“Someone lured her into the live oaks,” Dickson insisted. “Someone who wished her harm.”
“Or wanted to get to you through her, Mr. Dickson,” Geoffrey interrupted. “Is there anyone who hates or fears you enough to do something like this? Anyone who would profit substantially if you were unable to negotiate a contract or complete a sale or purchase?”
“We’re all too vulnerable for that. Most of us have wives and children who can’t be protected every moment of every day wherever they go or whatever they do. Society has rules because it is such a fragile entity. So does business. You break them at your peril.”
“So you’re saying that you have no enemies?” Prudence pressed.
“I have enemies. As did your father, my dear. But men of the world expect to incur rancor and bad blood. We take sensible precautions when we believe a foe is allowing his animosity to get out of hand, but we are rarely if ever in danger of our lives. Your father had to live with the knowledge that he might be targeted by a man he’d condemned to prison or the rope, but I never heard him speak of it. No, I don’t think this horrific act was aimed at me, Prudence.”
“Then it must have been an accident,” Teddy said. “Perhaps the sheriff and the coroner and my brother are right to blame the swamp. All the time I was growing up I heard stories about slaves who had run away and died in its waters. Animals, too. Household pets that were eaten by alligators, goats and calves pulled into the murky water and held beneath the surface until they drowned. Aunt Jessa used to say that if you listened hard enough at night, you’d hear the howls of their death throes.” He paled and sat down suddenly as he realized he’d just described Eleanor’s final moments.
“A woman who said her name was Aunt Jessa came to Seapoint yesterday,” Prudence said, responding to the puzzled look on Philip’s face.
“Who is she? What was she doing here?” Dickson demanded.
“Aunt Jessa is the mammy who raised Bennett children as far back as anyone alive can remember,” Teddy explained. “She’s old now, but the islanders still treat her as though she’s head woman of the plantation.”
“She chanted something over Eleanor,” Prudence said. “Then she anointed her forehead, eyes, and lips with oil.”
“And you let this crazy woman touch my child?”
“She was already in the cellar when I went down,” Prudence explained. She didn’t mention the odd feeling she’d had of being in a dream, of feeling powerless to challenge or interfere with what the woman in the white turban was doing. “I don’t think she meant any harm, Mr. Dickson. She told me Eleanor was safe now, that nobody and nothing could harm her.”
“That’s what the people call white magic,” Geoffrey explained. “Black magic harms. White magic protects.”
“Aunt Jessa is a healer,” Teddy clarified. “She may cast the occasional spell, but she isn’t a voodoo priestess.” He said this to Geoffrey, whom he judged to be the only other person in the room to have an inkling of what he was talking about.
“I have to know,” Philip Dickson said, brushing aside women in turbans and magic of any color. “I have to know what really happened to my daughter. If you ask enough questions of enough people, you’ll get answers.”
“What do you want us to do, Mr. Dickson?”
“Only what you do for other people, Geoffrey. What you used to do as a Pinkerton and you and Prudence do together from that office of yours down on Wall Street. Tell me how Eleanor died. Why she went to the place where we found her. If someone did this to her deliberately, I want you to find the monster. I’ll kill him myself with my bare hands if I have to.”
In the strained silence that greeted his demand, Prudence looked at Geoffrey with a spark of I told you so in her eyes.
Neither of them had brought up Eleanor’s fear of someone watching her from the live oaks. Whatever menace she had felt could no longer be proved; anxiety over a nameless, faceless threat only strengthened the argument that her own panic had caused Eleanor’s death. They would keep that one vital fact to themselves for as long as they could.
Teddy raised his head from his hands and stood up again. With immense dignity he asked the man who would never be his father-in-law if he would allow his only child to be buried in the Bennett family graveyard at Wildacre.
Philip Dickson stared at him in horror and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that books crashed down from their shelves to the floor.
CHAPTER 6
“I want to go to Wildacre with Teddy when he leaves,” Prudence said. “Will you come with me, Geoffrey?”
