A Note Yet Unsung Page 24

  Five times? He jumped up. “Forgive me, Rebekah, but I have to go.”

  She looked at him. “Go? Go where?”

  He grabbed his bag from the corner, along with his satchel. Thirty minutes to get to the train station. And this was the last train of the day. If he missed it—“I’ll be back on Monday afternoon, by the time you come in. Or shortly after.”

  She stood. “Monday afternoon? But where are you going? And for the entire weekend?”

  She looked from him to his baggage, then back again, suspicion coloring her features. But he had no time to explain. About where he was going, or when he’d be back.

  “If I remember correctly, Tate, Mrs. Cheatham told you in no uncertain terms that she—and the symphony board—didn’t care for the weekend trips you’ve been making. So, naturally, I assumed, since you’re serious about your position here and finishing this symphony, that you would have canceled your—”

  “Rebekah, I don’t have time to explain. I have to catch a train. I’ll see you on Monday.”

  “But, Tate, I really wish you would—”

  He raced out the door.

  19

  Left standing midsentence, Rebekah could only stare as Tate strode from the office. He’d left. Simply left. Without a backward glance. Too stunned at first to feel anything other than surprise, she quickly learned how swiftly her emotions could flip.

  Her body flushed hot as she thought about where he was likely headed. To an opium den, perhaps. Or maybe a gentlemen’s club, where “creativity-boosting” libations flowed and where morphine was administered like candy. And where there was never a shortage of those kind of women.

  The more she imagined it, the angrier she became.

  Hoping against hope that she was wrong, she crossed to the cabinet, knelt down, and opened it. Gone.

  The box of laudanum was gone.

  “Of all the confounded—” She pushed out a breath through clenched teeth, that word not customarily a part of her vocabulary. “If you think for one minute, Tate Whitcomb, that I’m going to allow you to throw away my opportunity the way you’re throwing away yours . . .”

  She grabbed her cloak and reticule and headed for the train station, not knowing what she was going to do. She only knew she had to do something.

  Outside on the street, a biting wind whipped at her cloak, and she regretted not wearing her gloves that afternoon. But she hadn’t planned on walking any great distance, much less racing across town to the train station.

  She tucked her chin to the wind and covered ground as fast as she could, determined not to let Tate board that train. He’d be throwing away so much. For them both.

  Working with him that afternoon had been pure pleasure. Actually having a hand—albeit a small one—in writing a symphony was . . . She could hardly find the words to describe it. The experience was one of the most exhilarating she’d ever known, and they’d only just begun. Speaking of exhilarating . . .

  That moment on the bench, when he’d stared at her, then had briefly leaned in . . . She’d been attracted to men before. And though she’d never been kissed, she was still no novice in matters of the heart. But how could she be so moved by a man when he hadn’t even touched her? But oh, how she’d wanted him to. In that moment, anyway. Looking back on it now, she was so thankful he hadn’t.

  Because that would have changed everything. And she couldn’t allow anything to interfere with this opportunity. Because an opportunity like this wouldn’t come again. She’d done her best to appear as though she’d been oblivious to his attention. When really, her heart had all but hammered straight out of her chest.

  Almost twenty minutes later, she reached the train depot, winded, throat raw from the cold, lungs and legs aching. She climbed the stairs to the crowded platform—and spotted him boarding the forward-most passenger car. But . . . why would such a well-to-do man purchase a third-class ticket?

  She called out his name. But the train whistle blew, masking her words. Tate didn’t look back.

  “All aboard!” a porter yelled above the noise and foot traffic. “Train to Knoxville with the final stop in—”

  Another whistle blast drowned out the last of the announcement. But . . . Knoxville? She tried to push her way through the crowd to get to Tate, but her efforts proved useless. She’d never reach him in time.

  “Two tickets, please!” a frantic voice said behind her, and Rebekah turned to see a couple buying tickets.

  She looked back at the train and thought of Tate first, then of New York, and shoved her way to the ticket office. “One ticket, please.”

