“Oh Lord, don’t let Sam’l be too cross!” she prayed aloud.
Chapter 20
THE WIDOW had come from Tuscarora.
Matthew Livesey had been surprised when a liveried, black house slave had delivered an invitation to attend her at the townhouse. He had thought, like others, that Georgina Tresmayne would stay cloistered during her year of mourning out at the plantation house. Yet here she was, uneasily seated in a throne-like parlor chair in her dark widow’s weeds, her wide-brimmed hat veiled with black netting even indoors, reigning over the small gathering of close friends and relations, whojust as uneasily drank her wine, and ate her cakes and light “kick-shaw” snacks off the sideboard. Osgoode Moore attended her like a royal equerry might a queen, bending down to mutter deferentially to her, or listen to her low conversation. Anne Moore stood a bit behind the throne-like wing-chair, much like a lady-in-waiting would. Thomas Lakey and his nephew Andrew Hewlett were present, young Cornelius Harnett from Brunswick, a few other leading lights of the Tresmayne faction and their ladies, and Matthew and his family. Harry had been the last of the Tresmayne tribe living, but there were some Maultsbys from Georgina’s side, hovering together near a settee.
Livesey could, indeed, not face her directly: his dream about her still plagued his conscience. Yet he had to, for the only chair left wasjust a little in front of her and to her left, and his leg was paining him. Armed with a neat brandy, he settled himself.
“Dear Matthew,” Georgina said in a soft, weary voice almost at once. “Our closest and dearest friend.”
“Umm …” Livesey nodded to her, peering in spite of himself to penetrate her veil to read her features, or to gaze upon her beauty. “You are well, ma’am?” he asked gently. “Do you bear up?”
“’Tis hard, Matthew,” Georgina barely whispered. “Wretchedly hard, but I try.” A gloved hand penetrated the veil to dab her eyes.
“I must own surprise, ma’am, that you came back to town. The restful, bucolic peace of Tuscarora surely would be more … umm … conducive to …” Livesey stumbled, then blushed in dithered silence.
“To mourning?” Georgina supplied for him. “One would think so, Matthew. More contemplative a place, yes, one would surely suppose. But the silence, Matthew!” Georgina almost shuddered as her control slipped. “No one with whom a body may converse but servants, or the overseers. The loneliness of the estate, with few visitors …”
“I deeply apologize for not coaching out sooner to relieve you of such loneliness, then, ma’am,” Livesey grunted with another cause for shame to contemplate. “I would not like you to think I, or any of the Liveseys, meant to abandon you. No! It’sjust…”
“Life must go on, truly, Matthew,” Georgina responded. “Those who remain must cope with the mundane matters, even direct kin or the closest of friends. And, I’ve found,” Georgina came near to jesting, for a brief moment of her former self, “people feel awkward around the widow, or widower. As if death is catching, like the ague?”
“Yes,” Livesey confessed.
“When your dear Charlotte passed over, Matthew, Harry and I were just as awkward toward you for a time,” Georgina admitted. “But it does pass. True companions remain true companions. I found that, in experiencing your grief. I assure myself with those recollections, that mine will pass as well. And someday, you will no longer feel so dawkish as to refer to me as ‘ma’am,’ when before it was ‘Georgina’ … and Harry.”
“Forgive me, Georgina,” Livesey said with a shy smile, and was rewarded with a brief touch of her cool, gloved hand upon his knee in assurance. A touch which wakened every damnable bit of that damnable fantasy all over again! Livesey covered his chagrin with a deep sip of brandy. “You will reside in town, then?”
“I believe I shall, Matthew,” Georgina said with a firm nod of her head. “I spent less time here with Harry than at Tuscarora. We seldom came to town together. Harry’s legal work, his faction and assembly duties called him away from the plantation at short notice, or at odd hours. Besides, we built Tuscarora together, whilst this house was almost entirely his planning before we wed. Odd as it may seem to you, Matthew, being here, surrounded by so many of his things, instead of’ours’ out in the country, comforts me.”
“I see,” Livesey answered, flinching a little at her naivety toward what “business” Harry Tresmayne could have been on when “called away at odd hours” from her.
