The Seeker Read online

  Charlotte had no words to say as Aunt Tish looked away at the wall as if she could see beyond it to the south where her Jonah might still be picking cotton. “But then when we got here and I saw the Massah had a mess of slaves, I had to fight powerful against the bitter gall that wanted to poison me. It still rises up to smote me at times.”

  Tears pooled in Charlotte’s eyes and dripped down her cheeks. And she felt the boy she’d seen was right to hate her. She choked out the words. “Do you hate me too, Aunt Tish?”

  “Now, now, chile. You’s like my own.” Aunt Tish laid her calloused black hands on Charlotte’s cheeks. “You knows my heart could never hate you. And that poor boy you saw wasn’t hatin’ you either. He was hatin’ how life is. And fact is, I can see it in your eyes. You’d a turned him free as you be right now if you coulda done it. That’s what you got to ’member, chile. You’d a set him free if ’n you coulda.”

  Charlotte stared at the black woman’s loving face. “But Aunt Tish, I can’t even set you free, can I?”

  “No, chile, you can’t. Not now, but maybe someday. And then I knows you’ll do the right thing by me and Mellie.”

  Charlotte hadn’t thought about the slave boy for a long time. She had blocked him from her mind, blocked it all from her mind. Things were the way they had to be. The way her mother and father had always told her they were meant to be. Why the memory came sneaking back to unsettle her thoughts on this night, she had no idea.

  Perhaps because everything was different, thrown up in the air to land who knew where. Certainly not as she’d ordered or planned. Edwin standing up to her. That artist, a man she didn’t even know, kissing her. Her own wantonness to allow such a happening. Her father lying down beside that woman in her mother’s bed. A woman young enough to perhaps bear him the son he’d always wanted. Mellie not there to unfasten her buttons. Grayson slipping out of her hands and with it the power to do that right thing by Aunt Tish and Mellie the way she had promised in her heart as she sat beside Aunt Tish at the table that day so many years ago.

  Now there were those who said the country was going to war because Lincoln seemed poised to do what she had not had courage or strength to ask her father to do already.

  5

  Charlotte was still staring in the mirror when Mellie slipped into the room to help her out of her dress. “You done had to try, didn’t you, Miss Lottie?” she fussed as she pulled the rest of the buttons loose with quick fingers.

  “I don’t like being captive to a dress.”

  Charlotte stood up to let Mellie untie the top of her hoops. They fell to the floor with a soft clatter as the silky skirt collapsed against her legs. She pulled her arms out of the sleeves and stepped out of the piles of emerald fabric. Mellie gathered up the dress quickly and spread it out on the bed before it could get too rumpled.

  “How about squeezed half in two with a corset?” Mellie said as she pulled loose the ties on Charlotte’s stays. “It ain’t no easy thing bein’ a lady. Same with that Miss Selena. She had her stays pulled so tight it took me five minutes to work the lacings loose enough to get her out of the contraption. It’s a wonder she wasn’t faintin’.”

  “I’ve heard she does at times.” Charlotte rubbed her sides and pulled in a deep breath that felt wonderful as she sat back down at the dressing table in her camisole and pantalettes. “I ain’t surprised,” Mellie said as she began pulling the pins out of Charlotte’s hair and brushing it out. “You want me to massage your feet, Miss Lottie?”

  Charlotte took the brush from Mellie and began pulling it through her hair herself as she said, “You’re every bit as tired as I am, Mellie. You need to go on to bed and massage your own feet.”

  “I didn’t have to dance with ever’ man in the state,” Mellie said, but she didn’t try to take the brush away from Charlotte. Instead she sat down on the bench at the end of Charlotte’s bed, slipped off her shoes, and held her feet out in front of her to wiggle her toes inside her black stockings. “I was watchin’. How many times did that old Mr. Robertson step on your toes?”

  “Too many.” Charlotte groaned at the memory. “But he’s always generous whenever Father needs funds for his campaigns.” “Then let that new woman your daddy brung home get her toes stepped on.”

  “I don’t want to talk about her tonight, Mellie. Please.” Charlotte put down the brush and began plaiting her red hair in a thick rope.

