The Seeker (20 page)

“None of my business, of course,” he said in what he hoped was a pleasant tone. “I was just a bit surprised to hear the senator would agree to change cooks. He seemed fond of Tish.”

“My dear Adam, all things change. You surely know that. Think of how our Charlotte found it necessary to make new plans after the disappointment of her broken engagement. You did know of her disappointment, didn’t you?” She pulled a sorrowful face and went on with no pause for him to answer. “And so we all find it necessary to make changes. Grayson was sinking under my husband’s misguided kindness and distracted management. That is being corrected.”

“I see.” Adam gave up on pretending politeness.

His frown seemed to make her smile more genuine. “Perhaps you do,” she said as she once more picked up the bell. “I’ll have James show you out.”

“Don’t bother,” Adam said before she could ring it. “I can find my way back to the door.”

“I daresay you can.” Her smile didn’t waver as she replaced the bell without letting it make a sound. “Would you like me to send your regards to Charlotte when next I write?”

“Certainly.
If
you write.”

“Oh, I have written her. It’s the least I can do for Charles, since he is much too busy himself to worry with such correspondence.”

She reminded him entirely too much of Phoebe, who continually arranged and ordered the lives of everybody around her, but at least he could usually believe Phoebe was driven by love to push her family to do whatever she determined was best for them. In Selena Vance, Adam glimpsed no redeeming core of love. Marriage to the senator had given her position, prestige, and power, and those were the whips she was using to bring the world around her to its knees. There would be no peace at Grayson for a long while. As Adam turned to go out, he felt a rush of gratitude that he’d never allowed himself to be caught by such a woman.

He was almost to the door when a frazzled-looking middleaged woman passed him in the hall without seeming to note or perhaps care that he was a stranger. “I have lost young Landon again. If you’ve seen a small boy of six, I would count it a great favor if you would point me in his direction.”

Adam was saved from answering by Selena’s firm voice in the dining room. “Landon Harley Black, come out from under that table at once and go do as you’re told by Miss Pennebaker. There are consequences to pay.”

As if the consequences were payment due from her instead of Landon, the unfortunate Miss Pennebaker looked near tears as she hurried on toward the dining room.

Poor Landon had little chance of ever harpooning his whales. Not with Selena calling the shots. He would be a gentleman or else. Then again, the same might have once been said about Adam’s chance of being an artist with his grandfather so set against it. Of course Adam hadn’t had the added burden of being a gentleman on his shoulders. The son of a shopkeeper and the grandson of a schoolmaster didn’t have quite as much to live up to. No Graysons in his future. Thank the merciful heavens.

And what of Charlotte’s future? She had seemed so set on coercing her young gentleman friend into marriage. As he had eavesdropped on her and Gilbey in the garden the night of the party, she had shown signs of Phoebe’s and the new Mrs. Vance’s determination to shape life to suit them. That should have been enough to make him run from any contact with her, but instead he had stepped out of the shadows to confront her. He still wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because of the innocent vulnerability he’d glimpsed behind her smile when the senator had escorted his new wife into the house. Perhaps simply because he was a man and she was a woman. He had thought to merely offer her a few kind words, but she was so lovely and her lips so inviting.

Even now as he rode away from Grayson, he could shut his eyes and bring up the exact image in his mind of how she had looked in the moonlight. Her skin soft under his touch, her eyes brimming over with fearful desire, her lips begging to be kissed. He had drawn her face many times since then, but not that image. If he kept it only in his head, then he might still convince himself that she was only another beautiful woman who had allowed him to steal a kiss from her in a weak moment. He could forget his disappointment when she pushed him away in the graveyard and assure himself that the kiss before his leave-taking the next day was nothing more than the last move in a game they had been playing with their emotions. His winning move.

But if that was true, why did he feel so much the loser now that he hadn’t found her at Grayson? He had expected her to be there. He had pictured her there, if not exactly waiting for him, at least remembering him the way he was remembering her. As some unexpected twist in the road with entrancing possibilities glimmering in the distance. Obviously her plans with young Gilbey had gone awry. Perhaps that had been a disappointment she had run from as Selena Vance had suggested. But into the direct path of the war? The senator should have known better than to let her go to Virginia where both armies were lining up to fire the first salvos of the conflict. Each thought to take the other’s capital and end the war in one brilliant maneuver.

