“You know your mother can’t take this excitement. I’m surprised at you. We will invite Payton to visit here at his earliest convenience. Then you will see how he has matured. There, there, Clara. You will not die before dinner, I promise you.”
Though she truly felt faint, Clara smiled inwardly. Once again, she had triumphed over her family. Sending for Payton was a brilliant idea. Julia could be married before she turned twenty-one and came into Grandmother Lightfoot’s legacy.
Julia slammed into her bedroom. Carolyn looked up from the alterations of her sister’s old ball gown. “What was the buzz in the parlor this time?” she asked, threading her needle with care. “Usually I am the one on the griddle fire.”
Julia stared out the window at the winter-shrouded garden below. Mother’s pink rosebushes stretched up their stark thorny limbs to catch the feeble rays of the midwinter sun. My soul is as dead as those roses. “Mother has got it in her head to marry me off.”
“Oh?” Carolyn picked up her thimble. “So who is the lucky fellow?”
Julia made a face at the windowpane. “Payton.” His name tasted like ashes in her mouth.
Carolyn gasped. Her thimble dropped from her lap and rolled across the floorboards. “She’s not serious!”
Julia faced her shocked little sister. She folded her arms across her bosom as if that action would protect her from her odious cousin. “She is, and dear Papa was in agreement, as he always is when she works herself into a state.”
Carolyn looked truly stricken. “What will you do?”
“I told her no.” Julia should have told her that she wanted to be a teacher, but she’d never stand for that any more than Payton would.
Carolyn’s mouth dropped open. “You said ‘no’ to Mother? I can hardly believe it. You’ve never crossed her before.”
Julia sank down on the pink satin daybed. “I know, but not this time. It’s too important a decision. When she told me her wonderful plans, I just blurted out ‘no.’ Mother is not accustomed to hearing the other side of any argument, much less conceding to it. My refusal staggered her.”
Rolling her eyes, Carolyn shivered under her shawl. “I can imagine.”
Julia gave her a twisted smile. “Both Papa and Hettie had to help her upstairs to bed. I expect she’s dosed up with laudanum by now. I suspect that she has already sent a letter to Payton telling him to run up here and make me his wife.”
“Perhaps he’s changed,” Carolyn suggested, though the wrinkle of her nose indicated that she thought otherwise.
“As much as a fish can turn into a bird.” Julia shook her head. “Payton was nasty when he was a little boy, and he was even more disagreeable when we last saw him.”
“You can’t marry Payton! You’ll die of boredom—or worse.”
Julia curled her hands into fists. “I know that, but Mother is set like a stone.”
Out of nowhere, a wicked idea flashed through her mind. Without allowing a moment of consideration, Julia grabbed on to it like a rope out of quicksand.
She narrowed her eyes. “You know, lady-bird, I am so very, very glad that you ‘found’ that invitation to the ball. I intend to have the best time of my life there.” She would see to it that Payton Norwood would never marry her.
Carolyn’s mouth quivered. “Julia, you aren’t planning to…I mean you can’t…you wouldn’t…”
A sly smile played across her lips. “What won’t I do?”
Her sister’s gaze searched Julia’s face. “You wouldn’t—” her voice sank into a whisper “—ruin yourself with a man at the ball so you didn’t have to marry Payton, would you?”
Julia had little notion exactly what polite society meant by being “ruined by a man,” though she knew from her reading that the experience was enough to blacken a girl’s name forever. Whatever it was, she would find some nice Yankee boy—there had to be at least one there—to do it to her. That would knock Mother’s loathsome plan into a cocked hat.
She barked a harsh laugh. “I have no idea what you mean, Carolyn.”
Chapter Three
Christmas Day 1863 was observed by the Chandler family with the same rituals that they had followed every other Christmas: services at St. Paul’s Church; a Christmas turkey stuffed with the traditional cornbread and oysters, and a crystal bowl full of cranberry sauce; gifts from Papa; eggnog and favorite carols sung around the piano with a few friends, whose political sympathies were in agreement with the Chandlers’ Confederate ones.
On the morning of the Winstead ball, Julia and Carolyn pleaded joint headaches. “Too much Christmas frivolity,” Julia whispered to Mother when she came to inquire after their health. In reality, the girls were in a fever of excitement, while they attempted to rest up and prepare their clothes for the evening’s prohibited adventure. The daytime hours crept by at a snail’s pace.
Hettie, by necessity, knew their plans since she had to let them in the back door upon their return from the party. Nevertheless, she gave the sisters a stern look when she brought up their suppers on a tray.
“You are asking for trouble,” she scolded them in a low voice while she watched them wolf down cold turkey, buttered bread and pickles.
“Yes,” replied Carolyn with glee in her eyes. “We are very wicked. Isn’t it grand?”
Hettie examined the two black velvet half-masks that Julia had created from an old muff. “You be sure to act respectable, no matter what the devil tells you to do. That Winstead house will be full of no-good Yankees. I’ve heard stories about those men that would make your blood run cold.”
Carolyn glanced up from her supper. “Oh, do tell one!”
Julia didn’t want to know anything more about the Yankees. One of those men was going to “ruin” her tonight, and that was all she could stand to think about. She nudged Carolyn. “Not now. We have enough on our minds as it is. You can tell us the gruesome horrors when we get back, Hettie.”
The cook picked up a silver-backed brush and began to rearrange Carolyn’s hair. With quick, expert fingers she wound her blond curls into fashionable corkscrews on each side of her face. “Neither of you has a lick of sense in your heads. I feel it in my bones that tonight’s foolishness will come to a bad end. You have no business going where you’re not invited. Virginia girls mixing with Northern trash is just like washing good china in a mud puddle. Like my mama always said: crows and corn can’t grow in the same field.”
Julia’s skin felt dry and scratchy. She didn’t want to think about those Northern boys and their reputed evil ways—not yet. She placed her hand on top of Hettie’s. “Please don’t spoil our fun tonight. I haven’t been to a party since Christmas of 1860, and Carolyn has never gone to one at all.” She crossed her fingers behind her back before saying, “I promise that we will be as good as gold and twice as nice, won’t we, Carolyn?” she added in a warning note to her rambunctious little sister.
Carolyn only nodded as she stared at herself in the looking
