’s practical jokes,” said Ivy, “but once they realized it was true, they were happy. They said we could live at Maple Pool for as long as we like. I think the main feeling was relief that I’m not a spinster.”
“Come sit even if you won’t eat,” said Myra as she licked blackberry preserves from her spoon. “I can’t eat a bite until I hear what transpired last night.”
Joseph was flushed above the ivory collar of his shirt. Ivy approached the table much as a skittish deer approaches a salt lick and sat at the side furthest from Blanche, and he followed her with an air of embarrassed resignation.
“Must we really tell?” he sighed.
“You don’t get to have a wedding without your family and then leave the details a secret,” replied Somerset. She couldn’t wait to get Ivy alone.
“Maybe Ivy will favor us with the details,” prompted Blanche as she pushed her plate away. She didn’t look upset but her usually composed face added a new dimension to the feeling of shock.
Myra leaned across the table at Ivy.
“Oh, I hope I’m you in six months,” she said as speared a waffle and doused it in maple syrup.
“Well, I was changing for supper and I kept hearing something pecking at my window,” began Ivy. “So I opened it.”
“Oh no!”
“Were you dressed?”
“She was dressed or she wouldn’t have opened the window! Go on, Ivy.”
“Well, it was Joseph throwing pebbles. He called for me to come down. It was almost dark and I knew Pa would kill both of us if he caught us, but I also knew Joseph wouldn’t show up at such a late hour if it wasn’t important. So I crept out the kitchen exit. I thought I would be sick I was so nervous but I also thought that if we got caught, I’d be compromised and Joseph would have to marry me.”
A round of laughter made its way around the dining room.
“So I went down and he said—”
“Don’t tell them what I said!”
“He said some lovely things, but he’d die if I repeated what he said. It ended with a proposal though, one that would only come from Joseph. He wanted us to ride out to Tuscaloosa and be married, but I wanted to get home before morning to let my family know that nothing horrible had happened to me. I made him take me to Buchanan’s Loft and have Mr. Buchanan marry us. He said it had been years since he married a couple, and it must have been, because he kept forgetting the words. But we got married and went back to Maple Pool. We’d been gone about two hours and they were canvassing the grounds for me already.”
“Well, if Evelyn Buchanan was there it’s already made the newspapers from coast to coast,” Thomas said.
“She wasn’t at home. She was hostess at an aide meeting for the church,” said Joseph. “She’s probably livid this morning that she missed the biggest social function of the year that just happened to occur in her parlor.”
“Everyone was relieved that I’m fine. We spent the night at home and Lee cooked us a celebratory breakfast this morning,” Ivy finished as she sank lower into her chair.
Blanche caressed her hand.
“The first matter of business is that you must let me throw you a reception so that people can receive you as a married couple. I missed the ceremony so don’t deprive me of a party, child.”
Ivy nodded. Somerset expected the same response out of Ivy even if Blanche told her that she and Joseph must live in separate houses now.
“I want to offer Orchard Rest to you as a home, too. There’s more room here than at Maple Pool. We could fix a couple of rooms for you, and it would be almost as nice as living in your own home.”
“Do stay,” said Somerset.
“I’m not competing with you for her attention,” said Joseph.
Everyone laughed at the supposed rivalry.
“Yes, live here. Maybe you can teach me to be useful,” added Myra.
“You are a Marshall. You don’t have to be useful,” said Blanche. Her tone was hatchet sharp.
“It’s much larger here, Joseph,” said Ivy. “They wouldn’t notice us, whereas at Maple Pool there’s barely room to pass each other in the hall.”
“We don’t need much room. We don’t have many possessions between us.”
“I’m not living on the river.” Ivy looked at him with mock stern eyes.
Somerset bounded out of her chair and grasped Ivy’s elbow.
“Let me show you some of the empty rooms. You don’t have to decide right now, but you might be sorry later that you didn’t look when you had the chance.”
