For a Noble Purpose, page 2
part #1 of Larksong Legacy Series
From that moment, Sarah considered Martha a sister even though they didn’t share the same skin. Only a sister would be invited out to Sarah’s special spot in the fields. Only a sister would be allowed to stare at the stars and dream the same dreams.
“What’ya gonna name your babies?” Martha had asked.
Sarah remembered the names she chose, each stitched on a sampler in her hope chest and which she hoped one day would go forgotten. Besides Martha, only Linden, Sarah’s first husband, had known and approved of every one. She had wanted that life with him. The life of the white-washed farmhouse and the rounded belly, the baby nestled in her arms. It made no difference now what she wanted to name her babies. There would never be any babies to name.
The swell of violin strings brought another round of gentle applause. Sarah saw Mr. Whitticomb watching her from across the floor, ready to return to his rightful place. Face-to-face once again with reality.
She managed a perfect curtsy to match Mr. Lark’s bow. As they righted, he offered her his elbow, looking to guide her hand into the crook of his arm and lead her off the dance floor. Although it was the social convention, it was not proper for a stranger to do while her husband looked on.
Unless he assumed her husband’s presence to be immaterial.
But of course, he did. There was always another covetous man around the corner, one who didn’t believe in curses, only padded pocketbooks.
“You insult me with your assumptions,” she hissed. She yanked her hand from his and his smile wavered.
“My assumption was to lead you from the floor then hand you over to your husband. What is it I was supposed to assume?”
Perhaps he doesn’t know, she thought, reining herself in before she made a scene. If so, he was the only person who didn’t. She could suddenly hear the whispers all around them. Their accusations, their wonderments. She had an alibi for every one of her husbands’ deaths, but somehow she remained responsible all the same. The sinister spinster. The unnatural beauty who not only broke but also stopped each beating heart.
A lady sniggered somewhere nearby, her words close enough to be whispered yet loud enough to sink right into Sarah’s heart. “Already lining up the next while this one’s still warm. Has she no shame?”
Mr. Lark removed himself another step, drawing a hand behind his back with a nod. “I see I have overstepped a boundary. I was unaware. My most gracious apologies.”
The violin bows slid across their strings, swelling into another number, and her husband was there again, taking her in his arms in time to the melody. She looked for Mr. Lark, but he was already striding off the dance floor. The makeshift floorboards slightly buckled in spots where the nails had popped loose.
“Is everything well, my dear?” Mr. Whitticomb asked.
For the hundredth time that evening, she forced a smile and met his gaze. “Yes, of course. Everything is fine.”
Jackson Wittcomb’s hazel eyes were so very lovely. It really was such a shame he had to die.
2
T
obias stepped off the dance floor, sorely tempted to reach up and scratch his head at the bride’s odd behavior. One minute she was heart-stopping smiles and the next she accused him of…what, exactly? An assumption? Clearly, she must be harboring an inner conflict he knew nothing about, even though he nursed his own inner conflicts often enough.
While she hadn’t made him assume anything untoward, she certainly could make him want to. Between her golden curls and the touch of hazel within her striking green eyes, she could lead him anywhere.
No, not anywhere. Harness the horses, Tobias. He already had a path set and it led to Washington Territory. His time with her had been an innocent dance. It was a way to distract the other guests from noticing his brother, Garrett, taking mental inventory of the populace—and hopefully discovering the next recruit for their wagon party.
Garrett had wandered over to the refreshment table and was now speaking to a colored woman in a maid’s outfit, no doubt one of the plantation servants. Garrett never could resist a pretty woman, no matter her station. It had earned him a fair share of their father’s verbal—and physical—reprimands over his twenty-eight years and too many words of caution from all four of his brothers. Which could be why he continued to do it.
Tobias sighed. Right now, they should have been floating the Missouri River to their jumping-off point in Independence, Missouri if not for Garrett insisting they sidetrack through Hawthorn Ridge. It was always a no-win situation when his brother had a feeling about going somewhere. Garrett might be the next closest in age to Tobias’s thirty years, but he was also the most hotheaded and likely to do some fool thing.
