A Log Cabin Christmas (19 page)

Mina watched as Sam read, seeing a faint smile, no doubt at the part where Papa predicted Elton would drive her witless, and then she grinned with him when he reached the “twiddlepoop” comment. He glanced at her and then continued reading.

The slight nod Mina took as acceptance of guardianship. When Sam’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline, she bit her lip and thought he’d reached the sparks part.
Heaven help me, I can’t look. Now he must be reading the part about a spark catching flame, and father having high hopes and better plans
.

“Sounds just like him.” Sam’s agreement got her to look up. Only then did she recognize his even tone for the trap it was. His eyes seared through her, making her blush even harder.

“His keen sense of humor comes through,” she ventured.

“Twiddlepoop,” Belinda snorted from where she read the letter.

“Yes.” Mina almost sagged with relief at the distraction. “Papa always called Elton the twiddlepoop.”

“Who’s talking about Elton?” her nurse muttered.

“I didn’t mean his sense of humor.” Sam’s intensity didn’t lessen as his gaze snagged hers. “Strategizing runs strong in your family, Mina.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I didn’t know Papa had hatched any hopes regarding the two of us, but …” Somehow, the appropriate apology withered, wordless, on her lips.
I hope he’s right
couldn’t be confessed. So Mina just let it trail off into nothing.

“Strategizing isn’t a bad thing.” He stepped toward her. “Not when the Montroses seem particularly gifted in it.”

“Oh.” Her breath fled as Sam’s meaning sank in. “You mean, you think Papa’s plans, er, hopes, might be worth considering?”

“I was considering them before I knew he’d planned them.”

“When I arrived, I’d hoped to make a home. After the quakes, when you said I belonged, I knew it wasn’t the place that mattered. It’s the people.” She met his gaze, lowered her voice, and amended, “The person.”

“Having already opened one present this Christmas, it seems I’ve become a greedy man. Some gifts are given only when asked for, and there’s one I desire more than any other. Wilhelmina Montrose,” Sam sank down on one knee to finish, “would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

“We’ve not known each other long,” she cautioned and then paused to consider. “My heavenly and earthly fathers seem to have conspired to put me in your care, and my heart agrees. Yes, Samuel Carver. I’ll gladly be your bride.”

Belinda’s cheers let Mina know she approved.

“But I don’t know where the pastor lives in these parts,” she said.

“We don’t have one,” Sam acknowledged. “But until we can reach a proper priest in spring, Mr. Stearns
is
a captain….”

Dearest Lady Reed
,

I can scarcely believe that it’s been a full half year since you sat across the solicitor’s office, pretending to be a stranger and helping me fool Mr. Gorvin so that I could begin my great adventure
.

Do you know, when the scriptures speak of charity, of love, as the virtue that “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,” I think it must also mean such love is God’s gift to strengthen us so we can bear, endure, and still hope. How else to explain the inconceivable events after I’d arrived in America and found my guardian?

Surely even your great imagination would be astonished to hear that two days after I’d found Mr. Carver’s mountain cabin, a series of devastating groundswells threatened our lives
.

Love saw us through those harrowing quakes, which I think shook us closer together. Incredible as it may seem, we were wed by a sea captain on dry land on Christmas Day! And you might not believe such a short union as ours would already be blessed with a coming child
.

Nevertheless …

All my love,
Wilhelmina Carver

T
he quake depicted in this story was the first of the sequence of New Madrid Earthquakes, a series of three major quakes that took place December 16, 1811, January 23, 1812, and February 7, 1812. By far the largest-known quakes east of the Rocky Mountains, historians and geologists conservatively rank them as probable 7.7 on the Richter scale—seismographs not having been invented yet in 1811.

The incident depicted in this novella, the quake on December 16, 1811, occurred at roughly 2:15 a.m. and was followed by a large aftershock at approximately 7:00 a.m. The more specific details, such as shifting chimneys, the eerie stillness and the strange luminescence, the rushing rumbling roar preceding the shaking, clear streams giving off the odor of eggs and poisoning wildlife, are pulled from firsthand Kentucky eyewitness accounts in journals of the period.

While no single account mentions all such details, they are each accurate and compiled to give a more complete picture of the experience and devastation of the quakes.

Kelly Eileen Hake is a reader favorite of Barbour Publishing’s Heartsong Presents book club, where she released several of her first books. A credentialed secondary English teacher in California with an MA in writing popular fiction, she is known for her own style of witty, heartwarming historical romance.

by Liz Johnson

For Judy and Ann, first readers and faithful friends. Thank you for your encouragement, kindness, and example of joy.

December 3, 1864
Franklin, Tennessee

A
lthough it had not yet snowed that morning, Cora Sinclair sniffed the air for any sign of a coming storm. Despite the frigid breeze, oh, how she wished it would snow now. How she wished the pure white flakes would cover the ground stained with the blood of thousands. At least until Christmas.

Pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders, she ventured a swift glance at the white columns and brick walls of Carnton. Unable to control her emotions, tears filled her eyes, and she shuddered as memories of the last two days in the grand house flooded through her.

“Has it really only been two days?” She spoke to herself, as no servants could be spared to walk the half mile with her to her home.

While the sun rose, illuminating the barren trees and scarred earth, Cora could not help but envision the soldiers who had marched over this very land. Her gaze darted around the grassy fields, looking for signs of any soldiers still there.

The silence turned eerie, and more shivers ran down her arms.

There! What was that shadow in the tall grass?

Fear rooted her feet in place as the shadow moved.

Surely it wasn’t a Union soldier who’d lost his regiment, interested in taking a woman as a prisoner. Was it?

Why had she been so swift to assure Mrs. McGavock that she could safely find her way back to the cabin she shared with her grandfather? Why hadn’t she waited until someone could be spared to join her?

Cora tried to swallow but found the lump in her throat was actually her wildly beating heart. A strangled sob tore from her as the shadow moved again. And again.

She tripped over her feet as she backed away, falling hard on her hip. Closing her eyes, clutching the lapels of her cloak, and pulling her shoulders up to her ears, she waited as the rustling grass drew near. When the movement stopped, she squinted at the bright red fur and round eyes of a little fox several yards away.

Jumping to her feet, she threw decorum aside, picked up her skirts, and ran toward the small cluster of trees that hid a wooden cabin just off the Harpeth River.

Her breath came in ragged gasps as she reached the outer ring of sycamore trees, and she leaned heavily on a sturdy trunk until her breathing returned to normal. Dark auburn waves had escaped the knot at the nape of her neck, and she pushed them behind her ears, her hands growing damp from the streams of tears down her cheeks.

Suddenly the swelling sunlight shimmered off a piece of gold.

Her mind had to be playing tricks on her again. She blinked several times, but the soldier didn’t vanish. In his Union-blue frock, and covered with branches up to his waist, he sat perfectly still against the base of a tree. His right arm hung at an odd angle, the fabric there more purple than the deep blue of the rest of his coat.

She took a tentative step toward him. “Are you—are you …?” She didn’t know what she was going to ask, but he let out a low, pain-filled groan, effectively halting her words and the hand she reached out.

Cora jumped back, snatching her hand to her chest. As she concentrated on his shoulders, they rose and fell in a shallow rhythm.

“Papa!” she yelled. But she was much too far away for her words to carry to her grandfather.

Racing over the uneven earth between giant trees, she finally reached the clearing dominated by the one-story log cabin. She nearly crashed into the front door when the handle did not unlatch on her first attempt. After yanking on the rope again, the lever on the inside of the door rose, and it swung open.

“Pa–papa.” She swallowed, trying to catch her breath as the old man with silver hair slowly pushed himself from the rocking chair in front of the fireplace. He still held the family Bible open. “Please. There’s a soldier in the grove. We have to help him.”

Cora didn’t realize how much the fire in the stone hearth warmed the cabin until she stepped back into the freezing cold, her teeth chattering. Stepping next to her grandfather, she leaned into him as a coughing fit seized his body. That same cough had kept him from accompanying her to Carnton when the fighting finally finished and Mattie ran to their home asking for help with the wounded.

Papa waved off her look of concern and trudged against the wind as she led him toward the fallen man.

When they reached the soldier, he hadn’t moved, but his shoulders continuedto rise and fall. Papa quickly laid one of the blankets he’d brought with him on the ground. “Help me roll him onto this.”

Together they pulled the brush off of him and then gently laid him on his side. Rolling him onto the blanket seemed the only option, as he was much too big to lift. He never stirred as they situated him in the middle of the makeshift travois, or as Papa slipped one of the blankets under his arms and covered him with the third.

“Take that corner,” he said, and Cora bent to pick up the edge of the blankets at her feet.

It took them several tugs to get the blanket moving, but once it began sliding over the roots and foliage, they continued at a steady pace all the way back to the cabin.

They dropped the blankets next to the fire, and the soldier moaned but made no other movement until Papa rolled him onto his side. Just as the discoloration of his overcoat suggested, the telltale round hole from a minié ball marred his right shoulder.

“Boil water, and get some clean cloths,” Papa directed. “We need to take it out.”

Cora carried her teapot to the corner of the room near the door and filled it from the large tub of creek water there. Then she slid the pot onto the cast-iron stove, which Papa had added to the cabin just a couple of years before the war began. While she waited for the water to begin bubbling, she hastened to the bedroom, rummaging through the single trunk at the foot of the bed. Her hand finally landed on soft, white cotton, and she removed a pair of much-used petticoats. She had outgrown them more than a year before, and had been saving them in case she needed to mend her only other pair.

