Love's Awakening (The Ballantyne Legacy Book #2): A Novel (37 page)

Leaning in, he kissed the bare hollow of her shoulder. “He’s already talking of christening a boat for a grandchild.”

“Oh?” She knew it to be true. Her father hadn’t stopped smiling all day. “’Twill be at least nine months till that happens.”

His eyes were roguish. Merry. “I’d hate to disappoint him and be a day late.” Reaching out, he doused the candle flame with his fingertips before returning her to his warm embrace. He kissed her as he’d not done all day, though the strength of it told her he’d wanted to. Badly.

“Ellie, love . . .”

She softened like wax beneath his hands, every inch of her flushed with love and longing. She felt she’d come home. She was Jack Turlock’s bride. And tonight, at least, she never wanted to leave River Hill, wedding journey or otherwise.

Man’s yesterday may never be like his morrow.

P
ERCY
B
YSSHE
S
HELLEY

The
Elinor
docked on a fair May night studded with starlight, its great bulk borne along on a stiff westerly breeze. Ellie stood at the hurricane deck railing, Jack by her side, their wedding journey of two months behind them. Though it had been the happiest time of her life, her hungry gaze scoured the moonlit dock for signs of her father and brothers. But only a few roustabouts scrambled to secure the mooring lines and ready the stage planks in the lantern-lit shadows.

“Are you disappointed, Ellie, love?” Jack threaded his arms round her waist, his lips brushing the back of her neck where her chignon slipped free of its pins. “They’d not recognize you anyway.”

She smiled at his teasing and remembered his gentle words the next morning when she arrived at New Hope and faced Andra in the foyer. Her sister circled her as if she were a
museum specimen on exhibit, a look of wonder on her face. “Are you feeling well, Elinor? You’re so . . . prodigiously big!”

Peering down from the stair landing, the maids giggled. Ellie gave them an awkward smile, draping her hands over her expanding middle. “’Twas a secret till now,” she said, thinking how small her waist had been on her wedding day. “I’m more than four months along. I simply wasn’t showing when we left for New Orleans.”

“Well, I didn’t think it was all that shrimp remoulade and crawfish bisque you’d been writing home about!” Andra motioned Ellie into the parlor, giving a backward glance at Mari and Gwyn and requesting tea. “We’re in need of some good news, aside from Peyton and Penelope’s betrothal, that is.”

“So there’s to be another wedding?” Ellie raised her brows in surprise, her own glad news forgotten. “Truly?”

“Supposedly, though our dear brother keeps postponing the date. Penelope is proving very patient.”

“A postponement? Why?”

Andra rolled her eyes. “Business, ye ken.”

“But there’ll always be business.” Ellie took a seat, already feeling ungraceful with her added bulk. “Perhaps I can help move things along now that I’m home.”

“Good luck.” Andra took a chair opposite, darting a look at the door as if impatient for tea. “Enough about weddings—or the lack. I’d much rather hear about your trip.”

“Oh, New Orleans was wonderful. Jack is wonderful.” Feeling a nudge to her middle, Ellie placed a hand there. “I’ve brought gifts for everyone. Cashmere shawls for you and Mama, a Tourte le jeune bow for Ansel—”

Andra’s pinched expression stopped her midsentence. “A great deal has happened since you’ve been gone. I hardly know where to begin.” Reluctance wove across her face, heightening Ellie’s alarm. “Da wanted to be the one to tell you. But he’s
in town with no inkling you’re here, and Mama is meeting with the Ladies’ Aid Society.”

“Well, go on.”

She gave a nod. “First the good news. Aunt Elspeth has settled into a genteel boardinghouse in town, thanks to Jack’s generosity. She’s certainly redeemed herself since Henry Turlock’s trial and has even been coming to church. As for Wade, he was released from jail a month or so ago after Henry was sent to the penitentiary in Philadelphia to begin his sentence.” She hesitated as Gwyn served tea, waiting till the door was closed before continuing. “As for Ansel . . .”

Ellie waited, fears mounting.

“He’s been gone a fortnight.”

“Gone? I don’t understand.”

“No note was left—not a word at the last. We aren’t sure if he went of his own accord or . . .” Tears glimmered in Andra’s eyes. “Da cautions us against despair, but we aren’t sure what has happened. There were some papers found—some threatening messages sent to Ansel prior to his disappearing. My fear is that Wade is involved, wanting revenge, but we have no proof.”

