Lovesong

by Valerie Sherwood

  “It won’t be so easy as that.” Virgie gave her sister a slanted look. “Mother may make you marry the victor, you know.”

  “Will she?” asked Carolina restlessly.

  “Yes, she will,” was Virgie’s soft but firm rejoinder. “I heard her say to Aunt Pet that Ned and Dick were the two to choose between—that they were equally eligible and both head over heels in love with you.”

  Carolina gave a little start at her sister’s words. They had brought back to her a terrible scene she had had with her mother this morning back in the gardens of Level Green. While Carolina was cutting roses for the breakfast table, her mother had come out and tried to pin her down as to which of her suitors she preferred.

  “I prefer neither of them!” Carolina had insisted, stabbing her finger with a rose thorn and putting the finger to her mouth in a sulky childish gesture.

  ‘‘You prefer, perhaps, someone back in London?” her mother had asked smoothly.

  Finger still in her mouth, Carolina had turned slowly to regard her mother. The morning sunshine was very bright, the tangle of wild roses from which she was cutting sprays was heavy with dew. Nearby the sandy loamy soil was mounded around newly planted moss roses that had arrived by ship from England, and sprigs of boxwood that would someday be a towering hedge. From the tall oaks that had been saplings when Columbus discovered America came a burst of birdsong, and farther away the cooing sound of mourning doves.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked slowly.

  “And would his name be Lord Thomas Angevine?” pursued her mother, answering a question with a question.

  The world about Carolina had seemed to hold very still. High above her a golden eagle wheeled and soared—free. As she was not. All her pleas that she be sent back to England, to some other school, had availed her nothing. Her school days were over, she had been told. A planter’s daughter in the Virginia planters’ aristocracy, she was chained to convention, to a certain way of life. But she would break her chains, she would be as free as that eagle!

  “Yes.” She moistened lips suddenly gone dry. “There is a man in London and that is his name.” She took a deep breath. “I am betrothed to him. But how did you know? I have told no one.”

  For answer her mother held out a letter, held it delicately between thumb and forefinger. Carolina could see that it was the letter she had written to Thomas on her first night home, a letter in which she had poured out her heart. “How did you get it?” she gasped, her face flaming scarlet.

  “Very simply,” said her mother. “When you appeared on the doorstep without notice, I alerted the servants to deliver any of your mail—outgoing or incoming—to me.”

  “Well, since you have read my letter to Thomas,” Carolina said bitterly, “you know that we are in love and plan to marry.”

  “In love?” echoed her mother lightly. “I have since made inquiries about young Lord Thomas and I have discovered that he is a worthless rake and that he is always in love—with a succession of women—but never for long. I think it is your good fortune to have escaped him.” She looked into her daughter’s rebellious face. “Carolina, you should remember to wear a hat in this sun. You will ruin your complexion.”

  “Oh, the devil with my complexion!” cried Carolina, who was thinking that now she would have to write Lord Thomas again, that there would be a further delay in his knowing what had happened to her, a further delay in his coming for her.

  “He won’t come for you, you know,” said her mother softly, as if divining her thoughts. “Men like him are not to be trusted. They flit from flower to flower.”

  Carolina’s head came up indignantly. “How can you say that? You do not know him.”

  “No, but I recognize the type. Some men marry and settle down—quickly and quietly. But you and I would never be attracted to those.” She sighed. “Some men” —was she thinking of Sandy Randolph, Carolina wondered?—“are always in love with the unattainable. They want most dearly what they cannot possess and will pursue it forever. But others—like your Lord Thomas—will never settle down. And even if they do, they will never be faithful.” She broke off. “Now that we have moved into our new home and have properly introduced you to Virginia society, now that you are being pursued by half the young bucks in the county, you must make a decision. I think it should be a quick decision. And whoever you choose will need to be in love with you for I take it from all this overprotesting that you are no longer a virgin?”

