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Loblolly Writer's House
Diesel Books
Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: Loblolly Writer's House
Pages: 596
Copyright: 2013
ISBN-13: 9780989430210
Price: $2.95 (eBook)
Gothic suspense set against the backdrop of the devastated South at the close of the War for Southern Independence.
In September 1865 Eli Calhoon, Lieutenant Colonel, Confederate States Army, returns to his war-ravaged plantation, Camellia Creek, outside Port Gibson in Claiborne County, Mississippi, resolved to begin again.
But Mississippi, like the rest of the South, lies prostrate in the wake of a devastating conflict that wasted its population and destroyed what had been, only four years earlier, the third strongest economy in the world. More troubling, the South’s recovery is now overseen by a victorious enemy determined that the Southern economy, as well as the South’s influence within the Union, will never be revived. For Southerners, getting a spring crop in the field is as far out of reach as is the payment of five years’ back taxes Congress demands from the states in Rebellion to pay for the war it waged against them.
Orphaned Alice Shelton, late of Ohio by way of Chicago, has come to Mississippi with her aunt and uncle, Betty and Peter Franklin. Peter is a speculator in search of investment. A veteran of the war, he knows opportunity exists in the defeated South. His preference for a home for his wife, daughter, and niece is the lovely Camellia Creek. In company with the Franklins are Peter’s widowed sister-in-law Eustacia and her son, Jonathan, who Peter believes is the perfect match for Alice, heiress to a fortune.
Alice’s widowed father, Jacob Shelton, and his two sons were killed in action during the war, fighting for the Union. The losses have left Alice in despair so deep her aunt fears Alice might take her own life.
Seth Parker, Major, United States Marine Corps, has come to Mississippi on orders at the request of a friend and military senior to investigate the murder of a U.S. Treasury agent, which may tie in to cotton thefts rampant among the white Army officers stationed in Mississippi. The powers that be prefer he find a Southerner to blame, but the senior officer is not so sure. To investigate the death, Seth is given a troop of nine men, all Negro members of Mississippi’s Native Guard, for the most part ex-slaves recruited into the Union Army during the war.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and in a lawless South, desperate measures are gambles that sometimes pay off. When an indiscretion not of her own making lands the lovely Alice into the hands of a determined Eli Calhoon, he blackmails her into marriage and brings her to Camellia Creek, where she is haunted by Jocelyn LeBlanc, an ill-fated beauty who died under mysterious circumstances decades earlier. In addition to Jocelyn’s ghostly presence, war’s aftermath, murder, and jealous greed vex Alice, threatening her new-found desire to live, a desire ignited by the very man who could be plotting to snuff it out.
Excerpt
November 1865, Six miles south of the Chittaloosa, western Claiborne County, Mississippi
“Our land ends here, follows the creek just beyond that tree line. He’s holding on to his river-front property as long as he can, but if the rebel states have to pay all those back years in Federal taxes, I don’t know how long he’ll manage.”
Eustacia Franklin said something typically self-righteous in re-sponse to Uncle Peter’s remarks, and Aunt Betty murmured a platitude focused on the misfortunes of others. Mrs. Franklin took offense at that and launched into another sermon on sinners reaping what they’d sown.
Alice Shelton, late of Ohio by way of Chicago, crept farther into the woods, away from the rough dirt road that had brought Peter Franklin and his extended family to the site of his new property, one hundred fifty acres of rich, black-soil farmland. They’d come to the end of it, but what Uncle Pete had wanted Aunt Betty to see, to get a grasp for, was the lovely site not far from the Mississippi. A house nearby sat on what remained of the owner’s land. The site, some distance from the river, was situated near a spring-fed creek and shrouded by cool woods and a wild flower garden. Uncle Peter wanted that house.
Alice wanted nothing.
Eustacia Franklin’s shrill voice faded. Aunt Betty had ceased to talk, and Alice gathered, from what she could hear behind her, that Uncle Pete had moved away from his dead brother’s wife and was now speaking to his nephew Jonathan, Eustacia’s adult son, on the benefits of cotton planting. She hoped her uncle’s excitement would hold Jonathan’s interest for a while.
Alice breathed in clean air. It had rained last night and the ground was a sodden carpet of brown and yellow leaves, leaves from other Novembers. She stopped and looked up. Here, in war-ravaged Mississippi, fall had only now begun to color the foliage. Gently she exhaled, and her breath formed a soft mist against the mosaic of forest green and clear blue sky. This was a pleasing spot, a luscious contrast of light and shadow, pierced by sun-fractured raindrops. Quiet, serene, but cloistered, like the peaceful seclusion of a forgotten grave.
