Shadows of Love

by Gail MacMillan

  Like my mother, who’d returned to work when my father had fallen into financial difficulties, I bathed, brushed my hair till it shone, borrowed a bit of paint for my cheeks from Meg, and went to work in the tavern.

  Meg soon found it more lucrative to move me from bartending to entertaining. Business in her little tavern began to boom in spite of Abe’s order of temperance in the village. Sailors readily filled my apron pockets to hear music hall ditties that my mother had taught me, laborers to hear the slightly bawdy songs Barret had sung for me, and young romantics for Darcy’s love poems set to Colin’s music.

  Still others, not normally tavern frequenters but starved for entertainment, flocked to see me dance and sing my way through a variety of songs each evening while Mary and Bridgit sat with my son and recuperating husband.

  I had been working at the tavern for a fortnight when Abe Douglas returned from Halifax. He’d left the day following Barret’s return, his purpose to work on negotiations for his coveted mail contract. Since it had become known that Barret Madison was no longer his commodore, rumor declared it was slipping beyond his reach. Abe, stubborn and unrelenting, refused to heed these tales and kept hammering away at postal officials.

  I was singing a slightly bawdy song and moving about among the customers in one of Meg’s low-cut crimson gowns when my father-in-law burst into the hot, smoky room, Burt and Harry close behind him. With a slash of his riding quirt, he cleared the nearest table of its mugs and flasks and sent its patrons scattering.

  I froze in my performance. Some customers fled; others, bolder and curious, moved back to clear a path for him. Silence fell as the last of the fleeing clientele vanished out the door. I stood alone facing the enraged entrepreneur in the smoky room.

  “How dare you march in here and disturb my customers?” Meg broke the static hiatus as she came from behind the bar to face the raging man. “This is my establishment. You aren’t lord and master here.”

  “Your so-called establishment is made of old, dry lumber, some of the first ever milled in this valley,” Abe said, his voice cold, even, and deadly as honed steel. “It would make a splendid bonfire.”

  “No!” Meg gasped. “You wouldn’t dare!” She clutched the end of the bar for support, her face blanching.

  “I’m against the sale of spirits to my workers,” he said, glaring at her. “The elimination of this den of iniquity would aid my move for temperance and up the productivity of my men.”

  He swung back to face me. “And God damn you, you bold little bitch! You’ll not shame me in public again!”

  He started toward me, his expression fanatical with rage. Determined to fight to the bitter end, I grabbed a bottle from a nearby table. Holding it above my head by the slender neck, I braced myself and waited, pulse racing, heart pounding. He’d raised his quirt and was about to bring it down on me when Barret’s voice stopped him.

  “Strike her and you die, old man.”

  Abe whirled and faced my husband, who stood in the doorway, a pistol leveled at him.

  “Bastard!” Abe roared. “Burt, Harry…!”

  “If Burt or Harry make the slightest move to stop my wife and me from leaving, or if a single shingle of Meg’s place is harmed, I swear I’ll kill all three of you,” Barret replied evenly. His face, though pale, was wolfishly lean and threatening, the appearance of illness having disappeared into a state of controlled determination.

  “Son of a whore!” Abe breathed.

  “Come here, Starr.” Barret held out his free arm as he kept the gun leveled at Abe. “We’re going home…to bed. It’s time we had another child.”

  He added the last words with deliberate malice, and I saw Abe flinch as though physically struck.

  I went into the shelter of my husband’s embrace, then backed out the door with him into the chill May night where Lucifer waited, saddled and expectant. Barret stuck the pistol into his belt and swung into the saddle, a grunt of pain betraying his appearance of strength. When he kicked his foot from the stirrup and held down a hand to pull me up behind him, I asked, “How did you know to come?”

  “Jared,” he said. “He brought Abe back aboard his ship, then came to visit me. He said he’d heard you were working for Meg. I didn’t let him know I’d been ignorant of the fact, but pretended to feel ill to get him to leave. I knew Abe wouldn’t tolerate your working in the tavern. I knew his first stop would be here. And that he wouldn’t be above doing you injury.”

