“What about raising a flag with fifteen stars and stripes over the soil of Upper and Lower Canada?” she challenged fiercely, stung by the underlying insolence of his reply.
“There are those,” he stated calmly, his eyes very hard and bright on her, “who say that it is not far distant.”
She took a gulp of her brandy, her hand trembling with anger. It was not enough that the American colonists had established their own independence, but now they were turning greedy eyes toward the Crown lands of British North America. And Bryne Garrett was standing with one foot on each side of the boundary. He was an opportunist and a speculator. No wonder his house was so richly furnished, his clothes so well cut, his linen so fine. He was everything she abhorred, and a slave-owner into the bargain!
“Flora was alone here when I arrived on your doorstep,” she said, sitting very stiffly. She was vaguely aware that the interview was not going as she had planned but had bolted away from her, completely out of control.
He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve made little Flora’s acquaintance, have you? Usually she falls asleep in the cupboard and doesn’t emerge until morning.”
“It’s outrageous to keep her as a slave!” Sarah accused hotly.
Bryne frowned thoughtfully before he replied, seeing that the brandy was firing her to a certain recklessness, which he found interesting. “I’ve never mentioned the word slave to Flora, but it seems as though the servants have. I bought her last year in South Carolina for less than the price of a barrel of ale, and saved her from a mighty miserable fate. As the laws of British North America allow the child of a slave to remain in bondage until the age of twenty-five, Flora will stay as my property until I consider that she is good and ready to take care of herself. Young girls, whatever the color of their skin, are all as addleheaded as hens running under carriage wheels if they’re let out of the gate too soon. I have one white ward, who’s away at boarding school in Kingston, and one black slave here in York—I intend to see that they both have an equal chance in life.”
“That’s not possible,” Sarah retorted swiftly, “unless you change Flora’s status to that of your ward too!”
His eyes snapped at her as if he was totally unused to anyone telling him what to do, but before he spoke again he reached for the neck of the bottle, and leaned forward to add some more brandy to her glass, and then added to his own. “I think it’s time for you to stop haranguing me on every touchily controversial subject that you can think of,” he stated dryly, “and explain how you came to be uninvited in my house, and—of all things!—decided to spring-clean in the middle of the night!”
She realized then that she had said too much to him, and that little chance remained of employment under his roof, but she was also surprised to find how little she cared. She emptied the glass, and set it aside, feeling deliciously lightheaded and quite unafraid, although so incredibly tired that she could have curled up on the floor.
“I need work,” she said, blinking a little, for her lids were becoming unbelievably heavy. His piercing eyes were blurring into the shadow of his thick lashes, his bony, forceful nose persisted in being out of focus, and a strangely ghostlike impression of that dangerous, experienced mouth hovered hazily above another. “I thought that if I proved to you in your absence that I could keep a house in order, you would be persuaded to employ me.” She felt she was talking slowly, but she plunged on. “I had hoped to teach when I came to this country, and make full use of the education that my father gave me, but that is something that can’t be achieved yet. There are barriers here as high as in England between the righteous folk and the sinners.”
“True indeed,” he remarked with quiet amusement. “Don’t tell me that we’re on the same side of the fence!”
She nodded solemnly. “I have two small children with me. They’re not mine, but nobody seems to believe me. And you won’t either.”
“On the contrary.”
She stared at him in bewilderment. “Why should you believe me when you haven’t even heard yet how I acquired them?”
“I usually recognize the truth when I hear it. Now tell me the rest of it.”
She told him everything. It flowed from her. About Giles. The anguish of being powerless to save Hannah. Of Philip Manning, her voice softening as she remembered all those quiet hours they had spent together. And of how desperate had been her disappointment at failing to find Will Nightingale, rounding it all up with an account of the way doors had been shut against her. When at last she fell silent, her head was lolling, and she felt herself being helped to her feet.
“You must go to bed,” he said.
“Does that mean that I can stay here with the children?” she asked him on a rush of hope.
