Langley's Choice

by Kate Dolan

  Yet he had no grave—no proper grave—only water.

  Had that been God’s will? Had it been God’s will that they be reduced to paupers?

  Had God willed misfortune on them?

  Or had they brought it upon themselves? Caroline thought of her father’s face as he talked of the mounting debts. He had recognized his mistakes and regretted them, but too late.

  And her mistakes? Charles was dead, and her engagement was at an end. With a start, Caroline realized that if she had not behaved so imprudently, if she had simply married Mr. Throckmorton when he had asked and not drawn out the engagement and tried so hard to seek adventures, her marriage to him could have saved her family. He had family money and a sizeable plantation; the attachment would have solved her family’s financial problems.

  Being married to him could not have been any worse than living with her sisters, which she would now have to do forever, probably. None of them would have enough money to marry anyone.

  Caroline bowed her head. What have I done? But she halted the waves of self-pity that again threatened to engulf her.

  What do I do now?

  “Trust in God’s will,” Charles would no doubt tell her. Yes, but what was God’s will?

  She had never particularly thought about it before.

  His will probably did not call for her to set out on a privateer’s ship seeking adventures on new horizons. But perhaps it did. Perhaps she was meant to discover or explore.

  More likely, it was God’s will that she spend her days cooking and cleaning and doing the dull, repetitive work she had hitherto avoided. After all, the one thing she did know about God was that he wanted them to attend church, and church was dull and repetitive.

  Charles had always enjoyed church. Had he seen something in it she did not? He had probably known God’s will. To know it would make it easier to trust in it, she supposed.

  Caroline realized the damp ground had wet her gown through to her shift, and she was getting cold. The light had faded from the winter sky so it would be hard to see among the trees. And she was hungry.

  Obviously, she had no choice at the moment but to go back to the house. If she had to trust in something, she could call it God’s will. She could look for God’s will. She could look for God’s will in the bottom of a cooking pot.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  "Good morning, Josiah. I trust you had a pleasant sleep?”

  Josiah was surprised to find Carter up and dressed ahead of him. When he had gone up to sleep, he had left the man engrossed in a game of cards that had promised to go on half the night.

  “Yes, sir, I believe I did.” He winced as a sharp pain coursed across his temple.

  Carter chuckled. “I’d stay away from Mrs. Goodwin’s black currant wine tonight if I were you. The headache is always twice as bad the second day.”

  Josiah didn’t remember drinking that much, but he didn’t have the energy to object to the assumption he was suffering the effect of too much wine.

  “Something to eat—and drink. That will be the remedy. You must come down at once.”

  Carter seemed unusually enthusiastic this morning; indeed, he had seemed so ever since they arrived. He appeared to be enjoying himself immensely, which made no sense for a man facing debtor’s prison.

  Josiah waved him toward the stairs. “I’ll be down directly.” He thought hopefully of the restorative power of coffee then remembered the lack of forks the previous night. Forks were still considered an unnecessary “English” accessory by many in this colony, as was coffee, so if they had none of the former he doubted he would find any of the latter. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to get up and ask.

  He recognized Carter’s voice as he walked into the main room.

  “I believe business was off a bit last night from what I recall from previous years, was it not, James?” Carter punctuated his question by taking a big bite from a turkey leg.

  “Ah, perhaps, but ’tis no matter. I won enough at cards to make up the difference! Good morning. You must be the esteemed Mr. Throckmorton.”

  Josiah was a bit taken aback at being addressed so suddenly. “At your service, Mr…?”

  “Goodwin, James Goodwin.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Goodwin.”

  “You are most welcome, sir. I understand that you are the legal expert in our midst.”

  “I’m hardly an expert, Mr. Goodwin.” Josiah picked up a tankard from a side table and headed over to the table where the other two breakfasted. “I enjoyed a very limited practice at the bar in London before deciding to visit Maryland.” Visit? Had he really said “visit?”

  His host passed him the pitcher from the middle of the table. Josiah resigned himself to the fact it would probably not contain coffee.

  “Your admittance to the bar itself makes you a rare expert, in this county, at least. Not to mention the education preceding such honor.”

  Josiah set his drink on the table with a little more force than he’d intended. Despite the pleasant conviviality of his host and others in the room, he was growing annoyed. He wanted toast and bacon and coffee for breakfast. Instead, somebody had merely laid out cold cuts of meat from last night’s supper and filled a pitcher with watered-down rum. It was thoroughly unpalatable, yet the few other men in the room seemed to eat and drink with great relish, Carter included. And Carter seemed ten years younger and infernally cheerful.

  Then there was the picture of the local legal practice, which was shaping up to be unbearably primitive. No barristers, barely educated attorneys, no one bothering to cite the law and litigants more concerned about whether they knew the judge than whether they could secure adequate representation. He could never work within this system, and yet he must if he was going to help Carter.

  “Josiah!”

  He realized he had been staring at his distorted image in the pewter tankard and jerked his gaze up to look at his companions. “Yes?”

  His host grinned at him as he held out a trencher of turkey. “Your thoughts have taken you some distance from us, I believe.”

  “What? No…” Josiah reached out to take the proffered breakfast. “No, my thoughts were, indeed, here.”

