Save Your Heart for Me

 

"Carson? Is that you?" The Union captain put away his ornamental sword and pushed back his hat. "Don't you know me?"

Carson blinked her eyes and tried to focus. The crowd was very still around them and the moment seemed to stretch out forever.

From behind her, Lauren cleared her throat, and Carson shook her head.

"That is you, isn't it?" he guessed. His eyes raked her face and there was no doubt. "Carson Myszkowski!"

"I can't believe it," Carson finally responded, recognizing his face. "Alex?"

"What are you doing?" Lauren hissed. "People are watching! You can do old home week later!"

"Sorry." Alex pulled at his large cavalry gloves as he recalled where they were and what they were supposed to be doing. It was just such a surprise to see Carson there.

Carson glanced at the crowd, seeing her parent's faces and pulled herself together. It was just such a surprise to see Alex there.

"Mrs. Anne Butcher." Alex addressed Carson in a formal voice loud enough to be heard above the murmurings of the crowd at the gates.

Carson stared at him, forgetting her lines for a moment while her mind raced with memories and questions. She didn't move, didn't speak while the crowd grew restive, starting to whisper.

"Yes, I am Anne Butcher! Yes, I am Anne Butcher!" a voice from behind her prompted her lines.

"Yes." It came out barely audible in the large open space with a cow lowing from the barn and the far sound of geese overhead. She cleared her throat and adjusted her voice a little louder. "Yes, I am Anne Butcher."

The crowd relaxed as though the world had swung into its proper axis again. Carson's parents hugged each other.

"I am Captain Michael Payne of the U. S. Army under General Sherman," Alex continued. "You will surrender this farm to me."

"Please," she pleaded, hoping the tone was eloquent. "Please don't destroy my home. I have worked so hard to keep us going since my husband's death."

Captain Michael Payne smiled at her but his tone was firm. "It has been my judgement to use this farm and this house as a base hospital for the wounded of both our sides, Mrs. Butcher. The horses and the livestock will be confiscated by my troops to refresh our own needs. But the house will not be damaged."

Carson stood looking up at him for a few seconds too long, and she heard Mrs. Engstrom hiss, "Swoon! Swoon!"

Captain Michael Payne's golden eyes twinkled at her. His left brow raised slightly as he waited for the end of the tableau.

It was his daring look. The way he'd always looked at her when he wanted her to do something stupid when they were kids. The look that always worked because she didn't want him to think that she was ‘chicken'.

"Thank Heaven!" She finally managed. She bent her knees as she had practiced, and closed her eyes, relying on the 'captain' to catch her in his arms as she would have dropped to the ground.

His gloved hands slid around her waist and held her then he looked back at his men.

"No one here is to be harmed. Any trespassers will answer to me personally. Gather up the wounded from the camp and bring them here. The battle of Butcher's Roost is over."

Applause sounded through the large group of watchers around the house and yard. The men in uniform began to pick themselves up and brush themselves off, finding hats and weapons that had been dropped during the fake assault.

Carson opened her eyes and looked up at the captain, struggling to get her footing so that she didn't fall on the ground when he released her.

"I thought you weren't going to swoon!" Mrs. Engstrom came down the stairs, clutching her hand to her ample bosom. "For one awful minute, I thought you weren't going to swoon! You took a year off of my life, Carson! What were you thinking?"

"Sorry, Mrs. Engstrom," Carson replied quietly. "I guess it was stage fright."

Mrs. Engstrom sighed and crossed Carson Myszkowski off of her play list for next year.

"I thought it was masterful timing," Alex whispered, helping Carson stand up straight.

"Thanks." She brushed at her dress. "It was more a dread fear that you might forget to catch me. You know how easy I am to forget."

Alex frowned. "I never forgot you, Carson."

"Five years!" She rounded on him as the yard around them cleared. "And only a handful of letters! Then you're back and you didn't even tell me!"

