The frown on Mama’s face was wider and deeper than she’d ever seen. “I’ll send for Papa’s solicitor, if that’s what you want. That’s your business, even if I think it wrong. I owe Bex my peace. I wish him well.”
“Mama, what are you talking about? How has Bex given you peace?”
Mama unfolded the pages so that the worst headline, Hero Unmasked, showed. “Did you read this article?”
“I don’t want to read about how Captain Bexeley chose to drown fifty men for insurance money.”
“Not even if one was your uncle?
“Papa’s brother? No, he was murdered in the streets.”
“No, my brother,” her mother said. Her soft voice froze Ester’s blood.
“How, Mama? What are you saying?”
“Bex is not his uncle. Next to your father, he is the bravest man I know.” Mama rose from her chair and went to the closet and pulled out a small box. She sat back down with the wooden thing sitting on her knee. Her jeweled hand rested on the box, and Mama had that distant look in her eye, the one she had sometimes when she knitted.
“I don’t want to upset you, Mama. But like you said, Bex is my business.”
Ester stood and readied to go back to her room.
“You’re stubborn like your father, Ester, but let’s hope you don’t get so rigid that you become like your grandfather. The man that was my father. He was very stubborn, cruelly stubborn. Stubborn and wrong.”
Blinking, Ester turned back. The woman had never spoken much of her father, just her mother and the enslaved in Jamaica. “Please tell me. Trust me with all of it. I’m strong enough to know.”
The woman drummed the box upon her knee. “My mother was taken on the first raid of her village, and she came to Jamaica on the Zhonda, probably one of the ship’s first voyages. She was sold to my father, who bought her because she wasn’t as dark as the rest. He forced her to be his concubine, to give birth to children so he could give them to his wife, who couldn’t have none. This man who was evil to the mother who bore me treated me like a full daughter, at first. His wife, Mama Rose, I believed she loved me, too.”
A little too stunned to breathe, Ester listened with her whole heart.
“Birthdays were very important to my father. Maybe that’s one thing that I hold over from him. He’d parade Mama Rose and me around the plantation. He put his big white hands about us in hugs so tight. So tight.”
A hundred questions filled Ester’s brainbox, but she saw her Mama’s eyes drift, her face paler than ever, so she said nothing.
“He was good to me, but cruel to those darker than me. I tried to unsee his hands, unsee him whipping or nearly strangling his enslaved workers, but I couldn’t unsee him slap a woman with my same eyes and my wide nose. That’s when the whispers made sense. Maybe, why I pay attention to the gossip now.”
“Your true mother?”
Mama rocked and nodded. Her jeweled hands lifted, blocking some unseen memory from striking, and Ester swallowed tears.
“Father bloodied my mother’s face—done with his big hands, his hands. Then I grew older and saw a lot more of what evil his hands, those awful hands, could to do to me. I was my mama, but just white as a ghost. He let me know that.”
Ester dropped to kneel at Mama’s feet and clasped the woman’s fingers so tight, hoping Mama knew she was here, not Jamaica, and Ester had the strength to protect her. “Mama, I’m here. I could get your knitting to draw you back. Stay away from the memories. You’ve said enough.”
“Sometimes, Ester, the fight is in your head. You have to win there to win anywhere.”
A full sob broke, twisted free from her gut, deep and pained, and ushered from Ester’s lips. She held on to Mama’s knees. “I’m so sorry I judged you.”
Mama patted Ester’s head, smoothing curls. “Some things don’t pass so easily.” Mama’s voice was low, but Ester heard her, and that was all that mattered.
“When your grandfather wasn’t around, my true mama told me about her family in Africa who had escaped the Zhonda the first time it came. Her baby boy with a star birthmark above his left eye. He was learning to fish when she was taken by the Zhonda. Then she grew sick and died. Cholera, I think.”
“The Zhonda.” Ester lifted her head and caught Mama’s eyes. “I’m so sick of that name. I wish I’d never—”
“Bex has memories that don’t pass so easily. My story is Bex’s, too. Mama tapped on the box in her lap. “You must see this. If I hadn’t sheltered you and Ruth from these memories, maybe we’d all be stronger.”
