An Inconvenient Marriage. Christina Miller

turned to Emma, who held his hat and muddy Bible. To his shame, he’d forgotten she was there. Her reddened cheeks cut through him, slicing yet another piece from his heart. Seemed he spent more time embarrassing his fourteen-year-old than he did in any other occupation these days. His daughter stood at a distance, more than arm’s length, as she had since he’d fetched her from her Kentucky boarding school two weeks ago.

      Until she turned, head bowed, and dashed back toward the vestibule.

      Where was she going? Why would she bolt this way in the midst of an emergency?

      “Now will you slow down and think?” The woman in green hesitated only a moment and then followed Samuel’s daughter down the aisle. Reaching her, she rested her hand on Emma’s shoulder and spoke into her ear. Emma immediately broke into a bright smile.

      How had the lady won his daughter’s affections so quickly when Samuel could hardly coax a word from her?

      “That was no scream.”

      The words broke into his haggard mind like a swarm of cicadas, interrupting his thoughts. He spun toward the sound. That was it—the voice he’d heard earlier. Shrill, piercing, yet with an unmistakable plantation accent—this was the woman in trouble. Samuel searched the choir for eyes pinched with pain, lips drawn in agony.

      Instead he saw a feisty-looking antique of a lady, her hazel eyes snapping and her wrinkled lips pursed. “What you heard was my solo, sir.”

      Solo? The screeching he’d heard had been—singing? “I beg your pardon, ma’am...”

      His face must have been as red as Emma’s. To insult a woman of her age—it was unthinkable. To do so to a parishioner—intolerable. And in front of other church members—unforgivable.

      How had this happened? He’d shepherded hundreds of men during the war, prayed with the sick, comforted the dying. He’d cared for them with the love of a father. But now, in the first moments of his first day at Christ Church, he was failing.

      Just as he was failing Emma.

      As he scrambled to think of a suitable apology, a man in a stylish suit and ruffled white shirt stepped into the sanctuary. “Chaplain Montgomery.”

      “Colonel Talbot.” He hastened toward his former commander and clasped his hand. If only Samuel had not committed such a blunder, he could have enjoyed reuniting with this friend he’d not seen since Lee’s surrender. Instead he leaned in close to whisper. “I fear I’ve inadvertently insulted a lady in the choir.”

      “You? I doubt you’d know how.”

      “Trust me, I did. I know I heard a woman cry for help, but she said she was singing.” Samuel chanced a glance at the lady, who stood dignified as a dowager among the sopranos who attempted to hide their smiles behind their hands or sheet music.

      The colonel looked in the direction Samuel indicated and then back again. “The lady in black?”

      He nodded. “The one who looks like she wants to cane me.”

      Colonel Talbot covered his mouth with his hand and rubbed his chin, but not before Samuel caught a glimpse of a grin on his face. Even if he hadn’t, the man’s laughing eyes would have given him away.

      “This is not funny, Colonel.”

      He cleared his throat. “You’re right, of course. She used to be a brilliant soprano, but her singing days passed when she left middle age, and no one has the nerve to tell her.”

      “But I distinctly heard her call for help.” Shriek for help would have been more accurate, but Samuel held his tongue.

      The colonel slowly lowered his hand as if unsure he wouldn’t yet give way to an outburst of laughter. “It’s a new hymn called ‘Help Me Be More Like Jesus.’ Since she penned it, we could hardly give the solo to anyone else.”

      “Hardly.” So Samuel had insulted not only the dowager’s voice but her composition, as well. This was worse than he’d first thought. “Who is she?”

      “Missus Reverend Hezekiah Adams. The founding minister’s widow.”

      No. The woman who’d called him to pastor here. Samuel let out a low groan. Missus Adams was, indeed, a dowager—of the church. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his brow. “I’ve gotten myself into a bind. Only you know how much Emma and I need to stay in Natchez—and why.”

      As they strode toward the choir—and the dowager, the lady in green silently dismissed the singers from the back of the sanctuary, and they trickled out. Emma wiped her little finger under her eyes, no doubt trying to whisk away her tears.

      Tears that Samuel had inadvertently caused.

      No matter what it would take, he had to keep this pastorate, for Emma’s sake. That meant he must win over Missus Adams before she could ship him and Emma back upriver to Vicksburg. Otherwise he could never bring long-overdue happiness to their lives. Happiness they had never yet experienced as a family.

      God had led him here, to Natchez, to Christ Church. To a place of new hope, new beginnings. Of this Samuel was sure. Now he had only to convince the dowager.

      And by God’s grace, he intended to do just that.

      * * *

      Never in Clarissa Adams’s nearly twenty-one years had she seen such a commotion in church. Things wouldn’t calm down anytime soon, either, judging from the fire blazing in Grandmother Euphemia’s eyes.

      Nor had she ever seen anyone insult her grandmother, even unintentionally, and escape the dear woman’s finely honed sarcasm.

      What other new and unexpected thing might happen this day?

      “My father’s not always like this.” The girl set the bowler hat on the nearest pew, drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at the mud on the Bible.

      With a low laugh, Clarissa leaned in close. “I imagine sometimes he’s even worse.”

      The auburn-haired girl let out a giggle, then she covered her mouth with her hand and lowered her head.

      The poor girl. Her distress made Clarissa unsure who she felt more sorry for—her, Grandmother or the dark-haired father.

      Studying the girl, Clarissa recognized a subtle air about her, an air she’d herself had at that age. The girl’s natural vulnerability and lightheartedness of youth barely peeked through a veneer of stone.

      What tragic event had caused such hardness?

      Clarissa glanced at the red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks. The few moments she had wept couldn’t account for her appearance. Something or someone had made her cry earlier, that much was certain. Surely the handsome man with the kind eyes hadn’t injured his daughter in some way, had he? It seemed unlikely, but Clarissa turned wary eyes to him. Strange men arrived in postwar Natchez every day, seeking a pretty cotton heiress and an easy fortune—or so they thought. They weren’t to be trusted.

      But who were this father and daughter? And why had they burst in at the end of choir rehearsal?

      Clarissa glanced at the cameo timepiece pinned to her shirtwaist. Ten minutes to one. She had little time to find out before meeting her attorney as he’d requested in his terse note of this morning. “I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm. Fathers don’t realize how they sometimes embarrass their daughters.”

      “Does your father understand you?”

      The pointed edge in the girl’s tone brought back memories of Clarissa’s own family heartbreak, of the fear that had turned her words sharp as Father boarded a riverboat—alone—for the Yazoo Delta that long-ago February day. Memories of the cold wind blowing up to the bluff as Clarissa waved to a parent who didn’t look for her in the crowd. “I think Papa would empathize with me now, if he were here.” Instead of a hundred and twenty miles up the Mississippi River.

      “My