Czytaj książkę: «An Inconvenient Marriage»

Chapter One

Natchez, Mississippi

February, 1866

The cry piercing the damp winter air chilled the Reverend Samuel Montgomery’s bones even more than the wind blowing up from the Mississippi. He hadn’t heard a sound like that since Chickamauga—a cross between a rebel yell and the shriek of an anguished soul.

He raced up the muddy brick walk and toward the ghastly sound, dropping his Bible in his haste. As always, when he’d heard similar screams of agony on the battlefield or in an army hospital, he breathed a hasty prayer for the suffering one. What could have ignited a sound like the strident voice calling through the stucco walls?

“Help me...”

Nearing the white-columned structure, Samuel reached into his frock coat pocket and checked his vial of anointing oil and his portable communion set, issued by the Confederate Army’s Chaplain Corps.

His mind sped as fast as his booted feet while he prepared himself to anoint the sick or administer the Lord’s Supper to the dying. Judging from the hair-raising voice, he might be called upon to deliver either sacrament—or both—this windy winter day.

And they were the last tasks he would have expected to perform as he took his first steps into his new church, Christ Church of Natchez.

Samuel crashed through the doorway and crossed the vestibule at a run, the sweet tones of an unfamiliar song grating against his nerves. He snatched off his hat and pitched it toward the nearest corner. As he burst into the chilly, high-ceilinged sanctuary, voices and organ strains blended into a maddening refrain from the choir gathered near the pulpit.

Did none of them understand someone was in trouble? Barreling down the sloped center aisle, he scanned the massive room, from pulpit to vestibule, from balcony to white-paneled box pew doors. No one lay suffering on the carpet. No one sat propped in a pew, gasping for air...

“Help me—”

“Stop the music!” Samuel shouted over the choir and waved his arms to get their attention. “Someone here is ill, or injured or—”

“Who? Someone with you?” In the sudden silence, a dark-haired woman turned from leading the musicians and rushed toward him, her deep green skirts rustling. Perhaps she could help him discover the person in need.

Although stunning with her ivory skin and delicate features, she looked but a mere five or so years older than his Emma—twenty years of age at most.

He turned from her and crossed to the pulpit, then glanced upward. “It was someone inside. I heard it from out on the lawn. Perhaps we should search the balconies.”

Her light, fast footfalls followed close behind. “Wait a moment—let’s think this through. What did you hear? Was it a man or a woman?”

The compassion in her voice would have moved him under different circumstances. He turned to look into gold-flecked green eyes, sparkling in the light of the overhead gasolier. Those soft, gentle eyes could easily have diverted him from his task—if they belonged to a more mature lady. If he would ever again allow a woman to distract him. And if some poor soul didn’t need his help. “A woman is in trouble, and we don’t have time to stand around and chat about it. Did you not hear the cries for help? She screamed in agony and—”

The twitters from the sopranos and altos interrupted his words, along with his train of thought.

Had he imagined the sounds? Surely not, but he’d heard of men suffering such maladies after experiencing the terrors of war.

“Father, please...”

His daughter’s whisper jarred him back to the present. He turned to Emma, who held his hat and muddy Bible. To his shame, he’d forgotten she was there. Her reddened cheeks cut through him, slicing yet another piece from his heart. Seemed he spent more time embarrassing his fourteen-year-old than he did in any other occupation these days. His daughter stood at a distance, more than arm’s length, as she had since he’d fetched her from her Kentucky boarding school two weeks ago.

Until she turned, head bowed, and dashed back toward the vestibule.

Where was she going? Why would she bolt this way in the midst of an emergency?

“Now will you slow down and think?” The woman in green hesitated only a moment and then followed Samuel’s daughter down the aisle. Reaching her, she rested her hand on Emma’s shoulder and spoke into her ear. Emma immediately broke into a bright smile.

How had the lady won his daughter’s affections so quickly when Samuel could hardly coax a word from her?

“That was no scream.”

