“Still, there’s Harry riding down her street that night. And a husband is, they tell me, usually the last to know.” Livesey reddened with embarrassment. “Dash it, but Swann’s low talk … him knowing about adultery, secret signals …”
“Perhaps he practices them?” Bess said with a wry expression.
“Or understands human nature better than I ever will,” Livesey replied, not rising to her bait. “I’ve learned a lot since Harry died. And I’m not partial to one whit of it.”
“Ignorance is bliss?” Bess tried to cajole him further.
“Perhaps naivety—or innocence, rather—is bliss.”
“‘Cause if ignorance is bliss,” Bess went on with a blithe look, “then Constable Swann must be a very happy man.”
Livesey at last rose to her baiting and emitted a barking laugh. “Well, let’s pray God he’s hand-wringing miserable, then, Bess,” he said, heaving himself off the stool. “And pray God he’s right. Better for all that Harry died for personal reasons ‘stead of politics. Better for Wilmington and its peace.”
“And simple enough for even Constable Swann to smoke out,” Bess agreed.
“And the sooner the better.” Livesey nodded. “Done with bookkeeping? Good. I’ll look them over this afternoon. Thankee, pet. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“I’ll put them in your desk, Father,” she said, after giving him a supportive hug. “What will we do with these flowers now? Should I throw them out?”
“Mmm, best not just yet. Might put them away somewhere in the office. The fewer who know of them, the better, until Swann’s gotten more evidence,” Livesey decided.
“So will we wait for him to discover something, then?” she asked with a slight frown. “Or will you be making any more inquiries?”
“Well, Swann is the law. Now he’s on any sort of scent…” her father dithered. “Bless me, but I wish I could talk to Anne Moore first, or Osgoode. Ask about the rumors. No, perhaps not. I might muddy the waters for him. Still …I wish there was something more I could do.”
“I’ll put them away, then.” Bess smiled, wrapping the bouquet in a scrap yard of calico. “Oh, Father?”
“Yes, Bess.”
“Could I have ten pounds?”
“Da … !” Livesey began to splutter. “Ahem … ten pounds, d’ye say? Whatever for, my girl? A rather large sum …”
“For a new gown and bonnet, for the summer.” Bess beamed, most waiflike. “You look at the ledgers, you’ll see we’re over two hundred pounds in the black, and that’s with only the first three ships of the spring cargoes accounted for. And, our last debt’s paid off, finally. So… ?”
“Well, I suppose …” he waffled, wishing to give her anything she desired, yet so used to scrimping, over mere pence!
“Nothing too grand, I promise!” she enthused. “And trim some of my old homemades. Please, Father?Just the one new! Swear it!”
“Well then … yes, I…” Livesey allowed, proud to indulge her.
“Oh, you’re the kindest, most generous father in the whole Cape Fear!” she cried, hugging him once more, and bussing him on the cheek to seal the bargain before he turned abstemious again.
Bess took the ledgers to his office and set them out where he’d see them later, so he could savor their profit. She opened a drawer, and took out the scissors he kept to snip margin-paper off bills, which he used to make notes. She unwrapped the bouquet of oleanders and took a clean eight inches of the ribbon with the snips, off the bottom bow, which she rolled up and stuffed into a pocket of her apron.
She really did need at least one new summer gown, Bess assured her conscience. There was her blue taffeta one, too, which she’d worn to the Burgwyns’s. It would look much nicer and newer were it trimmed in this particular width and color of blue satin ribbon, backed with a bit of white lace along each pleat and ruch. That blue gown, though …
What a perfect excuse! With this snip of ribbon, Bess meant to hunt down the original supply, and all most-innocently. It was the least she could do, to help her father. Constable Swann … he might ask other importers, other shops where it had originated but he hadn’t shown much enthusiasm for questioning the dressmakers, or the hatmakers. It was a woman’s business, a woman’s trade … and who would suspect her of any motive other than Fashion?
And there were the flower vendors, too, she decided; how many were there in the streets or the markets? No one, not even her clever father, had given a thought to them, either!
The vendors usually tied their poseys or nosegays with a hank of rough twine, a wire-grass frond, even with a slim, dampened strip of basketing willow or white oak! This bouquet, though … whoever had tied this might have brought the ribbon with them, with no chance to take it home and do it up!
