simply gaped at her. Then he shook his head. 'You shouldn't have told me that.'
'Why not?'
'I-I wanted to call on you after you returned to Risen Glory, but what you've told me casts a shadow over my motivations.'
Kit's own motivations were so much more shadowy that she laughed. 'Don't be a goose. I could never doubt your motivations. And yes, you may call on me at Risen Glory. I intend to return as soon as I can make the arrangements.'
Just like that, she made her decision. She couldn't marry Bertrand Mayhew, not yet anyway, not until she'd had time to see where this exciting new possibility might lead her. She didn't care what Cain had written in his letter. She was going home.
That night as she fell asleep, she dreamed of walking through the fields of Risen Glory with Brandon Parsell at her side.
Just imagine.
Part Three
7
The carriage tilted as it swung into the long, winding drive that led to Risen Glory. Kit tensed with anticipation. After three years, she was finally home.
The deep grooves that had rutted the drive for as long as she could remember had been leveled and the surface spread with fresh gravel. Weeds and undergrowth had been cut back, making the road wider than she recalled. Only the trees had resisted change. The familiar assortment of buckthorn, oak, black gum, and sycamore welcomed her. In a moment she'd be able to see the house.
But when the carriage rounded the final curve, Kit didn't even glance that way. Something more important had caught her attention.
Beyond the gentle slope of lawn, beyond the orchard and the new outbuildings, beyond the house itself, stretching as far as her eyes could see, were the fields of Risen Glory. Fields that looked as they had before the war, with endless rows of young cotton plants stretching like green ribbons across the rich, dark soil.
She banged the roof of the carriage, startling her companion, so that she let go of the peppermint drop she'd been about to slip into her mouth and lost it in the frilly white folds of her dress.
Dorthea Pinckney Calhoun gave a shriek of alarm.
A Templeton Girl, even a rebellious one, understood that she couldn't travel so far without a companion, let alone stay in the same house with an unmarried man. I he tact that he was her cursed stepbrother made no difference. Kit wouldn't do anything that could give Cain an excuse to send her back, and since he didn't want her here in the first place, he'd be looking for a reason.
It hadn't been hard to find a penniless Southern woman anxious to return to her homeland after years of exile with a widowed Northern sister-in-law. Miss Dolly was a distant relative of Mary Cogdell, and Kit had gotten her name through a letter she received from the minister's wife. With her tiny stature and her faded blond corkscrew curls, Miss Dolly resembled an aged china doll. Although she was well past fifty, she favored ancient gowns heavy with frills and wide skirts beneath which she never wore any fewer than eight petticoats.
Kit had already discovered she was a natural coquette, batting the lashes of her wrinkled eyelids at any man she judged to be a gentleman. And she always seemed to be in motion. Her hands in their lacy, fingerless mitts fluttered; her faded curls bobbed, her pastel sashes and antique fringes were never still. She talked of cotillions and cough remedies and a set of porcelain temple dogs that had disappeared along with her girlhood. She was sweet, harmless, and, as Kit had soon discovered, slightly mad. Unable to accept the defeat of her glorious Confederacy, Miss Dolly had permitted herself the small luxury of slipping back in time so that she could forever live in those first days of the war when hopes were high and thoughts of defeat unthinkable.
'The Yankees!' Miss Dolly exclaimed as the carriage jolted to a stop. 'They're attacking us! Oh, my… Oh, my, my…'
In the beginning, her habit of referring to events that had happened seven years before as if they were occurring that very day had been unnerving, but Kit had quickly realized Miss Dolly's genteel madness was her way of coping with a life she hadn't been able to control.
'Nothing like that,' Kit reassured her. 'I stopped the carriage. I want to walk.'
'Oh, dear, Oh, my dear, that won't do at all. Marauding troops are everywhere. And your complexion-'
'I'll be fine, Miss Dolly. I'll meet you at the house in a few minutes.'
Before her companion could protest further, Kit stepped out of the carnage and waved the driver on. As the vehicle pulled away, she climbed a grassy hillock so she could get an unrestricted view of the fields beyond the house. Lifting her veil, she shaded her eyes from the late-afternoon sun.
The plants were about six weeks old. Before long, the buds would open into creamy four-petaled flowers that would give birth to the cotton bolls. Even under her father's efficient management, Risen Glory hadn't looked this prosperous. The outbuildings that had been destroyed by the Yankees had been rebuilt, and a new whitewashed fence stretched around the paddock. Everything about the plantation looked well tended and prosperous.
Her gaze came to rest on the house from which she'd been exiled when she was so young. The front still bowed in a graceful arch, and the color was the same shade of warm cream that she remembered, tinted now by the rose-colored light of the fading sun.
But there were differences. The red tile roof had been repaired near the twin chimneys, the shutters and front door held a fresh coat of shiny black paint, and, even from a distance, the window glass sparkled. Compared to the lingering devastation she'd seen from the window of the train, Risen Glory was an oasis of beauty and prosperity.
The improvements should have gratified her. Instead, she felt a mixture of anger and resentment. All this had happened without her. She settled the beaded veil back over her face and headed for the house.
Dolly Calhoun waited by the carriage steps, her Cupid's-bow mouth quivering from having been deserted just as she'd arrived at her destination. Kit gave her a reassuring smile, then stepped around the trunks to pay the driver from the last of her allowance money. As he pulled away, she took Miss Dolly's arm and helped her up the front steps, then lifted the brass knocker.
The young maid who answered the door was new, and that deepened Kit's resentment. She wanted to see Eli's dear, familiar face, but the old man had died the previous winter. Cain hadn't permitted her to return home to see him buried. Now she had new resentments to join the old, familiar ones.
The maid glanced curiously at them and then at the array of trunks and bandboxes piled on the piazza.
'I'd like to see Sophronia,' Kit said.
'Miz Sophronia's not here.'
'When do you expect her?'
'The Conjure Woman took sick this mornin' and Miz Sophronia went to check up on her. Don't know when she's comin' back.'
'Is Major Cain here?'
'He'll be comin' in from the fields any minute now, but he ain't here yet.'
Just as well, Kit thought. With any luck, they'd be settled in before he arrived. She clasped Miss Dolly gently by the arm and steered her through the doorway, past the astonished maid. 'Please see that our trunks are taken upstairs. This is Miss Calhoun. I'm sure she'd appreciate a glass of lemonade in her room. I'll wait in the front sitting room for Major Cain.'
