PRAISE FOR MELANIE DOBSON’S BOOKS
Chateau of Secrets
“Amazing characters, deep family secrets, and an authentic French chateau make Dobson’s story a delight.”
—RT Book Reviews, 4 ½ stars
“Intriguing and suspenseful, rich in secrets, hidden tunnels, and heroic deeds—Melanie Dobson’s Chateau of Secrets weaves a compelling tale of a family’s sacrifice for those in need. A . . . beautiful story.”
—Cathy Gohlke, Christy Award–winning author of Saving Amelie
Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor
“Mysteries are solved, truths revealed, and loves rekindled in a book sure to draw new fans to Dobson’s already large base.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An old, cherished house is like the human heart. We keep treasures safely tucked within: some conquests we proudly display, some treasures we put behind glass, some secrets we hide from sight, our own and others’. In Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor, Ms. Dobson skillfully plaits the complex strands of life: golden and dark, truth and deception, love and loss into an engaging, multigenerational story of heartache and ultimate, unexpected redemption. Any reader might both lose and find herself between the covers of this compelling novel.”
—Sandra Byrd, author of Mist of Midnight
The Silent Order
“What a wonderful book by an amazing author! In Dobson’s latest offering, readers will find mystery, love, and values that have withstood the test of time. The characters are a delight, and readers get a fascinating glimpse into the underworld of gangsters during the era of Prohibition and the dangers police faced in keeping law and order.”
—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick, 4 ½ stars
“Melanie Dobson weaves a tale of intrigue cloaked in secrets yet threaded with elements of grace. Put The Silent Order on your must-have list.”
—Kim Vogel Sawyer, bestselling author of My Heart Remembers
Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana
“A compelling historical romance intricately woven with suspense, page-turning tension, and tender glimpses into a passionate young heroine’s heart. Melanie Dobson’s strong storytelling skills will have you glued to the pages of this intensely satisfying book.”
—Miralee Ferrell, author of The Other Daughter
“Dobson’s contribution to this multiauthor series about a unique character and the town in which they live centers on the Quakers in the 1850s who helped with the Underground Railroad. Even though the characters are fictional, they leap off the page as if they were real.”
—RT Book Reviews, 4 stars
“Melanie Dobson crafts a lyrical novel about the brave sojourners on Indiana’s Underground Railroad. Step backward in time with her characters and be ready to lose your heart!”
—Patti Lacy, author of What the Bayou Saw
ALSO BY MELANIE DOBSON
Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor
Chateau of Secrets
The Silent Order
Courier of Caswell Hall
Refuge on Crescent Hill
Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana
The Black Cloister
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 Melanie Dobson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Waterfall Press, Grand Haven, Michigan
www.brilliancepublishing.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Waterfall Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503937710
ISBN-10: 1503937712
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
For my husband
Jon Dobson
Thank you for holding my hand along this journey.
My heart overflows.
Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Two
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part Three
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Book Club Questions
Author Bio
Prologue
April 1844
She birthed her first baby in the early afternoon hours, a beautiful boy who cried out once and then rested peacefully in her arms.
As the midwife cleaned up, Mallie clung to her son as if he might float away into the field below her window. For the first time in her life, she had something—someone—to call her own.
He looked up at her, his hazel eyes searching her face. It was as if he knew he had someone to call his own as well.
She would be a good mama to her child for as long as the master let him stay in the house. She would feed him when he was hungry. Sew him warm clothing to wear when he was cold. Teach him to use his strength for good instead of evil.
She wiped the birthing blood off his arm with her nightgown, his skin dark against the white linen. She’d been praying for months that her baby’s coloring would be a beige hue so he could work in the master’s house instead of the fields. God hadn’t lightened his skin, but He had answered one of her prayers. The child was a boy instead of a girl. For that, she was grateful.
A female slave was expected to do unspeakable things in this house, things no one ever told her about as she worked for her former missus. It wasn’t until after she turned thirteen that the new master called for her. Then she worked solely for him.
Her stomach turned. She couldn’t abide by the thought of her child forced to appease the insatiable appetite of that man.
Mallie kissed her baby’s forehead.
She glanced toward the door, waiting for the master to visit.
What would he do when he saw their baby? She prayed he wouldn’t take him to the market or give him to a slave wet nurse. Mallie wanted to be devoted solely to him.
