Brides of Ohio Read online

  Katherine looked around for a place to leave the horse and buggy, eager to follow. But Ruth’s horse, a gentle old mare, had already raised one hoof and appeared to be dozing. She secured the brake and followed Mary into the house.

  Finding herself in a little entry hall with stairs in front of her, she was unsure where to go. To the right was a charming little parlor with rose-print wallpaper, comfortable-looking chairs, and a sofa; a dining room with a long, sturdy table and chairs lay to the left. Mary was nowhere to be found.

  “Katherine?”

  Hearing her friend’s call, Katherine immediately ascended. Halfway up she heard the worst coughing she had ever heard in her life, and the sound made her dash up the last few steps. There were several doors to choose from at the top. All were closed save one. She entered the room and nearly gasped at the sight of a woman in bed, covered with a handmade quilt. Her face was drawn and pale, and it grieved Katherine to come to the conclusion that this was Dorothy Kirby.

  Mary sat on the edge of the bed trying to urge her sister to drink from a cup. “The fire’s low. Go through the dining room and there should be some wood in the kitchen.”

  The tightness in the older woman’s voice gave Katherine speed, and she flew down the stairs as directed to the kitchen in the rear of the house. The wood box had several logs in it, and seizing a few of the thicker ones, she lugged them back upstairs. It didn’t take her long to get the fire going again.

  She turned to find Dorothy looking at her. She swallowed hard. It felt like a walnut with its green spring husk still attached was trying to go down her throat. Would her presence alarm the sick woman? Dorothy couldn’t possibly know who she was.

  She started to step out of the room when Mary motioned for her to come near.

  “Pneumonia,” Mary stated as she approached.

  “Is that Katherine?” A catch grew in Katherine’s throat at the sound of the poor woman’s hoarse, weak voice.

  “Yes, but hush now,” Mary soothed. “We’ll save introductions for later, Dolly.”

  But the woman shook her head. “Been praying for her. Like you asked.” She made an attempt to give Katherine a weak smile but began to cough again.

  “Maybe she’ll quiet down if I leave.” While gratified that Mary had asked her sister to pray for her, Katherine was more eager to let the woman rest.

  Mary shook her head, seemingly resigned to something Katherine was unwilling to consider.

  “Toby …,” Dolly began.

  “I know. He’s fighting.”

  Dolly shook her head and looked toward her night table.

  Mary took the letter lying there and read the first few lines and then handed the letter to Katherine.

  Toby had died at Cold Harbor, Virginia, a little less than a year ago.

  “Jonah?” Mary’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  Tears smarted at Katherine’s eyes as she watched Dolly shake her head.

  Mary bit her lip and drew the letters from Daniel from her reticule. “Daniel’s all right. He’s in Petersburg.”

  Her sister nodded and closed her eyes. Her breathing was ragged for a minute or two. It became shallower and shallower, and Katherine gently grasped Mary’s shoulder as Dorothy Kirby left to go to her reward.

  Tears flowed freely down Katherine’s face as she sat down on the edge of the bed and held Mary as she sobbed.

  Oh Father, she prayed, dear Mary has lost so much. Keep Daniel safe and let this sad war come to an end. Soon.

  Bootsteps sounded on the stairs, and Katherine rose, standing protectively over Mary who still sat on the bed. A huge, gruff-looking man filled the doorway, and fear gripped Katherine as she saw the rifle in his hand.

  But Mary knew the stranger. “Mr. Carr,” she said calmly, far more calmly than Katherine thought her capable of just a few minutes after her sister’s death. The older woman stood, handkerchief in hand.

  Surprised, he said the name almost under his breath. “Mary O’Neal!” Clearing his throat, he took his straw hat from his head. Long strands of gray hair tumbled clumsily into his eyes, and he immediately pushed them back. “Mrs. O’Neal, I—I wasn’t expectin’ you.”

  “I understood from Ruth Decker you were helping Dolly run the farm.”

  Mr. Carr nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Since that rascal Toby took off.”