Adam wished he had asked where in Virginia. But if Charlotte had gone to a finishing school as Landon said, Adam could find her. It wouldn’t be that much of a challenge. The challenge would be in not getting shot as a Yankee spy.

He reined in his runaway thoughts as up ahead he caught sight of the buildings of the Shaker village rising into the sky. It was better that he didn’t know where Charlotte was. He had no time to be chasing after her, no matter how she haunted his thoughts. Her father would undoubtedly send for her before the war advanced to any place near her. She wasn’t Adam’s responsibility. So what if she had touched something deep inside him that no other girl had ever even come close to touching. That didn’t mean it was something that wouldn’t fade into forgetfulness after a few months in spite of how memories of her pulled at his heart now. He had pictures to capture, and the first one was this confounded staircase Sam Johnson was so determined to have.

But since he was there, he might as well look around for more faces and scenes to draw. The next day was Sunday. Perhaps they would allow him to attend their morning meeting to observe the Shakers’ dancing worship that sounded so odd to him. Dancing had no place in the religion his grandfather had shoved down his throat. In his grandfather’s place of worship, a person sat on hard benches and listened in total silence as a dark-clad preacher threatened the Lord’s punishment on any man, woman, or child who let his thoughts wander away from the preacher’s words.

While the Lord had never sent down a lightning bolt to strike Adam down as the preacher sometimes warned might happen to those who didn’t take the message of the Lord seriously enough, Adam’s grandfather had been more than ready to pick up the rod on the Lord’s behalf to keep Adam’s spirit in check. Adam hadn’t been in a church building since he left his grandfather’s house.

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe there might be a God. The beauty of this very spring day seemed to suggest some higher power had set the world in motion. Even more than the beauty of nature, Adam couldn’t dismiss the strong belief of a man like Redmon who offered to pray for a white man he barely knew while enslaved to another white man. And the man clearly believed his prayer would be heard and attended to. Yet if that was so, why was Redmon still a slave? If what the Bible said was true and nothing was impossible with the Lord, why hadn’t that most powerful God set Redmon, a man who loved him, free?

While Adam hoped Redmon’s prayers brought him comfort, he couldn’t imagine a most high God leaning down to pay attention to any petitions he, Adam, might offer up. Perhaps the Lord had lent his ear to the first Adam in the garden or helped the disciples catch fish the way the Bible said, but a lot of years had passed since then.

And now soldiers were lining up to go to war, and on both sides men were praying to God for victory. What happened then? Wouldn’t it be better if the prayers of men of peace were answered and there was no war?

The Shakers believed in peace. They had shut out the world in order to establish a community of perfect peace. A few days immersed in their peace might be good before he had to go back east where the armies were massing and the voices of those calling for peace had been drowned out by the beat of war drums.

17

The letter from Grayson came the first week of May. Spring had spread its blooms from one end of the village at Harmony Hill to the other, but when Charlotte paused to admire the white clouds of apple blossoms in the orchard, Gemma had mildly taken her to task.

“We don’t look at the fleeting beauty of the bloom. It is the beginning of fruit that we see,” Gemma told her.

“But what is the wrong in enjoying the flowers first? Don’t you think the Lord created such beauty for the eye to behold?”

Charlotte was trying to understand the Shakers. Not because she planned to stay with them, but merely as a puzzle she needed to figure out. She had asked so many “why” questions that Sister Altha finally forbade Charlotte to speak the word in her presence. A novitiate’s place was to listen and learn and not to question why. Sister Altha said the why had been answered many years ago by Mother Ann through the visions she had received from the Eternal Father. There was no need to question the Believers’ truths given in such a sacred manner nor should one doubt the decisions of the Ministry who were even now led by Mother Ann’s precepts and spirit.

