Southern Rain (Torn Asunder Series Book 1)

by Tara Cowan

  They were very handsome as they rowed, both in blue coats and tan trousers, John Thomas with a plain bowtie, Frederick with a patterned one. Each had removed their brown bowlers and placed them on the seat beside them. “You shall not offend our sensibilities if you wish to remove your coats,” Shannon said. “It must be very warm for you.”

  Frederick needed no further encouragement, and after a hesitation, John Thomas removed his as well. They floated along peacefully, waving at another party out for a leisurely Sunday, Frederick exclaiming, looking at the wide river and green embankments, “It is magnificent!”

  John Thomas said, nodding to the east, “Look there.”

  They turned their attention that way to see a beautiful Greek Revival manor, where children in pastels were playing on the lawn. “There must be ten of them!” Marie exclaimed.

  John Thomas laughed. “The words of any passersby at Harmony Grove once upon a time.”

  They all laughed, Marie saying, “I envy you. If I hadn’t had Frederick and Shannon I should’ve been so lonely.”

  Frederick smiled at her, while Shannon said, “Yes, and you had that little Negro girl as your companion. What became of her?”

  “Sarah.” She looked across the river. “She was sold. My mother…did not like her.”

  Shannon’s lips parted, and no more was said on the subject.

  They found a likely embankment, where they, some three miles away from their beginning point, tied off and got out to picnic. Shannon and John Thomas spread the blanket. He again studied her, but she kept her eyes on her tasks, first anchoring the blanket, and then removing the food from the basket.

  They dined with little speech until their hunger was sated, and then Marie and Frederick got up to walk toward the river, hoping to espy some of the mansions through the trees.

  John Thomas was leaning back on his hands, his fingers close to hers on the blanket, since she was doing the same to accommodate her corset. He looked at her, his eyes gentle and pinched at the corners. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I thought you were referring to… But you could not have been if I hurt you so.”

  Shannon pressed her lips together, staring at the stripe down the side of his trousers, toying with the idea of allowing him to believe he had been mistaken. No profit could come of disillusioning him, for it was as though some demon had possessed her to make her say such a thing anyway. She felt him touch her chin gently and lift her face up. He subjected her to a searching look, and she met his eyes. “You weren’t mistaken,” she said quietly.

  He studied her for a moment as though he did not at first grasp her meaning. Then he did, and he didn’t speak, his fair brows drawing together. She swallowed, looking away.

  “Why?” he asked very quietly after a time, looking into the distance. “I thought it was behind us.”

  She moistened her lips and looked away, toward the river. “I sometimes think you don’t know me at all, John Thomas.”

  He touched her face gently and brought it back to look at his, his brows drawn together. She was startled at the pain in his eyes. “That is…a terrible thing for any husband to hear. Have I been so obtuse?”

  She swallowed, her throat burning, tears threatening. “Do you know, John Thomas, I don’t know why I said what I did,” she said, an edge to her voice. “I suppose you never knew that I am spoiled, and petty, and that I… I quarrel for reasons even I do not understand–”

  His face had been growing more aggrieved during this speech, and he interrupted, “I know your soul, Shannon. I see…” He hesitated, emotion in his face. “I… Forgive me, but yes, I see all of those things. But I see more, my darling love, and I’m not sure there is anything you can say to convince me otherwise. I see a sweet spirit and a gentle soul, and I won’t pretend to understand you, but I am in love with all of you, and it’s no use sitting there thinking I haven’t already forgiven you, as I can see you’re doing, for I have.”

  Her lips parted, and she absently studied him for a long moment, letting the silence draw out. Then she moistened her lips looked away, surreptitiously swiping at her eye. She glanced toward Frederick and Marie, glad to see they were still walking and talking.

  She bit her lip and finally looked back, her blue eyes full, her expression sweetly penitent. “I am sorry, John Thomas!” she said softly. “I can’t think what possessed me!”

