to do. “Would you care for a cup?”
He swallowed, seemed troubled by the simple question. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
She poured another cup and handed him the aromatic brew. His fingers trembled the slightest bit, but he quickly wrapped them around the mug while Julia pretended not to notice.
What she did notice was the fatigue around his eyes, the sheer weariness of the man. She noticed, too, that he was fit and muscled, his hands clean but rough, as if he labored for a living. He wore no jewelry, not even a wedding ring, though why she would notice bothered her a little. Good-looking men were not necessarily decent human beings, and even if he was the nicest guy on the planet, she was too empty to be interested.
“The telephone is over there if you still want to make a call.” She motioned to the landline on the brown granite counter and moved to check the casserole.
Mr. Oliver waved her off. “No need. I have jumper cables in my trunk. Never make a road trip without them.”
The stranger’s quick eyes moved from her to Mr. Oliver as if assessing both and wondering what to make of their friendliness. He was like a caged panther, dark and wary and dangerous.
“We’ll drive my car up there,” Bob said. “Give you a jump and have you on the road in a jiffy.”
“Thanks.” Eli Donovan took a brief sip of coffee and moved to set the still-full mug on the counter.
“Take the coffee with you.” Julia gestured between the two men. “Both of you.”
Eli hesitated. “Your cup…”
“Is returnable.”
“Oh. Thanks.” The word was rusty in his throat, as if he didn’t say it often. In fact, all his words were rusty, careful.
Bob clapped him on the shoulder. Julia couldn’t help noticing the way Eli tensed. “Today’s your lucky day, Eli. Good coffee from a pretty lady and a man who never leaves home without tools. My car’s parked around back. Ready when you are.”
“I’m ready.”
From the corner of her eye, Julia watched the two men exit her kitchen, their feet thudding against the board veranda. Eli carefully balanced his coffee, sipping as he walked, and Julia could hear Mr. Oliver, in his perky professor voice, chattering away while the other man remained silent.
Bingo trotted around the gravel walkway behind the pair, happy to have a purpose, abandoning his mistress to the quiet smells of her kitchen.
Julia wiped her hands on a peach-imprinted dish towel and went to the door, watching as Bob Oliver and Eli Donovan disappeared around the corner of the porch.
What a strange morning. Another marble from nowhere, and now a disturbing stranger. Both on Mikey’s birthday.
She reached into her pocket, withdrew the marble and rolled an index finger over the smooth clay. Somewhere in her distant memory, a little boy laughed.
“What’s past is prologue…”
—William Shakespeare
Peach Orchard Farm
Summer, 1864
The sound of advancing hoofbeats should have shaken the ground. Yet, they moved quietly, reverently it seemed, a cavalcade of Union soldiers bearing their wounded.
Charlotte Reed Portland’s first inkling that her Tennessee home was about to be invaded intruded as she taught a delicate embroidery stitch to her two sisters-in-law. Seated in the parlor, butter-yellow sunlight streaming in through the windows on a hot and windless day, Charlotte heard the excited voice of a servant, heard the hurried footfalls a moment before her nine-year-old son burst through the French doors, cowlick standing on end.
“Mama, the Yankees are coming!”
At Benjamin’s breathless announcement, Charlotte stiffened, her fingers tight on the embroidery hoop.
She had known they would come, an army of men at war with her adopted state, in need of horses and food to fortify the Union. What they didn’t understand, or perhaps didn’t care, was that the Confederacy had need of the same supplies. Even now, the small, out-of-the-way town of Honey Ridge was strained beneath the burden.
So, of course, the Federals would come here, to Peach Orchard Farm, home to three generations of Portlands, including her husband, Edgar, and their son. Though hardly a plantation, they were self-sufficient in corn and wheat, fruit and livestock, and a handful of slaves.
Please, Almighty God, do not allow them to take everything.
Her two younger sisters-in-law regarded her above their needlework with wide, hazel eyes, mouths dropped. Their milk-bathed complexions had gone chalky. As mistress of the house and an ancient twenty-seven, the responsibility for their well-being and that of the house and servants rested upon Charlotte’s shoulders.
“Miz Charlotte, you want I should go to the mill for Mr. Portland?” This from Pierce, the yardman, the whites of his eyes startling in his dark, sweat-gleamed face. A good man, a trustworthy and loyal servant.
Afraid the quiver in her throat would burst free and betray her angst, Charlotte nodded, breathing in for composure.
“Please do, Pierce,” she managed, her British accent stronger when she was nervous, an accent her husband had once found charming. “I’ll go out to greet them.”
With deliberate poise, she put aside the embroidery hoop and rose, smoothing damp palms over her green day gown. Fear vibrated in her stomach.
Edgar would not be pleased at an interruption, whether from her or the hated Yankees, but they’d heard the gunfire in the near distance early this morning. A battle, or perhaps only a skirmish; it did not matter which. Men would die. She’d prayed the war would not touch her household.
But now it had.
Charlotte could hide most feelings beneath a false serenity, a gift she’d found essential here in the American South, where differences were suspect, human beings were sold and traded and her husband ruled with a cold look.
“Josie. Patience,” she said to the younger women. “Lock yourselves in your rooms. Take Benjamin with you. Neither come outside nor look out the windows. Do not show yourselves in any way.”
With rigid posture and a sweep of full skirts, she moved out onto the long, pillared veranda, gripped the whitewashed railing and waited. Normally, she loved the scene from the porch, the double row of magnolias along the curving driveway, the expanse of peach orchard to the north. Yet, today her knees trembled and she saw only the advancing army—a straight military line of blue and gold and rows of men astride their mounts. The Union flag, stars and stripes aloft on the front steed, rippled slightly.
She’d heard the horror stories. The armies of the north came to pillage and destroy, but God help her, with her last breath she would defend her family and this home. From the moment Edgar had brought her here, a nervous bride
