Strange how small those lofty words made her feel. “I am a selfish fool. I have squandered it, often hated it.” She covered the aging fingers with her own. “So many times I just wished I could forget.”
“I understand that. I know what it is to have images locked forever in your memory. But the Lord gave you this mind for a purpose, my precious child. Yours is to discover what that might be.”
Marietta let her gaze fall to the multicolored rug as the words tumbled through her mind. Recent events indicated that her purpose lay in undermining the man she had let into her heart. Which seemed such a cruel, painful thing to call one’s destiny.
Yet even as she looked on that possibility, memories crowded. All the times her family had tried to steer her away from the Hughes family. All the times her conscience had niggled. All the times she had silenced any voice that did not offer what she wanted.
If that now caused her pain, it was pain she had chosen through disobedience. She never should have given herself the chance to fall in love with Dev. So being forced to accept the truth about him and change it—that was perfect justice.
“Mari.” Her grandmother’s voice pulled her back to the present, even as those of Mama and Barbara drew nearer. “Embrace what the Lord has made you.”
She could only nod before the other two women entered and then turn her gaze on the happy, tearful faces.
They would have been a part of each other’s lives for years already had Marietta not interfered.
“Stephen would not have wanted you there, though, Barbara. You know it as well as I.” Mama glanced from Barbara to Marietta, who had been sure to whisper to her about the living issue some twenty minutes ago. “Your uncle always provided as best he could, but you needn’t remain there from pride. Please. With so many of our men away at war, we women must cling together. Come stay with me. Or with Mari. She has empty rooms aplenty.”
Panic rose fast, like a storm surge in a hurricane. First the old, familiar objections, the ones that slid into her mind without thought, without reason. That she would not be impressed upon, that she had no obligation to take a veritable stranger into her home. That it was not what she wanted.
But then, just like a surge emptying back into the bay, those acidic thoughts were pulled from her heart and replaced with pure fear.
She could not expose Barbara—pure, tenderhearted Barbara—to the Hugheses. They would crush her. They would destroy her. This young woman was not made for that kind of family, the kind that hated where they should have loved. Too much darkness saturated that home. They would…
And the darkness comprehended it not.
Marietta relaxed as she drew in a long breath and remembered all Barbara had already survived. If she could withstand the mean streets of Mobtown with a smile, if she could withstand the loss of Stephen, of their child, then the Hugheses could do nothing to her.
Perhaps they were darkness. But darkness could never overcome light. And a beacon might be exactly what Marietta needed within her home.
Only a beat having passed beneath the rapid wings of thought, Marietta smiled and stepped forward to take Barbara’s other hand. “With me, Barbara, please. We can finally get to know one another.”
Barbara searched her eyes for a long moment, no doubt looking for hidden motives, for some sign that obligation spurred the request. Marietta held her gaze as firmly as her fingers.
Perhaps she still had plenty to hide. But not, for the first time, her heart.
Thirteen
Devereaux spread out the pages on his brother’s desk, side by side until they covered the entire expanse upside down. The muscle in his jaw ticked, he clenched his teeth so tightly.
The telegram weighed heavy in his pocket. Defeat was certain. President Davis had authorized their worst-case-scenario plan.
And Devereaux had been charged with two vital tasks: rallying the men for the second rising sometime in the murky future, and burying a portion of the South’s hope. Gold. Rations. Weapons. Gunpowder. Medical supplies.
First, the physical. He braced himself on the edge of the desk and scowled at the papers. Though the fronts were covered in type, the backs hid the real information: a faint outline on each that would look like nothing but a mistaken mark of a pencil if taken individually. But together, they showed Maryland. The Southern state held by force in the Union, where those loyal to their roots couldn’t breathe a word of it lest they be seized. Maryland, with its thriving city of Baltimore and its western territories still largely wild.