CHAPTER 1

Tidewater Maryland, April 1917
Chloe thought dying would be easier than what her father
wanted her to do now. She’d just been lifted onto the open
bed of a farm truck, where she gazed out from under the low brim
of her straw hat. It framed the terrifying jumble of faces gawking up
at her.
“Chloe,” her father’s voice rumbled a warning. Barrel-chested,
wearing a custom-tailored suit, he hovered beside the truck fender
while she stood above him trembling.
She parted her lips, desperate for air as all the faces ran together
like wet watercolors.
“Chloe,” her father repeated, chilling her.
She tried to think of the words that would please her father and
also sway the people before her. But under her cream-lace bodice,
she couldn’t inflate her lungs. It was as if her corset had been laced
too high and much too tight.
She tried to focus on the scene before her. The smell of fecund
earth buffeted upward in warm waves. The dazzling, nearly blinding,
spring sunshine glinted off the chrome of Model-T cars and trucks
amidst a few old wagons and horses tethered here and there. She
managed to draw in a teaspoon of the warm afternoon air.
“Chloe,” her father prompted, his raw irritation bristling just
under the surface.
“Klo-ee, Klo-ee!” Out in the crowd, a tall, towheaded boy called
out her name and followed it up with a loud wolf whistle. An older
man beside him cuffed the boy as a few chuckles and titters floated
up to her, taunting her.
I can’t do this. I can’t —
You can do anythin ’, a clear, loud voice sliced through her mind.
Startled, her lungs found space to expand. Chloe sucked in air
and hefted the megaphone to her mouth. “I’ve never done this
before.” Her voice came out unnatural and hollow sounding. She
swallowed, trying to wet her cotton-dry mouth.
You can do anythin’ you put your mind to and don’t let nobody
tell you diffr’nt. The plucky words gave her sudden confidence.
Chloe lowered the megaphone. “I don’t think I need this,” she said in
a loud voice. She forced a smile. “Can y’all hear me?” And she
started to breathe.
As from faraway, approving murmurs from the watching crowd
rippled up in reply. Men wearing denim overalls and straw hats
slouched against blossoming trees, scant protection from the warm
sunlight. Under the trees, women in starched print house dresses
lounged primly on worn quilts where babies slept. Beside the
schoolhouse, vacant on Saturday afternoon, barefoot children raced
from the wooden swings to the slide and back again. Their yells and
laughter drifted up to Chloe.
Still Chloe felt their eyes boring holes into her. Her father
fidgeted. She sucked in air again.
“My daddy…asked me to talk to you today,” she blurted out the
truth. “I really don’t know why…”
But that was near as could be to a lie. I’m here to turn everyone
up sweet for Daddy. I knew something was up the minute I clapped
eyes on the new clothes he brought home from D.C. The cream
colored cotton jaconet dress with its stylish, narrow skirt and high
waist—the matching silk stockings, butter-soft kid shoes, and gloves
—had made her edgy, not pleased. “You’ll be comin’ with me,” he’d
said before he’d left this morning’s breakfast table. And she’d felt
herself shrivel inside.
Now she strangled the megaphone with both hands as if she
could choke words out of it. “But maybe it’s ’cause I know him better
than anyone else.” Another lie. Or was it?
The crowd looked interested. They waited.
Then she realized it had been her granny’s long-dead voice in her
mind, urging her on, showing her how to talk to these folk. Her
beloved granny, her daddy’s mother—the one person who had
always made Chloe feel loved and valuable in her own right. This
thought gave her courage. “My Granny Raney— ” Her voice gained
weight, “ — always told me, ‘You can do anythin’ you make your
mind up to. Just look at your daddy.’” Truth at last.
She heard her father’s chortle of approval. She sensed the men
in the crowd listening to her. Her jittery heart still lodged in her
throat, but somehow she spoke around it, striving to appear
confident. “My daddy wasn’t born in a big house like we live in now.”
Phrases from speeches she’d heard her father give over the years
filtered through her nervous mind and out through her lips. “He
didn’t get to go to college. He taught himself law. He passed the bar
and became a district attorney, then he ran and won a seat in the
state legislature.”
What next? She recalled the morning’s headline and grabbed at
it. “In this dangerous time of the War to End All Wars, he wants to
serve you as your first elected senator in Washington, D.C.”
Then her mind went dead. Plumb dead. She stared out at the
faces, her lips parted. No words came. An awful silence swelled.
Help me, Lord. Help me, Granny. 1 can’t do this!
“Does he want the women’s vote?” a female called out,
provoking, sassy.
The question stirred the gathering. Heads twisted, craning as a
not-too-friendly muttering swelled. Chloe shaded her eyes and
glimpsed —way back in the crowd—a hand in a navy glove waving to
her. “Kitty McCaslin!” Chloe called out. At the sight of her best friend,
tears of relief wet her eyes. “Honey, don’t you know that
amendment hasn’t passed yet?” The watchers chuckled and the
tension eased. Chloe sensed their returning interest and voiced the
next thing that came to mind. “Kitty, whatever are you doing here?”
“Causing trouble.” Kitty’s tone was teasing.
Chloe eyed Kitty. Her lifelong friend was her exact opposite—as
dark as Chloe was fair-haired, petite as Chloe was tall, with brown
eyes to Chloe’s china blues. In a chic navy-and-white outfit probably
straight from New York City, Kitty pouted her rouged lips. Kitty knew
how to wrap folks around her little finger, all right.
