Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  That fact was immediately evidenced when Fielding Lightfoot entered the hallway and missed a step. His face had gone as pale as his fawn satin coat but he kept a good grip on himself as introductions were made and Carolina said merrily, in answer to Virginia, ‘Don’t listen to gossip! As you can see I am returned in good health and soon to be’ - her figure in her enveloping scarlet cloak was taut but her reckless silver gaze challenged her mother’s penetrating dark blue one - ‘wed.’

  ‘Wed . . .’ repeated Letitia woodenly. Suddenly she seemed to gather her forces. 'Soon to be wed, you say?’ Then, briskly, ‘Perhaps we should talk about that?’ Her voice had a slight edge to it. ‘In the library. There is a good fire burning there. You can warm yourselves.’ As she turned to lead the way to the library she cast another frowning look at Carolina’s scarlet cloak.

  She is thinking that I might be pregnant! thought Carolina indignantly. And that is why I do not take off my cloak! She had a sudden desire to tear off her cloak and throw it aside - but to do that would reveal the barbaric splendour of the emerald necklace she had chosen to wear to match her gown. It felt cold against her neck and it would require explanation because she had not left home with jewels like that! Virginia would exclaim over the necklace, and Carolina’s nerves were by now so jangled that she wanted to get whatever tongue-lashing was coming over with before Virginia began to ‘oh-h-h’ and ‘ah-h-h’ over her jewels.

  Following her mother’s straight-backed elegant figure - Fielding Lightfoot trailed gloomily behind them - Carolina thought whimsically how like her autocratic mother it was to call them both like children into another room so that she might point out the error of their ways. But surprisingly, such seemed not to be the case.

  ‘I would be glad to see Carolina suitably married, of course,’ Letitia told Rye frankly when the four of them were at last alone - Virginia have been shooed away like a child from this family conference. ‘But’ - her calculating gaze scanned Rye’s sober grey broadcloth clothing - ‘we must first know more about you. Before we can give our consent.’

  The fire crackled in the hearth of the big pleasant panelled room. Standing before it, Carolina was nervously conscious of Fielding’s glowering stance as he crossed to a table, poured a glass of wine and silently handed it to Rye.

  But the man who had dominated the wildest port of the Caribbean these years past proved equal to the occasion. ‘I am the third son of Byron Evistock, Lord Gayle,’ Rye told his future mother-in-law gravely. ‘My family seat is in Essex and has been since before the Norman Conquest.’

  ‘Indeed?’ The faint edge in Letitia’s voice suggested that she might or might not be impressed by such an illustrious line. She signalled irritably to Fielding to offer Carolina a glass of wine as well - which Carolina promptly refused, feeling that even if the wine did not choke her she might well drop the glass. ‘And can you support my daughter in the style to which she is accustomed?’ She shot the words at Rye. Her negligent gesture included the handsome room with its rich panelling, its crimson damask chairs and silver sconces - and all the rich rooms and corridors that lay beyond their vision.

  Carolina thought of the gold candlesticks and jewel-encrusted goblets that reposed in the great cabin of the Sea Waif and was tempted to speak. But she caught Rye’s eye and was silent.

  ‘I will do my best,’ said her beloved cheerfully.

  Letitia’s fine high-riding brows shot up and she seemed to grow a shade taller. ‘But you are the third son,’ she pointed out frostily, ‘and as such not likely to inherit the title or the family seat, I take it?’

  The erstwhile Captain Kells inclined his dark head in agreement. ‘I have endeavoured to make my own way,’ he said modestly.

  Carolina, choking back sudden mirth, hoped he would not be goaded into explaining just how he had made his own way but he seemed imperturbable. She caught his gaze just then and saw that there was a hint of laughter gleaming in his grey eyes.

  ‘And you think you can support my daughter in this manner?’ Letitia’s tone was one of disbelief.

  ‘With luck I might just be able to,’ was the laconic reply.

  ‘With luck?' she echoed. She stared at him scathingly. ‘Are you aware, sir, that this is accounted the finest house in the Colonies?’ Her haughty tone asked him to consider that spread about her were thirty-five rooms, nine corridors and three oversize hallways.

  ‘Mother,’ broke in Carolina desperately. ‘Let me show you my betrothal ring.’

