You Belong to My Heart (2 page)

Clayton nodded and followed her.

The two children were good friends, had been friends since the day the shy six-year-old Clayton Knight first saw the rambunctious five-year-old Mary Ellen Preble. He had come alone to the Preble mansion to deliver an exquisite ball gown that his seamstress mother had made for the beautiful Julie Preble.

That very day—four years ago—Clay and Mary Ellen became friends and playmates, despite the difference in their backgrounds.

And there was quite a difference.

Young Mary Ellen was the adored only child of John Thomas Preble, one of Tennessee’s richest, most powerful gentlemen. In an era when cotton was king and Memphis was the cotton capital of the world, the sharp-witted, deal-making John Thomas Preble became a millionaire cotton factor well before he had reached the ripe old age of thirty.

He had ordered construction of the stately home on the cliffs overlooking the muddy Mississippi a full year before meeting a dazzlingly beautiful young lady at a summertime ball in Charleston. Preble knew the moment he saw the slender blond charmer that he would make her his own.

So the big formal mansion became a wedding present to John Thomas Preble’s blond eighteen-year-old bride, the beautiful South Carolina aristocrat, Miss Julie Caroline Dunwoody. After an extended honeymoon on the Continent, the wealthy groom carried his radiant, impressionable young bride across the marble threshold of her new home, Longwood.

Julie Dunwoody Preble was genuinely awed by the grandeur of Longwood.

Fronted by tall Corinthian columns, the palatial white mansion was named for John Thomas Preble’s old boyhood home. No expense had been spared on this present Longwood’s construction and decoration. Preble had sent to Europe for the best and costliest materials and ornaments. Silver doorknobs and hinges from England. Mantels of white Carrara marble. Mirrors from France. Sparkling chandeliers from Vienna.

The huge dwelling was grandly furnished with careful attention to detail. A twenty-five-piece rosewood parlor suite was created especially for Longwood. A gold-leaf harp and a piano graced the white-and-gold music room. Rich damask curtains and upholstery. Reed and Barton silver and fragile Sèvres porcelain. And upstairs in the spacious master suite, an imposing mahogany four-poster bed that measured seven and a half feet wide was reflected from every angle in gigantic gold-leafed mirrors.

The spacious grounds were kept perfectly manicured by a pair of talented gardeners. In season the well-tended flower gardens provided both color and fragrance. Eye-pleasing gardenias, hydrangeas, azaleas, and roses sweetened the moist summer air.

Down the terraced green lawn to the north was a marble sundial with shining brass gnomon on whose stone face was the inscription “I read only sunshine.”

A few yards from the sundial a hexagonal white latticed summerhouse was shaded by an old walnut tree and covered with honeysuckle and ivy. Beyond the gazebo a roomy carriage house sheltered a one horse gig, a gleaming navy victoria, and a gold-crested black brougham. On the far side of the carriage house, an enclosed, heated stable was home to a dozen blooded horses.

John Thomas Preble had it all.

He was an influential, respected young man with a lovely, starry-eyed wife, a stately white mansion on the bluffs of the Mississippi, a dozen house servants, and a legion of slaves who worked the vast outlying Preble plantations.

It was into this kind of wealth and luxury that Mary Ellen—slightly less than a year after her parents had wed—was born on a warm beautiful June afternoon in 1831. Within hours of the birth, Mary Ellen’s proud twenty-eight-year-old father threw a champagne-and-caviar feast on the manicured grounds of Longwood to celebrate the blessed event.

His exhausted wife and sleeping child safely sequestered behind closed curtains upstairs and cared for by a competent, hovering staff, the beaming father accepted congratulations from the city’s blue bloods and businessmen. And he promised to introduce his perfect infant daughter to the world at an even more extravagant gala just as soon his adored wife regained both her strength and her girlish figure.

There had been no such celebration the day Clayton Knight had come into the world. In May of 1830, the year before Mary Ellen Preble opened her eyes to great fanfare, Clayton Terrell Knight was delivered to a pain-gripped, sweat-soaked young woman in a hot, airless back room of a small, shotgun house on the mud flats four miles south of Memphis.

