The Amethyst Heart Read online

  © 2000 Penelope J. Stokes

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stokes, Penelope J.

  The amethyst heart / Penelope J. Stokes

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-5955-4053-9 (repak)

  ISBN 0-8499-3721-5 (HC); 0-8499-4235-7 (TP)

  I. Title

  PS3569.T6219 A8 2000

  813’.54—dc21

  00-026888

  Printed in the United States of America

  05 06 07 08 09 RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  To my family in blood and spirit—with appreciation for the rich legacy of love and grace.

  And to the memory of Opal, who shared her stories with me.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part 1: Integrity

  1. Conrad

  2. The Celebration

  3. The Hostage

  4. Standoff

  5. Generation Gap

  Part 2: Liberty

  6. The Physician

  7. Celie

  8. The Abolitionist

  9. Death and Life Are in the Hands of the Lord

  10. The Baltimore Belle

  11. A Matter of Conscience

  12. Strange Guidance

  13. Pearl of Great Price

  14. Traitor Hero

  15. Day of Jubilee

  16. Free at Last

  17. The Birth of Hope

  18. Legacy

  19. Judge Dove

  20. Round Two

  Part 3: Dignity

  21. Dishonest Abe

  22. The Final Straw

  23. The Gift

  24. The Gambler

  25. Pearls of Wisdom

  26. The Freak

  27. Pharisees and Publicans

  28. In the Lion’s Den

  29. The Sheik and the Spinster

  30. The Wedding Gift

  31. Revelation

  32. Generations

  33. Hard Questions

  34. Round Three

  Part 4: Equality

  35. The Boarding House Boys

  36. Bailey Blue

  37. The Conspiracy

  38. Plan B

  39. Nightriders

  40. Second Chances

  41. Dixon Lee

  42. Trial by Fire

  43. Grace Amid the Ruins

  44. The Offering

  45. Amethyst’s Heart

  Epilogue

  Book Group Discussion Guide

  Prologue

  March 13, 1993

  The old woman sat at her dressing table and peered into the mirror, working with one shaky hand to tuck a stray wisp of hair into the upswept bun. All her long life, that lock of hair had given her trouble, never staying in place, always tumbling out to sweep down and tangle in a necklace chain or get caught in an earring.

  Just like me, she thought with a smile. Never doing what other people expect or want me to do.

  She peered into the dim glass and wondered, as she had done countless times over the past forty years, whether she should go to the expense of getting the mirror re-silvered. But even ages ago, when she could have afforded a few extras, she had resisted. There was something appropriate about the yellowing, spotted glass. It fit with the ancient house, and with her.

  She applied a bit of lipstick and sat back to survey the results. “You’ve got a few spots and wrinkles yourself, old girl,” she murmured to her reflection. “But you’ve still got a good head of hair and all your own teeth. Not too bad for ninety-three.”

  Ninety-three. Was it possible? Could Miss Amethyst Noble truly be ninety-three?

  She chuckled at the thought. Even though she had outlived two husbands and the vast majority of her friends, Southern tradition dictated that people still call her “Miss” and refer to her by her maiden name. As if she were still a debutante, a sweet Southern belle being courted by some handsome beau.

  But Amethyst was far beyond those days—so far that any recollection of being a young girl had faded to a vague, hazy memory. She had weathered fourscore and thirteen years, survived two world wars, and come into the last decade of the twentieth century with all her marbles intact.

  Or so it seemed. For here she was, still living in the ancestral home built by her grandfather in 1853, preparing herself for a birthday party.

  Amethyst went to the big cedar wardrobe and selected a dress—her favorite, a soft lavender heather with a high neck and little pearl buttons down the front. She probably should have bought a new one for the occasion, but at her age the current fashions looked ridiculous. This would do just fine. Besides, her great-granddaughter and namesake, Little Am, had always loved it. As a tiny girl Little Am had climbed into her great-grandmother’s lap, snuggled against the soft fabric, and stroked it with a gentle hand. The memory of that tender moment always brought tears to Amethyst’s eyes. The child had been her joy and delight—and her single desperate hope for the future.

  Amethyst sighed. The girl would be here today, no doubt, but she was no longer a child; and, sad to say, she was no longer anyone’s delight. Puberty had transformed the gentle, sweet-natured little girl into a teenage mutant ghoul who dressed all in black, muttered in monosyllables, and wore four earrings in each earlobe. Not what Amethyst had hoped for the child. Not at all what she had prayed for.

  Well, you can’t change the times, she thought with a shrug. You just have to keep on living and pray your life will have some kind of positive effect on the people around you.

  She slipped the lavender dress over her head and opened her jewelry box. It was cluttered with things she rarely wore: earrings and necklaces and rings—gifts, mostly, from family members who never knew what to buy for an eccentric old woman. Only one piece held any real significance for her, and she picked it up and fingered its surface lovingly.