“On certain conditions,” he answered, “but we’ll discuss those tomorrow.”
Relief that she was not to be turned away took the last strength from her. Her head drooped and she swayed against him.
Effortlessly he swept her up in his arms, and instantly her lids became locked in sleep. He carried her up the curving staircase, wondering in which room she had left the children. Deciding that it was not important, he bore her through into the bedchamber that overlooked the orchard. He laid her on the bed and removed her shoes before pulling the covers over her. Turning, he went across to release the silken cords that held back the drapes, letting the velvet folds fall into place across the windows.
He glanced back at her once before the door clicked shut behind him.
Four
She awoke to a strange room and a strange bed. Sunlight was shining through a crack in the drapes, and for a moment she could not think where she might be. An ormolu clock on the chest of drawers told her that it was noon. Then she remembered. The children! Where were the children?
She threw herself from the bed, not bothering to find her shoes, and with her hair tumbling about her shoulders she rushed to throw open a door. But it only led into the dressing room where she had bathed all those hours ago, although the hip bath was empty now, and everything tidied as though that unexpected encounter with Bryne Garrett had never been.
Swiftly she wrenched open the other door in her bedchamber and ran through to the head of the stairs. “Jenny! Robbie!” she called frantically.
She almost fell as she descended, her stockinged feet slipping on the shining wood. When she found the housekeeper’s room deserted, a kind of panic seized her and she whirled back into the hall, calling out again.
The double doors of the drawing room were flung open from within, releasing the aroma of cigars. Bryne stood there with a thunderous expression on his face. Behind him some gentlemen rose from their seats to view the cause of the commotion. “What’s wrong here?” he demanded.
“Where are the children?” she cried urgently.
He ran impatient fingers through his thick hair. “I have no idea. Not under my feet, thank God! Find Mrs. Tupper in the kitchen and ask her.”
Sarah sent the baize door thudding open with the flat of her hands, and the flagstones of the passageway struck cold to her running feet. At the entrance to the kitchen she stopped, overwhelmed with relief, thankfully taking in the quiet domestic scene before her. A stout little woman was mixing a pudding at the kitchen table, the frill of her mobcap framing a face both shrewd and sharp but not unkindly. At one side of her sat Jenny and Flora, chattering together as they stoned the raisins for the pudding, and on the floor by the hearth Robbie was finishing a piece of gingerbread.
“Come in,” Mrs. Tupper invited amiably, her voice holding nuances of a London background somewhere in the past. “I’m ’elping out ’ere today—and not for the first time.” She put her head on one side, frowning in concern. “La! You’re white as a sheet. Did you work too ’ard last night? I’ve ’eard all about it.”
Sarah shook her head, sinking down onto a chair. Robbie had come running to her, and she lifted him onto her lap. “I was afraid for the children, in case they’d run off somewhere.”
&
nbsp; “No fear of that. My youngest boy, Joe, is groom ’ere, and ’e’d ’ave kept an eye on them.” Mrs. Tupper paused in the beating of some eggs. “Don’t you go imagining that ’e ’ad any dealings with that lazy lot that were turfed out of ’ere yesterday. ’E’s a good, ’ard-working lad, and when he turned up for work this morning Mr. Garrett sent ’im back ’ome to fetch me to see to things.”
“Where are all my possessions?” Sarah asked, puzzled. On her lap Robbie was snuggling blissfully against her, thumb in mouth, and she cuddled him close.
Flora gave her the answer. “Me and the Boss moved all yo’r chattels into the closet while yo’ slept.”
Mrs. Tupper snorted. “A fat lot you did!”
Flora glowered at her, putting stubborn elbows on the table. “De Boss thanked me for hanging up Miss Sarah’s cloak real neat.”
“Why say Boss?” Sarah queried. “You could call him by his name—Mr. Garrett, or even Mr. Bryne.”
Flora giggled. “Yo’ sure is funny wid yo’r English talk yo’self, Missie.”
