Outside, everything was pitch black. If there was a moon, it was well hidden behind mountains of dark clouds. In the brief moment that the landscape was lit up by a flash of lightning, Prudence’s eyes were drawn to the chapel where a marriage was to have been celebrated.
How strange it was to be on this island she had never heard of until her friend decided to wed the eldest son of the family who had once owned it. Waiting out a ferocious storm for the second time in her life, Prudence remembered what it felt like to be trapped by circumstances utterly beyond her control. What if she had been born into a situation where her whole life was a trap? Where there was never any hope of escaping the cage that imprisoned her?
Staring at the rain-lashed darkness beyond the window pane, she remembered the slave Queen Lula had said was the only one ever to disappear from Wildacre and never be found. She wondered if the pale girl had taken her chances on a night like this one. When pursuit would be unthinkable until the storm blew itself out. By which time there might not be a scent trail for the dogs to follow. What had Queen Lula called her? Sally? No. The name started with an S, but it was an unusual one. Prudence didn’t think she had ever heard it before.
“Geoffrey, do you remember the name of the runaway Queen Lula told us about?” she asked as the three of them settled into the upstairs parlor’s comfortable overstuffed chairs.
“Selena,” he said promptly. “She claimed the girl was the only slave from Wildacre who was never caught and brought back. What made you think of her?”
“If I were desperate and planning a run for freedom, I’d take a storm like this as a sign. Nobody would be likely to come after me for hours, perhaps days. And maybe by then I would have reached a place of safety. A station of the Underground Railroad or perhaps a kind farmer willing to give me a ride on his wagon. Queen Lula said she was light enough to pass for white.” Again Prudence stared at the dark window, imagining a young woman’s struggle through wind and rain, a small bag with food and everything she owned on her back. “I wonder what she looked like.”
“Stories were told about her,” Teddy said unexpectedly. “We weren’t supposed to know about them, but we did. I was no more than four years old at the time, but every runaway was talked about in the quarters for years afterward, usually because the punishment for trying to escape was so brutal. My grandfather believed in public whippings with all of us gathered around to witness what was done. Anybody who cried out in sympathy or refused to watch would feel the sting of the lash.”
“How terrible.”
“What can you tell us about her? About Selena,” Geoffrey asked.
Prudence glanced at him curiously. She hadn’t expected him to pursue the topic. They had agreed to discuss something else with Teddy when the three of them were alone. That was one of the reasons for leaving the library together.
“Almost nothing,” Teddy answered. “Except that Aunt Jessa was the one who raised her up after her own mother died. I imagine they were all shocked when she made a run for it. Big House slaves never ran; they were devoted to the family.”
Prudence stared at him. Could he really believe what he was saying? That someone who couldn’t even lay claim to her own life would feel anything but hatred for the people who had taken it from her?
“I don’t expect you to understand, Prudence,” Teddy said, catching the look on her face. “But that’s the way it was back then. At least that’s the way I remember it. What I was told.” He looked at Geoffrey for confirmation. “I can’t imagine why Queen Lula told you that story.”
“I was asking about the light-skinned islanders,” Prudence said. “I talked to Minda when she brought the white roses to the chapel. In fact, when I first saw her, I called out Eleanor’s name.” She paused.
“We do have ghosts on the island, you know,” Teddy said, ignoring the mention of Minda. “Lawrence and I used to dare each other to go out alone into the live oaks when it grew dark. You could see blue lights dancing above the ground sometimes. In the direction of the swamp. It was gas escaping from the mud bogs, of course, but it was more spine-chilling to think they were the restless souls of the dead rather than believe our tutors’ scientific explanations.”
“Selena’s escape would have been before the war.” Geoffrey seemed intent on gathering all the details of the long-ago break for freedom.
