A Rebel Heart Page 30

  Schuyler eyed Levi obstinately for a moment, then gave a jerky nod.

  Levi smiled and returned his attention to Whitmore’s wife. “First of all, as a returning soldier myself, I will posit that those of us with any amount of gumption and drive have not waited five years to find ways to support ourselves and our families. We are assessing our skills and finding places in our states and communities that need them. The transportation market, for example, is exploding, and as people travel from one end of the nation to the other, more and more establishments such as Daughtry House will spring up along the railroads. You are also mistaken about the Daughtry sisters’ willingness to hire their former slaves. At least four of them are more in the nature of partners, rather than employees. These people—the Lawrences and the Vincents—are not just available and willing to work cheaply. They are the most skilled and experienced managers I have encountered in all my travels across the Midwest and the mid-South. And I assure you that has been extensive. Charity has its place, certainly, but this is pure business savvy.”

  By now he was breathing hard, but realized he hadn’t stammered once during that entire speech. He looked around to find that an even larger crowd had gathered. It appeared that he was making an impromptu speech to the entire party. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  “Furthermore,” he said pleasantly, “I believe the public at large will find Daughtry House to be a comfortable, well-run lodging with a flair for food, entertainment, and luxury beyond compare—and word will spread to that effect. I am proud to be associated with these three beautiful sisters, one of whom I intend to marry—which completely negates your final assumption, ma’am.” He bowed and stalked out of the room to stand in the empty rotunda.

  He had not meant to add that last point.

  Levi certainly had a carrying voice when he chose to use it. Standing in the breakfast room doorway with her sisters just behind her, Selah collapsed against the doorframe.

  Aurora let out an unladylike whistle. “Well, that settles that,” she said to Joelle. “I’m definitely not going back to Memphis now. I wouldn’t miss the fireworks for anything!”

  Joelle gave Selah a shove. “You’d better go check on him. He looks like he might lose his supper.”

  Selah turned her head to take in the sight of her champion and defender, standing in the full light of the chandelier with his face white as a bale of cotton. He did look a bit sick.

  She took a deep breath. “Pray for me, girls.” She approached Levi, vaguely aware of the buzz of conversation that had erupted after Levi left the dining room. Bees of another pesky sort, she thought. “Levi Riggins,” she said quietly, “I heard what you said.”

  He looked at her, lips pressed together. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’d do it again. And I’m going to keep asking until you say yes.”

  She laughed. “All right. I think I’ll enjoy that. But I want to show you something first.” Keeping a slight distance, she swayed a little while he watched, rapt. “You told me to hold on to my handkerchief until I was ready to give it back to you to keep.” She reached into the front of her dress and pulled out a neatly folded scrap of fabric, then walked up to him, close enough to brush his waistcoat. “I’m ready.”

  “Selah,” he breathed and reached for her.

  “Oh, no, no, not yet.” She stepped back. “Look here.” She showed him the embroidered corner of the handkerchief, where she had repaired the damage to the colored thread of her initial and connected a new one to it.

  “That’s an R.” His voice was low, hoarse.

  “Yes. Do you know when I worked on this?”

  He shook his head.

  “The day after you returned it to me. When you went home to Chicago, I slept with it under my pillow every night, praying for you. Until last night. That’s when I told God I wanted what he wanted for me and for you, no matter what.”

  “Did you?” He was smiling a little now, the color coming back into those sharp-bladed cheeks. “I told him the same thing, just a minute ago.”

  “Will you waltz with me, Levi?”

  “I’ll do better than that.” He picked her up off the floor, whirled her around in a triple-meter step, and started humming the “Blue Danube.” After a minute, he said, “Selah Daughtry, will you marry me? That way you won’t have to take the R out of your handkerchief.”

  “Well, it’s your handkerchief. You did want it back, didn’t you?”

  “How about if we share it? You have custody for a year, then it’ll be my turn. And so on.”

  “All right. You always know the right thing to say.”