  His face softening, he reached for her hand, gripping it and kissing it. “Well, you could have let me believe I was mistaken.”

  She gave a difficult laugh, wiping at her eye again. “You wouldn’t have believed me. But you would have swallowed it.”

  His brows lifted slightly, and a delighted laugh entered his blue eyes. “Yes. That is precisely true.” His eyes grew more serious, and he reached up, cradling her face, stroking the soft skin with his thumb. “You would tell me if something was troubling you.”

  Her lips parted slightly. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes.”

  He sat back, letting some time pass. His fingers touched hers on the blanket, toying with them. She knew he was trying to make her smile, so she did. After some time had passed, the argument fading, she looked up at him. Tentatively, she reached to cover his hand. “It seems we have scarcely seen one another these past few days.”

  “I was just thinking the same.” His brows drew together. “And I have an uneasy feeling that it is my fault.” It was too much for him, to leave her hand on his, and he picked it up, bringing it to his lips.

  “Merely the circumstances.”

  “Yes, but I happened to think last night, as I sat up with Frederick, ‘Now, why am I here with this fellow when there is such a creature lying in my bed?’ I assure you, I could think of no reason whatever.”

  Shannon flushed, smiling and averting her face. His thumb caressed hers, and she looked back at him. “How shall I redeem myself?” he asked with gentle amusement. “An increase in pin money? Some biscuits made by my mother’s cook?”

  She smiled, lips tucking at the corners, and said with an attempt at airiness, “I should like a new piece of jewelry. Something simple, mind you, and I wouldn’t want you to spend above four-hundred dollars.” He smiled, glancing toward the shore and then tilting her chin toward him for a quick, chaste kiss.

  They settled back, watching Frederick and Marie as they stood at the shore. “Are they happy, do you think?” John Thomas asked softly.

  Shannon let a few seconds pass. “They seem content, at peace.”

  John Thomas looked at her, and then back at them.

  “I am glad to see Frederick so attentive to her,” she said as he helped Marie over a rock. “I was rather afraid he would forget she is not merely his cousin.”

  “Do you forget it?”

  “Yes,” she confided, laughing. “It is so strange!”

  “I thought it must be,” he said. “I try to imagine Patience married to my cousin Arthur, and–”

  “No, not Arthur!” she protested, making him smile. “Has Jonathan written to you? Is she well?”

  “I am informed that he is too busy with his parish to write,” he answered, smiling. “But yes, Lizzie tells me she is very well.”

  Shannon’s eyes brightened as though remembering something, and she bit her lip.

  “What?” he demanded.

  She shook her head.

  “You know something. Gossip, I imagine, but my interest is piqued.”

  She shook her head again, making one of the curls from her twist bob. “I shan’t tell.”

  “Oh, won’t you? Do you think I could not hurl you into the Potomac?”

  “The words of a lover, indeed! I protest, there is no one like you New Englanders for romantic language–”

  He laughed, interrupting her. “Shannon!”

  “Oh, very well.” She waited a moment for effect. “Lizzie has a beau.”

 
His brows lifted instantly. He stared at her enquiringly.

  “Well, not a beau, precisely,” she conceded, “but Miriam writes me that she has allowed a Mr. Winthrop to call on her a few times, and even consented to go driving with him in Boston.”

  His eyes widened. “Good heavens. Tell me about him. I am certain you can, if I know Miriam.”

  She laughed. “He is a little older than she, perhaps thirty-four, very handsome, a Brahmin–”

  “Forgive me, what is a Brahmin?” he interrupted.

  She sighed. “Do you read nothing Oliver Wendell Holmes writes?”

  “I have been a little occupied,” he explained.

  “You are a Brahmin, my dear.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes. It is the very highest caste of Indian society, and he has used it to refer to a certain set of Bostonians. Descended from old families of England, highly moral, Harvard people, Protestant, the caretakers of society, exclusive, Unitarians or Congregationalists…” John Thomas began to flush.

