Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series) (3 page)

“Married?”  I was not ready to marry someone I didn’t
remember. 

“Well, yes, darlin’.  I’m sure you’ll get your memory back
soon enough.  But if you’re not ready yet, I understand.  I’ll give you
a couple of months.”

“A couple of months?”  He was moving way too fast for
me.  I felt like I’d just been passed by a locomotive heading west. 
“Well, I…” I was at a loss for words.  Should I let this man follow me to
the Washingtons’ farm?  Or should I follow him to his home here in City
Point?  I didn’t know what was proper, and I still wasn’t sure I could
trust him.  I knew that I had better get back to Chester to inform Ms.
Jane about all that Mr. Banks had told me.  She would be worried sick
about me if I didn’t return.  I certainly didn’t want Lionel driving all
that way by himself, either.  Who knew what kind of hoodlums or Yankees
could come along and just start beating the tar out of him? 
Yankees?  Yes, I suddenly remembered that was what we used to call the
Union soldiers.  That was another memory.

“Let me make this easy for you, darlin’.”  I sure wished
he’d stop calling me “darlin’”.  “I’ll go back to my home here, and you
run on along to that family you’ve been staying with.  Then we’ll meet up
here again at next week’s end, and you can think about what you want to
do.  Bring that Negro boy with you so you’ll be safe.  Is that
suitable to you?”

A week to think about it.  Well, I guessed that was better
than making a decision today.  “All right, I’ll come back here in a
week.”  At least that way, I wouldn’t feel strange about him coming down
to Chester with me, not knowing him and all.  ‘Course he could follow me,
but I hoped he didn’t.  I wasn’t ready to be hitched up to him just yet.

I put the Celtic ring in my dress pocket, and we parted ways,
Mr. Banks kissing my hand again.  “I’m so glad I found you.  Good
day, Madeline,” he said. 

“Good day, Mr. Banks.”  I got back in the carriage with
Lionel, and we headed back to Chester.  Confused thoughts were ruminating
inside my head the whole trip back, and I didn’t say much to Lionel.  I
kept pulling the ring out and looking at it, hoping for another memory, but got
none.

“But I can’t remember him at all, Ms. Jane.  Is that
normal?  Shouldn’t I remember the man I was supposed to marry?”

After Lionel and I got back to the Washington Farm, I had a long
talk with Ms. Jane about Jefferson Banks and about us being betrothed. 

“Not necessarily, dear,” she said.  “You haven’t remembered
a thing for three months now.  It will obviously take some time.”

“But I did get a memory, once he gave me this ring.”  I
pulled out the ring to show to her.

“Isn’t that a beauty!” she said, looking at it closely. 
“That looks antique.”

“Mr. Banks said it was his mother’s.”

“I’d say that’s worth a lot of gold.  Gold and silver, as
it were,” she laughed at her own humor.  She looked at my sullen
face.  “Now don’t you worry about a thing, Madeline, is it?”  I
nodded.  She placed the ring back into my hand.  “I’m sure you will
start to remember, the more time you spend with him.  What was the memory
you said you got with this ring?”

“Oh, yes!  I remembered standing on a hill overlooking a
body of water in the distance, perhaps a river.  Mr. Banks said my brother
lived down the river in Surry.  How far away is Surry?  We didn’t
take any sketches of me that far, did we?”

“No, we didn’t.  Surry is at least 50 miles away or
more.  About the same distance as Williamsburg from here, but on the other
side of the James River.”

“James River,” I said, feeling a hint of remembrance at that
name.  “That does sound slightly familiar.  Williamsburg also sounds
familiar.  Perhaps those are the areas I grew up in.  Yet how did I
get so far away?”  I tried to remember Surry, yet Williamsburg sounded
more familiar than Surry did. 

I had gotten side-tracked.  “Anyway, when I first held this
ring, I was by the river, as I said, and I heard a man’s voice call my name
softly, “Madeline”.  Oh, Ms. Jane, his voice was deep and yet as sweet as
honey.  He was someone I cared about very much.  I can feel it. 
But he was not Mr. Banks.”

