zss speculated. But Biddy was impish-cheerful and aspiring minutes later, as if she’d met somebody who she thought might marry her upwards, so … ? One more time, Bess felt like cringing that she’d come to delve, and deceive in the process!
“’tis the best I made all winter, and I’d like …” Bess stammered, growing bolder by merely speaking. “I’d like for no one to recognize it, frankly, Biddy. I’d thought to edge the shoulder pleats, the bodice and cuffs, with lace and ruches, maybe lace and ribbons to boot? I … I found a bit of ribbon the very color, but…”
Feeling as if it would scald her hand, Bess reached into her clutch and withdrew that snippet of royal-blue satin ribbon from the bouquet her father had discovered.
“Aye, that’d be peert,” Biddy enthusiastically agreed, totally oblivious to Bess’s distress, and showing no sign of distress, herself, to Bess’s immediate relief. It didn’t signify to her!
“White lace, o’ course, Bess,” Biddy speculated with her head cocked to one side. “White satin bodice panel, an’ down th’ front tae just abune th’ hem, with lace flouncing round th’ bottom, an’ … oh, Bess!” she cried, gasping. “White figured-salmi I’ve some a’ready, an’ less than twa yards’d do! Come on back to ma room, I’ll show ye!”
Biddy led her into the house to one of the two doors in a wall to the left. “Pardon th’ mess,” Biddy warned her as she flung open the right-hand door to a fair-sized bedchamber, one awash in half-finished clothing hung on pegs or nails driven into the log walls. The corners were taken up by swatches of fabrics. Whole bolts of cloth stood on-end, or filled the few shelves. There was a tall wardrobe, a narrow four-poster bed, and a dressing table and mirror, flanked by—dwarfed by—stacks of wooden boxes turned into shelving that held lace, ribbons and “possibles.”
“‘Twoz ma daddy’s, first,” Biddy said with a sheepish moue at how cram-full it was. “But since ma sewing turned profitable he took th’ other room, an’ moved yon partition. He’s talked o’ building on off th’ back porch, if things got e’en mair crowded. Take a perch on th’ bed, wheelst I dig. I know ’tis in here, somewhere!”
Bess looked around whilst Biddy muttered to herself and pawed through her boxes. For being such a mercurial person, Bess thought her much better-organized than she. Each box bore painted labels for lace, ribbons, threads, buttons, quilting scraps and such. Cloth on the shelves were sorted by color or pattern. There was even an accounting ledger on the dressing table, open to show debits and expenditures versus profits, done in a careful printed hand, not the sloppy script that only the writer might decypher later.
“Ribbon ye brought’s a tad narrow, Bess,” Biddy said, single-mindedly grubbing about. “Dinna want th’ trim hanging out too far so we could use this hat-lacing. It’d be bonny, ‘gainst royal-blue, an’ I’d sew it flat. No overlapping th’ pleats.”
“Yes, that’s quite nice,” Bess answered, distracted. The door of the big wardrobe was open, and she could see that it was filled to bursting with finished gowns, from work-a-day plain to royal ball fine, plain cotton chemises to the frilliest silk underthings. Things Biddy had made for herself, Bess realized, some of the sort she seemed to dread she’d never get to wear—for company, church, afternoon entertainments, or … courting? Bess thought them fine enough for Philadelphia Society, not staid little Wilmington. Morning gowns, even cunning hats, and a small pile ofbabies’ clothes?
Bess reached across the bed to take one of the baby gowns off the pile. It was a light, shimmering watered silk, laced and eyeleted, bibbed and ruffled, as elegant a baptismal gown as ever she’d seen … complete to the itty-bitty pearly buttons no bigger than ladybugs.
Her hope chest, Bess sorrowfully thought. Like any good girl, Biddy was amassing her linens and paraphernalia for the day she’d wed and start a home of her own. Yet, would that ever happen? Bess had to wonder. Not if her irascible father scared off every available young man, the upright and the rogues together, and kept her isolated so far away. And someday, in another of his huffs, Eachan MacDougall mightjust uproot them again, and storm west, deep into the Piedmont or the high mountains, and dutifully sweet Biddy would have to follow him and end up abandoning or scrapping her wishful finery, ‘til she became the shoeless drudge that Bess had first imagined, reduced to home-spun wool shifts! A baby on her hip, wed against her will to a rough copy of her father? Or adrift and helpless, hundreds of miles from friends should her father ever pass? Old before her time, over-worked …?
“It’s so pretty!” Bess crooned over the baptismal gown.
