A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series Read online

  “I thought A Heartbeat Away was very well-written and was very effective in the portrayal of the personal side of war. Although the story is based on fictional characters, it tells a story that was very real to many during that time period. Moore’s style is an easy and enjoyable read.”

  —Bob Murphy, RCM History Tours

  “A Heartbeat Away is a poignant tale as deep and varied as the backdrop upon which it’s set. Remarkable characters facing extraordinary circumstance, amidst the turmoil of the Civil War, make this story lasting and memorable. A MUST read!”

  —Elizabeth Ludwig, author of No Safe Harbor

  “S. Dionne Moore is a master storyteller whose way with words takes her readers deep into her story world. In A Heartbeat Away, she has outdone herself with the word pictures she paints of Civil War–time Maryland and a heroine torn between both sides of the conflict. Beth Bumgartner carries wounds of another kind than the Confederate soldier she nurses, wounds that are healed through her working an unfinished quilt her mother has given her. This is a story that needs to be read and savored.”

  —Pamela S. Meyers, author of Thyme for Love and Love Finds You in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

  Other books in the Quilts of Love Series

  Beyond the Storm

  Carolyn Zane

  (October 2012)

  A Wild Goose Chase Christmas

  Jennifer AlLee

  (November 2012)

  Path of Freedom

  Jennifer Hudson Taylor

  (January 2013)

  For Love of Eli

  Loree Lough

  (February 2013)

  Threads of Hope

  Christa Allan

  (March 2013)

  A Healing Heart

  Angela Breidenbach

  (April 2013)

  Pieces of the Heart

  Bonnie S. Calhoun

  (June 2013)

  Pattern for Romance

  Carla Olson Gade

  (August 2013)

  Raw Edges

  Sandra D. Bricker

  (September 2013)

  The Christmas Quilt

  Vannetta Chapman

  (October 2013)

  Aloha Rose

  Lisa Carter

  (November 2013)

  Tempest’s Course

  Lynette Sowell

  (December 2013)

  Scraps of Evidence

  Barbara Cameron

  (January 2014)

  A Sky Without Stars

  Linda S. Clare

  (February 2014)

  Maybelle in Stitches

  Joyce Magnin

  (March 2014)

  A HEARTBEAT AWAY

  Quilts of Love Series

  S. Dionne Moore

  A Heartbeat Away

  Copyright © 2013 by S. Dionne Moore

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4267-5270-4

  Published by Abingdon Press, P.O. Box 801, Nashville, TN 37202

  www.abingdonpress.com

  Published in association with WordServe Literary Agency.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, posted on any website, or transmitted in any form or by any means—digital, electronic, scanning, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in printed reviews and articles.

  The persons and events portrayed in this work of fiction are the creations of the author, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  The Scripture quotation on page 110 is from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been requested.

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / 18 17 16 15 14 13

  For my beautiful daughter.

  Love you to the hundredth power. So there!

  Acknowledgments

  Tip of the hat to RCM History Tours owner Bob Murphy for all the information he shared and the time he took to give me a private tour of the battlefield. He filled my head with the voices that became these characters.

  1

  September 14, 1862

  Battle of South Mountain

  Joe opened his eyes to darkness. A shadow moved against the semiblackness of a window and his senses screamed the warning. He jerked, gasped at the jolt of pain, and fell back. His heart pounded with fear at his weakness as his mind struggled to place where he was. Ben? Where was he? They had stayed close to each other. Too close. Ben had blamed himself when Joe had taken the minié ball in his shoulder. Joe heard his own voice as if from a great distance; his explanation to ease Ben’s guilt: “We’re in a war, what do you expect?”

  He blinked as a vision of Ben flashed through his pounding head. He massaged his forehead, felt a hand on his shoulder, and swung to his left, rolling to avoid the contact. He fell into nothingness, slammed onto the floor. Pain took his breath.

  “Joe!”

  Through the waves of nausea he realized one thing—the voice was soft. Feminine. When the hands touched his shoulder, his face, he felt the softness in the fingertips, reminding him of home and gentler times.

  “You’re in a springhouse on our farm,” the voice rushed to explain. “You were injured.”

  He gritted his teeth against the effort of even sitting up. Her hands left his arm, though he could hear the swish of her skirts. A flicker of light, then a touch to raise the wick and brighter light.

  “Can you stand?” She went to the bed and yanked the covers back up that had twisted with him to the floor. “I’ll try to help you.”

  “No.” He spat out the word, and rocked to his knees, fighting for consciousness through every move. Why was there such searing pain? The minié ball injury? “I’ll get up.”

  She guided him down onto the thin mattress and covered him with a quilt. He felt like a child being put down for a nap. Her fingers swiped hair from his brow, and he swallowed against a new tightness in his throat. How long had it been since he’d felt a gentle touch?

  “I’ll get my grandmother. Perhaps she can—”

  “Stay.” He exhaled hard, wanting nothing more than to feel her touch against his face again. To hear the softness of her voice.

  She’d made as if to rise but settled back in the chair and into the circle of light. “Do you know who you are and what happened?”