There were no soirees out on the front lawn. No gala parties to announce Clayton’s birth. No guests coming by to congratulate the proud father. Actually, the father was neither proud nor present.

No one was present for the birth of Clayton Terrell Knight, save his frail, suffering mother and a half-blind midwife. The father would not learn of his son’s birth until, tired and broke, he wandered back home after three days’ absence in need of a shave and a hot meal.

Clay Knight’s father was a darkly handsome, charming, uneducated man with little passion for home and hearth. Family and responsibility held little appeal for the lackadaisical, happy-go-lucky Jackson Knight. Nor, for that matter, did honest labor.

He had a propensity for the more exciting pursuits life had to offer. Like drinking. And gambling. And women.

There were occasions when Jackson Knight devoted his full and undivided attention to one of that trio of favorite vices. Other times he indulged in all three at once. Acquaintances agreed that nobody had more fun than the silver-eyed, black-haired Jackson Knight when he was seated at a green baize poker table with a bourbon in one hand, glassine cards in the other, and a buxom beauty on his knee.

Life was not so much fun for his neglected wife, Anna. She had married beneath her, against the wishes of her widowed father, the naval hero of 1812, Admiral Clayton L. Tigart. The aging commodore hadn’t approved of the match. But he loved his only daughter, so he gave the young couple his modest life’s savings as a wedding present.

The money hadn’t gone toward building a home for Anna, as the admiral had intended. The hedonistic Jackson Knight had squandered the entire sum in less than a year, with nothing to show for it. Anna never saw a penny of the money.

The love she’d had for Jackson Knight had waned and died in the long, lonely hours she’d spent waiting alone in the darkness for him to come staggering home, the scent of another woman’s cheap perfume on his clothes and on his lean body.

For the disillusioned Anna, her precious baby son, Clayton, was the only good thing to come out of the unhappy union with his handsome, worthless father. It didn’t matter, she told herself, that her son’s father was of the lower classes and considered white trash by the gentry. Clayton could boast of at least one distinguished forebear, his maternal grandfather.

One morning just before dawn, when Clay was still an infant, word came that Jackson Knight had been knifed to death in a saloon brawl.

For young Anna Knight, it was no great shock or loss. The only real change his death would make in her hard life would be the extra money she’d now have to buy food and necessities. No longer would Jackson Knight be there to take her meager earnings to fritter away on liquor, gambling, and women.

After her husband’s death, Anna Knight was able to save enough to move with her baby son into a modest frame house in Germantown less a mile from the city. Proud of the new place, Anna fixed it up happily, transforming the plain house into a warm, cozy home. The finishing touches were added when she carefully hung a framed picture of her father, the commodore, directly above the fireplace in the parlor.

With freedom from constant worry, Anna had a chance to catch her breath. She had the time and the energy to develop her innate talent for designing and making beautiful women’s clothing.

Her reputation started to build. Word of mouth began to spread, reaching all the way to Memphis’s wealthy elite. In time, Anna’s flair for fashion caused her services to be vied for by the upper crust of the river city. She supported herself and her son by making elegant clothes for the city’s gentry.

It was Anna’s abundant talent that brought her to the attention of the young, wealthy mistress of Longwood. At a society ball honoring a visiting European count, Julie Preble’s discerning eye fell upon one of Anna Knight’s gorgeous creations. It was worn by a thin, graying Memphis matron who was more than happy to share the name and address of its maker.

Anna Knight was summoned to Longwood and her services engaged. Soon she had completed the first of what would be many exquisite ball gowns for her distinguished young client. With orders for her work growing rapidly and many more gowns to be made, Anna Knight was pressed for time.

So she was forced to call on her young son to help out.

A bright, dependable child, Clayton acted older than his six years. Of necessity he’d had to grow up quickly, to accept responsibilities other children his age never faced.

Anna Knight was a very smart and sensitive woman. Never had she said a derogatory word about Clayton’s dead father. She had, in fact, bent over backward to tell the son who’d never known his father what a charming, likable man Jackson Knight had been.

At the same time, she cleverly guided the impressionable little boy toward a path in life never sought by his father. In subtle, simple ways she demonstrated to Clayton the value of honesty and commitment and honest work. She taught him the meaning of respect, showed him the satisfaction that came from seeing a job well done.

