Surrender at Orchard Rest Read Online Free PDF

banter. Ivy was beautiful enough for him and he loved her family, but for all that, Joseph couldn’t find one point of interest about her.
    “She looks ready to agree with every word I say for the rest of my life,” he’d exclaimed to Somerset once when she suggested he take up with her after they hadn’t heard from Fairlee for six months. “What on earth is the fun in being with a woman like that?”
    Joseph thumped out of the room on his cedar cane in search of a celebratory drink.
    Somerset placed her hand on Ivy’s shoulder.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You didn’t do anything to me. I don’t require an apology. I don’t want to talk about it, either. What a fine portrait of Teddie that is.”
    Congested sniffs filled the room.
    “Only he and Helen sat for them before the war came,” said Somerset, giving Ivy time to compose herself. “I imagine what mine would look like since his is as fine as it is. He doesn’t even look like a real gentleman you’d see walking down the street. Amelia wanted to take it with them when they moved to South Carolina but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. She said if Amelia got her boy, she couldn’t have the Bostick of him as well. Just one of many tenuous points between Mother and Amelia.”
    Ivy did not acknowledge her.
    “We always knew she’d come back, Ivy,” said Somerset in a soft voice. “Even if she didn’t ever come back, you’d grow old and lose your chances with anyone else while waiting on him to come around.”
    “I don’t want to talk about it now.”
    Somerset stared at the portrait, waiting for her dearest friend to pull herself together. It was a portrait of Theodore hunting in a copse of trees in autumn. The light filtered through the branches of pines and made his blond hair—Blanche’s hair—golden, throwing the autumn foliage into insignificance. His setter, Dorothy, clung close to his heels and pointed her narrow nose in the direction of his prey. The only thing wrong with the picture was that it didn’t show his Marshall eyes—Blanche’s eyes—well. He was just on the brink of manhood, and it was obvious why Amelia had snapped him up without a second thought. The set of his jaw and the slope of his shoulders radiated strength and calm, a future patriarch.
    Ivy turned from the oil painting with defeated posture and wiped her eyes.
    “I’m better, truly I am.”
    “I feel for you. I do,” said Somerset. “Yet I can’t tell you I hope they part ways. Fairlee is my friend, too. I love you both, but I can’t choose for him.”
    “Yes,” agreed Ivy.
    Somerset heard a sound that caused her whole body to feel alert. She recognized Sawyer’s familiar fast step on the portico. She looked from Ivy to the open west window. She knew a real friend would stay and console Ivy, but in that instant she felt an unquenchable necessity, with the intensity of a fizzing flame on a firecracker, to see Sawyer.
    “If I need to see someone now, will you stand sentry for me? No guests are here, but if Mother asks, tell her you don’t know where I went. I’ll tell you all about it tonight after the guests have gone home.”
    Somerset strolled over to the open window and, after a quick survey left and right, she raised her voluminous skirts and stepped over the sill.
    Sawyer caught his breath when he saw her suddenly materialize two yards in front of him with her impossible skirts swinging from descending the sill. She looked very mischievous, the light in her eyes too fervent. He took in the tumult that was her dress, the arcing folds of fabric, fine embroidery, and silk roses. He knew in that instant that she had never been so exquisite, and he discerned that it was not the ensemble so much as the fact that she believed once more what a magnificent woman she was. He felt timidity seep damply into his soul. It was March 1861 again and he was dying of love for her, unknown, while she lolled on the garden swing with Eric.
    She advanced on him, closing the distance