Whispers from the Shadows (49 page)

Epilogue

December 20, 1860

Forty-six years later

T
had waited until the dancing was boisterous enough that no one would notice as he slipped away. Not far, not as far as he would have liked. Just into Jack's library, right beside the ballroom. Where the music was just enough muted, where the lights were just enough dimmed. Where the world was just enough away. He moved over to the window that looked out on a skiff of fresh-fallen snow.

And he sighed.

He heard the sound of Gwyn's slippers on the rug behind him, which brought a smile as it always did. Still, he sighed again as her arms slipped around his waist.

“What are you doing in here, my love? Marietta will want to dance with her granddad on her wedding day.”

His arms settled into their habitual place around her. “I know. I needed a few minutes.”

“You knew it was coming.” Her hand rubbed a circle on his back, but it couldn't bring much comfort. Not yet. Not when the fracture was so new.

“I know. I had hoped, I had prayed…but there is no way around it now, sweet. Other states will follow South Carolina. The South will all have seceded in a matter of months. War is coming again.”

Now she was the one who sighed. “We are too old for all of this.”

“Speak for yourself, woman. I'm as spry as ever.” He straightened his spine in proof and decided
not
to look around for a chair to perch on. Instead, he tilted her face up with a finger under her chin and studied it in the moonlight. There were wrinkles now, to be sure. Each one earned from years of living well, loving always. And the same beautiful smile. The same fathomless Caribbean eyes. “You are lovelier than ever, Mrs. Lane.”

“And you more handsome, but that is not my point, as well you know.” She lifted up on her toes and pulled him down enough to brush a quiet kiss over his lips. “I know you. I know you will rouse the Culpers from their slumber. But you cannot be the one out scouting anymore, riding thither and yon to meet with anyone who might have information. Your place is where the congressman's once was. Behind a desk.”

Blasted things, desks. “I know. But the question of who else to bring in…”

They turned together back to the door that she had left cracked open to the ballroom. Thad looked out to see all the most treasured people in his world. Jack, dancing with their Julie and smiling down at her in the same way he had since she was born when he was five—with total adoration. He could ask more of Jack, but he already had his place in the Ring and in the navy besides. Out on the waves that Thad so rarely ventured onto anymore. Each of their boys had his place too, doing what they could.

“Are you certain you need anyone else?”

“I am certain.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “We have a different kind of enemy this time around, sweet, one that will stretch our resources to the breaking point.”

“What kind?” Worry saturated her tone, and her fingers twitched against him. When they got home, she would head straight for her ever-faithful
secretaire
and its fresh stacks of paper.

Thad watched the colorful twirl of dancers, hooped skirts swishing and swaying as his nieces and daughters and granddaughters, his neighbors and friends all celebrated with them. His gaze fell on Marietta. The youngest of Jack and Julie's children, and the most exasperating. The one with the most potential yet with the most determination to ignore it. Perhaps that was why she was his favorite.

She was more beautiful than she ought to be in her white silk, with her scarlet curls arranged just so. And that too-practiced smile aimed, now, at her new husband's brother.

He sighed. “Hez's intuition was right. A secret society is operating for the South and placed all through the country, all with a Southern agenda.” He had yet to voice their name, afraid he might be wrong. But the invisible ink had revealed it to him just that morning, minutes before he read in the papers that South Carolina had seceded.

The Knights of the Golden Circle
.

Gwyn shook her head. Not, he knew, in denial. But in a wish that it wasn't so. “And you think to undermine them?”

“I cannot think how else to reunite our country but to quiet those who sow division.”

“How will we find them, Thad?”

His gaze followed Mari as her groom swept her up in a dance. As Lucien Hughes, too handsome, too charming, laughed with his precious granddaughter. Thad's fingers curled into his palm. “I think, sweet, that they just found us.”

Discussion Questions

1. When Gwyneth witnesses the horrors of the first chapter, she responds by obeying her father but at the cost of her mental and physical health. How would you have reacted? Would you have fled as he commanded or stayed and sought justice?

2. Thad has an intuition, an attuning to the Spirit, that often leads him to the place he needs to go at a specific time.
Have you ever known anyone who seems to do this? Have you ever heard the whisper of the Spirit leading you in this way?

3. Who is your favorite character and why?

4. Family plays an important role for the characters in
Whispers from the Shadows
, both in how they support us and how they can hinder us. Which aspects best encompass your own family experiences?

5. Gwyneth works through the trauma of her father's murder by drawing and painting. What do you do to deal with stressors? What did you think of her method?

6. Thad tells Gwyneth that “we are all broken.” In what way is that true of each of the characters? How is it true for you?

7. Do you think Thad did the right thing in marrying Peggy? Why or why not?

8. Rosie helps Gwyneth see that she has put her trust and found her rest in a fallible man rather than our infallible God. Have you ever relied too much on a person? Who, and in what way? What was the outcome?

