Every Perfect Gift (30 page)

“The bullet grazed you. Lucky you were wearing your heavy cloak or it would have been worse.” Gillie poured water into a basin, dampened a small towel, and touched it to the wound. Sophie clenched her teeth and drew in a sharp breath. The towel felt like sandpaper against her raw skin. Her eyes watered.

“There.” Gillie finished cleaning the wound, then opened her medical bag and took out a jar of salve. “This will sting for a moment, but then you’ll feel much better.”

Sophie braced for the application of the salve, then watched as Gillie expertly bandaged her wound. “What about Mr. Worth?”

“Dr. Spencer is tending to him. Soon as I finish this, I’ll check on him.” Gillie tied off the bandage and helped Sophie button her shirtwaist. “What on earth were you doing at Blue Smoke in the middle of the night?”

“It wasn’t the middle of the night when we started. Julian Worth asked me to go with him. He wants to talk to Ethan, but Ethan doesn’t want to hear it.”

“I see.”

“I wish Ethan would listen. It might resolve a lot of things for him. I hate to see him so closed up inside. He’s a wonderful man.”

Gillie replaced the lid on the salve jar and smiled. “I think there’s more to your feelings than mere admiration.”

Sophie nodded. “I love him. I think he has feelings for me too, but something always gets in the way of his declaring them.”

“He’s only waiting for the right moment to tell you.”

Sophie sat up on the cot and brushed her hair away from her face. “What makes you so sure?”

“When you fainted, he scooped you up and carried you in here. I’ve never seen a man look so worried, or so besotted either.” Gillie grinned. “He kissed you when he thought I wasn’t looking.”

“He kissed me? And I missed the whole thing. Just my luck.”

“Don’t worry. Something tells me you’ll have plenty of opportunities to enjoy his affections.”

“I must look awful.” Sophie fished for her hairpins and tried to impose some semblance of order upon her thick mane. “Be honest. Do I look as terrible as I feel?”

“You’re definitely a little peaked, but that’s to be expected.” Gillie patted her hand. “I want you to rest here while I assist Dr. Spencer. I’ll tell Mr. Heyward you’re awake and good as new.”

A door opened, and Gillie Gilman came down the hall, drying her hands on a white towel.

Ethan got to his feet. “How are they?”

“Dr. Spencer is finishing with Mr. Worth now.”

“Is he—”

“Alive for the moment. The tourniquet helped, but he’s lost a lot of blood. The bullet damaged a vein and shattered the bone.” Gillie arched her back and briefly closed her eyes, and Ethan saw how exhausted she was. “It took awhile to pick out the fragments. I hope we got them all.”

“Me too. What about Sophie?”

“A bullet grazed her shoulder. But she’s fine. She’s resting now.”

“A bullet?” Shock and rage moved through him. “I ought to kill Crocker.”

“Violence begets violence, Mr. Heyward.” She crossed the room and opened the curtains, letting in the pale morning light. “Sheriff McCracken will deal with him.”

Dr. Spencer came in, his trousers and shirt spattered with blood. “Mr. Heyward.”

“How is he?”

“Sleeping. I’ve given him enough laudanum to keep him quiet for several hours.”

“But he will be all right?”

“If we’re lucky, and if sepsis doesn’t set in. His thigh bone is blown to smithereens. He also had a bad concussion when his head hit the ground, but it’s the leg I’m most concerned about. Even if he pulls through this, I’m afraid Mr. Worth won’t ever walk normally.”

“May I see him?”

The doctor shrugged. “He won’t know the difference, but it
certainly won’t do any harm.” He turned to his assistant. “I’m dead on my feet, and so are you. Go on home, Gillie.”

“I want to stay with Sophie.”

“I’ll stay,” Ethan said.

The doctor consulted his pocket watch. “Nearly seven. I need to clean up and get something to eat. I’ll be back soon.”

“Take your time. I’ll watch over them.”

They left. Ethan walked down the hall and peered into the room where Julian lay, the curtains drawn against the light. A sharp medicinal smell permeated the air. He stood for a moment in the heavy silence, watching the rise and fall of Julian’s chest, then closed the door and went to find Sophie.

TWENTY-FIVE

Ethan opened the door and peered in. Sophie lay curled onto her side, sleeping softly, her fist beneath her chin. The sight of the thick bandage beneath her sleeve sent another surge of anger coursing through him. If Crocker wanted to shoot at him, fine. But none of this was her fault.

She stirred and opened her eyes. “Ethan.”

“Sorry to wake you.”

“I was just resting my eyes.”

He smiled. So like her to deny any vulnerability.

She sat up and scooted her feet along the floor, looking for her shoes.

“Here. Let me help.” He crossed the room, fished her shoes from beneath the infirmary cot, and helped her with the tiny buttons, trying to ignore the effect the sight of her small delicate feet had on him.

She put her hands up and fussed with her hair. “I’m a fright.”

“You look fine. I’m sorry you got into the middle of my feud with Lutrell Crocker.”

“How is your brother?”

His stomach lurched. “So you know about Julian and me?”

“Yes.”

“How much did he tell you?”

“Only that you think he committed murder. He says that he can prove he didn’t, but you won’t listen.”

“You disapprove.”

“I think one should always give another the benefit of the doubt.” She thought of her one and only conversation with her mother. “Even if you are disappointed in the end.”

Ethan held the door for her, and they went down the hall to Julian’s room. “You’re right. I’ve been sitting here all night, and I finally realized that. When Julian wakes up—if he wakes up—I’ll listen to his evidence.”

