The Lady Who Broke the Rules

by Marguerite Kaye

  ‘Mr Owen believes that a happy child will be more receptive to learning,’ Reverend Seagrove said, beaming at him, as the children gathered round a table for morning milk. ‘We try to mix some play with our lessons. It is not good for the children to be seated at their desks for hours on end.’

  ‘You have quite an age range here,’ Virgil said to Miss Thomson, ‘how do you manage?’

  ‘We have the older children help the littlest ones with their reading and numbers, and I have a young woman who helps me three days a week,’ the schoolteacher replied, blushing.

  ‘Lady Kate is eager to recruit another full-time teacher,’ Reverend Seagrove said, ‘but we must first persuade the villagers of the benefits of keeping their children in school past working age. Unfortunately, Mr Jackson, many families depend upon their children’s income, and do not have the foresight to understand that the income could be significantly increased in the future were they permitted to learn more.’

  ‘What about educating the parents?’ Virgil asked.

  Miss Thomson looked shocked, but Reverend Seagrove was much struck with this idea. ‘Lady Kate has been telling me all about Mr Owen of New Lanark. I believe he has established some form of institute which purports to offer an education to the adult members of his community.’

  ‘It is that aspect of New Lanark I’m most interested in,’ Virgil replied. ‘Without learning, you can never be free to choose.’

  ‘Most profound, if I may say so,’ the vicar said, nodding vehemently. ‘I will use that for a sermon, if I may.’ He smiled at Kate. ‘Perhaps we shall persuade the good people of Castonbury that there is a place for grown men in the schoolroom, after all.’

  ‘And grown women, too, I hope,’ Kate replied drily.

  Reverend Seagrove chuckled. ‘Quite right, my dear. What do you think, then, of our little school, Mr Jackson?’

  ‘I think it’s a lot more than a little school. Your ideas are revolutionary.’

  ‘Lady Kate’s ideas, for the most part,’ Reverend Seagrove said. ‘It was she who insisted on our modern heating system. Most of our patrons felt it quite unnecessary to heat a school room. And the lessons, too, the participative elements you have seen…’

  ‘Come, Reverend Seagrove, you are making me blush. I merely followed Mr Owen’s tenets. I could never have raised the funds without your help, and while I am happy to take some credit for the principles upon which we teach, it is Miss Thomson here who has put them into practice.’

  ‘Then you are a remarkable team,’ Virgil said seriously. ‘You should all be proud of Castonbury school. You’ve given me much food for thought.’

  Kate’s family were by degrees mildly interested, dismissive and scathing of the hard work she had invested in this enterprise. Many of the children’s parents had taken a great deal of persuading to allow their offspring to attend. While Reverend Seagrove and Miss Thomson had been unfailingly supportive and the school’s board of governors were slowly coming round to the ethos upon which it had been established, she was quite unused to praise. She had never doubted the worth of what she was doing, but having someone else perceive it and credit her with some of its success almost overset her. She had tried to pretend it didn’t matter what anyone thought. She had mostly succeeded. But it did matter, and Virgil’s opinion, whether she wanted to admit it or not, meant more than anyone’s.

  ‘Lady Kate does not know what to do with compliments,’ Virgil said to Reverend Seagrove, seeing her blush, ‘but nonetheless, I must tell you all, I think this is a remarkable place.’

  Replete and revived by their morning victuals, the first awe which had overwhelmed them upon meeting their American visitor dissipated, the children gathered around Virgil, clamouring for stories, besieging him with questions, not all of which had any grounding in reality, having arisen from the various stories they had heard at home. Receiving Miss Thomson’s assent, he sat down on the floor with them in a circle around him and told them stories of the New World.

  It was as if he wove a spell, Kate thought, watching. He held them captive, enthralled and yet totally at ease, just exactly as he had done with the servants at Castonbury. His tales of Anansi the spider were not what the school’s board of governors would call nice. They were subtly subversive, exactly the kind of story to make the children laugh gleefully, at the triumph not of good over bad, but of small over large.