  He looked off into the distance peacefully, seemingly. “I have always been more comfortable in Weymouth than Boston. I don’t think we were from an old family in England. Well, the Haleys might be, though they’ve never cared to know. Certainly the Adamses were not.”

  “The Adamses were something else entirely. And you were to marry an heiress with strong family ties, in that same set, Mr. Holmes tells me.”

  He smiled at her, his eyes warm. “Well. I married an heiress.”

  She smiled, but at length it faded. “I did not realize the pressure was as strong on your side,” she said. “I wish I had. Perhaps it would’ve helped me to understand their feelings.”

  “There was no pressure at all. Not once I saw you. But this Winthrop: you don’t mean Isaac Winthrop?”

  Shannon’s brows rose. “Yes, I do. What? Do you know something? Has he a house full of illegitimates? A wife in the attics?”

  He laughed. “Not to my knowledge. He has three railroads, though. What do you say to that?”

  Shannon beamed. “I say brava, Lizzie!”

  He shook his head. “He’ll have to win her first.”

  Washington, D.C., July 1860

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The young couples always ate as soon as John Thomas arrived home and changed from his uniform into formal dining clothes. With not very long left in the Ravenels’ stay, they discussed how they would spend the remaining Saturday, when John Thomas would be excused from reporting.

  The ladies looked elegant, Marie in an exquisite green gown which bespoke Southern gentility, and Shannon very fine in deep blue. They were laughing over something when Mrs. Hensley, the Negro housekeeper, entered and waited at the door. John Thomas looked up and said, “Yes, Mrs. Hensley?”

  She hesitated and then took a few more steps in the room. Shannon watched her with curiosity. “You wanted news, Lieutenant, if we heard anything?”

  John Thomas waited a beat. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

  “The Southerners… The Democrats, I mean. They’ve nominated Mr. Breckinridge.”

  Shannon watched the two men after Mrs. Hensley departed. John Thomas did not move or show any emotion, while the faintest smile grew on Frederick. Her husband said nothing for several seconds, and she was surprised when the first thing he did was meet her eyes. She swallowed.

  “But… With Northern Democrats nominating Mr. Douglas, they cannot possibly prevail against Mr. Lincoln!” Marie said faintly.

  Shannon stared at her plate, thinking they were lucky to have avoided the subject thus far.

  “I fear not,” Frederick said.

  “But…South Carolina will secede if a Democrat is not elected,” she said, looking at Shannon, who studiously regarded her food. Marie looked around the room when no answer was forthcoming, meeting John Thomas’s eyes.

  “I’m afraid so,” he answered. “Indeed, sometimes I think that was the sole object of the separate conventions.”

  Frederick’s head reared back. “You can say this?” he demanded. “John Breckinridge is the Vice President of the United States. Is his nomination an act of aggression? There was not even one concession to the South in Charleston!”

  “There have been plenty of concessions, Frederick. For far too long,” John Thomas said softly.

  Frederick flushed with anger. “What concessions?”

  John Thomas looked outraged. “Oh, come! We are required to return fugitive slaves when they can make it to freedom in the North. Lincoln–”

  “Lincoln! Do you support that fellow?”

  There was a long silence. Finally, John Thomas said, “You have long known my beliefs, Frederick.”

  Frederick was so outraged, he could not speak. At least, he could not speak for a few seconds. “You intend to vote for that abolitionist? A man who would rip away our holdings, our way of life, everything we hold dear? Who can no more understand Southern society than he could that of Egypt? I cannot believe it of you!”

  “He does not want to touch slavery where it exists,” John Thomas said, jaw flexing. Shannon’s eyes glanced between them, fearful.

  “Oh, he appeases, and appeases, but if you read anything he ever wrote before he thought of running for president, it is all there before your very eyes! He loathes slavery!”

