Page 2 of Just Imagine

The neighbors were scandalized. That child is running wild! Bad enough if she was a boy, but even a fool like Garrett Weston should know enough not to let a girl run around like that.

Rosemary Weston had no interest in local society, and she ignored their pointed hints that Kit needed a governess or, at the very least, acceptable clothing. Eventually, the neighborhood women sought out Kit themselves with their daughters’ cast-off dresses and lectures on proper female behavior. Kit ignored the lectures and traded the dresses for britches and boys’ shirts. By the time she was ten, she could shoot, cuss, ride a horse bareback, and had even smoked a cigar.

At night when loneliness overwhelmed her, she reminded herself that her new life had advantages for a girl who’d been born with an adventurous heart. She could climb the peach trees in the orchard any time she wanted and swing from ropes in the barn. The men of the community taught her how to ride and fish. She’d sneak into the library before her stepmother emerged from her bedroom in the morning and forage for books with no worries of censorship. And if she scraped her knee or caught a splinter in her foot, she could always run to Sophronia in the kitchen.

The war changed everything. The first shots had been fired at Fort Sumter a month before her fourteenth birthday. Not long after that, Garrett Weston had turned over the management of the plantation to Rosemary and joined the Confederate army. Since Kit’s stepmother never rose before eleven and hated the outdoors, Risen Glory began to fall into disrepair. Kit tried desperately to take her father’s place, but the war had put an end to the market for Southern cotton, and she was too young to hold it all together.

The slaves ran off. Garrett Weston was killed at Shiloh. Bitterly, Kit received the news that he’d left the plantation to his wife. Kit had received a trust fund from her grandmother a few years earlier, but that meant nothing to her.

Not long after, Yankee soldiers marched through Rutherford, burning everything in their path. Rosemary’s attraction to a handsome young lieutenant from Ohio and her subsequent invitation for him to join her in her bedroom spared the house at Risen Glory, although not the outbuildings. Shortly after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Rosemary died in an influenza epidemic.

Kit had lost everything. Her father, her childhood, her way of life. Only the land was left. Only Risen Glory. And as she curled into the thin mattress above the stable owned by Baron Cain, she knew that was all that counted. No matter what she had to do, she’d get it back.

She fell asleep imagining how it would be when Risen Glory was finally hers.

The stable held four horses, a matched pair for the carriage and two hunters. Some of Kit’s tension eased the next morning as a large bay with a long, elegant neck nuzzled her shoulder. Everything would be all right. She’d keep her eyes open and bide her time. Baron Cain was dangerous, but she had the advantage. She knew her enemy.

“His name is Apollo.”

“What?”

She spun around to see a young man with rich chocolate skin and large, expressive eyes standing on the other side of the half door that separated the stalls from the center aisle of the stable. He was in his early-to-mid-twenties and tall, with slim shoulders and a slight, supple build. A black-and-white mongrel waited patiently near his heels.

“That bay. His name is Apollo. He’s the major’s favorite mount.”

“You don’t say.”

Kit opened the door and stepped out of the stall.

The mongrel sniffed her while the young man looked her over critically.

“I’m Magnus Owen. Major said he hired you last night after he caught you sneakin’ out of the stable.”

“I wasn’t sneakin’. Well, not exactly. That major of yours has a naturally suspicious nature, is all.”

She looked down at the mongrel.

“That your dog?”

“Yep. I call him Merlin.”

“Looks like a no-account dog to me.”

Magnus’s smooth, high forehead puckered indignantly.

“Now, why do you want to say somethin’ like that, boy? You don’t even know my dog!”

“I spent yesterday afternoon asleep in that stall over there. If Merlin was any kinda dog, he’d of been mighty annoyed about that.”

Kit reached down and absentmindedly scratched behind his ears.

“Merlin wasn’t here yesterday afternoon,”

Magnus said.

“He was with me.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I’m just inherently prejudiced. The Yankees killed my dog, Fergis. Best dog I ever knew. I mourn him to this day.”

Magnus’s expression softened a little.

“What’s your name?”

She paused for a moment, then decided it would be easier to use her own first name. Behind Magnus’s head she spotted a can of Finney’s Harness Oil and Leather Preserver.

“Name’s Kit. Kit Finney.”

“A mighty funny name for a boy.”

“My folks were admirers of Kit Carson, the Injun fighter.”

Magnus seemed to accept her explanation and was soon outlining her duties. Afterward, they went into the kitchen for breakfast, and he introduced her to the housekeeper.

