Her Captain's Heart Read online

  Knowing his opinion would shock the Quaker, he pushed up from his place. “I’ve got things to do. See about hiring that housekeeper and find a laundress. I think you’ll find a lot of former slaves who will be happy to get work.” He regretted sounding so brusque. But he couldn’t help it. He was a captain—he was used to giving orders.

  “Thank thee, Matthew.”

  Joseph gave him an approving look. “You show you understand how much work it takes to run a household. You must have had good parents.”

  Uneasy, Matt looked at the older man, wondering where this comment had come from. “Yes, I had good parents.”

  Joseph nodded and walked outside, whistling. Matt hurried out after him, not wanting any more discussion about Alec. He’d deal with the surveyor and then he’d do what he’d known he must do sooner or later. Deathbed promises were a burden he couldn’t ignore. And Alec could not be ignored.

  Verity had left Beth at home with Joseph because, once again, she didn’t know what kind of reception she’d receive. And she didn’t want Beth troubled. Verity had a formidable errand this morning and could only hope that she was following God’s prompting.

  The memory of the battered young boy from last night haunted Verity. She had tried to turn Alec over to God, but the image of his injured body lingered in her mind. Some images were like that.

  She had seen many sights during the war that she wished she could erase from her mind. But that wasn’t possible. She wondered what images Matthew carried with him day after day, after four years of soldiering. What a burden. No wonder he was brusque at times. I will be more patient with him.

  Her steps slowing with her reluctance, she walked around St. John’s Church to the house behind it. Like all the other houses in Fiddlers Grove, the parsonage looked as if it had had no upkeep for a long time. White paint was peeling and green shingles needed replacing. She said a prayer for boldness to help conquer the uncertainty she was feeling, and walked up the steps. Then she lifted her suddenly unusually heavy arm to knock on the door. It was opened by a black girl of about thirteen in a faded blue dress with tight braids in rows around her head. “Good morning,” Verity greeted her. “Is the vicar in?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The young girl eyed her as if wanting to say something, but unsure if she should.

  “May I see him, please?” Verity smiled, her lips freezing in place.

  The girl stepped back and let her in. “Wait here, please, ma’am.”

  Verity waited just inside the front door.

  Within short order, the pastor emerged from the back of the house. He looked shocked to see her in his house—just what she’d expected. In everyday clothing, he appeared shorter and slighter than he had in his white vestments. He was rail-thin, like most everyone else in town, with gray in his curly brown hair.

  “Good morning,” she said, greeting him brightly with false courage. “I was wondering if I could have a few moments to discuss something with you.”

  The man looked caught off guard and puzzled. “I…I don’t know what we’d have to discuss.”

  She tried to speak with the boldness of the apostle Paul. “I have come with funds and the authority from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman and Abandoned Lands to open a school in Fiddlers Grove.”

  He gaped at her.

  “And I need thy help.” Her frozen smile made it hard to speak.

  “My help? I’ve read about that infernal bureau in the paper. I’m not helping them. Bunch of interfering…” He seemed at a loss for words to describe the Freedman’s Bureau in front of a lady.

  “I hope you will listen to what I have to say.” She swallowed to wet her dry throat.

  “You are mistaken, ma’am. We lost the war, but that does not mean that we want Yankees telling us how to live our lives and taking our land.” He moved forward as if ready to show her the door.

  “I beg thy pardon, but how is having a school in Fiddlers Grove telling thee how to live thy life?” she asked, holding her ground.

  “If it doesn’t affect me, then why discuss it with me?”

  “Please let me at least explain what I propose. Does thee have an office where we might discuss this in private?” I will not be afraid.

  Maybe her calm persuaded him or the Lord had prepared her way, but he nodded and showed her to a den off the parlor. He left the door open and waved her to a chair. He took a seat behind a fine old desk. “Please be brief. I am studying for my next sermon.”

  Verity nodded, drew in air and said, “I did not realize that there was no free school here. I was a schoolteacher for two years before I married. It grieves me to see children growing up without education.”

  He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “I, too, wish there could be a free school in town, but there wasn’t one before the war and there won’t be one now that everyone is in such difficult financial straits.”

  She pressed her quivering lips together, knowing that her next words would shock him. “I have come to set up a school to teach black children and adults. But I think that it would be wrong to set up a school for only black children when the white children have no school. Doesn’t thee agree?”

  He stared at her. “Are you saying that you could set up two schools?”

  “No. Why not one school for children of both races?” She forced out the words she knew would provoke a reaction.

  “You are out of your mind. This town would never accept a school that mixed black and white children.”

  Praying, she looked at his bookshelves for a few moments and then turned back to him. “I don’t understand. Is the offer of free education something to be refused?”

  “The kind of free education you are talking about is not even to be considered. If you build such a school, they will burn it down.” He stared hard at her, underlining his point with a scowl.

  Her face suddenly flamed with outrage. They were poor and defeated, but still rigidly committed to the past. She tried to use reason. “There is great want here. Wouldn’t men welcome the work of building a school and the cash it would bring?”