The box had to be a piece of the puzzle of Mama’s story, and Ester held her hand, would hold her hand forever, so her mother would tell her story. “I’m here and I’m listening.”
Fast blinking, as if she watched a play with actors in front of her, Mama stared ahead. She twisted a gold ring on her thumb. “My father took us to England. He needed to testify at a trial. A big insurance claim, about his lost shipment on the Zhonda. I saw the manifest papers in his things. One of the ‘cargo’ had a star mark above his eye. It could have been someone else, but in my heart, I knew the Zhonda had killed my brother, the last remaining part of my African family. The only part of my family left was an evil father who I thought loved me until he showed me he didn’t.”
Ester’s throat thickened. “Is it Bex’s story because of his uncle?”
Mama put a hand to Ester’s cheek. “Mama Rose caught me crying. She knew what my father did in secret. She gave me a fist of money and told me to stay in London. She said I could be truly free here. I wouldn’t have to fear his hands anymore. I took the money and I ran.”
“Mama, you just stayed in London, alone? That’s terrifying.”
“It was, but I wanted freedom more than fear. Ester, it was hard for the first couple of weeks hiding, knowing if my father found me, he’d be so cruel, but I kept up with the trial in the papers to see when he left to go back to Jamaica.” She opened the box and pulled out clippings. “I read in one article of a young man, barely twelve years old, who bravely testified against the Zhonda’s captain, and all the evil the boy saw and tried to stop.”
Ester was so shy she couldn’t imagine standing up in front of strangers to testify. She drew her arms about her knees. “That’s brave for one so young.”
“It’s worse, Ester. Bex had to testify that his uncle, the captain of the Zhonda, the man who’d raised him since he was six, was a killer, ordering the crew to toss my brother and the other men into the ocean to drown. Bex said many still had chains on them. Chains, in the middle of the ocean.”
Ester couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t imagine the terror of the heavy irons dragging a body down. But she also couldn’t imagine the pressure a young, twelve-year-old boy was put under to do what was right.
Bex. Her poor Bex.
She took up the clippings and read the horrible truth, the young boy’s terrifying testimony. Ester scooped up the paper that read Hero Unmasked.
It said very much the same but added that he still struggles with being on that boat from age six, even though he had not known about his brothers’ plight in the cargo below. Ester wiped her dripping nose. “Doesn’t he know that a six-year-old couldn’t have changed grown men?”
“Ester, I don’t think anyone has ever told him. He was on that boat. He was almost tossed overboard, trying to reason with the first mate. Bex’s account led to the captain’s hanging. His uncle’s hanging.”
Ester picked up the box again and went through the clippings, landing on a caricature of the courtroom with a young boy drawn with slave’s shackles labeled “Zhonda” about his neck.
Mama wiped at her blank eyes. “The captain was hanged because of the large-scale fraud he tried to perpetrate on the insurance company, not for the killing of my brother or any of those men. Keep reading the papers. See the interviews of dock workers. They thought Bex a traitor to his own kind. At age twelve he was left all on his own, just for doing what was right
.”
Bex said that he wanted someone to believe in him. Ester didn’t want him alone, but he still courted danger. “Then he’s done enough. He should seek to be safe and build a safe, secure life.”
Mama shook her head. “There’s a guilt about surviving that haunts, just as there’s a squeamishness about being powerless. I know it, for I was small when I watched my siblings being sold away. We Croomes live in this house and have freedom, but my plantation brothers may not have lived past fifteen.”
It wasn’t possible to hurt more, but Ester held her chest like it would explode. Everything churned inside—guilt, betrayal, and so much anger at herself. “Bex once said all he ever wanted was for someone to recommend him beyond his faults, to know he was good. I thought he meant his snoring, not this. I let my fears push him away. I betrayed him, Mama.”
Her mother took a finger and swiped the tears from Ester’s face. “He did what was right. Gave me peace for my lost brother, but it doesn’t take the hurt from him.”
