A Reckless Love Read online

  Praise for A Reluctant Belle

  “Featuring flawed characters desperate to fight for equality, this intense historical romance will make readers wrestle—as Joelle does—with questions of what the Christian faith says about freedom, truth, and justice.”

  Publishers Weekly

  Praise for A Rebel Heart

  “A Rebel Heart features characters with depth, a gripping plot with thoughtfully researched authenticity, and unexpected twists.”

  Booklist

  “A Rebel Heart checks all the boxes on my wish list for a satisfying novel. It brings a lesser-known slice of history to life and deals honestly with our national past. The characters are colorful and compelling, the setting richly painted, and the high-stakes plot carries the reader to the end without ever slowing down. Full of intrigue, grit, and grace, A Rebel Heart is Beth White at her finest. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.”

  Jocelyn Green, award-winning author of A Refuge Assured

  “With great skill, Beth White combines intriguing history with inspiring romance, and then adds a good measure of mystery and suspense to her newest novel, A Rebel Heart. From the first page to the last, readers will be wrapped up in Selah’s quest to restore her family’s stately Mississippi home and charmed by the touching romance. Levi’s investigation to solve a series of robberies and find out who is behind the mysterious incidents that threaten Selah and her family will keep readers guessing and turning pages until the very end. Well done!”

  Carrie Turansky, award-winning author of Shine Like the Dawn and Across the Blue

  “Pinkerton agent Levi Riggins stole my heart, beginning with his valiant rescue of Selah Daughtry after a train wreck in the opening scenes of A Rebel Heart. Selah couldn’t help but lose her heart, too, although she has more than one reason to be wary of the former Yankee officer. Beth White’s careful historical research shines throughout this novel, as do her wonderful characters. Highly recommended.”

  Robin Lee Hatcher, Lifetime Achievement Award–winning author of You’re Gonna Love Me

  Books by Beth White

  GULF COAST CHRONICLES

  The Pelican Bride

  The Creole Princess

  The Magnolia Duchess

  DAUGHTRY HOUSE

  A Rebel Heart

  A Reluctant Belle

  A Reckless Love

  © 2020 by Elizabeth White

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-2306-4

  Scripture used in this book, whether quoted or paraphrased by the characters, is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  The author is represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc.

  This book is dedicated to the best

  of neighbors and friends—

  Danny and Kim Carpenter.

  Contents

  Cover

  Endorsements

  Half Title Page

  Books by Beth White

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  A Note to the Reader

  Preview of Another Captivating Story by Beth White

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  Prologue

  April 27, 1865

  North of Memphis, Tennessee

  Zane’s first thought when he came to was that the world was coming to an end. Lying flat on the ground, hearing muffled, mud up his nose and in his good eye, he turned his head to squint against the giant boiling, roaring flare on the Mississippi. Fire on the water—how could that be?

  But then he’d seen hell in all its various forms over the last four years. Maybe God had decided to start over, like he did with Noah’s family. Zane wouldn’t quibble with the Almighty over the need for a fresh start.

  He pushed to his hands and knees, shaking his head to rid himself of the sensation of battle aftermath. The war was over. He was on his way . . . somewhere upriver. Maybe St. Louis or Cairo. Not home, because he didn’t have one. Mainly he wanted to get beyond Mississippi and Alabama, a place where a man could live in peace.

  Sounds began to come and go—small explosions, inhuman screams, the roar of the flames—and he fought the urge to curl up on the ground, arms over his head, knees drawn in. No. He was here for a reason. Left behind for some purpose only God knew. If he didn’t believe that, he’d have given in long ago.

  Dragging in a breath that pierced his lungs and launched a spasm of coughing, he forced himself upright on his knees, wiping the slime from his face, spitting grit out of his mouth. His ears cleared long enough to distinguish—

  The screams were real. Human. In a flash of recall, he remembered what brought him here. The man he’d followed by horseback along the river. The explosion—

  Right, the steamboat—the boat he’d been aboard from Vicksburg to Memphis—had exploded, knocking him unconscious.

  He stared in horror at the inferno on the river. There were people everywhere, floating past on doors and shutters and tree stumps, calling out, drowning, burning, shrieking like demons, the scene comparable to the worst wartime engagement he’d experienced.

  As he staggered to his feet, something dripped into his good eye. He reached up to wipe it away, then stood looking at his hand by moonlight and the flickering fire, rubbing the sticky moisture between his fingers. His head was bleeding, though the patch over his bad eye remained miraculously in place.

  He took off his coat, ripped off one of his shirtsleeves and tied it about his forehead, then put the coat back on.

  By now his senses had straightened enough that he could think. He took stock of the tragedy around him and began to formulate a plan. That was what the Provost Guard of the Indiana Iron 44th did. Take any unorthodox situation, assess the most critical problems, and deal with them step by step. It was how he’d survived the last eight months in prison. It was how he’d made it to Vicksburg mainly on foot, how he’d secured a berth on that hell-bound steamer.

