Shelter from the Storm

  Shelter from the Storm

  Patricia Rice

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Edition

  September 3, 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-295-2

  Copyright © 2011 Patricia Rice

  Dedication

  For the Rices—for your love, your support, and for being there—this one’s for you.

  Prologue

  Cairo, Illinois May 1865

  Tear spots blurred the ink of the elegantly scripted letter in Laura’s hand as she read it once more. She had received few of these missives through the years of war and turmoil, and they always carried bad news. The first one had come at the end of that first year of war, telling of Aunt Ann dying of some mysterious ailment that had left her too weak to eat.

  Then there had been Uncle Matt a few years later. He couldn’t actually be called a casualty of war. He had been too old to march with the army, but the war had killed him just the same. When the Union gave his last few male slaves a “pass” to join the army, he’d had an apoplexy from which he never fully recovered.

  Laura had wondered how Stoner Creek Farm had been run since then, and reading this letter gave her some clue.

  With Lee surrendered and Lincoln dead, the war was nearly done, and Ward was still alive. Handsome, gallant Ward Breckinridge, pride of the Kentucky Rifles, shot and imprisoned, and now home, only to die—if Sallie’s letter were to be believed.

  Laura shook her head as she reread the words. Sallie had never tended to be hysterical, but this letter verged on it. Ward had been the ideal husband for her: competent, self- assured, wealthy even without Sallie’s rich lands, and patient. Ever patient.

  Sallie had always been a terrible flirt, but Ward had outlasted all her other beaux. The night he had walked into the ballroom wearing his blue-and-gold uniform had brought Sallie to her senses. Marrying Ward was the best thing Laura’s cousin had done in her life, and they had had but a few weeks out of all these years together.

  Laura wiped her eyes with a plain-edged handkerchief. It seemed as if the Kincaid luck and charm had finally dwindled to an end with the name. Stoner Creek was all that was left, and from Sallie’s letter, that might not be for much longer.

  Laura set the stiff pages on the small oak dresser at her side and rose to gaze out the dormer window of her attic room. It was still early in the morning, but the heat was already climbing. She’d thought about that letter all night, and she’d made her decision, but it had been the hardest decision of her life.

  The muddy unpaved streets below couldn’t compare with the rippling emerald green of the pastures at home. The crude wooden storefronts here were no replacement for the sun-burnished patina of old bricks and white-painted porticoes of Stoner Creek. Even the people lacked elegance. She was tired of sewing drab linsey-woolseys and calicoes, and she ached to see the lavish silks and satins of home.

  Still, deciding to send the telegram saying she was coming home had been a battle. It was an admission of failure, a throwing away of nearly four years of her life. She would have to return to the same penniless dependent role she had fled before, only after this taste of freedom, it would be worse.

  Laura glanced at her stiff widow’s weeds, then strode determinedly to her writing desk. The telegram would go out before she opened the shop this morning. She had saved enough money to pay the fare. She would return with her head held high and clothed in the respectability of black. No one would have to know her shame. No one.

  If only she could remember she was a woman grown, and not the love-starved child of long ago.

  Chapter 1

  It has been alleged, and not without some plausibility, that Kentuckians are belligerent by nature. We do not deny it. The crest of the state shows two gentlemen in swallow-fork coats, holding each other firmly by the right hand. The intent of the picture is plain. So long as they hold hands, neither can reach for his hardware.

  —Irvin Cobb

  Paducah, Kentucky

  Stoner Creek, Kentucky August 1850

  Sitting stiffly in her crisp new petticoats and crinoline with dimity eyelet pantaloons peeking out beneath, six- year-old Laura Kincaid didn’t dare mop the perspiration forming on her brow. Her father would have declared all this lace and horsehair utterly ridiculous for an afternoon ride, but her father was dead, and Sallie had insisted this was what ladies wore.

  Laura glanced circumspectly at her nine-year-old cousin’s willowy back. Sallie had a lovely Arabian mare with ribbons braiding her mane that matched the multifarious ribbons of Sallie’s delicate batiste gown. In pastel blue with all the ribbons fluttering in the faint breeze, she looked as cool as a pitcher of water from the spring.