"Hey, you were pretty good, Carson!" Her brother approached, his uniform torn in several places. "But I thought you weren't going to swoon for a minute." He put out his hand to Alex. "Good fight, Captain."

"Thanks, Private."

Riley Myszkowski studied the other man's face for an instant."Hey, Alex! Is that you? What are you doing here? When did you get back?"

"I live here again, Riley. I moved back last week. I haven't had time to call everyone." Alex said, looking into Carson's eyes as though to answer her accusation.

"It's been a while! I think you owe me a pizza!" Riley recalled with a quick laugh. "And maybe ten bucks! I'll be looking for you, Captain."

"Maybe the pizza, Riley," Alex answered. "I can't believe you're still trying to scrounge money off of everyone!"

Riley shrugged. "Not everything changes."

"Hello!" Lauren sailed down the porch steps and instigated herself between both men with a dazzling smile. "Why, the two of you must be so thirsty after you're ordeal!" Her ‘Scarlett' accent was never better. She'd played Anne Butcher for the previous two years. "Let me take you around back for some lemonade."

She put a hand through each of the men's arms and the group walked away. Both men smiled down into her pretty, upturned face.

Carson started to follow but a small boy, not more than five, came up to her and pulled at her dress.

"Hey, Lady?"

Lauren glanced back at her and made a discouraging face then continued walking and talking with her escorts.

Carson narrowed her eyes and picked up the hem of her dress, prepared to follow no matter what Lauren had in mind.

"Hey! Lady!" the child called in a louder voice.

His parents joined him and looked at Carson, waiting for her to acknowledge their son.

Carson ground her teeth as Lauren, Riley, and Alex rounded the corner of the house.

"Yes?" she asked with a sigh, trying to be pleasant.

"Are you a witch?"

It took a while to explain to the small boy, whose name was Thomas, that she wasn't a witch but a widow. Then to explain what a widow did and why she wore black. By the time she'd finished, Mrs. Engstrom was drawing her into the house to answer questions for a crowd of visitors that were taking the tour of the pre-Civil War farmhouse.

Carson glanced out the wide, narrow-paned window and saw Lauren flirting with both her brother and Alex Langston. She didn't care if she flirted with Riley. He was used to it. She didn't really care if she flirted with Alex but she did have a few choice words to say to him and the sooner she said them, the sooner she'd feel better about it.

Alex was back. She couldn't believe it! And she couldn't believe that she was still angry at his desertion! It had been five years, after all. She wasn't normally a person to hold a grudge. Alex was a different story.

There was no time to go and look for Alex, Riley, and Lauren. She had no sooner finished with the tour than she was ‘summoned' for assignment in the field.

"Ladies!" Mrs. Engstrom called frantically from the porch again.

Twice every year the small town of Seven Springs, Tennessee came alive. Once in the fall for the apple festival and just after Christmas for the re-enactment and craft fair at the resident historical site.

Butcher's Roost had been preserved since the end of the Civil War as a reminder of the great battle between the North and the South. Resting on several hundred acres of land at the foot of the great Smoky Mountains, it had been a strategic site for one of the last headquarters of the Confederate army.

Despite its unattractive name, the house and land were graceful and well made, weathering time and tourist's feet with a dignity that had been built into its foundation.

Mrs. Engstrom, the last descendent of the liaison between Confederate land owner Anne Butcher and Union officer Michael Payne, was in charge of the event, as always. She handed out assignments with the deliberate strength of a general commanding her troops. She knew every word of every line that was spoken during the play. If a rifle misfired during the assault, she caught her breath. She was the original Mrs. Anne Butcher for the first ten years of the tableau. She gave way only when she became unable to fit in the dress.

"Jean, you will be handling the tours through the house until noon." She checked off her list without looking up, her bi-focals perched on the end of her nose.

"Melanie, you'll be taking the groups through the spinning and dye house. I have Tom taking people through the servant's quarters and the smokehouse."

Melanie made a face but smiled as the woman looked up at her.