  “You’re a Yankee. You don’t understand Virginia. White men farm, but Negroes do the laboring. They are the carpenters, plasterers, coopers and bricklayers.”

  “Well, that will change. It must, because no longer can Negroes be told what to do. They will choose what they wish to work at. Just as thee did. The old South is gone. It died at Appomattox Courthouse. Slavery has ended. And nothing will ever be the same here again.” The truth rolled through her, smoothing her nerves.

  He stared at her, aghast.

  Now that she’d said what she’d come to say, she felt calm and in control. “It may be of no comfort to thee, but the North has changed, too. No people can go through the four years that we’ve been through, suffered through, and be the same on the other side. Doesn’t thee see that?

  “A school would be good for the whole town,” she continued. “Why not let progress come? Why not let me rent thy church to use as a school until the new school is built? And the Freedman’s Bureau may pay thy church rent, money that I’m sure thy church could use. Why not leave bitterness behind and be a part of a brighter future?”

  After the surveyor had finished, Matt made himself head to the Ransford plantation to have the meeting he’d dreaded since he’d arrived. With imaginary crickets hopping in his stomach, he knocked on the imposing double door and waited for the butler to answer. When the door opened, he managed to say, “Good morning, Elijah.” Looking into the familiar face yanked Matt back to his childhood.

  “Did you wish to see the master of the house, sir?”

  Even in his distraction, Matt noted the change from “the master” to “the master of the house.” Matt appreciated Elijah’s assertion of his freedom. He wondered again about Samuel. Did Elijah know where Samuel was? This wondering about Samuel chafed at Matt, but he couldn’t speak of Samuel here and now. “Elijah, I need to speak to…Dace on a matter of importance—”

  “Elija
h, is that Matt Ritter?” Dace’s gruff voice came from the nearby room.

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “Bring him on back, please.”

  Elijah bowed and showed Matt into the small study that Matt recognized as the room Dace’s father had used for business. Memories flooded Matt’s mind—coming in here and snitching toffees from the candy jar that still sat on the desk, the scent of his uncle’s pipe tobacco.

  After Elijah left them, Dace said, “I was wondering when you would come.”

  Matt sat down in the chair across the desk from his cousin, his only living blood relative, and looked him in the eye. Dace showed the telltale signs of war. He was gaunt, with deep grooves down either side of his face, and tired eyes.

  “What brings you here?” Dace said over the rim of a coffee cup, sounding neither pleased nor displeased.

  “Three matters, one from the past and two from the present. Which do you want to hear first?” Matt kept his tone neutral, too.

  “Let’s deal with the past first. I still like to do things in order.”

  This took Matt back to childhood also, to the many times he, Dace and Samuel had been planning on doing something daring like swim across the river at flood stage. It had always been Dace who planned out each test of their courage. “On her deathbed, my mother asked me to come back here and try to reconcile with you after the war.”

  “So that’s why you came back?”

  “Yes.” And with the foolish hope of coming home. But of course, Dace had never been forced to leave town, so he would not understand the feeling of not belonging anywhere or of having lost a home. Matt made sure none of this showed on his face. He would give Dace no chance to see that the events of their shared childhood still had the power to wound him.

  “How do we reconcile? Shake hands? Remain on speaking terms?” Dace asked with a trace of mockery.

  Matt’s neck warmed under his collar. “I don’t think real reconciliation can ever take place. There was hardly a chance before the war. Now there is even less hope.”

  “So why did you come?”

  Matt’s taut spine kept him sitting stiffly. “To fulfill my promise and to be a part of making the South change, even though it doesn’t want to. That is the present matter I came to discuss.”

  “How will you make the South change? By force?”

  “Force has already been used. My side won. Congress is moving forward, granting citizenship to former slaves and giving them the right to vote as citizens.”

  Dace just stared at him, tight-lipped.

  “I’m hoping that it won’t come to the point where I must ask for Union troops to put down opposition here. But I’m here to form a Union League of America chapter and to get a school built for former slaves and—”

  The sounds of the front door slamming and rapid footsteps alerted the men, and then Dace’s wife rushed into the den. “Dace, you won’t believe—” She broke off at the sight of Matt.

  Matt rose, as did Dace. Of course, he remembered Lirit as a pretty girl, spoiled by her doting father on a nearby plantation. Though around the same age as the Quaker, Lirit looked older, somehow faded and thin and threadbare. “Hello, Lirit.”

  She drew nearer her husband as if Matt were unclean or dangerous. “Dacian, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that you weren’t alone.”

  Matt ignored her obvious rejection. Lirit had never been one of his favorites, unlike Mary, whom he’d adored as a child. The thought of Mary started a fire in his gut. Alec. Where was he now and what had he suffered for running away and hiding?

  “Matt and I were just discussing why he’s come back to Fiddlers Grove,” Dace said.

  Lirit glanced at her husband. “You know that he’s building a school for the children of former slaves?”

  Dace nodded.

  “Where did you hear that?” Matt demanded. He’d only told this to Mary, and he doubted Lirit and Mary were on speaking terms.