“I didn’t let him explain. My anger or stubbornness made me deaf to his pain. And to yours, Mama. I’ll never forgive myself.” Ester reached up and hugged Mama’s neck. “There needs to be a better word to express how empty I feel inside. Mama, how could you be so strong and forgiving?”
Mama stroked her back in long circles that made her rings clink, then started to chuckle, but the laughter was bitter. “Strong? Forgiving? I ended up being the same as my father. I forsook Ruth. I couldn’t stand her scandal and how it could ruin what your father and I have worked for—all those hours in Mayfair, maiding, all those late days in the warehouse, working and saving. I sent Ruth away—my own flesh and blood. Who’s better, Ester? My father who sold off my kin, disappointed by the color of their skin, or a mother who sent away her daughter because she was disappointed by her daughter’s choices?”
“Listen Mama, you’re nothing like your father. It’s not too late to take Ruth back in.”
“Then it’s not too late to do the same for Bex.”
“But the risks? He won’t stop taking risks.”
Mama put her fingers light and easy on Ester’s cheeks. “Life is risk. Find your strength, Ester. It’s in you. It’s in Bex, too. I saw his hands on you, and they were the hands of a man in love. I saw it from the moment he walked you back from the blacksmith’s at Gretna Green.”
He did seem more certain of their marriage than she did. And if she hadn’t asked him to stop being brave, he’d be here at Nineteen Fournier.
Mama picked up the article scraps and put them back in her box, but she put the wooden container into Ester’s palm. “Those hands of Bex’s saved your father and four other workers. There’s goodness in that man. Forgive him and then forgive your papa. He’s flawed, too, but he loves you.”
Clancy popped his head in. “Mr. Croome is looking for you, Mrs. Croome. He’s dressed this morning.”
Mama nodded. “Thank you, Clancy. I’ll go to him when I’m done here.”
The butler bowed and ducked out the door as if Mama had thrown a fireball at him. Maybe she had, in her own soft-spoken way.
“Just think on it, Ester. Oliver Arthur Bexeley isn’t a perfect man, and neither is your father, but they need a strong woman to make them do better. I have faith in you. You’re strong. You come from strong women who did what they had to do to survive. There’s favor on your life because you’re loved. Be that woman, Ester. Be brave and love.”
She watched her mother leave, head high, rings glistening, then clutched the ring Mama had given her to wed Bex, spinning it on her favorite necklace. How could she go to Bex now, when she’d rejected him—twice? Sighing, she hugged her knees. No one was as brave as her mother. No one.
…
In his Cheapside flat, Arthur packed the last of his belongings. He wasn’t sure of where he was going, but London had become unbearable. People didn’t see the great actor, just a man to be pitied.
The only thing he could be thankful for was that Ester’s name was kept from the papers. Phineas was true to his word about not disclosing their marriage.
Arthur looked around. Everything had been put away except his wife’s bag. Ester. He missed her, craved the scent of her, but to see her face and know that there was no hope to love her was impossible.
His fault. He should’ve trusted her with his secret. Yet, how did he know he wouldn’t have lost her sooner?
Opening her bag, he let his fingers sink into the fairy gown she’d worn when they’d eloped. It was soft like her nightgowns. Goodness, he missed her, her touch.
He pushed her gown back into the bag, trying not to wrinkle it, but that wasn’t a talent a man like him had. Gowns were a wife’s forte.
A knock at the door drew his attention. The hint of lilac that wafted from the dress made hope in his heart rise that Ester had spied the advertisement he’d penned in the papers and had come to talk, maybe forgive him.
But the next pound upon his door didn’t sound feminine or shy. It wasn’t Ester.
Exhaling useless air, he opened the door at the third knock.
Jonesy bounced up and down. “Wait a moment, Mr. Bex.” The boy went to the steps and lifted a large box. The thing with the yellow sash bow seemed so big in his small hands. “Here it is, Mr. Bex. Straight from the Burlingame Arcade. The shopkeeper put the sketchbook inside.”
Ester’s sketchbook. She hadn’t even thought to retrieve it. But who’d want to remember their crazed trip to Gretna Green?