  “Well, then,” Carter interposed with a smile, “your attention certainly was not. I was asking you where your business takes you today.”

  A good question. A very good question, since he had still not come up with a pretense for his visit to Joppa. He did not want Carter to think he’d come all this way merely to assist him. He put a big piece of dark meat into his mouth and chewed as slowly as he could.

  “I think I would like to consult with you, Mr. Goodwin, if I may. I am not quite sure just how to proceed. With my business.”

  He looked around. The room was starting to fill with men eating, drinking and smoking, all in what seemed to be unusually high spirits. It was as if he’d walked into a festival of some sort. He certainly did not want to discuss business here. “Have you chambers near the court or an office…?”

  “I’d be happy to meet with you upstairs, if you’d like. This morning?”

  Good grief! Had this man no other appointments? “Er, yes, that would be most kind of you to make room in your schedule on such short notice.”

  “My pleasure.” Goodwin wiped his fingers on a napkin and stood, looking at Carter. “I have some accounts to settle while everyone is still relatively sober. Will you excuse me?” Then he turned to Josiah. “Shall we meet upstairs at my desk in an hour?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “After you meet with Goodwin,” Carter said, and gestured to the stairs, “let us ride back to the courthouse. I expect we’ll see a little more activity today, and the court opens session, too.”

  What other kind of activity was Carter referring to? After his behavior last night, Josiah didn’t know what to expect from him.

  “Yes, I would like to see the court in session.” He thought of the woman coming out of the woods yesterday. He didn’t want
to evince an interest for anything other than purely legal spectacle.

  Why was Carter smiling so broadly?

  “Josiah, my boy, you look far too glum for court days. You’re going to miss all the fun if you’re not careful.”

  “Fun?”

  “Yes, fun.”

  Court and fun were concepts that bore no relation to one another in Josiah’s experience. “You come here for fun?”

  “In a sense, yes. These days, I don’t generally undertake the trip unless I have business in the session, since it is such an inconvenient journey. But when I was Charles’s age I managed to find an excuse to come to every session. And in those first few years after my marriage I believe I would have sued myself, if necessary, to justify the trip. There was always a baby crying and at least two children fighting somewhere in the house. For the chance to get away alone, it was worth every hardship of the journey. And the entertainment here, well, it may have fallen off a bit in recent years—it’s been a while since we had a good horse race, and the cockfights really aren’t what they used to be—but it still helps to knock the cobwebs out a bit. Just being here makes me feel young again.”

  Carter did look younger; suddenly, the behavior he had displayed since their arrival seemed less incredible. He revisited his youth with every trip to his attorney. Odd, but then, from the attorney’s point of view, it would be much more pleasant to deal with clients who came anticipating a sense of renewal rather than clients bent on seeking revenge or defending against a loss.

  Carter had come here to defend against a loss, though, a catastrophic one. And he was clearly avoiding the prospect for as long as possible.

  Josiah looked at his drink and sighed.

  “I don’t suppose rum is much in fashion for breakfast among gentlemen these days,” Carter said sympathetically.

  “No, indeed, it is something I have not encountered before.”

  “Perhaps Mrs. Goodwin might fetch you some more of her wine? Or at least some cider.”

  “Yes, perhaps.” Josiah looked around vainly for someone he might send to the kitchen. He really was very thirsty, and the watered rum tasted revolting at this hour of the morning.

  “But, you know,” Carter laughed, “when I was Charles’s age, it was rum for breakfast every morning!”

  Josiah forced out a polite laugh and excused himself to head for the kitchen. When Carter had been Charles’s age, the colony must have been even more primitive. The face in the crude portrait on the parlor wall at Hill Crest came into his mind—Carter’s father, and grandfather, too, had worked so industriously to ensure their family’s prosperity. Their lives must have been filled with discomfort and hardship, for they seemed to spare few comforts for themselves. They sacrificed themselves for the next generation, and now that generation had lost it all. Had all the sacrifice been for naught?

  There was no sign of Mrs. Goodwin when he entered the kitchen, but a young girl chopping turnips at the table looked up and bobbed a curtsey. “Sir?”

  “Ah, yes. I was hoping I might be able to get something to drink.”

  The girl sniffed and put down her knife. “I’ll get you some rum, will I, sir?”

  “No, no, I…do you have any coffee? No, well, nor chocolate, either, I suppose?”

  “We’ve rum, sir, and cider, some wine—but that’s locked up—and perry.”

  “May I trouble you for a cup of water, then?”

  “Water, sir?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes.” As he looked more closely at her face, Josiah could see the girl’s eyes were red and swollen, and tracks left by tears stood out plainly on her cheeks. He remembered Miss Carter’s face looking that way the few times he had seen her on deck on the voyage back to Maryland. His own had probably looked the same.

  For some reason, he now felt the urge to cheer this girl up. “Have you not heard of water here in the colonies? Incredible substance, really. Light, clear, it falls from the sky.” He demonstrated with a fluttering motion of his hands, and the girl smiled a bit.

  “We English invented it, you know.”

  That remark earned him a small chuckle.