  Sallie’s blond naturally curly ringlets bounced beneath her matching bonnet, never falling flat and limp as Laura’s hair did now. She stuffed a lank strand of brown back into her bonnet and straightened her parasol with annoyance. Parading to town dressed like a peacock didn’t have the same appeal as it had earlier in the coolness of the porch, and she squirmed irritably in her hot new clothes.

  Sallie’s mare wandered to a halt, and Laura glanced up from her sulk to find the cause. They had passed from the tree-lined lane of the farm into the rutted road leading into town. On either side of the gravel-and-dirt path spread fields of towering tobacco. Laura hadn’t quite determined the extent of her uncle’s lands yet, but the peeling whitewash on this fence did not resemble the newly laid stone fences of Stoner Creek Farm. She assumed these fields must belong to a neighbor, and she looked with curiosity to the half-naked occupant of the tobacco bed.

  From the dark eyes filled with suspicion that he turned toward them, Laura judged him to be a few years older than Sallie. Still, the boy’s shoulders had begun to fill out, and when he lifted the hoe to his bare shoulder, muscles rippled along his arms. His hair was black and unkempt, curling about his neck where sweat dampened it.

  Baked by the summer sun, his skin was darker than any white man’s she had ever known. Traveling as she had with her father, Laura had seen many sights and all sorts of people. This one fitted no category that she could name, white or black, and she stared at him openly.

  He didn’t even notice her. His eyes never left Sallie, even though his suspicious gaze had turned insolent at her cousin’s question concerning his mother. He made some reply as he fully absorbed all the fancy frills and furbelows adorning Sallie’s white-and-golden beauty. It was with reluctance that he turned to give Laura a cursory look upon Sallie’s polite, if condescending, introduction.

  Still in awe of her cousin’s plenitude of charm, wealth, and beauty, six-year-old Laura felt she had little to offer in comparison, and she understood when the boy’s attention wandered. But she could not resist the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, and when it seemed apparent Sallie would move on without further explanation, she spoke up.

  “Pleased to meet you, Cash Wickliffe,” Laura said politely as she had been taught, before she launched into her real interest. “Why do you not have slaves to work this plot? I thought tobacco was slave work.”

  Sallie halted her mare to give her younger cousin a contemptuous look. “Come on, Laura. If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, I’ll not take you with me again.”

  She trotted her pony away without even saying farewell to the boy, who stared after her with the oddest expression in his piercing eyes. When Laura didn’t immediately follow, he turned to look upon her fully.

  “I come cheaper than slave labor,” he offered without a hint of scorn. “You must be the orphan cousin Sallie’s folks took in.”

  The statement was made with the same lack of rancor as Laura’s question. Both were singularly rude, but neither one appeared t
o object to blunt honesty.

  “My pa died in a steamboat race,” she said bravely, although his death was still recent enough to bring tears to her eyes.

  He quickly changed the subject to the enormous black dog sitting at the side of the road beside her pony. “He yours?”

  Laura brightened. “That’s Franz. My pa gave him to me for my birthday last year.”

  “He’s bigger than you. What kind is he?”

  “Laura Melissa Kincaid, you come on right now, y’hear! Or I’ll tell Pa on you.” Sallie had turned her mount and brought it cantering back to retrieve her wayward charge.

  With a slight wave of her hand Laura nudged her pony into catching up with her demanding cousin’s. The Newfoundland ambled along behind.

  “You don’t go conversing with white trash like that, Laura Kincaid! Didn’t your folks teach you anything?” Sallie grabbed the pony’s bridle to ensure Laura’s captivity.

  “They said to always speak when spoken to,” Laura replied defensively. “I was just trying to be polite.”

  “You don’t have to be polite to the likes of that. He’s no different from Henry or Jemima, and you don’t carry on conversations with them.”

  Since in her loneliness Laura had carried on quite a few conversations with these house servants, she didn’t argue the point, but sought enlightenment. “Why? He seemed nice enough to me.”