  “Which is a good thing, since you tend to make people angry.” Levi whistled. “Mrs. Whitmore is quite the witch when she’s insulted, isn’t she?”

  Selah laughed. “We don’t have to let her stay here. It’s our hotel.”

  “Yes . . .” He set her down, steadying her when she reeled a bit. “You do know that I have to keep my job, don’t you?”

  “And I have to stay with the hotel.” She blinked, dizzy and in love. “We’re going to figure that out. But right now I want to kiss you.”

  He let her.

  One

  THE WRITING WAS ON THE WALL: apparently she had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Why else would Schuyler Beaumont have come to the opera tonight?

  Joelle adjusted the focus of the opera glasses Grandmama had loaned her for the evening. The mahogany paneling, gilded gaslit chandeliers, and velvet draperies of the Greenlaw Opera House blurred into the background of Schuyler’s laughing countenance. He was golden himself, drat him, like Dionysus come down to carouse with his mortal fraternity brothers. Clad with careless elegance in a well-tailored black suit and snowy linens, longish hair tumbling over his brow in burnished waves, he fairly glowed with joie de vivre.

  “Joelle, are you not feeling well? Perhaps I could fetch you a lemonade.”

  Startled, she dropped the glasses to her lap and turned to find Gil Reese blinking at her with myopic concern. He was already halfway out of his seat.

  She waved him down. “No, no, of course not. I’m perfectly fine.” She sucked in a calming breath and forced Schuyler out of her mind. Mostly. “I’m having a wonderful time.”

  “But you were growling. Or clearing your throat. I thought you might be about to—you know . . .” Gil’s narrow, homely face flooded with color.

  Joelle’s older cousin ThomasAnne, seated to her left, patted her hand. “Oh, dear, I knew that fish at dinner looked suspect.”

  “There was nothing wrong with the fish.” Amusement rescued Joelle from aggravation. “I’m not ill. I am merely surprised to find our business partner in the audience, after he assured me he’d rather be shot at dawn than—”

  “—than watch a lot of fat ninnies caper about in tights, caterwauling in some foreign language.” Dr. Ben Kidd, slouched in his seat on the other side of ThomasAnne, laughed. “Good line, that. As was yours that you could surely find someone to oblige him.”

  Joelle treated Ben to a frown. He was well aware that she’d invited Pastor Gil more or less to spite Schuyler—all three men had been present when the tickets arrived at Daughtry House three days ago by special courier. The satisfaction of watching Schuyler’s lips tighten almost outweighed the discomfort of today’s long train ride from Tupelo to Memphis, magnified tenfold by guilt over Gil’s undying and equally unwanted adoration. It had been a great mistake to raise his hopes this way.

  How many times over their lifelong acquaintance had Schuyler goaded her into some decision she’d come to regret?

  “Where is he?” Gil grabbed the glasses and began to search the audience.

  “Down front with that pack of loud young men.” Joelle attempted nonchalance. “The tall one in the middle with his cravat half untied.”

  “I don’t know how you can tell that from the back.” Gil handed the glasses back to her. “But I wouldn’t be surprised. Beaumont is an undisciplined—” he stopped himself and gl
anced at ThomasAnne—“idiot.”

  Joelle felt no need to encourage Gil’s incessant criticism of Schuyler, however justified it might be. “Shh. The lights are dimming.”

  “Oh, joy,” muttered Dr. Ben.

  The curtain opened, and Joelle was soon lost in musical euphoria. Tonight’s program, Mozart’s comic opera Cosí fan tutte, starred the celebrated Italian soprano Delfina Fabio as Fiordiligi. Other roles were filled by local talent, and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra accompanied with creditable style from an improvised pit at the foot of the stage.

  Joelle might have her differences with her autocratic grandparent but could only be grateful for this unexpected gift of tickets to a performance she would never have been able to afford on her salary as associate manager of the Daughtry House Hotel in Tupelo, Mississippi. The lights came on for intermission, and she couldn’t help glancing at her escort. The possessiveness in his expression made her jump to her feet. “I need some air.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Gil said, rising.

