The Charm School by Susan Wiggs
Twenty-Two
They have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—fought like
very tigers for freedom! But they have been
hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants
have been their historians!
—Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal on Behalf of That Class ofAmericans Called Africans (1833)
“I’m bankrupt, little brother.” Hunter Calhoun’s words slurred together, melded by the combined effects of too much whiskey and too little sleep. Slow as cold treacle, he rose from his winged armchair and went to the sideboard to slosh more sour mash into his tumbler.
Ryan sat in the parlor of Albion, trying to hide his shock. It had been years since he’d been back, but he remembered the place well enough to note the drastic changes. The marble mantelpiece, once gleaming, now bore yellowish stains and thick streaks of soot. The Irish crystal vases and lamp chimneys were black with neglect. The French pianoforte was gone; three dimples in the wood floor marked the spot where the valuable instrument used to stand. No servants or maids bustled about with their dusters and brooms. No delicious smells emanated from the kitchen. No singing came from the compound or the tobacco fields.
“What the hell happened?” Ryan asked, studying Hunter.
His elder brother had always been a mythic figure to Ryan. Blond and handsome, an athlete who excelled at every gentlemanly pursuit from fox hunting to ballroom dancing, he’d been the man his father had raised him to be. A true son of the South.
Now Hunter’s complexion was ashen, his eyes hopeless. He rolled an unlit cigar between his thumb and forefinger. “You could say it’s a legacy from our dear, departed father.” With an unsteady hand, Hunter lit the cigar, puffed on it once, then let it dangle forgotten from his hand draped over the threadbare arm of his chair.
“I don’t understand. He left you everything—”
“And you felt so put upon because he cut you out of his will.” Hunter hurled the cigar into the cold hearth. “You should count your blessings, Ryan. ’Cause you don’t want what he left me with.” Hunter made a vague gesture in the direction of the estate offices across the hall. “About twenty years’ worth of unpaid debts.”
Ryan’s blood chilled when Hunter told him the amount. It was difficult even to conceive of that much money. He had grown up taking it for granted—the luxury, the freedom from want. Now he understood that it was all an illusion, an illusion built on a broken man’s dreams.
“Why didn’t you know about this?” he asked his half brother. “Why didn’t my mother know?”
“He never spoke of his failure to me. Why should he? You were always off with Journey, and then you were up in Cambridge playing Yankee radical. As for your mother, she paid no attention.” Hunter’s voice held no contempt. “Father always did deal with problems that way—shoving them aside. Sending them away.” He picked up his chipped mug and took a drink of his whiskey. “Selling them down the river.”
Remembrance flickered in Ryan’s mind. “That was years ago. Do you still think about what happened?”
Hunter gave a sarcastic snort and encompassed the room with a sharp gesture. “Do you see anything better to think about?”
Ryan shrugged awkwardly. “It seems so long ago.”
“Didn’t mean to bark at you.” Hunter swirled his drink. “I guess you were pretty young when it all happened. How old were you? Thirteen? Fourteen?”
“Yes. All I remember is that the slave girl’s name was Seraphim, and she was a laundress.” He pictured a slender girl in a tattered apron, an ebony curl tumbling down her brow as she bent over her steaming laundry cauldrons. “I recollect a lot of shouting from Father, too. Journey and I were hiding under the stairs when he found out and went looking for you.” Ryan glanced at the twisted staircase, hung with cobwebs. “Now that I’m older, I’m surprised he took on so about you having a love affair with a slave woman.”
It was one of the things Ryan hated the most about slavery. “So why did Father get so mad?”
A bitter laugh escaped Hunter. “I broke the rules, little brother. I fell in love with her. And that, of course, was unforgivable. It violated the principle that keeps the slave system in place. It acknowledges that a slave is human, that she could be beautiful in the eyes of a man, that she’s worthy of love.”
Ryan stared at his brother in shock. That was it, then. Now, drunk and broke, Hunter was revealing the defining event of his life. His failed love dwelt at the heart of the darkness in his eyes.
“I suppose you remember how Father ended it between us, too,” Hunter said.
“I do. The son of a bitch sent her to auction.” The memories washed over him. He heard her pitiful screams as the slave traders carried her off to the dock and put her on a ship bound for the market in Savannah. He remembered the sound of a gunshot, and people running frantically, expecting to find Hunter with his head blown off.
He’d shot his father’s prize garden statue, a monument of Jared Calhoun on a horse. Then, without saying a word, Hunter had saddled a horse and taken off for the University of Virginia.
Some years later he’d married Lacey Beaumont, the daughter of their neighbors to the north. They had two children, Belinda and Theodore.
“Where’s your wife, Hunter?” Ryan asked quietly.
“At Bonterre. With the children.” Hunter stared at his big hands. “Damn it, Ryan. God damn it to hell. I miss my kids.”
And so does Journey,said a voice in Ryan’s mind. He had been counting on the goodwill of the Beaumonts. But what sort of goodwill would they extend to a Calhoun who had failed their daughter? Now what the hell was he going to do?
