A Rebel Heart Page 20

  “Maybe.” He pulled at his lower lip. “I’ll go over to the forge and talk to Nathan. Meanwhile, you make sure Wyatt knows that ice house is off-limits.” He winked at her. “One thing’s for sure—your life hasn’t been boring since you met me!”

  March 21, 1870

  Selah met Mose and Horatia in the front yard, rejoicing that the roof was done, the front porch repaired, and the marble steps put back in place. They were still going to need a coat of paint over the whole outside of the house, but at least the family could now come and go without risking life and limb.

  She watched in concern as Mose climbed down from the wagon, a large bandage still covering his head wound.

  “I don’t know why she wouldn’t let me drive,” Mose complained, eyes twinkling at his wife.

  “You can’t hardly drive with two good eyes,” Horatia said, tying the mule to the hitching post.

  Selah laughed. “We’re glad to have you back. Levi’s gone to town, and he’ll be sorry he missed you.”

  “I’ll be around all day,” Mose said, pulling on his pipe. “Ray says the big house is clean top to bottom, and she’s been working on the kitchen. What we gon’ do next?”

  “We’ll look at the list together and I’ll let you help me decide. But first, I have a surprise for you.” Selah avoided Horatia’s eyes. She had a feeling Mose was going to be a lot happier about this than his wife. But it was good. Surely this was a good thing. “Come on around to the kitchen.”

  The three of them made their way around the left side of the house, Mose moving a little slower than usual and Horatia watching him like a hawk for any dizziness. As far as Selah could tell, he’d suffered no debilitating or lasting harm from the attack. They had a lot to praise God for. Now she had to trust him with this little complication that had arrived today.

  Like in most large plantations, Ithaca’s kitchen was a freestanding brick building, constructed at a distance to reduce the possibility of fires spreading to the main house. Finished before work started on the big house, it was equipped with a large woodstove, an ample pantry, and plenty of cabinets. Most of the cookware, kitchen tools, and small appliances had been stolen by squatters and vandals while the Daughtry sisters were in exile in Memphis. But Levi would be bringing a shipment of replacements back from town later today.

  Selah couldn’t help a little jolt of excitement at the thought of her home once again running at full capability. This time, though, its staff would be working for honest wages. Be careful, she cautioned herself. We’re not there yet . . .

  As she walked across the kitchen yard with the Lawrences, Horatia clicked her tongue in disgust. “The herb garden needs tending, Mose. And the vegetables shoulda done been planted already.”

  “I know that, woman,” Mose said. “A man only got so many hours in a day. Miss Selah, I’m thinking that boy Tee-Toc, always underfoot, he would make a fine assistant and get some of that done. What you think?”

  “That’s your province, Mose. You take on whoever you want and train him up.” Selah took a deep breath and pushed open the front door. “Charmion? You still here? Look who I brought!” She stood aside to allow the Lawrences to enter behind her.

  She’d expected Horatia’s angry intake of breath, Mose’s soft, joyful laughter. She hadn’t expected to find the obviously pregnant Charmion to be standing on a chair hanging curtains.

  Horatia rushed past Selah. “Girl-child, get yourself down off that chair before you hurt yourself and my grandbaby! Have you lost whatever little sense you was born with?” Horatia took her daughter’s hands in support as she stepped down off the chair—and held them, face working. “Oh, little honey-pie. I’m so glad to see you!”

  With a sob, Charmion flung herself at her mother. “Mama. Oh, Mama.”

  Selah backed out of the kitchen, dabbing her eyes with the hem of her apron. She had done the right thing, encouraging Nathan to bring Charmion on over, early this morning. He’d been working on their little cabin down the road, in the earliest hours before dawn and into the darkness of dusk, so that it was almost ready for its young mistress to turn it into a home. Charmion had walked all around it with her hands pressed to her cheeks. “Oh, Nathan! Is this really ours? I’ll put the baby’s cradle over here by our bed, and the stove can go there, and—” She’d started to cry. “It’s so beautiful, and I want my mama to see it!”

  “She will, darlin’, she will.” Nathan took her into his arms, looking over Charmion’s head at Selah.