  “No, I have to—I need to—” She circled a hand vaguely.

  Blushing, Gil dropped back into his seat. “Oh.”

  She’d just lied to a pastor, compounding her sins. But if you didn’t say a thing out loud, was it really a lie? Before ThomasAnne could offer to come as well, she made her way to the aisle, stepping over people and muttering apologies. She’d almost made it to the lobby when someone grabbed her by the arm. She whirled, set to clobber the drunk who had accosted her.

  And faced the untied cravat and stubborn, slightly whiskery chin of Dionysus himself. She looked up and found Schuyler treating her to a disapproving glare.

  “What are you doing out here by yourself?” he growled.

  Gently bred single women didn’t wander around alone. She knew that. But one didn’t make it through a brutal civil war without some skill in self-defense. She should punch him after all. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I respectfully disagree. If you are leaving, I’m going with you. I’ve had enough of—”

  “I’m not leaving, you cretin. It’s intermission. I’m doing what one does during intermission.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “Women travel in packs. Where’s ThomasAnne?”

  “Schuyler, you are not my guardian. You are not my brother. Thank God, we are only remotely related. So what I do during intermission, and who I am with, is none of your business. But if we are being interfering and inquisitive, it occurs to me to wonder what brings you here, considering your violent disdain for the fine arts.”

  “Tit for tat, my lady bluestocking.” Schuyler had drawn himself up so that he towered over her nearly six-foot height. “You will just have to remain in suspense.”

  “Well, if you’re going to be childish, please excuse me while I conclude my business.” She dipped a pert curtsey and turned.

  “Wait—Joelle, don’t go like that.” He caught her hand, and she whirled.

  “What, Schuyler?” she said through her teeth.

  “I want you to meet my friends. These are important people who can wield great influence on the success of the hotel.”

  “Is that what this is? You need a pretty face to sweeten some deal you’re working on?”

  “No! I mean, of course you’re pretty, but that’s not what—” He looked at her in gratifying frustration. “How do you always contrive to twist my words to come out wrong?”

  “You seem to manage that quite well without my help.” When his face reddened but he somehow restrained a retort, she sighed. “I suppose I can spare a few minutes before we go home when the opera is over. Who are these important guests?”

  “General Nathan Bedford Forrest, for one. He is interested in bringing his wife over to Tupelo to celebrate their wedding anniversary this summer.”

  She supposed she should be flattered. The general was one of the most celebrated Confederate officers to survive the Recent Unpleasantness. In fact, the man had come out smelling like the proverbial rose, retiring in seeming obscurity to his north Mississippi plantation, from whence he quietly directed the post-war recovery of the Southern ruling class.

  Oh how she was going to enjoy making sure that never happened.

  Note to the Reader

  WRITING A NOVEL SET during the Reconstruction Era turned out to be an educational experience as well as an emotionally draining one. I’m not sure where the original idea came from, but somehow I thought I was going to write a light, romantic story about three sisters trying to run a luxury hotel in northeast Mississippi.

  Um, for anyone who might be in doubt, five years past a bloody civil war in an economically and socially crushed culture is not exactly a lively setting.

  Fortunately, though, the human spirit manages to find love, hope, and encouragement—and yes, even humor—in the darkest of times.

  The elephant in the room, of course, is the complicated and emotionally charged subject of race relations. Some of what I read in the course of research made me cringe. Some of it brought me to tears. Some of it made me laugh. I tried, with the guidance of my early readers and my editor, to keep terminology both historically accurate and sensitive to the ears of modern readers. That is a really, really tricky thing to do, and if I missed the mark one way or the other, I hope the reader will forgive and put it down to “the author tried her best to tell a rip-roaring good story.” I was more interested in low-level individual, family, and neighborly relationships, rather than the broader cultural impact on the nation—but that may change in later books. We’ll see.

