* * *
Just as Maddie had introduced the Thursday salon to London, she continued to host the gatherings in Charleston during the summer months. Her American version featured a more diverse guest list, due to the more liberal rules of local society. It was not all old families in her drawing room on King Street, but she filled the space with those who moved both up, and down, the financial ladder. As long as the guest had something of interest to add to the conversation, Maddie would extend an invitation and not worry about status or occupation. Impoverished artists were as welcome as the powerful Middleton family. Politicians mingled with poets and everyone talked about the war.
The first salon of 1814 opened on a note of concern about the conflict, two years old and not showing signs of finding a conclusion, dragging on without end. From his preferred perch nearest the east window, Ethan held court and provided what little news he managed to cull from Stephen’s infrequent correspondence. It was largely the gossip of privateers that Stephen passed along, and the listeners could make of it what they would. Maddie circulated, introducing new thoughts into stale discussions, and kept the chatter flowing. She put her greatest efforts into keeping the men and the women from drifting apart into separate cliques.
Shortly after the second Thursday salon she heard from Heywood, and Maddie had every intention of replying with a scolding note. The plantation he had intended to buy had proved worthless, and he had then been distracted by another that was up the Pee Dee. He could only hope that it was not as neglected as the first. Before Maddie could decide which tone to take with her overly ambitious husband, he was brought home to King Street and carried up to the bedroom, too sick to walk on his own.
The doctor diagnosed malarial fever and Maddie wasted no time in sending her children to Ethan for their safety. She brewed teas of wormwood and cinchona bark, covered Heywood with blankets when he shivered and sponged his body when he dripped with sweat. Days and nights blurred together, the passage of time marked by the transition from chills to fever. People came and went, sat and paced, while Maddie kept watch, alert to the slightest change that might offer some hope.
“That place on the Pee Dee,” Heywood mumbled during a lucent period. “Banks tumbled to ruins. Worked to death, the people. Too few left to keep up the rice beds.”
“You get better and I swear I will never let you out of my sight again,” Maddie said.
He managed a weak smile. “Wasted trip. No more wandering.”
“You’re home to stay.” His forehead was as hot as a blacksmith’s forge.
The corners of his mouth grew slack as he lapsed into a deep sleep. Maddie dozed off as well, exhausted, only to be pulled out of her dreams by the frenzied clutch of Heywood’s hand. She watched his body convulse, recalling the doctor’s description of what to expect if treatment failed. She pushed her feet against the floor, as if the room were listing to starboard and she was about to topple. Called by Ethan, the Tafts and the Beauchamps gathered, clustered to one side while Maddie’s life tipped and then keeled over, to sink under a black wave.
Friends and family surrounded her until she could find her footing, but she remained unsteady into September when it was time to return to the plantation for the harvest. Ethan had been of immense help in sorting out the tangle of business affairs, but he could only shake his head in dismay at how deeply in debt Heywood had gone. Every square inch of land was mortgaged, promised when Heywood had no legal right to use Maddie’s personal holdings as collateral. Even Albemarle and her funds in the Bank of England were backing loans, a nightmare of debt that could see her ruined and forced to go begging to her brothers for help.
With the children entrusted to Ethan’s care for a week so that Maddie could focus her thoughts on her financial problems, she sat down at Heywood’s desk in the plantation office and reviewed what options had been made available. She would not consider Mr. Laurens’ suggestion, coming from a man whose family made its fortune in the slave trade. The idea of selling her people was reprehensible, flying in the face of family tradition. As the distinguished gentleman had pointed out, however, bills would come due, and if Mrs. Taft did not sell her chattel, the sheriff would.
Converting land into cash was not a complete solution, given the depressed market. It all came back to the blockade, the trade embargo and the war, and whether or not the crisis would end before Mr. Prioleau came to Belle Rive to conduct an auction. In her mind, Maddie pictured some miracle hidden among Heywood’s correspondence or tucked among the contracts, but such miracles did not exist. Instead she reviewed the transactions and realized how clever a businessman Heywood had been. Every acre he purchased was worth far more than he had paid, prime rice land or lush pastures that produced high yields. Steady, reliable Heywood Taft had acted more recklessly than Maddie would have under the same circumstances, but he had compiled a formidable portfolio. Without him to juggle interest payments and sweet-talk his way out of immediate compensation, Maddie was alone in solving a problem she had not done enough to prevent. She missed him with such intensity that she had to push away from his desk, to leave a room that no longer smelled like him.
