“We used to the name game, Mistress Eden. We don’t even own our African names,” a woman said. “Those we had was stolen away right along with us.”
“And I’m sorry for that,” Mama replied. “Hopefully you’ll need not change names ever again. The reason for doing so now is to protect you from the past, from those who knew you as slaves. These new names will help you gain freedom.”
“I always wanted to be called Paul,” one man told them. “It was the name of a whole-souled man in Kentucky who preached to us slaves in secret.”
“I’m sure he’d be pleased,” Mama said with a smile. “Plus it’s one you’re likely to remember.”
Looking down at her slate, Ellie printed the name in large block letters and passed it round the circle.
“I’ll take Rachel,” the woman beside Ellie said. “It’s a good Bible name.”
Ellie marveled that Mama almost made a game of it, having them practice their chosen names till they were comfortable as a well-worn garment, mixing up the slates and having everyone remember who they were with a great deal of high-spirited merriment. Next the women stitched their new initials in their dress hems and the collars of the linen shirts Mama had sewn for the men. They wouldn’t leave till their new identities were firmly in place. Even then some didn’t want to go.
“Can you make a place for me at New Hope?” The question, asked again and again, never failed to stir Ellie’s spirit. “I can work in the house or the fields, whatever you need.”
“You’re always welcome here,” she’d often heard Mama say, “but ’tis too close to the river to tarry.”
As if to anchor them all, her father held family devotions in the evenings after supper. A maid was posted at both front and back doors in case of trouble, and only then did the attic empty in lieu of the cooler, shuttered parlor. There Da chose “freedom passages,” as he called them—the stories of Moses leading the Israelites from Egypt and Joseph fleeing bondage to rise to power. No one was caught napping, wooed as they were by his rich Scots speech as he stood before the cold hearth.
“Da should have been a preacher,” Peyton murmured as he sat beside Ellie on a sofa. “You know what they say of Scottish sons. The firstborn is laird and heir. The second is the military’s and the third the pulpit’s.”
“God had but one Son and made a minister of Him,” she said softly. “I daresay the rest is second best.”
He gave her a wry glance. “I’d rather be laird and heir.”
The pride in his tone gave her pause. Peyton had all of their father’s business sense but none of his humility. Not even a stint in jail had dinted what Ellie feared was arrogance. Across from them sat Ansel, as different from Peyton as she was from Andra. She studied him in the flickering candlelight, grieved by the cheerless slant of his features that bespoke a burden.
With the coming harvest, the gristmill would operate almost continuously, requiring all of Ansel’s time. How he’d transport fugitives was a mystery. And Peyton? While the enslaved in their care were running from danger, he seemed to be running headlong toward it, or so she feared. Rumor was that he was still seen in the company of Wade Turlock in town.
Devotions done, Ellie lingered in the parlor as the fugitives padded upstairs on quiet feet and her father and brothers crossed to the study. Mari drew the cover over Feathers’s cage, shuttering his late-night song before disappearing to snuff the candles in the adjoining room.
“’Tis too hot to sleep,” Mama told her. “Why don’t we go onto the back porch till it cools down?”
Relieved, Ellie nodded, having no desire to retire to her room, where thoughts of Jack crowded in, unrelenting as the summer heat. They took seats amidst the glow of fireflies, the low cadence of Da’s and Peyton’s voices drifting through an open window. Other than that, all was still save the haunting call of a mockingbird.
“What a peaceful night.” Mama looked skyward at the moon. “Full and silver-bright. Perfect for the harvest.”
Ellie’s gaze flickered east toward River Hill’s unseen fields. ’Twas all too easy to imagine Jack swinging a scythe in the moonlight. Better to ponder the reality of the coming autumn with its corn stubble and spent fields . . . and winter’s rivers locked fast with ice, barring his way back to them.
Eyes damp, she bit her lip, stunned by the ferocity of her feelings. Since Chloe had told her Jack was leaving, selling River Hill, she’d longed to confide in someone, but pouring out her heart to her parents would only make matters more complicated. She’d caused the household worry enough with her waywardness on the road. She wouldn’t add to it with her distress over Jack and Chloe too.
