Surrender at Orchard Rest (4 page)

“She looks ready to agree with every word I say for the rest of my life,” he’d exclaimed to Somerset once when she suggested he take up with her after they hadn’t heard from Fairlee for six months. “What on earth is the fun in being with a woman like that?”

Joseph thumped out of the room on his cedar cane in search of a celebratory drink.

Somerset placed her hand on Ivy’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything to me. I don’t require an apology. I don’t want to talk about it, either. What a fine portrait of Teddie that is.”

Congested sniffs filled the room.

“Only he and Helen sat for them before the war came,” said Somerset, giving Ivy time to compose herself. “I imagine what mine would look like since his is as fine as it is. He doesn’t even look like a real gentleman you’d see walking down the street. Amelia wanted to take it with them when they moved to South Carolina but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. She said if Amelia got her boy, she couldn’t have the Bostick of him as well. Just one of many tenuous points between Mother and Amelia.”

Ivy did not acknowledge her.

“We always knew she’d come back, Ivy,” said Somerset in a soft voice. “Even if she didn’t ever come back, you’d grow old and lose your chances with anyone else while waiting on him to come around.”

“I don’t want to talk about it now.”

Somerset stared at the portrait, waiting for her dearest friend to pull herself together. It was a portrait of Theodore hunting in a copse of trees in autumn. The light filtered through the branches of pines and made his blond hair—Blanche’s hair—golden, throwing the autumn foliage into insignificance. His setter, Dorothy, clung close to his heels and pointed her narrow nose in the direction of his prey. The only thing wrong with the picture was that it didn’t show his Marshall eyes—Blanche’s eyes—well. He was just on the brink of manhood, and it was obvious why Amelia had snapped him up without a second thought. The set of his jaw and the slope of his shoulders radiated strength and calm, a future patriarch.

Ivy turned from the oil painting with defeated posture and wiped her eyes.

“I’m better, truly I am.”

“I feel for you. I do,” said Somerset. “Yet I can’t tell you I hope they part ways. Fairlee is my friend, too. I love you both, but I can’t choose for him.”

“Yes,” agreed Ivy.

Somerset heard a sound that caused her whole body to feel alert. She recognized Sawyer’s familiar fast step on the portico. She looked from Ivy to the open west window. She knew a real friend would stay and console Ivy, but in that instant she felt an unquenchable necessity, with the intensity of a fizzing flame on a firecracker, to see Sawyer.

“If I need to see someone now, will you stand sentry for me? No guests are here, but if Mother asks, tell her you don’t know where I went. I’ll tell you all about it tonight after the guests have gone home.”

Somerset strolled over to the open window and, after a quick survey left and right, she raised her voluminous skirts and stepped over the sill.

Sawyer caught his breath when he saw her suddenly materialize two yards in front of him with her impossible skirts swinging from descending the sill. She looked very mischievous, the light in her eyes too fervent. He took in the tumult that was her dress, the arcing folds of fabric, fine embroidery, and silk roses. He knew in that instant that she had never been so exquisite, and he discerned that it was not the ensemble so much as the fact that she believed once more what a magnificent woman she was. He felt timidity seep damply into his soul. It was March 1861 again and he was dying of love for her, unknown, while she lolled on the garden swing with Eric.

She advanced on him, closing the distance between them by extending her hands.

“Sawyer! How glad I am you’re here!”

“You look radiant,” he said through the knot in his throat.

Her answering smile was full of joy.

“Fine feathers,” she replied, dismissing his compliment, and led him to a low stone bench behind one of many wide columns that lined the portico. “I want to talk to you while I have you all to myself before supper.”

“Won’t someone notice you’re missing?”

“No one knows you’re here but Ivy, and she won’t tell.”

“Then I’m a lucky man.”

Somerset took his hand in her warm grasp. Intuition told her the rhythm of their interactions was off again. She looked up into the pensive face she loved.

“Something is wrong,” she reflected.

“There isn’t time to discuss it before supper tonight.”

She smoothed a crest of his golden brown hair away from his brow.

