And she knew. When Eric had said to her complete partners, Melody had put the emphasis on the marriage. But that was not it. If he had meant solely a marriage contract that would place her in the role of Riverrun’s mistress, he would have put it that way; he was that kind of man, precise in his language. He meant what he had said; and he had said partners. He did not want her to give up her work, then, nor was he trying to take her place. What he wanted was to step up beside her, not in front of her. He wanted to share in what she had done to save what he had lost, so terribly long ago. Partners. The bubble exploded, and Cassandra’s laughter was not diminished by the wind.
That afternoon, she called all the servants and hands into the front room again. They were understandably nervous; the last time she had spoken to them this way, men had died because they had listened, and believed in her. But over that nervousness was something else. It could be seen in the way Rachel stood away from the wall with her feet planted firmly and her hands clasped at her waist; in the way Melody had put aside some of her childishness and watched her mistress solemnly; in the way Amos no longer stooped; in the way Simon held his still-healing arm; in the way the French doors were flung open to the porch, and the wind sifted in and no one moved.
She spoke to them this time without weapons in her hands, told them of Hawkins’ threats and how they would be refused, of Eric’s frantic ride to Richmond for the money that would erase the cloud of debt that hovered over them.
“But he won’t be satisfied,” she said. “Captain Hawkins has never kept his word to me, to Eric, to any of us, and there’s no reason to start thinking that he will this time. The only way he’s going to turn us under is by destroying our crop. Even if we pay him off, and we will, taking away our profits for the winter could mean the end. Amos, if we had to, could we ship it all tomorrow? It looks cured to me, but is it?”
Amos nodded. “It be first-rate this time, Missus.” And the others nodded their agreement.
“Then we have to protect it more than ever. And I don’t think keeping it in the sheds is the answer. Simon, you know how much there is down to the last green leaf, I’ll bet. Do you think we could keep it here, in the house, all of it, until Mr. Martingale gets back?”
Simon scratched at his head thoughtfully, and looked at Amos. “Yes’m, I thinks we could do that. Won’t do no harm if it ain’t for long.”
Cassandra smiled. She knew they must be thinking that she had lost her senses, but after a few moments they began to see what she had seen only an hour before—that if Hawkins were to make good on his threats, Riverrun’s most vulnerable points were the storage areas for the tobacco, and Cass did not have enough men to split among them and adequately protect them. By placing as much of the crop as possible within the house, however, there would be a concentration of force that Hawkins might think twice about trying to penetrate.
The risk, of course, was in the house itself. If Hawkins’s men actually made an attack, the most obvious course would be through fire.
When, Cassandra, she asked herself, did anything you wanted come easy?
The rest of the day, then, was spent in creating an appearance. Rachel and Melody, with Abraham’s help, cleaned out the small ballroom—more like a dining room—and set the few pieces of furniture in those rooms that were empty upstairs. The drapes were drawn. Meanwhile, Simon and the others moved through the cellar, marking those places where the dampness did not reach and building low platforms to lift the bundles of tobacco off the dirt floor. Buckets of water were placed along the walls. From the outside, it would appear to anyone watching that Cass had decided to take this time between harvest and delivery to prepare the house for winter. Those men who were not with Simon or the women made an elaborate show of sponging down the windows and the porch, and scrambling up to the roof to check on the state of the chimneys.
It seemed hectic, and it was. But by nightfall, everything was ready for Cass’s next move.
“You must be crazy. I don’t know what that man has over you, Cass, but you’re only asking for trouble.”
David had several pillows piled behind his back, but even then, he was lost in the voluminous folds of his robe that only served to accentuate the weight he had lost, the tightly drawn appearance of his face. He coughed more frequently now, and not even Rachel’s herbs were able to clear his lungs. Before Cass had come up to see him, Rachel—almost fearfully—had confided that she had spotted specks of blood in the phlegm he had spat out the previous evening.
