Corporal Mae Stoker is no stranger to misery or surviving harsh conditions, especially after enlisting in the Union Army at the height of the American Civil War to avoid living with her aunt and uncle. But when she's wounded during the Battle of Lov...
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As the Buchanan's clapboard Grecian monstrosity came into view nestled near the Tennessee River, Mae's heart started hammering against her chest. Her stomach clenched into a thousand knots, and her mouth became dry as a bone in a desert.
Every nerve in her body screamed for her to run away before it was too late—despite her muscles feeling frozen in place. Her tongue became incapable of making sound, and all she could do was watch the mansion come ever closer.
"You didn't tell me your family relations are Ardella and Cyrus Buchanan," Emerson grumbled, glancing at Mae from the corner of his eye.
Bile burned the back of her throat, and she forced a swallow before choking out past numb lips, "Didn't I?"
"No, ma'am," he muttered. He slowed the carriage to a stop at the last bend in the drive, then turned to look at her. "Have you no other family I might take you to?"
Mae stared straight ahead, clenching her gloved hands into tight fists atop the blanket covering her lap. "They're all dead."
Emerson pursed his lips and allowed the reins to dangle from his gloved fingers. He stared at the horizon, a look of deep thought creasing his face. After a moment, he turned to her. "What of your late husband's family? Surely, they would take you in."
A bubble of grief and rage burst to life as Elwood Stoker's angular face and icy blue eyes filled with hatred flashed within her mind. He was one of many faces she'd recognized among the mob that killed her father and burned her home.
She'd barely escaped and watched from the shadowed forest in disbelief as a man who'd welcomed her into his family a little over two years before stood as the rabid head of a mob of townsmen against loyal Unionists after the Confederacy's loss at Gettysburg.
Elwood had made it blatantly obvious that he no longer considered Mae family. Not that she'd been a part of his for very long.
She'd known one week of wedded bliss in her new home with her husband, Edwin Stoker, before he left for the war. He'd died in the first Battle of Bull Run three months later—which Elwood had blamed Mae for, along with Edwin's enlisting in the Union Army instead of the Confederacy.
And as though to leave no doubt of how much he'd come to despise her, Elwood had then forced her at gunpoint to return to her father, refusing to allow a Yankee-lover to live on his land a day longer.
She shook her head, as much to clear it of any lingering vestiges of Elwood's hateful face as to answer Emerson's question, unable to speak past the emotion clogging her throat.
Emerson muttered an expletive, then quietly apologized and rubbed his jaw. "I sure wish you'd told me this before," he mumbled with a deep frown puckering his brow. He handed her the reins, then exited the carriage and knelt to check the wheel.
Mae blinked several times and forgot about her unease enough to ask, "What are you doing?"
"Procuring an excuse for delaying our arrival," he muttered, "while I try and figure something out."
