“Well,” Cass said, after the spasm had finished. “I suppose four is better than three. Although I don’t know how David would handle another woman.”
“Don’t you worry about him, Mrs. Roe,” Alice said. “That lady of his, she got reins on him tighter than a choker, you bet on it.”
Cass extended her hand. Alice took it, and for a moment there was no time, no wind, no fire, but only a meeting of palms, and an unspoken promise Cass prayed she could keep.
Chapter Nineteen
After so many obstacles, so many deaths, and so many flights from what should have been the hearth of her old age, Cass was suspicious instantly when she did not have to engage in any prolonged, tearful arguments to get what she wanted. In fact, she thought as she left the boardinghouse and walked down the street toward the agent’s office, if anything it was all too easy. From the moment she had been born, her one continuing lesson had been that nothing, absolutely nothing of substance was gained easily.
The carriage had arrived in Meridine two days before, a full four days ahead of schedule when Alice volunteered to take over much of the driving and lashed the now exhausted bay team through the night hours as well. They’d arrived at noon and were instantly lost in a mob of horses, carriages, buckboards, and pedestrians that swarmed through the town’s whitewashed center. White and red brick, clustered at an intersection from which narrow roads branched like spokes of a wheel to the outlying farms and factories. Like ripples from a stone dropped in water, the homes of Meridine encircled the business center in patterns of squared corners rather than rambling lanes, resembling an archer’s target without the circles. She’d been delighted with everything she saw, including the bustling dock area on the town’s south side where the Green River flowed lazily east in the direction of Richmond. It was apparent that the war had not touched Meridine directly. There was a new monument in the square for the dead, but no homes had been torched, no Union soldiers housed forcibly; there had not even been—if Willard Handcock, the agent, was to be believed-a minor cavalry skirmish within fifty miles. Meridine, then, was one of the few communities left in the western counties of Virginia able to provide produce and products for a hungry, starving market.
They had chosen a small boardinghouse near the river to stay at while their business was undertaken, and the only problem they encountered was convincing the owner—a feisty old woman who wore a calico bonnet night and day—that Alice was not a servant and therefore should not be stuck in the outbuilding quarters. It was David, finally, who laid the matter to rest with the passing of a gold coin. It did not stop the woman’s grumbling, nor did it completely take the hurt from Alice’s eyes, but it worked to forge among the quartet an even stronger bond.
A bond of which, Cass thought sadly, Melissa was the weakest link.
“Listen,” Melissa had said the first night away from the tavern, while Alice was driving and David was asleep among the few items of baggage lashed to the top, “I don’t have anything against those poor people, mind, Cass, but after all she is what she is, you know.”
Cass had said nothing, only bit down on her lip.
Now, as Cass reached the stretch of wooden sidewalk that was raised above the street a foot or so, she banished the gloom and stared in the shop windows, seeing her reflection and grinning. She wore a white-and-green frock more suited to July than October, though the neck was properly high and laced, the skirts only lightly starched and rustling. Over her shoulders lay a matching shawl whose fringe delighted in the noontime breeze, and she was aware that many heads turned her way as she walked. She smiled to herself and touched her hand to the hair she had fashioned into a loose but businesslike bun, with small curls that arched around her temples and were scattered over her forehead. She did not deceive herself by scowling at those whose admiration was more frank than others’; it was pleasant, after so long a time, to know that she had not lost what her father had once called her summer-spring beauty. True, there were lines about her green eyes, creases radiating lightly from her mouth, etchings of past troubles that had never been erased—but they seemed to add to, rather than detract from, her attractiveness, giving others an undeniable impression of strength and intelligence.
There came a shout from farther down the street and she stopped, straining against a roof post until she could see, in the distance, the rainbow-bright colors of a wagon calliope making its way from the docks behind a gaggle of shrieking children. A carnival, she thought; my God, how long has it been?