  It was a brooch, a single heart-shaped amethyst a little larger than a quarter, with small pearls set around the perimeter. Simple, elegant, and nearly perfect—except for the one missing pearl, lost years ago.

  She turned it over and read the familiar inscription engraved on the back: Sincerity, Purity, Nobility. The motto of the Noble family for over a century, as far back as anyone could remember, and beyond. Generations of women before her had worn this heart of amethyst. But who after her would treasure it as she did?

  With arthritic fingers she struggled to pin the brooch at her throat, then glanced at the clock on the mantel. Her family would be here in an hour, and she still had to set the table and arrange flowers for a centerpiece.

  She got up from the dressing table and moved slowly into the parlor that adjoined her bedroom, pausing to stroke the keys of the hundred-year-old piano and basking in the comfort of the familiar. Across the foyer from the parlor was the log cabin room, the oldest portion of the house. Here the original log beams and massive stone fireplace had been
preserved, and when she stepped down into the room, she felt it surround her with the welcome embrace of an old friend.

  This house was her life. Its walls sent back the echoes of her dreams, her laughter, her tears. It had sustained her when times were bad and rejoiced with her in the happy years. Its corridors held cherished memories of her own nine decades and the legacy of generations before her. Here she had been born, grown up, learned to love, married, given birth, and mourned—and here she would die, when her time came.

  But not quite yet.

  Amethyst scrutinized her reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. She looked as good as anyone had a right to look at ninety-three—and a lot better than most, considering that most people her age were withering away their final years in some nursing home.

  Against all odds, she was still alive—truly alive, not just existing in that nebulous place between this world and the next. And she meant to stay that way until they carried her out of Noble House in a pine box.

  Part 1

  INTEGRITY

  “You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old; and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.”

  Leviticus 19:32

  1

  Conrad

  Con! Hurry up, or we’ll be late!”

  Conrad Wainwright grimaced as his wife’s shrill voice pierced through the study door. Why couldn’t the woman speak in a normal tone?

  Forty years ago he had thought it cute, that high-pitched squeal of hers. Mimsy. The perfect empty-headed Southern girl, who would keep his house, cook his meals, bear and raise his children, and be utterly satisfied to be known as “Mrs. Conrad Wainwright.” The straight-C student who would never question his authority, challenge his decisions, or rock the domestic boat. The cheerleader who would devote her life to encouraging him. The prom queen who would entertain his clients and decorate his world.

  Forty years ago Margaret “Mimsy” Hanover had been everything Conrad Wainwright had wanted in a wife. But back then she had been petite and blonde and beautiful, and when she had hung on his arm, simpering and fluttering her eyelashes and claiming that every word out of his mouth was nothing short of genius, he had thought her silly and sweet and utterly entrancing.

  Over the years, however, the trance had worn off; now that voice could send him into a migraine without a moment’s notice. She had fulfilled her part of the unspoken bargain—she had made a home for him, raised two children, entertained his clients, and always supported his decisions. But somewhere along the way, things had changed. The petite cheerleader had undergone a grotesque metamorphosis. Her hair had gone from blonde to brassy, her figure from lithe to lumbering, and that squeal of hers had grown so shrill, so insistent, that it could make a hyena cringe and run for cover.

  Conrad closed his eyes and fought against the storm of emotions that assailed him. Fifteen years ago he had considered divorce, had actually gone to see a divorce lawyer to discuss his options. But before he had the chance to take any action, his son William and daughter-in-law Marlene had been killed in an auto accident. On the highway between Memphis and Nashville, a drunk driver had crashed head-on into their car, leaving them dead at the scene and their eighteen-month-old daughter orphaned.

  The last thing Con had wanted to do at age fifty was to raise another child. But what other choice did they have? William’s sister, Lauren, the child’s only aunt, was totally worthless as a prospective parent. Still single and rootless, she was living with three friends in Greenwich Village. They heard from her two or three times a year, at Christmas and birthdays. The year before the accident she had called at four in the morning to tell them she had changed her name to Selina or Salmonella or some other odd thing Conrad couldn’t remember. No. Lauren was not a viable option.

  For once in her life, Mimsy, a veritable mass of motherly instinct, had taken over and insisted upon having her own way. The baby would come to live with them and be raised as their own daughter. She put her foot down and refused even to consider any other options. So, at midlife, he had found himself cast in the role of father to the infant Little Am, named Amethyst after her great-grandmother.

  Mimsy was in heaven. Her empty nest had been filled again, her shallow life given depth and meaning by a senseless tragedy. Conrad, on the other hand, felt trapped, imprisoned by fate in a claustrophobic cell of responsibility.

  Almost without realizing it, Con began to retreat into himself, to insulate himself from a world spun out of control. He started to drink on the sly, and his business began to slide. No one wanted a lawyer who couldn’t keep up with his commitments, who didn’t return calls, who misplaced files, got his clients confused, couldn’t keep his billing straight.