Edith Simmons was a stout woman with thinning salt-and-pepper hair and strong opinions. She’d been cook and housekeeper for the former owner and had agreed to stay on only when she’d discovered that Baron Cain was unmarried and there’d be no wife to tell her how to do her job. Edith believed in thrift, good food, and personal hygiene. She and Kit were natural-born enemies.

“That boy is too dirty to eat with civilized people!”

“I won’t argue with you there,”

Magnus replied.

Kit was too hungry to argue for very long, so she stomped into the pantry and splashed some water on her face and hands, but she refused to touch the soap. It smelled girlish, and Kit had been fighting everything feminine for as long as she could remember.

As she devoured the sumptuous breakfast, she studied Magnus Owen. From the way Mrs. Simmons deferred to him, it was obvious that he was an important figure in the household, unusual for a black man under any circumstances, but especially for one who was so young. Something tugged at Kit’s memory, but it wasn’t until they’d finished eating that she realized what it was. Magnus Owen reminded her of Sophronia, the cook at Risen Glory and the only person in the world Kit loved. Both Magnus and Sophronia acted as if they knew everything.

A pang of homesickness struck her, but she pushed it away. She’d be at Risen Glory soon enough, bringing the plantation back to life.

That afternoon when she finished her work, she sat in the shade near the front door of the stable, her arm draped across Merlin, who’d fallen asleep with his nose resting on her thigh. The dog didn’t stir as Magnus approached.

“This animal’s worthless,”

she whispered.

“If you was an ax murderer, I’d be dead by now.”

Magnus chuckled and lowered himself beside her.

“I got to admit, Merlin isn’t much of a watchdog. But he’s young still. He was only a pup when the major found him rootin’ around in the alley behind the house.”

Kit had seen Cain only once that day, when he’d curtly ordered her to saddle Apollo. He’d been too full of himself to take a few minutes to pass the time of day. Not that she wanted to talk to the likes of him. It was just the principle of the thing.

The Yankee newspapers called him the Hero of Missionary Ridge. She knew he’d fought at Vicksburg and Shiloh. Maybe he was even the man who’d killed her daddy. It didn’t seem right that he was alive when so many brave Confederate soldiers were dead. And it was even more unjust that every breath he drew threatened the only thing she had left in the world.

“How long’ve you known the major?”

she asked cautiously.

Magnus plucked a blade of grass and began to chew on it.

“Since Chattanooga. He almost lost his life savin’ mine. We been together ever since.”

An awful suspicion began to grow inside Kit.

“You weren’t fightin’ for the Yankees, were you, Magnus?”

“ ’Course I was fightin’ for the Yankees!”

She didn’t know why she should be so disappointed, except that she liked Magnus.

“You told me you were from Georgia. Why didn’t you fight for your home state?”

Magnus removed the blade of grass from his mouth.

“You got a lot of nerve, boy. You sit here with a black man and, cool as a cucumber, ask him why he didn’t fight for the people who was keepin’ him in chains. I was twelve years old when I got freed. I came North. I got a job and went to school. But I wasn’t really free, do you understand me? There wasn’t a single Negro in this country could really be free as long as his brothers and sisters was slaves.”

“It wasn’t primarily a question of slavery,”

she explained patiently.

“It was a question of whether a state has the right to govern itself without interference. Slavery was just incidental.”

“Mighta been incidental to you, white boy, but it wasn’t incidental to me.”

Black folks sure were touchy, she thought as he rose and walked away. But later, while she put out the second feed for the horses, she was still mulling over what he’d said. It reminded her of several heated conversations she’d had with Sophronia.

* * *

Cain vaulted from Apollo’s back with a gracefulness unusual for a man of his size.

“Take your time cooling him out, boy. I don’t want a sick horse.”

He tossed Kit the bridle and began to stride toward the house.

“I know my job,”

she called out.

“Don’t need no Yankee telling me how to take care of a hot, sweaty horse.”

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she wished she could snatch them back. Today was only Wednesday, and she couldn’t risk getting fired yet.

She’d already learned that Sunday was the only night Mrs. Simmons and Magnus didn’t sleep in the house. Mrs. Simmons had the day off and stayed with her sister, and Magnus spent the night in what Mrs. Simmons described as a drunken and debauched manner unfit for young ears. Kit needed to hold her tongue for four days. Then, when Sunday night came, she was going to kill the Yankee bastard who was gazing down at her with those cool gray eyes.