“And Wilmington is so full of life and doings, compared to the rustication of Tuscarora,” Georgina spoke up bravely, hitching her shoulders like a dray-horse breasting to its harness for a hard pull, “that I am certain grief will go quicker where I may re-enter the business of a noisier life.”
“I am sure it will,” Livesey assured her. “And you will have your friends close by you for your more immediate support.”
“I count on it,” Georgina said, turning to peer at him through her misting veil. “As I count on you. And the others.”
“And perhaps our awkwardness will pass the sooner, too, Georgina,” Livesey replied, shifting nervously in his chair under her intense gaze.
“I count on that as well, Matthew,” Georgina said with another desperate, fond smile, which discomfited Livesey as much as anything else she had said previously. Damn that wretched fantasy, he thought, but it could yet be! If she smiled like that. Ifher words implied what he deduced from them!
“Bess, good day to you,” Andrew Hewlett offered as they grazed the sideboard together. “May I pour you a glass of wine?”
“I would relish that, Andrew, yes.” Bess beamed back at him.
“So surprising Mistress Georgina is back in Wilmington,” Andrew went on as he reached for a decanter of hock. He said it softly, after a wary look over his shoulder at the others, should he be accused of presuming too much familiarity.
“Yes, it is,” Bess agreed. “To see you in town as well, Andrew. I thought your uncle Thomas would keep you out in the country ‘til the Sabbath.”
“He usually does.” Andrew grimaced. “With a tutor. When I’m not out in the fields, riding rounds with the overseers. But then her invitation came, thank God. I hoped you would be here as well, with your father, d’you see. Well…” Andrew blushed for expressing his wishes to her. “… to continue our … excuse me for daring to pose it as our acquaintance! How presump-tious of me. To continue …”
“I was pleased to know that you and your uncle would be in attendance, Andrew,” Bess informed him, with just a hint of cautious decorum—the slightest lift of her shoulder and nose to tell him to not put too much stock in it—but with a warmth to her tone of voice that belied it, leaving the young gentleman pleasingly perplexed.
“Yes, well!” Andrew breathed, his chest expanding with triumph or defeat; he wasn’t quite sure which. “Oh, hello, Mr Livesey.”
“Hewlett,” Samuel grunted uncharitably around a mouthful of honey and molasses-baked barbecue chicken fritter.
“Pay Sam’l no mind, Andrew,” Bess almost snickered. “He’s still fashed over yesterday.”
“Am not,” Samuel growled.
“Are, too!” Bess giggled. “I was beastly to him. Or so he believes. But it was none of my doing.”
“Fashed?” Hewlett questioned. “What sort of a word is that?”
“Scot for ‘peeved’ or ‘vexed,’” Bess informed him. She paused for a moment, furrowing her brow. Her father had not appeared half as “fashed” by her trip across the river as she might have expected. It was almost as if he was secretly pleased that she had ridden over the Brunswick to pry information out of Biddy MacDougall. While he had not praised her overly, he hadn’t taken a strip of hide off her back either. He had hummed to himself over supper after her revelation, a sure sign, good as an encouraging wink anytime, that she had done extremely well.
But her father had also told her to keep mum about what she had learned, until he had had time to take it to Constable Swann. And the sudden invitation which had come after supper, almost
at bedtime, had delayed that. Still, this was Andrew, after all…
Making it a gay misadventure, Bess told Andrew about their ride, and Samuel’s enforced stopover at the Brunswick Road ferry tavern.
“Lord, Bess!” Andrew gushed when she had ended. “For a girl, I swear you’ve the bottom of a dragoon! To beard Eachan MacDougall on his own turf, well! After all the talk about town, too!”
“But I didn’t know it was his daughter ’twas the dressmaker,” she insisted gaily. “I’d heard Bridey, not Biddy. How was I to know?”
Such an inspiredfib! Bess thought. It deserves more than one airing, and ‘twill suit, I’m certain! She batted her lashes fetchingly, in punctuation to a smile of witless innocence.
“Imagine how surprised / was, Andrew!” Bess breathed, with a dramatic hitch of her bosom, and a reviving waft of her fan. “I showed no sign of that ‘bottom’ of which you spoke. I’m not that brave. Why, I was trembling like a leaf when I discovered who he was! And who she was. No, not brave at all…just giddy and silly. And ignorant.”
