Night Winds

by Gwyneth Atlee

  Tears welled in Shae’s eyes, and her stomach threatened new upheaval. She couldn’t bear to remember anymore, to think about that afternoon, when she came home to a family forever shattered. How long did she stand at the parlor window and listen at every passing voice, at every horse’s hoof beats? How long did she hold out hope her mother would return?

  Shae shook her head in an attempt to banish distant pain. From some reserve inside her, she found the strength to put her hand on the forbidden doorknob, the will to close her fingers. With a whispered prayer, she turned the knob, then pushed the door and peered inside the long-forbidden space.

  Heavy curtains obscured the golden light of the September afternoon. Dusky paneling and nearly black walnut furniture deepened the dimness into something animal, unsettling, like the darkness of a cave. She stepped into the gloom, then had to feel her way across the room to open draperies so she could see. Beyond the cobwebbed glass, the oleander bushes still waved with the breeze, as if to testify that outside, day yet reigned. Motes of dust swirled in the shaft of light that joined Shae in her intrusion.

  Inside the room, a massive desk, completely clear, claimed one end of the room. Behind it, several cabinets loomed, with drawer after drawer marked with no hint of its contents. The other end of the rectangular room contained a pair of burgundy chairs, covered in worn leather. The one closest to the small stove had a slight tear in the seat. A dust-covered copy of Moby Dick lay on a small table, the only book in evidence. The whole place felt close and smelled musty, for Eva, too, with all her rags and brushes, had been kept outside.

  Where do I begin? Shae’s gaze drifted to the huge desk, nearly large enough to qualify as a leviathan in its own right. With hands quivering, she sank into the leather chair behind it and pulled open the top drawer. Or tried to. It was locked.

  She stared at the keyhole and then shrugged and tried the drawers on the left side. The top one held a derringer her father carried when he transported funds from the store’s safe to the bank. She closed it carefully and moved to the next drawer, which revealed documents that meant little to Shae: a deed to this property, a bill of sale for the wrecked gig. (She winced at the cost and swore a silent oath that she would never steal another barring extreme emergency, of course.) Though she rifled through several dozen neatly arranged files, she found nothing of interest. Finally, bending low, she pulled the handle to the lowest left-hand drawer.

  It stuck, so Shae worked the handle back and forth in an attempt to free it. When finally it opened, the roller screeched in protest with a sound as harsh as fingernails on slate.

  Shae froze and in the dusty silence listened for the telltale footsteps that would end her hopes to find the truth. Outside the room, the entry clock chimed five. Between each stroke, she heard her heartbeat hammer in her ears. Long after the clock fell silent, she waited, until at last a design drew her eye downward. It was the decorative lettering atop a marriage license. Samuel Kingston Rowan and Glennis Maureen McElbee, May 5, 1854.

  Shae pulled out the heavy paper and set it on the desk before her.

  That date couldn’t be right. Why, she’d been born that same year, on July twenty-first! If that were so, then . . . Sudden comprehension flooded over Shae. Aunt Alberta’s comment, “Always trash, right from the start She was.” Her father’s overzealous vigilance, meant, he insisted, to protect her from herself. His obvious dismay each time anyone mentioned her resemblance to her mother. Glennis McElbee had gotten pregnant out of wedlock.

  Shae rolled her eyes at the notion. From the way King acted, one might imagine Mother had done the deed alone! She was no great expert on the origin of infants, but even she could guess her father’s role in the situation. How unfair that after their union was blessed, the shame of the rushed wedding had fallen only on her mother.

  Out of Shae’s earshot, had her aunt hounded Glennis with cruel reminders, snide remarks? Maybe Eva had been right. Maybe after a while, Mother couldn’t stand it and ran away forever. Or maybe Father, in one of his infamous tempers, had brought up Mother’s old “offense” once too often. Or perhaps he’d found out about her afternoon excursions. The ones that Shae had never mentioned, the ones she might have stopped.

  She shuddered with the memories, then thought of the note she’d found inside the carpetbag. The few scrawled words implied it had not been a lover that took her mother from this house. But wasn’t it possible she hadn’t been killed either?