  Carolina choked and did not answer.

  Her mother studied her for a long time. Then, “I take it from your blushes that I am right,” she said softly. “Well, you will not have been the first girl to make a mistake. I—” She cut off the words and made a sudden regal gesture of dismissal. “Wear your pink dress. No one has yet seen you in pink.”

  At any other time Carolina might have pursued that “I—” left hanging in the air. As it was, she was so filled with dismay that her mother had found out about Lord Thomas that she stumbled back to the house forgetting her roses. Once in the cool dimness of the hall she closed her eyes and leaned against the paneled wall and tried to get hold of herself. But she felt stripped naked —and humbled—by her mother, as she always did, for Letitia seemed to ferret out everything without even trying. Except that one time when she had been taken in by Carolina’s ruse of pretending that she was about to run away with Virgie’s lover. . . . How had her mother missed seeing through that?

  Carolina was standing directly across from a mirror as that thought occurred to her, and as she opened her eyes she saw her own face reflected. In its way it was a face as determined as her mother’s—and just as wild. And in that flashing moment she understood her mother’s mistake. Her mother recognized in Carolina a woman like herself a woman who would take chances, make mistakes, suffer for them—as she herself had. She understood her daughter’s wild nature, so different from her sister Virginia’s. Which meant—Carolina stood for a moment stunned by the realization—that she could do it again! She could escape this marriage her mother planned for her by pretending to go along with it, and then arranging passage on a ship that was leaving for England—and making her mother believe that she had run off to the Marriage Trees with somebody else! And her mother would be fooled just long enough for the ship on which she sailed to make the open sea before some fast ketch could overtake her and bring her back to Level Green—and back to an unwanted betrothal and perhaps a hasty wedding ceremony in the new Bruton Parish Church.

  It would have been so easy if only her friend, madcap Sally Montrose, had been here. Sally had nerve, she had sense, she was a kindred spirit. Sally would have thought it a wonderful escapade to help Carolina escape! But Sally had been away all spring and summer visiting relatives in Philadelphia and would not be back until sometime this fall. But—maybe it could be accomplished anyway, she told herself, planning rapidly. Maudie Tate, one of the women who had shipped over with her in those crowded barrackslike women’s sleeping quarters aboard the Flying Falcon, had been hired as a scullery maid at Rosegill—and were they not attending a garden party at Rosegill this very afternoon? For money—or for something else she wanted— Maudie would clamber into one of the rowboats tied up at Rosegill’s pier and slip away downriver. It was common knowledge that the Fair Alice—that ship that had brought so many fine fabrics to Yorktown to delight Virginia’s feminine hearts—was sailing for England three days hence. And passengers would be few this time of year when planters were busy with their crops and the ladies busy with the summertime round of parties. Maudie could arrange for passage, pay part— and she, impersonating Maudie in a scullery maid’s costume of coarse gray linen, her hair pulled up into a linen cap like Maudie’s, could come aboard, look down shyly and plump the rest of her passage money into the captain’s hand.

  She could be gone before the week was out!

  All this had flitted idly through her mind as she made her way on down the hall. It had been but a pleasant daydream—and that was all
it could be, for she did not have enough money to pay for her passage. What she had brought home she had already lavished on gifts for everyone in the shops of Williamsburg.

  Now, standing beside the library window at Rosegill, leaving in haste suddenly seemed the best thing to do. She would not write to Lord Thomas—she would go to London and surprise him.

  She stared out at the two young bucks on horseback, each so valiantly vying for her attention, and her gray eyes narrowed. Her mother would believe her just perverse enough to run away with one of them—or with somebody else. Indeed Letitia Lightfoot would probably just shake her head and tell all comers that Carolina had eloped for the sole purpose of depriving her mother of managing a big lavish wedding at Level Green, with the bride trailing down that wide majestic stairway, and roses everywhere, and the sun slanting down through the windows to shine on everyone who counted in Virginia.