  She tore off her left glove and held up her hand to show the ring. It spoke for itself. It was an enormous square-cut emerald from the mines of Peru, set handsomely in gold. She had a brief satisfying glimpse of Fielding’s shocked face. ‘And there was another betrothal gift as well,’ she added recklessly, throwing open the cloak she had not yet removed so that a necklace of enormous chunky emeralds set in gold flashed green in the firelight.

  Her mother drew in a deep breath. ‘Such emeralds are seldom to be found outside of Spain,’ she observed, shallow-voiced.

  ‘Just so.’ Rye Evistock favoured her with a sunny smile that lit his saturnine countenance. ‘But sometimes the dons are persuaded to part with them.’

  If she guessed then what he was, Letitia did not say so. And nearby a glowering Fielding had his gaze bent not on the jewels but on this bad penny of a girl who kept turning up, this child who was not his own, but whom he must appear to have sired - and even to love.

  ‘It would appear that you can support my daughter, sir,’ Letitia said in an altered voice.

  ‘Oh, indeed, Mother, he can,’ cried Carolina, almost weak with relief for she had been afraid that the elder Lightfoots might press too hard to learn the source of such obvious wealth.

  Standing there thoughtfully, her mother suddenly made up her mind. She turned her head regally. ‘Virginia,’ she called. ‘You may stop listening at the door and join us.’ The door was opened with alacrity and Virginia, her face stained red with embarrassment that her mother had guessed her to be eavesdropping, came into the room in time to hear Carolina say merrily that she had been all this time in England visiting school friends. Beside her Rye said nothing - nothing about her having been captured by the Spanish, nothing about his having saved her and taken her to Tortuga. It was the story they had agreed upon on the voyage, but as Virginia exclaimed over the flashing emeralds Carolina thought she saw a knowing light in her mother’s cynical dark blue eyes, and she flushed. ‘I brought Rye back to the Tidewater,’ she finished frankly - and this at least was the truth, ‘because I thought you would like me to be married at home.’

  ‘And so I would.’ The Inquisition over, Letitia now bestowed on her runaway daughter a brilliant smile. ‘It would be wonderful to have a wedding here at Level Green.’ She embraced Carolina.

  ‘I had intended for us to be married in Essex,’ put in Rye. ‘But Carolina - ’

  ‘Nonsense,’ interrupted Letitia, turning to him. ‘I won’t hear of your leaving before you are married! Carolina’s will be the first wedding ever to be held at Level Green and’ - she gave an expressive little shrug - ‘considering the way my daughters run away to be wed, ’tis likely to be the last for some time to come!’

  There was a little growl from Fielding at that, as if to say that his two older daughters might have dashed off to the fabled ‘Marriage Trees’ to be wed by strange ministers who lay in wait across the border in Maryland, but his two younger ones, still too young to be thinking about such things, certainly would not! And as for this one -well!

  His wife gave him a quelling look.

  ‘We would be pleased to have the wedding here,’ he said in a strangled voice.

  Letitia smiled at him. ‘And now, Carolina.’ She turned briskly to her daughter. ‘You look tired.’

  Carolina blinked. She was not at all tired - and she was sure that as excited as she felt, she certainly couldn’t look tired!

  ‘You have just finished a long sea journey,’ her mother reminded her. ‘V
irginia, take Carolina up to bed. The girls will want to see her if they are still awake.’

  Carolina knew she was speaking of her younger sisters, little Della and Flo. ‘Oh, yes, I do want to see them,’ she began. ‘But they’re probably asleep by now and tomorrow will be time enough to - ’

  ‘Now. At once,’ said Letitia imperiously, cutting off her daughter’s protests. ‘Fielding and I will want to have a private conversation with your betrothed,’ she explained as Carolina shot a wild look at Rye.

  Bewildered by this turn of events, Carolina let Virginia sweep her away in triumph upstairs, talking all the way. She wondered suddenly if her mother was actually going to broach the subject of a dowry!

  LEVEL GREEN

  THE YORK RIVER, VIRGINIA

  Winter 1689

  2

  Father says he will be pleased to have a big wedding here, but I doubt he will enjoy it,’ laughed Virginia, as they reached the top of the wide carved staircase. ‘But mother will be more than pleased - she will be in her element!’

  Carolina paused on the landing. ‘You don’t really think Mother’s going to offer Rye a dowry, do you?’ she asked, frowning.

