Glorious Angel by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online

after the war to prove that.”
    He left before she could reply again. Oddly, he was thinking about the Sherrington girl. She had understood. She didn’t condemn him. Yet the woman who had professed to love him did not understand.
    But he was not yet through with Crystal Lonsdale. Someday he would return and make her understand.

Seven
    Angela Sherrington sat in one of the two old wicker chairs on the narrow porch, staring pensively at the bare field in front of her house. In her mind’s eye she could see the field full of corn as it had been only a week ago. Would she ever see it that way again? Would anything ever be the same again?
    Bradford Maitland’s gold coin was pressed hard in her palm. It somehow gave her comfort when she most needed it. And Angela needed it now more than ever.
    She was still wearing the dark brown cotton dress that she had worn to the funeral that morning. She had wanted to wear black, but she didn’t own a black dress.
    This last week was like a bad dream come and gone. They were fortunate to have a fair corn crop this year, and it had taken three trips to thecity to sell it all. Angela had gone with her father each time, for he had kept his promise of three years ago and never left her alone. Three long years ago. The time had passed so quickly, tragically for most, but uneventfully for Angela. The boys who used to tease and fight with her didn’t bother her anymore, and Bobo had taken her warning to heart, never coming near her again. Her father even allowed her to go off by herself once more like she used to, instead of staying constantly within his sight. Yes, the years had been uneventful, until this year of 1865.
    A year ago the Union had won an important victory in the Battle of Mobile Bay. The fighting had finally reached Alabama. Fort Gaines surrendered only a few days after the disastrous battle. And on Mobile Point, directly opposite, Fort Morgan surrendered after withstanding an eighteen-day siege. The Yankees finally had their foothold in Alabama.
    Six months later, Fort Blakely and Spanish Fort were sieged. And then in April of this year, eight months after the Battle of Mobile Bay, the Union Army, commanded by General E. R. S. Canby, had defeated the Confederate land forces and occupied Mobile.
    Miraculously, the Sherringtons’ little farm had been passed by. During that terrifying time, her father boarded up their house and they waited, wondering whether they would be burned out.Would they lose their crop? Or their lives? But the danger passed and Reconstruction began.
    To Angela, losing the war held no major personal consequences. She had never owned a slave. She didn’t own land, and so was not facing taxes she couldn’t pay. Nor would the land they sharecropped be sold out from under them, for their landlord was financially stable.
    And Angela was not shocked by poverty as many fine southern ladies were, for poverty was all she knew. She and her pa had always gotten by.
    It was Frank Colman, an old friend and drinking buddy of her father’s, who found her that day as she waited in the wagon for her pa. She had guessed right away that something terrible was wrong, for Frank wouldn’t look her straight in the face. He told her about the fight her father had gotten into. Some barroom argument with a Yankee over the war, Frank said. A ruckus started—more men joined in—everybody fighting—her father fell—hit his head on a table—died right then.
    She had run all the way to the bar and found William Sherrington lying on a sawdust floor, dirty and bloodied from the fight, dead.
    As she fell down beside him in utter disbelief, all the times they had fought and argued over his drinking went through her mind, all the harsh words she had thrown at him over the years because of it.
    She had burst into tears on the floor and themen around her had moved back, shamefaced, as she poured out her grief and fury.
    Her father had been buried this morning. She was alone in the world