“It doesn’t matter, Sawyer. Any problem we face together is trifling.”

“In this age, no problems are trifling. I’d welcome simple problems.”

“Tell them to me. I’ll help you fix them.”

Sawyer cast her hand away, bounded from his seat, and began pacing in the enclosure.

“Not everything is fixable.”

“I can’t believe you’d think such a thing.”

“Will you stop?”

Somerset sprang up, bewildered and hurt by his rejection. He had never once behaved in a rash or unfeeling manner to her. Her spirit shuddered at the emotional assault of their first true confrontation, but she cast aside the unpleasantness and tried to stay true to the conversational course.

“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that ever,” she retorted, going to him. “Talk to me.”

“I can’t now with a houseful of people arriving. We’ll discuss it later,” he said.

She thought she saw tenderness mixed with pity on his tanned face.

An understanding smile crept across her face. He was practically running a pork plantation by himself. The weather had been unforgiving, he was short Joseph’s help, and he didn’t have enough working animals to keep the place going. The lines around his eyes had deepened since the accident. He was sunburned, in need of sleep, and short of cash. He didn’t want to burden her with financial woes.

“We’ll talk about something else then,” she said. “Have you thought any more about making our announcement tonight?”

“I’ve thought about nothing else,” he breathed, his eyes never moving from his boots.

“Well then.” She put her hands on his shoulders and backed him slowly into a stone alcove. “The timing is perfect. Everyone will be delighted for us. I know I am.”

She stood on tiptoe and raised her arms so that her fingers laced behind his neck. She pulled his lips onto hers and felt his heavy arms encompass her. One folded across her bare shoulders and the other wrapped her waist, pulling her into him with force she hadn’t experienced since the fateful day outside the Atlanta hospital when she lost her wits and threw herself headlong at him in the street. Somerset forgot herself again. The only things that mattered were how close he held her against him, the heat the rock wall emitted, and the possibility that anyone might stroll down the portico at any moment. His arms were around her, but his hands were inching up her ribcage, fingers winding in the beading swinging against her chest. No matter what she did in return, she felt the frustration of not being able to get close enough to him. As they grappled together under the trumpet creeper, her back hit the wall and his eyes shot open. Then he released her. The sudden parting left her skin cold under the sheen of sweat on it. He was breathing hard. She leaned against him, panting also, with a self-satisfied smile at her own prowess.

“I love you,” she murmured.

“I love you.”

“So we’ll announce our engagement tonight?”

“No.”

“No?”

She couldn’t believe her ears. He’d never said the word to her before, and the finality of it had the same intensity as the closure of a coffin.

“No?” she repeated.

He took her hand.

“I think announcing our engagement at such a public event is a mistake. You’re right, I should have convinced you to tell months ago, but it was wrong of me to not go through the pretense of asking Mr. Forrest for your hand. I want to do this the time-honored way and ask for you.”

“That just adds more time to everything! I don’t want to wait any longer.”

“Somerset, your pedigree could be fancier but with little chance. The letter of the law matters a great deal at Orchard Rest, whether you want to believe it or not.”

“No one will be surprised if we announce it tonight,” pleaded Somerset. “We’ve been courting for a long time now. Everyone knows you escort me to functions. My family will be happy that I’m engaged.”

“They will be happy, but we need to do this the proper way. Openly flouting tradition under their roof is not the way I’m going to begin a new relationship with them.”

“I don’t want to—”

Sawyer placed a finger over her lips.

“Shh. Trust me. You’ll be relieved at the way things work out if we don’t announce this tonight.”

Sawyer raised his eyes again to meet hers and they looked miserable. Somerset choked back everything she needed to say.

“I’m going around the house to use the front door like a decent man. You go back through the window if no one is in the room.”

He squeezed her fist and strode back down the portico with his quick and easy gait.

***

Blanche later said supper was her most successful postwar function yet. Somerset knew it was because she had not been her usual vivacious self, and Joseph, worried for her, had been quieter than usual. For once Blanche had a table of her children behaving as she wished, and she was elated that Dr. Harlow’s son, Holt, seemed to take interest in Victoria, who had difficulty attracting a beau of her own.

