glanced at the red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks. The few moments she had wept couldn’t account for her appearance. Something or someone had made her cry earlier, that much was certain. Surely the handsome man with the kind eyes hadn’t injured his daughter in some way, had he? It seemed unlikely, but Clarissa turned wary eyes to him. Strange men arrived in postwar Natchez every day, seeking a pretty cotton heiress and an easy fortune—or so they thought. They weren’t to be trusted.
But who were this father and daughter? And why had they burst in at the end of choir rehearsal?
Clarissa glanced at the cameo timepiece pinned to her shirtwaist. Ten minutes to one. She had little time to find out before meeting her attorney as he’d requested in his terse note of this morning. “I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm. Fathers don’t realize how they sometimes embarrass their daughters.”
“Does your father understand you?”
The pointed edge in the girl’s tone brought back memories of Clarissa’s own family heartbreak, of the fear that had turned her words sharp as Father boarded a riverboat—alone—for the Yazoo Delta that long-ago February day. Memories of the cold wind blowing up to the bluff as Clarissa waved to a parent who didn’t look for her in the crowd. “I think Papa would empathize with me now, if he were here.” Instead of a hundred and twenty miles up the Mississippi River.
“My mother went to heaven four years ago. I keep wishing Papa would find a new wife and finally be happy.” The girl cast a wistful gaze at her father. “Maybe he’ll meet someone here in Natchez. Do you know of a lady he might like?”
“Well, my grandmother is unmarried...” Clarissa pointed toward Grandmother Euphemia in her black widow’s weeds.
The girl’s giggle made Clarissa smile. Well she knew how a good laugh could make any heartache easier to bear, and equally well she knew the pain of losing a parent. However, although the girl clearly needed a mother, that was a poor reason to wed. Marriages of convenience rarely ended in happiness. “I’m glad you came to town. Please call me Clarissa.”
“I’m Emma Montgomery.”
Montgomery? Clarissa’s gaze fixed on the black-suited man who now approached Grandmother Euphemia, his back straight as a Citadel cadet’s. She should have realized this was the Reverend Samuel Montgomery.
She tried and failed to pull her attention from him, although she could feel Grandmother’s disapproving glare. This was the famed Fighting Chaplain, the war hero who’d saved his entire platoon from the Yankees? The one who’d traveled the South after the War for Southern Independence, using his newfound, widespread popularity to win converts and change lives in every town he entered?
The man who wielded the sword of the Word as skillfully as he’d brandished his grandfather’s sword to conquer his enemy on a Tennessee battlefield?
He certainly seemed more like a dignified pastor than a fierce warrior. And at this moment, he looked downright humble.
As well he should, after what he’d said. Even if he was impossibly handsome and even charming in his embarrassment.
Clarissa touched Emma’s arm, urging her up the aisle. As they approached the reverend, Graham Talbot and Grandmother, Emma drew a noisy, halting breath that had to come from her toes. Fearing more tears from her, Clarissa dropped an intentional twinkle into her eye and her smile in the hopes of lightening the mood. “Reverend Montgomery, Grandmother Euphemia and I welcome you to Natchez and to Christ Church.”
He opened his mouth as if to reply, but Grandmother cut him off.
“I am capable of introducing myself.” Grandmother turned her dark disapproval from Clarissa to the reverend. “You are three days early.”
“Yes, he is, and that’s good, because Missus Euphemia Geraldine Mathilda Duncan Adams will tolerate a three-days-early arrival. But never four.” Clarissa leaned over and gave Grandmother a peck on the cheek to distract this most undemonstrative of ladies. “You’ve escaped her wrath, Reverend, at least as punctuality is concerned.”
Grandmother’s wide eyes and Emma’s little giggle made Clarissa laugh. The girl looked lovely when she smiled, until she caught her father’s glance and steeled her face.
“I heard your interim pastor was to leave town tonight,” the reverend said, “so I wanted to be in the pulpit tomorrow.”
“But you are not scheduled until—”
“The reverend did just as Grandfather Hezekiah would have done.”
The hard lines in Grandmother’s face softened just a bit, as Clarissa had known they would, and she paused. “My Hezekiah would have done that, yes.”
Clarissa drew a great breath of relief and caught the tiniest gleam in the reverend’s eye as he gave her a nearly imperceptible nod. So he knew she was maneuvering the conversation—and her grandmother. With this man as pastor, she’d have to think things through more than ever.
Grandmother straightened her back in her maddening way that always meant she’d allowed herself to be manipulated long enough. “However—”
“I haven’t properly introduced you, Miss Euphemia.” Graham Talbot touched her arm. “May I present my friend, former chaplain and my aide-de-camp, the Reverend Samuel—”
“I know full well who he is. He’s the image of his late grandfather. I also know you’re trying to prevent me from examining this candidate as the deacon board has charged me with doing.”
Clarissa resisted the urge to roll her eyes, since it would only make things worse. “But the board sanctioned the Reverend Montgomery’s calling weeks ago.”
“Contingent on my approval upon his arrival.” Grandmother set those steady hazel eyes of hers on the two men and studied them as if trying to make them squirm like schoolboys.
It didn’t work. The pastor merely inclined his head, his dark curls shining in the light of the south windows. “I’m pleased to know you made my grandfather’s acquaintance.”
“My husband spent a bit of time with him of necessity. One can’t travel far in the hierarchy of this denomination without encountering people of—all sorts.”
“In other words, the Reverend Adams did not entertain Grandfather by choice.”
“Precisely.”
“And yet the board of Christ Church called me here—surely not without your blessing.”
Grandmother leaned heavily on her ivory-handled cane as she bent toward him. “Certainly not.”
“Why did you call me then, since you clearly disliked my grandfather, as did the Reverend Adams?”
“That is a topic for another day.” And that clearly settled the matter, because Grandmother had decided so. “The more important question is the whereabouts of your wife.”
At the sound of a sharp intake of breath, Clarissa turned to Emma. The raw pain in her face had overtaken all traces of her earlier hardness.
“Forgive me.” Reverend Montgomery nodded toward Emma. “I neglected to introduce my daughter,
