Love's Awakening (The Ballantyne Legacy Book #2): A Novel (21 page)

Once again, Ellie felt the ground cut from under her. “I won’t say a word, Chloe. ’Tis none of my business, truly.”

In hindsight, Jack’s terse words an hour before took on new meaning.
We’re good till autumn. After that she returns to Broad Oak.

But Broad Oak was not home, not safety or peace. Chloe had no wish to return there, and Jack was obviously more than willing to leave it all behind.

Chloe’s small hand snuck into her own. “I thought—hoped—we could live at River Hill and be a family, just the three of us.”

The plea was so heartfelt Ellie’s own eyes grew damp. With every breathless word, Chloe was revealing the depths of her discontent—and Jack’s. Ellie felt privy to a great many things—family secrets and futile desires that were far beyond her ken.

“Have you ever prayed about this, Chloe? Poured out your heart to God like you are with me?” The sorrowful shake of her fair head confirmed Ellie’s suspicions. “Jack won’t always be here, nor will I. But God never leaves you—and always listens.” She hesitated, wishing for more than words, wanting the vulnerable Chloe to have something tangible to hold on to. “I’m sad about River Hill too. I’d like to see it restored to its former grandeur, the garden especially.”

“You’d have to become its mistress. Marry Jack.”

Ellie looked away. The prospect unfurled like a flower,
alluring and sweet. She discarded it as quickly as it came. “Jack hasn’t asked me, and I . . . I couldn’t even if he did.”

Chloe lifted her head. “Because Ballantynes are better than Turlocks?”

“No.” She’d put that notion to rest once and for all. “Because we’re two very different people.” Seeing Chloe’s confusion, she sought a sound explanation. “We value different things, Jack and I. He’s fond of travel. I like being home. My passion is music. Jack prefers . . . ”

“Gin rooms,” Chloe finished.

Ellie sighed. “Not only that. My family—they’re believers, Presbyterians . . .”

“And mine aren’t anything.” The hopelessness in her tone struck Ellie hard. “No one prays or goes to church. The only time they mention God is to take His name in vain. Another vile thing, Sally says.”

“You can change that,” Ellie said softly.

Chloe let out a breath, looking older than her years. “Show us how, Miss Ellie. We don’t know where to start, Jack and I. We Turlocks tend to make a mess of things. If you married him and came to live at River Hill—”

“Jack doesn’t love me, Chloe. He—”

“He does care for you.” Her damp eyes flashed. “He might even love you. I’ve watched the way he looks at you. He even keeps your notes—letters—in his breast pocket. And he reads the books you mean for me, every one.”

Ellie tried to mask her doubt. “Truly?”

“Cross my heart.” She touched her chest. “I won’t lie to you again—or Jack.”

Appetite gone, Ellie began unpacking the basket, hands stilling at Chloe’s next words.

“I might as well tell you all the rest too. Ben hears the gossip at Broad Oak when he visits.” She’d dried her tears, but
her lip still trembled. “Rumor is Jack even threatened some bounty hunters—and Wade—over you.”

A chill crept over Ellie despite the day’s heat. Were bounty hunters the men who had stopped her on the road? Was Wade involved in some way? Despite her fears, why did she warm to the thought of Jack leaping to her defense, if indeed he had?

Shaken, she placed a biscuit in Chloe’s open, entreating hand, wanting to give her far more. Ellie bowed her head, uttering a prayer as much for herself as for Chloe and Jack, her heart unbearably sore.

Lord, please fill our needy souls.

 21 

I have grown to love secrecy.

O
SCAR
W
ILDE

The days leading to the ball ticked by with agonizing slowness. Ellie’s gown hung in her bedchamber, so lovely her heart ached inexplicably when she looked at it. Madame had fussed over the final fitting, insisting her rival, Miss Endicott, redye Ellie’s slippers to better match the gown’s exquisite coral hue—or order new shoes altogether. A mother-of-pearl fan rested in a case atop her dressing table beside pristine white gloves. There’d even been whisperings about a set of pearls, a birthday gift from her parents.

Despite all the finery and fuss, Ellie’s thoughts strayed repeatedly from the coming event, clinging stubbornly to Chloe’s startling revelation at the point. Chloe’s words seemed pinned to her heart, sore and painful as a wound. She couldn’t quite shake the humiliation she felt over being at River Hill unwanted, uninvited. Chloe’s duplicity stung, but Ellie understood her motives.