Uncle Peter’s voice grew softer, but Eustacia raged on about God’s swift justice, if four years permeated with losses that could not be recouped could be considered either swift or just.
Raising the hem of her sun-mottled dress, Alice moved to the crystal creek, its turbulent rapids sparkling like fireflies in the filtered sunlight. The sedgy bank indicated the stream had flooded with last night’s downpour, and she saw no place to cross without soaking her feet and skirt. Just as well since her uncle said the creek represented his property line. Thus thwarted, she removed a glove and squatted, and cupping her hand, she drew a drink from the icy water. Sweet, she thought. A bitter reminder that life goes on.
Vision blurred by tears, Alice shook the water from her cold fingers and watched—she frowned—the droplets pit the now placid surface of the creek, and on that mirrored surface, the reflection of a young woman reached for her across the water.
Alice jerked her head up, then rose and stumbled back two steps. No one stood on the opposite bank. The hackles rose along her spine. No one, at least, that she could see.
She blinked, blur and tears forgotten. The creek flowed along as it had before, its surface too turbulent to reflect anything but light and the muted colors of the forest.
Hesitant to get close to the water now, Alice bent forward to make sure she’d really not seen anything. An image of herself, perhaps, beckoning her to oblivion?
She took another step back, thinking it prudent to leave this place, but reluctant to turn her back on the stream. When she did look up, ready to bolt, she caught her breath. Across the torrid creek, a man stood a far stone’s throw away, too distant to have been what she saw in the water, but close enough for her to know he watched her. She returned his stare and hoped he, proud dressed in butternut, was too far away to see the tear tickling her cheek. For that reason alone she did not wipe it away. They stood, watching each other, until she broke eye contact and glanced down the length of him. He was tall and lean. Two dead rabbits were tied to his belt, and he held a rifle in his right hand. A hunter, a poacher, or the owner of this land, which her uncle, still to be heard talking to Jonathan Franklin some distance away, lusted for? If the latter, she was embarrassed this person overheard their conversation.
Momentarily, he raised his hand to his hat and tipped the cover in silent salute. She noted the braid of faded gold on his coat sleeve. A Confederate officer and, undoubtedly, the owner.
He turned his back and walked away.
“Alice?” Aunt Betty called.
“I’m here,” she called over her shoulder and swiped at the errant tear. Except for her aunt, their party still milled about in the sunlit clearing where the road ended. For sure Betty Franklin was eager to escape her protesting sister-in-law. In that, Alice’s search for brief solitude would find favor, though Alice was sure her aunt’s gratitude would be overshadowed by a gentle admonishment. Aunt Betty worried over her niece’s emotional frailty and feared, Alice knew, the nature of the solitude Alice sought.
Alice looked back across the stream, but the man had disappeared. There’d been another son, Alice knew. The older of the two brothers died in combat. This person—her gaze scoured the area—must have been the younger one…or a ghost.
“What…?”
Alice jumped at her aunt’s voice, and Betty Franklin pulled her close. “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“You came up so quickly, that’s all.”
Her aunt glanced at the stream. “What are you doing over here, sweetness?”
“Exploring your new farm. It’s nice here, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Aunt Betty said, glancing first at the stream, then looping an arm through Alice’s. “Is the water deep?” She guided Alice back toward the clearing.
“Not very, I don’t think.” Alice sneaked a last peek at the sparkling brook as she moved away. “Do you think the owner will give up his home?”
“Peter thinks he may have little choice, given the situation here.”
Eli Calhoon stood his rifle against the fireplace and stretched. The fire was out, the chopped wood wet. He needed to cut more, anyway. Obviously, Doolan Mills wasn’t coming back to work.
“And where have you been all morning?”
He managed a nonchalant pivot and faced her. Laura Ménier Calhoon Blackledge grew more beautiful every time he laid eyes on her, and he was laying eyes on her often of late.
“Hunting.” His eyes raked her black-clad body. “I liked the way you were dressed earlier. I thought mourning was over?”
Pulling on the satin bow beneath her chin, she smiled and reached for the hat atop her golden tresses. “Not after only six days.”
“And five nights, the last of which I spent with you.”
“And I thought I’d spend tonight with you.”
