Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  The smuggling episode had been kindly forgotten, the candlesticks had long since been given to Letitia and the fashionable silver forks were in constant use in the dining room of Aunt Pet’s high-chimneyed two-storey Williamsburg house, but the silver chamber pot was rather conspicuously displayed in her bedchamber, not - as those who had earthenware pots were prone to remark enviously - hidden away behind a screen or a hanging as chamber pots were supposed to be. Indeed Aunt Pet was forever promising generously to will it to this one or that when she died - whoever she was pleased with at the moment. Letitia had always chuckled that Petula would refuse entrance at the gates of heaven if she couldn’t take that chamber pot with her, and Carolina was inclined to agree. And now Aunt Pet had taken it to Philadelphia with her . . .

  ‘When will she be back?’ she wondered.

  ‘Oh, not for months,’ said Virginia. ‘She’s making a round of visits to old friends.’

  Carolina sighed. Outside of her mother and Virgie - and Sandy, who could not be counted on to attend - Aunt Pet was the one person she had most hoped to have with her at the ceremony. Somehow she didn’t think she’d feel quite married unless Aunt Pet was there to witness it and cluck over her gown and tell her she was marrying quite the handsomest man in all the Colonies - for Aunt Pet was partial to bridegrooms and always viewed them through rose-coloured glasses.

  ‘Perhaps if Mother writes to her, she’ll come back for the wedding,’ Virginia suggested sympathetically.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure there won’t be time for that,’ objected Carolina, who meant to get herself wed and be gone.

  Virginia’s quirked eyebrow said their mother would have something to say about that. She’d require time to marshal her forces and stage a big wedding.

  ‘What about the local war?’ Carolina asked whimsically. ‘The one right here at Level Green?’ For the battles between the warring Lightfoots were legendary.

  Virginia shrugged. ‘Oh, things have been relatively quiet since you left.’

  Carolina winced. Her absence was the reason they had been getting along so well, she supposed, for jealous Fielding Lightfoot could not forgive his wife Letitia for that long-ago Christmastide desertion that had resulted later in a daughter - Carolina. And the sight of her when she was growing up had always reminded him. She wondered if Virginia knew they were really only half sisters, and decided she did not.

  ‘Indeed the Chattertons now dominate the local gossip,’ Virginia told Carolina. ‘Millie Chatterton left Wilbur, and Wilbur posted a public notice saying she was a slovenly housekeeper and used vile language! And then Millie posted a reply for all to see that she’d learned the vile language from him, and that he had kept two mistresses all the time they lived together and when he came up with a third, she left!’ Virginia laughed. ‘I doubt any of it’s true, but it’s kept the gossips buzzing!’

  And had given the Lightfoots of Level Green a welcome respite, thought Carolina.

  ‘And what of Sally Montrose?’ she asked, expecting to hear of some new madcap adventure of her old friend who lived up the James and had lent her so many exciting novels with names like The Innocent Adulteress.

  ‘You won’t know Sally at all,’ said Virginia promptly.

  ‘Why ever not?’ demanded Carolina instantly, for carefree, impetuous Sally was her best friend in Virginia.

  ‘Well, you know what a tomboy she used to be? She isn’t anymore. She’s very elegant - minces around spouting French and acting very toplofty.’

  Carolina’s laughter pealed. She couldn’t imagine easygoing, good-natured Sally acting toplofty. But her laughter broke off at Virginia’s sober expression. ‘What happened to change her?’

  ‘You remember Sally was always in love with Brent Chase but he married her older sister?’

  Carolina nodded raptly.

  ‘Her sister - Brent’s wife - died in childbirth. It happened right after you left, Carolina. And Sally thought to marry him then - I think that was why she hadn’t married even with so many offering for her; she knew her sister was frail and something might happen. But - ’

  ‘But it’s posted in the parish church that a woman may not marry her sister’s husband,’ finished Carolina for her. ‘Poor Sally!’

