Ansel swung round, his obvious delight at seeing her an antidote for all that had gone wrong. “El?” Setting aside his violin, he pulled her to her feet and smothered her in a bearish embrace. “Tell me you’ve come home for good.”
She nodded and fought back tears, weariness making her emotional. Only Ansel knew how homesick she’d been in Philadelphia.
Holding her at arm’s length, he studied her. “How did you get here?”
“It seems the Lord brought me home in a whirlwind . . . atop the devil’s own horse.”
“What?” He looked down at her, a puzzled light in his eyes.
She forced a smile, still stinging from Andra’s rebuke. “Jack Turlock just left. We met at Widow Meyer’s Tavern during the storm. He took it upon himself to bring me home.”
Surprise rode his features—and raw alarm. “Gentleman Jack?”
Ellie nearly cringed at the long-standing nickname, spoken derisively by most. “The same.”
“Good thing Da is downriver. Wheest!”
Da. She’d been away so long, the Scots word seemed a bit strange. “No, Da wouldn’t approve,” she murmured, thankful her father couldn’t see what a muddy mess she was. “Our dear sister just sent Mr. Turlock packing.”
“Did she now?”
“I thought it rather rude of her, but I wasn’t much better.” She felt a twinge of conscience. “If Mama had been here . . . ”
“She would have insisted he stay for supper, and the old Ballantyne-Turlock grievance would be buried forever.” He gave her a quick wink. “Don’t be too hard on Andra. She’s none too happy that a funnel cloud lifted the roof of her room and ruined her new French wallpaper. Don’t you hear the hammers?”
The faint tapping of workmen from on high reassured her all would be well. Still, the damage she hadn’t seen was what most worried her. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever get here. There are trees down everywhere. I wonder about our neighbors . . . Pittsburgh.” But even as she said it, her concern narrowed to the figure in front of her. She studied her brother, finding him much changed. The sun lines about his eyes seemed more pronounced, indicative of his time outdoors. And his russet hair—could it be?—was silvered at the edges. The transformation shook her. He was but five and twenty.
“I spoke with the neighbors at dawn before riding into town, and all is calm. The mercantile and glassworks withstood the storm well enough, but the boatyard is quite battered. I didn’t have time to walk the length of the levee.” He rubbed his brow, thoughtful. “A stable on Water Street suffered damage and some horses got loose. The Baptist steeple went down. Thankfully, the mayor and aldermen have all in hand. I came back here half an hour ago to see if the farm manager has resumed the fieldwork and got distracted.”
Distracted by his music . . . this beautiful room. He hadn’t changed in that respect.
“I’d keep to the house for the next few days.” His tone was light, but his eyes were grieved and looked as deep a blue as Mama’s in that instant. “Don’t go into the garden—or out to the chapel.”
A tight knot was expanding inside her, and she felt somewhat sick despite his gentle warning. She sensed he was withholding something, but a gentleman, as Madame Moreau said, always spared a lady’s sensibilities. And a lady, in turn, never fished for details. The damaged roof was easily dealt with, but the chapel Da had built for Mama surrounded by all those heirloom roses . . .
“I’m needed at the stables.” He moved toward the door, shrugging on a coat. “Da’s prize mare foaled last night. A bit of good news amidst the bad. We’ll talk more at supper, aye?”
Supper? Queasy as she was from the day’s events, Ellie didn’t think she’d eat for a week. But a bath was in order, at least.
3
Truth does not blush.
TERTULLIAN
Since learning of Ellie’s homecoming, New Hope’s cook had turned into something of a funnel cloud in the kitchen, making such a din Ellie could hear her on high. All afternoon, enticing aromas wafted to the upper floors, rousing her from her nap, and she considered eating after all, if only to spare Mamie’s feelings. Soon a linen-clad tray was set before her, Mamie’s smile brimming with indulgence as if to make up for Mama’s absence.
Chicken and dumplings nested in a glazed blue bowl, its rim cracked—the very one she’d used in childhood. Thin slivers of pears from the hothouse and thick slices of Cheshire cheese from the cellar were layered temptingly on a china plate. A fluted glass held cherry pudding.