  “But why? I’m not Colin’s wife now.”

  “You once bore the Douglas name,” he replied. “There cannot be any unseemly behavior on the part of even a former member of the clan. The government officials in charge of granting contracts favor temperance and upstanding living. You, he would believe, could jeopardize his chances. Now get up here. I really do plan to take you home to bed.”

  ****

  “Get down.” The words were a terse order from my husband.

  We’d reached our cabin after a mad gallop from the tavern. His harsh words brooked no denial.

  My feet had barely touched the ground when he kicked Lucifer into a run and headed for the stable. I staggered back from the stallion’s slashing hooves.

  Barret was furious with me. As we’d swept along the muddy, pitch-dark trail, my arms clasped about his waist, I’d sensed the rage seething through his body. I couldn’t fathom the reason for the depths of his anger. I’d deceived him by lying about my absences, I knew, but surely he could understand the necessity of my working and the scarcity of employment opportunities.

  Inside the cabin I found a single lamp burning low and the fire on the hearth dwindling to glowing embers. Neither Bridgit nor Mary was present. Startled, I rushed to the door of the baby’s room and found it empty. I turned to face my husband, as he came inside.

  “Where are Colin and Mary?” I asked.

  “I took them to Bridgit’s cabin before I went to fetch you,” he said, leaning back against the closed plank door. “I wanted to be alone with you. We have much to discuss.”

  “Barret—”

  ”You couldn’t wait, could you?” he snarled, looming over me. “You couldn’t wait until I was well enough to sleep with you, could you? You had to go to the tavern looking for a man to satisfy your hot blood!”

  “No! Barret, you don’t understand…”

  “Don’t I, wife? I understand only too well. We were fine, Colin and Randall and me, until you came here. You’re the catalyst for the explosion that rent us apart. No one else could have brought me to the point of threatening that old man with a gun. You put my soul in purgatory through Colin. Now you’re shoving it farther into Hell by pitting me against him.”

  “He had your career destroyed, for God’s sake!” I cried. “He threw your wife and child out into a January blizzard. He called you a fornicating bastard. All I’ve ever been guilty of is of loving all three of you—first Colin as a brother, then Randall as my best friend, and finally you as my true husband.”

  “You were hardly acting the loving sister, friend, and wife tonight.” His eyes glinted in the semi-darkness.

  “How dare you! How dare you accuse me of looking at other men. I went to work in the tavern to provide our family with food, you great, jealous brute!”

  He froze. For a few moments silence reigned in the small cabin.

  “Sweet Jesus, we’re destitute, aren’t we?” he muttered finally. “You’ve been keeping us…me, haven’t you?”

  “Barret…” I began, but could not find the words to reassure him. I could not bear the agony in his face. I arose and tried to take him into my arms, but he shrugged away like a petulant schoolboy and went to look out the window into the darkness.

  “So this is what I’ve come to, what he’s reduced me to,” he muttered. “A whorehouse bastard who can’t even provide for himself, much less his family.”

  “Barret, no! My mother helped my father when he needed financial assistance…”

  “Your father never lost hi
s master’s ticket or his ship.”

  “Come to bed,” I pleaded. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  He pulled a quilt from our bed and started toward the door. “I’ll sleep in the stable,” he said over his shoulder.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lucifer stumbled in the torn earth, shied, and half reared in the harness. Barret roared at the frustrated stallion as he struggled to keep the plow upright. Watching from the cabin window, I felt a surge of compassion for the horse and man trying to prepare the rough field for planting. Both were unfit for the task. Both were free spirits, not drudges to be bound to monotonous tasks like tilling the soil.