  “I’ll thank you not to speak ill of the dead, Mr. Carr.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled gruffly and nodded toward the bed. “How’s your sister?”

  “Mrs. Kirby has passed,” Mary said softly as she turned back to her sister. As she did so, Katherine thought she caught a brief gleam in Elijah Carr’s eye.

  “If you want to gather up a few things, I’ll wait outside for you.” His voice strained not to sound eager.

  “What on earth for?” Mary asked suddenly, turning from her sister.

  “Well …,” he began hesitantly. “Thing is … Dolly promised the farm to me.”

  Mary stared at him. “I’m quite sure that must be a misunderstanding. Dolly would never give up this land. Joseph always intended it for the boys.”

  “Jonah and Toby are gone, Mary. Died fighting the war.”

  “But Daniel is still alive and well, Mr. Carr.” She walked up to him. He towered over her, but she paid him no mind. “I read a letter from him this morning. He’s with General Grant in Petersburg.”

  “Daniel always had a head for book learnin’. He was already an instructor over at that college of his. He was never a farmer. Dolly said, with Jonah and Toby gone, he would most likely sell me the land.”

  “Dolly said that?”

  “She surely did.”

  Mary looked at him carefully. “Be that as it may, whether or not to sell the land to you is for Daniel to decide. And until he comes home, we’ll stay right here and keep the farm going.”

  Katherine took a step forward to stand right behind Mary, backing up her words. She grasped the older woman’s hand and squeezed it. She had no idea how to run a farm, but she was more than willing to try.

  Her movement attracted Mr. Carr’s attention, and he looked at Katherine as if just noticing her. “Who are you?” he asked gruffly.

  With a pounding heart, she raised her chin. “My name is Katherine Wallace, sir.”

  At the sound of her voice, Mr. Carr glared at Mary. “What do you mean bringing a filthy little secesh up here? Dolly most likely died of shock from you letting her step foot in her house.”

  Mary glared right back at him. Secesh, short for secessionist, was a word they had both heard spoken in anger far too often since coming north. Mary thought it a cruel name, but Katherine felt it was an accurate one.

  “Miss Wallace is my dear friend, and I had my sister’s permission long ago to bring her here.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Dolly would have more of a fit if she could see the state the farm is in right now.”

  Mr. Carr looked uneasy. “Been hard,” he finally muttered. “When she took ill, she insisted on stayin’ here. I’ve been goin’ back and forth to take care of my lands, too.”

  “So you were at your farm all morning?”

  Carr looked at Mary rigidly. “Had business up in Delaware this morning that wouldn’t wait.” His excuse that he’d had to drive nearly nine miles to the county seat clearly did not convince Mary. “She made me go,” he said defensively. “Said she’d be just fine.”

  Mary’s shoulders fell wearily. She seemed either out of arguments or too tired to continue sparring with him. She turned and sat down next to her sister’s still form. “I guess I should thank you for being so neighborly after Toby left. Thank you.”

  Mr. Carr approached her, giving Katherine a hard look as he brushed by her.

  “I’m sorry Dolly’s gone. Let me take you back to my house. You could stay there a spell. …”

  “No thank you. We have the farm to look after.”

  The man gritted his teeth in silent frustration.

  “But if you would be so
kind,” Mary continued, “as to take Ruth Decker’s horse and buggy back into Ostrander, I would appreciate it. And please call on Reverend Warren on your way by Mill Creek Church. I need to lay my sister to rest.”

  Mr. Carr nodded and, without so much as a glance at Katherine, left the room. Presently they heard the distinct sound of a wagon pulling away from the house.

  “Father, forgive me for disliking that man,” Mary murmured.

  Katherine looked at her questioningly, but her friend said nothing more.

  Instead, she leaned forward and folded Dolly’s arms across her waist. She then grasped the patchwork quilt and gently pulled it over her sister’s body. “We’ll talk later, Katherine. For now, we need to get ready for Reverend Warren.”

  Chapter 2

  Katherine tossed in her bed for what seemed like the hundredth time. In spite of all she had done and been through today, sleep refused to call on her. Too many thoughts ran through her mind.

