Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [86]
“Sorry, but would you do me one more favor? Would you tell Josiah to be ready to leave by the time I get back from Hilltop tonight? He’s coming with me.”
“Wait a minute. Coming with you . . . where?” I was confused. Josiah had been living here in town with us while Jonathan trained. Tessie had been dreading the day when the training ended and Josiah would be sent back to Hilltop. “Isn’t Josiah going home to the plantation with you?”
“No, I’ve decided to take him off to war with me. My unit is going north to establish defensive positions along the Washington rail routes. We could use a good, strong set of muscles to dig entrenchments.”
The absurdity of his plan infuriated me. “You’re fighting for the right to keep Josiah a slave—and you have the nerve to ask him to help you?”
“Calm down, my dear little abolitionist,” he said, taking my hands. “Yes, I finally read your pamphlet, so I know you’re one of those.” He grinned, as if it were all a merry joke. “Josiah won’t be fighting in any battles. He’ll be quite safe behind our lines—which is more than I can say for yours truly. Besides, I’m certainly not the only soldier who’s bringing his boy along.”
“Boy? Josiah is a man, not a boy!”
“It’s only a figure of speech. . . . Come on, Caroline, don’t be mad at me. Who knows when we’ll see each other again?”
Once again, his charm won me over, just as it always had in the past. I reached up to touch his cheek. “I could never stay mad at you.”
“Then how about one last hug good-bye?”
I held him fondly in my arms—and in my heart. “Be safe, Jonathan,” I whispered. “Please. Please. Be safe.”
Charles came later that evening to eat dinner with us. Esther vowed to fill him with enough food to last until the war ended, then she made a valiant attempt to do just that.
“Please, no more,” Charles finally begged. “My uniform buttons are about to pop off, and I haven’t a clue how to sew them back on.”
“I’m sorry, Massa Charles, but I do love to see you eat. You a man with an appetite, just like my Josiah. Little Missy here don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive. Ain’t no fun feeding her at all.”
After dinner, Charles and I walked outside through the drawing room doors and into the balmy evening. Tomorrow was the last day of June. If it weren’t for the war, we would have been married in three more weeks. I was sickened at the thought that this was our last evening together, that neither of us knew when— or if—we would ever see each other again. We walked wordlessly through Eli’s garden, never noticing the carefully tended boxwood or lacy crepe myrtle, oblivious to the scent and beauty of the flowers we passed. Charles didn’t stop until we reached the shelter of the magnolia tree near the rear of our yard, the tree I’d climbed so often with my friend Grady. We ducked beneath its low-hanging branches, then stood once again beside the trunk. There, hidden behind a curtain of thick, glossy leaves, Charles bent to kiss me.
“You have no idea how much I want to make you my wife,” he murmured as we clung to each other afterward. “It should be our life together that’s just beginning, not a war.”
“Then let’s get married, Charles—now, tonight. I don’t care about a big wedding, I want to be your wife, if only for one night.”
He pulled back to look into my eyes. “I can’t do that to you. I won’t. If anything should happen to me—”
“Don’t say it!”
“Listen now. If anything should happen, I don’t want to leave you a widow.”
“I want to be your wife.”
“I know. But let’s get this war behind us first. Let’s begin our marriage in happier, more hopeful times.”
Our final moment together had come. I tried to study every detail of his face in the moonlight, memorizing it. We had exchanged photographs, but a picture wouldn’t help me recall the exact shade of his eyes or the texture of his hair. It couldn’t offer me the same assurance of love that I felt every time he looked at me.
He gave me one last kiss, one final embrace. “I love you,” he whispered.
“Please don’t go,” I begged as I held him for the last time.
“Caroline . . . please