“Now there’s a tack Father didn’t suspect, either!” she whispered as she rewrapped the bouquet and hid it in a bottom drawer. She opened the cash-box, wrote a careful receipt on a snip of margin paper, and took her ten pounds sterling in two one-guinea coins, and the rest silver shillings. And set off to shop …for fabrics.
Chapter 15
SAM’L?” Bess asked in her best, “please, dear brother” tone several days later, after she’d awakened him, after she’d gotten the hearth-fire going.
“What,” he replied, sleepy and flat between wide yawns as he stood at the kitchen window looking out on the street.
“Could you do something for me today?” She smiled.
“Oh, no,” he replied out oflong practice. “Terriblybusy.”
“Sam’l. Dear, dear Sam’l,” she crooned, ruffling his uncombed hair. “You haven’t even heard what it is yet.”
“It ain’t kindling, it ain’t water, it ain’t the garden, that’s seen to. And you don’t simper like that ‘less it’s something pestifyin’. Well, I won’t this time, so there,” he groused, ducking away as she ruffled his hair some more. “Damme, I ain’t a hound, Bess! Leave my hair be!”
“I want you to go riding with me, Sam’l.”
“Lord, who’d care t’be seen riding with his sister!” Samuel muttered with a grimace of extreme distaste. “Even want to, truth be told.”
He faked a shiver of revulsion before he stuck his head into the china washbasin to rinse his face and neck. He came up puffing and blowing, groping for a towel, which Bess offered him as a sop. Once he scrubbed himself dry, and lowered the towel, though, his face wore a canny expression, having awakened his wits with cold water.
“Oh?” he lisped with rising glee. “Does da puss’ms wanna pway wif da widdle he-kitten Andwew Hewwett? An’ big, bad daddy puss’ms might not wike it, hmm?”
“God, you are so disgusting,” she declared with icy scorn as she turned to face the hearth and the warming skillets.
“Widdle Bess-kittums miss da widdle Andwew, do she?” he leered.
“Andr … Mr Hewlett has nothing to do with it, Sam’l,” Bess said, more in a snooty huff than she’d planned. She took a deep hitch of breath and turned to face him, falling back on sweeter speech. “If you must know, I have to go across the rivers. Over toward Belvedere and the Brunswick Road. There’s a new dressmaker over there everyone praises, and I want her to make my new gown. And you know a lady can’t ride unescorted, Sam’l. There’s no one else but you. And you wouldn’t want our family name dragged through the mud ifl go riding without an escort …or the wrong sort.”
“Easy enough, then, Bess.” Samuel shrugged as he ran the towel over his damp hair. “Send a note. Tell her to come over here.”
“She can only come to town once a week, of a Saturday, Sam’l,” Bess said, allowing the slightest hint of pleading into her voice. “I can’t wait that long.”
“Women and fashion whims!” Samuel snorted in dismissal.
“I’m told she sews for anyone, man or woman, and just as cunning as anything,” Bess told him, falling back on her brother’s vanity. “If you wished some new shirts and waistcoats, with lace or embroidery for a change?
Now our debts are clear, I’d have thought you wanted to make a finer public show. At church, and such.”
“Well…” Samuel pondered as he combed back his hair. “Ah, but my old’uns are good enough. The ones you made’ll suit. So long as I keep my coat on, that is,” he could not help needling her. “So folks don’t see how crooked your seams are.”
Damn your eyes, Sam’l! she thought, turning back to her skillets; my sewing needs hiding, does it? She cracked open an egg on the side of the pan and dribbled a tiny bit in the skillet to see if it was hot yet. “If the ones I made you are so shameful to you, I’d expect you’d relish another’s handiwork.” She put a hitch in her voice, portraying sullen heartbreak. “I’ve tried t’do right by you, I really have, Sam’l! I’d never let my brother be seen all patches and darns, when I could …” She managed a lip-quivering sound.
“Aw now, Bess, don’t take on so,” Samuel grumbled. “I didn’t mean it. You do main-well. You cut and sew neat as… neat as …”
Hide yer grin, Bess told herself. She made as if to wipe tears away from her eyes, still facing the hearth as she cracked open eggs and began to fry them. Half-way home, she speculated; go the rest!
