“How do we know everything is there?” cried Prue, standing her ground.
“You will have to take my word for it,” said Georgiana coldly, “for you will never enter this house again. And I will have those earbobs, which happen to belong to me.” She reached out and snatched them from Prue’s ears.
“You would not have dared to do that when my mother was alive,” shrilled Pris.
“When your mother was alive,” said Georgiana in that new hard voice, “I had to fight back the urge not to tear my clothes from your skinny backs every single day! And that necklace is mine also! It was given me by Papa Jamison.” She jerked the coral necklace from Pris’s neck with such force that the clasp broke and there was a shower of coral beads on the driveway. Pris gave a little angry cry. “Do not ask me for sympathy,” said Georgiana crisply. “For I have none to give you. Your mother drove the people on this plantation past all endurance, she nearly cost me my life. I have ordered round a cart to take your trappings into town. Where you go is no concern of mine. But you have looked your last on Mirabelle, for at your mother’s throat today was a large amber pin which all know belonged to Samantha Jamison. If you ever set foot in Bermuda again, I will have you jailed, for I will say that you have stolen it.”
“She’s turning hard," muttered Chloe, who was watching. “She doesn’t sound like the Anna Smith we knew.”
“No, no,” Sue told her sister. “It’s just a reaction to nearly being hanged. Her nerves are still on edge. Give her a few days—you’ll see.”
They both watched as Prue. looking affronted. took a step backward away from this new avenging Georgiana. “But,” she blurted, “Mamma loved that pin. She is to be buried in it.”
“Even so,” said Georgiana with a gleam in her eye. “Here comes the wagon. Once it is loaded you will both be taken out of my sight and deposited in St. George. I bid you both good day!” She went up the “welcoming arms” front steps, herding the watchers in with her, and slammed the front door with a force that shook the house.
She was trembling.
“A clean cut!” applauded Christopher Marks. “You’ll be needing a London agent, will you not?”
“Yes, and I couldn’t have a better one than you, sir. I remember Papa Jamison said you collected pipes, as he did. I’d be honored if you’d accept his collection—it will be a small reward for saving my life today.”
“Indeed you’re generous!” Christopher Marks had long envied Tobias Jamison his beautiful collection of pipes. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
Before the weekend Georgiana had overturned Bernice’s whole regime at Mirabelle. The staff went about with happy faces, order had been restored, and the hated overseer was looking for work somewhere else. Coral, the cat, was returned by Sue and was happily mousing in all her old haunts.
It occurred to Georgiana that she should give a ball, a sort of homecoming party to herself, but when she thought about Brett and all that she had lost, all that she would never have again, she did not have the heart to plan it. For Mirabelle would never satisfy him. With Brett it was Windgate—or nothing.
Only Sue seemed to understand how she felt. Mattie could think of nothing but her inheritance, which Christopher Marks had sailed to Boston to secure for her. Georgiana, who had suggested to Mattie that Marks would make an admirable manager for her affairs, thought it only just. Mattie had endured much as Arthur’s wife—he owed her some happiness! And with a certain future stretching before her, Mattie flowered.
“Walter Meade has told us some of the things Arthur inherited from his parents when they died last year,” she confided. “I never dreamed of being so rich!”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” warned Sue merrily. “Or we won’t be able to find a hat to fit you!”
“I am not only a rich widow, I have also become a woman of the world,” said Mattie airily. “Well, I must be off to St. George—I’ve some shopping to do.”
“The merchants there have given her credit,” explained Sue. “They’ve heard about her impending windfall and can’t wait to get their share. Mattie will have it all spent before she receives it!”
“Perhaps you’d better go along to protect her,” suggested Georgiana.
“You’re right,” Sue laughed. “I will!”
