Synopsis | Excerpt
EMMA EDWARDS - Unwed at the old-maid age of almost thirty years, she feels she has reached the lonely evening of her life. Dependent upon the bounty of an uncaring and capricious sister-in-law, she believes that even God has forgotten her...
JONATHAN RAMSEY - Confederate naval office, who, with Emma, is swept suddenly into the swift-moving currents of war and danger. But is he too caught up in the treacherous currents of conflict along the famed Chattahoochee River to risk her devotion, to renew her faith with his love?
The River Between series continues with THE WIND ALONG THE RIVER, set in historic Eufaula, Alabama, where the dramas of the antebellum South and the Civil War come to life again.
Chapter 1
A sudden chill wind snatched Emma's cashmere shawl, threatening to fling it into the Chattahoochee far, far below. Engulfed in loneliness, she had stood too long on the bluff overlooking the river. Evening slipped silently around her, bringing an end to the December day, mild even for Alabama.
Shivering, Emma Edwards glanced at the lowering sky and sighed. She must hurry home to Barbour Hall because her sister-in-law, Cordelia, who thought Emma's only purpose in life was to obey her whims, would be angry again. Lily always said God had a plan for everyone, but Emma thought He had not noticed her. Love had passed her by. At twenty-seven, she had reached the evening of her life.
Blat! Blat! A sharp sound echoed from the hills behind her, seemingly a part of her exploding emotions. Her spreading skirt, weighed down by hoops, and her honey-colored hair, drawn back into a tight knot at the back of her slender neck, remained unruffled by the wind. Her delicate fingers smoothed the lines of her cheeks into an expression as placid as the distant water. She would not allow herself another sigh or frown; but as her gaze dropped to the riverbank at the base of the bluff and to the waves rolling into the shore, lapping, churning, whipping into a white froth, she could feel the same restlessness pounding ceaselessly within her. Surely December 20, 1860, would be a date forever seared upon her brain.
The sun had set behind Eufaula, yet the many mansions of the city sparkled as if their windows were studded with diamonds. They wavered before her startled blue eyes in a haze she knew to be smoke because her throat burned from her sudden gasp. Echoing reports of discharging cannon again assaulted her ears. Squinting to focus the blurred scene, she was able to discern, etched against a blazing bonfire, a buggy rattling down the hill toward her.
"Emma, Emma, come quickly," Lily Wingate's lilting voice called. Her brown hair had slipped from its combs and was streaming in the wind. "Hurry! You mustn't miss the fun of the illuminations!"
"The what?" Emma's relieved laughter bubbled in her throat as she easily negotiated her willowy body into the red leather seat of the runabout. Suppressing her initial reaction of fear, she allowed her heart to respond, as always, with delight to the animation of her niece, just seven years her junior.
"Oh, it's all just too exciting," exclaimed Lily. "Didn't you hear the cannon signaling?"
"Of course," Emma answered.
"The tide can no longer be stemmed!" Lily's voice was shrill with fervor. "Since South Carolina has taken the irrevocable action of secession, the news is coming in that all over the South people are joining in illumination night!"
The buggy swayed as they crossed Randolph Avenue, and Lily struggled with the reins. The horse threatened to rear as the people poured into the street, shouting, waving handkerchiefs. A brigade of soldiers, the Eufaula Rifles, marched smartly around the corner, accompanied by a drum's tattoo.
Emma could not seem to share Lily's exhilaration. As a spinster, she had no real place in Eufaula's kingdom of cotton. While she could sympathize with the local demand for states' rights and a low tariff so that the South could trade its cotton for cheap foreign goods, she had no voice of her own. From this beautiful city, located on a bluff one hundred and fifty feet above the Chattahoochee River separating Alabama from Georgia, cotton was taken on flat-bottomed side-wheelers down to Apalachicola, Florida, and thence to New York and Liverpool. She could easily understand why Eufaula's flourishing economy was based on land, cotton, and slaves; however, she existed only at the beneficence of her late brother, Clare Edwards. Her sister-in-law kept her in a nebulous position—below the other family members but slightly above the servants. Sometimes, only Lily's insistence that Emma had been granted a special gift kept her head erect, her lips smiling, and her heart searching.
Looking at vivacious Lily, Emma wished that she could share Lily's faith and confidence in her own ability to face whatever life brought.
For the last month, the townspeople had been holding their breaths, suspended, waiting for the weight to drop. Immediately after Lincoln's election in November, Barbour County had organized the Minutemen and called for secession and preparations for safety and resistance. Alabama had waited—to see what South Carolina would do. Eufaula's matrons had busily prepared for parties even while the convention deliberated. Drifting on the eddies of the group, Emma had not felt a part of the celebration.