Ellie bent her head and gave thanks over the artfully arranged meal, grateful the storm hadn’t destroyed New Hope’s kitchen.
In moments, without so much as a knock, the bedchamber door swung open and Andra entered in a clean India cotton gown, no hint of the Turlock mud in evidence.
“Mind if I join you? Peyton was quite put out you didn’t come down for supper.”
Peyton? More likely Andra, wanting to waylay her at table and pepper her with questions. “I was sleeping . . . after spending a night in a tavern chair.”
Andra bent down and kissed her cheek before taking a seat, enveloping her in a subtle rose-carnation scent and the welcome she’d been denied hours before.
“I’m sorry for spoiling your homecoming. ’Twas just such a shock to see you ride in like that, without warning—and without Rose.”
Ellie forked a dumpling to her mouth, depriving Andra of the elaboration she so obviously wanted. She smiled up at Mamie as the woman poured a second cup of tea and then left them to an awkward silence.
Andra added sugar to her cup, expression thoughtful. “Where is Rose?”
Pensive, Ellie sampled a slice of pear. “Probably in Boston by now.”
“Boston?”
“Last winter Rose met a young tradesman—a printer. They spent the Sabbaths ice skating on the Schuylkill River and fell in love.” Looking back, Ellie could hardly believe the turn of events. Her comely maid hadn’t had to go hunting for a groom. Tradesmen abounded in Philadelphia, all hers for the picking. Ellie envied her the simplicity of the match. “They decided to marry and move farther east.”
Andra’s fair eyebrows arched, giving an impression of petulance. “But she was devoted to you—and was bound to fulfill the terms of her contract.”
“I freed her from her indenture document in writing and gave her my blessing.” Doing so had felt bold, but hadn’t Father done the same when circumstances required it? If anything, Ellie rued the fact that she’d not written to ask his permission first. “Besides, who am I to deny her happiness? She’d fulfilled four of her five years and was more friend to me than maid.”
Taking a sip of tea, Andra raised jade eyes. “You’re too soft, just like Mama.”
Ellie shrugged away the criticism. “Da and Mama simply wanted Rose to act as a chaperone—be a companion to me while I was in Philadelphia. Now that I’m home I hardly need a maid.”
“Well, you’ll have need of another soon enough. Best begin making plans to return to Madame Moreau’s before Da comes home.”
Ellie looked away, trying to gather courage. “After four years of finishing school, I feel quite . . . finished.”
“But Da has such hopes for you. He wants you to have a Philadelphia connection, marry well.”
“Does he?”
“He wants one of us to wed.” And it shan’t be me, her tone seemed to say.
“One of us? Or all of us?”
Andra’s corset-stiffened figure seemed to wilt against the Windsor chair. “You know he’s cast all his hopes on you. Mama too. You’re lovely. Accomplished. Gracious.”
Ellie shifted uncomfortably in her chair. It wasn’t like Andra to flatter. Ellie much preferred her plain speaking, even her criticism. “I’d expected Da would be here when I arrived so I could explain things.”
“I’m glad he’s in New Orleans, and not only because of the storm. If he’d seen you ride in with Gentleman Jack, looking like the two of you had just eloped—”
“Shush,” El
lie whispered, losing what little remained of her appetite. “I suppose we were quite a mud-spattered spectacle, but that’s all it was. I haven’t seen any of the Turlocks in years.”
Andra’s chin tipped up in fresh offense. “I have a mind to send that gown he ruined to River Hill for recompense. My maid said she’ll never be able to remove the stains. He did it on purpose. You know he’s never liked me.”
“’Tis mutual, isn’t it? You never cared for him. Or his brother.”
At the mention of Wade, Andra shuddered. “Outright rogues, the both of them.”
Ellie started to give Jack his due. If not for Jack Turlock, I’d still be stranded on the Pennsylvania turnpike. But the words seemed to stick in her throat.
“So . . . how did the two of you happen to cross paths?” Andra poured more tea, feigning a disinterest she was far from feeling, Ellie guessed. Her animosity for the Turlock clan was matched only by her curiosity.