“Thankee, Sam,” she said in a small voice. “It’s just that I thought I was doing all I could to keep a good house for you and Father. So people would be proud of you. Maybe if I have enough left over, I could pick up some scrap lace, now we’ve a little money, and redo your best ones. Would you like that?”
“Aye, Bess, that’d be handsome,” Samuel agreed.
“Or, I could take them over the river with me when I go today.” She wound back to her aim. “Or you could come along with me. I can’t go, if you don’t.”
“Well…” Samuel relented a trifle.
“They tell me the new dressmaker’s very pretty,” Bess tossed to him, using her hole-card to take the trick. She turned to face Samuel with an innocent smile, the sort she imagined a girl who hadjust been cruelly used by her own brother, but had forgiven him, might sport.
“How pretty?” he scoffed, suddenly leery again. It would not be the first time he’d fallen for one of Bess’s lures, and had gotten his fingers burned.
“Well, so pretty that Constable Swann gets this strangled look whenever he speaks of her,” Bess informed him with a blithe air. “And Louisa Lillington … who told me of her first…?”
Louisa Lillington was an extremely handsome young lady, one whom Bess knew figured highly in Samuel’s fantasies, for the strangled looks Samuel wore whenever he ogled her at a rout, oyster roast or tea.
“Uhmm?” Samuel perked up at the mention of that special name.
“Well, she was a little catty … but she did allow that she was very pretty,” Bess said with a straight face, having made it all up on the spur of the moment. Louisa Lillington thought herself the new generation’s ideal for feminine charms in the Cape Fear, and if she sounded pique-ish over another girl’s features, then there was a definite challenger toeing up, barefisted but game for a bout of’who’s the fairest.”
“Well, who is she, then?” Samuel asked, a bit quickly.
“Bridey … Bridget…” Bess frowned, waving a hand in the air. “Something like that. I didn’t catch her last name, but Louisa assured me everybody ‘cross the Brunswick knows of her. She’s new to the Cape, I think.” Bess shrugged off, facing the skillets again, feeling like if truth was taffy, she’d have it pulled clear across the road by then!
“How old, d’ye think?” Samuel inquired further.
“About my age, I think Louisa said,” Bess confided. “Ours or so.”
“Hmm.” Samuel sighed. “Damme, though, there’s the mill, and the tar-pots. Father’d have my hide if he found out. Uhmm. How long d’ye expect this little errand of yours’d take?”
“Well…” Bess all but hugged herself in victory as she turned with a speculative, cheek-biting look. “Were you to have a couple of horses we could use, I could get across to Eagle’s Island an hour before noon. There and back … no more than two hours, I should think. You could say you took a long dinner.”
“Hmm,” Samuel reiterated, waffling now.
“I could cook us a chicken for our dinner,” Bess coaxed warily. “Or since we’d arrive just about her dinner time, should I do enough for three? It might be the polite thing, seeing as how we’d be interrupting her. Then we might all sup together!” she perkily suggested.
“Aye, that sounds … polite,” Samuel agreed, and Bess could see her brother’s imagination spring to life: at-table with a young, pretty dressmaker! But his face sobered, and he got on his usual wary look.
“Here now, ’tis twice we’ll have to cross the Brunswick with two horses. That’s five pence per man and mount, twice. That’s …”
“One shilling, eight pence,” Bess quickly summed. “Two shilling and two pence, if you count me boating over the island to meet you, and come home again when we’re done.”
“Uh, aye … aye, it is,” Samuel frowned, flustered that she was quicker with sums than he. “Must I sport the whole cost, or just half? And hire horses atop of that, that’d be …” he said, wincing.
“There’s work beasts enough on the island, aren’t there, Sam’l? Not a brace ofblooded hunters, but surely two saddle-broke …”
“Who pays for all this?” Samuel asked, again highly dubious.
“Sam’l…” Bess tried cooing, though she knew he’d balk if she bargained too close with him. “Well… it is my gown, so it’s up to me to bear the cost, I s’pose. But I am providing the dinner!”