She watched Sue go, riding down the familiar driveway on her mother’s favorite riding horse, Jemmy, who had had such a narrrow escape when Arthur had set the locked shed on fire. Dear, good Sue, she must find a proper way to reward her. She had considered asking Lance to become her factor. Sue and Lance would have the money to get married then, for they had been postponing and postponing. But that would mean they would be living in the factor’s cottage, or alternatively given rooms in the main house. And she wasn't sure Sue would enjoy either cottage life or being a perpetual guest in someone else’s house. It was a perplexing problem. She would have to put her mind to solving it.
At least she had been able to stop the felling of Mirabelle’s great trees for ship’s masts and ship’s lumber. The island’s vast forests were fast being stripped for the shipping industry, and Mirabelle’s trees were dear to her. She had ridden beneath their branches, dismounted to nap in their shade, been thankful for the roof they had provided against sudden rain.
Idly she strolled into the big kitchen where cook and her helpers were contentedly working. And then into the drawing room where once she had thought to stand before that high-flung cedar-paneled fireplace and take her wedding vows.... Instead she had taken them in St. Peter’s Church in St. George—and again in New Orange ... to a man she would never see again.
Pensively she moved into the dining room, smiling at the silver which had all been gotten out and polished yesterday and put back in place, out of the big locked cupboard where Bernice had, miserlike, stored it. Everything was back where it should be—all except the mighty candlesticks with their fat cupids and their twining grape leaves—those candlesticks that she had taken in a moment of madness and which had nearly cost her her life.
She wondered with a little pang where they were. Those candlesticks had meant to her stability, home. Like Mirabelle, they had always been there ... that was why she had taken them. Unconsciously she had thought of them as a lodestone around which her world turned. She had never really meant to sell them. In a kind of blind, groping way, she had meant to take them to her new home, establish her life around them. And when she had left Windgate, that was the real reason she had taken them with her—not their value. She knew that now. And in a moment of madness she had exchanged them for ship’s passage. Now she regretted it.
She walked through the big airy rooms, scanning the familiar furniture, touching a piece here and there. She could almost believe Tobias Jamison would be riding home up the drive from a day in St. George supervising the unloading of cargo bound for Mirabelle. She walked outside and half expected to see frail Samantha Jamison rocking on the big veranda. From out of the past she seemed to hear Doubloon’s mocking laughter. All of her youth was tied up with Mirabelle. As a tot, with Elise, she had played along its white beaches, running through the surf, gathering shells. As a young girl she had learned to read and write at that very desk. Outside, on those “welcoming arms” front steps she had held court for any number of suitors.
All her past was bound up in Mirabelle, and once again she was its mistress.
Why, then, did she feel so lonely? So lost?
Her heart and her mind fled north, back to the Hudson River Valley, back to Windgate, back to the tall “English patroon,” Brett Danforth, who had swept into her life in Bermuda and taken her north on a tall white ship. She swallowed, remembering Imogene’s diary. Another tall gentleman from Devon had broken the heart of another girl from the sunny isles....
She kept walking through the lonely rooms. Those curtains would have to be replaced, they were yellowed. Money-hungry Bernice had been a poor housekeeper. And her wardrobe . . . she looked ruefully through what was left of her clothes, a
ll cut up and altered, and none of it done with any taste at all. There was a lot of work ahead of her in that department.
Hooves were thundering up the driveway and Georgiana hurried to the big front door and threw it open just in time to see Sue leap off a winded Jemmy as the poor beast skidded to a stop at the front steps. Without bothering to tie Jemmy up at the hitching post. Sue tossed the reins aside and ran up the steps, almost colliding with Georgiana.
“He’s here!” Sue cried in a hoarse voice. “I saw him just a little while ago. Oh, Georgiana, he’s here!”
“Who?” cried Georgiana, shaking Sue in exasperation.
“Brett!” gasped Sue. “He was just stepping onto the dock as I arrived. He didn’t see me and I turned around and rode back at a gallop. He’ll be here soon—oh, Georgiana, what are you going to wear?”
Brett—here! Joy broke over Georgiana in a bright wave, engulfing her senses. She hugged Sue and for a minute there the two girls spun around ecstatically.
