Counterfeit Courtship (20 page)

Moments later, Ellie crept into the room, her light blue skirts rustling less than usual with her careful gait. Her blue eyes shone in the morning light, making him catch his breath. Was she always this lovely so early in the morning? It was a look he would never tire of waking up to—every day of his life.

“Is Betsy up? I don't want to awaken her.”

Graham and his father stood, then Graham seated her next to himself.

“Betsy has been mercifully sound asleep since four o'clock, and so is Noreen.” Aunt Ophelia hastened toward the butler's pantry and returned with a plate and silver service.

Ellie accepted it with thanks and helped herself to a ham biscuit, her face alight. “I have an idea.”

Graham should have known. That's what that look always meant.

“Your light was on late last night,” Father said, no hint of expression on his face.

Ellie's bright smile made up for it. “You're right, Colonel. You must be feeling better.”

“But your light was on late last night,” he said again in an insistent tone.

“I'm all right now. I had things to think about.”

“Including your new idea, no doubt.” How crazy would it be? But she was here, and she was making plans. That meant she hadn't given up.

God, You've been good to us.
And Graham's renewed prayer life was not the least of His blessings. No longer did his prayers seem to vanish as soon as they left his mouth.

“Miss Ophelia, there's going to be a whole passel of men out at Magnolia Grove guarding my cotton for the next three days. They need a woman on hand to cook for them.” Ellie sipped the coffee his aunt set before her. “I need Lilah May to stay here to help take care of Uncle Amos. Would you be interested in the job? I'm running low on provisions, so we'll serve ham from my storage room and vegetables from my garden. That should hold us over until my payment for the first cotton shipment comes in.”

“I've replenished our coffee, sugar and flour with the little money I came home with, so we can contribute some of that, as well,” Graham said.

Aunt Ophelia gave her a saucy grin. “I'll start getting things together right away.”

For a change, Ellie's plan wasn't bad.

He stopped the thought cold. In the past, he'd grown accustomed to her ideas bringing nothing but chaos. But her recent schemes had worked out for their good. Mostly. Perhaps he needed to change his attitude toward them.

But something told him he would always groan a little when hearing her announce a new plan.

Chapter Nineteen

“E
llie, I've never seen anything quite so unconventional.” Miss Ophelia's stage whisper surely carried all the way across Magnolia Grove's backyard as she and Ellie stood on the gallery just before dusk that night.

Ellie cast her gaze over the twenty or so workers striding from the cabins toward the house after a hard day of hoeing cotton. They propped their hoes against the side of the house, stepped onto the back gallery and entered the great hall. Sugar followed and flopped down in the middle of them.

“I agree, but these men are risking their own safety to help me. I wanted to have prayer here in my house, in the home where I spent much of my childhood and made some of my best memories.”

They went inside, where the workers, Moses, Mister Sutton and Graham doffed their hats and bowed the knee. As Graham began his prayer, Ellie also dropped to her knees, her gratitude for this moment clouding her vision. Each man here had volunteered his help, refusing pay. Such loyalty was worth more than piles of gold or barns full of cotton.

Graham ended his prayer for protection, wisdom and insight by opening his Bible. “Remember Philippians 4:13: ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.'”

After the final “amen,” the workers filed out the front door, Miss Ophelia following. Graham hung behind with Ellie.

“Sutton and Moses are in charge of guarding the abandoned house and outbuildings. I'll be just up the road at the chapel, close to you. As I hope always to be.” His voice was now barely a whisper. “I know what you said and I know what you meant, but that's not the way this will end. I'm going to defend your property, I'm going to see your cotton onto the ship, and then I'm going to come back and say a few things to you that have been on my mind. No matter what.”

This man—this warrior—kindled her hope in ways she hadn't dreamed. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

Graham leaned down and dropped the lightest of kisses onto her lips—a kiss of anticipation, of promise, like a vow. She brought her fingers to his cheek, brushing them against the evening stubble there. His lips tasted of coffee and cream as he kissed her again, stealing her breath. Then he broke away, gazing at her with those beautiful green-gray eyes.

“I have my mind set on one thing.” Graham touched his finger to her lips for an instant. Then he set out, looking every inch the colonel.

If Leonard came here tonight, he'd face a fiery opponent.

As Ellie took a moment to catch her breath, Miss Ophelia sailed into the great hall. “I take it the courtship is resumed.”

Now, how did she know what had been going on? “Perhaps, in time.”

The older woman's laughter rang out like the dinner bell. “If that's what you want me to think, then that's what I'll think. But it's a good thing I came along to chaperone.”

It was past time to change the subject. “There's a breeze tonight. Would you like to sit on the widow's walk and cool off? This room is sweltering.”

They extinguished the gaslights and headed upstairs to the second-floor great hall, Sugar trailing behind them.