“Oh, my!  That is certainly strange.  I am, of course,
glad for you to have gotten a memory – especially such a nice one – but he’s
obviously not the one you were to be married to, is he?”

“No, and that worries me.  Why was I not able to marry this
other man?  The one I now long to find?  Should I start looking for
him?  I wished I’d seen his face.  I could’ve had an artist sketch a
photo of him and post it so I could find him.”  A thought suddenly
occurred to me about sketches of my own face being posted.  “Ms.
Jane!  What if this Jefferson Banks found one of the sketches of me and
came to find me to try and take advantage of me somehow?   Maybe he
knows my real family, and maybe my family isn’t dead at all.  Maybe he’s
trying to get my family’s fortune, that plantation he said I lived in!”

“You’re letting your imagination run wild, child.  Think
about it a minute.  This man has possession of a ring that gave you a
memory of your past.  How do you think he would’ve gotten that ring if he
didn’t know you before?”

“That’s a good point.  And yet, he’s not the one I
remembered from the past, but it was another man instead.  It’s all so
confusing.  What should I do?  Mr. Banks still wants to marry
me.  He even said he had a plantation himself in City Point that he’s been
repairing from after the war.” 

“I don’t want to tell you what to do, child, but as I said
before, perhaps if you spend more time with this Mr. Banks, you will start to
remember things.  Perhaps it will all make sense in the end.”

“Could we perhaps visit Surry sometime?  At least put up my
sketch?”

“You know I’d love to help you, but I’m not sure Mr. Washington
could make the trip that far and back.  Perhaps if we ask him nicely, we
can all take a trip before the weather gets cold.  Did you stop to think,
though, that if Mr. Banks said your brother was deceased, there may not be
anyone left who knew you?”

“But perhaps this man in my memory is there.  I’d really
love to find him.  Surely someone I grew up with would recognize me.”

At the next week’s end, I headed back to City Point with Lionel,
ready to begin my journey back to remembrance.  My hopes were high. 
There was, after all, a river in City Point, as well.  Every thought of a
river brought me closer to the mystery man in my memory.  I had to remind
myself that I was betrothed to Mr. Banks and that I should try to remember him
instead.

Mr. Banks greeted me with a lingering kiss on my hand and a
polite bow, and then told Lionel to wait while he took me to his plantation for
the day.  I protested to this.  I barely knew the man.  I was
not about to go off to his plantation with him alone without a proper
chaperone.  He relented, and asked Lionel to drive his carriage for us,
guiding him along the way. 

He told me about the history of City Point and how it was
located where two rivers met – the Appomattox and the James.  He talked
about the things that happened during the war, of the Union ships that came
down and placed a blockade across the James River, and of the slaves who ran
off to join the militia or jumped in the river to climb aboard the Union’s
ships.  He told me about Union soldiers that came down and invaded homes
while they waited for orders to try and burn down Richmond and Petersburg
nearby.

“My family’s plantation is just down this drive,” Mr. Banks told
Lionel.  “It’s on the Appomattox River,” he told me.  “During the
war, the Union General Sheridan camped here for a time.  I was off in the
war, of course.  My mother died, my step-father was killed in the war, and
my sister ran off.  Our slaves apparently escaped to a Union ship right
before Emancipation.  Do you remember the war, Madeline?”  I shook my
head.  “That’s just as well.  It was a horrible time.”

“Here we are,” he said, pointing at a three-story white frame
Georgian house with a smaller structure off to the side, which he later
explained was the kitchen house.  He took me all around the grounds, to
the back of the manor, overlooking the river.  The river was down a
sloping hill from the manor.  I tried to remember if I’d been here before,
if that same river was the one in my memory, but nothing looked familiar. 
Nothing at all.  I felt disappointed. 

“It’s very beautiful,” I told him.

“It’s called ‘Western Manor’.  My step-father inherited it
when I was a young lad, when he brought me and my mother here.  Let’s go
inside, shall we?”  He led the way to the river-front door, unlocked it
with a large key from his pocket, and we went inside a very long hallway. 
There was a spiral staircase to our left, with dark wood railing and green
paneling lining the circular stairs.  In fact, this same green hue was
used in the woodwork along the ceiling, wainscoting, and window sashes, as well
as around the fireplace of the dining room.  He pointed out a cannonball
that was lodged in the dining room ceiling from the war. 

