Emma Barry
Authors: Brave in Heart
Emma Barry
Avon, Massachusetts
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 2013 by Emma Barry
ISBN 10: 1-4405-7022-1
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7022-3
eISBN 10: 1-4405-7023-X
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7023-0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © istockphoto.com/RapidEye, istockphoto.com/oliale72
To Tim, Henry, and Eleanor, you have my heart.
A Sneak Peek from Crimson Romance
It would be impossible to sufficiently thank everyone who assisted the creation of
Brave in Heart.
If we’ve met and talked about books — which is another way of saying if we’ve met — you’ve helped form my taste and hone my mind and I am in your debt.
To be a more specific: to my teachers for making me love the written word, the United States of America, and its complicated, painful history. To the men and women whose remembrances of and fiction about the American Civil War haunt me. To the authors, living and dead, whose books made me want to write down the stories I imagine.
To everyone involved with the Novellas Need Love Too contest for feedback and encouragement, particularly RL Syme. To my critique partner, Genevieve Turner, without whom this book would have been incomparably weaker. To my beta readers — Larissa, Jean, Tim, Brooke, and, most of all, Kimberly Truesdale — for insight and generosity.
Most of all, to my family for being understanding of all the time I was lost in a novel, thought, or Word document and for always believing in me. Je t’aime.
Middletown, Connecticut
November 19, 1859
“I wish to release you from our engagement.”
A gasp followed Margaret Hampton’s declaration. At first, she wasn’t sure if it came from her or Theo. But the night air, cold, damp, and unforgiving, burned her throat. Her. She couldn’t believe what she had done.
Another rasping breath trailed the first — her lungs simply would not stay full. Perhaps the intensity of Theo’s glare expelled it from her body. The steely shine in his eyes could halt a rushing spring thaw. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? The passion that lined his face now was a mirage. It would not power his life.
Theo’s hands clenched. “Will you at least tell me why?” His voice was hard like flint, but quiet.
Silently, Margaret thanked the slivered moon in whose dim light she could scarcely make out his features. Aloud, she repeated the words she had practiced in the mirror earlier that evening, projecting a confidence she did not feel. “I think it’s for the best.”
“For who? For you?” His tone rose, but a sparkling piano chord and a shadow of someone’s laugh from within reminded them they were not entirely alone.
Inside the Smith’s house, a merry little party was playing Squeak Piggy Squeak. By the sound of it, the game had grown heated. Mark’s cry of objection and Susanna’s laughter floated distinctively to her ears, distracting Margaret from the far more momentous scene she was playing in the garden.
“For us both, Mr. Ward. This is over.”
The words were bald. Heavy, without euphemism. And followed by an expectant pause.
Theo turned and leaned against the balustrade, seeming to examine her for weakness.
She shifted her weight and looked down away from him. Her poise was crumbling, and thus she filled the silence. “We don’t suit.” The lie tasted of ash and dried her tongue. “I’ll go in now so as not to fuel any rumors. We can break the news to our friends tomorrow.”
“And that’s it? There’s nothing I can say to change your mind?” She looked up at this and a flicker of light caught his eyes. They flashed like twin sapphires, potent and intoxicating.
“Don’t you love me?” His voice shook, thin and a little desperate.
The breeze in the trees stopped. The happy rattle inside stilled. Margaret’s heart snagged on its next beat. For an instant, all motion and noise paused. The past two months — joyful, wild, intemperate months — spread before her, poured out from a jug between them. Both had thought themselves past all chance at love. Until … until.
In this immobile moment, Margaret could look at Theo and see the contradictions within him. He’d taken
The Liberator
for years, but wouldn’t write for the local paper on the slavery question. He railed about education reform, but would not run for office. He hated Middletown, but would not leave.
Even the narrowly leashed emotion radiating from him now would be buried before this conversation had ceased. The denial and repression he had spent three and a half decades perfecting was an inability to act on the ardor in his heart. This she knew beyond all else, and thus there was no place for her. She wasn’t sure she could deceive him, but no more could she marry him.
She looked down and shook her head. “No, I don’t … love you. It’s done.
She was certain he wouldn’t believe her. Some part of her wished he wouldn’t. In jilting him, she was ensuring a hard, lonely future for herself. Teaching the same books until the covers fell off. Emphasizing the same rules for young women until her voice was strained. Scrimping for new gowns and darning stockings past serviceability. Dying at the Middletown Female Seminary. Was a hypocritical husband really so distasteful as to warrant all this?
Yes.
Yes, if it were Theo. He had long ago dedicated himself to a half-life. She wouldn’t join him there.