To her relief, Mama began to talk of more mundane matters. “Your birthday ball is but a fortnight away.”
“I suppose most everyone is coming.”
“Most, yes.” Mama’s fan stirred the air around them. “A few will be traveling and have sent their regrets. Not everyone has responded yet.”
Nor will they, Ellie didn’t say, thinking again of River Hill. “My gown fits perfectly. I don’t think I’ll need another fitting.”
“I’m afraid you might.” Mama turned to her, profile pensive. “Lately you hardly seem to eat a bite.”
Ellie shifted uncomfortably in her chair, wishing she could brush aside any concerns like yesterday’s tea crumbs. “I’m afraid the heat has stolen my appetite.”
“Only the heat, Ellie?” Mama’s gaze didn’t waver. “We’re concerned the incident on the road might have upset you more than you let on.”
Not the incident on the road, Mama, but what happened afterward, in Jack Turlock’s parlor.
Ellie looked to her lap. Jack’s closeness and concern had upended her in ways she couldn’t fathom or forget. He’d been so tender with her. As if he truly cared for her, like Chloe said. But she could hardly speak of that. “’Tis not the past—the incident on the road—so much as the future. There are so many possibilities before me at one and twenty. Anything might happen. I could be married and a mother by next July.”
“That’s certainly how it was for me.” Mama’s soft voice caught in a throaty chuckle. “I came face-to-face with your father in River Hill’s ballroom one summer, wed him soon after, and bore Peyton nine months later.”
“You knew Da was yours from the first—and you were his.”
“Yes, we knew, but circumstances conspired against us. Thankfully, love and the Lord Himself often make a way when there seems to be none.”
The gentle words struck Ellie hard. True for some, perhaps, but not for her. Nor Jack.
“I’ll never forget the beauty of that ballroom,” Mama said. “All the candlelight shimmering off gowns and greatcoats. The music and dancing. Once, River Hill was the jewel of Allegheny County.”
Once. Ellie roamed the many rooms in memory, all but Jack’s, though Chloe had offered to show her that too. “It’s still beautiful, though neglected. Sometimes when I was there, it was hard to keep my mind on lessons. I’d look around and imagine all the pleasure to be had in turning it lovely again, especially the garden.”
“It’s been forgotten, then. Overgrown.”
“Sadly, yes. Chloe and I were hoping to bring a corner to life on the south side, where there’s a charming dripping cistern. It overlooks the river . . .” She left off, letting go of the dream like the scattered garden seed on the back road.
“You share your father’s fondness for the place. He once spent many pleasant hours there.” She rested her fan in her lap. “Every house, to be a true home, needs a mistress. River Hill has been without one for fifty years or better. Perhaps Mr. Turlock will settle down and make it grand again.”
“I doubt that will ever happen. He’s—” Ellie changed course lest she betray what Chloe had confided about the sale. “He’s a very busy man. His interests lie elsewhere. Though I wish he would settle down, if only for Chloe’s sake.”
“You’re very fond of her.”
“I worry about what will become of
her.” A breeze stirred the loose tendrils about her flushed face, and she turned in its direction. “Like you, my every emotion seems to cloud matters. I wish I had more of the Ballantyne steel.”
“Oh, ’tis there but buried deep.”
Was it? Then why did she feel so tossed about, her thoughts and emotions in a perpetual tangle? Feigning calm, she kissed Mama’s smooth cheek. “I’d best go to bed . . . say my prayers. And I promise to eat a hearty breakfast on the morrow.”
Mama gave no answer, just squeezed her hand in a wordless good night.
22
On matters of fashion, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
As thunder rumbled like whiskey wagons overhead, Jack ducked into the glass-fronted shop after studying the bold sign emblazoned with gilded scissors and a spool of blue thread.
WILLIAM DAVENPORT, TAILOR.
The spacious room was empty, and he nearly sighed with relief. He couldn’t spare a day in town with the harvest under way, yet here he was, sweating and harried, his temper as sharp as the scissors on a near table. Davenport emerged from a back room, waddling more than walking, his portly frame encased in black. His eyes flared with surprise when Jack shut the door and walked toward him. Drawing up short behind a worn wooden cutting table, he gave a wary greeting. “Mr. Turlock, sir.”