  Sallie rolled her expressive blue eyes. “How did you get to be such a baby? Can’t you tell he’s not like us? His mama’s a quadroon from New Awlins. And his pa is a no-good drunken scoundrel, Pa says. They tenant-farm that piece of land and Cash works for wages for Mr. Watterson. He don’t even own the clothes on his back.”

  Since Cash hadn’t worn any clothes on his back, Laura pondered this new knowledge. She knew about New Orleans. She’d just been there this past winter and had been impressed with the beauty of the delicate scrollwork and flowers and airy balconies.

  The ladies had all been beautiful, too, and she had spent many a hopeful hour admiring the selection, wondering if her father would choose any of them to replace her mother. They had smelled much as she remembered her mother, and spoke in the same soft, purring accents. But she knew nothing of quadroons and didn’t understand why a lady from New Orleans would be someone to speak of with scorn.

  She frowned and puzzled as Sallie kicked her mare into a canter. It did little good to question Sallie. She always knew everything and was impatient about imparting any of it to anyone else. Her answers were always more puzzling than the questions. Laura would wait and ask Aunt Ann. Her answers were not always satisfactory, but they were always quiet and polite. There was no danger of disturbing Aunt Ann’s peace of mind with persistent questioning. Maybe was a decisive answer for her.

  Later, in the coolness of the evening, Aunt Ann looked up from her perpetual embroidery with something close to surprise at her niece’s question. “Cash? Why in heaven’s name was Sallie talking to Cash? I vow, that child will flirt with anything in breeches. You just stay away from him, Laura. He’s not our kind.”

  “But Sallie said his mama is sick. Shouldn’t we visit her?” Laura clung tenaciously to her subject. She didn’t much care one way or another about insolent boys who worked in tobacco patches, but the promise of a lady from New Orleans captivated her. Her aunt’s soft Southern accents were pleasant, but they did not remind her of her mother’s lovely French one.

  “Visit the Wickliffes? Certainly not, Laura. They’re not our tenants. Go on and play now, child.”

  Defeated, Laura wandered off to the kitchen, where she played with Franz and listened to the odd drawls of the slaves as they cleaned up after the evening meal. Franz wasn’t supposed to be in here, but as long as he didn’t get boisterous, Jemima didn’t complain.

  Laura didn’t belong in here any more than Franz did, but she didn’t belong anywhere else either. With no one to talk to but the dog, loneliness overwhelmed her as it had every night since she had been brought here.

  No one came looking for her until bedtime. By then her new pantalets and crinolines were dusty and disheveled and her brown ringlets had fallen flat and limp about her face. Sallie took one look at her and made a face.

  “You’ll not be any beauty, I’ll be bound. Wait until Pa sees you.” She caught Laura’s arm and jerked her in the direction of the study.

  Uncle Matthew little resembled his suave younger brother, Laura’s father. He was the same height, but years of comfortable living had given him a portliness that did not lend well to quickness of movement. He preferred to sit back in his chair, smoke his cigars, and give orders, making the world come to him rather than going out to see it for himself. He raised his bushy eyebrows at the sight of his niece in sadly rumpled clothing, and he looked to his daughter for explanation.

  “She was in the kitchen playing with the dog,” Sallie said scornfully, without need for the question to be voiced.

  From behind his graying side whiskers Matthew Kincaid smiled indulgently. “Well, there are worse crimes, I suppose. Why don’t you scamper upstairs, Laura, and let Amy clean you up and put you to bed?”

  Weary now, Laura eyed his ample lap with longing. Papa used to always pick her up and hold her and tell her of his day’s adventures before carrying her off to bed. She desperately needed that familiar reassurance now.

  “Isn’t my papa ever coming back?” she whispered tearfully.

  “I’m your papa now. child. You go get some sleep and you’ll feel better in the morning. Maybe you can sit with Sallie in the schoolroom and learn your ABC’s.”