I just have to follow Kitty’s lead. Warm relief shot through Chloe.
“The usual, you mean?” she countered, her hand on one hip. She
gauged the crowd. They were enjoying the repartee. “What’s your
daddy going to say to you, interrupting my first campaign speech?”
“What my daddy don’t know can’t hurt him,” Kitty quipped. “And
your daddy won’t care as long as he gets elected!”
The crowd laughed, indulgent with the daughter of the local
banker—even if Kitty was wild to a fault and had gone off to college
in New York City. The general consensus was that Kitty’s father was
out of his mind letting his daughter go off to college in the big city.
Didn’t he know what could happen to innocent girls up there?
Chloe’s heart beat in ragtime. But she knew she was winning.
The crowd was with her. “I’m surprised you aren’t running for
senator yourself,” she teased Kitty as if they were alone.
“Give me thirty years and I will!” Kitty crowed.
Good-natured catcalls swirled over Chloe. She wagged a finger at
Kitty and laughed aloud before looking at her father in mute appeal.
When would he let her step down?
Judging her work done, her father levered himself up beside
Chloe and captured the dangling megaphone from her. With one
hand he put it to his lips and with the other he gathered her close to
his side. This part of the routine she was used to. With practiced
charm, she kissed his cheek, smiled broadly, and tilted her face as
though cameras were flashing. She’d learned the pose at the age of
four.
“Ain’t my little gal somethin’?” her father bellowed in his
sandpaper voice.
The farmers applauded and the women nodded, studying her
outfit, ready to copy it the next time they could afford yard goods.
“Thank ya, honey.” He pinched her cheek.
It was then that Chloe glimpsed the elegant stranger. At the sight
of him all thought of winning elections flew from her mind. He was
tall, lean, dressed in a gleaming white shirt and dark trousers with a
suit jacket folded over his arm. His hair was raven black, slicked back
from equally dark eyebrows. He stood there, surrounded by the
crowd, and his eyes met hers. The contact was almost electric.
The moment became too much for Chloe. The heat, her fear, the
sudden stirring she felt looking at this stranger… The air rushed out
of her and she was rendered breathless again. She wavered within
her father’s arm.
“Don’t faint, honey,” her father soothed, ever the solicitous father.
“Here, Jackson, help her down. The sun’s gotten to her.”
Hands reached up for her and lowered her to the ground.
Someone pushed a fan between her fingers. With a quick smile at
those around her, she looked past them, but the man had vanished.
Disappointment pierced her. Who in the world was this stranger?
Why was she so affected by this man she’d never seen before?
LATER, in her upstairs bedroom, Chloe gazed out her window at
Carlyle Place’s grounds. Two hundred years ago it had been called
Carlyle Plantation. The name had been changed by her mother’s
father near the end of the last century–more modern. But nothing
much had changed.
Through the limbs of budding magnolia trees, she watched the
day dim into twilight. Her view of the rolling spring-green lawn and
ancient maples, oaks, and tulip trees usually eased her nerves. But
not today. She’d survived her first speech—just barely. Sliding down
to her knees, she cradled her aching stomach with one arm and
rested her cheek on the cool white windowsill. “I can’t do that
again.”
Unbidden, a memory breathed through her. She was a little girl
again. Fleeing another one of her parent’s battles, she’d run weeping
from the big house to the small cottage behind Carlyle Place. Granny
Raney had been there in her old rocker, holding out her arms. Chloe
slipped up onto her wide lap and buried her face in Granny’s soft
bosom, scented with camphor. Granny didn’t ask any questions, just
rocked and sang her favorite hymn in her low, soothing voice. And
Chloe was comforted, as always.
Granny Raney had loved her, never failed her, and today, though
she’d been gone for years, she’d brought Chloe through the speech
making.
Chloe closed her eyes, willing away the clammy feeling that
hadn’t quite left her. I won’t do that again.
Of its own accord, her mind brought up the image of the
handsome, dark stranger at the schoolyard. Who was he? Had he
come with Kitty? Her beau from New York? Her stomach quivered.
What did that matter to her if he were?
Downstairs, the dinner bell floated up like a death knell. Both her
parents were at home at the same time. Which meant dinner would
be a nightmare. She toyed with the idea of staying in her room,
begging off with a stomach ache. But that would only bring them up
to her room, not stop them. Nothing ever stopped them.
With effort, she pushed herself onto her feet again and went to
the blue-and-white willow-patterned pitcher and bowl on the stand
across the room. Like everything else in her mother’s house, the
ewer had been in the family nearly a century. She washed her hands
and face in the cool water and wondered what it would be like not to
live in a museum, not to know the history of each piece her mother
revered. Then, with a long sigh, she turned to examine herself in the
freestanding mirror she knew Jason Carlyle had ordered from
England for his bride in 1774 on the eve of the Revolution.
I look like I’ve been off to war and back again. She brushed her
fair hair back from her face, tucking stray strands into the hairpins in
the knot at her nape. Sunlight from the window made her hair
shimmer like fire. Pinching her cheeks, she brought color into her
pale face. She smoothed the wrinkles in her cotton outfit and then
re-gathered her white silk stockings above