Divided Nation, United Hearts Read online

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  By the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Books Available from Bold Strokes Books

  Divided Nation, United Hearts

  February 1862. The War Between the States has been raging for nearly a year with no end in sight. Philadelphia socialite Wilhelmina Fredericks is safe from the war’s clutches, yet she feels compelled to do her part to bring the madness to an end. Accordingly, she disguises herself as a man, takes up arms, and heads South to join the fight. What could possibly go wrong?

  Clara Summers’s father and older brother are serving in the Confederate army. Forced to look after her two younger brothers as well as the small Tennessee farm the family depends on for its livelihood, Clara has no time for or interest in love. Then she meets a handsome Union soldier named Wil Fredericks, and her loyalty to both her family and the Southern cause is put to the test.

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  Divided Nation, United Hearts

  © 2017 By Yolanda Wallace. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-848-1

  This Electronic book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  New York, USA

  First Edition: March 2017

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Cindy Cresap

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Melody Pond

  By the Author

  In Medias Res

  Rum Spring

  Lucky Loser

  Month of Sundays

  Murphy’s Law

  The War Within

  Love’s Bounty

  Break Point

  24/7

  Divided Nation, United Hearts

  Writing as Mason Dixon:

  Date with Destiny

  Charm City

  21 Questions

  Acknowledgments

  Living in Georgia, it’s practically impossible to escape reminders of the Civil War. There are monuments, statues, and fancifully dressed re-enactors everywhere I look—and the South lost the war. Imagine what the architecture in downtown Savannah would look like if the North had surrendered at Appomattox Court House in April 1865 instead of the other way around. What is harder to find than the memorials to a conflict nearly two centuries old, however, are stories like the one that fills these pages. Stories of the various roles women played during the War Between the States. Countless books have been written about the thousands of men who put their lives on the line to fight on both sides of the war, but that doesn’t hold true for the many women who felt compelled to take the same risk. I hope I’ve done them justice. And I fervently hope, given the divisiveness of the recent presidential campaign and its unexpected election results, that history doesn’t soon repeat itself.

  My thanks, as always, to the usual list of suspects: Radclyffe, my editor Cindy Cresap, and the rest of the team at Bold Strokes Books for making the writing process so much fun. Thanks to my wife Dita for continuing to put up with my frequent flights of fancy. And thank you to the readers tor taking those flights with me.

  Dedication

  To Dita,

  Nothing can divide us.

  Chapter One

  February 1862

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Wilhelmina Fredericks reminded herself to breathe as she listened to the black man with the thick shock of coarse white hair speak so eloquently about a subject that had divided an entire nation in two.

  “I prayed for freedom for twenty years,” Frederick Douglass said, “but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

  Drawn in by the force of Douglass’s commanding presence, Wilhelmina leaned forward in her seat. The lecture hall was filled with people who had come to hear the former slave and famed abolitionist speak. Powerful men whose riches funded businesses across the Northeast, and the well-dressed women who bore both their children and their last names. Like the rest of the audience, Wilhelmina hung on Douglass’s every word.

  “The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.” Douglass’s long fingers clutched the lapels of his coat as he stood at the polished oak lectern. His dark brown eyes scanned the room, taking in the faces of his all-white audience.

  Wilhelmina admired his bravery. His willingness to speak his mind despite the rabid opposition he often faced. She had heard he was nearly killed during a lecture tour nearly twenty years before when he was chased and beaten by an angry mob before being rescued by a family of pacifists who offered him shelter. Wilhelmina wished she had a modicum of his courage. How brave it was to fight for what you felt was right when so many around you tried to convince you that you were wrong. Tried to beat into your mind with whips and with words that you did not deserve the freedoms and opportunities granted to others simply based on the color of your skin. She had been denied opportunities, too. Not because of her race, but her sex. Oh, how she wished she had the luxuries—and the freedom—her brother was afforded simply by the happy circumstance of being born male. Then she could have both a mind and a voice of her own without being looked down upon for daring to express her opinions. Or her desires.

  “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without plowing the ground,” Douglass said. “They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

  Wilhelmina felt galvanized as Douglass continued to speak. Her father, Martin Fredericks, was one of the richest and most powerful men in the country. Though he frequently invited politicians into his stately home in one of the oldest neighborhoods in his native Philadelphia in the hopes of currying their favor for potential business deals, he privately derided politics as a dirty business unfit for women or children. All the more reason for Wilhelmina to experience this auspicious occasion in person rather than hearing about it secondhand. She wanted to hear the unvarnished truth about the state of the nation, not the whitewashed version her father thought fit for her and her mother’s delicate ears.