Then Georgiana pushed Sue away. Her face was flushed. It had come to her dearly that it was love that counted—not property. If Brett loved her enough to come for her, he should have her!
“You’ll want to wear your best dress, Georgiana—oh, I forgot, those awful women—Bernice had all your clothes cut up!” She brightened. “You still have my blue dress—you can wear it again!”
“No,” said Georgiana softly. “I have just the thing to wear. Swiftly she shed her clothes and pulled from her big press the simple white cambric bodice she had worn when she arrived back in Bermuda. “Hand me that gray kirtle, won’t you. Sue?” she cried. “And help me get hooked up!”
“But—but those are the clothes you wore in the jail!” Sue was shocked. “I realize they’ve been washed but—surely you aren’t going to greet him in those?”
“Yes,” panted Georgiana, struggling with her own hooks. She kicked off her shoes. “There—that petticoat, the plain blue cotton one, that will do nicely. And this dark corselet when I get it laced up. Quick, run down and have them take care of Jemmy and saddle two fresh horses for us.”
“But you’ll look like a goose girl!” wailed Sue.
Georgiana gave her a brilliant smile. “Exactly what I intend!”
Sue left, shaking her head and Georgiana took a quick look at her reflection in the long pier glass. It gave her back a pretty picture of a beaming lass with rumpled golden hair. She reached up and rumpled it some more, for today she did not intend to be a well-groomed beauty whom all might envy—very much the opposite.
Her reflection showed her a pair of bare feet with dainty ankles and a plain clean blue petticoat over which she now tucked up her gray kirtle to give a jaunty effect. The dark corselet with its broad lacing pushed her high bustline up yet a little higher, and the low-cut white bodice with its full puffed sleeves brought into tempting view the smooth white skin atop her rounded breasts. Georgiana loosened the blue riband around the low neckline and gave it a tug that brought it down over one shoulder.
She laughed wickedly. That should be an enticing enough display to tempt even a righteously angry husband!
For a new wisdom had come to Georgiana. Brett—if he saw her as mistress of a great plantation, wealthy, needing no one, might even go back to Windgate without her—back to Erica Hulft! But if she was in dire trouble, Brett would never leave her.
A sweet but very determined expression spread across Georgiana’s lovely face. So Eve must have looked in Eden.
She ran out to join Sue, who was standing beside two saddled horses looking mystified.
“Brett is not to know Mirabelle is mine,” she told Sue rapidly. “You’re to ride on ahead and intercept him and tell him I’m in terrible trouble and there’s no time to tell him about it, if he hurries to Mirabelle he may be able to save me!”
Sue gave her a look of pure disapproval.
“Do this for me, Sue,” urged Georgiana. “And if it works, if Brett takes me way with him, Lance can become my factor and run the plantation. You and Lance can get married and live in the house—yes, and you can have Mattie with you, if you like. She’s going to enjoy being a rich widow but she’ll need someone to keep her on the track—and you’re steady, Sue.”
Sue’s face fairly glowed. “Oh, Georgiana,” she cried. “I can’t thank you enough. Lance and I—”
“May not get the post, if you don’t hurry!”
Without pausing to draw breath. Sue was aboard the horse, had wheeled his head about and was galloping down the drive.
Georgiana called to the groom who was watching nearby, “Send someone for this horse. I’ll be leaving the animal some distance along the road from the front gates.”
And she leaped aboard and was off after Sue.
Riding along with the wind in her hair, she reflected that just wearing these clothes did give her a sense of urgency, of desperation. She had fully meant to give them to the servants but something had impelled her to hang on to them. And now they were ready for just such a moment as this!
She rode through the wide front gates of Mirabelle—and cast a quick look backward. She had the feeling she would not see those “welcoming arm” front steps for a long time.
When she had reached a prudent distance from those gates she dismounted, gave her horse a smart pat on the ramp that set him trotting toward home, and set out beneath a canopy of cedars and hanging sea grapes, trudging toward St. George.