Though she dreaded seeing Jack again, she continued to
wait at the window on the days of Chloe’s lessons, a fading hope in her breast, wishing he’d appear. But he simply sent Ben to bring Chloe and fetch her home, lending far less weight to what she’d shared.

He does care for you. He might even love you.

Impossible. Chloe had simply been woolgathering. Jack would soon go west. River Hill would be sold. Chloe would return to Broad Oak. Daniel would propose. Ellie felt the certainty to her bones. Thankfully, she had only to look toward the attic to regain a sense of what really mattered.

“Ellie, I need your help upstairs today.” Mama prefaced the request with a smile, despite Gwyn being ill from a fever and the ball drawing near and another fugitive having come at dawn. “’Tis name day. Dr. Brunot will be coming soon.”

Ellie gladly swept up the stairs to the attic, where dormer windows were open wide to relieve the summer’s heat. She gathered slates and pencils from a small corner chest and took a seat as the group gathered in a tight circle, Mama at their heart. Despite the swell of sweat and anxiety that seemed ever palpable, Ellie always found their time together rewarding—and a blessed distraction.

Mama’s voice was clear and calm, never giving way to the pressures and worries beyond the attic rafters. “You’ll soon be leaving New Hope and your old ways behind. Our Quaker friends in the north would like for you to come with new names of your own choosing.”

“We used to the name game, Mistress Eden. We don’t even own our African names,” a woman said. “Those we had was stolen away right along with us.”

“And I’m sorry for that,” Mama replied. “Hopefully you’ll need not change names ever again. The reason for doing so now is to protect you from the past, from those who knew you as slaves. These new names will help you gain freedom.”

“I always wanted to be called Paul,” one man told them. “It was the name of a whole-souled man in Kentucky who preached to us slaves in secret.”

“I’m sure he’d be pleased,” Mama said with a smile. “Plus it’s one you’re likely to remember.”

Looking down at her slate, Ellie printed the name in large block letters and passed it round the circle.

“I’ll take Rachel,” the woman beside Ellie said. “It’s a good Bible name.”

Ellie marveled that Mama almost made a game of it, having them practice their chosen names till they were comfortable as a well-worn garment, mixing up the slates and having everyone remember who they were with a great deal of high-spirited merriment. Next the women stitched their new initials in their dress hems and the collars of the linen shirts Mama had sewn for the men. They wouldn’t leave till their new identities were firmly in place. Even then some didn’t want to go.

“Can you make a place for me at New Hope?” The question, asked again and again, never failed to stir Ellie’s spirit. “I can work in the house or the fields, whatever you need.”

“You’re always welcome here,” she’d often heard Mama say, “but ’tis too close to the river to tarry.”

As if to anchor them all, her father held family devotions in the evenings after supper. A maid was posted at both front and back doors in case of trouble, and only then did the attic empty in lieu of the cooler, shuttered parlor. There Da chose “freedom passages,” as he called them—the stories of Moses leading the Israelites from Egypt and Joseph fleeing bondage to rise to power. No one was caught napping, wooed as they were by his rich Scots speech as he stood before the cold hearth.

“Da should have been a preacher,” Peyton murmured as
he sat beside Ellie on a sofa. “You know what they say of Scottish sons. The firstborn is laird and heir. The second is the military’s and the third the pulpit’s.”

“God had but one Son and made a minister of Him,” she said softly. “I daresay the rest is second best.”

He gave her a wry glance. “I’d rather be laird and heir.”

The pride in his tone gave her pause. Peyton had all of their father’s business sense but none of his humility. Not even a stint in jail had dinted what Ellie feared was arrogance. Across from them sat Ansel, as different from Peyton as she was from Andra. She studied him in the flickering candlelight, grieved by the cheerless slant of his features that bespoke a burden.

With the coming harvest, the gristmill would operate almost continuously, requiring all of Ansel’s time. How he’d transport fugitives was a mystery. And Peyton? While the enslaved in their care were running from danger, he seemed to be running headlong toward it, or so she feared. Rumor was that he was still seen in the company of Wade Turlock in town.

Devotions done, Ellie lingered in the parlor as the fugitives padded upstairs on quiet feet and her father and brothers crossed to the study. Mari drew the cover over Feathers’s cage, shuttering his late-night song before disappearing to snuff the candles in the adjoining room.

“’Tis too hot to sleep,” Mama told her. “Why don’t we go onto the back porch till it cools down?”

