Beauty for Ashes (37 page)

Carrie felt the child’s chest. A heartbeat fluttered, but the skin was turning blue. She blew into the baby’s nostrils, tiny puffs of air. Nothing. Holding tightly to the baby, she swung it in a wide arc, back and forth, praying that the rush of air would fill its tiny lungs. Still nothing. Carrie realized she was holding her own breath.

Then, at last, she heard it—a faint mewling sound that quickly grew into a lusty, full-bodied cry. Carrie bathed the tiny child, tears of sadness and relief streaming unchecked down her face.
It’s a boy, Henry. Someone to carry on your name. And thank God he’s all right
.

She swaddled the child and handed him to his mother. “Mary, here’s your son.”

“Another boy?”

Carrie smiled. “Henry would bust his buttons if he knew.”

Mary squeezed Carrie’s hand. “I like to think he does know, somehow.”

“Me too.” She helped Mary to bathe and change, and left to check the fire in the stove. Now that the child was safely delivered, she was weak with relief and exhaustion but too keyed up to sleep. She made tea and carried a tray to Mary’s room.

Mother and child were sleeping. Watching the rise and fall of Mary’s breath, Carrie felt her old resentments falling away. They might never be the best of friends, but she and Mary were truly a family now, bound forever by the child they both loved. She wished Mary a peaceful rest, free of the longing for the life that was lost to her now.

Mary’s life had not turned out as she wanted. Perhaps no one’s did.

Perhaps the secret to a happy life was to want the one you had.

The Atlantic lay still and pewter-gray, reflecting the late February sky. Bundled into his overcoat, Griff stood on the battery, watching a fishing boat approach the harbor. His throat tightened. He’d forgotten how much he missed the sights and smells of the low country, the excitement of moonless wartime night voyages aboard the
Nightingale
. He’d missed Charleston too, the way a man misses a well-loved woman.

At one time he had known the city’s every nook and cranny—the ornate mansions on Queen and Meeting Streets built with money from rice plantations dotting the banks of the Pee Dee River. The gaming houses, the busy wharf, the elegant theaters. St. Philip’s Church, where he attended services as a boy. He recalled countless Sundays spent wedged between his parents and his brother, trussed into scratchy wool suits and stiff boiled collars, tight shoes pinching his feet. He loved the sound of his mother’s voice lifted in song, the peaceful hush that descended as the prayers were read, the dust motes swirling in the bright Carolina sunlight, the tantalizing sea smells riding on the sultry breeze coming through the open windows.

But Charleston was a changed place now. St. Philip’s bells no longer chimed the hours, having been melted into cannons during the war. Vast stretches of the city from Hassel Street clear up to Tradd had burned to the ground back in sixty-one, leaving a swath of smoking ruins, their insides seared to nothing. Here and there ghostlike shells of homes still stood, reminders of a way of life that was now irrevocably lost. In his opinion, it was this loss, more than any physical ailment, that had sent his father to his sickbed.

He jammed his gloveless hands into his pockets, turned, and walked along Meeting Street toward his father’s house. Uncertain of the reception awaiting him after so long an absence, he’d left his bags at the train station. If he was turned away—a distinct possibility—he’d simply head back to Hickory Ridge.

He regretted that he hadn’t ridden out to Carrie’s place before leaving town. But Philip’s telegram, with its terse message, “Come home,” had arrived on the same day as his meeting with Gilman at the bank. A trip to Carrie’s would have meant missing the evening train and then a two-day wait for the next one. Distracted, he’d scribbled a hasty note to her, intending to leave it with the postmaster, only to find it later in the pocket of his overcoat. Stupid. He hoped Carrie would understand. As uncertain as he was of his welcome in Charleston, he nevertheless wanted a chance to say good-bye to his father. He feared he might already be too late.

Arriving at the Rutledge house, he pushed open the wrought-iron gate, hurried past the tangle of neglected gardens, and climbed the steps to the verandah. Before he could ring the bell, the door opened. There stood his younger brother, bleary-eyed and unshaven.

Philip motioned Griff inside. “Thank God you came. Father has been asking for you.”

Griff shucked out of his overcoat and hung it on the hall tree and blew on his hands to warm them. “Then he isn’t—”

“Not yet. But soon, I think. Dr. Pettigrew was here yesterday.”

Philip’s voice cracked. “He didn’t offer us much hope, I’m afraid.”

Griff nodded.

“Susan was here most of the night. I finally sent her home to rest for a while. You need coffee?”

“If it isn’t too much trouble.” Griff looked around his boyhood home. Nothing, not even the draperies, had changed. On the hall table stood a silver bowl filled with apples. Oil portraits of his mother still hung above the massive fireplace and along the stair landing. A small forest of silver candlesticks crowded the mantel. The furnishings gleamed and smelled faintly of beeswax. His heart ached with loss.

“Is Calpurnia still keeping house for Father?”

“Calpurnia?” Philip led the way to the dining room, where a silver coffee service waited on the marble-topped sideboard. “You have been away a long time, brother. Cal passed on—” He paused while he poured coffee into two bone-china cups—“four or five years ago. Her daughter Daisy comes in a few times a week to tidy up.” He handed Griff a cup. “Otherwise, Susan helps me look after things.”

Griff sipped the bitter brew. “Susan’s a good woman.”

“But not good enough for you,” Philip said without rancor.

“We wouldn’t have been compatible. It has nothing to do with her character. I’m certain you’ll be very happy together.”