  Seeking reassurance, Shae picked up the carpetbag. She laid it on the desk, then reached inside for its contents. As she withdrew the wrapped cameo, a few pointed, crumbling leaves and the slip of tattered paper fluttered to the floor. The necklace slid out of its bag, then struck the smooth wood of the desktop with a soft, metallic thunk. As Shae leaned to her right to collect the note, the filigree that framed the cameo caught her eye. Something brown was crusted in it, something too dark to be mud.

  Blood! Her mind screamed it as she straightened, the dropped note instantly forgotten. She reached out for the necklace, but her hand was shaking so hard she couldn’t even touch the cameo.

  The door burst open.

  “Mary Shae!” a voice demanded. “What in God’s name are you doing in here?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The servant had barely left the room to announce Phillip’s presence when Rachel glided through the parlor door, her face warmed by a smile. Gazing into her blue eyes, he tried to convince himself she couldn’t be capable of the deception Lydia described. Surely, his sister must have somehow misunderstood, must have somehow dreamed up an intrigue to break her isolation throughout Port Providence’s nearly endless summer.

  Rachel stopped a few feet short of him and waited until he crossed the gap between them to embrace her.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Phillip whispered into her stylish, upswept hair. “I’ve missed you so much, Rachel.”

  Did he only imagine the perfunctory nature of her hug? Or the briefness of the span before she pulled away?

  “I have thought so much of you,” she told him, her peridot earrings sparkling when she moved. Taking him by the hand, she led him to a dainty-looking sofa in the well-appointed sitting room.

  He followed her lead and sat beside her. “Have you? I never heard a word in all these weeks. I thought you might not have received my letters.”

  “Letters? Are you certain?” With a languid motion of her hand, she brushed aside the thought.

  At that moment, Phillip noticed she no longer wore his ring. The ring his grandmother had left him. The ring that Rachel had sworn she loved too much even to remove while bathing. His head throbbed, and once more, he felt too warm.

  If his expression changed, she did not appear to notice, for she continued speaking. “You must have miscopied the address. Besides, you know how I detest writing. What I have to say, I feel more confident expressing face-to-face.”

  “So what was it you expressed to Ethan earlier face to face?” Phillip hadn’t meant to ask so bluntly, but her dismissal of his letters vexed him. She’d never seemed so insensitive before, or was that, too, a trick of his imagination?

  Rachel’s expression glazed over, as if with a sheet of solid ice. “Ethan? I haven’t seen the man in months. I did hear that he broke off his engagement to that common Irish creature.”

  “Is that how he put it?”

  “How should I know what he said? I told you, I haven’t seen him.” Rachel’s hands knotted into fists, crumpling the yellow fabric of her skirt. The skin across her knuckles had blanched to stark white.

  “You would make a poor criminal. You’ve never learned to lie. I thought you hated Ethan. But now that his fiancée has abandoned him, you’ve suddenly remembered all that wealth? Is that it? Are you angling for his money?” He glanced pointedly at the bare fingers of her hand. “Or are you just out for a more expensive bauble?”

  She tried to slap him, but he anticipated her and grasped her wrist.

  “Tell me that I’m
wrong,” he demanded through clenched teeth. “Tell me you haven’t betrayed me.”

  With her violent impulse thwarted, Rachel burst into angry tears. “What choice did you give me? I tried. I tried so hard. You’ve no idea how humiliating this has been defending you when I believe you wrong, hoping, praying you’d relent, or that this horrible disaster with those Negroes would blow over. Overhearing Father and his friends say you’re not half the man your father was. Overhearing Father tell them how he regretted giving his consent for our betrothal.”

  Once, he might have felt guilt or even sympathy, but not now, after she turned her gaze on him once more. Her exquisite face transformed into a mask of pure contempt.

  “Blame yourself, not me, you stubborn fool,” she told him. “Even a stupid rat knows when a ship is sinking. You’ve been taking on water for so long now that I’m sick with shame for you.”

