Heirs of Acadia - 02 - The Innocent Libertine (38 page)

South of the central part of town was a ramshackle metropolis of tents. Some were large affairs that seemed to sprout from half-finished structures. This region of tents dwarfed the more permanent structures. Pushing right up to the road’s southern border were tents selling everything from healing remedies to pots and pans and wagons and plows. There were even tents holding churches.

“Sorry, I need my other hand.”

Abigail looked down. Without knowing, she had taken hold of Abe’s hand. “Oh, forgive me.”

“Thank you.” He hauled on the reins, taking the horses through a gradual turning, and then he checked behind them to make sure the other carriage was still following. “May I ask your impression?”

She heard the intensity in his voice.

“It’s all so utterly and completely new to me.”

“Are you displeased?”

She took a very long breath. There was so much she wanted to say, but the words just did not seem to fit together in the proper form. “Could we please continue down to the riverfront?”

He glanced at her. “But of course.”

The road broadened and became the city of Wheeling’s main thoroughfare. A line of cypress and ash trees formed a separation along the center. Traffic for the pair of ferries across the Ohio River waited in a long and almost stationary line. Abe joined the steadily moving stream that made its way past the hotels and the restaurants and the land offices and the haberdasheries and the saloons and the dry goods stores and the courthouse and the jail.

“Can you feel it?” she asked.

“What?”

Again she was unable to find the proper words. The sensations were as strong as the sunlight overhead. People thronged the raised plank walkways fronting the stores. Men tipped their hats and stood aside for ladies walking beneath parasols. Families in the odd dress of immigrants gawked and moved slowly along the street. The town seemed impossibly full, of people and sights and sounds.

Abigail motioned up ahead. “Would you stop here for a moment?”

“I can try.” A line of shade trees rimmed the riverbank. Abe found a spot that was not occupied by other wagons. He pulled the horses to a halt and applied the hand brake. “Can I get you anything? A drink of water, perhaps?”

“Just sit here with me for a moment, please.”

“Abigail, I don’t think I can stand this much longer. What is it?”

She turned in her seat so she could stare back up the crowded central street of Wheeling. Dust hung heavy in the windless afternoon, like a golden veil dropped over the city and the people and the wagons and the river. She asked again, “Can you feel it?”

“Feel what?” he exclaimed in frustration.

“The excitement. The energy. The life!”

He stared at her. “You’re pleased?”

“Pleased? Oh, Abe, I have never been so thrilled in all my life.”

“But . . .” Now it was he who struggled for words. “But this is just an overcrowded border town.”

“No, no, Abe. It is a city of new beginnings. It is a city of the future. It is a new world filled with
adventure
. We are surrounded by people who are staking all they have, including their lives and the lives of their children, on carving a place for themselves in this new world.”

“So you like it? You—”

“I have never in all my life dreamed that I should find a place so exciting.” She took a breath and felt the energy surge through her. “It is a world of impatience and impetuousness. It is a world of opportunity. It is our world.”

“Ours,” he repeated.

“Ours. Together.” She pointed out over the river. “And look there.”

Just upriver from the main ferries, a team of drovers was pulling tar-blackened tree trunks toward the river. Off the opposite bank, a smaller ferry was moored. From it a crew of workers was busy hammering in crossbeams to stanchions rising from the river bottom. “They are building a bridge across the Ohio,” Abe observed.

“Just so.” She raised her finger a trifle. “And look out on the other side.”

A long line of wagons were carting in rocks, and a team of workers were spreading them to form the base for the extended road. Abe stared at it a long moment, then said, “Tell me what you see.”

She looked into the eyes of this man she loved and replied, “Our future.”

“Would you help me down, please?” Lillian asked.

“Of course.” Reginald extended his hand.

“Come along, Hannah,” Erica said. “Let’s go look at the river.” The two of them skipped off hand in hand, while the nanny and her husband followed at a distance.

Lillian and Reginald had spoken scarcely a word since leaving the hilltop. Lillian had regretted the tension and the distance between them. But Erica had been right. The need for a time of prayerful reflection had been so great she accepted Reginald’s anxiety as a necessary cost.

“Thank you.” She stepped lightly down and kept hold of his hand. She drew him into the trees lining the river until they could stand and look across the gray-green waters at the opposite bank.

They stood there for quite some time. The town’s clamor rose behind them with the dust. Up ahead was scarcely less tumult. Where workers were building the road, carters shouted at their beasts and cracked whips twenty feet long. Oxen strained to haul the loads of rock and gravel. The ferry operators handled the long guide ropes while their teams pulled the flat-bottomed vessels against the river’s constant flow. As soon as the ferries docked on the other side, the ferry master shouted for the men to swiftly off-load. There was nothing tranquil about the scene. It was dusty, chaotic, tumultuous.