“If you think you’d be happier working for somebody else, I can always find another stable boy.”

“Didn’t say I wanted to work for anybody else,”

she muttered.

“Then maybe you’d better try a little harder to hold your tongue.”

She kicked the dirt with the dusty toe of her boot.

“And, Kit?”

“Yeah?”

“Take a bath. People are complaining about the way you smell.”

“A bath!”

Kit’s outrage nearly choked her, and she could barely hold onto her temper.

Cain seemed to be enjoying her struggle.

“Was there anything else you wanted to say to me?”

She clenched her teeth and thought about the size of the bullet hole she intended to leave in his head. “No, sir,”

she mumbled.

“Then I’ll need the carriage at the front door in an hour and a half.”

As she walked Apollo around the yard, she released a steady stream of profanity. Killing that Yankee was going to give her more pleasure than anything she’d done in all her eighteen years. What business was it of his whether she took a bath or not? She didn’t hold with baths. Everybody knew they made you susceptible to influenza. Besides, she’d have to take off her clothes, and she hated seeing her body ever since she’d grown breasts because they didn’t fit who she wanted to be.

A man.

Girls were soft and weak, but she’d erased that part of herself until she’d become strong and tough as any man. As long as she didn’t lose sight of that, she’d be just fine.

She was still feeling out of sorts as she stood between the heads of the matched gray carriage horses and waited for Cain to emerge from the house. She’d splashed water on her face and changed into her spare set of clothes, but they weren’t any cleaner than the ones she’d abandoned, so she didn’t see what difference it made.

As Cain came down the steps, he took in his stable boy’s patched breeches and faded blue shirt. If anything, he decided the kid looked worse. He studied what he could see of the boy’s face beneath the brim of that mangled hat and decided his chin might be a little cleaner. He probably shouldn’t have hired the scamp, but the boy made him smile like nothing else had for longer than he could remember.

Unfortunately, the afternoon’s activity would be less amusing. He wished he hadn’t let Dora maneuver him into taking her for a drive through Central Park. Even though they’d both known the rules from the start, he was beginning to believe she wanted a more permanent relationship, and he suspected she’d take advantage of the privacy their ride offered to press him. Unless they had company . . .

“Climb in the back, boy. It’s about time you saw something of New York City.”

“Me?”

He smiled at the boy’s astonishment.

“I don’t see anybody else around. I need somebody to hold the horses.”

And to forestall an invitation from Dora to be a permanent member of the Van Ness family.

Kit gazed up into the Yankee’s gray, Rebel-killing eyes, then swallowed hard and swung herself into the leather-upholstered seat. The less time she spent in his presence, the better, but he had her trapped.

As he expertly maneuvered the carriage through the streets, Cain pointed out the city’s attractions, and her pleasure in the new sights began to overcome her caution. They passed Delmonico’s famous restaurant and Wallach’s Theatre, where Charlotte Cushman was appearing in Oliver Twist. Kit glimpsed the fashionable shops and hotels that surrounded the lush greenery of Madison Square, and, farther north, she studied the glittering mansions of the wealthy.

Cain drew up in front of an imposing brownstone.

“Watch the horses, boy. I won’t be long.”

At first Kit didn’t mind the wait. She surveyed the houses around her and watched the sparkling carriages with their well-dressed occupants flash by. But then she thought of Charleston, reduced to rubble, and the familiar bitterness rose inside her.

“A perfect day for a drive. And I have the most amusing story to tell you.”

Kit looked up to see an elegant woman with shining blond curls and a pretty, pouting mouth come down the steps on Cain’s arm. She was dressed in strawberry silk and held a lacy white parasol to protect her pale skin from the afternoon sun. A tiny froth of a bonnet perched on top of her head. Kit detested her on sight.

Cain helped the woman into the carriage and politely assisted her with her skirts. Kit’s opinion of him sank even lower. If this was the kind of woman he fancied, he wasn’t as smart as she’d figured.

She put her scuffed boot on the iron step and swung herself into the rear seat. The woman jerked around in astonishment.

“Baron, who is this filthy creature?”

“Who’re you callin’ filthy?”

Kit sprang from the seat, her hands balled into fists.

“Sit down,”

Cain barked.

She glared at him, but his Rebel-murdering expression didn’t flicker. With a glower, she sank back into the seat, then gave the evil eye to the back of that pert strawberry-and-white bonnet.