  “Fine with me.” Mellie stood up and pushed Charlotte’s hands aside to finish the job quickly and efficiently. “Then how about we talk about that Mr. Wade what come with them? Now, he is one fine-lookin’ gentleman. And did I hear somebody say he was paintin’ that woman’s portrait?”

  “You did, and I don’t know about gentleman.” Charlotte’s cheeks warmed at the memory of her lack of control. How could she have been so wanton?

  Mellie leaned back and eyed Charlotte in the mirror. “Sounds like you must have run up on him in your mama’s garden. I did note you looked a mite breathless when you come in from outside.”

  “Nobody can breathe with those stays squeezing your ribs in a vice.” Charlotte pointed toward the corset she’d shed moments before.

  “Then it didn’t have naught to do with Mr. Edwin chasin’ in like some storm had hit out there and then you runnin’ in all aflush some minutes later followed by that painter feller with a grin like as how he’d just eat the last of Mammy’s dried apple tarts.”

  “You see entirely too much,” Charlotte said.

  “What else I got to do but look, and you know you like hearin’ about what I see. Like that Janie Preston. You’d think that girl would figure out yellow makes her look like yesterday’s leftover gravy, but it didn’t seem to bother Mr. Matthew. I think he’s about to get caught.” Mellie was always a fountain of information after any party on who was making eyes at who or which men were plotting political alliances. “’Course tonight most all the young ladies were findin’ ways to sashay up to that new man. The ‘no gentleman’ from the garden.”

  “He’s famous,” Charlotte stared down at her hands. “Has illustrations in Harper’s Weekly all the time.”

  “You don’t say? On top of bein’ so fine lookin’.” Mellie tied off Charlotte’s braid and sat back down on the bench. She folded her white apron in pleats for a minute before she said, “Fact of the matter is, you might not be the only one the likes of him is gonna cause trouble for.”

  “What do you mean, trouble?” Charlotte turned on the dressing table stool to study Mellie.

  “I kept my eyes down, Miss Lottie. I swear I did. I didn’t even take a peek up at him, but he talked to me.” Mellie glanced up at her and then down at the pleats she was folding and unfolding with nervous fingers. “I mean like I was a person. Not a slave. Like you talk to me. Like I matter.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked me if I liked it here. Like I was one of the party ladies instead of a servant there holdin’ a tray of tarts.” Mellie reached up and yanked off the cap she’d been wearing for the party and ran her hand through her black curls. “I didn’t know what to say—he just stood there till I had to say somethin’.”

  “And did you tell him you liked it here?” Charlotte kept her eyes on Mellie’s face, but she was seeing the boy on the block again. She held her breath as she waited for Mellie’s answer.

  Mellie didn’t look at Charlotte. Instead she stared at the flickering light of the gas lamp beside the door for a moment before she said, “You know I wouldn’t want to be nowhere ’cept with you and Mammy. But . . .” She let her voice trail off as she looked back down at her apron and began folding it in pleats again.

  “But what?” Charlotte reached over and touched Mellie’s arm. “You know you don’t have to worry about what you say to me. I want you to talk to me.”

  Mellie finally looked straight at Charlotte. Her dark brown eyes looked sad. “I do know that, Miss Lottie. Mammy says that’s part of my problem. How you’ve been more sister than mistr
ess. Mammy says it’s give me ideas I might be better off forgettin’ about. That slave girls ain’t supposed to know how to read like you taught me. And I taught Mammy. She says I’d best never be lettin’ on about none of that. Or lettin’ myself fall in love with no long-legged field hand. She understands how I might want to, bein’ all of twenty now, but she says that would set my feet on a sure path to sorrow.”

  Charlotte searched for something to say to make Mellie feel better, but nothing came to mind. There was truth in what Mellie said. They sat there in silence a minute before Mellie went on.

  “But not ever knowin’ about lovin’, that’s reason for sorrow too, ain’t it, Miss Lottie?”

  Finally Charlotte said, “I don’t know, Mellie.”