  Looking at Colin playing on the plank floor I had scrubbed to whiteness, I reflected that if it were not for my child and me, they would not have come to their present position. Little Colin and I had adjusted to life in reduced circumstances, but then, I had only briefly lived in an environment of wealth and privilege, while Colin, being malleable in his extreme youth, had barely seemed to notice the change in his surroundings. Perhaps my son and I were meant for a simple existence. I looked again at Barret and Lucifer fighting their way up the field. Perhaps I was more mule than refined saddle horse.

  In the paddock beside the hovel we called a stable, Lady stood watching the stallion work. Due to her more even temperament she’d been the first animal Barret had put before the plow.

  After a half-day’s valiant effort, the little mare had pulled up lame and spent. Her deteriorating health, as well as the fact that Barret believed she was carrying Lucifer’s foal, caused him to abandon her and take up the stronger but highly volatile Lucifer. Now, as Lady watched the pair, she whickered softly, a bit sadly I fancied. Perhaps, she, like myself, was pitying them their unsuitable task.

  As I stood by the window watching my husband as he struggled to prepare the rough field he had cleared for planting between our cabin and the river, I found it difficult to believe he was the same man who had boldly captained the magnificent Maris Stella before raging seas, and who, impeccable in evening attire, had whirled me with confidence about a Halifax ballroom.

  Since he’d become my husband, his life had not been bold or colorful. Where once he’d held a position of respect and wealth, he had become reduced to shoveling guano aboard ships and manure from stables.

  Then I saw he had paused in his work and was looking downriver. I followed his gaze and recognized the object of his interest. The Maris Stella, her sails full of fresh breeze, had come into view. Returning from an early spring voyage to England under the command of Jared Fletcher, she cut a heart-stopping spectacle of sheer beauty, her white canvases puffed and stark against the charcoal clouds blanketing the sky.

  I felt the tightness in my throat deepen and wondered how much more profoundly Barret was being affected by the spectacle of the ship he’d once commanded and loved as a living thing in the hands of another. When she’d departed two months earlier, Barret had been at sea. This was the first time he’d seen his beloved vessel sailing without him.

  With the raw wind whipping his dark curls back from his face, he stood rigidly straight and watched transfixed, Lucifer’s reins looped about the shoulders of his shabby woolen jacket. Below mended breeches, his boots were mud-caked. The scenario lashed at my heart. Unable to bear it, I turned away.

  When I returned from settling Colin in bed that night, Barret was sitting at the table, his hand clasped about a half-empty rum flask. He ate his meals with Colin and me but still slept in the barn with the horses. This was the first evening in days he’d lingered after supper, and I’d thought he was going to rejoin his family. The flask killed my hopes of a reunion.

  Outside, a cold, hard rain was turning the newly plowed field into an unworkable sea of mud and drenching the baby’s laundry where it hung on a cord between two trees. Tomorrow I’d have to bring it all inside and dry it painstakingly about the hearth while Barret stood in the stable doorway, restless and annoyed because of his delayed farming.

  “He’s asleep,” I said, sinking into a chair by the fire and taking up my mending. “He’s so beautiful I could gaze at him forever.”

  “Too beautiful to have come from me,” Barret muttered.

  “Are you doubting his paternity?” I asked sharply.

  “No, of course not,” he said, shaking his head. “I will never understand how any man can look into the face of his biological son and fail to recognize him in his heart. That’s not what’s eating my innards tonight.” He took a long drink from the flask, wiped his mouth with his hand, and coughed before continuing.

  “Today, as my Maris Stella sailed past, I saw myself for what I truly am for the first time…a destitute bastard who can’t even provide a decent living for his family.”

  “That’s not true, Barret! You’re richer than Abraham Douglas will ever be. You have the one thing all his money cannot buy—a son, a beautiful healthy son. In fact, Abraham was so desperate for our child he tried to adopt him—even buy him—when you were away.”

  “He what?” Barret’s bellow told me I had gone too far in my efforts to placate him. Forced to explain, I told him as gently as possible of Abraham’s proposal.

  “So he used me for stud service,” he growled when I’d finished. “Produce issue, then get back to my stall.”

  “He withdrew the offer when he learned of Caroline’s pregnancy.”