  And so Selah had made that happen.

  As she shut the kitchen door now, she watched Mose walk over to pat Horatia on the back.

  Yes. It was good.

  Levi had left the boardinghouse early that morning. His landlady had prepared her usual breakfast of cat-head biscuits and a slab of salted ham, along with a couple of eggs fried over easy. With his belly pleasantly full, he’d sat playing checkers with an old-timer on the front porch of the Mercantile, waiting on Whitmore to open up. No discussions of politics, just listening to an old man’s stories of Indians, bears, hacking a home out of a wilderness, and watching the wonders of modern life roll in on train tracks.

  Yawning, Whitmore arrived around eight, unlocked the door, and invited Levi to come in and browse while he got the coffeepot going.

  Levi leaned on the counter and proffered a paper covered in Selah’s neat script. “I would, but my boss said I was to purchase the items on this list, nothing more, nothing less.”

  Whitmore pulled his spectacles down to the end of his nose and peered. “We’ve got everything there, plus some special orders for Miss Daughtry that arrived on the Saturday afternoon train. If you’ll wait, I’ll be but a moment.”

  Levi nodded and watched Whitmore putter around, stoking the woodstove, pouring water, grinding and measuring coffee, and setting it to boil.

  Whitmore looked over his shoulder. “You’ve stayed in Tupelo longer than I expected you to, Mr. Riggins—certainly longer than most Yanks do. You must be finding the company congenial out at Ithaca.”

  “I am, as a matter of fact.” Levi nodded at the list on the counter. “Miss Selah is a careful, straightforward manager, for all her high standards. I like that in a woman.”

  “Selah’s not everyone’s cup of tea—my wife, for one—but she’s easy to look at, and a man always knows where he stands with her.” Whitmore’s eyes twinkled. “Since she hasn’t run you off, I presume your standing is on solid ground.”

  “We get along well together, and she is very pretty.” For the sake of Selah’s reputation, Levi forbore mentioning that he still found it a modern miracle that Selah Daughtry remained unwed. After a slight pause, he said, “Would you mind telling me what your wife finds objectionable in such a virtuous and godly young woman?”

  “It’s nothing that would bother you and me, Riggins. But that straightforward manner you mentioned can express itself in some . . . shall we say, tart pronouncements from time to time. Miss Selah does not suffer a fool, and she will not tolerate any sort of criticism of her sisters or of her cousin, Miss McGowan.”

  “Has your wife had reason to be critical of Selah’s family?”

  Whitmore sighed. “My wife does love gossip. But even though it’s harmless, I never repeat such nonsense.”

  Whitmore clearly wished to share whatever it was he knew.

  “Now, Mr. Whitmore, you know I won’t believe anything salacious about the Daughtry ladies. You might as well tell me what you mean.”

  “It’s nothing that everyone in town doesn’t already know.” Whitmore looked around and lowered his voice. “Did you know that Miss ThomasAnne came to live with the Daughtrys for a brief time while the two older girls were away at boarding school?”

  “I don’t know much about her at all,” Levi admitted. “She’s a bit like dust in the corner of a room, blown here and there by movement around her, but making little impression on her own.”

  Whitmore nodded. “And she’s been a good companion for the Daughtry gi
rls—highly respectable, impeccable manners, decorously dressed. But she originally came from Georgia, I believe. And that first stint at the Daughtrys’ plantation was covered by a certain . . . cloud of scandal. She’d recently ended an engagement with a soldier, and they say Miss ThomasAnne came to Ithaca to recover from a broken heart.”

  “I see.” Levi pulled at his lip. What a sad and frankly boring little story. Women broke engagements or got jilted every day.

  “Well, you wanted to know what Mrs. Whitmore had to do with it. I’m afraid my wife made a rather unkind assessment as to the reason for Miss ThomasAnne’s previous stay with her cousin, and happened to repeat it in Miss Selah’s hearing one day at church. Selah lit into poor Mrs. Whitmore like a dog protecting a favorite bone, and—” Whitmore’s eyes rolled behind his spectacles. “Neither one of them has ever gotten over it. Miss Selah seems to have rather a talent for holding a grudge.”

