Page 8 of Magnolia Summer

“Your family will be overjoyed to see you. They speak of you quite often, about what a talented seamstress you are and how you plan to open your own shop.”

“My family is very kind. I shall be happy to see them.” Tears pricked the back of her eyelids in response to the sharp longing in her heart. It would be so good to feel her mother’s and sister’s arms around her.

Down the road and beyond some trees, a column of dark smoke danced lazily toward the sky. It seemed too big to be simply a cooking fire.

She glanced at Dr. Beverly. His face was set in grim lines. He even looked a bit ashen.

“What is it? Is someone’s house on fire?”

“I think so.” His voice was hollow.

The acrid smell of smoke burned her nose as they drew closer. The doctor grew stiffer and taller in the seat, the reins clenched tightly in his fists, as he urged the horse to move a little faster. Finally, a burned-out house came into view. Its charred stone chimney rose in the clearing from amidst blackened, smoking logs. Flickers of fire licked the remains of the small house.

Celia bit her lip. “Do you suppose whoever lived here was able to get out in time?”

“I reckon they did.” His teeth clenched so tight a muscle twitched in his jaw. His eyes narrowed and color returned to his face. He must know something he wasn’t telling her.

“Did someone deliberately set this fire?”

“I don’t know.” He spoke softly and looked away from her.

“Then why do you look angry?”

His chest expanded as he switched the reins lightly over the horse’s back to hurry him past the house. The heat from the fire made her dress cling to her back.

“What makes you think I look angry?” His eyebrows lifted in nonchalance.

“Your eyes are still shooting sparks.” She wouldn’t mention that his jaw looked set in stone. Like a Grecian statue. “Whose house was it?”

“James Burwell’s.”

Celia stared over her shoulder at what was left of the house. Her chest tightened for a moment in sympathy for James Burwell. Although, if he had truly molested a woman as the sheriff had said . . .

“Do you know James Burwell?”

“We’ve been friends since we were children. James has the mind of a scientist, continually making discoveries, figuring things out.” He turned and looked her in the eye. “Someday he’ll find a new way to double corn production, or invent a machine to do the work of a hundred men, or find a thousand new uses for cotton or sorghum molasses. He is a capable, gifted man, and he would never . . . ever hurt a woman.”

Something about his expression and his clear blue eyes as he gazed at her made her heart flutter, just as it had when he’d smiled at her at the train depot.

She quickly looked away from him. Heat rose into her own cheeks and an unsettled feeling came over her. How foolish to have such a reaction to a man she hardly knew. But as she thought about what he had said, she was even more certain that he had been trying to deceive the sheriff.

They rode on in silence for a while. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Why wasn’t he married? His features were appealing, and he was tall, educated, his only physical flaw being crooked bottom teeth. She marveled that one of Bethel Springs’s girls hadn’t roped the local doctor like a prize bull. He was the pick of the county, she imagined.

The wagon bumped over the uneven road, which consisted only of two dirt ruts with grass growing down the middle. The scenery alternated from fields of cotton or corn, to thick forests, and back to cotton again. Out of boredom and an effort to make conversation, she asked, “So, Dr. Beverly, where did you attend medical school?”

“Bellevue Medical Seminary, New York City.”

“Oh. Why did you move to Bethel Springs? Did you miss the South?”

He shrugged. “I grew up here and my parents asked me to come back. There was a need for a doctor.”

“Is your father a farmer?”

“He owned a plantation before the war. Now he works near Columbia, Tennessee, helping my uncle with his brick manufacturing business. But my mother, brother, and I are your family’s nearest neighbor to the east. We’ll pass the house in a minute.”

Before the words were out of his mouth, a thundering of hooves grew closer. The rider rounded the curve a hundred feet ahead of them and Celia immediately recognized her brother.

“Will!”