tell me now.”
“I don’t have time. I have to make arrangements to leave town.”
What was she thinking? “Where will you go?”
“Back home.”
“The Delta?”
“No, I’m going to my home. To live with Cousin Mary Grace.” With the tip of her cane, she pushed open the already-ajar door and stepped onto the front gallery. “As soon as I can get the money together, I’m buying a steamer ticket and moving back to Memphis.”
* * *
“Grandmother, you can’t—”
Missus Adams slammed the door hard enough to make the case clock chime.
Samuel glanced over at his new wife as the surprise on her face quickly gave way to fear. Then she yanked open the door and ran onto the gallery. “Grandmother, come back inside.”
“I’m not leaving yet. I want to think. Alone.”
“Fine.” Clarissa strode inside and toward the back door. There she gestured for Samuel to join her at the six-over-six detached sidelights. “If she truly wants to think, she’ll sit under the pergola. But when she wants to pray, she goes to the sanctuary.”
Samuel peered out at the vine-covered, open pergola in the garden, perhaps a hundred yards from the house. “Then I’m glad I don’t see her in the pergola, because she needs to pray about leaving us. But if she wanted to pray, why didn’t she say so? And where’s the sanctuary?”
“She thinks private prayer should be just that—a private matter, not to be spoken of. And you can’t see the sanctuary from here.” She grasped the double door’s knob, turned and pulled, but this door was stuck too.
“Let me try.” When she’d stepped back, Samuel took the knob and applied his strength to the door. When it finally flung open, he stood back so she could exit first. “I’ll make sure Absalom has these doors fixed first thing, Miss—Missus...” He shook his head. Veronica had insisted he call her Missus Montgomery, and it would be wise to keep an emotional distance in his new marriage as well. However, she should be the one to decide. “What do you want me to call you?”
Her tinkling laugh—guileless, melodic—took him aback. He should have expected her to have a beautiful laugh, since she had such a sweet-sounding speaking voice. Nevertheless, he was unprepared for it. Of a sudden, he couldn’t wait until the next choir rehearsal so he could hear her sing. He couldn’t keep a smile from his face. “What’s so funny?”
“You are, with your formality, although it will help you fit into our church and our town. You haven’t been here long enough to know, but Natchez is the strictest and most conventional city on the River. Or in the entire South, for that matter, including Charleston.”
No, but he’d been here long enough to believe it.
“Grandfather used to tell me stories of Grandmother Euphemia calling him ‘Reverend,’ even when they were alone, until long after they sent my uncle to boarding school.”
“And what did he call her?”
“Ducky dearest.”
He could just imagine the dowager’s response. He grinned at Clarissa, hoping to draw her sweet laugh again. “Hmm...it has possibilities.”
As her laugh tinkled, the warmth in Samuel’s heart shot him a grim warning, reminding him that romantic love was not for him. Sure, the dark-haired beauty before him was his wife, but only because she needed to hold on to this home and he needed to keep his pastorate. So from now on, instead of enjoying the sound of her laugh, he would need to steel his heart against it. He couldn’t treat her as if they had a real marriage, a real relationship. She didn’t want it any more than he did.
“I think we’ll leave Grandfather’s terms of endearment in the past.” Oblivious to the darkness of his thoughts, of his heart, she stepped outside to the weedy brick courtyard and the sprawling, equally weedy terraced gardens beyond. “Custom dictates that I call you ‘Reverend’ in public, and you refer to me as ‘Missus Montgomery.’ But at home, please call me Clarissa. As may Emma.”
“And please call me Samuel.”
She smiled, settling this issue, if nothing else. Although the arrangement seemed too casual, too intimate, for a wife who would never truly be his wife.
“How long have you been a widower?” she asked with a hint of compassion in her voice, unlike the deacons.
“Almost four years.” As painful as it was to discuss Veronica and his marital failure, he needed to get the conversation behind him. Clarissa had a right to know. In fact, she had a right to know the whole story of Samuel’s failure, although he didn’t have the courage to reveal it. “My first marriage was an arranged union. My father wanted me to move up in our denomination, and Veronica’s father was assistant to our national superintendent.”
She stopped and turned to him, her hazel eyes bright green in the sunlight. Or had her natural empathy colored them so vividly? “Did you have a happy marriage? It’s rare for marriages of convenience to lead to true love.”
“We did not.” Something in Clarissa’s demeanor—perhaps the sad little droop of her lips—made him long to tell her all about his disastrous first marriage. But even more, he dreaded seeing pity in those most expressive eyes. However, Clarissa was his wife now, and she deserved to know as much of the truth as he could bear to tell. “Emma was born a year after we were married, and her birth was our only happy moment. Unfortunately for me, Veronica was in love with another man and had been for some time before our wedding.”
Clarissa’s dainty hand fluttered to her chest and then he saw it—the pity he hated. If he didn’t tell her the rest of his story now, he never would, and that wasn’t fair to her. “Her beau, Reuben Conwell, was a businessman and heir to the Southern Bank of Louisiana and Mississippi. Conwell had a reputation as a swindler with an uncanny ability to spot and exploit his competitors’ weaknesses. The man was ruthless, heartless. Veronica’s father felt he was not good enough for her.”
“So her father promised you advantages within the denomination if you would prevent her from marrying Conwell.”
“He promised my father, not me, but yes. But in time, I loved Veronica intensely.” At least, he’d thought so at the time. He gazed out over the expanse of lawn and gardens. His late wife had never taken walks with him, had rarely had this much conversation with him. She’d seemed barely able to tolerate his presence. What a change to have a wife who wanted to be with him. “I thought I could make her love me. I did everything I could think of to make her happy, to make her like me, let alone love me.”
He should probably tell her the rest, lay bare his heart and confess the event that had sealed their marriage’s failure. Though he couldn’t uncover the wound to share it, he relived it now—the moment he’d realized his love for Veronica. Six years ago, as they were about enter the elegant Burnett Hotel ballroom, where the district’s dignitaries and guests had gathered to witness his appointment as presbyter. His tender confession of love, the kiss he’d tried to give to seal his newfound affection...
Her shocked response, her acerbic laugh. Reverend Montgomery, do you mean you love me?