At that moment, the door creaked eerily. Ryan twisted around in his chair, but saw no one. “Ghosts, big brother?”
Hunter got up and looked behind the door. “Blue,” he said, his voice harsh. His face went ashen as he said, “How long have you been here, son?”
“Don’t know, Daddy,” came a small voice.
“Lord, but I’ve missed you.” He scooped up the small boy and hugged him close. Hunter squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled deeply. “I’ve missed you so much, Blue.”
Ryan hurried over to them, hoping to distract the lad from the conversation he’d overheard. Most of it probably went over the tyke’s head, but it would do the already troubled kid no good at all to hear that his father had once loved a slave girl.
The boy squirmed out of Hunter’s arms and regarded Ryan with big eyes. He had the sort of cherublike features that would make middle-aged ladies want to pinch his cheeks and kiss him on his freckled nose, poor kid.
“Hey there, Theodore,” Ryan said.
“My name’s Blue.”
“Hey there, Blue. I bet you don’t know who I am.”
“Sure I do. You’re my damnyankee Uncle Ryan.”
“So I’m a damn Yankee, am I?”
“’S what Pappy Beaumont says.”
Thatdidn’t bode well, Ryan thought. “So how come your daddy calls you Blue?”
“Everybody calls me Blue. On account of the rhyme.” He peeked shyly at Hunter. “When I was real real small, Daddy told me I’d always be his little boy Blue.”
Hunter pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to gain control of himself. “Does your mama know you’re here?”
Blue stabbed the toe of his boot at the floor. “I sneaked out. I hate it there, Papa. Mammy Georgia boxes my ears, and they make me eat oatmeal without any syrup and they give me mustard greens for supper.” He made a wretched face. “And I have to stay inside all day.”
“How would you like to come outside?” Ryan said, glancing at Hunter. “I’ll show you my old lookout tower and you can climb up and take a look at my ship.”
“Let’s go!” Blue sped out the door.
Wading through knee-high grass, the three of them crossed the lawn and walked down to the landing. Tall salt grass choked the area around the creaky dock, but the old loblolly pine, once a haven for Ryan and Journey, still stood tall and straight as the mast of a clipper ship.
Ryan boosted the boy into the tree. “Take hold of those rungs there and climb on up to that platform. Journey and I spent a whole summer putting it together.” He smiled, remembering the soft night air and the dreams he’d once had.
“I see her!” Blue called out, scrambling to the split hickory platform.
“That’s the Silver Swan. My very own command.” From this distance, he couldn’t see anything but the silhouette of the ship. He’d come ashore alone, leaving Journey nervous and pacing the decks, Isadora sending him dubious, unreadable looks and the men showing their impatience to return to Boston and collect their pay. Everyone on that ship depended on him. He felt the pressure like a constant headache. And Hunter’s problems didn’t make his task any easier.
“How are things between you and the Beaumonts?” he asked his brother.
Hunter gave a humorless bark of laughter. “This is the South, little brother. There’s no greater shame than being poor.”
“So everyone’s gone? The servants, the workers, the overseer?”
“Everything. All our people. You’ll be pleased to know I freed them rather than handing them over to the slave trader to pay off Father’s debts. Joshua lives here still, because he and his wife were so old. I gave him and Willa the overseer’s house. Nancy still lives where she always did. She went blind a few years ago. Willa looks after her.”
“So what’s going to happen with you and Lacey? To Albion?”
“With luck, it’ll burn to the ground.”
Ryan kept his eye on Blue, high on the viewing platform. “I’m serious, Hunter. You have a family to think of. Joshua and Willa and Nancy are your family, too. Are you going to let them starve?”
“Of course I won’t let them starve, damn it.” With more speed than Ryan would have expected him capable of, Hunter picked up a rock and threw it. Even after two glasses of whiskey, he had perfect aim, hitting a tree trunk with the rock at fifty feet. He’d always been a crack shot, much to the detriment of that marble statue. “I have a meeting with the officers of Dominion Bank in Richmond next month. If I’m lucky, they’ll advance me a loan to start up again.”
“But you have no laborers.”
Hunter laughed again. He’d always had a marvelous laugh, and it was marvelous still, though edged with desperation now. He held out his big, pale hands to the light and splayed his fingers. “Little brother, these hands have held the reins of the finest horseflesh in Virginia. They’ve cradled bottles of wine worth more than some men earn in a lifetime. They’ve been dealt hands of cards that won or lost a small fortune. And they’ve loved more women than I’ll ever admit to. The one thing they’ve never done is a day of hard, honest labor.” He turned them palms up, studied them as if they belonged to someone else. “Right now, they’re the only thing I can truly claim as mine. So I suppose I’d better get used to the idea of doing the work myself.”
“There’s too much to do.”
“Your confidence warms my heart, brother.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“Since when do you care, Ryan?”
“You’re my brother. You’re family.” He shaded his eyes and motioned for Blue to climb down.
