by Georgie Lee
The wind whipped at her, making her eyes water as much as her desire to weep. She despised what he’d become, but it pained her to let him go again. It was like learning of his death for a second time, except he wasn’t dead, but achingly beyond her reach. Beneath the black silk, in the touch of yellow about his irises, there lingered something of the man who’d almost become her husband, the one she’d been willing to wait for until he’d lied about his death.
I don’t believe in that man any more.
She brushed past him, stepped up on the plank and rushed across. On the other side, Dr Abney took her hand and helped her down, staying close beside her as she wiped the moisture from the corners of her eyes.
‘My lady, are you all right?’ Concern made the lines of his face deepen. ‘He didn’t take liberties with you, did he?’
‘No. He was a perfect gentleman.’ Until he’d changed into a rogue and made it clear he wanted nothing more from her than her word.
She took the pistol box from Dr Abney and made for the Captain’s cabin and Dinah. Behind her, Richard called out orders to his crew, his voice reverberating across the water even as the growing distance between the ships swallowed it. The sound of it called to her, but she didn’t look back. She refused to mourn him a second time.
* * *
Richard marched to the opposite side of the ship, unwilling to watch the Winter Gale, and yet another thing torn from him, disappear over the horizon. He gripped the rigging and leaned out over the rail to take in the salty air. Even in the stiff breeze the echoes of Cassandra’s rosewater-scented skin continued to torture him.
‘Captain?’ Mr Rush approached him. ‘We’ve caught a good wind and should outrun the Navy vessel. Mr O’Malley wants to know what course to plot.’
Richard stared out at the whitecaps breaking over the tops of the wind-driven chop, ignoring the weight of the pistol in his coat pocket. The news of Walter’s death and Cas’s appearance had hit him broadside like a wave, but he wouldn’t let it capsize him, nor would he pine for her like some abandoned dog. Let her return to Virginia cursing him. It made no difference as long as she helped him. He couldn’t be certain she would until the moment came to send her the pistol. Until then, like the rest of his past, his time with her was over. With the evidence in jeopardy, he must find another way to ruin Vincent. He’d promised his crew they’d clear their names and have a future free from the threat of the gallows. It was a promise he would damn well keep. ‘Set a course for Nassau, Mr Rush. Let’s find out if those rumours of Vincent trading with pirates are true.’
Chapter Three
One month later
‘Milady, scrubbing floors is no task for a titled lady!’ Mrs Sween, the Belle View housekeeper, gasped from the dining-room door. She’d come up from the cellar and the underground passage leading to the kitchen building in the garden. The earthy scent of the lavender she’d hung in the cellar clung to her and it filled the dining room where Cassandra knelt on the floor with a bucket of warm water and a scrub brush. Cassandra’s arms burned from her effort to make the old floorboards shine again. Over the years, Uncle Walter had given little thought to the house, focusing instead on rents and the annual crops, neither of which had ever brought in enough money, as Giles had complained every quarter when her meagre payments had arrived.
‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a titled lady.’ There were few young ladies who’d left Virginia as an impoverished orphan and returned a dowager baroness. At one time the achievement had seemed like the pinnacle of success, a finger in the eye of everyone in society who’d abandoned her after her parents died and her family’s fortune was lost. It hadn’t been the triumph she’d hoped for. ‘Mother would’ve been ashamed at the way I used to sit idle at Greyson Manor. Giles never let me do more than decide on the dinners.’ Even if she’d been able to work beside him, she doubted he could have taught her much. He’d driven the estate deeper into debt than when he’d inherited it, caring more for his mistress than the careful management of his income. ‘Mother always insisted I take a hand in the affairs of Belle View. I intend to teach Dinah to do the same thing.’
Dinah played next to her with a small brush, a wide smile on her cherubic face, making more of a mess than a difference in the condition of the floors. Cassandra’s efforts hadn’t achieved much either. The scrubbed boards stood out against the surrounding dull ones, many of which were in need of repair. The carpenter was too busy fixing the barn to see to something as trivial as the unused dining room.
