Chloe
This book is the work of historical fiction. In order to give a sense of the times, some names or real people or places have been included in the book. However, the events depicted in this book are imaginary, and the names of nonhistorical persons or events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of such nonhistorical persons or events to actual ones is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Lyn Cote
All rights reserved.
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First Edition: June 2005
ISBN: 978-0-446-55370-4
Contents
To my agent, Danielle Egan-Miller.
Thanks for all your hard work and for having confidence in me.
You’ve been great.
“Just as I am without one plea but that Thy blood was shed for me.”
CHARLOTTE ELLIOT
Tidewater Maryland, April 1917
C
hloe thought dying would be easier than what her father wanted her to do now. She’d just been lifted onto the open bed of a farm truck, where she gazed out from under the low brim of her straw hat. It framed the terrifying jumble of faces gawking up at her.
“Chloe,” her father’s voice rumbled a warning. Barrel-chested, wearing a custom-tailored suit, he hovered beside the truck fender while she stood above him trembling.
She parted her lips, desperate for air as all the faces ran together like wet watercolors.
“Chloe,” her father repeated, chilling her.
She tried to think of the words that would please her father and also sway the people before her. But under her cream-lace bodice, she couldn’t inflate her lungs. It was as if her corset had been laced too high and much too tight.
She tried to focus on the scene before her. The smell of fecund earth buffeted upward in warm waves. The dazzling, nearly blinding, spring sunshine glinted off the chrome of Model-T cars and trucks amidst a few old wagons and horses tethered here and there. She managed to draw in a teaspoon of the warm afternoon air.
“Chloe,” her father prompted, his raw irritation bristling just under the surface.
“Klo-ee, Klo-ee!” Out in the crowd, a tall, towheaded boy called out her name and followed it up with a loud wolf whistle. An older man beside him cuffed the boy as a few chuckles and titters floated up to her, taunting her.
I can’t do this. I can’t—
You can do anythin’,
a clear, loud voice sliced through her mind.
Startled, her lungs found space to expand. Chloe sucked in air and hefted the megaphone to her mouth. “I’ve never done this before.” Her voice came out unnatural and hollow sounding. She swallowed, trying to wet her cotton-dry mouth.
You can do anythin’ you put your mind to and don’t let nobody tell you diffr’nt.
The plucky words gave her sudden confidence. Chloe lowered the megaphone. “I don’t think I need this,” she said in a loud voice. She forced a smile. “Can y’all hear me?” And she started to breathe.
As from faraway, approving murmurs from the watching crowd rippled up in reply. Men wearing denim overalls and straw hats slouched against blossoming trees, scant protection from the warm sunlight. Under the trees, women in starched print house dresses lounged primly on worn quilts where babies slept. Beside the schoolhouse, vacant on Saturday afternoon, barefoot children raced from the wooden swings to the slide and back again. Their yells and laughter drifted up to Chloe.
Still Chloe felt their eyes boring holes into her. Her father fidgeted. She sucked in air again.
“My daddy . . . asked me to talk to you today,” she blurted out the truth. “I really don’t know why . . .”
But that was near as could be to a lie.
I’m here to turn everyone up sweet for Daddy. I knew something was up the minute I clapped eyes on the new clothes he brought home from D.C.
The cream-colored cotton jaconet dress with its stylish, narrow skirt and high waist—the matching silk stockings, butter-soft kid shoes, and gloves—had made her edgy, not pleased. “You’ll be comin’ with me,” he’d said before he’d left this morning’s breakfast table. And she’d felt herself shrivel inside.
Now she strangled the megaphone with both hands as if she could choke words out of it. “But maybe it’s ’cause I know him better than anyone else.” Another lie. Or was it?
The crowd looked interested. They waited.
Then she realized it had been her granny’s long-dead voice in her mind, urging her on, showing her how to talk to these folk. Her beloved granny—the one person who had always made Chloe feel loved and valuable in her own right. This thought gave her courage. “My Granny Raney—” Her voice gained weight. “—always told me, ‘You can do anythin’ you make your mind up to. Just look at your daddy.’” Truth at last.
She heard her father’s chortle of approval. She sensed the men in the crowd listening to her. Her jittery heart still lodged in her throat, but somehow she spoke around it, striving to appear confident. “My daddy wasn’t born in a big house like we live in now.” Phrases from speeches she’d heard her father give over the years filtered through her nervous mind and out through her lips. “He didn’t get to go to college. He taught himself law. He passed the bar and became a district attorney, then he ran and won a seat in the state legislature.”
What next?
She recalled the morning’s headline and grabbed at it. “In this dangerous time of the War to End All Wars, he wants to serve you as your first elected senator in Washington, D.C.”
Then her mind went dead. Plumb dead. She stared out at the faces, her lips parted. No words came. An awful silence swelled.
Help me, Lord. Help me, Granny. I can’t do this!
“Does he want the women’s vote?” a female called out, provoking, sassy.
The question stirred the gathering. Heads twisted, craning as a not-too-friendly muttering swelled. Chloe shaded her eyes and glimpsed—way back in the crowd—a hand in a navy glove waving to her. “Kitty McCaslin!” Chloe called out. At the sight of her best friend, tears of relief wet her eyes. “Honey, don’t you know that amendment hasn’t passed yet?”
The watchers chuckled and the tension eased. Chloe sensed their returning interest and voiced the next thing that came to mind. “Kitty, whatever are you doing here?”
