CHAPTER 4
At the edge of the swirling dancers, Emily buried her hands deep in the pockets of her green gown, her fingers worrying at some dry seeds she had picked up somewhere along the way. Around her the dancers circled, clapped, changed partners, tapped their feet as the fiddler wove his spell. Emily did not dance, though she wanted to, longed to, even, and found her toes tapping under her hoops whenever there was music. As a young girl, occupied with the grief of her motherless upbringing, she had deemed herself clumsy. Her father tried to teach her the steps, but she never found them natural—too much counting and concentration on left and right. Nor was Emily at ease in conversation, except in her family; even there she often kept her thoughts to herself. Social events were a self-conscious agony to her. However, her widowed father insisted on attending, hoping somehow that social exposure would make up the deficit.
Now Emily lifted her gaze to the gangly fellow who pranced through the line of dancers with one of the Sutton girls on his arm. Here was her younger brother, Jeremiah, all mouth and legs, same as on his horse or in the field, and even at his studies, prone to blurting out whatever came to mind. He moved incessantly, prone even in sleep to toss and jerk. Perhaps juggling his mother’s death like an endlessly burning coal. Emily turned away from the current of dancers, seeking refuge by the door, ajar to the cool night air.
At the door, Emily’s elder brother, Will, was speaking intently with Michael Lambert, who smiled and nodded to her. She knew Mr. Lambert as kind, a quiet man, one of a pair of old bachelor brothers working their homestead together. Emily returned the nod, but hesitated, unwilling either to be drawn into conversation or to turn back toward the undertow of dancers.
Emily sensed Will’s brooding. Bereft since the death of his wife, Fran, and their infant boy, he had never recovered himself. Lately, however, Belinda Slate, the doctor’s sister and a school friend of Emily’s, had charmed him with her excess of senseless exuberance. Her lighthearted, effusive babble had raised Will’s spirits, given him hope. In that momentary hope, he had posted a letter proposing marriage on her graduation, only to be answered by an inexplicable silence. Now he brooded incessantly. Emily nodded again at Mr. Lambert and returned her attention to Jeremiah, cavorting down the line again, so forward, so lacking limits.
From behind her, a man spoke. “A special evening, Miss Matthews. Leaving so soon?”
Emily startled. The voice had laughter in it, quiet like a whispered secret in her ear. She turned. Stylishly dressed in a double-breasted black frock coat, the man stood mid-height, tan and muscled like a man of the field, yet somehow not. Emily knew she should recognize him, but no name came to her aid.
“Charles,” he said, relieving her. “Charles Slate, Miss Matthews. I’m Belinda’s older brother.”
“Ah, yes, Dr. Slate,” she said. “You treated my father’s new slave. I do remember. I was distracted. I beg your pardon.” She did not offer him her hand, guarded in her pocket, working the little seeds. Belinda’s often unflattering gossip about her brother’s exploits with women flitted through Emily’s mind. But she gave credence only to bits of Belinda’s endless tales.
“I’ve not seen you on the floor tonight, Miss Matthews. Are you saving up your dances for some absent partner, lucky man?”
“No, Dr. Slate, I just—” Emily faltered. “Well, I’ve no knack for it, you see.”
“Well, that can be remedied, much like a chill or a fever. Perhaps you’ll allow me to judge the temperature of your dancing?” He held out his hand, but she shrugged, losing hold of the seeds as she flattened her hands in her pockets. “Come now, Miss Matthews, I’m sure there’s a cure for this. And equally sure, I might be the one to have it.”
Emily raised her eyes, and her hand. Inside something unfamiliar stirred, like pangs of early hunger before breakfast.
“I thank you, Dr. Slate,” she said, so softly he had to lean forward to hear over the music and stamping feet. “I am most inept. I shouldn’t want to shame you on the floor.”
“A highly unlikely outcome, Miss Matthews. Highly unlikely.” He took her hand and stepped onto the floor. They were immediately absorbed into the whirling crowd and he guided her skillfully, so that her steps hardly mattered. Emily laughed at her missteps. It was a short venture. The music stopped and he led her back to the bench. “May I fetch a glass of punch and sit beside you here? Watching this crowd is entertainment in itself. It’s a marvel how old Widow Jones keeps up with that young Darrell Snow! Dancing him right into the floor, she is. You wait here in the fresh air and don’t be dancing off with someone else, now.”
Emily sat rolling the seeds at the tips of her fingers until Charles returned with the punch. She drew her right hand from its hiding place and took the cup, careful not to touch his hand as she did. She was grateful for the focus of the cup. She raised her eyes at the laughter that filled the interval between the last note of the fiddle and the first of the banjo beginning another round.