  * * *

  ‘I meant it, Kate,’ Virgil said as they made their way back through the woods at Castonbury afterwards. ‘You should be proud of what you have achieved there. I gather from the reverend that it was no easy task to persuade some of the villagers to send their children to school rather than into employment.’

  ‘There is so much more I’d like to do.’

  ‘There is always more. You cannot do it all.’

  ‘Yet that is exactly what you aim to do, judging by the plans you were discussing with Reverend Seagrove. I hadn’t realised they were so far-reaching. It sounds as if you wish to take on the burden of educating every freed slave in America.’

  ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  She was startled by the sudden weariness in his tone. ‘You sound as if you carry the burden of slavery upon your own shoulders. You, of all people, have nothing to feel guilty about.’

  ‘Kate, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  The atmosphere which had come between them since the morning at the lake returned. ‘Virgil, I…’

  ‘Kate, we need to talk.’

  She almost panicked. The past two nights had been spent assuring herself that what had happened between them had been purely physical. It had been intensely pleasurable, but it meant nothing more. By day, she could maintain a calm front, assuring herself that nothing had changed save she knew herself capable of pleasure. By day, she had the strength of her conviction. By night, she was as weak as a kitten. And it frightened her.

  She had not loved Anthony, but she had cared for him and hoped to learn to love him. What she had discovered was that her feelings could be easily abused, she herself easily manipulated as a result. It had taken her five years to regain control of that life. She was damn sure she wasn’t going to do an about-turn and hand her heart over to a man who not only swore he could never care for her, but in a few weeks hence would be on the other side of the world. She almost panicked, because for a terrible moment she thought Virgil was about to declare himself, and for an even more terrible moment she thought herself about to accept him. Then she saw his face. Tight. Controlled. Fierce. And she knew she’d got it quite wrong.

  ‘You are leaving?’ she said with a sinking heart, because it was the only other thing she could think of.

  ‘You know I am, sometime before that claimant to the Castonbury throne arrives, but that’s not what I wanted to discuss.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Is there somewhere we can be private near here?’

  ‘There is the orangery, but I think Wright is still working there. Or the fishing pavilion.’

  They walked quickly and in silence. The pavilion sat over the lake with a view out to the island, a small square building which smelled of damp wood. Not the most romantic of places, Kate thought, then told herself that was exactly as it should be. An odd assortment of chairs and stools were huddled together by the window.

  She sat in a wooden ladderback chair, but Virgil remained standing. He paced the room like a restless tiger, abstractedly inspecting fishing tackle, picking up a piece of rope and working a knot in it free. Casting it aside, he pulled a three-legged stool over to sit opposite her. ‘Millie,’ he said resolutely, ‘I need to tell you about Millie. You need to understand, Kate, how impossible it is that there could ever be anything between us.’

  ‘Virgil, I already understand that.’

  Did she? The problem was, the difficulty was that he wasn’t sure he did, not after—no, don’t think about that. Virgil felt like a knight who had voluntarily laid down his armour thinking the battle
won, only to discover that another was starting and his armour no longer fit. He could not allow Kate to penetrate his defences. What he needed to do was to remind himself of that. And if that meant the brutal truth, peeling back his scars to the raw flesh to remind himself, then that is what he would do.

  He loosened his neck cloth. This was the only way. He had to close it down, this thing between them. He had to find a way to stop himself thinking of her, dreaming of her, wanting her. He had to get her out of his mind. This was for his sake, but even to say so would give her the wrong idea.

  ‘Kate.’ Virgil caught himself. Don’t say her name, not like that! He tried again. ‘Kate.’ Better. She looked…anxious. Couldn’t be helped. He could do it. The pain would cauterise whatever it was he was feeling, stop it in its tracks. Damn it, he had to do it. Virgil breathed deep, as if to dredge it all up from his guts. He felt sick. Good. That was good.

  He closed his eyes. Another deep breath and he was back in the South. Harvest time. He opened his eyes and forced himself to look at Kate. Her face had that fierce look, her brows drawn together, her fine features pinched with concentration. Good. Good.