She pointed often to the portrait of the white-haired, grim-faced admiral above the fireplace. She told Clayton of his grandfather’s valor and how he should be proud to be the grandson of the commodore.

A shy, sweet-natured little boy, Clayton was happy, healthy, and well adjusted. Eagerly he said yes—just as always—when his busy mother asked if would run a very important errand for her.

Clayton listened attentively as Anna Knight gave him clear, easy-to-understand instructions on how to get to Longwood. Cautioning him—just as always—not to speak to strangers or to stray off the path she had laid out for him, she sent her only child to the stately white mansion on the bluffs of the Mississippi to deliver a ball gown she’d just completed.

Pale gray eyes alert in his tanned face, short arms wrapped around the big flat box, Clayton obediently walked straight to Longwood. Once there he climbed the front steps of the mansion. Before he reached the tall front doors, a little girl with white-blond hair dashed onto the shaded gallery.

She smiled at him.

He smiled back.

His was a snaggle-toothed smile. His two front teeth were missing. The little girl thought that was very funny, so she laughed. He laughed, too.

Clayton Knight had just met Mary Ellen Preble.

M
ARY ELLEN AND CLAY
instantly became friends.

As the years went by they spent many an hour playing together and no one paid much attention. They were, after all, only children. Their close friendship went mostly unheeded by the grownups. No one saw any reason to worry about their childish devotion to each other.

Clay was frequently at Longwood, as was his mother. Anna Knight now sewed for only a handful of lucky ladies. One of those privileged few was Julie Preble, so it was necessary for Anna to spend a great deal of time with the mistress of Longwood for consultations and fittings.

Julie Preble was so delighted to be one of Anna’s select clients, she treated the gifted seamstress more like an honored guest than a hired dressmaker. At Longwood Anna was not expected to use the servants’ entrance as she was at the mansions of her other clients. Julie Preble had instructed the servants that Anna Knight was always to be admitted through the fan-lighted front doors and ushered into the opulent front parlor.

Both John Thomas and Julie Preble liked the uncomplaining Anna Knight and felt sorry for her, that though she’d been born a respectable Tigart, with her marriage she had sunk to a much lower station in life.

The Prebles also liked Anna’s well-behaved, mannerly young son. No one objected as the energetic youngsters romped freely about, unchaperoned and unwatched. The pair, everyone agreed, got along famously, and wasn’t that wonderful? The Prebles knew they needn’t worry when their only daughter was with Clay. Clayton Knight was a responsible young boy; he’d look out for Mary Ellen.

Mary Ellen was, from the minute she learned how to walk, a spirited tomboy. She liked to run and shout and play chase and climb trees as much as any boy. She liked to roam the lush Tennessee countryside, to venture deep into the woods with Clay and pretend that they were bold adventurers exploring a new, uncharted land.

Mary Ellen loved the river and was allowed to go down to the levee as long as she was with Clay. It was such fun to see the mighty steamers ferry passengers up and down the waterway and to watch the giant bales of cotton being loaded onto huge cargo craft. Enchanted by all the activity going on at the landing, Mary Ellen once asked Clay if he’d like to work on the river when he finished school. Maybe be a riverboat pilot?

“No,” he was quick to set her straight. His silvergray eyes flashing with excitement, he said, “You know very well that I want go to the Naval Academy.”

She did know. Clay talked incessantly of going to the Naval Academy. He collected sea charts and atlases and books about faraway places. He pored over maps and books for hours at a time. He talked often of his grandfather, repeating to Mary Ellen the stories his mother had told him of Admiral Tigart’s bravery. His aging grandfather was one of his heroes; the other was a young naval officer who’d been born right there in Tennessee, over in Knoxville. David Glasgow Farragut was, Clay believed, destined for greatness. He hoped that the day might come when he would serve under the brilliant Farragut.

“Yes, sir, it’s the deep-water navy for me,” Clay said. “Brave the Cape of Good Hope and then on to sail the seven seas.” He paused, sighed dreamily, then added, “You can be the riverboat pilot.”

“Me?” Mary Ellen made a face. “I can’t. I’m a girl, silly.”