“This is my favorite place in the house,” Ellie said as they reached the homey room at the top of the stairs. “Since all the bedrooms open into it, Uncle Amos, Lilah May and I used to sit here in the evenings, talking and reading. I miss those days.”

They coaxed Sugar up the narrow, enclosed stairs that led to the roof, then settled into comfortable rockers. The moon hid behind a heavy bank of clouds and did not reveal even the privy or the two cistern houses twenty yards from the back gallery.

“I have good memories in this house too,” Miss Ophelia said, rocking gently. “Your uncle and I have always been dear friends, you know.”

How well she knew of the courtship this woman and Uncle Amos had fabricated long before Ellie was born. Too much of Miss Ophelia's life paralleled Ellie's own, a fact that still frightened her if she allowed herself to think about it.

“I visited Amos before we left for Magnolia Grove. I think much of his illness is caused by his anguish over the war, and I told him so.”

Ellie wasn't alone in her opinion? The fact brought a measure of comfort.

“The stroke of apoplexy certainly caused his paralysis, but he could still be productive, still live, if he'd exert himself a bit. Before I left, he asked Lilah May to send for Roman to help him downstairs. He wants to move his bedroom down there.”

Uncle Amos—going down the stairs? “Is that wise? The doctor hasn't said to move him.”

“He'll die in that bed if he doesn't get out of it. That's what I told Amos.”

Ellie could hardly argue with that.

The light breeze and gentle humming of cicadas enticed Ellie into laying her head against the back of the rocker and closing her eyes.

She drifted in and out of sleep until Sugar's low growl raised her from a light doze. Sitting up slowly, she looked in the direction the dog faced and heard the four-beat gait of a horse walking up the lane. Graham?

“Miss Ophelia, someone's riding toward the house.” She touched her shoulder.

The older lady roused and leaned forward in her rocker, peering over the railing. “Can't be important. He's riding too slowly for that.”

The sound of hooves came closer to the house, and the shadowy figure of man and horse appeared. The man dismounted, and Sugar growled again, louder this time.

Ellie sucked in a sharp breath. “It's Leonard. He's the only person Sugar has ever growled at,” she whispered.

Miss Ophelia shaded her eyes as if that would help her see him better. “A dog's growl isn't the most reliable way to identify a man.”

“In this case, it is.” Without a sound, Ellie moved to the railing for a closer look and saw a square can in the man's hand. “What's that he's carrying?”

When the figure moved onto the front gallery, Sugar's growl intensified. Then a sloshing noise—and the odor of kerosene. A flash of orange light and the roar of flames.

“He's setting the house on fire—”

Ellie clambered to the staircase, but Sugar beat her to it.

“God, have mercy!” Miss Ophelia's shrill prayer fueled Ellie's silent one as they raced to the ground floor. Her thoughts rolled like smoke as they burst into the great hall downstairs.

Eerie orange light illuminated the room through the fanlight and sidelights of the front entrance, dancing on the walls and ceiling. Sugar ran from the front to the back door, her barking muffled by the sound of the crackling fire.

Ellie threw open the back door. Sugar bounded out ahead of her and dashed around the house.

Stepping from the back gallery to the yard, Ellie caught sight of the tools the workers had left propped against the wall. She grabbed the longest hoe and rushed to the front, Sugar's growling bark loud in her ears. She had to stop Leonard. If she didn't, he'd set the back gallery on fire too, and if he guessed where she'd hidden the cotton, he'd do the same to it.

Reaching the front of the house, she slowed and peered around the corner. The fire's light revealed a spindly form with an eye patch as the man tried to escape the dog's attack.

Leonard. The man of her nightmares.

Sugar nipped at Leonard's right leg, and Ellie saw her chance. She stole up to his blind left side and lifted the hoe as high as she could.

Kicking toward Sugar but missing, and dodging her teeth to his right, Leonard pulled his sidearm from its holster.

The anger that shot through Ellie fueled a sudden strength. “Don't you ever hurt my dog!”

He swung toward her, his one eye wide.

She brought the hoe down hard on his head.

* * *

Graham and his half dozen field hands sat crouched like infantrymen in the thick stand of pine east of the chapel. The cicadas must have outnumbered the leaves on the trees, judging from their deafening racket. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his damp face and neck in the stifling heat and humidity. After all those years of war, who'd have thought he'd spend another night out in the open, waiting for an enemy to cross into his territory?

He pushed back his hat, scanning the road and the overgrown yard around the chapel. Of a sudden, the cicadas hushed. Not a sound whispered from the road, the woods.

Something had changed. He sensed it as always before battle. His heartbeat filled his ears as he rose silently to his feet, grasped the handle of his sidearm.

Gunshots—six of them in succession—then the clanging of a bell.