Since noon today, when the news had spread like leaping flames from the Eufaula telegraph office that South Carolina was withdrawing from the nation, flags had been fluttering and young people had been popping firecrackers. Emma had withdrawn from the bustling excitement, feeling acutely that everyone was converging with a plan except her. Now as she looked at Lily, she stiffened her spine against the buggy seat and pulled her old canezou, a dainty jacket with horizontal rows of smocking, more closely around her neck. Shivering, glad she had brought the warm shawl, she wondered whether her chill came from night air or from her unreasonable premonition of fear.
Deftly controlling the horse, Lily pulled away from the crowd proceeding up the hill, gathering around Mayor Thornton's house for speeches. Though it was to be expected that their neighbor, Lewis Llewellen Cato, a member of the Eufaula Regency, would be entertaining a large crowd, Emma was surprised to see Barbour Hall ablaze with lights. It had not been so since Lily's father's death last year.
As they drove past the red cedars at the gates, Emma looked up at the magnificent white-frame mansion. Built in 1854 and considered one of the finest examples of Italianate architecture in the South, its floor-to-ceiling windows on both floors and in the belvedere crowning the roof were, every one, sparkling with light.
Lily giggled in delight. "The house looks dressed for a ball. Haven't I always said the glassed belvedere is her airy hat; the wooden balustrade, her neck ruffle; the green shutters on the upper story, her canezou, the porch spreading around the first floor, her hooped skirt—?"
"And the trim for her skirt, the pairs of slender columns interspersed with lacy scrolls," Emma finished for her, laughing.
As the merry pair entered through the double doors, Lily's husband, Harrison Wingate, strode across the entry hall floor, a checkerboard of twelve-inch squares of black-and-white Italian marble. His smooth face brightened with a smile that lifted his mustache and radiated from his eyes as he greeted them. "As soon as I put this candlestand by the parlor window," he said, indicating the hand-carved mahogany torchier he carried, "and light one last candle, I'll be finished and ready to go. You're coming with us, Emma?"
"The house is already so bright, it could shine all the way to South Carolina," laughed Lily. Then she added emphatically, "Of course, she's coming. She stays alone in this house far too much. I'm not about to let her miss the most exciting thing that ever happened to Eufaula!"
Her face a mask, Emma looked toward the parlor. She dared not venture an answer until she sensed her sister-in-law's mood.
Cordelia Edwards was jovial. She sat close to the crackling fire that had been lighted beneath the mantel of white Italian marble. "Ah, boo, boo, boo," she laughed, jiggling her chins. The six-month-old baby, perched on Mrs. Edwards's stomach, rewarded her with a two-toothed grin. She looked up as the child's father brought in the waist-high stand, and her tone changed to icy sarcasm. "More candles, Captain Wingate? I really thought this room had quite enough light." She glanced meaningfully toward a multitude of candles lending fire to every crystal teardrop of the Waterford chandelier.
"This is the last one, Miss Cordelia," Harrison replied politely as he placed the torchier so that the thick, tall candle would shine directly through the lace draperies on the huge square, six-over-six-pane windows. "The crowds are moving up the hill. We must give evidence of our support."
Lily crossed to her mother, dropped a kiss on her baby's dark fuzz of hair, and flopped on the double settee. Cocking her head to one side, she traced her finger over the elaborate Chippendale design of carved mahogany leaves and scrolls which formed the stiff back, and considered her mother before speaking. "Mama, do you feel like playing with Mignonne a little longer? We all wanted to attend the celebration on College Hill."
Emma sniffed in alarm. Lily had said "we." Emma had already been away from the house for more than an hour. Even though the clean, sharp smell of the oak wood fire invited her to warm her fingers, she had remained standing in the doorway, watching them obliquely in the huge, gold-leaf Belgian mirror over the mantel.
Mrs. Edwards frowned. "You girls know better than to be out about the town alone," she scolded, shaking her fingers until her black taffeta sleeves rustled.
"Yes, Ma'am," Lily replied meekly, "but this time Harrison will be with us."
"Perhaps I'd better stay and help keep... ," Emma interjected subserviently and hurried toward the fireside.
"Nonsense; I'll keep her. What are grandmas for?" Cordelia Edwards bounced the baby for another grin. Mignonne watched with thick-lashed eyes, her apple cheeks waiting expectantly for reason to smile.
Quickly, Lily jumped to her feet and gave Emma a push. "Go put on something pretty," she commanded, then added under her breath, "Harrison has a friend I want you to meet."
Emma's cheeks, already as delicately hued as the inside of a seashell, lost all color, but she turned obediently into the hall and fled up the stairs.
