The Velvet Shadow (4 page)

His steady gaze bore into her in silent expectation, and the intensity of his look made her pulse pound. This was not her first marriage proposal, but Roger was by far her most persistent suitor. For two years he had escorted her to events around Boston, providing an introduction into fine homes and social events she would never have graced without his influence. Flanna had to admit she enjoyed walking into a luxurious drawing room on the handsome lawyer’s arm.

But to live in Boston? The people here seemed alien, cold, and stuffy compared to the warm and gentle folks of Charleston. As much as she enjoyed Roger’s company, she did not think his conversation and ready wit could compensate for the loneliness she would feel without contact with her brother, her father, her Aunt Marsali, and her seven strapping cousins. Why, she could not have endured the lonely college terms if not for Charity’s company and the knowledge that she could go home during the summer months.

“These things,” she began, speaking slowly as she searched for words which would protect their friendship and yet cool Roger’s ardor, “are not announced casually over family dinners. And you have forgotten one very important step—you must write my father and ask his permission and blessing before I can give my consent. I am a dutiful daughter, and if I were to assent to your plan without consulting my father, my actions would break his heart.”

“Don’t you like me, Flanna?” Roger looked down, the fringe of his lashes casting moonlit shadows on his cheeks. “Would marriage to a lawyer be so terrible that you cannot contemplate it? Or is it me you find objectionable?”

“You are being foolish.” She softened her voice, trying to verbalize feelings he would not understand. “I’m very fond of you. It’s just—Roger, may I be honest?”

“I would accept nothing less than honesty from you.”

“Good.” She paused, her gaze flicking toward a passing buggy. “Should we be sitting out in public like this?”

“We’re chaperoned.” Without taking his gaze from her face, he called out, “Charity?”

“Yes, Mr. Haynes?” The girl’s voice echoed over the street.

“There.” Roger tightened his grip on Flanna’s hands. “Your maid is here, and we are safely under observation. So tell me what is in your heart.”

Flanna shifted in the buggy. “I am terribly fond of you.” That much was true. After several miserable weeks in Boston, Flanna had met Roger at a social sponsored by several college supporters. He had at once become her escort and her friend, and she had reserved every spare moment for him without wanting to think of the consequences. Now she was about to disappoint him, perhaps for the last time. But she had never intended to give him her heart, only her friendship.

She looked directly into his dark eyes. “Roger, I must go home to Charleston. I promised my father that I would assist him once I became a doctor. And I miss Charleston. My family is there.”

“I will be your family if we are wed.” Roger spoke in an odd, yet gentle tone. “And Flanna, think of it—I may one day be president of the United States! What greater destiny could a woman wish than to marry a man who has devoted his life to public service?”

“She might wish to devote
her
life to those less fortunate.” She squeezed his hand, hoping he would understand. “Roger, I never told you this—I suppose I was a bit embarrassed—but my grandfather
owned over a hundred slaves. One of them was my Mammy, and I have never met a more modest woman, black or white. My mother died when I was a baby, so Mammy was everything to me, the only mother I ever knew.”

“I don’t care that your grandfather owned slaves.”

“That’s not the point, Roger.” Flanna looked down at his hands, so tightly entwined with hers. “Mammy became ill, you see, but she was so demure, so shy, that she would not allow a male doctor to examine her.”

She breathed deep and felt a sharp stab of memory, a painful remnant from the past. “She died one night as I held her in her bed. When I lifted the blanket I discovered that she’d hemorrhaged from her female organs. A doctor could have stopped the bleeding and saved her life, but she would not let a strange man come near.”

Roger made a small, comforting sound. “Why didn’t your father tend her?”

Flanna shook her head. “She would have died from embarrassment before she’d let him examine her. Despite her unrefined language and her status, she was by nature a lady, far more genteel than I could ever hope to be.” Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. “She was always fussing at me for roughhousing with my brother and my cousins. She thought I’d grow up to be a tomboy.”

“Darling,” he said, his voice silky, “there is absolutely nothing of the tomboy about you now.”

“That’s because of Mammy. When I was fifteen, she and Aunt Marsali brought me in, pulled my hair up, and let my dresses down. They taught me to be a lady, and by that time I was ready to learn.” Flanna paused, then continued in sinking tones. “And on the night Mammy died, I vowed that I would become a doctor so no woman, black or white, would have to suffer because she would not visit a male physician. I can’t break that vow.”

“Women die in Boston too, Flanna,” Roger said, with a significant lifting of his brows. “You could fulfill that vow here, in Washington, anywhere.”

“But my father is in Charleston. And when I left for medical school, I promised to come back and work with him.”

Roger sighed heavily and released her hands. “I understand, dear Flanna. So be it. I will say nothing to my brother.”

“Thank you.”

“But”—he held up a warning finger—“at the earliest opportunity I will write your father and ask for his blessing upon our future marriage. You promised you would work with him. You did not promise him a lifetime.”

Flanna sat in silence, considering his words. Perhaps she would be unwise to completely reject his proposal. She had given little thought to her life beyond her future as a doctor, and handsome bachelors like Roger did not come along every day. He was a catch; all the girls at the boardinghouse said so. Her vision was still colored with the memory of Mammy, and she could just see the woman rising up, her face as stern as granite, rebuking Flanna for being penny wise and pound foolish.
“You’s always disregarding tomorrow for the promise of today.”

“If you write my father, perhaps you should introduce yourself first,” she suggested. “I shouldn’t think he would respond favorably if you ask for my hand outright. I’ve mentioned you in my letters, of course, but he will want to know you on a personal level.”

“Doubtless he’ll want me to visit Charleston,” Roger said, taking up the reins, “which I will gladly do, but only because you are the only woman in the world for me. And while I am winning your father’s good faith and his blessing, you shall take your final examinations and pass them. Are we agreed?”