  ‘Not likely!’ said Virginia blithely. ‘Father couldn’t scrape one together! Indeed, if everyone hereabouts weren’t so in awe of this great pile of a house - which does make it look as if we have money, you will admit - Father’s creditors would be closing in on him right now!’

  ‘But, Virgie - ’

  ‘More likely she’s saving face for Father,’ observed Virginia candidly. ‘She’ll make some graceful suggestion of a dowry and wait for it to be turned down!’

  Which of course it would be. Carolina had little doubt of that, for she had already made Rye aware of Fielding Lightfoot’s straitened circumstances now that he had built his ‘folly’.

  ‘Unless, of course, she hopes to borrow money from Rye!’ giggled Virginia as they turned down the familiar corridor to Carolina’s old room. ‘She wouldn’t want us to hear that. There’s been a lot of discussion about debts lately.’ She sighed and abruptly changed the subject. ‘How does it feel to be back?’

  ‘It feels - wonderful, of course.’ Carolina paused in the doorway of her old room for a moment, and a feeling of homesickness swept over her - which was ridiculous for she was home. But somehow the sight of those misty blue walls and those dainty blue and white curtains and that white quilt with the large blue fleur-de-lis design worked into it had awakened memories.

  ‘I see mother has added a new double valance to my bed - and it’s lined with blue silk!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, and she’d have done more if she’d known you were coming back, I don’t doubt!’ Virginia had run lightly up the stairs with her black skirts raised, but now she seemed to waver as she approached the bed. She paused and smiled. ‘Oh, Carolina, I’ve missed you so! Christmas was the worst - without either you or Penny.’

  ‘You’ve still heard nothing from Penny?’ asked Carolina sharply, for she had hoped to find news of her older sister on her return.

  ‘Nothing at all. Not since she left Emmett in Philadelphia,’ declared Virginia. ‘And Christmas was very gloomy - for me at least. Mother, of course, takes everything in her stride, and who knows what she’s thinking? And Father just shouts - as if that’s going to help anything! But I moped about - I was sure you and Penny were both dead. How was your Christmas, Carol?’

  ‘Why, why it was - ’ Carolina thought how she had really spent Christmas - gliding over the clear aquamarine waters of the islands, basking in the sun. Amid a round of merry-making she had rechristened the Sea Wolf the Sea Waif - that had been on Christmas Day. And afterwards they had all drunk toasts. And after that, with the white fire of tropical stars flashing like distant jewels in the black velvet night, Rye had pulled her to him and murmured, ‘We’ll spend next Christmas before our own hearth. In Essex.’ And we’ll have a great Yule log that will burn the whole twelve days of Christmas! Carolina had thought, leaning against him. And friends will come to call . . . but will it be better than this, here in your arms?

  ‘It was late in our voyage coming over from England, of course,’ she told Virginia hastily. ‘It was a very dull Christmas. Those on board - made the best of it, of course.’

  ‘How awful for you,’ said Virginia with sympathy. ‘I had forgot. Of course you were aboard ship. How awful to spend Christmas Day at sea in a cold damp vessel!’

  Carolina recollected that the weather had been hazily sunny. They had been becalmed and Rye had hastily taken her to the prow of the ship because the buccaneers had elected to swim naked off the stern in the clear warm waters. They had returned aboard hastily, shouting, when a shark had appeared, lazily circling the ship. ‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed guiltily. ‘Awful.’

  ‘But how wonderful that you chose to come back and be married here! Mother’s wanted a big wedding at Level Green ever since the house was built. After all, Penny escaped her net by running off to the Marriage Trees - and I’ve been such a terrible disappointment to her.’ A bleak look came over Virginia’s too-thin face. She sighed and sank down on the big feather bed as if she had suddenly run out of strength.

  Carolina frowned at her. Virginia was certainly very scrawny and she had been overly plump when Carolina had left. Her thick red-gold hair seemed dirty copper now; it had lost its springiness and its lustre - and it was pinned back unattractively as if Virginia didn’t care how she looked.

  ‘Are you all right, Virgie?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Of course.’ Virginia’s voice, which had once had an earnest ring to it, was flippant, almost hard. ‘Don’t you think I look better this way? I do!’

