one

Five years later
June 1, 1870
Oxford, Mississippi

What a waste, Aurora reflected, that the most brilliant, extravagantly beautiful woman below the Mason-Dixon line lacked the sense to come in out of the rain.

Irritated, she eyed her sister Joelle, who stood in front of a full-length mirror, reading the ingredients of a receipt for calamine lotion she’d picked up at the pharmacy. With her chin-length red-gold hair caught up at the sides with ivory combs, cheekbones like a Botticelli angel, and full lips pursed, she could have been posing for an illustration in Godey’s Lady’s Book.

“It was such a shame about the fire over at Daughtry House.” Mrs. Clancy, the bridal shop couturier, buzzed around, twitching at the lace, ribbons, and ruffles adorning the massive white skirt of the dress Joelle had reluctantly agreed to try on. “Especially after y’all had just had such a lovely house party with the Forrests and the opera singer—what was her name? Delfina Fabulous or something like that? Weren’t you all just scared to death? And I could hardly believe my dear friend Mrs. Scully’s husband—that would be Mr. Scully, you know—was involved in the tragedy of your father’s death, God rest his soul. Poor Mrs. Scully having to keep her head up, with her husband charged with . . . something. What was it? Arson? Train sabotage?”

Aurora did her best to ignore the woman’s gossip. Maybe a shopping trip so soon after all the traumatic events of the spring had not been such a good idea.

“I’m going to get Wyatt to mix this up for me when I get home.” As Joelle stuffed the leaflet into the front of the dress, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and gasped. “Pete! Have you lost your mind?”

Joelle’s horrified use of her childhood nickname jerked Aurora back to the subject at hand. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

Joelle grabbed the front of the dress. “I’m not wearing this monstrosity! I look like an unbaked lemon meringue pie! Schuyler would hurt himself laughing.”

If pressed, Aurora would confess to some doubt as to the likelihood of the dress passing down Tupelo Methodist Church’s center aisle without knocking someone’s eye out. But one should never concede wholesale in a battle of wedding fashion. She reached up to jerk the cap sleeves off Joelle’s creamy shoulders. “You’re right. It is entirely too conservative.”

Mrs. Clancy gave Aurora a doubtful look. “Miss Joelle is already exposing a significant amount of décolletage. Are you sure—”

“I’m sure this is not the right dress.” Aurora moved her hands, mimicking Joelle’s tall, hourglass shape. “Haven’t you anything that clings more to the body?”

Joelle yanked the sleeves back up. “I do not plan to expose any décolletage at all. And the shape of my body is nobody’s business but mine—and eventually Schuyler’s,” she added with a smug glance at the sapphire adorning her ring finger.

Aurora laughed. At least the goddess had a sense of humor. “Touché. But we came all this way to—”

“—to see our lawyer,” Joelle said, with one of her whiplash reversions to pragmatism. “You dragged me in here against my will.”

Aurora sighed. What was the use of looking like a mermaid out of a fairy tale if one refused to take advantage of it on the most important day of her life? “All right, all right. Let’s collect Sky from the music store and go up to see Mr. Greene.” She gave the proprietress an apologetic look. “I’ll talk to her and bring her back when—”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Clancy,” Joelle said sweetly, “but we won’t be back. I promised my dear friend Charmion that she could make my wedding dress.” She dipped a curtsey. “Thank you for your time. You have a lovely shop, and I’ll be happy to send you any business it’s in my power to influence. I’m going to change now.” With a vague flutter of her hand, she darted into the changing room before Aurora could argue.

Exchanging a harassed look with the dressmaker, Aurora hustled after her sister.

Already skinned out of the wedding dress, which had been kicked into a giant pile of fabric in the corner, Joelle looked up from straightening her stockings. “You’re not going to make me go back in there, are you?”

The idea that she, the youngest and smallest of the three Daughtry sisters, wielded any influence at all over her elders continued to secretly astonish and gratify Aurora. “If you promise to let me go with you to choose the fabric for your wedding dress.”

Joelle dropped her simple blue-print dress over her head and began to do up buttons. “You do have good taste. Though I warn you, I’m not baring my cleavage, even in the interest of high fashion.”

“Consider me schooled, Miss Daughtry.” Shaking her head with a smile, Aurora helped her sister finish dressing.

As they bid good day to Mrs. Clancy and left the shop, Aurora looked regretfully over her shoulder. She’d been looking forward to shopping in Oxford, a much bigger town than poky little Tupelo. She hadn’t been back to Memphis since early April, and though she didn’t precisely miss Grandmama’s constant interference, rural life had become rather slow of late. Ah well. Maybe she could come back another day. She skipped to keep up with Joelle’s long stride. “What do you think Mr. Greene has to say?”