But there was no time for that now. She turned around and entered a narrow doorway, turning right into a large, musty office whose single massive window looked out on the parade of pedestrians and merchants. There were two desks in the room: one immediately in front of her, the other tucked into a gloomy corner, in the back. At the latter sat a stumpy, rough-looking man whose three-piece suit seemed forced around his corpulence rather than fitted. He rose quickly and hurried to her, extending his hand to take hers.
“How do, Mrs. Roe? A beautiful day, yes?”
Cass nodded and smiled. Willard Handcock was a recent emigrant from a country she’d not yet been able to pin down, and his enthusiasm for his adopted land was incredibly and pleasantly infectious. He led her instantly to his desk, offered her a chair, and only after she was seated and had assured him of her comfort did he take his own.
“So,” he said, hands folded loosely over his paunch. “It is summer again, yes? It always takes me by the neck this change in weather so late. Beautiful. As you are, Mrs. Roe, as you are.”
She nodded, and was amazed to find herself nearly giggling. I must either be tired or drunk, she thought but knew more rationally that it was the excitement of the occasion that made her so nervous, and so susceptible to compliments.
“But,” the agent said with a brisk rubbing of his palms, “we have business, yes? Your Mr. Vessler was in earlier and all things are arranged. I must say again, though, that I’m mighty surprised you come here. I did not know I even have the property on books until you make me look.” He grinned and ducked his head.
“You’re the only agent in town, Mr. Handcock,” she said. “Where else would I go?”
He shrugged expansively. “I should not argue, yes? No. I should instead give you these and ask you sign here … and here … and once more here.” He handed her several long sheets of paper bordered in gilt, and when she held them up she saw that her hands were trembling. “A brandy, Mrs. Roe? For the event.” And without waiting for an answer he pulled from a desk drawer a dusty decanter, wiping it with one sleeve. Two glasses came from another drawer, and he carefully measured out a single swallow of the amber liquid. “We drink when you sign,” he said.
Though Cass had placed her trust in David’s knowledge of the law, when the moment came to put her name on the lines Handcock had indicated, she paused. Too easy, she thought again. Too miraculous.
The agent held out a pen.
County law was quite specific, David had told her: properties deserted for a period of three years or more fell onto the county rolls for auction. The problem was, few Southerners, even in prospering Meridine, had the kind of gold needed to pick up such a large piece of land. Another year, and there would be many; but now, there was only herself.
“Mrs. Roe?”
The entrancing calligraphy on the documents blurred, re-formed, and she saw a faint image: Eric’s face. She closed her eyes at once and took a deep, shuddering breath as her fingers closed around the quill. A few brief letters strung together to form her name, and Riverrun would be hers. A few brief letters. She sighed, signed, while two great tears shimmered on her cheeks. Handcock misunderstood.
“Indeed, a joyous moment,” he said, taking the documents back and blotting them quickly with sand and coarse paper. He raised his glass and toasted her with a smile. Cass only sipped at the weak brandy, fighting not to choke. And then, as suddenly as it had come upon her, the mood broke. She was still laughing when she left the office with the paper
s folded neatly into a packet and tucked under her arm. The air was filled with the song of the calliope, the shouts of young children racing through the streets announcing the carnival’s arrival. A juggler nimbly sidestepped a wagon piled high with sacks of corn, a clown played leapfrog with a small yelping dog. Those on the sidewalk had stopped to watch the impromptu show, and many of the horsemen had reined in to form a circle around a man giving an exhibition of marksmanship with a bullwhip. It was as though Meridine had turned out just for her, and though she knew it was only a fancy, Cass reveled in it all the way back to her rooms.
The others were gone.