If she continued to please the master, perhaps he would let her keep their boy, at least until he was old enough to work in the fields.
If her son was sent to the fields—when he was sent—she would pray every day for him. That he would be strong. Courageous. That he would face the future with resolve instead of fear, knowing he was created to be exactly who God wanted him to be.
But she wouldn’t think a
bout leaving him now. All she would think about was loving him.
He squirmed in her arms, his lips pressing together.
Across the room, the midwife looked up from her work. The elderly Negro woman helped all the slaves birth their children—inside the plantation house and out in the slave quarters. She knew what babies needed. “Feed him,” she commanded.
Mallie unbuttoned her gown, and the baby latched on to her breast. Milk flowed slowly out of her into him. Life-giving liquid to sustain. She smiled as she watched him, knowing she could care for him on her own without the master or the missus. She was his mama.
The boy ate voraciously before releasing her. Then he looked back up, into her eyes, and her heart felt as if it might burst open, joy flooding onto the wooden floor.
The midwife reached for the baby. “I have to clean him, Mallie.”
“No!” She never wanted to let him go.
“We’ll just be downstairs,” the woman said. “I’ll bring him back to you when I’m done.”
Mallie kissed her son’s forehead and both cheeks. His eyes were closed now, and he was content with his full belly and the world around him.
If only she could keep him in this peaceful state forever, cushioning him from the realities ahead.
The midwife slipped her hands under the baby.
“I love you,” Mallie whispered to him. “With all my heart.”
The midwife lifted him and held him out in front of her as if he were a bundle of sticks or straw. Mallie watched him until he was gone; then she glanced out the window at the pine branch brushing against the glass. For her entire life, she’d longed for a family. Someone she belonged to. Someone to love who would love her in return.
Her mama was gone—she’d been sold almost a decade ago. Mallie remembered the morning Mama had left for the market. She’d waited and waited by the front door for hours for her return, but the master came home alone.
She didn’t know the name of her father. As far as she could remember, Mama never spoke about him. Master Jesus, Mama had said, was the only father she needed to know. A master who loved his children.
But now she had family on this earth too, and she’d do her best, in the short time she had, to instill right and wrong in her son so he’d grow up to be a gentleman.
She didn’t have a name for him yet. A name meant hope, and she hadn’t allowed herself to hope until after he was born. She’d given him life, and now she could give him a name as well.
Her eyes grew heavy. Her body was spent. The midwife had said she must sleep, but she wanted to wait until after her baby was beside her again, safe in her arms for the night.
In the spring breeze, the branch tapped a steady rhythm against the glass. She closed her eyes, listening for the midwife’s footsteps in the corridor, for the cries of her son. Sleep beckoned to her as she waited, the weight of exhaustion pressing down. She tried to fight it for only a few more minutes, but her body rebelled against her will, worn out from the labor of bringing a child into this world.
Hours later, she awoke when the chamber door flung open. Morning light flooded through the window and across her narrow bed.
Rising on her elbows, she expected to see the midwife holding her son, ready to be fed, but the missus stood at the end of her bed instead, wearing her cornflower-blue traveling gown.
“Get dressed,” she told Mallie.
Mallie looked toward the door. “Where’s my baby?”
The missus didn’t answer.
Mallie inched her legs to the side of the bed, trying to ignore the lingering pain. “I must feed him.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said as she opened the small dresser beside the window. “The baby didn’t survive the night.”
Mallie fell back against the wall, her body trembling as she tried to process the missus’s words.
Her baby didn’t survive? No—the missus must be wrong. Her son was fine last night. Healthy and strong.
“Bring me my baby,” Mallie demanded, but when she looked into the eyes of her mistress, at the pity and disdain, her words ebbed into grief. A wail erupted from deep inside her, carving its way around her heart and up her throat, echoing across the room.
“Lower your voice, Mallie.”
A whisper now. Begging. “Bring me my baby.”
“I can’t—”
“I want to see him.”
“He was ailing,” the woman said. “Abe buried him before daylight.”
Mallie wrapped herself in her arms, sobs heaving from her chest. She rocked back and forth, her head banging against the wall. She never should have fallen asleep. Never should have let him go.
“We have no time for this,” the missus said, pulling things out of the dresser.
She didn’t understand the missus’s words, didn’t care what she was saying.
The woman turned toward her. “Get out of bed.”