  “And so do I loathe slavery!” John Thomas said, for the first time raising his voice. “I cannot hear you sit there talking as though you have the right of it without telling you that: I think it is wrong, and demoralizing, and cancerous. I am sorry if that offends you, but it is the way I was raised to feel, just as you were raised to feel the opposite. Now, I have no wish to argue with you. The ladies are present, and the bonds between our families are too deep to allow this to divide us.”

  Frederick shook his head. “You cannot say your piece and then tell me you have no wish to argue with me! I knew you did not like slavery, but I did not know you were a radical. An Immediatist! Do you think I would’ve stood in front of my mother and father and argued on your behalf, if I had?”

  John Thomas looked as though he had been slapped. He had no rejoinder to offer, just sat looking at Frederick.

  But Frederick was in a rage. His jaw clenched and unclenched. “And what of my sister? If Washington should turn dangerous, will you keep her here, despite it, so that you may advance your glorious cause?”

  A pin could’ve been heard dropping. John Thomas stood, as though he would leave. He said, however, before he did, “Your sister is all I ever think of. That is why you advocated on my behalf, if you would only remember it.”

  Shannon sat in their bedchamber by candlelight in her white dressing gown, her long hair around her shoulders drying. She was sitting in one of the chairs by the fireplace, her legs crossed, staring into the abyss. She rather thought John Thomas had gone for a walk, which was for the best, but he had been gone for some time when the door finally cracked open. He looked in, meeting her eyes, and came in fully, closing the door behind him.

  He did not say anything, only drew his hand through his hair and leaned against the bedpost, still looking at her. She had been quite angry with him, but the wind was rather taken from her sails by his parting speech.

  “I am very sorry that your name was tossed about in an argument,” he said stiffly.

  “I am, too,” she said.

  He met her eyes, looking strangely unsure. “Are you angry with me, too, then?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “It seems I never know how to feel, what to think anymore.”

  “Think what you will. I might wish we feel the same, but I have never tried to force my beliefs upon you.” She knew his cold tone was evidence of how much Frederick had hurt him. But still she swallowed and looked down.

  At length, she looked up. She watched him for a few moments. “Could you not have sat silently?” s
he asked in a passionate whisper, eyes roving his face.

  “It seems all I ever do is sit silently.”

  “But this…may have caused a rift with my family, John Thomas! You may have done irreparable damage, the two of you, and I will be the one to pay for it, and pay dearly!”

  He sighed, shaking his head softly.

  “Are you indeed as radical as Frederick believes?” she asked, studying his profile.

  “I have no notion of what Frederick believes anymore. If we are to speak of radicals, you may look no further than your precious South Carolina. To talk of a state having the power to break away from the union as though it is not treason! To speak of men having the right to own other men as though we were speaking of cattle!”

  “Are you an Immediatist?” she asked faintly, aghast.

  He stopped, looking at her. “No,” he said finally, voice hoarse.

  She softly released a relieved sigh.

  “But only because it is unwise, Shannon. Not because it is not right,” he said firmly, his jaw hard. “When will you believe me when I tell you that I am an abolitionist! To its fullest extent, to the furthest edges of what you term radical.”

  “I believed you,” she said, looking down her nose at him and coming to her feet. “Has it not brought me hours of pain?” she asked, emotion in her voice.

  “Pain?” he asked, his voice lowered now, but emotion still on his face. “How has it caused you pain, when you knew it when we married? How, unless you refuse to believe it?”

  “Do not presume to tell me what I believe! I tell you, it has not always been easy to be your wife!”

  His eyes pinched at the corners. “How?” he demanded. “Tell me what I have done! What, besides hold to my own beliefs? If we are to speak in such terms, there have been ways in which you have not been satisfactory as a wife, Shannon!” he said harshly.

  Shannon blinked, letting the room go silent, stunned. She opened her lips as though to speak but could not. Her chest ached from a pain which started there. The silence drew out between them, and his accusation boiled down into one charge which she could not overcome, for which she knew she had failed him, and blamed herself without mercy. She could hear herself swallow as time stretched out.