The words broke into his haggard mind like a swarm of cicadas, interrupting his thoughts. He spun toward the sound. That was it—the voice he’d heard earlier. Shrill, piercing, yet with an unmistakable plantation accent—this was the woman in trouble. Samuel searched the choir for eyes pinched with pain, lips drawn in agony.

Instead he saw a feisty-looking antique of a lady, her hazel eyes snapping and her wrinkled lips pursed. “What you heard was my solo, sir.”

Solo? The screeching he’d heard had been—singing? “I beg your pardon, ma’am...”

His face must have been as red as Emma’s. To insult a woman of her age—it was unthinkable. To do so to a parishioner—intolerable. And in front of other church members—unforgivable.

How had this happened? He’d shepherded hundreds of men during the war, prayed with the sick, comforted the dying. He’d cared for them with the love of a father. But now, in the first moments of his first day at Christ Church, he was failing.

Just as he was failing Emma.

As he scrambled to think of a suitable apology, a man in a stylish suit and ruffled white shirt stepped into the sanctuary. “Chaplain Montgomery.”

“Colonel Talbot.” He hastened toward his former commander and clasped his hand. If only Samuel had not committed such a blunder, he could have enjoyed reuniting with this friend he’d not seen since Lee’s surrender. Instead he leaned in close to whisper. “I fear I’ve inadvertently insulted a lady in the choir.”

“You? I doubt you’d know how.”

“Trust me, I did. I know I heard a woman cry for help, but she said she was singing.” Samuel chanced a glance at the lady, who stood dignified as a dowager among the sopranos who attempted to hide their smiles behind their hands or sheet music.

The colonel looked in the direction Samuel indicated and then back again. “The lady in black?”

He nodded. “The one who looks like she wants to cane me.”

Colonel Talbot covered his mouth with his hand and rubbed his chin, but not before Samuel caught a glimpse of a grin on his face. Even if he hadn’t, the man’s laughing eyes would have given him away.

“This is not funny, Colonel.”

He cleared his throat. “You’re right, of course. She used to be a brilliant soprano, but her singing days passed when she left middle age, and no one has the nerve to tell her.”

“But I distinctly heard her call for help.” Shriek for help would have been more accurate, but Samuel held his tongue.

The colonel slowly lowered his hand as if unsure he wouldn’t yet give way to an outburst of laughter. “It’s a new hymn called ‘Help Me Be More Like Jesus.’ Since she penned it, we could hardly give the solo to anyone else.”

“Hardly.” So Samuel had insulted not only the dowager’s voice but her composition, as well. This was worse than he’d first thought. “Who is she?”

“Missus Reverend Hezekiah Adams. The founding minister’s widow.”

No. The woman who’d called him to pastor here. Samuel let out a low groan. Missus Adams was, indeed, a dowager—of the church. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his brow. “I’ve gotten myself into a bind. Only you know how much Emma and I need to stay in Natchez—and why.”

As they strode toward the choir—and the dowager, the lady in green silently dismissed the singers from the back of the sanctuary, and they trickled out. Emma wiped her little finger under her eyes, no doubt trying to whisk away her tears.

Tears that Samuel had inadvertently caused.

No matter what it would take, he had to keep this pastorate, for Emma’s sake. That meant he must win over Missus Adams before she could ship him and Emma back upriver to Vicksburg. Otherwise he could never bring long-overdue happiness to their lives. Happiness they had never yet experienced as a family.

God had led him here, to Natchez, to Christ Church. To a place of new hope, new beginnings. Of this Samuel was sure. Now he had only to convince the dowager.

And by God’s grace, he intended to do just that.

* * *

Never in Clarissa Adams’s nearly twenty-one years had she seen such a commotion in church. Things wouldn’t calm down anytime soon, either, judging from the fire blazing in Grandmother Euphemia’s eyes.

Nor had she ever seen anyone insult her grandmother, even unintentionally, and escape the dear woman’s finely honed sarcasm.

What other new and unexpected thing might happen this day?

