Surrender the Wind Read Online Free PDF

the whole story? That she lived in danger. Catherine shrugged, betraying none of her nervousness from his continued scrutiny. “Lord save me from a man with his illusions.”
    “Life is a journey down the landscape of illusion.” He probed again, his double entendre.
    How dare he patronize her? As if he knew so much more than she. “How philosophical you are, not only claiming to be a general but a Greek scholar too. Was it Socrates?” Did she see a challenge met in his eyes? Catherine smiled. Indeed, he’d find her a worthy foe.
    “No Plato.” His grin was taunting.
    “But Plato based his ethical theory on the proposition that all people desire happiness. Is that not so?” She tempted him.
    “Yes.”
    “Of course,” she instructed. “People sometimes act in ways that do not yield happiness. But they do this only because they do not know what actions will produce happiness—like your Cause.” Her gaze locked on his, she waited for some frivolous answer—some goading, some crossing of swords.
    Instead he considered her, letting the moment draw out, then raising his brows. “The touch of your sword wounds me. Plato further claimed that happiness is the natural consequence of a healthy state of the soul. Because moral virtue makes up the health of the soul, all people should desire to be virtuous, therefore States rights are paramount—as my Cause—for they are virtuous.”
    What a thrill that he thrived on intellectual debate. “Your so-called virtuous States Rights are flawed. For the soul of Plato, the basic problem of ethics is a problem of knowledge. If a person knows that moral virtue leads to happiness, he or she acts with a natural inclination toward virtue. Your Cause fails in this.”
    “Our Cause does not fail and will not fail. We view the basic problem of ethics as a problem of the will. The South knows what is morally right and we will prevail.”
    “You have switched from Plato to St. Thomas Aquinas, General.” How she savored to point out the flaw in his argument.
    He inclined his head in an exaggerated bow. “My shadow is small in the sun of your greater knowledge.”
    She ignored his mockery. “The Christian philosophers would argue that owning a man is immoral. Those who allow slavery should not have freedom themselves.” She remained emphatic on the subject and would not bend. “Do you have slaves?”
    He was introspective for a moment, and then spoke. “At one time, yes, but my brothers, parents and I decided to free them. Some remain and we pay them wages. I always believed slavery was a rotten whore of an institution. What about the cold hypocrisy of the North? What about the women and children in the factories and sweatshops? Is that not a form of slavery? And the Negroes, you give them low-paying jobs—they live below poverty. Is this the emancipation you want them to flee to?”
    He was right. Catherine did not have an answer for him. It was the sad hypocrisy of the North. Would it haunt society in years to come?
    “I think you would do well with the women of the South, in fact, they would admire you.”
    A blue jay cawed outside and perched on a tree branch, his sharp blue plumage bright in the sun. Hadn’t the general moved the conversation onto safer terrain? “How so?” Her interest was pricked. She really had no prior contact with the culture of Southern women other than what she had read.
    The General laughed. “Curious like a woman. They’d respect you for your independence, coming to a small town, away from home, holding a profession…living alone.
    She had never lived alone, surrounded by a legion of domestics, nannies and Brigid, her ladies maid. Her stepmother, Agatha lived in the house, taking advantage of all the Fitzgerald assets. Her father had left the estate to his two children. The dilemma was a legal intricacy that her father never had imagined. Since Shawn was missing, Agatha gained control of all Fitzgerald assets until Catherine’s twenty-fourth