“Yes, let Somerset have at you for an hour,” chuckled Thomas. “You’ll forget you have any other home but here.”
Somerset took Ivy’s hand and led her out of the dining room. Then she hurried her past the library, the main staircase, and the poorly lit foyer and down the narrow hallway that led to the men’s wing of the house. There wasn’t much to it, a small two-story box with a maple staircase to divide the levels. The shrine that was Theodore’s bedroom was housed there, the door ajar as if he sat just beyond his desk that had never been cleared of worn, dusty law books. The curtains in his room swayed as they passed as if he rose from the desk to greet them. An office littered with ledgers, receipts, and books sat beside it, and just across the hallway were the two adjoined guest rooms.
Somerset thought these were the rooms Blanche had in mind when she offered Orchard Rest as their home. She could think of nothing more insulting than housing them in Joseph’s old bedroom upstairs where memories of Fairlee resided. She wanted nothing less than to encourage comparison between the two. She yanked Ivy into the first room and bolted the door behind them, ready to discuss the preceding night’s events.
Just as Somerset felt her stowed-away surprise register on her face with the suddenness of a February snow shower, she felt competing emotions in her heart. Joy that Ivy realized her only life’s dream was balanced by the fact that Ivy had done so with Joseph. Somerset was afraid for her. She also felt the small particle of resentment settle in her sore, aching chest that Ivy, of all people, married before her and crossed yet other bridges before her. Somerset ground the feelings out and tried to smooth the worry from her face. She reminded herself that only days ago she promised to be the kind of friend Ivy was to her.
She grabbed Ivy around her slim waist and hugged her tight.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said through the drapes of sloe hair. “I’m overwhelmed that you’re finally my family, but sometimes I think you love the wrong brother. Are you all right?”
Ivy laughed her thin, fluty laughter.
“I’m married, not dead. Why wouldn’t I be fine?”
“I’m happy for you but I’m worried about you. I love Joseph and you can’t doubt it, Ivy. But he is my brother and can’t hurt me the way he can hurt you. Sometimes he’s impulsive and does things without thinking. Then we all have to repent for him later.”
Ivy climbed onto the emerald green
canopied bed that now looked as if it had been predestined for her alone and patted the counterpane for Somerset to join her. Somerset crawled up and pulled the cotton drapes closed. The morning light filtered through, turning them a pale cedar green.
“Somerset, I may have painted a cute picture of my proposal in the dining room, but that story was only a shade of what happened. Joseph sat down with me outside Maple Pool and we talked for a long time. I know that you ran into Fairlee and Mr. Cooper yesterday and I probably know as much about Joseph’s and Fairlee’s courtship as can be put into language. I don’t think there are words enough to describe it since we’re talking about truth here. Why do you think I insisted on going to the Loft to be married? I wanted to assist Joseph in spiting Fairlee.”
“I won’t believe that you married Joseph to help him punish Fairlee. If that’s the case, you have a hollow victory on your hands.”
“Honey, we spited Fairlee together, but that’s not why we married. We married because we love each other.”
“What?”
“Somerset, you have far more life experience than I do. You realize by now that we love people for different qualities and in more ways than one.”
Somerset stretched out across the bed and stared up at the billowing canopies.
“You purport not to love Sawyer, but I know you did. You loved him in a different way than you loved Eric. Eric got your first love, arguably the best. You loved Sawyer because he was sweet, helpful, and tenderhearted. You fell in love with him for digging with you through abandoned battlefields and escorting you to makeshift hospitals to look for Eric. Eric wasn’t tenderhearted or self-sacrificial, but you loved him even more for his strength, his intellect, and the protection he offered you.
“I may not have stolen Joseph’s first love. I may not be an opinionated, voluptuous blond who can tease his days out, but I can be sweet, helpful, and tenderhearted. I can make him see there is more to him than the empty veneer that people have come to expect.”
Somerset rolled over on her stomach so that she faced Ivy again.
“Please tell me he was kind to you when he got you home last night.”