“My father’s not always like this.” The girl set the bowler hat on the nearest pew, drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at the mud on the Bible.

With a low laugh, Clarissa leaned in close. “I imagine sometimes he’s even worse.”

The auburn-haired girl let out a giggle, then she covered her mouth with her hand and lowered her head.

The poor girl. Her distress made Clarissa unsure who she felt more sorry for—her, Grandmother or the dark-haired father.

Studying the girl, Clarissa recognized a subtle air about her, an air she’d herself had at that age. The girl’s natural vulnerability and lightheartedness of youth barely peeked through a veneer of stone.

What tragic event had caused such hardness?

Clarissa glanced at the red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks. The few moments she had wept couldn’t account for her appearance. Something or someone had made her cry earlier, that much was certain. Surely the handsome man with the kind eyes hadn’t injured his daughter in some way, had he? It seemed unlikely, but Clarissa turned wary eyes to him. Strange men arrived in postwar Natchez every day, seeking a pretty cotton heiress and an easy fortune—or so they thought. They weren’t to be trusted.

But who were this father and daughter? And why had they burst in at the end of choir rehearsal?

Clarissa glanced at the cameo timepiece pinned to her shirtwaist. Ten minutes to one. She had little time to find out before meeting her attorney as he’d requested in his terse note of this morning. “I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm. Fathers don’t realize how they sometimes embarrass their daughters.”

“Does your father understand you?”

The pointed edge in the girl’s tone brought back memories of Clarissa’s own family heartbreak, of the fear that had turned her words sharp as Father boarded a riverboat—alone—for the Yazoo Delta that long-ago February day. Memories of the cold wind blowing up to the bluff as Clarissa waved to a parent who didn’t look for her in the crowd. “I think Papa would empathize with me now, if he were here.” Instead of a hundred and twenty miles up the Mississippi River.

“My mother went to heaven four years ago. I keep wishing Papa would find a new wife and finally be happy.” The girl cast a wistful gaze at her father. “Maybe he’ll meet someone here in Natchez. Do you know of a lady he might like?”

“Well, my grandmother is unmarried...” Clarissa pointed toward Grandmother Euphemia in her black widow’s weeds.

The girl’s giggle made Clarissa smile. Well she knew how a good laugh could make any heartache easier to bear, and equally well she knew the pain of losing a parent. However, although the girl clearly needed a mother, that was a poor reason to wed. Marriages of convenience rarely ended in happiness. “I’m glad you came to town. Please call me Clarissa.”

“I’m Emma Montgomery.”

Montgomery? Clarissa’s gaze fixed on the black-suited man who now approached Grandmother Euphemia, his back straight as a Citadel cadet’s. She should have realized this was the Reverend Samuel Montgomery.

She tried and failed to pull her attention from him, although she could feel Grandmother’s disapproving glare. This was the famed Fighting Chaplain, the war hero who’d saved his entire platoon from the Yankees? The one who’d traveled the South after the War for Southern Independence, using his newfound, widespread popularity to win converts and change lives in every town he entered?

The man who wielded the sword of the Word as skillfully as he’d brandished his grandfather’s sword to conquer his enemy on a Tennessee battlefield?

He certainly seemed more like a dignified pastor than a fierce warrior. And at this moment, he looked downright humble.

As well he should, after what he’d said. Even if he was impossibly handsome and even charming in his embarrassment.

Clarissa touched Emma’s arm, urging her up the aisle. As they approached the reverend, Graham Talbot and Grandmother, Emma drew a noisy, halting breath that had to come from her toes. Fearing more tears from her, Clarissa dropped an intentional twinkle into her eye and her smile in the hopes of lightening the mood. “Reverend Montgomery, Grandmother Euphemia and I welcome you to Natchez and to Christ Church.”

He opened his mouth as if to reply, but Grandmother cut him off.

“I am capable of introducing myself.” Grandmother turned her dark disapproval from Clarissa to the reverend. “You are three days early.”