Carefully, almost reverently, she placed the legal documents on the bed and knelt beside them. She did not want to touch them, but she drew faint circles on the quilt around them. It was not going to be easy. There was not much gold left from her flight—enough, perhaps, to take them all just barely through the winter, unless David was able to find himself work to help with the support. Then there would be spring, and the hiring of hands, clearing the grounds, buying seed and livestock. Her hands went suddenly to her cheeks as she realized the complexity of it all. Blindly she had driven herself into the realization of a dream, and now that the dream had become a reality she was no longer sure she could take hold and keep it.
You have no choice, she told herself. Already you have three people depending on you; what if Eric should return and see that you’ve failed? What would he say? She scowled. He would say nothing, only love her the more for trying.
“You know,” she said then to herself, “if you sit around here all day, nothing’s going to happen no matter what you do. Up, girl, damn it! You’ve got a hell of a long ride, and a hell of a long winter.”
The sound of her voice—scolding, chiding—made her grin. Speaking aloud to herself was, she knew, a habit she had long ago picked up from her father. Thinking, he had told her, too often refuses to stay on the track; talking, on the other hand, just as often can show you what a fool you’re about to make of yourself.
“No fool, Father,” she said, softly. “Not this time. I’ll die before I let this fall apart.”
Despite the shadows that lurked beneath the trees and filled the brush alongside the road, there was still plenty of light to see by when Cass wheeled her roan mare about with a hiss and a cluck, and slowed the animal to a trot. The air was chilled now, Indian summer fading as rapidly as its promise. The ground seemed harder, the leaves more brittle, and she shivered involuntarily under the heavy drape of a woolen cloak she’d purchased at Owen’s Dry Goods before leaving Maridine. It had only taken an hour to round up the others and give instructions to David about the foodstuffs they would need. Then, over their protests, she had ridden off on her own. It was important, more than any of them knew, that she reach the plantation first, and alone. She had almost missed the turn-off; two man-tall pedestals of fieldstone marking the entry lane had been submerged in a tangle of ivy and weeds, and it was only a fleeting memory that warned her of her mistake.
Once onto the lane, hoof beats smothered by fallen leaves and forest debris, she began to doubt.
From the day she had taken over her brothers’ chores on the farm, she had prided herself on her strength. She was no ordinary woman, she’d told herself, no ordinary person. Where others had been satisfied to allow vague notions of destiny to color their lives, she had tried almost desperately to be her own shaper, her own guide. She thought she had proved her worth in her skirmishes with Forrester, had shown the depth of her strength after the episode with Hawkins during the Davidson ball. But how much of all that had been her error? If she had told Kevin of the assault, might he not have found some strength of his own to face the two men and sweep her troubled horizon clear? If she had told Cavendish everything soon after Kevin had died, wouldn’t he have shown her what legal recourse she could have taken to shore up her defenses against further embattlement? She hated the questions because she would never know the answers, would never know how much of her grief could have been spared if she had not insisted on doing things her way or not at all.
It came to her as she rode up the lane that she was alone. David, Melissa, Alice; they were companions of her waking hours, to be sure, but even when the sun shone there were still tendrils of night that wrapped themselves about her and hid her from sight. Melissa had once wondered aloud how a farm girl could have learned to be so aloof, and Cass had told her aloofness and caution were two different things. But she hadn’t believed her own words then, and she didn’t believe them now. And she had refused, until now, to admit that being her own woman was a grand and glorious matter that worked to her benefit only up to a point. It gave her leverage in her dealings with others—the element of surprise that a woman could be the equal of a man—and it allowed her in several ways to manipulate people like David and Melissa without their knowing their strings were being pulled, up to a point. But beyond that point she was and would always be the other Cassandra Roe, needing love, affection, strength where her own sometimes faltered. Geoffrey, in the beginning, had fulfilled that need, and Kevin, in the beginning, had done the same, though with less assurance. But it had been Eric—arrogant, self-confident, almost aristocratic in his manner—who had fitted her perfectly. Eric was gone, and she was growing weary of reminding herself of that, weary of those half-hopes and vagrant dreams that he would suddenly return on the heels of a storm cloud and complete the imperfect puzzle that was shaping into her life.