  The clerk eyed her through the grilled window. “Miss, this train is leaving.”

  “And I’m going to be on it, sir!” She slapped a bill on the counter.

  “To Knoxville or to the end of the line?”

  She thought quickly. “End of the line.” She had no idea where Tate was going.

  As the man counted back her change, she spotted a telegraph behind him.

  “How much to send a telegram, sir?”

  “Miss, you ain’t got time to—”

  Rebekah grabbed a pencil and blank slip and wrote hastily, grateful Mrs. Cheatham was gone for the weekend.

  With a dark look, the clerk took the message and shoved the coins and a ticket toward her. “Sure hope you can run, lady.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Just watch me.”

  Feeling the train slowing down again, Tate awakened with a start.

  He looked out the window, expecting to see only darkness as they rounded a curve. But instead he saw the faint lantern glow from the depot at Chicory Hollow—and a flurry of white.

  Finding it difficult to believe he’d slept the brief leg from Knoxville, he stifled a groan at seeing the snow. Inclement weather always made his trek more arduous, especially in the dark, but at least it wasn’t sleeting. And knowing how excited Opal would be to see the snow somehow made the large, fluffy flakes seem less burdensome.

  Tate looked beside him at the old-timer who’d asked to share his bench seat back in Knoxville. The man was scrunched up against him, head on his shoulder. Tate shifted in the seat, but the man didn’t budge. Seems he wasn’t the only one who’d been dog tired.

  Tate nudged him again. “End of the line, sir,” he said softly. The man finally roused, along with the other few passengers in the train car whose business took them to Chicory Hollow—where civilization ended and another world began.

  The train car was cold, despite the wood stove situated in the center. As usual, as he’d come to learn, the fire had been allowed to die out soon after they’d left the station in Nashville. Traveling in third class was not for the faint of heart. Nor those wishing to stay warm.

  But it was for Nashville Philharmonic conductors who wished to remain unrecognized.

  He stood and stretched, his back and neck muscles aching from being too long in one position, and an awkward one, at that. Despite the rest he’d gotten on the way, he still felt tired, and looked forward to going to bed later that night.

  What he wasn’t looking forward to, however, was apologizing to Rebekah when he got back home. The woman was probably livid, and likely still would be come Monday, based on her tone when he’d walked out. But under the circumstances, he’d had no other choice.

  Not that she would understand. And not that he could tell her the truth about where he’d been this weekend.

  Weary within and without, he grabbed his bags and made his way up the aisle, waiting for the slow-moving passengers in front of him to disembark. He’d been in such a hurry to leave Nashville, he hadn’t had the chance to change clothes, but he would before he started out.

  A rush of cold air greeted him as he stepped from the train, and he breathed deeply, welcoming the fresh air after the ripe odors that had permeated the passenger car. It felt good to stretch his legs, and he headed to the public privy—when he looked up and saw a familiar face stepping off the next car.

  Shocked for an imm
oveable instant, he quickly ducked behind the nearest billboard, his pulse escalating. What were the odds that Rebekah’s stepfather—Tate tried to remember his name. Ledbetter, wasn’t it?—would be on this train?

  Tate waited a full two minutes after Mr. Ledbetter passed before daring to venture from behind the sign. What business did the man have in Chicory Hollow? Tate had no idea, but if he were a betting man, he would’ve wagered no business fit for a gentleman.

  Still, he didn’t plan on hanging around to find out. Not when he had such a hike waiting for him, and not when he remembered what Virgil and Banty Slokum had tried to do to him a couple of times ago when he’d arrived this late. But tonight, he was ready for them.

  Not wasting another minute, Tate made a beeline for the public privy.

  “Miss? Hello?”

  Eyelids heavy, Rebekah struggled to awaken and saw an older gentleman staring down at her. For a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was. Then the enormity of her mistake hit her and she threw off the lap blanket and shot to her feet.