  It was why he wasn’t on it when it exploded.

  Step by step, Sager, he told himself. There are people in the water worse off than you. Help them.

  Before he could act, voices pierced the chaos—not from the survivors on the river but from somewhere just ahead, behind a stand of trees near the top of the muddy, flood-torn riverbank. Though Zane’s hea
ring still came and went, he thought he distinguished two voices. One of them had him crouching, reaching for the pistol he’d bought in Memphis.

  Jones. He’d know that high-pitched raspy voice anywhere.

  He froze. So he’d been right that the saboteur on the Sultana seemed familiar. His instinct to follow the man had saved his life, and now he had a choice to make. He could apprehend Jones with no proof—other than his own word—that he’d done anything wrong. Or he could dive into the river and save as many lives as possible.

  As the screams of burning, drowning men and women and the crackling roar of the blazing vessel splintered the night, he reeled with the pain in his head. Maybe he wasn’t strong enough to accomplish either task.

  Suddenly he could hear the judge’s voice in his head. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, Zane. Don’t take that on yourself.

  The judge. Judge Teague had been on that boat—in Zane’s spot on the upper deck. It seemed impossible that he could still be alive. But Zane had never bowed to the inevitable in his life.

  Praying for strength, he turned back toward the river.

  The explosion jerked her awake. Aurora sat up, heart slamming in her throat. The second-floor bedroom was dark and quiet, but she could still feel the iron bedstead quivering. Cousin ThomasAnne lay beside her, snoring a prosaic, ladylike purr. How could she sleep after that concussion? For that matter, Aurora herself seemed to be the only one awake in the house.

  Everyone always said she had the hearing of a bat, but had no one else felt the reverberation, the shudder of the house? Some nights she lay awake long after everyone else slumbered, listening to the hoot of the steamboats pushing upriver from exotic places like Natchez, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, New Orleans. Now that the war was over, the Mississippi River had opened to civilian traffic. The daily symphony of sounds from the landing below the bluff had thickened with longshoremen calling to the crews of boats docking or steaming away, loaded with passengers, cotton, and other crops headed north. Nighttime was quieter, with a rhythm and music all its own: distant foghorns, the call of night watchmen, perhaps a drunken sailor singing a bawdy song on his way out of a waterfront saloon.

  Now—only muffled silence, as though her ears had suddenly gotten stuffed with cotton wadding.

  Shoving aside ThomasAnne’s bony knees, she lay back and pulled the quilt under her chin. With spring slow to arrive this year, the night was sharp and cool for late April. The river had been roiling with snowmelt for weeks, overflowing its bounds, flooding the plains of the delta on the Arkansas side and across the state line in Mississippi. Though Memphis, high on its bluff, remained safe from the angry water, she breathed a prayer for the roustabouts below.

  She lay awake for a long time, unable to shake the feeling of unease. Maybe that disturbance had been a dream after all. She hoped it had been. But sometime later, her eyes flew open at the sound of feet on the stairs just outside the bedroom door. The room had lightened, but shadows still lingered in the corners. Then, oddly, a flare of light penetrated the blackness beyond the open streetside window.

  Scrambling out of bed, Aurora ran to lean over the windowsill. Lamplight flickered and swam along the street like giant fireflies, all headed in the direction of the river. A wagon rattled by, then a couple of horses, then more wagons. Suddenly the street was alive with chaos and noise, men pouring out of their houses, calling to one another.

  “Steamboat exploded!” The words came clear at last in the melee. “Fire! People in the water—”

  Craning to see beyond the mad activity pouring toward the bluff, Aurora spotted a stream of boats backing out into the river. Impossible to distinguish individual vessels from amongst the various sizes and shapes, but the US military packet Pocahontas, a midsized steamer charged with rounding up Confederate blockade runners and habitually moored at the foot of Beale Street at nightfall, was no doubt among the rescuers. That very day, Aurora and her sisters had been at the Soldiers’ Home, serving members of the Pocahontas’s crew, along with paroled Union prisoners from the steamboat Sultana. Stopping in Memphis to unload a hundred tons of sugar and nearly as many barrels of wine, the Sultana’s pilot had allowed the passengers to disembark for supper. The ladies of Aurora’s church had brought blankets and food, tea and conversation, to men so gaunt and ill from incarceration at Cahaba Prison over in Alabama that they hardly seemed human.

  The men, clearly giddy with joy at the knowledge that they were on their way home, had seemed grateful for feminine kindnesses. Some had had the means to purchase new clothes in town, but others remained in stinking uniforms so black with grime that the original color could no longer be discerned. Aurora had held her breath and bravely smiled at each man she encountered, some who seemed hardly older than her own fourteen years, some aged beyond reality by their travails. All but blinded by pity, Aurora had ignored the revolting of her stomach and sat beside a poor man with an amputated leg and a ferocious head wound while a troupe of opera singers from Chicago, also traveling on the Sultana, had performed a program of comic scenes.