“So mourning is over.”
“A respectable woman must keep up the pretense.”
“How long are you planning it to last this time, Laura?”
“If I waited six months after Andy to wed Albert, I think I can weather the disgrace and wed you after five, don’t you?”
“If I were of a mind to wed.”
“Oh, you are, darling,” she said.
Albert and pretense aside, she’d mourned Andy less than a week after they’d buried him. At the time Eli had justified the desecration of his brother’s memory as duty to the wife, mutual need in the wake of shared grief. And Laura had, after all, been his until Andy had stolen her, all too willingly, away. To his credit, Eli had planned for them to wed before his furlough ended. Now he recalled his sleeping with Laura so soon after Andy’s death with self-disgust. He didn’t know how Laura remembered their impropriety, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t with disgust.
“Do you mourn Albert at all?” he asked.
She tugged a glove off her slender fingers. “I was good to him until the end.”
Not exactly what he’d asked. He pursed his lips, and Laura tossed the hat and gloves onto the battered table he’d pieced back together last month.
“He died happy, Eli.”
“Fond memories from healthier times?”
Gracefully, she raised her arms and began extracting the pins that held her flaxen tresses in place.
“You think I can’t make a bedridden man happy, darling?” she said, finger-combing her curls. “I missed you this morning.”
“I had to get some things done early.”
“Early?” She laughed. “You left in the middle of the night.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
She smiled, then spun, arms wide to take in the house. “Well, you shouldn’t have that problem here…with me to comfort you.”
Only because he wasn’t going to allow “here” to become a habit.
“Comfort isn’t what I want from you Laura.”
Gazing at him now through half-closed lids, the smile still plastered on her lips, she draped a golden lock over her shoulder and reached for the high collar of her dress. “Do tell.”
He stepped to her, and her smile blossomed.
“You look good in black,” he said.
“You told me that years ago, remember?”
Yes, he remembered.
She had her top two buttons undone, and his groin tightened.
“Not many women look as good in mourning as you do, and I see women in mourning no matter which direction I look these days. Personally speaking, there’s one I’d very much like to get out of black crepe.”
She giggled and stepped back when he reached for her. Button number three, then four. “Would she happen to be tall and blonde?”
“Petite, and I believe her hair is dark red. Auburn, I think you’d call it.” He was on her, crushing her back against the wall and pressing his hardness against her pelvis.
She pushed him. “Who?”
Eli covered her lips with his and forced his tongue inside. Heat seeped between his legs. Laura twisted her head. “You bastard, let me go.”
“Tell me this, darling—understanding I already know the answer—can a bedridden man make you happy?”
Her struggle stopped, and he dipped his head to suckle her neck. Docile now, she lifted her chin to give him easy access.
“There is no petite redhead, is there?”
He chuckled and reached for her skirt, drawing it up in the front and pushing her pantaloons down.
“Please, Eli, I want—”
He swallowed her words with another kiss, then said, “I know what you want, and there’ll be plenty of time after. Right now I want you.”
She arched back when he stroked her, rolling her head, eyes shut, against the wall. “I passed Aunt Naomi on the way in… Oh God,” she said and opened her legs wider. “That feels good, Eli.”
He reached for the top button on his britches. “And did she speak?”
“She gave me a look fit to kill, but didn’t say a word.” Laura placed her hands on his shoulders and moved her pelvis against his invading fingers. “She’s yet to offer a word of sympathy for Albert’s death.”
Laura was having trouble talking and breathing at the same time. She really should shut up.
Again he shifted his weight and braced so that he held her firmly against the wall. “She’s mad at me for taking my rabbits to Elvie to cook.”
Laura moaned, at the same time trying, as best she could in yards of crepe, to circle her legs around him. “Some things never change, do they?”
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. With his exploring hand, he pushed her thighs wider beneath the voluminous skirt and petticoats. “Things get worse.” He gritted his teeth with his thrust, and she cried out. “But some things do get better.” Even if they last only a moment.
He buried his face against her throat and rocked against her, leaving her panting, her nails clawing his shoulders. He grunted when he climaxed and pulled out of her, spilling his seed against her thigh.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said, distaste permeating each word. “Finding myself in the family way is no longer a problem.”
He breathed out, then relaxed while the last wave of pleasure eased through his body. Sated, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, rendering her helpless in his hold, and looked her in the eye.
“Petite and redheaded. She is, I do believe, a Yankee.”
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