“Don’t be cheeky!” Mrs. Tupper gave the child a whack on the arm with her wooden spoon. “Nice manners never hurt nobody.”
“Mrs. Tupper!” Sarah exclaimed in protest.
The woman paid no attention, talking on garrulously. “I’ve already done what Mr. Garrett asked and seen about new staff. ’E should ’ave asked me in the first place. Real unlucky ’e’s bin, but that’s what comes on being a bachelor. Servants take advantage. I’d do for ’im myself if I didn’t ’ave so many young ones still at ’ome.”
“I’m hoping to be in charge,” Sarah said quietly.
Mrs. Tupper flashed her an uncertain glance. “So I gathered from what young Flora told me, but Mr. Garrett ’as said nothing. I’ve taken on Beth ’Unter, who’s an ’onest, reliable girl, and Agnes Jenkins is coming to cook—she was left ’igh and dry without a job when her employer died last week.” A distant thud interrupted her, and she lifted her head. “That was the front door. Mr. Garrett will ’ave gone with the gentlemen. I guess they came to get the latest news of what’s going on across the boundary. Everybody says there’ll be a war with the United States before the year is out.” She pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Mr. Garrett talks about ’is country’s rights being violated by British restrictions on ’is country’s trade, but ’e seems to forget that good King George ’as Boney at ’is throat, and can’t ’ave Yankee boats doing what they like on our ’igh seas!”
It was early evening when Bryne returned to the house. By that time Mrs. Tupper had departed, and the two new servants had moved in. Sarah, having put both children to bed, was folding freshly laundered garments away in a drawer when a fist thumped on her bedchamber door.
“Yes?” she said quickly, suddenly tense.
“I want to speak to you,” Bryne’s voice replied on a note of authority that brooked no refusal.
“Come in,” she replied.
He entered with a large striped box, which he tossed onto the bed. Turning toward her, he stood with feet apart, hands set on his hips, coattails swinging. “That was a crazy display of hysterics you indulged in at noon today,” he stated crisply. “Every man in that room immediately figured that I’d brought a mistress back with me from New England, and that we were engaged in a domestic squabble of some kind!”
She lifted her chin. “Surely, you explained?”
His eyes broke on an inner spark of irony. “Normally I never give explanations, but in this particular case I was compelled to in order, ma’am, to defend your honor.”
“Did they believe you?” she asked hesitantly. He had answered courteously enough, but somehow he had failed to reassure.
A fleeting look of satisfaction passed across his face, caught in a flicker of lashes and a brief outthrust of his lower lip. “They believed me,” he said without expression. Then he went across to the bed and lifted the striped box by the lid to shake the base free of it. As it dropped onto the quilt a gown of white lace tumbled out its folds, the gossamer layers hanging on the air like spiders’ threads.
“There you are,” he said. “I reckon that should fit you out for this evening. I took the liberty of taking one of your shoes to match up the size with a pair of satin slippers. After we’ve dined, and had a little discussion about the matter that we have to settle, I’m taking you to a soirée at the Governor’s residence. It bores me to go to these events on my own.”
She had been dazzled by the gown. She had never seen anything so exquisite before, but pride and a fierce independence put a stop to an intense feminine longing to rush forward and hold it up against herself before a looking glass. Moreover, his calm assumption that she would be willing to alleviate his boredom by accompanying him socially for the evening irritated her beyond measure.
“I couldn’t possibly accept such an extravagant gift,” she said stiffly.
He groaned and threw up his hands in exasperation. “Don’t be so prissy! I’ll not give it to you, if that eases your mind. But I want you to wear it this evening.”
She hesitated. Much could happen before it was time to leave for the soirée. Her time in the house could be running out to little more than an hour, for she feared that his conditions for her staying on would be centered on some totally unacceptable plan concerning Jenny and Robbie, such as their being fostered out somewhere. In the meantime she must hope for the best.
“I’ll put the gown on,” she said quietly.