“Och, those.” Biddy almost flinched, turning shy. “Thayr, uh … not mine. I dinna have room for ’em on th’ shelves, d’ye see? I’m to deliver ’em, soon.”
Bess didn’t believe that for a minute.
“Here it is!” Biddy gushed, sitting on the bed with her. “Th’ white figured-satin. I thought I had some left! Just enoo to do, ye ken?” she said, laying the white-on-white, almost embossed fabric the length of Bess’s plain blue gown. “This lace trimming eet?” she said, laying a sample at the edge. “If yair partial t’this, why, I could be done an’ bring it to ye Saturday, ‘long with yair brother’s sarks!”
“It’ll be lovely!” Bess replied, and it would be. No one could recognize it for old, once Biddy had done with it. “I am partial!”
“Guid! Now, I’ve twa royal blue ribbons,” Biddy chattered on, reaching over to fetch samples. “Got a spool o’ velvet, an’ that’d be fetchin’ with this narrow lace. Or, I’ve some satin left over, enoo t’do an’ mair, I think. Ooh, Gawd A’mighty, Bess, lookee here! That ribbon ye brought, ’tis th’ very same as mine. Same width an’ color, th’ same edges, an’ ev’rything!”
Laid end-to-end, it was hard to tell where the eight inches or so that Bess had brought ended, and the remaining spool from Biddy’s “possibles” began, and Bess’s stomach chilled and her throat turned dry. There was no way she’d wear that murdering ribbon on a gown!
“I … I think I’m partial to the velvet, after all, Biddy,” she managed to say, feeling her face turn hot as fire. “We … must’ve bought from the same store.”
“Mayhap, Bess,” Biddy cheerfully agreed, unaware of Bess’s upset. “Though I bought it, oh … nigh a year ago an’ mair, back when I first began sewing for others, an’ used most of eet up on a specialjob o’ work. Thought I’d got th’ last spools t’be had, so… where’d ye get yours?”
“Uh, it, ah …” Bess stammered, looking up to see if Biddy was subtly probing her, if she’d ignited any sudden suspicion, fantasizing for a bizarre moment that Biddy had sent the bouquet, tied the bows …!
But no! Bess could see no guile in Biddy’s open, honest face. Just girlish and innocent curiosity, perhaps a dab of disappointment that she might not have enough to trim her new friend’s gown. Yet the ribbon was here, might have come from here, but how?
“Cat got yair tongue, Bess?” Biddy asked, teasingly.
“It was tied round a bouquet…” Bess blurted without thinking, lowering her head quickly and blushing fit to burst afire for coming so close to the truth!
“Ooh!” Biddy exclaimed, laughing. “Thayr’s a bonny lad sent ye flowers? Ye’ve a secret beau, an’ ye wished t’please him by wearing a matching colored ribbon? ’tis nae wonder ye craved blue sae much!”
“Well, there is this one …” Bess flummoxed on, unable to meet her eyes. “We don’t know each other that well, yet, but…”
“Weel, th’ velvet’s fair-close,” Biddy chuckled, “an’ when he sees ye cleed sae braw in this gown, he’ll be fechting t’other laddies for a dance with ye, an’ claim a knot or bow of yair ribbon. At yair sleeve ends, or over yair heart on th’ bodice, I could add a wee knotted bow of th’ satin ribbon ye brought he could claim for his own, so ye could let him know he’s special.”
“Yes,” Bess whispered, wondering what effect that outward sign would have on the shy and awkward Andrew Hewlett if he ever did send her a ribbon-bound nosegay.
�
��Och, I fashed ye. I dinna mean t’tease, Bess,” Biddy said in a soberer tone. “I won’t e’en ask ye his name … yet!” she chirped.
“And you, Biddy… do you have a beau?” Bess suddenly asked, inspired with such a conversational opening, if for no other reason than to distract Biddy from too many questions fired at her. Just one of the hundred questions Bess wished she could ask Biddy, but this one followed the flow of things.
“Me!” Biddy scoffed, looking away for a furtive second, turning red herself. “Living way out here? What fine young gentleman would ride up our lane, ifFather dinna give him leave?”
“The velvet ribbon, and the little … love knot, then. Pity, though, that there may not be enough satin,” Bess decided, pondering on why Biddy got so shifty on the subject of swains. “Did the rest go on a particularly fancy gown? It must have been dear, and showy.”