  “Miss! Watch your—”

  With a thwack, her head met with the above compartment of the passenger car, and she sank back down again, briefly seeing stars.

  “I’m sorry, miss. I tried to warn you.”

  The porter wore an apologetic look.

  “It’s not your fault,” she whispered, grimacing and rubbing the tender spot on her head while peering through the dirt-smudged windows looking for Tate. She’d fallen asleep? She’d battled drowsiness all the way from Nashville to Knoxville, where she’d briefly disembarked and had watched for Tate to do the same. When he hadn’t, she’d gotten back onboard. She’d been so cold from standing outside that she’d reached for a blanket . . .

  And that’s the last she remembered. She exhaled. Staying up the night before with Mrs. Cheatham had proved costly.

  Rebekah steadied herself on the seat in front of her and rose again, squeezing her eyes tight as the pounding continued. “How long have we been here, sir?”

  “Oh, not long. Five minutes at the most. But this is the end of the line, ma’am. Train doesn’t leave again ’til morning.”

  She nodded and looked around her feet for her reticule. It was gone! She dropped to her knees and—

  There. Beneath the bench seat.

  She grabbed the purse, checked the contents and found them, to her relief, as she’d left them. She stood again, more mindfully this time, and thanked the porter, then quickly made her way down the aisle and outside—disembarking to a cold rush of air hitting her face.

  Fat flakes of snow swirled and danced in the wind like little fairies before draping the evergreens in white. The scene looked like a picture someone might paint on a card sent at Christmas. Only, at the moment, she failed to fully appreciate the beauty.

  She pulled her cloak more tightly about her and searched the nearly empty platform, wishing again that she had her gloves. The clerk at the station in Nashville had sold her a first-class ticket for the ladies-only car, which meant she hadn’t been able to move from car to car as she’d hoped. But she knew Tate hadn’t disembarked in Knoxville, and this was the next—and last—stop. Still, she marveled at the idiocy of her plan. Or lack thereof.

  What had she been thinking? Simply buying a ticket and getting on a train? What woman did that? It certainly wasn’t in character for her to do so.

  Chicory Hollow.

  She read the worn shingle hanging at odds from its chains. Nice to know where she was, even if knowing didn’t help much. She looked for the porter, but the platform was empty. A CLOSED sign hung in the window of the ticket office. Same for the telegraph office adjoining it. Then she spotted a man walking away from her at the far end of the platform. A local, judging from the simple cut of his trousers and worn overcoat.

  She started to call out to him, then stopped, recognizing his confident gait, those broad shoulders and that lean waist, even if she didn’t recognize his homespun clothes. She stared, certain Tate had been wearing a suit when he’d left Nashville.

  So why on earth had he changed? And into that? Debating whether or not to approach him now, she quickly decided not to.

  She’d come this far, so her best option was to follow him and find out, for certain, what he was doing and then confront him about it—when he couldn’t deny his actions or try to talk his way out of it.

  She followed him from the train depot, keeping her distance. But when he suddenly veered off into the woods, she stopped, not knowing what to do. Why on earth was the man going into the woods? And at this hour of night?

  One possibility came to mind, but she’d seen privies back at the station. Privies she now wished she’d made use of. Plus she was hungry. Lunch seemed forever ago.

  Imagining all the grief she was going to give that blue-blooded blackguard when the time came, she followed him through the prickly maze of pine and poplar, and almost immediately lost her sense of direction.

  Snow and pellets of ice bullied their way through the thick stand of evergreens, and the wind sent them swirling this way and that, which only added to her confusion. But she quickly gathered her wits about her. Because Tate Whitcomb needed to be back in Nashville writing that symphony. For his future, as well as hers.

  She heard something crack behind her, and spun. Yet saw nothing. But she knew she’d heard something.

  “Tate?” she called out. Seconds passed and, dread rising inside her, she called his name again. Telling herself not to panic, she turned in a slow circle, searching the world of bare tree limbs and shifting shadows for any sign of the train station, or civilization in general.