  “Little does he know she’s carrying Jared’s brat.” Barret laughed harshly. “Sweet Jesus!” He slammed his palm down on the table. “Abe Douglas used every last bit of me before he threw me out.”

  “Barret, love, no!”

  He ignored me and took a long drink from the flask. Then he began to sing softly, the lyrics coarse and bawdy.

  “Barret, stop it!” I cried, rushing to kneel before him.

  “Don’t you like my song?” he muttered, his words slurred from the liquor. “I was paid to sing that ditty many times a night when I was a youngster, while a half-naked whore bounced me on her knee or sat with her arm draped about me at the piano. I sing it often, as I lie alone in that barn out back. It serves to remind me of who I am.”

  He pushed me aside as he rose and went to stare out the window into the blackness of the night, the flask clutched in his hand.

  “Barret, I’m so sorry, my love,” I murmured.

  “Go to bed, Starr.”

  He strode out into the night.

  ****

  When I awoke the next morning, the valley lay shrouded in a heavy fog. An eerie silence hung over the place. Not a single bird sang, not a single branch creaked. It was as if life stood suspended, waiting for God only knew what. The atmosphere chilled me to the bone.

  I dressed and went shivering into the outer room of the cabin to look out a window. Barret was nowhere in sight. Nor was he anywhere on our property, my following quick perusal revealed. My stomach was churning with apprehension when a knock sounded on the door. I opened it to find Meg swathed in a shawl, her face pale and drawn.

  “He’s at my tavern, Starr,” she said. “He arrived there late last night. He was so drunk he could barely stand.”

  “Come in, Meg,” I said. “You’re shivering. I’ll build up the fire and make coffee.”

  “Starr, I must confess I dreaded coming to see you today.” She stepped inside, removed her shawl, and shook beads of moisture from it. “I had to trust my instincts that you truly are my friend and that you’d believe me. I wanted you to hear it from me. There was a bunch of rabble in the street who saw Barret banging on the door of my tavern—it was past closing—who saw me let him in. I had to get to you before the village gossip. I know he grew up in rooms above a kind of tavern. I think he felt that, in coming to my inn, he was in some strange way going home.”

  “What did he say?” I asked, my hands trembling as I swung a pot of water over the fire.

  “He was like a man torn apart. He began shivering and trembling as if he’d caught a great chill. His clothes were drenched from the rain.
I…I helped him undress and put him into my bed. I stayed with him until he slept, and then I went to another room for the night.

  “Starr, I admit we were lovers before he met you. But last night there was nothing between us. You’re my friend. No matter how I felt, how I still feel about Barret, I wouldn’t, couldn’t do anything to hurt you. He loves you.”

  “I believe you, Meg. Sit. Please. I’ll make us some breakfast. Then I’ll go collect my husband.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  Meg and I turned toward the door to see Barret framed in it. Against the swirling fog, he was a dark, towering silhouette.

  “I’ll be leaving,” Meg arose and drew her shawl over her dark curls. As she started to move past Barret, he caught her by the arm.

  “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead before she moved away from him and, with a backward glance at me, moved out into the mist.

  “Meg told you?” he asked, closing the door.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing his forehead with callused fingers.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Sweet Jesus!” he breathed, going to sink down on a bench at the table. “I feel worse than I did during my first bout of seasickness.”

  “Barret, I think it’s time you told me the truth about yourself.”

  “What truth?” He grimaced.

  “About your connection to the Douglas family. It’s more than simply as their employee. I’ve seen you accept abuse from Abraham as you’d take from no other man, and care for Colin and Randall with every ounce of your strength. That January voyage to London on behalf of the Douglas Enterprises was far beyond what any employee would attempt for his master. Barret…” I hesitated, fearing to voice what had occurred to me in the night. “You often referred to Colin as a family member. You arrived in this valley the year before he was born.”

  “What in God’s name are you suggesting, Starr?” He turned to face me, his expression one of utter astonishment.