  “So you’ll swim, like a rat?” The depth of her disloyalty impaled him like a blade.

  She drove it to the hilt, twisted it in her wrath. “I’m in the best of company. Your own mother won’t support you.”

  Phillip shut his eyes against the pain, then mentally added Rachel to the cost of what he had once naïvely considered a simple case of fairness. “So tell me, where does Ethan fit into all this? Consoling you, was he?”

  “At first,” Rachel admitted. “But it began before you . . . before us. I care for him, I suppose. I have all along. He only proposed to that little slut to punish me because I wouldn’t give in to what he wanted not until we married. Now he sees that she was nothing, just an ungrateful bitch sniffing at his money so she won’t be forced to labor in a shop.”

  Phillip released her arm, suddenly repelled as if he were handling offal. “Sounds as if you’re describing the wrong woman, Rachel. You always were far too impressed by the Lowell fortune. I’m sorry mine wasn’t sufficient to appease your appetite.”

  Her gaze locked with his, and her mouth grew small and mean. “A woman of my station shouldn’t have to settle for a man so stubborn he’s willing to destroy his father’s business. All for a promise and a bunch of upstart Negroes.”

  “Damn it, don’t you see it? You are settling. You’re putting aside a man who loves you who lovedyou for a man so obsessed with Shae Rowan he’s still plotting to take her as his mistress. To him you’ll be nothing but a second choice.”

  “I’ll be his wife. I’ll wear his diamonds. That’s all that really matters. The rest,” she said with a disdainful sweeping motion of one hand, “is of no consequence at all.”

  Phillip stood and glared down at her. “That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Tisdale. There’ll be consequences all around, for everyone involved.”

  *

  “Mary Shae, I asked you what you’re doing here.” Aunt Alberta’s gaze strayed to the desktop and the marriage certificate that rested on it. “Why on earth are you digging through your father’s private things?”

  “What happened to my mother?” Shae demanded. She refused to let the older woman put her on the defensive.

  “Your mother?” Aunt Alberta’s eyes narrowed above her fleshy cheeks.

  “My mother. Someone sent a gift for me.” Shae lifted the cameo by its golden chain. “And a note as well. There are questions. I want answers.”

  Her aunt’s face darkened. “Of all the impertinence! Put that away at once, young lady. You’re in absolutely no position to make demands. Haven’t you caused enough trouble for one week?”

  “Mother didn’t run away, did she?” Shae stood and faced her aunt, though beneath her skirt, her knees shook.

  “She wasn’t fit to wipe his boots. Not for a moment. She was household help, Mary Shae our family’s help, in Philadelphia. A poor Irish girl who didn’t know pastries from pepperpot. And then she trapped your father. She did nothing but make him trouble from the start. You’d best watch yourself, or you’ll turn out just like Her.”

  “She didn’t run away,” Shae insisted. She left the marriage certificate on the desk and replaced the cameo in its filthy sack. Tucking it into the carpetbag, she strode toward the older woman. “But she should have. I won’t make the same mistake.”

  “What are you saying, Mary Shae? Your mother was a faithless woman. She had affairs for years. Surely, you remember how she vanished so many afternoons. She never offered anyone a word of explanation. Did you think that she was lighting candles in that Papist church sanctuary all those days?”

  Shae tried to reach the door, but Alberta’s bulk prevented her from leaving.

  Her aunt grasped her upper arm hard enough to pinch.

  “It pains me to say this,” the older woman said, “but your mother was a wretched slut. The wanton tramp took all her jewelry and ran off with the first man who would have her.”

  Shae yanked her arm free. She wanted to shriek against Alberta’s accusations, but, as always, guilt prevented her. Guilt that she had known but had done nothing to stop Glennis. Yet even if her mother had affairs, it didn’t make the rest of her aunt’s explanation true. She shook her head. “I won’t listen to that story anymore. There’s something else as well. I know it. Tell me. Tell me, please.”

  “I don’t know who sent the cameo, or what lies they might have spread. Just remember, King and I are all the family that you’ve had these last six years. We’re the only ones who really love you.”