At Aurora’s breathless tone, Joelle blinked and looked down at her. “Sorry, Pete.” Slowing her pace, Joelle let Aurora catch up. “I’ve no idea, but he’s not going to be happy that we came without Selah.”

The girls’ visit to Oxford today resulted from a very peculiar and cryptic telegraph they’d received three days ago from the family lawyer, requesting that they call on him at their earliest convenience, as he had some news of interest to the entire family that he wanted to impart in person.

Their older sister would normally have been the designated representative, but Selah had been feeling poorly, and Levi Riggins, her husband of barely six weeks, balked at putting her on a train. Joelle, next in line, flatly refused to go anywhere without Schuyler Beaumont, to whom she had become affianced two weeks ago, and who followed her about like a lost puppy. However, his unchaperoned escort would be inappropriate until the two of them were actually married, so Aurora had volunteered to go along, braving the half-day trip by train from Tupelo to Oxford in hopes of luring Joelle into the mercantile for fittings.

A hollow victory, as it turned out. Since becoming a schoolmarm and an engaged woman (twice in one month, of all things, to two different men), Joelle had developed an alarming tendency toward stubbornness and keen observation. It was getting harder and harder for Aurora to coax her formerly absentminded sister to fall in with her excellent plans.

With a mixture of exasperation and affection, Aurora glanced up at Joelle’s serene, flawless profile. During those long years of separation during the war, while Papa was away in the Confederate army, Aurora had resided in Memphis with her grandparents—for her own safety, they said. Meanwhile, Joelle and Selah had been permitted to stay with their mother at Ithaca Plantation. Oh, how she had longed for her sisters’ company.

Now even she recognized the irony that their reunion for the purpose of holding on to the family property had resulted in both her sisters finding the love of a lifetime and ultimately going their own ways. Against all odds, at the advanced age of twenty-seven, Selah had married a Yankee-born Pinkerton detective, while Joelle had jilted the preacher and snared the heart of their longtime family friend and business partner.

Aurora didn’t begrudge them their happiness, but when the excitement of Joelle and Schuyler’s wedding passed, she would be left alone. Again.

Well, so be it. She had always been capable of creating her own fun. She would just have to work for it a little harder than before. Grandmama or no Grandmama.

They quickly reached a store with big plate-glass windows, lettered J. A. SPENCER, FINE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND PIANO TUNING. Schuyler had elected to pass the time with the large, friendly family of Justice of the Peace Spencer, while Aurora and Joelle went to the bridal shop. (“I assure you, Schuyler, you have no interest in this procedure,” Aurora had informed him when he asked plaintively why he couldn’t come along. “Your part is over, until you see Joelle coming down the aisle.”) Now she braced herself for the inevitable saccharine outpouring that ensued whenever Schuyler and Joelle had been apart for more than ten minutes. It was enough to give one a toothache. Hopefully, the spooning would dissolve into the normal rhythms of their previous bantering relationship.

As she opened the door, Aurora was bombarded by a brassy wall of music, overlaid by a couple of flutes and clarinets, with percussion clunking along underneath. Following the cacophony to the back of the store, she found the community wind ensemble in its weekly rehearsal, conducted by Mr. Spencer himself. Schuyler, never one for sitting still when there was noise to be made or mischief afoot, had confiscated a bass drum and mallet and joined in. With little regard for tempo and less for dynamic sensitivity, he whaled away at the drum as if it had committed some heinous sin. Though he was clearly having a grand time, the second he saw Joelle, he dropped the mallet and went for her.

Rolling her eyes, Aurora waved at Mr. Spencer and headed for the stairs. Shortly she found herself at a second-floor landing in front of a brass doorplate etched with D. VAUGHAN GREENE, ESQ. When her knock was answered by a deep, firm “Enter, please,” she turned the knob and pushed open the door.

“Mr. Greene?” She smiled at the genial, well-dressed gentleman who rose to greet her. “I’m Aurora Daughtry.”

“Miss Daughtry! How nice to meet you.” The lawyer covered a startled glance by hurrying to pull a chair out and indicating that she should sit. “I was, er, expecting Miss Selah—or rather, Mrs. Riggins. She has been the one to handle our business dealings in the past.”

“Yes, I know.” Aurora folded her hands in her lap and tucked her feet under her dress as her grandmother had taught her to do during the course of many agonizing deportment lessons. “Selah wasn’t feeling up to traveling, so Joelle and I came in her stead. I assure you, I have both the intellect and the authority to deal with whatever information has come to light.”

