“Such as?”
“I don’t know. Others who are related, or who’ve been rooked by the crook that was apparently my former father-in-law?”
He held her gaze but saw no malice, or even subtle consciousness of guilt, in her bemused stare.
If she was testing his veracity on knowledge she already possessed, she was doing a good job of hiding it. And that made it easier for him to avoid answering.
“Most of the field hands live in accommodation on the estate with their families,” he said. “In the big house, only Miss Alma and Coral are related. As far as I know, Rufus has no family.”
“None? He never married? No children or extended family?”
“By the time he could marry, Cyril had him and Miss Alma locked into that criminal contract. And extended family...” He shrugged. “He was a small boy when he was brought here in the arms of woman who wasn’t his mother. She didn’t know his background.”
Her gaze was no longer curious or bemused—it was dismayed. She grasped a piece of paper off the desk and frowned at it.
It was a typewritten list of brief employee biographies, starting with his.
“Miss Alma’s widowed?”
“An honorific George and I prefer. There is no official record of her marriage, so she receives no pension. But she did tell George that she and her husband, Moses, were married by a preacher shortly before Moses escaped in the summer of sixty-four to join the union cause. He was killed before their daughter was born.”
She cleared her throat. “Their daughter?”
“Dottie. She’s buried here on the estate.”
She looked at him. “Illness?”
“Of a sort.” When she raised her brows in question, he clarified, “Opium. She was a couple of years older than George, and he told me that she lived a hard life. Always in trouble with his father, who’d had her whipped for insolence and slothfulness. She ran away when she was fourteen and died about ten years later. Before she died, however, George said she arrived here in a coach with one of her paramours, let her daughter, Miss Annabelle, out on the walk, and then drove off. Miss Alma didn’t even know Dottie had been here until little Annabelle was shown into the kitchen. She was just five, and started working alongside Miss Alma then and there, scraping food off of plates and stacking them for washing. It was the only way Cyril would agree to let her stay—if she earned her keep.”
“A five-year-old child?” She flapped the paper onto the desk. “Made to earn her own keep?”
Her background, and her demeanour towards him the previous day, had him half fearing she’d prove to be a feminine version of Cyril Sweeney. But her growing alarm to facts he dished out as dispassionately as possible given the unease scraping the underside of his breastbone with each revelation of Miss Alma’s and Rufus’s personal privations, and her seemingly genuine outrage about Miss Annabelle’s past treatment, eased that concern, freeing up room in his personal war chest of worries for a whole new one—one he hadn’t even contemplated.
For as he returned her stricken stare, he found himself mesmerised by the white striations in her irises that seemed to pulse like sunlight riven into light-filled spars by the deep water of a slow-moving river’s back eddy. Each shimmering, silken flutter induced a reciprocal tug inside his chest: a fingerling trout nibbling a baited hook yet too big for its mouth. But given a few weeks to grow...It was his turn to clear his throat.
“Miss Alma would likely have told you much of this herself, if you’d asked,” he said, training his gaze on the ledger he’d placed atop the pile. “She’s never been shy about sharing her past, or her feelings about certain people, but Rufus...It might be better if you didn’t—”
“Please, Mr. Banner.” She swivelled to face him fully, all trace of emotional conflict gone from her expression as the authoritative general’s mask from the day before slid back in place. “You needn’t explain. I appreciate your candour, and I assure you I will hold in confidence everything you’ve told me. But it is important I know my staff’s histories. It prevents me making assumptions of them...of stepping in it with them, as it were. So thank you. Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me. And you can trust that I will not weaponise the information against them. Now...” She drew breath and folded her hands in her lap. “Miss Alma’s great-granddaughter, Coral. I’ve hired her as my private maid. Do you know of any reason I should reconsider my choice?”
He paused, surprised by the unexpected, and unexpectedly good, news.
Smiling, he shook his head. “Not at all. Miss Coral is as sweet as her mother was, and as responsible as her great-grandmother is.”
“You knew Miss Annabelle?”
“For a short time.” He nodded. “I met her my first summer here. Coral was just taking her first steps, and Miss Annabelle—she was Mrs. Shepherd by then—was cheering her on. She was a brave woman,” he added soberly. “Always smiling, despite the terrible pain she was in every day.” He cleared his throat. “She passed that fall.”
Mrs. Sweeney eased out a slow breath. “I’m not sure I dare ask, but...Coral’s father?”
“Martin Shepherd. A good man. Son of a sharecropper here, who took over when his father died. But he was sickly, too. He’d had breathing troubles all his life. Worse some days than others. When Coral was four, he was taken down by pneumonia. He must have suspected he might not live to see her grow up, because he had paperwork ready, granting Miss Alma guardianship of her should anything happen to him. She’s been raising Coral ever since.”
Mrs. Sweeney nodded and, frowning, fit her knees under the desk once more to stare at the fireplace framed by shelves of books on the far wall. “Thank you for telling me all of this, Mr. Banner,” she murmured as she looked down at the page of biographies on the desk. “It gives me a much clearer portrait of some of the people here than these short summaries provided by Mr. Lyons.”