"Is that a problem, dear?"

"Not at all, Mrs. Engstrom."

Everyone knew her reputation. If she checked you off the list, you would never be part of the re-enactment again. Mrs. Engstrom glared at Melanie but didn't comment. She continued on with her list and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"Lauren, you'll be working at the souvenir shop, taking money and setting up the tours. Mind you." She pointed her pencil at her. "No more than ten or twelve at a time. We don't want to lose track of any of them like we did last year and end up with someone locked in the cellar, do we?"

Melanie nudged Lauren and laughed. Lauren had lost an entire tour last year and obviously the chairperson of the Seven Springs Historical Society wasn't going to trust her in the house again.

"And Carson, since you're new, you'll be doing story telling beside Mary, who's candle-dipping and Rachel, who's making soap."

Carson nodded and thanked her, silently wondering exactly how long it took in Seven Springs to become an insider. She'd been an outsider since she'd moved there in her last year of high school. Five years later, she was still 'someone new'.

She trudged back up the steep slope to the demonstration area near the barn and outbuildings, trying not to think about that awful first year in Seven Springs.

Things had been so much better since she'd come back from college and made a life for herself in the town. She'd found friends and been accepted by most people.

She'd joined the historical society while she'd still been in college, studying to be a history teacher. It was a good place to meet people and her natural love of history made it interesting. But from the first, she'd suffered the fate of the last man on the bottom.

The first year, she'd been making soap. The second, she'd been dipping candles. Last year, she'd been out in the stables answering questions about the chickens and cattle.

Thank heavens three other ‘outsiders' had moved into town and joined up for the re-enactment after her! At least storytelling didn't smell bad or entail her having animals stepping on her feet.

The storytelling stall was the one next to the blacksmith. There was a chair crudely made of slats and rope and several smaller stools surrounding it for the storyteller and her patient listeners. Everything had to be authentic, something that could have created during the Civil War. Mrs. Engstrom and the Historical Society were scrupulous when it came to realism.

By the time Carson got to her spot, some parents had already dropped off a few solemn looking little children who were patiently waiting for the story of the battle of Butcher's Roost. Many of them were dressed as their parents had imagined children dressed during the time. The standard realization seemed to be blue jeans, particularly overalls, and flannel shirts.

Carson pulled her shawl more tightly around her, glad for the heavy material of her widow's dress in the cold morning and took her seat to tell her tale.

"History tells us that it was Anne Butcher's love for a Federal captain that was the only thing that saved Butcher's Roost from the fires of the Federals. The Yankee captain insisted, once the farm was captured, that it be used as a hospital to treat the wounded coming into the area. At the time, they had to keep their romance a secret but he came back at the end of the war and the widow married him. They lived as husband and wife another twenty years and raised four children together."

Carson had seen the picture of the pretty widow and her handsome captain and she embellished the story as she told it, enjoying the looks on the children's faces.

Those wondering looks were the reason she'd become a teacher in the first place. Sometimes it was hard to remember when parents were upset over seating arrangements and homework assignments. Or she was being swallowed by the ton of paperwork that had nothing to do with teaching her class.

She'd become a teacher for the look on a child's face when they first learned something new. That awe and wonder that this thing existed and now they understood it. And maybe it was corny, but she thought she could make a difference in someone's life.

Everything hadn't gone the way she'd planned originally when she'd graduated from college. She hadn't been able to teach a grammar school class but she'd found that teaching ninth graders was equally as challenging. That elusive man she'd envisioned coming into her life had remained elusive long after he should have shown his face. But she hadn't given up hope.

And though she'd been teaching for nearly two years and she wasn't sure about making a difference sometimes, the look on the faces of her students remained the same. And that's what kept her from quitting work as a teacher and going to work at the mall outside of town.

When the story was told, the children went in search of their families and Carson shivered on her chair, waiting for the next group.