  “My shoulder. I was shot by a Yank in a skirmish. Ben . . . my brother was with me.”

  “He’s not here. It’s only you. You were brought here by . . . a group of people.”

  Such a lot of words. Too many for him to make sense of them all. Golden light shimmered against her dark hair and revealed a flash of darkness along her cheek. A dimple? He blinked and felt the grit in his eyes.

  “Go back to sleep. It truly is the best thing for you.”

  “Ben . . .” He let the word linger, his mouth dry, lips stinging. He raised his hand to touch the burning spot along his mouth, but the effort was too much. The woman’s voice was a whisper in his ear, his eyes too heavy to open, and he didn’t want to. All he wanted was to know if his brother was safe. The woman had to know something, didn’t she? Lost on a rise of pain emanating from his chest—or was it his shoulder?—the question spun away from him. Giving up the fight, he dragged air into his lungs and forced himself to relax against the waves of discomfort.

  Gerta Bumgartner stood sentry over the inert form of the Confederate soldier, a position Elizabeth
had seen her grandmother take many times in healing the sick and suffering. But this—this was different and they all knew it.

  “His wound is bad, Grandmama,” she worried aloud as she stepped into the coolness of the springhouse.

  Gerta’s sharp eyes, only now dimming with a fog that made it hard for her to focus, took in the dark interior of the room. Babbling along the floor, a spring ran up through the ground, paused to maintain a pool of water, then gurgled off beneath the wall and out into the bright September sunshine.

  Another roar vibrated through the air. The two shared a look, each understanding and mirroring to the other the worry of cannons and charging brigades moving in their direction. The war was edging closer to them every minute.

  “The fighting is fierce. The South will prevail.”

  Elizabeth should have been used to the shocking things Gerta said by now. It was part of the reason her grandmother stayed to herself and was no longer called on as much among the citizens of Sharpsburg. “How can you say that, Grandmama, knowing that your grandson fights for the Union?”

  Gerta chuckled and wiped her hands on a linen cloth that lay across the wounded soldier’s chest. “I say what I think.” She shot her a mischievous grin. “Tomorrow, Bethie, I’ll root for the Yanks.”

  Beth took in the soldier’s gray complexion, his dry, bleeding lips. No shoes. His feet were cracked on top, the bottoms splotched with blisters and dirt.

  “A right sad lot of men, if he’s any example,” Gerta said. “Did you burn the clothes and the bedding?”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t help grimacing. She’d been forced to burn the rag of a dress she’d worn while dragging the louse-infested mattress and clothes out to the fire. Her ankle and leg ached from the work.

  “I stripped him down and scrubbed him hard.” Gerta pointed to a long tube hung on a leather string around his neck. “A louse trap.”

  Beth raised a brow. “Another one of your remedies?”

  Another cackle of glee burst from her grandmother. “Can’t take the credit for this one. It works, and there was plenty of his blood to bait the trap.”

  Beth stared at the narrow tube and decided she didn’t want to know any more.

  Gerta stroked the man’s forehead almost as if she feared his skin would tear with the least amount of pressure. Beth had felt that tender touch before. Felt her grandmother’s gentle pressure against the hollows of the eyebrows that helped relieve pressure in the head, or the massage that eased pain and relaxed taut muscles in the neck. “Tell me about the package,” Gerta said.

  For a moment, she couldn’t fathom to what her grandmother referred; then she recalled the brown-wrapped package beside the armchair in front of the fireplace. “I haven’t opened it yet.”

  “I can see that, girl, but where did it come from?”

  “I brought it with me.”

  “Your mama.”

  She managed a stiff nod. “She wanted me to have something of home.”

  “Yet you haven’t unwrapped it?”

  Beth shrugged. “I haven’t been homesick.”

  Gerta straightened and put a hand to her back, a grimace tightening her features. “I think I’ll sit a spell. We’ll need to bake more bread. As much as we can over the next few days.”

  “I’ve already started.” She didn’t bother to remind her grandmother that she’d said the same thing often over the last two days, ever since word of the Confederates moving into Frederick had been received.

  Elizabeth followed her grandmother’s brisk steps outside at a slower pace. Already the September air blew hot. A beautiful day, redolent with the rushes of gentle breezes and a mobcap of white clouds scudding along the blue sky. Yet, even the warm rays of the sun seemed restless as they stabbed through the clouds and then disappeared, only to reappear within seconds. She wondered, fancifully, if even God was nervous about the artificial white cloud capping South Mountain and the battle raging there.

  She hadn’t realized she’d stopped to stare until her grandmother’s voice broke into her thoughts.

  “There go the Roulettes.”

  Beth’s gaze followed the bend in the road that ran in front of her grandmother’s farm and led northeast to Hagerstown.

  “Going to the church, no doubt.”

  “Aren’t you worried, Grandmama?”

  “You wanted to train as a nurse and the good Lord saw fit for those slaves to bring you your first patient.” Gerta turned back toward the house. “We’ll have more than we can handle if the fighting keeps up.”

  Not quite done with the conversation, she traced her grandmother’s path into the generous kitchen. “You think they’ll come this way?”