Ellie’s hand shook, sloshing tea over the delicate rim of her cup, the joy of her homecoming a dim memory. Andra’s own distress was so evident, Ellie feared the situation was even worse than it seemed. Was Andra withholding anything? Or simply being mindful of her condition?

Setting her cup aside, Ellie moved toward the foyer, the sudden stitch in her side hardly slowing her. Passing the maids, she hurried up the stairs, praying Andra wouldn’t follow.

Ansel must be there somewhere, mayhap playing a trick like he’d done in childhood. Not gone. Not missing. Nor worse.

She pushed open the door of his bedchamber and stood on the threshold, craving his voice, his reassuring smile, the easy
bond between them. The emptiness was profound. The dark room bore his unmistakable scent—the disarray of a man too preoccupied to put his hat and boots away, or who’d meant to do that very thing but never would again. Whispering his name, she caught up his greatcoat from the back of a chair, burying her face in its familiar folds, her heart shattering over and over.

He wouldn’t go without telling her. He’d have left a last note for her. Said some sort of goodbye.

Unless . . .

When I began researching this novel, I was soon rocked by my misassumptions about slavery and the Underground Railroad. As a student of Kentucky and Ohio history, I found that the slavery issue in Pennsylvania was even more complex than I had first thought. In the words of author David G. Smith in
On the Edge of Freedom
, “Every single fugitive slave escaping by land east of the Appalachian Mountains had to pass through Pennsylvania, which is why the state, its laws, and the attitudes of its citizens was so important.”

I had always believed that Pennsylvania was indeed a free state and little slavery existed within its borders in the early nineteenth century, given the Pennsylvania Assembly’s passage of a gradual abolition bill in 1780 and other antislavery legislation. Yet despite valiant efforts by Quakers, free blacks, and abolitionists, slavery persisted, especially west of the Susquehanna River, until 1840. Tragically, slaveholders and anti-abolitionists like the Turlocks found ways to thwart the law.

Every name and incident involving slaves in
Love’s Awakening
is taken from the historical record. The Ballantynes’
legacy as abolitionists is inspired by courageous people like William and Phoebe Wright of Pennsylvania, passionate antislavery activists who are credited with assisting hundreds of fugitives to freedom. Yet it should also be said that many fugitives—men, women, and children—passed through Pennsylvania with no help from northern whites, relying solely on themselves or free blacks.

While some abolitionists were open about assisting slaves, much of the Underground Railroad activity in Pennsylvania was so secretive it is still unknown today.

I am most indebted to these sources for their candid, moving accounts of the Underground Railroad and the slavery issue:
Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania
by William J. Switala;
On the Edge of Freedom: The Fugitive Slave Issue in South Central Pennsylvania, 1820–1870
by David G. Smith;
Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America
by Fergus M. Bordewich; and
Across the Wide River
by Stephanie Reed.

Since I was small and became lost in the wonder of words, it’s been my desire to honor the Lord with my writing. My stories are not my own but His. It’s a marvel they ever saw print. My prayer is that each one reaches the hands and hearts they were made for.

Unending thanks to each of you who’ve come alongside me with an outpouring of love via email, snail mail, prayers, gracious reviews, and more. You’ve encouraged and blessed me in ways you’ll never know short of eternity.

Take a sneak peek
at the next installment!

The Ballantyne Legacy,
Book 3,
by Laura Frantz

Available Fall 2014

The fear of death follows from the fear of life.

A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

M
ARK
T
WAIN

A
LLEGHENY
C
OUNTY
, P
ENNSYLVANIA
D
ECEMBER
1825

So this was how it felt to die.

Warm and sticky. Sudden. Hazy. The bullets tore into his back, his knee, crippling him midstride. Pain exploded inside him, and his frantic grip on the baby’s blanket went slack. Wren’s terrified wail was worse than the anguish shuddering through him. Not yet a year old, his daughter stiffened in his arms as smoke cloaked them in powdery waves.

“Ansel—hurry!” Sarah’s voice sounded choked . . . strangely distant.

Strength ebbing, he pushed his wife into the coach, nearly throwing the baby in after her. On his heels was his apprentice. Turning, he called to the lad as another shot rang out
along the wooded road. Ansel’s hands threaded through the smoke and darkness toward the boy and felt a bloodied limb.

God, no . . . God, help.

He’d been wrong to return home to Pennsylvania. Wrong to think the trouble over slavery had died down. The thought lambasted him as he thrust the lad into the coach and started to climb in after him.

