by Susan Wiggs
He had changed little from Ryan’s boyhood recollection. He’d always been a tall, ramrod straight widower with long hair and a waxed moustache with handles wide enough for birds to perch on. He wore well-cut clothes of stark black and snow-white, a marked contrast to Ryan’s canary yellow shirt and peacock blue jacket. Maybe he should have listened to Journey and worn more somber colors, but it was too late now.
“Mr. Beaumont,” he said, “it’s a pleasure to see you.” Ryan mounted the porch steps and stuck out his hand.
Beaumont ignored it. “I take no pleasure in this meeting. And no Calhoun is welcome in my house.”
Ryan flashed his best smile. “We’re off to a fine start, then, aren’t we? A dandy start. All right, sir. Suppose we forget I’m a Calhoun. I’ve come to make a business transaction with you, pure and simple. And then I’ll be on my way.”
The waxed moustache twitched. “What sort of business?”
“I’m interested in acquiring some slaves.” Ryan nearly gagged on the words. “The wench called Delilah and her young ones.”
Beaumont tilted back his head and roared with laughter. “I guess they didn’t teach you much up there at Harvard College. Else you’d know damned well I’m on to you. You’re interested in Delilah because you took her man away, set the buck free.” His laughter stopped. “Don’t you see, boy? If you’d left well enough alone, that family’d be together.”
Ryan used all of his self-control to keep from trying to pound common sense into Beaumont’s head. “Sir, I’m prepared to pay—”
“Uncle Ryan! Uncle Ryan!” Blue came tumbling across the lawn, a little tousle-haired moppet in tow. “Hey Uncle Ryan! What you doing here? Are you going to stay for supper?” He unleashed a steady stream of questions as he led the little girl up the steps to the porch. “Can we go look at your boat again? You want to help me build a tree house?”
“Whoa, there, son,” Ryan said, smiling as he went down on one knee. “This your sister?”
“Uh-huh. Belinda. She’s three.”
“Well, hey there, three-year-old Belinda.” Ryan winked at her. She stuck one finger in her mouth. Through a tumble of yellow curls, she peered at him shyly with eyes as blue as painted china. “I’m your uncle Ry—”
“Children, come inside this instant,” said a nervous-sounding voice from the door.
Ryan straightened up quickly. “Lacey, it’s good to see you again.”
“I’m sure I can’t say the same,” she stated, then creaked open the screen door. Looking subdued but resentful, Blue and Belinda went to her side. Petite and beautiful, her hands moving in flutters of agitation, she kept her eyes averted from Ryan. “Father, I trust you won’t be long? It’s nearly the children’s bedtime.”
He nodded. With visible relief, Lacey let the door slap shut.
Evening was coming on, a long flat lowering of the light over the bay. On the road that passed in front of the main house, a horse whinnied, and somewhere unseen in the distance, a deep voice sang a spiritual hymn. As always in the mysterious tidewater region, beauty and brutality were present in equal measures.
Beaumont said, “I won’t do business with you, Calhoun. Is that clear?”
Ryan drew a deep breath. “I’ll pay you double what they’re worth.”
Beaumont smiled. “It’s not a matter of money, but one of principle. Allowing this sort of thing would upset the natural balance of things. I can’t simply sell a family into freedom. That would be irresponsible of me.”
Ryan loosed a bark of incredulous laughter. “Good God, man, do you hear what you are saying?”
Beaumont drew himself up. “Sir, you are the one who is having trouble hearing. I’ll do no business with you. The wench and her babies are not for sale at any price.” He made a loud exhalation of disgust. “Your entire family is a disgrace.”
Ryan’s hand clenched into a fist. With a will, he kept it at his side. At least, he thought furiously, he would have no need of the ship’s money. But now he’d have to find another way to bring Journey’s wife north with them.
“Goodbye, Mr. Beaumont,” Ryan said formally. “I shall give your regards to my brother.”
“Sir, your brother knows exactly where he stands in my regard.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.”
“Pardon me. I believe I have another visitor.” Beaumont brushed past Ryan and walked down the steps.