She glanced about the room and sighed at the faded and dusty furnishings, the best pieces having been sold off years ago to pay debts. What was left would have made her mother cry to see it. It almost made Cassandra weep, too, when she recalled the many family dinners she’d enjoyed here. Some day, Dinah would enjoy them, too.
If I can continue to make something of Belle View and to cultivate Williamsburg society. She thought of the money from Richard hidden upstairs and how much of it she’d already spent to purchase seed stock, hire labourers and pay for the carpenter’s work on the barn. She shouldn’t spend it, but hoarding it away didn’t free it from the taint of piracy or do anyone any good—not her, not Dinah, not the workers who relied on Belle View for their living. Not spending it would also make maintaining the illusion of wealth more difficult, especially if she had to go begging for loans to keep the plantation from sinking into debt.
‘Lady Shepherd, I don’t mean to trouble you...’ Mrs Sween’s brogue muddied by a Virginia twang interrupted Cassandra’s thoughts ‘...but I heard one of the field hands say Mr Marston quit this morning.’
‘He did.’ Cassandra snatched up the brush and started scrubbing again. ‘He insisted I evict the tenant farmers and commute the tenure of the indentured servants and replace them with slaves. I refused and, because I failed to “see the future”, he felt he could no longer remain as overseer.’
‘He was also being paid far less than most of the overseers around these parts.’
‘It did make his decision to leave a little easier.’ Cassandra sat on her heels and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Belle View’s numerous windows and doors stood open, allowing the breeze coming off the James River to move through the rooms and the main hallway, but it did little to lessen the oppressive humidity.
‘What will you do without him?’ Mrs Sween tucked an escaping wisp of grey hair beneath her white cap. She was stout and shorter than Cassandra with a ruddy face like a farmer’s wife. She’d come to Virginia from Scotland as an indentured servant to Uncle Walter twenty years ago and had helped raise Cassandra after her parents’ deaths. Cassandra wished Mrs Sween had been with her in London. She would’ve seen through all of the Chathams’ lies and Cassandra’s ignorance.
What about Richard’s lies?
Cassandra studied the matronly woman standing before her, wondering if she knew the truth about Richard. She was desperate for someone to speak with about him, but if Mrs Sween was ignorant of the truth, then asking her meant inadvertently revealing what had happened on the Devil’s Rose.
She glanced at the burled-wood pistol box resting on the mantel across the room. Inside, the missing weapon marred the beauty of the presentation of the pewter against the red velvet. She twisted the gold band on her finger, her stomach tightening with worry. Every day she thought about his pistol, both anticipating and dreading its return.
She plunked the scrub brush in the bucket, sending a wave of soapy water cresting over the side. She refused to live in fear here as she had in London with Giles. She’d turn Richard in before she’d allow his bargain to threaten her or Dinah. ‘I’ll manage the farmers as best I can until I can engage a new overseer. Heaven only knows how I’ll pay one.’
‘Better find a way. A place like this is too much for one person to run alone.’
Cassandra stood and wiped her hands on her old plain cotton dress, one of many sh
e’d left in trunks in the attic before her trip to England, thinking she’d return within the year. She’d never expected such a long and heartbreaking delay. ‘At present, I don’t have a choice but to do it myself. Besides, I enjoy the work. It takes my mind off so many things.’ Like Richard.
Learning he wasn’t dead had been like having fabric pulled off a dried wound. She’d cursed him for weeks after coming home, but in the still of the dark nights, with the cicadas singing their old familiar song, his resurrection had created another, more startling feeling in her heart—hope. He was still alive and perhaps, like her place in Williamsburg society and the grandeur of Belle View, the future they’d once imagined could be reclaimed. She had no idea how it might come about but, with the memory of his lips still vivid on hers, a small part of her believed in it and him, even if he no longer wanted her and she should want nothing to do with him. Emotion had led her to make a grave mistake with one man. It was a mistake she couldn’t afford to repeat, but surrounded by the humid aroma of dirt and trees, the smells of her childhood, it was hard not to believe in the old dreams again.