  Levi could well believe that might once have been true. But he’d seen the tender heart beneath her toughness, and he suspected that life had lately softened her rigidity a good deal.

  “She is definitely protective and loyal,” he said, “and with all due respect to your good wife, I find it difficult to believe any salacious talk about ThomasAnne. I am interested, however, in Selah’s father. She seems to revere him, but there are no portraits of him anywhere in the house. What can you tell me about him?”

  “Colonel Daughtry?” Whitmore let out a low whistle. “Now there was a man larger than life, wasn’t afraid to take what he wanted and hang on. He loved his wife and those girls and the plantation, and literally died protecting them.”

  “He is dead, then? There seems to be some question.”

  Whitmore scratched his head, shifting the toupee. “Most people assume he is, because if he was alive, he’d be here trying to stop this merger between the M&O and the Mississippi Central. He did keep the M&O from coming across his land once, in the late ’50s, which is why Gum Pond—Tupelo, that is—wound up here. Daughtry wasn’t stupid, though. He managed to buy property across the street from the train depot and put up a saloon.”

  “Selah’s father owned a saloon? What happened to it? Who gets the profit now?”

  “Nobody knows. Not sure Selah even has any idea her pa owned it. All his business interests were run through a bank in Oxford. I imagine it was sold or mortgaged, though, to buy Confederate bonds, like most people of property did.” Whitmore leaned over the counter, settling in to gossip. “Before the war, Ithaca was one of the most profitable plantations in the state. Had its own tannery and brick kiln and forge, Italian marble seats in the privies, the swimming pool, and ice house. The Colonel kept dogs and horses, and I was invited out there to hunt on occasion.” Whitmore preened a bit at this evidence of his own social standing. “You should have seen it when it was all decked out for Christmas. All those fancy mirrors and tables and serving dishes must’ve cost twelve fortunes. And sending the girls to boarding school . . . My lands, that family had connections, and the man was a genius at making money.”

  Levi could well believe it, considering what it was costing to bring the place back. “But Daughtry left it all, to enlist in the Confederate army. A lot of planters paid to have others serve in their places.”

  “True. But the Colonel was a fighting man. Which is why what happened is not surprising, when you think about it. I know you’ve heard by now about the raid on the plantation—I think it was in the spring of ’63—gang of galvanized Yanks took off and went on a spree foraging for food. They found Ithaca and tore the place up, violated poor Mrs. Daughtry, and she died that same day from shock and injury. Just miraculous they didn’t find those beautiful girls. Story is, they were hiding under the porch the whole time.”

  Levi’s hand went to his pocket. “Thank God,” he said. But where was God for Selah’s mother? Did God pick sides? Or did he simply take his hands off the reins and let people destroy themselves willy-nilly?

  “Indeed. They wrote to their grandfather, he came to get them, and word was sent to the Colonel. That’s when things got interesting. He was in Tennessee, commanding a Mississippi regiment during the Chickamauga campaign, so he couldn’t just up and take leave to come home. But he did go a little crazy when he heard something similar happened at General Maney’s plantation outside Chattanooga. Daughtry took his men riding out after the Union sympathizers that plundered Maney’s place, rounded them up, and then went after their families, breaking fingers until the women gave up the locations of a bunch of other traitors. The Colonel—” Whitmore blew out a breath—“shoo, you didn’t want to mess with him. The governor ordered him to bring the men in for trial, but Colonel Daughtry was beyond reason at this point. When some of them escaped, he just up and shot the rest and left ’em in a ditch.”

  Levi had heard some of that story from Schuyler Beaumont, but he wanted details and perspective that Whitmore might provide. “What happened then?”

  “Who knows what would have happened if he’d simply surrendered? But by that time Union forces in the area heard about the massacre, tracked the Colonel down, and arrested him. After a proper trial, he was sentenced to life. Then another twist in the story!” Whitmore chortled. “The Colonel apparently escaped as the Federals closed down Camp Douglas after the war.”