Heat rose in her cheeks as she realized that her underthings would soon be tied around a man to whom she had never even been introduced. Staring into his face, she tried to perceive the kind of man he might be and how he had come to be in their woods. Was he a deserter? Or had he simply lost his way and been separated from his regiment?

Mud-caked curls clung to his temples, and dark lashes convulsed, but his eyes never opened. Unruly whiskers covered his cheeks and chin, but he was not altogether unattractive. The slope of his broad shoulders and quirk of his colorless lips made her heart beat unusually fast, and her stomach filled with a sensation she could not name. Certainly it was only concern for his well-being. Someone cared about this man and waited for his return.

Was he married? Was his wife waiting at home for him, terrified of reading his name listed among the missing or dead?

Just the thought forced her to put her mind on the task at hand. She ripped the cloth in her hands into even strips, as Papa struggled to remove the man’s coat.

“Let me help you.”

Papa looked up and smiled as they rolled him to his stomach. “Will you pull on that cuff?”

Soon they had stripped away his outer clothes and piled them on top of the satchel he had carried, leaving only his undershirt and the red stain that covered nearly the whole of his back. Papa sliced the saturated fabric with his knife, until they could clearly see the man’s injury.

Cora bit down on her lower lip to keep from crying out at the sight, and she blinked several times in order to rein in her emotions.

Papa’s hand shook as he held the knife over the wound, and she reached out. “I’ll do it, if you like.” Her eyes pleaded with him to refuse her offer, but he did not. He simply handed her the blade.

“Good. I’ll hold him down. You cut out the minié ball.” Papa leaned down on the man’s shoulders, pressing him into the floor.

She pinched her eyes closed as she poured steaming water over the weapon and into a basin.

“God, give me a steady hand,” she whispered as she touched the point to the jagged opening. Blood immediately bubbled from the hole, and she gulped another breath as she pressed in deeper until metal met metal. The tip of the blade scratched and prodded at the foreign object, and the soldier cried out.

Cora jumped at his agony but didn’t stop digging until the projectile poked out of its aperture. She snatched the minié ball away then pressed on the seeping wound with one of the strips from her petticoat.

Papa’s knee cracked as he stood and walked toward the cabinet near the kitchen table. He pulled out a glass decanter and swiftly returned to her side. “We have to make sure it’s clean, or he’ll develop a fever.”

She agreed, nodded, and pulled back the cloth as Papa poured the amber liquid into the injury. The muscles in the man’s back bunched and quivered, and he let out several groans, but still he did not open his eyes.

By the time they had bandaged the wound and cleaned up after the surgery, the sun had set, and the only light in the room came from the flickering fire.

When another coughing fit took hold of Papa, Cora put her hand under his elbow and helped him toward the bedroom. “Why don’t you go to sleep? I’ll stay up and make sure that he doesn’t take a turn for the worse.” She looked over her shoulder at the sleeping man, a pang of fear eating at her stomach.

How could she possibly lose another man to the wounds of this battle? Already the faces of the men haunted her dreams.

“Thank you,” Papa mumbled as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Despite his stooped shoulders, he still stood nearly a head taller than her. “Call me if there’s any change.”

“I will.”

Papa left the door to the bedroom mostly open as Cora walked past their patient to the jumbled pile of clothes on the floor. Folding them piece by piece, she cringed when she held up the long jacket, covered in blood and grime from the floor of the surrounding forest. As she folded it, a piece of paper fell from an interior pocket. She bent to pick it up, surprised that there was no envelope or address on what was clearly a letter.

Many men carried them into battle. Letters to send to their loved ones if they didn’t make it home, but this one was simply folded in half.

Glancing into the handsome features of the man before her, she opened the page filled with long, even pen strokes. What secrets hid beneath his long, brown lashes? Was he dreaming of the woman to whom this letter belonged?

Her stomach clenched at the idea of reading another woman’s post, but she pressed on. How would she know where to address it if he did not survive?

The closing words swam before Cora’s eyes, and she had to stuff the letter back into the jacket pocket before it made her cry any harder.

Every letter just like it—and the reason for them—had made her sick to her stomach as she’d passed water and tea to the soldiers crowding the house and yard at Carnton. If only she could share that pain and grief with someone.

But who could understand? Papa needed her to be strong. And the McGavock family would be consumed with caring for the wounded for months.

The faces of those wounded men and the women who waited for them to return were memories she had to carry on her own.

Straightening her shoulders, she brushed her fingertips over her eyelids and cleared her throat. As she set the captain’s folded uniform at the foot of his pallet, she shot him one more glance.

But this time, something had changed.

His stunning brown eyes stared back at her, sending her stomach to her toes.