The Rain Crow
Mother jabbed me in the ribs with her rapier elbow so sharply my breath caught. “Lorena Dobbs McKenzie,” she snapped, “stop glaring at that girl right now and act pretty.”
At that moment, my nemesis swiveled her perfectly coifed head toward me and flashed that cloying smile with her wide white teeth that always reminded me of freshly limed planks while her claws tightened possessively on Joseph Sullivan’s arm. Mother caught the exchange and huffed like a small dragon. “You rise up young lady. You’re a McKenzie and this is our night.”
Our night.
How could I rise up? That scheming Jezebel with her crooked nose and braying donkey laugh had stolen my happiness, my everything. I could understand it maybe if she were pretty, but she was as far from pretty as I was from the moon.
Mother had kept me busy festooning the hall with pine boughs and small floral bouquets or bunches of grapes tied with colorful ribbons at the apexes. It was the customary decoration, but I wasn’t normally choused day to dark harvesting pines and flowers and scuppernongs for it. “You’re not going to sit in your room sighing and mooning over that boy when there’s work to be done,” she fumed when I complained. “Your eyes will be swollen shut from crying and I’m not going to have you looking less than perfect tonight, young lady. Bear up. You’re a McKenzie, not some wilting violet.”
I rallied before she assaulted my ribs again and glanced at the offending pair then pulled my shoulders back like a dragoon marching to war. Mother was right. This was our night, and I wasn’t going to let that weasel ruin it. Nor his harpy.
The Pines Fall Production Horse Sale was one of the premier events in Charleston, South Carolina every year. We invited trusted breeders to consign also but limited the sale to 150 horses to keep people alert and prices high. Two breeders from New York were gathered with some Georgia men, catalogues in hand, earnestly discussing prospective purchases and prices. They would be dragged away by distraught dance partners soon, but drift back together again like iron filings to a magnet. Balls were common as dust; fine horses were prized.
Everyone who was anyone attended the ball the night before, as it was as highly anticipated by socialites as the sale was to horse people. Though I was only sixteen, I had helped with the horses and our breeding program for as long as I could remember. Papa and I studied bloodlines like treasure maps for perfect crosses to result in horses with the ideal conformation, speed, stamina, and temperament and we were largely successful in our breeding theories. It was a great source of pride for my father that my ability to remember things in complete detail after one reading meant I could reel off any pedigree in perfect order.
Papa and I studied horses thoroughly while Mother studied bank accounts, properties, and family histories in equally minute detail. Looks, personalities, and the occasional blackguard were minor attributes to her. Money and social standing excused a great many shortcomings.
Mother thought my memorization of horse pedigrees a perfect waste of intelligence when I should be focused instead on helping prepare her pre-sale party, which she plotted all year. She was determined the ball must be the social event of the season. In addition to a grand party, it gave her the opportunity to introduce me to the most eligible young men in the south. If I would not marry well in the north, and my father assured her I wouldn’t, I would marry the best in the south. Not while he still drew breath would he permit a Yankee to claim my hand he declared in one such debate. She replied she might arrange that if he didn’t see reason, swore she wasn’t speaking to him, and stormed off to her room to sulk. He danced on the veranda later and shouted up toward her window, “Ye speakin’ tae me yet then, Bert?”
Whiskey may have been involved.
Tonight, she was dressed in a bespoke aubergine gown with an extravagant amethyst and pearl necklace adorning her enviable bosom. Her naturally small waist, even after six pregnancies, was drawn in even smaller with the help of two maids and substantial lacing in her corset. As I was expected to follow in Mother’s wake as one of the social queens and fashion icons of Charleston, I was swathed in a satin emerald gown that Aunt Gertie brought from Washington. Emerald being chosen to complement my complexion she said as soon as she unpacked it. Mother and Gertie promptly plotted how to dress my hair to make me so gorgeous Joseph would regret the foul betrayal of sending me a message the week before saying he would be taking someone else to the ball, casting me into utter devastation.
Nearly the first words out of Aunt Gertie’s mouth when she arrived had been a chastisement about freckles and an order to fetch lemon juice.
“Yes, well, she looks just like her father,” Mother pronounced almost as an indictment.
“She has your lovely storm-gray eyes,” Gertie offered.
“But everything else about her is pure Kieran. She even has that choirboy gone rogue look half the time. I think it’s that crooked smile.”
Guilty. I vowed to work on that. Rogue choirboy looks not being in fashion for young ladies.
“His oval face, arched brows—”
Gertie peered at me. “Oh, I think her face is round, don’t you?”
“No oval. Definitely oval. And that generous mouth, turned up nose. Kieran’s. Red hair.
“Yes, red hair,” Gertie agreed.
“Chestnut, I think,” I interjected, uncomfortable with this odd dissection of my looks.
Papa made the mistake of coming by as they were curling, conversing, and debating my hair color, so he was asked.
He gauged me for a moment as if sizing up a new acquisition and shrugged, “Blood bay. Aye, definitely blood bay.”
Mother gasped. “Did you just compare our daughter to a horse? Get out!”
He always knew exactly the right thing to say to get banished from a conversation he had no interest in.