  ‘Yes, I think she was planning to live with him in sin,’ said Virginia thoughtfully. ‘But he wouldn’t have it. He married one of the Crawford girls in October and Sally claimed she was too “indisposed” to attend the wedding even though the Crawfords were neighbours, but someone saw her out riding, jumping fences as if she was trying to break her neck! The first time we saw her after the wedding, we all stared. She was wearing a black face mask and she had hennaed her hair and she was wearing so much powder that it was whitening her cloak!’

  Sally, who had always scorned pomades and powders!

  ‘I’m sorry for Sally,’ said Carolina slowly.

  It came to her eerily that of all her friends, of all those close to her even, she seemed to be the only one destined to be happy. Her London school friend, Reba, had fallen in love with a married marquess - and lost him. Her older sister Penny had run away to the Marriage Trees - and disappeared after the breakup of her marriage. Virginia’s life was the saddest of all: After being pushed into marriage she had been as suddenly widowed. And now Sally’s hopes were crushed . . .

  ‘Perhaps we’ll see her soon,’ she said soberly.

  ‘Oh, we’re sure to.’ Talking about Sally’s troubles seemed to give Virginia more animation. ‘She goes everywhere, flirts with everyone, dances her slippers off! But you’ll find her changed - she’s very bitter.’

  And with reason! thought Carolina, feeling an ache in her heart for her old friend.

  By now the two younger girls were looking sleepy and Carolina was suddenly aware of something that in the excitement of her homecoming she had overlooked - that Rye had been put in a room somewhere, she was not sure where. He had no idea where she was and he could hardly be expected to prowl a strange house, knocking on doors in the night to find his hush-hush bride. And besides, she realized that all three of her sisters, sleepy or not, seemed prepared to spend the night in her room, talking and giggling.

  ‘I’ll want Sally for a bridesmaid,’ she meditated, wondering how to get them all out of her bedchamber so she could go looking for Rye. ‘Perhaps that will cheer her up.’

  ‘She needs cheering now - not in the future,’ Virginia said gloomily.

  ‘Well, I’m not talking about the future,’ protested Carolina. ‘I expect to be married right away!’ Pardon or no pardon!

  ‘Ha! Not a chance!’ scoffed Virginia. ‘You know as well as I do that mother will insist upon a huge wedding with all of Virginia and half of Maryland and the Carolinas invited! Wait and see if I’m not right. Just planning it will take at least a month. And then there’s your wedding gown, remember - everything for it will have to be specially ordered from England - or at least Philadelphia.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Carolina cried in dismay. For the first time she realized what a prodigious undertaking she had stumbled into - and after all her blithe romantic notions of a quick marriage at home and then away to England! ‘I’ve a perfectly beautiful gown that will serve admirably!’

  ‘No matter how beautiful, it will have to be something brand new,’ insisted Virginia. ‘In fact it will probably have to be the dress mother always wished she had worn herself at her wedding if she hadn’t run away to the Marriage Trees!’

  ‘Whatever that is,’ grumbled Carolina.

  ‘We’ll know when she picks it out,’ laughed Virginia.

  ‘Well, do use your influence with her, Virgie,’ sighed Carolina.

  ‘I don’t have any influence with her,’ supplied her sister promptly. ‘And I never did - as well you know!’ She propped up a pillow and leaned back against it as if exhausted.

  ‘What’s “influence”?’ piped up little Flo, who had been staring at her newly returned sister in silence.

  ‘Something you’l
l never have unless you get your sleep,’ said Carolina instantly, taking this opportunity to get rid of the small fry. ‘Get them to bed, won’t you, Virgie? Mother was right - I am terribly tired.’

  Virginia blinked. Those sparkling silver eyes looked anything but tired. ‘I’ll pack them off to bed,’ she said, giving little Flo’s bottom a playful spank as the child slid off the high bed to land squarely on both bare feet on the wide planked floor. ‘Remember to bank the fire a bit before you go to sleep, Carol,’ she called back over her shoulder as she held open the door and shooed the two children from the room.

  Carolina cast an indignant glance at the hearth where orange flames still licked the hickory logs. ‘Where do you think I’ve been living, Virgie,’ she demanded tartly, ‘that I’d forget to bank the fire?’ For she had carefully stuck to the story that she’d been living in England since she’d left.