  Lirit looked at him. “I was just at the parsonage. Your Mrs. Hardy had been there trying to talk the vicar into renting our church building as a school. She actually suggested that white children attend with black children.”

  Matt frowned. White children? “The school is to be only for black children and former slaves.”

  “The Quaker said that she didn’t like to see the white children going without an education.” Lirit’s scathing tone made her opinion of this clear.

  Matt began to leave the room. “I should go—”

  “Wait,” Dace said, stopping him. “You said you had come on three matters. We’ve only discussed two.”

  Matt sent a doubtful look toward Lirit.

  Taking the hint, Dace touched his wife’s shoulder. “May I have a private moment with Matt?”

  “Certainly.” Lirit walked out, haughtily pulling off her gloves. She snapped the pocket door shut behind her.

  Matt and Dace stared at each other for a few heavy moments. “Last night our barn was hit by lightning. When we went to put out the fire, we found Alec Dyke unconscious and hiding in our barn. He’d been beaten mercilessly, and had bruises and cuts all over him. Were you aware that Orrin is probably abusing the boy?”

  Dace looked worried and rubbed his chin. “I don’t know what I can do about it.”

  “I know I can’t do anything about it, but you might say something.”

  “It could just make matters worse.”

  “I hope you’ll think this over, Dace. If anyone can stop Dyke, it would be you.”

  He turned to leave.

  “Matt,” Dace said, stopping him. “Where is the Quaker from, do you know?”

  Matt thought this an odd question, but replied, “Pennsylvania.”

  Dace folded his hands in front of his mouth and stared out the window opposite him. “I don’t like the idea of Yankees coming here and telling us how to live our lives. But it’s like we are already in the coffin and they’re tossing dirt on our heads and we don’t even object.”

  Matt looked directly into Dace’s eyes. “Change is inevitable.” He didn’t think he needed to say that even in the aftermath of the disastrous war, Ransford Manor was still the largest plantation for miles. And if Dace Ransford were in favor of something, people paused before they opposed it.

  “Well, I’ve taken care of my obligation to my mother. The next time we meet, I’ll just be the Yankee working for the Freedman’s Bureau.” Matt left without looking back, something he should have done fourteen years ago.

  Chapter Five

  In the autumn afternoon with golden leaves fluttering above, Verity turned to see Matthew coming toward her on the road back to town. She waited for him to catch up. Her mood lifted at the sight of him; after all, Fiddlers Grove didn’t abound with friendly faces. And there was something so competent about him, so focused. He was not a man who sought the easy path. Or who would give up easily.

  She knew he wished she had arrived after he’d left Fiddlers Grove, but having him here was a great comfort to her. Of course, she wouldn’t embarrass him by saying that. The wind had ruffled his dark hair, giving him a raffish look. She turned away so as not to betray her reaction.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, breathing a bit fast from his short sprint.

  “I came here to hire our housekeeper. I asked Hannah if she could recommend someone and she said she could recommend herself.” Verity smiled. She valued frankness in a world where people rarely told one another what they were really thinking. Like this man. She turned his own question back on him, asking, “What is thee here for?”

  “Mrs. Ransford overheard you at the parsonage,” he said, ignoring her question. “The whole town will know now what we’re here for.”

  The wind had loosened the ribbons on her bonnet. Turning her back to the wind, she retied them tighter. “Was our work here to remain a secret?” Like thy reasons for returning to a town that wouldn’t welcome thee home?

  “What did you mean trying to rent the church for the school?” he scold
ed. “Surely you knew what the vicar’s response would be.”

  “And what was his response?” she asked, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Much better to be amused by his overbearing behavior than to take offense. Men always liked to think that only women gossiped, but men did it, too, as Matthew had just demonstrated. If he continued scolding her, she’d go ahead and ask about his cousin and this town. It’s not just nosiness, Lord. I need to know so I don’t say things I shouldn’t, assume things I shouldn’t and cause trouble I could avoid.

  He scowled at her. “I’m sure it was not favorable.”

  From the corner of her eye she glimpsed movement behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a stray dog following them. He looked like some kind of hound, with drooping ears, a long face with large brown eyes and a brown matted coat. The sight of his ribs almost pushing through his hide wrung her heart. Poor creature.

  “No one is going to rent you space to teach in. I don’t think you’re really aware of the extent of anti-Yankee feelings here yet.” A gust nearly took Matt’s hat and he clamped it down with a frown.

  She gave him a look and then turned around to the dog. She’d much rather help this poor animal than argue with Matthew Ritter. “Here, boy,” she coaxed in a low voice. “Here, boy.”

  The animal stopped walking and sank to its belly, whimpering.

  “What are you doing? Ignore the cur or he’ll follow you home.”

  Ignoring his brisk order, she smiled. “That is my hope, yes.”

  He said something under his breath that sounded uncomplimentary about fool women.

  She glanced up at him. “What was your rank in the army?”

  “Captain. Why?”

  Because thee still acts like a captain. But I didn’t enlist in the army. She chuckled to herself. Stooping, she smiled and cooed to the stray again, holding out her hand, palm up.