by Justine Cole
When was it they first began to talk of other things—politics, philosophy, even themselves? He told her a little about his boyhood, and although he did not mention either Simon or his mother, she sensed he had lost his childhood early, something she understood only too well. Was that why she found herself speaking about the children in London's tenements, sharing her outrage that such conditions could exist in a city that was supposed to be civilized?
It was not long before she came to realize what a well-educated man her husband was. In addition to having been schooled by private tutors, she learned that he had spent an unhappy year at Eton before he had been sent down as incorrigible. Still, he had received a university education at William and Mary, a small college in Virginia, where he had been an outcast among the wealthy sons of Southern planters because of his outspoken criticism of slavery.
They frequently went to the ship's hold, in which Pathkiller and Chestnut Lady were being comfortably transported.
"Don't be surprised when we arrive if you find the house needs some tending," he said one day as they entered the stall. "I haven't been home for over three years, and Televea has been closed."
"Televea?" She held out a piece of carrot in the palm of her hand for Chestnut Lady.
"It's a Creek word meaning 'home.' Simon bought the house from a Creek merchant who had made a fortune in cotton but overextended himself and was forced to sell off his house and his land."
"Do you mean an Indian?"
Quinn smiled. "Don't be so shocked. The Indians in Georgia don't carry tomahawks anymore. Some of the pureblood still wear turbans and leggings, but most of them dress like the white man."
Noelle was surprised to learn that the Cherokee nation had its own constitution and its own alphabet. Instead of the crude huts she had imagined Indians lived in, there were farms and churches, schools for the children.
"The Indians have become very civilized," Quinn said, his mouth twisting slightly at the corners.
"But isn't that for the best?"
He picked up a brush and began stroking Pathkiller's black coat. "They thought that by adopting the white man's ways, they'd be able to keep their land, but it was a foolish hope."
"How do you mean?"
"Treaties were made, then they were broken. The Cherokees have very little land left them. A tiny corner of North Carolina and Tennessee, a small piece of Alabama, and the very northern tip of Georgia. And now, what little they have has been taken, too."
Thoughtfully he fingered Pathkiller's mane, the brush idle in his hand. "Last May Congress passed the Indian Removal Bill. All of the eastern tribes—the Seminole, the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and the Cherokees—were ordered to give up their homeland for territory in the west, territory that they don't want."
"Does no one speak out for the Indians?"
Quinn nodded. "A few. But it hasn't changed the outcome."
"And so," Noelle said thoughtfully, "the Cherokees have to abandon their homes for an unsettled land. Have they gone yet?"
"Barely two thousand of them. The rest—more than sixteen thousand—have stayed, hoping for a miracle."
"Do you think there will be one?"
"It's been a long time since I've believed in fairy tales, Highness. The Cherokee nation is going to be broken."
Sensing how deeply the injustice troubled him, Noelle reached out and gently touched his arm. "I'm sorry, Quinn."
For a moment he looked at her, and then he nodded curtly and walked away.
That night, Quinn did not cross the cabin to her berth; nor the next. Long after he had fallen asleep, Noelle lay awake trying to understand why it was becoming harder and harder for her to keep her hatred for Quinn burning as fiercely as before. Could it be
because she was strangely fascinated by him? Of all the men she had ever met, he was the only one who had never bored her.
She remembered the night she had returned from Yorkshire and confronted Simon. "I'm frightened of him," she had declared. "Can't you understand that?"
But had she been completely honest? It was true that Quinn moved through life with only the thinnest restraint on the violent side of his nature. It was also true that, too often, she had been the target of that violence. But she had lived on the cutting edge of danger since she was seven years old. While his treatment of her was abominable, in some perverse way it was not as dehumanizing as being fawned over by men who knew nothing more about her than that she was beautiful.
Without quite knowing it she made her decision. For now, it would be Cape Crosse, Copeland and Peale, and Quinn. She needed time to adjust to this new country. But most of all, she needed time to settle her relationship with her husband. As long as she felt any ambivalence toward him, she would never be free of him, no matter how much geographical distance might separate them. As for the future, she had a good mind and a strong body. She would make her own way whenever she chose.
PART FOUR
The Copeland Bride
Chapter Thirty
Savannah, one of the busiest ports in the South, lived up to its reputation the mild morning in late January when Quinn and Noelle debarked from the Dorsey Beale. Merchant ships anchored beside brigs and paddle steamers. Sloops darted in and out of the bustling harbor while barges and flat-bottomed boats made their way to and from the mouth of the Savannah River on their journeys for the wealth of cotton and tobacco. Wagons pulled by workhorses and teams of oxen lined the piers as burly roustabouts unloaded cargo from deep within the holds of the ships. Carriages and wagons for hire dotted the waterfront streets, their drivers mulling about in small groups, waiting for the hefty fares they anticipated from the wealthy first-class passengers leaving the ship.
After he had supervised the safe debarkation of Pathkiller and Chestnut Lady, Quinn hired one such carriage. Normally, he explained, they would travel between Savannah and Cape Crosse by boat, but today there was a sou'wester blowing, and it would be just as fast overland.