“Then you lend me the money to make a new start,” Hunter said. “I was thinking Irish racehorses—”
“I don’t have that kind of money.” I have another use for my money. Ryan let the idea slide away on a morass of regret. “After I settle...some things here and discharge my cargo in Boston, I’ll come home for a while, help you get back on your feet.”
Hunter stared out at the bay, nodded absently. Blue dropped to the ground beside him and loyally took his hand.
“I’d best be going,” Ryan said, his heart leaden with the knowledge of what lay ahead. “I have to return to my ship to fetch...something before I visit the Beaumonts.”
Hunter stiffened. “Why would you want to visit the Beaumonts?”
Ryan had a strange urge to unburden himself to Hunter. He and his brother had never been close, yet for some reason Ryan wanted to tell him. He couldn’t, though. He and Hunter lived in different worlds. “Lacey’s my sister-in-law. And I’ve never met my niece.”
Hunter gave a bitter snort of laughter. “Give my love to my darling wife.”
A sharp oath broke the quiet of the anchored ship. Isadora, who had been listening to Timothy Datty read from Two Years Before the Mast, looked up from her deck chair. On the aft deck, Ryan and Journey stood face-to-face.
“Never heard Mr. Journey cuss like that,” Timothy observed. “Guess the skipper’s business ashore didn’t go well.”
She remembered the expression on Ryan’s face when he’d seen the fallow fields of Albion. “I imagine you’re right.”
Journey turned sharply away from Ryan and stalked to the rail, holding himself with stiff dignity as he faced the shore. At his sides, his fists clenched and unclenched. Ryan said something with a note of impatience in his voice that quickly crescendoed to anger; then he disappeared into his quarters.
Timothy set the book aside. Isadora’s first impulse was to go to Journey, but she hesitated, making her way instead to the captain’s cabin. She rapped on the door.
“It’s Isadora.”
A pause. Then Ryan said, “You might as well come in.”
When she saw what lay on the table before him, she gasped. “That’s the specie from the ship’s till.”
“Astute of you to notice,” he said.
She refused to flinch at his sarcasm. “I thought only Mr. Easterbrook could open the safe.”
“Well, you thought wrong, sugar.”
She walked forward and pressed her palms on the table. This was not the Ryan Calhoun she had come to know. This man was driven and angry, uncommunicative and vaguely threatening. But Isadora had changed, too. She wasn’t afraid of him.
“Tell me what’s troubling you.”
“My brother’s broke. The farm’s a ruin.”
She sat down on the curved bench next to the table. “You can’t give him this money.”
“Christ, what do you take me for?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Why don’t you explain yourself?”
He helped himself to a cup of port wine from the silver-clad decanter on the table. When he offered some to Isadora, she shook her head. “Tell me.”
“I need to buy three slaves,” he said, his voice barely audible. “It’s a promise I made a long time ago.”
Shock sucked the air from her lungs. She felt her eyes widen and then, in a rush of understanding, she relaxed against the back of the tufted bench. “You mean Journey’s wife, don’t you? His wife and children.”
He didn’t speak; he didn’t have to. She could read the truth on his face, and it made her want to leap up and launch herself at him, smothering him with kisses. All along she had thought him selfishly ambitious. At last she understood why.
She didn’t go to him, of course. She couldn’t, not now.
“So you see the dilemma, don’t you? I’m compelled to steal from my employer—and therefore from my own men—in order to keep a promise I made to Journey.”
“Isn’t there any other way? Couldn’t you make a promissory note to—what was the man’s name?”
“Beaumont. And the answer’s no. Calhoun credit isn’t much good in these parts lately.” Ryan’s chest expanded in a deep breath.
“And if you don’t take the money?”
“We leave here without Journey’s wife and kids. I won’t do that.”
She felt a tug at the conviction in his voice. It was rare indeed to find a man who was that committed, that loyal. It was a new and thrilling thing to her. And she said, meaning every word, “I know a way to accomplish this.”
He looked up and his eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Hand me the bo’sun’s whistle.”
Frowning, he took the silver whistle from around his neck. “I don’t see—”
“Of course you don’t,” she said in exasperation. “Wait here.”
She went out on deck, sounding the whistle. Ryan followed, propping his hip on a spirit barrel and regarding her with unconcealed skepticism. The crew gathered, clearly intrigued when they saw who had summoned them. Men, she thought. Sometimes they had bilge for brains.
She surveyed the circle of faces—harsh and bewhiskered, scoured by sun and wind, and realized with a lurch of her heart that in one voyage she had come to know these men better than she knew the members of her own family. Journey hung back, toying anxiously with the pendant around his neck. He had been solemn and thoughtful the past few days, and he was off his rations. Now she knew why. Terror and hope were consuming him.
“I think,” she said, “you probably all know our purpose in making port here.”
“We’re to fetch Journey’s wife and babies,” Timothy said steadily, “so they can be together as God and nature intended.”
She wanted to hug him for his simple, straightforward wisdom. If people in the South held the lad’s view, the abomination of slavery would not exist.
“’Tis only right we tolerate the delay,” Gerald stated with a firm nod in Journey’s direction.
“We are all agreed, then?” she asked.