Charles settled beside her on the bench, leaving space for only her hoops between them. He stretched his legs out in front with his back against the wall. Less than gentlemanly, Emily thought. He made no effort to elicit conversation. Under his breath, Charles hummed the tunes, sang a word or two, off-key.
“You’re beautiful, you know,” he said, without turning his head toward her.
Emily lowered the cup. A dark seed that had stuck to her thumb dropped into the green silk of her lap. She brushed it away, but it caught in the ruffles of her skirt.
Charles rubbed the toes of his seamless riding boots together, then planted them flat on the floor, his hands on his knees. Emily marked the neatness of his striped trousers and the cleanliness of his nails. Like my father, she thought.
“Yes, beautiful,” Charles said. “Just so you know.”
The caller announced, “Last dance.” The fiddler struck the pace. Charles stood and bowed ever so slightly.
“Good night, Miss Matthews,” he said. “I plan to have you dancing every tune. And don’t forget to plant those seeds. I’ve seen things sprout and grow even after much neglect.”
Emily blushed that he had seen, had caught her tension out, but she raised her face and said, “Yes, Dr. Slate. I expect you are correct. Good night.”
She sat a few minutes more, then rose when her father came toward her.
“Two Slate courtships with my children?” he said. “Hardly what I envisioned for either of you. However, Belinda seems to have lost interest. Erratic and flighty, that girl, even if she is your friend. I’m grateful that Will has been introduced to Lucinda Morris, who seems thoroughly solid and willing, though he doesn’t appear much cheered from the looks of his face tonight.” He offered his elbow to escort her home. “Be careful with yourself, Emily. Though he is a good doctor, I have my misgivings about Dr. Slate. I believe he may be a bit too practiced at how to put himself forward.”
* * *
A week later, Charles Slate dismounted his sorrel and handed the reins to Benjamin, who had stepped out from a nearby shed at the sound of the approaching horse. Benjamin wrapped the reins around his wide hand and smiled at the profusion of flowers arching across the doctor’s arm.
“Evening, Dr. Charles.”
“Good evening, Benjamin. A very good evening, actually.”
Benjamin’s throaty chuckle elicited an accompanying laugh from Charles, who mounted the steps two at a time and strode across the porch. The door opened before he could knock. Ginny did not widen the door nor back up to admit him.
“You guarding the tower, Ginny?”
She slapped her leg and stood back. Her narrow face broadened with infectious laughter. Charles joined in, unsure why.
“Lordy, Dr. Charles, you looking like a bride ’bout to jump the broom, all those flowers on your arm!” She slapped her leg again.
“Ah, well, Ginny.” He mocked a small curtsy. “If I have my way tonight, perhaps we shall have a bride at this threshold, but going out rather than coming in.”
Ginny clapped her long fingers over her mouth. What might have been laughter strangled into a cough when she saw Emily on the landing.
“What sort of foolishness are you two about?” Emily said, descending into the hall. She gazed at Charles with open curiosity and not a little wariness. He was dressed as he had been at the dance, with the addition of a startling green shawl-collared waistcoat. Ginny scrambled to retrieve the flowers as Charles reached to take Emily’s extended hand.
“How lovely,” Emily said, bending over the loose blossoms.
“From my mother’s garden,” he said.
“Perhaps they should go into my own mother’s vase. Ginny, will you bring some water, please.”
“Yes’m. They’re right fine, Dr. Charles. Smell good!” She emphasized the word. “Quince and daffodil and forsythia. Yes, sir, even got some early foxglove. I’ll just put them on the back porch, Miss Emily.”
“I will fetch the vase,” Emily said. “My father is in the parlor, Charles, no doubt smoking his pipe. You’ll find him there. I’ll join you in a moment.”
Charles was pleased. Now, he would have the time he needed with Emily’s father to express his hopes for marriage to her. He found Judge Matthews, as predicted, in front of the fireplace with his pipe. Charles strode across the room and offered his hand.
Though Judge Matthews took the extended hand, he was not pleased to see Charles Slate come courting. True, he wished to see Emily blossom, see her dancing, laughing, talking. See her married. But he had not counted on Charles Slate with his disreputable father and his own questionable reputation, in spite of his medical competence. Nor could the judge imagine his sons would be pleased: neither Will, who managed the plantation and shared his father’s steadfast sense of justice; nor Jeremiah, whom nothing pleased, and who lived life much the way he had entered it, angry and restless, with a burden of unnamed guilt.