“I took the stage and was nearing home when the storm broke. I never expected to meet up with him. I nearly didn’t recognize him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He—” She weighed her answer, not wanting to compound Andra’s ill will for him. “Ja—Mr. Turlock was supervising a group of men clearing the road.” For all the Turlocks’ faults, shirking work wasn’t one of them, unlike the majority of entitled men she’d met who sat on their hands and waited for the bulk of the family fortune to fall into their laps. The air of authority he’d had baffled her. She remembered him as quiet, stoic, always in the shadow of the brash Wade. “He was surprisingly considerate of the women and children.”
“Especially the women,” Andra murmured disapprovingly.
Especially to me.
Ellie blinked as if doing so would dispel the virile image in her mind. Stubborn, it wouldn’t budge. Despite his flaws, Jack Turlock had a certain je ne sais quoi that was undeniable. Amidst her usual musings involving books, flowers, and music, he didn’t fit.
“You still haven’t explained why you left finishing school.”
Relieved at the change in topic, Ellie set her fork aside. “My studies were at an end. All my friends had married and moved on. There was little left for me to do in Philadelphia. Coming home seemed . . . right.”
“It might be all right for days, a few weeks. But there’s little at New Hope for you to do. Mama and I manage the house, the help. Actually, Mama is so often at the orphan home in town, I’m seeing to most everything now. And Ansel and Peyton and Da tend to the boatyard and other business.”
There’s simply no room for you.
Ellie heard the underlying message loud and clear, noted the stubborn set of Andra’s features. “Perhaps I can be of use at the mercantile—”
“Da won’t let you near the mercantile. ’Tis too close to the levee and all those blasphemous river men.”
“Perhaps the glassworks, then.”
“Doing what?” Andra laughed. “Speaking French? Dancing?” She rolled her eyes, much as Jack Turlock had done in the coach. “Elinor Louise, you’ve no head for business. That’s why you were sent east in the first place.”
Bruised by the slight, Ellie struggled to keep her composure. Obviously Andra’s opinion of finishing school and feminine pursuits as frivolous hadn’t altered. It was no secret she wished Ellie wed and off the premises, familial ties or no. “What of society? Making calls and the like?”
Andra shook her head. “Social niceties aren’t what Pittsburgh is known for, unlike Philadelphia. Calling cards and afternoon visits simply aren’t profitable. There’s precious little of anything civilized here except for an occasional dance or two. This town is all about industry. Period.”
Finished with her tea, Andra stood and surveyed the room they’d once shared before the new wing had been added a few years before. The mint-green walls were a tad faded, and the Queen Anne furnishings, though still lovely, had an antique look about them. Even the white dimity bed hangings seemed a trifle childish, unchanged since childhood.
Ellie withheld a sigh. “Perhaps I’ll begin work on my room.”
At that, Andra’s tense face melted into relaxed lines. “Now that should keep you busy, little sister.”
Broad Oak was as solid and enduring as its name, made more memorable by the immense trees that shaded the long drive with an everlasting rustle of limbs and leaves. As Jack rode down the muddy length of it, his level gaze took in the house’s stone façade with the wide portico so typical of riverfront properties, a place where his mother sometimes sat with his sister to escape the summer’s heat. But no one was on the porch today, and his gaze tripped on something else entirely.
Nearest the house, as if split by lightning, the oldest and largest oak had fallen, leaving a gaping crater that resembled the dismay carving a hole inside him. The revered old tree had stood a century or better and was his favorite, almost majestic in its height and reach. He had a sudden urge to turn round and ride straight to River Hill till a feminine voice stopped him, pointed in its displeasure.
“Jack . . . that you?”
He slid from the saddle, his boots making a smacking sound as the heft of him landed atop stones and mud. “Chloe?”
His sister circled the felled oak, wearing battered brogans and a man’s shirt and hat, silvery eyes glistening like newly minted coins, nose freckled, mouth planted in a pout. She looked like an unmade bed. The only feminine thing about Chloe was her name. He guessed he and Wade were to blame, always treating her like a little brother.
