Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series) (49 page)

Ethan and Reverend O’Loughlin made funeral arrangements, and they
planned to take Elizabeth’s body to the church that afternoon.  Ethan said
Elizabeth would be buried in the family graveyard, the same graveyard where
other family descendants were buried, including Ethan’s brother, Godfrey. 
Doc gave Ethan and Clarissa more instructions about the baby before he
left.  The O’Loughlins prayed with Ethan, and then they left.   

Ethan took the baby to the master study, and I followed, hoping we
could talk.  Just as we sat down in the chairs together, William came in,
knocking lightly on the open door.

“May I come in for a moment?”

“Of course,” Ethan said.  “What’s on your mind?” he asked
cautiously.

William closed the door.  “I just wanted to tell Madeline
that she doesn’t have to marry me anymore.  I know how much the two of you
love each other, and I won’t stand in your way, if you want to be
together.  You could all be one big happy family.  Ethan, you could
have all three of your children together.  That’s the way it should
be.  I realize Madeline would be a replacement mother for that baby there,
but I know she could love it, because it’s yours,” he said, still looking at
Ethan.  “That’s the kind of person she is.  I also want you to know,
I only had the best of intentions.  I had offered to help Madeline because
she was in a bind.  I hope you don’t harbor any resentment towards me.”

“No, of course not,” Ethan said soberly.  “Thank you,
William.”

William looked at me and smiled tentatively.  I smiled back,
and he left the room, closing the door on his way out.

“What do you think, Madeline?” Ethan said.  “Do you think you
could love this little one?  The one that caused all our heartache…the one
that separated us?  The one I chose over you?”

“Yes, Ethan,” I said without hesitation.  “I could love
it.  William was right.  I could love it because it’s yours and
because she needs a mother.”  He hadn’t exactly proposed, but I really
didn’t expect him to yet.  He was still grieving for Elizabeth.

“Why would you want to do that?  Why would you want to take
care of another woman’s baby…a woman who hated you, and I daresay you felt the
same.”

“I would do it for you.  I told you before, Ethan…I’d do
anything for you.” 

He looked down at the baby.  “She does need a mother,” he
said thoughtfully.  “But I’d have to know that you didn’t hold any
resentment against her…that you would take care of her as you would your
own.  You once told me that a mother loved her own children more than any
others.  Are you capable of giving her the love and care she deserves?”

He was wondering if he could trust me to take care of Elizabeth’s
baby.  I understood why he was asking that.  He was being protective
of the baby.  I admired him for it, and I knew he was thinking about the
baby first and foremost, but I really wanted him to say that he loved me and
was happy we could be together again.  I wanted him to say that he needed
me, not just to mother his children, but that he needed me in order to be happy
again, the way we should have always been.  But he didn’t.  I would
have to give him more time.

“Yes, Ethan, I would.  In fact, I’ve been thinking that if
she tolerates cow’s milk for a little while or you get a wet nurse, then once
my own milk comes in for this baby,” I rubbed my belly, “perhaps I could feed
them both.  It would be almost like having twins.”  I smiled
tentatively.

He seemed shocked.  “I hadn’t thought of that.”  He
rubbed his face with a free hand.  “You are amazing, did you know
that?”  I blushed.  Perhaps he did see that my intentions were
good.  “I want you to know that I’m happy that you and I can be together
again finally,” Ethan said then, giving me hope.  “What William said was
true; it would be wonderful to have you and all three children living with
me.  But I feel guilty for that because in order to get to this point,
Elizabeth had to die.  So I feel like I shouldn’t be happy.  Does
that make sense?”

“Yes.  You need time to grieve.  That’s understandable.”

“Please, be patient with me?”  He asked rather than
demanded. 

“Of course,” I said.  “What will you name this baby,
Ethan?  Have you had time to think about it?”

“Yes.  I want to name her after her mother and my
mother…Elizabeth Rose.”