“Away! Away!” he shouted to the coachman, his hoarse cry meeting with another gunshot.

The driver slumped atop the high box seat in answer, his whip dangling from a limp hand. With an overwhelming burst of stamina, Ansel slammed the coach door and climbed upward, dragging his battered leg atop the box, steeling himself against the searing ache.

Grabbing hold of the whip, he braced himself as the vehicle lurched into the rain-soaked night and tried not to flinch as the cold weight of the coachman’s body shifted against him.

He was shaking. Praying. Preparing to die.

’Twas a bitter end to a long-awaited homecoming.

 1 

Soon after, I returned home to my family, with a determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise.

D
ANIEL
B
OONE

C
ANE
R
UN
, K
ENTUCKY
J
ULY
1850

Papa had forsaken his black mourning band.

The shock of it stole through Wren like ice water. For two years her father’s shirtsleeve had borne a reminder of her mother’s loss, as telling as the lines of grief engraved upon his handsome face. Not once had he taken off the black silk. But today, on this glorious July morn, it was missing. And Wren ached to know what stirred inside his russet head.

It had all begun with a letter from far upriver. From New Hope. She’d paid the post the day before, wonder astir inside her as she studied the elegant writing.
Ansel Ballantyne, Cane Run, Kentucky.
They received a great deal of mail, mostly
from Europe and the violin collectors and luthiers there, or from Mama’s family, the Nancarrows in England. Not Pennsylvania, with the Allegheny County watermark bleeding ink on the outer edge of the wrinkled paper.

She ran all the way home and arrived at the door of their stone house flushed and so winded she could only flutter the letter in her fingers. As it passed from her hand to her father’s, she measured his expression.

Pensive. Surprised. Reluctant.

Sensing he craved privacy, she turned on her naked feet and fled, climbing the mountain in back of their home place till her lungs cried for air.

There she sank to her knees atop a flat rock and drank in the last colorful bits of day.

The river before her was framed by fading light, no longer blue but liquid gold. Wide and unending, it cradled a lone steamboat with fancy lettering on its paddle box. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she breathed in the sultry air, not coming down again till her father’s husky voice cut through the mountain twilight, calling her home.

The supper that Molly, their housekeeper, had made was waiting. She darted a glance about the kitchen. No Molly. No letter in sight. Just cold cups of cider and deep bowls of hominy stew and cornbread drenched with butter.

“A bheil an t-acras ort?”
Papa stood in the doorway to the parlor, speaking the Gaelic he’d used with her since childhood, warm and familiar as one of Molly’s hand-sewn quilts.
Are you hungry, Wren?

Hungry, yes. For mourning bands and Mama and explanations of strange letters from upriver. She nodded, sitting down and waiting for grace. Tears touched her eyes when he prayed. The words were Mama’s own, ushering in her sweet presence again.

“I’ve news from Pennsylvania.” Swallowing some cider, he gestured to the mantel where the letter rested.

“From the Ballantynes?” Wren nearly choked asking it, the grit of cornbread crumbs in her throat.

“Aye. It’s been awhile since they’ve written. Longer still since I’ve visited. Things there are changing . . .” Misery rose up and clouded the blue of his eyes. He took another sip of cider and then pushed up from his chair, nearly sending it backwards. “I fear I’ve been away too long.”

Tossing aside his napkin, he limped out the back door, his old injury tugging at her as he disappeared among fruit-laden trees. In the heat of the kitchen, she was left alone with her clamoring questions.

All her life she’d wondered about their family in western Pennsylvania. She’d heard the romantic tale of how her Scots grandfather, Silas Ballantyne, had come over the mountains the century before and built a fancy brick house for his bride. She was sure the glimmers of gossip whispered by Cane Run folk had been embellished over time. Some sort of trouble had driven Papa away from there more than twenty years before. But that was a puzzle too.

She picked up his bowl of stew, set it in the hearth’s embers to keep it warm, and placed his plate of cornbread atop it. Though he’d gone outside, his profound disquiet lingered. She’d not seen him this upset since Mama’s passing.

Darting a look at the mantel, she sighed. The letter that started all the trouble seemed to taunt her, the black mourning band coiled beside it, rife with mystery.

Birdsong nudged her awake, just as it had for twenty years or better. Wren could smell coffee—and varnish. Someone was in the workshop situated across the dogtrot at the south
end of the house. The instruments seemed to dry better there, soaking up the sun through the skylight in the vaulted ceiling, the room’s brightness calling out the rich pine and maple grain of the finished fiddles.

