Surrender at Orchard Rest (26 page)

“It stirs something malevolent in me when people prove Mother’s words about them true,” said Somerset with a shake of her head.

“If she’s an upstart, she managed well,” said Joseph. “That’s enough. We mustn’t entertain such nasty thoughts. She’s one of your closest friends, and for my part, well—I played my part in driving her away. She clearly outlined what she wanted from me, and I was unwilling to rise to the occasion. Now, my dear, let me find the closest saloon.”

***

When they arrived back at the Grove, Blanche and Somerset made a rare united front that hadn’t occurred since well before the Russell birthday party. Somerset blew about Blanche’s bedroom like a fury, and her eyes looked as tight as her clenched fists as she stood on Blanche’s sapphire-hued rug.

“And she was mincing down the sidewalk with that smug, self-satisfied smile of hers! In a dress that cost half our income from the plantation last year!” Somerset knew this was an exaggeration but for once it pleased her to be Blanche’s daughter. “She looked as innocent as a cherub and went on about how much happiness it brings her to introduce her new husband! And all the while the poor dolt is standing there, never realizing that she’s purring in public to the man she used to be betrothed to. She had the audacity to invite me to luncheon and shopping.”

Blanche’s indigo eyes glimmered with calculated vengeance as she pulled her white satin dressing gown closer around her gaunt frame.

“Good luck to her on ever coming home again and feeling welcome—not that I ever wanted her in our family but still, no one slights my son. Evelyn Buchanan has no social clout compared to me. She’s going to find certain doors in Tuscaloosa are shut against her as well. I’m not spending the rest of my life on some rest cure. We’re going to persuade Dr. Harlow to let me go about my usual duties. I’ve heard how you’ve managed Orchard Rest in immaculate fashion but there are matters I need to tend to.

“I can see Evelyn Buchanan not breathing a word of it. She’s been dying to get Fairlee off her hands since she married Mr. Buchanan. Fairlee upstaged all her daughters with their long, thin noses and wan complexions, and if she was able to unload her on someone with a little money and a good family then so much the better, because that means Fairlee and Joseph won’t be living at the Loft. Evelyn hasn’t cared a speck about being family with us since dear Teddie didn’t return interest in one of those scarecrow daughters. I do fault Mr. Buchanan, though. I thought he was on better terms with Thomas than this!”

“I wish there was something I could do for Joseph.”

Somerset heard horse hooves and, upon looking out Blanche’s window, she caught sight of Phillip riding up to the house. Her feet itched to run from the room and greet him at the door. She woke anticipating their invigorating conversations and went to bed feeling let down that the day ended. He’d extended his trip home by one week, an event that Somerset hoped foretold great events for their courtship.

“There’s your beau,” said Blanche as she leaned forward in bed to get a better look.

“We’re going riding this afternoon, and we might take a light supper to Riverside and eat beside the waters before sunset.”

“Who is accompanying you?”

“Joseph.”

“My, but he is handsome. Such hair and what shoulders! He made an impression on your pa when he visited and asked permission to court you. Thomas said he’s a bit longer in the tooth than he thought you’d care for, but there was no holding it against him with his stature and wealth. What do you think of him?”

“He is unlike any man I’ve ever met,” replied Somerset.

“All infatuated girls say that, dear. Is it serious?”

“If it isn’t, I mean to make it serious.”

“Sawyer was your escort for some time. What do Sarabeth and Lawrence say about this turn of events?”

“I haven’t seen them since the night of the party. What can they say? Sawyer was only a suitor, and I didn’t leave, he did.”

“Enjoy your outing, Somerset.”

“Thank you.”

“Somerset?”

“Thank you for talking to me. I’ve missed it so. I know I’ve been intolerable to live with, and I haven’t apologized to you because I know words don’t fix anything.”

“I’m going to be late, Mother.”

***

Somerset squeezed Joseph around the middle as she made her way to the front door. He was standing on Blanche’s favorite Oriental rug with a lit cigar in one hand and a whiskey in the other, but he was sober. He’d ordered a single drink at a tavern on the way home while Somerset waited in a dry goods store and said no more about it.

“I can ask Myra and Birdy to accompany me if you’re unwell.”

“Myra’s with Victoria, and Birdy went out to do some mending for Ivy. It will do me good to get out of this house. I wouldn’t be in here if I hadn’t wanted the whiskey.”

“We’ll talk about it before you go back to your tent.”

“We won’t either,” said Joseph but Somerset was already running to the door.

Somerset’s face strained from smiling as she pulled the front door open.

“I packed a picnic basket with enough for three,” her suitor said.

“You packed the basket? Surely not!”

“A servant packed the basket but you’ll be delighted with the contents. Are we off?”

`“Let’s go before I remember all the things I left undone this morning to go to Tuscaloosa!”

***

“I think of South Carolina as my true home and I think the sea is part of me forever now, but there is something in these mountains and rolling hills that makes me wonder how I live apart from them,” said Phillip as they rode to Riverside.

“I don’t know how you live there,” said Somerset. “It’s well enough to visit, but I never like the flatness of the land and seeing it roll out before me like a map for miles and miles. I feel exposed and can’t imagine living in transparency. Each mountain and ridge seems to me a protective mother looking down on us and shielding us.”

“That’s an interesting thought. I’m the opposite, I’m afraid. When I fought during the war all these mountains, ridges, and bluffs seemed the most sinister things in the world to me. I would rather chance it on territory as wide open and level as a book. It makes me an easy target, to be sure, but it also makes the enemy an easy target.”

Somerset arched an eyebrow as she contemplated that tidbit. Joseph, who tried to be respectful and keep some distance behind them at all times, was suffering a rare nostalgia for the war that Phillip hadn’t raised in him before.

“Who did you serve with?” he called ahead.

