A Reckless Love, page 2
She nodded, then pattered lightly up the stairs, praying.
God, give me strength to be useful and kind and courageous.
Adams Hospital was a madhouse. Screams of pain ululated over the shouts of medical personnel, the grunts and questions of volunteers, and a general roar of disaster. The iron smell of blood and stench of burned flesh permeating the hallway would have knocked Zane to his knees—but he’d already sagged against a wall outside the ward where he and a freedman named Lucky Tolbert had just left Judge Teague.
Tolbert and his dugout fishing canoe had saved his life.
By the grace of God, Zane had managed to pull five victims to safety before the current yanked his tired body under and nearly swept him downriver. But just as he feared he’d lost the will to fight, he caught sight of a dark-skinned arm reaching for him. Tolbert dragged him into the canoe and pumped the water out of his lungs, then the two of them set to work ferrying as many as they could safely carry to the Negro’s island fishing camp.
Zane knew he shouldn’t have been surprised that the judge was one of those survivors floating along on a door from the pilot house. It was a night of disasters and miracles. He closed his good eye and let his head fall back against the wall. He was so weary, and he wanted to sleep. Yet he dreaded what he knew he’d dream of—the nightmare of what he’d seen this night would haunt him for years to come. Maybe he’d never forget it. Maybe he’d never sleep again.
“Son, get up from there and let’s find you a bed,” ordered an aristocratic Southern soprano located somewhere above him. He felt a gentle, gnarled hand rest on his head. “Where are you hurt?”
Zane peered upward, his vision oddly doubled. He couldn’t tell much about the woman, other than that she had once been beautiful. And she was willing him to do something he was incapable of accomplishing. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just resting. I’m about to go . . .” Where was he going? He had no place to go. Besides, he had to stay and make sure the judge recovered. “I’ll just stay here, if it’s all right with you.”
“It is not all right,” she said imperiously. “Never mind. I’ll send someone for you—”
“No, ma’am.” Forcing his exhausted legs to support him, he stood up, tottering. “I need to stay here. Judge Teague is in there—”
“Judge Teague is in the hands of the best surgeon in Memphis—my husband, Dr. McGowan. I might let you check on him later—after you’ve gotten into some dry clothes and had a meal and a good sleep.” Her blue eyes twinkled. “Now, since you seem to be ambulatory, come with me, before I have to call an orderly to haul you out of the way.”
Recognizing a stronger will than his own, Zane pushed away from the wall, ignoring the arm she extended to assist him. Hanged if he’d let an old lady serve as a crutch.
By midmorning, McGowan House had been turned into a makeshift hospital. Aurora stood in the doorway of the dining room with a basin of clean water propped against her stomach. She watched her sisters—tall, gangly Joelle and no-nonsense Selah—work together to bring comfort to some poor burned soul. Frankly she wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman, as every bit of hair had been burned from the blistered head, and the body was covered by a blanket.
It was a hopeless cause. Selah closed the sightless eyes and brought the blanket up to cover the person’s face, then sat back on her heels and stared at Joelle. “I’ll get one of the men to come for the body,” she said and rose.
Joelle nodded and moved to the next patient.
Aurora wanted to weep with exhaustion and sorrow, but there wasn’t time for such maudlin selfishness. For once she could be grateful for her upbringing under Grandmama’s spartan philosophy. She had been trained to cope with hardship when necessary.
At the moment, it was necessary.
Joelle, her strawberry-blonde hair hanging in messy disorder about her face, looked over her shoulder. “Is there any water in that bowl?”
“Yes.” Aurora approached her middle sister and knelt beside the pallet. Ladies from the church benevolence committee had brought over piles of blankets first thing after the alarm had gone out, along with stacks of red flannel shirts and drawers. Many of the survivors of the disaster had been stark naked when brought in, having stripped off their clothes in an effort to avoid being dragged under by the current or drowned by other desperate swimmers. Aurora’s initial shock had quickly turned to numb stoicism. In the emergency there was no time for missish sensibilities.