  Finally he had gotten a grip on himself and curtailed the booze, but it was too little, too late. In an attempt to get out of the hole, he had made some bad investments with money borrowed from the trust funds of several of his clients. At the point in his life when he should be looking forward to a comfortable retirement funded by ample stocks and bonds and IRAs, his practice was in the toilet, and his creditors were closing in. Bankruptcy loomed on the horizon.

  Mimsy, of course, knew nothing of his dilemma. She had never taken an interest in his business dealings, always content to let him bring home the paycheck and control the finances. As long as she had a fine house, a gold card, her society friends, and Little Am, she didn’t ask questions. And he certainly didn’t volunteer any information.

  Conrad raked a hand through his hair and shuffled the papers on his desk. If he didn’t do something fast, he was going to lose it all—the Mercedes, the house in the country, everything. He could see only one option.

  Mother.

  “Con-rad!” The shrieking voice came again, this time accompanied by an insistent knocking on his study door. “Conrad, come on! We don’t want to keep Mother waiting!”

  Con gathered up the papers from his desk, folded them lengthwise, and shoved them into the inside pocket of his sports jacket.

  It was a ninety-minute drive from their ten-acre estate in the countryside south of Memphis to Con’s boyhood home in Cambridge, Mississippi. Cambridge was a small, compact university town, its streets lined with venerable antebellum homes and tall magnolia trees. At the center of the courthouse square stood the statue of a Confederate soldier, and the sight of it always evoked a wave of nostalgia in his heart. As a boy he had played under the watchful eye of that statue; as a youth he had painted his initials on its base. As a freshman at the university, his fraternity hazing included a long night chained to the soldier in his boxer shorts. As a law student he had attended trials in the courthouse and gazed out the window to see the soldier standing there, ever attentive, ever vigilant.

  Conrad knew every street in Cambridge, every alley, every path through the woods that surrounded the town and the college. Even though his law practice forced him to live within commuting distance of Memphis, he still loved Cambridge and thought of it as home.

  Today, however, the drive into Cambridge made Conrad unaccountably nervous. Usually he looked forward to the trip—the rolling green landscape, the sensation of power as the Mercedes accelerated around each bend in the road, the feeling of welcome as he drove up the long hill into the town square and made his way around the circle to Jefferson Davis Avenue, where Noble House sat as a monument to his family’s longevity. All he could think of now as he pulled the Mercedes into his mother's driveway and parked it in the shelter of the hundred-year-old magnolia tree was that because of him, Noble House would soon become little more than a faded memory.

  Reluctantly he got out of the car, took the presents from the trunk, and proceeded up the walk toward the front of the house with Mimsy and Little Am trailing behind.

  “Do I have to go?” Little Am asked for the umpteenth time. She was seventeen, and Con was sure that visiting her ninety-three-year-old great-grandmother seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to the girl. But when she got out of sorts, which happened on a regular basis
these days, her voice took on that shrill and strident tone she had learned as a baby at her grandmother’s knee.

  Conrad stopped in his tracks and turned to glare at her. “Yes, you have to go. Now stop whining.” He looked her over and shook his head in dismay. Little Am was dressed in black jeans, a cropped-off black T-shirt that bore a Harley-Davidson logo and revealed five inches of her belly, and a black leather vest studded with silver spikes. His eyes locked onto an inch-long design just above her navel—a heart pierced by a thin blue dagger. A tattoo? Con sighed. He could only hope it was one of those temporary things that came off with baby oil and a good scrubbing. At least she looked clean and, except for that awful black stuff around her eyes, had toned down the makeup a little. Maybe he couldn’t expect any more than that.

  He turned and continued up the walk. The pink azaleas across the front of the porch were budding, and around the big magnolia tree, clusters of daffodils had already bloomed. In a couple of weeks, when crowds of people would be flocking to Cambridge for the annual pilgrimage tour, the place would be a riot of color.

  Mother had finally conceded to taking Noble House off the pilgrimage. It was simply too much for her—dressing in a hoop skirt, having hordes of people coming through, standing on her feet ten hours a day to give “the tour.” But folks still came by to see the outside of Noble House, which was the oldest historic home in the county. Sometimes Mother would still put on her rose-colored satin dress and sit on the porch swing waving to passersby, and if any of them had the nerve to get out of the car and come onto the porch, she’d offer them lemonade and regale them with her stories of Grandpa Silas and the War.

  It was, he had to admit, a beautiful home—a rectangular two-story of planter design, with square columns and tall, narrow windows across the front, and a balcony on the upper level—a “courting porch,” Mother called it. Noble House wasn’t as large or as elaborate as some of the other stately homes in Cambridge, but it had a history, Mother said, that couldn’t be matched. History, and a hundred and forty years of Noble love.