He nodded, thrust his hands into his pockets, hesitated restlessly as if he would say something more, but appeared to change his mind, and with another nod he went from the room. It was as though he had won a battle where he had hoped for a truce, and found no pleasure in the victory.
The fashionably high-waisted gown fitted her perfectly. He must have taken full note of her figure and height to have selected so accurately, and the décolletage set off the creamy stem of her throat and the fullness of her breasts. With care and an inexplicable rising of excitement she dressed her hair back so that tiny tendrils fell curling at each side of her face.
Bryne must have been waiting for the first tap of her heels on the stairs, for he came forward to watch her descend with an approving glitter in his eye. He was looking very grand himself in a crimson velvet coat with gold buttons, a winged cravat, and slim dove-gray trousers. “Charming!” he declared. “A perfect English rosebud. How will you withstand this harsh clime, I wonder.” He held out his arm to her, his bow respectful, but she glanced at him warily, never quite sure of his attitude. He had ordered dinner to be served on the small round table in the parlor, instead of in the long dining room, and the atmosphere was immediately more intimate, the candlelight dancing on the soft green damask walls, and the window open to the warm May night where the moon hung like a great silver ball.
He talked about his trading business, how he dealt in merchandise that arrived by sleigh in winter from the eastern ports, but otherwise by water, and for that reason he had a couple of warehouses down on the wharf where goods were also both landed from and dispatched to Sackets Harbor and Oswego on the American side of the lake. He traded a great deal with the Indians in Upper Canada, such as the Missisaugas, the Mohawks, and the Chippewa tribe, and often rode long distances to deal with them himself, finding it more satisfactory than sending a representative.
He also told her about his ward. “Lucy’s French-Canadian mother died at her birth, and her father, a cousin of mine, who had lived in Montreal all his life, was killed in a riding accident when the girl was twelve. That was five years ago, and the first time I’d ever had cause to set eyes on her. But, being Lucy’s only relative, the obligation fell on me to become her guardian and take care of her financial affairs and wellbeing. I did not welcome it. She was a spoiled brat, and I had her packed off to boarding school in Kingston without delay. According to the progress reports that I receive from time to time, she is as willful as ever. I reckon the school has had a mighty tough task in trying to make a young la
dy out of her.”
“Don’t you ever visit her?” Sarah asked, a feeling of compassion going out toward the girl, who had lost an indulgent father only to be banished to the unloving discipline of a school by an impatient guardian.
He nodded amiably. “I visit her. Kingston is no great distance away. She’s a flirtatious little baggage, and bats her lashes at me in the manner born.” He pushed back his chair, dinner having come to an end, and he glanced at his gold watch before coming to hand her to her feet. “There’s plenty of time before I need send for the carriage,” he said. “Let’s sit on the veranda for a while.”
Now she should hear the ultimatum that he intended to put to her. Anxiety, which had been increasing steadily over the past hours, soared swiftly to a sharp peak, and as she moved ahead of him out to the veranda, she rested her fingertips against her chest as though to press it down. She was convinced that the condition was to be more drastic than a mere fostering out of the children. Throughout dinner the fear had been growing that he would suggest an orphanage, and being such a powerful man in the city, he could easily compel her by law to give up the children if he had a mind to be so brutal. If this should prove to be the case she must do everything in her power to make him change his mind. And that would not be easy. He had sent his ward away quickly enough. How much more willing he would be to rid his elegant residence of two small children liable to get into mischief or create a disturbance at any time.
The diaphanous frills of her gown shimmered as she sat down on a curved basket seat. He did not sit beside her at first, but remained leaning against the wooden pillar, leisurely smoking a cigar, a ruby ring on his finger sending out little slivers of carmine light. She was intensely conscious of his unswerving gaze fixed directly on her, but she tried to appear relaxed, looking out at the moonlit garden and the orchard beyond, where the blossom lay like clouds upon the branches, not stirring in the soft, still air.
Fair Wind of Love Page 5