She held the bowl while Joelle dunked in a clean cloth and wrung it out. Joelle began to methodically wipe the dirty face of a man who had somehow, miraculously, escaped anything more than a severe chill. Eyes squeezed shut, he lay trembling and moaning.
“I’m glad I can’t see what’s in his head,” Aurora blurted. “Can you imagine what that was like—being blown out of your sleep into fire and cold floodwater? Everyone around you drowning or burning?”
Joelle looked at her, blue eyes bloodshot, lines of fatigue bracketing her mouth. “I know. We’ve all seen awful things in this war, but this . . .” With a sigh, she laid the cloth gently across the man’s creased forehead. “These men were on the way home. I don’t understand God at all sometimes.”
Aurora hadn’t even considered God’s thoughts on this situation. But then everyone called her the Princess of Rainbows. Joelle was the deep thinker of the family.
Suddenly the front door slammed open. Male voices echoed from the foyer, along with the sound of boots on the marble floors.
“Hello the house!” someone shouted. “Doc McGowan sent us.”
Leaving the bowl on the floor, Aurora sprang to her feet and ran to the dining room doorway. “Here we are. What’s the—” The rest of her sentence splintered. Four men carried the corners of a litter on which lay an injured fifth man. There was blood everywhere, but it seemed to originate at his blood-soaked bandaged left hand. Aurora put her hands to her mouth in an effort to collect herself. Maybe she hadn’t seen the worst yet. “Come this way,” she told the man at the head of the litter.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and the men tromped behind her into the dining room.
As two servants removed the deceased burn victim, Aurora took a clean blanket from the stack on the dining room table and arranged it in the empty space on the carpet. The litter bearers carefully rolled their unconscious burden onto the pallet, then helped Aurora settle him on his back.
She made herself study the patient so she’d know how to help. His plain bearded face was oddly veined, as if from drink, and he seemed generally healthier than the other paroled prisoners who had come up from Vicksburg on the Sultana. An unattractive specimen with greasy, graying brown hair, he was short, barrel-chested, and perfectly dry. His only real injury seemed to be the bloody hand. “Did Grandpapa give you any instructions? How was he hurt?”
“Knife fight at the Soldiers’ Home. Nobody knows who he is nor where he come from.” The man shrugged. “Your grandpa’s coming right behind us.”
“Grandpapa’s coming home?” Her grandfather had been gone since the alarm went out in the middle of the night, and she hadn’t expected him back before nightfall, if then. One of the few trained surgeons in town, Belmont McGowan, MD, drove himself hard during emergencies, his family and his own well-being coming in a distant second and third to patients who needed his care.
The litterman nodded. “Yes’m. The hospital didn’t have no more beds, so Doc said make this man comfortable here and he’d sew up that hand when he got home.”
Aurora nodded. “What about my grandmother?”
“I don’t know, miss.” The man shrugged. “Judge Teague was brought in around six this morning, and I think she’s been caring for him.”
Aurora’s hand flew to her mouth. “Judge Teague? Was he on the Sultana?” She knew how much Marmaduke Teague meant to her grandparents. The judge might be a Unionist, but he and Grandpapa had been friends since childhood and owed one another enough favors that even a civil war hadn’t been able to strip their mutual devotion.
The man nodded. “Yes’m. Apparently so. The judge got burned pretty bad in the explosion but got away on a door from the pilot house. Young fellow with one eye and a colored man with a log canoe rescued the judge and couple others hanging onto some tree branches out in the river. When they got to the little island where the Negro had been camping, the young fellow knew enough to cover the survivors’ burns with flour. Your grandpa says that’s what saved the judge’s life. Not too long after that, the Pocahontas stopped to take everybody to the hospital in Memphis.”
“Well, thank the Lord for them both.” Throat tight, Aurora dropped to her knees in a floof of skirts and started unwrapping the nasty bandage about the ugly man’s hand. “All right, I’ll get him cleaned up so Grandpapa can deal with him when he gets here.” Casting aside the bandage, she reached for the bowl of water Joelle had abandoned before attending to some errand that took her out of the room.