Teddy nodded, obviously puzzled at Geoffrey’s interest in a topic that planters avoided talking about in the presence of ladies. For fear of causing them distress. No Southern male of his father’s era had wanted to admit that he lived his life on the knife’s edge of constant vigilance against the threat of a slave uprising. But neither could he deny it. Ownership was no longer an issue after the war, but it would take generations for the fear of a bloody revolt to work its way out of everyday life. “I’d tell you to ask my father about that period of Wildacre’s history,” he said, “but I know what his response would be.”
“He’d tell me my curiosity wasn’t the act of a gentleman,” Geoffrey said.
“You’ve heard that phrase before.” Teddy smiled ruefully.
“More times than I care to remember. Sandyhill had its secrets, too.” Geoffrey seemed to accept that Teddy had told him all he could about the elusive Selena. He nodded at Prudence. It was time.
“Teddy,” Prudence began. “Something happened the other day when your sisters were here. Did they tell you about it?”
“Does it have to do with Eleanor’s trousseau?”
“Not directly.”
“Then I’m at a loss.” He looked quizzically at Prudence.
“One of the maids brought me a note that had been hidden inside a shoe she was packing.”
He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
“The note read, ‘Meet me in the live oaks. You won’t be sorry.’ When Maggie Jane saw it, she said it was your handwriting.”
Teddy’s face went pale. “I would never have arranged a clandestine meeting at night with Eleanor. You know that, Prudence. I had too much respect for her. And we were going to be married in a few days.” His features contorted in pain. How many times would he have to deny that he’d been complicit in the death of the woman he loved? “I don’t understand. Where is this note?”
“Aurora Lee ripped it up. She threw the bits and pieces from the balcony.”
“That sounds like her,” Teddy said bitterly. “Out of sight, out of mind. My sister doesn’t like truth to cloud her reality.”
“Did you write it?” Geoffrey pressed.
“No. I did not,” Teddy snapped.
“Then someone else did. Someone who knew your handwriting well enough to fool Maggie Jane into believing that’s what she was seeing. It was the proof we needed that Eleanor was lured out into the live oaks the night she disappeared. That she didn’t go entirely on her own to walk off prewedding jitters,” Prudence said.
“I never believed that theory,” Teddy claimed. “Though perhaps I allowed myself to be talked into accepting it because the alternative was too terrible to contemplate.” He drew a hand down over his face as if to wipe away suspicions that could no longer be avoided.
“Aunt Jessa is the key to all this,” Geoffrey said. “I thought so from the beginning. I’m even more certain now.” He began ticking off on his fingers the points he had already made to Prudence. “Aunt Jessa kept the island’s secrets. She confided at least one of them to Queen Lula because she needed a spell to ward off some calamity she feared was coming. The spell didn’t work. We know that from what Queen Lula implied. The tragedy she was trying to deflect was Eleanor’s death. After that, it was a matter of cleaning up loose ends, getting rid of the two women who might reveal what the killer desperately wanted to hide. I was puzzled by Jonah’s death. It didn’t seem necessary. Until I realized that his bid to leave the island wouldn’t be allowed because his silence could no longer be assured.”
“And the coral snake?” Teddy asked.
“We don’t
think the attempt on my life was because of any serious threat I posed. It was the act of an angry, vengeful individual who harbors slights and grudges until he eventually acts on them,” Prudence said. “It was the kind of malicious trick you play on someone out of pique, the uncertainty of whether the snake will strike absolving you of guilty intent.”
“Someone was determined that you and Eleanor would not marry,” Geoffrey said. “No matter what lengths he had to go to in order to prevent it.”
“Hence the note,” Prudence said.
It was obvious from the look on his face that Teddy knew where their suspicions had led them.
“Lawrence,” he breathed.
CHAPTER 26
Prudence woke to sunlight streaming in through the French doors of her bedroom and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Lilah, the maid who had brought up her tray, hummed as she pulled back the curtains, a huge smile on her face.
“We come through it all right, miss,” she said cheerfully. “Didn’t nobody get hurt and from what I hear tell, there ain’t much damage neither. Leaves and branches all over the place, but that’s about it.”