  She suspected her father would have been bored to tears by tonight’s event—he usually was if an opportunity to mak
e even more money seemed an unlikely occurrence—but she was inspired by every word that fell from Douglass’s lips. She had never heard anyone speak so passionately or so persuasively about the divisive issue of slavery or the civil war its defenders and opponents were currently waging on battlefields on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

  “Without a struggle, there is no progress,” Douglass said as he reached the end of his oratory. “Our destiny is largely in our hands.”

  Wilhelmina applauded wildly as she rose to her feet. She wanted to join the rest of the well-wishers as they surged forward to shake Douglass’s hand or simply bask in his presence, but she didn’t dare. Her disguise had managed to get her a seat in the predominantly male audience, but she feared it might not stand up to closer inspection. What would she do if she were found out? Her father had business interests in both the North and the South so he tried to remain neutral about the outcome of the war. He would never allow her to go anywhere without an escort if he discovered she had attended an event sure to draw the ire of his slave-holding cronies in Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. If sufficiently angered, he might not even allow her to leave the house. She couldn’t risk losing what few liberties she had. If she did, nights like this one would become a thing of the past.

  She made her way to the door as quickly as the crush of people in her way would allow. Her long brown hair was pinned under, parted on one side, and slicked down with oil to mimic the most popular men’s hairstyle of the day. She covered her head with a black stovepipe hat to prevent any stray locks from falling out of place. Making sure to meet men’s eyes as she passed them instead of keeping her gaze directed at the ground as she would if she were sporting her normal attire, she headed outside and hailed a carriage.

  “Where to, young sir?” the driver asked after she climbed into the back of the horse-drawn conveyance.

  Taking care to pitch her voice into an even deeper register than her usual alto, Wilhelmina recited an address almost as familiar to her as her own. She settled into her seat after the driver slapped his leather reins across his horse’s broad hindquarters.

  “Here we are,” the driver said after he stopped the carriage in front of a mansion in North Philadelphia.

  “Thank you.” Wilhelmina climbed out of the carriage and paid the fare, making sure to provide a generous tip as she did so.

  The driver’s eyes widened after he took a look at the extra coins in his hand. “Any time, young sir,” he said, tipping his cap. “Any time.”

  Wilhelmina waited for him to leave before she approached the house. Gas lamps burned all along the street, but the rooms inside the cavernous house were dark. Wilhelmina picked up a pebble and carefully threw it at a window on the second floor. When she didn’t receive a response, she tried again, using a bit more effort this time. She held her breath, hoping the fragile glass window wouldn’t shatter from the combined pressures of the cold weather and the force of the rock’s impact. A few minutes later, the heavy brocade curtains parted, and the face of Elizabeth Reynolds, Wilhelmina’s oldest and dearest friend, peered through them.

  Libby was obviously dressed for bed. For propriety’s sake, she had pulled on a wool robe to cover her cotton nightgown. A white sleeping cap sat snugly on her head, but a few unruly blond curls had managed to find their way free. Wilhelmina had never seen her look more beautiful, but Libby clearly had no idea who she was.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Libby asked in a fierce whisper after she raised the window high enough to stick her head through the opening. “If you would like the pleasure of making my acquaintance, kind sir, there are rules you must follow. Rules that don’t include you attempting to break into my bed chamber at such an ungodly hour.”

  “Please don’t take offense, madam.” Wilhelmina removed her hat and bowed at the waist like a lovesick beau pleading for an audience with his intended. “I would have filled out a calling card, but I didn’t want to risk having mine getting lost in the shuffle.”

  Libby gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. “Wilhelmina?” She stuck her head farther out the window. “My God, it is you. Why on earth are you dressed that way?”

  “Let me in and I shall tell you.”

  Libby held a finger to her lips and patted the air with her hands, pleading for Wilhelmina to keep her voice down. “I’ll come fetch you, but we must be discreet. We simply cannot let anyone see you in that god-awful attire. How would we possibly explain it?” she asked as she slid the window shut.

  “How indeed?”

  Wilhelmina grinned as she climbed the front steps. Her reasons for coming here were twofold: she couldn’t risk going home dressed as a man, and she couldn’t go to sleep until she shared the events of this day with someone. Not just anyone. Libby. The woman she had known since she was a child and had loved for nearly as long.