Dancing for bandits, driving side by side, their first kiss, vows meant to be forever—yes, no one wanted to remember those things. Offering his helper a coin, he took the box. “Thanks, Jonesy.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Bex. You’re a good tipper. I have an errand, then I’ll deliver it for you.”
“Jonesy, I’m going to be away tomorrow. Will you be fine? How are you going to get along without my pennies?”
The boy frowned. “Don’t really want you to go, Mr. Bex. Nobody tips Jonesy like you. I know that a lot of folks are saying mean things about you, but I don’t believe ’em.”
Arthur dug in his purse and handed him a guinea. “I’ll miss you, my friend. Maybe you can get that footman position you want when you’re not taking care of the things I need.”
The smile on Jonesy’s face evaporated. “No one trusts Jonesy like you. They don’t see pos…possibilities.”
“Any household would be privileged to hire you.”
With a shrug, Jonesy put the coins in his pocket. “Don’t care what they say about you, Mr. Bex. You’re good. Will miss you something terrible.”
Arthur watched the boy leave and it kicked what was left of his gut. London didn’t have time for people like Jonesy. That feeling that he should stay and fight washed over him again, but it was best to go and gain some needed distance, where lilac and sketchbooks didn’t make him feel so empty.
Before he could close the door, Phineas popped inside. “Bex, can I have a moment of your time. You haven’t been keeping to your old haunts. I figured you and the wife needed your privacy.”
“Phineas, I have plenty of privacy. My wife’s still staying with her family.”
The reporter took off his hat and fanned his sweating face. “The advertisement didn’t work. Bex, I’m sorry.”
Phineas pushed his hat atop his head with a swish. “Maybe we can write another article. And if you get your mother-in-law to participate, that would—”
“No.” Arthur flailed his hands, out and in, out and in. “I don’t want the Croomes bothered.”
Phineas hung his head for a moment. “Well, I followed up with the doctor for you. Mr. Croome is still not himself. He’s walking a little, but he’s not out of the woods. The physicians think it’s sheer force of will keeping him moving.”
It was good to hear that Croome was mending, but that feeling of leaving Ester and Mrs. Croome unprotected should things become dire knifed his insides. Ester may have rejected him, but he hadn’t rejected them. As stu
bborn as his wife was, she’d still need someone.
Getting tangled in his own logic, he picked up the box and pushed it to Phineas. “Take this to Nineteen Fournier. Today if you can. It’s my wife’s birthday.”
“Yes, Bex,” the reporter said, as he took the box and stuffed it under his arm and gripped the handle of Ester’s bag. “Oh, I did some checking. The warehouse recently had gas lighting installed. Seems the housings were too thin, and the fittings leaked. With all the dust associated with the wool and cotton in the place, it was like gunpowder for a flintlock.”
“The gas lighting was at fault?” Bex thought about the gas lighting business of the Jordan family. “Make sure you tell my wife about the lighting when you give her the present. That way she’ll know her father wasn’t at fault. You might get a story you can investigate out of it.”
Phineas nodded. “If you change your mind about leaving town today, I know where you’re needed. Wilberforce is going to attend a meeting at the White Horse Cellar to talk about abolition. The rally was a setback. He requested that you be there.”
“Wilberforce requested that I come?” He held out his scandal-riddled hands. “Me? The talk of the town?”
“He truly thinks the fight for abolition is a young man’s game. No one is more qualified to speak of the fight and its costs. The White Horse Cellar at nine. See you there. Another Zhonda could happen if slavery isn’t abolished. Think about it, Bex.”
Phineas tipped his hat and left with every trace of Arthur’s wife but the scars on his heart.
He closed the door, dropping his head against it. He’d run all his life since his uncle’s conviction. Maybe it was time to stop running. He’d lost Ester, but he hadn’t lost the fight. The defenseless still needed defending. It didn’t matter if he went to war with a broken spirit. He still could stop another tragedy and save another brother, so that no one ever knew the cruelty of the Zhonda again.
The Bashful Bride (Advertisements for Love Book 2) Page 26
