The Heart's Charge by Karen Witemeyer

Author:Karen Witemeyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Romance;FIC042110;FIC042030;FIC027050
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

Eliza bit her lip. Her family situation was . . . complicated. Uncomfortable. Both to talk about and to accept. Even for her. How could she expect Jonah to understand?

Slowly, she lifted her chin and claimed her identity. Illegitimate. Mulatto. Female. All classifications the world looked down upon. Yet she was the person God created her to be. His fingers had formed her in her mother’s womb. With purpose. She was fearfully and wonderfully made, and she would not hide.

“My father was far from perfect, but he wasn’t evil.” Eliza held Jonah’s gaze until he looked away to check their position on the road. “His wife passed away in the winter of 1861. She’d always been frail and spent more time abed than in company, but he mourned her loss. Mama hated seeing the man of science she respected retreat into a hollow shell. He started making mistakes at the shop, mixing up orders and forgetting ingredients. Mama worried his patients would suffer and couldn’t in good conscience sit idly by and let things deteriorate without doing something to intervene.”

Jonah craned his neck and raised a brow, a light of teasing in his eyes. “Hard to imagine an interfering female in your family tree.”

Eliza’s lips twitched. “Yes, well, we Southerlands aren’t afraid to have opinions.”

“So I’ve noticed.” His tone offered no censure, only admiration. A fact that sent warmth through her midsection and up into her cheeks.

Good heavens. Was she actually blushing?

Clearing her throat, Eliza returned to her story. “Mama refused to let him languish away. She became downright impertinent. Throwing open draperies when he said he preferred them closed. Taking food to his study when he neglected to come to the table and not leaving until he ate to her satisfaction. She watched every move he made in the workshop and challenged him when she spotted an error.

“Respect blossomed in that workshop. A respect that grew into something . . . more.”

Eliza repositioned herself on the wagon bench, uncomfortable speaking of her parents’ immorality. No matter how many times her mother tried to justify their relationship with talk of love and how it was only because of society’s intolerance that they’d never wed, the truth was still the truth. Her mother had given herself to a man without the benefit of marriage vows, and her father had not had the courage to defy convention and marry her mother, even in secret. He could have taken her to New York or Vermont, states with no anti-miscegenation laws. He’d had sufficient wealth to pay someone off and ensure secrecy. Even if he never acknowledged the marriage publicly, she and Mama would have had the comfort of the truth. The blessing of legitimacy in the eyes of God, if not in the eyes of society. But her parents had chosen to walk a different path.

“When he was a young man, Papa fell ill with the mumps, and the physicians told him he was sterile. After having no children with his first wife, the last thing he expected was to beget a child on my mother.

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