  Mellie shook her head as her mouth hardened into a thin line. “You speakin’ the truth there, Miss Lottie. That’s sorrow you gonna know too if you settle on Mr. Edwin. There ain’t never gonna be no lovin’ between the two of you. It ain’t in the man.” She stood up and carefully gathered up the dress. “You sure did look pretty tonight,” she said as she hung the dress on a padded hanger in the wardrobe. She laid out Charlotte’s nightgown before she started toward the door. “If you don’t need nothin’ else then.”

  “Wait, Mellie.” Charlotte stopped her before she could turn the knob.

  Mellie looked back at her, ready to do whatever she asked. Her training from childhood on. Take care of Miss Lottie. Charlotte was relieved to see no hint of the hate she remembered in the slave boy’s eyes, but she could still see the sorrow there like the glint off water down a deep well. “Did you ever think maybe love is glorified too much?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Lottie. Could be won’t neither one of us ever find out for sure unless’n we try it for ourselves. But the Good Book that Mammy is always after me to read speaks highly of it.”

  “But that’s love for God. Or for your neighbor. Not love between a man and a woman.”

  “He made Eve for Adam and told them to have babies. He put the want to for that kind of love in a body’s heart too. And you know if you’ll think on it, there ain’t all that much difference between folks no matter what color their faces is when it comes to thinkin’ on love. That’s how come Mammy still looks to the south and wonders about my daddy even all these years after they carried him off.”

  Charlotte shifted uneasily on the dressing table stool. Of course she’d thought about being in love the way Mellie meant. Her imagination had tingled as she read great love stories, but real life didn’t often mirror the fantasy of stories. In real life a person had to be practical. A person had to do what was expected. She looked at Mellie and sighed a little before she said, “I guess I’ve always thought there were more important things than love. The kind of love you’re talking about.”

  Mellie’s face softened. “That might be a good thing if you stay fixed on Mr. Edwin. I heard him talkin’ last night. About goin’ to them Shakers what don’t think the Lord intended no Adam and Eve lovin’ the way I’m thinkin’ on it.”

  “I know. Everything’s turned upside down tonight. Everything.”

  “You’ll figure it out, Miss Lottie. You just need to get some sleep so’s your head can think up the ways. Come mornin’ you’ll find a way to turn things back right.”

  Come morning. Charlotte echoed Mellie’s words in her head as she pulled on her nightgown and crawled under the covers Mellie had turned back for her. And she did always find a way. This wouldn’t be any different. She could turn things back right. Come morning.

  But the morning sun didn’t ease Charlotte’s worries. For the first time in her memory, she felt out of place in her own house as she got out of bed and dressed for the day. Mellie had slipped in while she slept and filled her pitcher and washing bowl and laid out her clothes, but she’d probably been ordered to the new Mrs. Vance’s aid.

  Charlotte ran her hands along the cherry banister as if absorbing the familiar feel of it as she went down the stairs. She loved Grayson. She knew every corner, every floorboard squeak, every angle of sunlight through the windows. It was her house, warm and loving and home. But now a stranger was going to be climbing Grayson’s stairs and inspecting all the rooms and wardrobes not as a guest but with permanence in her step.

  Plus the other stranger, the artist, was somewhere under the roof. She might turn a corner, open a door, and encounter him face-to-face at any moment with the truth of her shamelessly allowing him to kiss her vibrating in the air between them. So it was a relief when she went into the kitchen and Aunt Tish told her the man had been up at first light and gone from the house as the sun was rising.

  “But he’d best be back here by half past noon or it’ll be his head,” Aunt Tish added with raised eyebrows as she looked up from taking three of the leftover dried apple tarts out of the warming oven and arranging them on a plate for Charlotte. “Miss V done been askin’ where he be when I carried a tray of coffee up to her and the Massah. She done told your papa in my hearin’ that he’d best be tellin’ that man he weren’t to go off paintin’ some lowdown field hand’s face instead of her own. Like as how such might spoil the man’s brush.”

  “Unless I miss my guess, Mr. Wade will be painting whatever 49 he likes,” Charlotte said as she sat down at the table. She always ate breakfast in Aunt Tish’s kitchen when her father wasn’t at Grayson, and this morning he’d hardly note her absence with Selena filling his eyes. She liked it in the kitchen with the bacon sizzling in the skillet and the pots boiling on the stove. To Charlotte, it felt like the center of Grayson, where she could see the whole of whatever might be happening.