“Yes, he is, and that’s good, because Missus Euphemia Geraldine Mathilda Duncan Adams will tolerate a three-days-early arrival. But never four.” Clarissa leaned over and gave Grandmother a peck on the cheek to distract this most undemonstrative of ladies. “You’ve escaped her wrath, Reverend, at least as punctuality is concerned.”

Grandmother’s wide eyes and Emma’s little giggle made Clarissa laugh. The girl looked lovely when she smiled, until she caught her father’s glance and steeled her face.

“I heard your interim pastor was to leave town tonight,” the reverend said, “so I wanted to be in the pulpit tomorrow.”

“But you are not scheduled until—”

“The reverend did just as Grandfather Hezekiah would have done.”

The hard lines in Grandmother’s face softened just a bit, as Clarissa had known they would, and she paused. “My Hezekiah would have done that, yes.”

Clarissa drew a great breath of relief and caught the tiniest gleam in the reverend’s eye as he gave her a nearly imperceptible nod. So he knew she was maneuvering the conversation—and her grandmother. With this man as pastor, she’d have to think things through more than ever.

Grandmother straightened her back in her maddening way that always meant she’d allowed herself to be manipulated long enough. “However—”

“I haven’t properly introduced you, Miss Euphemia.” Graham Talbot touched her arm. “May I present my friend, former chaplain and my aide-de-camp, the Reverend Samuel—”

“I know full well who he is. He’s the image of his late grandfather. I also know you’re trying to prevent me from examining this candidate as the deacon board has charged me with doing.”

Clarissa resisted the urge to roll her eyes, since it would only make things worse. “But the board sanctioned the Reverend Montgomery’s calling weeks ago.”

“Contingent on my approval upon his arrival.” Grandmother set those steady hazel eyes of hers on the two men and studied them as if trying to make them squirm like schoolboys.

It didn’t work. The pastor merely inclined his head, his dark curls shining in the light of the south windows. “I’m pleased to know you made my grandfather’s acquaintance.”

“My husband spent a bit of time with him of necessity. One can’t travel far in the hierarchy of this denomination without encountering people of—all sorts.”

“In other words, the Reverend Adams did not entertain Grandfather by choice.”

“Precisely.”

“And yet the board of Christ Church called me here—surely not without your blessing.”

Grandmother leaned heavily on her ivory-handled cane as she bent toward him. “Certainly not.”

“Why did you call me then, since you clearly disliked my grandfather, as did the Reverend Adams?”

“That is a topic for another day.” And that clearly settled the matter, because Grandmother had decided so. “The more important question is the whereabouts of your wife.”

At the sound of a sharp intake of breath, Clarissa turned to Emma. The raw pain in her face had overtaken all traces of her earlier hardness.

“Forgive me.” Reverend Montgomery nodded toward Emma. “I neglected to introduce my daughter, Miss Emma Louise Montgomery.”

“And this is my granddaughter, Miss Clarissa Euphemia Adams.”

“I’m delighted.” The parson turned his brown-eyed gaze toward her for an instant, the smile in those eyes telling her he meant it.

“This church endured a great scandal when it called a young, single man after my husband’s passing. The bylaws now state the pastor must be married. And I won’t approve your call if you are not.” Grandmother tapped her cane on the carpeted floor. She did have a way of shredding any scrap of joy, especially in church. “Your wife, Reverend. Where is she?”

His face paled and he glanced upward, as if seeking divine help. “The truth is, she—”

The vestibule door swung open and banged against the wall with a force that shook the gasolier.

“Stop this meeting!” A vaguely familiar, barrel-chested man took the aisle at a clip, his long, curly salt-and-pepper hair as oversize as his stovepipe hat.

Glaring at him, Grandmother muttered, “Will all of Natchez come dashing into this church today, demanding we stop what we’re doing?”