Grandpapa treated saints and sinners, heroes and traitors, without regard to their deserving of his care. The least Aurora could do was to follow his example.
one
Five years later
June 1, 1870
Oxford, Mississippi
What a waste, Aurora reflected, that the most brilliant, extravagantly beautiful woman below the Mason-Dixon line lacked the sense to come in out of the rain.
Irritated, she eyed her sister Joelle, who stood in front of a full-length mirror, reading the ingredients of a receipt for calamine lotion she’d picked up at the pharmacy. With her chin-length red-gold hair caught up at the sides with ivory combs, cheekbones like a Botticelli angel, and full lips pursed, she could have been posing for an illustration in Godey’s Lady’s Book.
“It was such a shame about the fire over at Daughtry House.” Mrs. Clancy, the bridal shop couturier, buzzed around, twitching at the lace, ribbons, and ruffles adorning the massive white skirt of the dress Joelle had reluctantly agreed to try on. “Especially after y’all had just had such a lovely house party with the Forrests and the opera singer—what was her name? Delfina Fabulous or something like that? Weren’t you all just scared to death? And I could hardly believe my dear friend Mrs. Scully’s husband—that would be Mr. Scully, you know—was involved in the tragedy of your father’s death, God rest his soul. Poor Mrs. Scully having to keep her head up, with her husband charged with . . . something. What was it? Arson? Train sabotage?”
Aurora did her best to ignore the woman’s gossip. Maybe a shopping trip so soon after all the traumatic events of the spring had not been such a good idea.
“I’m going to get Wyatt to mix this up for me when I get home.” As Joelle stuffed the leaflet into the front of the dress, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and gasped. “Pete! Have you lost your mind?”
Joelle’s horrified use of her childhood nickname jerked Aurora back to the subject at hand. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
Joelle grabbed the front of the dress. “I’m not wearing this monstrosity! I look like an unbaked lemon meringue pie! Schuyler would hurt himself laughing.”
If pressed, Aurora would confess to some doubt as to the likelihood of the dress passing down Tupelo Methodist Church’s center aisle without knocking someone’s eye out. But one should never concede wholesale in a battle of wedding fashion. She reached up to jerk the cap sleeves off Joelle’s creamy shoulders. “You’re right. It is entirely too conservative.”
Mrs. Clancy gave Aurora a doubtful look. “Miss Joelle is already exposing a significant amount of décolletage. Are you sure—”
“I’m sure this is not the right dress.” Aurora moved her hands, mimicking Joelle’s tall, hourglass shape. “Haven’t you anything that clings more to the body?”
Joelle yanked the sleeves back up. “I do not plan to expose any décolletage at all. And the shape of my body is nobody’s business but mine—and eventually Schuyler’s,” she added with a smug glance at the sapphire adorning her ring finger.
Aurora laughed. At least the goddess had a sense of humor. “Touché. But we came all this way to—”
“—to see our lawyer,” Joelle said, with one of her whiplash reversions to pragmatism. “You dragged me in here against my will.”
Aurora sighed. What was the use of looking like a mermaid out of a fairy tale if one refused to take advantage of it on the most important day of her life? “All right, all right. Let’s collect Sky from the music store and go up to see Mr. Greene.” She gave the proprietress an apologetic look. “I’ll talk to her and bring her back when—”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Clancy,” Joelle said sweetly, “but we won’t be back. I promised my dear friend Charmion that she could make my wedding dress.” She dipped a curtsey. “Thank you for your time. You have a lovely shop, and I’ll be happy to send you any business it’s in my power to influence. I’m going to change now.” With a vague flutter of her hand, she darted into the changing room before Aurora could argue.
Exchanging a harassed look with the dressmaker, Aurora hustled after her sister.
Already skinned out of the wedding dress, which had been kicked into a giant pile of fabric in the corner, Joelle looked up from straightening her stockings. “You’re not going to make me go back in there, are you?”
The idea that she, the youngest and smallest of the three Daughtry sisters, wielded any influence at all over her elders continued to secretly astonish and gratify Aurora. “If you promise to let me go with you to choose the fabric for your wedding dress.”
Joelle dropped her simple blue-print dress over her head and began to do up buttons. “You do have good taste. Though I warn you, I’m not baring my cleavage, even in the interest of high fashion.”