“It’s a portrait you can paint across most everyone here,” he said. “Sugar Hill has not lived up to its saccharine name, even for the family. Life here has always been a struggle. If it’s not the rain and mosquitoes, it’s the heat and drought, or fluctuating market prices, disease, and boll and vegetable weevils. Now it’s a war half a world away that’s bleeding our labour dry. That is why I wrote George last year and advised him we needed to increase pay again,” he added, steering the conversation back to business he knew well and was comfortable discussing. “That letter came back unopened shortly after we received word that he’d...passed.”
His fingers twitched with the visceral memory of holding that unopened envelope and staring at it with the awareness that it was the last letter he had, and would ever again, write his friend.
“I wasn’t sure what that meant for Sugar Hill’s future,” he continued, fisting his hands. “At least in the long term. But in the short term, I did what I felt best. I doubled wages and noted my decision and reasoning behind it in my monthly report—reports I’ve prepared and mailed every month since I took over operations.”
Her smile was pained. “I received a packet of documents last year from Mr. Lyons, and every month thereafter a report from you. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve only skimmed the information. I was...not well for many months following George’s death.”
He nodded soberly. “It was a shock.”
“Yes, it was,” she murmured, her expression abruptly as fragile as a window pane webbed with hairline cracks. Inhaling, she focussed her strongest smile yet on him. “You’ve done well, Mr. Banner.” She touched the stack of ledgers. “Sugar Hill’s quarterly profits are up, despite the wage increase, so thank you for taking the initiative. I hope you’ll accept my sincerest apology for arriving here woefully uninformed. I intend to rectify my ignorance. Can I count on you to help me do that, to help me learn all I need to know?”
He bit back an impulsive affirmative.
Behind that immeasurable green gaze and guileless smile sheltered a strong will and stronger intellect. A will strong enough to compel her t
o show up here without a personal advisor or even a personal maid and take on management of an estate in an industry she knew exactly nothing about; and an intellect keen enough to try and win over the one person on the estate who knew not only how to run it, but who had the contacts, and respect, to survive in the industry.
Part of him was intrigued at the prospect of being won over by her. That part wanted to agree to help her in any and all ways possible. Fortunately, a wiser part of him—the one with clear memory of the last time he’d gotten involved with a woman linked to George—told him to give his head a shake.
He forced a noncommittal smile.
“I’ll do my best.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Banner.” Her smile changed to a look of anticipation, and he sensed that she was expecting him to impart knowledge a little closer to home—as in, his home. He looked up at the oil portraits.
“George, I’m sure you recognise,” he said. “Next to him is his father, Cyril. Then Cyril’s father, Terrence, and then his father and Sugar Hill’s founder, John Sweeney. He came from Scotland via the West Indies and started with cane sugar, but he moved into cotton when it proved more profitable. Terrence expanded on his father’s legacy. Cyril introduced tobacco a few years before I started here.”
“I see,” she said, regarding Cyril’s gilt-framed likeness with disdain. Her censure was not misplaced.
He’d worked five years for Cyril—who’d adopted his daddy and granddaddy and great-granddaddy’s vicious style of stewardship—and still wondered why he’d stayed past his first week. Of course, the answer lay in a crypt not six hundred and fifty feet north and west of where he was sitting.
Despite their fifteen-year age difference, he and George had been friends. And Joe had despised the way Cyril treated George: talking down to him, criticising him for everything short of breathing. So when it became clear George had no friends beyond him and the kindnesses shown him by Miss Alma, Rufus, and other plantation workers, his planned short visit in the summer of ’01 en route to a railroad job ended with him staying on permanent. And when it had also become clear George had no real interest in the family business and only suffered through learning the minimum necessary to keep his father’s vitriol modestly in check, Joe had committed to learning everything he could about the business, if only to help George.
To his surprise, he discovered that he liked getting his hands dirty, learning the ins and outs of tobacco growing and its industry. He could see a future in it, even if George couldn’t.
George’s passion had been engineering. He could spend all day huddled over sheaves of paper with pencil and ruler, drawing angles and lines. Joe couldn’t fathom sitting still at a desk for even an hour. Not after a decade of developing his sea legs on the nomadic waters of the gulf.
Every school holiday from age six to sixteen, he’d worked alongside his father and three older brothers, hauling in heavy nets of live and thrashing fish or spiny and pincered lobster.
Blistering sun, pelting rain, howling winds...Nothing short of a hurricane kept his father’s schooner, the Irish Lass, in harbour. Twelve hours of tilling soil or tending the silent and stationary tobacco at Sugar Hill, even with the mosquitoes and in the heat and humidity, had felt like a holiday to a sixteen-year-old compared to a half-day skidding and sliding around on a wet ship deck, ducking his father’s backhands when he wasn’t working fast enough to suit him.
Add in his knack for numbers and determination to better himself—if only to avoid ever having to drag in another stinking fishnet—and he’d flowed easily into the lifestyle and work George abhorred.
Fifteen years later, he was still living the life George had abdicated, sitting next to his widow, trying to ignore her enticing perfume and the captivating way she tugged her lower lip with her teeth as she frowned and surveyed the desk.
“Is this everything?” she asked.