The only thing that mattered to Somerset was that she caught up with Sawyer as he left the library after port with Joseph and her papa. She found him in the foyer just before the clock struck nine. She was mindful that Bess or Tuck could come by as they cleared the dining room.

“You’ll meet me?” she implored.

“Yes,” he said, indecision enveloping the word. He put on his hat and did not meet her gaze.

Somerset opened her mouth to tell him she loved him but he was gone.

***

Waiting for Fairlee’s arrival made for an interminable week. Joseph had Jim help him dress in the same two shirts and pants over and over again and asked Somerset and Victoria which suited him better as often as he changed. When he wasn’t wearing Jim out over his lack of wardrobe, he sat on the porch with a glass of whiskey, rereading the telegram and calling to anyone passing through the front parlor about current train schedules. Victoria, nerves spent but too polite to say so, took Warren to the peach grove behind the house and spent entire days filling cane baskets even though she despised the work of preserving them. Somerset was too preoccupied with Sawyer’s sudden evasive behavior to be bothered by Joseph, and everyone else was too tired to notice her lack of appetite and moodiness. Blanche had hoped for matrimony during Fairlee’s visit, but, realizing that the happy couple might ask to live at Orchard Rest, she changed her mind and wished instead that Joseph would be well enough to leave the plantation soon of his own accord.

On the day before Fairlee’s arrival, Dr. Harlow came to see Joseph’s leg and declared the infection was starting to subside. He
tsk
ed over it several times as he cleaned the viscous custard drainage and said that it was too soon to be putting his full weight upon it. He added that he certainly couldn’t go about normal activities for at least a month. Joseph railed against the instructions as fiercely as he had battled the notion of losing his limb, and Dr. Harlow compromised with him in that he could go out in the wagon for a single visit if another member of the household transported him. The doctor left Orchard Rest in a huff, muttering about how the boy would kill himself yet with his own stupidity and brazenness.

Thomas told Joseph he wasn’t sparing a single servant for the afternoon so that he could go courting, so Joseph asked Somerset to take him. Ordinarily she would have been curious to be so near Joseph and Fairlee during their first reunion in years, but when she agreed she wondered if it would cut into time that she could be spending with Sawyer.

Somerset stood before the mirror in the front parlor with the flattering light filtering in through the window upon her upturned face. She turned her bonnet from side to side and fluffed and retied the bow scores of times in an effort to beautify it. It was shabby and shapeless, and she wished that her closet contained more than work dresses and a couple of ball gowns that couldn’t be worn on a visit out in the country. Fairlee was a comely dresser, or had been, so Somerset wanted to look presentable.

“I wish we were rich again!” she grumbled as the bow fell limp in her hands for the hundredth time.

“Somerset!” exclaimed Victoria, coming into the parlor with an armload of starched linens.

“Don’t give me that look. We all look like we belong on the streets in a Dickens novel. I can’t believe I agreed to take him to see Fairlee when my closet is all threadbare cotton.”

“Take comfort in the fact that Joseph will look as shabby as you, and Fairlee likely will.”

Somerset laughed, taking pleasure in her little sister’s practical outlook.

“Besides, I wish I were going,” continued Victoria. “It will be like having a front row seat at a play.”

“I wish you would go with us.”

“I was never friends with Fairlee. She won’t be expecting me.”

“You’re grown now so she might like your company. She won’t be expecting anyone today since she just got home. Your presence will lend grace to an undignified situation.”

“What undignified situation?” Blanche asked.

She appeared at the door carrying her poultry ledger with Warren following her like a brown puppy, adoration on his face. Somerset thought Blanche was omniscient. She materialized at the first portent of trouble.

“Miss Buchanan must be home,” surmised Blanche, “and knowing Joseph, she hasn’t had time to put her valise down but he insists on calling on her.”

Somerset nodded.

“The train arrived this morning, Mother, and I doubt she’s been at home for more than a couple hours.”

“I can’t imagine what Evelyn will think of this household when a legion of my children appears on her front porch with no advance notice,” mused Blanche.