To appease Garrett, he had agreed to send their second youngest brother, twenty-six-year-old Jamison, ahead to the steamboat with the rest of the wagon party. Meanwhile, Tobias, Garrett, and their youngest brother, twenty-year-old Cade, continued to Hawthorn Ridge on horseback. Not being one for social situations, Cade had volunteered to keep watch over camp while his brothers searched for their latest recruit.
Tobias scanned the surrounding area again. Maybe he could locate their target on his own, if only he knew the tell-tale signs like Garrett did. Most of the guests were either dancing across the pine-plank floor or mingling along the perimeter. Dining tables, which had lined the space when they first arrived, were now being carried out by several servants, while others offered guests finger pastries on silver trays. Even without the substantial gardens of the Southern plantations, there were flowers in abundance, too many for this area in late April. Probably imported from the docks in St. Louis, shipping up on the steamboats from New Orleans. Tobias swiped a glass from a passing servant and a white iced cake, popping the entire cube into his mouth as he circled the edge of the dance floor.
So much finery. So much frippery. Even here, a thousand miles from Charleston, he was still suffocated by it. He couldn’t wait to get to Washington Territory, where he hoped there wouldn’t be a yard of lace or silver-topped cane to be found.
The bride was probably like all other plantation ladies, obsessed with herself, flawless with her rosy expression and delicate gloved hands. Never worked hard a day in her life or felt the sun break upon her beautiful face.
Yes, she was beautiful—stunning in blue—that much he would easily admit. Her husband had certainly found a proper jewel to parade before his friends. Their children would be the sapphires and rubies of Hawthorn Ridge.
Despite Tobias’s own lavish upbringing, a life of luxury wasn’t one he had ever aspired to. He did sometimes wonder, however, what it would be like to have a life so utterly dull as he imagined the bride and groom were bound to share. They were both ordinary and destined to lead ordinary lives. Tobias, on the other hand, had never had an ordinary life.
“You’re doing it again,” Garrett said, unexpectedly beside him, a glass of red wine in his right hand. Ten yards or so behind him, the maid handed another glass to the next guest, her lashes downturned.
Tobias had been so caught up in his own turn of thought—a common issue for him—he hadn’t noticed when his brother appeared. “What do you mean?” he asked.
Garrett nodded to Tobias’s hands where he held a collection of grass stems half-braided. His nervous twitch was in full force tonight. He hadn’t remembered collecting the long prairie blades, his hands always eager to create even when he didn’t tell them to do so. It made him more resourceful, able to build and whittle and manufacture in half the time it took other people, if they were able to construct them at all.
One summer back in Charleston, a rogue abolitionist snuck onto their plantation and burned down half the slave quarters. When their father threatened to sell the slaves to pay for the damages, Tobias took to the countryside, chopping timber by hand and building better quarters than before. He had help, of course, but he could haul and assemble one wall alone in the same time it took three men to finish the same.
It was the same as Garrett’s knack for finding people, those feelings which guided him, often without solid intent. He didn’t require a map or compass either; only his inner navigation. From Charleston to St. Louis, he had located forty-five wagons worth of folks who also saw Washington as an ideal refuge. Those hoping for a better life—slaves longing for freedom, families tired of injustice, men searching for companionship—the misbegotten, misunderstood, or just plain miserable. Forty-five wagons, yet never one soul who shared the Lark brothers’ particular talents. Or at least none whose Gifts could be easily recognized.
It was how their father liked to refer to their unusual abilities: “Gifts.” With a capital G, never lower-case, as though what they had could be reduced to a common noun. Gifts were the Lark family legacy, passed down from father to son, to show superiority to everyone else. Superior to women, superior to blacks, to Indians, and the low downtrodden families in Charleston’s gutters. It was tripe which only Alonzo Lark believed, and it was a wonder any of his sons escaped his poisoned mind. It was only due to their mother’s influence that they developed any principles at all, for their father had few in every way.