‘Don’t worry, my lady, all will be well. You’ll have this place soon set to rights and Belle View will be one of the finest plantations on the James River.’ Mrs Sween rested a wrinkled hand on Cassandra’s shoulder and Cassandra smiled gratefully at her. Mrs Sween’s presence eased the loneliness surrounding Cassandra like the netting covering the portraits of her parents to protect them from the beetles. It didn’t banish it completely. Only during the brief moment in Richard’s arms aboard his ship had the isolation swathing her seemed to lift. The feeling had been fleeting, like his comfort and his shallow love.
‘Shall I take the little one to have her lunch?’ Mrs Sween offered, brushing a lavender flower off her apron.
‘Yes, please.’ Cassandra picked up Dinah and kissed her on one soft and chubby cheek, then handed her to Mrs Sween, who carried her off, promising her fresh butter and bread.
The voices of men calling to one another caught Cassandra’s attention. She went to the window, passing the large dining table dominating the centre of the room. She paused to trail her fingers over the dull and dusty top of it. Of all the meals she remembered enjoying with her parents at this table, the last stood out as the most vivid. Her father had listened while she and her mother had made plans for the upcoming holiday balls and dinner parties marking the start of Cassandra’s first season. They’d laughed and revelled in talk of dresses and dance lessons, blissfully unaware that three weeks later a hurricane would level Belle View’s crops and force the creditors to call in her parents’ debts, ruining them. A month later, the fever that often followed hurricanes had risen from the carcase-filled fields and riverbeds to claim her parents and the bright future they’d all imagined for Cassandra.
With a heavy heart, Cassandra walked to the window overlooking the back lawn. Green grass covered the slope of the land to the dock where two farmers loaded sacks of grain into the shallop tied there, the single-masted boat bobbing with the current. When she was a child, she used to watch the small boats coming and going from her bedroom window, waving to the farmers from the Shenandoah Valley who brought their crops down the James to sell at market or ship to England. Her father would greet the incoming vessels, collecting gossip and passing on information from the latest session of the House of Burgesses. He was gone, but this small hub of activity remained, although it was, like her old life here, only a shadow of what it had once been. Over the years, many people had offered to buy Belle View, but Uncle Walter had advised her not to sell, saying it would be a safe haven for her if she ever needed it. He’d never had the chance to see how right he’d been.
But is he right about Richard?
Cassandra left the dining room and walked down Belle View’s long central hallway, barely sparing a glance for the dusty sitting room, office and library flanking either side of it. The paint on the walls of the main hall had once been a vibrant red, but it had dulled to a rusty colour. Like everything at Belle View it needed seeing to, but she couldn’t spend money on paint when there were labourers to be paid. She passed the wide front door and the tall clock standing beside it, her mother’s wedding gift from her parents. It chimed the half hour, the bells as clear today as they’d been when Cassandra was a child. They were the one thing age and the hurricane hadn’t appeared to touch in the old home. She climbed the staircase to the second floor, her hand brushing over the rough banister in need of a polish before striding down the upstairs hallway to her bedroom.
Once inside, she locked the door. Her large, four-poster bed filled most of the room. A turned wooden chair sat between the opposite window and the fireplace covered with an embroidered screen. Even without an overabundance of fine furnishings, this room was simple and comfortable in a way that none of the rooms in any of Giles’s houses had ever been.
It wasn’t comfort she sought at present, but something more disturbing.
She knelt in front of the fireplace and worked loose a brick near the bottom. The hiding place had once held her childish treasures, but today it concealed a darker secret. She pulled out the pouch of money, disappointed by how much lighter it was. The coins wouldn’t last much longer and, to her shame, she almost wished Richard would send the pistol if it meant another bag and the slight easing of her financial concerns.
No amount of money is worth the misery he’d bring if he returned. The misery he’d already visited on her by pretending to be dead and convincing Uncle Walter to support his lie. She set the money aside and tugged out a letter tied with a ribbon and encompassing a number of folded, weathered and water-stained parchments.