“Shall we refuse to take him before tomorrow then?” asked Victoria. She sounded disappointed. She seldom left Orchard Rest, but she could tell by the stately incline of her mother’s head that she was close to forbidding them to go.

“Oh, goodness no,” said Blanche. “I’d rather abandon all propriety with Evelyn than have Joseph lounge about on the porch for another day. He was calling down to passersby on the road yesterday. I won’t have it another day.”

“I’m having Franklin hitch Hector to the wagon,” said Somerset. “We’re leaving just as soon as Jim finishes dressing Joseph.”

“Good,” nodded Blanche. “Don’t go empty-handed. Victoria, take some of the preserves you put up this week so Evelyn thinks we’re less barbaric than we actually are. Somerset, don’t leave the two of them alone together no matter what—I don’t care who else is there chaperoning. Keep up with the time, Victoria. I know he’s looked forward to nothing else, but I want you all back by suppertime. It’s bad enough that Fairlee just got home, I won’t have Joseph camped out at the Loft until asked to leave.”

“I go. I go, too!” asserted Warren, removing his finger from his mouth and stomping forward.

“You won’t either,” said Victoria.

Blanche smoothed his hair over his forehead.

“No,” Blanche soothed him. “You’re too sweet to go on adventures with all the big boys and girls today. You’ll stay with me and feed the animals.”

Victoria chucked him under the chin on her way to gather the preserves, and Blanche turned back to Somerset.

“Keep the peace at all cost, young lady. If they start to quarrel for any reason, you are to become immediately indisposed and need to come home. Joseph has been a challenge since he returned home, but I’ve had my fill of him since this last accident. I won’t tolerate a jot more humiliation out of him. I have no idea what put the brakes on their engagement, and after two years, I’d rather hoped that little minx wouldn’t come home again. I can’t imagine a worse pairing than those two. Do whatever you need to do to keep Joseph from making a scene. “

Blanche looked at Somerset over the ledger she rested her chin on. Her dark blue eyes were stony and hard, set in a face that could have easily been ten years younger. It was a look Somerset knew well. Most of the time Blanche looked serene, but Somerset knew the expression on her face was the real Blanche, the woman who had started life over from scratch in Baton Rouge and then twice at Orchard Rest.

“We’ll be the picture of decorum,” avowed Somerset.

Blanche smiled and the twinkle reappeared in her eyes.

“Of course you will. I’m letting you go because you handle him so well. When you come home, we’ll talk about a trip we’re going on. You’ll be happy to hear about it, dearest.”

Victoria returned with three jars of preserves in her hands, a basket of peaches over one arm, and a jar of Betsy’s arthritis liniment balanced in the crook of one elbow. Evidently she was of the same opinion as her mother that they were barbarians for inviting themselves to the homecoming. Blanche led Warren to the hall where she began to sort through the contents of the walnut highboy.

Joseph limped into the room looking like himself. His natural tan had returned and was enhanced by a crisp white shirt that was pilfered from Thomas’s wardrobe. He leaned on his walking stick and caught his breath.

“What are we waiting for?” he asked. “I do hate to keep a lady waiting.”

“Are you certain you want to go today?” asked Somerset.

“You know I am.”

“The train just arrived. Don’t you think she might appreciate some time alone with her family?”

“They run over to Tuscaloosa to see her all the time. Besides, we’re getting married. We are family. I haven’t forgotten my manners.”

His tone was lighthearted, but the set of his jaw said he’d ride Hector bareback if no one was willing to drive him. Victoria raised her eyebrows at Somerset as they filed out of the parlor and down the steps into the bright afternoon.

Orchard Rest was quiet for a midweek afternoon. Thomas worked from before dawn to well after dusk each day when he wasn’t traveling, but Joseph was the true driving force behind improvements on the farm. Until Joseph was well enough to work, the plantation would stay at a lull. Thomas and his hired workers would tend the cotton and cattle while Blanche remained in charge of the poultry. Somerset, Victoria, and Bess would keep gathering and preserving fruit from the orchard and mind the family vegetable garden. It was an efficient, though small operation, and everyone had more than enough to keep them busy.

