CHAPTER FOUR #2
She glanced up into his angular face, his hazel eyes filled with care. He kissed her hand, then tightened his grip to tug her out of the path of the undertaker’s workers. Outside in the street, an ebony horse and crepe-festooned carriage waited to take Daphne to her final resting place.
Gil put his arm through hers and gave her a surreptitious squeeze of encouragement.
His first wife and his brother, Lawrence, had suffered a horrible death in a house fire.
He’d never spoken of her, Maude McTeague Gladney.
Before their marriage, he’d given Leona the newspaper clipping reporting the fire and another of her obituary in an envelope bordered in black.
Leona’s husband Jack, too, had met a brutal end when the train to Boston suffered a catastrophic derailment.
A crack of splintering wood made her jump. Shouting men, uncaring the mourners might hear them, cursed each other.
Horrified, she turned to Gil. “They’ve dropped her.”
The red-faced undertaker rushed past them. Gil clutched her elbow, propelled them out of the house, and down the stoop to the street.
“Don’t speak of it,” he murmured. “It will only upset the family and titillate the newsmen.”
“I know,” she replied through gritted teeth. “But what newsmen?”
He shifted his head to the right. Leona glanced in the direction he indicated, relieved to see a friendly face. “Oran Montgomery, you mean? He and Daphne are—were friends of Daphne’s. He’s here with his wife, Charlotte.”
After a few minutes, the formal procession began. They hadn’t gone far before Gil leaned down to Leona again. “Are you well? It’s not a long walk, but it will be a long day.”
Touched by his concern, she gazed up at him.
He needn’t have worried. She’d spent summers in the mountains, used to the hard work on her grandfather’s commune, Halcyon Farm.
When her body couldn’t contain the creeping dread hunting her, she’d often take long walks in the new Prospect Park.
Gil didn’t know she’d spent months—and years—marching all day in full kit beside Jack with the Army of the Potomac while Gil had served as a clerk in Washington, D.C.
He smiled and gave her a soft but encouraging pat on the shoulder.
She faced ahead, keeping her silence. Would he even believe her?
The granddaughter of the Transcendentalist poet William Harrison Earl gone to the field as a soldier.
A rush of shame brought heat to her face.
Her gentle husband knew nothing, not even about the derringer she carried. What would he think of her then?
They’d met at the Brooklyn Lyceum, the one he would have to sell.
He was the owner and the stage manager. It was during a series of weeklong lectures by female poets and novelists, culminating with a lecture by Louisa May Alcott, her mother’s friend.
Aunt Louisa, though not truly her aunt, cast her familiar spell on her as she read from her Hospital Sketches , stories from her time nursing soldiers.
During the question-and-answer period, a young lady in the audience asked Louisa about writing and publishing.
As Aunt Louisa answered, Leona took notes until her hand ached, barely aware of Daphne beside her.
Or the handsome stage manager’s attention until she glanced up, fingers cramping, shaken by the realization she might have discovered the key to the liberation of her soul.
Her glance found his, and his sublime smile captivated her; he wanted her to notice him, and she did.
When the lecture was over, he approached, courteous and charming.
He’d offered to introduce her to the famous speaker, appearing suitably impressed when Aunt Louisa sent her sister to fetch Leona for a reunion.
With Daphne’s approval, he courted her with dinners and flowers, books, long walks, and museum and library visits, with soothing conversation.
The warmth in his kind and intelligent eyes melted the ice caging her heart.
But Gil wasn’t Jack, and all the curatives she sought for the pain of the war, his death, and that of their child—writing, love, fulfilling work—had only won her temporary relief.
And now Daphne, another stone to weigh her down.
“Leona,” a woman spoke with urgency at her shoulder. “We must talk.”
Leona shook herself free of the fog overtaking her. “Charlotte, yes, of course.” She cut her eyes toward her husband, now speaking with another mourner a few feet away. They’d almost reached the churchyard.
Charlotte glanced through the crowd and back at Leona, frowning. “Have you heard what the gossips are saying?”
The strain in her voice spread alarm through Leona. Her stomach sank, remembering the whispers, the loaded glances. They’d been for her all along.
“They’re talking about me? For what reason?”
Charlotte looked around again, the dyed ostrich plume of her hat shivering in the sudden sharp breeze cutting through the crowd.
The women pulled their husbands and fur coats closer as they passed through the open wrought-iron gate.
The church doors hung ajar to receive them, the charismatic Reverend Henry Ward Beecher greeting them as they entered.
“Not now. I’ll call on you early tomorrow morning,” Charlotte assured Leona with a grimness that dismayed her. “And you, my dear, must be ready.”