The sun was shining fitfully through dark clouds that had threatened rain since early that morning. The wind off the hillside made her look at the terrible job of candle dipping in a new light. At least it was warm beside the fire.

"You look like a woman who could use warming up," a husky male voice said from behind her.

She didn't turn around but she did shiver again. "I look like a woman who'll consider candle-dipping next year!" "I think I can help," Alex volunteered with a laugh.

He disappeared for a moment and when he re-appeared on her side of the wagon, he was carrying a black iron pot filled with smoldering red coals that put out waves of shimmering heat into the frosty morning air.

"That's wonderful!" she enthused, scooting her chair closer to the heat source. She pushed her toes close to the side of the pot.

"Warm feet," he murmured, looking up at her from his position near the ground. He settled the pot into a rut to make it safer against tipping. "The way to a woman's heart."

"Communication is the way to a woman's heart, Alex," she disabused him of his male notions.

"Communication?" he wondered, catching and holding her gaze. "I'm sorry, Carson. I didn't mean to drop in on you like this. I was going to call. My phone won't be turned on until Monday. Then Robbie came down sick and begged me to take his place today. I didn't know you were playing Anne Butcher."

"You don't have to explain," she responded lightly. "We were only friends for a year. And that was a long time ago." She looked down at his hands where they rested on his knees as he crouched beside her. They were large and callused, reminding her that she had no real idea of what he'd been doing for the last five years. Yet, it was amazing to think how he'd grown from a scrawny teenager to the man before her.

"I want to explain," he began, glancing at the group that was building up waiting for a blacksmith demonstration. "But I don't have time right now. Let's meet for lunch or something, Carson. Okay?"

Carson pulled her shawl closer. "That's fine. When you get settled in." She still wasn't ready to forgive him.

"How are your other brothers?" he wondered, his eyes focusing on her face. "Are the rest of them still around?"

"They're fine," she answered with a polite smile. "Bragg lives just over the mountain and Jackson still lives here. Riley and Woods are here for the weekend with the re-enactment troop. Campbell and Lee both live in Virginia."

Alex laughed. "I'm surprised none of you changed your names. It can't be any easier for your brothers being named after the army forts where they were born than it was for you."

She shrugged. "We're adults now. Not many adults tease you about your name."

"Thank goodness you were the only girl," he remarked. "Those names don't lend themselves well to the feminine." "And mine does?" Carson defended.

He stood up slowly, all six foot something of him. Lean and devastatingly masculine. "I like it," he said simply. "It suits you. Let me know when your coals start to get cold."

"Thanks," she answered. She moved her eyes quickly past his legs covered in black wool, his narrow waist, and his flat stomach. The loose white shirt clung to his chest and broad shoulders "I'm-uh-warmer already."

She would have had to have been something less than a human female not to watch him walk away. He had been her friend. There had been nothing of the romantic between them. But he'd grown into a good looking man. He was muscular but not so big that he lurched, she analyzed, watching his confident stride. He walked like a man who knew where he was going and what he was doing. A different man than the one who'd left after his grandmother had died.

She looked away and reminded herself that this was Alex. It was all right for Melanie or Lauren to flirt with him but not for her. She knew him too well. She might find him attractive but it was in the same way she might find an actor on television attractive. It wasn't personal. It was just Alex.

She concentrated on her new audience and by the time she heard the anvil fall again, she was re-telling the story of Butcher's Roost.

There wasn't time to wonder what had brought Alex back after all those years. Or to nurse her old grudge against him. The day slowly overcame its gray start and the skies turned blue. The sun was warm and the leaves on the trees were still golden and red. People flocked to the festival from Seven Springs and the county surrounding it. It would probably be the last opportunity to get outside and enjoy the fine weather before the long winter set in.

A little after two, as the tour buses were circling in the wide drive and a new group of visitors were starting their way through the grounds, Melanie and Lauren, joined her on the hill.

"Who is that?" Lauren asked, seeing the blacksmith stoking the fire in the forge.