Ryan turned to see a tall black-clad woman in a plumed hat and beaded veil hurrying across the lawn. His mouth dried as he recognized her. Hell’s bells. Why had Izard allowed Isadora to come ashore? This could mean nothing but trouble. It could mean he’d hang even sooner than he feared. “What the devil—”
“Do you know her?” Beaumont demanded, watching with interest.
Ryan couldn’t imagine what she was up to. He was out of options with Beaumont, so perhaps he had best wait and see. Isadora had her faults, but stupidity was not one of them. He gave a noncommittal shrug and waited for her to approach.
“There you are, Ryan Calhoun,” she declared in a remarkable Virginia accent. “I wondered where you’d run off to.” Before he could reply she made a dainty curtsy for Beaumont. “Sir, please pardon this terrible intrusion.”
“No trouble at all, ma’am.” He paused, clearly expecting Ryan to make the introductions.
Isadora spoke before he had a chance. She put out a hand gloved in black lace. “Isa—Isabel Swann, of the…the Hipsucket Swanns. Up in Spotsylvania County, don’t you know. I’ve been promised a berth to Boston aboard Captain Calhoun’s ship. I was so afraid he had left without me.”
Hugh, ever the know-it-all, smiled with gentlemanly politeness. “I see. Hugh Beaumont, at your service.”
Behind the veil, she gave off an air of mysterious allure. “And I fear we must ask it of you,” she said. “Your service, that is.”
“Oh?”
She drew herself up stiffly. Censure seemed to radiate from behind the veil. “I came looking for Mr. Calhoun—we have been expecting him, you see—when our clarence became mired out on the road. Do you think some of your people could lend us a hand?”
Trying to figure out the angle of her ruse, Ryan marveled at Isadora’s poised, calm, elegant performance. How different this beguiling creature was from the awkward girl who had first bumbled her way onto his ship.
“Your carriage is mired?” Beaumont asked.
“I fear so.” She aimed a censorious finger at Ryan. “It is all your fault for wandering willy-nilly about the countryside. Mr. Beaumont, if we could please get some help.”
“Certainly, madam. I’ll order my overseer to bring you a band of men,” Beaumont said.
“Thank you ever so much. We shall need a good number. We are quite deeply mired.”
Where the hell had she learned that melting Southern accent? Ryan wondered.
“And Mr. Beaumont, one more favor.” She leaned forward, put a hand on his sleeve and spoke in an intimate fashion that made Ryan bristle. “I have a confession to make as well. For years I’ve heard of a magnificent place called Bonterre. Now I’m enjoying my chance to see it.”
And suddenly Ryan grasped her mad plan. Transporting escaped slaves was a crime. She and everyone involved would become fugitives with a price on their heads.
And—God help them all—he was going to let her.
“Oh, Mr. Beaumont, you do go on,” Isadora said with laughter in her voice. “I won’t ever want to leave if you don’t stop being so charming.”
Strolling by her side in the falling dark, Hugh Beaumont straightened his cravat. “On the contrary, Miss Swann. You are the charmer, not I.”
“Sir, my head shall explode from its swelling,” she protested.
Ryan gave a derisive snort.
Beaumont ignored him. “I have fallen completely under your spell.”
She knew a moment of utter incredulity. The idea that a man, any man, might find her charming was beyond her comprehension. An astonishing novelty. Was she r
eally being charming? Was this all there was to it?
She was amazed by the skills necessity could inspire. There was a time when Isadora hadn’t had a bold bone in her body; now it seemed that everything depended on her being bold.
She laughed again, amused by how easy it was to flirt and mimic the ways of a Southern social butterfly. “I insist that you stop it now, sir. My poor heart cannot take such flattery.”
“And God forbid,” Ryan muttered, trudging along behind them, “that your heart should suffer damage from flattery.”
Isadora chuckled silkily. Ye powers, was he jealous? Surely not at a time like this. He had to know how desperate the situation was. She had not discussed the plan with him. Watching from the side of the roadway, where they’d half sunk Hunter’s clarence in sticky black mud, she and the others had waited in the vain hope that perhaps Beaumont would sell the slaves to Ryan. When he had come out of the house alone, they knew they would have to set their plan in motion.