“That’s nice,” I said.  If this baby shared her mother’s
name, no one would ever forget who her mother was…including me.  Perhaps
we could think of a nickname…Liz or Lizzie.  Then we’d have Lizzie and
Lillie, and they would have the same middle name.  That made me realize
just how closely related Elizabeth’s baby was with mine.  It seemed
strange, but it made me smile.

Ethan and Clarissa took the two girls back to Wellington Cross
shortly thereafter.  I offered to keep Lillie for a few days, but Clarissa
insisted that they could handle them both, that I needed to rest for my own
baby’s sake, as it had been a stressful couple of days.

Catherine and I prepared dinner, after which we both took naps.

While we napped, Doc and Reverend O’Loughlin came and took
Elizabeth over to the church to await the funeral.  When I awoke, the
sheriff came to question all of us about the incident.  Jonas and William
explained about their search at Edgewood and about finding the toolshed over by
the grist mill that had been occupied recently.  They described where to
find it, and then the sheriff left.

That evening, after supper, I talked to Catherine about
everything.  She assured me that Ethan would propose once he’d grieved and
a proper time had elapsed.  She encouraged me that he still loved me and
would come around soon, just to give him time.

I volunteered to clean up after supper, but as I was about to take
dishes over to the kitchen house, William came in the dining room. 

“I hope you didn’t mind me saying what I did in front of Ethan,
before talking with you.  I know you didn’t really want to marry me
anyway.”

“It’s fine,” I said.  “I have to let him grieve now. 
Thank you for everything…you’ve been most kind.  You’re going to make a
fine husband someday.”

He helped me carry everything over to the kitchen house and then
left me alone, washing dishes.  As I was drying my hands and about to go
back to the manor house, I heard a noise outside, followed by a light knock on
the outside back door.  I looked out the window and saw a man; it was too
dark to tell who. 

“Madeline,
it’s me, Jefferson,” I heard a voice say.  Jefferson?  What in the
world would he be doing here?  Did he really think I would open the door
for him, when he had lied to me and tried to shoot me?  I didn’t trust him
one bit.

I walked around to the hallway by the staircase towards the back
door, but before I could turn the knob, there was a loud bang and the door
swung open hard, almost striking me.  I was shocked to see Jefferson
holding a gun, which he swiftly hit me over the head with.  Everything
went black, and I felt myself falling.  I grasped for something to hold
onto on my way down but felt nothing but air.

When I awoke, I was sitting in semi-darkness up against a wall on
the cold dirt floor.  My hands were tied in front of me, and I felt a
cloth tied tightly around my mouth.  The air smelled damp and musty, but I
could also smell a fire burning.  There was a lit oil lamp on an old rain
barrel beside me, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could see more
of my surroundings.  I was not in the kitchen house.  Instead of
seeing tables and cooking bowls, there was an old plow propped up against one
wall, and an old butter churn sat in a corner.  Tools lay out across one
wall, sharp ones.  I must be in an old storage shed, most likely the one
Jonas and William had found near the grist mill that had been recently
inhabited.  So it was Jefferson who’d been squatting here.

I remembered seeing Jefferson’s face after he forced the door
open, raising a gun hard against my head.  My head was still pounding from
the blow.  I touched my temple and felt something wet and sticky, probably
blood.  I surveyed the rest of my body, including my unborn baby, making
sure everything was still in proper order.

I wondered why Jefferson had brought me here, why he had kidnapped
me.  Looking out a window, I could see flames flickering.  Jefferson
could be out there with the fire.  I slowly tried to stand up.  I
felt a little dizzy but was able to walk across the room to see better out the
window.  Outside, I could see a man sitting by a fire, smoking a pipe and
holding a liquor flask.  Jefferson.  He was silhouetted against the big
empty corn field.

I wondered if I could escape.  Since he had been imbibing
liquor, I thought I might have been able to outrun him.  The door was on
the same side as the firelight, so I couldn’t open it without him seeing
me.  I looked around the room for another means of escape.  There was
only this window and another one on the opposite wall, close to where I had
been sitting.  It was small, but I thought I could probably manage to fit
through it.  I walked across the room and tried to raise the window. 
It squeaked unmercifully, and I heard Jefferson open the door loudly.  I
quickly sat back down on the ground, trying to play innocent, but he had
already seen me.