Click rubbed his jaw speculatively. “Depends on what we’re agreed to.”
“I shall get right to it, then, for you are used to plain speaking. Captain Calhoun is in need of several thousand dollars for this transaction, and the only available source is the ship’s specie.”
“A hanging offense, laying hands on that,” said Chips.
“Piracy,” added Luigi.
“At the very least, we’ll be stripped of our seamen’s papers if we’re caught,” Izard stated.
“This was supposed to be my last voyage,” William Click said. “I’ve been saving up for a little farm.”
“I’ve got a family to feed,” Gerald reminded everyone.
“If I don’t pay my debts, I’ll land in jail for sure.” The Doctor stared mournfully down at his hands.
“This wasn’t part of the deal.” Chips sounded belligerent. “I signed on for full share.”
Isadora drew herself up, looking at each man in turn. “You are each free to determine what you can afford to do. Do you understand the meaning of that? You are free to decide.” She paused, feeling them waver. “Journey’s wife is not.” She fixed each man with a hard look. “I shall repay you myself out of my dowry money.”
“You can’t do that,” Gerald objected. “What will you bring to your husband when you marry?”
The laughter that bubbled up in her throat was painful. It was hard to believe that at one time, all she had dreamed of was marrying Chad Easterbrook. What a pitiful, self-deluded creature she had been. Ryan Calhoun had broken her heart, that was true. But he had also opened her eyes.
She felt his gaze upon her now, and dared to meet that chilly stare. This man had forever laid waste to her hopelessly romantic dreams. She should be grateful to him, but at the moment the hurt pressing against her chest left no room for gratitude.
“Believe me,” she said, “slavery is a far greater evil than my spinsterhood.”
Ryan turned away, planting his hands at his waist and staring at the reedy shoreline in the distance.
“What say you, gentlemen?” she asked, pretending not to notice his disgust. “Are you with your shipmate on this?” While she watched and waited, she held her breath, a hard knot in her throat.
The Doctor shuffled forward. “I never did bear the yoke of slavery,” he said to Journey. “But I am an African, too, and your brother in spirit. Debt or no debt, I’ll throw in my share.”
Journey shut his eyes, his face flooding with relief.
“Take it off our sailors’ bills,” Gerald said. “Whatever you need.” He fixed Mr. Click with a flinty eyed stare. “Ain’t that right?”
“Our sh-shares are huge on this trip,” Timothy added. “And Miss Isadora will make good on her promise.”
“Never said I wouldn’t throw in my lot.” Click nodded his head in Journey’s direction. “Whatever it takes, that’s what we got to offer.”
Journey made a choking sound, then turned away briefly. When he turned back, he could only mouth the words “Thank you.”
Isadora beamed at them all, letting the knot in her throat unfurl. “I’ll go get the ledger books.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” Izard murmured as he stood at the rail beside Isadora. They watched Ryan sculling for shore in a launch.
“It will,” she stated. “All the figures summed up perfectly—”
“I fear money’s not the problem.”
She turned to study him. The chief mate was a puzzling man, quiet and somber, yet with a sturdy core of decency everyone respected, and an undeniable intelligence that made her listen when he spoke up. “So what, in your estimation, is the problem?”
“Perhaps I should have spoken sooner. I don’t believe Beaumont will take the money. He won’t accept any sum for the woman and her babies.”
“How do you know so much about this?”
He hesitated, then said, “My late wife had African blood.”
She gaped at him in wonder. “Mr. Izard—”
“Trust me, I know.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“Would you have listened? Would anyone?” He spread his arms. “You might get to keep your dowry after all.”
“That is not funny.” She started to pace, her teeth worrying her lower lip. “Something has to be done, then. Something bold. Something audacious. Something that will work.”
Izard was silent for a long time. “Miss Isadora, what are the chances you could charm the stockings off an old Southern gent?”
She laughed. “I couldn’t charm the peel off a banana, for heaven’s sake.”
“Not even if three lives depended on it?”
Her amusement faded. Self-doubt, her age-old companion, shadowed her thoughts. But then she glanced at the foredeck and spied Journey silhouetted against the late afternoon sky. He cut a lonely figure, tall and slender against the backdrop of the fiery clouds.
Ain’t never seen my baby girl.
Isadora straightened her shoulders. “I think, Mr. Izard, that I am about to become charming.”
Ryan had expected a chilly reception at Bonterre, but the outright hostility of Hugh Beaumont took him by surprise. The moment he walked up the horseshoe-shaped drive, a houseboy went running, and Beaumont himself appeared on the gleaming white porch, flanked by soaring columns.
He had changed little from Ryan’s boyhood recollection. He’d always been a tall, ramrod straight widower with long hair and a waxed mustache with handles wide enough for birds to perch on. He wore well-cut clothes of stark black and snow-white, a marked contrast to Ryan’s canary yellow shirt and peacock blue jacket. Maybe he should have listened to Journey and worn more somber colors, but it was too late now.
“Mr. Beaumont,” he said, “it’s a pleasure to see you.” Ryan mounted the porch steps and stuck out his hand.