  To begin with, Mary had insisted on her using one of the unused rooms upstairs. One of her nephew’s rooms. It hadn’t seemed proper, but where else would she sleep? The barn? She supposed it simply felt odd to be sleeping in a man’s bed. Mary had thought she would be most comfortable in Daniel’s room and insisted he wouldn’t mind. She would have felt much more comfortable in Dolly’s room, but that would need airing out. And besides, she thought, Mary should have her sister’s room.

  Mr. Carr had spoken to Reverend Warren as Mary had asked, for the reverend and his wife, Minnie, soon arrived to help her with all the arrangements. They had been kind and sympathetic toward Mary, but the couple seemed to keep Katherine at a polite distance. At least they were a tad warmer than Ruth Decker.

  She played with a thread in the quilt that covered her. She had kept herself busy in the kitchen while Reverend Warren spoke to Mary, and she had rounded up the loose chickens while Mary and the reverend’s wife laid Dorothy out in the parlor. Making herself as scarce as possible was all she could think of to avoid the discreet coldness of the couple. In light of their behavior, alongside Ruth Decker’s, she could only imagine how people would treat her at the funeral on Saturday.

  She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. When she had insisted on coming north with Mary, she had not really thought about how people would treat her. In retrospect, she realized she had latched on to the silly notion that the North was a sort of wonderland where everyone was warm and friendly and welcomed strangers with open arms. How could she help it? Mary had been the standard she had used to measure all Northerners.

  The anger and suspicion Katherine aroused had come as shocking as a slap on the face. The instant any Northerner heard her voice, it was assumed she was either a secessionist or, worse, a Southern spy.

  I was a fool to think people would assume otherwise. Mary warned me it might be this way, but I was so happy to be coming to the North. … Why shouldn’t people be suspicious? The war certainly isn’t over yet. Oh why didn’t I just stay put?

  She put a hand to her eyes and sighed deeply. She couldn’t stay and live a life she didn’t want with a family who had never wanted her.

  Andrew Wallace, Katherine’s father, had never forgiven her for not possessing her mother’s beauty and vivaciousness. His only daughter’s shy and studious spirit only irritated him. As far as he was concerned, her only value to him lay in whom she married. Her brother, Charles, had always blamed her for their mother’s death. Annabelle Wallace had died giving birth to her. And her father’s sister, Aunt Ada, had always contended that it was downright shocking that the Wallace family could have conceived a drab little nothing like Katherine.

  But God opened a wide window for her when the O’Neals became the Wallaces’ neighbors the year Katherine turned thirteen. John O’Neal had inherited a prosperous plantation and was connected to a very old South Carolinian family. Therefore, they immediately had standing in the community despite the fact they were Yankees.

  She and Mary had become fast friends at the picnic held to welcome them, and when Katherine was sent off to school in Columbia, she corresponded regularly with Mary. The older woman became the mother Katherine had always longed for. It was Mary whom she confided in, Mary who led her to a deeper relationship with Christ, Mary who had shown her the ills of slavery.

  Katherine smiled sleepily. Thank You for my dear friend, Father. Thank You for bringing us here safely. … She yawned as weariness crept over her. Folks here would surely come around once they got to know her. Closing her eyes, she drifted off to sleep.

  The crack of a whip shot though the air, and Katherine started at the sound of it. Dropping her book, she ran through the house and into the kitchen.

  The cook grabbed her as she tried to race out the back door. “Don’t be goin’ out there, Miss Katherine!”

  “Who is it, Clarissa? Who’s being whipped?”

  Before the woman could answer, the crack of the whip and a scream rent the air.

  Katherine pried loose and tore out of the house. She half ran, half stumbled down the slope toward the whipping post her father kept in full sight of the sad shacks that housed the Wallace slaves.

  Another scream tore through her heart, and Katherine suddenly realized who it was.

  “Chloe,” she whimpered as the post came into view. Without thought for herself or the state of mind her father was surely in, she ran to her friend and stood between the poor young slave woman and the long black whip. Her eyes rose to the man holding it, and she gasped to see it was her father and not the overseer as she had expected.