Mallie yanked the bedcover up, trying to bury herself in the quilt her mother stitched long ago. If only she could join her son in the grave. She couldn’t bear to stay in this world a moment longer.
The missus took her arm. “You must get dressed. Right away.”
She cried as the missus dressed her. Cried as the others watched her walk down the steps, into the black carriage.
It wasn’t until hours later that she realized.
The master never came to see her at all.
Part One
Having heard all of this,
you may choose to look the other way,
but you can never again
say that you did not know.
—William Wilberforce, in a speech to the House of Commons
Chapter 1
West End
December 1853
Lantern light spilled out from the carriage post as Alden Payne climbed inside the brougham, setting his valise on the broadcloth seat. The lantern cast a veil of light from the frosty window on the carriage up to the holly berries intertwined in a bough of fir hanging limply on his sister Eliza’s front door.
He should have been elated at the thought of going home early this morning, excited to see his parents and younger sister after another semester at Harvard, but his chest filled with dread instead.
As he waited for the coachman, his father’s face ballooned in his mind. The intense gray eyes that could find fault in any argument, the ash-colored hair salted with white.
Alden had inherited his father’s gray eyes and ash-brown hair. His father had inherited Scott’s Grove, a thousand acres of tobacco in Virginia, and the obsession to enlarge this plantation.
After Alden graduated from Harvard in the spring, his father expected him to join in his work at the plantation. What was he going to say when Alden told him that he’d already made a different choice? Other plans—especially ones that differed from his father’s decrees—weren’t tolerated.
The Negro coachman, dressed in formal livery, climbed onto the bench above the carriage’s front window, but before the carriage rolled forward, the front door to the house opened.
“Wait!” Eliza called out, tramping down the narrow carpet of light to the carriage door. She was tugging on the arm of the Negro boy who’d carried a pitcher of water up to Alden’s room last night.
Alden opened the door, concerned.
Eliza stopped beside the carriage door, tying the cord of her dressing gown around her waist. “I almost forgot to give you this.”
He looked at his sister’s hands for some sort of package, but they were empty. “What are you giving me?”
She pushed the Negro boy forward. “It’s a Christmas gift for Father.”
He eyed the boy standing in the shadows. His curly black hair was trimmed short over his ears, and he was as gangly as one of the stalks in Victor’s fields. Instead of studying the ground, the boy confidently met Alden’s gaze.
Alden glanced back at his sister. “You’re giving Father a slave?”
Eliza nodded, brushing her frizzy hair back over her
shoulder. “To help him plant the tobacco.”
Alden stepped down onto the packed dirt of the driveway. Eliza’s husband, Victor, had inherited a farm on the outskirts of a village called West End, but Victor wasn’t nearly as competent of a planter and overseer as Alden’s father. It seemed to him that Victor needed the boy here to help with their hundred acres of corn.
“Are you certain?” Alden persisted, but Eliza didn’t seem to hear him.
“Father will be pleased,” she replied before commanding the boy to climb on top of Alden’s trunk, which had been tied to the back of the carriage.
She wagged her finger at him. “Don’t you move until you get to Scott’s Grove.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy replied.
“And I don’t want to hear of you giving my father or anyone else trouble.”
Alden studied the boy perched up on the wooden trunk. Temperatures had dipped below freezing this morning, but he only wore a linen tow shirt and trousers. His feet were bare. “Does he have a coat?”
Eliza shook her head. “He doesn’t need anything.”
“Perhaps a blanket?”
“Discipline is all he lacks, Alden. Don’t you dare coddle him.”
Alden climbed back into the carriage. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he said before tipping his hat toward his sister. Then he closed the door and rapped on the front glass.
The coachman prompted the horses forward, and the farmhouse slowly faded behind them, their lantern light illuminating the remnants of decayed corn stalks in Victor’s fields as the carriage wheels rocked over ruts in the road.
Victor and Eliza used to spend Christmas at Scott’s Grove, but they hadn’t visited in the past two years. Eliza had loved the annual festivities when she was younger, and in their early years of marriage, Victor seemed to enjoy celebrating with the Payne family as well. But Alden’s brother-in-law had grown more isolated as the years passed. His once immaculate farm had begun to fall into ruin. And now Eliza was acting oddly as well.
Turning, Alden looked through the window behind him at the boy clinging to the ropes around the trunk, his bare feet dangling over the side.
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