“No need for formalities. Just call me Jack.”
“Well . . . Jack. What brings you to High Street?”
“I’m in need of a suit of clothes, and I hear you work quickly.”
The tailor cleared his throat, looking only slightly less nervous. “How quickly?”
“A fortnight.”
“Is this to be a formal occasion?”
“Regrettably.” Jack flinched as the man circled him appraisingly, removed the tape dangling about his thick neck, and pulled it tight about Jack’s waist. His balding pate shone in the dim light as he bent to measure a leg next, leaving Jack free to look about the tidy room.
Clothing hung from wall pegs in various stages of construction or repair—pants, shirts, greatcoats, and more. Beneath shelves stuffed with fabric stood an enormous sewing chest with manifold drawers. His gaze stopped circling, fastening on an elongated looking glass. The large mirror reflected a somewhat shocking image back to him. Tall. Slim. Straight. Dark as an Indian and maybe mistaken for one, but for his hair.
The tailor straightened. “I have the finest broadcloth in bottle-green or midnight-blue, and cut-steel buttons for suits. Do you prefer breeches or trousers?”
“Trousers.”
“Then you shall have a fine cutaway coat.”
Jack had no clue as to the details. He simply nodded glumly. If this is what it took to make a gentleman, he’d gladly go west and don buckskins.
“And the color?” The tailor’s clipped British accent was unrelenting.
“Color? Um . . . midnight-blue, I think you called it.”
The bald head bobbed in satisfaction as the tailor applied the tape to Jack’s shoulders. Jack bristled at the familiarity. How in blazes did Davenport remember all the figures? “Shouldn’t you be writing this down?”
There was a derisive snort. “Mr. Tur—Jack, when you’ve kept shop as long as I have, there’s no need for such a crutch. Besides, your measurements are uncommon enough to be memorable. Now if you’ll kindly turn round.”
Jack did as he bid, enduring more taping. All for Chloe’s benefit. He’d read the misery in her eyes when she’d found the Ballantynes’ invitation crumpled in the study’s cold hearth, and it moved him more than any tirade ever could. He kept forgetting, despite her fierce demeanor, that she was still half girl. On more than one occasion of late, he’d found her upstairs playing with their mother’s old dolls, reminding him he needed to tread more carefully.
“All right, we’ll go,” he’d finally told her, his every word forced as he watched her press the wrinkles from the invitation with an agitated hand.
She looked up, lashes glistening with tears, reminding him of when she’d barely come up to his knee, all rolls and dimples, and he hadn’t been able to say no to her. “Promise?”
“Aye, but not a word to Ellie, understand? This is a . . . surprise.” A farce was more like it. He’d ignored the répondez s’il vous plaît at the invitation’s bottom, as he wanted to be able to back out at the last moment if his misgivings gained the upper hand. He feared they would.
“We’ll have to learn to dance, Jack. Otherwise we’ll both be outcasts.”
He shook his head. “No dancing. Period.”
Flashing him a determined glare, she disappeared upstairs and returned with a thin, dog-eared book. “It’s Playford’s The English Dancing Master. I found it in Ma’s old desk.”
“So?”
“Don’t you see? We’ll be able to memorize the steps to a few country dances, at least. But,” she said pointedly, “we’ll have to have a fiddler like Ellie does for the dancing lessons you’ve denied me.”
“Touché,” he said, seizing on one of the few French words he knew.
Now, having agreed to it, he felt disbelief take hold. He’d hired not only a fiddler but a dancing master, both due this very afternoon. Guilt had snagged him, he guessed. He’d yet to tell Chloe he was selling River Hill and returning her to Broad Oak. Given that, he owed her a grand finish. The Ballantyne ball should suffice.
Davenport’s fumbling returned him to the present. “Have you never been to a tailor, Mr. Tur—Jack?”
“Never.” And I’ll not make the same mistake twice.