She was alone.
She shook her head angrily, startling the roan, who skittered off to the side of the lane, shied at the stab of a thorned, skeletal bush, and bolted several paces before Cass brought her under control. When they had stopped, she looked up and saw the trees falling away. She gnawed at her lower lip anxiously. What if it was all gone? What if there was nothing but rubble and stone? What if fate’s cruel underside had finally turned up with a killing blow?
“Go,” she whispered to the horse, and stroked its neck gently. The roan balked, then broke into a canter, snorting its protest and angry surprise when she yanked hard on the reins and half-spun it around. It was beautiful … and it was hell. Her hands drifted across her eyes, and tears trickled through her fingers.
The house was, as far as she could tell, still in one piece. The broad front porch, the half-moon roof over it, the squared pillars, the tall, arched windows on either side of the huge double doors. The house caught lances of the twilight’s fire in panes and on clapboard, and diffused them until the house seemed to develop a faintly golden aura that lifted it out of the decay that surrounded it. It was unearthly, vaguely frightening, and she was positive that as soon as she blinked it would crumble, leaving behind it nothing more than a cloud of dust, a ghost-dance of memories that would be carried swiftly away as soon as the wind quickened again.
Riverrun.
“Oh, Eric,” she whispered, and slid down from the saddle, took the reins in her left hand and slowly led the roan up the lane to the wide carriage-turn now overgrown with wild grasses and seedlings of the trees that seemed to press closer now to the deserted mansion. Halfway to the steps she paused and glanced at the garden that had once been a colorful maze along the right side of the house. There were flowers still, but pale, sickly, autumnal remnants of some long-ago spring. She lifted her gaze up the side of the house to the window beyond which was the room where she’d recovered, the room from which she had seen Vern Lambert spying on Eric. She swallowed heavily, clucked to the roan, and moved forward again, the horse’s hooves the only sound as twilight hazed to dusk.
Vines had attacked the pillars, carpeted the porch, crept up and through the panes that were now broken like witches’ teeth. White paint peeled from the wood to leave slashes of gray, and here and there a board had warped away from its nails.
An animal skittered away, invisible in the shadows.
She tied the reins to a straggling shrub, hiked up her skirt with one hand, and climbed onto the porch—the steps had been shattered and
were now nothing but gaps. She stood for a moment, listening for spirits, for voices, for signs. She looked to her left and saw an overturned chair, a crushed table beside it. Sara.
Sniffing once, laying a finger across her upper lip, she moved to the doors, stretched out a hand, pushed, grunted, pushed again, and the rusty voice of the hinges was an explosion that reverberated through the hallways inside and set a dozen starlings and jays scolding at the disturbance in the trees behind her.
The curve of the staircase, the rooms to either side, the corridor that led to the back and the kitchen, all lay under dust, gray and white, with hints of black-brown. The dust puffed into clouds as she walked, and settled slowly. Nesting sparrows chirruped somewhere upstairs. There were droppings that meant rodents and bats, an occasional hare. She shuffled through dried grass, twigs, and tumbles of reeds. The furniture was gone, and the portraits, and the draperies; the iron socket in the ceiling from which the foyer’s chandelier had hung gaped like a black mouth. At the top of the stairs the huge oval tapestry whipped to tatters, faded, and yellowed.
She stood for a moment at the foot of the staircase with her hands cupped around the great oaken ball of the newel post, her arms wanting to propel her up, her legs refusing to take the first step. Instead, she drifted with the dust down the hall toward the back. And stopped at the kitchen’s threshold, stifling a gasp.
The large room was clean, and recently done. The floor was scuffed but earnestly polished, the iron stoves, the fireplace, the table in the center—all of them were clean and obviously in use. There were bits of greens on the floor. Something once white had burned down the front of the stove. A freshly cut cord of wood was stacked near the fireplace.
Riverrun Page 24