Magnolia Grove's dinner bell.

Ellie—

“Fitzwald must be at the big house. Everybody move out!” Graham raced toward Dixie, hidden along a footpath a good twenty yards into the woods. What could be happening there? Who fired the shots?

He flung himself onto the horse and thundered down the road. He should have stationed a man at the house. Should have given Ellie a weapon—

Rounding the bend, he caught a whiff of burning wood.

Surely that weasel hadn't set something on fire...

He spurred Dixie to top speed. When he reached Magnolia Grove's lane, he saw orange flames leaping up to the gallery's ceiling. In the glow, someone sloshed a bucket of water into the fire, her hoopskirts billowing with her effort.

As Dixie galloped up the half-mile-long lane, Graham scrambled to sort the facts in his mind. The woman with the bucket had to be Ellie. She turned and rounded the house, no doubt heading toward the two cistern houses, fighting the fire with his elderly aunt.

Nearing the brick structure, he scanned the area illuminated by the fire. If Fitzwald had set it, where was he?

Graham jerked Dixie to a stop and hitched her to a low-hanging magnolia branch. Approaching on foot, he passed an inert form lying in the grass inside the circle drive. For an instant, he took in the sight of the hoe and the man lying facedown on the ground, his head in a puddle of blood.

Ellie's dog stood, growling, over the body.

It had to be Fitzwald. But what had happened? “Sugar, stay.”

The fire still crackled, flames licking at the second-story gallery now. Graham made for the cistern house in back. In the darkness there, a slight body rammed into his chest.

Ellie. She held two buckets of water, much of which sloshed out with the impact and soaked his pants and boots.

“Was it Fitzwald?” Graham shouted, holding her upper arms.

“I think I killed him—” Her voice choked as with tears as she screamed her answer. “He's in the front yard.”

The air filled with the sound of men running, yelling. Graham grabbed the buckets from Ellie. “Where's Aunt Ophelia?”

“Cistern house. Pumping water.”

He set down one bucket and pulled out his gun. “Find her and give this to her. Tell her to guard Fitzwald and use the gun if she needs to. Then get some more buckets.”

As she ran toward the dairy, Graham's men poured into the yard. Moments later, Myron Sutton thundered up the lane, his black gelding's hooves pounding the dry ground.

“Fitzwald set the fire, Sutton,” Graham hollered over the din of men's shouts and the crackling of the fire. “Get Sheriff Tillman, fast.”

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Graham emptied two buckets of water onto the last embers. Then he bent over, hands on his knees, and drew a long breath of less-smoky air. After a few moments of rest, he hastened to the front of the house.

There in the circle drive, Aunt Ophelia stood guard over the motionless form, which now lay under the nearest live oak. A gun in each hand, she pointed both at Fitzwald's chest. Someone, probably one of the workers, had bandaged his head with coarse cloths and stopped the bleeding, and someone had propped his legs on a sack of grain from the stable.

“He's still alive,” Aunt Ophelia said, “so the men dragged his sorry self over here, out of their way. Sugar and I are making sure that, if he wakes up, he doesn't go anywhere.”

“Where's Ellie?” Graham glanced around, thinking to see her helping to guard Fitzwald.

His aunt peered about as well. “Why, I don't know. I've been keeping both eyes on this—this—”

Her hesitation made Graham eager to hear what his refined yet unconventional aunt would think of to call Leonard Fitzwald now.

“—this outsider.”

Graham worked hard to keep from chuckling. Yes, “outsider” was the worst possible name Aunt Ophelia could call a born-and-bred resident of the town she loved. “So you no longer consider him one of our own?”

“Don't be cheeky. I'm armed, you know.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I'll gladly turn these weapons over to you as soon as you find Ellie and make sure she's all right.”

“I'm on my way.” He started toward the back of the house and the dependencies but stopped as Ellie rushed toward him.

“The fire's out, honey,” he said, taking in her beautiful sooty face and soggy, dirt-smeared dress. “We did it. We saved the house.”

Without so much as a nod of apology to Aunt Ophelia, she wrapped her arms around his waist. “Miss Ophelia and I—we tried, but we couldn't have done it alone.”

He laughed and held her and smoothed her hair, which had come loose from its knot and hung down her back in a pretty, tangled mess. Then he pulled one arm away and pointed at Fitzwald, leaving the other around her shoulders. “Looks to me like you did a good job.”

“I was afraid I'd killed him.”

Her voice sounded so small, so tinny, that it shook him a bit. “Are you all right?”

“I just wish he was gone.”

Graham looked at Ellie and then at the weasel. “He'll be in jail soon. Tonight you have effectively prevented Fitzwald from causing any further problems for a long time.”

Now if Graham could only solve a few more big problems in his life...

* * *

I almost lost it.