Cain eased the carriage into the traffic.

“Kit is my stable boy, Dora. I brought him along to stay with the horses in case you wanted to walk in the park.”

The ribbons on Dora’s bonnet fluttered.

“It’s much too warm to walk.”

Cain shrugged. Dora adjusted her parasol and settled into a silence that screamed her displeasure, but to Kit’s satisfaction, Cain paid no attention.

Unlike Dora, Kit wasn’t prone to sulking, and she gave in to the pleasure of the bright summer afternoon and the landmarks he continued to point out. This was the only chance she’d ever get to see New York City, and even if she had to do it with her sworn enemy, she intended to enjoy it.

“This is Central Park.”

“I don’t see why they call it that. Any fool can tell it’s at the north edge of the city.”

“New York is growing fast,”

Cain replied.

“Right now there’s mainly open land around the park. A few shanties, some farms. But it won’t be long before the city takes over.”

Kit was about to voice her skepticism when Dora spun in her seat and fixed her with a withering glare. The message clearly said Kit wasn’t to open her mouth again.

Fixing a simpering smile on her face, Dora turned back to Cain and patted his forearm with a hand gloved in strawberry lace.

“Baron, I have a most amusing story to tell you about Sugar Plum.”

“Sugar who?”

“You remember. My darling little pug.”

Kit made a face and leaned back in the seat. She watched the play of light as the carriage slipped along the tree-lined promenade that ran through the park. Then she found herself studying Dora’s bonnet. Why would anybody wear something so silly? And why couldn’t Kit keep her eyes off it?

Two women riding in a black landau passed in the other direction. Kit noticed how eagerly they gazed at Cain. Women sure did seem to make fools of themselves over him. He knew how to handle horses, she’d give him that. Still, that didn’t count much with a lot of women. They were more interested in how a man looked.

She tried to study him objectively. He was a handsome son of a bitch, no doubt about that. His hair was the same color as wheat right before harvest time, and it curled a little over the back of his collar. As he turned to make a comment to Dora, his profile stood out against the sky, and she decided there was something pagan about it, like the drawing she’d seen of a Viking—a smooth, high brow, a straight nose, and an aggressive line to the jaw.

“. . . then Sugar Plum pushed the raspberry bonbon away with her nose and picked a lemon one instead. Isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard?”

Pugs and raspberry bonbons. The woman was a damn fool. Kit sighed loudly.

Cain glanced back at her.

“Is something wrong?”

She tried to be polite.

“I don’t hold much with pugs.”

There was a slight movement at the corner of Cain’s mouth.

“Now, why is that?”

“You want my honest opinion?”

“Oh, by all means.”

Kit darted a disgusted glare at Dora’s back.

“Pugs are sissy dogs.”

Cain chuckled.

“That boy is impertinent!”

Cain ignored Dora.

“You prefer mutts, Kit? I’ve noticed you spend a lot of time with Merlin.”

“Merlin spends time with me, not the other way around. I don’t care what Magnus says. That dog’s ’bout as worthless as a corset in a whorehouse.”

“Baron!”

Cain made a queer, croaking noise before he recovered his composure.

“Maybe you’d better remember there’s a lady present.”

“Yessir,”

Kit muttered, although she didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

“That boy doesn’t know his place,”

Dora snapped.

“I’d fire any servant who behaved so outrageously.”

“I guess it’s a good thing that he works for me, then.”

He hadn’t raised his voice, but the rebuke was clear, and Dora flushed.

They were nearing the lake, and Cain pulled the carriage to a stop.

“My stable boy isn’t an ordinary servant,”

he continued, his tone somewhat lighter.

“He’s a disciple of Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

Kit looked away from a family of swans gliding between the canoes to see if he was making fun of her, but he didn’t seem to be. Instead, he laid his arm over the back of the leather seat and turned to face her.

“Is Mr. Emerson the only writer you read, Kit?”

Dora’s indignant huff made Kit garrulous.

“Oh, I read ’bout everything I can lay my hands on. Ben Franklin, of course, but most everybody reads him. Thoreau, Jonathan Swift. Edgar Allan Poe when I’m in the mood. I don’t hold much with poetry, but otherwise I have a generally voracious appetite.”

“So I see. Maybe you just haven’t read the right poets. Walt Whitman, for example.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He’s a New Yorker. Worked as a nurse during the war.”

“I don’t reckon I could stomach a Yankee poet.”