“What do you hope to find?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.” Prudence’s gaze swept the soaring, two-story entrance hall to the modern mansion that was Seapoint, so out of time and place on Bradford Island. “I think I want to feel what Eleanor experienced when she went there, try to understand what she was prepared to accept to make Teddy happy.”
“The Bennetts.” That was all Geoffrey thought he needed to say.
Prudence shuddered. “Lawrence and his father are handsome and charming, but why do I expect them to try to sell me snake oil? And those poor, washed-out sisters. Teddy isn’t like the rest of his family.”
“I think you’ll find he has more in common with them than you might suspect. He was born and raised in a culture that’s as foreign to you as a Turkish harem. It’s marked him.”
“I don’t believe that. Teddy and Eleanor together were something new. They gave each other the strength to break away from tradition and their pasts.”
Geoffrey looked skeptical and might have continued to debate the point except that the young man they were discussing joined them.
“He won’t listen right now, but at least we were able to part on speaking terms.” Teddy knew it was futile to attempt to argue with Eleanor’s father once his mind was made up, but he was just as stubborn as Philip Dickson and just as skilled as the older man at waiting out an opponent. Where Dickson favored a blunt, heads-on approach, Teddy was prepared to meander through as many circuitous byways as it took to get what he wanted. Somehow, he had promised himself and her, Eleanor would lie in the Bennett burying ground waiting for him.
“I’ve ordered one of the pony traps brought around,” Prudence said. “We thought we’d ride with you to Wildacre if you don’t mind our company.”
“I’d like that. There hasn’t been much time to talk.”
Teddy tied his horse to the back of the trap, then climbed in, taking up the reins with the ease of long practice. Prudence and Geoffrey squeezed in beside him. Prudence had questions to ask, and she wanted answers.
The road Teddy took wound along the edge of the live oak forest so that even though the day was warm and bright, they frequently rode in dappled shade. Prudence was mesmerized by the scintillating sunshine, intoxicated by the perfectly clear, unpolluted air. No New Yorker who ventured outside his home could escape the smoke of hundreds of thousands of coal fires and the stench of manure clumped haphazardly in every street.
Except for the crashing of waves against its Atlantic beaches and the squawk of seagulls, Bradford Island was a hushed, still place, so unlike the clamor and noisy bustle she was used to that Prudence found herself waiting and listening for some enormous cacophony of sound to break the silence.
She didn’t feel completely at ease here, though Geoffrey had blended in so quickly that he seemed never to have cut his ties with the South at all. The place might be isolated and far from what city dwellers called civilization, but it had a breathtaking beauty that she realized spoke to those who chose to make it their home. Prudence could only imagine what the heat must be like in full summer.
“I’m sorry Mr. Dickson refused your request to have Eleanor buried in the Bennett family graveyard,” she began. “It would have been a fitting resting place, given the circumstances.”
“I haven’t given up hope that he’ll change his mind,” Teddy said.
“Perhaps Mrs. Dickson is
the one you should talk to. Though from what the housekeeper says, she’s refusing to allow even her husband into her bedroom.”
“She blames him for bringing them to what she must think is a godforsaken place.” Geoffrey’s rueful tone of voice took some of the sting out of his words. “She’ll need time to forgive him.”
“I don’t know that she ever will,” Teddy said. “Eleanor talked about her mother often. She agonized over not being able to please her, but they always seemed to be at loggerheads when she was growing up. She spoke about tension between her parents, about disagreements and arguments that often revolved around her. Lately, with the wedding on the horizon, those earlier problems appeared to be resolving themselves, but she didn’t fool herself into thinking they wouldn’t resurface.”
“Teddy, may I ask you about the wedding?”
“I don’t want to have any secrets from you, Prudence. Not now. Not if it will help find out what really happened to Eleanor. And you, too, Geoffrey. I’ll answer whatever questions you have as honestly as I can.”
“Whose idea was it to have the wedding here instead of at Trinity Church in Manhattan?”
