Love, Come to Me(15)

“It wasn’t intentional. Seeing you wobble on your toes while holding a windowpane that I’ve had on order for almost a month was more than I could stand.”

“I wasn’t wobbling!”

“I see. You would prefer to think that I was so enthralled by your charms that I would use any convenient excuse to—”

“No, I wouldn’t! . . . I . . . oh, get out of here!”

He indicated the stairway with a gesture that was at once mocking and deferential, his eyes shining with amusement. “After you, Miss Caldwell.”

She preceded him regally, walking back into the main part of the store and stopping at her usual spot behind the counter. Accepting his money without bothering to count it, Lucy went over to the cash drawer.

“Now if you’d like to wait for one more minute,” Lucas Caldwell said to Heath, “while I write out your receipt—”

“Obliged, but I don’t need a receipt.”

They all watched in silence as the tall Southerner strode towards the doorway. George Peabody, a hotheaded boy who couldn’t resist making one remark from the safety of the corner, muttered an insult under his breath.

Heath stopped and turned around, giving him a measuring glance, but before he could make a reply, Lucy rounded fiercely on the boy. “George Peabody, you button your mouth!”

“He’d better see to his britches first,” Heath said, and touched the brim of his hat respectfully to Lucy before slipping out the door.

Automatically they all looked at George’s trousers, discovering that one of the buttons did indeed need to be fastened. The tension broke, and as the flushed boy spun around to restore his injured dignity, they all chuckled. Even Daniel had to smile. “Impudent Reb,” he said ruefully, and no one disagreed.

The purpose of the latest series of intellectual meetings, which were held in various parlors in Concord, was to talk about Reconstruction with objectivity, sensibility, and a lack of prejudice. As everyone had expected, the meetings were far from objective, seldom sensible, and never unprejudiced. Still, the highly charged discussions were well attended and interesting. The parlor debates were solely the province of the men, though the women who wished to listen were allowed to sit quietly along the sides of the room. Men like the long-winded, methodical Bronson Alcott and the insightful Ralph Waldo Emerson traded observations about the war and Reconstruction with other townspeople. This time the meeting was being held in the Caldwell parlor, which was scarcely large enough to hold the gathering that had accumulated this week.

Lucy surveyed the kitchen while the meeting was in progress. Quickly, she filled the urn of water on top of the shining cast-iron stove, so that moisture would disperse through the dry air, and then she cast a glance at the trays of tea cakes that would be brought out to the parlor later. Satisfied that everything was in order, she smoothed down the muslin and lace apron front of her dress and tiptoed towards the sound of voices. At this moment Bronson Alcott was standing at the front of the circle of people, his gray hair flowing to his shoulders, his broad hands making moderate gestures as he spoke with the attitude of a man who loved the art of oration.

Cautiously Lucy stood in the shadowy doorway and looked around the room. There was her father at the back, checking his pocketwatch and no doubt wondering when the tea cakes would be served. Daniel, his legs crossed and his hands resting on one knee, was in the innermost circle of the group, gazing raptly at the speaker. In the far corner of the room, Heath Rayne sat in a patch of darkness, the shadows dimming his hair to a muted wheat color. His legs were crossed ankle over the knee, his arms folded casually across his chest—the perfect picture of boredom—but Lucy knew somehow that he was listening intently to everything that was being said.

She wondered why he would want to come to the meetings on Reconstruction, when he was the only Southern contingent. True, in Concord there were occasional traces of pro-Southern sentiment when it came to the issue of Reconstruction. But Heath Rayne was an outsider here—he and everyone else knew it. His presence had definitely inhibited the first few meetings or so. Everyone kept looking at him, wondering when he was going to jump up with the Rebel yell and start brawling, yet he had been gratifyingly quiet during every discussion so far. Now they had almost forgotten that he was at the meetings at all. He arrived, made pleasant small talk with those who dared to approach him, listened quietly to the lecture, and then left, as if he were a disinterested observer and had had no experience with the war! Lucy didn’t understand him at all. She comforted herself with the fact that no one else did either.

“And to those that say the conflict should not, in retrospect, be viewed as a confrontation between the absolute wrong and the absolute right,” Alcott was saying, “my reply is for them to examine in the cold light of objectivity the evil of slavery. A sympathy for those who supported slavery and a wish to grant them leniency . . . must be considered in terms of the highest treason . . .”

Having heard the speech countless times before, Lucy had to fight back a betraying yawn. Delicately she raised a hand to her mouth and stifled it, blinking to clear away her weariness. Glancing at Heath again, she saw that this time his blue eyes were resting on her steadily. She held his glance for a long moment, unable to look away, and as his mouth curved in the faintest of smiles, she felt one coming to her own lips. Then Mr. Emerson was adding to what had just been said, his green-gray eyes cast with a dark sheen. His words, as always, gained the attention of everyone in the room. “Leniency to the Southerners should not and cannot be given, not if we wish to uphold the ideals for which the war was fought. Rebels should be pounded and not negotiated into a peace, if we are finally to realize our aspirations. War is not a game. It should be conducted without mercy to the opponent, if any moral inspiration is to be gained by the men who fight it.”