9. Sir Arthur's decisions take him from a would-be hero to a villain's accomplice throughout the book. How are you left feeling about him? How did your opinions change over the course of the book? What do you think of Mercer's opposite change?

10. The salvation of the United States came when an entire city rallied together, unified, and stood firm against their enemy, though in the years prior they had been languid and more concerned with their individual goods than the nation's. How does that parallel the country today? What can we learn from them?

Author's Note

When I first researched the Culper Ring, America's original and most trusted spy ring, I was intrigued not only by the tight-knit, secretive group who survived because they were all friends and family, but also by the possibility of their secret continuation after the Revolution. When I read that Benjamin Tallmadge, the head of the ring during the War of Independence, was a congressman during the War of 1812, the wheels in my head began spinning. How could the man who organized intelligence during the Revolution
not
have a hand in it when war was declared again?

History records that most of America's intelligence gathering during this second war with England was courtesy of the privateer fleet that wreaked havoc upon the British vessels. Whenever they saw something of interest, they got word back to Washington. Yet again, a network of friends…and so I had to ask, “What if they were organized by the Culpers?” I needed a hero capable of gathering information from sailors far and wide, and so the personable Thaddeus Lane was created.

Where in
Ring of Secrets
the featured tool of espionage was invisible ink, I was excited to add into this story the cutout paper called either a “mask” or “grille.” The British were actually using this method as early as the Revolution, but Americans hadn't yet gotten their hands on it. I just loved, though, how this visual tool wove seamlessly into my visually inclined heroine, who was already subconsciously hiding messages in her artwork. Such fun!

I once again drew on the Puritan prayers from
Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions
compiled by Arthur Bennett, which are the ones supposedly copied from a text by Grandfather Reeves.

My primary research book for this one was
The Battle for Baltimore 1814
by Joseph A. Whitehorne, in which he combined traditional with original research to paint a picture of the little-known war in the Chesapeake region. I was dumbfounded by how the politicians in Washington all but ignored the advancing British for two years; I cackled in delight (being from Maryland and West Virginia) at how the hot, humid summer did more to repel the soldiers weary from Europe than the troops did; and I was touched to the core
when Baltimore won their pivotal battle by doing what the nation had been unable to do for the two years prior—put politics and daily life aside, and unite with a single focus.

The British admiralty really did decide to attack Baltimore because of misinformation about the preparedness of the city, including a newspaper article in the Baltimore paper that grossly understated their efforts—how could that
not
have been intentional? Combined with that, the British had a basic misunderstanding of the American spirit. They thought our signals were signs of panic and that they could defeat us by burning our capital, never considering it would make everyone spitting mad and, for the first time, united.

My descriptions of the bombardment of Fort McHenry are taken from firsthand accounts, including the unexploded ordinance that landed in the ammunition magazine. Mere hours in, Cochrane knew he had made a mistake, one made all the more clear when Ross was killed in the land battle. Disheartened and exhausted, the British soon withdrew from the Chesapeake and, after the American victory at New Orleans, from the country early in 1815.

But even in its early days, America had a growing rift between slaveholding and non-slaveholding states, one observed from its very founding. I made sure to plant the seeds of concern in
Whispers from the Shadows
because the next adventure of the Culpers is going to put them in a position they never anticipated—smack between the Knights of the Golden Circle, who reportedly buried Confederate gold, and a Pinkerton investigator determined to infiltrate them.

Can you see me rubbing my hands together in delight?

About the Author

Roseanna M. White
grew up in the mountains of West Virginia, the beauty of which inspired her to begin writing as soon as she learned to pair subjects with verbs. She spent her middle and high school days penning novels in class, and her love of books took her to a school renowned for them. After graduating from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, she and her husband moved back to the Maryland side of the same mountains they equate with home. Roseanna is the author of two biblical novels as well as several American historical romances. She is the
senior reviewer at the Christian Review of Books, which she and her husband founded, the senior editor at WhiteFire Publishing, and a member of ACFW, HisWriters, and Colonial American Christian Writers.

Roseanna loves little more than talking to her readers! You can reach her at: [email protected]

Be sure to visit her blog at
www.RoseannaMWhite.blogspot.com
and her website at
www.RoseannaMWhite.com
, where you can sign up for her newsletter to receive news about upcoming books.

Ring of Secrets

Love Has No Place in a World of Spies

1779—Winter Reeves is an aristocratic American Patriot forced to hide her heart amid the British Loyalists of the city of New York. She has learned to keep her ears open so she can pass information on British movements to Robbie Townsend, her childhood friend, and his spy ring. If she's caught, she will be executed for espionage, but she prays the Lord's protection will sustain her, and Robbie has taught her the tools of the trade—the wonders of invisible ink, secret drop locations and, most importantly, a good cover.