Relieved, Ellie nodded, having no desire to retire to her room, where thoughts of Jack crowded in, unrelenting as the summer heat. They took seats amidst the glow of fireflies, the low cadence of Da’s and Peyton’s voices drifting through an open window. Other than that, all was still save the haunting call of a mockingbird.

“What a peaceful night.” Mama looked skyward at the moon. “Full and silver-bright. Perfect for the harvest.”

Ellie’s gaze flickered east toward River Hill’s unseen fields. ’Twas all too easy to imagine Jack swinging a scythe in the moonlight. Better to ponder the reality of the coming autumn with its corn stubble and spent fields . . . and winter’s rivers locked fast with ice, barring his way back to them.

Eyes damp, she bit her lip, stunned by the ferocity of her feelings. Since Chloe had told her Jack was leaving, selling River Hill, she’d longed to confide in someone, but pouring out her heart to her parents would only make matters more complicated. She’d caused the household worry enough with her waywardness on the road. She wouldn’t add to it with her distress over Jack and Chloe too.

To her relief, Mama began to talk of more mundane matters. “Your birthday ball is but a fortnight away.”

“I suppose most everyone is coming.”

“Most, yes.” Mama’s fan stirred the air around them. “A few will be traveling and have sent their regrets. Not everyone has responded yet.”

Nor will they
, Ellie didn’t say, thinking again of River Hill. “My gown fits perfectly. I don’t think I’ll need another fitting.”

“I’m afraid you might.” Mama turned to her, profile pensive. “Lately you hardly seem to eat a bite.”

Ellie shifted uncomfortably in her chair, wishing she could brush aside any concerns like yesterday’s tea crumbs. “I’m afraid the heat has stolen my appetite.”

“Only the heat, Ellie?” Mama’s gaze didn’t waver. “We’re concerned the incident on the road might have upset you more than you let on.”

Not the incident on the road, Mama, but what happened afterward, in Jack Turlock’s parlor.

Ellie looked to her lap. Jack’s closeness and concern had upended her in ways she couldn’t fathom or forget. He’d been so tender with her. As if he truly cared for her, like
Chloe said. But she could hardly speak of that. “’Tis not the past—the incident on the road—so much as the future. There are so many possibilities before me at one and twenty. Anything might happen. I could be married and a mother by next July.”

“That’s certainly how it was for me.” Mama’s soft voice caught in a throaty chuckle. “I came face-to-face with your father in River Hill’s ballroom one summer, wed him soon after, and bore Peyton nine months later.”

“You knew Da was yours from the first—and you were his.”

“Yes, we knew, but circumstances conspired against us. Thankfully, love and the Lord Himself often make a way when there seems to be none.”

The gentle words struck Ellie hard. True for some, perhaps, but not for her. Nor Jack.

“I’ll never forget the beauty of that ballroom,” Mama said. “All the candlelight shimmering off gowns and greatcoats. The music and dancing. Once, River Hill was the jewel of Allegheny County.”

Once.
Ellie roamed the many rooms in memory, all but Jack’s, though Chloe had offered to show her that too. “It’s still beautiful, though neglected. Sometimes when I was there, it was hard to keep my mind on lessons. I’d look around and imagine all the pleasure to be had in turning it lovely again, especially the garden.”

“It’s been forgotten, then. Overgrown.”

“Sadly, yes. Chloe and I were hoping to bring a corner to life on the south side, where there’s a charming dripping cistern. It overlooks the river . . .” She left off, letting go of the dream like the scattered garden seed on the back road.

“You share your father’s fondness for the place. He once spent many pleasant hours there.” She rested her fan in her lap. “Every house, to be a true home, needs a mistress. River
Hill has been without one for fifty years or better. Perhaps Mr. Turlock will settle down and make it grand again.”

“I doubt that will ever happen. He’s—” Ellie changed course lest she betray what Chloe had confided about the sale. “He’s a very busy man. His interests lie elsewhere. Though I wish he would settle down, if only for Chloe’s sake.”

“You’re very fond of her.”

“I worry about what will become of her.” A breeze stirred the loose tendrils about her flushed face, and she turned in its direction. “Like you, my every emotion seems to cloud matters. I wish I had more of the Ballantyne steel.”

“Oh, ’tis there but buried deep.”

Was it? Then why did she feel so tossed about, her thoughts and emotions in a perpetual tangle? Feigning calm, she kissed Mama’s smooth cheek. “I’d best go to bed . . . say my prayers. And I promise to eat a hearty breakfast on the morrow.”

Mama gave no answer, just squeezed her hand in a wordless good night.