"It's the blacksmith," Carson whispered.

They turned and watched as he lifted his arm that held the heavy mallet and brought it down on the red-hot steel that had been in the forge fire. The clang of metal on metal echoed through the crisp morning air.

"I know he's the blacksmith," her friend retorted, "but who is he in real life?"

Lauren sighed. "Alex Langston. Can you believe it? Old Martha Langston's grandson! Who would've believed he'd turn out so well!"

"I don't recall-" Melanie began with a frown.

"He's been gone for years," Carson told her.

"He was always in trouble." Melanie nodded, recalling him slowly. "I remember him now. Carson knew him best."

"Well, he's turned out pretty well," Lauren re-stated with a curious glance at Carson's face. "And don't you even think of looking at him!"

"Me?" Carson exclaimed, handling the heavy material of her skirt with some difficulty.

"I saw him first," Lauren told her.

"You saw him in seventh grade," Melanie answered sourly. "You didn't think much of him then."

"Whatever! That was then!"

"If Carson wants him-"

"I don't think I said that," Carson answered briefly.

"It's always the outsiders that get men like him in a small town," Lauren fretted.

"She's hardly an outsider!" Melanie argued eagerly. "She's been here since high school!"

"I can put a stop to this right now," Carson said. "You can have him, Lauren. He's not my type."

Lauren made an unattractive noise between her teeth. "Not your type!? Yeah, right!"

"You mean he's a little too hunky for you?" Melanie asked her friend.

"I mean, I know Alex Langston. He and I were never more than friends."

As one, they turned and looked at the handsome, well built blacksmith who was busy shoeing one of the horses in the corral. Interested tourists watched him in amazement and snapped pictures.

"Friends?" Lauren whispered.

"I remember! The two of you were always together. It was your first year here," Melanie confirmed. "I thought you were dating."

"Never," Carson said in dark tones. "I was more like his kid sister."

"Well, I never knew him that well," Lauren continued and turned back to Carson. "But I'd like to now, Carson. So keep off!"

There was a short bout of giggling as a few of the other ladies from the visiting re-enactment troop re-arranged hats and gloves. They fluttered about like multi-colored butterflies, watching the blacksmith as he went through the movements of his assumed trade. Smiling and whispering, they ogled the smooth ripple of muscle under the white shirt.

"Ladies," he acknowledged them with a nod of his head.

"Sir." A short brunette curtsied slightly, holding her long skirt with gloved hands. She was wearing a deep green velvet gown that dipped low off of her shoulders.

He put down his mallet and put his hands on his hips where his black wool pants met perfect golden skin revealed in a small expanse by the loose shirt. Not an ounce of surplus flesh rested around that waist.

"Can I demonstrate something for you?"

That evoked a flurry of laughter and parasol turning while Melanie whispered that his eyes were the color of hot caramel.

"You read too much," Carson scoffed quietly.

"Depends," Melanie replied. "I'm married. You know? Look but don't touch?"

"Not me," Lauren said tartly, flashing them both a look of blue-eyed determination. "I want the demo."

Carson and Melanie watched Lauren saunter the fifty feet or so towards the blacksmith, her hips swaying provocatively in the wide, hooped skirt as she passed the saucy brunette.

"How does she do that?" Melanie asked enviously.

"Sashay," Carson filled in for her. "Lauren sashays."

"How does she do it?" her friend pressed.

"Practice," Carson supplied. "She walks for hours in front of the mirror and watches her hips."

They laughed, the sound floating outward on the cold air.

The blacksmith looked up from his perusal of the woman steaming towards him and locked gazes with a pair of laughter filled hazel eyes.

Carson looked away quickly, pushing aside a small catch in her breath.

Alex picked up his hammer. There had to be something he could do to make Carson forgive him. Memories of her were one of the reasons he'd come back to Seven Springs.

"So." Lauren finally reached his side. "You're the blacksmith."

