Wedded to War Read Online Free Page A

City
Sunday, April 28, 1861
     
    C urling up on the plush cushioned bench inside the parlor’s bay window, Charlotte welcomed the bundle of marmalade and cream fur that bounded onto her lap.
    “So there you are, Dickens!” Purring vibrated beneath her hand as she stroked his glossy coat. She had named the cat with her favorite author in mind, but quickly realized the little feline was beautiful on the outside but a dickens on the inside.
Probably the way everyone sees me—especially men!
    Still stinging from the news that the uniform contract had gone to Brooks Brothers, Charlotte was in no mood to be courted today. But courting season had arrived with the daffodils, and it would not be put off, even for war. No, courting was serious business. She should know. She had been through ten years of it herself, and not one had produced a suitable match. Still, she couldn’t help but assume some of the blame for that.
    This year will be different
, her mother kept telling her. Perhaps she was right. Even so, by the time Phineas Hastings took his leave of her front parlor this Sunday afternoon, she was more than ready for some solitude.
    Charlotte held nothing against Mr. Hastings. In fact, she had respected the law professor ever since she had met him at a guest lecture given by Frederick Douglass at the Broadway Tabernacle. Mr. Hastings was intelligent, charming, educated, and a regular churchgoer. His parents—God rest their souls—had brought him up well.
Not quite as tall as
—She shook her head as if to erase the thought. Comparing every suitor to a ghost from her past served no one.
    Importantly, her mother approved of Phineas. A wry smile lifted Charlotte’s lips. Little did Caroline know, however, that as soon as she had put an end to Charlotte’s work at the House of Industry, Phineas had given the charity a large donation—all the proceeds from a recent lecture he had given—just to cheer Charlotte up. Since then he had made a few more donations, perhaps more to win Charlotte’s affections rather than from his own concern for Five Points, but she didn’t care. Regardless of his motivation, his generosity to the charity endeared him to her.
    In addition to teaching law, Mr. Hastings was one of New York’s most well-known crusaders for abolitionism. His fiery rhetoric—and the fact that he had shared the stage with Douglass, even if only for a moment—left her in awe of him from the start. Most men didn’t understand why Charlotte attended lectures, but Mr. Hastings had actually seemed to enjoy conversing with her about politics and culture, religion and philosophy. It was what had attracted her to him in the first place. He wasn’t afraid of a woman who used her brain.
    “Then again,” Charlotte told Dickens, “I imagine I would be happier if I just didn’t think so much.” She leaned her head against the windowpane, her cat still warming her lap. Discontent seeped into her, like the cold air through the glass. Large, wooly clouds sagged in the air, snagging on church steeples and streetlights as they drifted across a grey flannel sky. Every roll of thunder echoed the rumblings of her spirit.
    The passionate preaching from the pulpit this morning and thenewspaper at her side she thumbed through now deepened her unrest. Since the attack on Fort Sumter almost two weeks ago, New York City had rallied together for the Union cause, but the news headlines did not support the city’s optimism. Virginia had seceded on April 16. Troops on their way to Washington were attacked in Baltimore. Southern sympathizers had burned several railroad bridges to prevent Union troops from passing from Baltimore to Washington, and the rioting continued. Col. Robert E. Lee officially resigned his commission with the U.S. Army to lead Rebel troops in the Army of Northern Virginia. A Southern attack on the Federal capital was imminent.
    And she wasn’t doing a thing about it.
    Sighing, she reached for the Blue Willow teacup