“I can’t recall whose proposal it was originally. But once we began talking, Eleanor and I, it seemed the better choice. Neither of us wanted a society wedding, with hundreds of guests and a reception at Delmonico’s. But if we got married in New York, we would have been trapped into exactly that. Mr. Dickson has too many business friends and acquaintances to risk slighting any of them, and Mrs. Dickson’s society circles would have been scandalized by anything less. The only way out of the dilemma was to get married far enough away so that we wouldn’t be subject to anyone’s dictates but our own.”
“I’m surprised Eleanor’s parents agreed.” Astounded, given Abigail’s society background, but Prudence was trying not to seem to find fault with either family.
“It didn’t happen quickly or easily, but Eleanor has . . . had remarkable powers of persuasion. Immediate family only, was what she told them we wanted.”
“Eleanor didn’t have any aunts, uncles, or cousins. I remember one time she said that being the only child of only children was a very lonely life.”
“I had hopes she’d find a new family here, with me,” Teddy said.
“But you were going to live in New York, weren’t you?”
“For the next few years at least. Until I established myself. Then I planned to transfer some of that business to the new Cotton Exchange in Savannah. All of it eventually. We would have built a town home in Savannah but spent at least half our time on the island.”
“Did Mr. Dickson know of your plans?”
“Not all of them,” Teddy confessed. “Eleanor and I had only begun talking about how we wanted to shape our future. It won’t matter now.”
The New York Cotton Exchange would be closed to him once Philip Dickson withdrew his sponsorship. Which in due course he would. To work beside Teddy every day would be a constant, stabbing reminder of the horror of his daughter’s death.
They rode in silence for a while, Prudence wondering how to bring up the subject of Teddy’s family without giving offense. He had seemed eager to talk about Eleanor and the life they had envisioned together, but it was a delicate topic now. With prosperous expectations tied to the Dickson name and fortune no longer a reality, he would have to fall back on the only kin left to him. The boring Bennetts, as Prudence had thought of them after the dinner party that had seemed an endless ordeal of forced smiles. Even Eleanor, though she was circumspect in her comments, had found them a trial.
Teddy pulled the buggy to a halt. “We’re almost there,” he announced, climbing down to unhitch his horse. He vaulted into the saddle as the animal shook its head and danced in the roadway, scenting home stables and the prospect of a good run.
“We’ll follow you,” Geoffrey said as Teddy moved off ahead of them. He kept the trap far enough back to avoid the dust kicked up by Teddy’s horse. Unlike the road linking Seapoint to its pier, this sandy track wasn’t paved with a thick layer of crushed shells.
* * *
Wildacre stood within a grove of towering oaks like a huge white ship under full sail, its balanced, classical lines perfectly proportioned and majestic. Prudence breathed in a sigh as Geoffrey turned the buggy into the long, tree-lined drive. Here was the Southern plantation hall she had expected but not found at Philip Dickson’s Seapoint.
Teddy’s family home was three stories tall, a double curved stairway reaching gracefully to the second floor. Slender columns rose symmetrically around the entire mansion from ground level to rooftop; every tall French window and door was placed exactly in line with the one above or below it. The brick was softly whitewashed, shutters painted black. Peacocks strutted on the green lawn, fanning their tails and calling out raucously as the pony trap intruded on their domain.
“The bottom floor is storage rooms and probably some quarters for the staff,” Geoffrey said, reining the horse to a slow walk as they approached. “All of these island and riverside planters learned to accommodate flood waters and hurricane season.” He swept appraising eyes over the structure.
“It’s beautiful,” Prudence said. “Like something out of a storybook.”
“They weren’t all like this,” Geoffrey warned. “Not even in the glory days before the war. A fair number of plantation families made do with much more modest accommodations. Their livelihood depended on each year’s harvest. Nature didn’t always cooperate.”
“I wonder how many acres the Bennetts were able to keep for themselves when Eleanor’s father bought the island.”
“Less than a hundred,” Geoffrey said. He shrugged matter-of-factly. “It’s public record.”
“You looked up the transaction?”
“Had someone do it for me.”