  Virginia’s tone was sardonic. ‘Someplace warmer,’ she said. ‘Where emeralds are easy come by. And if you should forget to bank the fire’ - there was an undertone of mirth in her voice - ‘I’ll stop by after I’ve seen the children off to bed.’

  Softly she closed the door.

  Carolina stared at the closed door. Virginia was not so easily hoodwinked as she had expected. She had guessed Carolina’s secret. And why not, when Carolina had shown up in the dead of winter with the remnants of a toasty tan still burnishing her fair complexion and flaunting a fortune in emeralds, gift of a tall man with the lean grace of a swordsman and too deeply bronzed to have got that tan last summer . . .

  Carolina frowned at the door. Virginia would say nothing of course. Nor would her mother. But they knew, they knew . . .

  She waited no longer. Hastily she donned a robe and went out into the cold corridor. There was only a hint of light out there - just enough to keep her from banging into the walls as she went - but she hesitated to take along a candle. Because her mother was a light sleeper and she had very sharp eyes and if she should happen to come out into the corridor for any reason, she could not fail to see a lighted candle sending dark shadows wavering up the walls but she might miss a dark figure tiptoeing along shivering . . .

  Ah, there it was - a gleam of light under one of the bedroom doors. Rye had kept his candle burning!

  The hinges were well oiled. Silently she slipped inside. She was in what her mother had named ‘the bronze room’ because she had chosen for it bronze draperies and bedspread. It was comfortable but not very large - indeed it was a room in which her mother frequently put less-favoured guests.

  In the big walnut bed Rye was just about to pinch out the candle flame. His long muscular arm was extended over the table and he looked up alertly as she entered and smiled at her.

  ‘I had just about given you up,’ he said.

  ‘My sisters converged on me and I couldn’t get away,’ Carolina explained, her teeth almost chattering, for the hall had been freezing.

  ‘Shall I stir up the fire?’ he asked, sitting up as he noted her shiver.

  ‘No, no, stay where you are - I’ll join you.’

  As she hurried across the room, Rye threw back the bronze bedspread and the quilt and she plunged into bed beside him. He reached out a long arm and scooped her to him. She lay shivering with cold, warming herself against the naked length of him. He seemed to generate more heat than did the fire on the hearth, she thought lazily.

  ‘You shouldn’t be running about these cold corridors barefoot,’ he reproved, taking her bare feet in his warm hands and massaging them.

  ‘All I brought with me were satin mules,’ she said ruefully. ‘And they have heels that would clatter along these uncarpeted halls loud enough to wake the dead!’

  ‘Well, we wouldn’t want that,’ he said, chuckling.

  Carolina relaxed against him, feeling warmth flow through her body as he caressed her. ‘Virgie wanted to talk,’ she explained. ‘And my two little sisters came in. And then there was the fire to bank - ’ She sat up. She had forgotten to bank the fire after all!

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked alertly.

  ‘Nothing.’ She sank back beside him. Virgie would bank the fire. Virgie had been trying to tell her, in an oblique way, that she knew where Carolina was going to spend the night: in her lover’s arms! ‘What did you talk about - downstairs after I was gone?’ she asked Rye.

  ‘Your mother tried to persuade me to purchase land along the York and settle here. She thought you might be too enamoured of foreign lands.’

  ‘She what?’ Carolina’s head lifted in astonishment.

  He was chuckling again. ‘She’s very alert, your mother, and I think perhaps the necklace made her guess how matters really stand with me.’

  Carolina sighed and snuggled back against him. Rye had warned her not to wear the necklace, that it might make trouble, but she had been adamant. ‘But Mother didn’t actually accuse you of anything, did she?’

  ‘No,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But I think she was telling me in a roundabout way that she didn’t want me taking you to sea again . . .’

  ‘What did Fielding have to say?’

  ‘Very little. He just sat and drank and watched us.’

  ‘I was sure he wouldn’t suggest you settle here,’ she murmured.