  “Here you are, Miss Lottie. I saved you the ones with the most apples.” Aunt Tish set the plate of sweet tarts in front of Charlotte and poured them both a cup of tea. She wiped her face with her apron, but Charlotte saw the smile that sneaked up from her lips to her eyes.

  “Sit down and tell me what’s so funny.”

  Aunt Tish lowered herself into the chair opposite Charlotte with a little groan. She’d put on a few extra pounds around her middle over the last years and had trouble with rheumatism in her back. “That Mr. Wade, he ain’t doing nothin’ with a brush.”

  “How do you know that?” Charlotte peered at her over the rim of her cup.

  “He done been in here drawin’ the likes of me. Can you believe that? Had this great big pad of paper and some pencil sticks. Had me sit right here while he sat there wheres you are. Stared holes plum’ through me, and when I looked down ’fore I got in a mess a trouble for starin’ bold at his white face, told me to keep lookin’ at him. You shoulda seen how he moved his hand fast as anythin’ over that paper.” A look of wonder came over Aunt Tish’s face as she drew quick lines on the tabletop with her fingertip. “Then he turned over the page and did it all ag’in.”

  “Did he show you what he drew?” Charlotte was wishing more and more that the kiss in the garden had never happened. Adam Wade sounded like someone she might enjoy getting to know better, but she could hardly stay in his company now without him thinking she was chasing shamelessly after him.

  “He done better than that. He give me one of ’em.” Aunt Tish reached under her apron to pull a folded sheet of paper out of a hidden pocket. “I hated to fold it up, but I couldn’t leave it layin’ out where anybody might see it.” She smoothed it out on the table between them.

  Aunt Tish stared up at Charlotte from the paper as if Adam Wade had lifted the likeness of her face out of a mirror. And while the sketch was bare bones, just a few lines, there was more to it than just the image of Aunt Tish. In those few strokes he had captured a look in her eyes. One Charlotte had seen often enough herself when Aunt Tish stood out on the back steps and looked beyond at the horizon.

  “And he did this in just a few minutes?”

  “Ten, fifteen at the most.” Aunt Tish lightly rubbed her flat palm over the paper. “He caught me, didn’t he now?”

  “He did.” She thought of him measuring her face with his
thumb and fingers the night before, and she wondered what the sketch would have shown about her if he’d drawn the lines. Maybe she was just as glad he hadn’t had a pencil in his hand. “I think there are some old frames up in the attic if you want to get Mellie to climb up there and look for one.”

  “I might just do that,” Aunt Tish said as she folded up the paper to slide back in her pocket with great care.

  “Where is he now? Do you know?” Charlotte asked before she bit into one of the tarts.

  “That weren’t none of my bus’ness.” Aunt Tish stood up to fork the bacon out of the pan.

  Charlotte eyed her broad back. “But you know.”

  Aunt Tish didn’t say anything for a long moment as she stirred a pot of grits and lifted the lid on the coffeepot. Charlotte didn’t ask her again. She just waited, and finally as if Aunt Tish could feel Charlotte’s eyes on her, she sighed and turned around. “I don’t know if’n that’s where he really went or why he would want to.” She hesitated again.

  Charlotte lifted her shoulders in a show of unconcern. “It doesn’t really matter to me where he went. I was simply curious about what he might be sketching next.”

  “Uh-huh,” Aunt Tish said with one peaked eyebrow that showed she was seeing right through what Charlotte was saying. “Looks to me like as how he done caught your eye. Guess that’s why it’s so odd him askin’ the way to Mr. Edwin’s place.” “Edwin’s?” Charlotte didn’t even attempt to hide her surprise. She shifted uneasily in her chair. He’d promised not to kiss and tell.

  “I couldn’t figure him wantin’ to be drawin’ Mr. Edwin’s long skinny face, but then I couldn’t figure him wantin’ to draw my round black one neither. I overheared him talkin’ to Willis as he was leavin’. He was wantin’ a horse. Course when Willis come in later for his breakfast, he was tellin’ how the man was full of questions on how to get to the Shakers’ town too. Askin’ all manner of questions about what Willis knew about them and the way they lived and such.”