Cain lifted an amused brow.

“I’m disappointed. Surely an intellectual like yourself wouldn’t let prejudice interfere with an appreciation for great literature.”

He was laughing at her, and she felt her hackles rising.

“It surprises me you even know the name of a poet, Major, ’cause you don’t look much like a reader to me. But I guess that’s the way it is with big men. All the muscle goes to their bodies, not sparin’ much for the brain.”

“Impertinent!”

Dora shot Cain an I-told-you-so look.

Cain ignored it and studied Kit more closely. The boy had guts, he’d give him that. He couldn’t be older than thirteen, the same age Cain had been when he’d run away. But Cain had nearly reached his adult height at that time, while Kit was small, only a couple of inches over five feet.

Cain noted how delicate the boy’s grimy features were: the heart-shaped face, the small nose with its decided upward tilt, and those thickly lashed violet eyes. They were the kind of eyes women prized, but they looked foolish on a boy and would look even more outlandish when Kit grew to be a man.

Kit refused to flinch under his scrutiny, and Cain felt a spark of admiration. The daintiness of his features probably had something to do with his pluck. Any boy who looked so delicate must have been forced to do a lot of fighting.

Still, the kid was too young to be on his own, and Cain knew he should turn him over to an orphan asylum. But even as he considered the idea, he understood he wouldn’t do it. There was something about Kit that reminded Cain of himself at that age. He was feisty and stubborn, walking through life daring somebody to take a swing at him. It would be like clipping the wings of a bird to put that boy in an orphanage. Besides, he was good with the horses.

Dora’s need to be alone with him finally overcame her aversion to exercise, and she asked him to walk to the lake. There, the scene that he had hoped to avoid was played out with tiresome predictability. It was his fault. He had let sex overcome good judgment.

It was a relief to get back to the carriage where Kit had struck up a conversation with the man who rented the canoes and two brightly painted ladies of the night out for a stroll before they went to work.

The kid sure could talk.

That evening after dinner Kit sprawled in her favorite spot outside the stable door, her arm propped on Merlin’s warm back. She found herself remembering something strange Magnus had told her earlier when she’d been admiring Apollo.

“The Major won’t keep him long.”

“Why not?”

she’d said.

“Apollo’s a real beauty.”

“He sure is. But the Major doesn’t let himself get tied to things he likes.”

“What do you mean?”

“He gives away his horses and his books before he can get too attached to them. It’s just the way he is.”

Kit couldn’t imagine it. Those were the things that kept you anchored to life. But maybe the major didn’t want to be anchored.

She scratched her scalp under her hat, and an image of Dora Van Ness’s pink-and-white bonnet flashed through her mind. It was foolish. The bonnet wasn’t anything more than a few pieces of lace and a trail of ribbons. Yet she couldn’t get it out of her mind. She kept imagining what she’d look like wearing it.

What was wrong with her? She pulled off her own battered hat and slammed it on the ground. Merlin looked up in surprise.

“Don’t pay me no nevermind, Merlin. All these Yankees are makin’ me queer in the head. As if I don’t have enough distractin’ me without thinkin’ ’bout bonnets.”

Merlin stared at her with soulful brown eyes. She didn’t like admitting it, but she was going to miss him when she went home. She thought of Risen Glory waiting for her. By this time next year, she’d have that old plantation back on its feet.

Deciding that the mysterious human crisis was over, Merlin put his head back down on her thigh. Idly, Kit fingered one of his long, silky ears. She hated this city. She was sick of Yankees and the sound of traffic even at night. She was sick of her old felt hat, and most of all, she was sick of people calling her “boy.”

It was ironic. All her life she’d hated everything that had to do with being female, but now that everybody thought she was a boy, she hated that, too. Maybe she was some kind of mutation.

She tugged absentmindedly at a dirty spike of hair. Every time that Yankee bastard had called her “boy”

today, she’d gotten a sick, queasy feeling. He was so arrogant, so sure of himself. She’d seen Dora’s watery eyes after they’d come back from their walk to the lake. The woman was a fool, but Kit had felt a moment of sympathy for her. In different ways, they were both suffering because of him.

She trailed her fingers over the dog’s back and reviewed her plan. It wasn’t foolproof, but all in all, she was satisfied. And determined. She’d get only one chance to kill that Yankee devil, and she didn’t intend to miss.

The next morning, Cain tossed a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass at her.

“Keep it.”