Beaumont ignored it. “I take no pleasure in this meeting. And no Calhoun is welcome in my house.”
Ryan flashed his best smile. “We’re off to a fine start, then, aren’t we? A dandy start. All right, sir. Suppose we forget I’m a Calhoun. I’ve come to make a business transaction with you, pure and simple. And then I’ll be on my way.”
The waxed mustache twitched. “What sort of business?”
“I’m interested in acquiring some slaves.” Ryan nearly gagged on the words. “The wench called Delilah and her young ones.”
Beaumont tilted back his head and roared with laughter. “I guess they didn’t teach you much up there at Harvard College. Else you’d know damned well I’m on to you. You’re interested in Delilah because you took her man away, set the buck free.” His laughter stopped. “Don’t you see, boy? If you’d left well enough alone, that family’d be together.”
Ryan used all of his self-control to keep from trying to pound common sense into Beaumont’s head. “Sir, I’m prepared to pay—”
“Uncle Ryan! Uncle Ryan!” Blue came tumbling across the lawn, a little tousle-haired moppet in tow. “Hey Uncle Ryan! What you doing here? Are you going to stay for supper?” He unleashed a steady stream of questions as he led the little girl up the steps to the porch. “Can we go look at your boat again? You want to help me build a tree house?”
“Whoa, there, son,” Ryan said, smiling as he went down on one knee. “This your sister?”
“Uh-huh. Belinda. She’s three.”
“Well, hey there, three-year-old Belinda.” Ryan winked at her. She stuck one finger in her mouth. Through a tumble of yellow curls, she peered at him shyly with eyes as blue as painted china. “I’m your uncle Ry—”
“Children, come inside this instant,” said a nervous-sounding voice from the door.
Ryan straightened up quickly. “Lacey, it’s good to see you again.”
“I’m sure I can’t say the same,” she stated, then creaked open the screen door. Looking subdued but resentful, Blue and Belinda went to her side. Petite and beautiful, her hands moving in flutters of agitation, she kept her eyes averted from Ryan. “Father, I trust you won’t be long? It’s nearly the children’s bedtime.”
He nodded. With visible relief, Lacey let the door slap shut.
Evening was coming on, a long flat lowering of the light over the bay. On the road that passed in front of the main house, a horse whinnied, and somewhere unseen in the distance, a deep voice sang a spiritual hymn. As always in the mysterious tidewater region, beauty and brutality were present in equal measures.
Beaumont said, “I won’t do business with you, Calhoun. Is that clear?”
Ryan drew a deep breath. “I’ll pay you double what they’re worth.”
Beaumont smiled. “It’s not a matter of money, but one of principle. Allowing this sort of thing would upset the natural balance of things. I can’t simply sell a family into freedom. That would be irresponsible of me.”
Ryan loosed a bark of incredulous laughter. “Good God, man, do you hear what you are saying?”
Beaumont drew himself up. “Sir, you are the one who is having trouble hearing. I’ll do no business with you. The wench and her babies are not for sale at any price.” He made a loud exhalation of disgust. “Your entire family is a disgrace.”
Ryan’s hand clenched into a fist. With a will, he kept it at his side. At least, he thought furiously, he would have no need of the ship’s money. But now he’d have to find another way to bring Journey’s wife north with them.
“Goodbye, Mr. Beaumont,” Ryan said formally. “I shall give your regards to my brother.”
“Sir, your brother knows exactly where he stands in my regard.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.”
“Pardon me. I believe I have another visitor.” Beaumont brushed past Ryan and walked down the steps.
Ryan turned to see a tall black-clad woman in a plumed hat and beaded veil hurrying across the lawn. His mouth dried as he recognized her. Hell’s bells. Why had Izard allowed Isadora to come ashore? This could mean nothing but trouble. It could mean he’d hang even sooner than he feared. “What the devil—”
“Do you know her?” Beaumont demanded, watching with interest.
Ryan couldn’t imagine what she was up to. He was out of options with Beaumont, so perhaps he had best wait and see. Isadora had her faults, but stupidity was not one of them. He gave a noncommittal shrug and waited for her to approach.
“There you are, Ryan Calhoun,” she declared in a remarkable Virginia accent. “I wondered where you’d run off to.” Before he could reply she made a dainty curtsy for Beaumont. “Sir, please pardon this terrible intrusion.”
“No trouble at all, ma’am.” He paused, clearly expecting Ryan to make the introductions.
Isadora spoke before he had a chance. She put out a hand gloved in black lace. “Isa—Isabel Swann, of the...the Hipsucket Swanns. Up in Spotsylvania County, don’t you know. I’ve been promised a berth to Boston aboard Captain Calhoun’s ship. I was so afraid he had left without me.”
Hugh, ever the know-it-all, smiled with gentlemanly politeness. “I see. Hugh Beaumont, at your service.”
Behind the veil, she gave off an air of mysterious allure. “And I fear we must ask it of you,” she said. “Your service, that is.”
“Oh?”