"That's right." He wiped his hand on a rag before he offered it to her. "Could I shoe a horse for you, ma'am?" He flirted back with the attractive redhead, not looking at Carson. "Or would you like a wagon wheel repaired? I can do a demonstration of early welding for you."

Lauren's smile widened. "I would dearly love to have you demonstrate your manly arts for me, Mr. Langston."

"We need you in the house now, ladies!" Mrs. Engstrom hailed the group from the white washed front porch.

"I have to go," Lauren said, winking and pressing his hand a little harder. "Maybe we can talk later. At the dance?"

He nodded. "I'll be there."

He stoked the fire in the forge higher then turned to the group who were watching him.

Carson ignored him as she took her seat and began to tell the story again. She imagined how happy Anne Butcher must have been to see that her captain was alive, that there had been no real battle. But she hadn't been able to show it.

Any sign that the two even knew each other could have meant death for them both. It had been a miracle that they'd been able to keep their relationship a secret for so long anyway. To all outward appearances, they'd had to meet as enemies after a battle. One, the victor, coming to claim the property. The other, the loser, to surrender what was rightfully hers. All the while loving each other and just wanting to fall into each other's arms and thank God that neither had been hurt.

It was very romantic. Carson smiled, thinking how often her family teased her about her mile-wide romantic streak. The anvil struck hot metal beside her and she frowned, recalling how many times Alex had teased her about the same thing.

But that was another time and they were two different people. Still, she had to admit she was curious. What had brought Alex back to Seven Springs?

Carson was relieved by another storyteller a short time later. She walked around to the back of the house, looking for something to drink. Her throat was parched from the acrid smoke earlier that day and the constant storytelling after the re-enactment.

She looked out towards the hillside and watched Alex as he explained his role to a large group of people while he drew the glowing horseshoe from the fire and hit it with the anvil.

"Can you believe that Alex is back?" Riley rounded the house and caught his sister off-guard. "Wonder what brought him back?"

She looked at him then dipped herself some lemonade. "I wouldn't know. I haven't really talked to him."

"He's in good shape. You can't help but admire-"

"I wasn't admiring anything," she defended a little too heatedly. "I was wondering if I was supposed to relieve Lauren or if I was supposed to find something else to do."

"Yeah." He smirked. "Right."

Carson counted to three and sipped at her lemonade. "You know I like men with brains, Riley," she scoffed. "A few well placed bulges don't mean anything to me. And Alex Langston-"

"- happens to be someone you cared about once," Riley went on.

"We were just friends."

"Maybe he wants to be more than friends now," he suggested.

"Maybe you've read too much into his homecoming. His grandmother did leave him a house here."

"A house no one's lived in for almost six years?" He laughed at her. "I think you should look again. He might have come back for . . . someone."

"Someone?" she wondered, glancing back towards the hill. "Did he say something to you, Riley?"

"Not anything specific." Riley followed her gaze. "But he did say that he wanted to talk to you about something important."

She put down her empty cup and frowned. She and Alex had been very good friends for a short time. Was it possible that he could have felt something more? That could be awkward. She had never thought of him that way.

"You could go up and talk to him," her brother suggested.

"I could," she agreed, starting to walk away. "And you could mind your own business."

"You're writing him off without getting to know him any better? He's not the same man, Carsy."

Carson frowned. "You don't know your history, do you? Around here, the first dance at the Butcher's Ball is always danced by whoever plays Anne Butcher and whoever plays Captain Michael Payne."

Riley laughed. "Trapped, huh?"

"Unless it snows. See you later, Riley."

 

Review by ~ Leena Hyat for Scribe’s World

"SAVE YOUR HEART FOR ME is a uniquely woven tale of love in a small town where
everyone knows everyone and everything. Joye Ames has presented her fans with another beautiful and light romance that is sure to delight! For those who enjoy small town romances, SAVE YOUR HEART FOR ME is one not to be missed!"
 

Back to Joyce and Jim's Main Page