“Consider me schooled, Miss Daughtry.” Shaking her head with a smile, Aurora helped her sister finish dressing.
As they bid good day to Mrs. Clancy and left the shop, Aurora looked regretfully over her shoulder. She’d been looking forward to shopping in Oxford, a much bigger town than poky little Tupelo. She hadn’t been back to Memphis since early April, and though she didn’t precisely miss Grandmama’s constant interference, rural life had become rather slow of late. Ah well. Maybe she could come back another day. She skipped to keep up with Joelle’s long stride. “What do you think Mr. Greene has to say?”
At Aurora’s breathless tone, Joelle blinked and looked down at her. “Sorry, Pete.” Slowing her pace, Joelle let Aurora catch up. “I’ve no idea, but he’s not going to be happy that we came without Selah.”
The girls’ visit to Oxford today resulted from a very peculiar and cryptic telegraph they’d received three days ago from the family lawyer, requesting that they call on him at their earliest convenience, as he had some news of interest to the entire family that he wanted to impart in person.
Their older sister would normally have been the designated representative, but Selah had been feeling poorly, and Levi Riggins, her husband of barely six weeks, balked at putting her on a train. Joelle, next in line, flatly refused to go anywhere without Schuyler Beaumont, to whom she had become affianced two weeks ago, and who followed her about like a lost puppy. However, his unchaperoned escort would be inappropriate until the two of them were actually married, so Aurora had volunteered to go along, braving the half-day trip by train from Tupelo to Oxford in hopes of luring Joelle into the mercantile for fittings.
A hollow victory, as it turned out. Since becoming a schoolmarm and an engaged woman (twice in one month, of all things, to two different men), Joelle had developed an alarming tendency toward stubbornness and keen observation. It was getting harder and harder for Aurora to coax her formerly absentminded sister to fall in with her excellent plans.
With a mixture of exasperation and affection, Aurora glanced up at Joelle’s serene, flawless profile. During those long years of separation during the war, while Papa was away in the Confederate army, Aurora had resided in Memphis with her grandparents—for her own safety, they said. Meanwhile, Joelle and Selah had been permitted to stay with their mother at Ithaca Plantation. Oh, how she had longed for her sisters’ company.
Now even she recognized the irony that their reunion for the purpose of holding on to the family property had resulted in both her sisters finding the love of a lifetime and ultimately going their own ways. Against all odds, at the advanced age of twenty-seven, Selah had married a Yankee-born Pinkerton detective, while Joelle had jilted the preacher and snared the heart of their longtime family friend and business partner.
Aurora didn’t begrudge them their happiness, but when the excitement of Joelle and Schuyler’s wedding passed, she would be left alone. Again.
Well, so be it. She had always been capable of creating her own fun. She would just have to work for it a little harder than before. Grandmama or no Grandmama.
They quickly reached a store with big plate-glass windows, lettered J. A. SPENCER, FINE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND PIANO TUNING. Schuyler had elected to pass the time with the large, friendly family of Justice of the Peace Spencer, while Aurora and Joelle went to the bridal shop. (“I assure you, Schuyler, you have no interest in this procedure,” Aurora had informed him when he asked plaintively why he couldn’t come along. “Your part is over, until you see Joelle coming down the aisle.”) Now she braced herself for the inevitable saccharine outpouring that ensued whenever Schuyler and Joelle had been apart for more than ten minutes. It was enough to give one a toothache. Hopefully, the spooning would dissolve into the normal rhythms of their previous bantering relationship.
As she opened the door, Aurora was bombarded by a brassy wall of music, overlaid by a couple of flutes and clarinets, with percussion clunking along underneath. Following the cacophony to the back of the store, she found the community wind ensemble in its weekly rehearsal, conducted by Mr. Spencer himself. Schuyler, never one for sitting still when there was noise to be made or mischief afoot, had confiscated a bass drum and mallet and joined in. With little regard for tempo and less for dynamic sensitivity, he whaled away at the drum as if it had committed some heinous sin. Though he was clearly having a grand time, the second he saw Joelle, he dropped the mallet and went for her.