“Aye, ‘twoz,” Biddy told her, shifting on the bed, “though, in th’ end, I dinna make money on eet. Three spools of eet, I used, that gown flummeried up busy as anything, but th’ lady’d nae pay mair than ma first estimate. I dinna know any better back then, but I learned peert quick, I’ll tell ye. Why, she e’en wished a bonnet made, satin ribbon-trimmed tae match, an’ said I should do it for nothing, an’ she might recommend me tae her friends. Show what I could a’of Used me as ill as a shamblin’ bear, she did, Bess! Like I woz low, clay-eating woods trash! ‘Twixt you an’ me,” she said, leaning chum-mily close to lower her voice as if that customer was lurking outside the windows, “an’ Gawd forgive me for speaking snippy, but … neither blue, nor pearly gray satin, were fetchin’ on her. Neither woz her best color, but could I say a single thing about eet? An’ by the time ‘twoz done, weel … Gawd forgive me, ageen, but it felt like sweet revenge t’think o’ her sportin’ a gray gown!”
“It doesn’t sound that bad, really,” Bess replied, puzzling as to where she might have seen such an outfit.
“A pale lady with light hair might manage eet, but not her, I tell ye,” Biddy said with a catty little laugh. “Weel, like ma daddy says, ’tis not th’ trappings that make a lady … an’ her time will come, sooner’n she might think.”
“Who was it?” Bess blurted out, intrigued.
“Weel, if yair heart’s set on knowing.” Biddy smirked, biting a corner of her mouth. “‘Twoz Mistress Anne Moore.”
“Dear Lord!” Bess exclaimed. Anne, Uncle Harry; could it bet she thought.
“Ye must’ve hae dealings with her before, then,” Biddy said with agreed-with satisfaction that she and Bess were of the same mind where the handsome and elegant, but arch, Mrs Osgoode Moore was concerned.
“Well, not that many really …” Bess answered.
“Now Mr Osgoode, och, he’s a fine gentleman!” Biddy enthused. “Sae cultured an’ polite tae one an’ all, and la! th’ books he owns. Walls an’ walls o’ books, an’ when I woz sewin’ for … her, he’d let me borrow some, then ask me what I thought of’em, kind as anything. A tip o’ his hat tae any man, e’en my daddy, once. Not like t’other Moores, an’ th’ barons. Not like his high-nose wife, the …!”
Biddy babbled on about Osgoode Moore’s merits, and how she wished to emulate his style and erudition someday, whilst Bess’s mind was in a whirl, trying to recall Anne Moore wearing a pearly, light-gray, satin gown trimmed in off-white lace with royal-blue ribbon flouncings … as dark-haired and dark-eyed as she was, with her slightly olive—nigh Spanish—complexion, neither color would enhance her. She reviewed a host of church and vestry meetings, horse races and teas, oyster roasts and “pig-pullings,” yet her memory was blank.
She might have realized the unsuitability, too, Bess speculated, might have worn the ensemble once or twice, then flung it in the back of her chif-forobe, or handed it down to a maid servant … donated it to a winter charity…
As a cast-off, might it have made it all the way down the cape to Masonborough, in Mr Ramseur’s domains? Bess’s mind boggled with the possibility that Sim Bates’s live-in slave woman had ended up with it! Just how convoluted is this snip ofribbon going to be?
“Now, whayr’s ma naughty Flora?” Biddy asked with a laugh as she wound down. “Whayr’s that sly kitty?”
“Hmm?” Bess said,jerked back to the here-and-now.
“Cat’s got yair tongue, ««‘yair wits as weel, I’m thinking.”
“Oh, don’t mind me, Biddy, I was maundering,” Bess said, forcing herself to sound giddy. “Lord, wouldn’t it be awful, if I really cared for the satin ribbon ‘stead of the velvet, to go beard Anne Moore and beg for her scraps?”
“A shame tae th’jaybirds, aye!” Biddy whooped, bouncing on the bed in mirth. “Ah, but she’s prob’ly thrown eet out lang ago, for th’ magistrate’s wife had one right-similar not twa weeks later. Saw her by the courthouse one Saturday. Mayhap Anne Moore saw her, too, an’ couldna bear th’ shame. ƒ dinna make th’ second, but some seamstress must’ve. What they call … coincidence? An’ eet looked much better on old Miz Marsden.
“Weel, then,” Biddy finally asked, “do ye prefer this figured-satin an’ velvet? Materials an’ ma work, I think …I could do eet for eight shillings, an’ hae eet ready for ye on Saturday. Th’ sarks would be two shillings each, twelve shillings altogether. If that’s not tae dear on yair budget?”
“Biddy, that’s perfect!” Bess exclaimed at the low cost. “It leaves me enough from the money my father budgeted me that I could have you make a whole new one, atop of this. You’ve made my day!” she could honestly declare.