His voice interrupted her reverie. “I know you’re an impatient woman … ” Ah, here it was: his criticism of her, that she nagged and behaved impulsively. This conversation was almost amusingly familiar. Except for how it would end.
He continued, “ … but I thought that once we married, I might — ”
“No.” The word shot out with more force than she had intended. She repeated more gently, “No. It’s no good. I will
not
marry you.”
Theo snapped to his full height. Margaret stumbled back several steps, unaware she had drifted toward him during their exchange. He ran his fingers through his hair and then took her gloved hand.
“I wish you well, Miss Hampton. May God bless … ” His voice did break then. He pressed her palm to his mouth before releasing it and brushing past her wide skirts as he strode toward the garden.
Margaret watched Theo’s broad shoulders retreat until he was cloaked in darkness. Air rushed into her body now, but it wasn’t enough to compress the sudden, overwhelming loneliness that had taken residency in the vicinity of her stomach.
“It’s over,” she whispered to no one. “It’s over.”
As the realization that their relationship was finished became real to her, a single cry escaped her lips, half-formed and plaintive. Like her love for Theo. But that was all in the past now. Safely gone. She hoped she would never see him again.
Margaret composed herself, waiting for the agitation to drain from her body. When she realized it would not, she turned, squared her shoulders, and returned to her life from the dream world she had been visiting.
June 15, 1861
Bugger you all
, Theodore Ward thought as his gaze whipped across the room.
Bugger you all
.
He stood in the assembly hall in McDonough House, ostensibly talking with his legal partner, but Josiah Trinkett’s words had blurred until they had become a net of words. The old man’s right hand chopped at the air in ever-shorter strokes, each
thwack
punctuating a phrase. He was good and worked up now, opining about pigs. Never get Josiah started on the merits of Berkshires: a lesson Theo should have learned the first time.
If there was one thing Theo hated, it was how often farm animals turned out to be at the heart of the cases they handled. He scowled and scanned the room again. White bunting punctuated with absurd poofs of flowers and tissue paper decorated the walls. Exploded from them, really, in jovial exorbitance. The time and energy women could spend on such things never ceased to amaze him.
The decorations for the evening’s festivities seemed particularly excessive, or perhaps it was the contrast between the attention to detail in the ballroom and the general tone in the city. Two companies of local boys had just departed to join the Fourth Regiment Connecticut Infantry in Hartford.
Theo’s hands tensed at his sides, his body strung like a line at the thought. He wanted to be amongst them. The war that was starting was about the future of the nation, yes, but also its past. It sought to extend freedoms and liberties. It was a new and perfecting revolution and, blast, he was missing it!
At this, he tapped his foot, his frustration needing to be expressed in some way.
The absence of the Fourth was felt keenly by the mothers, wives, and sweethearts left behind. The women demonstrated their resolve by manning the refreshment tables. Those excessive paper flowers and drawn women’s faces stood as the only evidence of the shots at Fort Sumter only a few weeks prior. A few pursed lips and an added forced, frantic quality to the banter the only acknowledgement that two great armies were now approaching one another and clashing weekly. Every day some neighbor boy half his age enlisted. Theo was ready to go. But as his father’s untimely passing had left him his mother’s sole child, she opposed the idea. His foot tapping grew more frantic.
Since Josiah showed no signs of stopping his monologue, Theo began to invent distractions. He swallowed a sigh, the same one that always plagued his throat in his partner’s presence. He scratched at his right ear. And he began contemplating his escape not simply from this conversation but from Middletown entirely.
Get away. The words were almost mythical. And yet, it was possible. He could do it. Maybe the time had come at last. He felt inexplicably hopeful for the first time in months.
This
was the moment when everything was going to change. He knew it.
That was when he heard the laugh. A rich timbre that cut through all the other noise in the room, deafening even Josiah’s babble, and called to something deep within him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Margaret Hampton skipping across the room with three young women, likely her students, at her heels.
Margaret wore a dress of pink tulle and cream lace with a sweeping two-tiered skirt. Theo’s gaze, however, was riveted to her snowy white shoulders, which were well and truly exposed. The dress clung to her body through some dressmaker’s insane invention. It looked precarious. It looked damned enticing. A cameo he knew had belonged to her mother hung high around her neck on a slim, silver ribbon and she had a white shawl draped from her elbows, matching the roses in her hair.
A gasp leapt from his mouth and shattered at his feet. Dear Lord. Her countenance shone like the flame of a candle. Had she always been so luminous? Had she always been so tall? She was of average height, he knew, but she seemed statuesque. Perhaps it was her habit of walking just ever so slightly on her toes. Or maybe it was that she was more alive than any other woman he’d ever known.