“I’m only doing what I have to, David. I know what it looks like, and I know what it sounds like, but neither Eric nor I have any intention of giving ground now that we’ve come this far.”
He shook his head slowly, wearily. “I don’t know, Cass. I really don’t know.”
She sat on the edge of the mattress and took his hands in hers. “David, you know that I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. And what I’ve done to you.”
He smiled, a ghostly, wan grimace that made her want to weep. “You’ve done nothing to me, Cass, that I didn’t want done. As it turned out, I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was. Not with you, not with poor Melissa,” his smile became rueful, “and not with Alice.” He took back one of his hands and gestured toward the darkened big room. “This isn’t exactly how I planned to spend so much of my time, but I’ve had that time to do a lot of thinking. Should I have gone west, as we’d planned? How much better would it have been out there? Knowing no one, traveling the way one has to travel out there, every time you turn around another load of troops coming through to fight the Indians. How much better off would I have been, Cass? I don’t know. But I’m not worrying about it anymore, you can believe that. There’s no sense in it.
“She loved me, you know, Melissa did. I know she treated me like an overgrown child. Who knows what she said to you and Cavendish and God knows who-all else about me behind my back? But that’s the way she was. And in spite of everything, I think I loved her, too. That’s my regret. Cass. Killing her.”
“You didn’t kill her,” she insisted.
“Of course I did. If I hadn’t been bedding Alice, she never would have taken to drink, she never would have taken that ride and broken her neck. I killed her.”
“David—”
He coughed, covering his face with a yellow-stained cloth. When she reached for the pitcher of water, he shook his head. “I’m all right. I’m all right.”
Amos came to the door, then, and stood patiently on the threshold.
“It’s time, David,” she said. “I have to make the next move.”
“Cassandra— Never mind. You never would listen to reason that didn’t agree with yours. Never.
“But you’ve got to promise me one thing, Cass: one thing I have to have your word on.”
“For God’s sake, David, you sound as if you think you’re dying.”
His rueful smile made Cass turn slightly away.
“Cass, if all this … this preparation, God forbid, comes to something, you’ve got to promise me that I’m going to have a hand in it. I’m not going to stand here like I did last time and take potshots at shadows.”
Denial had already leapt to her tongue, but she stayed it, swallowing it when she saw the expression on his face. It wasn’t Riverrun he was concerned about, and it wasn’t her. He was looking for a way to make a gesture, to take one step closer to clearing his mind of the guilt he felt. It wasn’t practical. It was deadly—literally. But she could not bring herself to tell him it was suicide. Instead, after a moment’s consideration, she nodded, then took his hands and brought them to her lips. She left him staring at the wall as Rachel rushed in with his tray of dinner.
In the corridor she took Amos by the arm and walked with him for several silent paces before clearing her throat. “Well?” she said.
“They eatin’ now,” he said. “‘Bout an hour.”
“All right. Just remember, you can’t use the buckboard. It all has to be done on foot. No torches, no
lanterns. If there’s a moon, and it looks like there’s going to be, you’ll have to stick to the trees, the long way around.”
“Lawd, Missus,” he said, with a trace of smile in his voice, “you sure don’ take things easy, do you?”
Cass gave a short laugh, pulled on his arm, and kissed his cheek quickly before taking the stairs two at a time down to the hall and into the dining room. Her place had been set at the head of the table, but there was only one candle lit. She looked at her plate—pork and greens—and felt a sudden lurch in her stomach. She didn’t think she could eat; there was too much to do. But she had to, and she did, but she did not taste any of it.
She refused to go to her room until the last man had brought in the last bundle that would fit in the spaces provided. Once they were secured, she spoke with Amos about the stables and made him promise to get the men on the job immediately when night fell the following day. In the meantime, they were to be up at the usual hour; doing the usual things, no matter who came to the house. Then she moved slowly, painfully, to her room, wishing she could talk herself into filling the iron tub in the kitchen with hot water and just soaking in it for the rest of her life. Not since she had first come to Virginia had her legs throbbed so much, her arms hung at her sides as though they were chained with lead weights. She knew this must be how the others felt, and as she fell onto the mattress without taking off her clothes, she decided that the worst thing she could do was not get up when they did.