“Amen,” Samuel agreed gruffly.
“Oh, surely, sir,”—Andrew drew up, defending her with a frozen smile—“You do not own your sister to be ignorant. Perhaps mistook, at best. I’m sure she did not intend to strand you at the tavern, under MacDougall’s wrathful eye.”
“I’m mortal certain she did!’ Samuel snorted, lifting his brows in derision for another of Bess’s victims, too easily taken in by her. “You’ll discover her sly ways soon enough, sir, way she’s got her cap set for you,” Samuel concluded with a malicious leer and grazed beyond them to a tempting platter of pork short ribs.
“Ahum.” Bess reddened, fanning herself madly, screening her embarrassment. She took a deep sip of her white wine and coughed.
“Ah,” Andrew Hewlett muttered, rocking on his heels over that bit of news, wondering if a fellow’s heart could indeed burst with joy. “Hmm. Well…”
“Pay Sam’l no mind,” Bess implored. “He’s a heartless tease.”
“Well, then …” Andrew deflated a little. “Biddy MacDougall, though, Bess! What is she like?”
“She’s very handsome, Andrew,” Bess told him as she led him off further toward the front of the parlor by gliding away from him. “Very sad, too, living that lonely out yonder. But very sweet, an incredibly sweet girl, about my age. I found myself quite liking her.”
“Did you think to question her about your uncle Harry?” Andrew pressed in a conspiratorial whisper. “I mean, the rumors … !”
“Not really,” Bess lied, heeding her father’s warning. “But I didn’t feel she was involved with him, Andrew. Surely, a girl who has lost her lover would show some grief, one would think. And she didn’t.”
“Ah.” Andrew Hewlett blushed over the picture of an older lover with a tender young morsel of a girl. “What about her father, then?”
“He didn’t appear half the ogre your uncle or the others make him out to be,” Bess mused aloud. “I think there’s a certain sadness about him, too. I could be wrong, but I don’t think she or her father are involved.”
“Why?” Andrew countered. “I would have thought him the perfect suspect.
“I know nothing of peoples’ secret emotions, Andrew, but Mr MacDougall already knew who we were, soon as we were introduced to him on the ferry boat,” Bess replied. “Knew us, surely, as friends of Uncle Harry’s? Yet he didn’t blink an eye. Didn’t go ‘squint-a-pipes’ as a bag of nails, looking six ways from Sunday. One would think a guilty man could not meet the gaze of a dead man’s relations.”
“Well, there is that.” Andrew frowned, disappointed. “I still say, though, that braving it out, after you found yourself in such a situation, took a power of bottom, Bess. You’re to be commended.”
“Why, thank you, Andrew!” Bess grinned, delighted, though she turned her gaze down shyly. “Immodest as I acted … I am pleased you think so, instead oflecturing me for playing the fool.”
“Never, Bess!” Andrew declared. “Well, I mean …”
“Hmm,” she replied, looking away quickly. “Oh, Mrs Maultsby, so good to see you again!”
“Bess Livesey?” the frail old grandmother of the widow gummed back, peering over her spectacles. “That you, my dear? Oh, come take a seat by me and the mister, here. La, poor child, your uncle taken from ye so cruel!”
Let him wonder, Bess told herself, abandoning Andrew.
“Ahum,” Osgoode Moore at last announced tentatively. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for responding to Mistress Georgina’s invitation.” He stepped out into the middle of the parlor onto a fine Turkey carpet, clad in black breeches and waistcoat, and a sober mid-gray coat. “While the recently departed Harry Tresmayne was a grand neighbor and true friend to many in the Cape Fear settlements, those present here today were especially close to him, and his dear wife, Georgina. Those bound to them by the bonds of family, those others as close as family and especially esteemed. Georgina will have more to say to you in a moment, but she has requested me, as his … as their attorney and confidant, to preface her remarks with some of mine own.”
Could he have killed him, if Bess is correct about MacDougall? Livesey thought, looking up at him from his seat near Georgina. Osgoode seemed no less perturbed by his own brand of grief than any of the rest. Did that signify? he wondered. How would a killer act in front of the widow, the mourning? Too overly grief-stricken, shedding those crocodile tears; or formally brusque, as Osgoode seemed to be at that moment? Still, he was a lawyer, Matthew reminded himself, a creature born to pose in any manner his client’s cause required, whether he believed it or not.