“Well, well.  Trying to escape, are we?” he said.  “I’m
terribly sorry, Madeline, but I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”  He
walked across the room towards me and slammed the window shut beside me. 
“It’s been a long time, Madeline.  How’ve you been?”

I couldn’t speak since he had tied the cloth around my
mouth.  He started laughing, a sinister laugh.  “Oh yeah, I
forgot.  You can’t talk.  That’s just as well.  Women talk too
much.  Always getting themselves into trouble because of it.  That
wife of Edward’s, she talks too much.  She told your secret, Madeline,
that you’re carrying Ethan’s baby.  She told Edward, and Edward told
me.  Now, isn’t that sweet?  You found each other after all this
time, after you lost your memory, and you had a rumble in the hay with him and
got yourself confined, didn’t you?”

He knew far more than I would have thought.  Had he been
spying on me?  Why would Edward talk to him about me and Ethan?  I
had thought Edward turned Jefferson in as a traitor after the war. 

“Yep, I know more than you thought, huh?”  He took a drink
from his flask and wiped his mouth.  “That’s who we’re waitin’
for…Edward.  He told me to bring you here until he came.”  He pulled
out a pocket watch and then squatted down beside me.  His breath
reeked.  “We have probably an hour or two to wait.  I figured once
you woke up, we could have a little talk.  At least, I could talk, and you
could listen,” he said, laughing again.

Why would he say he was waiting for Edward?  What did Edward
have to do with anything?  I was confused.

He stood up and walked over to pick up a shovel, which for a
moment I thought he was going to kill me with, but he turned it around and
leaned against the handle of it like a chair.  “You are one lucky woman,
did you know that?  You should be dead.  I have tried to kill you
countless times, and you lived through it every time.  The last time I
thought I’d killed you for sure, but it turned out to be my sister
instead.”  His eyes hardened with hatred, and he took another drink.

His
sister
?  Was he referring to Elizabeth?  She
did mention that she’d had a brother who turned Yankee.  Could it have
been Jefferson?

“Yes, Elizabeth was my sister – half-sister, to be exact. 
Remember me telling you that my sister ran off?  She and I had the same
mother, Anne.  I was born in East Tennessee, but my real father, John
Banks, died when I was just a young boy while helping to build the East
Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad.  My mother remarried Joseph
Tyler, who had inherited his family’s plantation in City Point, that being
Western Manor.  I did lie; you had not been there before.  I had to
make up a lot of things to try and get you to fall for me.  You believed
me because you didn’t know any better, since you’d lost your memory.  I
could’ve told you that you were the Queen of England, and you would’ve believed
me.  Aw, don’t look at me that way.  I’m sorry darlin’.  I had a
lot of practice lying during the war.  You see, with this
Tennessee-Virginia accent, I was able to fool a lot of Rebels that I was on
their side.

“Anyway, my mother gave birth to Elizabeth while living at Western
Manor, where we grew up together.  When I got to be a teenager, before the
war started, I took a trip back to East Tennessee to find my father’s
people.  I stayed with a cousin till the war started, then I joined up on
the Union side – that’s the side my cousin signed up with.  I didn’t care
too much for slavery myself, so I joined them.

“During the war, I met your Ethan, and I told him I was from City
Point, which was where I grew up, after all, and I played both sides of the war
for a while.  I even corresponded with General Grant once.  I gave
permission for General Sheridan’s troop to use Western Manor if they needed, on
the stipulation that my mother and sister were not to be harmed.  They did
not comply, I found out later.  I should have gotten a safeguard for
them.  Do you remember seeing me when Ethan and I came and got you, his
mother, and those Negros and took you over to Edgewood?”  I nodded. 
“That’s where we are now, on the property of Edgewood.  That was the first
time I took the path between the two plantations.