Sublime

“I am Dulcinea Dearborn.” Morrigan swallowed a small sound of surprise.

Elmer M. Ellsworth, a special assistant to Governor Winship, was a member of this hand-picked jury.

The white man behind it was Elihu Embree, an iron manufacturer and former slave owner who had evolved, at age thirty, into an abolitionist. Elihu mailed his newspapers to Southern politicians, intent on persuading them to end the horrors of slavery.

Dazedly Merritt realized her younger brother, once a baby she’d helped to dress and bathe, and later a toddler she’d taught how to eat pudding with a spoon, had become a man she could rely on.