  ‘There’s a heaviness to the air in Virginia in the summer that saps your energy,’ he began. ‘Everything smells ripe, rotten. There’s an art to getting the tobacco leaves in at just the right time, to having them dried in the sheds and packed in the hogsheads ready for the ships arriving so you can get the best price. If you leave them on the plants too long, you lose them.’

  ‘That was why you chose to strike then. I remember you saying so.’

  ‘Yes. As the time passed, the end was inevitable. I saw the men’s resolve crumbling, Kate. I could almost taste their fear, but I hung on.’

  ‘And you were punished.’ She reached for his hand, but he brushed her away. He couldn’t touch her. He would not have her comfort; he did not deserve her admiration. He would put an end to that. ‘I was so damned certain I was right. They stuck by me, the men at the Booth place. God forgive me for that. They stuck by me long past the time when I thought we’d have been sure to win, but I hadn’t counted on Master Booth’s sheer determination, and I hadn’t counted on his being smart enough to know that if he conceded just one thing it would be the end. I thought we had the most to lose, but I was wrong. When they sent men from the neighbouring plantations to do our jobs, I knew we’d lost. Yes, they whipped us. They flayed me so badly I thought I would die, but you’d be amazed just how much punishment a body can take.’

  There was a sheen of tears in Kate’s eyes. He could see her struggling valiantly not to let them fall. How she hated to cry. ‘You mustn’t feel guilty,’ she said. ‘Those other men, I’m sure they didn’t blame you.’

  ‘That’s not it.’ Tension enhanced the drawl in his voice, brought out the distinctive accent of the South. He held himself rigid on the stool.

  ‘What else?’ Kate asked.

  There was doubt in her voice. She didn’t want to hear. That was good. He didn’t want to tell, but it was too late now to call a halt. ‘Millie,’ Virgil said. ‘We weren’t married. Some of the plantation owners encouraged it—they figured a family man was less likely to run away and they could always sell the children for profit, though it didn’t stop them splitting those same families up if it suited them—but Master Booth wasn’t one who went along with that view. He thought family ties made us more rebellious. We weren’t married, but we planned to be.’

  Kate flinched. Her eyes were dark, her skin not so much creamy as pale. She hadn’t expected that, obviously. She didn’t like it. Because she cared? He couldn’t let himself think that way. Hell, that was the whole point.

  Virgil tugged at his neck cloth and it came away in his hand. He began to wrap the length of linen round his knuckles, pulling it tight. ‘Millie, she was mightily against our uprising. She begged me not to do it, but I was so sure I knew best. It was for our future, I told her.’ He cleared his throat. ‘What I did, it made sure we didn’t have a future.’

  He told her, and in the telling it was like it was happening again, fresh and stark, every detail etched on his memory, waiting all these years to be released for the first time. The sting of the sun blinding him as he emerged from the hellhole. The way fear tasted, sharp like sweat. Apprehension morphing into disbelief, then horror, as he saw his fellow slaves lined up. The look on Master Booth’s face. On Harlow, the overseer’s. And Millie. Millie’s face. Millie calling his name. Millie, suffering for his crimes. Millie paying for his insubordination. ‘They knocked me out. I heard her screaming, I tried to get to her, but they knocked me out. I couldn’t get to her. I tried, but I couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t save her.’

  His voice cracked, be he made himself finish. ‘When I came back to consciousness, I thought it was over. I knew I would be sold. I thought most likely they’d send me north, because my reputation was too bad to make me anything but worthless in the South. I planned to come back for her. I wanted to tell her but they wouldn’t let me see her. I never got to tell her. I thought she would know, but by the next morning—by the morning—it was too late. She killed herself.’

  The agony of it all, which he had locked away, which he had kept so firmly tamped down, weighting it with the sheer slog which had been his determination to succeed, binding it tight with the penance which was at the root of his philanthropy, overwhelmed him. Virgil dropped his head in his hands.