  Carolina certainly didn’t think so. Looking at Virginia’s skeletal features made her feel alarmed. She wondered if her mother realized how fragile Virginia was now, she who had always been so sturdy. ‘You can’t be eating enough, Virgie,’ she told her sister bluntly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t seem to want food,’ said Virginia indifferently.

  Carolina’s ‘Why ever not?’ was cut off as the door opened and a child’s pretty face peeped into the room, immediately to be withdrawn with a glad, ‘Come along, Flo. It’s Carol - she’s back!’

  There was a patter of slippered feet and their two younger sisters - those children born to Letitia and Fielding in later years - scampered into the room in their voluminous white nightclothes to hug Carolina and join their two older sisters on the edge of the big bed, their legs dangling over the white and blue quilt.

  They were big-eyed when they learned that Carolina was going to be married and clamoured to learn where she’d been and what she’d done since she left. Carolina hated having to lie to those eager upturned faces but she could hardly tell them it was the notorious Silver Wench of buccaneer Tortuga they were talking to!

  ‘Will I be one of your bridesmaids?’ piped up little Flo, interrupting Della’s rapt questioning about recent doings in London.

  ‘Yes, of course you will,’ laughed Carolina, glad to be on a safe subject. ‘You both will. And Virginia will be my maid of honour. Although I doubt it will be a very big wedding with all the bad weather this time of year.’

  ‘Ha! Don’t you believe it!’ cut in Virginia. ‘Remember, Mother was a runaway bride herself and - ’

  ‘Yes,’ laughed Carolina. 'She dashed off to the Marriage Trees herself, just like Penny did and like - ’ She stopped, flustered, remembering that Virginia too had made a dash to the Marriage Trees. With Hugh. Only for her it hadn’t worked out.

  Virginia gave her a sardonic look as though for her the Marriage Trees were long forgotten. ‘So Mother will make up for her lack of a big wedding with yours, Carol, depend upon it!’

  Carolina, who was trying to regain possession of her hand as little Flo, bubbling over with talk, fought to get a closer look at the big emerald betrothal ring which Della was studying with such interest, grimaced. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out like the wedding held at Oakcrest four years ag
o,’ she said. For the wedding at Oakcrest had been a total disaster. A sudden ice storm had glazed the roads and snow had fallen on top of the ice. Three carriages had lost wheels, one group had been seriously injured and on arrival at Oakcrest had had to be put to bed and a doctor called. The fires had been built too hot and sparks had set fire to the roof; the bride and groom had had to leap from their nuptial bed and run outside in their scanty nightclothes to save their lives - and the entire wedding party had spent the night fighting the fire and getting frostbite to boot!

  ‘Oh, your wedding won’t turn out like the one at Oakcrest,’ said Virginia moodily. ‘Things always turn out well for you, Carol.’

  But not for me, was the implication. And Carolina, eager to avoid that touch of envy that Virginia must feel to see her arrive so full of health and strength and happiness, with a big emerald betrothal ring on her finger, spoke quickly. ‘I was surprised to find all of you here at Level Green at this time of year. I half thought to arrive and find that Mother had packed all of you off to Aunt Pet’s in Williamsburg!’

  ‘Oh, she might have.’ Virginia reached a thin hand over to tousle little Flo’s abundant curls affectionately ‘But she couldn’t, you see, because Aunt Pet has gone visiting to Philadelphia.’

  Of all the Randolph relatives - excluding Sandy, of course - Aunt Pet was Carolina’s favourite. At Virginia’s words her brow furrowed. ‘Did she take her silver chamber pot with her?’ she asked instantly.

  ‘She took it,’ affirmed Virginia.

  ‘Oh, then she’ll be gone a long time, I suppose,’ said Carolina, disappointed. For Aunt Pet took such pride in her silver chamber pot, that if she intended to be away from home for any length of time, it always accompanied her. Silver chamber pots were rare - most were of lead-glazed earthenware, and even those at lavish Level Green were only of pewter. That silver chamber pot was a mark of distinction - it had come along with Aunt Pet from England. Aunt Pet had smuggled it in actually, for there had been a ban on the export of silver from England at the time. Determined not to leave behind such a precious possession, Aunt Pet’s mother had suspended not only the silver chamber pot but a pair of fine silver candlesticks and a dozen of the fashionable new silver forks beneath the wide cage of a huge wheel farthingale and lumbered aboard with a fortune in silver beneath her voluminous skirts!