  “Virgie,” she said rapidly, for she had just noticed that Ned had won and had dismounted. He was posing jauntily with his spear still conspicuously displayed and looking around for Carolina when his opponent, Dick Smithfield, chagrined but too well bred to show it, leaped off his bay horse to congratulate the winner. “Virgie, how much money do you have?”

  “Why, naught but a few pence. I spent all my pin money on laces and a length of dress material from the shipment Captain Frobisher brought aboard the Fair Alice.”

  Carolina sighed. Virgie could never be counted on where money was concerned—she would have to find some other way. Outside in the distance she could see that little Sally Majors had nearly finished weaving the circlet of roses and ivy for her “crown.” She would be expected to come out and wear it.

  She cast a quick speculative glance at Virgie. Virgie was loyal but she folded under pressure and she found it difficult to keep a secret. That was why Carolina had not told her about Lord Thomas—for had not Virgie confessed to her mother where she got the money for her own elopement? Still—such weakness could be useful.

  She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Virgie, would you help me make a dash for the Marriage Trees?”

  “You’re going to run away to the Marriage Trees?” gasped Virgie. “Oh, Carol, who with?”

  But Carolina was already halfway out into the hall. Virgie ran after her, calling out, but when she reached the front door, Carolina had already picked up her wide skirts and run lightly over the lawn to join the others.

  She passed the younger children, playing Blind Man’s Buff on the lawn, and waved to flushed-faced Della and Flo. Had she ever been that young? she asked herself as she watched them. Had her world ever seemed that bright?

  She was looking back at them, hardly noticing where she was going, when she stumbled. An arm shot out and righted her instantly. And she found herself looking up into Sandy Randolph’s dazzling smile. He had detached himself from the others and she had blundered into him on his way across the lawn. Now he swept her a low bow and she made him a curtsy.

  “’Tis a splendid vista here at Rosegill, is it not, Mistress Carolina?” he asked.

  Carolina came up out of her curtsy and looked into a pair of glinting eyes. She murmured that yes, it was.

  “So you will be crowned Queen of Love and Beauty this day,” he added softly. “It is most warranted. You have grown up to be a beauty indeed.”

  Carolina gave him a sharp look, surprised at this sudden compliment from a man who had never paid her the least attention save that his gaze had seemed to follow her sometimes when he rode by and saw her strolling down the street near Aunt Pet’s in Williamsburg, or again racing across the lawns during one of his rare visits to the Eastern Shore.

  “They say I resemble no one,” she said lightly, quoting Aunt Pet. “Not my mother, not my father.”

  He gave her a melancholy look. “Oh, I would say there is some resemblance,” he murmured. “To your mother at least. You have her light step, her graceful carriage, her low warm laugh. ... I am leaving Virginia, Mistress Carolina,” he added gravely.

  Carolina was astonished that Sandy Randolph should have noticed so much about her. She was surprised too that he was leaving. She knew of course that he traveled a great deal—who would not with a mad wife at home, a wife who tore out tufts of her own hair and could not stop laughing hysterically for hours, a wife who had attacked him twice, once with a butcher knife and once with a pair of scissors? He bore the scars of both on his handsome face.

  “We will miss you, sir,” she said inadequately.

  Again his melancholy gaze passed over her. “That is good to hear, Mistress Carolina,” he said soberly. “For there are times when I have thought my life was wasted.”

  They were standing together, a little apart from the rest, while Ned waited impatiently for the crown to be finished, and Virgie—now standing beside her mother —watched them speculatively. Letitia Lightfoot’s expression was inscrutable as she too watched the pair of them.

  There was a faint rustle on the grass as a strolling couple passed behind them and the man’s murmured comment was carried clearly to Carolina.

  “They look like father and daughter, don’t they?” he said idly. “All that white hair and pale eyes?”

  And the woman’s hissed, “Hush! They’ll hear you!” silenced him.