“You sound as if you don’t want to be proven wrong.”

“I suppose it’s never easy to have one’s assumptions challenged, but it’s time. I see that now.”

He opened the door to Julian’s room and they went in. Sophie moved to open the curtains, but Ethan stopped her with an upraised hand. “I want to tell you everything. It’ll be easier in the darkness.”

“All right.”

He motioned her to a chair and leaned against the door frame, ankles and arms crossed. “Promise you won’t hate me.”

“I don’t think I could,” she said, her voice soft, “even if I wanted to.”

“All right then.” He focused on Julian’s face and began.

“Julian is nine years older than I am. As a boy, I couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t around. His mother, Martha, looked after my mother at Ravenswood. Mother allowed Martha and Julian to sleep in the house instead of the servants’ quarters. She taught Martha to sew. And to read—a secret she took to her grave because my father would surely have disapproved or forbidden it.

“Julian was the only boy his age who was not sent to the fields every morning. Father allowed him to remain behind, and
I thought he did it for my sake. My only sister died when I was five, and he saw how lonely I was. Then one day I overheard my parents arguing and realized that my father and Martha were in fact Julian’s parents. Though, of course, he denied Julian his name.”

Sophie nodded. “That must have been a shock.”

“It was. I was furious with Father for betraying my mother. But after my parents died and I grew older, I realized I had no memories of ever seeing affection pass between them.” A long sigh escaped his lips. “I don’t know, Sophie. Perhaps my mother was aware of my father’s assignation and turned a blind eye. Perhaps she even encouraged it. She wouldn’t have been the first woman of her station to do so.”

Julian made a soft moaning sound and they both turned, watching and waiting until he quieted.

“Julian knew about his mother and my father. We talked about it one time, and he made me promise never to mention it again. He resented the fact that I was denied nothing while he and his mother lacked for almost everything.”

“Even so,” Sophie said, keeping her voice low, “resentment is not the same thing as murder. What made you think Julian was responsible?”

“Because I saw him. Or I thought I saw him . . .” Ethan’s voice faltered, and he began again.

“When the war came, we heard rumors of slave uprisings, of plantation owners being killed in their beds. It happened to my mother’s second cousins, the Witherspoons. Union soldiers were riding through the countryside, setting fire to everything, urging the slaves to revolt, promising them their freedom. But somehow we never thought such violence would touch our home. Then one morning it did.”

Despite the intervening years, the memories of that day
overtook him with such force that he couldn’t speak. He balled his fists and swallowed hard until his composure returned.

“Go on, Ethan.” Sophie’s calm gaze found his. She folded her hands and waited, her green eyes bright with unshed tears.

“That morning started out like any other. The overseer, Jonas Carpenter, came to the door to tell Mother that several of the slaves were too sick to work. One was about to deliver a child. Mother gathered her things and went down to the quarters to tend to them. Father finished reading his paper and retired to his study to work on his account books. Julian and I went fishing, but nothing was biting. After a while we got bored. He said, ‘I’ll race you home,’ and took off down the road.

“I tried to catch him, but he was older and faster, and I lost sight of him. I’d heard him talk about a shortcut through some woods behind the slave cemetery. Mother had told me to stay away from there, but that day I decided to try it. Julian had been teasing me all morning about not being able to keep up with him, and I figured the shortcut might put me back home ahead of him.

“Later I asked myself a million times why. Why that day of all days did I make that choice? If only I had taken the road, I wouldn’t have been delayed by the two Yankee soldiers who appeared out of nowhere. They stopped me and asked all kinds of questions that scared me half to death. Then they finally got tired of terrorizing me and told me to get on home. When I got to the yard, the slaves had left the fields and were running in every direction. Yankees were helping them load wagons with things from the house—my mother’s settee, the painting my father kept above the fireplace in his library, even the wooden rocking horse that my mother still kept in the nursery. I wondered where the overseer was, where my father was, why he wasn’t making any attempt to stop them.

“I ran inside, calling for my parents. I looked into every room
downstairs and couldn’t find them. Then I went up to their bedrooms, and—”

Sophie’s face paled. She slowly shook her head. “No.”

Ethan swallowed the burn of tears in his throat. “Father was lying in the hallway, facedown. Mother was in her room, partially hidden behind the curtains. Her head was turned to the wall, and I could see blood flowing from a wound in her chest. I screamed. Then Julian stepped out of the shadows, holding a knife.

“He said, ‘I didn’t do it.’ He dropped the knife and ran. And that was the last time I saw him until this summer when he showed up at Blue Smoke.”

“No wonder you were so shocked.” Sophie shifted in her chair. “I know it looks as if he’s guilty, but can you blame him for running away? He’d have been lynched on the spot—or given a kangaroo trial and then lynched. Even if he is innocent, he did the only thing he could have done to save his own life.”

Ethan’s shoulders slumped. “I know that now. But why come back after all this time, when it’s too late?”

“It’s never too late for reconciliation. For forgiveness. Julian wants you to know the truth for your sake as much as for his.” She glanced at Julian. “If he—”

Shouting erupted in the street, stopping her words. Ethan opened the curtain and peered out onto a chaotic scene. People were running toward the opposite end of the road, voices raised in fear. Wagons rattled along the street. A whistle blew.

“What the devil?” Ethan glanced at his brother. Julian was still in a deep sleep. He grabbed Sophie’s hand. “Let’s go.”