She drew herself up stiffly. Censure seemed to radiate from behind the veil. “I came looking for Mr. Calhoun—we have been expecting him, you see—when our clarence became mired out on the road. Do you think some of your people could lend us a hand?”
Trying to figure out the angle of her ruse, Ryan marveled at Isadora’s poised, calm, elegant performance. How different this beguiling creature was from the awkward girl who had first bumbled her way onto his ship.
“Your carriage is mired?” Beaumont asked.
“I fear so.” She aimed a censorious finger at Ryan. “It is all your fault for wandering willy-nilly about the countryside. Mr. Beaumont, if we could please get some help.”
“Certainly, madam. I’ll order my overseer to bring you a band of men,” Beaumont said.
“Thank you ever so much. We shall need a good number. We are quite deeply mired.”
Where the hell had she learned that melting Southern accent? Ryan wondered.
“And Mr. Beaumont, one more favor.” She leaned forward, put a hand on his sleeve and spoke in an intimate fashion that made Ryan bristle. “I have a confession to make as well. For years I’ve heard of a magnificent place called Bonterre. Now I’m enjoying my chance to see it.”
And suddenly Ryan grasped her mad plan. Transporting escaped slaves was a crime. She and everyone involved would become fugitives with a price on their heads.
And—God help them all—he was going to let her.
“Oh, Mr. Beaumont, you do go on,” Isadora said with laughter in her voice. “I won’t ever want to leave if you don’t stop being so charming.”
Strolling by her side in the falling dark, Hugh Beaumont straightened his cravat. “On the contrary, Miss Swann. You are the charmer, not I.”
“Sir, my head shall explode from its swelling,” she protested.
Ryan gave a derisive snort.
Beaumont ignored him. “I have fallen completely under your spell.”
She knew a moment of utter incredulity. The idea that a man, any man, might find her charming was beyond her comprehension. An astonishing novelty. Was she really being charming? Was this all there was to it?
She was amazed by the skills necessity could inspire. There was a time when Isadora hadn’t had a bold bone in her body; now it seemed that everything depended on her being bold.
She laughed again, amused by how easy it was to flirt and mimic the ways of a Southern social butterfly. “I insist that you stop it now, sir. My poor heart cannot take such flattery.”
“And God forbid,” Ryan muttered, trudging along behind them, “that your heart should suffer damage from flattery.”
Isadora chuckled silkily. Ye powers, was he jealous? Surely not at a time like this. He had to know how desperate the situation was. She had not discussed the plan with him. Watching from the side of the roadway, where they’d half sunk Hunter’s clarence in sticky black mud, she and the others had waited in the vain hope that perhaps Beaumont would sell the slaves to Ryan. When he had come out of the house alone, they knew they would have to set their plan in motion.
A stoop-shouldered man arrived at the head of a work crew. By the light of three torches, Isadora could see they were Africans. She tried surreptitiously to get Ryan’s attention. He could ruin everything. When his gaze met hers, he aimed a fierce stare at her. “Miss...Swann.”
She braced herself. “Yes?”
“I hope you don’t expect me to roll up my sleeves and unmire the clarence.” He flicked his thumb and forefinger fussily at his wrist.
She thought she might explode with relief. He seemed to be going along with her masquerade. It was quite a thing, to trust and be trusted by him on faith alone.
They reached the mired carriage, a clarence hitched to Hunter’s only remaining horse, a tired nag she hoped Beaumont wouldn’t recognize in the uncertain torchlight. Ralph and Luigi had done an excellent job sinking the rear wheels in the soft mud of the salt marsh that bordered the road.
The “mishap” had occurred near a dozen or so split-log cabins arranged haphazardly around a common area of bare earth.
“Stand back, sirs, there you are.” Ralph motioned for Mr. Beaumont and Ryan to step away. “Don’t want to splash mud all over you.”
A number of Hugh Beaumont’s “people” had come to help. Odd how he called them people yet treated them like livestock. One man, probably the overseer, whistled and shouted orders.
Ralph Izard gave Isadora the briefest of nods, then cut his gaze away, the signal to carry on with their plan. She waved a handkerchief in front of her face. “Oh, my heavens,” she said breathlessly. “All of a sudden I feel quite faint.”
Beaumont put a supporting hand beneath her elbow. “Shall I help you back to the house?”
“That’s not necessary.” She tried to seem mortified. “It is a complaint of a very female nature.”
That stopped any further speculation on his part. Ryan pursed his lips as if holding in mirth and turned his attention to the mired coach.
“I shall find a place to rest over here.” Her heart pounded as she approached the slave compound. A woman standing by the well and another by the big open-air cookfire stared at her. What a horror she must look to them—a white woman coming uninvited into their midst. Chickens scratched and poked in the beaten-earth yard, and children played a game with sticks and rocks. They were no different from any children, trying to snatch the last moments of the day as twilight fell, yet in too short a time, they would lose that innocent abandon.
