east wall, and then he saw it. A nearly full teacup and a half-eaten slice of bread and butter sat on the table next to his stepmother’s favorite fireside wing chair.
Food and dirty dishes sitting out—in Noreen Talbot’s home? Something had gone wrong. He could sense it, just as he always could in battle.
Graham turned from the library and checked the dining room. He stepped through the breezeway to the kitchen dependency—nothing. He charged up the stairs. “Noreen?” Upstairs, he headed for her room at the end of the hall.
As he’d suspected, it was empty too, with both bed pillows fluffed and in place, Noreen’s hairbrush and mirror at perfect right angles to each other as always—and the third drawer of Father’s lowboy flung open.
The drawer where he hid his revolver.
Graham hastened to search the drawer. As he’d feared, Father’s Colt Dragoon was gone, and the lid lay beside the open box of bullets.
What could this mean? He glanced down at his dirt-caked boots and the clumps of dried mud he’d left on the Persian silk and wool carpet. Noreen could have moved the gun, but she didn’t leave drawers and ammo boxes open.
A wave of soprano giggles pierced the air around him, interrupting his thoughts. The girls.
He dashed into the hallway and toward his own room. He had to find out what had happened to Noreen, a mother to him since shortly after Mama and Graham’s baby sister died in childbirth. But first he had to get rid of those girls. The thought of doing that made his stomach sick.
He could think of only one way to get them out.
* * *
Ellie Anderson pulled her head back inside the window of Uncle Amos’s second-story bedroom, unsure whether to laugh at the scene below or feel sorry for Graham Talbot. For a moment, she fought the urge to send him their old childhood signal: a shrill whistle from between her teeth. But from the looks of things, he had enough noise in his ears as it was.
Would he even remember that signal, or had his war years erased the memory? It was such a childish thing, like the handkerchiefs they used to attach to wires and dangle out the windows of their rooms. A blue handkerchief was an invitation to an adventure, red for a picnic, and a white one was a distress signal. They had worked fine until Uncle Amos caught Ellie trying to fly hers from the weather vane.
She watched until Graham and the debutantes entered his home. Then she turned from the window in time to see Uncle Amos tip a spoonful of grits onto his lap.
She hastened to the bed, where he sat propped up by three pillows. “I’m not getting the hang of this,” he said, the slur in his speech still unfamiliar, even two months after his stroke of apoplexy.
Reaching for a napkin, Ellie tried to smile some encouragement into his drooped face. “You will. Keep practicing.” She wiped his chin and nightshirt front, and then she loaded more grits onto the spoon she had built up with a length of inch-thick dowel.
Uncle Amos reached for it, grunting as he spilled the grits again, and tried to dredge the spoon through the bowl.
“Grab it like you would an ax handle, not with your Natchez table manners.”
A twinkle appeared in his eye—the first one she’d seen since he took to his bed. “When did you last see me holding an ax?”
Ellie breathed a prayer of thanksgiving for this smidgen of humor. Surely it was a sign that he would recover. It had to be. Because if he didn’t get better—
Light footsteps tapped down the hall, interrupting her thoughts. Within seconds, Ellie’s maid poked her head in the doorway, a fringe of tight, gray-streaked black curls escaping her red kerchief. “That spoon you made working?”
“Better, Lilah May,” Uncle Amos said in a loud voice of optimism—as always when anyone other than Ellie was around.
“Let me help him. Colonel Graham just got home. You best get over there and rescue him from all them women.” Lilah May sat next to Uncle Amos on the bed and lifted a cup of no-longer-steaming coffee from the tray. “Besides, this man needs some coffee.”
“Graham Talbot?” When she raised the cup to his lips, Uncle Amos held up one hand, stopping her. “What women?”
“Maiden women, that’s who, from all over town. They got designs on him, for sure. One of them is going to wiggle her way right into that big mansion of his.”
Her uncle’s good eye widened, making the droopy one seem even worse by comparison. “Get over there, Ellie.”
She glanced out the window, the hot midmorning sun streaming in and heating up the room, bringing only a breath of a breeze with it. At least today her uncle remembered who Graham was. “I’m driving out to Magnolia Grove to check the west cotton field this morning before it gets too hot. I want to see how well the plants are squaring.”
“All you ever do is work. You’re the best plantation manager a planter could ask for, but you’re also a young lady. Go see Graham.”
From the look on Uncle’s face, this was an argument she was going to lose. “Make sure he gets more than coffee, Lilah May. If he had his way, that’s all he’d take.”
With Uncle Amos’s snort ringing in her ears, Ellie headed downstairs. Her maid and uncle could imagine her running to Graham’s side if they liked. But she had no intention of joining the fuss and flurry over the war hero’s return. They’d been friends too long, and she knew him too well to think he would enjoy the festivities this town had planned for him. A Confederate colonel who’d served under General Lee was worthy of celebration, to be sure. But Graham would rather entertain General Grant in the parlor than attend all the parties, balls and dinners that were in his future—starting tonight.
The poor man. Surely all he wanted to do was rest after traveling all the way from Virginia.
Someone ought to warn him. He might need her help.
She hastened to the library and rummaged in her desk for stationery, then she dipped her pen in the ink.
Graham, old friend,
Maybe your welcoming committee has already told you this, but your aunt Ophelia has been at the ready for weeks, prepared to give you a coming-home party the night you arrive. If you need a quiet evening instead, I’ll be at our old hideout and will bring you home for some of Lilah May’s good cooking.
Your friend, Ellie.
As she put away her pen, she noticed a letter addressed to her, propped against her walnut whatnot box where Lilah May always left the mail. Ellie pulled a pin from her hair and slit the envelope, then drew out the single thick sheet. Only three lines of large, bold handwriting scrawled across the page.
After my father’s demise, I must put his accounts in order. May I call at your home Friday next at 8:00 p.m. to discuss the business he left behind?
As always, Leonard Fitzwald.
As always? Surely that didn’t mean Leonard intended to loiter here at their home as he had before the war. Honestly, if the neighborhood hadn’t known better, they’d have thought Ellie and Leonard were courting.
The