A few days after Cassandra’s arrival, Mrs Sween had given Cassandra Uncle Walter’s travelling desk. Inside, beneath the mundane accounts and letters from friends had been the items Richard had sent him. They’d been sealed between the pages of a letter to her from Uncle Walter, one that had proved more unsettling than the illicit documents and the memories of Richard they’d conjured up.
She untied the ribbon and set aside the documents to read Uncle Walter’s last letter again.
Dear Cassandra,
By the time you read this I will be gone, but know that I loved you like a daughter and cherished you as if you were my own. However, for all the love I bore you I have also lied to you in the most grievous of ways.
I’m sorry I cannot tell you this in person, so that I may beg for your forgiveness, and I hope once you read what I have to say you will find it in your heart to forgive me and to understand why I did it.
‘I’m the one who should have asked for your forgiveness. I never should have left you,’ she whispered, and tears blurred the paper while she read his account of what had happened with Richard five years ago. The effort it had taken for him to unburden himself was evident in every scraggly curl and shaky line of each word. It broke her heart to imagine him, ill with fever, struggling to confess to her. If only he could have known she’d discover it for herself, it might have saved him the pain and effort. Yes, he’d lied to her about Richard, but in the weeks that had passed since she’d first read his letter, she’d come to forgive him. His one sin didn’t erase the years of love and his hard work on her behalf at Belle View.
She flicked the edge of the paper with a fingernail, wishing she’d never left him or Virginia. After everything Uncle Walter had done for her, she hadn’t been there for him in his final illness, and it tore at her. He’d deserved her love and thanks and care, and she hadn’t been able to offer it to him. It was another of the many things Giles, the Chathams and even Richard had stolen from her.
She continued to read, trying to hear Uncle Walter’s voice in each word, to remember his face and his smile, but all she could glean were a few snatches of expressions. Her inability to clearly recall the man who’d taken care of her after her parents’ death stung as much as the words of his letter. The tone of them reminded her of t
he one she’d written to him shortly after Dinah’s birth when she’d admitted her mistake in marrying Giles and had asked for his advice. He’d never judged her for the failure of her marriage, but had helped her as best he could. He might not be here, but he was asking for her help now, not for himself, but for Richard.
I’m entrusting Richard’s evidence to you. Please protect it and assist him as I have. Neither one of us has the right to ask this of you, not after the way we deceived you, but please understand it was all done with the best of intentions.
I spent my life in Virginia fighting for those who’d been wronged by others. I could not allow Richard, a man who was once my apprentice and your fiancé, to be falsely accused and do nothing.
I failed to help him see justice done, but perhaps you can find a way to succeed.
She folded the letter, then picked up the shipping passes and other papers. The contents made no more sense to her today than they had the many times she’d perused them in the past few weeks. Beside her, the cold fireplace beckoned her to strike the tinder and set the lot of it on fire and be done with Richard. There was no reason she shouldn’t.
Except Uncle Walter asked me to help him.
She tucked the papers inside the letter and returned them and the money to the space behind the mantel and replaced the loose brick. For Uncle Walter she would keep the papers safe until she could return them to Richard, but she would do no more. She’d damaged her already weak position in Williamsburg once by defending Richard. She wasn’t about to risk everything to do it again. Belle View and Dinah’s future were all that mattered now.
* * *
Richard pulled the collar of his light coat up higher around his face and hurried through the dark streets of Nassau. He’d put aside his mask, frock coat and breeches for the simple clothes of a first mate. In this pirate haven, everyone minded their own business and he could move unnoticed through the riff-raff without fear of discovery. As he approached the centre of town, evidence of the hurricane from ten years ago marked the buildings on either side of the road. Many rose into the sky, their stone structures devoid of roofs, their walls pocked with gaping holes. People moved in and out of the shadows and small alleys, their shuffling footsteps followed by the gravelly voices of whores trying to entice clients inside. Richard stepped over a filthy drunk sleeping against a wall, ignoring the sodden wretch and the faint inkling of disgust and shame the sight of him conjured up. All this filth was too familiar to him, like the currents of the James River that he and Vincent used to navigate as boys or the smell of the tobacco ripening in the fields of Sutherland Place.
