Through Rushing Water Read Free

opportunity to slip away.
    The speaker, an elderly woman dressed head-to-toe in gray, had served as a missionary to the heathens in China. Spiritual and physical poverty beset the land. The men were bedeviled with opium. The women had their feet bound.
    Annabelle’s feet were no bigger than those of a child. So much about her was childlike . . . or more accurately, childish. How would she manage, with her flights of fancy, to conduct a dinner party for twelve? She would never command the respect necessary to manage a household staff the size of Montgomery Hill.
    â€œâ€˜Study to show thyself approved unto God,’” the missionary quoted. “My daughters, students of the College, have you studied to be approved?” She stared right at Sophia.
    No, she had not. She had studied to please Rexford Montgomery, had studied to be mistress of Montgomery Hill. And all along he had thought of her not as a prospective bride, but merely as a convenient chaperone for Annabelle.
    How foolish to look to a man for approval.
    â€œHow will they know lest we tell them?” the missionary went on. “Someone must share the Good News. Someone must speak the truth.”
    The truth. Pravda . Sophia’s father always spoke the truth. His military advice had earned him a place close to the tsar. Alexander had even listened to Father’s advice on freeing the serfs. But when the tsar took Sophia’s classmate as his mistress, the truth endangered her father’s life.
    The missionary continued. “How many Chinese will be consumed by hell’s fire, because you would not leave your hearth fire? How many Chinese will die in ignorance and darkness because you were too afraid of the unknown? What will you give, out of your comfortable life, so that another may live?”
    Sophia was the daughter of Constantin Ilia Makinoff, Master of the Horse Guards and Speaker of Truth, may he rest in peace. She was not afraid. She would speak the truth.
    Her back straightened, resisting the lure of repose. Perhaps her work would not be so earthshaking as her father’s, but it might be more meaningful than teaching wealthy young women to better themselves with French.
    And might she accomplish more as a missionary than as a congressman’s wife?
    â€œWho among you,” the speaker continued, “is ready to go where the Lord sends? Who is willing to give up her life of ease for the rigors of mission work?”
    China bordered Russia. Sophia could serve out her term, then return home. Surely the tsar would have forgotten her father’s denouncement by then. Surely he did not blame Sophia. He was nearly her father’s age; he, too, might die.
    Besides, what other choice did she have? Stay and watch Annabelle take her place at Montgomery Hill? Unthinkable.
    The speaker raised her arms and her voice. “Who will go?”
    For the second time that day, Sophia stepped forward.

C HAPTER T WO
    T he steam engine banged to life. Chains rattled and the stern-wheeler creaked ominously. The boat jerked, throwing Sophia off the bunk. Muttering imprecations that would discredit her both as a missionary and as a lady, she opened her eyes. Dim light from the window announced the sun had begun its rise. Further attempts at sleep would be futile.
    Sophia pushed upright. Her valise and Catharine Beecher’s Educational Reminiscences and Suggestions were still wedged against the door with its broken bolt. She pried her hairbrush, a poor substitute for a weapon, from her clenched fist. At the College, she had never locked her door. And now on this boat full of crude and dangerous men—Enough. Better a hundred sleepless nights than one more word from Annabelle about her wedding.
    She peered through the curtain. A haze of humidity blanketed a mud-choked river. Misshapen trees, like those securing the boat last night, stippled eroded riverbanks.
    Did her prayer book have a confession for impetuousness and rash