  Libby opened the door, pulled her inside, and ushered her upstairs. “What were you thinking?” Libby asked after they were safely behind closed doors.

  Wilhelmina tossed her hat, gloves, and overcoat in a nearby chair and began to remove the many pins that held her hair in place. Once free, the locks fell well past her shoulders. She missed the refreshing feel of the night air on the back of her neck. She also missed the feeling of independence she had gained by donning her disguise.

  “I wanted to hear Frederick Douglass speak,” she said, raking her fingers through her hair to tame the tangles, “and I couldn’t afford to have any of my father’s business associates recognize me. One of our most trusted maids helped me get dressed and promised to come up with a good story to explain my absence at dinner. As long as I’m back in my bed before morning, my family will never know I left the house.”

  “What a scandal.” Libby’s bright blue eyes threatened to pop out of her head. Wilhelmina felt a secret thrill for being the source of Libby’s obvious titillation. “You can stay with me tonight and borrow one of my dresses for your trip home in the morning. But first you must tell me all about your adventure. After you change out of those clothes into something more appropriate, of course.”

  Libby rummaged in a dresser drawer, pulled out a nightgown, and turned her back while Wilhelmina undressed.

  Wilhelmina removed the waistcoat, dress shirt, and trousers she had borrowed from her brother. Martin Jr. was such a clotheshorse he probably wouldn’t even notice the articles were missing. She paused as she pulled her chemise over her head, wishing Libby would turn and look at her. Wishing Libby would see her standing naked before her. Both her body and her heart were Libby’s for the taking. To claim them, all Libby had to do was turn around. Alas, Libby continued to face the wall, waiting to know that she was decent—and to hear her tale.

  Wilhelmina pulled Libby’s nightgown over her head and climbed into the large four-poster bed. Both the silk nightgown she wore and the cotton sheets she lay between smelled of the rosewater perfume Libby dabbed behind each ear twice a day. Once before breakfast and once before retiring for the night. Wilhelmina pulled the covers up to her chin. Her head swam as Libby’s scent permeated her senses.

  “Was it everything you thought it would be?” Libby asked.

  “It was even better.”

  Libby crawled into bed and wriggled close to her, making Wilhelmina’s head swim even more. “You simply must tell me all about it.”

  Libby’s eyes shone even brighter than the flames dancing in the fireplace across the room. Wilhelmina’s heart skittered at the sight.

  She began to recite Frederick Douglass’s impassioned speech practically word for word, but Libby grew bored within minutes. Libby didn’t want to know what was said. She wanted to know who had been in attendance and what everyone was wearing. Wilhelmina did her best to provide the requested details, but she had been more interested in the man on stage than the people in the audience.

  “I thank the heavens you are safe.” Libby took Wilhelmina’s hands in hers and kissed them fervently. Wilhelmina wished Libby would kiss her lips that way,
but Libby saved such kisses for Stephen Andrews, the junior business associate who had recently asked her to become his wife. “Anything could have happened to you alone on the streets at night. Only you would take such a risk.”

  “The risk I took tonight is nothing compared to the one I intend to take next.”

  Libby smiled indulgently. “What caper are you planning to pull off this time?”

  Wilhelmina pushed herself into a seated position. She had come to a decision during the carriage ride from the lecture hall. She expected few people to agree with her, but she had always been able to count on Libby’s support and prayed that wasn’t about to change.

  “After listening to such a persuasive speech, I feel I must do my part to help the war effort.”

  “That’s easily accomplished,” Libby said. “Mother is a member of the local ladies’ aid society. She’s always saying she could use more volunteers. I’m certain she would love it if you and I gave her a helping hand from time to time. It would also serve as good practice so we won’t begin our lives as married women unprepared.”

  Wilhelmina shook her head. “I don’t want to learn how to can fruit, darn socks, or launder uniforms. You know that kind of work isn’t for me. Neither is marriage, for that matter.”

  Libby laughed and took one of Wilhelmina’s large hands in her dainty ones. “I’ve always said you would make someone a better husband than you would a wife. You’re as tall as most men and nearly as obstinate when you set your mind to something. Tonight, it’s obvious you don’t lack for courage either.”

  “That is why I intend to fight.”

  Libby laughed again. This time, a hint of nervousness mingled with the mirth. She pressed Wilhelmina’s palm to her cheek. Wilhelmina felt the warmth of Libby’s skin. Longed to taste it with her lips and tongue.