  Her father swore and yanked her out of the way. Katherine fought, but he was too strong. He shoved her into the hands of the overseer, who stood nearby, and Andrew Wallace continued his vicious attack.

  Katherine wailed, and when her father finally stopped his brutality, he turned and backhanded her. Searing pain shot through her jaw, and she soon felt blood trickling down her neck and onto the fine French lace of her morning gown. With a shaking hand, she reached up and touched the gash his signet ring had made.

  “Next time,” he roared as she sobbed, “it will be someone else tied to that post. You hear me?”

  “Katherine, do you hear me?”

  Katherine awoke to find Mary sitting at the edge of her bed, gently shaking her awake. She reached for her jaw. It was wet. She pulled her hand away and saw not blood but tears, which fell free and fast down her face. She looked up at her friend. Moonlight reflected in Mary’s motherly eyes and brought the young woman out of her nightmare.

  “Chloe?” Mary asked gently.

  Katherine nodded, and the older woman handed her a handkerchief.

  “I’m so sorry I woke you,” she said as she propped herself on one elbow to dry her face.

  “Don’t worry yourself over that.”

  Mary smoothed Katherine’s hair, tucking in loose strands that had come loose from her long braid. “Seems like you had that dream a number of times on our journey back.”

  Katherine lowered her eyes.

  Mary put a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face until their eyes met. “God knows you had no intention of doing what you did. His Son’s blood covers all sin.”

  “But what about Chloe? I never got to tell her how sorry …” Fresh tears filled Katherine’s eyes.

  “I’m sure wherever she is, she has forgiven you.”

  Katherine nodded, but even though she knew Mary was right, she still felt guilty. She had only wanted the best for Chloe, the young slave woman who had been her only friend through her lonely childhood. Teaching Chloe how to read had been Katherine’s way of setting her free. Katherine, then sixteen, hadn’t really cared that it was against Southern law. Her father may have controlled the young woman’s body, but Katherine knew if she was educated, at least her mind could go wherever she wished.

  How could she have been so foolish as to have let her emotions get the better of her? But the things her father had said that evening at dinner … Even now his horrid, ugly words
rolled back and forth in her mind, causing her to shake with anger. If only she had kept her tongue, Chloe would never have been beaten senseless and Katherine would have no scar to mar her face.

  She sighed and looked at Mary. Chloe hadn’t been the only one affected by her rash actions. “How did Thomas take it when I left?” she ventured. Her father had sent her off to Charleston for six months after the incident.

  Mary hesitated. “It was hard for him.”

  “I’m sorry, Mary. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings … and Thomas’s. Father said you bewitched me.”

  Mary said nothing, and Katherine knew she was trying not to say what she felt. She had hoped Katherine would one day truly become her daughter by marrying her son.

  That had been Katherine’s hope as well, but any chance she may have had with Thomas was dashed when her father forced her to break off all communication with the O’Neals. And he made arrangements to make sure it would stay that way. For the past seven years, Katherine had no contact with them until the night she and her aunt were forced to find refuge with Mary after their house had been destroyed.

  “That’s all water under the bridge now,” Mary said finally. “I just hope your father and your brother made their peace with God before the war took their lives.”

  “I hope Aunt Ada does the same,” Katherine said thoughtfully. “I’m going to write to her and let her know I’m safe.”

  “That would probably be best. Maybe you’ll be able to reconcile with her.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve burned that bridge.” Her aunt had disowned her when Katherine insisted on going north with Mary rather than accompanying her to Charleston. “I’ve never seen her so angry, not even after … Chloe.”

  Mary sighed. “Well, we should be getting back to sleep. Lots to do tomorrow.” Mary rose and pulled the quilt over Katherine. Her face fell a little. “I guess we’ll both be posting letters. I have to write to Daniel. He and Dolly were close.”

  “I’ll keep him in my prayers.”

  Her friend gently smiled her thanks and went back to her room.