“Look at this cussed tree! Daring to fall—my very favorite for climbing!” There was a telling wetness about her eyes that belied her indignation. “Yours too, if I remember.”
Sympathy softened him as he tugged the unsightly hat off her fair head. “Be glad it didn’t fall on the house.” The memory of his own mishap along the turnpike, still vivid, nearly made him cringe. His six and twenty years had almost ended in the dark Monongahela woods. If they’d buried him, what would they have said?
“Son of whiskey scion succumbs to storm”?
He shook off the thought and tied Cicero to the iron hitching post, which stood slightly askew. A casualty of the storm, most likely.
“It’ll make good firewood, I guess,” Chloe admitted grudgingly, kicking at a gnarled branch, “or staves for whiskey barrels.”
“None of that talk, Daughter.” The voice, firm and far-reaching, drifted down from overhead. Chloe and Jack looked up, but Isabel Turlock’s eyes were firmly planted on her secondborn son as she leaned out an open window. She couldn’t tolerate a daughter who talked trade, her stern countenance reminded. Whiskey was taboo, though they wallowed in its profits.
“How is River Hill?” she demanded, the worried cast of her features hinting she expected the worst.
“I’ve not been there yet,” Jack told her.
“Well, when you do, send word that all is well. But before you go, I need to speak to you—in your father’s study.” With that, she shut the window so hard the glass rattled. Jack half expected it to shatter. It wouldn’t be the first time . . .
“Ma has a bee in her bonnet,” Chloe warned. “You’ll be sorry you’ve come.”
She grabbed her hat from him and spun away, skirting the fallen oak and heading for the summer kitchen. There she’d pour out her angst to Sally, their Negro cook, the woman who’d been more mother to them than the tiny woman who soon stood before him. What Isabel O’Hara Turlock lacked in stature, she made up for in spirit. She raked him with a glance and motioned him inside as soon as he set foot on the porch.
“There’s more than the weather to worry about,” she murmured, the fine lines in her face deepening when she frowned.
He followed her down the hall, his gaze scouring the elaborately painted ceiling for signs of damage. Unscathed, the plump, harp-playing cherubs surrounding a bearded Father Time smiled down at him benignly, as they had a quarter of a century or better. Everything was polished, echoing, empty. Mrs. Grimm, the house
keeper, was a stickler for tidiness—and well deserving of her dour name.
Isabel’s voice wafted back to him, as clipped as the rap of her heels on the polished floor. “You look like you’ve been in another brawl.”
“I’ve been clearing the pike,” he said, reminded of his wretched clothes. Though he’d changed at Widow Meyer’s, they were now as soiled as before. “Where are Pa and Wade?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. They’re in the quarters. Four of the slaves are missing. They took advantage of the storm and fled.”
“Which four?”
“The ones fresh from Kentucky. You know the ring leader well enough—Big Jim, so hot-tempered he could boil beans.” She rounded his father’s desk and began searching through stacks of papers, her ringed hands flashing with amethysts and diamonds, her favorite gemstones. “He’s been upset ever since your father sold his wife downriver, as if he had a choice. She was as surly as Jim. Together they made more mischief than the other fifty slaves combined.” Taking up a pen, she signed a document and thrust it toward Jack. “Here are the transfer papers for Jim’s brother, Ben. We want him off the property in case he’s tempted to run too.”
“What about Sally?”
Isabel raised a hand to sand-colored hair that didn’t hold a hint of gray, eyes hardening. “What about her?”
“You’re bound to stir up a hornets’ nest separating Sally from Ben.”
“It should have been done long ago. Sally’s indulged that boy far too long, treating him like a house slave when he belongs in the fields.”
“You can hardly blame her, as he’s her youngest grandson.”
“I need no reminding. Just take Ben with you as you go. I’m sure you have work for him at River Hill.”
“Aye, in the stables. But I’ll have a talk with Sally first.”
“That’s hardly necessary.” Her voice held a hint of hostility. “I don’t consult the slaves before making decisions and neither should you.”