Of course, some brothers developed a stronger sense of morality than others. Jamison had chosen to study God’s word while Garrett, on the other hand—
“I saw you dancing with the bride.” Garrett interrupted. “You told me we weren’t allowed to speak to anyone unless spoken to.”
Distracted again. The grass braid in his hand was now a fully formed crown, long blades knotted tightly to act as gemstones. He crumbled it into a ball before shoving it in his jacket pocket. “Yes, a request you clearly ignored. I saw you not two minutes ago conversing with that servant.” He pointed toward the maid in question.
“Yes, precisely. A servant. She is no danger to us.”
“And the bride is?”
The beauty danced twenty yards away, her blue skirt swirling, her husband gazing upon her like she was the edge of magnificence. Garrett swallowed the rest of his drink, handed his glass to a servant in the shadows, and returned to his somber stance. “That’s the Widow Walcott,” he hissed. “They say she kills her husbands.”
“What?”
“It’s true. She’s been cursed with six dead husbands, always widowed before the wedding night. People are placing bets on when this one will die.”
That woman? A murderer? Although, it would account for some of her strange behavior. Tobias looked back at his brother. “Who told you this?”
“Practically everyone. Her servant confirmed it.”
Could this woman be the aim of Garrett’s Gift? Tobias wondered. Six husbands dead wasn’t particularly unusual, although it was a number higher than most. Men died all the time of hundreds of different ailments and young widows often remarried quickly. The Widow Walcott could have a knack for choosing clumsy husbands or those prone to illness, if not for one small detail. All of them died before the wedding night. A fact that didn’t make much sense unless she was murdering them. But if everyone knew this, then why wasn’t she in jail? And why go to the hassle of planning a wedding only to kill your husband after the ceremony? That wasn’t even enough time to draw a new will or receive financial benefit upon his demise. Surely, any remaining funds would be channeled back to her husband’s next of kin.
Unless…
The gears in his mind began turning as quickly as his fingers liked to tinker. What if she was actually…
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Garrett broke into his thoughts. He spun Tobias around so his back was to the dance floor and the bride. He gave his brother a shake. “We have to meet the wagon train in three days. We’re only here to find our latest recruit and leave. Not to fall in love with a married woman.”
“Lighten your load, Garrett. No one’s falling in love here. It was only a dance.”
“A dance with a side of your usual irrational hope. I know what you’re thinking and as always, you’re wrong.”
Tobias strained a smile. “You cannot possibly know what I am thinking.”
“You’re wondering if she’s Gifted.”
Oh. Perhaps Garrett could tell what he was thinking.
“Tobias, you know women cannot carry the trait. Didn’t father say that more than almost anything else?”
Their father had said it, many times. The tale of the shipwreck Oblique became the solitary way in which Alonzo Lark bonded with his sons. “Never forget that these Gifts belong to you and you alone,” he told them. “There were others in the beginning, seven who survived the restless waves on the Northwestern seas. They were the first sons of the Gifted, granted spectacular abilities which changed their legacies forever. If not for stupidity and spite, they could have conquered the world. They thought too far beyond their strengths and, one by one, it led to their downfall. One-hundred-and-fifty years later, the Lark sons are all who remain.”
Until the day he died, Alonzo Lark maintained his insistence that their family were the only Gifted still alive. Tobias had allowed him to live in his beliefs while ever hopeful that one day, they would find another like them. The day he could finally prove his father wrong. After all, he and his brothers were the only people alive who could argue with their father and win.
Outside of their family, no one thought of their father’s persuasive Gift as anything unnatural. The Charleston populace assumed his influence stemmed from his charismatic personality. Despite drawing roots from a meager home, Father spoke as eloquently as a man drawn straight from the gentry. Whether he addressed a single man or an audience, they always listened and agreed. It was how he amassed his fortune. How he purchased Larksong Plantation at only twenty-two. How he acquired over a hundred slaves within the first two years of rice farming and another hundred in the more profitable cotton fields by the age of thirty. He asked and he was given. “Like Jesus,” he would joke. It was blasphemy and no one laughed, especially not Jamison. Only their mother, for she had no other choice. She was merely a convenient way to pass along the Gifts to Alonzo’s offspring under an eternal influence beyond her control.