  “They’ll be all over the place. Harper’s Ferry is a threat that they’ll have to deal with.”

  “And you’re not afraid?”

  Gerta snorted. She dipped water from a bucket into a kettle and set it to heat. “I’m seventy-nine years old, sharp of tongue, and knowing more than all those Rebels and Yanks put together—”

  “All of them?” Beth couldn’t help the smile.

  Her grandmother shot her a grin and flattened her lips like the bill of a duck. A comical, mischievous expression Beth had seen frequently on her father’s mother’s face, hard times or not. “Well, most of them. Goodness knows there’s nothing much to fear at my age except dying and going to the wrong place, and I’ve had that one settled for years.”

  “But what if they steal or force you to leave or . . . ?” She shuddered, her mind going to the worst possible scenario.

  Scooping tea leaves into her favorite cup, Gerta raised another, empty cup, eyebrows lifted in question. Beth nodded.

  Gerta measured out tea leaves, her bright, dark gaze unflinching. “Nothing bad will happen, Bethie.”

  She pressed her lips together, the truth stinging afresh. “Already so many have died.”

  “And there will be many more who will need our help.”

  Nursing, she meant. It was the one dream that Beth had clung to in the days since leaving her parents’ home to stay with her grandmother, intending to join with the Army of the Potomac and Clara Barton. A dream that had waned a bit as rumors circulated of the coming troops. But the blacks had come under cover of darkness the night before, bringing the soldier and igniting the need to be of more use than sitting and stitching or cooking.

  Gerta had never been able to understand why the blacks had come to her instead of the town doc, other than her reputation for helping the ailing despite the color of their skin. The small town’s doctor had southern sympathies.

  Gerta slid the cup of tea toward her. Dutifully taking a sip, Beth couldn’t help smiling. No one made a cup of tea like her grandmother, or maybe it was so good because it was made by someone who knew her as well as her grandmother did.

  “You’re limping.”

  She covered the sigh by blowing the air onto the tea. Her leg. Her ankle. Always a problem. “I want to help anyway.”

  “Your mother gave you jobs to keep your hands busy so you could rest your leg.”

  Beth didn’t meet her grandmother’s gaze. Gerta, of all people, knew exactly how much she despised being relegated to tasks that made her sit and rest. “It’s not going to be a problem.” She lifted her chin, pleased to see not an ounce of pity in Gerta’s eyes.

  “Then we should get to work.”

  Beth took a long sip of tea, dreading another day of baking. Perhaps her pride should be swallowed instead of the tea.

  A sagging flour sack beckoned, as did the twenty something loaves of bread already baked, awaiting the inevitable hungry mouths of the enemy, whose goal must be to reach Hagerstown and join the rest of the Confederate army. They could hide the loaves. Save them for the Union troops that were even now engaging the Rebs. She hoped the enemy wouldn’t decide to loot the Union-held garrison at Harper’s Ferry that would take the Confederates through her grandmother’s small town. Sharpsburg would be ravaged by the thieving monsters. She feared h
er hopes were already dashed though, as reports of the Confederates in that part of Virginia had already filtered back, putting the townspeople in a vise of fright, hemmed in on three sides by the enemy.

  Allowing herself to be carried off to a more peaceful time by the familiar work of adding water to flour to form dough and inhaling the yeasty sourdough scent, Beth did her best to blank her mind of the worries that nagged. When she finished kneading enough dough for four loaves, she began another batch, until perspiration dampened her neckline, flour dusted the front of her bodice, and her bad foot sent shards of pain shooting into her leg. She dragged up a stool and continued the work. Wiping the flour from her hands, she heaved a heavy sigh when the sticky flour mess mussed her skirts instead of the apron she should have been wearing to protect her clothes. She brushed at the mess and decided it best to let the moist flour dry before picking it off her skirt. She tied on her grandmother’s worn calico apron with the pretty stripes. The striped material would have been a little wild for her mother’s taste, but it fit Gerta’s personality to a T. The thought tugged a smile from her as she plunged her hands into another batch of warm, sticky dough.

  The yard door rattled open behind her. Gerta opened and shut the door quickly. “The flies are terrible.” She set a cup of tea down on the work surface. “I wanted him to drink some, but he fell asleep again.” She surveyed Beth’s work with a sharp eye that belied her deteriorating eyesight. “You’ve quite enough there. Add more flour to the sourdough for tomorrow’s baking. I’ll start on some pies while you rest.”

  Beth finished the dough, placed it in a bowl, and covered it to rise. A long line of bowls lined the work surface in front of her.

  “Biscuits would be good as well. Maybe a meat pie.”

  “Are you going to have Harold take the milk cow, chickens, and horse to safety?”

  Gerta measured out lard and turned to the flour sack. “He’s driving Mrs. Knicks’s cow, too, and said adding more wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Beth sighed. At least the animals would be safe should the soldiers come their way and pillage. She’d heard stories of the damage they’d done at Frederick. Finished with the bread, Beth wiped her hands on the apron and picked up the tea she’d left mostly untouched. She tasted it and frowned.