“Anything new for me? Orjust trim my old togs?” he pressed.
“I don’t know if my money’d go quite that far, Sam’l. But Lord, you’d bargain your own sister to the last groat?” she all but wailed in exasperation.
“Darned right I would!” he chortled. “I know you too well.”
“Hang it,” Bess relented, letting out a frustrated breath which bulged her cheeks with an audible chuff. “All right. I’ll pay the ferry fees for you. But new shirts are your own look-out.”
“And …?” Samuel prodded, smug in his victory.
“And I’ll pay for lace and labor on two of your best home-mades. But no more than two, please, Sam’l, or I can’t afford my new gown!” she cried. “Well …all right,” he allowed. “Two, then.”
“So you’ll ride with me?” she asked. “If I pay you to?”
“Mmm, s’pose I could.” He shrugged at last.
“Hang it! You will or you won’t!” Bess thought it had come down to begging time. “Say you will? Please?”
“Oh, aye, I will,” he relented. “Long as this doesn’t get me in trouble with Father, mind.”
She thought of flinging her arms about him and thanking him profusely, almost attained to telling him what a wonderful brother he was.
But that might, she thought, be gilding the lily. It would also re-arouse his suspicious nature. And end with her owing him a debt he’d be sure to remember, and collect on, later.
So she left it with a simple “thankee, Sam’l, I’m grateful to ye,” and a warm (but not too warm) smile of sisterly thankfulness.
Chapter 16
FERRIES in the North Carolina colony were horrid. Service was haphazard, even around the larger towns and boroughs. The eastern Low Country was laced with rivers flowing from the Piedmont; some too deep to ford, or too swift; most too broad to bridge. The ferry operators were supposedly licensed, and the county courts oversaw their boats or flats, and their fees. Some few were free, the owners getting an annual stipend—they were the worst, usually: the ferrymen surlier, the boats worse maintained, without the incentive of money in hand for every passenger, horse, crate or barrel, right on the spot.
Bess took a small shallop across the Thoroughfare and the Cape Fear, a leaky tub under lug-sail whose bilge-water seepage soaked the hems of her petticoats and gown. Better to soak than pull them up to protect them, for the ferryman was a bewhiskered, toothless sot who spent
his time trying to see her ankles and engage her in bawdy conversation. When he wasn’t muttering to himself, chewing his beard and laughing at his own monologue, that is.
Samuel was waiting for her at the landing, a muddy slope which trailed off into the river. The lengthwise-laid pole roadbed should have been sanded, but it wasn’t, so every step squelched poles into a brown soup between them, and each pole was so slick it took Bess some time to get on “dry” land without breaking an ankle or coming a cropper.
Showing no brotherly concern whatsoever, Samuel had stayed above the landing, only offering shouted advice on how to walk, pointing out the larger and deeper puddles of muck. And the two horses he had said he’d procure turned out to be two roach-backed mules who had seen better days. At least they had saddles.
I’ll remember this, Sam’l, she thought, ‘deed I will, you … oh, you’ll be years working this one offwith me, you!
“No side-saddle?” she commented, trying very hard to maintain an air of pleasant adventure. She almost attained a smile.
“No horse, either, you’ll note,” Samuel said, enjoying himself. “Wanted a girl’s saddle, shoulda brought it from home. Up you get, my girl. I’ll take the hamper. What all’d ye fix? Bring my shirts?”
“Don’t go eating it now, Sam’l,” Bess scolded. “And could you give me a leg up? This beast must be fifteen hands ifhe’s an inch.”
Samuel left off pawing through the willow food basket to offer some assistance, shortened the stirrups for her once she was astride, then led off. Bess’s mule craned his neck about to look at her with a chary expression, flicked his long ears, and shambled into a paddle-footed, slow gait that no amount of coaxing could improve.
Eagle’s Island was low, marshy, foetid with swamp smells and fumey with smoke: pine kindling as it burned under tar-pots, tar and pitch giving a sharp tang of sulphurous oil to the air; sweet scent of fresh-sawn boards and sawdust, the amber perfume of resin-renderings or the aseptic smell of turpentine.
What Lies Buried: A Novel of Old Cape Fear Page 14