Isadora felt as if she had entered a new and alien world, a place closed to a woman like her. A self-protective and savage air hung about the slave women. She guessed that they cultivated this frightening facade, for a white woman walking into their midst could mean nothing good. She was familiar with the antislavery tracts published in Boston, but nothing she had read had prepared her for this direct experience of the squalor and hostility that pervaded the compound.
She despaired of being able to identify Delilah among these silent, suspicious, homespun-clad women. Her every instinct told her to flee, to hide, to shrink away from a place she clearly didn’t belong. Then she reminded herself of her purpose. Journey was waiting aboard the Swan for his wife and children. She couldn’t let him down. Besides, there had been a time when she hadn’t belonged on shipboard either, but she had become more at home there than in a drawing room on Beacon Hill.
Holding her head high, she went to the well. How did a Southern lady ask a slave for a drink of water? she wondered wildly. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Please, I’d like a cup of water.”
“Yes’m.” Without meeting Isadora’s eyes, the woman pressed on the well sweep and brought up a bucket.
As Isadora drank the slightly brackish water from a tin cup, her veil kept getting in the way. A scrawny cat streaked across the dirt yard, and a small barefooted girl raced after it, giggling and oblivious to the tension of the women.
“Celeste,” someone called, “you get yourself back here, right now!”
Isadora tried not to appear interested in the young woman in a threadbare dress. Isadora was glad for the darkness and the veil, because she felt a glorious smile coming on. Celeste was the name of Journey’s younger daughter.
Setting down her cup, she stepped into the child’s path and leaned down. “Celeste,” she said gently, “your mama’s calling you.” She held out her gloved hand. “Come. I’ll take you to her.”
The child fell as still as a pillar of salt, her eyes big. Isadora cursed herself for not realizing that a stranger with a veiled face was as frightening as a ghost. Celeste sucked in a deep breath and formed her mouth into an O, preparing to let loose with a scream.
Isadora saw her plan falling to pieces. The child’s hysteria would draw Mr. Beaumont’s attention, and all would be lost.
But before Celeste screamed, Delilah arrived, grabbing her hand and yanking her away from Isadora. The child clung to her mother’s skirts, regarding Isadora with horror.
“Delilah,” Isadora whispered, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “Please, don’t run off. I have something for you.”
“I best be going, ma’am,” Delilah said, backing away. Her older child held fast to her hand. “It’s time to get my babies to sleep.”
It was all Isadora could do to keep from grabbing for her. She prayed no one would hear as she said, “I have something from Journey.”
A soft intake of breath was her only reaction. “Yes’m,” she said, very quietly.
A couple of the other women drew cautiously near. Isadora felt surrounded. Dear heaven, she was so close, yet how could she converse with Delilah now?
“Mistress needs to set a spell,” Delilah said calmly. “That’s all. Just needs to set a spell.”
She led her toward a mud-chinked cabin. To Isadora’s relief, the others stepped out of their way.
She sat on a crooked bench outside the cabin. Through the open door, she detected a faint glow from a rude stove with a teapot steaming atop it. The bed was a plank, the pillow a stick of wood, the bedding a coarse blanket.
Out on the road, the men were still busy whistling and hawing at the horse and trying to heave up the mired coach, but she knew she only had moments. She pulled something from her glove and pressed it into Delilah’s hand.
“From Journey,” she whispered. It was the love knot, fashioned from a lock of Delilah’s hair, on a leather strap.
Delilah’s rough, slender fingers closed around the amulet. “Lord be praised,” she said, so faintly that her children clutched at her.
“He’s worn it around his neck ever since the day he left you,” Isadora said. “We haven’t much time. If you wish to leave this place tonight, I and the men with me will help.”
Delilah’s white-rimmed eyes shone in the flickering light with terror and hope. And—God be praised—trust. The love-knot from Journey had convinced her. “Yes’m.”
As quickly as she could, Isadora explained the plan. “There is no time to think this over,” she cautioned. “But the risks are clear. You don’t have to go.”
“I know the risks,” Delilah said.
Isadora heard the conviction in her words. Delilah knew what was at stake better than Isadora ever would. In spite of her suffering, Delilah had the soft, womanly knowledge of her own humanity. She had birthed two babies and loved a man who was only half alive without her. Choosing between a lifetime of servitude and the threat of capture and punishment could not be easy for a woman with two tiny children. But Delilah had obviously made her decision. “I sorrowed a thousand nights for that man,” she said. “I’m through with sorrowing.”
“Then you know what to do.” Isadora stood, already moving away, not wanting to betray a particular interest in Delilah. She fanned herself vigorously and hoped Mr. Izard would notice, for that was the signal to move on to the next step.
The tense moments drew out unbearably. With a great rocking motion and a squishing of mud, with a chorus of male grunts and “heave-hos,” the carriage finally lurched up out of the mud. The horse, exhausted, gave a whinny and hung its head.
Isadora could hear the beating of her own heart in her ears, could feel the pulse of fear in her throat. She tried not to break into a cold sweat when she saw a quick flare of fire on the roof of one of the cabins. A woman screeched, and people ran toward the well. Luigi had touched a torch to the roof, creating mass confusion.