  Carolina, who had been standing there relaxed, stiffened suddenly. They meant her. And Sandy Randolph. She shot a look up at him. Apparently he had not heard, for his melancholy gaze was focused across the river to some far horizon. Almost in panic her gaze swept over his features. She had his eyes . . . long and wide and silver, dark lashed. She had his hair, so glistening pale it was like white metal in the sunlight. She had his fair fair skin. And Virgie had said, They were getting along so well before you got home. . . . Suddenly those words rang through her mind like a great bell tolling.

  And with every peal they brought the truth clanging home to her.

  She was Sandy Randolph’s daughter!

  And everyone—her face grew hot at the thought and she hardly dared to look around her—everyone had known but her! So many things she had never understood came flooding back to her now with diamond clarity: little comments people had made, voices suddenly hushed when she came into a room, knowing glances cast her way, Aunt Pet’s commiserating sympathy that had always seemed overdone, Fielding Lightfoot’s willingness to let her visit away from home while he kept the other girls close around him, being sent away to school in England—oh, it all made sense now. Most stunning of all was the harsh realization that everyone else had known while she herself had been walking around in the dark.

  How could she face them, all these people drifting about on the lawn, waiting for her to be crowned Queen of Love and Beauty? How could she face them, feeling that all these years they had been talking behind her back, laughing behind her back, nudging each other, whispering, “There goes that poor little Lightfoot girl—the one who isn’t really a Lightfoot at all!”

  Beside her Sandy Randolph was talking, making polite conversation—but she did not hear him. Her head was awhirl as all the implications of being Sandy’s daughter and not Fielding’s raced through her mind.

  She was the reason for all the trouble at home.

  Carolina could easily imagine how it had happened. Her mother had found the one man who was right for her—but she had been so young, she had been able to make no impression on her dashing cousin. When at last Sandy Randolph noticed that skinny little Letitia had grown up to be a beauty—and that he desired her—it was too late. He already had a wife and that wife was mad—divorce was impossible. So even had she managed to free herself from jealous—and wronged—Fielding Lightfoot, she could not legally have wed her lover.

  What her mother must have gone through! thought Carolina in panic. For this sudden revelation made so many things startlingly clear to her:

  It made clear the aversion of her Lightfoot in-laws, the trouble between them and her spirited young mother. And now she remembered something else— something she had h
eard Aunt Pet say once about a “visit” her mother had made to distant relatives in the Carolinas sometime before Carolina was born. A visit? Or had she been running away? Had she met Sandy Randolph there, lived with him for a while? Aunt Pet had always been reticent about that visit and her mother had never mentioned it. Perhaps Sandy and Letitia had both rebelled at a fate that meant never to let them be together, perhaps they had “skipped over the traces” and spent brief blissful days and nights together . . . and then realized that it could never be, that Letty had a husband in Philadelphia and two small children while Sandy had a mad wife to care for back on his plantation up the James.

  Now that Carolina thought about it, trouble had always erupted between her parents whenever she had attracted her father’s attention. And there was Aunt Pet’s quick comment, “You should have done it long before, Letty,” on being told Carolina was being sent away to school in London.

  She had always sensed Fielding’s antipathy—and now she knew why. Fielding was not her real father and he knew it. He had accepted Carolina as the price of getting Letty back—but he could not love her.

  And her mother did not really love her either because . . . Carolina stood in the way of her having a happy life with Fielding. That was why Carolina had been kept in England with no discussion of when she would return home. Neither Fielding nor Letitia had wanted her to come home.

  Facing it squarely as she stood poker straight upon the lawn at Rosegill, Carolina realized achingly that it would have been better for them both if she had never happened. The thought shook her and she turned suddenly for comfort to the tall straight reed-slender man beside her, so fashionable in his ice gray suit. Ice colors—the kind she favored. Just as they both favored gray horses. Oh, they were alike, alike!