A stoop-shouldered man arrived at the head of a work crew. By the light of three torches, Isadora could see they were Africans. She tried surreptitiously to get Ryan’s attention. He could ruin everything. When his gaze met hers, he aimed a fierce stare at her. “Miss…Swann.”
She braced herself. “Yes?”
“I hope you don’t expect me to roll up my sleeves and unmire the clarence.” He flicked his thumb and forefinger fussily at his wrist.
She thought she might explode with relief. He seemed to be going along with her masquerade. It was quite a thing, to trust and be trusted by him on faith alone.
They reached the mired carriage, a clarence hitched to Hunter’s only remaining horse, a tired nag she hoped Beaumont wouldn’t recognize in the uncertain torchlight. Ralph and Luigi had done an excellent job sinking the rear wheels in the soft mud of the salt marsh that bordered the road.
The “mishap” had occurred near a dozen or so splitlog cabins arranged haphazardly around a common area of bare earth.
“Stand back, sirs, there you are.” Ralph motioned for Mr. Beaumont and Ryan to step away. “Don’t want to splash mud all over you.”
A number of Hugh Beaumont’s “people” had come to help. Odd how he called them people yet treated them like livestock. One man, probably the overseer, whistled and shouted orders.
Ralph Izard gave Isadora the briefest of nods, then cut his gaze away, the signal to carry on with their plan. She waved a handkerchief in front of her face. “Oh, my heavens,” she said breathlessly. “All of a sudden I feel quite faint.”
Beaumont put a supporting hand beneath her elbow. “Shall I help you back to the house?”
“That’s not necessary.” She tried to seem mortified. “It is a complaint of a very female nature.”
That stopped any further speculation on his part. Ryan pursed his lips as if holding in mirth and turned his attention to the mired coach.
“I shall find a place to rest over here.” Her heart pounded as she approached the slave compound. A woman standing by the well and another by the big open-air cookfire stared at her. What a horror she must look to them—a white woman coming uninvited into their midst. Chickens scratched and poked in the beaten-earth yard, and children played a game with sticks and rocks. They were no different from any children, trying to snatch the last moments of the day as twilight fell, yet in too short a time, they would lose that innocent abandon.
Isadora felt as if she had entered a new and alien world, a place closed to a woman like her. A self-protective and savage air hung about the slave women. She guessed that they cultivated this frightening facade, for a white woman walking into their midst could mean nothing good. She was familiar with the antislavery tracts published in Boston, but nothing she had read had prepared her for this direct experience of the squalor and hostility that pervaded the compound.
She despaired of being able to identify Delilah among these silent, suspicious, homespun-clad women. Her every instinct told her to flee, to hide, to shrink away from a place she clearly didn’t belong. Then she reminded herself of her purpose. Journey was waiting aboard the Swan for his wife and children. She couldn’t let him down. Besides, there had been a time when she hadn’t belonged on shipboard either, but she had become more at home there than in a drawing room on Beacon Hill.
Holding her head high, she went to the well. How did a Southern lady ask a slave for a drink of water? she wondered wildly. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Please, I’d like a cup of water.”
“Yes’m.” Without meeting Isadora’s eyes, the woman pressed on the well sweep and brought up a bucket.
As Isadora drank the slightly brackish water from a tin cup, her veil kept getting in the way. A scrawny cat streaked across the dirt yard, and a small barefooted girl raced after it, giggling and oblivious to the tension of the women.
“Celeste,” someone called, “you get yourself back here, right now!”
Isadora tried not to appear interested in the young woman in a threadbare dress. Isadora was glad for the darkness and the veil, because she felt a glorious smile coming on. Celeste was the name of Journey’s younger daughter.
Setting down her cup, she stepped into the child’s path and leaned down. “Celeste,” she said gently, “Your mama’s calling you.” She held out her gloved hand. “Come. I’ll take you to her.”
The child fell as still as a pillar of salt, her eyes big. Isadora cursed herself for not realizing that a stranger with a veiled face was as frightening as a ghost. Celeste sucked in a deep breath and formed her mouth into an O, preparing to let loose with a scream.