  But it was as if the train station had never existed.

  A noise, like the crackle of leaves, sounded somewhere behind her, and she turned again. “Who’s there?” Her heart beat so loudly in her ears, she could scarcely hear anything else. “Tate, is that you?”

  Feeling the frosty tendrils of actual fear, she shivered, sensing she wasn’t alone. But before she could call out again, a hand reached from behind her and clamped an ironlike grip over her mouth.

  20

  Rebekah tried to scream, but the strangled attempt never left her throat. She fought and kicked, scratched and tried to scream again, doing everything Sally had taught her to do if something like this ever happened.

  “Whoo-wee! You and me, we gots us a real wildcat here!”

  A high-pitched cackle to her right told Rebekah there were at least two of them. The grip on her mouth shifted just enough and—

  “Ow!” A string of curses left her assailant. “She done bit me! Bit me!”

  Nearly gagging from the vile taste, Rebekah let out a scream and continued to fight as a band of steel encircled her waist.

  “Hold on there, you pretty thang. I hain’t gonna hurt you none. Just wantin’ me a little bit a—”

  The unmistakable ratchet of a shotgun severed the night—and Rebekah’s struggle. She stilled, her body shaking.

  “Let her go.”

  “Tate!” She turned in the direction of his voice but saw only endless night and shadows.

  “Aw, come on, Witty!” The hold around her tightened. “We’s just havin’ us some fun—that’s all. We hain’t gonna hurt her none. Maybe just steal us a kiss or two.”

  “Yeah.” Another high-pitched cackle. “If she don’t bite your nose off first, you dumb little—”

  “I said, let her go, Virgil.”

  The shadows to the left moved, and Rebekah made out the barrel of a shotgun, then saw him. His name left her in a throaty whisper, and the man holding her loosened his grip.

  Rebekah turned and shoved him hard, but the effort only earned his laughter. She quickly joined Tate at his side.

  “Witty, you oughtn’t let your woman go a-wanderin’ the woods on her lonesome. ’Specially followin’ the aidge of dark.”

  “Then again,” the second man piped in, “you Whitcomb boys hain’t always been the brightest.”

  “Are you all
right?” Tate whispered down to her.

  “You know these men?”

  “Just answer my question, Rebekah.”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Scared, but fine.” Though she didn’t care for his corrective tone, or the way she couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Virgil, you and Banty get on out of here before I remember you’re on Whitcomb land.”

  Virgil stepped forward. “This here land belonged to my grandpappy long ’fore—”

  “He lost it to mine,” Tate finished. “In a poker game. I know the story. And telling it again won’t change the ending. Go on and get, Virgil. You too, Banty.” Tate raised the shotgun. “Now!”

  After leveling glares, the men did as he asked, stepping through an opening in the pines and disappearing into the night.

  With the threat diminished, Rebekah’s fear swiftly melted to anger. “What are you doing out here, Tate? In the middle of nowhere!”

  “You followed me, Rebekah? All the way from Nashville? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Me? Lost my mind? You’re the one standing here conversing with those two . . . imbeciles—who you apparently know!”

  He lowered the shotgun, his gaze swiftly scanning the tree line before he faced her. “Seriously, Rebekah. What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here? Other than throwing away everything you’ve worked so hard for, all the years of study, of practice. You’ve been given so much, Tate. Opportunities others will never have. That I will never have. Yet you’re willing to trade it all for a few days of laudanum and . . . debauchery.”

  He stared. “Debauchery? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about your addiction.” She swallowed, the emotion threatening to choke her. “And whatever else it is you’re planning to do out here. Oh, I’ve read about what musicians do, Tate. I’ve seen it firsthand. In Vienna. Going to your opium dens and drinking your . . . cocaine elixirs. You think it broadens your creativity. But it does just the opposite.” She sighed. “You’re in danger of losing all you’ve gained if you continue doing this.”