The Seeker by Ann H. Gabhart Read Free Book Online

nothin’ else then.”
    “Wait, Mellie.” Charlotte stopped her before she could turn the knob.
    Mellie looked back at her, ready to do whatever she asked. Her training from childhood on. Take care of Miss Lottie. Charlotte was relieved to see no hint of the hate she remembered in the slave boy’s eyes, but she could still see the sorrow there like the glint off water down a deep well. “Did you ever think maybe love is glorified too much?”
    “I don’t know, Miss Lottie. Could be won’t neither one of us ever find out for sure unless’n we try it for ourselves. But the Good Book that Mammy is always after me to read speaks highly of it.”
    “But that’s love for God. Or for your neighbor. Not love between a man and a woman.”
    “He made Eve for Adam and told them to have babies. He put the want to for that kind of love in a body’s heart too. And you know if you’ll think on it, there ain’t all that much difference between folks no matter what color their faces is when it comes to thinkin’ on love. That’s how come Mammy still looks to the south and wonders about my daddy even all these years after they carried him off.”
    Charlotte shifted uneasily on the dressing table stool. Of course she’d thought about being in love the way Mellie meant. Her imagination had tingled as she read great love stories, but real life didn’t often mirror the fantasy of stories. In real life a person had to be practical. A person had to do what was expected. She looked at Mellie and sighed a little before she said, “I guess I’ve always thought there were more important things than love. The kind of love you’re talking about.”
    Mellie’s face softened. “That might be a good thing if you stay fixed on Mr. Edwin. I heard him talkin’ last night. About goin’ to them Shakers what don’t think the Lord intended no Adam and Eve lovin’ the way I’m thinkin’ on it.”
    “I know. Everything’s turned upside down tonight. Everything.”
    “You’ll figure it out, Miss Lottie. You just need to get some sleep so’s your head can think up the ways. Come mornin’ you’ll find a way to turn things back right.”
    Come morning . Charlotte echoed Mellie’s words in her head as she pulled on her nightgown and crawled under the covers Mellie had turned back for her. And she did always find a way. This wouldn’t be any different. She could turn things back right. Come morning.
    But the morning sun didn’t ease Charlotte’s worries. For the first time in her memory, she felt out of place in her own house as she got out of bed and dressed for the day. Mellie had slipped in while she slept and filled her pitcher and washing bowl and laid out her clothes, but she’d probably been ordered to the new Mrs. Vance’s aid.
    Charlotte ran her hands along the cherry banister as if absorbing the familiar feel of it as she went down the stairs. She loved Grayson. She knew every corner, every floorboard squeak, every angle of sunlight through the windows. It was her house, warm and loving and home. But now a stranger was going to be climbing Grayson’s stairs and inspecting all the rooms and wardrobes not as a guest but with permanence in her step.
    Plus the other stranger, the artist, was somewhere under the roof. She might turn a corner, open a door, and encounter him face-to-face at any moment with the truth of her shamelessly allowing him to kiss her vibrating in the air between them. So it was a relief when she went into the kitchen and Aunt Tish told her the man had been up at first light and gone from the house as the sun was rising.
    “But he’d best be back here by half past noon or it’ll be his head,” Aunt Tish added with raised eyebrows as she looked up from taking three of the leftover dried apple tarts out of the warming oven and arranging them on a plate for Charlotte. “Miss V done been askin’ where he be when I carried a tray of coffee up to her and the Massah. She done told your papa in my