Nothing was familiar.  “Have I ever been here before, Mr.
Banks?”

“Yes, you have been here before, while it was still being
repaired.  I do very good business with the railroad and so have been able
to do all the repairing and painting.  It looks pretty good, doesn’t it?”

I had been here before?  It did not seem familiar.  I
thought about him being in the railroad business and wondered what he
did.  “What do you do for the railroad?” I asked, as he led me into the
parlor.  This room had a nice view of the river and the trees on the other
side, just beginning to change into warm autumn hues.

“I make sure the local plantation owners and farmers get their
goods on the trains to be sold, mostly up North.”

“You deal with the Yankees?”  Somehow, that didn’t seem
right to me.

“You do what you have to, to survive, Madeline.  Now that
the war is over, we have to make friends with them again.”  He looked
distractedly out the window.

“Do you grow anything on your plantation?”

“No, ma’am.  No slaves and not enough laborers.  I
couldn’t afford to pay them anyway.  I’m lucky to be able to keep this
house at all.  I had to sell off part of the land when I came back from
the war.  Come and look at this,” he said, pointing at one of the
windows.  He showed me where Union officers scratched their names in the
glass while they were here during the war.

“So, Union soldiers were here in this house during the
war?  Did they take good care of the house?”

He swallowed audibly.  “Well, there used to be more
dependencies, which are gone now.  Probably used for firewood.”  His
demeanor changed and he grew quiet for a moment, his eyes peeled to the
floor.  “And my ma was killed here during the war, apparently by one of
them.” 

I picked up one of his hands and squeezed it.  “I’m so
sorry.  That’s terrible.”  For the first time, I felt pity for this
man.  Perhaps he could understand what I had gone through, as he had lost
something precious to him, the same way I lost my memories.  “It’s perhaps
good you weren’t here to see that.”

“If I had been here, I would’ve killed them all,” he said
darkly.

I let go of his hand again and walked out of the room to see
more of the house.  He briefly showed me the bedrooms upstairs – briefly
because I had no intentions of lingering up there for very long unchaperoned.
 I was still uncomfortable being alone in the manor with practically a
stranger, but I was determined enough to do so to try and get my memory back.
 We went back down the staircase and out the carriage-front door to find
Lionel sitting on the dusty ground resting his back against the carriage wheel. 
He quickly stood when he saw us approaching.

“I would show you the kitchen house,” Mr. Banks stated, “but
it’s not in very good condition.  I’ve been using the dining room
fireplace to cook with mostly.  I suppose now I have a reason to get the
kitchen house back in order so you can use it.”  He smiled and raised one
eyebrow an inch higher than the other.

I frowned slightly at that comment but forced myself to
smile.  Even though he seemed a little forward, after all, he did know me
and had wanted to marry me.  I’d just have to get used to the idea. 

“It’s a very nice home, Mr. Banks.  Thank you for bringing
me here to show it to me.”

“You’re quite welcome.  And please, Madeline,” he picked up
my hand and kissed it softly, his eyes never leaving mine.  “Call me Jefferson.”

“I apologize, but I don’t know you well enough yet to call you
by your given name.  You’re still practically a stranger to me.”

“Of course,” he said, letting go of my hand.  “I shall give
you more time.”

We ascended the carriage again and Mr. Banks took us across a
bridge to City Point where the two rivers met.  We got out of the carriage
and walked around the busy town down by the rivers and along the railroad
tracks, avoiding trains.  He showed me where he spent a lot of time working
in exports of things such as cotton, tobacco, corn, and wheat.

Lionel took us back to the marketplace where we’d met Mr. Banks,
and we bought some hard cheese and a loaf of bread and ate on a bench
overlooking the river.  I saved half of mine for Lionel.  I talked more
with Mr. Banks about the war.  I asked him what I did during the war, but
he said he didn’t know, as he didn’t know me then and that we had avoided
talking too much about the war, since it was a painful subject.