Page 7 of Magnolia Summer

Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day!

Clang battle-axe and clash brand! Let the King reign!

The King will follow Christ, and we the King,

In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.

Fall battle-axe and clash brand! Let the King reign!”

He turned toward her.“Are you not now convinced of my culture and refinement?”

She simply smiled, as if he’d just told her a mildly amusing story. “I’m not sure I’ve read that one. Is it Tennyson?”

“It is.”

She nodded, then she picked up her letter from her lap and began to read again.

She was unmoved by his charm. Incredible. But perhaps she was only pretending. At least he had made her smile. But as he drove along, and even when she’d had time to read the letter several times over, silence reigned.

Why did he have such a desire to get a reaction from her and make her talk? James would say he was playing the knight in shining armor again. James was always looking at things scientifically. But Truett was simply a Southern gentleman, with a bit too much emotion.

But it was more than that. Celia Wilcox was beautiful.

His challenge for himself would be to make Celia Wilcox smile again by the time he got her home, and before two weeks were over, to get her to verbally repent of her low opinion of him. If he couldn’t, he’d give up and accept that she was beyond even his considerable charm.

* * *

Celia pretendedto read her letter, but her thoughts went back to the interchange between the sheriff and Dr. Beverly, whose aim seemed to be making the sheriff think he was a poetry-sotted swain. But why? Did he know where this James Burwell was hiding? If he did, why would the town doctor, ordinarily one of the town’s most respectable citizens, try to fool the sheriff?

And the assault of a woman? This town seemed worse by the minute.

Then Dr. Beverly had surprised her by quoting Tennyson, though she wouldn’t for the world let him know she was impressed. No, she had no interest in the backwoods doctor. Although he was uncommonly handsome, with hair the color of well-sanded wood that curled perfectly against his forehead and temples, and the darkest blue eyes, which had looked so sad when he told her how sorry he was about her father’s death.

She wasn’t sure what to make of him. But her hope, her future, was in Nashville. She would not marry anyone who would keep her in Bethel Springs.

Celia focused her attention on her sister’s letter, the catalyst for her departure from Nashville. Lizzie’s pleading words were uncharacteristic of her calm and patient sister.

She pressed her lips together to stop the tears that sprang to her eyes and stuffed the letter into her fringed silk purse, an item that seemed frivolous now that her family was practically destitute.

Perhaps it was ungracious to criticize, even secretly, her father’s decision, but she still couldn’t understand him leaving all their friends, not to mention his livelihood at the university. She’d been helpless to talk him out of it. She just tried to be happy for him, happy that he was doing what he’d always dreamed of doing.

Mama went along with whatever Father said, and Celia half believed her father didn’t care about her mother’s feelings. She’d never in her life heard him ask his wife her opinion of anything, never seen him listen to her as if he was interested in what she had to say. He treated Celia with more respect than he did his own wife. It had always irked Celia and made her wish her mother, just once, would stand up to him.

There was no use thinking about that now. As soon as Mama was herself again—Lord, please let it be before the end of summer—Celia would catch the first train back to Nashville. And she hoped by then she would have convinced her family to go back with her.

Just the thought that the dress shop might permanently replace her with someone else, that she would lose her job when she had calculated it would only take her nine more months to save up enough money to open her own shop, sent her heart racing in panic. Was she being selfish to want it so badly? But after all, with the income, she could help her family. They would naturally want to move back to Nashville, and her money could make that happen.

Celia held on to the buggy’s seat as it jounced her around over the bumpy road. She gazed into dark woods crowding the edge of the road—pecan trees, magnolias, and oaks mingled their leaves of varying shades of green. Cedars stood like thick, tall brushes in a straight line along the edge of the fields. Mimosa trees, with their tropical foliage and fuzzy pink pom-pom flowers, dangled over the edge of the dirt road. Farther along, honeysuckle vines draped the fences and permeated the hot afternoon with heady perfume.

The countryside had a natural, exuberant beauty one couldn’t find in the city. But nature’s charm could be dark and dangerous, as it had been for Father.

With God’s help, they could find the runaway horses and sell them and the farm and buy a small house near where Celia would open her shop. Then she would no longer have to board with old Mrs. Beasley and endure her snide remarks about a young woman, alone and unmarried, opening her own business as if she were a man.

A thousandhumphs on old Mrs. Beasley and everyone like her.

“So what do you think of our beautiful countryside, Miss Wilcox? Or may I call you Miss Celia?”

“Either is fine.” She smiled, then hoped he didn’t think she was flirting with him. “It is beautiful, in a wild sort of way.”