“You will be relieved to know that our Harry died testate,” he went on. “Soon after their marriage, Harry and I drew up his testament, with Mistress Georgina, my wife and myself as witnesses. Certain codicils were amended since, the last performed a little over four months past. The last will and testament is with the magistrate’s court now for review, and those few creditors listed in Harry’s ledgers are at last redeemed. The notice for any last debts will be posted tomorrow at the courthouse, and those still owing will have a fortnight from tomorrow to come forward and present their bills in good faith. He … Harry wrote that I should serve as his executor for the nonce, until his last affairs are cleared, and I’m happy to relate that Mistress Georgina has agreed to that arrangement.”
Last affairs, my Lord! Matthew Livesey winced at the turn of phrase. He was not the only one. Livesey cocked a chary eye toward Georgina, and caught the last tiny flash of frustration or anger which had passed over her features, the last settling of a well-controlled start of alarm. Or was he imagining that? he asked himself. Good God, did she know about Harry’s ruttings, in spite of his caution to conceal them from her?
Georgina turned her head a trifle, caught him staring, and gave him a quick, pained grin, though her expressive green eyes were narrow.
By God, I think Georgina did know! Livesey realized. She’s not a stupid woman; far from it. She grew up in the same community Harry had been born in, would have known his nature of old. Hoping that he might have changed, as women seemed to believe of their men in spite of all evidence to the contrary—hoping and trusting that they alone would be the ones to amend a rogue’s life!
“… and testament shall be read,” Osgoode concluded, turning to Georgina, pacing back to her chair to take guard over her shoulder.
Georgina slowly lifted her veil, folded it back over the brim of her hat to bare her wan face to them at last. She shifted forward on her chair to pose at the forward edge, folding her black-gloved hands in her lap.
“Of all the myriad acquaintances Harry had, you present today were most revered and cherished,” she began slowly. “Dear Osgoode may be a tad retiring, and of such a gentle and ungrasping nature to say so in his preface, but all of you have been cited in Harry’s will as heirs of some possession, or possessions. Some may be no more than an item of a sentimental nature unique to his relationship to
you … but he held you all … us all … as his dearest life’s companions, and would wish to be reminded to you in death, as he was in life. For … for my part…” Georgina broke off, covering quivering lips with a handkerchief, bowing her head for a moment to master herself. Osgoode put out a supportive hand on her right side and she groped for it, and seized it blindly.
Then, wonder of wonders to Matthew Livesey, her left hand came down from her face, the sodden handkerchief crushed into a ball inside her palm, and groped toward him! Fervently he offered his own, gave a reassuring squeeze as she rested her wrist atop That Thing, right atop the hateful knee-cup of his shameful, shattered limb!
“I thank you, sirs,” she managed at last, sitting upright and releasing them. “For my part, I have commissioned small tokens be made in remembrance of Harry. Forgive me, but I did not know your sizes, so instead of mourning rings, please accept these poor offerings in their stead. Keep them close to your hearts forevermore, as you did … as we all did my Harry!” she rushed out before grief overcame her again.
Anne Moore knelt to offer solace this time, as Osgoode was busy passing out small tissue-wrapped packets which had been stored in the escritoire at the back of the parlor. He passed among them, as solemn as a vicar distributing the Host at the altar rails.
Matthew Livesey unwrapped his. It was a sterling silver medallion, between two and three inches across. The heft in his palm felt heavy enough to have required ten shillings or better; perhaps four ounces of coin-silver. He squirmed with remorse at such a crass thought. The medallion had been cast with a milled edge. In the center was a side-view portrait, a noble bust of Harry Tresmayne’s profile, with his name scrolled above it in an arc, and the dates of his birth and death below. The obverse side presented a quartered shield such as a Spanish doubloon might bear. One canton of the shield held two pine trees, another crossed swords; the third was a trading ship, and the last were crossed corn and wheat sheaves.
What Lies Buried: A Novel of Old Cape Fear Page 18