“Why didn’t you hide me away when the Admiral came to take me?” she asked as she mounted the stairs, Captain Tar at her heels. “If you had done as I asked, I wouldn’t have had to go to England but you failed me. I needed you and you were afraid. I need you now and you’ve left me.”
In his dressing room, she pulled a shirt from the armoire and held it to her nose, but it smelled only of soap and fresh air. His gloves, his trousers, his stockings; she sniffed them all but there were no lingering fragments of her husband. “Why did I let you go to Georgetown? I knew it was dangerous. I was afraid, Heywood, afraid of arguing with you.”
Her vision was blurred by tears as she examined and touched every piece of fabric that had once touched his skin. In the back of a drawer, a stack of folded paper bound with coarse twine caught her eye. She touched the knot, as if she could stroke the fingers that had tied it. The papers were letters she had written to him, all notes without importance, but he had preserved them like precious souvenirs. What had she done with his letters to her? Dropped into a desk drawer, tucked into a book, forgotten, discarded. She pressed the packet to her heart, but when she looked at it again, she saw that the note on the bottom of the pile bore a man’s handwriting.
Behind closed doors, Maddie sat on the floor with Tar at her side, the poor dog lost without Heywood to scratch his ears before they strode out to the pier every morning. With great care, she extracted the letter without disrupting the twine, and let it fall into her lap. The ink was acid and it would burn her fingers.
The epistle was addressed to Lady Madeleine nee Beauchamp. Her hands shook, her breath caught in her throat and she fought back a wave of nausea that surged up from her stomach. Low in her belly she felt a tiny fluttering, like a moth beating against a window pane. It was true, then, she had not imagined it. There was another baby coming. She hugged Captain Tar, who offered reassurance with a wagging tail and a cold nose nuzzling her chin.
“My dearest Maddie,” she read. “Oh dear God. No.”
Memories flooded her skull, memories that became more real than the dressing room and Heywood’s clothes and the stirring of her unborn child. “I was such a fool,” she said to the dog. “What did I know of love? That I thought I was in love. Childish whimsy.”
She read on, trying to hear Heywood’s oaths or sobs as Lord Sunderland declared his undying love, his never-ending devotion to the flower of Charleston. It was a litany of madness, surely Heywood had recognized the prose as the ramblings of a man unhinged. Or had he believed it? Flee, Sunderland commanded, flee South Carolina. Use the letter to gain safe passage aboard any British vessel manning the blockade. Flee to London where they would reunite, free from the iron fist of her stepfather. The Court of St. James would be open to her, the title of Marchioness Sunderland her proud possession, and she would preside over the finest estate in
England if she would only come back and join Sunderland as they should have been united from the first. The letter had been sent three years ago.
Maddie could not continue. She crumpled the page into a tight ball. All along, Heywood had not competed with Ethan but with this stranger who offered wealth and social status such as Heywood could only imagine. It was all so clear, the reason for her husband’s behavior. He was fighting to win her heart, out of fear that Maddie would leave him for some suitor who had wooed her in England, who had more to offer. The doubts that must have plagued Heywood, the need to remain vigilant, the fear that he would lose his wife to a peer who could give her prestige and position.
“To think that I wanted to marry him,” she said. “Go to the devil, Sunderland. You murderer. Heywood’s death is on your hands.”
She paced the floor, unable to sleep that night. Her mind raced in circles that grew larger until they encompassed her stepfather and his unconscionable manipulating. If he had accepted her choice of Sunderland, or if he had granted her the time to seek another whom she might have loved more, or a man she could have come to love. She would not be alone, broken-hearted and grieving if the Admiral had not deceived her. In the end, he was the one to take the blame for the mountain of debt that Heywood accumulated in a race he had already won. For Heywood’s death and the distress that consumed his last years of life, the blame was placed squarely on the Admiral’s shoulders.
As the first rays of light slipped through the gap in the shutters, Maddie took up her pen and wrote. When the tears came, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and carried on. Her venom scrawled onto the paper, she dropped the letter into the crate that she had meant to ship months ago, when she was a wife with a husband who feared his marriage was built on sand.
A footman carried the box that held portraits of the youngest grandchildren, along with a sketchbook of family scenes that would allow the Admiral to share their lives. Eyes straight ahead, Maddie landed at the Charleston wharf and sought out one of the local pilots who often called at Belle Rive to buy and sell goods.