Lillian shivered, but it was neither from fear nor dismay. “I have seen enough.”

“Very well.” Reginald turned from the water. “I suppose we should see to rooms for the night.”

“Yes.”

Something in her tone turned him back. “You are already wanting to speak with a land office?”

“No, Reginald.”

“I would urge you not to act in haste. There are many scoundrels at work here. Everyone warns—” “Reginald, you misunderstand. It is not that at all.”

“Well, what then?”

She stepped forward until she stood so close she could smell the dust on his clothes and see how it clung to his lashes, as though already the city were working to set its imprint upon his features. “I had to be absolutely certain before I spoke with you. I hope you can see that.”

“All I see is that our journey is at an end. Our journey and our time together.”

“That is not true.”

He encompassed the entire sunlit vista with a wide sweep of his arm. “This is not my world, Lillian.”

“I know that.”

“You have traveled half the world around to come to this place.”

“Yes. What you say is true.”

“You must establish a new future for yourself and your son. I understand that. Just as I understand your future holds no place—”

“Nothing could be further from the truth, dear Reginald.”

“But . . .”

“Reginald, listen to me. I love you. But I had to be certain that what I had come to find was not here. Do you understand? No, I see that you do not.”

“Lillian, hopefully somewhere farther to the west is the place of safety you desire, your destiny.”

“So I thought. But I was wrong. I have come to realize through this journey that everything holds risks. Staying can be dangerous, moving the same. Genuine security must be found in love, both human and divine.”

Reginald needed a moment to gather himself. “Then you will come back to Washington?”

“Before I answer that, I must know one thing. Here and now, I beg you to speak plainly and in utter honesty. What you said back on the hillside about my not being the cause of this ambush, this was the truth?”

“Never have I spoken with greater truthfulness.”

“You understand that my returning with you could well open you and the family to further attacks.”

“All of which would be only slander and lies.”

“Nonetheless, they will accuse you of harboring a fallen woman.” Despite her sternest resolve, her voice broke.

“No, my dearest, a thousand times no. Slander and lies will be met with truth.”

“You would do that? Shield me at such a dire cost?”

“How could I do anything less for the woman I hold dearest?”

“Reginald—”

“I know what I know, Lillian. You are a good woman. You are becoming a
godly
woman. You are the woman I would give the world to call my own.”

She sighed. “How can I argue against such love?”

“You can’t.”

“Then whenever it is time for you to depart, I am ready.”

“You will do that? Come with me?”

“If there is room for me in your life,” she repeated, “I am ready.”

He reached for her hand, his strong frame now trembling. “Lillian, my dearest, would you marry me?”

It took her a long moment to whisper, “Yes, I will.”

“God has brought to me a gift beyond measure.” Reginald looked into her face. “Please, you mustn’t cry, my dearest.”

“I’m not, am I? Well, perhaps a little. It doesn’t matter.” She wiped at her face, using just the one hand, for the other was unable to release hold of his fingers. “It is you who have taught me the lesson of love, of finding a place where I belong and a role worth the joy of giving all my days to. All my life.”

He smiled as he said, “Do you recall the carriage ride we took on the day you told me of your past?”

“I shall never forget it, nor the goodness of your reply.”

“And the knoll and pastures? The riverbank?”

“And what you said there in the carriage, yes, I remember. You spoke of love.”

“I spoke also of purchasing that piece of property.”

“You didn’t!” His grin was all the answer she required. “Oh, Reginald!”

“We will build a house for ourselves there,” he declared. “A place of refuge and shelter, of love and friends willing to accept us exactly as we are. And perhaps Byron could join us, at least for a time, and allow me to come to know and care for him.”

“A home,” Lillian whispered and held him so tight she felt his heart beat against her own. “I have found my safe place.”

It seemed to Abigail that all the world was singing. The birds in the boughs overhead added a high tremolo to the workers and the horses and the children. All this river town had to offer was wrapped in a single glorious song. She also knew that when she thought back to this day, she would remember it as a hymn. As though even the sun were humming a bright golden note. As though the angels were choosing to add their own secret tone to this most special of afternoons.

“My darling Abigail,” Abe said, turning to her as they stood at the edge of the river, “would you marry me?”

Her own answer came out as a trembling melody. “Yes. Oh yes. It is all I could ever ask for, to marry you, my dearest Abe.”

He embraced her and drew her close enough to say into her ear, “You make me the happiest and most fortunate man, dearest Abigail.”

Abigail stepped over to the other coach as Erica and Hannah returned from the riverside. Something in Abigail’s gaze caused Erica to leave the child with Horace as he tended the horses. “Yes? What is it?”

“Abe has asked me to marry him.”

“And you are pleased?”

“I am thrilled beyond words.” But then her expression changed. “Erica, I saw the slave auction block.”