Patricia Rice (14 page)

The invalid gave an inelegant snort. "I suppose you would prefer I go downstairs and referee my charming husband and sons while they bash each other's heads in."

"A woman has a calming influence on hot tempers," Dora chided.

Harriet hiccupped, then drank greedily of the cup given her. "I would prefer they killed each other," she replied when the cup was empty.

Dora couldn't say much to that. Seeing her patient settled down for the evening, she slipped back across the hall to Josie. This would be a long night.

The newest Nicholls didn't put in an appearance until four in the morning. Dora delivered her with Annie's assistance. Mrs. Andrews never arrived. The noise downstairs had apparently disintegrated into drunken slumbers. The infant squalled loud enough to wake all the devils in the house.

"Is it a girl?" Josie whispered wearily.

"Meet Friend Amy." Dora lay the swaddled infant beside Josie's head so she could inspect her. "She will look just like her mother when she grows up."

"I would rather she looked like you so men left her alone," Josie answered bitterly.

That was a hard blow to take on top of a day of hard blows. Biting back a rebellious remark, Dora returned to cleaning up. Maybe she wasn't invisible. Maybe she was just ugly. She hadn't thought about that. She'd never spent much time in front of mirrors.

She heard a stirring below as the babe's squalls continued through her first bath. She supposed someone should tell the happy father of his child's birth. She wasn't in any hurry to do the honors, but she didn't see anyone else she could appoint in her place. It didn't seem quite appropriate sending poor Annie down to that saloon they called a parlor.

She delayed as long as she could. While Annie lovingly bathed the infant, Dora changed the bed linens and Josie's night shift. By the time both mother and child slept, they had returned the room to rights. There was nothing left to do but go down and make the announcement.

Annie and Dora exchanged glances. They could hear voices rumbling up the stairs. Argument could break out at any moment. It was now or never. Dora held out her arms for the bundled child. Annie willingly surrendered her.

"That child gonna need a mammy. I'll go get Delia. She's nursin'."

Grateful that at least some of the initiative had been absorbed by someone other than herself, Dora took the tiny bundle. She slipped into the hall before she lost her nerve. She didn't even dare look at the child. She walled herself off from feeling anything for it too, knowing instinctively that it would be too easy to love, and that she couldn't bear seeing the child hurt. She must leave here soon, before she became attached.

All three men staggered to their feet when Dora entered the parlor. The rod in the velvet drapes over the bay window sagged on one side, leaving a puddle of material across the carpet. A broken bottle of bourbon saturated both velvet and carpet, and the room reeked of whiskey. A shattered lamp had sent broken crystals across the polished floor at the other end of the room. The shards of a framed photograph had fallen from the mantel and glittered in the light of a single candle.

Dora's gaze swept the room, then came to rest on the three sheepish men. Carlson didn't look too battered, just grumpy. Charlie had apparently taken the worst of it. His eye had blackened and one side of his face was bruised and swollen. Pace had a split lip and blood stained his white shirt. Dora didn't know what he'd done with his uniform coat. She tried not to look at the place where the shirt lay open at his throat, nor the way the hairs on his arm curled where he'd rolled up the sleeves. She bit her lip and held out the bundle in her arms.

"It's a girl. Josie said she was to be named Amy."

"I'll not name any child of mine—"

Pace slammed a fist into his brother's arm to shut him up. "How's Josie?"

"Sleeping." Dora knew her voice was more curt than necessary, but her precious calm had shattered this night. "She'll want to see her mother when she wakes," she reminded them, in case they had forgotten.

"I'll not give that meddling old woman—"

Dora thrust the sleeping infant into Charlie's arms. "Amy Andrews is the child's grandmother. Unless thou wishes to rouse thy mother to her duty, I'd suggest thou dost welcome thy mother-in-law to the task. A child needs a grandmother."

Pace grinned and cheered softly as he peeked over his brother's arm at the squirming babe. "Better watch it, Charlie. You'll have a house full of women before you know it. Don't let that meek face fool you. Dora will chew your ear off if you don't behave."

That was the final straw. She'd been rejected, ignored, called ugly, and now named a shrew. If the good Lord had any more days like this one in store for her, she wished He'd just let her drown. Grabbing her skirt in both fists, she started for the door. "Annie is fetching a nursemaid. Good night."

"Wait a minute!" all three men screamed after her in varying degrees of panic and concern, waking the babe and sending her into howls.

Dora lifted her skirts and started up the stairs. Sometimes, vengeance didn't always belong to the Lord.

Chapter 9

If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.

Mark 3:25

May 1864

"Remember Tommy McCoy?"

Dora sat on the front step of her farmhouse cutting the last of the seed potatoes so each piece had at least one eye. She nodded absently. "The federal troops arrested him last month, said he was aiding and abetting the Confederates. That poor family has more troubles. I don't know why Tommy is always the one who gets caught. Everyone around here is a southern sympathizer."

Jackson grunted in disbelief. "You cain't be as blind as you pretend. Joe Mitchell and Charlie been feuding with the McCoys ever since Tommy's papa called them a bunch of drunken asses and ran them off his property one night, way back before the war. I reckon they was sparkin' Tommy's sister at the time. They been tryin' to get even ever since."

Dora glanced up impatiently. "And?"

Jackson's black face split in a white grin at the surliness of her tone. "You sure are gettin' jumpity these days. Life in the big house still not a bowl of cream?"

"Amy's teething. Again. Friend Harriet complains night and day about the racket. Two more of the field hands disappeared, and their wives are worse than useless. They've been told soldiers' wives are free, so I guess their women will leave next. I don't even know if it's the truth or not, but that doesn't matter to them. I tried talking Josie into offering wages, but she looks at me as if I declared treason. And Friend Carlson has been so surly since Charlie joined the rebels, it's easier to get out of his way than talk to him."