  “You think he left the country?” Levi’s gut was telling him that Selah’s father had played some part in the sequence of events leading up to his own investigation. But big chunks of it made no sense. Especially if he was dead.

  Whitmore laid a finger beside his nose. “I don’t know. But I tell you one thing. Jonathan Daughtry wasn’t a man to fade into obscurity. And if his daughter Selah has a long memory, her pa was one to never forget a slight. And you can take that to the bank.”

  Twenty-Two

  DAUGHTRY SLIPPED THROUGH the woods behind the boy. He was done with shooting from a distance. He believed in the elegance of using the right tool for the right job. Blowing a bridge required explosives. To take out a nest of Yankee soldiers, you needed artillery. Eliminating a spy was a little more subtle.

  The Yank was well trained. In daylight he managed to stay too close to one of the women, usually secreted in the house, and he would come and go under the cover of darkness. Getting rid of him meant Daughtry was going to have to get up close and use a knife—or some other clean, quiet method with his hands.

  Right now it was the boy he was worried about. Like his pa, a traitor and Federalist sympathizer, no telling who he would turn on. He had found the explosives, the little sneak-thief.

  In prison they’d talked about what they were going to do when they got out. Everybody knew of arms stashes—places where the Confederacy had managed to keep weapons out of Union hands. A barn here, an ice house there. So on his way to Mexico and back, he’d collected what he thought he would need, then made his way back home. He’d expected to have the place to himself, with the girls safe in Memphis, the slaves scattered.

  He should have known Selah would come back. She was too much like him, a man’s mind in that willowy female body, a calculating, straightforward temperament that would never allow anyone, even her domineering grandmother, to order her life. Now that she was here, Daughtry wanted to help her keep the place—but not on the dime of that scoundrel Beaumont. The Good Book spoke against families that would devise evil and work iniquity upon their beds. Those who would covet a field and oppress a man and his heritage. The Beaumonts were tainted with abolitionism; the youngest, Camilla, had nearly corrupted his own girls, though he’d removed them from danger just in time.

  Hadn’t he? Yes. His girls might be tenderhearted, but they weren’t stupid, even Joelle, who forever had her head in a book.

  The boy’s footsteps slowed, and Daughtry kept pace. What was the kid up to? Generally he took off early in the morning for town, to spend the day with that milk-toast doctor, or he was out at the forge with Nathan. Daughtry hadn’t forgotten his connection with the train accident and the Yank. P
erhaps he should question the boy first. One could never have too much information.

  Better yet, perhaps he could be turned into a spy. Threaten to harm one of his benefactors. Elegance. Yes.

  Twenty-Three

  “DID YOU SEE THE HEADLINE in this morning’s paper?” Schuyler popped the newspaper open in Selah’s face the moment she opened the door.

  “I haven’t read it yet, but please, do come in,” she said to his back as he stomped past her into the rotunda.

  “Well here!” He wheeled and tossed it at her. “Read it now!”

  She straightened the pages, focused her gaze, and cleared her throat. “‘A vessel has arrived at Mobile on Friday last with 3,500 bags of coffee consigned to a house in that city.’”

  “Not that!” Schuyler snatched the paper and thumped a large headline midway down the front page. “This one. ‘The Mobile and Ohio Railroad has once again overreached itself in taking subsidies from worthless government bonds issued to a gullible public—’ Have you ever read such utter nonsense? And on and on it goes, with contrived allegations of funds misspent by board executives wining and dining themselves at taxpayer expense! Who writes this kind of thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Selah said, trying to look over his shoulder. “Is there a byline?”

  “Just ‘A Concerned Citizen.’ Concerned, my eye! One of those radical Republicans beyond doubt!”

  “Why do you say that? Shouldn’t we all be concerned about our taxes being fairly and wisely spent?”

  “Well, of course we should, but is there any reason to target the M&O?”

  Selah regarded him, suddenly uneasy. “Schuyler, is this true?”

  “No!” he roared. “Do you see me wining and dining anybody? And even if I were, there are legitimate expenses attached to running a business.”

  “Is—are those bonds attached to Ithaca? Is that where the money is coming from?”