If she’d been an Irish servant, and Catholic, Prudence thought, Lilah would have crossed herself.
“It be cool now, Miss Prudence, but the heat’s gonna come on somethin’ fierce before too long. That’s always the way of things after a storm like we had last night. And you gotta watch out for the mosquitos. They get all stirred up by the wind and start bitin’ like fury. Best you take a shawl if you go out.”
“Is breakfast laid on downstairs?”
“Cook was just startin’ in on the eggs when I got your coffee, miss,” Lilah said. “Mrs. Dickson sent word she wanted a tray, so I reckon it’ll be just the gentlemen in the dining room this mornin’.”
“Then we’d better hurry up and get me dressed,” Prudence said.
A strange kind of chemistry had bloomed last night, as though she, Teddy, and Geoffrey were bound one to the other by a common purpose. It had begun when Teddy uttered his brother’s name with dawning recognition that Lawrence had never wanted his marriage to Eleanor to take place, no matter how much he pretended to welcome it. She thought they had been on the point of uncovering something vital when Teddy had abruptly excused himself and gone back downstairs to the library. When they looked for him there later, Philip told them he had retired to the guest room.
Abigail had looked bewildered. “He seemed ill.”
Not ill, Prudence thought. Stunned by a misgiving that could destroy the bonds of brotherhood and devastate a family already shattered by war and its aftermath.
* * *
It was obvious Teddy hadn’t had more than a few hours of sleep. If that. His face was drawn, the skin dull and as if pulled too tightly over the skull beneath. Patches of beard had escaped his razor; his hair, though neatly combed, was peculiarly lifeless. He hadn’t touched the food on his plate except to poke at it with a fork that never reached his mouth.
He’s a man in mortal mental agony, Prudence thought.
Geoffrey, holding her chair as she seated herself at the table, whispered into her ear. “He can’t be allowed to go back to Wildacre like this. Not alone, especially if he intends to confront Lawrence.”
She nodded in agreement, unfolding her napkin slowly to stall for time. She had no idea what to say to him. “Has Mr. Dickson already eaten?” she finally managed.
“He took coffee into the library,” Geoffrey said. “Something about double-checking his charts.”
Teddy laid his fork squarely across his untouched plate, lining his knife beside it, folding his pristine napkin. “I think I know what we have to do next,” he announced.
Neither Geoffrey nor Prudence said a word. They waited.
“Geoffrey said yesterday that Aunt Jessa was the key to everything that’s happened,” Teddy began. “I thought about that all night. Along with other things.” He took a sip of his cold coffee. “When I was six years old, my grandfather hired a tutor for us. For Lawrence and me. I had a collection of shells and arrowheads and other things I’d picked up here and there. Aunt Jessa had told me about talismans, so I carried some of them in my pockets. For luck and protection against evil spirits. When I tried to explain, the tutor said they were unchristian fetishes and that I had to get rid of them. I refused, so he beat me. With Grandfather’s approval, of course. And then the tutor confiscated everything. What he didn’t burn, he buried in the outhouse. I was terrified, convinced that I was defenseless. That I would fall ill and die the way I knew bad children did. Coffined and put into the ground.”
Prudence poured hot coffee into a clean cup and set it within Teddy’s reach.
“Aunt Jessa saved me. She had me put my few remaining treasures into one of the tin boxes that Grandfather’s cigars came in, and together we took it into the live oaks. We dug a hole beneath a huge tree and buried the box there. Covered it over with leaves until you couldn’t tell the ground had been disturbed. She lit a candle and said words over our hiding place. She told me it was a spell she’d concocted just for me, that I’d always be safe from harm because my spirit totems would never be found by anyone else. I believed her.”
“What happened to the tutor?” Prudence asked.
“It was during the war. He left Wildacre to join the fighting.”
“Did you dig up the box after he was gone?”