“Forgive the question, but have you reached your majority, Miss Aurora? Perhaps we should wait until Miss Joelle has joined us.”

Aurora bit her lip. The poor man was staring at her in bemused embarrassment, as if he might offer her a box to sit upon. “Well, here’s the thing. Joelle is extremely bright, of course, but she couldn’t care less about money or legal obligations, and she’d go off into a brown study the minute she sat down. At the end we’d have to repeat for her everything that was said anyway. So it’s best if you and I take care of things, then I can tell her what we decided.”

Greene’s florid face became even redder as he mopped a handkerchief across his high forehead. “My dear, I didn’t mean to be insulting. It’s just that you look so—”

“—young, I know,” she finished with a grin. “I’m aware that I come in a small package, and the dimples are somewhat deceptive, but I am fully nineteen years old and quit playing with dolls some time ago. I have a letter from Selah, if it will make you feel better.” She produced the document from her reticule and passed it to the lawyer across his desk.

He took it and cast a skeptical eye over Selah’s neat script, his expression relaxing by a fraction. “I see.” He cleared his throat and looked up at Aurora. “That is, I do apologize for my initial hesitation. You understand that I am bound to be very careful—”

“Never mind, Mr. Greene, I am completely unoffended. And as you can see, even Selah agrees that Joelle won’t have much to contribute to the conversation—she’s downstairs with the musical people, much more to her interest, I assure you—so let’s you and I deal with whatever this mysterious business is, and I’ll be, as they say, out of your—” She caught herself, noticing that Mr. Greene looked a bit glassy-eyed. Grandmama was forever telling her that she spouted more words in thirty seconds than most people used in a day. “Never mind. Please. Carry on.”

Folding Selah’s letter, the attorney nodded. “Very well. I’m happy to hear from your sister’s hand that your business arrangement with Mr. Beaumont is about to be altered slightly by his marriage to Miss Joelle. I will consult with your grandfather to make sure the Daughtry interests are protected, particularly yours. With your two older sisters joining their thirds of the property to their husbands’ holdings, I strongly advise that you continue to invest your share of the earnings so as to provide a stable income.”

Aurora nodded, restraining herself from burbling further.

Greene rewarded her with an approving smile. “All right. With that said, let me come right out with it. I needed to inform you and your sisters of some property your father owned in town.”

Aurora waited. When the lawyer sat back as if he had nothing further to add to that bald statement, she said, “Mr. Greene, my father has been dead for over two months. We thought he was dead long before that—in fact, the plantation came into our possession five years ago. Why is this just now coming to light?”

Greene removed his spectacles and polished the lenses vigorously with his handkerchief. “This property is somewhat different in nature than a plantation. It’s more of a . . . business.”

“A business? What kind of business?”

Greene mumbled something.

“Excuse me,” Aurora said. “It sounded like you said ‘saloon.’”

The glasses resumed their perch upon Mr. Greene’s eagle nose. He sighed. “I did.”

Aurora blinked. “Well, it’s not a crime to own a saloon, though I understand why he wouldn’t want my mother to know about it. But I can’t say I’m surprised. Papa was a complex man, and everybody knows he liked both earning and spending money. What I don’t understand is why the existence of this business has been kept from us, when we’ve been struggling with the debt on the plantation all these years. Presumably the saloon has been earning a profit, no?”

Evidently taken aback by her willingness—and perhaps her unladylike ability—to discuss commerce in such frank terms, Greene stared at her. “As a matter of fact, it was quite lucrative. But to keep you girls and your mother away from the somewhat shady nature of the Dogwood—”

“The Dogwood?” Aurora said. “That’s the one across from the train station, the first thing you see when you come into town. No wonder it’s lucrative.”

“Yes. That’s the one.” The leather chair squeaked as Greene shifted. “Anyway, your father was a silent partner in a rather convoluted arrangement with Romulus Oglesby. Oglesby took complete ownership when your father died.”

“Well, then why—”

“Let me finish, Miss Aurora. Perhaps you knew that Mr. Oglesby has recently passed to his reward?”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I’ve spent most of my growing-up years in Memphis. This is the first I’ve heard of his existence.”

“Fair enough,” Greene said, “though I imagine the male members of your household would be conversant with his name. In any case, he died without issue, and as I represented him as well as your father in the terms of their partnership, it devolves to me to inform you that, according to Mr. Oglesby’s last will and testament, you and your sisters are joint heirs to the Dogwood.”

“So Selah and Joelle and I own a saloon.” Aurora contemplated all the implications of that fact for a moment, then began to giggle. “Grandmama is going to have a hissy!”