Jackson dumped his basket of potatoes into a burlap sack for hauling to the field. "You want to move back here, just say the word. I can live out in the barn. I've been thinking of joining the army myself, breaking these chains once and for all."

Dora glared at him. "Don't thee dare! What good is freedom if thou art lying beneath the cold hard ground?"

His expression grew stubborn. "I could marry Liza and if the rumors are true, she would be free."

Dora sighed and threw her last potato into the basket. "Find the truth of the rumor first. Union soldiers are as apt to lie as other men. What wert thou telling me of Tommy McCoy?"

"He's dead. The feds shot him."

Dora's head jerked up and she stared at him in alarm. "He was not a soldier. How can that be?"

"Confederate guerrillas raided the corn supplies last night. Tommy just got paroled. The feds hauled him back in and a few others with him and shot them as traitors. The general is gettin' fed up playing Catch Me If You Can with these damned rebels 'round here. We're supposed to be part of the Union, not workin' against it. He knows darned well it wasn't no reb soldier from down South come all the way up here to raid the supplies."

Dora stretched her cramped fingers and looked out over the lacy border of blooming deutzia edging the yard. The sky was so beautiful a blue it hurt to look at it. Spring breezes warmed the air and tickled along her neck. She could feel the earth burgeoning with new life: rosebuds had begun to swell and open, irises pushed their heads toward the sky, and honeysuckle vines bloomed in glorious profusion. And in the midst of all God's glory, men spilled the blood of other men into the ground.

Tears sprang to her eyes for no particularly good reason at all. She shook her head to rid herself of them.

Melancholy had haunted her this past week or more. She'd felt a fear, a helpless pressure that she couldn't explain. A baby's cries and an old woman's complaints wouldn't cause this pain around her heart. Only one thing could, and she was foolish to believe even that. Pace's letters were always infrequent and never to her. To believe any connection existed between them was to believe in angels and fairies.

Perhaps she should seek a doctor and get a spring tonic. More likely, she should quit reading the newspapers. Since the first of May, the war had escalated on two fronts in an unprecedented surge of violence. She went cold inside each time she imagined the men she knew fighting in it.

"I wish it would all go away," she whispered, as much to herself as to Jackson.

"I wished that a few times myself," Jackson grunted. Then looking at a figure coming across the field, he continued, "And there's one I'd wish away now."

Dora glanced up to watch Solly's lanky adolescent lope across the plowed furrows. The youth grinned when he saw they'd spotted him. "He is but a boy, Jackson. Thou must be patient with him," she said. Solly was supposed to have been here earlier this morning to help with the potatoes.

Barefoot and in a muslin shirt nearly in tatters, he strode up like a Union captain in glittering uniform, saluting them as he stopped in front of them. "I'm goin' to join the army," he announced.

Dora stared at him, stricken.

Jackson cuffed him casually alongside his head. "You gettin' married, boy?"

Solly blinked and stared at him. "'Course not. Why in hell would I do that?"

"Only reason I know of to go gettin' yourself killed for somethin' the white man shoulda done a long time ago. What'd the bluebellies ever do for you that you want to die for them? I taught you better, boy."

Dora lowered her eyes to the ground so neither man could see her laughter or surprise. Not ten minutes ago, Jackson had been the one claiming he would join the army. Now here he was, keeping a boy too young to know what he was doing from it—a boy he professed to despise, no less. It had taken nearly two years, but maybe Solly had started growing on the older man.

"I gets to be free if I join," Solly answered suspiciously.

"You gets to be dead if you join. Why you think they lookin' to take on niggers? 'Cause no white man in his right head gonna do it, that's why. They all been shot at and killed and tore up as much as they can take, and they're startin' to think mebbe we ain't worth the trouble. Well, hell, they ain't worth it neither. Let them fight their own wars. We got work to do." Jackson lifted the hundred-pound bag of potatoes to his shoulder as if it were feathers. Giving the boy another cuff, he started for the field. "Come on, let's get these planted."

Dora prayed that would resolve the problem for a little while longer. They'd been fighting for three years. Surely this couldn't go on forever. There wouldn't be a man left alive if they fought much more.

Carlson Nicholls rode by her at a gallop, scarcely noticing Dora as she walked along the grass on the lane's edge. If she were any judge at all, she'd say he looked fit to kill. But then, Pace's father had looked like that since Charlie had given up his lucrative provost marshal's position and joined the Confederates.

Dora knew Charlie and his so-called troops had harassed Unionists and others under the guise of upholding the law, but the fun had gone out of the game the day a local Yankee officer demanded he come up with real charges against the people he threw in jail. Charlie had quit the marshal position shortly after that, and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation a year ago January had been the last straw. Charlie had foamed at the mouth then just as his father seemed to be doing now.

The situation hadn't improved once the Yankees learned Charlie had turned traitor to their cause. As the wife of a Confederate, Josie had even been threatened with prison, but Carlson continued declaring his loyalty and argued Pace's actions with the Union army as proof. Dora could see the older man growing a little more gray each day, and she could almost feel sympathy for him if she thought concern for his sons made him surly. Instead, she suspected his temper arose from having to deal with the stubborn Yankee soldiers.

When Dora reached the big house, she found it a whirlwind of activity. Annie ran up and down stairs carrying loads of petticoats and gowns. Delia, the nursemaid, scolded little Amy so loudly that the child's protests nearly drowned in the vocal barrage. And Josie stood in the eye of the storm, directing it.

"Good, Dora, there you are! Will you go tell the stable hands to have that wagon outside right now? I'll not wait a minute more than necessary. Those trunks are getting loaded or I'll know the reason why."