  Could the Sultana be the afflicted vessel?

  She thought it likely, and if so, the disaster could not be overstated. The steamboat had been monstrously overloaded—so much so that it nearly capsized while passengers ganged on one side to pose for photographers on the wharf. Everyone at the Soldiers’ Home had been talking about it this afternoon.

  Or, more properly, she supposed, that had been yesterday. Dawn could not be far away now.

  “Aurora?” came ThomasAnne’s soft voice. “What’s the matter?”

  Aurora looked over her shoulder and found her older cousin sitting up in bed, nightcap askew over curly, reddish-brown hair straggling in plaits over her shoulders. “I’m not sure.” Aurora turned back to the ruckus outside the window. “Sounds like a steamer up the river exploded and caught fire. Those poor people . . .”

  “Oh mercy! Come back to bed before—”

  “Tom, it can’t reach us here.” Aurora squelched her own anxiety to reassure her cousin. “It’s almost time to get up anyway, so I’m going to get dressed. I’m sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”

  “Heavens, no, you can’t . . .”

  Ignoring her cousin’s bleating protests, Aurora shucked out of her nightgown. Feeling her way in the dark, she found her undergarments, stockings, and day dress lying across the cedar chest at the foot of the bed and quickly put them on. “Go to sleep, ThomasAnne,” she said soothingly, slipping out into the hallway, carrying her shoes—and stopped in her tracks at the sight of her grandmother mounting the stairs. “Grandmama! What are you doing up?”

  “I might ask you the same thing, young lady.” Grandmama reached the landing with a thump of her ebony-head cane, an accessory which Aurora suspected was carried mainly for effect. “Turn right around and get back to bed.” Once a famous titian-haired beauty, the old lady had not lost the raised-eyebrow expression of one used to commanding a retinue.

  “I’m not sleepy.” Aurora tipped her chin, imitating the autocratic tilt of Grandmama’s well-coiffed head. “Besides, it’s very noisy outside. What is happening out on the river? I heard the explosion.”

  “You heard the . . . You couldn’t possibly have—” Grandmama buttoned her lips, then sputtered an exasperated breath. “Pish. I told your grandfather we might as well wake you girls up. Go on down to the breakfast room and find something to eat. We’ll need to start making bandages and send them on to the hospital. I’ll wake the other girls—oh, ThomasAnne, you’re up too? Good, then. Hurry and put some clothes on.”

  As Grandmama stumped past Aurora to knock on her sisters’ bedroom door, ThomasAnne ducked back into the room from whence her white, freckled face had briefly appeared like a lace-frilled daisy.

  Aurora hurried down the stairs to the breakfast room. Finding the table laid and an array of breakfast foods—bacon, biscuits, grits, fried eggs, and fig preserves—already spread on the buffet by the window, she marveled at the servants’ ability t
o pull together such a bounteous meal in the middle of the night.

  Thoughts of the unfortunate souls who had undoubtedly perished in the accident killed her appetite. She had gone to the buffet to pour a cup of coffee when a sudden banging on the front door startled her into dropping the coffeepot. Jumping up to deal with the spill spreading over the Aubusson carpet, she heard the butler, Alistair, go to the door, tut-tutting at the racket.

  “Hold your horses,” Alistair muttered, and Aurora heard him jerk open the door.

  “Doc McGowan sent me!” came a rough male voice that Aurora didn’t recognize. “Said tell the mistress to get ready for an emergency ’cause the hospital’s already full—”

  Aurora hurried into the foyer. “Grandmama’s upstairs. I’ll take the message.”

  The wiry young Negro at the door snatched his cap off. “Miss—Doc said not to—”

  “Pish!” Aurora said, again in deliberate imitation of her grandmother. “How many?”

  The man looked over his shoulder, then back at Aurora and apparently decided he’d better deliver his information fast and get back to the hospital. “As many beds as you can find, miss. Some going straight to the morgue, of course—excuse my bluntness—and the surgical cases will stay at the hospital, but the ones can easily be treated will need nurses and simple comfort. Blankets, bandages—”

  “Yes, yes, we’ll take care of it. I’m sure you’re needed elsewhere. Thank you.”

  As the man ducked away, Alistair shut the door and turned to Aurora. He looked at her with reluctant respect glimmering in his dark eyes. She’d known him all her life, and he and his wife, Vonetta, the family cook, had half raised her. “Well done, little miss. I’ll start down here rounding up blankets and laying out pallets, move some furniture around.”

  “Good. I’ll go up and help Grandmama with bandages.” She headed for the stairs, then hesitated, a hand on the newel. “I’m sorry about the mess in the breakfast room. I dropped the coffeepot.”

  Alistair responded with a grim smile. “I got a feeling we gon’ have more to worry about than spilt coffee ’fore this day’s over, Miss Aurora.”