The trip took them over rough roads and crude wooden bridges that looked as if the slightest breeze would sweep them away. They ate a silent dinner at an inn along the road and arrived at Televea at dusk. The carriage traveled down a narrow brick-paved lane thickly edged with pines. The lane stretched for some distance before it opened into a clearing with what had once been a magnificent white frame house sitting high on a rise.
It had been built in the federal style with the center well- balanced by a tall hipped roof and, flush at each end of this main section, narrow one-story wings. Graceful windows set in recessed arches were framed by shutters that had once been black and shiny but were now faded and, in several cases, hanging loose from single rusted hinges. Overgrown boxwood and azaleas encircled a long porch supported by four simple square columns, which, despite peeling white paint, still lent their dignity to the rest of the house.
After the coachman had taken the horses around to the stable and come back to unload the luggage, Quinn and Noelle walked up the steps to the porch, which was bare except for an abandoned bird's nest piled with droppings and a rattan rockIng chair with a faded chintz cover.
The muscles in Quinn's jaw tightened. "Welcome to Televea," he muttered as he stepped into the deserted foyer. "There aren't any servants. I'll have to hire some." He lit a lamp that stood on a candlestand just inside the door. Elongated shadows flickered up the walls to the high ceiling and over a worn Persian rug, which was centered on what had once been a beautiful inlaid parquet floor. The coachman looked around curiously as he brought the trunks inside and followed Quinn upstairs with them. When the man was gone, Quinn lit a cheroot and began to wander from one room to the next, as if he had forgotten her. Curious to see the rest of his house, which had been so ill used, Noelle followed him.
In most of the rooms furniture had been pushed to the center and placed under dustcovers. The curtains in the drawing room were faded; the windows in the sitting room hung bare. Everywhere there was the smell of must. In the wing at the left of the house was
an empty ballroom with a columned arch that opened into a conservatory where glass walls swept in a graceful semicircle. Although the panes were unbroken, they were so darkened by grime that they were opaque.
The right wing held a long, narrow dining room. An American eagle had been carved into the plasterwork of the once-white mantelpiece. Over the fireplace was a richly detailed painting of a pair of quail signed by the American naturalist John James Audubon.
Noelle could contain her curiosity no longer. "On the ship you told me that Televea had been closed since you left, yet Simon was in Cape Crosse less than a year ago. Where did he stay?"
Quinn pushed aside a pile of rags with the toe of his boot. "He owns a house near the shipyard."
"But why did he let this beautiful house deteriorate so badly?"
"Because he hates it," Quinn said impassively.
"Then why didn't he sell it?" she persisted.
"He did. I bought it from him before I left London."
Noelle looked around the gracefully designed room, wishing, for the hundredth time, that she knew what had happened between Quinn and his father. "How could anyone hate a house like this?" she said, almost to herself.
Planting the heel of one hand against the dusty mantelpiece, Quinn stared down into the cold cavity of the fireplace. "You ask too many questions, Highness, about things that aren't any of your business."
She left Quinn wandering about the house and went upstairs, where she found her trunks in a dusty but pleasant room that adjoined the master bedroom. A search of the wardrobe revealed a pile of sheets. While she made up the bed she thought how grateful she was that Quinn had not demanded she share his room. Still, as she was going through her trunks for a nightdress and robe, she realized she was unconsciously listening for the sound of footsteps. But there was only silence from the other room.
Below in the kitchen, Quinn sat with an open bottle of whiskey. The sight of Noelle walking through the rooms of Televea had disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. Why hadn't he left her in London as he had intended? His loins ached with the desire to possess her. Only his memory of those punishing nights on the ship when she had so stubbornly held herself apart from him kept him from claiming her now. If she weren't so damned beautiful . . .But then, it was more than her beauty. Everything about her seemed to affect him.
He took another swallow. He was goddamned if he would let it - go on this way any longer! When he decided he wanted to father a child, he'd bring her to his bed. Until then, he'd take his comforts elsewhere. Noelle would bear his children, run his household. That was all!
The next morning, as Noelle sat at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of tea, a knock sounded at the door, distracting her. She opened it to find a group of six women, three white and three black, assembled on the back stoop.
"Miz Copeland?"
"Yes?"
"I'm Dainty Jones, your new cook."
It was a moment before Noelle found her voice. Dainty Jones was the tallest woman she had ever seen and certainly one of the thinnest. She had closely cropped ginger hair, its color the only reminder of her Scots-Irish ancestors, and ruddy skin stretched tight over angular bones. Her face was shaped much like an hourglass—broad at the top, sunken at the cheeks, broad again at the chin—and her accent spoke of the backlands.
"How do you do, Miss Jones," Noelle finally managed.
"Call me Dainty."
Shouldering her way into the kitchen, she continued her introductions. "This here's Bessie Pugh. That's Grace Mahoney. She's good with a needle, so you better take her as your maid. Them two is Favor and Evangeline Patterson. They don't have no experience, but they're hard workers. That one bringin' up the rear is Earline Wilcox. She's shy of strangers, so I 'spect you better leave her stay in the kitchen and help me. Mr. Copeland said the men'd be over tomorrow to start work on the outside."