The judge had concentrated his attentions on Emily in a hovering protection, attempting to heal his own grief by healing hers. He had prayed for a suitable husband, had sensed the growing interest of one or two young men of good families, only to see them reined in by fathers who vehemently opposed the judge’s antislavery stance. He had even imagined Michael Lambert for her, though the man was so much older. Instead, here was Charles Slate, wanting to court his daughter—the son of a belligerent drunk, who barely made crop on the small acreage he had inherited from a maiden aunt. Most likely, it was Adeline responsible for how the family managed. She was as much respected as her husband was scorned. Whatever had brought Adeline to Thomas, no one knew. By the time they moved to the small farm outside Greensboro, he had long since taken to drink, and she had somehow committed to making a life for herself and her children, with or without his assistance.
Adeline had done well. She had schooled the boys, sent Belinda to the Yalobusha Female Institute, where Emily met her, and had versed all three in rudimentary social graces. Charles had made a doctor, though he was as wild as the horses he rode, if the abundant rumors and the judge’s own suspicions about him were true, even in part. The younger son, Hammond, though slow and not likely to ever earn a dollar, much less a living, was good and kind in the way of simple folk. And a productive farmer to boot, thanks to Adeline’s mentoring. Then there was Belinda, full of an unruly kind of sweetness, if not strength. Will had set his heart on that girl. The judge was glad to think that union now improbable.
Yet here was Charles Slate, asking without preamble, but with courtesy, to come courting Emily. Educated and smart. Possibly a better man than the judge gave credit for. Though not landed, his profession as a doctor could secure Emily a livelihood. Charles exhibited a practiced charm the judge did not altogether trust, but which might do Emily good, bring out the cheer that had lain so long in her mother’s grave. And who else was there? As Judge Matthews thought about his motherless girl, it struck him how Charles was himself essentially a fatherless son. With quiet foreboding, he gave his permission.
* * *
As the courtship progressed, Charles and Emily sometimes strolled in the early evening down to the narrow creek near the house. She loved the soft air, cooling in the golden light, and Charles’s off-tune humming. As they walked, Emily studied him, trying to see in his face what could make him want her. More and more, as the weeks passed, she realized how little she knew him, how intimate a stranger he was to her.
“When did your family come from Ohio?” she asked.
“Oh, I was just a little boy, about three, I reckon. All pretty hard on Mama, I think. Belinda was born soon after we settled here. She was premature and they’d had another little girl who had just died. I don’t know what from. My pa inherited some land from a maiden aunt and thought there was more to be had. He didn’t have but a few acres in Ohio, just Mama’s garden, I think. Spent his time doing handiwork around the town.”
“Is he still handy?”
“Not with land. Never was that I can make out. Handy with a bottle.” Charles’s laugh had a bitter edge. “He was drinking then, Mama says, but not so much. I reckon they both thought some acreage of his own might keep him dry. Thought he might could make a farmer after all.”
Emily tried to gauge his expression.
“Well, none of that was true. The plot he inherited wasn’t much. And a good deal of the better land around was already taken up in land patents by folks like your father. Folks with slaves to work larger acreage. Well, Pa got him some land, not so much as he wanted, but more than he could work. And not enough to keep him dry.” Charles gazed up at the sky. “I doubt that much exists.”
He turned abruptly toward the house, leaving Emily staring at his back.
She caught up with him. Charles scuffed at a patch of moss with the toe of his riding boot.
“Now, don’t misunderstand me, Emily. Sometimes he was dry, early on.”
He took her arm. “But I ought to tell you something good,” he said. “See, he could whittle, loved to whittle. Kept his pocketknife real sharp. Little old thing you’d think wouldn’t cut butter. But in his hands, it was magic. He made us toys—made us whistles, Hammond and me. Out of little limbs. He’d auger out the sapwood from the center, good and hollow. Then, he’d bore a little hole and hand it to one of us to blow on. Course nothing would come out. He’d slap his knee and laugh. He had a big old, hearty laugh in spite of being a smallish man. Now laughing just puts him in a coughing fit. Well, but then he’d take the twig back and make three or four more holes, blow into it with his fingers flying and out would come a little tune. I never got the hang of it myself, but Hammond did. That’s how he started making music. Me, I never could.”
“I’ve noticed.” Emily laughed.
Charles tapped at her layered hoops.
“You wear entirely too many petticoats, Miss Matthews.”
“Indeed?” She smiled, her face tilted down in embarrassment at his forward familiarity, but with an angled glance at his laughing face.