  She already knew her ABC’s, but she could tell by the tone of her uncle’s voice that she had been dismissed. Dispiritedly she trailed off to the upper reaches of the house, leaving Sallie with her father.

  “She’s not very grateful.” Sallie flounced down upon the settee, spreading her new crinoline admiringly over the plush velvet upholstery.

  “She’s a baby yet. I’m looking to you to take good care of her. She’s never had a home before. That brother of mine was always a rover. It’s only a miracle that he didn’t take the child on that last trip.” Matthew sipped at his whiskey and contemplated the pastoral landscape on the wall, depicting two small boys and a lady in white in one corner, with hills of rich land and Stone Creek filling the rest of the canvas. “You be nice to her, y’hear?”

  Hearing a story behind his warnings, Sallie encouraged him. “How come I don’t remember Uncle Mark?”

  Matthew sighed and tapped his cigar against the glass tray. It never seemed strange that he spoke to his daughter as most men would a wife. Sallie was always there; Ann was not. Not in the mental sense, anyway.

  “Your uncle married a woman beneath his station, some French singer he met in New York. My father forbade him to bring her home, so he didn’t. He never came home again, even after your grandfather died. Proud and stubborn, the fool. At least he had the sense to name me the child’s guardian. There’s no telling where she would have ended up if he hadn’t left those papers with their landlady.”

  Silently Matthew contemplated the memory of the garish blond who had brought Laura to the farm last spring. Landlady, indeed. Mark had headed straight downhill after his wife’s death. It had taken a healthy sum to pay off the woman and get rid of her. He suspected there were dozens of other debts out there. Mark had led a gambler’s life, and those who gave credit to gamblers deserved their fate.

  “What happened to her mama?” Sallie prompted.

  “She died a couple of years ago. Now, hadn’t you better be off to bed too?” Matthew lifted his eyebrows in a manner not meant to be disobeyed.

  “Yes, sir.” Sallie hopped up but couldn’t refrain from asking one more question. “Does she have to stay with us always? She’s an awful baby.”

  Matthew frowned and rose to his full towering height. “From now on, she’s your little sister, and you’ll take care of her just the same. She’s a Kincaid. Don’t ever forget it.”

  Sall
ie dropped a curtsy and walked off with all the stateliness of a nine-year-old princess. A Kincaid, indeed. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if Laura’s mother wasn’t a quadroon just like Cash’s. Imagine anyone marrying so foreign a creature as a dirty, dark Frenchwoman when Kentucky was known for the beauty and quality of its belles.

  She fully intended to be the most beautiful and sought- after of them all, one of these days. After all, Stone Creek Farm would one day be hers, and there wasn’t a man in the world who wouldn’t do anything to have Stone Creek Farm. She had only to choose among them. It would take a long and intensive study to make her choice, and she didn’t mean to wait until the last minute to do it.

  At almost the same time that Sallie was sedately preparing for slumber, twelve-year-old Cash Wickliffe trailed up the path to the tar-paper shack he called home. Night had fallen, but the day’s heat still left the stench of bubbling tar. The pigsty of the shack next door added to the heavy odors of this barren patch of Watterson land. The stench was worse in this humidity, when no wind stirred the air, and Cash hurried to the door, fear pounding through his veins as always when he entered his home.

  It wasn’t fear of his father. He had reached an age when he could stand up to anything his father could mete out, despite the fact that he was bone weary after fourteen hours of labor. The fear that followed him in the door was a fear of death, and his eyes quickly searched the gloom to find the room’s one bed.

  He smiled in relief as a gentle voice called from the pillow. She had not bothered to light the candle. There was little need for it under the circumstances. She could scarcely lift her head any longer to do the fine sewing that had put food on the table for the first years of his life. Cash crossed the dirt floor to kneel down and give his mother a hug.

  “Pa gone to town again tonight?” he asked in resignation, reaching for the medicine that should have been administered hours ago.

  “He’s a bitter man, Cash. You have to understand that. He gave it all up when he married me. He couldn’t know how things would turn out. You just remember he’s your father, and show him the proper respect.”