She dressed hurriedly and donned an apron, then wove her hair into a careless braid, tying it off with a frayed, rose-colored ribbon. It jarred sourly with her moss dress and navy shoes, giving her the look of a crazy quilt. She never fussed overlong about her mismatched wardrobe, not caring how she looked. A spill of varnish or a chisel gone awry had wrecked more dresses than she could count.

The workshop door was open wide, and she saw the long rack stretching the length of the room, jewel-toned violins strung like beads on a necklace. The smell of varnish wafted strong but not unpleasantly so, competing with the tang of freshly cut wood. Lingering on the door stone, she swept the shop in a glance. Papa? No. Only Selkirk, Papa’s apprentice. Straddling a bench, he was carving the scroll of a violin from a piece of pine, his back to her.

“Morning, Kirk.”

“Morning, Wren.” He didn’t so much as glance up, keeping his chisel true to the wood, a dusting of sweet shavings across his breeches.

“The McCoy bow is finished. I rubbed it with pumice powder and oil just yesterday. But you’ll need to test it first.” She’d lost count of the bows that didn’t pass muster. The instruments they made had to be nearly faultless. Papa’s reputation as luthier depended on it.

“I won’t be making any deliveries today.” Selkirk’s tone was low. Thoughtful. “Your father’s left for Louisville. Something about booking passage upriver to Pittsburgh.”

She went completely still, nearly forgetting how strange it was to be alone with Selkirk without Papa present. Just
outside, Molly was stringing laundry on the line joining house to shop.
Mute Molly
, Cane Run folk called her. When small, she’d been choked by a slave trader and robbed of her voice.

Wren fought the catch in her own throat as she fastened her gaze on the instruments adorning the sunny room, not just fiddles but mandolins and dulcimers and psalteries, the work of their hands and hearts. “Pittsburgh sounds right far.”

Kirk shrugged. “Just a few hundred miles. Easily managed by steamer.” He looked up, his chisel aloft. “Don’t you want to meet your Ballantyne kin, Wren?”

Did she? In truth, she rarely thought about them aside from Christmas when Grandmother Ballantyne sent lovely, impractical packages downriver. An enameled jewelry box. A cashmere shawl. An ivory-handled parasol. Things far above Wren’s raising. “Mostly I forget all about them.”

Kirk gave a chuckle. “Well, they’ve not forgotten you. Fact is, they’ve named a steamboat in your honor. She’s called the
Rowena
.”

“You don’t mean it.”

“Aye, I’ve seen her taking on cargo in Louisville. A fine steamer she is too, well deserving of your name.”

Her backside connected with the nearest stool. “But . . . why?”

“Because the Ballantynes are rich. Because they name all their steamers after the petticoats—er, ladies—in the family.”

“I’m hardly a lady,” she replied, glancing at her stained apron.

“You might be by the time you come back here.”

The very thought made her smile. She reached for a finished bow and newly strung fiddle, launching into a lively jig as if it could drive the ludicrous thought from the room. But it simply ensnared Kirk, keeping him from his work.

His mouth quirked with amusement. “If you tickle their ears with your fiddle, they might well forgive you for Cane Run. The truth is, Wren, you don’t belong here. Not like the Clarks and Landrys and Mackens who settled this place. Your mother’s people are of English stock, aye? And your father, for all his humility and homespun, is still a Ballantyne.”

“I misdoubt I belong there either.”

“How will you know unless you go?”

Because some things the heart just knows.

“If someone named a boat after me and begged me to come upriver, I’d be the first aboard.” Kirk traded one chisel for another. “It’s a bit odd your father seldom speaks of his kin. Makes me wonder what drove him to Kentucky to begin with.”

She rested the fiddle across her knees. “All I know is that Papa left Pennsylvania when he was young as you and sailed to England. He took up with the Nancarrows—Welsh luthiers—and wed my mother. When I was born they came to Kentucky.”

“Bare facts, Wren. You’d best be finding out before you go.”

She fell quiet, pondering the sudden turn of events, the steamboat
Rowena
, and Louisville, a place she’d never been. “When will Papa be back?”

“Tomorrow or thereabouts.”

She was used to his absences. His violin hunting often took him away for months. Sometimes Mama had accompanied him, but never Wren. Since Mama had passed, Papa hadn’t gone anywhere at all.

Why on earth would he now want to return to Pennsylvania?