The brothers each arrived two years apart, first Daniel, then Tobias, Garrett, Jamison, and six years later, Cade. Three stillborn girls followed, small and lovely, with cheeks like plump strawberries and velvet black eyelashes. Tobias had been twelve when the final sister was laid to rest in the family plot. He remembered hearing his father’s words in front of everyone: “Three girls in the grave. You see what I have told you, Geraldine. It is a sign our line is complete. We will not try again.”
He had turned to his sons, all in a line, hats in their hands. “Be mindful who you marry, my sons. Women cannot receive the Gift. They are inferior. Unworthy.” He extended his hand to the quickly growing mound of dirt covering Tobias’s youngest sister and smiled. “Unworthy like this one was.”
Their mother smiled too, drawn in by their father’s words, lost in the effects of his Gift, but the boys were impervious to their father’s charms. It was another result of their blessing. Apparently, you could not be harmed by others who carried the same.
Ten-year-old Garrett stepped forward then, slapped his hat on his head, and wound up, throwing a fist into his father’s stomach. He was strong for a child, built tough and sturdy, but not enough to overcome their father. Alonzo quickly caught his breath, observed his son for a second, then struck the back of his hand across Garrett’s face, so hard he stumbled into Jamison who accidentally drove two-year-old Cade onto the ground. The toddler began to cry, lifting his arms for his mother to hold him.
Their father would have none of it, however. “Leave him, Geraldine,” he scolded as she reached for him. “If you coddle him, how will he learn?” With her same cloudy-eyed smile, she followed her husband back to the carriage, leaving Daniel to dry Cade’s tears.
Their mother resided with them for six more years, until the summer of 1840 when Daniel found her hanging from the rafters in the plantation attic. Everyone knew she took her own life, but only the Lark brothers knew she had been persuaded to do so.
Tobias didn’t believe in curses, but he didn’t believe in coincidences either. If Tobias’s Gift caused him to build without conscious appeal and Garrett’s led them places without reason, why couldn’t Sarah Walcott’s Gift unwittingly prevent her from entering a state of married bliss? She hadn’t meant to end her husbands’ lives; it happened spontaneously without her command.
There were six other men on the Oblique besides their great-great-great-grandfather and they had never learned their names. Why couldn’t one of them have been Sarah’s ancestor?
Garrett continued to stare with that same exasperated expression. If Tobias pressed the issue, his brother would likely feed him a sleeping draught, hogtie him to his horse, and lead him away to Independence. Chances were Garrett was right and the Widow Walcott wasn’t Gifted. Just like every other “suspicion” Tobias had about someone before, this one was also likely incorrect. But what if it wasn’t?
“Garrett,” he said slowly. “Please don’t kill me, but I’m afraid I need another conversation with the bride.”
3
S
arah heard Garrett’s caution as she spun past in Mr. Whitticomb’s arms. “That’s the Widow Walcott. They say she kills her husbands.”
Well, it appeared Mr. Tobias Lark truly hadn’t known who she was or what she was capable of. He wasn’t searching for wealth through marriage to her. Had he known the truth, he most assuredly wouldn’t have asked her to dance. The dismay on his face was enough to confirm it. She would not be receiving Mr. Lark’s attention again.
Nor should she desire it. She didn’t desire it. She was married.
For now.
She had to get away from here. She had to stop this. All of it.
“I must go,” she gasped. She spun away from Mr. Whitticomb, grasping her skirts above the damp grass, and fled toward the two-story whitewashed farmhouse. It wasn’t much as far as plantations went; her grandfather’s horse farm in Kentucky boasted a home nearly twice the size. However, its wide windows and green clapboard shutters were standard size for Hawthorn Ridge and had always been enough for their family of three. She threw open the rear servants’ door, past the questioning looks of the two kitchen maids and their concerned statements of, “Miss Sarah? Ev’rythin’ al’right?”