Orchard Rest rose up behind Somerset as she drove away, she thought, like a swan about to take flight. It was a sprawling variation of the double quarter houses that Blanche had adored in Louisiana. The original house was a true double quarter house with a wrap-around verandah, but as the family kept expanding, Thomas had been forced to add to the house. Two smaller wings had been added, one on each side of the house, and they always reminded Somerset of the white wings of the swans that Mrs. Garrett used to keep on her pond. She loved the narrow side gabled roofs and the never-ending porches where she had kissed no man, save Sawyer Russell, who was still alive. The porches, the enclosures, and the columns sheltered her while freeing her to do whatever she wished. With the exception of the house Eric had been building her, she loved no other place so well.

She saw Joseph looking about him at all of Orchard Rest, hunger in his hazel eyes as they pulled away, and she felt his love for the place, too. She could read his thoughts. The grass was too tall, and the peach trees were out at the limbs. The roof of the oldest house needed new shingles and the fence to keep the deer out of the garden would need a coat of whitewash before winter. She turned her head when they passed the barn. He was still working on a new barn. She’d been forced to set fire to the original one during Wilson’s raid to save them, and years later he was still repairing the damage she’d caused. He felt a deep peace when working on Orchard Rest, a peace that wouldn’t have been provided by finishing law school. Now that it was certain he would get to keep his leg, he looked at the plantation with satisfaction on his face. He would move slower than before, but he would be useful again. His career was once in destruction, but he was redeeming himself as a creator now. She saw him look at the plow he’d meant to repair before the accident.

Through his thick brown hair, she saw the outline of the scar where the rifle butt had connected with his head. The scar was wide, pink, and short. It was a daily reminder of the first time he almost died, while trying to help Eric. Once without thinking, she’d reached out and rubbed her index finger over it. Joseph had slapped her hand, not spoken to her for two weeks, and they’d never brought it up again.

Victoria spoke, breaking Somerset’s reverie.

“Why is Mother sorting through every piece of furniture we have?”

“I didn’t know she was,” replied Somerset.

“She’s gone through every chest, armoire, and cabinet in the house,” continued Victoria. “I even saw her checking behind every book in the library last night.”

Joseph remained silent.

Somerset mulled, engaged with the general strangeness of Victoria’s claim. She started in her seat, accidentally whipping Hector with the lines.

“She hasn’t found her diary!” exclaimed Somerset. “She was looking for it last week before Joseph’s party.”

“She keeps it in her room.”

“It disappeared last week, and if she hasn’t found it yet, she must be half wild on the inside. You know how organized she is.”

“How would it get out of her bedroom, Somerset? No one goes in her bedroom.”

“She misplaced it or someone took it,” considered Somerset. She turned to Joseph. “Did you take it?”

He rolled his eyes and made a sound of irritation.

“Why the devil would I take an old woman’s memoirs?” he asked.

“Because you like to rile her,” said Somerset.

“Somerset,” chided Victoria.

“He does. He loves to see her get worked up, and he’s been bored now for weeks. Did you take it?”

“Seeing as how she hasn’t breathed a word of it to me, I’d have replaced it by now, don’t you think?”

“No, not necessarily.”

“Well, I don’t have her chronicles of having been a rich beauty. Did you take it and read it for amusement?” asked Joseph.

“I don’t think it’s funny in the slightest,” returned Somerset.

“Warren runs in and out of her room all day long, following her,” said Victoria. “I’ll ask him if he took it.”

Joseph cleared his throat.

“I don’t care what happened to it. It’s that time of year again where she obsesses over it. I just want to let the past go.”

They lapsed into silence again.

They passed the drive that led to the Garretts’ place and then the cemetery. It was a hot sticky day, and the katydids’ continual whirring made Somerset’s ears ring even when they were at a lull. She paid close attention to Joseph. He smiled in anticipation, but she could tell by the squint of his eyes that he was in physical pain. She hoped that Fairlee would be kind after what Joseph was putting himself through to get to her.