  “We had to, really, after inventing the sailing ship; we needed something to put it in.”

  The girl laughed as she took a dipper full of water from a pail near the door and poured it into a tankard.

  “You’re laughing! You do not believe me! I say, you’re enjoying the use of that table well enough. We English invented tables and turnips, too.”

  The girl smiled shyly as she handed him the water, and Josiah bowed as he accepted it. On sudden inspiration, he took a farthing from his pocket and handed it to her. “For your gracious service.”

  “Thank you, sir!” The girl looked at the coin with reverence.

  As he walked back to his table, he thought about the remarkable reaction to his small gratuity and realized it may have been the first time the girl had ever been given a coin. In this society, everyone paid with notes of credit for tobacco, and coins were a rare item. In fact, he had perhaps been unwise to part with one of his so frivolously.

  But it had made her so happy.

  He felt, strangely enough, as if he had accomplished something.

  As he sat down, he noticed Carter now seemed more reserved and serious—more his usual self, he supposed. They sat for some minutes in silence. Josiah thought of the girl and how simple it had really been to make her forget her troubles, or perhaps even banish them. After all, if her troubles had been monetary, hard English currency, even a tiny bit of it, might buy a solution.

  “Good day, John Carter! I have not seen you in many sessions!” The voice came from the foot of the stairs as the speaker started toward them with heavy, clunking footsteps. He reached out a hand to Carter and then turned to Josiah. “Surely, this is not young Charles?”

  “Oh, no. Mr. Throckmorton, may I present Obadiah Greensleeves.”

  The big man with the heavy shoes reached out to shake Josiah’s hand and gave him a toothy grin.

  “Mr. Greensleeves, may I present Mr. Josiah Throckmorton.”

  “How do you do, sir?” Josiah tried to speak without wincing, hoping the man would let go of his hand now that introductions were complete.

  “Does Charles accompany you this trip? I swear I do not believe I would recognize him after these many years.”

  Josiah looked at Carter, who had trained his gaze out the window silently. Without looking at anyone, Carter spoke in a low voice. “My son Charles is dead. He was killed in an accident last month.”

  After a moment, in which the visitor thankfully said nothing, Carter turned away from the window to look first at Josiah then at his old acquaintance. “Mr. Throckmorton, my…neighbor has his own business at court this term, so we travel together.”

  “So sorry, I am, ’deed, so sorry to hear it. My condolences, Carter.” Greensleeves exchanged a quick handshake with Carter, made his apologies then faded quickly to the other side of the room.

  Carter fixed his gaze out the window once more, blinking rapidly in what Josiah guessed was a desperate effort to hold back tears.

  “Can I get you something, sir?” he asked, feeling helpless. It would not be as easy to make Carter forget his troubles as it had been to vanquish those of the girl in the kitchen.

  The feeble question remained unanswered, and after some time of sitting in silence, Josiah decided he should leave Carter to himself and see if it were near the time of his appointment with the attorney.

  “Please, stay a moment yet,” Carter said hoarsely as he pushed his chair back from the table. “Thank you for coming with me on this expedition. You’ve been very kind in your attention, Josiah, which I do appreciate.” The older man looked him full in the face. “The trip has brought back a great deal of memories for me, as you know. Some have been pleasant, some not so. Thus am I grateful for your company.”

  Both men looked away from each other uneasily. Josiah did not know whether to attempt to leave again; act
ually, he felt a little taken aback by this unaccustomed display of emotion and did not quite trust himself to stand immediately. After a moment, he sensed Carter had more to say. He sipped his water, grateful it did not taste of mold.

  “Charles did not enjoy court days. On his first few trips, I daresay he simply found them dull. On his last trip in particular, though, he voiced a deeper sense of disapproval—disapproval of men’s behavior, mine included, I suppose.” Carter looked at Josiah and smiled sadly. “I believe for a time I rather enjoyed being here without him.”

  “It is not so, now, though.”

  “No, indeed,” Carter sighed, “it is not.”

  Josiah marveled at the waste of it all. The work of Carter’s grandfather and father, the sacrifice of Charles, all for nothing. No doubt, Charles would have had an answer ready to refute that conclusion, though. Probably something about God’s hand or God’s will and a reason for all things that men cannot fathom. He knew ministers said some such thing from time to time.

  Very likely when they had nothing else to say.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  "My hands are tired. May I stop and go see Mother now?”

  “What?” Caroline gave her youngest sister a cross look. All her calculations of quantities of molasses and spices and cooking times vanished with the interruption. “No. You have a whole pile of apples left there to peel.”

  “But I’m tiiired. Ever so.”

  “I understand, Johanna. You may go upstairs to rest when you are finished.”

  “It’s not fair. You just don’t know how tired I am.”

  “Yes, I do know, because I’m that tired, and Edwina and Georgiana are that tired.”

  “But it’s not fair!” As her wail reached a near-deafening crescendo, Johanna’s flailing arms upset the pile of apples next to her on the bench, scattering them to the far corners of the kitchen floor.

  “Pick those up,” Caroline said in a low voice, gritting her teeth. “Every last one.” When her sister made no move, Caroline raised her voice to wood-splintering levels. “Pick them all up now!”