“It’s still there,” Teddy said. “Aunt Jessa made me promise that whenever I had a painful or frightening secret, I would breathe my trouble into some small object and bury it in the tin box. That way, she said, I would exercise power over the demons that were threatening me.”
“I wish I’d had an Aunt Jessa,” Prudence said.
“The thing is, she called it our secret place. Her secrets were there as well as mine. When we buried the box the first time, she put something of hers in it, too. A lock of black hair. I remember wanting to find out whose hair it was, but not having the courage to ask such an ordinary question. If Aunt Jessa had a secret that she wanted me to know, that’s where she would have hidden it. Not in her cabin, Geoffrey. Whoever searched for it there found nothing.”
“Who else knows about the tin box?” Geoffrey asked.
“No one.”
“Not even Lawrence? You’re sure?”
“Especially not Lawrence. We grew apart as we got older. Became something less than friends, perhaps even less than brothers.”
“How many times did you go there? To where the box was buried?” Prudence asked.
“Not many. The magic of it was that just knowing I had hidden juju working for me kept other fears at bay. I was twelve or so the last time I put something in the tin box. I hadn’t thought of it in years, not until last night when you said Aunt Jessa was key to what happened to Eleanor. When I realized that if she wanted to leave me a message, that’s where she would put it.”
“Do you think you can find the spot again?” Geoffrey asked.
“I know I can. If I close my eyes I’m able to retrace every step of the way. It’s not the kind of thing you forget.”
“But the trees have grown and some of them must have died.” Prudence couldn’t imagine having to retrace such a long-ago pilgrimage.
Teddy stood up, stepped away from the table. “Shall we go? I’d like you to come with me.”
* * *
They drove a pony cart along the sound road until the roofline of Wildacre came into view through the trees. Then Teddy veered into the live oaks and dropped a feedbag over the horse’s head as he tied off the reins.
“It’s not a long walk from here,” he said, taking a small hand shovel from the back of the cart.
The air was so clear that everything appeared newly washed and brighter than the day before, but all around them on the ground lay evidence of the storm. Dead leaves and branches had been stripped from the trees by the wind and left to fall where they might. Even new growth had been no match for the force of the blustery rain; piles of green l
ay scattered among the deadfall as though a giant’s hand had flung them there like a deck of cards. The sand squeaked beneath their boots, but the water that had pelted down with such force only hours before had nearly all been absorbed. Only here and there did a puddle remain, clouds of tiny insects buzzing busily across the surface.
Prudence swatted at what she could feel but not see, then draped her shawl over her head, covering exposed neck and shoulders against the onslaught of voracious no-see-ums. Geoffrey, guiding and supporting her through the debris-strewn sand, seemed impervious to the assault. Prudence felt the outline of the Colt he wore in a holster beneath his arm when she stumbled against him.
“Something else I realized last night,” Teddy was saying. “Lawrence wasn’t opposed to my marriage to Eleanor at first. He welcomed it.” His voice turned bitter. “I should say he liked the idea of a Bennett coming into Dickson money. So did my father. It wasn’t until after I brought Eleanor to Wildacre that they changed. My father first, then Lawrence. I’ve never understood what it was that turned them against her. Certainly not Eleanor herself. Everyone who ever met her, loved her. You remember how she was, Prudence?”
“I do. And you’re right, Teddy. Eleanor didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
“Walk us through those early days,” Geoffrey said. “I would have thought the Dicksons were familiar figures once Seapoint was built and they began coming here to spend their winters.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Teddy said. “They weren’t neighbors. They were conquerors. That’s how my father saw them. You have to remember that all of the negotiations for the sale of the island were carried out by Philip Dickson’s lawyers. And then an architect and a building foreman oversaw Seapoint’s construction. I remember we heard that Eleanor’s father came to the island from time to time while the house was going up and the grounds being laid out, but none of us met him. It was clear from the beginning that he wanted nothing to do with anyone who lived at Wildacre. It was as though we existed in a different world, and that’s how the Dicksons wanted it.”
Death Brings a Shadow Page 24