Meanwhile, Isadora walked quickly toward the coach, forgotten now in the excitement over the fire. Beside her, Delilah kept to the shadows, a child on each hip. No one seemed to notice as they went behind the coach. “Under the blankets, just there,” Isadora whispered.
Shushing one of the girls, who had started to whimper, Delilah complied. Isadora prayed the darkness and shouts and confusion had covered the maneuver. She waited patiently as the flames were doused. It didn’t take long, for the fire had no time to spread.
“Mr. Beaumont,” she called, “are things always this exciting around here?”
“Happily, no. I much prefer the genteel excitement of a visitor like yourself.” He bent gallantly over her hand, but when he straightened up, he looked at the clarence and frowned. “Isn’t that an Albion coach?”
“Oh, heavenly days, I wouldn’t say so. I hired it in Fairfield,” Isadora said breezily. “The driver and footman as well.” As Hugh took a step toward the rig, she moved in front of him. “And now I really must be going. But thank you ever so kindly. You have no idea how much you’ve given me tonight.”
She curtsied, and he bowed dramatically. “Miss Swann, you are a bright star in an otherwise dreary evening.”
“And you, sir, are a gentleman beyond compare. Come along, Mr. Calhoun,” she said to Ryan. Dear heaven, she sounded exactly like Lily. She prayed she had Lily’s dignity as she went to the coach and allowed Luigi to hand her up.
She dared not let herself worry about what Ryan thought of this charade. Gathering her skirts with great care, she seated herself as he got in behind her. Then the rig plunged into darkness, away from Bonterre forever.
Or so she hoped.
Weighing anchor in the dead of night was not the smartest thing Ryan had ever done as skipper, but thanks to Isadora’s maneuver, he had no choice. He should be furious, but he couldn’t get the grin off his face. He couldn’t stop thinking about Journey’s reunion with his family.
It had been pure magic. A moment he would savor for the rest of his days. Abandoning the carriage a mile from Bonterre, Ralph and Luigi had conducted their passengers to an inlet where Chips awaited in a bumboat. Rowing with all their might, they’d reached the Swan at moonrise. Delilah and the children, who had huddled in terrified silence the entire time, had spied Journey pacing the decks.
Ryan would never forget the look on Dee’s face when she recognized her husband by the light of a binnacle lamp. She had looked up from her seat in the boat, and Journey had looked down from the ship’s deck. Like a supplicant in church, she had lifted her gaze aloft, tightening her arms around her little girls and staring at Journey while the tears poured down her cheeks.
Isadora had wept unabashedly into her sleeve when Journey met Delilah at the boarding ladder. He’d held his girls in his arms and then, with a cry of joy so powerful it sounded like pain, he fell to his knees in gratitude, wrapping his arms around his wife’s waist. He pressed his cheek to her stomach and sobbed. Every sailor aboard, men who had been hardened by the sea and inured to emotion, began to weep, Ryan included. Even William Click rubbed at his eyes and honked into his bandanna.
Now, hours later, they had set sail in the dark, hoping to avoid the shoals Ryan knew like the back of his hand. The moon had begun to set, and its light created a silver stream on the glassy surface of the water. At the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, a fair wind filled the sails.
Ryan turned back to view Virginia. The dark hills rose to the starry sky, a dazzling display of beauty in crystal-studded black velvet.
Virginia.It was a place in his heart. And there it would stay. He could never return now.
He felt...strange. This was a moment of triumph, to be sure. For years he’d awaited this reunion. On some level his life had been moving toward this moment since the day he’d left his father’s house in disgrace. This was the culmination of everything he’d wanted, everything he’d worked for, everything he believed in. His heart should be full.
Yet something was missing. Something more. Something he needed in order to feel complete.
The burgeoning wind whispered a name through his mind. He felt a chill, a rising of the hairs on the back of his neck. Not now, he admonished himself. Especially not now. They were a ship of fugitives now, a band of outlaws. He was in no position to offer a future to anyone.
His goal was clear-cut. He had to get Isadora to Boston, leave her safe in the bosom of her family and convey Journey to Canada. That must be his focus, his purpose. Anything more was asking for trouble.
“Ryan?”
At the sound of her soft voice, he nearly let go of the wheel. “It’s late,” he said gruffly. “You should be sleeping.”
“How can I sleep after what we did?” She moved with a spritely gait, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight. She drew energy from the very air around her. How different she was from the pasty-faced, disapproving schoolmarm who had come aboard so long ago. Now she wore plain clothes, her hair unbound, her bare foot pressed casually against the rail. She looked so incredibly alluring to him that he nearly groaned aloud.
“What a fine day this was,” she said.
He grew irritated at the elation in her voice. “You turned us all into criminals.”
“Don’t sound so disapproving. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“I wanted Journey and Delilah together again, yes,” he admitted. “But I was hoping to do it without turning pirate.”
“Slavery is criminal.”
“Not in the eyes of the law.” Ryan felt the shock of an ugly truth. This day was not his. This victory was not his. She had taken both from him. Deep down, he felt outdone by her.