“Everything?”
“Yes.” She shifted the ledgers around before frowning at him. “There are ten ledgers of Sugar Hill’s finances since you became manager. What about before that, when George was at the helm, or when his father and grandfather were in control? I’d like to see those. His great-grandfather’s ledgers, too, if they exist.”
“I only brought out what’s relevant to current operations.”
“It’s all relevant, Mr. Banner,” she said. “If I’m to truly understand what I’m taking on here, I need to know all there is to know about Sugar Hill. Not just the place, but the people. So please, if there is more information, I should like to review it.”
His instinct was to dissuade her, to direct her away from Sugar Hill’s past with a suggestion she make of its future whatever she envisioned. Only it wasn’t his call. Not when her portrait would one day hang above his head with the other four.
It wasn’t just her owner status that compelled him to hold his tongue, however. The Devil knew he’d never held back with George. Not just because they were friends, but because he’d believed it his duty to inform and redirect George whenever his friend veered down a dangerous or wrong-headed path. Which, early on, had been often.
Despite his having lived more years at Sugar Hill than Joe could claim even now, George had never delved beyond surface knowledge of the business. What he hadn’t known had hampered his ability to make informed decisions. And that had been why, after only a couple of months, he’d washed his hands of operations and left. That wasn’t going to be the case here. George’s widow was proving herself incapable of being hands-off. Or of accepting of his word as adequate. Oddly enough, sharper than the twinge of offence tweaking his ego was a feeling of relief. And respect.
Her approach echoed his—that anything worth having or doing was worthy of proper attention and care.
To him, that meant knowing not just what he needed to do his job well, but also what those who worked under him needed to do their jobs well. It seemed she had similar values—if a tedious methodology. So maybe, just maybe, she could handle what it was she was asking him to provide. Even if she couldn’t, it wasn’t like she’d given him a choice.
“All right,” he said with a slow nod. “If you want to know Sugar Hill’s full history, then we’d best go down into the archive.”
Chapter 6
The Archive
“INCREDIBLE,” SHE MURMURED, turning in a slow circle in the centre of the cylindrical room. Accessed through a panel in the wall of the study and down a short wrought-iron spiral staircase, the archive was a stone-walled room lit by sunlight through an arched glass dome. In its epicentre sat a worn teak desk. Eight-foot tall shelves jammed with artefacts, leather-bound journals, and reams of rolled papers secured with ribbon or leather string lined the perimeter. Her gaze stalled on a large glass jar on a middle shelf, and, taking a step towards it, she frowned.
“Is that...real?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Banner said.
She stopped and stared, chill creeping across her skull as she grappled with the reality of what she was seeing: a baby. A tiny human infant—with two heads—floating in a clear-fluid-filled jar like a pickled artichoke. She swallowed, suddenly grateful she’d not had the stomach for a large breakfast.
“Why on earth would anyone preserve it?”
“Terrence Sweeney had a fascination for oddities and anatomy,” Mr. Banner said. “That satisfied both interests.”
It certainly did.
“Did it live?” she murmured, releasing an unsteady breath as her shock gave way to aching sorrow.
“No. It was stillborn. To Terrence’s sister, Imelda.”
“Sister?” Her stomach fluttered when he brought his intense, dark-lashed gaze to bear on her.
He nodded. “Terrence kept extensive diaries from a young age. I’ve not read them, but George filled me in on what was in the jar when I expressed the same shock you’re experiencing now. It’s all there, and more.” He gestured to a full set of shelved black volumes, each one bearing the calendar year stencilled in gold letters
on the spine. “Cyril Sweeney’s diaries are on the upper shelves of the next case, and the few George kept and left here are on the bottom. He drew, more than he wrote.” He indicated a large, flat file cabinet tucked under the staircase. “The drawers are full of his sketches.”
It was a larger and older version of the small wheeled cabinet George had ported with him to each new job and she had gifted to his foreman along with the drawings it contained. It had been to his foreman that George had bequeathed his architectural business.
She closed her eyes and, in need of fresh air, looked up at the illusion provided by the panels of blue sky framed in the dome’s arched copper ribs.
“I don’t recall seeing a dome outside,” she murmured.
“By design,” Mr. Banner said.
Her stomach gave another little lurch when she looked at him. It was that wolf-like gaze of his, steady and penetrating, like he was waiting for her to run so he could give chase.
Pressing the soles of her shoes firmly to the stone floor, she cleared her throat. “Design?”
He nodded. “Terrence was the youngest of John and Donella Sweeney’s five children. He inherited because his elder brother was killed fighting the British in New Orleans not long after his sister Imelda died. His surviving sisters were married and gone by the time he inherited, and this house was only partially constructed. He and his mother stayed in the cottage Maisie and I call home while he assumed control of the build. He had this room added, though you won’t find it on the existing blueprints.”
“No?” She frowned. “Why not?”
“The acknowledged reason?” His smile was bitter. “The room needed to be kept secret as a hiding spot for the family in case of a slave rebellion.”
“And the unacknowledged reason?”
He glanced at a pair of bookcases. No, not the cases, but a shadowed gap between them where a black iron ring was embedded in the stone.
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