She rolled her head to look out the window. How many hours? she wondered. Two? Three? Certainly no more than that. She must get through a full day tomorrow without Eric. She could not even begin to start looking for him until past midafternoon on the third day, assuming he rode all night and all day, assuming the letters were there as promised, assuming he was able to get away from the city without falling into any more trouble. As she drifted off, she uttered a short prayer for another twenty-four hours of peace.
She remembered that prayer at noon, when Abraham came racing up the lane, his bare feet thudding against the quick-drying mud. He did not have to say anything; she knew and she was ready. She had the front doors closed and the windows shuttered, and ordered everyone in the house to stay in the kitchen and not, under any circumstances, to admit anyone but herself.
“And keep the windows tight,” she said as she slipped out the front door. “That damned stuff smells like a goddamned leaf-fire.”
She was granted only a few moments to compose herself, but it was enough when Hawkins and Forrester, on two huge dapples whose manes were braided and laced with red ribbons, veered into the turnabout and came to a halt in front of her. Hawkins bowed with a sweep of his hat; Forrester only moved his gaze slowly over the front of the house, as if, she thought, he was trying to see through the walls. When his eyes finally met hers, he did not smile.
“Cass,” Hawkins said without dismounting, “there’s no sense in my beating around the bush this time. Ah …” He looked pointedly at the doors. “Mr. Martingale?”
“Is busy,” she said. “Whatever business you have here you can speak to me.”
“But of course, of course, I wouldn’t have it any other way. As a matter of fact, it is you I want to speak to.” He smiled again, reached up with his good hand, and made a slight adjustment on the red patch that covered his eye. “You,” he said again. “Not that damned foreigner.”
“Does he have to be here?” she said, indicating Forrester with an abrupt nod of her head.
Hawkins stared at her for a long, not-quite frightening minute before suddenly jerking a thumb over his shoulder. At first, Cass thought Forrester was not going to move, but finally he yanked at his reins and backed his horse to the far side of the clearing. Then he unbuttoned his jacket, pulled out his derringer and made absolutely sure she could see it resting lightly on the pommel. She almost grinned. He still thinks I’m just a woman, she thought wryly. He doesn’t even give me credit for knowing that silly little popgun couldn’t reach this far on a bet, much less be accurate. But she said nothing, turning her attention back to Hawkins, and, getting an inner grip on the fluttering in her stomach, demanded to know what he wanted so she could get back to her chores.
“You never give up, Cass, do you?”
She would not give him the satisfaction of an answer.
Hawkins sniffed lightly and shifted in his saddle. “The problem is this, my dear—I know you’ll not be able to make payment in five days, and I know full well you’ll not give up this place in return for my forgiving your debts. So I have something else to show you, something that might not be quite so … well, I don’t know quite how to put it.”
“Then don’t bother.”
Hawkins glared, but the hard look softened immediately and, he climbed down from the dapple, stood at the foot of the steps, and looked up at her earnestly.
“Cassandra, you must know this, you must hear me out. I loved you once, you know, and as strange as it may seem, I love you now. No, don’t look at me that way. I know what you’re thinking, but what you don’t know is why I’m doing this, why I follow you everywhere.”
“Geoffrey, I don’t—”
“Cass, it isn’t you, believe me it isn’t.”
She had almost decided to turn on her heel and stalk back into the house, but the pleading tone in his voice stopped her, puzzled her. For a moment she was off balance, not readily able to cope with this marked change in Geoffrey’s attitude. And in that same moment she was shocked to realize that she recognized, in his voice, something of the old Geoffrey that made her reach out for the post and hang on.