Minutes later she heard the soft thud of hooves pounding along the road, saw a rider loom up in the distance.
She began to limp and she reached up and rumpled her hair again. She wished she had thought to rub some of the fireplace soot across her nose but, no, that might have been too much.
With some trepidation she saw the tall rider approach, come to a halt that caused his mount to rear up, and leap off.
“Georgiana!”
“Oh, Brett!” She ran limping toward him like a bird with a broken wing.
“You’re hurt,” he cried sharply.
“It’s nothing.” She flung herself into his arms, laughing and crying. Those arms felt so good, enfolding her. She had thought—oh, God, she had thought never to feel them around her again.
After a swift hug during which she could feel a tremor go through his big frame, and reveled in it, he pushed her away from him, held her at arm’s length and frowned down into her upturned face.
“Sue said you were in trouble. I thought it might be the candlesticks. If it is, rest easy—I’ve brought them along.”
Georgiana, who’d been about to say she’d nearly been hanged for those candlesticks, gasped. “However did you come by them?”
“When I got home, Linnet had found your note. I’d had time to think and I simply didn’t believe you had run away with van Rappard.”
Tears shown in Georgiana’s eyes. “Thank you for your confidence,” she said huskily.
“And when I heard that Mattie had gone too, I guessed where you’d go—Bermuda. I sailed the Witch downriver to New Orange and there Govert Steendam told me he’d been offered some candlesticks for sale, recognized them as coming from the long sideboard at Windgate, and had the fellow jailed!”
“But—I gave them to Flan to pay for our passage.”
“He cheated you—as he admitted under some persuasion. And returned them to us for the modest price of your passage!”
A quiver of laughter went through Georgiana. Flan had cheated her flagrantly on the sale of the candlesticks; she had let him have them for a pittance when they both knew their worth. How furious Flan must be!
They were both talking and laughing now, words tumbling over each other. Brett was telling her how he’d had to buy a ship to bring him here, no one would sail him into Bermuda waters—and there’d been nothing but storms, he’d thought he’d never get here. And Georgiana was pouring out her “deal” with Erica, ending with a sad little smile. “I only meant to help you, Brett, for I knew how important Windgate is to you.”
Brett loo
ked down at her tenderly. God, she looked beautiful, he thought. Golden hair rumpled and in those coarse garments, he was reminded of the night he’d first seen her. Breathtaking she’d been in the moonlight. He remembered how she had swayed like a leaf in the sea wind, how the soft light had caressed her pale gleaming body as he bore her gently to the sand.
“Windgate is important to me, yes, but”—his voice softened and his lips brushed her ear—“the whole of Windgate doesn’t hold a candle to you, lass.”
Tears rushed to her eyes. She had never thought to hear such an admission from his lips. She was first! First in his heart.
“So you came to Bermuda to collect a lost waif who might end up on the gallows?” she said with a little catch in her voice.
‘Aye—-and found her.”
“Things are not quite so bad here as you may have thought,” she murmured. “Come, let us to Mirabelle and we will talk about it.”
“You will be welcomed there?” He sounded astonished.
She shrugged. “Well, now that you have the candlesticks...”
“I see. Well, I do not have them with me, as you can see. They are still aboard ship.”
“But can be sent for?”
“Readily.”
“That will be good enough.”
She was gazing up into his eyes in a way that daunted him. A moment more of this and he’d take her here and now by the roadside! He swung her up on the saddle before him. Feeling her back rest lightly against his strong chest, feeling the slight rasp of his forearm beneath her soft breasts as he handled the reins, Georgiana rode once again up Mirabelle’s long driveway—content.
She saw before her the flaring stone steps of the big white cross-shaped house and they seemed to her, indeed, welcoming arms. She slid off the horse and ran up the steps.
“Come!” she called imperiously, opening the front door.
His wide-topped boots clattered up the stone steps after her. “Faith, don’t ye announce yourself?” he wondered.
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