  ‘Does it matter to you?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ It might have been too much to expect Fielding to feel towards her as a father might, but it would have been nice if they could at least have been friends . . .

  She sighed, and he settled his long body more comfortably against her womanly softness and cradled her in his arms. ‘Warm now?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nuzzled against him, feeling happy and tender and sleepy and yet so very alive. Tomorrow . . . they would solve all their problems tomorrow. Tonight they would forget this was a forbidden tryst, that she wasn’t supposed to be here, that there would be great consternation if she were to be discovered here in this room, in this bed! Tonight in their shared hideaway they would forget the world and surrender to passion and dreams.

  His hands on her body were warm, his lips tender. Her blood sang a love song as she pressed close against him and let the fervour of her own passion match the fervour of his.

  The fire on the hearth might be banked and growing cold but the fire that burned in their blood became a raging cauldron that consumed them yet renewed them, and left in its afterglow smouldering embers that could be relighted and flame up again at a touch, a smile, a murmured word.

  Dawn was breaking when Carolina rose to steal back to her own room.

  Rye wakened as she got up. In the chill morning light she could see he had one eye open. Did he never sleep? she wondered. Had all those nights when to fall asleep was to die so conditioned him that he would always wake at the slightest touch?

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ she murmured. ‘Mother must not find me out.’

  He reached a strong hand out for her, smiling, then thought better of it. ‘I suppose you are right,’ he agreed reluctantly, and rolled over with a sigh.

  Carolina treasured the sound of that sigh all the way down the dim empty corridor.

  3

  After breakfast the next morning Carolina sought out her mother, who was supervising the sorting of linens in the big chests just as though nothing so momentous as the arrival of a runaway daughter with her betrothed had happened. Her mother, thought Carolina whimsically, could never really look the settled housewife - not even in her indigo fustian gown. She would always look like an adventuress - which was exactly what the Tidewater gossips considered her to be.

  Carolina came right to the point. ‘I’m worried about Virgie,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’ve never seen her thin like this. I couldn’t ask you with her sitting there at breakfast, but what exactly is wrong with her?’

  Letitia frowned. ‘There is nothing wrong with her,’ she said curtly. Her quick deep blue glance flicked over the two serving girls in their neat white aprons, busy fetching and sorting. ‘Virginia caught a deep cold in earl
y fall and she has never really shaken it off. I keep hoping she will put on some weight.’

  ‘How can she?’ protested Carolina. ‘She eats like a bird! You could see that she hardly touched her breakfast.’ She saw one of the serving maids nudge the other.

  ‘I know.’ Letitia sounded indifferent. ‘She insists on taking tiny portions.’

  ‘And she doesn’t seem - as interested in things as she should be,’ added Carolina meditatively. ‘She just seems to glide about, not caring about anything really.’ The two serving girls exchanged meaningful glances and her mother’s lips tightened. Carolina felt bewildered. ‘What does the doctor say?’

  ‘Doctor?’ said her mother carelessly. ‘I have not felt that Virginia needs a doctor. She will doubtless eat more presently. When she decides to.’

  Her daughter gave her a baffled look.

  ‘Let us hope,’ added Letitia, her dark blue eyes of a sudden flashing grimly at Carolina, ‘that the excitement of your homecoming will raise Virginia’s spirits and cause her to take more interest in life.’

  And suppose I had not come home? Carolina wondered silently. What then? Would Virgie just have been allowed to waste away? It was very strange because both Fielding and Letitia were very fond of Virginia. Red-haired, laughing Penny had been their favourite of course, but now she was gone, and Virginia was still here.

  Carolina might have said more but, typically, Letitia seemed to have dismissed the subject. Once again the linens absorbed her attention as she corrected one of the serving girls, ‘No, Ida, the tableclothes go in this chest, the napkins over here.’ With things going smoothly again, she turned her keen blue gaze on to Carolina, who, unlike Virginia, was bursting with health. ‘I expect to give a small dinner party at the Raleigh in Williamsburg for you and your betrothed with the governor returns,’ she said.