“Th’ Guid Laird save me, Bess,” Biddy exclaimed with glee, and took her hands in congratulations, “for ’tis mortal-certain yejust made mine!”
“Och, I hate t’see ye gae, Bess,” Biddy told her, after she was mounted, after the dogs had been calmed down from their own good-byes. “I’m sure t’pester Flora an’ th’ hounds with blather after ye’ve gone.”
“Then come early as you can on Saturday, Biddy,” Bess demanded. “So we can have as much of the day as possible for our … girl stuff.”
“Looking forward to eet something fierce,” Biddy replied. “Ma daddy’ll be coming with me, mind. Doan say I dinna warn ye.”
“You’ll most-like meet my brother, Sam’l,” Bess chuckled back in kind. “So, be warned your own self, Biddy. Well, I s’pose I’m off. Got my basket and all…”
“I’m that glad ye come tae call, Bess Livesey,” Biddy announced of a sudden, stepping near the mule’s reins to hold her there a little longer, and turning somber. “Ye ken ma situation. Since we came here, I haen’t a lass ma own age t’tell ma heart to, d’ye see, an’…!”
“You have one, now,” Bess swore. “You get lonely ‘twixt those Saturdays and market days, send me a note and I’ll find a way to come over and just visit. Set a spell, as my father says.”
“I’d hoped ye’d say that. Gawd bless ye for that. An’ when I come, I promise not t’shame ye,” Biddy pledged in return.
“Shame me? How?” Bess scoffed.
“I ken I’m not sae fine a lass as some ye might be kenning,” Biddy confessed, “an’ I canna converse with manners as proper as some ye ken ought, yet. For now, I’m a puir, wee seamstress tae th’ fine folk… but I learn quick as anything, I do! Do I do or say wrong, noo an’ ageen, ye swear ye’ll tell me or shew me what’s proper, what a real lady would do? I’ll heed ye, an’ not shame ye afore yair other friends.”
“Well, of course you won’t!” Bess cried, startled by the seriousness of Biddy MacDougall’s declarations, by how desperate she seemed to want to please, to fit in. “We Liveseys don’t run with the barons and their crowd; we’re plain folk, and most everyone we like and love are plain folk, too. You’ll find a warm welcome with almost all, and … those few who might turn up their noses, then … Devil with ’em, I say! Don’t you worry ‘bout a blessed thing. Just come and be yourself, and more than welcome!”
“Yair a fine lady, Bess Livesey,” Biddy chortled, much relieved. “With friends like ye tae
learn from, I mightjust have a chance t’be some kinda lady mahself, someday.”
“Come hungry, too.” Bess beamed back, taking her hand one last time as the mule tittuped a bit with the dogs prowling round its legs. “We’ll lay on a grand feed. Much better than today.”
“I doubt that! Bye, then, Bess. Ride safe, an’ I’ll call on ye Saturday!”
On her solitary way to the ferry landing, Bess chastised herself for playing such a tawdry, theatrical trick on sweet, trusting Biddy, like a thief in the night prowling through her wardrobe. Yet, she had found a friend! Bess was tormented, too, by the existence of the leftover ribbon at Biddy’s place; how did it fit in?
She couldn’t imagine Biddy getting involved with Uncle Harry. There was no sign of grief in her, and Biddy just wasn’t the sort who could disguise a thing like that. Neither did Bess think that Eachan MacDougall was the murderer. If Biddy had been called upon by Uncle Harry on the sly, and she knew he’d been killed, she’d naturally suspect her hot-tempered, hard-handed father, and wouldn’t abide staying another hour under his roof. If Eachan MacDougall had done it, then why hadn’t he isolated Biddy completely, denied Bess access to their house, ifhe had something to hide?
If he had killed a man to protect Biddy’s naive and trusting honor, why wasn’t he packed up and gone to the Piedmont, already? she asked herself. It didn’t make sense! Yet, Biddy had wept about something beyond her loneliness, and had acted most cutty-eyed when asked about having a beau, about the baby clothes in her wardrobe. Was her enthusiasm for being tutored on how to be a proper Wilmington lady a thing beyond an almost pathetic need for company, or…?
“God, I wish I’d never come … almost!” Bess muttered to her plodding mule. “But I willbe her friend.”
That put her in a much better frame of mind, picturing how she and Biddy would enjoy a free day on the town. Until she remembered that she still had to re-cross the Brunswick on Eachan MacDougall’s ferry … and God, how long had Samuel been kicking his heels at the ordinary! What was the time, anyway?
What Lies Buried: A Novel of Old Cape Fear Page 17