“Causing trouble.” Kitty’s tone was teasing.
Chloe eyed Kitty. Her lifelong friend was her exact opposite—as dark as Chloe was fair-haired, petite as Chloe was tall, with brown eyes to Chloe’s china blues. In a chic navy-and-white outfit probably straight from New York City, Kitty pouted her rouged lips. Kitty knew how to wrap folks around her little finger, all right.
I just have to follow Kitty’s lead.
Warm relief shot through Chloe. “The usual, you mean?” she countered, her hand on one hip. She gauged the crowd. They were enjoying the repartee. “What’s your daddy going to say to you, interrupting my first campaign speech?”
“What my daddy don’t know can’t hurt him,” Kitty quipped. “And
your
daddy won’t care as long as he gets elected!”
The crowd laughed, indulgent with the daughter of the local banker—even if Kitty was wild to a fault and had gone off to college in New York City. The general consensus was that Kitty’s father was out of his mind letting his daughter go off to college in the big city. Didn’t he know what could happen to innocent girls up there?
Chloe’s heart beat in ragtime. But she knew she was winning; the crowd was with her. “I’m surprised you aren’t running for senator yourself,” she teased Kitty as if they were alone.
“Give me thirty years and I will!” Kitty crowed.
Good-natured catcalls swirled over Chloe. She wagged a finger at Kitty and laughed aloud before looking at her father in mute appeal. When would he let her step down?
Judging her work done, her father levered himself up beside Chloe and captured the dangling megaphone from her. With one hand he put it to his lips and with the other he gathered her close to his side. This part of the routine she was used to. With practiced charm, she kissed his cheek, smiled broadly, and tilted her face as though cameras were flashing. She’d learned the pose at the age of four.
“Ain’t my little gal somethin’?” her father bellowed in his sandpaper voice.
The farmers applauded and the women nodded, studying her outfit, ready to copy it the next time they could afford yard goods.
“Thank ya, honey.” He pinched her cheek.
It was then that Chloe glimpsed the elegant stranger. At the sight of him all thought of winning elections flew from her mind. He was tall, lean, dressed in a gleaming white shirt and dark trousers with a suit jacket folded over his arm. His hair was raven black, slicked back from equally dark eyebrows. He stood there, surrounded by the crowd, and his eyes met hers. The contact was almost electric.
The moment became too much for Chloe. The heat, her fear, the sudden stirring she felt looking at this stranger . . . The air rushed out of her and she was rendered breathless again. She wavered within her father’s arm.
“Don’t faint, honey,” her father soothed, ever the solicitous father. “Here, Jackson, help her down. The sun’s gotten to her.”
Hands reached up for her and lowered her to the ground. Someone pushed a fan between her fingers. With a quick smile at those around her, she looked past them, but the man had vanished. Disappointment pierced her. Who in the world was this stranger? Why was she so affected by this man she’d never seen before?
Later, in her upstairs bedroom, Chloe gazed out her window at Ivy Manor’s grounds. Through the limbs of budding magnolia trees, she watched the day dim into twilight. Her view of the rolling spring-green lawn and ancient maples, oaks, and tulip trees usually eased her nerves. But not today. She’d survived her first speech—just barely. Sliding down to her knees, she cradled her aching stomach with one arm and rested her cheek on the cool white windowsill. “I can’t do that again.”
Unbidden, a memory breathed through her. She was a little girl again. Fleeing another one of her parent’s battles, she’d run weeping from the big house to the small cottage behind Ivy Manor. Granny Raney had been there in her old rocker, holding out her arms. Chloe slipped up onto her wide lap and buried her face in Granny’s soft bosom, scented with camphor. Granny didn’t ask any questions, just rocked and sang her favorite hymn in her low, soothing voice. And Chloe was comforted, as always.
Granny Raney had loved her, never failed her, and today, though she’d been gone for years, she’d brought Chloe through the speech-making.
Chloe closed her eyes, willing away the clammy feeling that hadn’t quite left her.
I won’t do that again.
Of its own accord, her mind brought up the image of the handsome, dark stranger at the schoolyard. Who was he? Had he come with Kitty? Her beau from New York? Her stomach quivered. What did that matter to her if he were?
Downstairs, the dinner bell floated up like a death knell. Both her parents were at home at the same time. Which meant dinner would be a nightmare. She toyed with the idea of staying in her room, begging off with a stomach ache. But that would only bring them up to her room, not stop them. Nothing ever stopped them.
With effort, she pushed herself onto her feet again and went to the blue-and-white willow-patterned pitcher and bowl on the stand across the room. Like everything else in her mother’s house, the ewer had been in the family nearly a century. She washed her hands and face in the cool water and wondered what it would be like not to live in a museum, not to know the history of each piece her mother revered. Then, with a long sigh, she turned to examine herself in the free-standing mirror she knew Jason Carlyle had ordered from England for his bride in 1774 on the eve of the Revolution.
I look like I’ve been off to war and back again.
She brushed her fair hair back from her face, tucking stray strands into the hairpins in the knot at her nape. Sunlight from the window made her hair shimmer like fire. Pinching her cheeks, she brought color into her pale face. She smoothed the wrinkles in her cotton outfit and then re-gathered her white silk stockings above her knees and freshly rolled her pink garters. Another glance in the mirror. She drew herself up into an elegant posture, her spine listing slightly backward, and proceeded to the hallway and the top of the stairs.