“The Sixth Regiment South Carolina Cavalry.”

Joseph whistled. “You don’t say.”

“You’re familiar with the Russell passion for horse flesh. Joining the cavalry was the easiest decision I ever made. I was certain that if I stayed on horseback nothing would happen to me, and it didn’t.”

“The Sixth saw some nightmare action.”

“I saw the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse.”

Joseph whistled again. “Now there’s a battle I’m grateful not to have rattling around in my head. How did you get out of that one alive? You may be the only man I know to come out of it.”

Joseph spurred his horse to meet up with Somerset and Phillip.

“It was a sight I’d welcome forgetting,” acknowledged Phillip. “Men finally ran out of ammunition or lost the use of their weapons, and the hand-to-hand combat that resulted was imaginative and gory. You can’t think of all the ways men killed each other or the sheer number who killed themselves so the enemy couldn’t. I’ve never been troubled by dreams of the service like many of my friends, but every now and then I’ll dream of red earth and I know it isn’t clay. It’s the ground in Virginia after that battle.”

“I’ll be switched. Did you carry a carbine?”

“I carried a pistol and a saber during most of my reconnaissance, and I attribute the fact that I’m still here to my sword skills. I polished them at school, and I had plenty of time to hone them on the battlefield. Most men find it difficult to shoot well when a sharp blade is thrust through them. I still have my saber. It’s hanging on the wall of my office.”

“I burned my Whitfield as soon as I got home. Anything that had done as much killing as that gun didn’t need a place in this world.”

“My sword saved my best friend—up to a point. He later died in the same battle but my saber seems a friend if it prolonged our friendship.”

“What happened?” Somerset couldn’t help asking.

“He was Winston McGreen, and we went through the Citadel together when we were nothing but boys. He found himself in serious trouble with a Union cavalry member, cornered in a thicket so that he couldn’t maneuver or defend himself well. I rid myself of the infantryman who was approaching me with a bayonet lofted high and went to Winston’s defense. The first thing the Union soldier did was take his saber to my stallion’s throat and slash the jugular. I brought him from home, my favorite horse. It was sixty-four and he was still my only war horse. I pulled the cavalryman off his animal and cut his jugular the way he cut Juniper’s. I left them bleeding together in the mud and I took his mount in revenge. There wasn’t a thought in my mind when I acted.”

“You said Winston died anyhow?” asked Somerset.

“He died a few hours later on the Bloody Angle. I went out looking for his body when he didn’t make it back to camp. The slain lay five and six deep in places and I found him under two fallen men, rifle shot to the chest. His mother opened her house to me for two Christmases when I was in school with him, and I wanted her to have the body. Mrs. McGreen was financially ruined by time of the Battle of Spotsylvania, so I paid to ship him home to her in a pine box.”

“We’re so isolated to be as close to town as we are that I forget to view the world through anyone’s lens other than my own. There were brotherhoods all over, outside the Grove even,” Somerset said to Joseph.

“What a blow to lose your horse and your friend in the same day,” said Joseph with a shake of his head. “The first night alone must have been strange.”

“But what a touching thing to ship the body home to his mother,” added Somerset. “She’ll never have to worry what became of him. She’ll have him always and never wonder. You do understand why I wish Eric’s body had been recovered.”

“I was fortunate to already be well on my way to wealth or I wouldn’t have been able to carry it out for her. In the grand scheme of things it would have been wrong not to send Winston home.”

They arrived at the river. Riverside sat only a couple of miles upstream, and Somerset could just make out the wash waving on the line as Sarabeth’s figure bent over her basket to select garments to hang. She looked old and weak, an aged gray tree bending in the playful breeze. Somerset wondered if it had to do with her youngest son leaving and turned her back from the sad sight as she dismounted. Phillip tossed down a faded red knit blanket over the packed damp earth and began sorting the contents of their feast. Joseph stood with the toes of his scuffed leather boots in the swirling water.

“What halcyon days these have been,” said Somerset as she settled on the edge of the blanket. “I received a beautiful bouquet from you this morning. I chuckled to see poppies from you. What does phlox mean again?”

“It means we think alike, that we are the same. They mean harmony.”

“So we are,” began Somerset but stopped when Joseph turned around.

He was as pale as the polished gravel at his feet and the sheen of perspiration stood out on his forehead.

“Are you ill, Joseph?”

He swung his leg over his horse and was in the saddle in one motion.

“I’m not sick,” he replied, “but I am unwell. I feel hemmed in all of a sudden. I need to be alone.”

Somerset sprang to her feet.

“Let me go with you! You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

“No, I won’t ruin your evening. No one is going to catch you down here. The only person whose character should be questioned is mine.”

He dug his heels into the horse and galloped off down the same path they used to reach Riverside. Phillip stared at the empty spot where his horse had been as if all the gossip about him was true.

“Does talk of the war affect him?” asked Phillip. “I could go after him if you like.”

“No.” Somerset shook her head. “It won’t do any good. His true love married another man. We found out when we ran into the new couple in Tuscaloosa this morning. I suspect he’s going to go drink himself into a stupor.”

“Ivy?”

“No, Fairlee Buchanan. They’ve been breaking it off and reuniting for years now. She just seized the last word on the matter. Look, Phillip, if we’re of like mind we’ll eat and head back to Orchard Rest. Joseph and I will never hear the end of it from Mother if we’re seen.”

“Now there’s a person I’ve yet to meet,” said Phillip as he filled her glass and handed it to her.

“Mother? Well, she’s been terribly ill.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. Will she be able to receive company before I leave?”

“To hear her talk today, she’ll be out of bed by the end of the week.” Somerset shrugged as she tasted a sandwich.

“The great Blanche Marshall,” mused Phillip as he swirled his glass. “Is she like you?”