Although Noelle did not know it at the time, it was not customary to have servants of both races in the same household. But in Cape Crosse, those who wanted Copeland wages had to be willing to work together.
She surveyed the group of women who stood assembled in the kitchen. From the towering Dainty Jones to the ebony-skinned Patterson sisters, they were a far cry from the proper English servants of her experience. But she couldn't allow herself the luxury of misgivings. Constance was not here to help her, and she certainly had no intention of running to Quinn. She had a household to manage, and she was going to have to do it by herself.
By the end of her first week at Televea, Noelle had absorbed herself in the challenge of restoring the beauty of the old house, taking time out only to write Constance a long letter describing her new household and her unorthodox servants. She did not mention Quinn at all. As the days passed, she flew from one place to the next—attic to storeroom, kitchen to bedroom, directing her servants at their tasks, sometimes stopping to sweep a floor or scrub out a corner herself.
She began with four rooms: the dining room, drawing room, and two front bedrooms. They were scoured from floor to ceiling, rugs were beaten, floors polished, windows washed. Years of accumulated grime were removed from the lovely parquet floor in the front hallway. The furniture was uncovered and rubbed with lemon oil and beeswax until it shone.
The servants proved to be good workers, and Dainty Jones's cooking contradicted her skeletal form. Soda biscuits and griddle cakes, pies and Indian puddings, a Brunswick stew full of butter beans and red pepper—all of them poured generously from her fragrant kitchen.
True to his word, Quinn sent a small crew of men to restore the exterior of the house, and it was soon festooned with ladders and scaffolding. On the days when the winter rains fell, Noelle pulled the workers inside to paint and do carpentry.
She rarely saw her husband during those first exhausting weeks, and he made no attempt to enter her bedroom. Other than approving her progress in the house and agreeing to take her to Savannah as soon as he could get away so she could make the purchases she needed to finish the job, he had little to say to her.
One day she overheard the maids gossiping about a woman named Kate Malloy who ran an illegal gambling house for the upper-class gentlemen of Cape Crosse and its environs. From their conversation, she gathered that a game of poker was not all that was available at Kate Malloy's. It had been difficult for her to imagine a man as virile as Quinn going for long without a woman, and now she suspected that all his late nights were not being spent at the shipyard. So much the better, she told herself. Let Quinn take his lust elsewhere. Nothing could make her happier!
Several weeks after her arrival, an incident occurred that left Noelle vaguely uneasy. She was behind the house, shaking out a small Oriental rug she had found on one of her forages to the attic when she looked up to see a strange man standing near the smokehouse, watching her. He had a barrel chest, thick, powerful limbs, and a head that was abnormally small for so large a man. She could not see the color of his hair, hidden beneath a battered felt hat, but she could see his eyes. Small and malevolent, they bored into her. For a moment neither of them moved, and then the stranger spat insolently into a pile of dead leaves at his feet and disappeared back into the trees.
That evening, she mentioned the incident to Quinn. He made inquiries among the men who had been working at the house that day, but no one else had seen the stranger. Within a few days, she had put the encounter out of her mind.
Noelle learned from Dainty that the women of the community and nearby plantations had agreed among themselves to postpone calling until she was settled. "You can bet they don't like waitin', Miz Copeland," Dainty said, chuckling, one morning as she sank the heels of her bony hands into a mountain of bread dough. "But they're too polite to do anythin' else. Any female in this part of Georgia who's older'n fifteen or younger'n fifty has set her sights on Mr. Copeland at one time or 'nother, and now curiosity's eatin' away at all of 'em faster'n maggots on week-old meat. They want to see the woman who finally managed to catch him. Oo-ee!" Dainty chortled. "They
sure is some curious ladies jes' waitin' fer the chance to set their eyes on you!"
Chapter Thirty-one
One day, while the workmen were eating their lunches in Dainty's kitchen, Noelle stepped into her sitting room to survey their progress with the painting. As she studied the ceiling moldings high above her, she saw a section they had missed. The heavy ladder was off to the side a bit, but she calculated she could reach it if she rested her weight on one foot and leaned out.
After loading a brush with paint, she hitched up her skirts and carefully climbed the ladder. When she reached the top, she held on with the tips of her fingers and, leaning far out with the brush, she dabbed at the offending spot.
"Good God!"
His voice startled her so that she nearly lost her balance. As it was, she dropped the brush, which promptly smeared the freshly painted baseboard.
"What the bloody hell do you mean sneaking up on me that way!" she exclaimed. "Just see what you've made me do!"
He moved over to the base of the ladder and looked up at her with amusement. "If I'd known you were so handy with a paintbrush, Highness, I wouldn't have hired all these workmen."
"Why are you home at this time of day?" she snapped.
"I left some papers in my bedroom." He grinned up at her. "Are you planning to stay up there all day?"
"I was just coming down," she said stiffly as she began descending the ladder, trying not to catch either her skirt or her petticoats. The business was made more difficult by Quinn grinning up at her, obviously enjoying his unrestricted view of her lacy underthings.