“Is there nothing you don’t investigate?” When he didn’t answer, Prudence wondered if there was anything Geoffrey didn’t know about her. It was a prickly, unsettling feeling to think she had no secrets.
Teddy handed his horse off to a stable boy who had come running at the sound of hooves on the drive. Another boy held the bridle of the horse pulling the trap. By the time Prudence had stepped down and shaken out her skirts, Teddy’s father was on the front veranda to greet them.
Standing as tall and straight as though still in the Confederate uniform he had once proudly worn, Elijah Bennett cast one quick, quizzical glance at his son before stepping forward to smile warmly at his visitors. Prudence had sat diagonally across from him at the Dickson dinner table two nights ago. She’d thought then that he was one of the most striking older men she had ever met; seeing him in the setting of Wildacre confirmed that opinion. The thick gold hair his sons had inherited was laced with silver, but that and sun wrinkles around his blue eyes were the only physical signs of advancing age. Time had been kind to Elijah Bennett. Eleanor must have studied him and imagined how her Teddy would look in thirty years.
“Lawrence will be sorry to have missed your arrival,” he said, shaking hands with Geoffrey, bowing over Prudence’s gloved fingers. “He’s escorted Sheriff Budridge and Justice Norton to the landing dock. But perhaps you’ll be able to stay until he returns?”
Geoffrey said something politely noncommittal, then allowed Prudence to precede him into the dim coolness of Wildacre’s formal parlor, where the men were served bourbon over sugar cubes and sprigs of crushed mint. Prudence had to be content with a glass of cool lemonade.
“I’ve sent word up to Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane.” Elijah stood before the polished bricks of the empty fireplace, legs slightly apart in the firm stance of a commanding officer about to give an order. “They’ll join us shortly.”
“How lovely,” Prudence murmured. “I hope you’ll forgive us for calling like this without warning. There wasn’t time to send a note.” She looked around her appreciatively. “I did so want to see the home to which my dear friend Eleanor was welcomed and where I know she hoped to become a part of her
husband’s family.”
“Such a terrible tragedy,” Elijah said. “I thought of her as another daughter since the first time Teddy brought her to meet us.” He touched the black armband he wore and lowered his eyes, only raising them when the rustle of silk skirts echoed through the room.
Teddy’s two sisters wore deepest mourning, even to the substitution of jet earrings for the gold that usually dangled from their ears. Aurora Lee was a forgettable faded blonde, the golden hair of her father and brothers dulled to a pale cornsilk yellow that turned her muddy skin sallow. Her nearly lashless blue eyes wore a look of perpetual dismay and her lips were narrow to the point of vanishing when she stretched them into a cold smile.
Maggie Jane, the younger of the two, was painfully thin and just as sallow of skin as her older sister. She seldom had anything to say for herself, but compensated for her lack of conversational skill by frequently erupting into nervous giggles that she attempted to stifle by pressing a fingernail-bitten hand to her mouth. In this family, all of the good looks had gone to the men. Prudence wondered what Mrs. Bennett had looked like. She remembered Eleanor telling her that Teddy’s mother had died many years ago.
“We are so heartbroken to have lost dear Eleanor,” Aurora Lee simpered. “And dear Miss MacKenzie, how much more agonizing for you, as close as you were to her.”
“How thoughtful of you to have a care for me at such a mournful time,” Prudence said, skillfully picking up the thread of condolences expected of bereaved friends and next-of-kin.
The sisters seated themselves side by side on a sofa whose faded damask upholstery was slightly frayed. In fact, as she looked around the parlor again in a fruitless search for something to say, Prudence realized that Wildacre’s opulent interior was in reality rather shabby and worn at the elbows. The black of Aurora Lee’s and Maggie Jane’s dresses had turned rusty gray at the seams and hemlines. The Bennetts were only a few short steps away from genteel poverty. Yet not long ago they had sold their island to a wealthy New Yorker looking to compete with the Carnegies and Vanderbilts. What could have happened to the considerable sum Philip Dickson must have paid them?
Death Brings a Shadow Page 6