“It’s him,” Hawkins said then, with a finger pointed at the house. “That man. When I realized, Cassandra, that I had survived a literal hell only to find you with …” He turned away, kicked at the earth and turned. “That was what unbalanced me, Cass, not the troubles I’d had. That was what sent me in search of Forrester and the things he could do.
“And, when you fled down here and I finally learned where you were, learned that you were alone at last, I wanted nothing more than to come to you, like this, and tell you how I felt. But it wasn’t to be, was it? This was Riverrun. That man again. You had not shed yourself of him, and I would not stop until I had crushed him.”
Cass shook her head quickly. The softness of his voice, the way he held his head as he used to; all of it made her dizzy as she fought with the knowledge of what he had done, for whatever reason, to drive her to transform her home into a veritable fortress.
“Cass,” he said, lifting one foot to the bottom step, “you’ve got to believe me. I swear to you this is the truth, all of it. I don’t want to hurt you. Cass, I will do anything to have you again, the way we once were before it all fell apart. And I offer you this: take Riverrun, it’s yours. I have enough money, enough influence so that your crop will not go for less than its full worth, in gold. All I ask are two things: that he leave this place forever, and that you stay with me, as Riverrun’s mistress.”
He reached out and took her hand before she could pull it back, kissed it softly, and looked up at her.
“Please, Cass, say you’ll forgive me, now that you know. Say it, and let’s end this nonsensical battling.”
“Time,” she said, stalling. “I—I need time.” When he looked thunderstruck, she tried to reach him. “Geoffrey, after all that’s happened, all that’s been done, how can you expect me to drop it all for one pretty speech? How can you believe that I can do this to Eric without at least—”
“Eric,” he spat. “Damn the man, he’s nothing to you …”
He smiled his old smile. Velvet and promises. But he wanted her to be Riverrun’s mistress; and Eric wanted her to be his partner. Geoffrey, by his choice of one single word, had shown her he did not know her at all, after all this time.
Suddenly, the doors behind her were flung open and Abraham raced out onto the porch. “Mrs. Roe,” he said, “when Mister Eric come … back … do …” He faltered, quieted, put a hand to hi
s mouth and vanished back inside.
Cass, who had spun around and glared to shut him up, felt a look of horror spread across her face. Slowly, taking a deep breath for calmness, she turned back to Geoffrey and saw that the old smile, the old look, were gone …
“Five days, Mrs. Roe,” he said coldly. “Five days.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Five days, Eric thought. The grin on his face broadened. He had ridden steadily since leaving Riverrun, stopping only once just before midnight to exchange horses at a small and not very reputable-looking inn. The innkeeper, seeing the roan, knew that he was getting the better of the bargain, but Eric could not afford to waste time letting the mare rest from the driving he had given her. He knew Cassandra would understand—sometimes, he’d thought, she understands only too well—and felt little compunction about leaving the horse behind; if it all came out the way it was supposed to, he would be able to return to the inn and buy back the animal, just to keep Cass happy.
Cass. His thoughts had been of little else since he’d burst out through the portal across the lane and into the road; whenever he tried to focus on his mission, her face, her smile, the faint bell-like sound of her laughter would intrude and he would find himself creating scenes between them. None of them were very momentous, no more than glimpses of what he hoped domestic life would be between them. And as he shook off each one in turn, he laughed, thinking how much like a young boy he was acting, and how much like a fool he had acted when Cass had, rightfully, put him in his place. But it had been difficult, returning to the place that had been his only home since leaving England, and finding the woman he loved doing very well without him. Even when she protested her need for him, he doubted. Amos and Judah had known quite obviously what they were about in terms of keeping the place as self-supporting as it was; if Cass had had just a few more hands, she would probably have had everything cleared off the ledger long before this. It had been difficult, and he had reacted predictably, slipping in and attempting a resumption of life as though nothing had changed, no years had passed, no blood had been shed.
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