  Shae squeezed past her aunt, then through the open doorway, before turning back. “You’re wrong. I remember what love was. I can almost feel my mother’s arms around me. I can hear her voice, when she sang in the kitchen. I can smell her Irish soda bread, just baked. I haven’t felt love in a long, long time. I haven’t felt it since she left me.”

  With the carpetbag clutched close to her body, Shae ran down the stairs.

  “Mary Shae, come back!” Her aunt’s voice vibrated with hot fury. “Don’t turn into Her!”

  “I won’t,” Shae whispered to herself. “I won’t. Because I’m leaving now while I still can.”

  *

  When Benjamin called King away from his conversation with a customer, worry furrowed the goldsmith’s wide brow. King joined him in the workroom.

  “Your sister sent a message,” Benjamin reported. He passed King a folded note, then gestured broadly toward the errand boy, a red-haired lad of ten who licked his lips hopefully, as if in anticipation of the candy a decent tip would buy.

  Benjamin rubbed his palms together. He might be fleshy, but those hands of his were rarely still.

  The spark of his worry immediately caught in King’s mind. Alberta had never sent messages since that one disastrous time. She loathed the practice, which she claimed spread word among the serving classes to spying gossips all over Port Providence. Had something happened to his sister? Was the house in flames?

  Ignoring Benjamin and the boy’s curious stares, he unfolded the note and read its simple message. Please come home at once.

  “Where’s Mary Shae?” he demanded, suddenly recalling he hadn’t seen her for a while.

  “She left some time ago.”

  “It’s Mary, then,” King guessed. “Something’s happened.”

  After brushing by the boy’s outstretched hand, he feigned politeness long enough to excuse himself to the customer and introduce Benjamin to the wealthy man. Normally, King would worry about leaving a sale to a subordinate inexperienced in that delicate struggle. But the news of Alberta’s call had supplanted that concern. What mischief had his daughter wrought this time? He struggled to focus wrath into his thoughts, for anger was the place that he felt safest. Best to keep all else at bay, lest fear and regret both gnaw at his liver like dark rats.

  After reminding Michael to lock up at six, King left through the back door and began the short drive home. This day as every other, he could have used the streetcar, but King felt his black phaeton distinguished him as a man of substance, apart from the normal run of businessmen.

  Today he thanked God that he woul
dn’t have to wait on any public contrivance, and he flicked the reins on Samson’s back to hurry along the steadfast bay. The gelding sped to a brisk trot and then a canter. In a short time, the buggy rolled into the drive beside his house.

  Without pause to tend his horse, King raced inside.

  “Alberta!” his voice boomed in the stairwell.

  No answer. King’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. He called again.

  This time, her voice was faint. Following the sound, he rushed toward the kitchen and wondered if his sister might be ill.

  But she wasn’t in the kitchen either.

  “King? Is that you?” Her voice came from an unexpected angle.

  He rushed toward it, though it came from behind his office door. He pushed open the door and stared at his older sister, who sat behind his own desk as if she had some right! Rage set him shaking as he recognized the marriage certificate that lay before her.

  “How dare you?” he began, too astounded to manage the remaining words he needed.

  She raised a hand to stay him, although tongue-tied as he was, her gesture wasn’t needed.

  “Mary Shae’s been in here,” Alberta told him. “She came with her mother’s cameo and questions.”

  King found his voice, at least enough of it to whisper, “Merciful Christ. Where is she? How could she have gotten that necklace, after all these years?”

  Alberta shook her head. “I can’t answer your first question. She’s run off somewhere. As for the second” His sister raised a scrap of paper, caught between her thumb and forefinger. “ I thought you might tell me.”

  *

  “You’ll have to pick another stretch of beach.”

  Phillip jerked his head toward Shae’s voice. Soft and feminine, it seemed as natural here as did the breaking of the gentle surf, the mewing cries of the sea birds. The light that fell on her was pale pink, the last rays of a sinking, crimson sun. Behind her shoulder, the evening’s first bright star gleamed.