  The reader may find some of the “technology” included in this story to be anachronistic or, at the very least, surprising. There was a real swimming pool at Ithaca (there was one at Waverley, on which Ithaca is based), the chandelier was lit by gas, and yes, there was indoor plumbing in some parts of the country at the time. Scientists were making great strides in experiments with electricity and magnetics, leading to the development of electric trains (though likely not by a fourteen-year-old genius).

  There was a real Thompson House hotel in Oxford, Mississippi, which opened only a couple of months after the date of the events in this book. I hope that slight adjustment of fact won’t ruin the story; I just couldn’t resist including it. And the reader will probably be interested to know that the opening train wreck is based on a real-life tragedy (though it’s doubtful it was caused by a saboteur!).

  Most readers like to know which characters are “real people.” Levi’s wartime commander, Brigadier General Ben Grierson, was quite the Union hero. Several books and historical articles have been written about his cunning and courageous exploits during his raids through Mississippi (including his memoir, which I found particularly useful and fascinating). Except for Grierson and a few well-known Civil War historical figures like Lincoln, Lee, Grant, and Pinkerton, all other characters are my own. The renegade plantation raid during the Chickamauga Campaign was based on a real event, and the fact of Southern war criminals defecting to Mexico happened as mentioned in the story. The basic plot is my own, though I read several of Allan Pinkerton’s detective stories to get a feel for how an agent would function undercover. Really entertaining stuff.

  For details of daily life during this fascinating period, I recommend A Lost Heroine of the Confederacy: The Diaries and Letters of Belle Edmondson, edited by William and Loretta Gilbraith. Belle Edmondson lived in Memphis but traveled extensively through eastern Mississippi—as a Confederate spy!—and spent a good bit of time with the Snow family at Waverley. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

  I hope you enjoyed Selah and Levi’s story. Meanwhile, I’ll be having fun settling Joelle and Schuyler’s lifelong feud! As always, I welcome comments and questions through my website at www.bethwhite.net.

  Acknowledgments

  THIS BOOK WOULD NEVER have seen the light of day without the intervention of the “usual suspects”: my agent, Chip MacGregor; my editors, Lonnie Hull Dupont and Barb Barnes; my husband, Scott; and my
best friend, Tammy Thompson. My son, Ryan, was also embroiled in plot twists that I would never have thought up in a million years.

  For the specifics of this story, I’m greatly indebted to the Snow family, who own Waverley Plantation Mansion in West Point, Mississippi. I spent a wonderful day at Waverley in the summer of 2015, looking around, asking questions, and taking notes about life on a plantation before, during, and after the Civil War. That same week I poked around for a few hours in the Oren Dunn City Museum in Tupelo, Mississippi. A bonus of that research trip came when I was able to share a meal in Tupelo with my dear friend and fellow high school band geek, Jimmy Spencer, and his sweet wife, Monica. The Spencers answered all kinds of weird questions about their city—known to the modern world as the birthplace of Elvis Presley—and somehow managed to refrain from shouting “Hotty Toddy” even once (Go Dawgs).

  I would like to thank my new friend John McWilliams, guru of antique firearms, for instantly answering questions that it would have taken me hours of research to track down. Also DW Lynd, who helped me sort out train wreck details. All mistakes are mine, though, I assure you.

  Lastly, I mustn’t fail to mention the people who faithfully prayed for me as I wrote and rewrote and started over and rewrote some more . . . especially Hannah, Mom, Robin, Katie, Kim, Emma, Jan, Kathy, LG, Cindy, Bobbi, Penny, Redemption orchestra folks, Redemption staff, and members of my Grow Group. And I’m grateful to my choir students at Davidson High School for understanding and forgiving when Mrs. White gets the book deadline crazies.

  I hope you guys enjoyed the story.

  Beth White’s day job is teaching music at an inner-city high school in historic Mobile, Alabama. A native Mississippian, she writes historical romance with a Southern drawl and is the author of The Pelican Bride, The Creole Princess, and The Magnolia Duchess. Her novels have won the American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award, the RT Book Club Reviewers’ Choice Award, and the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award. Learn more at www.bethwhite.net.