As he’d grown up, his clothes had been made by Broad Oak slaves or ordered from Philadelphia by his mother for special occasions, none of them memorable. She’d shunned Pittsburgh’s shops, calling them countrified. And he, hating civility and fuss, had simply worn the clothes left in his grandfather’s wardrobe since his passing.
At last Davenport ambled over to a near shelf, where he selected a length of rich blue fabric. “Is the color and nap to your satisfaction?”
Reaching out a callused hand, Jack found the broadcloth soft as felt. “Aye, but if you dare give me the look of a dandy . . .”
“Say no more. I know how a man of your station and reputation should look. The suit shall be done a week from Wednesday.”
As the fiddle music ended, Jack uttered an oath and collapsed in the nearest chair. Chloe, far less perplexed, simply succumbed to a fit of giggles atop the ballroom floor.
“Dancing be hanged! I’d rather swing a scythe any day.” Wiping his brow with a rolled-back sleeve, he glanced out an open window toward fields he couldn’t see. His astonished farm manager had come to the door half an hour before, interrupting a rousing reel to report finding rust among the winter wheat.
Jack dismissed him with a shrug and a promise to ride out and investigate before dusk . . . if the lesson ever ended. Baffled by a great many intricate steps and trilling notes, he ached to be out-of-doors amidst windrows of grain, fatigued in the old familiar way, not laid low by silly maneuvers in a dusty ballroom.
Thunder growled, but it was a distant rumble, a threat he hoped would soon dissipate. Hay-making waited on the morrow, and dry weather was needed—as was he.
“Blast, Jack!” Chloe was on her feet, arms crossed. “You tripped me midstep on that last country dance and almost sent me sailing out a window!”
He exhaled, tugging at his banded collar in a bid for air.
“You’d best not do the same with Miss Ellie the night of the ball.”
Ignoring her, he studied the finely paneled walls and wondered if New Hope’s ballroom resembled River Hill’s. The dog ears of the three French doors facing the river were trimmed with mahogany rosettes, the elegant plasterwork ceiling a rich ivory bearing the O’Hara crest. He was Irish to the bone on both sides, though the Turlocks were of less impressive pedigree than the landed O’Haras.
This was the very room where Ellie’s father had shifted his allegiance
from Isabel O’Hara to Eden Lee so many years before. Jack had never understood it till he’d succumbed to their daughter in the shadows of the blue room, frantic and half sick with alarm at what had befallen her along the back road. If Eden Lee had half the charm of the lovely Ellie . . .
“Jack, are you listening?”
He lowered his gaze to take Chloe in, thirsty for some switchel, and pushed up from his chair. “Nay.”
Her flushed face turned entreating. “You simply need to memorize the steps. Remember what Master Playford said—very nippy, keep the turns tight, always be aware of other dancers. And if you go wrong, recover!”
He left the room grumbling.
The following day, Jack could see Chloe and Ben at the edge of the half-mown field. Concern crowded in, but he didn’t want to break the rhythm of the eight-man team he was aligned with, so he kept on moving. Chloe was supposed to be at her lessons, reading the books Ellie had left her, though he knew the hum of the harvest was as tempting to her as it was him.
Rain was in the air, its heaviness mingling with his own sweat, turning the day sultry, his shirt damp. Low-hanging charcoal clouds pressed in, threatening to burst. Studying the sky, he picked up his pace. Hay making was akin to dancing, he decided, requiring grace and careful execution, staying in careful step with one’s fellow mowers, every swipe of the blade laying the grass low in neat windrows.
If only he could perform as flawlessly in New Hope’s ballroom.
They’d been at work since first light, and it was now the nooning. Half a dozen tenants’ wives stood waiting at the fringes of the field, bearing baskets of food and small kegs of switchel spiked with cider. On harvest days the midday meal of meat, molasses bread, cheese, and watermelon was a feast, indulged for a full hour before the men began cradling again.
When the scythes finally slowed to a stop, Chloe made a beeline toward Jack, Ben in tow. Unfolding a square of linen, she revealed a loaf reddened and studded with raisins. “Mrs. Malarkey sent you some watermelon cake.”