“That British ship of the line standing in close.” She approached Red Wallace as he loitered near the Beauchamp warehouses. “Take me to it.”
“But the blockade, Mrs. Taft,” he said.
“I know for a fact that you buy my whiskey and beer and sell it to the English sailors,” she said. “Do not play coy with me. I am in no mood for games.”
British warships had been standing in the mouth of Charleston harbor for so long that they had become part of the landscape, like barrier islands with reefed sails. Wallace’s barge pulled up alongside the closest frigate, to be greeted by a bosun whose manner demonstrated a longstanding relationship that was cordial and friendly. After a shower of profanity and lewd remarks, Maddie heard enough. She had business to conduct.
“I will see your captain at once,” she barked. The oarsmen on the barge cringed, as if struck by a whip.
“And who shall I say is calling, your ladyship?” the bosun retorted.
Doing his best to wave off the bosun’s mistake, Wallace flapped his arms and waggled his eyebrows to send a critical message. His passenger, decked out in mourning, was indeed a lady and not a high-priced courtesan accustomed to trade with officers exclusively. “Lady Madeleine Ashford Taft,” Maddie said.
An uproar on deck soon had the rail lined with the curious. The bosun was replaced by a lieutenant who hurried down the ladder at speed, nearly falling over when the barge rocked in the harbor’s chop. “Maddie, is it you?”
George Ashford had been tanned by the sun, the corners of his eyes creased like old leather boots. His resemblance to his father had deepened over time, as if years of service to the Crown had ground him down. Not sure of receiving a welcome, Maddie was relieved when George stumbled over his words, with dozens of questions trying to spill out at once. She almost smiled under her dark veil, but she felt the weight of her mission and did not give in to a recollection of happier days.
After learning that the family was well, and expressing her deep longing to see Lucy again, Maddie accepted George’s condolences on the loss of her husband. He could only have known of the loss through the gossip-mongers of Charleston who provided all the blather one might desire, at a price. It was clear that the Admiral had posted George to Charleston Bay to spy on her, to obtain such gossip. Let him spy, then. It would not change her mind about her stepfather’s complicity in Heywood’s death.
George next launched into a detailed rendering of his naval career, which he relished, and his recent marriage. “You may recall Miss Gresham,” he said, chest puffed up with pride.
The threat to Lady Jane’s assent had found a way to gain the title of Lady Bransmore after all. “An uncommonly pretty creature,” Maddie said. “But what I recall most is her decidedly agreeable nature. I liked her very much. I hope you shall both be happy.”
Fatigue settled into her bones as George prattled on, as if his words were boulders that would sink the barge if she did not cast them over the side. “Will you come aboard, and take some refreshment? We have so much to share, so much news I do not know where to begin.”
“Sadly, I must decline,” she said, even though she wanted desperately to sit with her cousin and chat as if they were all back in the drawing room at Farthingmill Abbey. “ I have two children who need me, and I have yet to close up the townhouse for the winter.”
“As for your package, I will personally see that it is delivered to my uncle with all haste,” George said. “And if at any time you wish to call on me, please do not hesitate. You will be received with all cordiality.”
“If it were possible for you to call on me at my home, George, I would gladly receive you,” she said. “As conditions preclude such a pleasant occasion, I can only pray that your return to Spithead is not long in coming.”
“He regrets it, you know,” George said. He paused at the top of the ladder. “What happened. In its entirety.”
“A man who feasts on regrets will find no sustenance,” Maddie said. Did she not have a full plate of regrets? And what use were those regrets? The world continued to spin, the sun continued to rise and set.
“Austria has joined the coalition against Bonaparte,” he said. “Sunderland has fought admirably, by all accounts.”
The distance between the barge and the frigate grew. “Sunderland is dead to me,” she said. A gust of wind caught the sail of the barge, moving it too far away for a woman’s voice to carry. Maddie waved her handkerchief, bidding good-bye to her cousin and her past. She would make a new life, begin a new chapter as a widow and plantation owner who would economize, cut corners and do without until her husband’s debts were paid and the future of her children was secured. Lucy, Cecily. Caroline Thompson. How she missed them. There was no escape from life’s sorrows, no matter how determined Maddie might be. She could not run from them, and she certainly could not hide.
The Second War of Rebellion Page 51