The faint chiming of a bell sounded. Philip set down his cup. “He’s awake. Ready to go up?”

Griff nodded, his heart thudding. Stupid to fear his father’s opinion at this late date. He wasn’t a callow youth of fourteen anymore. He’d made a more than respectable fortune during the war, and he was on the verge of a new enterprise that he found challenging and exciting. By his own measure—which was all any man should care about—he was a success. And yet there was an empty place inside him where his father’s approval belonged.

He followed Philip up the curving staircase to his father’s room overlooking the summer kitchen and the carriage house where long ago Griff had stolen his first kiss. It seemed now like another life, as if those languorous low-country summers had happened to someone else.

They went in. The curtains were open to the weak winter light. In the grate, a fire leapt and crackled. A small side table was littered with a half-empty water pitcher, a glass, several small brown medicine bottles, a wrinkled handkerchief. A pile of books lay haphazardly on the floor.

“Father?” Philip said softly. “You’ve been asking for Griff, and here he is.”

Their father, wasted and pale, blinked and struggled to sit up. “Griffin?”

Griff moved to the side of the bed. “Hello, Father.”

“I—I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I wanted to see you. It’s been a long time.”

His father nodded and extended a mottled, clawlike hand. “Good . . . to see you, son.”

Despite all the strife between them over the years, Griff’s eyes filled. This wizened, helpless shell of a man was the man who had given him life. And now all Griff could think of was the good times. Those years before his father’s expectations collided with Griff’s own wishes and dreams.

“Sit.” Charles Rutledge motioned his eldest son to a chair. “Tell me . . . where . . . have you been?”

“Here and there. Most recently in Tennessee.”

“Did you . . . go to that horse race in Kentucky last spring?”

Griff smiled. Horses and horse racing had always been the best thing they shared.

“The Derby.” Griff shook his head. “But I rode in a race this past fall. A magnificent colt called Majestic. Sixteen hands high, a wide-rumped, stubborn cuss, but fleet of foot. And a stride like I’ve never seen before. You’d have loved him.”

The squeak of carriage wheels sounded in the street below. Philip rose and looked out. “Susan’s back. Will you excuse me, Father?” Philip sought Griff’s gaze. “Ring the bell if you need me.”

Their father waved him away. When Philip had gone, he turned to Griff. “I’m glad to have a few minutes alone, Griffin. I don’t have much time and—” He coughed and motioned for a glass of water. Griff held the glass while his father sipped, the water dribbling down his stubbled chin.

“Maybe you shouldn’t try to talk, Father.”

“But it’s important that you understand why I’m leaving . . . everything to Philip.”

The old resentments came rushing back. Anger replaced the pity he’d felt just moments before. But how could he argue with a dying man? “You don’t have to explain. What’s done is done. And I don’t need the Rutledge money. I never wanted it anyway.”

“Exactly.” The old man’s watery blue gaze held Griff’s. “You always were the enterprising one. From the time you were small, you had the instincts of a survivor. Philip, on the other hand, needed much more direction.”

“And he’s more malleable too.” The fire had burned low. Griff added another log and tapped it with the poker. “I understand he’s going to marry Susan Layton. I suppose I should congratulate you both.”

His father sighed. “The joining of family fortunes is a time-honored way of life in the South.”

Griff stood with his back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him. “I’m well aware of that. And when I refused to play along with this time-honored tradition, I was disowned.”

Charles coughed and sputtered. “Disowned? The way I remember it, you up and left the family, son. And broke your poor mother’s heart.”

“I’m sorry for that. But you made it clear there was no place for me here.”

A pained look crossed the older man’s face. “No place . . . is that what you thought? That I was throwing you out?”

“Weren’t you?” Even now, the thought burned a hole in his heart. He recalled the years spent in gaming halls, on riverboats, in anonymous cities, heartsick for his roots and alone. His father, so intent upon molding him into the son he wanted, had completely missed the one he actually had.

“I tried to give you what you wanted.” The old man picked up the handkerchief from the table and pressed it to his watery eyes. “The freedom to live life on your own terms. It’s what your mother urged me to do. But I . . . handled it all wrong. I never intended you to feel unwelcome. Disowned. I never wanted that.”

Griff felt his heart crack open. All this time he’d assumed Philip was the favored one and he was the black sheep, misunderstood and unloved. Was it possible that he’d been wrong? That what had looked like indifference was, in fact, his father’s way of showing love?

“But, Father, when I left you were so angry with me. So judgmental. I could see how disappointed you were, and I couldn’t bear it.”

“Disappointed, yes. Judgmental? Probably.” His father paused for breath. “But only because I missed you, son. Philip is not half the horseman you are, nor half the businessman either. I was angry at my loss. Not at you.”

“But—”

“In a way, I envied you. But I never stopped loving you. Never stopped trying to find out any bit of news about where you were and how you were getting on.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“In a way it was worse than if you had died. At least then I could have mourned you and . . . made my peace with your absence.”

Griff wiped his eyes. That his father loved him enough to give him the costliest gift imaginable—a life unencumbered by the obligations to the plantation and the way of life it engendered—was beyond his comprehension. How in the world had it taken him till now to understand that things are not always as they seem?

“Why didn’t you say something, Father? All these years when I thought—”

Tears streamed down the older man’s face. “Can you forgive a stubborn, arrogant old fool for getting it all wrong?”

The door opened and Philip came in. “Father? Dr. Pettigrew is here.”