More patient with Charlotte’s questions, Gemma stared out at the blooming trees as she explained, “The beauty in anything is in its usefulness. It is wrong to celebrate beauty for beauty’s sake, but with our bees’ help, these blossoms will become apples to supply our needs for nourishment and for produce to sell to the world. That is what we celebrate. We can ever be thankful for the bounty of nature.”

But the whys still sat on Charlotte’s tongue. Why couldn’t they breathe in the beauty of the blossoms and still celebrate the apples? Why? Why? The questions circled in her head and always ended with the same ones sitting down to stay with her. Why was she still here? Why hadn’t she gone back to Grayson the way Mellie had told her she should on that first Sunday?

Perhaps she needed to forbid her mind from thinking the word
why
, for she had no answers. She had always had answers. From the time she was a small child, she’d been able to see the path of her life clearly before her, but now the path she’d been so sure of was fading from sight. Selena had taken over her beloved Grayson, and Edwin showed no inclination to return to the “world,” as the Shakers called all that lay outside the borders of their villages. He was cut from the same cloth as the most devout of the brethren.

When at last she had been able to speak with him face-to-face, she had never seen him so animated as he told her how anxious he was for his birthday in December when he would be of the proper age to officially sign the Covenant of Belief and hand over Hastings Farm to his new family. She stared at him and did not know him. Arguments rose in her mind, but she couldn’t seem to bring them to her lips with Sister Altha beside her and Elder Logan beside Edwin as they supervised their meeting.

She had been surprised when Sister Altha suggested she talk with Edwin. Charlotte hadn’t requested to do so, even though she had almost given up meeting Edwin in some unsupervised place. There were no unsupervised places at Harmony Hill. Even the shadows seemed to have eyes and ears.

Very aware of Sister Altha’s stern eyes upon her, she looked at Edwin and finally got out the weak question. “Are you sure?”

“I have never been surer of anything in my life, Charlotte.” When he forgot to call her “sister,” Sister Altha frowned and he quickly amended his words. “Sister Charlotte. The brotherly love here surrounds me until I feel as if I’m resting on a pillow of peaceful purity. This is the way the Lord wants us to live. Staying pure of worldly sins of the flesh, listening to him and working to make his way our own. Mother Ann instructed us to let such be our inheritance, our treasure, our occupation, our daily calling. Isn’t that right, Elder Logan?” He looked to the man by his side for approval. They sat in two chairs facing Charlotte and Sister Altha with a good distance between, as if even the air the brothers and sisters breathed should not be mixed.

“It is as you say, Brother. Our sister may come to know the same treasure if she bends her will and opens her heart to the teachings.” Elder Logan’s face was lined with wrinkles that seemed to speak of kindness and understanding. His hair was as white as the stones that made up the impressive exterior of the building they were in. He sat straight in the chair with his open hands resting lightly atop his knees. Edwin sat exactly the same, a head taller than the elder.

“I have often told her so in the time she has been among us,” Sister Altha put in. “Have I not, Sister Charlotte?”

“Yea,” Charlotte agreed, using the Shaker word. She was tempted to add that Sister Altha always made it sound as if it was a treasure Charlotte had scarce hope of finding, but she held her tongue. That hardly mattered, since the Shaker way was not a treasure she had ever thought to seek. It certainly wasn’t the reason she was sitting in a Shaker room looking across at Edwin, who had donned the Shaker spirit along with his Shaker clothes. The Hastings land no longer mattered to him. He had found his place among the brethren. Perhaps for the first time ever, he looked comfortable in his own skin.

Charlotte had never been one to hide from the truth. Hadn’t she knelt by her mother’s body on the garden path and looked death in the face without pretense? She had looked on her arrangement with Edwin with the same direct honesty. She had realized early on that the two of them might never share any sort of bond other than the love for their land, but she had believed that would be enough. Now she knew it was not. And yet she stayed hidden among the Shakers, waiting for some word from her father that she could come back to Grayson. She needed the loving assurance that, even with Selena attempting to push her out the door, he—her father— would always make a place for her there.