Flanna stared at him, her thoughts scampering frantically. Why not agree? Roger was as persistent as a mosquito; he would give her no peace until she assented to
something
in his favor. And though her father undoubtedly would approve of Roger Haynes, he had little time for correspondence, so it might be months before he answered Roger’s letter and granted permission for an engagement. By then Flanna would be back home in Charleston, fulfilling her promise. Roger might lose interest; he might even forget her altogether. Certainly his mother
would do
her
part to make sure Flanna was forgotten. But if Roger persisted, if his feelings for her endured through time and separation and distance, then perhaps he really
did
love her as a husband ought to love a wife.

Flanna sighed and closed her eyes. She would pray for God’s will, but in the meantime there was little she could do to resist Roger’s relentless energy.

“Are we agreed then?” Roger sat still, the reins suspended in midair, awaiting her response.

“I believe we are—but I must pray about it.”

Roger caught up her hand and pressed it to his lips in a fit of rapture, and Flanna smiled at his impertinence. Roger was all flash and flair, the most charming companion she had ever met, and one of the most considerate escorts. If by some miracle he did forget her once she returned to Charleston, she would certainly never forget him.

Flicking the reins, he urged the horse forward. Flanna pressed her hands together as the carriage moved slowly down the street. Who could tell? Perhaps Roger’s plan actually made sense. She could work with her father for a year, and if Roger was still determined to marry her, perhaps he’d even consider a move to Charleston. They were one Union, he’d said. One country. He could fill a political seat in Charleston as well as in Boston; charming, gregarious men like Roger developed a following wherever they went.

“Whoa, Gertie.”

Roger pulled back on the reins as the carriage drew up outside the tall wooden building that housed sixteen of the forty students at the New England Female Medical College. Flanna noticed a light burning in the parlor window. The housemother, Mrs. Davis, probably rocked there by the fireplace, mentally checking off each girl who returned. In another hour she would bar the door. Any young lady not satisfactorily accounted for would be expelled from the boardinghouse and the college on the grounds of moral turpitude.

Flanna shifted to face Roger. “You may call for me tomorrow but not a word about your future plans. Remember, before we can plan to marry, you must not only win my father, but your mother must approve of me.” That roadblock would probably grant Flanna another year’s grace, for Mrs. Haynes obviously believed that all Southern women were slaveholding monsters.

“Don’t mind Mother.” Roger lowered his head until his forehead brushed the brim of Flanna’s bonnet. “She spends too much time reading the newspapers. She’s upset by all this talk of secession. But I will not allow the word
slavery
to be uttered tomorrow. One should not talk of politics on Christmas Day.”

“Agreed. I will not speak of slavery, or secession, or women in medicine. I will do nothing but sit by your side and try to charm your mother.” She gave him a heartfelt smile. “I may even tell her I’m willing to stand with those noisy suffragists, if that will charm her.”

“Don’t forget my brother—he’ll need charming too. He wrote that he couldn’t believe I could lose my heart to a girl from South Carolina.” His breath gently warmed her face as he tilted his head. “May I be so bold as to ask for a kiss before I walk you to the house?”

“Miss Flanna?” Right on cue, Charity’s voice rang out from the back of the carriage. “Are we goin’ in now?”

Flanna pulled away from Roger as she turned to answer. “Yes, Charity. Hop on down, and Mr. Haynes will walk us in.”

“You can’t blame a man for trying.” An easy smile played at the corners of Roger’s mouth. “After the official engagement then.” He stepped out onto the carriage block, then extended a hand to help Flanna alight.

“After the wedding, you mean,” Flanna answered, taking his hand and descending as gracefully as she could. “A lady does not kiss a man until the wedding band is on her finger.”

“Is that so?” One of his dark brows arched devilishly. “Then three-quarters of the young women in Boston aren’t ladies.”

“That may be, sir,” Flanna answered, falling into step beside Charity as the maid moved toward the house. She turned and
flashed a bright smile over her shoulder. “But you may rest assured that I am.”

Flanna pressed her hands to her cold cheeks as she stamped her feet on the entry rug to dislodge any lingering clumps of snow. The rhythmic creak of the housemother’s rocker halted for a moment, and Flanna called out, “It’s only me, Mrs. Davis. Charity and I are safely returned from the Haynes house.”

Charity helped Flanna slip out of her pelisse, then gathered it in her arms as Flanna smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt. Mrs. Davis liked her girls to look modest and tidy at all times, for the widow had a sterling reputation to maintain. Though she had probably found it difficult to swallow the idea of a female medical college, for the past twelve years her girls had lived and studied under intense scrutiny without a single moral failure. Practically every time Flanna went out the door, Mrs. Davis’s farewell included a cheery reminder that the college’s fate and reputation rested upon her students’ shoulders.

Flanna lifted her chin and walked through the parlor, pausing politely before Mrs. Davis’s rocker.

“A nice evening, my dear?”

“Very nice, Mrs. Davis, thank you for asking. Mrs. Haynes is a gracious hostess.”

The widow nodded, her white cap framing her pinched face. “You’ve been seeing quite a lot of her son. How long have you two been keeping company?”

“Oh, about a year and a half, I suppose.” Flanna gave the landlady a careful smile. “Long enough for me to know he is quite a gentleman. You need not fear when I am out with him, ma’am.”

“A woman can never let her guard completely down.” The old woman’s voice rattled like the wind against the windowpanes. “Shouldn’t he be writing a letter to your father soon?”

Good grief, had the woman been listening at the window? Eager to retreat from the prying questions, Flanna shifted her weight toward
the staircase. Her bell-shaped hoop skirt swung forward, betraying her eagerness. “I expect Roger will do whatever a gentleman should do. But he understands I intend to finish school and return to Charleston.”