“Adams, if you cannot slow down and act civilly inside the church, you can find another attorney.” Uncle Joseph Duncan followed at a pace more sedate but still lively for a man of his advancing age. He smoothed his famed white moustache, his old-fashioned top hat in his hand. “And take off that outlandish hat in the house of the Lord. Even for a stovepipe, it’s ridiculous.”

Grandmother’s gaze hardened as she took a step toward the man who’d ignored Joseph and left his giant hat on his round head. “Absalom Adams.”

Cousin Absalom. Of a sudden, a fog of confusion settled over Clarissa’s mind. Absalom had died in the Battle of Lookout Mountain...

“I heard the rumor about my death,” he said. “I see you did too.”

“I also heard Joseph tell you to show respect in this church.” Grandmother Euphemia lifted her cane and swung it at Absalom’s hat, knocking the monstrosity to the floor.

“What do you think you’re doing? This is a thirty-dollar hat.” Absalom let out a string of curses that should have brought the roof down on his now-uncovered head.

At the sound of the man’s foul mouth, Reverend Montgomery stepped toward him until he stood inches from Absalom’s face. “Another such word and I’ll escort you out.”

The low growl of the reverend’s voice must have instilled some well-deserved fear into her cousin, judging from his wide eyes. “Who are you?” he asked, backing away.

The preacher closed the gap again. “I’m the Reverend Samuel Montgomery. I won’t tolerate your contempt in my church.”

Absalom’s face paled. “The Fighting Chaplain?”

The reverend remained silent, quirking one brow, threatening him with his dark glower.

Absalom broke away and retrieved his hat from beside the nearest box pew, muttering about the unfairness of life.

Clarissa shook off the fog and stepped toward her cousin. “What do you want? You caused enough trouble before you went to war. Why did you come back?”

“When you didn’t show up for our appointment, we came to you.” The hat trembled in Absalom’s hand as he moved a good distance from the preacher. “We need to talk about the old man’s will. About Camellia Pointe and his tenement down at the landing.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. He left the Yazoo ground to Father and Grandmother, and Camellia Pointe and Good Shepherd Dining and Lodging to me. And Good Shepherd isn’t a tenement—it’s a respectable hotel.” Clarissa turned from her rogue cousin toward Joseph. Her attorney’s downcast gaze shot a jolt of fear through her until she glanced at Grandmother and saw her pallor. Then the jolt grew to a thunderbolt. “Tell him it’s true, Uncle Joseph.”

At the tremor in her voice, her cousin smiled an oily smile. “I want the Fighting Chaplain here as a witness when you do.”

Emma announced she would sit in their carriage and read, leaving the others to start down the long hallway to the pastor’s study. Entering it, Grandmother poked her cane at Absalom’s ribs. “Why exactly are you not dead?”

“That’s harsh, Grandmother, even for you.” In the cypress-paneled room, Cousin Absalom pulled a cigar from the pocket of his mulberry-red frock coat and clamped his teeth around it, looking for all the world like a riverboat gambler. Which he could be, for all they knew.

“Considering how you left your entire family for dead during the yellow fever outbreak, I’d say it’s a question worth asking.” Grandmother rubbed the handle of her cane. “We thought we were finished enduring your treachery.”

“I was captured at Lookout Mountain and sent to the Johnson Island prison in Ohio, where they kept Confederate officers,” Absalom said around the fat cigar. “I stayed until Lake Erie froze over, then I escaped by walking across the ice to Canada. The Yankees reported me as dead.”

He had to be joking. “Cousin Absalom, that’s the most fanciful tale I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re lying, as always.” Fire shot from Grandmother’s eyes and she lifted her cane again.

The pastor cleared his throat and picked up his black Bible from the desk. “In the book of Ephesians, the apostle encourages us to speak the truth in love. I suggest we heed his exhortation and get on with our business, telling the truth and speaking it in love.”

Finally—a voice of reason in this emotional chaos. Fighting Chaplain or not, flaming evangelist or not, the new pastor had just silenced both Clarissa’s renegade cousin and her indomitable grandmother with one Bible verse. Could he be just what Christ Church needed?