  Chapter Eight

  Dry, hacking sobs echoed around the small room. Virgil’s shoulders heaved. Kate had never before seen a man in such agony. That it was this man, so powerful, so seemingly invincible, made it all the more unbearable to watch. She ached for him, but she knew better than to offer him comfort. She wiped her own tears away frantically. What he had told her was beyond anything she had imagined. Why he had put himself through the trauma of reliving it, she could not quite understand.

  Her own feelings strained at the leash she had put around them, like hunting dogs fresh on a scent. It was an enormous effort to control them, but she knew she could not afford to fail. That Virgil may be struggling, too, she had not for a moment imagined. Was he afraid, as she was?

  Looking at his hunched, distraught figure, the horror of his story fresh in her mind, Kate could not believe that. Such a trauma would surely sever all emotions for ever. No wonder he had chosen celibacy. No wonder he had been so reserved since the island. He obviously felt he had been unfaithful to Millie’s memory. It could never be the same, he’d said. She understood that fully now. It hurt. It was good that it hurt. He’d put himself through this for her sake, Kate realised. He knew she was not indifferent. He’d seen what she would not admit to herself. His seeing made her realise how far from indifferent she had allowed herself to become. But it was not too late.

  Virgil got to his feet and stared out of the window. Kate joined him, close but not touching. There was a heron on the lake shore, its wings spread to dry. When he began to speak again, his voice was flat, drained, exhausted. ‘So now you know it all. I killed her. My stubbornness, my ambition, my certainty, killed the woman I loved. If I had listened to her, if I’d thought for one moment about the consequences of what I was doing, I wouldn’t have done it. Surely to God, I wouldn’t have done it.’

  Kate stared at him, stunned. He couldn’t possibly blame himself, but he quite obviously did. ‘You can’t have guessed what they would do to her!’

  ‘I should have. It wasn’t the first time I’d been whipped for insurrection, and this was one hell of an insurrection. We must have scared them. A whipping was never going to be enough, and I knew when they put me in the hellhole that they weren’t going to hang me. I should have known.’

  ‘No!’ Kate exclaimed, the single word rebounding violently round the wooden walls of the pavilion. ‘How can you say that? Virgil, for goodness’ sake, if anyone is to blame it is that man, Booth.’

  ‘I put myself first. I didn’t think about her. The woman I wanted to marry, and I didn’t think about
her. It’s not a lesson I ever want to repeat. When they told me she was dead—then I felt flayed. I don’t ever want to go through that again, Kate. Do you understand that?’

  There could be no mistaking the warning note in his voice. Though it hurt her, Kate told herself the pain was welcome. It was a warning she would be a fool to ignore. ‘You could not be clearer, Virgil. I assure you, I understand completely. How could I not? What you have suffered…’

  ‘I don’t want your pity,’ he exclaimed sharply. ‘What I’ve suffered is nothing. I wanted to kill them at first, when I was in the hellhole, before it—before Millie—but I knew there was a better way. When Malcolm Jackson brought me to Boston, I felt like providence had finally given me a card I could play. I would show them I was better than them, and I have. Better. Stronger. More powerful. And I did it on my terms.’

  ‘That’s what’s driven you all these years?’

  ‘That’s part of it. I’ve had my revenge. Now I can make good for what I did to Millie.’

  There was so much, too much, for her to assimilate. Kate smiled weakly. ‘With schools?’

  ‘And homes. And work. A library. I don’t know what else.’

  Emotional isolation, Kate thought. Physical deprivation. ‘So I was right,’ she said instead. ‘You do want to take on the burden of providing a future for every freed slave in America. How will you know when you’ve done enough, Virgil? When will you have paid?’

  ‘I took a life. How can I ever repay that?’

  ‘Millie took her own life,’ Kate said gently.

  ‘Because of me.’

  She would not have given up, Kate thought, but bit her tongue. How could she possibly tell what she would have done? She could not even begin to put herself in Millie’s position. ‘You were nineteen, Virgil. “What does anyone know of caution at that age?” That’s what you said to me, remember? Don’t you think it’s time to forgive yourself?’