Isadora saw her plan falling to pieces. The child’s hysteria would draw Mr. Beaumont’s attention, and all would be lost.
But before Celeste screamed, Delilah arrived, grabbing her hand and yanking her away from Isadora. The child clung to her mother’s skirts, regarding Isadora with horror.
“Delilah,” Isadora whispered, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “Please, don’t run off. I have something for you.”
“I best be going, ma’am,” Delilah said, backing away. Her older child held fast to her hand. “It’s time to get my babies to sleep.”
It was all Isadora could do to keep from grabbing for her. She prayed no one would hear as she said, “I have something from Journey.”
A soft intake of breath was her only reaction. “Yes’m,” she said, very quietly.
A couple of the other women drew cautiously near. Isadora felt surrounded. Dear heaven, she was so close, yet how could she converse with Delilah now?
“Mistress needs to set a spell,” Delilah said calmly. “That’s all. Just needs to set a spell.”
She led her toward a mud-chinked cabin. To Isadora’s relief, the others stepped out of their way.
She sat on a crooked bench outside the cabin. Through the open door, she detected a faint glow from a rude stove with a teapot steaming atop it. The bed was a plank, the pillow a stick of wood, the bedding a coarse blanket.
Out on the road, the men were still busy whistling and hawing at the horse and trying to heave up the mired coach, but she knew she only had moments. She pulled something from her glove and pressed it into Delilah’s hand.
“From Journey,” she whispered. It was the love knot, fashioned from a lock of Delilah’s hair, on a leather strap.
Delilah’s rough, slender fingers closed around the amulet. “Lord be praised,” she said, so faintly that her children clutched at her.
“He’s worn it around his neck ever since the day he left you,” Isadora said. “We haven’t much time. If you wish to leave this place tonight, I and the men with me will help.”
Delilah’s white-rimmed eyes shone in the flickering light with terror and hope. And—God be praised—trust. The love-knot from Journey had convinced her. “Yes’m.”
As quickly as she could, Isadora explained the plan. “There is no time to think this over,” she cautioned. “But the risks are clear. You don’t have to go.”
“I know
the risks,” Delilah said.
Isadora heard the conviction in her words. Delilah knew what was at stake better than Isadora ever would. In spite of her suffering, Delilah had the soft, womanly knowledge of her own humanity. She had birthed two babies and loved a man who was only half alive without her. Choosing between a lifetime of servitude and the threat of capture and punishment could not be easy for a woman with two tiny children. But Delilah had obviously made her decision. “I sorrowed a thousand nights for that man,” she said. “I’m through with sorrowing.”
“Then you know what to do.” Isadora stood, already moving away, not wanting to betray a particular interest in Delilah. She fanned herself vigorously and hoped Mr. Izard would notice, for that was the signal to move on to the next step.
The tense moments drew out unbearably. With a great rocking motion and a squishing of mud, with a chorus of male grunts and “heave-hos,” the carriage finally lurched up out of the mud. The horse, exhausted, gave a whinny and hung its head.
Isadora could hear the beating of her own heart in her ears, could feel the pulse of fear in her throat. She tried not to break into a cold sweat when she saw a quick flare of fire on the roof of one of the cabins. A woman screeched, and people ran toward the well. Luigi had touched a torch to the roof, creating mass confusion.
Meanwhile, Isadora walked quickly toward the coach, forgotten now in the excitement over the fire. Beside her, Delilah kept to the shadows, a child on each hip. No one seemed to notice as they went behind the coach. “Under the blankets, just there,” Isadora whispered.
Shushing one of the girls, who had started to whimper, Delilah complied. Isadora prayed the darkness and shouts and confusion had covered the maneuver. She waited patiently as the flames were doused. It didn’t take long, for the fire had no time to spread.
“Mr. Beaumont,” she called, “are things always this exciting around here?”
“Happily, no. I much prefer the genteel excitement of a visitor like yourself.” He bent gallantly over her hand, but when he straightened up, he looked at the clarence and frowned. “Isn’t that an Albion coach?”
